Blog 2. Torture on Planet Earth: A Zy Uzip Report
Senegal Hand-Carved Thinker. (Contours Look Female)
|
The Thinking Post.
If you wish to contribute a blog and do not wish to put your name to the blog for whatever reason, please use the name of Zy Uzip as an
alternative. If you use Zy Uzip as your nom de plume, allow me to introduce you to your literary double.
Zy Uzip’s Background in Her Own Words.
My name is Zy Uzip-that is the closest I can get phonetically in the
English language to my given name. I am a reporter from a planet in a
neighboring star system. That makes me an alien on planet Earth, known
as Planet-Uzat1479 back home. I am in disguise as a human
female in her late fifties for my stay on Earth. That way my presence
and conduct, while somewhat eccentric, may be less noticeable and less
threatening in a male dominated planet. I have observed that there are
some eccentric middle-aged women on the planet. So I fit in. My
assignment is to report back to my planet on the goings-on on sister
planet Earth. I plan to make reports regularly, until I am recalled, or
given another assignment.
I
have been here on planet Earth for the past three years quietly
observing, listening, and when possible interviewing the Earth’s
political, religious, and cultural leaders, as well as browsing Google
and the Internet. I have learned much from political and religious
speeches and discourses, continuous newscasts, talk shows, cultural
events, scientific symposiums, discussions at the United Nations,
sermons in churches, mosques, and synagogues, and lifestyle
observations. I have studied Earthling’s medical practices, college
campuses, educational systems, belief systems, value systems, art, and
creativity.
I
have visited many of what Earth people designate as “trouble spots”-
Iraq, Darfur, Pakistan, the West Bank, Afghanistan, Chechnya (I tried
but did not succeed in visiting North Korea because the current ruler
has decreed that his nation is closed to the rest of the people on the
planet), and some of the planet’s “bright spots”-Northern Ireland, South
Africa, (East) Germany, China, the Baltic states.
I
have studied planet Earth’s history (at least hitting the high points)
and have attempted to get my arms around such things as tribalism, early
civilizations, discoveries, slavery, colonization, wars, reformation,
enlightenment, and freedom movements, including the current struggle for
freedom in Iran. I have also studied franchise movements, civil rights
movements, exploration of outer space, and movements to abolish nuclear
weapons, illiteracy, hunger, and disease from the planet.
I feel that being from another planet gives me a measure of objectivity in my reporting and the experience above gives me what The Thinking Post
likes to call a large picture perspective. I am sharing these reports
with the people of planet Earth by placing the reports on The Thinking Post.
I do this for two reasons. Firstly, to get feedback on my reports and
hopefully restore balance where my reports stray from objectivity. After
all, I am an alien with limited understanding of my report topics.
Secondly, to invite my Earth readers to put themselves in my shoes,
project themselves outside their planet, outside their normal patterns
of thinking, and view their planet as it were from the outside, and see
what they come up with. That briefly is my bag – a large picture
perspective from the outside.
Torture on Planet Earth: a Zy Uzip Report
Though
recently in hot debate across planet Earth, torture is not new to the
planet. It is seemingly as old as the planet’s recorded human history.
But recent accusations that the United States, the planet’s most
powerful nation state, has indulged in torture, has raised the topic to
the forefront of planet-wide dialog.
Within
five months of leaving office, former United States President George
Walter Bush and former Vice President Dick Chaney admitted publicly that
they approved of water-boarding (regarded by most people as torture),
this despite the fact that the United States is a signee of the United
Nations Convention prohibiting torture. President Bush defended his
decision to permit the use of torture on terror suspects in the
aftermath of the September 11, 2001 coordinated suicide terrorist
attacks by saying: “I vowed to take whatever steps were necessary to
protect you”. The attacks killed 2,974 people, including 19 hijackers of
the commercial passenger jet airlines used to fly into and reduce to
rubble the Twin Towers (110 stories each) of the World Trade Center in
New York City. These devastating attacks shocked people across the
planet and triggered two wars on the planet, still ongoing.
Definition of Torture. Before we go any further, allow me to define what I am writing to you about. What is torture?
I
give you an authoritative definition as found in Article 1 of the
United Nations’ Convention Against Torture ( the United Nations is an
organization of 192 independent states on Earth formed in 1945 to
promote peace and security on the planet):
“Any
act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is
intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from
him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an
act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having
committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any
reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering
is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or
acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official
capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from,
inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions”.
