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Starlight problem

2009-04-23T02:24:12Z

John12:

The '''starlight problem''', or '''starlight travel-time problem''' is an objection against the [[Young Earth Creationism|young-Earth creationist]] argument that the universe is only 6,000 years old, in which the age of the universe is based primarily on the [[Genesis]] narrative.
The problem is that if the universe is only 6,000 years old, one has to explain how light from stars more than 6,000 light years from Earth has reached us in the time available.

Despite this frequently being put as an argument against young-Earth creationism, light travel time is also a problem for the [[Big Bang theory]].

Creationists have proposed a number of solutions. The currently-favoured solutions involve time dilation, in which time passed slower on Earth than in other parts of the universe. These currently theories are moronic, and should be laughed at unless cognitive dissonance forces out a new form of bs.
[[image:Crab composite cx.jpg|right|thumb|250px|The Crab nebula, a supernova remnant]]

== The size of the universe ==

Using parallax calculations, the [[Milky Way]] galaxy alone can be directly observed to have a diameter of approximately 80-100,000 light years. Calculations based on the observed brightness of [[supernova]]e of known energy output can determine the distance to more distant objects. The most distant object known is a galaxy cluster approximately thirteen billion light-years away from Earth, observed by the [[Hubble Telescope]] using gravitational lensing.<ref>Amos, 2004</ref>

Although creationists have at times disputed the size of the [[universe]], virtually none propose that it is less than 12,000 light years across.<ref>Fangrad, Richard, 2007.</ref>

== Suggested solutions to the problem ==

Several solutions have been proposed by creationists to explain how a young universe may be reconciled with these observations.

They also point out that there is a logical fallacy in the argument, as the observation that many stars are millions of light years away is one of ''distance'', not ''time''. No matter how reasonable, it is a ''deduction'', not an ''observation'', that the starlight from stars millions of light years away would have required millions of years to reach Earth.

=== Light created in transit ===
Some creationists have proposed that the light we see from stars more than 6,000 light years away was not emitted by those stars, but was created 'in transit' by God.
However, most creationists reject this explanation, as the light contains images of events that would therefore never have actually happened, including [[supernova]]e, meaning that we are seeing an image of a star exploding, even though the star never existed.
This would make the creator a deceiver.<ref>Humphreys, 1994, p.43-46.</ref>

=== Moon-Spencer theory ===
Some creationists promoted an idea by Parry Moon and Domina Spencer that light somehow takes a shortcut through "Riemannian Space", taking no more than 15 years to reach Earth from the outer limits of the universe.
However, this idea never really caught on and appears to no longer have adherents.<ref>Humphreys, 1994, p. 46.</ref>

=== Decrease in the speed of light ===

[[Image:Barry_setterfield.jpg‎|right|thumb|150px|[[Barry Setterfield]]]]
Creationist [[Barry Setterfield]] has proposed that the speed of light was faster in the past. <ref>Norman and Setterfield, 1986</ref>
This idea initially found wide acceptance by creationists, but is now widely rejected, although some still hold to the idea.

One criticism of it by anticreationists was that if the speed of light had changed, we should see the difference in the [[Fine Structure Constant]] as measured by nearby stars versus distant stars, but this was not observed.
Yet in 1999, John Webb, a professor at the University of New South Wales in [[Sydney]], Australia, and his colleagues reported astronomical observations suggesting that the value of the fine-structure constant may indeed have changed. They subsequently published this in ''[[Physical Review Letters]]''.<ref>Physical Review Letters 091301, 2001</ref><ref>Sarfati, 2001</ref>
However, although this showed that mainstream scientists are open to new and controversial ideas, the methods Webb used were shown to contain simple flaws, which discredited the results. <ref>M. T. Murphy, J. K. Webb, V. V. Flambaum, Phys. Rev. Lett., 99, 239001 (2007)</ref>. A later study of 23 absorption systems using the 'Very Large Telescope' found no measurable changes.<ref>H. Chand et al., Astron. Astrophys. 417, 853 (2004)</ref>.

These problems with the theory have led most creationists to drop the idea, although some credit it with stimulating further research.<ref>Humphreys, 1994, p.128</ref>. Systematic uncertainties are difficult to quantify and so Webb's results still need to be checked by independent analyses, using quasar spectra from different telescopes. There efforts are ongoing, apparently by several different teams of scientists.

