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Abu Ghraib Quotes

Browse 34 quotes about Abu Ghraib.

Abu Ghraib Quotes

“There have been extensive human rights violations by American psychiatrists over the last 70 years. These doctors were pad by the American taxpayer through CIA and military contracts. It is past time for these abuses to stop, it is past time for a reckoning, and it is past time for individual doctors to be held accountable. The Manchurian Candidate Programs are of much more than "historical" interest. ARTICHOKE, BLUEBIRD, MKULTRA and MKSEARCH are precursors of mind control programs that are operational in the twenty first century. Human rights violations by psychiatrists must be ongoing in programs like COPPER GREEN, the interrogation program at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Such programs must be carried out within CIA units like Task Force 121 (The Dallas Morning News, December 1, 2004, p. 1A). Information pointing to ongoing human rights violations by psychiatrists is available in publications like The New Yorker (see article by Seymour M. Hersh, May 24, 2004). Yes the indifference, silence, denial, and disinformation of organized medicine and psychiatry continue. One purpose of The CIA Doctors: Human Rights Violations By American Psychiatrists is to break that silence.”

SilenceDoctorsAbuseHuman RightsDenialTorturePsychiatryCiaMind ControlRitual AbuseCriminalSociety DenialDisinformationBluebirdHuman Rights ViolationsAbu GhraibMkultraPsychiatristsArtichokeHuman ExperimentationManchurian CandidateDoctors Who KillCopper Green
Book:The CIA Doctors: Human Rights Violations by American Psychiatrists
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“After the sacrifice of value, after the sacrifice of representation, after the sacrifice of reality, the West is now characterized by the deliberate sacrifice of everything through which a human being keeps some value in his or her own eyes. The terrorists' potlatch against the West is their own death. Our potlatch is indignity, immodesty, obscenity, degradation and abjection. This is the movement of our culture - where the stakes keep rising. Our truth is always on the side of unveiling, desublimation, reductive analysis - the truth of the repressed -- exhibition, avowal, nudity - nothing is true unless it is desecrated, objectified, stripped of its aura, or dragged onstage.”

SacrificeSimulationAbu Ghraib
Book:The Agony of Power
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“In 2004, Jacques Derrida said that a change was under way. Torture damages the inflicter as well as the inflicted. It’s no coincidence that one of the Abu Ghraib torturers came to the military directly from a job as a chicken processor. It might be slow, Derrida said, but eventually the spectacle of our abuse of animals will be intolerable to our sense of who we are.”

TortureDamageAbu GhraibSense Of BeingJacques DerridaAbuse Of Animals
Book:We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
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“Of the veil or unveiling, which is the most alienating, the most humiliating, the most insulting? The immense hypocrisy of all those who denounce the veil, but are quite at ease with universal pornography. In any event, the question goes far beyond the veil and the female condition. At issue is a culture of obscenity that cannot but tear away all veils - according to the imperative of transparency. At issue is the profound jealousy of a ragged culture at all the ceremonial cultures - those cultures whose signs enwrap them, whereas our culture is laid bare by its signs themselves. This is merely the beginning of a general de-signification, in which all distinctive marks will become anathema, suspect of masking or even, quite simply, signifying something, and hence potentially terroristic. At the end of the process all that will be left will be lightweight, inoffensive signs - advertising signs or marks of the disembodied fanaticism of fashion. That, no doubt, is where the story of the veil will end.”

FashionPop CultureAbu GhraibWar Pornography
Book:Cool Memories V: 2000 - 2004
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“Water, which in itself is silent, is just waiting to make a noise. In itself completely motionless, it is just waiting to move. Perfectly cold and harsh in itself, it nonetheless has the tepidness of salt and the mineral softness of fabric. Total abhorrence of dominant ideologies. And anti-gulagism is the dominant ideology today. The anti-gulag priests are every bit as bad as the gulag torturers. The sheep have taken over from the beasts of the Apocalypse.”

WaterIdeologyAbu GhraibAnti Gulagism
Book:Cool memories
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“We all try to explain away the Holocaust, Abu Ghraib, or the Sabra Massacre by denying that we could ever do anything so horrible. The committers of those crimes are evil, other, bad apples; something in the German or American psyche makes their people susceptible to following orders, drinking the grape Kool-Aid, killing indiscriminately. You believe that you’re the one person who wouldn’t have delivered the electric shocks in the Milgram experiment because those who did must have been emotionally abused by their parents, or had domineering fathers, or were dumped by their spouses. Anything that makes them different from you.”

