[extropy-chat] German diplomacy

Tue Jun 28 06:29:47 UTC 2005

Hubert Mania wrote:

Thanx, Dirk and Samantha,

for still sticking to your views against this rotten US patriotism of 
Lorrrey and LaForge and those uglitarian callous caluculations with the 
deaths of  Iraqui people. Be assured that I am writing 2 or 3 emails a 
week, but then: I don't hit the send button anymore. I am too weak now 
to get screwed up in this stinking pile of shit.

Love and peace

humania

FOR Hubert:

June 17, 2005 DE GUSTIBUS What Was Served With Brunch Was Bile By BRET 
STEPHENS June 17, 2005 In Beirut last month, I met a Lebanese man who 
had been savagely tortured over the course of a 12-year odyssey in 
Syrian prisons. Among the things he had endured were electrocutions, 
beatings with electric cables, and being hanged from ropes by his 
ankles. And then there was "the German chair." The German chair, as he 
described it, was something akin to a medieval rack, in which 
progressively greater doses of pain are administered an inch at a time. 
Yet why was it known as the German chair? It's a question I neglected to 
ask. But I found my answer several weeks later, in New York. What 
occasioned this discovery was meeting a relatively senior German 
diplomat posted to the New York consulate. My wife -- also German -- 
knows his wife socially; our children use the same playground. They had 
invited us to their home for Sunday brunch. I should say here that I 
speak almost no German, and it quickly became apparent that the 
diplomat's wife spoke almost no English. So it was perhaps natural that, 
soon after we arrived, she and my wife took to one corner of the 
spacious apartment while the diplomat ushered me into his study. Less 
natural was the conversation that followed. I made the normal chitchat 
of first encounters: praise for the unobstructed (and million-dollar) 
views of the Hudson River; a query about what he did at the consulate. 
But the diplomat had no patience for my small talk. Apropos of nothing, 
he said he had recently made a study of U.S. tax laws and concluded that 
practices here were inferior to those in Germany. Given recent rates of 
German economic growth, I found this comment odd. But I offered no 
rejoinder. I was, after all, a guest in his home. The diplomat, however, 
was just getting started. Bad as U.S. economic policy was, it was as 
nothing next to our human-rights record. Had I read the recent Amnesty 
International report on Guantanamo? "You mean the one that compared it 
to the Soviet gulag?" Yes, that one. My host disagreed with it: The 
gulag was better than Gitmo, since at least the Stalinist system offered 
its victims a trial of sorts. Nor was that all. Civil rights in the 
U.S., he said, were on a par with those of North Korea and rather behind 
what they had been in Europe in the Middle Ages. When I offered that, as 
a journalist, I had encountered no restrictions on press freedom, he cut 
me off. "That's because The Wall Street Journal takes its orders from 
the government." By then we had sat down at the formal dining table, 
with our backs to Ground Zero a half-mile away and our eyes on the boats 
on the river below us. My wife and I made abortive attempts at ordinary 
conversation. We were met with non sequiturs: "The only people who 
appreciate American foreign policy are poodles." After further bizarre 
pronouncements, including a lecture on the illegality of the Holocaust 
under Nazi law, my wife said that she felt unwell. We gathered our 
things and left. For days now, I've been asking myself why I didn't 
answer the diplomat in the way he deserved. Partly it had to do with my 
wish not to spoil the friendship between our wives. Partly, too, his 
assault was so discombobulating I didn't trust myself to respond 
coherently. But the main reason is that, as his guest, I was restrained 
by an innate sense of propriety, a sense the diplomat did not share. And 
herein lies the essence of the torturer's art. To inflict harm on a 
defenseless person -- whoever he may be, whatever he has done -- goes 
against the human grain. It is one thing to strike out at somebody who 
has just hit you. It's another thing entirely to abuse someone who, 
whether as prisoner or as guest, is in your power.

Long ago the Greeks understood that nothing is so barbarous as 
inhospitality. And according to popular exegesis, God did not destroy 
Sodom and Gomorrah because of its citizens' sexual crimes but because of 
their crimes against hospitality -- the rape of strangers. Torturers, 
however, are those rare people who can inflict injury on the 
defenseless, work which is made easier for them because they know most 
people are unable to respond in kind. Thus it was with the German 
diplomat. Seated at his table, I submitted to his rules. But rather than 
oblige my submission with courtesy, he took the opportunity to inflict 
his insults -- insults to which I, as a guest, was bound not to resist. 
I was, so to speak, in his German chair. I am tempted to violate 
journalistic standards here by revealing the diplomat's name. Of course 
I won't: That's not the sort of man I am. The trouble is, that's one big 
reason why he is the man he is. German readers especially may recall the 
words of Brecht: The womb is fertile still, which bore this fruit. Mr. 
Stephens is a member of the Journal's editorial board. Copyright 2005 
Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

--
"Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress." Copyright 1992, 
Frank Rice

Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1 at 
mindspring.com > Alternate: < fortean1 at msn.com > Home Page: < 
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html > Sites: * 
Fortean Times * Mystic's Haven * TLCB * U.S. Message Text Formatting 
(USMTF) Program
------------
Member: Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Brotherhood (TLCB) Mailing List TLCB Web 
Site: < http://www.tlc-brotherhood.org > [Southeast Asia veterans, 
Allies, CIA/NSA, and "steenkeen" contractors are welcome.]

--
"Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress." Copyright 1992, 
Frank Rice

Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1 at 
mindspring.com > Alternate: < fortean1 at msn.com > Home Page: < 
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html > Sites: * 
Fortean Times * Mystic's Haven * TLCB * U.S. Message Text Formatting 
(USMTF) Program
------------
Member: Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Brotherhood (TLCB) Mailing List TLCB Web 
Site: < http://www.tlc-brotherhood.org > [Southeast Asia veterans, 
Allies, CIA/NSA, and "steenkeen" contractors are welcome.]

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