Myth-Jack THIS: Torture by Isolation is What We Do

Friday, June 20, 2008

Torture by Isolation is What We Do

[Originally submitted 6:54 local time; now posted as Comment #3 at Psyche, Science, and Society]

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Thanks for all your work on this. I just watched Dr. Reisner on Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/2008/6/19/as_senate_confirms_psychologists_helped_devise

Back on 27 November 2007, I made this comment
http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/blog/2007/11/17/leaked-guantanamo-document-confirms-routine-use-of-isolation-as-psychological-torture/#comments

We get fooled, again and again, by being mind-f*cked (the impolite phrase for Naomi Klein’s brilliant ’shock doctrine’) into thinking we are only part things that must relate to the Whole via bachelor fathers with terrible tempers and unspoken habits. Our science, psychology, has midwifed this monstrous abuse of being human.

Today, 20 June 2008, I’ve again just watched Democracy Now! I’m retrieving from the trash a recent APA invitation to renew my membership.

Thank you, Dr. Reisner, for restoring my faith.

Regarding torture, our fundamental debate is between two conceptions of Being: are we a Newtonian machine constructed by an external agent of point particles in an absolute vacuum; or are we growing from within? Is life really a Holy War amongst these cellf-imprisoned points of pure pain? Is our essence that of a castle, or a growing, living, Being aware of its own Becoming?

“Coercion doesn’t work,” the UK decided after 15 years of terror, Phillippe Sands tells us. And that’s what I was taught at UW back in the 80s: punishment is passé. So how come we’ve resorted to such primitive methods, namely cruelty and torture?

Because torture by isolation is at the very basis of our conception of Being.

Are we ego-driven machines? quantum singularities of pure pain? When C. Daniel Batson, University of Kansas professor of social psychology, dogmatically asserted to me in a type-written letter back in 1980something that “the self/other divide must be maintained,” upon what evidence did this assertion rest? None.

No, that’s an outdated and discredited reduction that presumes an absolute dualism that does not obtain. Prof. Batson crossed the line, from psychology into mythology, by denying that empathy involves a transpersonal realization of this self-evident Being Aware of Becoming “whose center is in each of us, but whose circumference is NoWhere.”

If you’re so convinced of the facticity of the self/other divide, dear colleagues, then put your finger on it. Of what is it made? how does it function? is it permeable, or semi-permeable? if there’s stuff in continuous transport across the divide, then isn’t it’s delineation an arbitrary imposition by the observer?

No. This pointilistic conception of Being only imprisons us in CELLVES of our own making, from within which we then wage war on all else. Sounds like feudalism, to me.

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Zelikow Authored the US National Security Strategy, What Could He Gain from Myth-Jacking the Report?

Rumsfeld leaned heavily on the FBI and CIA to find any shred of evidence linking the Iraq government to 9/11, but they weren't able to. So he set up his own fact-finding group in the Pentagon, the Office of Special Plans that would provide him with whatever shaky connections it could find or surmise.

Feeling confident that all plans were on track for moving aggressively in the world, the Bush Administration in September of 2002 published the "National Security Strategy of the United States of America." The official policy of the U.S. government, as proudly proclaimed in this major document, is virtually identical to the policy proposals in the various white papers of the Project for the New American Century and others like it over the past decade.[It wasn't known at the time that Zelikow was the author.]

www.crisispapers.com

Zelikow's Figleaf for Torture (The Infamous Textbox of Page 146)

Detainee Interrogation Reports
Chapters 5 and 7 rely heavily on information obtained from captured al Qaeda members. A number of these "detainees" have firsthand knowledge of the 9/11 plot.

Assessing the truth of statements by these witnesses--sworn enemies of the United States--is challenging. Our access to them has been limited to the review of intelligence reports based on communications received from the locations where the actual interrogations take place. We submitted questions for use in the interrogations, but had no control over whether, when, or how questions of particular interest would be asked. Nor were we allowed to talk to the interrogators so that we could better judge the credibility of the detainees and clarify ambiguities in the reporting. We were told that our requests might disrupt the sensitive interrogation process.

We have nonetheless decided to include information from captured 9/11 conspirators and al Qaeda members in our report. We have evaluated their statements carefully and have attempted to corroborate them with documents statements of others. In this report, we indicate where such statements provide the foundation for our narrative. We have been authorized to identify by name only ten detainees whose custody has been confirmed officially by the U.S. governement.*

____________
*Those detainees are Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, Riduan Isamuddin (also known as Hambali), Abd Rahim al Nashiri, Tawfiq bin Attash (also known as Khallad), Ramzi Binalshibh, Mohamed al Kahtani, Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al Ani, Ali Abd al Rahman al Faqasi (also known as Abu Bakr al Azdi), and Hassan Ghul.

Myth-Jack THIS

Friday, June 20, 2008

Torture by Isolation is What We Do

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Zelikow Authored the US National Security Strategy, What Could He Gain from Myth-Jacking the Report?

Zelikow's Figleaf for Torture (The Infamous Textbox of Page 146)

Cisterna Mystica