No One Expects The American Inquisition !

pic: zimzer


Ever since 9/11 - which, by the way, is the Main Theme of the Age - we have had a flirtation with torture. It has been depicted on films and even brought into our homes on TV. Yay!
We have had low-brow hijinks - Abu Ghraib comes to mind - and we have had high-brow discussions and debates about it, sort of like Mr. Dershowitz arguing the pro side: Torture: will it bring bombers to their senses before the clock... (such as Ahmed Mohammud made and took to school one day, school one day... made the teachers laff 'n' say it wuz against the rule!)

... before the clock runs down the last 15 minutes (or less, depending on which Die Hard movie you're watching) and explode.

What is the history of torture in the Anglo-Saxon nations? We know all about Spain and the Hapsburgs and what-not, but what about the English speaking democracies?

We have recourse to old tomes and old bones for antiquities:

wherein we see

p.211

--

On Torture Considered As One Of The Fine Arts: Zero Dark Thirty

As you must know by now, Thomas De Quincey, whom I often conflate and mistake for Daniel DeFoe, wrote a pamphlet entitled On Murder Considered As One Of The Fine Arts.

I have finally decided to view the film Zero Dark Thirty after a year.

I decided to wait until the release of the Senate Committee Report on the CIA and Torture.

I also watched Jean Seberg in Joan of Arc.

The Inquisition seemed to know quite well that information gained under torture is worthless.
Not so American 21st century policy makers. Not so President Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney, and all the vile Minions indwelling in the caves of Langley, and all the Mengeles of psychology who oversaw the torture.

We are making the future as we sleepwalk through life, and walk the knife-edged expressionistic roof tops like Cesare under the spell of our Caligaris, our Caligulas, our Cagliostros of celebrity, nobility, and mud.

Read one of the few perceptive reviews of the time on this ghastly cinematic brief pro torture :
Zero Conscience in “Zero Dark Thirty”
By Jane Mayer
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/zero-conscience-in-zero-dark-thirty

Read about how the film "shows the complexity of the debate".

If they had watched Joan Of Arc, the debaters might have gotten a 400 year leg up on the discussion.
--

Disgust On All Sides

From The American Conservative:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/torturing-god-out-of-jihadis/
Torturing God Out of Jihadis
By Rod Dreher
December 11, 2014, 12:39 PM

Michael Peppard pulls something particularly horrifying out of the Senate torture report:

The Senate committee was supposed to believe that a cruelly tortured man had thanked his torturer for breaking his religious faith. It goes without saying that the Senate committee found, after scrutinizing over 6 million pages of documents, “no CIA records to support this testimony” (487 n. 2646).

During the same hearing, Sen. Nelson asked about Hayden’s plans, if he suspected al-Qa’ida was training people to resist such techniques. His answer is chilling.

DIRECTOR HAYDEN: “You recall the policy on which this is based, that we’re going to give him a burden that Allah says is too great for you to bear, so they can put the burden down.” (487)

The new report does not describe the many techniques of religiously-themed abuse that I compiled from ex-detainee memoirs and interviews in 2007-08, nor does it extend our knowledge from the 2009 report, which admitted techniques such as forced prostration before an idol shrine to generate “religious disgrace.”

But what Hayden’s comments do show is that using religion as a weapon in prolonged psychological warfare was an actual “policy” – not a result of agents gone rogue.

The goal was to create a burden so great that a person’s religious faith would be destroyed. Nothing could be further from our country’s founding principle.

Peppard, who teaches at Fordham, has been studying how the US used religious abuse as a weapon against Muslim detainees. See here:

(Peppard quote:)

"This is truly unspeakable. I do not believe that the Islamic religion is true, and I have no problem with sending people who wish to make war on us in the name of Allah straight to Hell on the battlefield. They want to be martyrs in battle, fine, let’s give them what they want.

