More details about torture conducted by the U.S.

Details of the senseless torture committed by Americans continue to come out, but many details have been easily available for several years. Consider this 2006 article by Esquire, which I found at the Daily Dish. It is incredibly disturbing not only because of the behavior of the personnel, but because the information inexorably points to complicity by high-ranking officers and members of the Bush Administration.

[W]hen Church issued his report in March 2005, it found "no link between approved interrogation techniques and detainee abuse" and blamed all the trouble with torture on rogue soldiers.

That's when Fishback contacted Garlasco.

Bottom Line: I am concerned that the Army is deliberately misleading the American people about detainee treatment within our custody. This behavior violates the professional military ethic of "I will not lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate those who do" and it violates the constitutional principle of a government accountable to the people.

MARC GARLASCO PUSHES the tape recorder across the table, a little closer to Jeff . . .

This is where one of the stories begins. It's one of many disturbing stories, they are increasingly coming out, and they are all pointing to systematic torture, not just a rogue soldier here or there. It's time for Congressional hearings and war crimes prosecutions. Shouldn't we move forward, though? Yes, we should. We should move forward through this unseemly American conduct, not around it. We need to understand how this could have happened, or else it will occur again at the whim of the military. If it isn't prosecuted, it will occur at the whim of state and local police. We need to look at this conduct up close, as difficult as it is. We need those who were responsible, especially high-ranking officials, to feel intense shame.

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Father of two charged in child poisoning case

ASSIMULATED PRESS Regency, Alabama - A prominent business owner is being charged in the poisoning and near death of his two children. Alabama Child Protective Services was notified when the children of prominent Regency land developer Ian Oda were brought into Eden County General Hospital convulsing and showing other signs of poisoning. When questioned about what had happened, Mr. Oda explained that the children, Alex 7 and Elizabeth 6, had ingested poisoned food that he had warned them not to eat. “I told them the rules and they disobeyed me. This is their fault.” Police and CPS agents were dispatched to the Oda home where they found an elaborate fenced-in playground which had been built specifically for the children. Neighbors reported that they had seen the children enjoying themselves and running naked around the playground for several days before the incident. Food, snacks and beverages were scattered throughout the area. However, some of the treats had been laced with strychnine and piled all together at the base of a large apple tree. Further complicating matters was the news that a former employee of Mr. Oda had been seen talking to the children shortly before they arrived at the hospital. Mr. Levi Natas had been overheard telling Elizabeth that the poisoned snacks were actually the tastiest snacks of all and that their father was hoarding them for himself. Mr. Natas had worked for Mr. Oda's company for many years but had a falling out and been let go under contentious circumstances in 2004. Mr. Natas then started his own rival company in Regency and has been notorious for trying to undermine many of Mr. Oda’s construction projects. When questioned about the incident Mr. Oda said, “Oh yes, I saw Mr. Natas talking to Elizabeth. I saw everything. My living room window overlooks the playground. But the children knew the rules. That was the only pile of snacks I had asked them not to eat.” Mr. Oda faces charges of reckless endangerment. Although the children have recovered, Mr. Oda stated to police that they are no longer welcome in his home, will never be allowed back into the playground, and that their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will also never be allowed to play there. In a prepared statement which Mr. Oda dictated to one of his assistants while the assistant was asleep, he proclaimed, “I have an employee that can clean up this mess. I promise I will send him. But it may take a few thousand years before I get around to it.”

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That strange relationship between power and truth

I have a question for readers and a request for guidance. My gut feeling is that political power has nothing to do with truth. It doesn’t matter that someone is encouraging me or threatening me to believe that 2 + 2 =5. The truth is that 2 +2 is always 4. Even if someone enacts tax incentives for me to say otherwise. Even if police officers put guns to my head. Even if every other person in my country ostracizes me and calls me immoral. It seems, though, that there are what seem to be (to many people) strange but unrelenting version of truth that are guided by the exercise of power. This occurs most often in closed systems. For instance, one would be scolded if one stood up and announced that Mary wasn’t a virgin while in a Christian church. If you take a megaphone at a Fourth of July picnic in middle-America, you’d better damn well say that the United States is the world’s greatest democracy, even though our voting rates are pathetically law and even though our political system is thoroughly corrupted thanks to legalized bribes termed “campaign contributions” (see this telling comment, which SHOULD shock us into starting a massive revolution). Within a closed social system, then, it seems as though political or social power can be used to make many people mouth many blatant untruths. After mouthing them for long periods, many of these people start believing these untruths. For instance, did we invade Iraq to confiscate known weapons of mass destruction? That idea served as truth to many people during the run up to the invasion (some people still cling to that falsehood). Now, with a new power order in place in Washington DC, the prevailing truth is that the Bush Administration intentionally conjured up fake evidence regarding WMD. This inter-relationship between truth and power reminds me of Thomas Kuhn’s suggestion that scientific fields undergo periodic revolutions ("paradigm shifts"), in which the nature of scientific inquiry within a particular field is abruptly transformed. I’m also somewhat acquainted with various “post-modernist” writings that seem to address this general issue. For instance, consider this definition of postmodernism by Josh McDowell & Bob Hostetler, which I pulled from Wikipedia:

A worldview characterized by the belief that truth doesn’t exist in any objective sense but is created rather than discovered.”… Truth is “created by the specific culture and exists only in that culture. Therefore, any system or statement that tries to communicate truth is a power play, an effort to dominate other cultures.

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Elephant’s Wings

PZ Myers has produced a parable; an updating of the ancient saga of the Blind Men and the Elephant. The gist of every version of this tale is that several blind explorers each encounter one point on an elephant, and decide from that point what the whole must be. PZ presents a version with an intractable dissenting opinion among those considered as experts. After their consternation at their initial dissimilar conclusions about the true nature of an elephant,

The first three, being of a scientifical bent, quickly collaborated and changed places, and confirmed each other's observations; they agreed that each had been correct in the results of their investigations, except that there wasn't a hint of feathers anywhere about, but clearly their interpretations required correction and more data. So they explored further, reporting to each other what they were finding, in order to establish a more complete picture of the obstacle in the path.

"Feathers?" you ask. The fourth had suggested that it simply must have iridescent, transcendent wings. So as the others checked their evidence, he:

yawns and stretches in the shade of a tree. "It has wings, large wings, that it may ascend into the heavens and inspire humanity. There could be no purpose to such an animal without an ability to loft a metaphor and give us something to which we might aspire."

The disagreements between those who explore and those who are sure, escalate. A worthy short read.

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Andrew Sullivan reviews Robert Wright’s account of the evolution of religion

At the Daily Dish I learned that Andrew Sullivan reviewed Robert Wright's new book, The Evolution of God, in the London Times. Here's an excerpt:

From primitive animists to the legends of the first gods, battling like irrational cloud-inhabiting humans over the cosmos, Wright tells the story of how war and trade, technology and human interaction slowly exposed humans to the gods of others. How this awareness led to the Jewish innovation of a hidden and universal God, how the cosmopolitan early Christians, in order to market their doctrines more successfully, universalised and sanitised this Jewish God in turn, and how Islam equally included a civilising universalism despite its doctrinal rigidity and founding violence.

Fundamentalism, in this reading, is a kind of repetitive neurotic interlude in the evolution of religion towards more benign and global forms.

Continue ReadingAndrew Sullivan reviews Robert Wright’s account of the evolution of religion