formerly jayeless@dreamwidth

This post is a crosspost from Jayeless, and has been backdated to the date on which I posted it. It can be found in its original location at Jayeless » In a history tute last week....

Tutor: The Dept of History is looking for students across all year levels to participate in an investigation into the suitability of the history curriculum, blah blah blah… so if you’re interested, write your name on the volunteer sign-ups sheet.
Classmate: I’m going to put [L’s] name down.
Tutor: No, you can’t do that! It’s up to [L] to volunteer herself! We don’t have conscription in this country!
Classmate: I’ll introduce conscription for her.
Tutor: We don’t have conscription in tutorials either. If we did, I’d be conscripting you for all sorts of things. I’d always be saying, you do this, and you do that - think of the PRECEDENT you’re setting!

This post is a crosspost from Jayeless, and has been backdated to the date on which I posted it. It discusses the BBC article Rove "proud" of waterboarding, can be found in its original location at Jayeless » Rove "proud" of waterboarding.

This is disgusting. I'm not surprised that he'd feel this way, but surprised that he would admit it so publicly and blatantly, that he'd boast about it (although I guess that shouldn't surprise me either). And it is disgusting.

The article says this:

In a BBC interview, Karl Rove, who was known as "Bush's brain", said he "was proud we used techniques that broke the will of these terrorists".

Okay. So basically what he is admitting is that waterboarding is an (apparently non-torturous) technique that breaks the will of people. This technique breaks the will of people by instilling in them a sense of terror so great that they can't bear it any more. Obviously waterboarding cannot persuade people the opposite way, by convincing them that the interrogators are good people with correct arguments whom they want to provide help to. I would call this kind of technique "torture". Rove doesn't have to, because he seems to agree with the "instilling terror to break people" thing.

So then, what is really strange is this little tidbit:

Mr Rove said US soldiers were subjected to waterboarding as a regular part of their training.

A less severe form of the technique was used on the three suspects interrogated at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, he added.

So wait... the less severe form of the technique torments victims into breaking down with (Rove seems keen to suggest) great effectiveness.

So what the hell is being done to the USA's own soldiers?! Do they want to break them, too, to carry out the US government's agenda? Or is Rove suggesting that they torture use this technique on their own people in order for them to be able to resist breaking if subjected to it in the future?

Either way, what the hell, man? It's not like torture even works, so this is just obscene and cruel. Honestly, if I were a terrorist, I would come up with a plausible lie beforehand that I could tell my torturers to make them stop. This whole thing is vile.

I decided to start crossposting entries from my "main" blog, reasoning that people who read my entries elsewhere might be interested in these as well. This entry was originally posted yesterday, at Jayeless » Life in a water crisis.

Of the many things I am, one of them is that I'm a born-and-raised Victorian. Furthermore, I'm a born-and-raised young Victorian. I was born in 1992, only a few years before the drought took hold. You might have heard of "the drought". There's been so little rain for so many years that the lack of water has become a crisis.

This has several implications for life in this land. The first is water restrictions. I have vague memories of splashing around merrily in garden sprinklers as a toddler on hot summer afternoons. As a slightly older child, I remember playing some kind of espionage thriller game with my sister which involved me shooting her about a MILLION TIMES with a water gun. (It was again summer, and I did want her to shoot me back, but she kept missing. I wasn't happy.) I remember once being given permission to water the garden, and merrily turning the garden hose upwards into the air to create a kind of dodgy artificial rain.

Well, all of these things are now illegal, on pain of a $2,000 fine. For serious. If your neighbours report you to police for wilful violation of water restrictions, you have to pay $2,000 for it. One of the houses down the street has a sign in the front yard: "THIS HOUSE HAS INSTALLED A WATER TANK". If they did not, the owner could be reported for watering their garden. ( Read more... )