Various Topics

I will put some points here about the various issues in the world. I will do this by just typing directly here and also by pasting in some text from many of my email messages to friends.
I will also write about other stuff, like science and philosophy.


Waterboarding is/isn't Torture? 

First of all, it needs to be stated from the start that I don't agree with torture and that I think that waterboarding is most definitely torture. - added in 2019, in my current mental state, which seems to be more well developed. - the main point here is that waterboarding a detainee is completely different from doing it to a trainee soldier. 

For those pseudo-intellectuals who are agonizing over the above question, just read the following for its simple and logical approach and ask yourself 'why didn't I think of that'? [see 3rd main paragraph below]

Basic Chinese Water Torture or Chinese Water Treatment should, by logic, be considered a very good option as a means of US interrogation of detainees. It is not as apparently terrifying as waterboarding and doesn't cause hearing damage as White Noise treatment can. As such, it would not be considered torture by the Bush regime, unless you are from a far eastern country and are not versed in western doublespeak.

The main form of Chinese Water Treatment is actually a very slow drip that falls on the lower middle part of the forehead when the head is slightly tilted back. The person is restrained in a chair for a long time. The process eventually drives the person insane. It is strange, because it seems a very innocuous thing at first. Waterboarding, on the other hand can get quicker results. Whether this leads to true confessions is not always a relevant aspect of its use.

The waterboarding technique is also a very old method and was always considered as torture until recently when Bush made a public statement saying that it wasn't! How did he/they get away with this? Simple - there's 'waterboarding training' and there is 'waterboarding treatment', which is really 'waterboarding torture'. The training one is done in a very safe and controlled way and it is practiced on extremely fit US soldiers, like Navy Seals. But the soldier knows that he is going to be ok after a minute or so, even though the experience is one of the most unpleasant types of training. It is supposed to toughen the soldiers up.
Detainees on the other hand, don't know whether or not they are going to live or die when undergoing the same thing. It then becomes infinitely more terrifying and is done for longer periods on detainees, often with hate on the part of the personnel carrying it out. In fact, it is better if some of the detainees die, because it instils fear in the other detainees. The death can always be put down to an accidental one, anyway.

The world wasn't supposed to know about the Abu Ghraib policies, by the way. The policies were part of a stepped up interrogation protocol that was devised by a member of the CIA and sanctioned by Rumsfeld and Chaney.

McCain considers waterboarding as torture and is against it. I mention him, because he was once a detainee in Viet Nam.

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I used to think that torture was a necessary evil that was best kept secret by agencies like the CIA. So, is the Bush Regime being more open? No, Abu Grhaib tactics weren't supposed to be known by the world, but it leaked out and it was indirectly shown that Rumsfeld sanctioned it. So, they must have been investigated more after that. The Dem's acquired more power in the Senate and Hilary Clinton was the one who helped to get rid of Rumseld. She advocates torture in extreme cases herself, but at least she admits that it is torture like McCain does.
It is when somebody like Bush comes along and says that it is 'not torture' that you have to be really scared. They are still renditioning now and many people in the past were innocent.
Torture is against the Geneva Convention and to abuse democratic laws on a continuous basis is not good. At best, it should be used in extreme cases. But even then it won't be allowed. They did it and do it because they have unfairly defined it as NOT torture.
I think that it doesn't work and a muslim extremist, even in imminent dirty bomb cases, would be better treated in another way. For example, you could get a very holy man of islam or a high ranking muller to try and convince the prisoners to give out the vital info.
They have shown that torture doesn't work on these extremists and it obviously won't work and won't be fair on innocent ones. It was shown in the cases of the fanatics that waterboarding and other torture didn't work and in fact it caused more muslims to volunteer in fighting against the US. More on that later.
Waterboarding may be an effective torture technique in itself; it was used since ancient times. But nobody kidded themselves that it wasn't torture.
Trainees in the US military don't really undergo the same thing anyway and they are volunteers as well. Detainees* on the other hand have known to have died during the process. More evidence is available from a previous conflict. Also some evidence from far eastern countries showed that some people broke their wrists, etc as they tried to struggle during the waterboarding treatment.
If you read my article again, you will understand what i'm trying to get at now.

