May 25, 2018 • 59 mins
It's one of the most ancient practices in human civilization, and one that continues in the modern day. In recent decades experts, military officials and activists alike have argued over the definitions of torture -- and, most importantly, whether it actually works. So how much truth is there to the claims that, while unethical, torture delivers results? What's the Stuff the Authorities Don't Want You To Know about what goes on in those unobserved black sites hidden across the planet? Tune in to learn more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M Hello,
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is known the Iron Maiden Brown. They called me Ben.
We are joining with our returning super producer Paul decant Uh.
And most importantly, you are here. You are you that
makes this stuff they don't want you to know. By
the self described moniker, one of our co hosts just
(00:48):
added you you may sense a bit of foreshadowing in
today's episode. Today's episode is a little dark, but let's
get into it with an anecdote. I get adequate, in
(01:08):
adequate clothing and medical care when I required. Voice you
just heard was Admiral Jeremiah Denton of the United States Navy.
On July eighteenth, nineteen sixty five, his U S Navy
jet was shot down while leading an air attack over
North Vietnam. He was captured, and he remained in the
(01:29):
country as a prisoner of war until nineteen seventy three.
It's quite a long time now after like during that
first full year that he was a prisoner of war,
he was interviewed for this propaganda peace essentially from the
North vietnam Namese. He was filmed being interviewed by a
member of the Japanese press, and during this interview he
(01:52):
states several things that you heard. Um, he's getting adequate
food and clothing and medical care. Um. And also they
he supports the United States government and all of its actions.
And that's probably not something that his captors wanted him
to say, if it truly was a propaganda piece, which
it appears to be. Um. But here's the thing. What
(02:14):
you can't see because you're not watching the film, is
that he is blinking all the while that he's talking,
and what he is spelling out is actually Morse code,
and he's spelling out the word torture. And we actually
have a quick clip here of what that would sound like.
(02:36):
And this stuck out to the analyst on Uncle Sam's
side because they knew that didn't did not have some
sort of medical condition that would cause him to blink
radically absolutely, And when the U. S. Naval Intelligence got
ahold of this, this was the first time they had
had any kind of communication from one of these prison
camps that was existing in North Vietnam that actually stated
(02:59):
in anyway that they were being tortured, that the American
POWs were being tortured. And he's doing this repeatedly in
different interviews or is this all in one sit down?
This is one sit down, but he is just continually
spelling the word. And these propaganda videos were relatively common
in this age from different governments, where you would have
someone say, yes, we are being treated well, we are
(03:23):
being taken care of, when multiple outside sources suspected that
this was not the case. Today's episode is diving into
dark and grizzly territory, and we would like all of
you friends, neighbors, conspiracy realists, and skeptics alike to know
up front that this show is going to contain graphic
(03:44):
descriptions of horrific physical and mental abuse you see today.
We are exploring the past, the present, and the future
of torture, given the ubiquitous nature of torture throughout human history,
even before or recorded human history, because we were as
a species torturing each other before we were writing things down.
(04:07):
We won't be delving into too many specific cases, but
we will inevitably run into several strange examples of this practice.
So here are the facts. First things first, what what's
the operative definition of torture? Yeah, torture is um the
deliberate infliction of physical and or I mean, I guess
(04:31):
it could be one of the other psychological pain with
the purpose of obtaining information or extorting a confession from
the victim and thus enabling a conviction. It can also
be the penalty itself, um and I get that. That's
like a good, cut and dry definition of it. Don't
some people torture just for the sheer thrill of doing
(04:51):
it with no end game in mind. Well, a lot
of this comes from the u N outlining exactly what
torture is in I believe right right the the acronym uncat,
which might be the only funny thing about this episode,
which we will dive into. And that's a great point
because this sounds on the surface like a pretty solid definition,
(05:15):
but of course not everyone agrees with it, because there
is torture simply for statistic purposes, typically not from a
state level actor. It would be someone who wants to
torture someone and maybe they're doing it while employed by
the state, but they're getting their own dark giggles in
the process. And then what about the difference between state
(05:36):
sponsored torture and enhanced interrogation? Right? Right? Is this a
brand name difference is there? Is it a matter of
degree or the fundamentally different things. Experts like gr Scott,
who in the late nineteenth century wrote a book about torture,
says that it's devilishly easy to make a definition of
(05:58):
torture that's either too narrow only a specific kind of
thing can be considered torture, or it's too wide in scope.
You know, like, uh, I was I was tortured because
I had to listen to someone tell me yet again
the plot of Looper, that's not quite torture. I mean,
maybe it is, if it they just do it forever
(06:19):
for a year. But for today's purposes, we're going to
go with the definition that Noel just mentioned earlier. The
systematic use of torture in criminal procedures or criminal proceedings
dates back to some of our earliest civilizations, and it's
creepy when you think about it. Scenes depicting torture can
(06:40):
be found on different monuments, right, oh yeah, in everywhere
in these ancient areas from Mesopotamia, Egypt all over. Yeah,
and the first records of a legal application of torture
to prove something, to prove guilt or innocence were found
in the Sumarian Code of Urnmua. It's around the twenty
(07:02):
first century b C. And then the Babylonian Code of
Hammurabi in the century b C. Again, and the procedure
describe the the divine judgment of the water ordeal, which
is what it's torture. And as this practice became increasingly
(07:26):
codified because it was already common right in different raiding
parties from tribes and so on, as it became part
of the rule of law, the administration of torture took
different directions depending on the civilization. So ancient Greeks and
Romans used it for interrogation. And this is really interesting
because this is something that haunts us. I would argue
(07:49):
in the current age. Until the second century a d
torture was only supposed to be used on slaves, with
some notable exceptions, and in fact, a slave's testimony in
any sort of legal proceeding was only admissible if they
had been tortured first. That's insane, Yeah, that's the assumption
(08:10):
is that you couldn't trust slaves to reveal the truth
of their own accord. That is messed up on so
many levels. It is because can you imagine being a
slave and saying, yes, I know I saw you, know,
Sabbat or whatever, take the water jug and they're like, look,
we believe you, but unfortunately I am going to have
to break like one of your hands. Well, and then
(08:32):
are you sure you saw him take it? Are you sure?
And continue breaking until the person says no, Well, and
I'm sure. We're gonna get into this later. But it's like,
now we know that torture typically renders accounts unreliable, right
because you're gonna say whatever it takes to make them stop.
We're going to get into that on exactly how reliable
(08:55):
or not torture techniques are. Yeah, the I mean this idea, though,
the fundamental assumption about the efficacy of torture is like
a concept that haunts humanity like a ghost, and it it.
The consequences of this philosophy remain with us today and
(09:16):
have been here for millennia. In some areas of the world,
acts of torture were grouped into different categories. You would
have something like first, second, or third degree, and they
were they were rated in terms of pain, and unlike
the modern way that degrees are interpreted in the legal
system the US today, like first degree murder is worse
(09:39):
than second degree murder. Just flip, just flip it, flip it.
So first degree torture in this kind of system would
be something that causes pain but does not permanently mutilate
the body, such as whipping or the many variations thereof,
or just you know, beating the ever loving snot out
of someone. One very whipping would be something called bastinado
(10:03):
or filic. It's foot whipping. So it sounds silly at
first when when you're thinking out and you're just slapping
someone's feet. No, there if you rip the shreds and
they needed these to walk. So that's the first degree,
and the second degree ups the anti quite a bit,
I would say. And this is where you'll find things
like vices or racks, things that um either crush or
(10:28):
you know, like stretched to the point of not killing
but pretty much mutilating someone. Of these are like screw presses,
Uh yeah, where you where your thumbs would be crushed,
your toes or really any knees, feet, teeth, any kind
of way Basically that's where you get to second degree,
(10:50):
where that you're not going to look and function the
same after you've been tortured, and you you may well die,
but they're not purposely they're deciding to. And that's like
when where they would like put you on the rack
and like stretch you to the point where your bones
would break and things like that. Right, that's that second
or what yeah, or what would be called maybe uh
a restraint position like the so called Palestinian hanging there.
(11:16):
But these both well horrific pale in comparison to the
third degree. Yeah. The third degree is where it really
starts to make your skin crawl. This is the kind
of torture that was the most insidious and dangerous of
all um utterly nightmare fuel, the kind of stuff that
(11:37):
you hear in fiction that you're you would almost question
who would come up with this idea. It's all very
creative stuff too, So we're talking spikes and blades and
boiling oil and fire and things with names of it
alone will just send shivers up your spine, like the
serrated iron tongue shredder not an ironic name, the hot
(12:00):
opper basin for a bascination. The that's the word of
the day, destroying someone's eyesight, that's right. Uh. And oh
and the stocks that forcibly held the victim's feet over
red hot coals um and then yeah, until the skin
and the foot muscles were burnt black and the bones
(12:22):
completely uh turned to powder. The feet were the skin
of the few were also coated and lard beforehand, which
is an extra gruesome detail. And what what we just
described on that third degree, it's very clear that, especially
before the advent of modern medicine, someone's chances of surviving
(12:44):
any of those was remarkably slim. Just the infection. Can
you imagine the infection, the bleeding out from these various wounds.
And it's one of those things too where unless they
needed to keep you alive because they really wanted to
continue to extra act information from you, it's not like
they were going to give you any kind of medical
attention right away unless it was, you know, worth their
(13:07):
while to do so. Right, they might have someone pray
for you, but that person might be praying while they're
doing that thing on and the worst thing is that
is not for me. The worst thing is that it's
not just for interrogation purposes. Sometimes the whole reason that
a human being would have to go through this is
so that whatever group is doing the torturing can set
(13:30):
an example for what happens if you either defy the
group in power or or even just some kind of
dissenter from the group in power. Um that that bothers
me to the end. The people are starving and there's
a widespread theft of grain, and someone says, well, we
need the bulk of these serfs or peasants whatever to
(13:52):
survive and to farm land. So let's just publicly eviscerate
one of them, just so they know, literally not just
give them a good talking to right there, flesh, leave
the heads somewhere visible, a pike perhaps, And you know,
you can get into arguments about controlling a population through
fear or through you know, the various ways that you
(14:15):
can do that from a high level, but man, it
just seems too brutal to make much sense. And the
type of abuse administered here would typically depend on the
setting the transgression, the social status of the victims. So,
for example, in Europe, Elizabeth Bathory orbet bath Thy, because
(14:38):
of her high station, was not murdered or burned at
a steak or impaled, she was walled into a room
where she didn't start to death, she was fed until
she died. She was put on, not to be too
glib about it, permanent time out or solitary confinement. And
(14:59):
people argue that that sort of injustice or inequality of
consequence occurs today. I think the that the four of
us would largely agree that is the case, at least
here in the States, and for centuries and centuries various
civilizations across the globe, we all just sort of took
it for granted that horrific physical degradations, mutilations, and abuses
(15:25):
were par for the course when it came to dissent
a crime, or even rubbing the wrong important person the
wrong way. And if we fast forward to the modern day,
humanity started to realize this as a problem. Yeah, where
where did you get clicked for humanity? Man? In the
world wars? Yeah, in the World Wars. That's I believe
(15:49):
when the public around the world said, what Charnel houses?
