Musical torture

[Sarina_Joy]

c4, crazy rulers of the world.

Some gentleman is acting in an utterly horrified manner that the US is using 'loud, offensive music' to 'torture' PoW's (or illegal combatants in guantanamo), such as barney theme music or metallica - enter sandman or the XXX soundtrack, although it is apparently not played at a volume so high that you cannot carry on a conversation.

Am I the only one to be slightly baffled at someone complaining about the use of non-violent onterrogation methods? would it be preferable for them to be breaking out the thumb screws and bollock shock prods?

From the start the presenter has been comparing this with the actual instances of torture (sorry, prisoner abuse) at the abu-graib (sp, i know) prison.

Does anyone have any opinion on this, as to wether it is better to use the good ol' blooded methods or new age psyche methods to break a prisoners will?

Or should we rely on asking really nicely and offering a cup of tea?

Ninja_spammer

[Dante Hicks]

I'm one of those crazy people who thinks you shouldn't torture people at all.

[Kurashima]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

I'm one of those crazy people who thinks you shouldn't torture people at all.

[SilverSmoke]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

I'm one of those crazy people who thinks you shouldn't torture people at all.

Bandwagons are cool, especially when you agree with 'm.

[JammyJim]

torture is torture.
whether its having music or noise blasted at you 24/7 nonstop or whether its a swift beating from time to time.

[Vaio]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

I'm one of those crazy people who thinks you shouldn't torture people at all.

although some people wouldn't have a problem with 24 hour Metallica at high volumes. I wouldn't be bothered unless they played stuff from LOAD or later.

~Vaio~

[Sarina_Joy]

Yeah but is it actually 'torture' ?

[SYMM]

Originally Posted by Dictionary.com

To bring great physical or mental pain upon (another)

So yes.

[Kurashima]

Originally Posted by Vaio

although some people wouldn't have a problem with 24 hour Metallica at high volumes. I wouldn't be bothered unless they played stuff from LOAD or later.

~Vaio~

I didnt think LOAD was all that bad. Ive heard worse.

[Tactitus]

Originally Posted by SYMM

So yes.

Your post brought me great mental pain!

See, we can all be torturers! :xmasgrin:

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by Tactitus

Your post brought me great mental pain!

See, we can all be torturers! :xmasgrin:

Do you ever get tired of being an apologist for America btw?

[Vaio]

Originally Posted by Kurashima

I didnt think LOAD was all that bad. Ive heard worse.

So have I, Reload for one

~Vaio~

[MAdnRisKy]

I'm curious though, just to play devils advocate.

Lets say you have a criminal, a "terrorist" if you will, in custody and you "know" (again i can say this because it's a hypothetical situation, but if it's REALLY neccessary i can draw up an example where everyone would agree to this rather than just accept it for the sake of this example) that he knows the whereabouts of a live bomb in a populous area, and how to disarm it . and he's not talking.

what do you do to extract this information, given that lives are at stake?

[MrL_JaKiri]

Telepaths. A P5 or above should do.

[Kurashima]

Originally Posted by MAdnRisKy

I'm curious though, just to play devils advocate.

Lets say you have a criminal, a "terrorist" if you will, in custody and you "know" (again i can say this because it's a hypothetical situation, but if it's REALLY neccessary i can draw up an example where everyone would agree to this rather than just accept it for the sake of this example) that he knows the whereabouts of a live bomb in a populous area, and how to disarm it . and he's not talking.

what do you do to extract this information, given that lives are at stake?

WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT

I hear that SAME ****ING ARGUMENT trotted out by every single person that thinks torture is acceptable in some circumstances. Its in every argument, and has been for 25 years. Its straight out of hollywood, its unbelievably unlikely, and lets face it, IT SIMPLY DOESNT HAPPEN!. For **** sake, if youre going to come up with an acceptable reason for torture, dont use the same tired one that everyone else does and that has never happened and almost certainly will never happen.

