the time on the phone, with CNN and MSNBC in the background
discussing Justice's urging there be no trials for torturers. Only
Prof. Jonathan Turley on Keith Olbermann's Countdown came
close to matching this knife-sharp precis by Clay Claiborne. -Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: "Clay Claiborne" <cjc@CosmosEng.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009 11:06 PM
Subject: [Jan27action] Crunch Time on the Torture Question
Torture is mainly used as a tool to terrorize and intimidate a people.
This has historically been the case, and I submit that this continues to
be the case with regards to the U.S. occupations of Iraq and
Afghanistan. While torture has also been used to get information, this
really doesn't amount to much. Torture for information is very unreliable.
First of all it requires a victim that really knows something critical, very
rare in a fluid battlefield situation. And you'd have to be in position
to tell the difference between the truth and a good lie. It is rarely the
best way to get the info out of someone. I think torture for information
would be kept very secret and the victim killed to keep it a secret. As a
practical matter, torture forinformation just doesn't have much utility.
Torture as a tool to terrorize people into going along with your
program, on the other hand, has a proven track record. Your victims
could be pretty much anybody in the targeted group. They don't even have
know anything worth knowing. Remember Han Solo in Star Wars? As he is
being thrown back into the cell with the others after being tortured by
the Empire, he say incredulously "They didn't even ask me any
questions!" Well that wasn't the point was it? Generally you'd pick on
people that got 'uppity' in one way or another. Certainly this applies
to the American traditions of torture. None of black men that were
beaten, burned and got their balls cut off were asked any questions either.
Torture is about terror not information. This is the great truth that
has been so artfully hidden by all the discussion about whether or not
you can get useful intelligence that way. It has been presumed in this
whole discussion that the motivation behind the torture has been
information. It is not. It is terror and intimidation. The U.S. is
carrying out an occupation and like murder and false imprisonment, it is
a necessary tool of occupation. There are those that may point out that
it is self defeating but those that still believe that an occupation can
work also believe that the human spirit can be broken.
Now, unlike torture for info, torture for terror cannot remain secret
because it's real target is not the people being tortured, it is the
people that will fear being tortured and so toe the line. You release
the people you torture so they can spread the news or you otherwise
make sure your target audience 'gets the message'. In Vietnam, the U.S.
Army had a practice of throwing VC POWs out of helicopters. Nothing very
secret about that. What was going on in Abu Ghraib was no secret in
Iraq, just as Nixon's 'secret' bombing of Cambodia was no secret to the
Cambodians being bombed. In both cases they knew long before the story
'broke' in the U.S.
Public knowledge is really essential for this type of torture to work.
In fact, the more public, the better, as long as you aren't held to
account. Torture for terror is most effective when the details are most
widely known and the torturer goes unpunished. That is why it is crunch
time on the torture question. If there are no real prosecutions, if they,
in effect, get away with it, then all this talk and all the details
only further the purpose of their crimes. Anybody who thinks of
opposing them will know they tortured and are free to torture again.
That is exactly what they want.
Clay Claiborne, Producer
Linux Beach
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Venice, CA 90291
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***
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/04/opinion/04krugman.html?th&emc=th
Falling Wage Syndrome
By Paul Krugman
NY Times Op-Ed: May 3, 2009
Some of the wage cuts, like the givebacks by Chrysler workers, are the price
of federal aid. Others, like the tentative agreement on a salary cut here at
The Times, are the result of discussions between employers and their union
employees. Still others reflect the brute fact of a weak labor market:
workers don't dare protest when their wages are cut, because they don't
think they can find other jobs.
Whatever the specifics, however, falling wages are a symptom of a sick
economy. And they're a symptom that can make the economy even sicker.
First things first: anecdotes about falling wages are proliferating, but how
broad is the phenomenon? The answer is, very.
It's true that many workers are still getting pay increases. But there are
enough pay cuts out there that, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
the average cost of employing workers in the private sector rose only
two-tenths of a percent in the first quarter of this year - the lowest
increase on record. Since the job market is still getting worse, it wouldn't
be at all surprising if overall wages started falling later this year.
But why is that a bad thing? After all, many workers are accepting pay cuts
in order to save jobs. What's wrong with that?
The answer lies in one of those paradoxes that plague our economy right now.
We're suffering from the paradox of thrift: saving is a virtue, but when
everyone tries to sharply increase saving at the same time, the effect is a
depressed economy. We're suffering from the paradox of deleveraging:
reducing debt and cleaning up balance sheets is good, but when everyone
tries to sell off assets and pay down debt at the same time, the result is a
financial crisis.
And soon we may be facing the paradox of wages: workers at any one company
can help save their jobs by accepting lower wages, but when employers across
the economy cut wages at the same time, the result is higher unemployment.
Here's how the paradox works. Suppose that workers at the XYZ Corporation
accept a pay cut. That lets XYZ management cut prices, making its products
more competitive. Sales rise, and more workers can keep their jobs. So you
might think that wage cuts raise employment - which they do at the level of
the individual employer.
But if everyone takes a pay cut, nobody gains a competitive advantage. So
there's no benefit to the economy from lower wages. Meanwhile, the fall in
wages can worsen the economy's problems on other fronts.
In particular, falling wages, and hence falling incomes, worsen the problem
of excessive debt: your monthly mortgage payments don't go down with your
paycheck. America came into this crisis with household debt as a percentage
of income at its highest level since the 1930s. Families are trying to work
that debt down by saving more than they have in a decade - but as wages
fall, they're chasing a moving target. And the rising burden of debt will
put downward pressure on consumer spending, keeping the economy depressed.
Things get even worse if businesses and consumers expect wages to fall
further in the future. John Maynard Keynes put it clearly, more than 70
years ago: "The effect of an expectation that wages are going to sag by,
say, 2 percent in the coming year will be roughly equivalent to the effect
of a rise of 2 percent in the amount of interest payable for the same
period." And a rise in the effective interest rate is the last thing this
economy needs.
Concern about falling wages isn't just theory. Japan - where private-sector
wages fell an average of more than 1 percent a year from 1997 to 2003 - is
an object lesson in how wage deflation can contribute to economic
stagnation.
So what should we conclude from the growing evidence of sagging wages in
America? Mainly that stabilizing the economy isn't enough: we need a real
recovery.
There has been a lot of talk lately about green shoots and all that, and
there are indeed indications that the economic plunge that began last fall
may be leveling off. The National Bureau of Economic Research might even
declare the recession over later this year.
But the unemployment rate is almost certainly still rising. And all signs
point to a terrible job market for many months if not years to come - which
is a recipe for continuing wage cuts, which will in turn keep the economy
weak.
To break that vicious circle, we basically need more: more stimulus, more
decisive action on the banks, more job creation.
Credit where credit is due: President Obama and his economic advisers seem
to have steered the economy away from the abyss. But the risk that America
will turn into Japan - that we'll face years of deflation and stagnation -
seems, if anything, to be rising.
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