No Choirboy Post 5

The next chapter in No Choirboy comes from an interesting perspective. This chapter deals with taking to Paul Jenkins, and Mary Jenkins who are the siblings of William Jenkins who was a teenager that was murdered at his fast food job. Paul and Mary explain how they feel and how their brother’s death had impacted their lives. Mary says, “ I never questioned my parents decision. No, never. Dad’s totally opposed to the death penalty. That’s his whole movement right now, all about victims’ rights.” Paul states, “ I’m pretty sure Dad’s primary focus is that because it hurt him so much that William died he did not want to inflict that on any other person, like the parents of the murderer. The murderer was also someone’s son.” Bill says, “ For religious and philosophical reasons, I don’t believe that the death penalty isa  viable way to stop crime. Never did. The prosecutor said that they were taking this case very seriously. This was a capital case. No one would have blamed me if I just said, “Yeah, go get him.”

I find this passage very interesting. A lot of people say they are against the death penalty but how would you feel if somebody that you love was murdered? Would killing the murderer bring justice? Bill then says, “ If you believe in something, you have to act on it or it’s not worth believing in.” This is a very important quote in this chapter and I find Bill to be a very strong person. He could have easily just said yeah, we want justice and then the murderer would have been killed too. But he was strong enough to stand up for his beliefs in an emotional time. 

No Choirboy Post 4

The next chapter in No Choirboy is an interview with the brother and mother of Napoleon Beazley, who was a seventeen-year-old boy that was executed for killing the father of a federal judge. This case sparked national debate whether sentencing kids under the age of 18 was right. Napoleon was known as a great kid in his town. He was the class president, captain of the football team, and a very popular guy. Everybody seemed to like him. Is it right to have a kid who is seventeen sentenced to death for one bad mistake he or she has made?

I know that minors can no longer be charged capital punishment but this scenario with Napoleon got me thinking. I am against the death penalty by all means but I tired to put myself in a position where I was for the death penalty. Then I thought about whether minors should be sentenced to death or not. I put a lot of thought into this and it was really hard to make a decision. I keep thinking that everybody, regardless of age, should be responsible for his or her decision. The other side of me kept saying that kids brains are not 100% developed and because of their immaturity, they can be at fault for making bad decisions.  That side of me definitely won. Teenagers make bad decisions, it is part of their nature, but no decision can be bad enough to have them sentenced to death. 

No Choirboy Post 3

Chapter three of No Choirboy takes a look in to Nanon Williams’ time in prison.  Here is a excerpt from what Nanon had to say. “ Few men survive here. Years ago, perhaps they did. Not anymore. The visitation area looks nice. When you enter this prison, it resembles a college campus. Never allow appearance to fool you- you are entering a killing camp. Back where I am, there is metal upon metal, concrete, and cage after cage lined up with less than the space animals are afforded at the zoon. They will never, not ever, allow you to see and hear the madness around me back in the cells. I have seen over 250 men executed. Men I knew. While most kids went to bars, clubs, school, I lived in a war zone. I have seen men raped, beaten to death, found hung in their cells, burned, cut. I have heard men scream so loud it feels like their voice is in your head. Death row is no place for a kid.” This passage really caught my attention. It shows the brutality of prisons and how horrible the conditions are. It really got me thinking about our prison system in general. I was wondering if this system actually punishes people. From all the information in the book, prison seems like an absolutely horrible place so is it in fact punishing people? Prison is supposed to be a place for rehabilitation and is supposed to change a person for the better. Personally, from what I have been reading, I don’t think prison does that. I think certain prisons, as well as death row, dehumanizes people. It goes to show how brutal our prison system is and it needs a change.

No Choirboy post 2

The second chapter in No Choirboy is about a boy named Mark. Mark was fourteen years old when he and his brother killed a man and his wife who were going to testify against them for stealing farm equipment. He was arrested about four months later. The first part of the chapter, Mark talks about how the crime went down, what he did, and how he was traumatized by what he did for so long. He talks about contemplating suicide and the feelings he had going through his body. Mark was going to be tried as an adult but didn’t go to trial. Instead he plea-bargained for life with parole.

