None Dare Call It Sadism

Oh, that's a fine way of puttin' it, Pegeen! Via HuffPo

On ABC News' "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," George Will echoed several Bush officials when he criticized the release of the memos, saying "The problem with transparency is that it's transparent for the terrorists as well." Will expressed concern about the cost of letting "the bad guys" know what techniques, such as waterboarding, will be used on them. He went on to add, as noted by HuffPost's Jason Linkins, that "intelligent people of good will" believe the President of the United States can do whatever he wants to "defend the country."

Peggy Noonan went even further, articulating a position that upends George Santayana's famous quote: "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

"Some things in life need to be mysterious," said Noonan, adding, "Sometimes you need to just keep walking."

She also added:

"It's hard for me to look at a great nation issuing these documents and sending them out to the world and thinking, oh, much good will come of that."

Oh, dear Peggy and fellow-traveling moral failures; it's not the documents that are the problem - it's the torture. Or did you think that there was some doubt as to what was going on? The knowledge, as the White House put out, was out there. Techniques and all.

As I stated a few days ago, the practice of torture makes little sense in terms of intelligence or security, but as a means of social control and as a recreational activity, it makes perfect sense.

Taddyporter writing at Bitch, PhD comes close:

[I]t seems to me the whole torture/don't torture debate is fundamentally misinformed.

Torture is an instrument of terror.

Permit me to repeat. Torture is an instrument of terror. Conducted by officers of the state, its state terror.

It's purpose is to terrorize the torturee, the torturer, the community from which the tortured is drawn, and, most importantly, the community from which the torturer is drawn.

Torture is not intended to extract information. Its intended to extract confession. Its intended to exact submission. Its intended to cow, to intimidate, to humiliate. Its intended to ensnare us all in the crimes of the regime. Its intended to plant a feeling of helplessness in the occupied population. Its intended to divide the occupied population into informants and informers. Its intended to demonstrate the complete power of the regime to dispose of people in any way they wish. Its intended to terrorize the population the regime fears most; us.

Do not be confused. All this blather about how torture is needed to compel captured al-Qaeda to spill the beans on their super-secret plans for murder and mayhem is absolute horseshit.

We know that few of the captives held at Guantanamo Bay, Bagram, Abu Ghraib, and the CIA black sites are, in fact, al-Qaeda. Most of them are people swept up in pacification sweeps for being out after curfew, or whose papers were not in order, or who were denounced by informants, probably as payback for some quarrel. They could not be compelled to give information about al-Qaeda plans because they had no information.
They could be compelled to confess. They could be compelled to infect their communities with terror.

And if you think the community the regime wished to terrorize was the Iraqi nation or the Afghan nation, think again.

Indeed. You should think again, and you should re-think any unexamined assumptions or principles you may have that would lead you to accept the rationalizations of torture. You see, while the above is correct - it is state terrorism - that is also beside the point. The important thing here is who controls the state, by what means they gained control, and to what end do they think that effort will profit them. What tactics and ideals do you see most commonly exemplified from the grassroots upward?

To be blunt, it's authoritarianism, the celebration of the domination and degradation of the weaker by the stronger, the basest and most destructive human motives re-cast into a sociopolitical philosophy that is sometimes called NeoConservatism . But the words and the rhetoric do not matter, for they are made a mock by the evident truth:

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.
George Orwell

The means, the ends and the fallout have been equally well documented in history and literature. The sum of it is "no good can come of this."

It is not in your interest or in mine, not in the interest of your children or your neighbors, to accept this all-too present future.

And yet, every single decade, another crop of Great Leaders comes to the fore to try and disprove the premise, at least for a time. Since no sensible, sane person working from either an ethical OR a purely utilitarian perspective would advise anyone to build a nation or a legacy in this way, it's clear that the flawed and fatal process has an overwhelming appeal in spite of the obvious. It must be some very primal force. You would think someone would just say it.

But it seems that none dare call it sadism.



