DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: sirs on October 23, 2007, 11:27:05 PM
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Tee appears to want to debate "torture", and even though it's been discussed adnauseum, I started a thread for those that may wish to chime in
Now, I'm guessing that certain terms need to be defined with some parameters, since its far too easy to lay claim that anyone that supports Bush or the war on terror, and the use of interrogation techniques, supposedly supports "torture". So, before any discussion can be initiated, lets lay some groundwork
Head slapping is NOT torture, can we agree to that? Made to listen to loud music and various means of sleep deprivation is NOT torture. Can we agree to that? Being made to wear panties on one's head is NOT torture, can we agree to that?
If we can't even agree to the above, I really see no reason to continue. Can we all agree to that?
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<<Head slapping is NOT torture, can we agree to that? Made to listen to loud music and various means of sleep deprivation is NOT torture. Can we agree to that? Being made to wear panties on one's head is NOT torture, can we agree to that?>>
How many head-slaps over what period of time? How loud the music and for how long a time? How long a period of sleep deprivation? You really need to define your terms. I can definitely see prolonged head slapping as torture. Same with the music and sleep deprivation, if they stretch a guy to the limit of physical endurance. We don't know that much about the effects of sleep deprivation, which is probably where the loud music is headed - - what happens to the guy's internal organs? You don't know and I don't know.
Being made to wear panties on one's head is not torture. Doesn't even belong in this discussion. I believe you just put it in as a childish way of trivializing any objection to torture.
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<<Head slapping is NOT torture, can we agree to that? Made to listen to loud music and various means of sleep deprivation is NOT torture. Can we agree to that? Being made to wear panties on one's head is NOT torture, can we agree to that?>>
How many head-slaps over what period of time? How loud the music and for how long a time? How long a period of sleep deprivation? You really need to define your terms. I can definitely see prolonged head slapping as torture. Same with the music and sleep deprivation, if they stretch a guy to the limit of physical endurance.
Well there ya go, no need to go any further, since watching endless rationalization efforts at trying to portray listening to loud music as torture could be construed as torture as well. Gald we could nip this one in the bud, so soon
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What was nipped in the bud was another one of your thinly-disguised attempts to trivialize torture by painting it as something annoying but not damaging. Interesting again to see the right-wing "mind" at work, unable to make any kind of distinctions between variations on a single concept: loud music is loud music is loud music - - there is no difference at all between listening to it for an hour, for a day or for a year. Just pick "loud music" and say if it's torture or not. The limited cognitive capacity of the right-wing brain is at the same time fascinating and frightening.
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Tee appears to want to debate "torture", and even though it's been discussed adnauseum, I started a thread for those that may wish to chime in
Now, I'm guessing that certain terms need to be defined with some parameters, since its far too easy to lay claim that anyone that supports Bush or the war on terror, and the use of interrogation techniques, supposedly supports "torture". So, before any discussion can be initiated, lets lay some groundwork
Head slapping is NOT torture, can we agree to that? Made to listen to loud music and various means of sleep deprivation is NOT torture. Can we agree to that? Being made to wear panties on one's head is NOT torture, can we agree to that?
If we can't even agree to the above, I really see no reason to continue. Can we all agree to that?
On the panties thing, I agree that it is not torture.
More a wreath on the crown of the victorious.
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What was nipped in the bud was another one of your thinly-disguised attempts to trivialize torture by painting it as something annoying but not damaging.
Not even close, since if it couldn't be understood that things like loud music isn't torture, there was no need to delve into the more serious issues of actual debatable acts of supposed "torture", such as waterboarding
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In the near future tecniues that force the truth from the unwilling without pain at all are very likely to be developed .
There will be no resisting , the access to he brains functions are becomeig more direct.
In some ways I am more worried aout this than about the old fashioned torture.
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<<Not even close, since if it couldn't be understood that things like loud music isn't torture . . . >>
But that's exactly the point. First you make a phony claim that you just want an honest debate on what is torture and what isn't.
Then you announce that "loud music" isn't torture, and we should all agree with you on that - - so that your "debate" starts off with us all happily agreeing with you on panties and loud music.
Then when someone points out to you the essential flaw in your logic - - your failure to define your terms - - you suddenly close up the debate, it's all over, "how can we debate if you peons don't agree with me, sirs, that loud music is not torture?"
You are acting not only irrationally, which for you is par for the course, but childishly as well. "If you won't agree that the last pitch was right over the plate, I'm taking my ball and bat and going home right now." OK.
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What was nipped in the bud was another one of your thinly-disguised attempts to trivialize torture by painting it as something annoying but not damaging.
Not even close, since if it couldn't be understood that things like loud music isn't torture, there was no need to delve into the more serious issues of actual debatable acts of supposed "torture", such as waterboarding
I think you also ought to consider the history of torture.
Sinners were/are tortured for their own good.
In mainstream christianity, a whole half of all karmic outcome there is is solid, round the clock torture, endured for all eternity. (This last one often the result of fey whimsy).
So here is evidence that possibly the christians know of a deeper, more spiritual essense involved in its use.
It can be seen then that torture has scope.
When you spin the definition, you are already there, btw.
Outlawing torture in war seems the most presumptive of ironic absurdities. The issue is war or no war, but not a societal blush and smelling salts regarding torture. Torture in war is inevitable, I don't care who. I would also add that it is monumentally absurd to believe you can snatch and patch behavior in war.
In Vietnam, it was standard MI interrogative technique to load a chopper of about l6-20 "gooks" go up four hundred feet, and throw one out before you even started to ask questions.
Mostly, it worked.
When you argue about the level of torture in a war, you have had your elcted and assigned argument already reduced to a panicky negotiation, and while you arrive on this square, you have tacitly nodded to the war, and are now desparately demanding that the most ugly be spared.
I am for voting for who wants the war ended, and who does not; those who do not should be spared, but the architects of this imperialistic attack on Iraq should have their fingers taped to a steering wheel, their fingers cut off one by one, and the stubs be cauterized with the cigarette lighter.
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Head slapping is NOT torture, can we agree to that? Made to listen to loud music and various means of sleep deprivation is NOT torture. Can we agree to that?
How about physically beating someone? Is that torture?
How loud is the music about which you're asking? There is loud, and then there is causing physical pain loud.
How long does the sleep deprivation go on? Too long and it can not only cause genuine physical problems it can also cause death.
A few slaps to the head? No, that isn't torture. Repeated, hard physical blows to the head, yeah that just might be torture. Listening to music one doesn't like at a volume a bit louder than one prefers? No, that isn't torture. Listening to something for days that hits decibel levels that cause physical pain (about 120 decibels and up, I think) yeah, that might be torture. Being kept awake for a day or two? No, that probably isn't torture. Being forcibly kept awake for a week or more, if that isn't torture, that starts to get near torture. If you think it isn't, then you have some folks forcibly keep you from sleep for about 10 days and then tell me what you think about it.
Yeah, physical mutilation is torture, but there are other ways to cause severe physical and mental anguish. That those ways may not involve physical mutilation does not mean they're not torture. And if you cannot agree to that, Sirs, then yes, there is no reason to continue the conversation.
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I think sirs was genuinely prepared to debate waterboarding as torture but, as a precondition to the debate, wanted all participants to agree that loud music and head-slapping were not. Probably because he himself was too stupid to see that "head-slapping" and "loud music" each came in more than one flavour. He had the true conservative narrow-mindedness where nothing can exist in shades of gray. There are no gradations of "head-slapping" - - all kinds of head-slapping are just "head-slapping." In the real world, of course, there are infinite variations of head-slapping, but sirs doesn't want a debate in real-world terms; he exists in an abstract world, the world of right-wing fanaticism, where there are no grays. When the failure to properly define his terms was pointed out to him, rather than acknowledge the problem (and his initial error) he chose to fly into a hissy fit and abort the entire discussion. Childish and regrettable, but typically sirs, sirs all the way as we know him and love him.
It's OK sirs, I'm heading in for now, but anytime you want to debate waterboarding as torture, let me know. Should be interesting.
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Head slapping is NOT torture, can we agree to that? Made to listen to loud music and various means of sleep deprivation is NOT torture. Can we agree to that?
How about physically beating someone? Is that torture?
When it is physically damaging someone, yes.
How loud is the music about which you're asking? There is loud, and then there is causing physical pain loud.
If it's causing damage to the ear drum, then it is obviously loud enough to be torture
How long does the sleep deprivation go on? Too long and it can not only cause genuine physical problems it can also cause death.
If physical problems/damage is caused, then its no longer simple sleep deprivation
Yeah, physical mutilation is torture, but there are other ways to cause severe physical and mental anguish.
I don't have a problem with "anguish", or anxiety, or emotional stress, or humiliation. My line is when physical damage is occuring, as far as what becomes "torture".
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I don't have a problem with "anguish",
Yes, I see that by the fact that you put the word in quotes. Anguish isn't merely feeling bad or sad or unhappy. Anguish is excruciating physical and/or mental distress, suffering or pain. Causing anguish repeatedly and deliberately is something many people would call torture. Maybe you don't have a problem with that, but that doesn't mean it isn't torture.
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And I don't have a problem with "distress" either, as a means of interrogating terrorists. I do have a problem with anything that would inflict physical damage onto the body. Mental stress and duress, that might cause severe anxiety, that might cause cardiac irregularities, that might cause more serious problems, are far too many "mights", and isn't "torture"
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It is a leagal question that doesn't benefit from ambiguity.
Could being subjected to endless pointless quibbling over details of the argument rather than the point in question , torturous parsing of common words and verbose justification for verbosity be consideredTorture?
No?
Too bad that , oh the times I have nearly cracked.
There ought to be a medically determined decibel level that is forbidden , but should there be a limit on the dissonance of the music?
How about silence ? should there be a limit on how long and severely a person can be isolated and deprived of stimulus?
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It is a leagal question that doesn't benefit from ambiguity. Could being subjected to endless pointless quibbling over details of the argument rather than the point in question , torturous parsing of common words and verbose justification for verbosity be consideredTorture?
No?
Big monstrous YES, to that one. Boy, oh boy, the amount of anquish and mental distress in having to deal with some of Tee's irrationalization somersaults, definately needs to be officially declared as such ;D
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It is a leagal question that doesn't benefit from ambiguity. Could being subjected to endless pointless quibbling over details of the argument rather than the point in question , torturous parsing of common words and verbose justification for verbosity be consideredTorture?
No?
Big monstrous YES, to that one. Boy, oh boy, the amount of anquish and mental distress in having to deal with some of Tee's irrationalization somersaults, definately needs to be officially declared as such ;D
Mote ----> beam ;D
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And I don't have a problem with "distress" either, as a means of interrogating terrorists.
You're not getting this. And no matter what I say, you're keep minimizing it with quotes, like saying "distress" and "angush", and by talking about mental stress as if I were talking about getting fired after a bad day at work. So forget it. If you cannot grasp the notion of excruciating physical and/or mental distress, suffering or pain as torture, then there is no point in bothering to discuss this with you.
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And I don't have a problem with "distress" either, as a means of interrogating terrorists.
You're not getting this. And no matter what I say, you're keep minimizing it with quotes, like saying "distress" and "anguish", and by talking about mental stress as if I were talking about getting fired after a bad day at work. So forget it. If you cannot grasp the notion of excruciating physical and/or mental distress, suffering or pain as torture, then there is no point in bothering to discuss this with you.
What level of distress are you considering to be unacceptable?
Say that on a scale of one to ten , one being comfortable and ten being enough pain to make death look good , should he point of forbidding be five or eight?
Can this be made objective?
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The problem you have Prince is that I can differentiate between having a bad day and sleep deprivation. I can differentiate between losing out on a promotion and debilitating pain. You ever get a migraine?? I've had them since I was 12, so anquish and physical suffering I know plenty. I also know the difference between distress and actual acts of torture. What I "minimize" is the effort to upgrade acts such as simple head slapping (read NOT getting the tar beat out of you) and loud music as acts of "torture", while those who commit the real acts of barbary and torture, rarely get mentioned, much less condemned. And when they do, it sure appears as token criticism, and not too long, gotta get back on the evils of American head slapping
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sirs
i reluctantly support it as a last resort
if there is just cause to think it could produce something of vital importance to save american/allies lives
then yes
however I reject torture for the sake of torture, in other words as say for punishment
you don't torture someone just because they are the enemy or as a punishment option
there has to be an overwhelming justifiable reason to get access to vital national security information
but if the torture in very limited cases can produce vital information to ensure the country's safety, then yes
(btw sirs:)
yes i fully expect, as is often the case with "them"
to be demonized
just like with immigration
if you don't agree with "them" on immigration, eventually you must be a racist
and I expect with this torture issue, it will be the same
if you think it is ok in a very rare instance as a last resort
then I expect to be painted as some raving lunatic
that wants a torture chamber at every police station
to be used daily in all prisons and jails
which of course is once again a "demonization for disagreement"
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Tee appears to want to debate "torture", and even though it's been discussed adnauseum, I started a thread for those that may wish to chime in
Now, I'm guessing that certain terms need to be defined with some parameters, since its far too easy to lay claim that anyone that supports Bush or the war on terror, and the use of interrogation techniques, supposedly supports "torture". So, before any discussion can be initiated, lets lay some groundwork
Head slapping is NOT torture, can we agree to that? Made to listen to loud music and various means of sleep deprivation is NOT torture. Can we agree to that? Being made to wear panties on one's head is NOT torture, can we agree to that?
