Cathedrals, Bank Lines, The Disappeared And Their Killers

I really owe you more than pictures, but it’s hard keeping track of and sorting out my impressions and what I’ve been told.  People I see on the streets - what they look like, what they wear, their constant cell phone use - look exactly like the people I see in the US.  Pizza and hamburguesas and beer are among the most popular foods here in Cordoba. But these folks live among buildings that, in a few cases, go back to the 1500s.  They walk down narrow streets with little shops on every block - at least in this neighborhood - with fresh fruit and vegetables, eggs, and a few other items, that are right next to bakeries with all sorts of decadent sweets.  There’s history here (not counting the original people prior to European conquest) that makes even the US east coast seem young.

Argentina has free health care and free higher education.

US citizens have a way of feeling superior to the rest of the world, but there’s more to culture than military superiority.  Of course, this is what I’ve discovered every time I’ve been to a new (for me) part of the world.  People are people.  And everywhere you go there are very smart, sophisticated people.  People with great common sense and wisdom.  And there are jerks.  When we were surveyed at the airport by someone from a tourism agency, we were asked to rate a number of things.  I asked if we were going to be asked about the people.  No, we weren’t.  Well, I said, you should ask us.  The people were absolutely the best part of our trip.  Tolerant of my terrible Spanish and always wanting to know “De desde son?”  Where are you from?  And Alaska always elicits a smile and ‘frio.’

That said, here are the pictures.  These are two days old.  We walked up to Plaza San Martin, the center of Córdoba, Argentina’s second largest city.  While we were at the Museum of Memories, a group came in with a guide speaking in English and when we listened in we got invited to join.  It’s a company that puts on free tours - it’s up to you to decide what to pay the guide.  The group was mostly Spanish speakers and the English speakers got a much shorter version.  And two dropped out during the two hour plus tour, leaving just us.

But first here’s a picture from our 8th floor balcony.  Airbnb had a two bedroom apartment  for under $50 a night.  It’s by far the most spacious place we’ve stayed.  Well, the Buenos Aires homestay was bigger, but we didn’t have it to ourselves.            

  

I couldn’t pass up the shadows - also from the balcony.

 

This is the inside of the main Cathedral on Plaza San Martin.  If you’ve been reading the blog lately, you’ve  heard this name before.  San Martin, someone said, was the George Washington of Argentina.  But he was more than that.  Besides getting Argentina free from Spain, he did the same in Chile.  Then passed the torch to Simon Bolivar in Peru.

Here’s a view of the plaza. It’s much warmer here in central Argentina.  Up to about 70˚F in the afternoon.

    

Here’s the cathedral from the plaza.

Construction of the Cathedral began in 1582 according to Wikipedia and it was finished in 1709.  For the historically challenged, the Mayflower got to North America in 1620 and George Washington was born in 1732.

If you look closely below, you can see a long line of people at the bank.  We’ve seen shorter lines before and asked.  Someone suggested about a Friday lineup that people were getting money out for the weekend and wanted to get their money in case the ATMs ran out of money over the weekend.  In this case, it was Tuesday after a holiday weekend.  (This is here because it was on the way to Plaza San Martin.)

 

The Museum of the Memories is in a former detention and torture center from the 1970s when the government rounded up suspected opponents.


The Free Tour guide (in the red in the center) said about 30,000 people disappeared.  Tortured to death, shot, and others were  thrown out of airplanes over the ocean.  Children were kidnapped and given to other families.  I knew some of this.  Netflix has The Official Story up - well it’s here in Spanish without English subtitles.  It’s about this period.

 I was going to save this museum for a post all its own, but I have so many backed up photos I should just put it up.  It’s a chilling account.  30,000 people is a tiny fraction of the population.  But if it’s your son or daughter or husband, it’s everything.  And all the relatives and friends and acquaintances of 30,000 people is enough to spread terror among millions of others that they will be next.  Sort of like undocumented Americans waiting for ICE to knock on their doors.
 
Buzzfeed reported in May that over 52,000 people were being held in ICE detention centers.  The vast majority of these are decent, innocent people fleeing violence in their own countries.  But the Trump administration is full of heartless people who easily rationalize the evil they are doing.  Here is a picture of some of their Argentinian colleagues from the 70s and 80s.