Nonetheless, it is. Both directly and vicariously. When you water-board someone over one hundred times, and they are able to give you no more information than they had given before being water-boarded for the first time, it's for the sheer, sadistic fun of it.

And as you can see, sadism is fun, as documented on AntiWar.com in 2006.

ABC News has obtained two new photos taken at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq showing Spc. Charles Graner and Spc. Sabrina Harmon posing over the body of a detainee who was allegedly beaten to death by CIA or civilian interrogators in the prison's showers. The detainee's name was Manadel al-Jamadi. Mark Rothschild writes about the details of this poor man's death.

Oh, one may rationalize torture and abuse in many ways. One may, for instance, excuse it as a means by which one may actually break and reform the person, to make a brainwashed slave. Citations of "Stockholm Syndrome" are bandied around.

But it's all bullshit. Brainwashing, meta-programming and mind control were - and the CIA is very expert on this - blind alleyways leading to nightmarish blowback. The CIA knows better.

Torture is not a good way to gain intelligence, nor is it a terribly effective tool for "turning" an agent. Even if it were, when a person is known to be held and subsequently released they are likely to be suspected as an agent. Trust me, there is a great deal known about torture-enhanced brainwashing, interrogation and mind control. It's simply not an effective way of creating a reliable follower with the capability of acting independently and without direct supervision. The Manchurian Candidate was either a cautionary tale or a wet dream - depending on your point of view - but it did not prove out in practice, though there are many hints, much hearsay and even declassified documents to suggest that a large number of people who should have known better tried very hard to make it a reality. No doubt they still are.

None of this is secret. Nor are any of the techniques used for torture. "Water boarding" itself has been used in various forms for two or three thousand years. One form - The Swirly - is a favorite with grade-school bullies. The strong and sociopathic have always found it amusing to degrade and half-drown the weaker and better. And you can find no more pure manifestation of this mindset - and the society in which those who wish to become powerful and "socially significant" must learn to thrive - than Jr. High.

And so long as bullying is allowed to thrive in our schools, so long as "boys will be boys" and "girls will be girls" is permitted to be an explanation for recreational sadism on playgrounds and schools, the very worst of us will always triumph over the very best, for they look out for their own, while carefully tending the breeding grounds of future victims.

The worst fear of the American Right is that Obama will implement some form of "re-education" programs that teach values contrary to their own bible-thumping, baby-beating, authoritarian and eliminationist "family values."

I think that their worst fear should be implemented - and without waiting for Obama.

The first step is for people with an ethical view of civilization to retake the arts, crafts and structures of education - and they must keep it. Nor must any institution that teaches children that "winners" are actually BETTER than "lusers" be permitted to continue.

I'm by no means saying that competition is bad. But children must be taught that success and failure are both good things in their way, and that all people are valuable, as much because of their differences as due to their similarities.

I have come to believe that we need a radical transformation in our imagination as to what civilization can be and - far more importantly - for whom it exists. Currently, all of society and culture exists to serve the ambitions, lusts and needs of those at the very top of the pyramid; with everyone else being assigned a "value" in accordance to their utility toward meeting those needs. Not only are individuals neglected and discarded; entire races, nations and continents have been arbetrarily designated as strip mines and toxic waste dumps, simply because none of "the people who matter" come from those places.

I say that it should be obvious that pandering to the interests of less than 5% of the human race at the direct expense of the rest of us is a mug's game. Collectively, creatively, non-violently, but gently and relentlessly, we must resist - and communicate the need for that resistance as widely as possible.

So long as there are large numbers of human beings living in poverty, in daily fear, concerned about the most basic necessities of life, we will all suffer oppression in the name of keeping those desperately poor people from resorting to acts of desperation. It should be clear by now that the oppression itself makes resistance and defiance inevitable, and you would think that after several thousand years of history, we would have grasped the essential lesson - that the oppression generates it's own justifications.