If we can't even agree to the above, I really see no reason to continue. Can we all agree to that?
On the panties thing, I agree that it is not torture.
More a wreath on the crown of the victorious.
Good one, Crane! ;D
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Gosh, what a bunch of panty-waists and do-gooders! Grow up, folks!
If natonal security is at stake, you do what is necessary to extract the information. This is defined by the CA and his designees. If you personally do not wantto participate in the process ,then back off.
I have done this a few times in order to extract valuable information. I remember in 'Nam, I extracted information on where the Cong were waiting in ambush for our troops. Without this information, probably 20 guys would have been slaughtered. Do I regret this? Hell no, I would willingly do it again!
When you get all high and mighty, just remember that sometimes people lives are at stake!
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Tee appears to want to debate "torture", and even though it's been discussed adnauseum, I started a thread for those that may wish to chime in
Now, I'm guessing that certain terms need to be defined with some parameters, since its far too easy to lay claim that anyone that supports Bush or the war on terror, and the use of interrogation techniques, supposedly supports "torture". So, before any discussion can be initiated, lets lay some groundwork
Head slapping is NOT torture, can we agree to that? Made to listen to loud music and various means of sleep deprivation is NOT torture. Can we agree to that? Being made to wear panties on one's head is NOT torture, can we agree to that?
If we can't even agree to the above, I really see no reason to continue. Can we all agree to that?
Sleep deprivation can most certainly be defined as torture.
The Romans did not play semantics with sleep deprivation, they called it tormentum vigilae or "waking torture." It is a tactic that the Imperial Japanese and KGB used thoroughly. The British used it on IRA prisoners as well. South Africa was infamous for their use of sleep deprivation on ANC prisoners during apartheid.
Here's testimony from John Schlapobersky, who was tortured in this manner in the 1960's by South Africa.
I was kept without sleep for a week in all. I can remember the details of the experience, although it took place 35 years ago. After two nights without sleep, the hallucinations start, and after three nights, people are having dreams while fairly awake, which is a form of psychosis.
By the week's end, people lose their orientation in place and time - the people you're speaking to become people from your past; a window might become a view of the sea seen in your younger days. To deprive someone of sleep is to tamper with their equilibrium and their sanity.
And here is the testimony of Menachem Begin, later to be Prime Minister of Israel, who was tortured in this manner by the KGB in his younger days:
In the head of the interrogated prisoner, a haze begins to form. His spirit is wearied to death, his legs are unsteady, and he has one sole desire: to sleep... Anyone who has experienced this desire knows that not even hunger and thirst are comparable with it.
I came across prisoners who signed what they were ordered to sign, only to get what the interrogator promised them.
He did not promise them their liberty; he did not promise them food to sate themselves. He promised them - if they signed - uninterrupted sleep! And, having signed, there was nothing in the world that could move them to risk again such nights and such days.
You can find more here (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3376951.stm).
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Gosh, what a bunch of panty-waists and do-gooders! Grow up, folks!
If natonal security is at stake, you do what is necessary to extract the information. This is defined by the CA and his designees. If you personally do not wantto participate in the process ,then back off.
I have done this a few times in order to extract valuable information. I remember in 'Nam, I extracted information on where the Cong were waiting in ambush for our troops. Without this information, probably 20 guys would have been slaughtered. Do I regret this? Hell no, I would willingly do it again!
When you get all high and mighty, just remember that sometimes people lives are at stake!
Yeah, I'm calling bullshit on this one.
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Gosh, what a bunch of panty-waists and do-gooders! Grow up, folks!
If natonal security is at stake, you do what is necessary to extract the information. This is defined by the CA and his designees. If you personally do not wantto participate in the process ,then back off.
I have done this a few times in order to extract valuable information. I remember in 'Nam, I extracted information on where the Cong were waiting in ambush for our troops. Without this information, probably 20 guys would have been slaughtered. Do I regret this? Hell no, I would willingly do it again!
When you get all high and mighty, just remember that sometimes people lives are at stake!
That is why we are ...or were... a better country, or so i thought, than countries who torture. Because we have laws that prohibit the use of torture. Torture is unamerican. It is antithetical to our country's standards.
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Gosh, what a bunch of panty-waists and do-gooders! Grow up, folks!
If natonal security is at stake, you do what is necessary to extract the information. This is defined by the CA and his designees. If you personally do not wantto participate in the process ,then back off.
I have done this a few times in order to extract valuable information. I remember in 'Nam, I extracted information on where the Cong were waiting in ambush for our troops. Without this information, probably 20 guys would have been slaughtered. Do I regret this? Hell no, I would willingly do it again!
When you get all high and mighty, just remember that sometimes people lives are at stake!
Yeah, I'm calling bullshit on this one.
Bullshit? You must be so empty between the ears, it isn't funny!
Sometimes you do what you need to do to get the job done!
Bet you never been in combat.
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Bullshit? You must be so empty between the ears, it isn't funny!
Sometimes you do what you need to do to get the job done!
Bet you never been in combat.
I've known a lot of vets, especially Vietnam vets, including my own father.
I've never heard any of them talk like that, even the gung-ho types.
Others may buy into all that and that's fine with me. But there was something really odd about that little paragraph you wrote. Just my observation. I'm not asking anyone else to believe me.
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sigh...sometimes, I wonder why I bother with you liberal types. So much effort to educate you with so little results. And, increasingly, at my age, I find I have even less patience...
However, I did my duty to protect EVERYONE, including you, for what it is worth.
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Socialist, not liberal. ;)
Educate away, I'm listening.
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Been doing that, you ain't listening. Oh well.
My patience has ended...
I now know why Gary gave up.
Carry on, laddies.
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However, I did my duty to protect EVERYONE, including you, for what it is worth.
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It is worthless. We didn't ask to to "defend" us, we don't need your "ptotection" we need your "duty" about as much as we need your doody.
Torture could easily be very loud music, constant honking of Nathan Airchime train horns, babybies screaming, chipmonks in their death throes, cats being impaled. It could also be constant slapping around, painful positions, sleep deprivation, whatever.
Torture will generally extract whatever answers the torturer expects. People will admit anything just to make it stop. I killed JFK, I flew flight 57 into Pennsylvania, I ate babies with a garnish of faba beans, whatever, just make it stop.
That is why it is worthless. It also guarantees that if our people are captured by their people, they will be tortured as bad or worse. Long ago, ex-CIA agent Phillip Agee wrote of how a creep named Dan Mitrione taught torture techniques to the Uruguayan Secret police in their battles with the Tupamaros. The Tupas were eventually wiped out, but they got Mitrione first, and very good riddance to exceptionally foul rubbish. Even if he was supposedly a good buddy for Frank Sinatra.
So if you want to do your "duty", go work for the government of Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan or Mynanmar. We don;t need your ugly ass here.
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sigh...sometimes, I wonder why I bother with you liberal types. So much effort to educate you with so little results. And, increasingly, at my age, I find I have even less patience...
However, I did my duty to protect EVERYONE, including you, for what it is worth.
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You know, "Mr. Perceptive," we had a member who is the wife of a Marine. I admire her very much.
We disagreed on this war. (The Iraq war. Not the Afghanistan war.)
But when Abu Ghraib photos surfaced, she was, if I remember right, horrified. She heard that one of the perpetrators of the torture there had children, and she was disgusted that he or she had "spawned." She took the UCMJ seriously. She took honor and duty to country seriously.
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"Torture will generally extract whatever answers the torturer expects. People will admit anything just to make it stop.
I killed JFK, I flew flight 57 into Pennsylvania, I ate babies with a garnish of faba beans, whatever, just make it stop"
not really
the person being tortured is warned
if the prisoner being tortured fabricates
then that could mean even worse consequences
you seem to be assuming it's a one time deal
lie and the "say anything to make it stop" works
it's not nearly that easy
does it always work?
obviously not
can it work?
absolutely
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If the torturee is clever, he will be able to fabricate something that his torturers will accept. He knows that they don't know something, already, or they would not be wasting their time on him.
Torture is inhuman. It is also ineffective.
You should endorse it only if you want to be known as being from an inhuman country, and are willing to accept that your soldiers, spies or whatever are also to be treated inhumanely.
Nearly all the time, the situation in which we must torture a "bad guy" to save someone's life is bogus. We do not normally know with any certainty that the prospective torturee actually knows enough to save anyone from anything.
It's rather like the death penalty as practiced in the US as a deterrent to crime.
Knowing that after you commit the crime they will catch you and hold you for 40 years of appeals and finally give you a lethal injection at the age of retirement is hardly a deterrent to anyone.
It is better not to do it. It does not stop crime.
Torture does not prevent terrorism. Israel has been torturing Palestinians for decades. If it were effective, there would be no terrorism in Israel.
Did the Gestapo torturing the Resistence result in a victory for the Reich? Use your head.
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Gosh, what a bunch of panty-waists and do-gooders! Grow up, folks!
If natonal security is at stake, you do what is necessary to extract the information. This is defined by the CA and his designees. If you personally do not wantto participate in the process ,then back off.
I have done this a few times in order to extract valuable information. I remember in 'Nam, I extracted information on where the Cong were waiting in ambush for our troops. Without this information, probably 20 guys would have been slaughtered. Do I regret this? Hell no, I would willingly do it again!
When you get all high and mighty, just remember that sometimes people lives are at stake!
Yeah, I'm calling bullshit on this one.
I wouldn't , If I were leading a patroll in combat and had reson to think that a prisoner I had just captured knew where the mines were buried I might want to encourage him to tell me about it. I can't imagine not trying.
Not long ago an American officer in this ituation used trickery rather than pain to get such information and he was fired.
Further back in time ,General Sherman when faced with Georgian ingenuity (we invented land mines) marched captured Georgians on the road ahead of his troop to discover the mines .
Have we improved since General Sherman ,or just lost sight of reality?
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xavier i see your points
but i do not agree
i think in rare instances it is an option
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Tee appears to want to debate "torture", and even though it's been discussed adnauseum, I started a thread for those that may wish to chime in
Head slapping is NOT torture, can we agree to that? Made to listen to loud music and various means of sleep deprivation is NOT torture. Can we agree to that? Being made to wear panties on one's head is NOT torture, can we agree to that? If we can't even agree to the above, I really see no reason to continue. Can we all agree to that?
Sleep deprivation can most certainly be defined as torture. The Romans did not play semantics with sleep deprivation, they called it tormentum vigilae or "waking torture." It is a tactic that the Imperial Japanese and KGB used thoroughly. The British used it on IRA prisoners as well. South Africa was infamous for their use of sleep deprivation on ANC prisoners during apartheid.
You're problem here Js, is that ANYTHING prolonged over an extended period of time, that is even remotely unpleasant, can be construed as "torture", Being locked ina room listneing to rap would be torture. My attempt here was to try and provide a foundation of what we can agree is and isn't torture. Meaning the ACT itself, not simply a repetition of an act. I thought that was explained in my 1st response to Prince, where we went from simple head slapping --> prolonged slappping and literally being beaten up. The act isn't torture, it's the repetion that could cause physical harm to the person. But since no one wants to really come to a concensus on even the trite stuff, such as head slapping, humiliation, and loud music, again, there's no reason to even attempt to discuss ACTUAL ACTS of supposed torture.
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I believe that torture totally dehumanizes the torturer, who is no longer a human being, and the victim, who is also no longer human since he sacrifices whatever ideals he believed in simply to avoid the pain. He's been reduced to animal level, but so was the person who could do such things to him.
My personal opinion is very simple: anyone who tortures, orders torture or tolerates torture that he could prevent, is deserving of the death penalty.
Any commander who allowed torture to take place under his watch, whether he knew of it or not, is deserving of the death penalty. Why? Because it's all too easy for a commander to say "How could I know?" He has the manpower and the authority to know if he wants to know. He has the disciplinary power to make life hell for any recruit who even thinks of torture. He has the duty to take all steps necessary to know what's going on in his bailiwick and if he really doesn't know, he's a useless fuck-up who doesn't deserve to be in command in the first place. Just as his service puts him at risk of his life in battle, so he should accept the risk of being punished for torture in his ranks as just one more of the risks of his post. If he doesn't like the risk, let him take up schoolteaching or baking as his chosen work. Command responsibility is command responsibility. In the Red Army, commanders could be shot for fucking up, for losing battles, for wasting resources. Let torture be one more thing for which they can be shot. It would ensure that torture would be the rarest of occurrences in any such army.
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My personal opinion is very simple: anyone who tortures, orders torture or tolerates torture that he could prevent, is deserving of the death penalty.