.  The guide mentioned that the detention center that houses the museum is right next to the cathedral and part of the cabildo - the main government building of the province.  Both were complicit.  

Here are a few more memories.

This giant (5 or 6 feet high) fingerprint is made up of names of the disappeared. There were several more such fingerprints on the wall.    

A courtyard in the detention center.

A poster about one of the young women who disappeared.

Another victim.

And interrogation room, I think.

The difference between what happened in Chile and what’s happening today is great.  We still have enough accountability that people aren’t being actively and intentionally  tortured or thrown out of airplanes into the ocean.  But it’s not because some of the people in charge wouldn’t do those things if they could.  They did it at Guantanamo.  We still have some safeguards.  But being locked up indefinitely without adequate food and, bad sanitary conditions, having your kids separated from you, is all pretty terrifying by itself.  We’re watching the cold-bloodedness of Mike Dunleavy in action.  He would have gone along with the men in the picture above.  And I’m guessing the 22 legislators who went to Wasilla and refused to vote to override the vetoes  have moral compasses that don’t recognize evil either.         

      

Being Smart Beats Beating

How necessary is torture to get information from terrorists?  As a teenager I read about the Gulag and Nazi Germany and other settings where people got tortured.  I wasn't particularly looking for torture stories, but they came up in many books I read.  I soon realized that these stories of torture were always written by the people who were tortured, not by the torturer.  But I wanted to know what was going on in the head of the torturer.  How could one human being inflict such horrible pain on another?

It's still one of the questions I keep gathering data on (not in any rigorous manner, but I note things as they come up.)   The debates over torture in the television show "24" (skip down to "This wouldn’t have been a problem. . . in the link) were of great interest to me.  The show was one of the media that popularized the idea that torture was acceptable if the person being tortured knew about a plot that would, say, kill two hundred civilians.  Of course, that begs the question how the interrogators know the suspect knows this.  The issue came up in real life over torturing Guantanamo prisoners and John Yoo's lawyerly defenses of torture.

Stuck somewhere in my brain was the idea embedded in the Fifth Amendment - that one cannot be compelled to testify against oneself.  Our founding fathers knew that torture victimized the innocent and that subjects of torture would tell their interrogators whatever they thought they wanted to hear.

So when I read this article in the LA Times yesterday, I found evidence that supports my view of all this.  (And, of course, I recognize that we all tend to believe what we want to hear, so I'm offering this, as evidence, not proof.)  Here are some excerpts, but it's worth reading the whole thing:

"Hanns Scharff was a master manipulator, but not in the stereotypical Gestapo-like ways that usually come to mind. His tools were kindness, respect, empathy and guile. He told meandering stories, took detainees on long strolls in the countryside and left them alone in his office to read the U.S. military newspaper, Stars and Stripes. He provided hard-to-find cigarettes and even let one captured U.S. pilot take a short flight in a German fighter plane. But all the while, without them even knowing, he was swiping their secrets. .

"He died in 1992, well before the U.S. war on terror commenced. But his methods began getting a second look amid the fierce national debate over the harsh interrogation tactics used by the George W. Bush administration after the 9/11 attacks. President Obama and others have condemned some of those methods as torture. 

Former CIA officials have defended the rough techniques as useful, but a 2014 Senate report found that the agency’s use of torture failed to stop any imminent plots. 

Sometimes, it even backfired, the report concluded. At least one suspect “sang like a tweetie bird,” according to a CIA official quoted in the report, before he was tortured. But after being subjected to harsh interrogation, he provided no other useful information, according to the report. Amid the debate, the FBI-led interrogation unit began funding research to scientifically analyze various interrogation practices. It plans to soon release a report detailing best practices. 

Though Scharff’s techniques had been long known to U.S. officials, the research confirmed for the first time that it actually works better."  [Emphasis added]

Pet Shop Thoughts

My granddaughter and I took a picture to the shop to have the frame repaired and down the street was a pet store that said 'reptiles and birds.'  As a kid, I learned a lot about animals by going to the zoo with my parents.  It was a big deal for me to watch the animals and learn their names and the differences between different kinds of animals, to watch how they moved, to hear their sounds, to smell their smells. I was totally taken by them.   As an adult, I have problems with zoos, but I also recognize they give people an opportunity to connect with animals, and for many, like me, learn to understand emotionally and biologically their importance in the natural world.  And the zoo I went to was an old style zoo and you can see a picture of me there when I was little at this link.