We now have the technology, the resources and the tools to ensure that every single human being on the planet has secure access to the basic necessities of life. We can ensure it, we can afford it and that one simple thing will inevitably unleash a mind boggling amount of creativity which will of course translate into greater prosperity.

Ultimately, those who have the talent to foster and manage wealth will become far more wealthy then even now, though it may not be measured so much in terms of their ability to crush or advance the fortunes of others, there will certainly be enough rewards out there for all - so long as we can at least statistically resist the darker urge to proper at the expense of others, rather than the far more effective strategy to prosper by enlarging the fortunes of all.

The need to do this is urgent. We simply cannot afford to have such a high proportion of the human race wasted on survival-level concerns.

For whatever reasons, the climate of the planet is shifting and no area will be able to isolate itself from the impact. Huge population shifts will occur; the areas best suited for food production are going to shift, global trade routes are changing - and it's all too easy to see nations, peoples and corporations positioning themselves to exploit the "unavoidable" misery about to occur.

The idea that such misery is, in fact "unavoidable" is absolute bullshit. As a species and as a global civilization - for that is a matter of practical reality - we have a simple and stark choice.

We can choose to devolve into small clusters of squabbling apes competing for diminishing resources - or we can choose to survive as a species, with the pragmatic determination that we are not wise enough to know what traits and talents will be needed for as yet unforseen challenges.

I know where my advantage lies. It differs from the advantage of those who are yammering at you that we cannot afford to not torture, to not invest in regieme change, who tell you that we cannot afford to trust individuals with their own life choices. The rhetoric and threats vary from the left to the right of the political spectrum, but it all boils down to a subliminal panic amoung the elietes that they are losing their grip upon the the information flow and the decision making process of people in general.

Glenn Greenwald, among others, has been relentless in documenting examples of this, but it's difficult to think of an example less subtle than this.

The New York Times' David Barstow won a richly deserved Pulitzer Prize yesterday for two articles that, despite being featured as major news stories on the front page of The Paper of Record, were completely suppressed by virtually every network and cable news show, which to this day have never informed their viewers about what Barstow uncovered. Here is how the Pulitzer Committee described Barstow's exposés:

Awarded to David Barstow of The New York Times for his tenacious reporting that revealed how some retired generals, working as radio and television analysts, had been co-opted by the Pentagon to make its case for the war in Iraq, and how many of them also had undisclosed ties to companies that benefited from policies they defended.

By whom were these "ties to companies" undisclosed and for whom did these deeply conflicted retired generals pose as "analysts"? ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN and Fox -- the very companies that have simply suppressed the story from their viewers. They kept completely silent about Barstow's story even though it sparked Congressional inquiries, vehement objections from the then-leading Democratic presidential candidates, and allegations that the Pentagon program violated legal prohibitions on domestic propaganda programs. The Pentagon's secret collaboration with these "independent analysts" shaped multiple news stories from each of these outlets on a variety of critical topics. Most amazingly, many of them continue to employ as so-called "independent analysts" the very retired generals at the heart of Barstow's story, yet still refuse to inform their viewers about any part of this story.

I no longer consider any of the networks to be a primary source - and I hold reservations about the rest of the MSM. Nor are my reservations particularly new. Their coverage has always been suspect, but without access to the raw data and the ability for individuals to gain accesss to a global marketplace of ideas in which even linguistic barriers are falling, we need not rely upon them. Increasingly, we do not.

But the stories we are not told, the information that is not cited, the stories that become commonly known without ever seeing a mention on major American networks, that very silence speaks far louder than words.

And so, it comes right back around to education - for learning is a life-long enterprise. We can no longer allow ourselves to be led by those who's most important life experience was learning how to stuff the nerd in the locker - and get away with it.

Really, everything you need to know in life, you should have learned in kindergarten. Is it not time that those who learned how to "beat the system," to take advantage of the "naive" and "idealistic" and "sentimental," to be kept far from the levers of power.

Image credit: Death In Torture poster by DeathinTorture

I blogged you so!

