What torture sounds like

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That’s the sound of exceptionalism.

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The sound of FREEDOM, and DEMOCRACY!

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Is it anything like the screams of innocent people dying from terrorist attacks?

It’s why they do it. Not to get information, not to save friendly lives, not even to punish.

When beaten, [known innocent prisoner Dilawar] repeatedly cried “Allah!” The outcry appears to have amused U.S. military personnel, as the act of striking him in order to provoke a scream of “Allah!” eventually “became a kind of running joke,” according to one of the MPs. “People kept showing up to give this detainee a common peroneal strike just to hear him scream out ‘Allah,’” he said. “It went on over a 24-hour period, and I would think that it was over 100 strikes.” [1]

It’s because of the warm, giggly feeling it gives them deep inside. It’s because it’s funny, to them, to hear the screams. It’s because of the release they feel when a person’s mind irrevocably breaks. It’s because of the adrenaline rush they experience from the sweats, the stenches, the sounds.

At Bagram, Dilawar was chained to the ceiling of his cell, suspended by his wrists for four days. His arms were dislocated from their sockets, and flapped around limply whenever guards collected him for interrogation. During his detention, Dilawar’s legs were beaten to a pulp and an amputation would have been necessary. He is survived by his wife, and daughter, Bibi Rashida. [2]

Torture is an end in and of itself. The people who do it are torturers, they aren’t soldiers or spies or politicians or anything else. They are people fundamentally defined by the act of torture, and by the feelings of power and sexual excitement they harvest from the suffering of others. The only reason they aren’t torturing someone you love right now is luck. It’s not because of any reasons of state or guilt or innocence. You’re just lucky they haven’t yet found an excuse to get their hands on you personally. It’s what they do.

Currently the USA, which has a long history of creating torturers in other lands[3], is hard at work creating torturers at home.

The infliction of physical punishment is not every man’s job, and naturally we were only too glad to recruit men who were prepared to show no squeamishness at their task. Unfortunately, we knew nothing about the Freudian side of the business, and it was only after a number of instances of unnecessary flogging and meaningless cruelty that I tumbled to the fact that my organization had been attracting all the sadists in Germany and Austria without my knowledge for some time past. It had also been attracting unconscious sadists, i.e. men who did not know themselves that they had sadist leanings until they took part in a flogging. And finally it had actually been creating sadists. For it seems that corporal chastisement ultimately arouses sadistic leanings in apparently normal men and women. Freud might explain it. [4]

Cultures that do not seek out and destroy the torturers within their ranks will suffer for it.

Citations:
[1] Bagram torture and prisoner abuse - Wikipedia
[2] Viewpoint: The Passion of Dilawar of Yakubi
[3] Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation - Wikipedia
[4] Gestapo Chief Rudolf Diels, as quoted in Larson’s “In the Garden of Beasts”.

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I see what you did there. As seen on The Daily Show’s Immoral Kombat segment.

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Yes. People in fear and pain tend to scream out in much the same way. And that’s why torture is wrong. :weary:

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Why does that matter? We’re supposed to be better than them. I am; you’re not.

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Since none of these people were tried, yes, it was the screams of innocent people, in some cases dying.

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Torture is terrible. Torture is terrorizing. Torture is an attack. Torture is violence.

We can call it Torturism.

So, Terrorism vs. Torturism: who has the better ideology?

Probably. It´s fitting since both are caused by self-righteous, sadistic shitstains who use patriotism and religion as a cover to unhamperedly get their nuts off killing and torturing their helpless victims.

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I wonder if it’s not that there are secret hidden “torturers” that gravitate towards the military, then move through the ranks to where their secret inherent torturing nature can manifest itself, but moreso that there is a subset of the population who could function normally in a society (without torturing), but can be turned into a “torturer” with enough indoctrination etc…

It seems awfully suspicious and convenient that inherent torturers happened to exist at the right place at the right time. I suspect that it’s more like you note that they’re being created (which is breaking them as well).

It’s either the military or the police the secret torturers gravitate to.

Yes this is true.

These banal pieces of shit who are likely regarded as heroic pillars of their communities – need to be forced to watch similar things happen to whom they love, including their brats and their grandbrats, their nasty little towns, likely in the sticks somewhere - like in the south, upstate NY, Idaho, Grosse Pointe, MI and so forth. – except for their pets - ESPECIALLY their Shih-Tzus & Birds – who should be re-homed.

Of course I cannot really imagine a person who’s sidekick (or sidekicks) is a Shih-Tzu and/or a bird, especially a Parrot, could be capable of such evil. I’m not saying is not possible - just obviously not very likely.

(Moderator - my apologies for the above sub-par post which supports - and is indeed is a good example of the sort of thought emotion-process and nasty clannish-minded grokking that leads to such otherwise seeming unremarkable banal people to engage in such torture, mass murder over a hundred children in Pakistan, bomb Hiroshima & Nagasaki, and etcetera.)

Sounds like they can quit using Skinny Puppy and just use their own stuff – recursive terror.

EXACTLY. Thank you for elucidating so well the point I’ve been trying to make myself in much less well-referenced words. :smile:

I’m not denying that those with inherent tendencies will tend to gravitate to jobs where they can find an outlet. I’m simply suggesting that police and military systems are specifically designed to tear down a person as an individual so that you follow orders and are willing to do things that few sane people are willing to do (grab a gun and jump into danger to shoot strangers. etc…) Pushing the indoctrination further and you “break” people and turn them into torturers etc…

I know some really good people who are Marines who served in Iraq and Afganistan, and each and every one has come back “broken” to some degree. Mostly over things they saw or did themselves, that are so incompatible with their fundamental personality that they can’t come to terms with it. One guy told me that they were ordered to secure an area of a town, and the given order was “every male over X age is an enemy combatant”. The age was one that we’d usually consider part of childhood here in the states. Every male that was seen over this age was shot. period. He can’t answer why they did it other than that those were the orders, and you don’t disobey orders.
The guy who told me this is truly a good person (or so I believe enough to welcome into my house and have him around my family), and this experience haunts him and keeps him hovering right on the edge of suicide despite counseling and enough meds to choke an elephant. He was broken before receiving orders to obey implicitly, and has been even more broken by following these orders. I do not believe him to be an inherent child murderer, just a so so student from an iffy family background that made him think that the military was a decent option out of high school rather than taking a minimum wage job. Apparently flipping burgers wasn’t that bad of an idea.

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One guy told me that they were ordered to secure an area of a town, and the given order was “every male over X age is an enemy combatant”. The age was one that we’d usually consider part of childhood here in the states. Every male that was seen over this age was shot. period. He can’t answer why they did it other than that those were the orders, and you don’t disobey orders.

Sounds like a war crime…

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I don’t disagree. The problem is that nobody of import will ever be prosecuted, and you have destroyed lives on two continents.

You kind of have to tread carefully when someone shares something like this. They’re so messed up by it (and rightfully so) that most days he doesn’t see a good way to continue on. I’ve kind of gently probed a bit, and he proudly notes that he was a pretty horrible shot that day (said with a bit of a smile). In his mind there was no way to just be a reasonable human and say “fuck orders”. His best resistance was to miss on purpose.

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