I
present this definition in the interest of clarity, because the
boundaries between torture and, what some consider, legitimate
interrogation techniques, have not been universally accepted on planet
earth. This is particularly true with regard to psychological torture.
Among some Earthlings, such techniques remain controversial.
Torture in the Earth’s Recorded History.
Torture has seemingly been part of the human story on the planet from
the beginning of recorded time. Torture has been used by governments and
their surrogates including the military, the police, the “secret
police”, and correctional institutions as a means of effecting political
control, intimidation, extracting information, obtaining the names of
accomplices in crime, re-educating people, instilling fear and achieving
obedience from populations. In addition to state-sponsored torture,
groups and individuals have inflicted torture on others for similar
reasons or merely for personal, sadistic gratification.
Almost
all human cultures on the planet and their ruling bodies practiced
torture. In the Americas, torture and human sacrifice were part of
religious rituals of the ancient Mayan, Aztec, and Incan societies. The
judges of ancient Babylon decreed punishments that included cutting off
feet, lips and noses, and gouging out eyes. The Assyrian King,
Ashurbanipal, who reigned from 668 to 627 BCE (formerly BC), cut open
the bellies of his opponents as if they were young rams. The Romans, the
Assyrians, and the Egyptians used torture routinely in interrogations
and as part of their systems of justice. For centuries, a slave’s
testimony was admissible in a court of law only if extracted by torture,
on the assumption that slaves could not be trusted to reveal the truth
voluntarily. The Roman Emperor, Julius Caesar, boasted that he tortured
and killed 1,192,000 of his enemies during his 10-year reign. The Roman
Emperor Caligula had noblemen who fell out of favor sawed in half.
In
the Medieval Inquisition, which began in 1252 CE (formerly AD) and
ended in 1816 CE, torture was sanctioned by the Catholic Church (a
leading religion on the planet) and by kings, queens, princes and their
governments. Many of the most brutal tortures were inflicted upon devout
heretics by even more “devout” priests and friars. Countless women were
accused of being witches and were tortured and burned to death. In
Colonial America, women were sentenced to the stocks (an instrument of
punishment consisting of a wooden framework with holes for securing the
ankles and the wrists, used to expose an offender to public derision).
Wooden clips were placed on their tongues for the crime of talking too
much. I am glad that I came to Earth later in its cultural development,
otherwise my disguise as a woman might not have been the best of ideas.
In
more recent times, Adolf Hitler established concentration camps
throughout Germany and subject countries in the 1930s and 1940s. These
camps included whipping posts, torture rooms, and gas chambers, mass
graves, and ovens to burn the remains of victims. Throughout the 20th
century, Communist countries established labor camps where political
dissidents were subjected to forced labor, deprivations, torture, and
death. During World War II, in Germany and Japan, medical torture was
practiced by medical doctors to assess what victims could endure and to
determine the best torture methods to extract information. Joseph
Mengele and Shiro Ishii were two of the more infamous practitioners of
medical torture. Torture methods used to interrogate enemies of the
state in the Soviet Union included the drug, Aminazin, a drug that
causes its victim to grow intensely hyperactive and uncontrollably
restless.
At
the risk of turning your stomachs, I have picked what I consider the
six most cruel and abhorrent methods of torture inflicted upon humans by
other humans on the planet. They are all revoltingly horrible, but
number six is by light years the worst.
1). Slow slicing
of the human body with an extremely sharp knife, beginning with ears,
nose, tongue, fingers, toes, belly, thighs, buttocks, shoulders, etc.
–the entire process of up to 3,600 cuts lasted several days. This
torture was used In China from about 900 CE to its abolition in 1905 CE.
2). Impalement,
whereby a person is pierced with a long stake going through the rectum
up through the mouth and then planted upright in the ground. This was
practiced in Asia and Europe throughout the Middle Ages, from 500 CE to
1600 CE, an entire millennium.
3). The breaking wheel,
used in France and Germany in the Middle Ages, whereby a person was
placed on a cartwheel with limbs stretched out along the spokes, and
with the wheel slowly revolving the victims bones were broken with an
iron hammer, and the victim was left on the wheel for days until shock
and dehydration caused death. This torture was abolished in 1827 CE.
4). The bamboo treatment,
whereby a person was stripped naked and suspended between two trees,
back to the ground, with growing bamboo chutes that were sharpened
placed at the person’s back. Bamboo chutes grow up to five feet in one
day, forcing their way up and through the human body. Chinese warlords
felt for centuries that this was their best method of extracting
information.