What abatois are we building? You know? And that was
library impetus for the United Nations to codify protections against torture.
And as you had said Matt. This didn't happen, actually
happen or get adopted into law until the nineteen eighties. Okay,
(16:14):
so it took a long time for it to click
for humanity, right as well, it took a long time
for the make it official. Uh there, you know, and
there are things before their Rules of Engagement for war
treatment of POWs. But the Convention against Torture and Other
Cruel and Human or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, commonly known
as UNCAT or the United Nations Convention against Torture, wasn't
(16:35):
adopted until nineteen four. It was ratified in nineteen seven.
And so they used a definition that's a little bit
different from the one we used at the top. Yeah,
this comes from Article one of the Convention. Quote for
the purpose of this Convention, the term torture means any
act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental,
(16:56):
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,
(17:19):
or with the consent or acquiescence of, a public official,
for other person acting in an official capacity, it does
not include pain or suffering arising only from inherent, in
or incidental to lawful sanctions. Tut, Tut, tut. Can you
unpack that first, Ben? I read it, but I don't
think I took it in. Well, one of the big
(17:39):
things there is that right at the end, putting in
lawful sanctions. So if it's if it's part of the
law in the country where this is occurring, as this
is the type of punishment, it feels like there's a
lot of wiggle room there. Right, we can see the
problems with this. So three of the big things that happened.
(18:01):
Noll you you point. You made the excellent point about
a third person that shows up, because there are people
who will gladly die for a cause, but they don't
want their children or their spouse to. And then the
second huge point about this is the involvement of a
public official or someone acting in an official capacity. So
(18:22):
this is banning state sponsored acts of this sort of violence.
This is not banning. Uh there's not specifically meant. It's
harget you know, the day Matt snaps and abduct someone, Okay,
getting the getting the crazy eyes, Sorry Matt. Moving on?
(18:42):
What would it take? What would it take for a
Matt snap? A Matt snap? Mm hmm. You don't know.
Maybe that's it you did, you don't know, probably my family,
but I don't. I don't know that I would abduct anybody.
I think you've feel like you, I feel like you
know exactly what the lion on Matt step is in
(19:04):
God hope we never cross it. We wouldn't be absolutely clear,
of course. No. I think you can agree with me
here that of the three of us, Matt is probably
the nicest, like legitimately and not not prone to unducting people.
Of course he's not prone, but when the snap happens, man,
(19:24):
stand back. I guess you never know when when a
snap occurs. That's the nature of it. It's very much
the nature of it. But it could happen any of us,
and we all have our limits. And that's why I
think it's interesting you brought up the third party situation
because that is uh a, it's it's dirty pool my man,
you know, taking someone's loved ones and you know, using
(19:47):
them as a as a tool to extract information out
of someone. That is just like the most horrific thing
that you could possibly do, I think, you know, or
even just like a co pilot or a partner, someone
who's in the same squad as you are, because now
you're responsible for the life of another. So ethically, it
(20:07):
puts someone in the position where they have to ask,
am I committing murder by an action? But the third
the third point. So the first point is the thing
about a third party. The second point is the state action.
And to follow up the third point here, and one
of the most dangerous ones is the idea of lawful sanctions.
(20:28):
What they're saying then is that if there is a
sanctioned action, anything from depriving the civilians of a country
of food due to an economic sanction or a military
incursion that results in the death or mutilation of civilians,
that does not count as torture. And this debate continues
(20:53):
in the international sphere today. Regrettably, we can we can
probably already a good spider sense of which countries have
what positions. Yeah, well, especially if we go back to
the top with that example of the Navy airman who is,
you know, telling people that he's been tortured and this
(21:14):
is part of the Vietnam conflict. And then you imagine
historically what we know the U. S. Military was doing
two civilians in places all over North Vietnam. And you know,
since it's States sanctioned, you know, we're talking about the
sixties and seventies then during the Vietnam conflict. But so
(21:35):
it's well before a decade before the U. N says
this is what torture is. But at the same time,
both sides are doing one form of torture or another.
That's a great point. And we should also note that
in many cases it's not as if the president or
the ruling party or the monarch of the country said
(21:57):
you soldiers, go out torture people. Often this fog of
war mission creep would set in and there would be
factions of people or officials acting relatively of their own accord,
thinking that the ends justify the means. And so we
can already see the problems with this definition, as lengthy
(22:20):
as it is and as specific as it attempts to be.
But regardless of the imperfections, the concept itself seems noble, right,
stop torturing people, especially when there's not a lot of
evidence that it works as intended. So case closed, right,
(22:42):
and we'll get into y after a quick sponsor break.
Here's where it gets crazy. The idea that everybody can
agree to stop torturing people is uh, the idea that
this work is wrong, and fortunately it is so so
so cartoonishly incorrect. According to the scholar irv and Abramaan,
(23:07):
although there were several decades of prohibition against torture generally
agreed that spread from Europe to most parts of the world,
by the nineteen eighties that that ban was functionally off.
The taboo against torture had been broken. Yes, he argued
that torture quote returned with a vengeance, and a lot
(23:29):
of this had to do with the advent of television
or the way television was kind of changing, and it
presented an opportunity to break political prisoners and then broadcast
the results. Um, the public recantation is kind of like
we're mentioning at the top of the show. They wanted
that airmen to say, I don't believe in the ideologies
(23:51):
of the United States government. They are wrong that's what
they want to be able to broadcast to everyone. Um.
And the idea, the idea is that if you torture
someone enough, you can change, you know, you can make
them say what you want for your ideological means and
and just recanting, Yeah, political beliefs. Idea using this ideological
(24:11):
warfare and political mobilization and the need to win the
hearts and minds of people who exist in a country
where war is being waged. Very it's it's Orwellian when
you think about it, you know. And if anything, then,
according to this expert, in the wake of the World wars,
torture as a widespread practice momentarily maybe sort of kind
(24:36):
of a little bit paused for a second. But now
if we fast forward a little closer to the modern age,
we find that that is not the case. According to
Human Rights Watch, between two thousand four and two thousand five,
over sixteen countries were documented using torture, state sponsored torture. Yeah,
and then you go to the war on terror, the
(24:58):
global War on terror, right where we know black sites.
We've covered this before on an episode. Black sites have
been used where torture occurs. And it's not just the
United States, right, is not just the This is not
just an episode picking on the United States. And often
these things are occurring through a second or third hand thing.
There's a proxy. Uh So, despite being banned, torture continues
(25:22):
in countries around the globe, and this ancient practice shows
no signs of abating. In fact, our species has effectively
leveraged technology to arrive at new forms of physical and
psychological abuse. One thing we learned about in the course
of our research, which initially didn't sound that bad, was
the so called cold cell treatment. And this comes this
(25:44):
is an Uncle Sam. Original prisoners are placed in front
of a large air conditioner unit running on full blast.
That doesn't sound bad right at first, Probably it's kind
of nice, depending on where you are, I mean for
the first day, or for maybe even for the first week.
But what about a month, what about a year? Yeah,
(26:07):
that is the so called cold cell treatment. And we
should make we should make a point that it's allegedly
happened for years, but we're required technically to say allegedly. Yeah,
I wonder what that does to the human body. And
we don't have a lot of information about exactly how
(26:29):
cold the air conditioner unit gets too, But we're I'm
assuming if it's an air conditioner rather than some kind
of like refrigeration device, it's probably in the lower to
mid sixties. So it's probably it's not fatal. It's probably
more psychological. That's exactly what it is. So so what
(26:49):
else have we found? What other technology have we turned to?
Tortuous ends electricity That's one of the major things that's
been used in modern times of everything from cattle prods
to stun guns two lasers being used by mostly mostly
security forces like police forces, UM and militaries. And it's
(27:13):
strange to imagine, especially in the United States. They the
modern stun gun did not originate as a less than
lethal weapon for police officers the way we you know
nowadays see it a lot of the times a taser.
You know, um, it was it was a cattle prod,
and then it became a way to control prisoners specifically UM,
(27:36):
and then it kind of evolved. Wow. And then also
this would be going to the earlier point made knowl
about torture and fiction. This would be where a car
battery is hooked up to something and then they they
shocked the person with the car battery, which is a
very real thing though. Absolutely, here's a weird one, the
(27:59):
so called white torture. What is this? I don't know
this this sounds this is psychological, but it sounds very strange.
A prisoner is in solitary confinement and everything in there world,
everything they encounter, including the food they eat and the
plates eat from white blank white. Dude. You know that's
(28:21):
in j Lo's rider that, like everything in her dressing
room has to be white. What do you think she originated?
Maybe this make should call it the j LO torture?
This this is real. That's that's real. That's a thing
that's not some interior designer being like playful. I can
imagine that being another psychological torture device that just I
(28:44):
don't know somehow, Yeah, especially like can you imagine combining
the cold cell, the white cold cell is what they
would call it, with lights on all the time, also
no human contact, playing the same song over and over
and you know that's that might sound like that's a
lot for us to put on Jennifer Lopez, but it
(29:07):
is in her rider that everything has to be white,
and she has been responsible for some atrocities though that's true. Ah,
I have not. I haven't either, heard it was really
bad atrocity. Maybe that's a little overst overstate. In the case,
I did like to sell though. I did like the
cell as well. I enjoyed it. I felt from from
(29:29):
the perspective cinematography, it was just stunning. The guy that
directed that, Tarsim Singh, did those early R E M videos,
very nineties kind of tableaus with like the rotating the platform,
and he's on with them. Anyway, I didn't that guy
basically invented the look of like the Pearl Jam video
from the nineties. And anyway, he's got some amazing other
movies with a fall. The Fall is a good one.
(29:52):
Oh and speaking of music, this brings us to another
form of technologically advanced torture that long time listeners are
familiar with. Yeah, it's just music torture, right like, and
I think a part of it doesn't necessarily have to
be incredibly loud. But whenever you see it done and
(30:12):
you dramatized in film, is usually some absurd stack of
you know, bas in the trunk kind of car stereo speakers.