So I entered the pet shop with mixed feelings, and the powerful smell - which I'm pretty sure was from the mice and rats for sale as snake food - didn't help.

A tangle of boas

All these little birds in little catches was disturbing, but fascinating to my granddaughter.  For ten dollars you can buy a female zebra finch.  And lock it in a cage.



















I looked up these Gouldian finches, just because their coloring is so remarkable.

Gouldian finch from Wikipedia:

"The Gouldian finch (Erythrura gouldiae), also known as the Lady Gouldian finch, Gould's finch or the rainbow finch, is a colourful passerine bird endemic to Australia. There is strong evidence of a continuing decline, even at the best-known site near Katherine in the Northern Territory. Large numbers are bred in captivity, particularly in Australia. In the state of South Australia, National Parks & Wildlife Department permit returns in the late 1990s showed that over 13,000 Gouldian finches were being kept by aviculturists. If extrapolated to an Australia-wide figure this would result in a total of over 100,000 birds. In 1992, it was classified as "endangered in the wild" under IUCN's criteria C2ai. This was because the viable population size was estimated to be less than 2,500 mature individuals, no permanent subpopulation was known to contain more than 250 mature individuals, and that a continuing decline was observed in the number of mature individuals. It is currently subject to a conservation program.  .  .  . 

The number of Gouldian finches has decreased quite dramatically during the 20th century. Their habitat has been reduced or altered. Early research indicated a parasite called the air sac mite was responsible for the decline of the species. This is no longer considered to be a major factor. In general, Gouldian finches are susceptible to diseases and viral infections. Their beautiful colours mean that they are easily caught by predators. Fires are listed as the primary threat to the natural populations. The total number of Gouldian finches altogether is not low, however, because they are among the most popular pet birds, and are bred in captivity for the pet trade."

Zoos often justify keeping the animals in captivity because they preserve a species that is endangered in the wild.  I don't know enough to weigh the pros and cons.

There's a post at ladygouldianfinch.com about Ethics in Aviculture which portrays most breeders and brokers as good, decent folks, but does acknowledge there are problems.

"As time goes on and bird keepers gain experience, many decide to breed birds to help pay for (at least) the bird food. Bird breeding isn't a get-rich-quick scheme; so if you are thinking along those lines right now, stop. Most new to breeding are very excited about selling the babies and making a few bucks. So much so, that they have been known to pull chicks from their parents too early. This can often lead to the death of the chick shortly after being sold. If the breeder is a good one, he/she will admit fault and replace the dead bird(s) with more mature birds. If the breeder isn't so good he/she may accuse the bird buyer of making some grave mistake and killing the birds. This practice really bothers me but I see it happen now and then. Granted, anyone buying a bird for the fist time should do their homework first, and would, therefore, know that they weren't at fault, but alas this is rarely the case. In the end the bird(s) and the unsuspecting bird buyer suffers."

Then there are all the turtles.


Here's a discussion on a turtle forum about how some pet shops treat reptiles



At least this store publicized that it is illegal to sell turtles under 4 inches, though they don't mention that the reason is to prevent the spread of turtle salmonella and other health problems.

All the turtles in this tank were under four inches.  Presumably they are raising them to be above four inches, but what about the health issues of having them in the shop?










And then there were all the lizards.  I looked up Bearded Dragon and the first four or five pages of the search results were from businesses and groups promoting their sale and telling people how to care for them.  For example, TheBeardedDragon.org.  These, too, are from Australia.









I don't have pictures of the mice and rats or the tarantulas and various frogs.  But here are some goldfish from a tank that said 'feeder fish.'  This account of someone who worked for Petco talks about how these fish are sold to feed other animals like turtles.  This account goes much further, but it is on a PETA site, so keep that in mind.

