Don't like Guantanamo? In the mid-East, detention centers are the norm rather than an exception. Dorothy Parvaz got a look inside Syria's secret prisons because her luggage had the misinfortune of containing a satellite phone and an internet hub. And that was with an American passport and an Al Jazeera-sponsored visa. You can imagine how Syrians get treated.
Most of the our days were spent listening to the sounds of young men being brutally interrogated – sometimes tied up in stress positions until it sounded like their bones were cracking, as we saw from our bathroom window (a bathroom with no running water, except for one tap in a sink filled with roughly 10 cm of sewage).
Not sure why progressives suddenly stopped protesting military imperialism and saving people from human rights abuses in dictatorships - it seems to have ended when a Democrat got elected - but they are absolutely cheering about instituting some Domino effect in Libya and were downright annoyed that Obama did nothing for Egypt.
Maybe the new left militancy has to do with snatching cell phones. People love their Internet access.
Dorothy Parvaz: Inside Syria's secret prisons - Al Jazeera
