Water Boarding Thrill Ride?

[welsh]

Ahhh... how can you not love Coney Island rides and thrills-

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93654870

Weekend Edition Saturday, August 16, 2008 · It might not be surprising that waterboarding, the controversial interrogation technique that simulates drowning and that many have called torture, would become the subject of satire.

But it was still shocking to many when artist Steve Powers created a Coney Island attraction called the Waterboard Thrill Ride. It's not really a ride, it's more of a peep show.

Powers took over an old photo studio near the Coney Island Side Show. There's a picture on the wall of someone who is tied down and looks a lot like SpongeBob SquarePants. "It don't Gitmo better" is painted above the picture, a reference to the Guantanamo Bay prison. You climb three cinder block steps up to a small window with prison bars, where you can peer into a cell. If you deposit a dollar in a slot, two robotic figures come to life for 15 seconds. An interrogator in black pours a kettle of water into the mouth of a "prisoner" in an orange jumpsuit who is tied down. The orange-suited robot convulses as the water is poured into its mouth.

People step up to the window. Some put money in, and some don't. Tami and Joe Brady put their dollar in and found it a little shocking. "The man is going up and down, and there is water coming out of this metal thing," Tami exclaims. "Oh my goodness, it's like a water torture."

Ahhh... because it is water torture?

Some people are not impressed. "I thought it would be funnier, more satirical," one passerby observes. But Mark Kehoe, an artist and the former art director of the annual Coney Island Mermaid Parade, says it reminds him of an act that he once saw on the Bowery that was intended as a comment on Nazi atrocities. "What's different and more interesting about this," Kehoe says, "here we are looking at our own atrocities."

Powers, the artist who conceived of the waterboarding "attraction," has worked and lived in Coney Island. When he was first offered the space, he said, he immediately thought of a torture chamber. It looked like a prison. There was an old sink in the corner that Powers said "hadn't been used in 30 years."

The Waterboard Thrill Ride fits perfectly with Coney Island's "ethos," he says.

"Coney Island has been a fun house mirror reflecting and refracting the best and worst of America for 100 years now," Powers says. And he notes that humor can be a powerful tool to deal with horrific issues, that taking real life horror and reducing it to a cheap thrill can demonstrate how cheap life has become.

Amusement parks and thrill rides have been the setting for horror movies and books for that reason.

Powers says people's reactions have run the gamut from the pro-waterboarding Navy veteran who loved it, to people who find it repulsive and over the top. But in the end, Powers says, he is finding the whole idea of waterboarding confusing.

Originally, he says, he wanted to make a statement: "What's more obscene, saying that waterboarding is not torture or creating a waterboard thrill ride?" But he acknowledges that unless you're an enemy combatant, or perhaps an interrogator of enemy combatants, there is no way to really experience waterboarding. So, like a few people before him, he set out to get as close to the experience as possible. He invited a few lawyers who might be looking at issues like the treatment of detainees and invited them to experience the interrogation technique themselves. And he planned to try it, too.

He invited about 30 people to join him in a small room Friday night about a block from his art attraction. He brought in a former Army interrogator, Mike Ritz, who trains people in interrogation techniques and what it feels like to be a prisoner of war. Ritz emphasized that the Army does not use waterboarding, a technique he believes is ineffective.

Ritz said he was a bit worried that the demonstration might make a mockery of the issue, but he agreed to participate because "it's become very easy for society to look the other way." He added that it is important to get people talking about the issue.

Suddenly, there was little humor or satire in the room.

Powers and the attorneys were brought in, one by one. Their heads were covered. Ritz put a black rag into their mouths and started pouring water until they gagged or resisted. Everyone realized it was a pale imitation of the real thing. After all, there was even a medic in the room.

Neil Goldman, a retired attorney, said he was glad to get out of there. "It was frightening."

For his part, Powers said, he learned a little more about waterboarding, even though it was such a carefully controlled experience. "It was done as safely as humanly possible," he said, "but it was still terrible."

Powers said his art piece asks this question: What's more obscene, saying waterboarding isn't torture or creating a waterboard thrill ride?

The Waterboard Thrill Ride is sponsored by the nonprofit arts organization Creative Time, and is part of its Democracy in America project, a national campaign that will involve more than 40 artists.

 

[Ah-Teen]

Maybe I missed something, are people paying to get water boarded or are people just walking through an exhibit.

If people are paying to get tortured.
Whatever floats your boat dumbass.

If people are just walking through.
There are more interesting forms of torture.

 

[alec]

You should read the article: visitors are paying to see a small attraction called Waterboard Thrill Ride: a cell in which a robot prisoner is being tortured with water. That's it. Cough up a dollar and you get to see it.

And he notes that humor can be a powerful tool to deal with horrific issues, that taking real life horror and reducing it to a cheap thrill can demonstrate how cheap life has become.

Personally, I think the whole notion of an amusement park is way better proof of how cheap life has become than this new attraction.

Also: the few times I visited an amusement park, it was to have fun and forget my daily problems, not to be reminded of how horrible life can be. Maybe the Waterboard Thrill Ride would look awesome in a museum, but in an amusement park it just screams 'bad taste' and 'not done'.

My two bottlecaps.

 

[Chuck]

voyeurism is a kind of thrill. but i wouldnt go as far as calling this a ride. not unless the tunnel of love has a warning about neck injury.

 

[Stag]

Welsh, quit being a wuss.