Mark then talks about the high security prison that he was in. He says, “It was real scary. It was bad. It was like you see in the movies.” Mark really gets deep into the prison scene. A very important quote I found form this chapter was, “ Rape was my biggest fear in Donaldson. I mean, full-grown men who had no homosexual characteristics were raping men. They were like animals. I felt like I was living in a zoo and around a bunch of animals.” This really caught my attention. I kept reading and started to think about the prison system and its conditions. Mark talks about the prison gangs and how the prison is a racist environment Mark explains how everybody fought and people were beat up. The prisons system seemed way out of control.

Later in the chapter, Mark talks about after he was moved to Holman correctional facility; he got the change to work in the death chamber. One day he was talking to a guy who was supposed to die in two days. Mark asked him, “ Hey, man, how do you feel?” The guy responded by saying, “ Man, I’d rather do this than spend the rest of my life down the hall.” This is one reason that I am against the death penalty. Killing somebody is not punishing them. Yeah, it is a human instinct to protect yourself but in my opinion, the death penalty is an easy way out for most people on death row. This quote backs it up.  Earlier in the school year, we watched a video about a guy on death row, I forgot his name, but he said he was “ready to die” and how he couldn’t take prison anymore. It’s as simple as that the death penalty is giving them what they want. Keeping them in jail without parole is much more of a punishment for people like that.

Outside reading blog 1

For outside reading, I am reading a book called No Choirboy by Susan Kuklin. This book takes a deep look into American prisons as well as teenagers and other inmates on death row. The first chapter is called “ I Was a Teenager on Death Row.” Right there that jumped out at me and I was hooked. The book starts out talking about a murder of a boy named Kevin Gardner, which took place in Alabama. On the first page we meet Roy who is in the courthouse waiting for the verdict for the murder of Kevin Kuklin. The judge says, “ By the power invested in me by the State of Alabama, I hereby sentence you to die by electrocution.” This happened back in August of 1993 when teenagers were still allowed to be sentenced to death.

This first chapter is narrated by Roy and he takes the reader through his emotions. We first hear from him the courthouse when he tells us how much he was crying and screaming when the judge announced that he was going to be put to death. He talks about how scared he was going to jail when he was 16 years old and being transferred to death row. He had no idea if he was going to die in a month and didn’t know how the appeal system worked. I find this very interesting because it is so easy to connect to. Being a teenager and putting myself in his shoes, I couldn’t even start to imagine what this kid must have been going through. Whether he committed the crime or not, not knowing when your supposed to die must be the worst thing ever.  Roy brings up a good point when he says, “ I wasn’t able to join the military. I wasn’t old enough to buy liquor. Hodo d you sentence somebody that young to death?” I couldn’t agree more with that quote. Putting people on death row that are under the age of 18 is just absurd. In my opinion, capital punishment is wrong itself but I will talk about that in later posts.

The rest of the chapter describes what happened at the murder scene and how the story played out. We learn that the people Roy was with were granted full immunity if they told the truth about what happened so they had no problem pointing the finger at Roy. Roy also describes what death row is like mentally and physically. In 2005, he was taken off death row and placed in a maximum-security prison. A law was passed that said a minor cannot be sentenced to death so therefore Roy got life without parole. His case can be re-opened now and he has lawyers trying to reduce his sentence.

Online Censorship

For my Marketplace of Ideas project, I have decided to take a deeper look into a right that Americans take for granted every day. This right deals with the use of the internet which millions and millions of Americans use daily. I started to research internet censorship and how it would affect us as Americans. Through my research, I have learned that there are many people and organizations that want the internet to be censored for certain reasons. Some want it censored for piracy reasons which could prevent illegal downloads of music, movies, and other illegal copyright. Some want to see materials on the internet not be accessible like certain violent games, websites with adult content, or other information that Americans youth should not be able to see.  Each side clearly has an argument in this issue but after looking into this topic, I know where I stand.

