Yes, the dear old Beeb now acquiesced to to such a degree that ‘state broadcaster’ is the only correct perforative description for it. Anyway, in this stirring article about some pasty faced toffs efforts to outdo New Labour in the Big Brother stakes entitled David Cameron defends secret courts and web monitoring plans. It talks about one of the motivations for the secret courts- the need for the govt to protect itself and the US torture regime from having their torturing of people being known and, heaven forfend, prosecuted as demanded by international law and the treaties they are hilariously signatories to. In the language it employs it seems to borrow a seemingly hip hop infused euphemism-
The deal ended the men’s damages claim for which they were demanding to see secret documents detailing their detention and ill-treatment by US forces in the wake of 9/11.
Yep ‘ill-treatment’ is what our polite establishment-soothing fearless hacks now call torture, kidnap, rape, genital mutilation, water boarding, sensory deprivation, inducement of psychosis, mental illness and mock execution. Now, dearest reader I ask you, with all due humility, if none of that qualifies as torture, JUST WHAT THE CUNTING FUCK DOES?
Oh dear. You see I’ve been offensive there, I used rude words. I’m just not fit to be in polite company, company that gets a neat salary, does what their editor and mortgage demands and calls torture ‘ill-treatment’. I know, I know. I can’t be proud of myself for I am a foul mouthed degenerate with no respect for vast secret global torture programs and the need to abdicate journalistic standards in order to support them. But, please, dear hack, if for some reason a razor blade is applied to your genitals, do remember this is not torture and on no account should the people doing this to you face any manner of criminal sanction. Enjoy the world you are helping build, it is Brave and New and we are all oh so proud of you.
Update: Please read Andy Worthington’s EXCLUSIVE: “They Want Me to be Harmed”: Shaker Aamer, the Last British Resident in Guantánamo, Describes His Isolation
This does have at least some direct antecedents.
In the early 1970s, a committee convened to look into the treatment of detainees in the North of Ireland reported back with the shameful conclusion that forcing prisoners to stand leaning against walls by their hands, have their heads put in bin-bags and endure white noise – all of these for hours on end – did not constitute torture.
Robert Robinson, who was one of the presenters of Radio 4′s Today programme at the time, and who had a very keen ear for the abuse of language, wrote the following as an intended introduction to a news item on the report:
“Truly the barbarians are among us. 1984 is at hand and Newspeak is upon us. Torture is a word that from this morning is no longer acceptable usage, it has been replaced by the officially approved phrase “sensory deprivation”. We remember that Orwell warned us – those who wish to distort reality first distort the language.”
The duty editor of the programme refused to allow the introducion to be used.