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Hey Jew, It Ain’t Torture, It’s Just a Haircut

By Larry Johnson on May 10, 2009 at 2:08 PM in Current Affairs

hassidic-israel A scene in Schindler’s List caught my eye.

Three Hasidic Jewish men are surround by a group of chortling Nazi soldiers. (Hasidic Jewish males typically wear long side curls.)

Anyway, the Nazi’s are cutting off the mens’ sideburns/side curls. Was this torture?

I thought about this after listening to rightwing pundits like Ann Coulter guffaw over the notion that just putting a caterpillar into a box with a prisoner who is afraid of insects constitutes torture. It is just a harmless caterpillar.

Under Coulter logic no common activity can ever be torture. Well hell, by that logic cutting off the sideburns of a devout Jewish man is just a haircut. Who cares if it is done by force and against their will. It is just a goddamn haircut. Right?

When you have total control over another person and you know that the person is claustrophobic is it torture to close them up in a small, dark box? You bet your ass it is. If you prey on the specific fears of a person and use coercion to force a person into a situation where they are subjected to that fear–it could be fear of insects, fear of heights, fear of enclosed spaces–then that also is torture.

It is not the act per se, rather it is the fact that the person inflicting the condition on another has power over the target and can compel the target to experience the activity.

Cutting hair is not torture, normally. But when you force a man who believes that wearing his sideburns long is a symbol of devotion to God to cut off his locks against his will then yes, that is a form of torture.

Are Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh willing to tell the Hasidic Jews to chill out and just take the haircut?

smather

Correct. Anyone who has been on the receiving end of a hostile, grossly unequal power relation event, knows what it means to not be able to resist.
http://noquarter foxyladi14

bet they think pulling the wings off flys isn’t torture either.
Bob

Ridicules comparison of Innocent people persecuted for their religion and ethnicity, to the worse killers who are hell bent on destroying us.
http://NoQuarterUSA.net Larry Johnson

Learn to spell if you wish to comment intelligently. And you forget that the Nazis convinced themselves the Jews were “hell bent on destroying” them.
mountainaires

Roaches. If you put me in a box filled with roaches, I would literally go insane from terror. It’s not a laughing matter to me.
benny

ohhh, larry. you got jews and torture together…….. we all know how you feel bout them.

lol

think this type of torure would be more acceptable….. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSe38dzJYkY

and yep, I expect a few cuss words from you. thats a regular. lol. to be expected.
Ellen D

Thanks, Larry. You are absolutely correct. Put me in high places and it would be torture. I’m OK with snakes and maybe could tolerate insects but high places are my downfall (no pun intended).
If you know someone’s weak spot it is torture – Hassidic Jews and haircuts, or one of the many cultures that is deathly afraid of dogs. Dogs may not bother your or me but I have seen Asian and Moslem men who are terrified of my mixed-breed friendly German Shepherd.
Ladydawnelle

is it considered torture to be forced to listen to Lush Rimjob, Coultergeist or Sean InSanity??? to some I would say HELL YES!

O’Leilly can be tolerable.
But then there MUST be a level LOWER than TORTURE when considering being forced to listen to Olberdouche, or his looney MSNBO group or ANY of the CNN fauxanchors.

No one is watching them

I like a few of the legal eagles at Faux News
that’s about it

oh and I can’t help but like Bernie Goldberg

Mom has turned into a TV NEWS surfer…….. she goes from one groan to the next it seems……… sad
it was her age group that had the REAL TRUE JOURNALISTs (David and Chet, Huntley/Brinckley?) those guys.

jmo
http://ezinearticles.com/?Three-Basic-Parenting-Styles&id=744499 Northwest rain

Larry you are just too logical for the wing nuts (left or right).

Cutting off the braid of Chinese – this was done to the Chinese laborers who came to America during the Gold rush.

Torturing women during the dark ages because — well because the patriarchy was all powerful and they were debating if women even had souls. Millions of women were tortured and eventually murdered — because the evil ones had the power.

Native Americas — for a period in our history there was a debate — were Indians in fact human. Because it was acceptable to torture non humans. But what the hell — Indians can be slaughtered, herded onto reservations and then starved. The “Indians wars” was mostly a lop sided war.

It is about power — and making the enemy less than human. Torturing prisoners does NOT keep our troops or people safe.

Torture is being forced to become a passive prisoner merely because one needs to travel by air plane. Some people in a position of power WILL abuse that authority. Teachers can abuse children — because they are in a position of power.
Ladydawnelle

so much for my secret plans to send you a TUB O’Roaches to soak in at your leisure!

drat
termo

I just don’t get the analogy.
aeguy

you got jews and torture together…….. we all know how you feel bout them.