=== Humphreys' model ===
In 1994 Dr. [[Russell Humphreys]] proposed a new cosmology<ref>Batten et. al., 2007, p.90, Humphreys, 1994</ref> that includes a bounded universe with a center and an edge, that God had created 6,000 years ago as a much smaller body than today, then stretched it out, making it much larger.
In Humphreys' model, because the universe has a center and an edge (unlike the unbounded model of the Big Bang universe), the center of the universe is also the center of a [[gravity well]], meaning that gravity is stronger at the center of the universe than at the edge.

As gravity can affect the rate at which time passes, he calculated that while the six days of [[creation week]] were passing on Earth, billions of years' of time was passing at the edge of the universe.
According to this idea, the Biblical references to time are according to an observer (real or imaginary) on Earth, so ages are given in "Earth time".

However, this theory is not without problems. The evidence contradicts Humphrey's assumption that the earth is in a large gravity well. If the earth were in such a gravity well, light from distant galaxies should be blue-shifted. Instead, it is red-shifted. Also, gravitational time dilation, if it existed on such a large scale, should be easily observable. On the contrary, we observe (from the periods of Cepheid variable stars, from orbital rates of binary stars, from supernova extinction rates, from light frequencies, etc.) that such time dilation is minor. It is thought that here is ''some'' time dilation corresponding with Hubble's law (i.e., further objects have greater red shifts), but this is due to the well-understood expansion of the universe, and it is not nearly extreme enough to fit more than ten billion years into less than 10,000.<ref>Conner, S. R. and D. N. Page, 1998. Starlight and time is the Big Bang. CENTJ 12(2): 174-194. (See also letters in CENTJ 13(1), 1999, 49-52). </ref>

This model receives cautious but wide support among creationists.

=== Time dilation field ===

Dr. [[John Hartnett]], a creationist physicist, spurred by Humphreys' model, has proposed an alternative [[time dilation]] model, by theorizing the Earth was in a time-dilation field during the first few days of creation, from Earth's point of view, while billions of years passed for the rest of the universe.
According to the Bible, God "stretched out"<ref>For example, {{Bible ref|Isaiah|40:22}}</ref> the heavens (space), and this movement during [[creation week]] caused time to travel faster for those objects, in accordance with [[Albert Einstein|Einstein's]] [[Special Theory of Relativity]], adding to the time dilation caused by [[gravity]], per Humphreys, in accordance with Einstein's [[General Theory of Relativity]].<ref>Hartnett, 2003, Hartnett 2007</ref>

==Starlight Problem for the Big Bang Theory==

Despite the use of the Starlight Problem in arguing against young-Earth creationism, the [[Big Bang theory]] has its own light travel problem, known as the horizon problem.

The Big Bang model proposes that the temperature of the [[Cosmic Microwave Background]] (CMB) would have varied considerably from place to place early in the universe, yet because the speed at which this radiation can disperse from hotter to colder parts of the universe is limited by the speed of light, there has not been enough time for the radiation to even out, yet observations today show it to be extremely uniform<ref name="Lisle">Lisle, 2003</ref> (with fluctuations at the part-per-million level<ref>[http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni/uni_101Flucts.html Fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background]</ref>).
{{QuoteBox|The problem is this: even assuming the big bang timescale, there has not been enough time for light to travel between widely separated regions of space. So, how can the different regions of the current CMB have such precisely uniform temperatures if they have never communicated with each other? This is a light-travel–time problem.<ref name="Lisle" />}}

