Open House at US Torture Sites, If We Do It, It Is Not Torture Giuliani

          When I was in Eastern Europe, in the former Soviet Union, one of the "attractions" for tourists, no doubt for "educational" purposes was where they tortured people, and most likely killed people too, sometimes after torturing them, sometimes during. My sense of sensibility told me to stay away from these places, for good reason.

          One place I did get near to was a rock where not a few people were tortured and killed but many people ceremoniously over many many more years than the Soviet Union existed, and long before the Russians came to town centuries earlier. I did not even need to see the plaque to know what went on there, there was a darkness to that rock, a palpable chill when I got closer to it and knew better than to get too close.

          Like many of such "sacred" places, that was where the first churches were set up. Christianity has a dark side much deeper than the Spanish Inquisition. It goes back nearly as far as the religion itself, and it was integral to how it spread itself to be a "world religion". To be relateable to the local Europeans, Christianity adapted itself not only to the locations where humans were sacrificed and tortured, but adopted the same language as well. A "powerful God" "sacrificed" and allowed the "torture" of his "only Son" for YOU and to give you your life, and you owe him your respect and allegiance, and if you do fail to do so and obey the rules he has stated that you must follow, he will TORTURE YOU, and not just for a little while as he did allowed when he gave up his Son for you, but F O R E V E R ! ! ! Are we not being clear here? Want us to act it out a bit then? You know we will.

          Not to put all of this onto those "barbarian pagan Europeans". Because long before Jesus, the same faith that Jesus followed, the "True" faith before him in which he was raised (and mostly rejected and was punished as a heretic for dissing, Fundamentalist Christians really can’t grasp that part), a forerunner founder within this faith of the one "true God" who showed his proclivity for human sacrifices by asking one of his most devoted followers to kill one of his sons in tribute to Him. The lessons in this being that He showed His magnanimity by letting Abraham off the hook at the last second, and that the whole thing was to be a reminder, not just to Abraham but to all, never to love anything or anyone more than Him. Or you get the point of what He may demand you to do if you happen to forget that little lesson.

          I do not mean to dwell on the dark pasts of these religions, but for many many people this is not the past at all, this is still how they frame and interpret the world around them. Torture, human sacrifice, they are inseparable from these faiths. They, inadvertently or not, teach them. They may say they are bad, but that even God does it, or allows it, under "certain circumstances."

          My first "taught" exposure to torture as a child, the earliest Gold Standard of torture, besides the Crucifixion, was the whipping of Jesus, acted out in glorious Technicolor, to enlighten three and four year olds (as far back as I can remember) like me of the world I now inhabited. It was not long before that standard was surpassed for me by my own government, but the earliest impressions still remain.

         But it is not the past that concerns me. The future is all that I think of because within that, the future, the past is given whatever value it might have, could have, but only when it is looked at honestly. I have gone on more than a few times about how Revelations has NOTHING to do with Jesus, not what he said, not what he taught, and it was added onto what was otherwise an attempted "Buddhist-like" spin on a Middle Eastern religion. It was added later, it was antithetical to the whole point of Christianity, and it was done to terrorize people as much if not more, than to "enlighten" them. And that "addition" to the New Testament has led to genocides in the past, and if not corrected, will lead to more, long after the current one contemplated, if that one doesn’t eliminate the possibility for more by eliminating humanity itself.

          But these, and these are by no means minor, these are not the only dark centers within Christianity, or that mutation that some sects call Christianity which would no doubt shock even Martin Luther, not to belittle the corruption and decadence that he bore witness to.

          I came across a paper blowing in the wind of a "song" to be sung at a Christian revival meeting. The gist of it went, "Enter me Jesus, take me over Jesus, there is nothing in me but you, Jesus."

          If I were an atheist, that probably would not bother me. If I was a pure Buddhist, I might think that a bit messed up, but relatively harmless, though a bit dark and dangerous. Knowing as much as I do about many faiths, for those wanting to be taken over so completely by a spirit, in essence, a name, giving up completely their sense of a self, without any reservation or means to compass what is a Jesus (oh, I know, they would know if it was something else) from a Satan (not to say either do or do not exist, but I am pretty sure those opening themselves up to be "taken completely over" by "Jesus" are sure as heck the kind of people who would believe in a "Satan" as well).

          To know how the Christian faith has evolved (another word Fundamentalists hate) over the centuries, to think that this kind of darkness, this kind of "positive" possession, is the end result for millions of "the Faith," this is almost unbearable. For those who truly have loved Christianity, have seen it grow, it is as heartbreaking it is for Americans to see the United States becoming the world’s largest promoter of torture, of torture without charges or trials, of potentially lifelong detentions, and of a leader who is not only above the law, any law except what he chooses to recognize, but also can be a judge, juror, and executioner for every other living person on the planet. They are the same kinds of heartbreak, the same sort of endless disappointment.

