American Methods: Torture And The Logic Of Domination

[Joanne98]

American Methods: Torture And The Logic Of Domination

In this book, lies the way, to destroying America's superpower status.
By BRANDING America, "The cruel and usual", by making the case that America's has been torturing and murdering it's own people for decades, we can take away the one thing the right-wing really wants. To be the provider of security in the world order. No one in their right mind would allow such an brutal culture to "protect" it's people after knowing what America does to it's own. Citizens of other democracies will demand that the US be removed from all aspects of their societies. It's a simple message. You can't trust a country that rapes, tortures and kills it's own people.


Kristian Williams

Publisher: South End Press
Release Date: 2006-05-09


ITEM OVERVIEW
Abner Louima. Abu Ghraib. The Humboldt Five. Extraordinary Rendition. Lynchings. School Of The Americas. Prison Rape. Whether or not it makes front-page news, make no mistake: Torture is an everyday tool of dominance and terror in the United States. On the heels of Our Enemies in Blue, his controversial chronicle of policing, Kristian Williams once again upsets the notion that "excessive force" by the state is anything but altogether American.
American Methods is a damning audit of the US record in underwriting human rights violations around the globe. In the last 25 years alone and under several administrations, we confront death squads in El Salvador, genocidal campaigns in Turkey, brutal interrogations done on our dime, even in our name by various "friendly governments," and more. Returning to our shores, Williams observes the banality of violence at home—on both sides of the prison wall. What emerges is the distinct character of American torture, particularly its emphasis on sexual violence, misogyny, and radicalized spectacle. Ultimately, American Methods offers devastating conclusions about the centrality of rape, racism, and conquest to both the state and our national culture.

http://www.akpress.org/2006/items/americanmethods

1. America may not talk openly about torture, but we have been

involved in its use in other countries, notably South America.

""Torture spreads to foreign governments through exchange of torture technology. Argentina gave classes in torture to Latin American military officers, and Brazilian torturers trained Chileans.<48> The School of the Americas, with its coercive interrogation manuals, was widely known as a training school for Latin American dictators during the Cold War. Amnesty International cites the United States as the largest international supplier of electroshock weapons—stun guns, electro-shock batons, and the like—to governments that practice electro-shock torture (for instance, $3 million worth to Saudi Arabia in 1990).""

http://www.usafa.af.mil/jscope/JSCOPE03/Arrigo03.html

[Joanne98]

2. We didn't talk about it. but we do now.

3. that is true

We are talking about Abu Ghraib and torture use on terrorists. But media does not talk about our exportation of torture, and our covert history of torture.

[Joanne98]

4. That's why I put this book up. It's explains the why's.

5. Right - Kristian Williams looks like a good writer

I googled him and see some interesting books.

[Joanne98]

6. I can't believe I never heard of him till today. Here's another book

that's looks like important work......

Book Review: Our Enemies in Blue
April 20, 2005





Our Enemies in Blue is essentially a synthesis of existing work on police, although most previous works on the police have not looked at the origins of the police and whom they serve, rather choosing to describe specific elements of their job without looking at their underlying role in maintaining the existing power relations in society. It is this thesis-that the police, as an institution, are both an enemy of popular movements in this country as well as ordinary people and that the police are representatives of the state and the elites that support them-that sets Williams book apart from others on the subject. While this analysis is not particularly surprising, even a cursory look at how your local police department functions could lead one towards this thesis it is rare that such an assertion, it is rare for such an analysis to be presented as clearly and with as much supporting evidence as used by Williams in his book.

In order to prove his analysis, Williams looks at the origin of modern police systems over the past two-hundred years. Williams shows that the modern police system is a relatively new institution, albeit with roots extending back several hundred years, born out of a period of intense social conflict in the 1800s. The origin of the police system is traced to the development of political machines and industrial capitalism as Williams demonstrates how the police were developed to serve the interests of both the state and the elite segments of society that continue to benefit from the continued existence of the police force. This origin as an institution designed to defend the class interests of the elites leads Williams to the conclusion that the police are not working-class, an assertion that is at odds with the claims of many progressives who have argued that the police are working-class. Williams also shatters the myth that the police were developed in response to widespread crime, instead showing that the creation of the police has led to higher crime and the criminalization of large segments of our population as law enforcement shifted from reaction to prevention.

Williams adeptly attacks a variety of policing practices including the formation of so-called Police Paramilitary Units (PPUs) such as SWAT teams, community policing, and racial profiling, all of which have gained widespread usage throughout the 1980s and 1990s. By elucidating the origins of modern police departments in the South with the slave patrols of the 1800s and interweaving the history of racism, resistance to the civil rights movement by the police, and statistics relating to racial profiling, Williams provides convincing proof that police, as an institution, are inherently racist arguing that police and prisons have replaced the slave patrols and plantations as the country's way of controlling minority populations. Similarly, Williams explains the origins of the SWAT team in the drug war of the 1980s and explains how police departments have used federal dollars to create a militarized police force, both in terms of weaponry and organization. So-called community policing efforts are also revealed by Williams to be an updated means of achieving social control, arguing that the goal of the community policing is to infiltrate communities and use their institutions to assist the police, creating a climate where the police use these institutions to expand their control while remaining unresponsive to the concerns of the community. Williams demonstrates that community policing leads to more advance forms of social control where homelessness is outlawed, political speech is limited, and technologies such as video surveillance networks are adopted.

