FBI complained of torture in Guantanamo in 2002

[cjh]

the question is do you value the dignity of man? even the basest of the lot.

if you do, then torture demeans you -- it cuts -- because you forsake that respect for individual dignity. you lower your standards. which ultimately trickles into the dignity you accord everybody, and not just the basest.

 

[rgraham666]

Well said!

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Originally posted by rgraham666
My understanding is that sociopaths have no conscience. Emotion they have plenty of.

That's tough. They don't exhibit strong emotions and confound most attempts to do so. They are highly unconventional in that respect. And they're just one example. If we're saying that someone cannot commit torture unless they are extremely emotional, we have to account for torture that's committed without those things. Like it its part of someone's job, and they have no hatred or love for what they do. There are a number of good stories about hang-men in Western towns in the 1800's that really considered their job just a job. No real emotion about it at all... and hanging a man was a common form of torture.

All in all, I don't think its substantial and necessary that torture is predicated by extreme emotion.

And very few people are so unconnected to the world that a chain of revenge would stop at B.

But those people exists, no? So, at least for them, revenge stops there and there is no chain of vengeance that stretches out into eternity.

And then there's the people that do it and nobody ever finds out they do it. I wonder how many unsolved murders were acts of revenge, and those people are "scott free". Or, if a death penalty is a form of revenge for a murder and the relatives of the murderer say "Well, he had it coming", then there wouldn't be a continuing chain.

All in all, I don't think its substantial and necessary that revenge is an unending chain.

 

[cjh]

thanks

 

[cjh]

<snip> If we're saying that someone cannot commit torture unless they are extremely emotional, we have to account for torture that's committed without those things. Like it its part of someone's job, and they have no hatred or love for what they do. <snip>

didn't that infamous psychology experiment at the Stanford deal with this very issue? that is, didn't it establish that most people can quickly become torturers if they believe that they are serving a greater good?

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Originally posted by CrackerjackHrt
didn't that infamous psychology experiment at the Stanford deal with this very issue? that is, didn't it establish that most people can quickly become torturers if they believe that they are serving a greater good?

Eh, kinda.

The "greater good" belief is up in the air--I don't think any of them were driven, necessarily, by a "greater good' compledx. It showed that, far quicker than anyone believed (a matter of hours, really), these arbitrary authority-figures started engaging in abusive behavior. The arbitrary trapped-figures started displaying the same, in addition to anxiety disorders, depression, paranoia, hopelessness... amazing.

 

[cjh]

that's pretty amazing. i didn't realize that the things deteriorated so rapidly.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

didn't that infamous psychology experiment at the Stanford deal with this very issue? that is, didn't it establish that most people can quickly become torturers if they believe that they are serving a greater good?

I thought the experiment was even more scary because it simply demonstrated that when given the means and opportunity to do guiltless sadism on another, to torture another human with no fear of retribution and only a small modicum of assentual peer pressure, most people will grow metaphorical horns.

And for any who've grown up in an American high school, that study isn't at all surprising. As someone earlier pointed out (i think it was rgraham, but it might have been cantdog) the smiles on the Abu Ghraib soldiers were the same many saw on the face of the popular bullies and jocks. That smug knowledge that they are better and that no one is going to stop them or hold them to the fire. Atrocities will occur because of that. Just down here in recent memory in my home school district, we had baseball team rapes freshman boy with bat, students beating to death Migrant Workers, a kid roaming the halls from the bathroom shooting everyone who presented a target, and the hundreds of unreported tales of on-school suicides from bullying and the unconscious mangled bodies of a kid who's head was slammed repeatedly into a stone pillar while people watched and cheered. One does not have to look far to see the evil that lurks in the human heart.

And the idea of torture for information is incredibly stupid. To stop pain, people will tell anything. If your torturers show no interest in the truth and pain increases for not telling them what they're looking for (instead of what is accurate), those who fear for their lives or have weak constitutions will lie to stop the hurting. Furthermore, torture as in the case of the dog who got beat, only inspires hatred and violence in those who are beaten. They learn to attribute the symbol of evil to all who have caused them pain. Many will even learn to strike back at all humans regardless of whether they are friend, foe, or neither. Like the Santana shooting, where the student never did get to the point of shooting the students who had tormented him, shooting both the innocent and those seeking to administer to the innocents. Or like the ex-prison inmates who recidivate because they believe that mankind owes them for the anal and masculine abuse they suffered in jail. There may be that are given respect and fear, but those who are trained to hate and kill are far greater. The deliniation between civility and psychotic rage can be as thin as a razor blade. Just ask a pacifist placed in a war zone or given the choice of kill and save his family or die.