When they tested the waterboarding technique on some CIA agents, they only lasted about 15 seconds; whereas muslim fanatics were known to have lasted anywhere from 1 to 2 minutes! If you want to find out exactly what Waterboarding is, then look it up on Wiki.

* There were detainees from other conflicts as well.

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Torture doesn't really work with extremists. It works in some cases when robbers brake into your house and want to know the combination to a safe; but that is a very different situation.
So, it doesn't even work with average people, because many individuals will just tell the perpetrator/torturer anything to stop the pain.

This whole issue started a while ago wth me, but i mentioned it now because i put a MySpace bulletin up for some MS friends about whether the Olympics should go ahead. Altho, i wasn't really into the Olympics, i said that the UK & the US don't have much basis in which to criticise China when they are doing similar things in Iraq.
It is sad about Tibetans; many of the nomadic types are now in internment camps because China wants to slowly starve them and commit genocide slowly. That's what got this whole ball rolling for me because i have always liked the Tibetans. They are largely vegetarian and live peaceful healthy lives in the mountains with their cattle (cheese, milk, etc). Where is their cattle now? Their culture is also slowly disappearing. The cattle, by the way, are unique as well.
I studied Buddhism in McGill as well and I admired these people. Other chinese are being persecuted as well. The Tibetan way of life is in my view very examplary and they are not polluting the environment like China is. Tibetans are officially chinese and realistically even autonomy is not going to happen. The first stage to get to is to stop the slow genocide and then eventually convince the Chinese to allow the Tibetans to keep their culture in return for the Dalai Lama signing a document saying that the Tibetans will not seek autonomy if they are left alone and allowed to keep their land. If they don't go for that option then the Tibetans are doomed. Autonomy in one state could domino effect to other ones like Manchuria. So, they won't want that.
China are becoming very powerful now - they are going into Africa where western countries failed due to complications with private companies being expensive in building infrastructure in return for resources. China is different; not only are they more unscrupulous than other countries, but they also do biz in a unique way and have a quasi-communistic system whereby they control every level of negotiation and it works quite literally harmoniously on the part of the Chinese. The african elite benefit greatly ofcourse and China can't lose and no other country can compete with them with their remarkably efficient system. Anyone who can obtain african resources in that way will become the greatest superpower.

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The Rise of China

The west think that state capitalism in China will eventually help to democratise it for the better. Maybe it will become a bit more freer for its ppl, but not by much, not as much as we are. The chinese are very careful and do things slowly and patiently and they are very stubborn. they don't risk things much if they don't have to - they go only for really good deals.
At the same time the west, i think, will get less free; by having to compete with China and India, we will lose some of the rights in our workplaces to get cheaper labour. So, i think that as the east gets a bit freer, the west will get less free. They will meet in the middle. Only the upper middle-class (& upper class) like you will be relatively unscathed. If you look at Canadian working conditions in some factories in Toronto who employ many new Canadians and immigrants, you will see that they are not good at all. Esp compared to the working conditions that you have. Even your job is probably not perfect. Some ppl are given too many duties to do in high paying jobs over here, for ex.

I have been to India and saw that some of the buses were overcrowded and it looks typically third world. I felt a little bit of that at rush hour on Jane Street in Toronto a few times when i was there. I don't usually catch the bus at that time though. But a lot of these ppl on the Jane bus are from third world countries and you can feel the third world atmosphere when you are on the bus and the bus is often too full that it is uncomfortable.

China and India will always have unfair conditions in their workplaces and they play a major part in the world economy and you can't compete with the way they work. It may be a good idea to transfer the means of production to africa and south america for cheap goods. China is already training african ppl for various types of work.
The idea for africa, as far as ppl like Geldof are concerned, is to do "fair trade" and get africans to have good working conditions and get their local ecomonies going. Fair trade products are a lot more expensive in the shops, tho. These procucts are chocolate, coffee, etc and can be bought in various western cities. Many upper middle income bracket workers are buying these goods. These workers are usually educated anyway.