"But to take a captured prisoner, even one we can reasonably be certain has done evil things from religious motivation, and compel him to desecrate his religion, is to my Christian mind one of the most evil things that one human being can do to another. That the history of the Church shows Muslims have done this to Christians again and again and again does not make it right. It is always and everywhere a manifestation of utter barbarism. Again, consider the experience of Fr. George Calciu, a prisoner in the communist Pitesti prison camp in Romania:

They took very distinct steps. The first step was to destroy the personality of the youth. For example, the guards would come, together with a group of young prisoners who had converted to Communism, into a cell where there were perhaps twenty young students, and would try to intimidate them. They would beat them without mercy. They could even kill somebody. Generally, they would kill one of them – the one who opposed them the most; the most important one. Generally, he was a leader. They would beat him and even kill him. Thus, the terror began... "

The Terror began in the 20th Century and is building.

The government of our country has lost any sense of morality, and has sold its soul to Power and Mammon. Many of the people have, too. We are becoming the enemy, little by little, and sometimes by large leaps.

--
photo: Islamoyankee

Eichmann's Inglorious Idiots

Even Adolf Eichmann had bad days, and often the genocidal machinery under his maintenance ground to a halt. Sometimes the trains did not run on time. The Final Solution had its good days and bad days; it came with the territory.

The Guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/18/james-mitchell-cia-torture-interview

James Mitchell: 'I'm just a guy who got asked to do something for his country'
Psychologist who designed CIA's post-9/11 torture program insists he has nothing to apologise for – and attacks 'people with a Jack Bauer mentality who don't understand how intel works'

Dr James Elmer Mitchell has been called a war criminal and a torturer. He has been the subject of an ethics complaint, and his methods have been criticized in reports by two congressional committees and by the CIA's internal watchdog.

But the retired air force psychologist insists he is not the monster many have portrayed him to be.

"The narrative that's out there is, I walked up to the gate of the CIA, knocked on the door and said: 'Let me in, I want to torture people, and I can show you how to do it.' Or someone put out an ad on Craigslist that said, 'Wanted: psychologist who is willing to design torture program.' It's a lot more complicated than that," Mitchell told the Guardian in his first public comments since he was linked to the CIA's enhanced interrogation program seven years ago.

"I'm just a guy who got asked to do something for his country by people at the highest level of government, and I did the best that I could."

Mitchell is featured prominently in a new report prepared by the Senate select committee on intelligence, which spent five years and more than $40m studying the CIA's detention and interrogation program.

The findings, according to a summary leaked to McClatchy, are damning: that the agency misled the White House, Congress and the American people; that unauthorised interrogation methods were used; that the legal opinions stating the techniques did not break US torture laws were flawed; and perhaps most significant, that the torture yielded no useful intelligence.

But Mitchell said the program's successes had been deliberately ignored.

"I'm sure there are people out there who believe that if the United States acknowledged that coercion worked, there is an increased probability that people would use coercion against our people," Mitchell said. "Never mind that they do anyway. In the fairyland they live in, all you have to do is give somebody some tea and a cookie, and everything will be OK."

[...]

"I would be happy to tell my entire story," Mitchell said. "But I have been told numerous times that if I violate the non-disclosure agreement there would be criminal and civil penalties. I am interested in having an active and honest debate, but only if the Justice Department and federal government release me from my agreement."

Mitchell, however, did talk about the torture program in general terms. He sees it as a huge success and is upset it has gotten such a bad rap.

"I don't get annoyed about the program," Mitchell said. "I get annoyed the way the good parts, and the bad parts, have been glossed over and some good parts have been vilified. That frustrates me. But I'm not going to talk about the program."

Interesting.

I admit now that the next quote is taken out of place, not, however, out of context - the context here is Eichmann's nouveaux idiots and Mitchell is their poster boy. It does give a preciousness to his total sense of madness:

He  [Mitchell]  also criticized Obama's healthcare policy – a "shit sandwich" – and his administration's approach to global warming. Mitchell believes it's a myth.

He identified himself politically as an independent. "I'm not a Republican or a Mormon or a gun nut or power hungry."

I am glad to hear Dr. "Mengele" Mitchell's political views. It fills some vague need.

 Eichmann On Trial

--

Zero Dark Thirty

I have been reading reviews of the film Zero Dark Thirty. The writers are quite convinced that the effort is worth the candle. I personally doubt it; they remind me of mediaeval savants arguing about how many angels dance upon a pin's head. It always brings to mind DeQuincy's On Murder Considered As One Of The Fine Arts

I am sorry to say that [there] exists in London... [a] Society of Connoisseurs in Murder.

