Guantanamo Guidebook (9)

I have a general (uncomfortable) fascination with the aesthetics of Power - what makes the Camp X-Ray style of appallingly rational, implacably ingenious brutality particularly disgusting is the utter moral hypocrisy of its perpetrators - the way they're happy to let the world know, as if they can count on everyone saying: "Oh well, it's all right really because they're defending democracy."

The formal relationship between brutality and BDSM (and perhaps even its origins, cf de Sade) is inescapable - I always get a certain horrible feeling when it's made apparent in such a sickening fashion.

every statement has an exception - including this one

relativejoker wrote: That said though (& can understand your point), bet I'm not the only one that would have loved to be a guard on that programme!! No thanks, I like my victems to say please first! Quaoar wrote: Not much to say about this really, except that for anyone who has even a remote sensitivity or understanding of the mechanisms of authority and humiliation, it's quite the most shocking thing I've ever seen ............ The formal relationship between brutality and BDSM (and perhaps even its origins, cf de Sade) is inescapable - I always get a certain horrible feeling when it's made apparent in such a sickening fashion.

BethTVMistress
"There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance" - Socraties

relativejoker wrote: Last time I checked, tv companies didn't have the powers to kidnap people off the streets at will. The tv participants did say please first!!

I'm not sure I made it clear. The reason why it was shocking is because the techniques that were used were accurate-as-possible replications of some techniques used at Camp X-Ray. Of course all the participants were voluntary - it would take a serious misunderstanding of my previous post to construe that I imagined otherwise (I can't believe I'm even having to defend this).

The object of the program is to put a few volunteers through a televisable selection of the experiences that prisoners went/are going through - minus the beatings, loss of contact with loved ones, legal limbo, protracted isolation and general hopelessness; and to show how inhuman even the most basic treatment of these prisoners is.

Televisionwise: I've never seen a person forced to stand still, handcuffed and blindfolded, until they pissed themselves before - the same practice could be well used in a BDSM situation. I just hope that a lot of people will watch this program and have their minds changed.

My point was that a lot of the techniques used in the torture of inmates share a common ancestry with the techniques of loving dominance, and I wanted to find out whether it made anyone else feel as uneasy as I do.

I would hope that BDSM practitioners, rather that being less shocked, would be more shocked, by virtue of their own involvement, by the idea of familiar practices being used for the purposes of evil rather than love.

every statement has an exception - including this one

Edited 3 Mar 05, 12:58 AM by Quaoar

I also have very much a grim fascination for this kind of treatment. I personally would like to have been one of the victims (on the program, nice and safe, mind). The idea, however, of someone being treated in such a way for REAL, and without any idea of how far the torturers can go and when or if they might ever see the light of day is horrendous and impossible to imagine. The thought of corrupt governments such as this (and it does include pretty much ALL of them) having such power and beliefs is truly frightening. I'm not a wishy washy liberalist, it is simply obvious that if someone is likely to admit to ANYTHING to save their body, life, or loved ones, when stressed to the limit and half mad, then their testimony is hardly of much true value (other than a politically useful statistic)

Sorry, but had to get it off chest.

Hit me! said the Masachist . . NO! said the Sadist

Of course as everyone around here clearly doesn't think I'm worthy to be part of the mighty IC 'community' I got no replies...

But don't let me interrupt the party...

For the record I thought it was a pretty crap programme - the facts aren't even right - they were recreating the conditions of camp delta, camp xray is far, far worse.

The other programme on last night that covered how the UK and US are outsourcing political prisoners to be tortured in places like Syria was far, far more shocking and informative.

It has something to do with it insofar as BDSM is to do with power exchange, and no matter how soft and easy your power exchange is, you're still dealing with the same highly volatile issues concerning physical control and its psychological consequences.

I must admit that I couldn't even watch half of the programme, because it disturbed me so much. I have virtually no concrete evidence, but I base my attitude on my intuition that if they can come up with such subtly horrible things in public, what the hell are they doing in private. I believe i mentioned camp X-Ray in my denouncement of the US torture regime.

Definitely. The first time I became aware of torture was reading something in my parents' copy of the Guardian sometime in the late 80s, about torture using electrodes applied to the genitals - I've never been able to get that out of my head. This was way before I ever knew about BDSM, so when I found out, I was always fascinated by how this could all be part of one huge network of doing and being done to - I think the awareness of the prevalence of torture has given me a sound basis for constructing a theory of mutual love and power, without letting me escape from the ethical duty that is implied by even the knowledge of such evil.

Sometimes I even think that BDSM is the only sane sexuality in a world overrun by torturous methods - forceful business takeovers, powerful countries (the US, Europe, Japan) forcing weak countries (Iraq, Africa, South America) to surrender to their privatising powers - all over Africa, a holocaust (AIDS) is taking place - does the US government give a shit? Does the European government give a shit? Will they spend billions without subsidising the military industry? Of course not.

Torture and dominance (dictatorship of the elite) is not the criminal exception we like to characterise it as: torture and dominance throughout history has been the rule, rather than the exception.

I can't see how Globalism can ever succeed without an active choice in helping those who are disadvantaged. We're doomed otherwise.

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I hope a massive asteroid hits the earth and wipes us all out. We don't deserve to live.

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every statement has an exception - including this one

Edited 3 Mar 05, 5:33 PM by Quaoar

This post makes me kinda ashamed to say THIS PROGRAM MADE ME REALLY HORNY!

Also, I made a CD of sensory deprivation torture music like the stuff they were blasted becuase I was so inspired...

Mmmmm...everything...