[MAdnRisKy]

now now, it's hypothetical. and I didn't say what my views on the subject were either.

the point though, is that it's this arguement which gets widdened out to "issues of national security".. (stuff that spies do). so come on, you're boss, what do you do?

(oh and ps if the same point has been made for 25 yrs, surely someone has come up with a reason to refute it... right?)

[Dante Hicks]

In a recent German case I believe their equivalent of the Home Office authorised "the use of force" on a suspect to (potentially) save a kidnap victims life.

[Tactitus]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

Do you ever get tired of being an apologist for America btw?

That remark brought me even greater mental pain.

[Sarina_Joy]

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

Telepaths. A P5 or above should do.

The Corps is father, the Corps is mother.

[Dace]

real men dont crack

[Kurashima]

Originally Posted by Sarina_Joy

The Corps is father, the Corps is mother.

The Corps is fictional.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by Kurashima

The Corps is fictional.

That's what they want you to think.

[Kurashima]

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

That's what they want you to think.

J Michael Strazcynski is due one serious beating.

[Nodrog]

Originally Posted by MAdnRisKy

I'm curious though, just to play devils advocate.

Lets say you have a criminal, a "terrorist" if you will, in custody and you "know" (again i can say this because it's a hypothetical situation, but if it's REALLY neccessary i can draw up an example where everyone would agree to this rather than just accept it for the sake of this example) that he knows the whereabouts of a live bomb in a populous area, and how to disarm it . and he's not talking.

what do you do to extract this information, given that lives are at stake?

Yeah and what if you decide to torture him and he tells you where the bomb is and noone dies so then you go home to sleep but that night a ghost appears in your room and you know you arent dreaming and you know it is a real ghost and then the ghost says ok here is a five year old child if you dont have sex with it now I am going to blow up the world and everyone will die and then it shows you a video of the world blowing up and there are people screaming in pain and agony but you still dont it believe it so then the ghost points at the house across the street and it blows up and you watch your neighbours bodies fly through the air and then the ghost says ok now you know I am not joking and if you dont have sex with this child now then I will do the same to the whole world so yeah anyway if this happened to you one night what would you do in my opinion I think you would have sex with the child even if it didnt want to have sex with you so this means that raping children isnt always wrong it just depends on the context

[Kurashima]

Originally Posted by Nodrog

Yeah and what if you decide to torture him and he tells you where the bomb is and noone dies so then you go home to sleep but that night a ghost appears in your room and you know you arent dreaming and you know it is a real ghost and then the ghost says ok here is a five year old child if you dont have sex with it now I am going to blow up the world and everyone will die and then it shows you a video of the world blowing up and there are people screaming in pain and agony but you still dont it believe it so then the ghost points at the house across the street and it blows up and you watch your neighbours bodies fly through the air and then the ghost says ok now you know I am not joking and if you dont have sex with this child now then I will do the same to the whole world so yeah anyway if this happened to you one night what would you do in my opinion I think you would have sex with the child even if it didnt want to have sex with you so this means that raping children isnt always wrong it just depends on the context

I never thought i would post this, but.

<3 Nod

[MAdnRisKy]

tell you what then, seeing as how you don't ever have to make a call like that, take an easy ideological stance and sleep well at night.

oh and tbh I expected better than a blanket "no cos it's just wrong that arguement is stupid because it's the one everyone uses and no I don't care that situations like that happen it's still wrong", followed by nod doing his "your example is so silly, see look?" effort.

so much for rational debate folks :/

[Knight Theamion]

as long as it aint frans bauer

[Ninja_spammer]

Originally Posted by Kurashima

J Michael Strazcynski is due one serious beating.

J Michael Strazcynski is fictional.

[Apothos]

Originally Posted by MAdnRisKy

I'm curious though, just to play devils advocate.

Lets say you have a criminal, a "terrorist" if you will, in custody and you "know" (again i can say this because it's a hypothetical situation, but if it's REALLY neccessary i can draw up an example where everyone would agree to this rather than just accept it for the sake of this example) that he knows the whereabouts of a live bomb in a populous area, and how to disarm it . and he's not talking.

what do you do to extract this information, given that lives are at stake?