HolocaustAbu GhraibSabra Massacre
Book:An Unnecessary Woman
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“The prostitution of the male body in fashion puts an end to the last heroic privilege of woman - that of being sacrificed to the gaze while concealing herself, precisely thereby, in a second nudity. A fantastic advance by women on the path to total parity: no limits to sexual equality any longer. You can see this too in the picture of the young American woman turned torturer in the jails of Iraq, holding the naked or hooded Arab on a leash, as in some Western, women-only club. Advancement is irresistible. It happens for better and for worse.”

EqualityProstitutionAbu Ghraib
Book:Cool Memories V: 2000 - 2004
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“4. Which gives rise to the truly mysterious question: how does this irresistible global power succeed in undifferentiating the world, in wiping out its extreme singularity? And how can the world be so vulnerable to this liquidation, this dictatorship of integral reality, and how can it be fascinated by it - not exactly fascinated by the real but by the disappearance of reality? There is, however, a corollary to this: what is the source of the fragility of this global power, of its vulnera-bility to minor events, to events that are insignificant in themselves ('rogue events', terrorism, but also the pictures from Abu Ghraib, etc.)?”

AmericaFutureTerrorismFragilitySimulationAbu Ghraib
Book:Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?
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“Writing to the Washington Post in 2007, two top U.S. generals drew upon their years of command experience to warn of such a slippery slope. “As has happened with every other nation that has tried to engage in a little bit of torture,” the generals wrote, “the abuse spread like wildfire, and every captured prisoner became the key to defusing a potential ticking time bomb. Our soldiers in Iraq confront real ‘ticking time bomb’ situations every day, in the form of improvised explosive devices, and any degree of ‘flexibility’ about torture at the top drops down the chain of command like a stone—the rare exception fast becoming the rule.”

TortureWar On TerrorAbu Ghraib
Book:Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation
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“Whether we consider Nazi Germany or Abu Ghraib prison, there were many people who observed what was happening and said nothing. At Abu Ghraib, one photo shows two soldiers smiling before a pyramid of naked prisoners while a dozen other soldiers stand around watching passively. If you observe such abuses and don't say, "This is wrong! Stop it!" you give tacit approval to continue. You are part of the silent majority that makes evil deeds more acceptable.”

PeopleIfsGivingSaidTwoShowsEvilHappeningsAbuseMajorityPrisonSilentSoldierDeedsNakedGermanyPrisonerDozenAcceptableApprovalNaziPyramidsNazi GermanyTacitAbu GhraibSilent Majority
Author:Philip Zimbardo
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“I did a piece where I was talking about torture at Abu Ghraib, and I embroidered my hand with the image of the hooded Abu Ghraib prisoners who'd been tortured using a needle and thread. I know that meeting a Holocaust survivor when I was eight and seeing the tattoo on her arm from her time in the camps influenced my piece about Abu Ghraib.”

KnowsHandsTalkingPiecesSeeingArmsMeetingsEightTortureSurvivorPrisonerCampsHolocaustThreadTattooNeedlesHolocaust SurvivorAbu GhraibNeedle And Thread
Author:Jill Soloway
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“In the United States, rising esteem for the military in uniform corresponds to the growing militarization of the society as a whole. All of this despite repeated revelations of the illegality and immorality of the military's own incarceration systems, from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib, whose systematic practices border on if not actually constitute torture.”

IfsStatesWholeUnitedPracticeUnited StatesGrowingMilitaryEsteemDespiteBordersTortureRisingRevelationsUniformsSystematicImmoralityIncarcerationGuantanamoAbu Ghraib
Author:Michael Hardt
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“This crazy ban on the seven states, where we can't accept immigrants, almost every analyst points out the obvious: It just increases the threat of terror. It lays the basis for terror. It's just like the atrocities in Abu Ghraib and Bagram and Guantanamo. They're the most fabulous recruiting techniques for Al Qaeda and ISIS.”

StatesAcceptingCrazyBasesIncreaseLaysThreatSevenTerrorObviousTechniqueImmigrantsAlsFabulousIsisBansAl QaedaAtrocitiesAnalystsGuantanamoAbu Ghraib
Author:Noam Chomsky
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“Each of the Iraqi children killed by the United States was our child. Each of the prisoners tortured in Abu Ghraib was our comrade. Each of their screams was ours. When they were humiliated, we were humiliated. The U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq - mostly volunteers in a poverty draft from small towns and poor urban neighborhoods - are victims just as much as the Iraqis of the same horrendous process, which asks them to die for a victory that will never be theirs.”

ChildrenWarStatesDiesFightingAsksProcessPoorUnitedPovertyUnited StatesVictoryTownsOur ChildrenVictimSoldierIraqNeighborhoodPrisonerScreamAntiwarUrbanVolunteerSmall TownComradeHumiliatedAbu Ghraib
Author:Arundhati Roy
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