I also think that those who are willing to say, "torture, what a splendid and jolly sort of pastime, we should keep it alive" are people who really do not deserve even a modicum of support and should be treated as the sociopaths in civilian's clothing that they are. Furthermore, anyone who still has the unmitigated audacity to even think of speaking on behalf of moral values after expousing such values should be noodle-whipped unto ironic comprehension.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Originally posted by CrackerjackHrt
that's pretty amazing. i didn't realize that the things deteriorated so rapidly.

It was supposed to go for three weeks, I think, and they shut it down in a matter of days because of what was happening to the "inmates" and the "guards". Entirely unpredictable, there was an expectation about roles and some of the symptoms they knew would be possible... but it was truly landmark in the wealth of information that came out of it.

The professor who ran it, as I understand, still makes a good living writing about it.

The Ethics board refuses to let anything like that happen again, unfortunately. My field in Psychology directly deals with it, I'd like to recreate it if possible.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

It was supposed to go for three weeks, I think, and they shut it down in a matter of days because of what was happening to the "inmates" and the "guards". Entirely unpredictable, there was an expectation about roles and some of the symptoms they knew would be possible... but it was truly landmark in the wealth of information that came out of it.

The professor who ran it, as I understand, still makes a good living writing about it.

The Ethics board refuses to let anything like that happen again, unfortunately. My field in Psychology directly deals with it, I'd like to recreate it if possible.

Interviews on high schools could probably pool similar data if the direct path goes. The obtuse ways of investigating foreign and domestic torture operations as well as the Prison hierarchies which the test simply duplicated. Not as clean as the Stanford test, but ways to leech similar data around the Ethical experiment codes.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Originally posted by Lucifer_Carroll
Interviews on high schools could probably pool similar data if the direct path goes. The obtuse ways of investigating foreign and domestic torture operations as well as the Prison hierarchies which the test simply duplicated. Not as clean as the Stanford test, but ways to leech similar data around the Ethical experiment codes.

Huh?

 

[Boxlicker101]

Revenge is a double edged sword. It cuts not only its victim, but also its perpetrator.

I think this would depend on the nature of the revenge. Suppose I was humiliated by a teacher in high school who called my stupid and predicted that I would never amount to anything. Suppose that, in order to prove him wrong and take revenge on him, I worked hard and succeeded just to prove him wrong. I would not be injured by that.

To use a nastier example, suppose there were a boy in a small town who was abused by all his fellows and accused of being a "sissy". To get revenge, this young boy worked hard, became filthy rich, bought out the company that emplooyed his ex- schoolmates and fired them all and bought out the local bank and foreclosed on all their mortgages. He would greatly enjoy the revenge and would suffer no harm from it, as long as he stayed out of their way. In fact, he would probably make a big profit after selling all the foreclosed properties.

Not all methods of revenge involve violence, you know.

 

[Boxlicker101]

I have sometimes read where the prisoners at Gitmo were being deprived of their rights under the Geneva Convention. I have also read of them being deprived of their rights by not allowing them to consult with lawyers. Does anybody see a contradiction here?

The GC, at least in this instance, involves POW's. The usual thing is to keep POW's until the fighting has ended, which has not happened in Afghanistan. That's what happened in WW One, WW Two, Korea and, to some extrent, Vietnam. Why should these prisoners be released in order to return and resume fighting against us?

POW's are not usually given access to lawyers bercause there is no reason to do that. They are not accused of anything, at least not by the US. Eventually, some members of the Taliban may be charged for their actions when they were in control but that will not happen in the US. The Taliban soldiers, as POWs should be allowed visits by reps from the Red Crescent or similar organizations and they can complain to them, but that is the only official way they have to complain.