The problem of course there is the subjectivity of the said complainer designating what is and isn't torture. Someone who is pulling out the tongues and dislocating body pars indeed is deserving of death. Someone that throws in an occasional head slap or heaven forbid makes them wear women's underwear on their head, is hardly deserving more than a scowl
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"My personal opinion is very simple: anyone who tortures, orders torture or tolerates torture that he could prevent, is deserving of the death penalty"
Human Rights Watch: 1999
This report shows that Cuba's treatment of political prisoners in some cases rises to the level of torture, violating Cuba's obligations under the Convention against Torture and under the Universal Declaration.7 The convention bars torture and "acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" and the Universal Declaration states that "no one shall be subjected to torture." 8 Cuba's imposition of prolonged periods of incommunicado pretrial and post-conviction detention, beatings, and prosecutions of previously-tried political prisoners?where those practices result in severe physical or psychological pain orsuffering?constitute torture under the convention.9 Cuba also has failed to comply with its obligations under the convention to "take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction" and to "ensure that all acts of torture are offenses under its criminal law."10
http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/cuba/Cuba996-02.htm (http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/cuba/Cuba996-02.htm)
Amnesty International -Report on Cuba - January-December 1997
Hundreds of political prisoners detained in previous years and convicted after unfair trials remained imprisoned. Many were prisoners of conscience. Scores of dissidents suffered short-term detention and harassment and several were forced into exile. There were frequent reports of ill-treatment, in some cases amounting to torture, resulting in at least one death. Prison conditions sometimes constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/aireport/ar98/amr25.htm (http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/aireport/ar98/amr25.htm)
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Coming to this thread soon: an explanation of how these actions to "support the revolution" are ok.
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After reading many good posts here, I clarify my position; I am not FOR torture, and think that military torturing SHOULD be permitted.
Obviously, it is inhumane.
I do not think torture is going to stop, even though it is on the front page.
My point is the duration. Dies anybody know how long torture has been in mankind's history.
My guess, from the jump.
Right through to today.
My perspective is one of cynicism--as the poet said:--"Oh, I do not think that they will sing to me."
It doesn't make it right, just makes it predicable.
Some suggest that those who torture in war are worthy of the death sentence, and in sentiment I agree, but I think many would be surprised at how many actually that would be, out of any war. Especially during political periods where inches are gaine by parsing the exact meaning of the term.
Given time, any war will demonstrate just how evil evil can be, and still there is no evidence of any extrahuman daemons manning the cannons.
(Well, not that Ronny and Hachet beachchair war that failed to rage at any time during its hours long duration, or the military might of America massing down on a Carribean medical school. Nor even Noriega taken down by that sinister new superweapon, din of Rock.)
Truth is, war makes animals of us. There is a thin bold line that we think we need to draw inorder to save ourselves--draw to separte those who passed a trace litmus for torture and those who fell just short. It is like pretending that those pathetic husbands showing up at the have-a-seat kitchen because they have been lured by a purring sixteen-year-old are pedophiles--they are by a highly useful fascist legal definition, but certainly not by a sound psychological diagnosis. In just the same way, those who do commit heinous crimes are people who found themselves in an indescribable horror called war, and stepped one step beyond their brothers to initiate a portal for their commonly-shared, insanely induced rage.
That is to say, who can say Who?
I would, in a systemic, designed structure of torture, kill the top of the pyramid, but common sense regarding the high number would counsel against making them all pay for the irreparable damage done to their hearts and minds. After all, we allowed Germans to live and mend themselves. How many Germans lives should be damanded for six million lives wasted?
I am against this war, and was from the beginning.
It is the war that is the real evil, and not the people it twists.
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good post crane
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After reading many good posts here, I clarify my position; I am not FOR torture, and think that military torturing SHOULD be permitted.
...............................................................................
I would, in a systemic, designed structure of torture, kill the top of the pyramid, but common sense regarding the high number would counsel against making them all pay for the irreparable damage done to their hearts and minds. After all, we allowed Germans to live and mend themselves. How many Germans lives should be damanded for six million lives wasted?
Would you be for guidelines that would be given to those responsible for keeping prisoners and interrogateing anyone?
Perhaps exact limits for each approved procedure.
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Coming to this thread soon: an explanation of how these actions to "support the revolution" are ok.
Can't wait to watch that trick 8)
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Torture is just as wrong for Cuba as it is for the US or anyone else.
The problem with Juniorbush's Administration is that they oinstantly claim that they don't torture, when they do, and even send prisioners on to the Egyptians or anuyone else who will use even worse torture.
Buch lies, he knows he is lying, and we know he knows that we know he is lying. And the torture continues, all information classified so we canb't do anything about it/
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Tee appears to want to debate "torture", and even though it's been discussed adnauseum, I started a thread for those that may wish to chime in
Head slapping is NOT torture, can we agree to that? Made to listen to loud music and various means of sleep deprivation is NOT torture. Can we agree to that? Being made to wear panties on one's head is NOT torture, can we agree to that? If we can't even agree to the above, I really see no reason to continue. Can we all agree to that?
Sleep deprivation can most certainly be defined as torture. The Romans did not play semantics with sleep deprivation, they called it tormentum vigilae or "waking torture." It is a tactic that the Imperial Japanese and KGB used thoroughly. The British used it on IRA prisoners as well. South Africa was infamous for their use of sleep deprivation on ANC prisoners during apartheid.
You're problem here Js, is that ANYTHING prolonged over an extended period of time, that is even remotely unpleasant, can be construed as "torture", Being locked ina room listneing to rap would be torture. My attempt here was to try and provide a foundation of what we can agree is and isn't torture. Meaning the ACT itself, not simply a repetition of an act. I thought that was explained in my 1st response to Prince, where we went from simple head slapping --> prolonged slappping and literally being beaten up. The act isn't torture, it's the repetion that could cause physical harm to the person. But since no one wants to really come to a concensus on even the trite stuff, such as head slapping, humiliation, and loud music, again, there's no reason to even attempt to discuss ACTUAL ACTS of supposed torture.
Sirs,
You said: "various means of sleep deprivation is NOT torture."
I am simply disagreeing with your statement.
Now you are saying that it is a factor of time. Well of course it is! The entire purpose of sleep deprivation is a factor of time. Anyone between a young infant and the very elderly can withstand a single night of not being permitted to sleep. Most can probably withstand two.
I am not going to get into a puerile argument of assigning an arbitrary hour of when sleep deprivation becomes torture. My point is simply that your statement is wrong. Sleep deprivation is torture. The Romans knew it. The KGB knew it. Pinochet and his regime knew it. Why not just admit it?
Sleep deprivation is torture.
There, it is easy to do. Now, the real question is: do you support using torture? Playing semantics is a mindless activity.
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Coming to this thread soon: an explanation of how these actions to "support the revolution" are ok.
Can't wait to watch that trick 8)
Oh nice, you, Ami, and the Christians United for the BNP are using equivalency so you don't have to make your own arguments.
You realize of course that even by doing so, you are saying that the US can use torture because Cuba does. Nice. ;)
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You realize of course that even by doing so, you are saying that the US can use torture because Cuba does. Nice. ;)
Nope. I'm against the use of torture. Where we disagree is whether or not waterboarding is torture.
I'm also amused by the hypocrisy of people who will justify Castro's use of political prisons and torture as ok, because it "supports the revolution." I've seen it before around here...
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<<I'm also amused by the hypocrisy of people who will justify Castro's use of political prisons and torture as ok, because it "supports the revolution." I've seen it before around here...>>
That's funny because I'm amused by the sophistry of people who will try to conflate Castro's alleged political prisons with his alleged use of torture, as if the issues were one and the same.
For the record, IF Castro used torture in the defence of the Revolution, it would be wrong. I don't know of a single poster in this group who ever approved of torture, even by Castro's government, even in the defence of the Revolution. Nobody. That's just one more example of the lies and hypocrisy of the lunatic right, which we should all be used to by now.
I don't believe that there is torture in the Cuban system. ALL Cuban prisons are probably more at the "hell-hole" end of the prison scale than the air-conditioned, wired-for-TV hotels with bars that the U.S. is pleased to call its prison system, but enemies of the Revolution, IMHO, do not deserve air-conditioning, TV or other amenities of life paid for on the backs of the peasants and workers of Revolutionary Cuba. Most if not all of the accusations of torture in Cuban prisons can be traced back to Armando Valladares, a lying sack of gusano shit who has spent a virtual lifetime as an enemy of the people and will do or say anything to try to attack Fidel and diminsh his reputation. The Revolution will shoot enemies of the people, but it will not torture them.
As far as political prisoners are concerned, that is total myth. Another lie. Each and every one of the so-called Cuban "political prisoners" was jailed for acts of espionage or for taking money from Americans to further their own counterrevolutionary activities. These are legitimate crimes in ANY political system.
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I disagree that there are no valid political prisoners in Cuba. Amnesty International claims there are, and I believe them more than I would believe you, Juniorbush, Fidel or any other interested parties.
If an axe murderer in the US deserves AC and TV, so does a political prisoner in Cuba.
Of course, the problem is with the word "deserves", which normally only inhabits bogus sentences.
The Cuban Revolution is pretty much wilted now.
Observe how the Chinese Communists, despite their oppression, have managed to get their economy to grow 9% per years for the past dozen years or so. They seem to be better at capitalism than people in nations where capitalism is worshipped. I suggest that the Chinese leaders are more competent than Fidel.
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China has managed to get their economy to grow 9% per years for the past dozen years or so
don't they have what amounts to slave labor?
They seem to be better at capitalism than people in nations where capitalism is worshipped
are you saying we should return to slavery and pay forced workers $120 a month?
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<<Observe how the Chinese Communists, despite their oppression, have managed to get their economy to grow 9% per years for the past dozen years or so. They seem to be better at capitalism than people in nations where capitalism is worshipped. I suggest that the Chinese leaders are more competent than Fidel.>>
More competent AT WHAT? Fidel stayed true to socialist principles. The Chinese Communist leaders are transition leaders - - China is moving out of socialism before the objectives of equality and an end to exploitation of man by man have been reached. China will probably enter its capitalist phase with more equality and equity than most capitalist states did, but it remains to be seen how much good that will do the Chinese people in the long run.
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China has managed to get their economy to grow 9% per years for the past dozen years or so
don't they have what amounts to slave labor?
=================================
Do they? At worst, it is highly exploitative. The peasants that work in the factories consider themselves better off than they did back on the farm.
They seem to be better at capitalism than people in nations where capitalism is worshipped
are you saying we should return to slavery and pay forced workers $120 a month?
======================================================
I was making a comparison to Cuba. If the Chinese can maintain a growth rate of 9%, why can't Castro?
Presumably, Castro is far worse to Cubans than the Chinese leaders are to their people. Otherwise how would you explain Juniorbush ranting about how unferr Cuba is, while fighting his silly war on loans from the Chinese, with whom we are a major trading partner?
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How is it that China can feed itself, when Cuba, which has two or three growing seasons and a lot of very fertile land, can't?
Are 'true socialist principles' not amenable to a natuion feeding itself?
Castro is magnificent at staying in power. He is less admirable when it comes to other leadership qualities.
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<<- - China is moving out of socialism before the objectives of equality and an end to exploitation of man by man have been reached.
You mean before thay all starved to death , the true end to which true communism is headed.
Mao was as sincere a Communist as any leader of hs scale could be , he had controll as close as was possible and he produced famine.
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<<Mao was as sincere a Communist as any leader of hs scale could be , he had controll as close as was possible and he produced famine.>>
How? When?
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<<Mao was as sincere a Communist as any leader of hs scale could be , he had controll as close as was possible and he produced famine.>>
How? When?
You have knoledge of someone more communist than Mao?
How did this person fare as a leader?
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<<You have knoledge of someone more communist than Mao?
<<How did this person fare as a leader?>>
I don't think you understood the post you were responding to. What I was asking for was details of the alleged famine that Mao supposedly caused. It was sure as hell news to me.
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<<You have knoledge of someone more communist than Mao?
<<How did this person fare as a leader?>>
I don't think you understood the post you were responding to. What I was asking for was details of the alleged famine that Mao supposedly caused. It was sure as hell news to me.
Oh that;
T you often strike me as a well educated and well read person , that one of the biggest events of human suffering during the twentyeth century escaped your notice is unexpected.
Type a web search for Mao , China , starve and you get a few hundred thousand hits , of course this only proves that a lot of people are talking , but till now you have not heard of this?
http://www.amazon.com/Hungry-Ghosts-Maos-Secret-Famine/dp/0805056688
http://www.overpopulation.com/faq/famine/chinese-famine-of-1958-1961/
Ironically, the Chinese Communists, led by Mao Tse-Tung, prevailed in the civil
war in part because they won the support of peasants by promising equitable
land redistribution and an end to famine. Instead, in 1958-61 the Communist
agricultural policies created the worst famine in human history.
To understand the cause of the Chinese famine, first the reader must look
back to the Soviet famine of 1931-3.
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/319/7225/1619
Forty years ago China was in the middle of the world's largest famine: between the spring of 1959 and the end of 1961 some 30 million Chinese starved to death and about the same number of births were lost or postponed. The famine had overwhelmingly ideological causes, rating alongside the two world wars as a prime example of what Richard Rhodes labelled public manmade death, perhaps the most overlooked cause of 20th century mortality.
http://www.solopassion.com/node/2322
In the late 50's as Chairman Mao Ze Dong solidified power in "Revolutionary China" he sought to increase the standing of China on the international scene. To do this, China had to sell it's primary domestic product; food. Of course in China most people producing food consumed the food they were producing. The communist party of China issued new orders and directives, every bit of food produced by the population would be 'given' to the government, who would then re-distribute it according to who needed it, or rather, according to what would benefit the oppressive rulers the most. Mao's ruling part of China began a campaign to become one of the world's largest agricultural exporters. Farmers were forced to hand over at gun point the food they were growing while they were starving. ...........In all, historians estimate, about 35 million Chinese peasants starved to death during this period in the absolute worst human famine to have ever occurred,.....
