The Respectability of Torture
St Mary’s University College, Thurs 1st August, 7.30pm
Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, was a whistleblower who was removed from his ambassadorial post by Tony Blair for exposing the Tashkent regime‟s use of rape and systematic torture, including the boiling to death of political opponents. He has also spoken out against Central Asia‟s appalling dictatorships, regimes which are allies of the West, involved in torture and rendition, and was accused of threatening MI6‟s relationship with the CIA. Now a human rights activist, author and broadcaster, he outlines the dynamics of torture and the hypocrisy of incriminated Western governments.
My first public appearance for a while will be in Belfast on 1 August where I shall be giving a talk. Long term readers of this blog will recall that, while my focus is largely on international affairs, the domestic political achievements I most hope to see are a united Ireland and an independent Scotland.
Phil: I don’t doubt that a collection of motivated people with an agreed common purpose can form an effective fighting force even if they are allowed to debate their schedule on a democratic basis. I certainly don’t believe that the Republican Army in Spain was quite as democratic as you allege: command was still hierarchical. And there’s not much evidence that either side was any more moral than the other:
Available information suggests that there were about 500,000 deaths from all causes during the Spanish Civil War. An estimated 200,000 died from combat-related causes. Of these, 110,000 fought for the Republicans and 90,000 for the Nationalists. This implies that 10 per cent of all soldiers who fought in the war were killed.
It has been calculated that the Nationalist Army executed 75,000 people in the war whereas the Republican Army accounted for 55,000. These deaths takes into account the murders of members of rival political groups.
It is estimated that about 5,300 foreign soldiers died while fighting for the Nationalists (4,000 Italians, 300 Germans, 1,000 others). The International Brigades also suffered heavy losses during the war. Approximately 4,900 soldiers died fighting for the Republicans (2,000 Germans, 1,000 French, 900 Americans, 500 British and 500 others).
Around 10,000 Spanish people were killed in bombing raids. The vast majority of these were victims of the German Condor Legion.
The economic blockade of Republican controlled areas caused malnutrition in the civilian population. It is believed that this caused the deaths of around 25,000 people. All told, about 3.3 per cent of the Spanish population died during the war with another 7.5 per cent being injured.
After the war it is believed that the government of General Francisco Franco arranged the executions of 100,000 Republican prisoners. It is estimated that another 35,000 Republicans died in concentration camps in the years that followed the war.
War is hell. This one would have been better avoided,
The head of SOCA Sir Ian Allen resigns. Declaration of interests incomplete. Directorship of management consultancy not revealed.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23537513
Huge fireball. It looked about 150 ft in diameter. I would be surprised to learn there were fewer than 200 casualties.
Heat’s getting to me! I meant Sir Ian Andrews.
http://companycheck.co.uk/company/07960401/ABIS-PARTNERSHIP-LIMITED/directors-shareholders
@Mark. 11 09am
Thanks for the Fallujah clip. Sickening and heartbreaking. It makes one realise that the “Colateral Murder” video is just a tiny drop in an ocean of depravity being committed in our names.
@Someone. 11 25am
Thanks. Fukushima, as with the Fallujah, chilling and disgusting.
Ignoring or denigrating evidence seems to be a consistent plank in the response of the elites and their servants, whether in WHO or corporate media.
Doesn’t that show how much thee elites fear people really finding them out?
@Komodo and Phil
Isn’t the underlying question something along the lines of how do we, as social and military cultures, agree on a mix of these conflicting characteristics?
At this stage in our social and technical evolution how best do we empower our (mainly) young men to fiercely defend their home-places and communities without tempting them to run the show and go off plundering for generals, royals and other kleptocrats?
Where, on the spectrum, do we choose? On one end the spontanious networked militia of the Samburu, and Dinka and on the other, the total-obedience-demanding hierarchies of Us and Nazi military. Is a happy medium possible or do we have to accept that those with the biggest bombs and most obedient soldiers will always have the upper hand?
Have we taken a turn down an evolutionary dead-end where our technical prowess fosters, for the elites, the delusion that they can get us to blast our way to their goals without destroying the ecological matrix where it’s all played out? Or will the horrors of these times be looked back on by our descendents as chapters in humanity’s painful journey out of barbarism?
Mutiny has been a game-changer many a time from Herodotus’s time to the present.
If “…only 15 to 20 percent of the American riflemen in combat during World War II would fire at the enemy”(Thanks Technicolour. 3 05pm), then how many can really be counted on to fire on their own people?
What happens when military-trained individuals “go native”?
I take heart from what is playing out at present in South America. It seems to me Venezuala for example would have long ago slid back into 1950s os 60s style military dictatorship were it not for the lower ranks of the military taking a stand for their communities before their commanding officers.
Two films I find really encouraging are Oliver Stone’s “South of the Border” and the Irish documentary “Inside the Coup”.
