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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 19 of 19. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by Toph on January 24, 2013, at 0:47:00
I wonder what Bob and the moderators think of the depiction of torture in Zero Dark Thirty. Back in the day we were blocked for discussing the practice which senior administration officials admitted and Cheney later endorsed.
http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20081228/msgs/877921.html
Posted by sigismund on January 24, 2013, at 0:47:00
In reply to Water boarding, etc, posted by Toph on January 23, 2013, at 12:10:29
Good Heavens!
I'm mentioned!
Don't worry, we do the same to our own citizens (or we hand them over to you as some sort of offering) and our leaders are, if not proud of it, entirely unrepentant
Posted by sigismund on January 24, 2013, at 0:47:01
In reply to Water boarding, etc, posted by Toph on January 23, 2013, at 12:10:29
One of those threads.
What a load of nonsense, but all very amusing.
Posted by sigismund on January 24, 2013, at 0:47:01
In reply to Re: Water boarding, etc, posted by sigismund on January 23, 2013, at 18:25:43
http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20081228/msgs/877047.html
That was exactly it then.
Posted by Toph on January 24, 2013, at 0:47:01
In reply to Re: Water boarding, etc, posted by sigismund on January 23, 2013, at 18:27:27
> http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20081228/msgs/877047.html
>
> That was exactly it then.The end justifies the means, I suppose...
for Bob anyway.
Posted by Toph on January 27, 2013, at 0:47:37
In reply to Redirect: Water boarding, etc, posted by Dr. Bob on January 24, 2013, at 0:52:04
I liked the movie. I found it enlightening and thinking of PB somehow validating.
Posted by Beckett on January 31, 2013, at 7:02:10
In reply to Water boarding, etc, posted by Toph on January 24, 2013, at 0:47:00
This fellow is an ex CIA whistle-blower. I recall him saying Obama pushing forward Bush's agenda more strongly over seas than Bush did, plus Obama's administration has killed far more lives than Bush's did. A fiery speaker now on his way to serve 30 months.
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/1/30/ex_cia_agent_whistleblower_john_kiriakou#.UQplbGvsNLg.mailto
This link is to a letter Senators Feinstein and McCain wrote to the head on Sony noting the films inaccurate portrayal of water boarding and tourture in the capture of Osama bin Laden.
Posted by sigismund on February 1, 2013, at 0:17:10
In reply to Re: Water boarding, etc, posted by Beckett on January 31, 2013, at 7:02:10
>plus Obama's administration has killed far more lives than Bush's did.
He must mean by drones? Makes no sense otherwise does it?
Obama must know that the catastrophic political situation in Pakistan has been aggravated by them.
I must read those links.
Posted by sigismund on February 1, 2013, at 1:59:11
In reply to Re: Water boarding, etc, posted by Beckett on January 31, 2013, at 7:02:10
>the film graphically depicts CIA officers repeatedly torturing detainees and then credits these detainees with providing critical lead information on the courier that led to the Usama Bin Laden.
Isn't that what Cheney said too?
Moving forward. My goodness. It is a terrible phrase that we should be embarrassed to use.
He's right. America should be better than that. Australia too. It takes so little for the advances of many many years to be swept away.
There is a kind of cynicism in public life. I now appreciate better the public life created by those who retuned from the second war.
Posted by Beckett on February 2, 2013, at 15:56:47
In reply to Re: Water boarding, etc » Beckett, posted by sigismund on February 1, 2013, at 0:17:10
>He must mean by drones? Makes no sense otherwise does it?
I don't know what he meant. My grasp of foreign affairs is weak, though I read today the US intends to become militarily imbedded through out Africa in the coming year searching for Al Qaeda.sigi, which book did you read on the Thirty Year War?
Posted by sigismund on February 2, 2013, at 18:01:37
In reply to Re: Water boarding, etc, posted by Beckett on February 2, 2013, at 15:56:47
>sigi, which book did you read on the Thirty Year War?
It's an old book, written in the early period of the Nazis.
"The Thirty Years War" by C V Wedgewood.
I realised when I was in Peru that the Habsburg armies were financed by the gold and silver from there. Even though the Spanish took their Christianity very seriously and had the idea that the Indians should be free under the crown in this medieval type system, the demands from Europe meant a couple of hundred years of slavery for them.