They're just blasting the stuff at really high decibel levels.
We're talking about, you know, the idea. I think is repetition.
It would be the same song over and over and
over and over again, whether it's Metallica or Britney Spears
(30:32):
or even a very popular one Bend I think you
mentioned before on another episode is the Barney song. Yeah,
did you know that guy's a tantric sex guru? Now,
the guy that played Barney, does he still wear the costume? Now?
I think he's, Oh, I need to get that out
of my head already. He mainly just wears scented oils
and lotions and nothing else. A fine musk. The The
(31:01):
other practice that we found was forced feeding, including using
some medical advances to feed people rectally, similar to uh
gross real life version of that South Park trope. Yeah,
and a lot of this you'll see in the news. Um.
(31:23):
And it's not necessarily used as a torture, but as
a way to keep people who are prisoners alive if
they're having some kind of protest where they're they're doing
self starvation in process of their captivity. And so again,
it's it's crazy to think that the method to preserve
someone's life can also be used to torture them. Yes, yeah,
(31:46):
and that goes into an ethical question as well. You
know this is something that we didn't discuss off air,
but it just occurred to me. Now, if somebody wants
to die, right, if want to commit medically assisted suicide
with their own accord and they are legally required to
(32:07):
stay alive, is that this in a state of pain,
perhaps from a chronic condition. Is that the state aiding
in torture? Or is you know what's the line there?
That's a tough ethical question we should Um, is there
an ethicist in the house? Paul, are you an ethicist? Okay,
(32:30):
but you know that's in that's something we I wonder
if the u N has pondered that. I haven't seen
anything anything recently at least well, and let's just I
don't know, I'm gonna talk about the elephant in the room,
or at least my elephant. You know. The u N
kind of gets a lot of flak as being a
somewhat toothless organization, like you can make these resolutions, um,
(32:51):
but at the end of the day, it's just kind
of you know, words on paper, and there's very little
enforcement ability that the u N has. Correct me if
I'm wrong, you are correct. The The primary power structure
of the United Nations is the U n Security Council,
and they can each member the UN Security Council can
(33:16):
veto an entire concept. So it has to things have
to pass unanimously. So it is very very very very difficult.
It's not as bad and ineffectual as the predecessor, the
League of Nations. But yeah, you're you're spot on. When
do words on paper translate to substantive change? Yeah, no,
(33:37):
that that that that kind of is the question, and
that's sort of you know, we're talking about the shift
of consciousness um as a country when we decide as
a people that torture is not okay. But yet if
if it's still is thought by some as being an
effective tool, whether or not there are resolutions on the
books or not. At the end of the day, if
(33:57):
you think it's going to get the job done, you're
probably gonna figure out a way to get around it
and do it, you know, especially when we have things
like black sites and you know, stuff where there's very
little oversights and you have heads of these divisions that
essentially act as gods of their little fiefdoms, you know,
So it's tough. Yeah, like secret police, for instance, throughout
(34:19):
a lot of throughout a lot of recent history. And
that's the point that is the stuff they don't want
you to know here in this in this episode, it's
the fact that there are numerous active conspiracies as we speak,
we're not talking about we're not talking about nineteen seventy four,
(34:41):
we're not talking about two thousand and seven. We're talking
about twenty eighteen. As we are recording this, there are
numerous active cover ups and conspiracies allowing various governments around
the world, including the United States, but not limited to
Uncle Sam to commit torture, either through proxy or euphemisms
(35:01):
like enhanced interrogation or good old fashioned secret police. As
as you guys pointed out, black sites off the line
item budgets written out of your history books, and we
might never know what happens with it. And this forces
us to ask about the future of torture. And we'll
get into that right after a quick word from our sponsor.
(35:28):
So we're back and no, only you brought up this
excellent point, especially in the case of US intelligence services,
military arms. The primary argument for these techniques is that
is something along the lines of, well, they might be deplorable,
but they do result invaluable or what they would call
actionable intelligence that can ultimately save lives. And the scenario
(35:53):
you'll often hear uh described by people supporting these programs
is the following. It's something called the time bomb scenario. Yeah,
imagine that you're an authority figure, right, whether this is
law enforcement, military, maybe an intelligence officer working for the CIA,
whatever it is. You have absolute certainty that there will
be some form of attack, a terrorist attack probably, and
(36:16):
it's going to happen in the near to immediate future.
But you don't know exactly where, you don't know exactly when.
How do you find out? This is your the big quandary.
How do you gain that information without, you know, stumbling
upon a piece of paper that has it written out.
So let's take it a step further and say that
(36:37):
maybe maybe we are those investigators, and we have one
or more suspects and custody, and with the same amount
of certitude, we know that they know where the attack
will be. Maybe we have it narrowed down to three cities,
but they know which city and which day, and you
we know that you know torture is banned, um, it
(37:01):
may still be one of the only ways to extract
information this kind of information before hundreds of thousands of
innocent people die, or at least that's the justification, right. Yeah,
And and this this is often depicted as the ultimate dilemma,
at least for modern times, regarding torture, and experts continue
to debate it today whether or not it's a good
(37:23):
idea to save all of these lives by torturing this person.
Can you even get information that would be reliable enough
to save people if you did indeed torture one of
these suspects. There's there's a lot to unpack there, right,
Like do you or do we in this scenario want
to be responsible for thousands of innocent people dying because
(37:48):
we refuse to bend or break the law. Yeah, and
international law that's set forth by you know, the United Nations.
And look, it's just one of those things, like it's
a big moral quandary that seems to have probably the
most weight behind it in our modern times. So now
our question becomes if we want to be Machavelli and
(38:10):
if we want to cast morals aside. Now our question
shifts a little, and it's the the ultimate question here.
Does it work? As we alluded to earlier in the show,
does physically or psychologically torturing someone compel them to provide truthful,
useful information. The answer is no, Torture does not work,
(38:32):
at least in the way that the tormentors might publicly intend. Again,
that's publicly. So there's an article from Scientific American by
a guy named Michael Schermer, and it's called We've known
for four hundred years that torture doesn't work. In this article,
(38:52):
there is a fascinating anecdote about the Duke of Brunswick
in Germany during the time of the Inquisition. He goes
to visit the inquisitors and he wants to oversee their
use of torture to extract information from people accused of witchcraft,
right the majority of whom were women. So the Jesuits
(39:14):
told the Duke that the inquisitors are doing their duty.
They're only arresting people who have been implicated in the
confessions of other witches when they were put to the
question which was the term for torture. And so the
Duke's a little bit skeptical and he thinks, well, maybe
people just say anything to get this to stop. So
he invited the Jesuits to come visit him. Uh and
(39:37):
go with him to a dungeon to witness a woman
being stretched on the rack. Second degree of torture, like
like we have mentioned earlier. And the Duke said to
this lady, while she's mid torture, by the way, he says, now, woman,
you are confessed, which I suspect these two men of
being warlocks? What do you say? And he looks at
(39:59):
the ext cutioners and he says another turn of the
rack executioners And the woman immediately said, no, no, no,
you are quite right. I have often seen them at
the sabbath. They can turn themselves into goats, wolves and
other animals. Several witches have had children by them. One
woman even had eight children whom these men fathered. The
children had heads like toads and legs like spiders. And
(40:21):
the Duke turned to the Jesuits and said, should I
torture you until you confess? Jeez, you get real creative
when you're put to the question. And that's that's that's
how we know. Like the problem with tortures. If the
primary goal is to receive truthful information again morals aside,
(40:42):
then we have to think of the primary goal of
the victim, which is just to stop this immense, unending pain. Well,
and also mentioned in that article is something that has
really shaped the way I've viewed torture over the years.
Christopher Hitchens, a writer that I very much admired to
a certain extent um. Several years ago, while he was
(41:03):
still living, he was worked, he was writing for Vanity
Fair still and he went and he was himself waterboarded.
And you know, he was famously hawkish about war, believing
that there were there were good reasons to go to
war and to eliminate terrorism and all. You know, you
can look at his views, but he didn't believe that
(41:25):
waterboarding was that big of a deal. But he went.
It occurred to him, and his quote from the article was,
if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no
such thing as torture. Because he had a terrible experience.
He almost immediately after being subjected to the water pouring
on his head, he he said, no, that felt like
(41:48):
I was drowning. That is the worst thing that's ever
happened to me. And I'm sure most listeners know what
waterboarding is, but I mean, just to set the scene,
it's like you've got a rag over your face, there
is an you know, a torrent of water being poured
over your mouth and nose to the point where it's
it's it's constant enough that you just can't catch your breath,
and I'm imagining that the rag is creating almost a
(42:10):
suction against your face where you just like are totally
incapable of drawing breath. And so I would argue that
this is not only a physical torture, because we know
it's very unpleasant physically when you can't breathe, it's also
a psychological torture because it's the sensation that it's creating
of not being able to catch your breath and of dying,
of drowning, which sounds terrifying. Well, yeah, And the whole
(42:32):
point of this whole thing, though, is that Christopher Hitchins
was alluding to the fact that he would have said
anything to make that stop, and he can't imagine, he
couldn't imagine experiencing that as someone like being told you
know where X is, you know what time it's going
to happen, tell me where it is, and then proceeded
(42:53):
with the torture over and over over. It just seems
so counterintuitive to me that that that people would think
that this is a part way to get people to
tell them the truth. It just seems to me that
it's obvious that it would be the opposite. Yeah, it's
a it's a smart way to get people to tell
you whatever you want them to say. But whether or
not it's true is is very, very different. And this
(43:15):
ticking time bomb thought experiment, Let's be honest, it's way
too cut and dry in reality. If there's someone in captivity,
they may or may not be responsible for this thing, right,
They may or may not have accurate information. Even if
they are responsible, maybe they're not on the inner circle
for some specific operation. Then they might not know anything useful.
(43:40):
They might just make stuff up out of whole cloth,
like the like the toad heads. As I'm saying, like
that's like creative writing type stuff, like you know, you
are going to dig deep into your imagination for you know,
to make that rack tightening cease. Absolutely, and despite the
continued practices of what we could call gray area interrogation
(44:01):
and or torture, the U. S. Government itself publicly agrees
that torture is not really effective. There was a two
thousand fourteen report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
They analyzed millions of internal CIA documents related to the
torture of people's suspected of terrorism, and the Senate concluded
(44:22):
the CIA's use of its enhanced interrogation techniques was not
an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees.
