General Robots

Waterboarding Memo als Song


(Youtube Direktfolter, via BoingBoing)

Obama hat neulich gegen den Willen der CIA die Memos zum Waterboarding veröffentlicht, woraufhin Jonathan „I write a single Song every day“ Mann genau aus diesen Texten einen Song geschrieben hat. Ein Youtube-Kommentator meint: „the banality of evil made beautiful“. So ist es.

the detainee is lying on a gurney
that’s inclined at an angle: 10 to 15 degrees
a cloth is placed over the detainee’s face
cold water is poured on the cloth

the wet cloth creates
a barrier through which
it is difficult or in some cases not possible
for the detainee to breathe

if the detainee
makes an effort to defeat the technique
by twisting his head to the side and breathing
out the corner of his mouth
the interrogator may cup his hands around
the detainees nose and mouth
in which case it would not be posible for him to breathe!

As we explained
in the Section 2340A Memorandum,
“pain and suffering”
(as used in Section 2340)
is best understood as a single concept,
not distinct concepts
of “pain” as distinguished from “suffering”…

The waterboard,
which inflicts no pain or actual harm whatsoever,
does not, in our view inflict “severe pain or suffering”.
Even if one were to parse the statute more finely
to treat “suffering” as a distinct concept,
the waterboard could not be said to inflict severe sufering.

The waterboard is simply a controlled acute episode, lacking the connotation of a protracted period of time generally given to suffering.

Die Foltersongs aus Guantanamo

Hier die Liste der Folter-Songs von Guantanamo. Bee Gees, Britney, Aguilera, Peppers… da verstehe ich ja, dass man diese Songs zum Foltern einsetzt. Aber das Theme der Sesamstraße? WTF?!

AC/DC – Hell’s Bells, Shoot to Thrill
Aerosmith
Barney the Purple Dinosaur – theme tune
Bee Gees – Stayin’ Alive
Britney Spears
Bruce Springsteen – Born in the USA
Christina Aguilera – Dirrty
David Gray – Babylon
Deicide – Fuck Your God
Don McLean – American Pie
Dope – Die MF Die, Take Your Best Shot
Dr. Dre
Drowning Pools – Bodies
Eminem – Kim, Slim Shady, White America
Li’l Kim
Limp Bizkit
Matchbox Twenty – Gold
Meat Loaf
Metallica – Enter Sandman
Neil Diamond – America
Nine Inch Nails – March of the Pigs, Mr. Self-Destruct
Prince – Raspberry Beret
Queen – We are The Champions
Rage Against the Machine – Killing in the Name Of
Red Hot Chilli Peppers
Saliva – Click Click Boom
Sesame Street – Thema der Kindersendung
Tupac – All Eyes on Me

Hell’s Bells in Guantanamo (via Fefe)

Wie gute Menschen böse werden (2): Philip Zimbardo on TED.com


(TED Direktevil)

Vor einem halben Jahr hatte ich ein Interview mit dem Psychologen Philip Zimbardo verlinkt, der 1971 das berühmt-berüchtigte Stanford-Experiment durchführte, in dem er Studenten in Wärter und Gefangene einteilte und das Grundlage für den Film „Das Experiment“ war. In dem Interview ging es darum, welche psychologischen Trigger dazu führen, das praktisch jeder von uns in der Lage ist, Folter wie in Abu Ghreib anzuwenden.

Zimbardo: Abu Ghraib was under bombardment all the time. In the prison, five soldiers and 20 Iraqi prisoners get killed. That means automatically any soldier working there is under high fear and high stress. Then the insurgency starts in 2003, and they start arresting everyone in sight. When Chip Frederick [starts working at Abu Ghraib] in September, there are 200 prisoners there. Within three months there’s a thousand prisoners with a handful of guards to take care of them, so they’re overwhelmed. Frederick and the others worked 12-hour shifts. How many days a week? Seven. How many days without a day off? Forty. That kind of stress reduces decision-making and critical thinking and rationality. But that’s only the beginning.

He [complained] to higher-ups on the record, “We have mentally ill patients who cover themselves with [excrement]. We have people with tuberculosis that shouldn’t be in this population. We have kids mixed with adults.”

And they tell him, “It’s a war zone. Do your job. Do whatever you have to do.”

Damals hat er auch einen Vortrag während der TED-Konferenz gehalten und ich versprach, das Video nachzuliefern. There you go.

Psychologist Philip Zimbardo knows how easy it is for nice people to turn bad. In this talk, he shares his insights — and graphic, unsettling, unseen photos — from the Abu Ghraib trials, where he served as an expert witness. But he also studies the flip side of this question — how easy it is to become a hero, and how we can help each other rise to the challenge.

Vorsicht, einige der Bilder der Präsentation sind sehr, sehr verstörend und der Vortrag stellt unserer Selbstverständnis und das Konzept „Menschlichkeit“ gehörig auf den Kopf.

Die Frau hinter der Kamera in Abu Ghraib.

Der New Yorker hat die Geschichte der Frau aufgeschrieben, die die Aufnahmen aus dem Foltergefängnis in Abu Ghraib gemacht hat. Liest sich teilweise sehr verstörend, was mich allerdings auch kaum überrascht.

