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What are your thoughts on physical torture?


Alex Mercer

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17 hours ago, MigL said:

What 'soul' ?

I don't know what Socrates thoguht it was, but for me it's just a convenient word to describe the self/me...

As such, I know that anything I do that damage's/harm's other's, damage's/harm's me/myself, because I'm not a sociopath...

15 hours ago, Peterkin said:

How do you mean? The OP question was torture of prisoners in detention as used by law-enforcement as punishment or deterrent to criminals.

Guantanamo - to the best of my information - is a place of detention and torture.

What prison isn't? 

As @MigL suggested the definition is too broad to be a useful measure of justice; was Guantanamo justifiable?

Of course not, it was an excuse not a reason...

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1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

As @MigL suggested the definition is too broad to be a useful measure of justice;

He rejected every proffered definition of "torture'" included those used by big, serious jurists on world courts. That is his prerogative, not my guide.  As far as I know, "justice" hasn't been defined at all, let alone measured, though it has been discussed.

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

was Guantanamo justifiable?

It was justified up and down a purple streak by its owners. I wasn't convinced.

 

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

Of course not, it was an excuse not a reason...

I don't understand what this refers to - the prison or my comment.  In the present context, I'm not even sure I answered the question you asked last time. I have trouble placing the references.

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:
17 hours ago, Peterkin said:

Guantanamo - to the best of my information - is a place of detention and torture.

What prison isn't? 

Halden Fengsel.

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Many prisons have cruel and dehumanizing and demeaning conditions without it rising to the level of torture.  Those conditions should be fixed,  too.   Norwegians always seem so enlightened.  Scandinavian societies,  in ancient times,  had a strong tradition of sexual equality and sharing of power,  which probably got them off to a good start.   

 

Still think the answer to the OP is two words:  Absolutely not! 

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4 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Many prisons have cruel and dehumanizing and demeaning conditions without it rising to the level of torture.  Those conditions should be fixed,  too.   Norwegians always seem so enlightened.  Scandinavian societies,  in ancient times,  had a strong tradition of sexual equality and sharing of power,  which probably got them off to a good start.   

 

Still think the answer to the OP is two words:  Absolutely not! 

I actually spent 3 days in Gotenburg prison in Sweden  for the reason of not having enough cash to explain where I would be staying in the country,they not believing my story of casual tourism and me not telling them that I had a job to go to in Norway. 

My only real experience of prison and very unpleasant since they took away my guitar and my belt ,replacing them with pornographic magazines and feeling free to lay hands on me  for the sake of letting me know who was the boss.

I had to pay for my own repatriation and returned  a few days later with enough cash to impress them that "you are going to buy the country this time" :)

 

Not really on topic:certainly not torture .

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3 hours ago, Peterkin said:
5 hours ago, dimreepr said:
21 hours ago, Peterkin said:

Guantanamo - to the best of my information - is a place of detention and torture.

What prison isn't? 

Halden Fengsel.

As Geordief relates, maybe you should ask the inmates if they want to be there.
If they don't, then some might describe that as torture.

It seems I am unable to communicate my thinking clearly.
I am not rejecting any of the many definitions given of 'torture', just that there are so many, and we are all talking about different definitions.

To me, getting slapped once a day, every day, might not be torture, but being incarcerated in Halden Fengsel certainly would be.
( what can I say, I'm a free spirit )

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30 minutes ago, MigL said:

( what can I say, I'm a free spirit )

Then you should either refrain from crime (especially in Turkey or Saudi Arabia - assuming you know what's considered a crime there) or be clever enough to avoid capture.

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21 hours ago, Peterkin said:

I don't understand what this refers to - the prison or my comment.

The prison.

21 hours ago, Peterkin said:

Halden Fengsel.

But that proves my point, because it's justifiable; almost every other prison on the planet is used as an excuse to punish.

Quote

The Latin root of punishment and its related verb, punish, is punire, "punish, correct, take vengeance for, or cause pain for some offense."

 

19 hours ago, TheVat said:

Still think the answer to the OP is two words:  Absolutely not! 

16 hours ago, Peterkin said:

Then you should either refrain from crime (especially in Turkey or Saudi Arabia - assuming you know what's considered a crime there) or be clever enough to avoid capture.

That's rather simplistic, since not all crime is criminal and not all criminal's are guilty.

The ghost of Tom Joad is spinning out... 

19 hours ago, TheVat said:

Many prisons have cruel and dehumanizing and demeaning conditions without it rising to the level of torture.

How is that possible if the prison is "cruel and dehumanizing and demeaning"...

22 hours ago, Peterkin said:

As far as I know, "justice" hasn't been defined at all, let alone measured, though it has been discussed.