It also adds that multiple CIA detainees fabricated information, resulting
in faulty intelligence, and that leads us to ask, if
torture doesn't work, what does Is there something better than torture? Well, yeah,
(44:47):
pretty much the opposite of torture. There there are multiple
studies that show that this might be the thing, the
way to get information from people building rapport. It works wonders,
and it has a significant only higher chance of creating
a successful relationship between interrogator and interrogator. Um by actually
(45:08):
be like showing empathy and I understand your situation. I mean,
there's a whole host of lines you can go down,
for sure. I guess the problem there is, though, if
you have people that are trained, they're hardened to the
point where they they're just not They're not going to
play nice with you at all, you know. I Mean,
it's one thing if you're like a scared kid or
(45:29):
like someone who's been accused of a crime, and you're
just all, you know, you don't know which way is up.
You could probably coerce someone into telling you some stuff
and getting them to cry and talk about their mommy
or something like. I'm I'm being a jerk, but you
know what I'm saying. But if someone is like a
trained a terrorist or an operative of some kind, I
don't I don't think that's gonna work. I don't know.
(45:51):
You might find that there's I'm just saying there. You
might find that there is a vulnerable human inside each
and every one of us. It also depends on the
X axis of time. That's that's fair. So if someone
is detained for life with no human contact, isn't that torture?
And except for you, it is. It is. But it's uh,
(46:13):
it's a chess level torture. And the the thing is
that it appears to it appears to work. There are
different studies that confirmed. There's one called the Who, What,
and Why Human Intelligence Gathering from this journal Applied Cognitive Psychology.
They surveyed a hundred and fifty two interrogators and they
found that rapport and relationship building techniques were employed most
(46:37):
often and perceived to be the most effective regardless of
context and intended outcome. Particularly, they found in comparison to
confrontational techniques, and that's from the interrogators themselves. Yeah, there's
another study called Interviewing High Value Detainees. It sampled the
sixty four practitioners and detainees, and it found that quote
(46:57):
detainees were more likely to disclose meaningful information and earlier
in the interview when report building techniques were used. So
those are two examples of studies that find this approach
superior to confrontational or abusive behavior. Although I do appreciate
the point of rapport building and solitary confinement being just
(47:23):
another form of torture, are arguably with these stories we
hear from various global conflicts in the study of torture.
They indicate the same conclusions, not just from academics and historians,
but from the firsthand accounts of other interrogators. And so
we have to ask ourselves if torture does not work
(47:43):
at least in terms of providing truthful information or eliciting it,
if it only blinds someone to the point that they
will say something anything to prevent further abuse. Then why
do we as a species persist. There are several reasons,
and absolutely none of them are appealing. First, in some
belief systems, certain methods of punishment may be prescribed for
(48:05):
certain types of transgressions. This is where you hear about
traditional methods of punishment, right, or execution for the violation
of socio spiritual morays. That's just that's a word. I
made up word socio spiritual. Uh. And then there's the
other one. Second, torture is also used successfully to some
(48:29):
degree to send a message. And this goes to an anecdote.
And I know there's a touchy geopolitical situation with Russia
right now, but there's a short there's a short story
or an account of what happened in the Soviet Union
at the time. Had four Soviet diplomats kidnapped in did
(48:51):
you all hear about this? So in these four Soviet
diplomats were kidnapped by a fundamentalist group called the Islamic
Liberation Organization. They dispatched Russia dispatched something called it's Alpha group.
They were tasked with counter terrorism, hostage rescue situations. They
(49:14):
learned that one of the hostages had been killed, a
guy named Arkady Katkov. And so what they did is
they tracked down and located one of the leaders of
the kidnappers are possibly a relative, and they wanted to
send a message to the terrorists. They tortured this person
(49:39):
that they captured with absolutely no intention of gaining information,
absolutely no intention of letting them survive. Alpha group castrated
the hostage, cut him into pieces, and sent pieces of
him to the hostage takers. And they also said, we
know who your other relatives are, and we know where
they live, and we know the routines. The three hostages
(50:02):
were released and dropped off near the Soviet embassy and
there were no other There haven't been Russian officials taken
captive since then. Uh. And then people argue back and forth,
this this scary story, but what it what it shows
is that their goal in torture then was not to
(50:23):
learn anything new. Their goal was to send a signal,
just like in the early days of civilization where someone said,
let us make an example discussing repugnant example. Yeah, rather
than fleeing some prisoners and putting them on spikes throughout
your whole kingdom, you just cut one person up to
(50:45):
take this one group out, and you could argue again
morals aside that that was a short term solution, that
the signaling did result in the release of those other hostages.
But over the long term is that a solution, I
don't know. But for now, the practice of torture continues.
(51:06):
We had talked before about several like we mentioned several
forms of torture that seemed arcane but are still around, right,
Like um nol you mentioned when we were talking about
UH foot whipping. You have told me before that that's
not an ancient practice, right right, Well, I mean, and
maybe the origins of it are, But I know there
(51:28):
was an incident with UM. I believe it was kus
Hussein who participated in whipping the feet of UM. I
believe it was an Iraqi soccer team. You know about this,
the whole team, I think so. Yeah. Apparently Ude Hussein
was a pretty sore loser when the group of Iraqi
soccer stars UM did not win the Asian Cup UM
(51:54):
and he had them tortured by having the soles of
their feet whipped after losing in the World Cup qualifying match. UM.
So yeah, it's definitely something that's still around and that's
technically that's going to be state sponsored then, because he
was a husaying yeah, wow, well boys, I feel awful.
(52:17):
Well there's a silver lining, right what I don't know.
We were just talking off air about you know, the
future of torture. Maybe there's a kind of torture that
doesn't really hurt you physically. Oh okay, some sort of
virtual torture. Yeah. Yeah, you guys seeing Altered Carbon the
Netflix show, I think it's a lot of fun. Uh,
(52:38):
it's got problems. But there's a particular scenario where there's
this like shop or it's like a medical facility where
a somebody who wants to extract information can pay these
texts to put somebody under You kind of have to
abduct them first, that shoot him up in the neck
with some kind of you know, sleepy meds, and then um,
(52:59):
you put them on this table and put all these
electrodes attached to their brain and they end up in
a virtual room where somebody can go in there and
read all kinds of virtual havoc on them and apparently
you know, there's like a a readout of the way
their body is reacting. Um, and while it's all psychological,
they apparently feel it in the virtual world, right, Yeah,
(53:22):
it's it's a terrifying extrapolation of both virtual reality and torture, certainly,
And I can imagine a world, this world where there
is some type of interface that makes it it blurs
the line between real and virtual, like the the a
are stuff that we are seeing right now, um augmented
(53:45):
reality and virtual reality. I can totally imagine that occurring.
I wonder how effective it would be the same thing, Man,
do you do you not still think the ethical quandaries
still apply and also the efficacy. Yeah, absolutely they would
still apply, at least in the psychological sense, because the
unless the person's mind was also a race, they were
(54:07):
their experience was also erased. They would still remember this
and bear the psychological burden of what occurred, sort of
like you can wake up from a nightmare, but you
still remember it and you're still going to affect your behavior.
So perhaps it's still better than the alternative of shredding
(54:30):
people's tongues or flame them. But it's a difference of degree.
What might say, Man, I watched the video on the
Brazen Bull to get ready for this, and I I
almost didn't even want to bring it up. But the
thing when they put him inside of a thing, it's
a statue made out of bronze, or at least theoretically
(54:52):
there is. There has not one been found when they
are actually seen a full brazen bull. Just read accounts
of it. Yeah, but it was a statue of a
bowl that it was large enough for a human to
fit inside, and they would put a fire on the
bottom of it, and the entire thing would heat up
because of the substances made of all of the metal
quickly heats up to the same temperature the person inside
(55:14):
is pretty much cooked. And it was. Oh, there was
also this whole thing where their stories or at least
accounts of the bull makes an actual bull sound when
the person is being cooked, and it's based on the
idea of a The single air hole that goes into
the bowl is actually from the mouth of this brazen
(55:37):
bull statue. And the only way to get oxygen as
as smoke is filling up the bull and you're in
there being cooked and dying is to breathe through that hole,
and it makes like a cow sound when you're breathing
through it. It was the most horrifying thing. I mean,
there are gross terrible things of cutting up in all this,
(55:57):
but the concept of being walked into an oven in
that way while you can hear whoever is in charge
like laughing, because its supposedly done as like a form
of entertainment, not only punishment, but entertainment. When that goes
into and we're talking about some of these older civilizations
(56:19):
where the torture was kind of entertainment, like even you know,
being a gladiator for example, that was a punishment, that
was a form of torture. I mean, you had a
fighting chance, I guess, But it was also done for
you know, the amusement of the government, and then they
keep the people happy with the bread and circuses and
all that stuff. And religion was also functioning as government
(56:43):
to for much of the time. So if it was
a religious practice, if we must, you know, rip the
hearts out of the living so that the sun continues
to rise or that the eclipse ends, then it's still
still a state spot start action. And this brings us
to questions for you, folks. Do you believe that torture
(57:07):
does produce results? Do you believe that the ends justify
the maccab means? And if so or if not, why
we would like to hear from you. We also this
is the part of the show where Matt, Noel and
(57:28):
I let you know that we are on the internet.
That's all true. We're on Instagram, where on Facebook, join
our discussion page. Here's where it gets crazy, where you
can find us interacting from time to time. You can
also find us on Twitter. But we're not just on
the internet anymore, folks. The rumors are true. We've branched
out to another platform, the good old telephone. Yes, we
(57:53):
now have a toll free number that you can call
and leave us a voice message and boiler alert. We
might make a couple episodes where we feature you on
the show. Okay, it's gonna happen, but we just need
you to leave the messages. So here it is. Write
this down, put it in your phone, do what you
(58:13):
gotta do. Eight three three st d w y t K.
Let's do that again with numbers eight three three seven,
eight three nine eight five. If you call that number
right now, you will hear Ben's voice and then leave
a message. That's all. It's super simple. Hey, and if
you you know, have some sort of phone aversion you
(58:36):
don't like touching plastic buttons. Um, I guess I could
apply to a keyboard, dude, it doesn't matter if it's
a specific phone a version. You can reach us on
the Internet, like Ben said, we are there at conspiracy
Stuff show on Instagram and just conspiracy stuff on Twitter
and Facebook. Uh. And if you don't want to do
any of that stuff, phone Internet facts our facts. But
(59:00):
we should, we should, that should be our next antiquated
communication means that we come up with that would actually
be amazing. We had a fact machine that just sat next.