According to Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” Our laws and principles of America give us the freedom of speech to post and seek what we want on the internet. The government should stay out of the internet and let it be free just like it has been. This doesn’t mean that I’m for piracy, but I am totally against bills such as SOPA and PIPA. Back in January, the internet was trending with talk about these two bills and what they could do to the Internet. Wikipedia had a blackout of a day where nobody could access content on their website to raise awareness to what these bills could do. Google put a black banner across the logo to protest. Twitter and Facebook had lots of trending posts about SOPA and PIPA. These bills were proposed to stop piracy but the vagueness in the bills could be a foot in the door for the government to keep going and block content that is user made. All three of those sights are user operated and without them, they could no longer be in operation. Not just these sights but many sights across the net would be taken down including Youtube. In today’s economy, many jobs are based online. What would happen if sights were taken down where people’s jobs were on the line? If SOPA and PIPA were passed, they could slowly destroy the internet as well as jobs across the country.

MTV Show

Yesterday we watched a reality show from MTV which focused on a gay teen, lesbian young adult, and a transgender man. I really liked the style in which this show was set up. Each segment was established with videos of people who are dealing or have dealt with being gay or transgender; I think MTV did a good job in getting their point across with that. Then the main part of the show focused on those three people and something that they were going through. The gay teen was having a hard time coming out to his parents so his part of the show was him trying to get enough courage and find the right time to tell his parents. We see him come out to his peers and it seemed to really help him come out to his parents. From seeing his experience, that must be really hard for any gay teenager to do. Another third of the show was dedicated to a lesbian young adult who’s mom hard a hard time accepting her as well as her partner. We see the struggle and fight about he she just wants her mom to accept her for who she is and be able to accept her partner. Last, and probably the most interesting part of the show, was the transgender, who changed from girl to boy, was trying to get married to another women. His drivers license said male, but his birth certificate said female. He looked like a male and really seemed to be in love with his fiancée.  To me, this was the biggest issue in this show because should a transgender person be allowed to get married? And if yeah, what sex? I believe in this persons case, marriage should be allowed. He has been a man for a lot of his life and he said “99% of my life is male, except for my birth certificate which is the 1%.” This guy showed how passionate he was towards being a male and really believed that he should be allowed to get married. Yet, he was nervous because of his birth certificate and his state doesn’t accept same sex marriages. He got his marriages license and I definitely think that is legal. One thing that this show did was all three stories had happy endings. This was done to show people who might feel like this, that in the end it will get better. This show was merely trying to help out people who fall under one of those three categories and I believe that the did a very good job with that.

Trayvon Martin

Reading the article about Trayvon Martin, there were lots of thoughts running through my head. The first thing that came to my mind was how well the article was in fact written. There was no bias at all and it was clear that the author was looking at both sides. The author took a lot of time looking into the background of both Trayvon and George. The author did this in a way where he introduced Trayvon and spoke about how he was just a normal teenage kid. The author states, “ Sleeping in Miami Dolphins bed sheets, he was all teenage boy, and more.” Then he goes on to say later,” Trayvon was a teenager, not an angel. In his last year at his high school in north Miami-Dade County, he had received three suspensions- one for tardiness, for graffiti and, most recently, for having a baggie with a trace of marijuana in his backpack.” The author does the same with George Zimmerman about how he likes to protect the community but has gotten in trouble for violent behaviors in the past. I really liked how the author set up this article.

The two main controversies I took from this article was the obvious one; should George Zimmerman guilty for killing Trayvon Martin. The other was did race play a factor in Travon’s death? The media buzz for this case would not even be as close to what it would be if Trayvon was not black. That is one of the saddest parts of the story for me. If it was white person who killed a white person or a black person who killed a black person, there still might be a story but not to this extent. Obviously it is a tragedy when I teenager is killed like this but this story is sadly all about race. I also believe race had something to do with Zimmerman taking action into his own hands. When he called the cops, he stated, “ The guy seemed to be up to no good; like he was on drugs or something; in a gray hoodie. He looks black.” I think that Zimmerman used stereotypes to judge Trayvon because he was black. Once he saw that and realized he had a hoodie on, he made the assumption that he was on drugs and could be up to no good. The article states that Zimmerman also could have potentially said a racial slur that the dispatcher picked up. A big reason why I think Zimmerman should be guilty is because he disobeyed the dispatcher when they told him not to follow Trayvon but he did it anyway. The rest of the story has so many grey areas I don’t know what to believe but this should have never escaladed to a death. Whether Trayvon started it or Zimmerman started it, this could have been settled earlier. If Zimmerman was responsible enough as a neighborhood watch guard, he wouldn’t of let this happened. Clearly he let his emotions get the best of him, which led to the shooting. Zimmerman should have repercussions for his actions. This situation didn’t have to go to a point where “self defense” was needed.