"PETCO also sells live “feeder fish” for turtles and reptiles people keep as captive “pets.” These small goldfish are kept by the hundreds in huge, severely crowded tanks with no enrichment. The death toll was so high at the store I worked at that part of the closing procedure every day was to take out the dead “feeder fish” who had been sucked into a filter, wrap them in a plastic bag, and place them in the “dead” freezer, along with dead rats, mice, hamsters, birds, and other casualties."

There are lots of sites that promote exotic pets and give advice on how to care for them.  But there are also some sites that tell a different story.  For example:

The Dirty Side of the Exotic Animal Pet Trade which says, in part,

"The illegal trade in wildlife is second only to that of drugs in the United States, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). A former FWS chief of law enforcement said, “There is no stigma attached to being an animal smuggler. If you get caught illegally transporting animals on a first offense, it’s possible you won't even do jail time. You can’t say the same for running drugs.”

Animal Planet's Facts About The Exotic Pet Trade

Live Science's Owning Wild Animals:  Stats on Exotic Pets (Infographic)  lists four levels of state regulations and I'm pleased to say that Alaska is in the most restrictive category, though I'm not sure how restrictive that is.  Just better than the other three levels.  Here are the five worst states, according to Cap Times in Madison, Wisconsin,

"Wisconsin is one of just five states that allow residents to keep almost any animal they want as a pet. The others are Alabama, Nevada, North Carolina and South Carolina."

The Human Society asks "Should Wild Animals Be Kept as Pets?"

I don't know that there were any animals in the pet shop that had been captured in the wild.  I'm guessing most, if not all, were from breeders.  But there are other issues, including health, and introducing exotic animals into the local eco-system, which is, apparently, a particularly big problem in southern Florida, where the climate and terrain are hospitable to tropical reptiles..

I did mention some of these issues to my granddaughter, but I also let her absorb the beauty and wonder of the animals.

Why The Senator Who Opposed Torture, As President Says "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques"

In Obama's talk this morning he used the euphemism "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques."   What he means is torture.  This post speculates on why he uses that term.  I don't come up with a final answer (as if anyone ever does), but I wanted to think this one through a bit and maybe some people will be reminded not to be distracted by euphemisms. 

In an interview with Time magazine, Ralph Keyes, the author of  Euphemania: Our Love Affair with Euphemisms, said people use euphemisms:

 "to deflect us — and maybe even themselves — about what they're doing. .  .

David Lloyd George — he was Prime Minister of Britain during World War I — once said that if we ever spoke plainly and clearly about what was going on on the battlefields, the public would demand that we bring an end to war."

The euphemism is bad enough, but at the CIA it's been shortened to EITs. 


Am I exaggerating about this being torture?

From ABC News in 2005:

"The CIA sources described a list of six "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" instituted in mid-March 2002 and used, they said, on a dozen top al Qaeda targets incarcerated in isolation at secret locations on military bases in regions from Asia to Eastern Europe. According to the sources, only a handful of CIA interrogators are trained and authorized to use the techniques:

1. The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him.

2. Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear.

3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.

4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions.

5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water.

6. Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt."

 But is that torture?   Remember, these are just the things they talked about openly. 

One of the CIA agents quoted in the story uses the word 'torture':

"It is "bad interrogation. I mean you can get anyone to confess to anything if the torture's bad enough," said former CIA officer Bob Baer." 

Judge for yourself with this example: 

"According to CIA sources, Ibn al Shaykh al Libbi, after two weeks of enhanced interrogation, made statements that were designed to tell the interrogators what they wanted to hear. Sources say Al Libbi had been subjected to each of the progressively harsher techniques in turn and finally broke after being water boarded and then left to stand naked in his cold cell overnight where he was doused with cold water at regular intervals"

The piece goes on to say the prisoner actually had no knowledge of what the interrogators wanted but made things up

  "because he was terrified of further harsh treatment"

An NBC investigative report on the movie Zero Dark Thirty which put American torture of terrorist suspects on the big screen for all to see, reports:

Working with Mitchell Jessen & Associates, the CIA soon developed a menu of 20 enhanced techniques – a list that was ultimately whittled down to 10, mainly because some of proposed techniques were considered too harsh even for terrorists.
“Not everything they proposed was part of the final menu,” said a former senior intelligence official, also speaking on condition of anonymity. “They came up with some stuff people didn’t like and were not approved. … There were legal tests. … Does it shock the conscience?  Does it lead to deep long-lasting injuries?”