Oh yeah, okid, yeah, it makes a cool sound, that's
for sure. Alright, that's next. Yeah, that's next. So before
you know, in the meantime, you could send us a
good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at how stuff
works dot com.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M Hello,
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is known the Iron Maiden Brown. They called me Ben.
We are joining with our returning super producer Paul decant Uh.
And most importantly, you are here. You are you that
makes this stuff they don't want you to know. By
the self described moniker, one of our co hosts just
(00:48):
added you you may sense a bit of foreshadowing in
today's episode. Today's episode is a little dark, but let's
get into it with an anecdote. I get adequate, in
(01:08):
adequate clothing and medical care when I required. Voice you
just heard was Admiral Jeremiah Denton of the United States Navy.
On July eighteenth, nineteen sixty five, his U S Navy
jet was shot down while leading an air attack over
North Vietnam. He was captured, and he remained in the
(01:29):
country as a prisoner of war until nineteen seventy three.
It's quite a long time now after like during that
first full year that he was a prisoner of war,
he was interviewed for this propaganda peace essentially from the
North vietnam Namese. He was filmed being interviewed by a
member of the Japanese press, and during this interview he
(01:52):
states several things that you heard. Um, he's getting adequate
food and clothing and medical care. Um. And also they
he supports the United States government and all of its actions.
And that's probably not something that his captors wanted him
to say, if it truly was a propaganda piece, which
it appears to be. Um. But here's the thing. What
(02:14):
you can't see because you're not watching the film, is
that he is blinking all the while that he's talking,
and what he is spelling out is actually Morse code,
and he's spelling out the word torture. And we actually
have a quick clip here of what that would sound like.
(02:36):
And this stuck out to the analyst on Uncle Sam's
side because they knew that didn't did not have some
sort of medical condition that would cause him to blink
radically absolutely, And when the U. S. Naval Intelligence got
ahold of this, this was the first time they had
had any kind of communication from one of these prison
camps that was existing in North Vietnam that actually stated
(02:59):
in anyway that they were being tortured, that the American
POWs were being tortured. And he's doing this repeatedly in
different interviews or is this all in one sit down?
This is one sit down, but he is just continually
spelling the word. And these propaganda videos were relatively common
in this age from different governments, where you would have
someone say, yes, we are being treated well, we are
(03:23):
being taken care of, when multiple outside sources suspected that
this was not the case. Today's episode is diving into
dark and grizzly territory, and we would like all of
you friends, neighbors, conspiracy realists, and skeptics alike to know
up front that this show is going to contain graphic
(03:44):
descriptions of horrific physical and mental abuse you see today.
We are exploring the past, the present, and the future
of torture, given the ubiquitous nature of torture throughout human history,
even before or recorded human history, because we were as
a species torturing each other before we were writing things down.
(04:07):
We won't be delving into too many specific cases, but
we will inevitably run into several strange examples of this practice.
So here are the facts. First things first, what what's
the operative definition of torture? Yeah, torture is um the
deliberate infliction of physical and or I mean, I guess
(04:31):
it could be one of the other psychological pain with
the purpose of obtaining information or extorting a confession from
the victim and thus enabling a conviction. It can also
be the penalty itself, um and I get that. That's
like a good, cut and dry definition of it. Don't
some people torture just for the sheer thrill of doing
(04:51):
it with no end game in mind. Well, a lot
of this comes from the u N outlining exactly what
torture is in I believe right right the the acronym uncat,
which might be the only funny thing about this episode,
which we will dive into. And that's a great point
because this sounds on the surface like a pretty solid definition,
(05:15):
but of course not everyone agrees with it, because there
is torture simply for statistic purposes, typically not from a
state level actor. It would be someone who wants to
torture someone and maybe they're doing it while employed by
the state, but they're getting their own dark giggles in
the process. And then what about the difference between state
(05:36):
sponsored torture and enhanced interrogation? Right? Right? Is this a
brand name difference is there? Is it a matter of
degree or the fundamentally different things. Experts like gr Scott,
who in the late nineteenth century wrote a book about torture,
says that it's devilishly easy to make a definition of
(05:58):
torture that's either too narrow only a specific kind of
thing can be considered torture, or it's too wide in scope.
You know, like, uh, I was I was tortured because
I had to listen to someone tell me yet again
the plot of Looper, that's not quite torture. I mean,
maybe it is, if it they just do it forever
(06:19):
for a year. But for today's purposes, we're going to
go with the definition that Noel just mentioned earlier. The
systematic use of torture in criminal procedures or criminal proceedings
dates back to some of our earliest civilizations, and it's
creepy when you think about it. Scenes depicting torture can
(06:40):
be found on different monuments, right, oh yeah, in everywhere
in these ancient areas from Mesopotamia, Egypt all over. Yeah,
and the first records of a legal application of torture
to prove something, to prove guilt or innocence were found
in the Sumarian Code of Urnmua. It's around the twenty
(07:02):
first century b C. And then the Babylonian Code of
Hammurabi in the century b C. Again, and the procedure
describe the the divine judgment of the water ordeal, which
is what it's torture. And as this practice became increasingly
(07:26):
codified because it was already common right in different raiding
parties from tribes and so on, as it became part
of the rule of law, the administration of torture took
different directions depending on the civilization. So ancient Greeks and
Romans used it for interrogation. And this is really interesting
because this is something that haunts us. I would argue
(07:49):
in the current age. Until the second century a d
torture was only supposed to be used on slaves, with
some notable exceptions, and in fact, a slave's testimony in
any sort of legal proceeding was only admissible if they
had been tortured first. That's insane, Yeah, that's the assumption
(08:10):
is that you couldn't trust slaves to reveal the truth
of their own accord. That is messed up on so
many levels. It is because can you imagine being a
slave and saying, yes, I know I saw you, know,
Sabbat or whatever, take the water jug and they're like, look,
we believe you, but unfortunately I am going to have
to break like one of your hands. Well, and then
(08:32):
are you sure you saw him take it? Are you sure?
And continue breaking until the person says no, Well, and
I'm sure. We're gonna get into this later. But it's like,
now we know that torture typically renders accounts unreliable, right
because you're gonna say whatever it takes to make them stop.
We're going to get into that on exactly how reliable
(08:55):
or not torture techniques are. Yeah, the I mean this idea, though,
the fundamental assumption about the efficacy of torture is like
a concept that haunts humanity like a ghost, and it it.
The consequences of this philosophy remain with us today and
(09:16):
have been here for millennia. In some areas of the world,
acts of torture were grouped into different categories. You would
have something like first, second, or third degree, and they
were they were rated in terms of pain, and unlike
the modern way that degrees are interpreted in the legal
system the US today, like first degree murder is worse
(09:39):
than second degree murder. Just flip, just flip it, flip it.
So first degree torture in this kind of system would
be something that causes pain but does not permanently mutilate
the body, such as whipping or the many variations thereof,
or just you know, beating the ever loving snot out
of someone. One very whipping would be something called bastinado
(10:03):
or filic. It's foot whipping. So it sounds silly at
first when when you're thinking out and you're just slapping
someone's feet. No, there if you rip the shreds and
they needed these to walk. So that's the first degree,
and the second degree ups the anti quite a bit,
I would say. And this is where you'll find things
like vices or racks, things that um either crush or
(10:28):
you know, like stretched to the point of not killing
but pretty much mutilating someone. Of these are like screw presses,
Uh yeah, where you where your thumbs would be crushed,
your toes or really any knees, feet, teeth, any kind
of way Basically that's where you get to second degree,
(10:50):
where that you're not going to look and function the
same after you've been tortured, and you you may well die,
but they're not purposely they're deciding to. And that's like
when where they would like put you on the rack
and like stretch you to the point where your bones
would break and things like that. Right, that's that second
or what yeah, or what would be called maybe uh
a restraint position like the so called Palestinian hanging there.
(11:16):
But these both well horrific pale in comparison to the
third degree. Yeah. The third degree is where it really
starts to make your skin crawl. This is the kind
of torture that was the most insidious and dangerous of
all um utterly nightmare fuel, the kind of stuff that
(11:37):
you hear in fiction that you're you would almost question
who would come up with this idea. It's all very
creative stuff too, So we're talking spikes and blades and
boiling oil and fire and things with names of it
alone will just send shivers up your spine, like the
serrated iron tongue shredder not an ironic name, the hot
(12:00):
opper basin for a bascination. The that's the word of
the day, destroying someone's eyesight, that's right. Uh. And oh
and the stocks that forcibly held the victim's feet over
red hot coals um and then yeah, until the skin
and the foot muscles were burnt black and the bones
(12:22):
completely uh turned to powder. The feet were the skin
of the few were also coated and lard beforehand, which
is an extra gruesome detail. And what what we just
described on that third degree, it's very clear that, especially
before the advent of modern medicine, someone's chances of surviving
(12:44):
any of those was remarkably slim. Just the infection. Can
you imagine the infection, the bleeding out from these various wounds.
And it's one of those things too where unless they
needed to keep you alive because they really wanted to
continue to extra act information from you, it's not like
they were going to give you any kind of medical
attention right away unless it was, you know, worth their
(13:07):
while to do so. Right, they might have someone pray
for you, but that person might be praying while they're
doing that thing on and the worst thing is that
is not for me. The worst thing is that it's
not just for interrogation purposes. Sometimes the whole reason that
a human being would have to go through this is
so that whatever group is doing the torturing can set
(13:30):
an example for what happens if you either defy the
group in power or or even just some kind of
dissenter from the group in power. Um that that bothers
me to the end. The people are starving and there's
a widespread theft of grain, and someone says, well, we
need the bulk of these serfs or peasants whatever to
(13:52):
survive and to farm land. So let's just publicly eviscerate
one of them, just so they know, literally not just
give them a good talking to right there, flesh, leave
the heads somewhere visible, a pike perhaps, And you know,
you can get into arguments about controlling a population through
fear or through you know, the various ways that you
(14:15):
can do that from a high level, but man, it
just seems too brutal to make much sense. And the
type of abuse administered here would typically depend on the
setting the transgression, the social status of the victims. So,
for example, in Europe, Elizabeth Bathory orbet bath Thy, because
(14:38):
of her high station, was not murdered or burned at
a steak or impaled, she was walled into a room
where she didn't start to death, she was fed until
she died. She was put on, not to be too
glib about it, permanent time out or solitary confinement. And
(14:59):
people argue that that sort of injustice or inequality of
consequence occurs today. I think the that the four of
us would largely agree that is the case, at least
here in the States, and for centuries and centuries various
civilizations across the globe, we all just sort of took
it for granted that horrific physical degradations, mutilations, and abuses
(15:25):
were par for the course when it came to dissent
a crime, or even rubbing the wrong important person the
wrong way. And if we fast forward to the modern day,
humanity started to realize this as a problem. Yeah, where
where did you get clicked for humanity? Man? In the
world wars? Yeah, in the World Wars. That's I believe
(15:49):
when the public around the world said, what Charnel houses?