5). Slowly peeling the skin
of a person’s body from head to foot, then smearing the peeled body
with a substance to attract rodents to feast on the person’s flesh.
This is very grisly stuff.
I
cannot but conclude that torture is deeply embedded in the planet’s
human culture. To underscore this fact, I put the question to myself:
What do the most popular guides to human behavior on the planet, the
Judeo-Christian Bible and the Muslim Qur’an, have to say about torture?
A
lot. Earthlings can go to their favorite research engine on the
Internet and type in “Torture in the Bible” and “Torture in the Qur’an”
to see what is presented.
From
my reading of the passages in the Bible and the Qur’an that deal with
the concept of torture, both the Bible and the Qur’an in many instances
prescribe, promote, and condone torture. Judeo, Christian, and Islamic
apologists try to explain away such passages, but they fail to confront
the clear meaning of the passages head-on. I forward these downloads
with my report, so you be the judge.
Both
the Bible and the Qur’an have a lot to say about the horrendous and
most unique form of human torture – the burning in hell fire for all
eternity. This torture is presented by both holy books as the will of
God and the will of Allah, and this mother of all tortures is not
addressed by the apologists at all. This leads to the most horrendous
torture of all:
6). The worst torture. I have identified burning in hell fire for all eternity as the sixth and by far the worst form of torture known to earthlings.
How Widespread is Torture Across the Planet and which Earthlings are the Worst Tortures? Modern
sensibilities on the planet have been shaped by profound rejection of
the worst forms of torture outlined above and by the crimes against
humanity committed by Germany, Italy, and Japan in the Second World War
from 1939 to 1945 and by Communist countries during the last century.
Even
so, despite near universal condemnation of the practice as repugnant,
abhorrent, and immoral, and the existence of treaty provisions that
forbid torture, many states and individuals still engage in it.
According to some estimates, over half of the nation states on the
planet (97 nation states) currently practice some form of torture.
These states either practice torture in silence (official denial), in
semi-silence (known but not discussed or spoken about openly), or openly
acknowledged to instill fear and obedience. In researching this topic, I
came across an article in the New Scientist, a prestigious
British magazine that concluded that the systematic torture of
individuals for political reasons is a growing technology that
incorporates the latest advances in physics, electronics, biochemistry,
behavioral psychology, and pharmacology; and that the governments of
some nations hire specifically trained scientists to set up and manage
torture programs.
Earthlings’
rationale for employing torture is tenuous, at best. Some modern
writers on the planet such as Alan M. Dershowitz, Mirko Bagaric, and
others argue that following the September 11, 2001 terrorists attacks on
prominent United States landmarks, terrorists pose such an extreme
threat that governments should be permitted to use some degree of
torture to elicit information that saves innocent lives. To support
their thinking that torture can be warranted in extreme emergencies,
they present the ticking bomb scenario. This scenario asks what to do
with a captured terrorist who has placed a nuclear bomb in a populated
area. If the terrorist is subjected to torture, he could explain where
the bomb is and how to defuse it. Hence, they argue that, in this
circumstance, torture, the lesser of two evils, is justified.
Others
argue that there is simply no scientific evidence supporting the
effectiveness of torture. They point out that torture victims usually
tell their torturers what they want to hear, and are happy to implicate
innocent people to bring an end to their agony. Hence, torture is likely
to elicit unreliable information.
Napoleon
Bonaparte, a French Emperor, stated in 1798: “The barbarous custom of
having men beaten, who are suspected of having important secrets to
reveal must be abolished. It has always been recognized that this way of
interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing
worthwhile."
Major
General Geoffrey D. Miller, an American commander in charge of
detentions and interrogations in Iraq, pointed out that after coercive
practices were banned, interrogations saw an increase of 50% higher
value intelligence. Despite many claims by government officials and
others, nobody has presented a single documented example of lives saved
as a result of torture.
Torture
is an exercise of enormous power over others, and power is deeply
seductive to many people on Earth. That is why, as the history of
torture on the planet has shown, there is an inherent, institutional
receptivity on the part of military, police, and correctional
institutions on Earth to the use of torture. This permits the culture of
torture to grow and become accepted in times of crisis, revolution,
war, and threats of terrorism. To legalize torture in such extreme
situations is akin to legalizing and institutionalizing slavery in
similar circumstances. That, torture prohibitionists point out, is
totally inconsistent with liberal democracy on the planet. Despite near
universal condemnation in recent years on the planet, torture remains a
contentious issue for ethics, philosophy, law, and governance.