They profess to be curious in homicide, amateurs and dilettanti in the various modes of carnage, and, in short, Murder-Fanciers. Every fresh atrocity of that class which the police annals of Europe bring up, they meet and criticize as they would a picture, statue, or other work of art...

Insert "torture" for "murder" and you have the current disputation:  torture as a murderous tease.
To argue Technique and Style, and to ignore Morality and Virtue is a grievous mistake.

Our age is not so much Secular as it is Amoral. It avoids virtue like the plague, from the market place to the halls of government to the home, virtue is treated like a homeless person.

Therefore, why should a critic speak of the vile nature of our entertainments, seeing that most of us are dead to the most basic concepts of virtue?
--

Torture Again; History; Seeing The Future Etc.

(apologies for the way the pasted text came out. I worked with it, but it was impossible to align it properly.)

GRAHAM GREENE AND CUBA: OUR MAN IN HAVANA? by PETER HULME New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids vol. 82 no. 3 & 4 (2008):185-209

In November 1964 Graham Greene wrote a deeply sarcastic letter to The Daily Telegraph contrasting the U.S.-supported Vietnamese army’s triumphalist photographs of their torture of Vietcong prisoners with the good old days in which “hypocrisy paid a tribute to virtue by hushing up the torture inflicted by its own soldiers and condemning the torture inflicted by the other side” (Greene 1989:114-15). Then in November 1971 he berated the British Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling, for his defense of what he called the “deep interrogation” of IRA suspects – long hours of enforced standing, hooding, permanent noise, sleep deprivation. Nobody has ever suffered permanent injury from these techniques, Maudling said, foreshadowing Donald Rumsfeld’s breezy dismissal of exactly the same techniques at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base. When applied by communists or fascists, Greene noted, we call it “torture,” but when applied by the British we downgrade it to ill treatment (Greene 1989:154-56). The CIA calls it “enhanced interrogation.”38 That, fifty years on from Our Man in Havana, torture is still at the forefront of debates about how to combat terrorism, and that those debates should still focus on Cuba, but now on a U.S. base situated within the island – one suspects that none of this would have come as much of a surprise to Graham Greene.

Of course, it has all been done before, and - of course - we shall all fall asleep and forget it all again. I think that if we really did remember history - and thus be able to learn from it - we would be seriously encumbered: we would lurch around like historical zombies, bumping into walls and automobiles, we would blink blindly like historical cave fish unaccustomed to the sun. Our whole zest, our brio, our love of life comes from our ability to forget our crimes, and the eternal forgiveness of God. Hence, we sleep and forget. Now another point that is very interesting in Our Man in Havana is the plot element of having unknown military installations in Oriente Province in Cuba, which was the geographical focus of the 26th July Movement of Castro. The eventual installations of nuclear weapons came 4 years later in the west at Pinar del Rio. Once again, satire and irony lead the way. We should not be so concerned with learning from history, as we should be to learn the satires of circumstances and ironies of history, and from them we polish our skills at forecasting the future messes we shall create: the future satires and ironies - tragic, cruel, and bloody. note: The question is: what is at work here, in the writings of the satirist? Is he merely picking one of a possible number of future combinations of events? Or is he somehow divining the optimal path - not optimal in the sense it is best for us - that events will take. Of the infinite number of possible futures, there must be a way to pare them down to a number that can be dealt with. Of all the paths, there are the paths of least resistance: the most optimal paths to pursue. Somehow, the brilliant satirist picks on a path very close to the most probable!!

A Scourge For All Seasons

Mr. Bush has rejected a bill from Congress which would ban waterboarding. Mr. Bush believes in God and Torture. Perhaps he has talked to a greater father again about this? Perhaps he has talked to Pazuzu, the father of Pain? Lord of the Flies? Gods of X universes of battle and torture? What history will contain you, Mr. Bush? You are greater than any mere presidential library. You are a Scourge for All Seasons.