On which subject, if you can get hold of anything by him, you might like to read Aguedas. I enjoyed "Rios Profundos" immensely. I read it in English of course.
Posted by sigismund on February 2, 2013, at 18:25:05
In reply to Re: Water boarding, etc » Beckett, posted by sigismund on February 2, 2013, at 18:01:37
I will type it out. It is that good.
From a speech given in Arequipa 14/6/65.
I find it very moving. He blew his head off in 1969, but everyone in Peru knows of him well."You may be surprised if I confess to you that I am the handiwork of my stepmother. My mother died when I was two and a half. My father remarried; his new wife already had three children. I was the youngest, and as I was so small, my father left me in the house of my stepmother, who owned half the town; she had many indigenous servants and with it the traditional contempt for and lack of awareness of what an Indian was. Since I was the object of as much of her scorn and rancor as the Indians, she decided that I was to live with them in the kitchen, eating and sleeping there. My bed was a wooden trough of the kind used to knead bread.....
Resting on some sheepskins and covered with a rather dirty but very sheltering blanket, I spent the nights talking and living so well that if my stepmother had known it she would have removed me to her side......
I lived thus for many years. When my father would visit I was hauled back to the dining room, my clothes were dusted off; but Sunday passed, my father went back to the provincial capital and I to my trough, to the lice of the Indians. The Indians, particularly their women, saw me as one of them, with the difference that being white I needed even more comforting than they did, and this they gave me in full. But consolation must contain within it both sadness and power; as those tormented comforted those who suffered even more, two things were sadly driven into my nature from the time I learned to speak: the tenderness and limitless love of the Indians, the love they feel for each other and also for nature, the highlands, rivers and birds; and the hatred they felt for those who, almost as if unaware and seeming to follow an order from on high, made them suffer. My childhood went by, singed between fire and love."
Posted by Beckett on February 6, 2013, at 9:25:18
In reply to Jose Maria Aguedas, posted by sigismund on February 2, 2013, at 18:25:05
That is beautiful and terribly sad. Especially the insight of the closing sentences. Amazon has maybe two titles in English, this, and one about a bullfight, though there are maybe a dozen more in his own dialected Spanish. And he killed himself?. I am very sorry to hear of this.
Thank you for sharing this author..
Posted by Beckett on February 6, 2013, at 13:13:48
In reply to Re: Water boarding, etc » Beckett, posted by sigismund on February 2, 2013, at 18:01:37
>I realised when I was in Peru that the Habsburg armies were financed by the gold and silver from there.
Are these the same mining companies (Habsburg) active today?
Posted by sigismund on February 6, 2013, at 17:47:41
In reply to Habsburg mines, posted by Beckett on February 6, 2013, at 13:13:48
>Are these the same mining companies (Habsburg) active today?
Well, I dunno. Silver is still mined at Potosi. Peru became independent around the same time as this place was settled/invaded. It would be hard to imagine that the ownership was not contested, but whether things became more humane I do not know either.
I saw there a film about the GFC, or more particularly about the people who assembled the dossier on Bernie Madoff. One of them had a Greek name. Harry Markopolis? Anyway they tried to interest the regulatory authorities and the financial or any press for 7 years. It was all in vain. No one was interested. Meanwhile the Greek bloke had to wear bullet proof vests and check under his car. It wasn't just Madoff....it was all the feeder funds and banks. Anyway some of the money came from European royalty through some person whose name I also do not know....French aristocrat name. When finally the scandal came out this man took pain killers and slashed his wrists. The reason the scandal came out was simply that Madoff handed himself in because the GFC made the economics of the ponzi scheme unsustainable. Subsequently Markoplis appeared before the US senate and became a hero, which he was anxious to deny saying that he had been right but had achieved absolutely nothing.
Posted by sigismund on February 6, 2013, at 17:52:05
In reply to Re: Jose Maria Aguedas, posted by Beckett on February 6, 2013, at 9:25:18
It might be Arguedas, with an R.
He might have been a professor of anthropology?
He wanted to write in Quechua but was persuaded not to, back then in the 60s.