Are you saying Larry is anti-Semitic?
politicalidentitycrisis

Obama as (not)my President is the worst torture I’ve ever been subjected to and it damn sure ought to be illegal!

Not to make light of torture Larry. You have won me over to the torture is not necessary side.
TeakwoodKite

I guess you would not live in an apartment in NYC. Just don’t turn the lights on an you won’t see them scatter.
TeakwoodKite

Relativism can be torture.

I keep hearing talking heads say “Oh we can go just a Little ways down this road and it is not torture.”

Is yelling fire, day after day, on the MSM torture? Is the desired effect of this treatment meant to wear down a person? No?

If so, the MSM are the purveyors of torture.
http://www.dcmediagirl.com DCMediagirl

Hey Larry: I salute you for continuing to try to educate and inform. There are many regular gung-ho armchair warrior commenters who are notable for their stubborn refusal to acknowledge things called “facts”, which in my humble opinion your intelligence training and expertise qualify you to write about. I think my personal nadir was reading the comment comparing the American media to the Taliban, the subsequent cavalcade of jaw-dropping ignorance that followed, and the foot-stamping childish insistence that the original commenter had been “misquoted”. Shameful.
Peggy Sue

I listened to an interesting coversation last night between Peter Earnest and Frederick Hitz. Both are former intelligence people. Hitz ended his career as CIA Inspector General and has recently written a book, “Why Spy.” In any case, Hitz said on reading the recently released torture memos that he was sickened by the material and had to remind himself that these were American documents, not something pulled from a German archive.

He also added that no one should kids themselves that these procedures are legal and that we should always ask if the price we pay for using said techniques is worth it in the long run. What is the long-term price?

So, another voice added to the mix, which only convinces me that these practices are wrong, wrong, wrong.
chmoore

Among all the other reasons torture is wrong and bad; here’s two more.

If it’s clear to the torturee, what answer the torturer wants in order to make the torture stop, then the torturee might be more likely to give that answer that the torturer wants for their agenda. This is NOT an assurance of reliable information. Rather, it could be used to intentionally make wrong information seem legitimate, by giving it the status of a confession. Note that it’s rarely if ever reported, what the actual questions are that torturers are asking during these torture sessions. Might they be something along the lines of ‘tell us all about WMD in Iraq’, or maybe ‘tell us all about Sadamm bending over for Al Qaeda’ ?

Many people seem to want to argue that if something bad is done to our people, then we are somehow obliged to do the same back to them. I ask you, for what purpose must this be done? Consider this; what do you gain aside from vengeance for it’s own sake? Aren’t you yourself then becoming the enemy?

It seems to me, instead of prevailing over the enemy, a good way to get defeated is to join the enemy by adopting their behaviour.
bobwhite

If the interrogator has an independent way of verifying information received through interrogation and the prisoner knows this, or if the interrogator can convince the prisoner about his ability to so verify, whether or not true, then the prisoner is likely to give accurate information. Anyone care to dispute this?

And, of course, in the case of these Muslim terrorists, they are not fighting under a national flag of any kind, much less a Geneva signatory; not wearing uniforms; not abiding by any rules of war; intentionally killing and torturing civilians and non-combantants(K.S. Mohammed boasted he personally beheaded Danny Pearl); hiding weapons and themselves in schools and mosques; and generally breaking every rule of civilized behavior. Cry no tears for them. Waterboarding to these slime is probably quaint.
Regina

Self preservation. The enemy is not a nation but a nation of extremist philosophy. Their hateful interpretation of their religious beliefs pulled them into the guerrella war against us. We don’t have to hate them….we just need to find a way to eliminate the reason for their existence without destroying ourselves. I suggest that the answer is in motherhood. When their mothers love their children more than they hate us, then their desire to destroy us will cease. This was Golde Meir’s philosophy. I say empower mothers around the world. They will not want to bury their children before their time. Worshiping a martyr does not feel the same as holding and hugging your children and grandchildren. In the meantime, containment of people who want to destroy us is necessary, as long as a person is not killed in the process…I think that prisoners with information that might save our country from disaster should undergo any and all interrogation that will lead to information that will guard our safety.
andrew 191

You mean like the Clinton/Lewinsky relationship?
http://! stodgie

dawnelle, i believe that fox’s viewership numbers are much higher than others. just saying!
andrew 191

It could be torture to read all of the childish and pathetic nicknames you’ve created.
Holly

Excellent article!