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm
Source List and Detailed Death Tolls for the Twentieth Century Hemoclysm
Guinness Book of World Records:
Although nowadays they don't come right out and declare Mao to be the Top Dog in the Mass Killings category, earlier editions (such as 1978) did, and they cited sources which are similar, but not identical, to the Glaser & Possony sources:
On 7 Apr. 1969 the Soviet government radio reported that 26,300,000 people were killed in China, 1949-65.
In April 1971 the cabinet of the government of Taiwan reported 39,940,000 deaths for the years 1949-69.
The Walker Report (see below): between 32,2500,000 and 61,700,000.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47616
A noted expert in calculating the number of deaths caused by authoritarian regimes says the late Chinese communist leader Mao Tse-tung's policies and actions led to the deaths of nearly 77 million of his countrymen, surpassing those killed by Nazi Party founder Adolf Hitler and Soviet Premier Josef Stalin.
R. J. Rummel, professor emeritus of political science and a Nobel Peace Prize finalist who has published dozens of books chronicling so-called "democide," or death by government, said the new Chinese figure ? nearly double his previous estimate of about 38 million ? was based on what he believes was Mao's duplicity in China's great famine of 1958 to 1961.
I believed that Mao's policies were responsible for the famine, but he was misled about it, and finally when he found out, he stopped it and changed his policies," Rummel said. "Therefore, I argued, this was not a democide."
But after further review of available data, he said he agreed with other researchers who had counted the famine figures as part of the regime's mass murder figures.
"They were right and I was wrong," he said.
Rummel said he was influenced to revise his figures upward after reading a pair of books, "Wild Swans: Two Daughters of China," by Jung Chang; and "Mao: the Unknown Story," which Jung wrote with her husband, Jon Halliday.
"From the biography of Mao, which I trust ? I can now say that yes, Mao's policies caused the famine. He knew about it from the beginning," Rummel said, adding Mao even "tried to take more food from the people to pay for his lust for international power, but was overruled by a meeting of 7,000 top Communist Party members."
"So, the famine was intentional. What was its human cost? I had estimated that 27 million Chinese starved to death or died from associated diseases. Others estimated the toll to be as high as 40 million. Chang and Halliday put it at 38 million and, given their sources, I will accept that," said Rummel. "I'm now convinced that Stalin exceeded Hitler in monstrous evil, and Mao beat out Stalin."
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-5055874/Mao-and-the-Australian-Maoists.html
Article Excerpt
IN DECEMBER 1993, to mark the centenary of the birth of Mao Tse-tung, the Melbourne Age commissioned an opinion piece from Albert Langer, who as a student activist in the 1960s had been the best-known public face of Maoism in Australia. Around the time Langer accepted the invitation, Western culture had been beset by a vogue for big, showpiece political apologies: Bill Clinton apologised for slaver, the Queen apologised for British imperialism, the Pope even apologised for the Crusades. But it never occurred to Langer to follow suit.
He wrote at a time when the populations of Eastern Europe had just revealed what they thought of their former communist rulers by throwing them all out of office, and when China was finally pulling itself out of poverty by developing a capitalist economy. Rather than the end of socialism, Langer portrayed this merely as its "low tide". It would inevitably be followed by another high tide like the one he enjoyed in his youth. The impasse into which the Left had fallen, he wrote, would not last forever. "As Mao points out," Langer declared, "there is an alternative--rebellion, straggle, the right for socialism ... Happy birthday Mao Tse-tung!"
When Mao's next major milestone, the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, arrived in 1999 Australian Book Review commissioned another 1960s Maoist, Humphrey McQueen, to write its annual La Trobe University Essay. By this time, McQueen was less of an enthusiast than Langer. He had now, he said, lost all sympathy with the regime. But he still claimed the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s was justified for attempting to bring backward rural China into the modern world, and he still considered Mao a great intellect. "Far from seeing Mao Tse-tung-Thought as sloganeering," McQueen wrote, "I knew how demanding his ideas could be."
When the review commissioned McQueen it could hardly have been unaware of the radical shift in Western opinion about the nature of Mao's regime. This was partly the result of Jung Chang's best-selling 1991 book Wild Swans." Three Daughters of China, which told the story of how her own once-dedicated Maoist family, and many others like it, had been humiliated, imprisoned and destroyed by the Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution. When Jasper Becker's book Hungry Ghosts: China's Secret Famine revealed in 1995 that Mao had caused between 30 and 40 million people to starve to death during the so-called Great Leap Forward of 1958-61, the horror of the regime was there for all to see. But McQueen's reminiscences mentioned none of this.
It is unlikely that future Chinese anniversaries will be celebrated by anyone in the Australian media in the same way. Mao Tse-tung now stands revealed as the greatest mass murderer in human history. We now have plausible evidence that he was responsible for the deaths of more than 70 million people, a tally larger than that achieved by Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin combined. In their new biography Mao: The Unknown Story (Jonathan Cape), Jung Chang and Jon Halliday attribute 38 million of these deaths to the great Chinese famine of 1958-61. Another 27 million were executed or worked to death between 1950 and 1976 in Mao's gulag of prisons and labour camps. During the initial nationwide campaign of terror to consolidate his regime from October 1950 to October 1951, Mao oversaw three million Chinese killed by execution, mob violence and suicide. A further three million suffered the same fate after 1966 at the hands of the Red Guards and other protagonists of the Cultural Revolution.
Although some of Mao's Australian sympathisers, such as Linda Jaivin writing in the Bulletin, have tried to nitpick Chang and Halliday's total of 70 million dead, their figure is, if anything, conservative. For instance, the 38 million death toll they attribute to the great famine is around the middle of the recorded range. Jasper Becker cited reliable Western demographers who argued at least 30 million died but he also quoted several Chinese estimates that each recorded a total of more than 40 million. One source was the senior Communist Party official Chen Yizi who in 1979 was appointed by Premier Zhao Ziyang to find out what really happened in 1958-61. Chen led a team of 200 officials who visited every province to examine internal party documents and records. His report put the total at between 43 and 46 million dead.
Moreover, Chang and Halliday reveal how much responsibility Mao had for this particular catastrophe. Becker had attributed the famine largely to the ideological folly of a failed experiment in collectivisation. Chang and Halliday produce new evidence to show it was more sinister than that. Mao's regime confiscated Chinese harvests during the Great Leap Forward so it could export food to communist-controlled Eastern Europe in exchange for armaments and political support. Food and money were also exported to support anti-colonial and communist movements in Asia, Africa and Latin America. In the first year of famine, 1958-59, China exported seven million tons of grain, enough to feed 38 million people. In 1960, a year in which 22 million Chinese died of starvation, China was the biggest international aid donor in terms of proportion of GNP in the world. Thanks to Chinese agricultural exports, East Germany was able to lift food rationing in 1958, and Albania in 1961.
In China at the same time a major food source for the urban population became the "food substitute" chlorella, a disgusting substance that grew in urine and contained a little protein. In the countryside, starving Chinese peasants were reduced to eating bark and compost and, in Anhui and Gansu provinces, to cannibalism. In Chinese cities in 1960, the maximum daily intake was 1200 calories, compared to the 1300-1700 calories a day fed to the inmates of Auschwitz.
The huge size of the Chinese population, around 600 million in 1960, gave Mao many more potential victims than were available to either Hitler or Stalin. What made Mao the greater monster was not just the sheer quantity of his killings. It was because so many of his victims came not only from his real and imagined enemies but from his own supporters. Chang and Halliday show that Mao built his political power out of a lifelong strategy that easily outdid even Stalin in waging murder and terror among his own Communist Party comrades.
MAO WAS NEVER the agrarian reformer his Western supporters claimed. He redistributed no land and liberated no peasants. His initial "red base" at Ruijin in Jiangxi province, southern China, had been achieved not by a revolutionary uprising of the masses but through military conquest by the Red Army, armed and funded by Moscow. His rule was identical to that of an occupying army, surviving by plundering the local population and killing anyone who resisted.
The system of control established at Ruijin from 1931-34 was introduced by Chou...
NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.
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Sorry, plane, but I've checked out some of your references, and for now I'm just not buying into any of it. This seems to be part of some right-wing academic hoax on the order of the so-called "Ukrainian Famine" BS, which was made to order specifically to rehabilitate the Ukrainian Nationalist movement, which had tried to ally itself with Hitler (with mixed success) but was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews during WWII. In fact, some of the "authorities" cited in the "Communist Chinese Famine" story were closely associated with the "Ukrainian Famine" hoax.
I checked out three of your sources. None of them were impressive. Vaclav Smil is a professor at University of Manitoba specializing in world energy issues, he is not a historian and thus has little reputation to lose if he writes bullshit outside of his field. From his name, I would guess that he too is a Ukrainian, probably a post-WWII refugee, part of the Great Fascist Migration, and with good reason has adopted the "Ukrainian Famine" hoax. R.J. Rummel is often cited by hardline anti-communists as the source of all kinds of BS related to the "Ukrainian Famine" hoax - - he's a historian alright, Professor of History at the University of Hawaii, nothing of any note in his resume, certainly never associated with any of the great universities. He's tried to self-promote himself as a "Nobel Prize nominee," which is patently ridiculous as the nominees are never named publicly and he later had to withdraw the claim. Really not very impressive or distinguished. The other source that I checked (sorry I've already forgotten the name) was equally unimpressive.
If time permits, I'll check out the other sources you quoted.
What you have really is a collection of third-rate academics with a real axe to grind, who have found a good thing in wildly outrageous anti-communist "history" that they can claim to have discovered - - in contradiction to the great historians of the age, all of whom somehow "missed" these momentous events. Then these third-raters have a new "historical" subject they can all write about, pat each other on the back about and create a warm and cozy little sub-culture, supported financially by those wealthy donors interested in anti-communism, anti-semitism and fascism. If they look in the right places, they can even find some Jewish neocons whose practical "anti-communism" (read Zionism) will lead them into holding their noses and jumping into bed with these guys to lend them anti-fascist credibility. David Horowitz would seem to be a prize catch for these guys, but I'm not sure that even he would be low enough to lend his name to their efforts.
My theory is: if it looks like bullshit, smells like bullshit and tastes like bullshit, then in all probability, it IS bullshit.
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MT you should never tell me that the holocaust actually happened or that the Jews of Europe ever had a hard time , I know where I can go and find General Eisenhower and Eli Weishenthal rebutted and called quacks . What is proven thereby?
I accept it as a fact that one of the worst famines of all man kinds history was purposefully undertaken to further the cause of Communism.
Why shouldn't I?
I believe that Hitler was bad for much the same reasons , I actually believe and do not deny that he organized a huge spree of bloody murder , but I am not emotionally invested in Fascism so accepting such an idea does not break my heart.
Still ,why should I treat you differently than I should a Holocaust denier?
Whatsort of sorce would you trust ? I get the feeling that anyone who was not a pro communist would be off your list , you may as well look for an accurate accounting of the Holocaust from a facist.
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http://www.ciolek.com/SPEC/rummel-on-democide-2005.html
Rudy J. Rummel (rummel--at--hawaii.edu)
Professor Emeritus of Political Science
University of Hawaii
Honolulu, HI, US
Hi,
Many scholars and commentators have referenced my total of 174,000,000 for the democide (genocide and mass murder) of the last century.
I'm now trying to get word out that I've had to make a major revision in my total due to two books. One is Wild Swans: Two Daughters of China [hyperlinks are added to the plain text email by Prof Rummel - ed.] by Jung Chang, and the other is Mao: the Unknown Story that she wrote with her husband, Jon Halliday. I'm now convinced that that Stalin exceeded Hitler in monstrous evil, and Mao beat out Stalin.
From the time I wrote my book on China's Bloody Century, I have held to these democide totals for Mao:
Civil War-Sino-Japanese War 1923-1949 = 3,466,000 murdered
Rule over China (PRC) 1949-1987 = 35,236,000 murdered
However, some other scholars and researchers had put the PRC total as from 60,000,000 to a high 70,000,000. Asked why my total is so low by comparison, I've responded that I did not include the China's Great Famine 1958-1961. From my study of what was written on this in English, I believed that:
(1) the famine was due to the Great Leap Forward when Mao tried to catch up with the West in producing iron and steel;
(2) the factorization of agriculture, forcing virtually all peasants to give up their land, livestock, tools, and homes to live in regimented communes;
(3) the exuberant over reporting of agricultural production by commune and district managers for fear of the consequences of not meeting their quotas;
(4) the consequent belief of high communist officials that excess food was being produced and could be exported without starving the peasants;
(5) but, reports from traveling high officials indicated that peasants might be starving in certain localities;
(6) an investigative team was sent out from Beijing, and reported back that there was mass starvation;
(7) and then the CCP stopped exporting food and began to imports what was needed to stop the famine.
Thus, I believed that Mao's policies were responsible for the famine, but he was mislead about it, and finally when he found out, he stopped it and changed his policies. Therefore, I argued, this was not a democide. Others, however, have so counted it, but I thought this was a sloppy application of the concepts of mass murder, genocide, or politicide (virtually no one used the concept of democide). They were right and I was wrong.