Race In America

After reading a few articles from those sites, it is crazy how some people still view blacks these days. Also, there were a few articles that caught my eye. One was about a guy who talked about how white people are racist to blacks and how black people are also racist to other blacks. He talked about how black people with more brown skin and black people with darker skin are racist to each other and it is like living in three worlds. It is crazy that this guy had to face racism, not just from white people but from other black people as well. He said he didn’t have “good hair” and couldn’t pass for lighter in the winter months but it always turned his hair red.

Another article that I read was one about black people being better off enslaved again. How can somebody actually make this statement? It is absolutely absurd that somebody can say that. The guy said, “blacks are more devastated” today than when they were enslaved because of the high rate of abortion among some blacks.” He also said slavery “is a crushing mark on America's soul, yet today half of all black children are aborted. Half of all black children are aborted. Far more black children, far more of the African American community is being devastated by the policies of today than were being devastated by the policies of slavery." He is arguing that because black people have so many abortions, that they are better off enslaved because the community is more devastated from the abortions than slavery. This is extremely racist and somewhat doesn’t even make sense. I don’t know how this guy could come up with this.

Affirmative Action and College Admissions

After taking a look at affirmative action, I think that race should be used in the college admission process but quotas should not be used and it should not be too significant. Race should be a factor in the college admission process because it helps create a diverse student body which college campuses strive for today. Most campuses don’t want people from the same ethnicity or background.  Universities want students of all colors and religions to create a population just the outside world is today. If race was not a factor in the college admissions process, schools would not be able monitor how their diversity is at their campus. Also, schools should not be allowed to use quotas and save seats for minority groups. I totally agree with the outcome of the University of California VS Bakke case.  Because the university used quotas and reserved seats for qualified minority and disadvantaged students, he was not able to get into the school because spots were already taken from the special admissions program. The court ruled that, “the program relied solely on racial quotas and that it violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. They also ruled that race could be considered in admissions process but only as a plus factor.” The last statement there I strongly agree with and that is how most universities use race in their admissions process today.

An example of how race plays a factor in the admissions process comes from the Harvard admissions program as well as the University of Michigan admissions policy. The University of Harvard’s policy is very interesting. They strive for a diverse campus in many ways, not just race. An excerpt from the process states, “the race of an applicant may tip the balance in his favor just as a geographic origin or life spent on a farm may tip the balance in other candidate’s case.” I really think that Harvard has their admissions process down right. They want students who bring something new to the table and it doesn’t just have to be race. Even though they say race is a plus factor, they want kids from different economic and social backgrounds as well. Michigan uses a point system in their admissions process. Personally, I think it is an interesting idea but it has some inconsistencies. People being given points can be arbitrary at times and doesn’t provide the best way to pick students. I think some of the things that are awarded less points than race should be weighted way higher. For example, the personal essay is only worth three points while the race and background factor is worth 20. I just don’t see how that makes sense because the personally essay can show a lot about a person.  Not just how good of a writer they are, but personal skills they have as well. Overall, race should be a slight factor in the college admissions process and reserving seats should not be allowed.

Terrill Swift

Hearing Terrill Swift speak today was absolutely amazing. His story and what he has gone through in his life is absolutely terrible. No person should have to spend 17 years of their life, not to mention some of their best years in their life, in jail for a crime they did not commit. One of the things he talked about was the amount of people who are wrongly convicted and have to serve jail time. I don’t recall the numbers that he was giving out but it just shows that many people around the country are being convicted of crime they didn’t do. When talking about the death penalty in Illinois, we learned that one of the reasons there is no death penalty in Illinois is because of wrongly convicted people. It is crazy that people spend years in jail for things that they didn’t do but it is terrible that people die for crimes that they didn’t commit. It just goes to show this terrible fault in the justice system. Because of the amount of innocent people being convicted, it is one of the reasons that I am against the death penalty.