Then you go through the three F's. Finance's, Freinds, and Family. Eventually coming down to his sick daughter who requires a liver transplant, and you take her to the building that is targeted and threaten to leave her there unless he gives up his friends and the device being used to target the building?
</lastnightsspooks>

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by MAdnRisKy

what do you do to extract this information, given that lives are at stake?

Nod's example is not that silly. The point is that yes, there are cases where pretty much anything is justified but those are so rare / unlikely we do not have to consider them in day-to-day debates. We're not constructing an ethical program for robots, so we're not constraining our behaviour unnecessarily. We're not considering some sort of ultimate unbreakable rules, but trying to generalise for 99.999999% of cases.

Yes, it's possible to construct a scenario where torture (or having sex with a small child) would be "justified" by some extraordinary context. So what? Does the current scenario meet that criteria? No, it does not.

In the German case I alluded to previously, a kidnapper was arrested who had taken a child, and was holding her in a place unknown. As the time ticked on, the detectives became worried that the girl would starve / die of thirst / etc which I think we'd agree would be a pretty horrific way to die. The man refused to disclose where she was, so the detectives asked their superiors if they had permission to "apply force". The word torture, as I understand, was not used. They were authorised by someone in some government department, to proceed. IIRC they then threatened the man, and he broke and told them that the girl was already dead. Were the detectives right to threaten the man? I'd say yes. Would they have been right to torture him?

I would probably say no. However, as discussed in this thread there are numerous forms of torture. Heavy interrogation at it's most extreme probably does lean towards some form of mental "torture" for instance. It seems to be fairly routine in poorly managed prisons to place troublesome people with violent cellmates as a form of punishment. The detectives in the above scenario could have probably threatened to place the man with a larger/more dangerous convict as a cellmate and say that they will personally inform everyone in the prison that he was a child molestor, or something to that effect.

[IncubusGod]

Torture is just not acceptable to be honest.

I may be one of those "crazy liberals" that believe that peoples human rights should be respected and that if you want to judge someone as a criminal, a deviant, a terrorist etc. that you have to keep your moral standards at a level far above theirs.
As soon as you waiver and treat them as they might treat you, as you think they should be treated (brutally) or deny them any of their basic human rights, then you lose all justification for holding/charging/punishing them.
If you are as a bad as them, then why the hell haven't you been arrested then? If you torture people for being bad, then aren't you being bad? Isn't inflicting mental anguish or physical pain on someone an abhorrant act?

You might come up with the most fancyful hypotethical situations to justify things however they have no bearing on real life to be honest.

This is why I consider the US morally bankrupt and hippocritcal in their actions. And it's why I despise regiemes that torture & oppress their peoples.

[Nodrog]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

In the German case I alluded to previously, a kidnapper was arrested who had taken a child, and was holding her in a place unknown. As the time ticked on, the detectives became worried that the girl would starve / die of thirst / etc which I think we'd agree would be a pretty horrific way to die. The man refused to disclose where she was, so the detectives asked their superiors if they had permission to "apply force". The word torture, as I understand, was not used. They were authorised by someone in some government department, to proceed. IIRC they then threatened the man, and he broke and told them that the girl was already dead. Were the detectives right to threaten the man? I'd say yes. Would they have been right to torture him?

I would probably say no. However, as discussed in this thread there are numerous forms of torture. Heavy interrogation at it's most extreme probably does lean towards some form of mental "torture" for instance. It seems to be fairly routine in poorly managed prisons to place troublesome people with violent cellmates as a form of punishment.

The other important thing to consider in situations such as this is the idea of setting a precedent for state policyl. While I would have no hestitation in personally recommending the torturing of a known kidnapper in order to save one of his victims, I don't think that allowing the state to make such a decision could be justified under anything but the most extreme situations. I would not view saving the life of one girl as able to justify giving the police the power to torture citizens - the potential consequences are simply too dangerous. I realise the girl's parents would be likely to think differently, but that just shows how perspective will affect evaluation.