Maciej Ceglowski, former hacker, painter and all-round interesting guy, commented on the Washington Post article that refers to secret outside-the-law prisons run by the CIA.
The article teases by saying that these prisons are in “eastern
European democracies”. The Post knows which specific democracies, but
won’t divulge them at the request of the U.S. government, for reasons
of security. Maciej writes that there is a considerable body of
evidence that suggests that his home country, Poland, is one of the
eastern European democracies in question.
Like most first-generation immigrants from oppressive regimes to North America
— myself included — Maciej holds America and its
principles — if maybe not its current administration — in high
regard. (He and I also hold Canada in rather high regard, but he trumps
me for having coined the Ceglowski Axiom,
“Any sufficiently advanced society is indistinguishable from Canada”.)
That’s why his closing paragraphs ring particularly true to these ears:
There’s an almost absurdist irony to the situation. The reason Poland
and other countries in Eastern Europe are so unabashedly pro-American
is that for fifty years, America stood for the antithesis of this kind
of behavior. Poles knew full well about secret prisons, torture,
incarceration without trial, and secret services that operate outside
the law, and they looked to the United States as a society that stood
against this kind of arbitrary exercise of state power.
Fifteen years later, we have television shots of
Polish and American generals standing side by side in in fraternal
solidarity in Iraq, and now perhaps hosting a special little Polish
branch of an American secret prison system. There’s a deja vu to this
that I hope other Poles will find as upsetting as I do. And I get to
feel the shame from both directions, since my adopted country is
colluding with my native one to break the laws of both.
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Totally understood about his point and not to detract from it... but the fact that its an unnamed source opens the door for the fact that it simply isnt true. or at least, they arent necessarily in poland.. they could more easily be in Baku or Amman. My latest podcast, if anyone is remotely interested, features an interview with a journalist in Warsaw on this subject. Not that it makes it any less disgusting... it doesnt.