[DEBATE] : US Officials: Torture Confessions Not Proven Useful

[Gus Gosling]

Riaz, I think you and Dom are both so eager to reach a conclusion that
matches your own prejudices that you're willing to ignore the actual
evidence.
Darius Rejali's extensive study of torture (`Torture and democracy',
Princeton 2007) certainly falsifies  --- in democracies at least --- Dom's
assertion `Torture is not supposed to be secret. It is supposed to be
known'. As monitoring of human rights abuses increases so too does `torture
by stealth' i.e. `clean' torture that leaves no (physical) scars.

The desire to cow, punish and oppress those who lie in one's power is hardly
confined to one ideology, economic system, or geographic locale. What I find
most disturbing is the recent attempt to normalise torture, to make it more
more acceptable to a fearful public (very much a post 9/11 effect).


2009/4/1 Riaz K Tayob <riaz.tayob at gmail.com>

> I agree with Dominic. This form of violence (representing again the
> primitivisation of values in the centre) is necessary and now absolutely
> essential to the system.
>
> While not exclusive to capitalism, it is now in the mainstream that brutal
> means are necessary to maintain the North's way of life...
>
>
> Gus Gosling wrote:
>
>> mea culpa! The state will have withered away. how very silly of me to
>> forget. (and you wonder why we let you talk to yourself)
>>
>> 2009/4/1 Dominic Tweedie <dominic.tweedie at gmail.com>
>>
>>
>>
>>> What is a communist state?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> 2009/4/1 Gus Gosling <gus.gosling at gmail.com>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> So torture can never exist in a communist state? Slightly counterfactual
>>>> statement there Dom.
>>>>
>>>> 2009/4/1 Dominic Tweedie <dominic.tweedie at gmail.com>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> The purpose of torture is to humiliate. That is all.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
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