Like many historical works, Our Enemies of Blue provides a plethora of detailed information about the origins of the police as an institution and their practice, but falls short when the question "what do we do about it?" is raised. Williams certainly comes from a perspective almost unheard of in works pertaining to the police, namely that the police are not necessary for the proper functioning of human society, but as Williams admits, the models he suggests are limited and that a full exploration of how society could function without police would merit its own book. However, Our Enemies in Blue succeeds in doing what Williams set out to do and he has successfully created a book that makes it clear that the police are an enemy of ordinary people in this country and that it is not enough to reform the institution, but based on its origins as a racist, sexist, and classist institution, it must be abolished.

Kristian Williams, Our Enemies in Blue, (SoftSkull Press, 2004).

7. Ya, I saw that one too

It makes sense. Police are there to harass poor people, initiating arrests themselves instead of from the public. Police are for the elite. He also mentions how police were used to keep women in line, (or repression of women). He is onto something for sure.

[Joanne98]

8. kick

[WHAT]

9. "full spectrum dominance"...

seems kinda pathetic, doesn't it (Hillary).

I tend to think Europe had a hand in this because, so far, our policies seem to be safeguarding Europe and opening-up the middle east to market manipulation that is euro-centric because of location and ideology...Go ahead, Charlie Rose, pant for inclusion in the ideas of european aristocracy, why do you forego American medical care? are you nervous the imported help might serve you ice water in a urinal? Well, I'd trust the impulses of imported help before I'd trust the discretion of a Charlie Rose wannabe.

That being said (and off my chest)...It seems to me that the whole idea of UK (there's a lot in a name), European (think embedded monarchy), US oligarchy (think FEMA bureaucracy and incompetence or irresponsability...so, no resemblance to plutocracy no matter how earnestly the fat-foots try to wear the slipper) no longer fits. None of it fits. I hope the whole top=heavy mess, prancing around in their shoes two sizes too small, topples.

What if elitism is only a method of indoctrination, and what if that indoctrination suppresses common-sense and responsibility because it falsely confounds these values with its own class and "class-survival". When someone makes such an egregious mistake could/would it be called stupid in such a classist defined society?

The ability to self-regulate might make such oligarchy decisions moot, thus disempowering a mighty small slice of total world accord. Management, self-defined as governance based on values correlated with class and cleverly linked to infra-structure sic. underlying foundations of media and think-tanks, etc. are a word game and don't work in reality (much like pr). It's a good thing!

Back to the subject, I think the US has been tricked into doing Europe's dirty work because of a projected class structure that is irrelevant today. Nobody can or wants to fit their fat foot into that dainty slipper anymore.

In closing, the US is being asked to fight for olde europe's (acquisitive) values that no longer meet the needs of the people. Pawns? I don't think so. Good-bye Mr. Rose.

Branding America is another oligarchy pr ploy with no basis in reality. No matter how prevalent it is, nobody is buying it thus what might work in the secular minds of the brain-washed elite won't work in real life, sorry.

Somebody lied, who was it?

[WHAT]

10. adding-on...

it seems like there is a general tendency to fracture trust by attacking infrastructure. Police, some are good, some are bad, they are like us. In the end, I think people will stick to common-sense. Ultimately, my loyalty is with the fallible but good people you can find everywhere. Why do I pick-up on a tendency to fracture, divide, and thus promote instability (much like what is going-on in Iraq) despite the common interest of the majority of people?

Why?

[Joanne98]

14. I don't think your getting it. He's saying the institutions are dieased

Even if you have good people working in the prisons, if the bad guys run the places, what are the good guys to do.

11. Why are you bringing up Charlie Rose and Hillary

I don't understand.

Aristocracy?

[Joanne98]

13. I think you are probably right about Europe. But we have our own

History. In this book he's making the point that something changed starting in the 80's. I saw it too. The tougher they get on crime, the more crime there is. No matter what. We're not under Europe control anymore and we can't allow OUR elites to export this evil anymore. I say give the US a branding. Cruel and usual. Let them sell that.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

12. Did you catch him on Book TV today?

On Sunday, July 9 at 1:40 pm

American Methods: Torture and the Logic of Domination
Kristian Williams

In "American Methods" author Kristian Williams argues that the U.S. Government has used torture as a method of social control and terror since the 1980s. Mr. Williams cites the 2004 Abu Ghraib prison incident, where American military personnel were investigated for the abuse of prisoners, as an example of traditional American torture. This event was hosted by Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle, Washington.

Kristian Williams is the author of "Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America." His work has been featured in Columbia Journalism Review, CounterPunch and In These Times.


It should replay next weekend if you missed it.

[Joanne98]

15. Thanx. I can't believe I never heard of him. I think about stuff like

this all the time. He really has dived in deep.

[undergroundpanther]

16. Thank you

Domination is a cancer that kills everything it touches.about time somebody said it pointed it out and wrote a book about it!