What abatois are we building? You know? And that was
library impetus for the United Nations to codify protections against torture.
And as you had said Matt. This didn't happen, actually
happen or get adopted into law until the nineteen eighties. Okay,
(16:14):
so it took a long time for it to click
for humanity, right as well, it took a long time
for the make it official. Uh there, you know, and
there are things before their Rules of Engagement for war
treatment of POWs. But the Convention against Torture and Other
Cruel and Human or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, commonly known
as UNCAT or the United Nations Convention against Torture, wasn't
(16:35):
adopted until nineteen four. It was ratified in nineteen seven.
And so they used a definition that's a little bit
different from the one we used at the top. Yeah,
this comes from Article one of the Convention. Quote for
the purpose of this Convention, the term torture means any
act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental,
(16:56):
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,
(17:19):
or with the consent or acquiescence of, a public official,
for other person acting in an official capacity, it does
not include pain or suffering arising only from inherent, in
or incidental to lawful sanctions. Tut, Tut, tut. Can you
unpack that first, Ben? I read it, but I don't
think I took it in. Well, one of the big
(17:39):
things there is that right at the end, putting in
lawful sanctions. So if it's if it's part of the
law in the country where this is occurring, as this
is the type of punishment, it feels like there's a
lot of wiggle room there. Right, we can see the
problems with this. So three of the big things that happened.
(18:01):
Noll you you point. You made the excellent point about
a third person that shows up, because there are people
who will gladly die for a cause, but they don't
want their children or their spouse to. And then the
second huge point about this is the involvement of a
public official or someone acting in an official capacity. So
(18:22):
this is banning state sponsored acts of this sort of violence.
This is not banning. Uh there's not specifically meant. It's
harget you know, the day Matt snaps and abduct someone, Okay,
getting the getting the crazy eyes, Sorry Matt. Moving on?
(18:42):
What would it take? What would it take for a
Matt snap? A Matt snap? Mm hmm. You don't know.
Maybe that's it you did, you don't know, probably my family,
but I don't. I don't know that I would abduct anybody.
I think you've feel like you, I feel like you
know exactly what the lion on Matt step is in
(19:04):
God hope we never cross it. We wouldn't be absolutely clear,
of course. No. I think you can agree with me
here that of the three of us, Matt is probably
the nicest, like legitimately and not not prone to unducting people.
Of course he's not prone, but when the snap happens, man,
(19:24):
stand back. I guess you never know when when a
snap occurs. That's the nature of it. It's very much
the nature of it. But it could happen any of us,
and we all have our limits. And that's why I
think it's interesting you brought up the third party situation
because that is uh a, it's it's dirty pool my man,
you know, taking someone's loved ones and you know, using
(19:47):
them as a as a tool to extract information out
of someone. That is just like the most horrific thing
that you could possibly do, I think, you know, or
even just like a co pilot or a partner, someone
who's in the same squad as you are, because now
you're responsible for the life of another. So ethically, it
(20:07):
puts someone in the position where they have to ask,
am I committing murder by an action? But the third
the third point. So the first point is the thing
about a third party. The second point is the state action.
And to follow up the third point here, and one
of the most dangerous ones is the idea of lawful sanctions.
(20:28):
What they're saying then is that if there is a
sanctioned action, anything from depriving the civilians of a country
of food due to an economic sanction or a military
incursion that results in the death or mutilation of civilians,
that does not count as torture. And this debate continues
(20:53):
in the international sphere today. Regrettably, we can we can
probably already a good spider sense of which countries have
what positions. Yeah, well, especially if we go back to
the top with that example of the Navy airman who is,
you know, telling people that he's been tortured and this
(21:14):
is part of the Vietnam conflict. And then you imagine
historically what we know the U. S. Military was doing
two civilians in places all over North Vietnam. And you know,
since it's States sanctioned, you know, we're talking about the
sixties and seventies then during the Vietnam conflict. But so
(21:35):
it's well before a decade before the U. N says
this is what torture is. But at the same time,
both sides are doing one form of torture or another.
That's a great point. And we should also note that
in many cases it's not as if the president or
the ruling party or the monarch of the country said
(21:57):
you soldiers, go out torture people. Often this fog of
war mission creep would set in and there would be
factions of people or officials acting relatively of their own accord,
thinking that the ends justify the means. And so we
can already see the problems with this definition, as lengthy
(22:20):
as it is and as specific as it attempts to be.
But regardless of the imperfections, the concept itself seems noble, right,
stop torturing people, especially when there's not a lot of
evidence that it works as intended. So case closed, right,
(22:42):
and we'll get into y after a quick sponsor break.
Here's where it gets crazy. The idea that everybody can
agree to stop torturing people is uh, the idea that
this work is wrong, and fortunately it is so so
so cartoonishly incorrect. According to the scholar irv and Abramaan,
(23:07):
although there were several decades of prohibition against torture generally
agreed that spread from Europe to most parts of the world,
by the nineteen eighties that that ban was functionally off.
The taboo against torture had been broken. Yes, he argued
that torture quote returned with a vengeance, and a lot
(23:29):
of this had to do with the advent of television
or the way television was kind of changing, and it
presented an opportunity to break political prisoners and then broadcast
the results. Um, the public recantation is kind of like
we're mentioning at the top of the show. They wanted
that airmen to say, I don't believe in the ideologies
(23:51):
of the United States government. They are wrong that's what
they want to be able to broadcast to everyone. Um.
And the idea, the idea is that if you torture
someone enough, you can change, you know, you can make
them say what you want for your ideological means and
and just recanting, Yeah, political beliefs. Idea using this ideological
(24:11):
warfare and political mobilization and the need to win the
hearts and minds of people who exist in a country
where war is being waged. Very it's it's Orwellian when
you think about it, you know. And if anything, then,
according to this expert, in the wake of the World wars,
torture as a widespread practice momentarily maybe sort of kind
(24:36):
of a little bit paused for a second. But now
if we fast forward a little closer to the modern age,
we find that that is not the case. According to
Human Rights Watch, between two thousand four and two thousand five,
over sixteen countries were documented using torture, state sponsored torture. Yeah,
and then you go to the war on terror, the
(24:58):
global War on terror, right where we know black sites.
We've covered this before on an episode. Black sites have
been used where torture occurs. And it's not just the
United States, right, is not just the This is not
just an episode picking on the United States. And often
these things are occurring through a second or third hand thing.
There's a proxy. Uh So, despite being banned, torture continues
(25:22):
in countries around the globe, and this ancient practice shows
no signs of abating. In fact, our species has effectively
leveraged technology to arrive at new forms of physical and
psychological abuse. One thing we learned about in the course
of our research, which initially didn't sound that bad, was
the so called cold cell treatment. And this comes this
(25:44):
is an Uncle Sam. Original prisoners are placed in front
of a large air conditioner unit running on full blast.
That doesn't sound bad right at first, Probably it's kind
of nice, depending on where you are, I mean for
the first day, or for maybe even for the first week.
But what about a month, what about a year? Yeah,
(26:07):
that is the so called cold cell treatment. And we
should make we should make a point that it's allegedly
happened for years, but we're required technically to say allegedly. Yeah,
I wonder what that does to the human body. And
we don't have a lot of information about exactly how
(26:29):
cold the air conditioner unit gets too, But we're I'm
assuming if it's an air conditioner rather than some kind
of like refrigeration device, it's probably in the lower to
mid sixties. So it's probably it's not fatal. It's probably
more psychological. That's exactly what it is. So so what
(26:49):
else have we found? What other technology have we turned to?
Tortuous ends electricity That's one of the major things that's
been used in modern times of everything from cattle prods
to stun guns two lasers being used by mostly mostly
security forces like police forces, UM and militaries. And it's
(27:13):
strange to imagine, especially in the United States. They the
modern stun gun did not originate as a less than
lethal weapon for police officers the way we you know
nowadays see it a lot of the times a taser.
You know, um, it was it was a cattle prod,
and then it became a way to control prisoners specifically UM,
(27:36):
and then it kind of evolved. Wow. And then also
this would be going to the earlier point made knowl
about torture and fiction. This would be where a car
battery is hooked up to something and then they they
shocked the person with the car battery, which is a
very real thing though. Absolutely, here's a weird one, the
(27:59):
so called white torture. What is this? I don't know
this this sounds this is psychological, but it sounds very strange.
A prisoner is in solitary confinement and everything in there world,
everything they encounter, including the food they eat and the
plates eat from white blank white. Dude. You know that's
(28:21):
in j Lo's rider that, like everything in her dressing
room has to be white. What do you think she originated?
Maybe this make should call it the j LO torture?
This this is real. That's that's real. That's a thing
that's not some interior designer being like playful. I can
imagine that being another psychological torture device that just I
(28:44):
don't know somehow, Yeah, especially like can you imagine combining
the cold cell, the white cold cell is what they
would call it, with lights on all the time, also
no human contact, playing the same song over and over
and you know that's that might sound like that's a
lot for us to put on Jennifer Lopez, but it
(29:07):
is in her rider that everything has to be white,
and she has been responsible for some atrocities though that's true. Ah,
I have not. I haven't either, heard it was really
bad atrocity. Maybe that's a little overst overstate. In the case,
I did like to sell though. I did like the
cell as well. I enjoyed it. I felt from from
(29:29):
the perspective cinematography, it was just stunning. The guy that
directed that, Tarsim Singh, did those early R E M videos,
very nineties kind of tableaus with like the rotating the platform,
and he's on with them. Anyway, I didn't that guy
basically invented the look of like the Pearl Jam video
from the nineties. And anyway, he's got some amazing other
movies with a fall. The Fall is a good one.
(29:52):
Oh and speaking of music, this brings us to another
form of technologically advanced torture that long time listeners are
familiar with. Yeah, it's just music torture, right like, and
I think a part of it doesn't necessarily have to
be incredibly loud. But whenever you see it done and
(30:12):
you dramatized in film, is usually some absurd stack of
you know, bas in the trunk kind of car stereo speakers.
They're just blasting the stuff at really high decibel levels.
We're talking about, you know, the idea. I think is repetition.