          As much as Christianity has called any other type of faith, heathens, pagans, devil worshippers, they have through the diversity and growth over the centuries, become such a wide brush, it in many aspects has become in many measures and from many angles, infected with the worst of what they accuse others of. Knowing this, seeing this, ACKNOWLEDGING THIS, is the only path to rid itself of this, the only means of redemption possible.

          And for America, this too is the only path of true redemption. When is America going to give guided tours of its (hopefully soon to be "former") torture chambers in Eastern Europe, Guantanamo Bay, and elsewhere as Russia and its ex-client states torturer’s apprentices have done? Are we even on track for such a truth awakening? Do we even conceive it to be possible anymore?

          In the very same countries where the Soviet Union tortured people, we have set up shop, though doubtlessly "renovated" and "technologically improved." Is there a single credible candidate for Congress or the Presidency that would say we ought to educate our public of the torturing done in their name, done supposedly for their benefits, so they might have a REASON to ask that we stop this decent into inhumanity, or will they all continue the farce of denial, acquiescing that what people don’t know won’t hurt them (but will kill many others)?

          For the first time we are about to approve an attorney general who, in advance, unlike Gonzales, says torture is allowable and that the President is sometimes above the law. While claiming to be above saying torture is good, and while most probably believing it personally himself to be negative, he has stated that he does not believe "water-boarding" has necessarily been determined to be torture.

          If not this, water-boarding, something the equivalent of induced suffocation sometimes accidentally ending in death, then how many other "classified" secret methods of our "alternative interrogation techniques" would he consider not torture at all? Would he even demand that these definitions be made public so that a "democracy" founded upon the "consent of the governed" might allow those supposedly giving their consent to even be allowed to know what our leadership considers to be torture and not to be torture, to be allowed to voice an informed opinion on it at all? No, he maintains all of such methods and matters, regardless of US and international laws to the contrary are the up to the judgement and discretion of the President who nominated him for that position.

          This President, regardless of what the Constitution says to the contrary is, by his definition, above the law completely just so long as he says "national security" before killing and torturing and invading, and says the same before classifying any and all evidence needed to make a judgement upon those decisions, or any others he may make, and laws he may have broken.

          While I wish to refrain from the relative insanity being thrown about as "speech" in the Presidential campaign, one remark has made it impossible for me to remain silent. Our definition of what is torture and isn't, (and from the "major candidates" for the US Presidency, many of which qualify as committing international crimes of threatening to bomb and attack countries), to Rudy Guiliani, the definition of torture is quite simple in the world he wishes to lead us into. If we do it, it is not torture. Whether or not something is torture now depends not upon the act, not upon the technique or method, but upon which person or group who is doing it. As psychotic as that "reasoning" is, he does earn the Gold Star for Honesty.

          The most deranged thing is, that such statements, which would not be tolerated by our Press if any other candidate or world leader attempted to put forth such, "if we do it, it is not torture, if you do it, it is," but that they sell this to the American public as a "qualification" to "lead". And the public, enough quite possibly to get such a madman, or a person who chooses to imitate one for the purpose of "leading" a country to openly embrace torture, endless wars, and countless types of double-think reasoning, applauds it wildly. "Keep us safe, Rudy" even if, or because, your ideas would likely be the death of us all, at least "you calls it as you seize it." :-)

          Torture is in fact, though many Americans may not know it, an American institution. Not one that ever got much press mind you, but like slavery, and because of it, something we excelled at. We had, during a Golden Age of Enlightenment of the 19th century, many human non-persons to experiment upon, refine torture techniques, to attempt to break people psychologically, physically, and completely, as one might "break" a horse.

          A good book upon modern slavery (Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy by Kevin Bales) had pictures of some of these devices, invented by Americans and patented no less, for the purpose of torturing human beings. But that was then, you may say, we are so much better than that now. I know better than to lash out wildly, if and this mind you is quite restrained considering the travesties, and dare I say the inhumanly evil hypocrisies which allow these unspeakable horrors to remain safely hidden below the radar so they can grow and thrive and become our environment, so I will just conclude with this.

          When our devoted leaders say water-boarding and other techniques do not lead to permanent brain damage (untrue) or lasting irreparable trauma (definitely not true), how is it they have the data to back up such statements, even if they are lies? Because while these "interrogations" are going on, mostly with those often believe to be completely innocent, many under the age of 18 and by definition of all countries children, they are studied, measured, refined.