This has been getting a bunch of attention:

New Progressive America
Twenty Years of Demographic, Geographic, and Attitudinal Changes Across the Country Herald a New Progressive Majority

"Obama’s 53 percent of the popular vote is the largest share of the popular vote received by any presidential candidate in 20 years. The last candidate to register that level of support was conservative George H.W. Bush, who won by an identical 53 percent-to-46 percent margin. So, separated by 20 years, we have two elections that are practically mirror images of one another, but with conservatives on the winning end of the first and progressives on the winning end of the second.

What happened? How did conservatives do so well in one election but progressives so well in the other? The answer: In those intervening 20 years, a new progressive America has emerged with a new demography, a new geography, and a new agenda."

By way of contrast, I wrote this some time earlier.

Thursday, November 23, 2006
The Populist Libertarian

But the return to Populism this is not seemingly the result of an ongoing political debate among the members of the electorate; this is much more a dawning realization that there has been theft and chicanery at the highest levels. It is a wholesale disgust with corruption over a span of years that leaves neither party - or indeed any person associated with Washington in general - wholly free of taint. Add to this the outrage of the heartlands, who thought that in sending a wave of republican freshmen into congress in `94, they would be changing things for the better.

Instead, they were presented with the results of corruption and indifference to the needs and fates of ordinary folks that passes all understanding.

So a return to populist politics is both inevitable and refreshing - even though it is a fickle wind from a dangerous quarter. That is why I join with my liberal and progressive friends and allies in pointing out that whatever size and shape government is, an ethical and Constitutional government in these Americas (and yes, I mean all of them) is concerned with the well-being and prosperity of The People - as a whole.

I'm not doing this to point out my prescience, or my potential value on the pundit circuit. This isn't to flog my brand; rather, it's to point out that my gut check on the New American Progress article is that they are almost correct. They are seeing this as political phenomenon. I see it, rather, as a function of the medium.

I'm not one to dig into things in depth. I shamelessly rely upon others for that. My niche relies having a familiarity with a wide variety of many things, rather than a deep understanding of a few, because that allows me to realize that certain interpretations - such as the one put forward in "New Progressive America" - suffer from the inadvertent framing of the author. I've read it, it's written as honestly as any position piece of it's sort could ever be expected to be - but it presumes that this shift in viewpoint is a shift toward more progressive values. I did a blog search and found this to be the general consensus, but I already knew of one other outlier, The Dark Wraith, who's reaction to the political quiz put out earlier by Center For American Progress is a wonderful example of High Snort.

How progressive are you? Take the quiz and find out not only how progressive you are, but also how annoyed you get when complex matters of your relationship to society, your sentiments about politics, and your philosophical underpinnings get packaged into a 40-question instrument that reduces you to a series of knee-jerk Right-Left talking points, buzz words, and over-simplifications.

Who knows? By the end you might be so annoyed that, whether or not you get labeled a progressive, you can tell for yourself that you are old, impatient, and downright curmudgeonly.

Just like me.

I should note that I took the quiz and scored as "Highly Progressive," with over 300 points. That doesn't mean I am a "progressive," it means that the term is almost meaningless, if constructed innocently. Personally, I think it's intended to create the impression that there is a direct correspondance between not being an idiot and being a political progressive.

Why not be content with "a high degree of correspondence?"

There are many policy positions that I take a hard line for reasons that diverge significantly from the common herd, and therefore, my position on those issues is not at all predictive of my views in general.

Take the death penalty. I oppose it, utterly, in practice. In theory, IF it could be applied impartially and only in cases where guilt was not merely "beyond a reasonable doubt," but certain to an absolute standard, I'd have no objection. However, that is not the case, and mistakes are far too common, nor do I see any persuasive evidence to suggest that the death penalty causes a deterrant effect. So, since it's both expensive and often corruptible of our political process - I oppose it. 25 to life without possiblity of parole achieves the same thing, at lower expense. Or as I often say, when asked why I oppose it - "I'm not that merciful."