It would be the same song over and over and
over and over again, whether it's Metallica or Britney Spears
(30:32):
or even a very popular one Bend I think you
mentioned before on another episode is the Barney song. Yeah,
did you know that guy's a tantric sex guru? Now,
the guy that played Barney, does he still wear the costume? Now?
I think he's, Oh, I need to get that out
of my head already. He mainly just wears scented oils
and lotions and nothing else. A fine musk. The The
(31:01):
other practice that we found was forced feeding, including using
some medical advances to feed people rectally, similar to uh
gross real life version of that South Park trope. Yeah,
and a lot of this you'll see in the news. Um.
(31:23):
And it's not necessarily used as a torture, but as
a way to keep people who are prisoners alive if
they're having some kind of protest where they're they're doing
self starvation in process of their captivity. And so again,
it's it's crazy to think that the method to preserve
someone's life can also be used to torture them. Yes, yeah,
(31:46):
and that goes into an ethical question as well. You
know this is something that we didn't discuss off air,
but it just occurred to me. Now, if somebody wants
to die, right, if want to commit medically assisted suicide
with their own accord and they are legally required to
(32:07):
stay alive, is that this in a state of pain,
perhaps from a chronic condition. Is that the state aiding
in torture? Or is you know what's the line there?
That's a tough ethical question we should Um, is there
an ethicist in the house? Paul, are you an ethicist? Okay,
(32:30):
but you know that's in that's something we I wonder
if the u N has pondered that. I haven't seen
anything anything recently at least well, and let's just I
don't know, I'm gonna talk about the elephant in the room,
or at least my elephant. You know. The u N
kind of gets a lot of flak as being a
somewhat toothless organization, like you can make these resolutions, um,
(32:51):
but at the end of the day, it's just kind
of you know, words on paper, and there's very little
enforcement ability that the u N has. Correct me if
I'm wrong, you are correct. The The primary power structure
of the United Nations is the U n Security Council,
and they can each member the UN Security Council can
(33:16):
veto an entire concept. So it has to things have
to pass unanimously. So it is very very very very difficult.
It's not as bad and ineffectual as the predecessor, the
League of Nations. But yeah, you're you're spot on. When
do words on paper translate to substantive change? Yeah, no,
(33:37):
that that that that kind of is the question, and
that's sort of you know, we're talking about the shift
of consciousness um as a country when we decide as
a people that torture is not okay. But yet if
if it's still is thought by some as being an
effective tool, whether or not there are resolutions on the
books or not. At the end of the day, if
(33:57):
you think it's going to get the job done, you're
probably gonna figure out a way to get around it
and do it, you know, especially when we have things
like black sites and you know, stuff where there's very
little oversights and you have heads of these divisions that
essentially act as gods of their little fiefdoms, you know,
So it's tough. Yeah, like secret police, for instance, throughout
(34:19):
a lot of throughout a lot of recent history. And
that's the point that is the stuff they don't want
you to know here in this in this episode, it's
the fact that there are numerous active conspiracies as we speak,
we're not talking about we're not talking about nineteen seventy four,
(34:41):
we're not talking about two thousand and seven. We're talking
about twenty eighteen. As we are recording this, there are
numerous active cover ups and conspiracies allowing various governments around
the world, including the United States, but not limited to
Uncle Sam to commit torture, either through proxy or euphemisms
(35:01):
like enhanced interrogation or good old fashioned secret police. As
as you guys pointed out, black sites off the line
item budgets written out of your history books, and we
might never know what happens with it. And this forces
us to ask about the future of torture. And we'll
get into that right after a quick word from our sponsor.
(35:28):
So we're back and no, only you brought up this
excellent point, especially in the case of US intelligence services,
military arms. The primary argument for these techniques is that
is something along the lines of, well, they might be deplorable,
but they do result invaluable or what they would call
actionable intelligence that can ultimately save lives. And the scenario
(35:53):
you'll often hear uh described by people supporting these programs
is the following. It's something called the time bomb scenario. Yeah,
imagine that you're an authority figure, right, whether this is
law enforcement, military, maybe an intelligence officer working for the CIA,
whatever it is. You have absolute certainty that there will
be some form of attack, a terrorist attack probably, and
(36:16):
it's going to happen in the near to immediate future.
But you don't know exactly where, you don't know exactly when.
How do you find out? This is your the big quandary.
How do you gain that information without, you know, stumbling
upon a piece of paper that has it written out.
So let's take it a step further and say that
(36:37):
maybe maybe we are those investigators, and we have one
or more suspects and custody, and with the same amount
of certitude, we know that they know where the attack
will be. Maybe we have it narrowed down to three cities,
but they know which city and which day, and you
we know that you know torture is banned, um, it
(37:01):
may still be one of the only ways to extract
information this kind of information before hundreds of thousands of
innocent people die, or at least that's the justification, right. Yeah,
And and this this is often depicted as the ultimate dilemma,
at least for modern times, regarding torture, and experts continue
to debate it today whether or not it's a good
(37:23):
idea to save all of these lives by torturing this person.
Can you even get information that would be reliable enough
to save people if you did indeed torture one of
these suspects. There's there's a lot to unpack there, right,
Like do you or do we in this scenario want
to be responsible for thousands of innocent people dying because
(37:48):
we refuse to bend or break the law. Yeah, and
international law that's set forth by you know, the United Nations.
And look, it's just one of those things, like it's
a big moral quandary that seems to have probably the
most weight behind it in our modern times. So now
our question becomes if we want to be Machavelli and
(38:10):
if we want to cast morals aside. Now our question
shifts a little, and it's the the ultimate question here.
Does it work? As we alluded to earlier in the show,
does physically or psychologically torturing someone compel them to provide truthful,
useful information. The answer is no, Torture does not work,
(38:32):
at least in the way that the tormentors might publicly intend. Again,
that's publicly. So there's an article from Scientific American by
a guy named Michael Schermer, and it's called We've known
for four hundred years that torture doesn't work. In this article,
(38:52):
there is a fascinating anecdote about the Duke of Brunswick
in Germany during the time of the Inquisition. He goes
to visit the inquisitors and he wants to oversee their
use of torture to extract information from people accused of witchcraft,
right the majority of whom were women. So the Jesuits
(39:14):
told the Duke that the inquisitors are doing their duty.
They're only arresting people who have been implicated in the
confessions of other witches when they were put to the
question which was the term for torture. And so the
Duke's a little bit skeptical and he thinks, well, maybe
people just say anything to get this to stop. So
he invited the Jesuits to come visit him. Uh and
(39:37):
go with him to a dungeon to witness a woman
being stretched on the rack. Second degree of torture, like
like we have mentioned earlier. And the Duke said to
this lady, while she's mid torture, by the way, he says, now, woman,
you are confessed, which I suspect these two men of
being warlocks? What do you say? And he looks at
(39:59):
the ext cutioners and he says another turn of the
rack executioners And the woman immediately said, no, no, no,
you are quite right. I have often seen them at
the sabbath. They can turn themselves into goats, wolves and
other animals. Several witches have had children by them. One
woman even had eight children whom these men fathered. The
children had heads like toads and legs like spiders. And
(40:21):
the Duke turned to the Jesuits and said, should I
torture you until you confess? Jeez, you get real creative
when you're put to the question. And that's that's that's
how we know. Like the problem with tortures. If the
primary goal is to receive truthful information again morals aside,
(40:42):
then we have to think of the primary goal of
the victim, which is just to stop this immense, unending pain. Well,
and also mentioned in that article is something that has
really shaped the way I've viewed torture over the years.
Christopher Hitchens, a writer that I very much admired to
a certain extent um. Several years ago, while he was
(41:03):
still living, he was worked, he was writing for Vanity
Fair still and he went and he was himself waterboarded.
And you know, he was famously hawkish about war, believing
that there were there were good reasons to go to
war and to eliminate terrorism and all. You know, you
can look at his views, but he didn't believe that
(41:25):
waterboarding was that big of a deal. But he went.
It occurred to him, and his quote from the article was,
if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no
such thing as torture. Because he had a terrible experience.
He almost immediately after being subjected to the water pouring
on his head, he he said, no, that felt like
(41:48):
I was drowning. That is the worst thing that's ever
happened to me. And I'm sure most listeners know what
waterboarding is, but I mean, just to set the scene,
it's like you've got a rag over your face, there
is an you know, a torrent of water being poured
over your mouth and nose to the point where it's
it's it's constant enough that you just can't catch your breath,
and I'm imagining that the rag is creating almost a
(42:10):
suction against your face where you just like are totally
incapable of drawing breath. And so I would argue that
this is not only a physical torture, because we know
it's very unpleasant physically when you can't breathe, it's also
a psychological torture because it's the sensation that it's creating
of not being able to catch your breath and of dying,
of drowning, which sounds terrifying. Well, yeah, And the whole
(42:32):
point of this whole thing, though, is that Christopher Hitchins
was alluding to the fact that he would have said
anything to make that stop, and he can't imagine, he
couldn't imagine experiencing that as someone like being told you
know where X is, you know what time it's going
to happen, tell me where it is, and then proceeded
(42:53):
with the torture over and over over. It just seems
so counterintuitive to me that that that people would think
that this is a part way to get people to
tell them the truth. It just seems to me that
it's obvious that it would be the opposite. Yeah, it's
a it's a smart way to get people to tell
you whatever you want them to say. But whether or
not it's true is is very, very different. And this
(43:15):
ticking time bomb thought experiment, Let's be honest, it's way
too cut and dry in reality. If there's someone in captivity,
they may or may not be responsible for this thing, right,
They may or may not have accurate information. Even if
they are responsible, maybe they're not on the inner circle
for some specific operation. Then they might not know anything useful.
(43:40):
They might just make stuff up out of whole cloth,
like the like the toad heads. As I'm saying, like
that's like creative writing type stuff, like you know, you
are going to dig deep into your imagination for you know,
to make that rack tightening cease. Absolutely, and despite the
continued practices of what we could call gray area interrogation
(44:01):
and or torture, the U. S. Government itself publicly agrees
that torture is not really effective. There was a two
thousand fourteen report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
They analyzed millions of internal CIA documents related to the
torture of people's suspected of terrorism, and the Senate concluded
(44:22):
the CIA's use of its enhanced interrogation techniques was not
an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees.