From the biography of Mao, which I trust (for those who might question it, look at the hundreds of interviews Chang and Halliday conducted with communist cadre and former high officials, and the extensive bibliography) I can now say that yes, Mao's policies caused the famine. He knew about it from the beginning. He didn't care! Literally. And he tried to take more food from the people to pay for his lust for international power, but was overruled by a meeting of 7,000 top Communist Party members.
So, the famine was intentional. What was its human cost? I had estimated that 27,000,000 Chinese starved to death or died from associated diseases. Others estimated the toll to be as high as 40,000,000. Chang and Halliday put it at 38,000,000, and given their sources, I will accept that.
Now, I have to change all the world democide totals that populate my websites, blogs, and publications. The total for the communist democide before and after Mao took over the mainland is thus 3,446,000 + 35,226,000 + 38,000,000 = 76,692,000, or to round off, 77,000,000 murdered. This is now in line with the 65 million toll estimated for China in the Black Book of Communism, and Chang and Halliday's estimate of "well over 70 million."
This exceeds the 61,911,000 murdered by the Soviet Union 1917-1987, with Hitler far behind at 20,946,000 wiped out 1933-1945.
For perspective on Mao's most bloody rule, all wars 1900-1987 cost in combat dead 34,021,000 -- including WWI and II, Vietnam, Korea, and the Mexican and Russian Revolutions. Mao alone murdered over twice as many as were killed in combat in all these wars.
Now, my overall totals for world democide 1900-1999 must also be changed. I have estimated it to be 174,000,000 murdered, of which communist regimes murdered about 148,000,000. Also, compare this to combat dead. Communists overall have murdered four times those killed in combat, while globally the democide toll was over six times that number.
Let freedom ring.
Rudy Rummel
Professor Emeritus
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<<MT you should never tell me that the holocaust actuallyhappened or that the Jews of Europe ever had a hard time , I know where I can go and find General Eisenhour and Eli Weishenthal rebutted and called quacks .>>
Hey that's no trick, plane, I too know where I can go and find those same works. I just don't happen to believe them. I know too much about the subject. I have spoken to dozens and maybe hundreds of Holocaust survivors, members of my own family included. My wife worked for JIAS (Jewish Immigrant Aid Society) and her job was dealing with them every fucking day, listening to their stories, trying to integrate them into Canadian society. It was heartbreaking work and she burned out in a couple of years at it. Many times she came home crying.
<<I accept it as a fact that one of the worst famines of all man kinds history was purposefully undertakn to further the cause of Communism.>>
Sure you do. IMHO it's because you know very little about the detailed history of the Holocaust, and the role of the Ukrainian Nationalist movement in it. You know almost nothing of what is called the Great Fascist Migration (the escape of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators from the justice that awaited them in the U.S.S.R. after V-E Day,) and the need to explain their pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic actions during the war. There are books (Ratlines, Blowback, Old Wounds, and probably dozens more) which explain these matters in detail, but I know that you will never read them. Nevertheless, it is your ignorance - - of the books and the facts set out in them - - that enables you to believe the BS of the authors and sources you quoted. In the battle for the heart and mind of plane, the Nazi collaborators were successful and I have clearly failed. miserably. That's OK, though, it IS really "just history," water under the bridge, and the Jews and Ukrainians here in Canada have settled into an uneasy kind of peaceful relationship that can only grow better with the passage of time.
<<Why shouldn't I? [accept it as a fact that one of the worst famines of all man kinds history was purposefully undertakn to further the cause of Communism]>>
Well, in a nutshell, because it just is not true.
<<I beleive that Hitler was bad for much the same reasons , I actually beleive and do not deny that he oranised a huge spree of blody murder , but I am not emtionally invested in Facism so acceting such an idea does not break my heart.>>
Well, I guess I should be thankful for small mercies. At least you also believe in the Holocaust. Good, plane, that's a start.
<<Still ,why should I treat you diffrently than I should a Holocaust denyer?>>
If you believe that both the Holocaust and the "Ukrainian Famine" stories are true, then you SHOULDN'T treat me any differently than you would treat a Holocaust denier.
Believe me, plane, if there HAD been a Ukrainian famine, (there was, but the hoax is that it was deliberately caused by the communists) then I would denounce it just as strongly as I denounce the Holocaust. Both would be crimes against humanity. The horror of the Holocaust is not that all those things happened to the Jews, but that any human beings could do what they did to other human beings. The Holocaust would have been just as horrifying if the victims had all been Hungarians or Mexicans.
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<<Still ,why should I treat you diffrently than I should a Holocaust denyer?>>
If you believe that both the Holocaust and the "Ukrainian Famine" stories are true, then you SHOULDN'T treat me any differently than you would treat a Holocaust denier.
Then I shall treat you with pity , because you have blinded yourself.
Here you will like this one , it blames Chinas huge famines {which were only huge because China is huge} on the US.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/FD01Ad04.html
There would have been no deaths in the 1961-62 famines if not for the US embargo.
At least you can see from this that there were large famines , which you didn't know before.
The bad weather and US embargo that can be blamed for the deaths reaching levels greater than during the war with Japan seem implausable to me , but I am not emotionally invested in Mao.
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<<At least you can see from this that there were large famines , which you didn't know before.>>
You are wrong again. Because of its huge population, famines were a regular feature of Chinese history. In 1944, 4 million Chinese died of famine. As a matter of fact, it was only with the advent of Communism that famine was abolished forever in China.
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Sorry, plane, but I've checked out some of your references, and for now I'm just not buying into any of it.
Lots more references here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Chinese_Famine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Chinese_Famine)
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As a matter of fact, it was only with the advent of Communism that famine was abolished forever in China.
If there were famines in China between 1959 and 1961, the above statement can not be true.
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As a matter of fact, it was only with the advent of Communism that famine was abolished forever in China.
Famine abolished forever? I am more than a little skeptical.
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<<At least you can see from this that there were large famines , which you didn't know before.>>
You are wrong again. Because of its huge population, famines were a regular feature of Chinese history. In 1944, 4 million Chinese died of famine. As a matter of fact, it was only with the advent of Communism that famine was abolished forever in China.
Advent , or abandonment?
How do we know that famines are over for China now? It is only a short time since the last one , therehave been at least three in liveing memory , i they have the courage to abandon the mistakes of Communism perhaps they will have fewer , but even a died in the wool capitolist would not dare say that his system would make anoher famine impossible.
In 1944 the Japanese were very likely interfering with Chinas grain production .
In 1959 the famine was much worse , but why?
According to Asia Times online (they like Mao) it was not worse , the 30 million missing were an error in the census and there were not so many deaths , or the weather was bad or the US wouldn't sell them grain. So they didn't die and it wasn't Mao's fault that they died.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/FD01Ad04.html
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<<If there were famines in China between 1959 and 1961, the above statement can not be true.>>
Sorry, I expressed myself poorly. I think China now is free of famine, and I meant to say that with the advent of Communism the tide turned, in the sense that there were no more famines as severe as the 1944 famine, and ultimately at some point, total victory over famine was achieved, i.e. they passed a point of no return, from which there would be no more famines - - unfortunately, the way I put it sounds like, as soon as the Communists took power, that was the end of famine in China. Obviously untrue.
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"Believe me, plane, if there HAD been a Ukrainian famine, (there was, but the hoax is that it was deliberately caused by the communists) then I would denounce it just as strongly as I denounce the Holocaust. Both would be crimes against humanity. The horror of the Holocaust is not that all those things happened to the Jews, but that any human beings could do what they did to other human beings. The Holocaust would have been just as horrifying if the victims had all been Hungarians or Mexicans."
How can I beleive you?
You will refuse to beleive any sorce not vetted by Communists , it is exactly equivelent to beleiveing nothing about Hitler not vetted by Hess.
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<<If there were famines in China between 1959 and 1961, the above statement can not be true.>>
Sorry, I expressed myself poorly. I think China now is free of famine, and I meant to say that with the advent of Communism the tide turned, in the sense that there were no more famines as severe as the 1944 famine, and ultimately at some point, total victory over famine was achieved, i.e. they passed a point of no return, from which there would be no more famines - - unfortunately, the way I put it sounds like, as soon as the Communists took power, that was the end of famine in China. Obviously untrue.
So he 59-61 famine was not 30-60 million? How large was it?
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Thanks, Ami, for the references. I am going to have to plead ignorance here, specifically because I don't know jack-shit about Chinese history and politics, so I'm not able to evaluate the Chinese sources. Obviously some have an axe to grind, some may not. Some may be Pentagon or Foggy Bottom pets, others may actually be honest and objective. From what I read of the article, it seems to be reasonable to assume mixed causes of mismanagement and natural disasters. Mismanagement does not IMHO equate to a deliberate genocidal killing policy.
I guess in China I'm way out of my depth. I found it easy enough to discredit the "Ukrainian Famine" hoax because of my own knowledge of Ukrainian, Jewish and Nazi history in the Ukraine before and during WWII and afterwards. With no such comparable knowledge of China, I'm going to have to reconsider my original characterization of events there, and say that communist mismanagement - - but not deliberate, malicious, murderous intent - - may have played a substantial role in a famine, but I'm still not convinced that the famine was anywhere near as severe as the 1944 famine.
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<<You will refuse to beleive any sorce not vetted by Communists , it is exactly equivelent to beleiveing nothing about Hitler not vetted by Hess.>>
That is just more total bullshit. I never once objected to any source on the grounds it was not vetted by communists. I don't even know where you got that idea from. Can't even imagine. What I said is too obvious to bear repeating. Go back and read it again; slowly. Look up any words I used that you might not have understood. If you still believe that I objected to sources because they were not vetted by communists, all I can suggest is that you seek out the nearest adult education facility and enroll in a course in reading for comprehension. Without delay. You will be desperately in need of it
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<<You will refuse to beleive any sorce not vetted by Communists , it is exactly equivelent to beleiveing nothing about Hitler not vetted by Hess.>>
That is just more total bullshit. I never once objected to any source on the grounds it was not vetted by communists. I don't even know where you got that idea from. Can't even imagine. What I said is too obvious to bear repeating. Go back and read it again; slowly. Look up any words I used that you might not have understood. If you still believe that I objected to sources because they were not vetted by communists, all I can suggest is that you seek out the nearest adult education facility and enroll in a course in reading for comprehension. Without delay. You will be desperately in need of it
(the escape of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators from the justice that awaited them in the U.S.S.R. after V-E Day,) and the need to explain their pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic actions during the war. There are books (Ratlines, Blowback, Old Wounds, and probably dozens more) which explain these matters in detail, but I know that you will never read them. Nevertheless, it is your ignorance - - of the books and the facts set out in them - - that enables you to believe the BS of the authors and sources you quoted.
There were millions of these people ,every one telling the same lie, they must have compared notes as they left. It cannot be that they are telling truths about Stalin , Hitler was the black and Stalin was the white.
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<<There were millions of these people ,every one telling the same lie . . . >>
They sure as hell couldn't all tell the same truth, now could they? "Oh please let us in, we're just poor simple Jew-killing, Nazi-loving Ukrainian nationalists who just tried as hard as we could to help Hitler win the war and now the Russians are mad at us."
Sometimes, plane, you are so fucking naive you could knock me flat on my back.
<<It cannot be that they are telling truths about Stalin , Hitler was the black and Stalin was the white.>>
It cannot be they would tell the truth about ANYTHING, don't you get it, plane? They were war criminals fleeing for their lives from a vengeful Russian people.
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Sirs, You said: "various means of sleep deprivation is NOT torture." I am simply disagreeing with your statement.
So, intermittently waking someone up, preventing them from having a pleasant 8hrs of sleep is "torture"?? Again, I'm referring to the act itself, not a DURATION of an act. So, if you want to argue that getting 5hrs of sleep vs 8 is torture at the hands of our americans, then so be it. I am simply disagreeing with that premice
Now, the real question is: do you support using torture?
No, not of the type I've already referenced, that of causing physical damage to one's body. Being made uncomfortable, stressed, humiliated, and anquished is NOT torture. At least not in the traditional examples of true torture. But since so many here are ready to rationalize how periodic head slapping and not providing 8hrs of blissful sleep is torture as well, then obviously we have little to talk about
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<<There were millions of these people ,every one telling the same lie . . . >>
They sure as hell couldn't all tell the same truth, now could they? "Oh please let us in, we're just poor simple Jew-killing, Nazi-loving Ukrainian nationalists who just tried as hard as we could to help Hitler win the war and now the Russians are mad at us."
Sometimes, plane, you are so fucking naive you could knock me flat on my back.
<<It cannot be that they are telling truths about Stalin , Hitler was the black and Stalin was the white.>>
It cannot be they would tell the truth about ANYTHING, don't you get it, plane? They were war criminals fleeing for their lives from a vengeful Russian people.
I too perceive naivete,
How can this be?
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<<I too perceive naivete,
How can this be?>>
I have no idea.
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<<I too perceive naivete,
How can this be?>>
I have no idea.
Again I perceive naivete.
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So, intermittently waking someone up, preventing them from having a pleasant 8hrs of sleep is "torture"?? Again, I'm referring to the act itself, not a DURATION of an act. So, if you want to argue that getting 5hrs of sleep vs 8 is torture at the hands of our americans, then so be it. I am simply disagreeing with that premice
What you are describing is not sleep deprivation. You are not "referring to the act itself." Sleep deprivation means no sleep for an extended duration. It is not "preventing them from having a pleasant 8hrs of sleep." Five hours of sleep a night is not sleep deprivation Sirs. Did you not read what the people described that I quoted? Manachem Begin was not this nice, friendly guy and even he considered it torture.