          I most likely will never write what I termed "Doctors on the Darkside" but it had to do with the fact that the only thing that slowed this from spreading out of control before Cheney/Bush was that it was socially unacceptable, and that is by far the greatest atrocity being done now in plain sight, worst than even our crimes of aggression. "What did you do today at work Daddy?" "Well honey, we put electrodes on peoples ----------s, and measured how much time it took while we tortured them for them to pass out from the agony. We did it for hours, then measured the right number of hours in-between to find the right intervals to drive them completely insane quicker than those we tested yesterday. And tomorrow we will try out a new technique of torture that I devised all by myself!" Wife- "Dear, to I smell a raise?" "No, that’s just the smell of burnt human flesh again, I can’t seem to wash it out of my clothes." "Well, then we’ll just have to find the right detergent. We’re so proud of you."

          I am not saying America is alone in this type of "research" and development. I am saying, though we have sold the "fruits" of our testing to other countries in the past, and now study our pupils now outpacing us due to their greater availability of test subjects than we have to work with, we have pushed it more publicly than any other to be accepted. The "We don’t torture" BS doesn’t cut it anymore when we boast of it at the same time. We are using torture worldwide in an attempt to intimidate countries from dissenting to the leaders we approve of for them, and now even to scare our own people from dissenting at home.

          It has seeped into our culture so much, we no longer by and large even see that it is there. While in Sweden, in legal citizen limbo, I watched a TV show (an American show) by and large aimed at children, an "educational" show about dangerous animals. In it was a scene about using what is learned from animals to subdue people and a scene was shown of demonstrators holding signs being tear-gassed while the narrator joked and mocked them in a comical voice. This was so much nicer, we are meant to think, at breaking up marches (a democratic form of supposedly legal dissent and protest) than just shooting them all instead. (Message to kids: Protesters with signs, bad, gassing them good, and funny too!) The credits at the end stated the footage of the protest being "broken up" was provided by the US Army and looked to be a Central or South American country.

          I also remember around that time reading of a person who was "questioned" in Afghanistan in the presence of a CIA "observer" who, the interviewee, was hung in mid-air by his arms tied behind his backs for days and on occasion beaten until he finally died from the pain as his arms separated from their sockets. The kicker is that the CIA observer noted that he was most likely completely innocent. All without so much as being charged with a crime, never mind convicted of one. Compare that to Jesus, who by all measures, perhaps inadvertently or on purpose, inspired people to revolt and was given at least a trial before being tortured to death. This person by admission was mostly likely innocent, not with evidence to be charged, and still no crime was committed in torturing him to death since it was the "good guys" dishing it out. "Rudy would do it" as the bumper sticker saying goes. Many people were turned over to them simple to get the reward money, or as a good way to say goodbye forever to someone you did not like or owed money to.

          But according to Rudy's logic, if we had done that, it might not had been torture.

          I am not pointing fingers at anyone. It is a dangerous world we live it. Torture being done, scientists perfecting it. People have been promoting it here on TV or making it palatable to the general public and are getting multi-million dollar salaries in return. But others have silently, and some no so silently, rebelled against this. It is in them and in their lives the hope of any bright future is to be found. Some when asked to torture, to murder unjustly, to go on TV and say how it is debatably reasonable to do such things to people who quite possibly are completely innocent to "possibly" "save" others, namely yourselves from some threat, real or imagined, they quit.

          Others, they do something else. If they are not brave or secure enough to quit, they do what they are asked, but they do it badly. They, though purposeful ineptitude, choose to leave behind a record for the day when a new leadership is in charge who would wish to right the wrongs (or at least recognize them) of the past. It is apparent to all the world now and to themselves, the Democrats in America are no such people. They, in the equivalent of terms of the USSR, would shoot those who would come forward just as much as the previous dictatorship would, they would build towering structures over the mass unmarked graves, and they would bury the past crimes completely and forever.

          Where others saw the "most incompetent administration ever," I saw a group of people seeing the atrocities going on all around them and did the best they could to try to walk the middle ground, those who did not quit outright and those unlike those without consciences, they did what they were asked as badly as believably possible, but so far, to no avail.

          It probably does not matter if Rudy "if we do it, it is not torture" Giuliani becomes the next President, or Hillary Clinton, or Dick Cheney. The mantra is the same. The bodies will stay buried. Torture will become more mainstream. Trials, when allowed at all will become more farcical to the greater ratings and laugh tracks of the Daily Show and Colbert Report. Those who did the unconscionable will watch their superiors who ordered it all go not only unpunished, but becoming more wealthy and respected than ever because of it all, and they will only have what remains of their own consciences to be propped up by the fact that they, at least, did not do it well, and that if anyone of power ever had cared worth damn, it all could have been exposed and stopped.

Note: The previous post, Rise of the Peacemakers, was written the day my Mom died. I had only posted the Molly Hatchett quote before I got the news, and did not have time to proof-read the rest before putting it off for awhile. I was going to put it up later the same day (now about 10 days ago) but was in no real rush. Today I put up the full post below of the Rise of the Peacemakers the way it was written that morning.