If it can happen there……….!
What a jumbled up table.
http://www.soca.gov.uk/about-soca/library/doc_download/528-register-of-interests-aug-2013
Peter Clarke I assume was the one alongside Ian Blair at the time of 7/7 and Jean Charles Menezes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Clarke_(police_officer)
“You mean competition doesn’t drive evolution? ”
No I didn’t say that. I am questioning the orthodoxy that competition is the driver of evolution. We are sold this idea constantly. It is an ideology that declares war and poverty to be natural jungle law.
However, the science shows that cooperation is also a big driver of evolution.
Yes. It ia he. Also with Kellogg, Brown and Root of Iraq infamy. formerly a subsidiary of Halliburton. Cheney was once chairman and CEO of Halliburton.
http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/peter-clarke/a/35/330
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halliburton
Murky old world isn’t it.
Where, on the spectrum, do we choose?
Ask me again when the oil runs out and the droughts spread. I don’t think we have the luxury of choice.
But an interesting and thought-provoking interjection, nonetheless.
Komodo 1 Aug, 2013 – 3:33 pm
“I certainly don’t believe that the Republican Army in Spain was quite as democratic as you allege”
Er, I am not talking about the spanish republican army. That was something quite different.
May I suggest you look into the anarchist militias of spain and the ukranian insurrectionary army. It is fascinating.
“…only 15 to 20 percent of the American riflemen in combat during World War II would fire at the enemy”(Thanks Technicolour. 3 05pm), then how many can really be counted on to fire on their own people?”
I think there are various military histories which show that only a minority of soldiers actually do most of the killing. Arrows shot away from action. Swords not scratched.
Unfortunately the military has long learnt this lesson. For example, changing the practise range target from a bull eyse to a human shadow had a huge impact on desensitising soldiers to kill. Now soldiers desensitise with computer games. Part of the training.
Did you know the columbine boys had hit rates worthy of special forces. How could this be? It is speculated that their years of shoot em up games, which they obsessed about right up to the killings, desensitised them to be able to commit the act of murder.
So we are in the area of violent films and games. Does violent stimulis encourage violent behaviour? Well the military seems to think so. Science seems to show so. But politics denys it.
Andrews’s wife Moira is a lawyer and works for G3 which according to Sky News just now were involved in the Liam Fox/Adam Werritty affair, paying for their flights I think I heard the Sky reporter say. Oh what a tangled web we weave…..
http://www.g3.eu/team_moira_andrews.php
She is Ex MI6 according to this
http://international-federation-of-tribal.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/fox-to-leave-with-rebuke-and-17000.html
Fox and Werritty just won’t lie down. So much jiggery pokery.
G3 (Good Governance Group) are connected to:
http://www.proven.eu/ – Intelligent Investigations
http://www.palmerlegaltech.com/ – Computer forensics
http://www.c5capital.co.uk/team.php – Global investment company headed by CEO Christina McComb ex diplomatic service
@Komodo. 4 05pm
“Ask me again…..”
@Phil. 4 21pm
“Does violent stimulis encourage violent behaviour?”
Onle 3500 studies come to that conclusion so far. Desensitisation to violence is surely one of our culture’s defining characteristics, along with emphazising competition over co-operation.
Going by our historical record I’d have to agree with your outlook K, but I don’t rule out some kind of epochal phase-change either, just like what happens in insect colonies when numbers, food supply or environment change beyond critical tipping-points. So many of our variables are totally unprecedented. Probably the only thing we can expect is that the future won’t look like we predict.
If we have descendents to write history, maybe it will be because they have worked out how to be so powerful without destroying the game altogether, um I think.
I feel it’s worthwhile committing to the best futures and the most thriving co-operative cultures we can envisage. The fat lady hasn’t sung, yet.
If you talk to people who have actually killed someone, they say the first is the hardest. After that it gets easier. Desensitizing video games with violent content make that first kill easier, IMO.
Sofia
“Going by our historical record I’d have to agree with your outlook K”
The official history of ineviatable war? Other perspectives are available. Conflict happens but the real law of the jungle is cooperation.
There was an interesting traffic experiment undertaken in germany and holland a few years back. Called shared space, I am unsure of it’s current status. All traffic regulations were removed. All the lines, lights, one ways etc etc. Everything. Of course pessimists predicted chaos. There’ll be fights, jams, deaths. But in every town that tried do you know what happened? The accident count went down, the average journey time went down. Every time. Remarkable. Cooperation even rules the roads.
And again my latest favourite example of real modern cooperation. I mean how far can cooperation progress? This is layer upon layer. And funny https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ri5cszSKEg
Sofia,
i got through with that second link, cheers it was at 1,560 signatures
@Someone, thanks for that Japan link, and interesting post on whether or not we will become intelligent
That point is actually a major part of the Drake Equation, the Last letter L = the lifetime a communicating Intelligence survives. – or as Carl Sagan wondered – do civilizations destroy themselves soon after developing technology
It’s also mentioned as one of the factors in the Fermi Paradox – where are they.