I guess the question is whose conscience?  An average citizen or a psychopath?

But let's stop beating around the bush.  Here's what the UN Convention Against Torture, Part I, Article 1 says:  

For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, 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 or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions. 

There's no doubt that by international standards, "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" are torture.  


Why does Obama use this term?

It's depressing that the senator and presidential candidate who opposed  torture, now as president not only condones it, but he hides behind the euphemism "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques." 

I assume that his many security advisers have convinced him that certain activities are necessary, or at least have given him enough doubt that he hasn't outright banned torture.  And he's also been told, I'm sure, that he can't use the word torture or he will make the US and perhaps himself, vulnerable to international sanctions and perhaps

The US is a signatory to the UN Law Against Torture, but has a long list of official 'reservations.'  Perhaps we can call them quibbles about the meaning of 'torture.'  Thus, using Enhanced Interrogation Techniques is a way of saying that we are not using torture.  From the United Nations Treaty Collection:

       II. The Senate's advice and consent is subject to the following understandings, which shall apply to the obligations of the United States under this Convention:
       (1) (a) That with reference to article 1, the United States understands that, in order to constitute torture, an act must be specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering and that mental pain or suffering refers to prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from (1) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering; (2) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality; (3) the threat of imminent death; or (4) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality.
       (b) That the United States understands that the definition of torture in article 1 is intended to apply only to acts directed against persons in the offender's custody or physical control.
       (c) That with reference to article 1 of the Convention, the United States understands that `sanctions' includes judicially-imposed sanctions and other enforcement actions authorized by United States law or by judicial interpretation of such law. Nonetheless, the United States understands that a State Party could not through its domestic sanctions defeat the object and purpose of the Convention to prohibit torture.
       (d) That with reference to article 1 of the Convention, the United States understands that the term `acquiescence' requires that the public official, prior to the activity constituting torture, have awareness of such activity and thereafter breach his legal responsibility to intervene to prevent such activity.
       (e) That with reference to article 1 of the Convention, the Unites States understands that noncompliance with applicable legal procedural standards does not per se constitute torture.
       (2) That the United States understands the phrase, `where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture,' as used in article 3 of the Convention, to mean `if it is more likely than not that he would be tortured.'
       (3) That it is the understanding of the United States that article 14 requires a State Party to provide a private right of action for damages only for acts of torture committed in territory under the jurisdiction of that State Party.
       (4) That the United States understands that international law does not prohibit the death penalty, and does not consider this Convention to restrict or prohibit the United States from applying the death penalty consistent with the Fifth, Eighth and/or Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, including any constitutional period of confinement prior to the imposition of the death penalty.
       (5) That the United States understands that this Convention shall be implemented by the United States Government to the extent that it exercises legislative and judicial jurisdiction over the matters covered by the Convention and otherwise by the state and local governments. Accordingly, in implementing articles 10-14 and 16, the United States Government shall take measures appropriate to the Federal system to the end that the competent authorities of the constituent units of the United States of America may take appropriate measures for the fulfilment of the Convention.
       III. The Senate's advice and consent is subject to the following declarations:
       (1) That the United States declares that the provisions of articles 1 through 16 of the Convention are not self-executing.

I can't imagine that the US Congress would put up with external inquiries into US torture.  They simply would refuse to comply and start withdrawing support for international organizations that tried to enforce sanctions against the US.  The US is still powerful enough to do that. 

But it would be embarrassing and it would officially lower the status of the US world wide.  I'd note that most members of Congress seem to dismiss the opinions of people who oppose what they believe.

For more on this topic, the ACLU has a number of links.

Here's also a CATO Institute comment on torture. 

[This post is evidence of my blogging addiction.  I have other things to do today, but the President's euphemism wouldn't let go of me until I wrote this.  A (bigger?) issue that will have to wait til later is the unspoken acknowledgement that what Snowden did was important.   It's not as proofed and checked as most posts.  I'll check on it again when I get my to do list done.  Your help in fisxing things is appreciated.]