The Original MySpace Bulletin Post about the Chinese Olympics issue.

1. Should we boycott the Beijing Olympics?

As far as the UK & the US go, the Olympics should go ahead, because both the US & the UK sanction torture as does China. The US & the UK engage in illegal warfare as well, so they don't have any basis in which to criticise China.
I wish this wasn't the case, but we just don't have a leg to stand on. I'm glad France is critical of China, though. I feel glad about all the protests and embarrassment it is causing China as well. So, it is good that there are torch-bearers and it is also good that there are protesters causing a lot of trouble.

For an explanation of the above, wait for the next bulletin.


2. China is not the only guilty one.

This is a continuation of the previous bulletin topic regarding the Olympics and whether they should be boycotted or not. I’m not really into the Olympics anymore, but I said that western countries need sound grounds in which to criticise China before it can even think of a boycott. It has the obvious grounds of China’s appalling human rights record; but what can one do when China starts to mention our less than perfect record. See a few examples below.

The UK supports US rendition and even secretly condoned Abu Ghraib Style torture in Iraq. Many Prisoners that got sent to Guantanamo Bay were innocent, that's why many of them were eventually released.
The reason so many innocent people went to G’Bay was because they were arrested and renditioned on the slightest pretext. This was done on the principle of ‘spreading a wide net’ and gathering suspected samples of a certain population. This is a rather draconian form of utilitarianism and actually caused more problems in the long run.
Shoddy and corrupt Pakistani police were also paid on a quota basis for every person they arrested. They even ended up sending a harmless retarded person to the prison.

The US uses waterboarding as a means of torture, but doesn’t officially recognise it as torture. They get away with this because they say that ‘navy seals’ are not affected by similar treatment in training. But waterboarding is done in a more careful and controlled way when it comes to US military training; whereas detainees don’t know if they are going to live or die during such treatment. In fact, some have died during other interrogation techniques sanctioned by Chaney and Rumsfeld and this is well known.

The UK has recently aided the US in rendition which involved a variety of torture methods. The UK itself doesn’t use waterboarding as a means of torture (as far as I know), but has used White Noise treatment in the past on a small sampled population from Belfast. It wasn’t a random selection of people; it was an attempt to net a suspected target population that had large numbers of IRA members.
The many affected innocent members of the population were considered acceptable casualties in this process. The actual torture method of white noise is highly effective as a means of torture and very damaging for the psychology of the individuals involved. Many victims of this treatment have permanent mental problems. Like waterboarding, there is not usually any external physical trauma with white noise treatment. However, it was in its initial stages of use and as such was used primitively. This meant that the people involved had to stand for long periods of time or else be beaten by guards. The US has sometimes used a similar but less severe type of interrogation technique by playing very loud metal music to detainees as they stand for long periods.
Britain has never admitted, let alone apologised, for the white noise issue and as such can be deemed as still being able to practice it, in all probability.
The Canadian scientist who discovered and devised the effective process of white noise, committed suicide soon after he discovered that it was being used as a means of torture. It is considered by many, as the worst type of torture. Most people will try to kill themselves during the process. Initial experiments on the process in Manitoba probably used rats and other pain/stress studies showed that the animals also tried to kill themselves by striking their heads against the walls of the chamber that they were housed in.

Regardless of these facts and countless others, the US and the UK along with some other European countries are still better than many other countries like China. Ofcourse there have been Tiananmen Square type scenarios relatively recently in the west*. But the scale is much worse in the east and China has no freedom of the press, whereas the UK and the US has at least some freedom of the press. Yes, if the press in the west was more open, then I wouldn’t have to write all this.

* UK – Bradford riots in 2000 resulted in draconian sentences handed out indiscriminately to members of the Pakistani community. They were essentially Chinese style prison sentences given to the less problematic participants of the riot, who even voluntarily came forward and handed themselves in to the police. And yet they all got 4 years in prison – there were quite a few of them as well. Some people protested against these harsh sentences and there was some leniency in a few cases. But even in these cases, they (many of them family men) still ended up serving at least 2 years for just throwing a few stones.