Taxi to the dark side was written off of the fury of Alex Gibney towards the George W. Bush administration on torture, mainly the story of a young, innocent Arabic taxi driver who was subjected to torture and was killed under US military custody due to torture tactics even though the young Arabic was not charged with any crime or was affiliated with the Taliban or Al Qaeda. US military interrogators were interviewed and told their stories of the horrific events that took place in Bagram, Afghanistan. Taxi to the Dark Side opens with an Arabic man who explains the murder of Dilawar, his 22-year-old son. They live in a small village of Yakubi in Afghanistan, which is surrounded by US military forces at Bagram. One day Dilawar and three of his passengers were captured by the US military soldiers who falsely accused the men of attacking Camp Salerno. Five days after being handed over to American forces at Bagram Prison, Dilawar was subjected to torture and was killed by US Army interrogators who shackled him to the ceiling and deprived him of sleep and ruthlessly beat him. The initial official military report claimed that Dilawar had died of “natural causes”. A subsequent autopsy revealed, however, that his legs had been reduced a pulp and that even if he had survived, it would have been necessary to amputate them. After American journalists exposed Dilawar’s murder, the US military and the Bush administration employed its “bad apples” defence, simply blaming the soldiers immediately involved. The documentary demolishes this claim. Using interviews with the interrogators and other primary sources, it establishes irrefutably that the main responsibility for this and other war crimes lies with the US military high command and the... ... middle of paper ... ...n most commonly as water-boarding. One of the cases noted in the film concerns Abi Faraj al-Libbi whos was tortured with the use of water-boarding, and “confessed” to links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. This completely untrue evidence was used in Colin Powell’s infamous speech to the United Nations to justify the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Republican Senator John McCain and Democrat Senator Carl Levin are shown in the documentary challenging Alberto Gonzales at Senate hearings as the former US attorney general attempts to justify the use of torture, but the opposition of McCain and Levin to torture is not based in any principled opposition to war or militarism. They have argued that torture produces “faulty” intelligence and weakens or discredits the war on terror. Even Senator McCain voted for the bill after administration threatened to discredit him.
People come to being on the road for countless reasons and though there is no real certainty on the road, there are two things that are certain, the road stands in opposition to home and your race and ethnicity plays a major role on the trajectory and the way others treat you on the journey. African Americans have an especially strong connection to road narratives. This is because, from the beginning, the race’s presence in America was brought by forcing them on to the road against their will. It is for this reason that there are countless narratives, fictional and non-fictional, of black peoples on the road. For Birdie Lee, a literary character, the beginning of the road marks the end of her comfortable home life and the beginning of her racial
taxi, and when they stop for her to eat food, she gets "stranded" by the taxi driver. She sees two
Released on July 31, 1992, the two-year film production was meticulously researched, yet laid out simply and forcefully the case against the US government story, and won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature as a result. Made all the more timely by the recent war on terrorism (or errorism, as I like to call it), the “Panama Deception” shows how the U.S. killed between 3,000 to 4,000 people over the course of an invasion that the rest of the world was against (a theme duplicated in the War on Iraq and others prior to then Panama invasion).
On March 16, 1968, in the Quang Ngai region of Vietnam, specifically My Lai, the United States military was involved in an appalling slaughter of approximately 500 Vietnamese civilians. There are numerous arguments as to why this incident even had the capacity to occur. Although some of the arguments seem valid, can one really make excuses for the slaughter of innocent people? The company that was responsible for the My Lai incident was the Charlie Company and throughout the company there were many different accounts of what happened that reprehensible day. Therefore there are a few contradictions about what had occurred, such as what the commanding officers exact instructions for the soldiers were. Even with these contradictions the results are obvious. The question that must be posed is whether these results make the American soldiers involved that day “guilty”. There is the fact that the environment of the Vietnam War made it very confusing to the soldiers exactly who the enemy was, as well as providing a pent up frustration due to the inability to even engage in real combat with the enemy. If this is the case though, why did some soldiers with the same frustrations refuse the orders and sit out on the action, why did some cry while firing, and why then did one man go so far as to place himself between the Vietnamese and the firing soldiers? If these men who did not see the sense in killing innocents were right with their actions, then how come the ones who did partake were all found not guilty in court? The questions can keep going back and forth on this issue, but first what happened that day must be examined.