Pazuzu (Archaeologists believe that the statue portrays Pazuzu in his "Howdy, folks!" attitude. I believe it is his "Hi, Mr. President" posture, as well as his "Ya'll come back and bring Pastor John Hagee with ya!" persona.)

......................................

{Philosophical Aside: Prophetic imagery in human consciousness. Pazuzu was the demon in The Exorcist. His idol was located in southern Mesopotamia, or Iraq. I know the thesis of From Caligari To Hitler has been attacked recently, BUT the imagery of the mind is not only Present data; it is Memorious of the Past and Prescient of the Future. Each image comes with the actual "am" or "is" and also the potentials: "was, were" and "will be". Our demons and angels are past, present, and future and we are aware of it, but often will not admit it.}

Please Explain 24 Hour Post...

The posting to which I refer is the previous post; it is just beneath this one. Such is the Blogic of the case, the logic of the Blog puts the most recent on top, directly subjacent to the title and the older ones further down. Hence, my explanation of something already posted will precede the explained post in one's sight, and yet be subsequent to it in time.

Someone asked me about my post on the TV show 24 Hours, wondering about how a story may be a basis for a logical argument? Perhaps I am being fanciful in my analysis? Going back to the sequence of events as propounded by Mr. Dershowitz as an instance of the justice and efficacy of the establishment of our own Torture Tribunal, we observe:
1) the bomber is known to be a bomber, and that so absolutely, something not usually so clear and precise in the real world, but which is very clear and precise in Die Hard, where the first 15 minutes or so are spent demonstrating that Allan Rickman is (a) Germanic, (b) insane, (c) a terrorist, (d) fond of shooting old security guys fer laffs;
 2) it is known that there are other bombs, or at least there is an very high probability that there are other bombs, and they are scattered in regions of dense population, something that assumes we already have a great deal of information from some other source, but we killed that particular golden goose before we educed the info as to 'where, pray tell?';
3) the bombs will go off in such a future time that the good guys still have a chance to disable them, detonation not being so imminent that all efforts would come to naught; a bomb set to explode in five minutes, say, yet in a city whose name and location we still do not know,is narratively impossible, because if the bombs go off, game over and Bruce Willis is sitting around with nothing to do for the next 90 minutes at 24 frames per second.

We could go on. What I wanted to do was demonstrate that Mr. Dershowitz's torture warrant case was constructed to compel to torture in the exact same manner as Die Hard was constructed to compel the viewers' continuing interest and approval of all mayhem wrought by Bruce Willis to attain his goal.
We watch the film and we feel anxious, wanting Bruce Willis to conquer Allan Rickman and his evil cohorts. We feel that Good has triumphed when he does so. We have been enmeshed within the web of a finely spun fabric of a story. We watch reality and we feel anxious. We wait for good to triumph. We have been enmeshed within the web, yet we do not see that some people wish to make us prisoners, and not merely to make our suffering yet more poignant. America, take control of your own Story!  

(addendum: the members of the Greybeards Round Table whose political views are more right wing- the ones who like that young sprat John McCain- say that my disdain for torture is typical liberal softness. I tell them I have lived a long time and have seen the monsters, in the nation, in the government, in my own life. I know monsters. I have sat at the same table with them. The CIA used its Flyer Miles to fly people all over the globe to torture them with no warrants of torture. Mr. Dershowitz, you offered a gun to someone who was already using the cannon. People will do what they must do. We do not need to ENSHRINE it into law.) p.s. I am told the name of the show is 24, not 24 Hours. I could have sworn it was 24 Hours when it first came out. If there is ambiguity and you constantly mix it up with "This Hour Has 20 Minutes..." ( for my Canadian friends), call me at that 800 number on bumper stickers asking whether you approve of my driving.

The Midwich Torturers: 24 Hours And Some Good Hoodia

24 Hours This is a show I have never seen. I am not sure why that was in the past. I know why it is now in the present. I have read about the cute little bundle of joy called 24 Hours (Damien by its mother), and it is not up my alley. Apparently there is torture on the show: the main character versus bad guys and bad guys versus main character. Just the type of thing for America, apparently starving for more, Abu Ghraib having only whet the appetites of the ravening crowds that make up the television viewing audience. I have seen somewhere in the cyber-sanatorium referred to as the blogosphere that 24 Hours might actually be a primer for teaching morality. People have said this. People have commented on it. There is a distinction between Fiction and Reality. I think we should try once again to get this right.

