Author Topic: 3DHS on Torture  (Read 24813 times)

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sirs

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Re: 3DHS on Torture
« Reply #105 on: October 29, 2007, 10:44:01 PM »
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


« Last Edit: October 29, 2007, 11:43:18 PM by sirs »
"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal." -- Aristotle

Plane

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Re: 3DHS on Torture
« Reply #106 on: October 29, 2007, 11:35:58 PM »
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?

Michael Tee

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Re: 3DHS on Torture
« Reply #107 on: October 30, 2007, 12:17:06 AM »
<<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]

sirs

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Re: 3DHS on Torture
« Reply #108 on: October 30, 2007, 01:03:24 AM »
Nice to know that on Tee's scale of terribly egregious acts, rape doesn't rate that high     :-\
"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal." -- Aristotle

Michael Tee

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Re: 3DHS on Torture
« Reply #109 on: October 30, 2007, 10:52:33 AM »
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.

sirs

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Re: 3DHS on Torture
« Reply #110 on: October 30, 2007, 11:01:01 AM »
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         :-\

"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal." -- Aristotle

Michael Tee

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Re: 3DHS on Torture
« Reply #111 on: October 30, 2007, 11:02:39 AM »
<<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.

sirs

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Re: 3DHS on Torture
« Reply #112 on: October 30, 2007, 11:06:04 AM »
<<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
"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal." -- Aristotle

_JS

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Re: 3DHS on Torture
« Reply #113 on: October 30, 2007, 11:19:05 AM »
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, 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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Michael Tee

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Re: 3DHS on Torture
« Reply #114 on: October 30, 2007, 11:28:58 AM »
<<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?

sirs

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Re: 3DHS on Torture
« Reply #115 on: October 30, 2007, 11:41:19 AM »
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
"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal." -- Aristotle

Michael Tee

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Re: 3DHS on Torture
« Reply #116 on: October 30, 2007, 12:31:08 PM »
<<You, may classify that as "lazy" in your twisted version of reality>>

Thanks, but I've already drawn my own conclusions.

Lanya

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Re: 3DHS on Torture
« Reply #117 on: October 30, 2007, 01:04:15 PM »
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061287/

The Prisoner, starring Patrick McGoohan.
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sirs

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Re: 3DHS on Torture
« Reply #118 on: October 30, 2007, 01:20:34 PM »
<<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
"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal." -- Aristotle

Xavier_Onassis

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Re: 3DHS on Torture
« Reply #119 on: October 30, 2007, 01:40:31 PM »
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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