I guess one of the reasons I was so interested in hearing Terrill speak is because Prison Break is one of my favorite TV shows. In the show, a man is set up and framed for a murder that he did not commit. His brother purposely goes to jail and has a plot. On the outside, the man framed for murder has lawyers fighting and working to get him out of prison before he is given the death penalty. In Prison Break, they talk about clemency, falsely convicted felons, and they try to get this guy on death row out of jail. This really connects to Terrill story about how he had lawyers fighting for him and how he never gave up fighting for his freedom. Even though Prison Break is just a TV show, it demonstrates the seriousness of innocent people being convicted. It was very inspirational to hear Terrill speak and here how he never gave up. His mind was set on being free and he did everything in his power to do that. Another lesson I got out of hearing him talk was always make sure you know what you are signing and don’t always trust what people say. Just one mistake like that can lead you to jail for a long time. Terrill really got me interested in finding out about more falsely convicted people and hearing more stories about people who have served time in jail for no reason.

Privilege

After reading the chapter titled privilege by Tim Wise, I do agree with most of the things that he says but there are a few points that he makes in which I do not agree with. Early on in the chapter, Wise states, “ We love to accept things we didn’t earn, such as inheritance, but we have a problem taking responsibility for the things that have benefited us wile harming others.” I agree with this quote entirely. At first, I had a hard time figuring out where this quote was going and what it meant. Wise then compared it to racial privilege which totally made sense. White people as a whole have never taken responsibility for slavery or segregation and that is where Wise is going with this quote. White people have never paid the debt for this and have had “a problem taking responsibility for the things that have benefited us while harming others.” I think this quote is a basic outline for the rest of the passage. It sets up the chapter to show how Wise thinks white people benefit from racism.

There are times in this chapter where I feel like Wise brings up examples that say that show how whites get the benefit of the doubt, but I questioned if white people actually benefit from these things. An example is when Wise is talking about some of his high school teachers. He states,” So many of them reinforced racism and white privilege every day, punishing kids of color disproportionately even when whites break the rules just as often or blaming poor performance by kids of color on their dysfunction families or presumable defective cultural traits.” Do white people actually benefit from not getting in trouble when they should? Yeah, maybe in the short term it would be nice to get out of trouble for something that you did wrong but does that make you a better person in the long run if you never learned how to deal with your mistakes? This part of Wise’s idea I somewhat question.

There are points in the story where Wise does make good points about how white people do get advantages over black. Wise makes this point while talking about the “color line” and how when it comes to race, black people need to know how to navigate the color line every day. Wise states, “ When black mothers have to teach their sons to keep both hands on the wheel if stopped by a police officer so as not to get shot- something I have never heard a white mother speak of doing with her white son.” In these kinds of cases, yes I do feel privileged that I don’t even have to think about these types of things. White people are very privileged in this case because the racial line is a significant burden to bear.

If I Were a Poor Black Kid

The article “If I was a Poor Black Kid,” made a lot of sense had some very good contentions in it. For the most part I agree it the ideas that were expressed. I really do believe that everybody in this country has an opportunity to succeed. Even though in some situations kids have it almost impossible to succeed in life but I really agree when the author stated, “It takes brains.  It takes hard work.  It takes a little luck. And a little help from others.  It takes the ability and the know-how to use the resources that are available.” Hard work is the biggest key. If somebody wants to be successful very badly, they will put the work needed into doing that. The biggest contention that I strongly agree with is the idea of technology. The author hit it spot on because the internet these days can be its own teacher itself. The article included many websites or online programs including sparknotes, cliff notes, Google Scholar, and Backpack that can help a student out with their studies. Here at Deerfield, we have all the resources and help in the world to succeed and personally I use the internet to help me with things more than going to see a teacher. When studying for tests I might even go on youtube and look up how to do a certain math problem and there are multiple videos that can help me out. The internet is the best resource for helping a kid with little money and opportunity succeed. I also agree with the authors statements how a kid needs to use the internet to help him find schools and scholarship programs. Even though there are many American kids out there who have very little money and have parents who work two jobs, everybody has the chance to succeed. You just have to be hard-nose, learn the resources around you, and meet the right people who can help. All of these things the author enforces in his article and I really agree with his idea in the article.