There is a distinction between Fiction and Reality.

About 2 years ago, Allen Dershowitz, an august personage who is (a) well known, and (b) Harvard, made a suggestion to facilitate the war on terror. Mr. Dershowitz suggested that suspects be put to "the question", as they used to call it in the good old days of the Inquisition. He suggested a secret court type of set-up, similar to that that was intended to facilitate the domestic wiretaps, whereby the judge presiding at the Star Chamber would authorize torture when necessary, and issue a warrant.

(When I think of it, I visualize a nasty judge, leering, and saying, "You may have the body!" - which , of course, is the meaning of Habeas Corpus. So there is a scary type of fuzziness.)

There is a good deal more than this, and Mr. Dershowitz makes his case well.

At the time I opposed the idea because of the fiction/reality problem - a point to which we will return very soon.

Of course, in the interim, we discover that government agents even overlooked getting warrants for wiretaps, a procedure that the White House fully endorsed.

I can just imagine how they would perform with torture warrants.

Mr. Dershowitz should realize the nature of the persons with whom he deals.

However, we must return to fiction/reality.

In Mr. Dershowitz's presentation, there was a scenario put forward for an exemplar of the type of case for which torture warrants ( let's call them T-warrants...just like T-bills.) would be issued: (1)there is a bomber who has at least one bomb in a highly populated area, and (2) this bomber is in the hands of the authorities (perhaps the 24 Hour guy, or guys, or gals...or the Bitch of Buchenwald), and (3) this bomb will detonate soon, and (4) we have to get information about at least the location of the bomb.

O.K. Let's get those guys from the Ghraib and do some nasty Hoodia on this sucka!

(I use the word 'hoodia' for all kinds nasty s...tuff. It just sounds right, and I made it up! I know there is a plant and a weight loss thing...I receive about 50 howdies from hoodia each day in my e-mail.

In fact, Hoodia is beginning to remind me of Tone Loc's Funky Cold Medina.)

My problem with this approach is that if I find Mr. Dershowitz's argument compelling, this compelling feeling of rectitude is due to the fact that a scenario for one of Bruce Willis's movies has been used as the argument.

When I watch Mr. Willis, I enjoy the movie and am inexorably drawn along to the point where good triumphs, having laid waste to all evil doers along the way.

Fine.

This is a good story. It compells me along the way from beginning to middle to climax to denouement. It is so enthralling, I do not question it. I would never question why Bruce Willis is fighting Professor Snape ( Allan Rickman ) in a high rise.

The scenario of the bomber is not an argument; it is a story-line.

And it is boffo at the box office.

But it is not the basis for our choice.

We live in a fantasy world.

We have a fantasy government.

We are at fault, for we do not demand reality. We only demand that the government protect us from reality, from the price of gas, from the drug companies...protect us from what is real so we may continue to dream.

Am I raving?Remember that it was not I who suggested using 24 Hours as a moral primer.

The notion is so stupid that I could barely restrain myself from wrting a comment saying so. However, I don't do that. There are plenty of people who will.

Thus, we will view a show with a story from Joel Surnow and Manny Coto.

It will be compelling.

It is FICTION, you stumbling morons!

You will speak and write about the pernicious effects of Hollywood when it serves your purpose, but you will not perceive that merely because a show appears to agree with some of your half-baked political beliefs, it is still but a show.

There can be no moral justification for torture just because it appeared in a thrilling TV show!

In fiction, everything is controlled by the artists.

As Aristotle said of Homer, he was the one who taught us how to lie; poetic license was readily classed as untruth at the time.

It is called poetic license, and it does not matter whether it is left wing nor right wing.

For heaven's sake. A bunch of people with their heads in their hoodias!

(note: 'Midwich' derives from John Wyndham's The Midwich Cuckoos, with emphasis on the cuckoos.)