Socrates had a pretty good stab at defining it.

For me it means, our past and future is fully taken into account (without the communal pressure for revenge) and considering the poential harm to other's (in carrying out the punishment) before a sentence is passed.

So, in answer to the OP the word I'd use is: sometimes...

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2 hours ago, dimreepr said:

The prison.

[Guantanamo justified?] Well, I agree with those who do not see it justified. Yet it continues in operation, because enough - and powerful enough - others insist that it's necessary.  No  justice reform takes place until there is general consensus on some aspect of it - and there can be no comprehensive reform in some countries, even if the majority of citizens agree in principle, as long as one or more influential faction(s) reject it.

2 hours ago, dimreepr said:
On 8/7/2021 at 9:48 AM, Peterkin said:

Halden Fengsel.

But that proves my point, because it's justifiable; almost every other prison on the planet is used as an excuse to punish.

That was a reply to your question: "What prison isn't?" [a place of detention and torture as depicted in the OP] I don't quite get your point about justification. One is meant to be  a correctional facility, while almost every other prison is a place of punishment. Though British and Canadian, and no doubt modern Australian prisons are intended to rehabilitate lawbreakers, there is that segment of the population which insists on retribution - and the two functions in a single institution are in constant disharmony. So the revenge faction always wins, simply because punishment is cheaper and the average voter won't  do the math; doesn't realize how much more it costs society in the long term to grow naughty boys into hardened felons then it would be to turn them around at the earliest opportunity. 

It's relatively easy for the Scandinavian countries to be progressive and united: they haven't had any major social upheavals since... even the Roman empire barely touched their shores. Recent influx of refugees from the Middle East, and the natives' reaction to their presence has been causing ructions - the Scandinavian Paradise may well be in decline.  

2 hours ago, dimreepr said:
19 hours ago, Peterkin said:

Then you should either refrain from crime (especially in Turkey or Saudi Arabia - assuming you know what's considered a crime there) or be clever enough to avoid capture.

That's rather simplistic, since not all crime is criminal and not all criminal's are guilty.

Of course it's simplistic. It was in response to this:

20 hours ago, MigL said:

To me, getting slapped once a day, every day, might not be torture, but being incarcerated in Halden Fengsel certainly would be.

 In the countries I mentioned, it doesn't make any difference to your treatment whether you're guilty of anything. Perhaps I should have advised him, rather, to get caught breaking a law in Sweden, then Italy, then Turkey and finally Saudi Arabia in order to form an appreciation of what degrees of punishment meet the criteria for the UN jurists' definition of torture. I would not, however, recommend doing it in reverse order. 

50 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

If evil exists, then evil must be done...

Now, there is a conundrum!  

(PS I don't care how many mistakes I find, I'm not editing this!)

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9 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

Now, there is a conundrum!  

Seems more like a paradox; can that exist?

24 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

It's relatively easy for the Scandinavian countries to be progressive and united: they haven't had any major social upheavals since

Indeed, they have no reason to seek revenge; it's much more difficult to forgive when all of your bredrin seeks revenge...

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15 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Revenge, seems to be the topic of this thread...

Torture as punishment is the topic. The objective existence or non-existence of evil, conundrums, paradoxes, and other abstract ideas is a debate I had rather relegate to its own thread, since I've contributed quite enough lumber to this one.

Edited by Peterkin
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4 hours ago, dimreepr said:

 

How is that possible if the prison is "cruel and dehumanizing and demeaning"...

 

Found your reply.  Still not used to the superlong reply-to-multiple-posts format in the software fgmenthere.   I was going with the concept of "intentional" infliction of pain in the UN definition of torture.  Prisons can be many unpleasant things without someone getting up in the morning intending to inflict pain on their charges.   There is suffering inherent in a f-d up penal system that's not intentional, but more the result of neglect,  costcutting,  and just tossing the mentally ill in with hardened sociopaths.   

My sense of these kinds of chats is that we need to use a generally agreed-upon definition of torture.   Many things are horrible,  but are not torture.   For some,  those things can feel like torment,  though.  And some prison guards do engage in torture,  when the authority figure isn't looking or deliberately averting the eyes.   Locking human beings up in cages has a way of bringing out the worst in everyone. 

Edited by TheVat
Gjfke
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3 hours ago, TheVat said:

My sense of these kinds of chats is that we need to use a generally agreed-upon definition of torture. 

That would be nice, but consensus appears unattainable. Partly because of subjective perception of what hurts, partly because of bias about justice, but most significantly due to  language. Viscerally, we all - or nearly all - understand what torture is; legal articulation is a whole other order of difficulty.  While courts have to negotiate that difficulty every day, individuals are able to avoid it indefinitely.

