Christian reactionaries. I think that is basically in your head. Of course, I am aware of religious conservatives who do not like pornography and seek to censor it, etc..
I do not think they censor the news or even seek to do so but they certainly do not want people to distribute or make smut, etc.. To judge from the Internet, they are not chilling anyone and their agenda has not advanced. But, they could someday become dangerous although at present they mostly live by the rules of our system.
Anything is possible, of course, so they deserve close attention. However, they do not tell me much about the Jihadist use of violence and threats and what that is all about. The Jihadists appear to have something quite different in mind than do the Christian reactionaries.
Jihadists kill people who say or write things they do not like and they kill people who have nothing to do with those who say and write such things. Their goal is not to make a more moral society by weeding out smut or some other allegedly immoral conduct but, instead, to force their will over non-Muslims in order to control non-Muslim societies and make them advance the Muslim agenda previously described by me - i.
The US, by contrast, still has the fortitude to defend free speech. Europe seems more and more to accede to Islamic demands. An important scholarly acquaintance and pen pal of mine says Europe is moving toward what she calls a dhimmitude society.
I think her analysis makes considerable sense. It is certainly a useful model. So far, I hear mostly paeans to terror and suggestions of extermination. Amitz, you might want to discuss not killing with Eric Rudolph. Timothy McVeigh also had his problems with certain opinions. On the basis of number of violent incidents as well as suppression, as distinct from the total number of casualties, I suggest both are an American problem. Other countries have other concerns. Mr Amitz, That is mostly so although there have been exceptions.
However, none have been on the level of Jihadists. Howard, You write, with irony I think: "Governments only keep demanding things that are effective. Be still, my heart. Yet, you think we can make serious inroads on improving the spies who are, by your admission, addicted to useless techniques, which they seem to advocate nonetheless, for reasons that make no sense. That is fine by me. Well, I do not claim expertise on spies and spooks. That is Tom Clancy country and not really one of my interests.
I am interesting in the moral and legal dimension of all of this but the spying angle is not my bag. The conservative Christians try to limit freedom of expression but they don't kill for caricatures they did it in the past - 19th century and before. The Muslims do it now. They succeeded, through fear of death, in censoring which caricatures these newspapers will publish. I believe the pressure to keep it comes more from "get tough" political leadership, and intelligence toadies wanting to stay in their good graces, than any demonstrated effectiveness.
Why do any number of ineffective airline security measures stay in place, never going away? Could it be the desire to be seen as Doing Something tm? Again, I suggest looking at the verifiable literature of police and intelligence agency interrogation, and compare and contrast the amount of information gained from torture versus developing sympathetic relationships, versus psychological pressure.
Having prisoners die or drift into irrationality, from a rational standpoint, means there is no future information coming from them. Tourison's book is excellent, and can be verified against such things as the declassified MACV "Lessons Learned" series. While the singular of data is not anecdote, I have friends in Iraq, nonsmokers, who carry cigarettes.
For getting information from the Iraqi-in-the-street, they comment that courtesy, and a small gift, go far. One of the most effective full-time interrogators is extremely formal, perfectly dressed, and totally disorients prisoners by having green coffee formally served, and then offering bread and salt.
Released archives from the fUSSR organs of state security show an emphasis on torture for show trial confession, but much more slow interrogation when serious information is desired.
Howard, If you think torture is so useless, why do you think government spy agencies seem intent on preserving it? My suggestion is that the issue with torture is not so much its capacity to obtain information - as it sometimes must be effective or governments would long ago have given up on it - but its reliability.
In this regard, the availability of confirmatory information is a likely use of torture by governments. Howard, Why would we make the balance between Jihadist and Christian reactionaries you suggest? How does that help us deal with the Jihadis? How does that help us even understand the Jihadists? I do not see the parallel and, if it exists, I do not see its importance. My view is that viewing Christian reactionary politics is interesting in its own right but juxtapositioning it against Jihadist politics and violence serves mostly to prevent serious analysis of Jihadist violence - and it is Jihadist violence that threatens to kill Americans and Europeans en masse, not Christiany loonies.
Which is to say, Mr. Amitz is exactly on point to the extent that he worries about how Jihadist have, by means of violence, coerced cooperation from Europeans, beginning with the Rushdie affair and those who died in it but, in a significant way, also looking back to the Munich Olympics and other Palestinian Arab terrorism that laid the groundwork for today's Jihadist.