Torture
has been endemic on planet Earth from the advent of humans up to the
present. It is seemingly part of the human condition, a serious flaw in
the human psyche. It is like a disease that keeps re-occurring and
popping up unexpectedly across the planet. I have concluded that
torture, like many human traits, illnesses and diseases, might be traced
to specific human genes. Around 23,000 genes are found in human
deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), a nucleic acid that contains the genetic
instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living
organisms (and some viruses) on Earth. Earthlings compare their DNA to a set of blueprints or a recipe, and it is what makes humans what they are.
Out
of curiosity, I have asked people to identify whom they consider to be
the worst torturer in the their history or in their literature. Most
identified more recent torturers: Adolph Hitler, dictator of the
European State of Germany, whose surrogates tortured and gassed 6
million Jews and others in the 1930s and 1940s; Joseph Stalin,
Russian revolutionary and ruler of the Soviet Union and head of the
Communist Party from 1929 to 1953. Stalin was one of the bloodiest
despots in the planet’s modern history. His rule was a "holocaust by
terror" that victimized the population of Russia for twenty-five years,
causing the death of an estimated 20+ million of his own people; Marquis DeSade,
French aristocrat who lived from 1740 to 1814 and whose writings gave
rise to the term sadism (enjoyment of cruelty) in the English langauge; Idi Amin,
brutal ruler of the African State of Uganda in the 1970s, whose
eight-year reign of terror encompassed torture and killing of an
estimated 100,000 to 300,000 Ugandans. He was known to randomly kidnap
young women and girls for sexual indulgence; and Mao Zedong,
ruler of China from 1949 to 1976, who forced millions of Chinese to live
in rural communes and work in agriculture, launched an economic program
known as the “Great Leap Forward” that led to the death of an estimated
20 million Chinese, jailed and murdered political rivals, established
himself as a cult figure with statutes of himself in most public places,
and occupied the neighboring country of Tibet, brutally crushing all
opposition.
Who Stands out as The Worst Torturers? No
Earthling I spoke to identified who I consider to be the worst
torturers. To my mind, the title of worst torturer goes to twocharacters
in the planet’s literature. They tie for this dubious distinction. All
other torturers pale in contrast. These characters in human literature
are the God of Jews and Christians and the Allah of Muslims.
These
two characters, according to the Bible and the Qur’an, created a state
or place of everlasting torment and condemn creatures of their own
creation to eternal torment. This is far out crazy stuff even for a
planet with a history of wild and crazy torturers. Some Earthlings
attempt to explain to me that evil people bring the horrible torture of
the burning of hell fire for eternity on themselves. But no matter what
evil some humans on the planet earth commit, the torture of hell fire
for eternity is inflicted upon them by God and Allah, and by nobody
else. Nobody else to my knowledge has that kind of power.
It
is God and Allah, whom many Earthlings revere as the epitome of virtue
and goodness, who devised the torture chamber of hell, cast the victims
into the eternal fire, and hold them there in torment forever. God and
Allah, traditionally acknowledged as the paragons of virtue, are the
torturers. No humans are capable of inflicting such punishment. All
torture by humans mercifully ends after a relatively short period of
time, either by cessation of the torture or by death. But the torture of
hell, unmercifully, never ends.
Such
torture boggles my mind. I like to think that this is merely
literature, fictional literature. Only the human imagination could think
of such torture and try to pass it off as real. I like to think that
this is Earthlings fashioning their Gods in their own image, which, if
true, underscores what I said above, that torture is a serious flaw in
the human psyche. And millions, even billions, of people on Earth accept
the unending torture of hell fire without question. That sends ripples
of repulsion to the core of my alien mind, and draws up serious
questions about the level of civilization that people on Earth have
attained.
By
believing in the existence of the torture chamber of hell, Christians,
Jews, and Muslims and all others sharing that belief, support, accept,
or acquiesce in the righteousness of torture in certain circumstances.
That is a major problem for the United Nations and groups such as the
World Organization Against Torture, and Amnesty International,
attempting to banish torture on the planet.
As
an outsider, I do not presume to tell Jews, Christians, and Muslims
what to believe in, but a belief system with a torturer-in-chief as its
God or Allah needs some adjustment, to say the least.
Inputs, expansions, adjustments, counterpoints, rebuttals, etc. to the above are very welcome.
Zy Uzip
