Videodrome

nomos

Administrator
BBC: "Producers of a reality TV show claim to have recreated torture techniques used at US detention camp Guantanamo Bay."

Wow. They're actually making good use of the 'reality' format. Hopefully a celebrity version is on the way.
 
O

Omaar

Guest
Apparently this show is being produced by Channel 4 with assistance from Team Delta.

According to Team Delta's Website, Team Delta is a "high speed unit of former military intelligence, special forces and other elite military personnel from all branches of the services" which "takes pride in teaching professional training workshops and providing realistic military experiences. "

Team Delta Website

Unsurprisingly, the skills of torture and interrogation are transferable to a corporate environment.

Again, from their website:

"Among other traits, an interrogator is an adaptable interviewer. Interrogators are given little notice and short preparation time to learn enough about the person they are to interview and to then adapt a plan or approach. Such skills transfer readily to the civilian world and corporate life. Team Delta instructors have proven this with success in entrepreneurial roles and in corporate America. We will adapt these skills to fit a client's training program. All corporate workshops are instructional followed by practical exercise. The style of these workshops is tailored to the client's objectives - everything from practical skill building to team building adventure training. For example, the focus of Mastering Hostile Negotiations may range from dealing with a difficult coworker to accomplishing a task through negotiating the release of a hostage. "

Most of the teambuilding exercises I've had to do to have been pretty bad, but at least they never involved playing prison guard and torturing people.

According to the team delta website, some of these guys were trained by the U.S. Army interrogation school, which also trained guards at Abu Ghraib:

"THE PENTAGON’S story is that the guards at Abu Ghraib prison weren’t following U.S. military policy when they subjected Iraqi prisoners to abuse and torture. But the military teaches these methods--as interrogation techniques.

"Students" at the U.S. Army interrogation school in Fort Huachuca, Ariz., learn that sexual humiliation and abuse are particularly effective to use on Arab men. A Wall Street Journal reporter who was able to visit Fort Huachuca noted that recruits are taught 30 interrogation techniques, many of them based on shame and humiliation. "

from Socialist Worker

"Steve Crawshaw, director of Human Rights Watch’s London office said the show could be a useful way to show viewers that seemingly innocuous techniques like sleep deprivation can have a devastating effect.

“The US administration has defined torture very narrowly and avoided the other key phrase, which is ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment,’” he said.

“Without having seen it, my understanding of the Channel Four program is that it shows clearly that even a very small amount of these treatments can be seriously damaging.”"

from IslamOnline

from the same article:

"In a separate related context, a wide-ranging Pentagon investigation, yet to be released, indicated that sexually oriented tactics may have been part of the fabric of interrogation methods in the Guantanamo detention camp, especially yin 2003, according to the Washington Post Thursday, February 10.

“A military investigation uncovered numerous instances in which female interrogators, using dye, pretended to spread menstrual blood on Muslim men, according to a senior Defense Department official familiar with the investigation.”

The paper added that a number of Guantanamo detainees earlier told their lawyers that female interrogators in the detention camp repeatedly used sexually suggestive tactics to try to humiliate and pry information from devout Muslim men held at the US military prison.

“The prisoners have told their lawyers, who compiled the accounts, that female interrogators regularly violated Muslim taboos about sex and contact with women. The female interrogators used to rub their bodies against the men, wear skimpy clothes in front of them, make sexually explicit remarks and touch them provocatively, at least eight detainees said in documents or through their attorneys.” "
 
O

Omaar

Guest
Team Delta Workshops

Team Delta always customizes its workshops to fit a client's needs.

Team Delta Corporate Workshops:

Conflict Resolution

Rules for a Successful Meeting

Mastering Hostile Negotiations

Mastering Hostile Interview

Basic Body Language for Salesmen

To Tell the Truth

Know your Neighbors

Discovery as a Process

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Know your Neighbour?s??!!
 

version

Well-known member
Videodrome's very much a reality at this point.

Maybe not the weird tumor stuff, but certainly the extreme violence being beamed directly into people's homes. It's not even restricted to basement oddballs, you can stumble across some heinous shit just scrolling through Ukraine updates on Twitter.

Guy can be a bit of a crank, but this is an intriguing and unsettling thread;



Always thought some of the stuff they were doing on I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! was bad enough tbh, locking people in coffins full of rats and whatnot. And it's supposed to be entertainment? The audience factor was unpleasant too, people deliberately voting for the person who freaks out the most to keep being put back into the challenges.

Those SAS programs too. I haven't seen the Ant Middleton one, but I remember there being something similar years ago where they put the contestants through sleep deprivation, stress positions etc.
 
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WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
2 schools of thought

If you want to recruit killers from the armed forces (any sector from special ops to prison), you’ll find them. People will volunteer to kill without provocation. Can they complete a task and escape though? Different story. Competence and cunning are different attributes, anyone will crack under prolonged interrogation

Dissociation through childhood trauma is another. To further gain of function motivations towards targeted killings hasn’t been the goal historically, warped webs conjuring divination has. What futures peek through?

Put another way, how many deaths have you witnessed? Peaceful or ultra-violent? Beheadings? Check. Torture cartel clip forwarded via a mate’s email? Check. Multiply by internet? Check

Give it time, dissociation can be accumulative
 

william_kent

Well-known member
anyone will crack under prolonged interrogation

Men's tolerance for humiliation and pain differ - often markedly. You must be prepared to find a variety of techniques before you find an effective one. Analysis of character before starting will help eliminate nonproductive techniques without trying them. A subject may have a great tolerance for physical pain but be absolutely broken by a hypodermic needle piercing his testicle.

from "Physical Interrogation Techniques", by Richard W. Krousher
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I would probably spill the beans at that point. In fact I would give everyone up the second they started strapping me into a chair "Yes, it is fucking safe!". The only thing is, how does the torturer know that what is said is true? I get that in some circumstances you can maybe check right away, but if you can't then how do they know the, er, subject isn't just telling them something that they want to hear?
 

version

Well-known member
I would probably spill the beans at that point. In fact I would give everyone up the second they started strapping me into a chair "Yes, it is fucking safe!". The only thing is, how does the torturer know that what is said is true? I get that in some circumstances you can maybe check right away, but if you can't then how do they know the, er, subject isn't just telling them something that they want to hear?

That was one of the arguments against the CIA and their "enhanced interrogation" post-9/11, wasn't it? That when people are under that kind of stress they'll say anything to make it stop.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I've certainly read that information gathered by torture is not reliable. Surely it depends though, like if you are trying to open a safe and they give you a combination then you can check if they've told the truth, but there must be loads of times where it doesn't work like that.
 
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