                                                                                              

The first response does not change my view at all. I think “If I was a poor black kid” was solely based on the idea that if somebody doesn’t have much money and resources, that they can manage to find ways to work hard and succeed even if they have under privileged schools and classes with oversized classes.

I think both the responses aren’t really seeing the big point in the article. Of course there is going to be setbacks, racism, and inequality to a poor black kid but the main idea of the article is to work hard and use as many resources as possible. The author is merely trying to provide hope for a poor black kid who can possible follow some advice that can help him be successful. These responses are criticizing on the author for not understanding what it is like to be poor or black, but he was just trying to provide some hope and knowledge for people who might need it.

Hidden Biases

After taking the IAT race test, my results show that I have a slight automatic preference for white people over black people. I was not very surprised by the results because I have taken this kind of test before and I got the same answer as I did the first time. The way the test works, I feel that people are bound to hit the space bar by mistake sometimes which counts for inaccurate results. However, I do feel that this test does grasp the concept of unconscious bias where people don’t realize how they are being prejudice.  After looking at the results and the biases page, I think that many people are prejudice and biases in real life without even knowing it. The page says that people start learning prejudice at age of 3 which bases their views for their life. Hidden biases influence me because the kind of community we live in. Deerfield is not a very diverse community which can sometimes reveal hidden biases in people that live there. Even though people might not say they are prejudice, there is always a little hidden prejudice that people might not even be aware of inside of them.

A Question of Torture: War on Terror

The next section of A Question of Torture is called War on Terror. This section was probably my favorite part of book as well as the most interesting. There are many examples and history in this section that raises lots of questions. An example that really cough my eye was in a security sweep before the pope’s 1995 visit, Manila police found bomb making materials in the apartment of an Arab tourist who was named Abdual hakim Murad. The Manila police didn’t have much time and needed to protect the pope. “After weeks of physical and psychological torture by beating, water boarding, holding lighted cigarettes to his private parts and threats of rape Murad cracked and confessed a plot to blow up eleven trans pacific aircrafts.” Murad was also implicated in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and after he was tortured, he was sent to New York City to face trial. If there is suspicion of a terrorist attack, is torturing the person justified? If so, to what lengths can you push a person? If not, what should be done? These are all questions that ran through my mind after reading this section. The police did what they needed to do to protect the pope and found out about a plot to kill over four thousand people.  Later in this chapter, Harvard law professor Alan M Dershowitz told CBS TV’s show 60 minutes that torture was inevitable. He also stated, “ If you’ve got the ticking time bomb case, the case of the terrorist who knew precisely where and when the bomb would go off, and it was the only way of saving 500 or 1,000 lives, every democratic society would, have, and will use torture” As a big fan of Fox’s T.V. series 24, I extremely agree with what professor Dershowitz said. There are so many times on that show when Jack Bauer, the main character, is in a “ticking time bomb” case and has to use torture to get information out of a terrorist to save innocent lives.  I really think that torture should be allowed with no boundaries on a person who is withholding information that can lead to the death of innocent lives.

A Question of Torture: Impunity in America

            My next blog for A Question of Torture comes from the chapter Impunity In America. This chapter starts off talking about the famous Abu Ghraib prison situation where prisoners of war were being tortured by United States army. Torture was done physically and psychologically and many disturbing pictures were taken that came out in the press. There were over 94 incidents of abuse including twenty homicides. People didn’t know what to think about torture back home in the United States after this happened. An ABC poll documented that 35% of Americans believed in torture in certain circumstances at that time. In the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib scandal, the Bush administration and the media didn’t really talk about the word “torture”. They rather focused the blame on the nine military police accused of torturing the prisoners.

