What Is Torture?

“Give me Liberty or give me Death.” To put this famous saying attributed to Patrick Henry somewhat differently, we easily recognize that death is not the worst thing that can happen to us. Indeed, there seems a large class of worse circumstances, though we generally don’t categorize them or, perhaps more importantly, often lack adequate language to describe them. <i>Worse than death</i>: it’s a subtle difference that doesn’t lend itself to formulation in terms of rules. <br /><br />Perhaps that’s why, when we find such rules, we elevate them to preeminent positions in international law. Here, George Kenney talks with <a href=”http://www.univie.ac.at/bim/php/bim/index.php?output_id=4″>Manfred Nowak</a>, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, to get a better sense of what the world is thinking, and doing, about a most peculiar abomination. And, no, the U.S. is not off the hook. It was extremely generous of Prof. Nowak to take time to talk with George Kenney. Please pay close attention and help redistribute widely. Total runtime an hour and eight minutes.

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Author: Chris Cook

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, broad/webcasting since 1999. The show is archived at: www.gorilla-radio.com. The GR blog is at: gorillaradioblog.blogspot.com, and you can find and support the program at GRadio.Substack.com. Financial support is also possible through the Patreon site: https://www.patreon.com/PacificFreePress. He's too the past contributing editor to the web news site, www.pacificfreepress.com, (now defunct) and tweets at @paciffreepress. G-Radio is dedicated to social justice, the environment, community, and providing a forum for people and issues not covered in the corporate media. Some past guests include: M. Shahid Alam, Joel Bakan, Maude Barlow, Ramzy Baroud, David Barsamian, William Blum, Luciana Bohne, Helen Caldicott, Noam Chomsky, Paul Cienfuegos, Yves Engler, Laura Flanders, Denis Halliday, Julia Butterfly Hill, Sam Husseini, Robert Jensen, Dahr Jamail, Chalmers Johnson, Malalai Joya, Kathy Kelly, Ingmar Lee, Dave Lindorff, Andrew Gavin Marshall, Stefania Maurizi, Greg Palast, Michael Parenti, John Pilger, Kevin Pina, Ted Rall, Paul Craig Roberts, John Ross, David Rovics, Joan Russow, Danny Schechter, Vandana Shiva, Norman Solomon, David Swanson, Andy Worthington, Mickey Z., Howard Zinn and many others.

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