I have no idea what the hell you are talking about, but you live in some Polyanna dream-world if you think 5 hours a night of sleep = sleep deprivation. We're talking about 72, 96, 168 hours with no sleep.
But since so many here are ready to rationalize how periodic head slapping and not providing 8hrs of blissful sleep is torture as well, then obviously we have little to talk about
Do you read? Honest answer, I'm not going to poke fun or anything. You just don't come across as someone who really has any knowledge of what goes on outside the United States (or maybe even Southern California). Do you know, for example, what we and the Israelis taught the Ethiopian Army to do to EPLF Rebels in Eritrea? Do you know what we've taught the Colombians to do, or Nicaragua when they faught the Sandanistas or the Contras afterwards?
Blissful 8 hours of sleep? You cannot hold a conversation on this topic if you really believe this is what takes place.
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sirs has a vested interest in minimizing acts that anyone else would consider to be torture. "Sleep deprivation" in his Bizarro world becomes "Not getting a good 8 hrs. sleep." Working a guy over with a blowtorch would probably become "warming him up a bit."
How can it be torture if U.S. forces do it? It's impossible. sirs starts from a premise and works backward from it. Premise: the U.S. are the good guys. Ergo, the U.S. doesn't torture. Ergo WHATEVER Americans do to their prisoners, it CAN'T be torture. Now it's simple - - every form of torture becomes non-torture by definition: sleep dep = "not getting 8 hrs. sleep;" waterboarding - "dunking;" letting attack dogs rip a guy open = "letting my dog bark in your face" (OK the last one was plane's, but sirs doesn't have a monopoly on selling torture.)
You really can't take guys like that seriously, because they don't take YOU seriously, otherwise they wouldn't be insulting your intelligence with that bullshit.
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So, intermittently waking someone up, preventing them from having a pleasant 8hrs of sleep is "torture"?? Again, I'm referring to the act itself, not a DURATION of an act. So, if you want to argue that getting 5hrs of sleep vs 8 is torture at the hands of our americans, then so be it. I am simply disagreeing with that premice
What you are describing is not sleep deprivation. You are not "referring to the act itself." Sleep deprivation means no sleep for an extended duration. It is not "preventing them from having a pleasant 8hrs of sleep." Five hours of sleep a night is not sleep deprivation Sirs. Did you not read what the people described that I quoted? Manachem Begin was not this nice, friendly guy and even he considered it torture. I have no idea what the hell you are talking about, but you live in some Polyanna dream-world if you think 5 hours a night of sleep = sleep deprivation. We're talking about 72, 96, 168 hours with no sleep.
Sleep deprivation is a general lack of the necessary amount of sleep. This may occur as a result of sleep disorders, active choice or deliberate inducement such as in interrogation or for torture. Studies have reported that sleep deprivation affects tens of millions of adults each year in the United States alone.
What is sleep deprivation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_deprivation)
But since so many here are ready to rationalize how periodic head slapping and not providing 8hrs of blissful sleep is torture as well, then obviously we have little to talk about
Do you read?
Do you? The extended amount of hours (meaning the repetition of an act, and NOT the act itself, as i have referenced over and over again) keeping a person from sleeping which would cause physical damage to a person would be considered torture, as is just about anything made repetative or overly extended. But the act itself, as defined in wikipedia, is NOT
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McCain Rebukes Giuliani on Waterboarding Remark
By MICHAEL COOPER and MARC SANTORA
Published: October 26, 2007
Rudolph W. Giuliani?s statement on Wednesday that he was uncertain whether waterboarding, a simulated drowning technique, was torture drew a sharp rebuke yesterday from Senator John McCain, who said that his failure to call it torture reflected his inexperience.
?All I can say is that it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Pot?s genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today,? Mr. McCain, who spent more than five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, said in a telephone interview.
Of presidential candidates like Mr. Giuliani, who say that they are unsure whether waterboarding is torture, Mr. McCain said: ?They should know what it is. It is not a complicated procedure. It is torture.?
Mr. Giuliani said on Wednesday night at a forum in Davenport, Iowa, that he favored ?aggressive questioning? of terrorism suspects and using ?means that are a little tougher? with terrorists but that the United States should not torture people. On the question of whether waterboarding is torture, however, Mr. Giuliani said he was unsure.
?It depends on how it?s done,? he said, adding that he was unsure whether descriptions of the practice by the ?liberal media? were accurate. ?It depends on the circumstances. It depends on who does it.?
Dr. Allen S. Keller, the director of the Bellevue/N.Y.U. Program for Survivors of Torture, said waterboarding involved tipping a person back, covering his mouth with a cloth and repeatedly pouring water over the cloth to make him gag and experience a drowning sensation. If it is done long enough, Dr. Keller said, there is a risk that the person may drown or have a heart attack.
With the exception of Mr. McCain, who believes that torture is ineffective because its victims will say anything to make it stop, several leading Republican presidential candidates have suggested that they would use aggressive or coercive interrogation techniques ? they say they would stop short of torture ? to prevent a terrorist attack.
Fred D. Thompson, the actor and former senator from Tennessee, said at a recent stop in Florida that he would not use waterboarding ?as a matter of course? but that in certain circumstances officials had to ?do what is necessary? to prevent attacks and save lives.
Mr. Giuliani?s remarks about waterboarding seemed to leave more leeway toward using the practice than remarks he made at a news conference in June. Then, he said that he favored aggressive interrogation techniques, but that ?I think you can do it without something like waterboarding.? On Wednesday night, he made it clear that officials should have a wide array of options available to them to try to prevent a potential attack.
The Giuliani campaign responded to Mr. McCain?s comments with a statement from its senior military adviser, Adm. Robert J. Natter, retired, the former commander in chief of the Atlantic Fleet.
?The highly politicized nature of political campaigns makes that forum a poor arena in which to debate the distinctions between torture and different forms of interrogation,? Admiral Natter said. ?Is waterboarding torture? I don?t know. I was waterboarded as part of my military training, and I would say that it falls into a gray area.?
Dr. Keller, an outspoken opponent of waterboarding and similar techniques, said of such trials that ?context is everything,? because people who are waterboarded as an experiment or as part of their training know that they will not be hurt in the end.
In his remarks in Iowa, Mr. Giuliani also criticized Democrats who call sleep deprivation torture.
?They talk about sleep deprivation,? he said. ?I mean, on that theory, I?m getting tortured running for president of the United States. That?s plain silly. That?s silly.?
Mr. Giuliani?s remarks were criticized by Human Rights Watch. Jennifer Daskal, who specialized in counterterrorism for the group, faulted him for suggesting that ?sleep deprivation is a joke.?
?Perfected by the Soviets, sleep deprivation is one of the cruelest, most painful forms of torture,? Ms. Daskal said.
For his part, Dr. Keller said he was troubled by the distinctions being drawn between torture and enhanced investigation techniques.
?We should use a common-sense approach,? he said. ?If it looks like torture, if it smells like torture, it probably is torture.?
Sarah Wheaton contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/us/politics/26giuliani.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1193533514-BCKl+OImaJFhPfvbO82etQ
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I have no idea.
I always thought it, but I never thought you'd admit it. :D
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CIA's Harsh Interrogation Techniques Described
By BRIAN ROSS and RICHARD ESPOSITO
Nov. 18, 2005
Harsh interrogation techniques authorized by top officials of the CIA have led to questionable confessions and the death of a detainee since the techniques were first authorized in mid-March 2002, ABC News has been told by former and current intelligence officers and supervisors.
They say they are revealing specific details of the techniques, and their impact on confessions, because the public needs to know the direction their agency has chosen. All gave their accounts on the condition that their names and identities not be revealed. Portions of their accounts are corrobrated by public statements of former CIA officers and by reports recently published that cite a classified CIA Inspector General's report.
Other portions of their accounts echo the accounts of escaped prisoners from one CIA prison in Afghanistan.
"They would not let you rest, day or night. Stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down. Don't sleep. Don't lie on the floor," one prisoner said through a translator. The detainees were also forced to listen to rap artist Eminem's "Slim Shady" album. The music was so foreign to them it made them frantic, sources said.
Contacted after the completion of the ABC News investigation, CIA officials would neither confirm nor deny the accounts. They simply declined to comment.
The CIA sources described a list of six "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" instituted in mid-March 2002 and used, they said, on a dozen top al Qaeda targets incarcerated in isolation at secret locations on military bases in regions from Asia to Eastern Europe. According to the sources, only a handful of CIA interrogators are trained and authorized to use the techniques:
1. The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him.
2. Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear.
3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.
4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions.
5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water.
6. Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.
According to the sources, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. They said al Qaeda's toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess.
"The person believes they are being killed, and as such, it really amounts to a mock execution, which is illegal under international law," said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch.
The techniques are controversial among experienced intelligence agency and military interrogators. Many feel that a confession obtained this way is an unreliable tool. Two experienced officers have told ABC that there is little to be gained by these techniques that could not be more effectively gained by a methodical, careful, psychologically based interrogation. According to a classified report prepared by the CIA Inspector General John Helgerwon and issued in 2004, the techniques "appeared to constitute cruel, and degrading treatment under the (Geneva) convention," the New York Times reported on Nov. 9, 2005.
It is "bad interrogation. I mean you can get anyone to confess to anything if the torture's bad enough," said former CIA officer Bob Baer.
Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer and a deputy director of the State Department's office of counterterrorism, recently wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "What real CIA field officers know firsthand is that it is better to build a relationship of trust ? than to extract quick confessions through tactics such as those used by the Nazis and the Soviets."
One argument in favor of their use: time. In the early days of al Qaeda captures, it was hoped that speeding confessions would result in the development of important operational knowledge in a timely fashion.
However, ABC News was told that at least three CIA officers declined to be trained in the techniques before a cadre of 14 were selected to use them on a dozen top al Qaeda suspects in order to obtain critical information. In at least one instance, ABC News was told that the techniques led to questionable information aimed at pleasing the interrogators and that this information had a significant impact on U.S. actions in Iraq.
According to CIA sources, Ibn al Shaykh al Libbi, after two weeks of enhanced interrogation, made statements that were designed to tell the interrogators what they wanted to hear. Sources say Al Libbi had been subjected to each of the progressively harsher techniques in turn and finally broke after being water boarded and then left to stand naked in his cold cell overnight where he was doused with cold water at regular intervals.
His statements became part of the basis for the Bush administration claims that Iraq trained al Qaeda members to use biochemical weapons. Sources tell ABC that it was later established that al Libbi had no knowledge of such training or weapons and fabricated the statements because he was terrified of further harsh treatment.
"This is the problem with using the waterboard. They get so desperate that they begin telling you what they think you want to hear," one source said.
However, sources said, al Libbi does not appear to have sought to intentionally misinform investigators, as at least one account has stated. The distinction in this murky world is nonetheless an important one. Al Libbi sought to please his investigators, not lead them down a false path, two sources with firsthand knowledge of the statements said.
When properly used, the techniques appear to be closely monitored and are signed off on in writing on a case-by-case, technique-by-technique basis, according to highly placed current and former intelligence officers involved in the program. In this way, they say, enhanced interrogations have been authorized for about a dozen high value al Qaeda targets -- Khalid Sheik Mohammed among them. According to the sources, all of these have confessed, none of them has died, and all of them remain incarcerated.
While some media accounts have described the locations where these detainees are located as a string of secret CIA prisons -- a gulag, as it were -- in fact, sources say, there are a very limited number of these locations in use at any time, and most often they consist of a secure building on an existing or former military base. In addition, they say, the prisoners usually are not scattered but travel together to these locations, so that information can be extracted from one and compared with others. Currently, it is believed that one or more former Soviet bloc air bases and military installations are the Eastern European location of the top suspects. Khalid Sheik Mohammed is among the suspects detained there, sources said.
The sources told ABC that the techniques, while progressively aggressive, are not deemed torture, and the debate among intelligence officers as to whether they are effective should not be underestimated. There are many who feel these techniques, properly supervised, are both valid and necessary, the sources said. While harsh, they say, they are not torture and are reserved only for the most important and most difficult prisoners.
According to the sources, when an interrogator wishes to use a particular technique on a prisoner, the policy at the CIA is that each step of the interrogation process must be signed off at the highest level -- by the deputy director for operations for the CIA. A cable must be sent and a reply received each time a progressively harsher technique is used. The described oversight appears tough but critics say it could be tougher. In reality, sources said, there are few known instances when an approval has not been granted. Still, even the toughest critics of the techniques say they are relatively well monitored and limited in use.
Two sources also told ABC that the techniques -- authorized for use by only a handful of trained CIA officers -- have been misapplied in at least one instance.
The sources said that in that case a young, untrained junior officer caused the death of one detainee at a mud fort dubbed the "salt pit" that is used as a prison. They say the death occurred when the prisoner was left to stand naked throughout the harsh Afghanistan night after being doused with cold water. He died, they say, of hypothermia.
According to the sources, a second CIA detainee died in Iraq and a third detainee died following harsh interrogation by Department of Defense personnel and contractors in Iraq. CIA sources said that in the DOD case, the interrogation was harsh, but did not involve the CIA.