Okay, I don’t like that anymore. At first it was funny but these people are going too far. I ended your letter last night because it was time to wake the MI prisoners and “mess with them” but it went too far even I can’t handle whats going on. I cant get it out of my head. I walk down stairs after blowing the whistle and beating on the cells with an asp to find “the taxicab driver” handcuffed backwards to his window naked with his underwear over his head and face. He looked like Jesus Christ. At first I had to laugh so I went on and grabbed the camera and took a picture. One of the guys took my asp and started “poking” at his dick. Again I thought, okay that’s funny then it hit me, that’s a form of molestation. You can’t do that. I took more pictures now to “record” what is going on. They started talking to this man and at first he was talking “I’m just a taxicab driver, I did nothing.” He claims he’d never try to hurt US soldiers that he picked up the wrong people. Then he stopped talking. They turned the lights out and slammed the door and left him there while they went down to cell #4. This man had been so fucked that when they grabbed his foot through the cell bars he began screaming and crying. After praying to Allah he moans a constant short Ah, Ah every few seconds for the rest of the night. I don’t know what they did to this guy. The first one remained handcuffed for maybe 1 ½-2 hours until he started yelling for Allah. So they went back in and handcuffed him to the top bunk on either side of the bed while he stood on the side. He was there for a little over an hour when he started yelling again for Allah. Not many people know this shit goes on. The only reason I want to be there is to get the pictures and prove that the US is not what they think. But I don’t know if I can take it mentally. What if that was me in their shoes. These people will be our future terrorist. Kelly, its awful and you know how fucked I am in the head. Both sides of me think its wrong. I thought I could handle anything. I was wrong.

Link (via)

Folter-Dokumentation „Taxi to the Darkside“ der BBC online

time.jpg

Die Dokumentation „Why Democracy? Taxi to the Dark Side“ untersucht die Foltervorwürfe gegen die USA anhand des afghanischen Taxifahrers Dilawar, der fünf Tage nach der Inhaftierung in Bagram starb.

The documentary, by award-winning producer Alex Gibney, carefully develops the last weeks of Dilawar’s life and shows how decisions taken at the pinnacle of power in the Bush Administration led directly to Dilawar’s brutal death. The film documents how Rumsfeld, together with the White House legal team, were able to convince Congress to approve the use of torture against prisoners of war. Taxi to the Dark Side is the definitive exploration of the introduction of torture as an interrogation technique in U.S. facilities, and the roles played by key figures of the Bush Administration in the process. (Wikipedia)

Gib mir den Rest, Baby…

Wie gute Menschen böse werden…

Auf Wired gibt es ein hochinteressantes Interview mit dem Psychologen Philip Zimbardo, der 1971 das berühmt-berüchtigte Stanford-Experiment durchführte, in dem er Studenten in Wärter und Gefangene einteilte und das Grundlage für den Film „Das Experiment“ war. Im Interview geht es um die Folter im irakischen Abu Ghraib:

Wired: You were an expert defense witness in the court-martial of Sgt. Chip Frederick, an Abu Ghraib guard. What were the situational influences in his case?

Zimbardo: Abu Ghraib was under bombardment all the time. In the prison, five soldiers and 20 Iraqi prisoners get killed. That means automatically any soldier working there is under high fear and high stress. Then the insurgency starts in 2003, and they start arresting everyone in sight. When Chip Frederick [starts working at Abu Ghraib] in September, there are 200 prisoners there. Within three months there’s a thousand prisoners with a handful of guards to take care of them, so they’re overwhelmed. Frederick and the others worked 12-hour shifts. How many days a week? Seven. How many days without a day off? Forty. That kind of stress reduces decision-making and critical thinking and rationality. But that’s only the beginning.

He [complained] to higher-ups on the record, “We have mentally ill patients who cover themselves with [excrement]. We have people with tuberculosis that shouldn’t be in this population. We have kids mixed with adults.”

And they tell him, “It’s a war zone. Do your job. Do whatever you have to do.”

Heute hat er auf der TED-Konferenz gesprochen, ich denke, das Video dazu wird in den nächsten Tagen im meinem Feedreader auftauchen. Ich reiche das dann nach.

Link

[update] Auf der TED-Website gibt es erste Notizen zu Zimbardos Vortrag:

What makes people go wrong?. “The line between good and evil is movable and permeable. Good people can be seduced through that line. Good and evil are the yin and yang of the world; God’s favorite angel was Lucifer, which God punished by sending to Hell — paradoxically, it was God who created evil. Evil is the exercise of power to intentionally harm people psychologically, destroy them physically and commit crimes against humanity.”

NSFW: Disturbing New Photos From Abu Ghraib

NSFW: VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED. As an expert witness in the defense of an Abu Ghraib guard who was court-martialed, psychologist Philip Zimbardo had access to many of the images of abuse that were taken by the guards themselves. For a presentation at the TED conference in Monterey, California, Zimbardo assembled some of these pictures into a short video. Wired.com obtained the video from Zimbardo’s talk, and is publishing some of the stills from that video here. Many of the images are explicit and gruesome, depicting nudity, degradation, simulated sex acts and guards posing with decaying corpses. Viewer discretion is advised.

Link

Geral Laings Irak-Art

Link

Wertsache Folter

Hier frage ich mich, wo die Verurteilung der Verantwortlichen bei den richtigen Foltervorwürfen bleibt? Müssen die auch rund 100000 Euros abdrücken? Und wieviel ist so eine irakische Demütigung eigentlich Wert? Und die eines Oberst?
Oder stelle ich einfach zuviele Fragen?
update: Und 2 Sekunden später finde ich das hier und: Nein! Ich stelle nicht zuviele Fragen!
folter