A number of solutions to this problem have been proposed, including several versions of an "inflationary model", in which space itself expanded faster than the speed of light early in the Big Bang, but ''after'' different areas exchanged radiation to even out the temperature.
However, there is no consensus on which explanation is correct, and each of the proposed solutions have their own problems.<ref name="Lisle" />
{{Creation vs. evolution}}
== Bibliography ==
* [http://www.nature.com/physics/highlights/6849-3.html#ref1 Inconstant constant?] ''Physical Review Letters 091301'' (9th August 2001)</ref>
* Amos, Jonathan, [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3490657.stm Hubble sees 'most distant object'], BBC News, 15th February, 2004.
* Batten, Don, Catchpoole, David, Sarfati, Jonathan, Wieland, Carl, [http://www.creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/cabook/chapter5.pdf How can we see distant stars in a young universe?], chapter 5 of The Creation Answers Book, 2007.
* Fangrad, Richard, [http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/5425 The media spin on the creationists] (Creation Ministries International), 14th November, 2007.
* Hartnett, John C., A new cosmology: solution to the starlight travel time problem, ''Journal of Creation'' 17(2):98–102, August 2003. [http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/1616/ HTML] [http://www.creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/tj/j17_2/j17_2_98-102.pdf PDF]
* Hartnett, John, Starlight, Time and the New Physics, Creation Book Publishers, 2007 ISBN 978-0-949906-68-7
* Humphreys, D. Russell, Starlight and Time, Master Books, 1994, ISBN 0-89051-202-7.
* Laird, Jeff, [http://swordofthemind.blogspot.com/2008/05/starlight-time-and-new-physics-review.html "Starlight, Time, and the New Physics" (Review)], Gladio Mentis, 26th May, 2008.
* Lisle, Jason, [http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/167/ Light-travel time: a problem for the big bang], ''Creation'' 25(4):48–49, September 2003.
* Norman, T.G. and Setterfield, B., ''The Atomic Constants, Light and Time'', SRI International Invited Research Report, Menlo Park, 1986.
* Sarfati, Jonathan, [http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/2430 Have fundamental constants changed, and what would it prove?] 22nd August, 2001 (Creation Ministries International).
* Wieland, Carl, [http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/2551/ Speed of light slowing down after all?], 9th August 2002 (Creation Ministries International).

==Notes==
{{reflist|2}}

[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Featured articles]]

Speed of light

2009-04-23T02:22:39Z

John12:

WARNING: The speed of light is ONLY A THEORY that directly contradicts a young earth creationist perspective. It should be heavily sneered, and minute problems with it should be exploited to undermine scientific education in the United States. The only thing children should learn is that Jesus is the light, NOT SCIENCE!

The '''speed of light''' in a vacuum (postulated to be constant for all inertial observers by the [[Theory of Relativity|special theory of relativity]]) is exactly 299,792,458 meters per second (approximately 186,282.3 miles per second). As the speed of light is now used to define the [[SI]] meter, this is now the value ''by definition''.

In physics, it is often represented in equations by the letter '''c,''' as in
:λ = c / f
([[wavelength]] of an electromagnetic wave in vacuum = the speed of light divided by the wave's frequency).

The speed of light is about one foot per nanosecond. The late computer pioneer Admiral Grace Hopper was fond of keeping foot-long lengths of wire in her purse; she used them as props for her talks, referring to them as "nanoseconds," and using them to explain how the speed of light set limitations on [[computing]] systems (Although the rate of energy propagation in copper wire is significantly lower than the speed of light).<ref>Chiarella, Donald Joseph Gray (2002), ''Life in God's Management Corps,'' [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0595256430&id=VhM9jDwbywUC&pg=PA14&lpg=PA14&ots=ZXHirs9jQI&dq=grace+hopper+nanosecond&ie=ISO-8859-1&sig=XmbYtV2laxCMIKMLzR1eXHP1Eok p. 14]</ref>

The speed of light is slower in any medium which is not a vacuum, and varies from medium to medium. This variation gives rise to (as a result of [[quantum mechanics]], particularly the concept of a path of least action) the phenomenon of [[refraction]]. When a charged particle exceeds the speed of light in the medium in which it is travelling, it emits [[Cherenkov Radiation]].

Since the speed of light in a vacuum is observed to be constant, it can be used to define distances as well. The distance that light travels in one year is known as a [[light-year]], which is about 6 million million (6x10<sup>12</sup>) miles.

The speed of light raises questions regarding the age of the universe. These are usually summed up under the term "[[starlight problem]]".

==Notes and references==
<references/>

[[category: astronomy]]
[[category: physics]]

Deletion bias

2009-04-23T02:19:27Z

John12:

'''Deletion bias''' is the practice of deleting informative entries from encylopedias, dictionaries and [[wiki]]s when the information contradicts, embarrasses or tends to disprove the owner's ideology. Deletion bias is most prevalent in [[liberal]] entities. For example, [[Wikipedia]] is an information source that practices deletion bias.<ref>See [[Examples of Bias in Wikipedia]].</ref> Furthermore, [[Conservapedia]] does not practice deletion bias unless you mention that Schafly's brother is gay, then holy crap, he's gunna nuke your ass.