The Kabul fort has also been the subject of confusion. Several intelligence sources involved in both the enhanced interrogation program and the program to ship detainees back to their own country for interrogation -- a process described as rendition, say that the number of detainees in each program has been added together to suggest as many as 100 detainees are moved around the world from one secret CIA facility to another. In the rendition program, foreign nationals captured in the conflict zones are shipped back to their own countries on occasion for interrogation and prosecution.
There have been several dozen instances of rendition. There have been a little over a dozen authorized enhanced interrogations. As a result, the enhanced interrogation program has been described as one encompassing 100 or more prisoners. Multiple CIA sources told ABC that it is not. The renditions have also been described as illegal. They are not, our sources said, although they acknowledge the procedures are in an ethical gray area and are at times used for the convenience of extracting information under harsher conditions that the U.S. would allow.
ABC was told that several dozen renditions of this kind have occurred. Jordan is one country recently cited as an "emerging" center for renditions, according to published reports. The ABC sources said that rendition of this sort are legal and should not be confused with illegal "snatches" of targets off the streets of a home country by officers of yet another country. The United States is currently charged with such an illegal rendition in Italy. Israel and at least one European nation have also been accused of such renditions.
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1322866
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1-6 no problem in my book, and none of it "torture" as is traditionally understood to be, though definately not pleasant.
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1-6 no problem in my book, and none of it "torture" as is traditionally understood to be, though definately not pleasant.
Question Sirs - how do you traditionally define torture? My thought is that most people only know what they see on T.V.
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1-6 no problem in my book, and none of it "torture" as is traditionally understood to be, though definately not pleasant.
Question Sirs - how do you traditionally define torture?
The infliction of pain purely to inflict pain, including the physical damaging/dismemberment of the body
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1-6 no problem in my book, and none of it "torture" as is traditionally understood to be, though definately not pleasant.
Question Sirs - how do you traditionally define torture?
The infliction of pain purely to inflict pain, including the physical damaging/dismemberment of the body
So where do you come up with that definition?
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Common sense, Miss Henny.
Yes, yes, I'm confident many here could give a thorough dissertation on multiple forms of mental anguish, duress, discomfort, that can cause a person to perceive how their life is about to come to an end, and thereby be construed as "torture". For me, torture is what it's always been, inflicting great bodlily pain & damage, purely to inflict great bodily pain and damage. And of done so to try and gain "information" is still torture, if inflicting great bodily pain & damage
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[Maybe when it's our children, or mothers, or wives or husbands we will think it's really "torture."]
IRAQ: Child prisoners abused and tortured, say activists
Photo: Afif Sarhan/IRIN
Children are victims of abuse in Iraqi prisons
BAGHDAD, 25 October 2007 (IRIN) - Iraqi NGOs have raised concerns about the condition of children in local prisons, saying they are abused and tortured during interrogation.
"Children are being treated as adults in Iraqi prisons and our investigations have shown that they are being abused and tortured," said Khalid Rabia'a, a spokesman for the Prisoners' Association for Justice (PAJ).
"Our investigation started after families brought their five sons to our organisation looking for psychological help for their children who were recently released from prison, and what we found out was shocking," Rabia'a added.
According to Rabia'a, child prisoners between 13 and 17 are being accused of supporting insurgents and militias. Most were detained during Iraqi army military operations in the Baghdad neighbourhoods of Adhamiya, Latifiya, Alawi, Doura and Hay al-Adel.
"The five children showed signs of torture all over their bodies. Three had marks of cigarettes burns over their legs and one couldn't speak as the shock sessions affected his conversation," Rabia'a said. "It is against international law that protects children and we call for interventions in all Iraqi prisons to save the lives of these children."
The Ministry of Interior denied the accusations, saying children and youth taken for interrogation are released after a maximum of 48 hours without being abused or tortured. A campaign against child abuse is being launched in Baghdad with the support of Iraq's Vice-President Tarek al-Hashimy.
"Iraq respects human rights conduct for children and adults and our prisons aren't used for torture. Earlier scandals were reported and those responsible were punished. The accusations are wrong and they cannot prove it," Lt Col Ali Khalid Hussein, senior official at the Ministry of Interior, told IRIN.
However, another senior official from the ministry, who requested anonymity and who has been supplying the NGO with daily updates, told IRIN that every Iraqi prison is holding at least 20 children and they are all suffering abuse.
Rabia'a said the NGO had informants in many Iraqi prisons but since they did not want to be named, they could not go to court and prove the abuses were taking place.
At least 220 children are believed to be held in Iraqi prisons. IRIN requested permission to visit the prisons said to be holding child prisoners but the request was denied.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=74984
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CONTRAST THIS: <<The Ministry of Interior denied the accusations, saying children and youth taken for interrogation are released after a maximum of 48 hours without being abused or tortured. A campaign against child abuse is being launched in Baghdad with the support of Iraq's Vice-President Tarek al-Hashimy.>>
WITH THIS: <<"The five children showed signs of torture all over their bodies. Three had marks of cigarettes burns over their legs and one couldn't speak as the shock sessions affected his conversation," Rabia'a said. "It is against international law that protects children and we call for interventions in all Iraqi prisons to save the lives of these children.">>
The "defence" that these animals try to establish is ludicrous. Like it would take more than 48 hours to burn a kid with cigarettes or electroshock him or her into a speech and/or cognitive impairment. They don't torture because the kids aren't kept more than 48 hours. The bullshit nature of the "defence" indicates these people don't really give a shit. They give an excuse and if it makes no sense, they don't care. They're like Bush, they fabricate one bullshit story after another, KNOWING that no intelligent person will buy it but also knowing that they're gonna get away with it so it makes no difference what they say.
<<"Iraq respects human rights conduct for children and adults and our prisons aren't used for torture. Earlier scandals were reported and those responsible were punished. The accusations are wrong and they cannot prove it," Lt Col Ali Khalid Hussein, senior official at the Ministry of Interior, told IRIN.>>
There's no question at all in my mind that these people are being coached by the same people who coach Bush and Cheney. Just issue a blank denial. Denying it proves that it didn't happen. Don't worry about insulting the intelligence of your listeners because either (a) they don't have any or (b) they can't do a God-damn thing about it even if they don't believe you.
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I'll look forward to when Lanya or Tee can provide actual evidence of CHILDREN being TORTURED at the hands of Americans, vs accusatory hearsay by a Islamic prisoner activist. Espcially since now apparently young adults captured as insurgents & terrorists shooting at our soldiers are being classifued as "children", and we already know that even simple head slapping has been designated as "torture"
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...............
There's no question at all in my mind that these people are being coached by the same people who coach Bush and Cheney. Just issue a blank denial. Denying it proves that it didn't happen. Don't worry about insulting the intelligence of your listeners because either (a) they don't have any or (b) they can't do a God-damn thing about it even if they don't believe you.
No question. We are letting loose some awful demons.
And they know where we live.
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...............
Denying it proves that it didn't happen.
While proving it actually.......get this, proves it did happen. Funny how that works
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I'll look forward to when Lanya or Tee can provide actual evidence of CHILDREN being TORTURED at the hands of Americans, vs accusatory hearsay by a Islamic prisoner activist.
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WE shall all look forward to that glorious day when criminals out themselves.
Even better if they will punish themselves as well, hunh?
Note: a "dope slap" is not torture. Give yourself one, please.
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The other aspect of the story of course is this: if they are letting out children with cigarette burns and other visible signs of torture, as well as brain-damaged victims of electroshock torture (I'm assuming it's brain damage in the case of the kid whose conversational ability was impaired, although it might be motor nerve damage or even muscle damage) then it can only be imagined what is happening to adult prisoners particularly those who will wind up on the list of the "disappeared," who will never be seen again and whose corpses will never be seen.
If you want to think about the wider implications of this story, then think about this: did Iraq invent torture? Is Iraq the only place in the Middle East where torture is practiced? This kind of thing goes on in every country of the region and except in the case of Iran, by regimes supported lock, stock and barrel by the U.S.A. And while you have people in the U.S. and elsewhere who will continue till the end of time to deny the obvious, to demand "proof" as if, as XO says, the torturers are going to "out" themselves, the people who actually live in those countries, including the parents of the children involved, are nowhere near that stupid. They know what is going on and they know who to thank for it. And I don't think - - unless they are total raving lunatics - - that they are going to accept this as the natural course of a process which is bringing them "democracy" because unless they are mindless and brainless, they don't see any of this as bringing democracy one step closer; what it is actually bringing is a civil war in which nobody is fighting for democracy and the best possible outcome will be one in which their side wins control of the government and its torture chambers.
The other thing to think about is that this sort of thing goes on, to the knowledge of every single thinking person who lives in the region, whether or not it's reported in Amerikkka's MSM. And has been going on for a long, long, time. For an obvious example, this is exactly what was going on before the U.S. invasion, under Saddam Hussein. During all those long years when he had Uncle Sam's blessing and afterwards as well.
Now you can run this backwards, to pre-9-11, and ask yourselves, "How many of the hijackers knew about this?" and the answer is: ALL of them. Ask yourselves, how would such knowledge have affected their attitudes towards the U.S.A.? Legitimate question. Does anyone here still believe Bush's bullshit that "They hate us for our freedoms?" (OK, that was a rhetorical question - - I know at least one who does.) Or you can run this forward, and ask yourselves, "Is it possible that all this shit can go down and nobody is gonna ask for payback?" I think there's only one answer to that question, again, not that everybody will see the all-too-obvious answer.
You know there was once a time when all this shit could happen within a closed environment, a sort of What Happens in the Middle East Stays in the Middle East, but that time is long past. 911 proves that payback is possible, but none of the mainstream politicians wants to admit that payback is even a factor. Can't admit that payback is a factor, because they are beholden to (owned by, would be a better way of putting it) special interests which demand that present disastrous policies continue forever. Until the American people wake up and realize what is being done in their name by their government, the cycle of torture, murder, payback will go on forever, as demanded by the special interests.
My prediction: the special interests will not lose their grip on American politics. Their ownership of both political parties is patently obvious to anyone with eyes to see. Their ownership of the MSM was locked in even before the Republican deregulation which permitted ownership to be even more tightly concentrated than before. There is absolutely zero chance of the American people breaking out of that stranglehold. The real secret weapon of the plutocracy is bread and circuses - - MOST Americans, very simply, just don't give a shit. And never will.
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So, intermittently waking someone up, preventing them from having a pleasant 8hrs of sleep is "torture"?? Again, I'm referring to the act itself, not a DURATION of an act. So, if you want to argue that getting 5hrs of sleep vs 8 is torture at the hands of our americans, then so be it. I am simply disagreeing with that premice
What you are describing is not sleep deprivation. You are not "referring to the act itself." Sleep deprivation means no sleep for an extended duration. It is not "preventing them from having a pleasant 8hrs of sleep." Five hours of sleep a night is not sleep deprivation Sirs. Did you not read what the people described that I quoted? Manachem Begin was not this nice, friendly guy and even he considered it torture. I have no idea what the hell you are talking about, but you live in some Polyanna dream-world if you think 5 hours a night of sleep = sleep deprivation. We're talking about 72, 96, 168 hours with no sleep.
Sleep deprivation is a general lack of the necessary amount of sleep. This may occur as a result of sleep disorders, active choice or deliberate inducement such as in interrogation or for torture. Studies have reported that sleep deprivation affects tens of millions of adults each year in the United States alone.
What is sleep deprivation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_deprivation)
But since so many here are ready to rationalize how periodic head slapping and not providing 8hrs of blissful sleep is torture as well, then obviously we have little to talk about
Do you read?
Do you? The extended amount of hours (meaning the repetition of an act, and NOT the act itself, as i have referenced over and over again) keeping a person from sleeping which would cause physical damage to a person would be considered torture, as is just about anything made repetative or overly extended. But the act itself, as defined in wikipedia, is NOT
This is a serious post?
You really believe that sleep deprivation used by interrogators is the same as the sleep deprivation defined for medical use?
You're being serious?
Regardless, the real idiocy is thinking that torture actually works. The IRA suffered tortured for years in the tiny country of Northern Ireland, where the entire Government, police, and political authority was rigged to favor Britain and Protestants. The British Army, RUC, and MI5 specialized in different methods of torture. Now, how do you suppose the IRA managed to minimize the damage done by torture and interrogation?
The Eritreans had two rebel organizations: the ELF and EPLF that fought against the Ethiopian Army which was trained by the United States and Israel in counterinsurgency methods. Both the ELF and EPLF suffered some really nasty forms of personal torture and torture of spouses, children, and other family members. How did they minimize any damage done by these methods?
In fact, both the IRA, ELF, and EPLF grew when the tactics used against them got nastier and nastier.
If you were leading a very small group against superior numbers and superior technology, and you knew that anyone captured would face stiff interrogation techniques and likely crumble when faced with them, how might you minimize that liability?
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The extended amount of hours (meaning the repetition of an act, and NOT the act itself, as i have referenced over and over again) keeping a person from sleeping which would cause physical damage to a person would be considered torture, as is just about anything made repetative or overly extended. But the act itself, as defined in wikipedia, is NOT
This is a serious post? You really believe that sleep deprivation used by interrogators is the same as the sleep deprivation defined for medical use? You're being serious?
