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I've visited the Stazi jail in Berlin. It was a pre-trial jail, you would go there to await trial. During that time you were interrogated. The Stazi jail had so

I've visited the Stazi jail in Berlin. It was a pre-trial jail, you would go there to await trial. During that time you were interrogated. The Stazi jail had something like a 98% success rate for extracting confessions. They used similar techniques. Dark sound proof cells. Hypothermia and exposure in outside cells. You were referred to by a number, and when walking down hallways you were not allowed to look up. A series of red/green lights allowed the guards transporting prisoners to make it so that prisoners never saw each other. On the rare occasions that you shared a cell with another prisoner, there was a 50% chance that they were an informant, and the rooms were bugged. So. I live in a country that has a Stazi-style prison. :-[ What does one do with that information?

Waterluvian 9y ago
Invoke second amendment rights? If not now, when? I know what I said here is extreme. But I'm genuinely curious. Where is the line? Or is there not one and it is never okay to truly challenge the status quo? Maybe you're supposed to write to your congressperson and then go back to your Netflix.
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  I'm having trouble of thinking of anyone trying to use the threat of violence to change the government in the USA in the past 30 years except for the Unabomber (because he wrote that manifesto) or the usual white supremacist separatist movements that refuse to recognize the federal government so 2nd amendment doesn't really matter to them anyways.
  - user982 9y ago
    The system works.
    - krapp 9y ago
      More likely, common decency and humanity works. Some Americans like to talk a good game about "watering the Tree of Liberty with the blood of tyrants," but not many are really willing to cross that moral threshold of looking their neighbor square in the eye and shooting them dead where they stand. Not because they're sheep, or cowards, or collaborators with the system, but because the thesis of the Second Amendment is no longer compatible with what most people consider to be the principles of civilized society. Killing is no longer the privilege of gentlemen.
  - Waterluvian 9y ago
    Maybe progress looks like the moonwalk. Things are getting better while constantly looking like they're getting worse? Maybe it's the pessimist in me but I'm surprised how little awful vigilantism occurs. It's kind of reassuring: there's a huge amount of rhetoric (free speech) compared to actual criminal action.
stevenwoo 9y ago
My first thought is nothing changes. In the recent PBS Vietnam War documentary they show film footage of the US military tiger teams waterboarding an elderly Vietnamese villager (episode 8/9?). And on the other side the North Vietnamese tortured all the American POW's, and we heard from Hal Kushner directly and learned about what they did to McCain and others who survived to bear witness. But we expect more from our side, we don't expect to be the "baddies". When we call it a war (on terror), we expand the limits on what some will justify. Having a war on an idea means there's essentially no end in sight.
tqkxzugoaupvwqr 9y ago
It’s “Stasi” (with s) for “Staatssicherheit” (Ministry for State Security).
mtgx 9y ago
By 98% success rate I assume you mean for the "guilty ones." But how many others were tortured in the same way that had no relevant information to give, because they were innocent? The issue with torture is not that it doesn't work on the guilty ones. I'm sure it does on the vast majority of them. The issue is you will torture 9 out of 10 in order to finally land upon the 1 out of 10 that is guilty.
- civilian 9y ago
  I can't find a citation, but I remember the tour guide saying it was 98% for _anyone_ who entered the Stasi during it's last decade of operation. (They had gotten good at extracting confessions.) Yeah, people would confess even if they were innocent, because of the conditions or because of threats to their family.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  Torture is extremely good at getting confessions to whatever the torturer suggests (or even can be remotely inferred to be suggesting); that's closely related to the problems with using it to get reliable information compared to other interrogation methods. Being actually guilty of anything is completely beside the point.
ibotty 9y ago
It's Stasi (as in _Sta_ats_si_cherheit), it has nothing to do with "Nazi". Aside: There is a big controversy (in Germany and elsewhere) on how and when to compare the third reich and the GDR. Hubertus Knabe, the leader of the Hohenschönhausen memorial (Stasi jail, as you put it), equalizes them. He made quiet a few exhibitions (like "moral courage in Germany 1933-89) that way.

Waterluvian 9y ago

Invoke second amendment rights? If not now, when? I know what I said here is extreme. But I'm genuinely curious. Where is the line? Or is there not one and it is never okay to truly challenge the status quo? Maybe you're supposed to write to your congressperson and then go back to your Netflix.

stevenwoo 9y ago
I'm having trouble of thinking of anyone trying to use the threat of violence to change the government in the USA in the past 30 years except for the Unabomber (because he wrote that manifesto) or the usual white supremacist separatist movements that refuse to recognize the federal government so 2nd amendment doesn't really matter to them anyways.
- user982 9y ago
  The system works.
  - krapp 9y ago
    More likely, common decency and humanity works. Some Americans like to talk a good game about "watering the Tree of Liberty with the blood of tyrants," but not many are really willing to cross that moral threshold of looking their neighbor square in the eye and shooting them dead where they stand. Not because they're sheep, or cowards, or collaborators with the system, but because the thesis of the Second Amendment is no longer compatible with what most people consider to be the principles of civilized society. Killing is no longer the privilege of gentlemen.
- Waterluvian 9y ago
  Maybe progress looks like the moonwalk. Things are getting better while constantly looking like they're getting worse? Maybe it's the pessimist in me but I'm surprised how little awful vigilantism occurs. It's kind of reassuring: there's a huge amount of rhetoric (free speech) compared to actual criminal action.

stevenwoo 9y ago

My first thought is nothing changes. In the recent PBS Vietnam War documentary they show film footage of the US military tiger teams waterboarding an elderly Vietnamese villager (episode 8/9?). And on the other side the North Vietnamese tortured all the American POW's, and we heard from Hal Kushner directly and learned about what they did to McCain and others who survived to bear witness. But we expect more from our side, we don't expect to be the "baddies". When we call it a war (on terror), we expand the limits on what some will justify. Having a war on an idea means there's essentially no end in sight.

tqkxzugoaupvwqr 9y ago

It’s “Stasi” (with s) for “Staatssicherheit” (Ministry for State Security).

mtgx 9y ago

By 98% success rate I assume you mean for the "guilty ones." But how many others were tortured in the same way that had no relevant information to give, because they were innocent? The issue with torture is not that it doesn't work on the guilty ones. I'm sure it does on the vast majority of them. The issue is you will torture 9 out of 10 in order to finally land upon the 1 out of 10 that is guilty.

civilian 9y ago
I can't find a citation, but I remember the tour guide saying it was 98% for _anyone_ who entered the Stasi during it's last decade of operation. (They had gotten good at extracting confessions.) Yeah, people would confess even if they were innocent, because of the conditions or because of threats to their family.
dragonwriter 9y ago
Torture is extremely good at getting confessions to whatever the torturer suggests (or even can be remotely inferred to be suggesting); that's closely related to the problems with using it to get reliable information compared to other interrogation methods. Being actually guilty of anything is completely beside the point.

ibotty 9y ago

It's Stasi (as in _Sta_ats_si_cherheit), it has nothing to do with "Nazi". Aside: There is a big controversy (in Germany and elsewhere) on how and when to compare the third reich and the GDR. Hubertus Knabe, the leader of the Hohenschönhausen memorial (Stasi jail, as you put it), equalizes them. He made quiet a few exhibitions (like "moral courage in Germany 1933-89) that way.