            Another issue that this section talks about is psychological torture at Guantanamo Bay prison. In 2004, Red Cross found that psychological techniques had grown more refined and repressive involving inhuman acts, solitary confinement, and temperature conditions. Also in 2004, Guantanamo’s commander Jay W. Hood, insisted that, “detainees had not been tortured in any way, “ saying that psychological torture really isn’t torture.  Is that still considered torture if these psychological acts were taken place on prisoners? Some could argue that they don’t have morals because they have committed bad acts in the past. I do not agree with that. Yes, people in Guantanamo have made big mistakes in their lives but that is no reason to psychologically torture them. The only time people should be tortured is when they have information that can potentially harm the people of the United States.

A Question of Torture:Propagating Torture

In the next chapter titled Propagating Torture, the author wrote about how torture took place in the army. The author gave an example about an investigation of Colonel Robert B. Rheaut. The investigation involved him killing a suspected Vietcong spy named Tahi Khac Chuyeng. There was evidence found in Vietnam that Chuyeng was a double agent working for the enemy. Rheault found this out and used truth serum and lie detector tests for an interrogation which confirmed his treason. Then Chuyeng was shot and killed and his body was thrown into the sea. Then the U.S. commander in Vietnam ordered an investigation against Rheaut. Rheaut said that he had orders from the CIA to kill him. This is just one example of hundreds of similar executions that took place in South Vietnam. I don’t think that the CIA  should have given orders to kill Chuyeng, but rather have him put in prison and interrogated and try to force information out of him. Another really intresting part of this chapter was a study done on people who have been tortured before. There were 200 victims examined and doctors found nearly 70 percent still had mental symptoms of the time they were tortured. “Even many many years after their torture, victims still had nightmares, depression, panic attacks, and low energy.” These things can stick with a person for their whole life if they do not get the right therapy. This idea that people can have effects stay with them for their whole life is a big argument in the issue on torture. Not only do they have physical and psychological effects when they are getting tortured, but they have side effects for their whole life.

A Question of Torture: Mind Control

In the next chapter called Mind Control, McCoy discusses how the Cold War brought up concern about Soviet mind-control techniques. “This created research and the CIA spent billions of dollars over the next decade to research the mechanisms of mass persuasion and the effects of coercion on individual consciousness” The Soviets were able to extract public confessions from people they were torturing and the CIA was disturbed by that. The Soviets had mind control methods that included utilizing drugs, physical duress, electric shock, and possibly hypnosis against their enemies. Another big portion of the chapter talked about Dr. Hebb’s experiment where he found the impact of sensory deprivation. He found out that after forty-eight hours of isolation, most subjects experienced hallucinations similar to the effect of the drug mescaline. Hebb’s experiment concluded that isolation makes the brains cortex impaired so it behaves abnormally. These experiments got me wondering how this could affect torture and how the CIA could use these results to get information out of enemies.

A Question of Torture Blog 1: Two Thousand Years of Torture

In the first Chapter, Two Thousand Years of Torture, of the book “A Question of Torture”, the author Alfred W. McCoy gets into the history of the use of torture and interrogation around the world. A main topic in this chapter is how the CIA’s perfection of psychological torture was a major scientific turning point. The author states, “ For more than two thousand years, interrogations had found that mere physical pain, no matter how extreme, often produced heightened resistance.” So once the CIA developed psychological torture, they fused two methods together; sensory disorientation and self-inflicted pain. This causes the victims to feel responsible for their sufferings and give in easier to their torturers. The idea of sensory disorientation and self-inflicted pain might sound like a great way for the CIA to interrogate people, but these two techniques create physical and psychological trauma for the person who is getting tortured. This really caught my attention because even though the CIA had brought up this new method of torture that seemed to get the job done, was it humane to use these techniques against somebody? Is it wrong to push somebody that far to protect the United States? I really started to think about those questions after I read that part of the chapter. The author also discusses how torture started across the world. The church banned torture in 866 and trial by ordeal in 1215. Then it was revived in the 13^th century and Europe abolished it in the 1800’s. After World War One, torture started to spread again and the French tortured hundreds of thousands in the Algerian War. Learning about all the history of torture, it really brought questions to my mind about where and when torture should be allowed. This chapter really got me excited to read on in the book to learn more about torture and see how it really affects people.