The "serious part" was in debunking that sleep deprivation = torture. That the ACT is large in its definition & parameters. YOU were the one trying to apply it as if no one could get any sleep at any time, which is a repetition of the act, to which can make an act deemed torture. The point remains that if used over an egregious amount of time, where physical damage to the body can occur, THEN it becomes torture
Regardless, the real idiocy is thinking that torture actually works.
Intriguing redirection. Reminds me of the "even if...." tactics of Tee. Since I'm not in line with the receiving end, I'm just going to have to defer to those who have
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The "serious part" was in debunking that sleep deprivation = torture. That the ACT is large in its definition & parameters. YOU were the one trying to apply it as if no one could get any sleep at any time, which is a repetition of the act, to which can make an act deemed torture. The point remains that if used over an egregious amount of time, where physical damage to the body can occur, THEN it becomes torture
*sigh*
So basically you started a thread to argue semantics? Obviously the sleep deprivation that military interrogators are going to use (even American ones) is NOT going to be that which is in your selected Wikipedia definition.
Common sense should tell you that. If it does not, then the references on sleep deprivation as a technique (in some areas taught by the United States) in interrogation should have given you the clue.
Sirs, I know you aren't this dense. I know you aren't. Surely we can discuss torture without resorting to completely asinine arguments on semantics.
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The "serious part" was in debunking that sleep deprivation = torture. That the ACT is large in its definition & parameters. YOU were the one trying to apply it as if no one could get any sleep at any time, which is a repetition of the act, to which can make an act deemed torture. The point remains that if used over an egregious amount of time, where physical damage to the body can occur, THEN it becomes torture
So basically you started a thread to argue semantics?
Yes & no. What was hoped for was a civil & substantive dialog on what a concensus could be made to what is and isn't "torture". Unfortunately, right from the beginning, it was obvious that even periodic head slapping and being periodically exposed to cold temperatures and loud music was going to be called "torture". Since we couldn't even start from a foundation of what is truely barbaric means of torture, there really was no where else to go
[/quote]
Obviously the sleep deprivation that military interrogators are going to use (even American ones) is NOT going to be that which is in your selected Wikipedia definition.
Yea, it'll probably be a tad more involved and made more uncomfortable, though the act is still referred to as sleep deprivation. Where's your cut-off time at which it becomes "torture" Where do you think the American's cut off time is?
Surely we can discuss torture without resorting to completely asinine arguments on semantics.
Unfortunately Js, before we can have an actual debate on such, definitions apparently are required, since anytime anyone is found supporting our efforts at gaining information from captured terrorists, that is deemed complete support of torture, as if the same supporters are out there advocating dislocation of limbs, pulling out of tongues, burning flesh, raping, etc. Until some foundations are put in place, a "discussion on torture" is hardly doable
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I'm not going to bother with an abstract time at which sleep deprivation becomes torture. I'm guessing it is different for every individual. I think the difference is more than a "tad" and certainly more than what you callously referred to as "not getting a blissful 8 hours of sleep."
I think the problem with the thread is that it is semantics from the outset. "What is torture?" is a question that has different answers for different people. The only real answer would be to give legal definitions from different sources, including international conventions.
It is the same as asking the question of insurgents, "what makes a valid target?" Are military personnel valid targets? Police? Government employees? Families of military personnel, police, government workers?
The EPLF and ELF in Eritrea decided that no Ethiopian high ranking officers would be allowed to comfortably live in Eritrea. They made sure that those guys had to have bodyguards at all times. They had to switch cars, eat and sleep in different locations each night. It made it difficult to plan strategy. They sent hit men into Asmara (the Eritrean capital) to kill Ethiopian military personnel, people considered to be Eritrean turncoats, and Ethiopian government officials.
The Ethiopians decided that torture and brazen counterinsurgency techniques were in order. It included rape, murder, public hangings, and completely erasing villages off the map through massacres.
In other words, I think if we go beyond mere semantics, and really the word "torture" is just an abstract expression for a much deeper concept, we get into the real questions: how far are we willing to go to "win" the war? What does war justify? or What doesn't war justify?
I think that these philosophical concepts are of far more worth than simply determining what is or isn't torture, which is too ambiguous and far too steeped in semantics anyway.
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I'm not going to bother with an abstract time at which sleep deprivation becomes torture. I'm guessing it is different for every individual. I think the difference is more than a "tad" and certainly more than what you callously referred to as "not getting a blissful 8 hours of sleep." I think the problem with the thread is that it is semantics from the outset. "What is torture?" is a question that has different answers for different people....In other words, I think if we go beyond mere semantics, and really the word "torture" is just an abstract expression for a much deeper concept, we get into the real questions: how far are we willing to go to "win" the war? What does war justify? or What doesn't war justify? I think that these philosophical concepts are of far more worth than simply determining what is or isn't torture, which is too ambiguous and far too steeped in semantics anyway.
Which is where this train leaves this discussion track. One can't have a discussion regarding "torture", when one is being accused of supporting torture, using someone else's parameters. Perhaps we need to break it up in to certain levels, to some mutual consensus, in order to advance to what you wish we could go to. We can make our own levels such as T1, 2, 3, and 4. Even explain why we believe something in 1 level should be at another, if we're in disagreement.
T1 can be head slapping, being yelled at, being made to listen to loud music, being made to wear panties on one's head
T2 can be perhaps waterboarding, extended sleep deprivation, being made to maintain uncomfortable positions
T3 can be appendage dislocation & fractures
T4 can dismemberment, mutilations, flesh burning & rape
T5 can be locked in a room listenting to an endless loop of Brass's RBE & how no plane hit the pentagon
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When I was younger I used to like show called "The Prisoner", in which a British spy was captured and held by an unknown power in an unknown site that seemed to resemble coastal resort town.
Usually they didn't hurt him much but the played with his head a lot.
He out smarted them a lot but never enough to get away , there was a sort of living balloon that would enfold him an carry him back if he got too far.
They never made the point of it all clear , but every time that the guy {they called him number six} didn't tell them what they wanted to know, it was another victory on which to end the show.
Is it possible to out smart a prisoner in a dependable way? If every capture is a dead end and we lean nothing as we go along we will not et as far as we might if we manage to learn something from our captives.
Perhaps a lot could be done by tricking the prisoners , but we will have to develop a cadre of experts , do we want a cadre of experts?
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<<T4 can dismemberment, mutilations, flesh burning & rape>>
??? How the hell is rape equivalent to being dismembered, mutilated or being branded with a red-hot iron????
I think torture is the infliction of unbearable pain. Pain so bad that the victim will do anything to make it stop.
I also think it's the infliction of unbearable suffering, such as immersing the guy's head in water till he starts to pass out; again, as in the first definition, you have the creation of a situation that is so unbearable that the guy will do anything to make it stop.
I also think it's the infliction of an unbearable fear, such as the scene in George Orwell's 1984 where the torturer puts Smith's head in a wire cage that he's about to put two hungry rats into. Something so unbearable that even before it starts the guy will do anything to make it stop.
It's basically the deliberate destruction of a human being by taking away forever his or her humanity. If you kill someone, they still die a man or a woman with their humanity intact. Torture reduces them to a level where what made them human as opposed to animal is lost forever. The guy who does anything to avoid the torture will betray his own mother, his own wife, his own child. Once he betrays them - - or reaches the point where he knows he would betray them if it would make the torture stop - - he can't go back. He knows at some basic level
I don't know how anyone could do that to another human being but obviously they can. And do. Gladly. Anyone who can does not deserve to live, there is absolutely no reason for them to be on this earth but this world is so corrupt that they not only exist, they thrive. And their supporters and defenders thrive. And now they have their defenders in the highest offices of the most powerful nation on the face of the earth. What to make of it? It depends on if there is a God or not. If there is a God there is no doubt that the nation which uses these torturers is a nation doomed to destruction over the long term. That some horrific punishment awaits. And of course if there is no God, then it doesn't make any difference. The U.S.A. will stand or fall according to blind chance and the mysterious workings of history. The words of the torturer in 1984 never left me: "You want a vision of the future, Smith? Think of it as a boot stamping on a human face. Forever." [not an exact quote]
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Nice to know that on Tee's scale of terribly egregious acts, rape doesn't rate that high :-\
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Equally nice to know that in your never-never world of fascist dreams, rape ranks right up there with dismemberment and being tortured with a blowtorch.
Try a real world test, if you're not afraid of being regarded as some raving lunatic, and ask any thousand individuals which of the three "tortures" they'd pick for themselves or their loved ones if they had to pick one of three from a list offered by their Iranian jail guard.
And BTW, thanks for proving - - yet again - - that your conceptual problem is simply that you just don't live in the real world.
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Equally nice to know that in your never-never world of fascist dreams, rape ranks right up there with dismemberment and being tortured with a blowtorch.
Yea, it DOES. Feel free to make your own level of torture, and place it right next made to listen to loud music :-\
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<<Feel free to make your own level of torture, and place it [rape] right next made to listen to loud music >>
That's something only YOU would be crazy enough to do.
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<<Feel free to make your own level of torture, and place it [rape] right next made to listen to loud music >>
That's something only YOU would be crazy enough to do.
Yet, as has been plainly demonstrated, I wouldn't because I didn't. I put rape where I believed it should be, right up there next to the blowtorch
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When I was younger I used to like show called "The Prisoner", in which a British spy was captured and held by an unknown power in an unknown site that seemed to resemble coastal resort town.
Usually they didn't hurt him much but the played with his head a lot.
He out smarted them a lot but never enough to get away , there was a sort of living balloon that would enfold him an carry him back if he got too far.
They never made the point of it all clear , but every time that the guy {they called him number six} didn't tell them what they wanted to know, it was another victory on which to end the show.
Is it possible to out smart a prisoner in a dependable way? If every capture is a dead end and we lean nothing as we go along we will not et as far as we might if we manage to learn something from our captives.
Perhaps a lot could be done by tricking the prisoners , but we will have to develop a cadre of experts , do we want a cadre of experts?
That sounds like a really interesting show, Plane.
I don't know that I can answer the questions you ask, but I can tell you how some militant groups minimize any damage done by interrogation techniques, even torture.
The IRA, which has really served as a model for many guerilla fighters that have come after, including the Irgun, the PLO, the EPLF, ANC, etc, organized itself in small cells where ideally an IRA member only ever dealt with two other IRA members. By doing so, everyone from the front line militant to the top planners had the most limited knowledge of operations. It wasn't "need to know" it was "could possibly know."
The IRA accepted that people would crack under torture from the British authorities. The problem was that there was only so much the individual members could tell them. For sure, some members knew more about certain aspects than others. But again, the IRA was smart with this as well. Most of their funding came through the legal (well, sometimes legal) political wing of Sinn Fein or through sympathetic Irish and especially Irish-American Catholics (and some Protestants as well).
In the latter part of the Troubles the British were far better served by their MI5 infiltrators than their interrogation techniques. In fact, the justice system in Northern Ireland and Britain had simply become corrupted and biased against the Irish Catholics. The Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six (http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/14/newsid_2543000/2543613.stm), were examples of miscarriages of justice corrected later, but not until men served well over a decade for crimes they did not commit. They happened to be Irish in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I think it wise to be sure and learn from the mistakes of the past. I'm not sure torture, to whatever degree is going to bring about much useful information. And, if we go too far down that path, do we risk passing on the attitude to our entire justice system (whether in Iraq or in the United States as well) that force and coercion are acceptable, especially against certain people?
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<<Yet, as has been plainly demonstrated, I wouldn't [equate rape with loud music] because I didn't. I put rape where I believed it should be, right up there next to the blowtorch>>
Just as crazy as putting it with loud music.
Like I said, the problem with crypto-fascits like you is that you have no concept of real life, which has many shades of gray. Crypto-fascists aren't capable of recognizing nuances, shades of gray. Rape is pretty bad so its place on the scale has to be with the worst of all bad things; of course, the only other alternative is to place it at the trivial end of the scale with all other trivial things. There's no other position for it - - either the worst of the worst or the most trivial of the trivial.
You just can't deal with reality, can you? It's too complex for you, so it has to be simplified. Good guys, bad guys. Black, white. Does fascism appeal to you because you CAN'T distinguish between shades of gray, or because you're mentally too lazy to bother?
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That latest response doesn't even warrant the neurons firing to post this one. You, may classify that as "lazy" in your twisted version of reality
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<<You, may classify that as "lazy" in your twisted version of reality>>
Thanks, but I've already drawn my own conclusions.
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http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061287/
The Prisoner, starring Patrick McGoohan.
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<<You, may classify that as "lazy" in your twisted version of reality>>
Thanks, but I've already drawn my own conclusions......
.....yea, as I said, within your twisted bigoted alternate reality. Yea, already referenced that
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Suspects need to be placed in a room and forced to hear the constant snarky snipings of Sirs, accompanied by the endless repetitions of the Dittohead musings of Plane.
That would crack them like a thin shelled pecan, in no time at all.
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<<.....yea, as I said, within your twisted bigoted alternate reality. Yea, already referenced that>>
uh - uh - uh, sirs, you're firing those neurons awfully wastefully, like you swore you weren't gonna do. You'll blow both of them if you don't slow down.
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<<.....yea, as I said, within your twisted bigoted alternate reality. Yea, already referenced that>>
uh - uh - uh, sirs, you're firing those neurons awfully wastefully
Yea, you're right. Lemme mark this down on the calander. It's so rare when Tee is ever right on anything
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Ooops. Now you're down to your last two neurons.