Knowing that there are Christian loonies tells me rather little about the Jihadists. Not bothering suggests you don't have any substantiation. I'm not talking about random Web links, but such things as declassified military manuals from assorted governments, serious psychological research, etc. It was a field technique that required capturing at least two prisoners.
One would be tortured to death, as badly as possible, in front of the person with tactical information. The interrogator would calmly tell the other that they would die in any case, but giving the information would be a quick death. Ignoring any moral aspects, even then they only felt it useful for limited tactical purposes.
The fairly consistent message is that psychology is at the heart of effective interrogation. Sometimes, kindness works. Sometimes, sensory deprivation works--I find a sensory deprivation tank, for 18 hours or so, quite restful.
There's an abundance of information from police experience; one Washington DC area detective, with a great reputation for valid confessions, describes himself as a salesman, convincing suspects that prison is a desirable alternative to their present circumstances.
So far, you have given the impression of one who likes torture as a means of vengeance. Go ahead. Find appreciable counterexamples from valid police or intelligence sources that torture is a useful means of corroboration.
Use Communist sources, as long as you separate the especially Asian desire to have symbolic confessions, as opposed to producing valid information.
In your example, how does one know that the information gained from torture actually corroborates? Do you keep torturing until the prisoner gives you information that agrees with other sources?
How do you know that the conflicting information given under torture actually is the correct or incorrect answer? You will, I trust, give equal attention to the assorted conservative Christian groups that constantly try to restrict access to "immoral" content? As long as the violent Muslims censor the media channels I use, we are on a slippery slope I can't accept and if violence is needed, to counter this kind of behavior, so be it!
There are lots of sources about the necessity for corroboration in any information gathering, so I am not going to bother, you can search for yourself.
On the other hand if your intention was to challenge my point, asking for web links the same as criticizing spelling is a loser tactic in web conversations. I am talking about corroboration as the classic way to validate the value of information in any professional information gathering operation and again I said that the pressure or torture is used only when there is not enough time to get the information by using regular interrogation techniques. Amitz, You write: 1. You talk about "soldiers" but there are soldiers only on our side.
The other side in "war" I use quotation marks because for the other side there is a jihad - which is a different beast has no soldiers but fighters with all kinds of attributes following. When the fighters take western prisoners few soldiers, mostly civilians they kill them or exchange them for ransom open or hidden ransom.
Jihad may, for example, take the form of classical war or it may take the form of razzias. Either way, it is a form of struggle by a society to extent its rule and its law over another society. Jihad has rules defined by Shari'a - whether or not observed or not - including explicit rules regarding prisoners e.
Jihadists claim to take Shari'a seriously and it is certainly the case that their idea of universal rules is not the same as ours, which is a reason why there is a war. If you are saying that soldiers out of uniform behaving as saboteurs should be treated as they were in the old days, that may prove in time to be more defensible position than the current approach of making believe they meet the definition used today for soldiers.
That is certainly a matter for debate and serious consideration. I think you have it wrong about an Islamic reform movement, if you mean something akin to an Islamic Luther. Consider that Qutb and his ilk are the reform movement. The Salafists are the reform movement.
The Deobandi movement is a reform movement. And, they all are rather akin to Luther's movement, seeking to eliminate the innovations i. Whatever it is that Muslims ought do to accept our civilization, it is not going to occur in our life time.
And, as I have argued repeatedly on this website, you and I and other infidels are the least likely people to change the basic direction of Muslim society. When Muslims decide en masse that Jihadism is a dead end, they will move on from it. However, I would not count my breadth. The question of torture has become more controversial of late due to a report in The New York Times on memos issued by the U.
Justice Department in , effectively authorizing intelligence agencies to use interrogation methods defined as torture under international law. Psychological techniques such as the water-boarding and sleep deprivation that American operatives are suspected of using recently have a history going back to behavior experiments from the s, McCoy said.
A switch from more physical methods of torture to the psychological approaches emerged in the following decades in places such as Vietnam, Central America and Iran, McCoy said, without any definitive proof of their effectiveness. When the "War on Terror" was initiated after the Sept. Though captives are less resentful when tortured psychologically, it doesn't make their statements any more trustworthy , Rejali said.
There's no such thing as "a little bit of torture," McCoy said of the "light" tactics that are preferred today. Detainees are just as likely to tell their interrogators whatever they want to hear under psychological distress as they are under physical distress, he said, a statement backed up by Sen. In addition, physical violence—or the threat of it—is often present in the treatment of detainees.