Michael Levin's article on "The Case for Torture." is an article which mainly discusess the use
...s invaluable. The efficacy of torture can be seen in the capture of Zubaydah and the prevention of the “Dirty bomber,” Jose Padilla. Effectiveness has also been proven; it has hypothetically saved many lives and has prevented many plots known to the general public. Ex-Vice President Dick Cheney said in a speech in 2009 that the “enhanced interrogation” of detainees “prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people” (“The Report of The Constitution Project's Task Force on Detainee Treatment”, 1). Since it has been deemed illegal by the UN it has to be done in secrecy. In result, it cannot be deduced how much has been prevented by this procedure since that information is classified. However, it is irrefutable that torture, in its essence, is beneficial and should be accepted as a means of ensuring public safety.
The Devil’s Highway, by Luis Alberto Urrea, New York: Little, Brown, 2004. 220 Pages. Reviewed by Patricia Castillo. Luis Alberto Urrea is the recipient of a Lannan Literary Award, an American Book Award, a Western State Award, and a Colorado Book Award. He has received the Latino Literary Library Wall of Fame for this book and was one of the finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction.
After crashing youre moms car, your now getting to do some community service with a old man named Sol, what could go wrong. In Notes from a midnight driver by Jordan Sonnenblick Alex is learning new ways of being himself. He starts off with a very bad deed but then he has to do some community service and threw that he learns from a polish man named sol that you will have to coop with your life When I first started reading Notes from a midnight driver you think that Alex is a no good person but after you start to be engaged with the book you start seeing that Alex has a more nicer version of himself.
Szegedy-Maszak, Marianne. "The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal: Sources of Sadism." Writing and Reading for ACP Composition. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Custom, 2009. 210-12. Print.
Applebaum believes that torture should not be used as a means of gaining information from suspects. Applebaum's opinion is supported through details that the practice has not been proven optimally successful. After debating the topic, I have deliberated on agreeing with Applebaum's stance towards the torture policy. I personally agree with the thought to discontinue the practice of torture as a means of acquiring intel. I find it unacceptable that under the Bush Administration, the President decided prisoners to be considered exceptions to the Geneva Convention. As far as moral and ethical consideration, I do not believe that it is anyone's right to harm anyone else, especially if the tactic is not proven successful. After concluding an interview with Academic, Darius Rejali, Applebaum inserted that he had “recently trolled through French archives, found no clear examples of how torture helped the French in Algeria -- and they lost that war anyway.” There are alternative...
The lead investigator was Tom Agnos. He, nor anybody in the state, had ever had to process such a terrible and devastating crime against humanity. According...
The film “Taxi Driver” is a true undertaking of the human longing to fit in, and be adequate. It depicts all aspects of this, by showing the triumph of Travis’s heroic emancipation of Iris, and the failure of the assassination of the presidential candidate Palentine. “Taxi Driver” shows all of this in a least expected but very beautiful way, it is a timeless ballad to all unsure, astray, and wandering personalities.
When the movie was released there was a lot of criticism for this part stating that “Some critics have argued that it “glorifies torture" or even constitutes "torture porn". Director Kathryn Bigelow has replied that "depiction is not endorsement".” (Tunzelmann, Alex) These facts were drawn from a critic’s data and are pretty accurate from my point of view. The practices shown in the beginning stages of the movie with what the CIA has admitted about their enhanced interrogation techniques, or EIT, are profoundly disturbing in many ways. Historically, the torture sense are accurate as the CIA did in fact use the techniques such as waterboarding, forcing suspects into crammed spaces, and sleep
He is a man whose psychological workings are dark, twisted, horrifying, and lonely. He is an absurd, anti-hero who is absolutely repulsed by his surroundings, and because he is unable to remove himself from them, he feels justified in removing other people. This profile fits Travis, portrayed by Robert DeNiro in Scorsese's film "Taxi Driver,", and Raskolnikov, the main character of Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment. Their revulsion for life leads both men to commit cold-blooded murders, but the story lines contain major differences. By contrasting these differences and comparing the common themes of the classic and the film, we may come to a clearer understanding of the purpose of both stories.
...ous and being there can raise concern. These political concerns relate closely with issues addressed in the film particularly with the war in Afghanistan and the threat of terrorism. The senior Taliban leader Ahamd Shah depicts an accurate image of what members of the Taliban are like, which means killing any American who comes into their country.