If I lived in Peru I would learn it. Doors into people's hearts would open. I had people read to me in it....deep, guttural and very soft
Posted by LostBoyinNC43 on February 22, 2013, at 23:42:47
In reply to Re: Water boarding, etc » Toph, posted by sigismund on January 24, 2013, at 0:47:00
The Army practices waterboarding not too far from where I live. At Fort Bragg, NC at the Special Forces SERE school. All the guys going thru the SF school at Bragg and Camp Mackall go thru SERE as one of the "packages" of training programs in the SF training pipeline. They have to sign a waiver and such when they enter training. So we waterboard are own guys in training, before they even deploy. The purpose is to teach them how they will respond to waterboarding and to teach them how important it is to avoid being captured, if at all possible. Years ago, in the nineties and before I developed health problems and before the events of 911 and before Fort Bragg/Mackall became a closed/semi-closed base, I was at Camp Mackall and Ive actually been to the section of the Camp where the "Survival" training (SERE) is done. Ive also walked thru the "Nasty Nick" Obstacle Course at Mackall years ago, it is done wearing full gear, pack and dummy rifle. Its a long, really long O course with a bunch of rope climbs more than Ive ever seen on any O course.
Waterboarding, the goal is to create oxygen desaturations while you are conscious. Its kind of like it forces you to feel like you are drowning, your blood oxygen levels go down and it incites a total and severe panic feeling. It makes you feel like you are going to die, you can die from it in fact if its not rigidly controlled. In the old days, before 911, the waterboarding at Bragg SERE school was a semi-controversial subject in Army SF circles and within the Army itself. A lot of "regular Army" officers did not care for the practice. After 911, attitudes changed bigtime on the subject.
I also briefly knew a Camp Mackall SERE instructor. The guy was not the friendliest guy in the world, even off duty. I dont think he was the smartest, either. he was not SF, he was considered "SF support." Most of the SF guys Ive met are pretty cool guys. But some of the support people, they have attitude probs
As an old time ex Lifeguard heavily trained in CPR/AED and oxygen administration, Ive been formally taught that low blood oxygen causes you to both feel panicky, irritable and confused at the same time. Its called hypoxia and thats what waterboarding causes. As a sleep apnea sufferer, Ive suffered from oxygen desats but they were in my sleep. But I feel like crap the next day if I dont use my CPAP gear.
As for my attitude about whether its OK for our military to waterboard terrorists, I think its OK in overseas situations where you are dealing with extremely hardened terrorists. I do know that sometimes, SERE school causes SF trainees at Bragg to flunk out. They cant take it. I suspect a few of them have landed in the psych ward at the Fort Bragg hospital in decades past. Plenty of guys have ended up having total breakdowns on the Fort Bragg SF training pipeline. On the other hand, plenty have made it thru relatively unscathed as well.
the world is not a pretty place and there is much bad about it.
Eric AKA "LostBoyinNC"
Posted by Beckett on February 23, 2013, at 8:47:27
In reply to Re: The Army waterboards guys close to where I liv, posted by LostBoyinNC43 on February 22, 2013, at 23:42:47
The waterboarding SERE performs on trainees I have read is a lighter version than the water torture used on detainees. Not that it is pleasant or that people still don't flunk out. Just for perspective.
Posted by LostBoyinNC43 on March 1, 2013, at 23:19:53
In reply to Re: The Army waterboards guys close to where I liv, posted by Beckett on February 23, 2013, at 8:47:27
Not what I heard. There have been Congressional investigations in the past into various SERE schools in existence at different times in our military's past. I heard the Marines had an especially realistic and violent SERE school back in the early to mid sixties. They would borderline kill trainees going thru it. Most of the SERE cadre were Marines who fought in the Korean war against communist Chinese, who were and probably still are, especially good at this sort of stuff.
They'd just about drown you, basically.
Modern era, down at Bragg and overseas training places. The SERE training the JSOC guys go thru is very realistic. Waterboarding does go on down there. And a few other places. In training. They do break trainees.
Eric
> The waterboarding SERE performs on trainees I have read is a lighter version than the water torture used on detainees. Not that it is pleasant or that people still don't flunk out. Just for perspective.
>
>
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