Most former detainees interviewed by Human Rights Watch in described physical abuse at the time of their arrest and transfer to Israeli detention or interrogation centers. MALAYSIA Malaysia has rounded up numerous detainees under its Internal Security Act, a draconian law that permits the government to detain individuals without charge or trial, denying them even the most basic due process rights. The ISA allows the government to hold detainees for two years after arrest, and then renew this period indefinitely without meaningful judicial approval or scrutiny.
In a Human Rights Watch report detainees held under the ISA reported that they had been mistreated, subjected to sexual humiliation, and slapped and kicked. All were held incommunicado for several weeks after they were first detained.
Family members report that detainees showed signs of more extensive physical abuse when they first were able to meet with them. MOROCCO Morocco has been no exception to the global backsliding in the protection of civil liberties and basic freedoms in the name of counter-terrorism.
Recent credible reports of torture and mistreatment of suspects, and the denial of the right to a fair trial, suggest that the broader freedoms Moroccans have enjoyed during the last decade and-a-half can be reversed.
In the months following the May attack, police carried out massive arrests and home searches without judicial warrants, arresting at least 2, Many detainees have said that their interrogators subjected them to physical and mental torture and degrading treatment in order to extract a confession or to induce them to sign a statement they had not made.
As documented in a recent Human Rights Watch report , defendants either were not informed of their right to a medical examination or not able to exercise it in a meaningful manner. NEPAL Torture and ill-treatment in custody are prevalent throughout Nepal , which is caught in an increasingly brutal nine-year civil war between rebels of the Communist Party of Nepal Maoist and government security forces.
During the course of the war, the number of enforced disappearances—cases in which people are taken into custody and authorities then deny all responsibility or knowledge of their fate or whereabouts—has reached crisis proportions. NIGERIA Torture and ill-treatment of criminal suspects in police custody is systematic and routine in Nigeria , with a strong correlation between the severity of the ill-treatment inflicted and the severity of the alleged offense.
As a result, armed robbery and murder suspects are generally the most seriously abused and suffer the harshest treatment in detention. The most common forms of ill-treatment experienced are repeated beatings with implements such as batons, sticks, planks of wood, koboko horsewhip , gora wooden roofing material , iron bars or cable wire. During a recent fact-finding mission by Human Rights Watch, suspects described being hung by their arms in various positions from the ceiling or across a metal rod suspended between tables.
Beatings are applied to the back, limbs, joints, and in extreme cases the head. They are usually carried out for minutes on two or three separate occasions, on the same day or a few days apart. A number of victims had tear gas power rubbed in their eyes, and one woman had it sprayed on her genitals. In Lagos, five men interviewed had been shot with a gun in one or both feet.
Despite repeated resolutions by the U. Human Rights Commission condemning its human rights record, North Korea has largely shunned dialogue with U. While acts of torture by the police are generally aimed at producing confessions during the course of criminal investigations, torture by military agencies primarily serves to frighten a victim into changing his political stance or loyalties or at the very least to stop him from being critical of the military authorities.
Suspects are often whipped to the point of bleeding, severely beaten, and made to stay in painful stress positions. A July Human Rights Watch report focuses on abuses against farming families in the Punjab, including testimony about killings and torture by paramilitary forces.
Now in its sixth year, the conflict has created a dire human rights crisis. Chechen fighters have committed unspeakable acts of terrorism in Chechnya and in other parts of Russia.
By carrying out forced disappearances, federal forces in Chechnya attempt to conceal the torture and summary execution of those in their custody, and therefore benefit from impunity for such crimes. In numerous cases their corpses are found in unmarked graves or dumped, but in most instances they are simply never heard from after being taken into custody.
Human Rights Watch and the Memorial Human Rights Center have documented cases when dead bodies were simply dumped by road sides, on hospital grounds or elsewhere. The majority of the bodies showed signs of severe mutilation, including flaying or scalping, broken limbs, severed finger tips and ears, and close range bullet wounds typical of summary executions.
Examinations by medical doctors of some of these bodies have revealed that some of the deliberate mutilations were inflicted while the detainees were still alive. In February , Human Rights Watch interviewed one former detainee on the day following his release. While in detention, the young man was held on the concrete floor of a tiny, unheated cell. He was handcuffed and had a plastic bag over his head the entire time.
At the time of the interview he was in a state of shock, had difficulty speaking clearly and focusing his eyes; he said that his perpetrators had injected him with an unknown drug. He had bruises on his face and arms, and he could not move several of his fingers, which were heavily swollen. Since , only one serviceman has served an active prison sentence for torture or disappearance in Chechnya.
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