Obermann said it well last night, "O'Brien from 1984, meet Mr. Bush. Mr. Bush, meet O'Brien from 1984.." Left unsaid, "you too should talk, you have so much in common." The latest set of nonsense from the administration over what Cheny was endorsing is prime, an example of Newspeak -- the language where peace is war and history is constantly re-written. The masses are kept in a swirl of hatred about the enemy. Orwell would either have a ball with this gang or perhaps just do a Lewis Black shaking fit until he went into a coma.
What is waterboarding? Obermann had an example of it on video last night; unfortunately, the actor
being waterboarded was a Navy Seal who by definition is going to be somewhat panic resistant. Have you ever had some water go down the wrong way? Imagine that sensation only lasting for minutes, hours who the hell knows while you're restrained and unable to move. You have been deprived of sleep, been pushed around, screamed at and you already are pretty sure these people do not have your best interests at heart. You can call it a dunk in the water, but unless Dubya, Troll Cyborg Cheney and Hobbit Tony Snow can say that they've gone through it, they should shut up about it. It's torture...
Freezing people until they go into hypothermia is torture. Ever had hypothermia? Your core temperature drops and you just can't stop shaking. You get disoriented, you heart and you may even find yourself crying because you are so cold. Not shivering; the shivering has progressed to shaking. The Nazi voyuer scientists used to do various things to Jews and other undesireables in their version of extraordinary rendition, amongst which was induction of hypothermia. For "scientific purposes." It is torture.
There is a passage in Frogs into Princes, the book that really started neuro-linguistic programming where the authors describe a patient who had problems with shared reality. They convinced the nutcase (who seemed to think he was a Masai because he would talk about quaffing goblets of blood whenever he had a drink; they just convinced him to stop talking, and he's running the pre-school your kids are going to now). (No, really. And, he's a born again Christian voting the straight Republican ticket. ) That's the problem here; no shared reality between those of us who look at a flower and say flower and at a pile of shit and say shit compared to those who look at a flower and say dog and at a pile of shit and say Bill Clinton did it!
Oh yeah, if you haven't read or seen 1984 , you obviously got confused looking for boobs on the internet or have been a victim of what we are calling education today. The Link is to Part II Chapter 5, and is an extraordinary passage. Here's an extract --
'In your case,' said O'Brien, 'the worst thing in the world happens to be rats.'
A
sort of premonitory tremor, a fear of he was not certain what, had
passed through Winston as soon as he caught his first glimpse of the
cage. But at this moment the meaning of the mask-like attachment in
front of it suddenly sank into him. His bowels seemed to turn to water.
'You can't do that!' he cried out in a high cracked voice. 'You couldn't, you couldn't! It's impossible.' 
'Do
you remember,' said O'Brien, 'the moment of panic that used to occur in
your dreams? There was a wall of blackness in front of you, and a
roaring sound in your ears. There was something terrible on the other
side of the wall. You knew that you knew what it was, but you dared not
drag it into the open. It was the rats that were on the other side of
the wall.'
'O'Brien!' said Winston, making an effort to
control his voice. 'You know this is not necessary. What is it that you
want me to do?'
O'Brien made no direct answer. When he spoke
it was in the schoolmasterish manner that he sometimes affected. He
looked thoughtfully into the distance, as though he were addressing an
audience somewhere behind Winston's back.
'By itself,' he
said, 'pain is not always enough. There are occasions when a human
being will stand out against pain, even to the point of death. But for
everyone there is something unendurable -- something that cannot be
contemplated. Courage and cowardice are not involved. If you are
falling from a height it is not cowardly to clutch at a rope. If you
have come up from deep water it is not cowardly to fill your lungs with
air. It is merely an instinct which cannot be destroyed. It is the same
with the rats. For you, they are unendurable. They are a form of
pressure that you cannot withstand, even if you wished to. You will do
what is required of you.
'But what is it, what is it? How can I do it if I don't know what it is?'"
Easy, vote Republican....
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