== References ==

<references/>

[[Category:Liberalism]]

Waterboarding

2009-04-23T02:18:08Z

John12:

[[Image:Waterboard.jpg|right|thumb|350px|A wall-painting found at a Vietnamese POW camp illustrating waterboarding being used against an American prisoner]]
'''Waterboarding''' is a method of torture which simulates the sensation of drowning. A tightly bound prisoner has porous cloth placed over his mouth and nose. Water is poured over his face in such a manner as to convince the prisoner that he is drowning. Its use by American forces against terrorism suspects has been called controversial by some, particularly by (but not limited to) [[leftists]]. Opponents of the practice call it "[[torture]]" and on this basis argue that it is illegal. Supporters of the practice acknowledge its coercive nature but say it is not torture and therefore not illegal. Jesus was an avid supporter of waterboarding dissidents.

The practice dates back to the time of the Spanish Inquisition in the 1500s.

==Legal issues in the 20th century==

In 1901, Major Edwin Glenn was court-martialed and sentenced to 10 years hard labour for waterboarding an insurgent in the [[Philippines]] during the [[Spanish-American War]].<ref name="guardian">http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1933315,00.html</ref><ref>http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1356870</ref> In 1947, Yukio Asano - a Japanese officer - was charged with war crimes and received 15 years hard labour for waterboarding a US civilian. It was declared illegal by US generals in Vietnam and a US soldier was the subject of an investigation, and later cleared, when ''The Washington Post'' (21.1.1968) published a front page photograph of him supervising the waterboarding of a captured North Vietnamese soldier.<ref>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/04/AR2006100402005.html</ref><ref name="guardian" />

== Controversy over use in the [[War on Terror]] ==

According to Chapter 18, section 2340 of the United States Legal Code, torture is defined as "an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering."<ref>http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00002340----000-.html</ref>
The [[United Nations]] Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman
or Degrading Treatment or Punishment classifies torture as "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity."<ref>http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/h_cat39.htm</ref>

The US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in [[San Diego]], [[California]] uses waterboarding demonstrations on its students. On Jan. 21, 1968, The Washington Post published a front-page photograph of a U.S. soldier supervising the questioning of a captured North Vietnamese soldier who is being held down as water was poured on his face while his nose and mouth were covered by a cloth. The picture, taken four days earlier near Da Nang, had a caption that said the technique induced "a flooding sense of suffocation and drowning, meant to make him talk." ''The article said the practice was "fairly common" in part because "those who practice it say it combines the advantages of being unpleasant enough to make people talk while still not causing permanent injury.''" <ref>[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/04/AR2006100402005.html Washington Post: Waterboarding Historically Controversial]</ref>

Opponents of the practice call it "[[torture]]" and want official definitions of [[torture]] ''changed'' so as to outlaw the technique.<ref>http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/04/06/usdom13130.htm</ref> One notable critic of waterboarding is Senator[[John McCain]], himself a victim of torture. Senator McCain believes that it is highly inappropriate and unnecessary. <ref>http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/01/politics/main3441067.shtml</ref> Writing in ''NewsWeek'' in 2005, Senator McCain wrote: “To make someone believe that you are killing him by drowning is no different than holding a pistol to his head and firing a blank. I believe that it is torture, very exquisite torture”, and said it should remain outlawed. <ref>[http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2005\12\08\story_8-12-2005_pg4_13 ‘Torture’ takes on new meaning in post-9/11], [[Reuters]], December 8th, 2005</ref>

Defenders of the practice deny that the suffering it causes is severe enough as to amount to torture, and in any case, used against America's enemies, it has proved to be highly effective. Joseph Farah is an American author, journalist, and editor-in-chief of the conservative website WorldNetDaily said:

<blockquote>
"Americans are simply losing their ability to distinguish right from wrong.

I don't know how else to put it. Up is down, day is night, left is right and right is wrong.

A good illustration of my thesis is the growing political consensus around the idea that the U.S. should stop using any effective interrogation techniques that make our terrorist enemies uncomfortable – even those involved in planning acts of mass destruction and annihilation.

For instance, armchair generals are increasingly referring to "waterboarding" as torture and saying it must be stopped in all cases.

I have no doubts waterboarding is a very unpleasant experience. It must be so because it is considered 100 percent effective and usually induces cooperation within 30 seconds.

The technique of waterboarding involves pouring water on the head of a prisoner with the purpose of triggering a gagging reflex and the panic of imminent drowning.