No one cares about water boarding, it ain't shit.

Even if it is "torture", it ain't that bad. I'd sign up for it right now if people would stop whinging about it.

Christ.

 

[RonPerlman]

Welsh, quit being a wuss.

No one cares about water boarding, it ain't shit.

Even if it is "torture", it ain't that bad. I'd sign up for it right now if people would stop whinging about it.

Christ.

Christopher Hitchens, didn't know you were a Fallout fan.

 

[horse]

quaffer boarding, otoh, a totally different thing.

 

[4too]

Rampant Denial

Rampant Denial



welsh

I see your efforts to inform the American citizenry about what is being done in their name
has once again been lost in the rampant maze of denial in which we all must seek shelter,
from time to time, whether topic A or topic B.

The superficial issue is the use of black humor to highlight an interrogation method chosen by American authorities ... implying a passing gesture by President Bush,
the elected Chief Executive, and American Head Of State.
The United States President: CEO, top federal cop, commander in chief, and King for the day.
The Buck stops here at ground zero.

We presume that those in authority are acting out of choice, and claiming the responsibility and the consequences.
We presume that those in the military and or law enforcement community are in some measure of control of this situation.
Let's say an option was exploited.

Assume you can't "half' kill some one, then assume you can't 'half' torture someone.
This effort to not call it torture is a distraction, a distortion of issue.
Anyone that has survived a near suffocating experience, or more topical, a near drowning experience,
might just retort, F-ck the sleazy legalese, water boarding is torture.

This could be another unpleasant reminder that the war on terror is a real war. Shame on you welsh for thrusting an uncomfortable topic into a recreational web forum.

Sorry America, people are being maimed and killed the world over and this need for the comfort of denial will just have to be suspended as any other civil liberty that might appear to block the road to "'mission accomplished"".

Those that chose water-boarding, no longer cared what any one calls the technique.
They admitted water boarding to their reparatory of interrogation.
Maybe to test it's effectiveness. Maybe an extreme measure in a conflict that has no 'rules of order'.
An operational choice was made.


Let's get to why the need to interrogate, why the need to torture.

wait. No. Can't go there!

Oh, these terrorists aren't ----> CITIZENS! Discourse derailed!

welsh, this whole 'torture' thing just fades from the American moral radar!

What a wonderful spin play on reality!

It's O.K. America!
Torture, mere collateral damage on the march into THIS AMERICAN CENTURY, (as visualized by FOX MEDIA)!

So a terrorist non citizen is not human .... stripped naked, no - skinned, of all human rights, ... future worm food,
so are we all.
Let's all pray to die with the most toys, pray for those critical bragging rights when we go to glory and sit on the left hand side of God. Amen.

Finally, America doesn't have to use third party secret police to torture.
Hands on first person experience with walking a mile or two in the 'bad guys' shoes.

I suggest, let's leave this in the light so it can constantly be questioned, and reviewed.
Not to be relegated to "an option" that becomes routine, in the heat of the moment,
like the use of cluster munitions and napalm in known civilian -- whether human and non human -- areas.

When isn't interrogation torture? Important to know the limits of our moral illusions.
Let's at least aspire to be "good cops" and be fair to humans and non humans. ASPCA International'!

By all means America, try out all the interrogation ploys of the Soviet play book.
Let's emulate the Communists. What a role model.
Forget the hot pursuit antics of 'good cops' with a flaming RAGE-ON.
Save it for 'Death Wish', 'Legal Weapon', and 'Dirty Harry' movies.
Forget the revenge plot of post 9-11. Cold, cruel, Soviet style interrogation is now the fashion for this 'brave new world'.
Torture techniques, Collect-'em all, it's not like we're k-k-killig, I mean *executing* , or *putting to sleep*, (non) humans tar brushed with a capital crime "T".

Crime?

Crime! That implies--- LAWS ---- oh noe!
And terrorists are not prosecuted nor protected by any "rules of war". No guide lines, just another bug hunt!
Some how 'acts of war' might apply, to all this extreme behavior, but, but, but, this war has no rules.
(Did war ever have rules?)
Laws here and no laws over there, ... now I'm confused!
Futile fields of indecision spell fertile opportunity to the exploiters of legal demarkations!
Oh noe!
Here come the lawyers and politicians --- again!

We got a shock and awe military playing cop, trying to stabilize this world condition because the politicians failed. So the lawyers, politicians, and the shadow government of third party action committees will do ... what .. split hairs ... dance on the head of a pin? Launch back biting TV ads against rival demigod candidates?

But, ... recall who won 'Cold War One' by trying to maintain that path on the illusionary high road of 'human' behavior?

I could be wrong,
might have been 'the good cop', the decent guy who didn't want to rule the world, or the major oil reserves,
just his little half acre with enough gas to get to work, and a SUV so the wife could go shopping and drop the kids off at soccer practice.

Maybe we shall see the true agenda of Wilsonian intervention,
that mincing, pince-nez, Big Stick policy,
whether it's blessed by any affiliation by billions of dollars to Halibuton,
or not. Maybe the out sourcing of our dollars and integrity is just another 'means justified' by the end.

America, which way to win-win friends and influence non humans?

At this point we can stick our heads up some fantasy black hole, - ?torture what torture? -,
or man up and know how dangerous American actions have been, and will be, in this on going war
with no POW's, no sugar coating rules of order.





4too