It also adds that multiple CIA detainees fabricated information, resulting
in faulty intelligence, and that leads us to ask, if
torture doesn't work, what does Is there something better than torture? Well, yeah,
(44:47):
pretty much the opposite of torture. There there are multiple
studies that show that this might be the thing, the
way to get information from people building rapport. It works wonders,
and it has a significant only higher chance of creating
a successful relationship between interrogator and interrogator. Um by actually
(45:08):
be like showing empathy and I understand your situation. I mean,
there's a whole host of lines you can go down,
for sure. I guess the problem there is, though, if
you have people that are trained, they're hardened to the
point where they they're just not They're not going to
play nice with you at all, you know. I Mean,
it's one thing if you're like a scared kid or
(45:29):
like someone who's been accused of a crime, and you're
just all, you know, you don't know which way is up.
You could probably coerce someone into telling you some stuff
and getting them to cry and talk about their mommy
or something like. I'm I'm being a jerk, but you
know what I'm saying. But if someone is like a
trained a terrorist or an operative of some kind, I
don't I don't think that's gonna work. I don't know.
(45:51):
You might find that there's I'm just saying there. You
might find that there is a vulnerable human inside each
and every one of us. It also depends on the
X axis of time. That's that's fair. So if someone
is detained for life with no human contact, isn't that torture?
And except for you, it is. It is. But it's uh,
(46:13):
it's a chess level torture. And the the thing is
that it appears to it appears to work. There are
different studies that confirmed. There's one called the Who, What,
and Why Human Intelligence Gathering from this journal Applied Cognitive Psychology.
They surveyed a hundred and fifty two interrogators and they
found that rapport and relationship building techniques were employed most
(46:37):
often and perceived to be the most effective regardless of
context and intended outcome. Particularly, they found in comparison to
confrontational techniques, and that's from the interrogators themselves. Yeah, there's
another study called Interviewing High Value Detainees. It sampled the
sixty four practitioners and detainees, and it found that quote
(46:57):
detainees were more likely to disclose meaningful information and earlier
in the interview when report building techniques were used. So
those are two examples of studies that find this approach
superior to confrontational or abusive behavior. Although I do appreciate
the point of rapport building and solitary confinement being just
(47:23):
another form of torture, are arguably with these stories we
hear from various global conflicts in the study of torture.
They indicate the same conclusions, not just from academics and historians,
but from the firsthand accounts of other interrogators. And so
we have to ask ourselves if torture does not work
(47:43):
at least in terms of providing truthful information or eliciting it,
if it only blinds someone to the point that they
will say something anything to prevent further abuse. Then why
do we as a species persist. There are several reasons,
and absolutely none of them are appealing. First, in some
belief systems, certain methods of punishment may be prescribed for
(48:05):
certain types of transgressions. This is where you hear about
traditional methods of punishment, right, or execution for the violation
of socio spiritual morays. That's just that's a word. I
made up word socio spiritual. Uh. And then there's the
other one. Second, torture is also used successfully to some
(48:29):
degree to send a message. And this goes to an anecdote.
And I know there's a touchy geopolitical situation with Russia
right now, but there's a short there's a short story
or an account of what happened in the Soviet Union
at the time. Had four Soviet diplomats kidnapped in did
(48:51):
you all hear about this? So in these four Soviet
diplomats were kidnapped by a fundamentalist group called the Islamic
Liberation Organization. They dispatched Russia dispatched something called it's Alpha group.
They were tasked with counter terrorism, hostage rescue situations. They
(49:14):
learned that one of the hostages had been killed, a
guy named Arkady Katkov. And so what they did is
they tracked down and located one of the leaders of
the kidnappers are possibly a relative, and they wanted to
send a message to the terrorists. They tortured this person
(49:39):
that they captured with absolutely no intention of gaining information,
absolutely no intention of letting them survive. Alpha group castrated
the hostage, cut him into pieces, and sent pieces of
him to the hostage takers. And they also said, we
know who your other relatives are, and we know where
they live, and we know the routines. The three hostages
(50:02):
were released and dropped off near the Soviet embassy and
there were no other There haven't been Russian officials taken
captive since then. Uh. And then people argue back and forth,
this this scary story, but what it what it shows
is that their goal in torture then was not to
(50:23):
learn anything new. Their goal was to send a signal,
just like in the early days of civilization where someone said,
let us make an example discussing repugnant example. Yeah, rather
than fleeing some prisoners and putting them on spikes throughout
your whole kingdom, you just cut one person up to
(50:45):
take this one group out, and you could argue again
morals aside that that was a short term solution, that
the signaling did result in the release of those other hostages.
But over the long term is that a solution, I
don't know. But for now, the practice of torture continues.
(51:06):
We had talked before about several like we mentioned several
forms of torture that seemed arcane but are still around, right,
Like um nol you mentioned when we were talking about
UH foot whipping. You have told me before that that's
not an ancient practice, right right, Well, I mean, and
maybe the origins of it are, But I know there
(51:28):
was an incident with UM. I believe it was kus
Hussein who participated in whipping the feet of UM. I
believe it was an Iraqi soccer team. You know about this,
the whole team, I think so. Yeah. Apparently Ude Hussein
was a pretty sore loser when the group of Iraqi
soccer stars UM did not win the Asian Cup UM
(51:54):
and he had them tortured by having the soles of
their feet whipped after losing in the World Cup qualifying match. UM.
So yeah, it's definitely something that's still around and that's
technically that's going to be state sponsored then, because he
was a husaying yeah, wow, well boys, I feel awful.
(52:17):
Well there's a silver lining, right what I don't know.
We were just talking off air about you know, the
future of torture. Maybe there's a kind of torture that
doesn't really hurt you physically. Oh okay, some sort of
virtual torture. Yeah. Yeah, you guys seeing Altered Carbon the
Netflix show, I think it's a lot of fun. Uh,
(52:38):
it's got problems. But there's a particular scenario where there's
this like shop or it's like a medical facility where
a somebody who wants to extract information can pay these
texts to put somebody under You kind of have to
abduct them first, that shoot him up in the neck
with some kind of you know, sleepy meds, and then um,
(52:59):
you put them on this table and put all these
electrodes attached to their brain and they end up in
a virtual room where somebody can go in there and
read all kinds of virtual havoc on them and apparently
you know, there's like a a readout of the way
their body is reacting. Um, and while it's all psychological,
they apparently feel it in the virtual world, right, Yeah,
(53:22):
it's it's a terrifying extrapolation of both virtual reality and torture, certainly,
And I can imagine a world, this world where there
is some type of interface that makes it it blurs
the line between real and virtual, like the the a
are stuff that we are seeing right now, um augmented
(53:45):
reality and virtual reality. I can totally imagine that occurring.
I wonder how effective it would be the same thing, Man,
do you do you not still think the ethical quandaries
still apply and also the efficacy. Yeah, absolutely they would
still apply, at least in the psychological sense, because the
unless the person's mind was also a race, they were
(54:07):
their experience was also erased. They would still remember this
and bear the psychological burden of what occurred, sort of
like you can wake up from a nightmare, but you
still remember it and you're still going to affect your behavior.
So perhaps it's still better than the alternative of shredding
(54:30):
people's tongues or flame them. But it's a difference of degree.
What might say, Man, I watched the video on the
Brazen Bull to get ready for this, and I I
almost didn't even want to bring it up. But the
thing when they put him inside of a thing, it's
a statue made out of bronze, or at least theoretically
(54:52):
there is. There has not one been found when they
are actually seen a full brazen bull. Just read accounts
of it. Yeah, but it was a statue of a
bowl that it was large enough for a human to
fit inside, and they would put a fire on the
bottom of it, and the entire thing would heat up
because of the substances made of all of the metal
quickly heats up to the same temperature the person inside
(55:14):
is pretty much cooked. And it was. Oh, there was
also this whole thing where their stories or at least
accounts of the bull makes an actual bull sound when
the person is being cooked, and it's based on the
idea of a The single air hole that goes into
the bowl is actually from the mouth of this brazen
(55:37):
bull statue. And the only way to get oxygen as
as smoke is filling up the bull and you're in
there being cooked and dying is to breathe through that hole,
and it makes like a cow sound when you're breathing
through it. It was the most horrifying thing. I mean,
there are gross terrible things of cutting up in all this,
(55:57):
but the concept of being walked into an oven in
that way while you can hear whoever is in charge
like laughing, because its supposedly done as like a form
of entertainment, not only punishment, but entertainment. When that goes
into and we're talking about some of these older civilizations
(56:19):
where the torture was kind of entertainment, like even you know,
being a gladiator for example, that was a punishment, that
was a form of torture. I mean, you had a
fighting chance, I guess, But it was also done for
you know, the amusement of the government, and then they
keep the people happy with the bread and circuses and
all that stuff. And religion was also functioning as government
(56:43):
to for much of the time. So if it was
a religious practice, if we must, you know, rip the
hearts out of the living so that the sun continues
to rise or that the eclipse ends, then it's still
still a state spot start action. And this brings us
to questions for you, folks. Do you believe that torture
(57:07):
does produce results? Do you believe that the ends justify
the maccab means? And if so or if not, why
we would like to hear from you. We also this
is the part of the show where Matt, Noel and
(57:28):
I let you know that we are on the internet.
That's all true. We're on Instagram, where on Facebook, join
our discussion page. Here's where it gets crazy, where you
can find us interacting from time to time. You can
also find us on Twitter. But we're not just on
the internet anymore, folks. The rumors are true. We've branched
out to another platform, the good old telephone. Yes, we
(57:53):
now have a toll free number that you can call
and leave us a voice message and boiler alert. We
might make a couple episodes where we feature you on
the show. Okay, it's gonna happen, but we just need
you to leave the messages. So here it is. Write
this down, put it in your phone, do what you
(58:13):
gotta do. Eight three three st d w y t K.
Let's do that again with numbers eight three three seven,
eight three nine eight five. If you call that number
right now, you will hear Ben's voice and then leave
a message. That's all. It's super simple. Hey, and if
you you know, have some sort of phone aversion you
(58:36):
don't like touching plastic buttons. Um, I guess I could
apply to a keyboard, dude, it doesn't matter if it's
a specific phone a version. You can reach us on
the Internet, like Ben said, we are there at conspiracy
Stuff show on Instagram and just conspiracy stuff on Twitter
and Facebook. Uh. And if you don't want to do
any of that stuff, phone Internet facts our facts. But
(59:00):
we should, we should, that should be our next antiquated
communication means that we come up with that would actually
be amazing. We had a fact machine that just sat next.
Oh yeah, okid, yeah, it makes a cool sound, that's
for sure. Alright, that's next. Yeah, that's next. So before
you know, in the meantime, you could send us a
good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at how stuff
works dot com.
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