3 hours ago, TheVat said:

Locking human beings up in cages has a way of bringing out the worst in everyone. 

As has been amply demonstrated. You read the Stanford prison experiment, and you can comprehend it, but then it's challenged on the grounds of fakery , of unsound scientific method, ?dismissed.... And yet, and yet.... Read that second article carefully. 

This bit gave me a longish pause

Quote

“The rebellion was fun,” he said. “There were no repercussions. We knew [the guards] couldn’t hurt us, they couldn’t hit us. They were white college kids just like us, so it was a very safe situation.”

He was, however, shocked that he couldn’t leave of his own free will, remembering that the guards were “really escalating the game by saying that I can’t leave. They’re stepping to a new level. I was just like, ‘Oh my God.’”

 

Edited by Peterkin
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If the intent here is to use this thread as an experiential tool to give readers a real life understanding of how torture feels, then you guys are doing a bang up job. Mission accomplished!

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10 minutes ago, iNow said:

If the intent here is to use this thread as an experiential tool to give readers a real life understanding of how torture feels, then you guys are doing a bang up job. Mission accomplished!

If you can give us your location, someone will contact law enforcement and a rescue will be effected.   Can you tell if your captor,  who bound you to the chair and put in the cervical restraint and eyelid clamps that forced you to read the thread,  has you in a fortified underground bunker?   This may affect your waiting time.   

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9 hours ago, dimreepr said:

For me it means, our past and future is fully taken into account (without the communal pressure for revenge) and considering the potential harm to other's (in carrying out the punishment) before a sentence is passed.

So, in answer to the OP the word I'd use is: sometimes...

Was going to abstain from this thread as my thoughts are by now well known. ..But the above makes sense to me, particularly the part I highlighted.

While I'm here, let me relate another possible candidate for torture, 😉 When I was around 15/16 years old, and with a couple of mates around the same age, we were yahooing and playing the larrikan, by lighting and firing penny [at that tie] sky rockets across a busy Sydney thoroughfare, when someone called the cops. They rounded us all up and directed us all to get off home directly...The problem was that I had this dirty big Crown Sergeant standing on my toes, and telling me to "pissoff home" while he was standing on my toes with his big size 14's! Eventually though, he let me go, gave me a fair-thee-well whack over the noggin with his baton, and sent me sprawling on the footpath! 

I copped it all  gracefully, as that would have been nothing to what my old man would have done to me had he found out!!😜 

Edited by beecee
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23 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Can you tell if your captor,  who bound you to the chair and put in the cervical restraint and eyelid clamps that forced you to read the thread,  has you in a fortified underground bunker?   This may affect your waiting time.   

Unable to respond. The captors can see our communication 

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My Mrs thinks Sydney's current covid19 lockdown is torture!

5 hours ago, Peterkin said:

Torture as punishment is the topic. 

All punishment can be defined as torture, some may benefit from it and be reformed, others not so. But some being a danger to society, means we have no choice in the matter. Society in general has and always will have, faults, misfits, and evil within. 

"Humans are the glory and the scum of the universe. We love and we loathe. We help and we harm. We reach out a hand and we stick in the knife."

Blaise Pascal, in 1658:

 

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On 8/8/2021 at 10:38 AM, Peterkin said:

Perhaps I should have advised him, rather, to get caught breaking a law in Sweden, then Italy, then Turkey and finally Saudi Arabia in order to form an appreciation of what degrees of punishment

I have broken the law in Italy.
( as well as Canada, the US, Germany, Mexico and Argentina )
Fortunately, Italian cops can be bribed.

 

23 hours ago, TheVat said:

If you can give us your location, someone will contact law enforcement and a rescue will be effected.   Can you tell if your captor,  who bound you to the chair and put in the cervical restraint and eyelid clamps that forced you to read the thread,  has you in a fortified underground bunker? 

It's not his fault.
It's a disease; he's a forum junkie.
😄 😄

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1 hour ago, MigL said:
On 8/8/2021 at 3:38 PM, Peterkin said:

 

I have broken the law in Italy.
( as well as Canada, the US, Germany, Mexico and Argentina )
Fortunately, Italian cops can be bribed

I was deported (well refused entry for "moral turpitude" **it may have been called) at the Vancouver border coming in from Washington State

 

Had no inkling I could be  refused entry to a member of the Commonwealth back then in the 70s.

Luckily the States took me back and  also gave me free overnight lodging in a prison  along the way bank to my flight in NY

(Just need to ask nicely . I think they were obliged by law to take me in)

 

** because I admitted to having smoked cannabis .

Edited by geordief
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