Back to Isreal
Israel: Eviction of 1,300 Palestinians necessary to save IDF time, money
The state wants to evict 1,300 Palestinians from their homes in an army firing zone in the West Bank in part because training there saves the Israel Defense Forces time and money, according to the state’s response to two petitions against the mass eviction
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.539057
“The majority of Spain’s bankrupt local councils are to be found along the Mediterranean coast, particularly in Andalusia and Valencia, which were badly hit by the collapse of the construction and property-development market.”
http://elpais.com/elpais/2013/07/22/inenglish/1374496783_970511.html
“Vanishing Treasures: Tomb Raiders Exploit Chaos in Egypt”
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/tomb-raiders-in-egypt-exploit-political-chaos-to-steal-antiquities-a-914058.html
You’re v welcome, Sofia. I’m embracing along with you 🙂 Sadly, as Phil points out, they have been working hard to come up with ways round our instinct not to kill each other – but they’re all still attempts to crush our nature. they don’t last.
Btw has anyone come across these people? Apparently Chomsky wrote the preface to a book about them so they are less obscure than the design of their website would suggest. Too many slogans for me, but still:
http://www.prout.org
Phil, thanks, I loved that experiment
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1533248/Is-this-the-end-of-the-road-for-traffic-lights.html
and its happened in Bristol too – junctions with no lights or signs, and guess what?
http://www.fitroads.com/TEC-Award-truth-final.pdf
Trying hard not to think that the presence of signs and orders and controls and threats might be there for another reason, since they don’t seem to make roads actually safer….
BrianFujisan,
I have through my long life noticed that all too often High IQ = Low common sense.
“Unfortunately the military has long learnt this lesson. For example, changing the practise range target from a bull eyse to a human shadow had a huge impact on desensitising soldiers to kill.”
That combined with a pavlovian conditioning process yes. The most effective method they learnt from Germany was dehumanisation of the enemy though.
Indeed Someone
wonder why there is such a frenzy going on lately regards other intelligence here n there…
Former Sen. Mike Gravel (D-Alaska), and 2008 presidential candidate says that there is “an extraterrestrial influence that is investigating our planet.”
http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/06/03/former-senator-presidential-candidate-an-extraterrestrial-influence-is-investigating-our-planet/
I see the us are improving on Diplomacy
US ‘evaluating’ value of summit with Russia after Snowden granted asylum
http://rt.com/usa/white-house-snowden-asylum-918/
@ Phil :
“It is provenly possible to have an army of politically engaged soldiers who are involved in the decision making process and encouraged to take moral positions. The great examples that I know are the anarchist armies in spain and ukraine.”
________________
I’m with Komodo on this one. He was a practitioner and knows what he’s talking about.
BTW, I’ve never heard of your anarchist army in Ukraine, but if by the Spanish one you refer to the POUM brigade then you should read Orwell (and historians) on that : much motivation, but the internal democracy didn’t do much for its organisation and efficiency.
The Soviet army functioned for a short while without ranks and that was soon dropped as well.
Oh, I now see that Phil has already made my point about the P.O.U.M, I didn’t see it before I posted.
@Habbabkuk
“The Soviet army functioned for a short while without ranks”
The soviet army? That’s funny. Don’t let a complete lack of grasping the subject interupt you.
Not nice, but necessary.
Necessarry for whom? and why this selective predilection for a stale establishment and some greedy breeding royals.
Far from it, Komodo, those few who think they have to be bastards and sacrifice every principle that is human to make this thiefdom work and function for the upper 2 %, are consensual cowards.
Oh dear we so need the SBS/SAS…. For f….g what? To make out that there is nothing wrong training Al Nusra’s filth, anything you say Gov. yes sire three bags full sire. Full of shite sire, brain dead and dangerous.
Yes we shoot people abroad, Gibralatar? no problem we do it tomorrow.
Wars do not happen because bad people want them to occur, they happen because good people have given up caring, a society living on minority scum rule, party politicians rule OK.
And now to late tea.
‘consensual cowards’
I’m stealing that. Just so you know. 🙂
“Double-Feature: “Bradley Manning Verdict Convicts Washington” and “Hiding Economic Depression With Spin” — Paul Craig Roberts”
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/08/01/double-feature-bradley-manning-verdict-convicts-washington-and-hiding-economic-depression-with-spin-paul-craig-roberts/
Technicolour 1 Aug, 2013 – 6:09 pm
“and its happened in Bristol too”
Great. I had no idea shared space was progressing and here on the wild roads of britain. I love that the bristol traffic lights were proven a waste when they broke.
That traffic regulations cause accidents and slow down traffic is counter intuitive and startling.