My readings suggest that we should not be thinking of this in terms of traditional politics. I think that sort of framing is as dead as the MSM it has always depended on. I see this as a reaction against biased and inaccurate media, against information managers who's agenda is to tell us what we should think, and have gotten so lazy that they have long ceased to bother to make a respectable case as to why we should vote for any particular party.

The report actually contains the data that points me to that interpetation:

"The Millennial Generation—those born between1978 and 2000—gave Obama a stunning 66 percent-to-32 percent margin in 2008. This generation is adding 4.5 million adults to the voting pool every year. Or consider professionals, who are now the most progressive occupational group and increase that support with every election. Fast-growth segments among women like singles and the college-educated favor progressives over conservatives by large margins. And even as progressives improve their performance among the traditional faithful, the growth of religious diversity—especially rapid increases among the unaffiliated—favors progressives. By the election of 2016, it is likely that the United States will no longer be a majority white Christian nation."

True enough; the question is why. And with two generations now having grown up with rich "pull" media that empowers them to seek out the information and entertainment they enjoy and find useful, rather than the passive acceptance more typical of earlier generations, we may be seeing something that is perhaps not all that obvious to traditional politicians and other marketers.

Did Obama win because he was more popular - or did he become popular because his understanding of reality and the situations we face had a greater correspondence to wired voters than others. I would bet that the latter is a large factor - and it doesn't seem to be a factor that the "movement leaders" seem to be considering, even now.

Speaking of the New Media...

One of the marvels of these here "Internet Tubes" is the marvel of telepresence, wherein some good internet angel allows you to talk to your client or boss in real time, face to face, without having to cram your busy entrepreneurial butt into Business Class for three to seven hours while inhaling every new flu bug known to man.

Insert obligitory reference to Isacc Asimov's "The Caves of Steel" here. Few realize that far from being a Disutopian vision, his idea of a society that starkly limits interpersonal contact was his own fondest desire.

Mine too. The fact is, that aside from making it possible to "do bidness" across vast spaces, telepresence will also allow you to "do bidness" across certain sorts of interpersonal divides as well.

But more importantly, it's emblematic of a change in the way "bidness" is done, the sorts of people you will be doing it with, and of course, the time frames in which you will be doing it.

Telepresence is just one example of technical capacity that is making the "old economy" obsolete and the new economy mandatory. Oh, it doesn't hurt that for every telepresent conference, you reduce your carbon footprint significantly. Indeed, that one change alone in getting things done could add to your bottom line while taking huge steps toward a "greener" operation.

The beauty is, while this is a first-class, top tier, status-forward solution, it's still probably going to cost less than the fuel for a single cross-country trip in a company jet.

I suspect that in the future, corporate jets will be reserved for technical people who have to actually - you know - touch things.

Eww.

Green Tech: Web conferencing leverages small business.

Oh, I love it when a paid post comes along that actually serves to prove a point I've been trying to make about society, culture and business. You see, if someone is investing serious money into making easier ways to do, say web conferencing, it nicely validates my larger points about the immense (and progressive) changes the web brings. Nothing validates an idea better than a line of people paying for an implementation.

Over the last two or three decades ... simple tools have expanded the ability for individuals of no particular means to build their own enterprises - everything from dotcoms to fast food chains to publishing empires. The actual cost of doing business has plummeted...

This trend, along with parallel trends in web 2.0 apps and emerging technologies like the possibility of a 3D web overlay, as 2nd Life is essentially beta-testing hold enormous possibilities for business. But that's "business" with a small b. Large corporations may find themselves in dire competition with a multitude of medium to small businesses who have learned that they no longer need corporate infrastructure to achieve what only a DuPont or Ford could a hundred or even 50 years ago.

With that in mind, take a peek at the sponsor's link and as you consider the offer itself, also consider what the availability of the offer implies - and the implications of what you could do yourself given that sort of individual "reach," without adding to your carbon footprint much at all.