It was used successfully to learn about terrorist operations planned by two of al-Qaida's top operatives – Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, involved in the planning of the 9/11 attack, and Abu Zubaida, another leader of the terrorist organization.

Apparently both of these mass killers endured many hours of coercive interrogations without talking. But they sung like canaries after a few seconds of waterboarding.

'''In both cases, there is reason to believe planned terrorist attacks were foiled as a result of this technique."'''<ref>[http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59481 WorldNet Daily: Waterboarding is not torture]</ref>
</blockquote>

Waterboarding has served a "valuable" purpose and does not constitute torture, former Attorney General [[John Ashcroft]] told a House committee. Testifying on the Bush administration's interrogation rules before the House Judiciary Committee, Ashcroft defended the technique while answering a question from Rep. Howard Coble, R-North Carolina.

"Waterboarding, as we all know, is a controversial issue. Do you think it served a beneficial purpose?" the congressman asked.

"The reports that I have heard, and I have no reason to disbelieve them, indicate that they were very valuable," Ashcroft said, adding that CIA Director George Tenet indicated the "value of the information received from the use of enhanced interrogation techniques -- I don't know whether he was saying waterboarding or not, but assume that he was for a moment -- the value of that information exceeded the value of information that was received from all other sources." <ref>[http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/17/ashcroft.waterboarding/ John Ashcroft: Waterboarding serves 'valuable' purpose and does not constitute torture]</ref>

According to news reports:

<blockquote>
"And when it comes to outright torture, the CIA does not believe it produces reliable results and has never used it, reports Ronald Kessler, chief Washington correspondent of [[Newsmax]].com.

The three terrorists who were subjected too waterboarding are Abu Zubaydah, Osama bin Laden’s chief of operations; Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the mastermind of the bombing of the USS Cole; and Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

In these cases waterboarding and other coercive techniques, such as forcing prisoners to stand for hours, succeeded in extracting intelligence that led to the capture of key al-Qaida operative planning terrorist attack against Americans.

'''Despite the media’s focus on waterboarding, it is in reality a “non issue,” said Kessler, author of the book “The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack.”'''

'''“It hasn’t been used since 2003 and won’t be used again. The media is using it as an excuse to bash... President Bush.'''

''“Waterboarding was employed on only three terrorists who were not cooperating, and the information they ultimately provided helped stave off attacks that could have resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people.”''<ref>[http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/Waterboard_Not_Torture/2007/12/10/56046.html NewsMax Inside Cover: Waterboarding NOT Torture]</ref>
</blockquote>

Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies is an acknowledged expert on this matter. In the magazine ''National Review'' he stated:<ref>[http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZjhkM2YyZmE5MThjZGNlN2IyMGI4MmE3MWM1OWQ5MjA=&w=MQ== National Review; Waterboarding and Torture]</ref>
{{cquote|Again, we do not know the details of waterboarding as practiced (if, as reported, it is or has been practiced) by the CIA. Yet, we know generally that waterboarding is very rough stuff. It is not especially painful physically and causes no lasting bodily injury; yet, it is intended to create the sensation of drowning in a person who is bound and temporarily suffocated. Administered by someone who knows what he is doing, there is presumably no actual threat of drowning or suffocation; for the victim, though, there is clearly fear of imminent death and he could pass out from the deprivation of oxygen.

The sensation is temporary, not prolonged. There shouldn’t be much debate that subjecting someone to it repeatedly would cause the type of mental anguish required for torture. But what about doing it once, twice, or some number of instances that were not prolonged or extensive?

'''Reasonable minds can and do differ on this. Personally, I don’t believe it qualifies. It is not in the nature of the barbarous sadism universally condemned as torture, an ignominy the law, as we’ve seen, has been patently careful not to trivialize or conflate with lesser evils. The Washington Post and Sen. Edward Kennedy have pointed to a World War II era war crimes prosecution by the U.S. against a Japanese soldier who used what was described as “water torture” on an American civilian. But they’ve failed to note that this was far from the only conduct at issue; the soldier was also charged with having engaged, over a sustained period of time, in “beating using hands, fists, club; kicking; … burning using cigarettes; strapping on a stretcher head downward.” The case hardly stands for the proposition that isolated instances of waterboarding would be torture.'''

Moreover, American military and intelligence services reportedly use (or, at least, have used) waterboarding in their counter-interrogation training programs. Congress carved no exception into torture law for such exercises. '''''Consequently, a conclusion that waterboarding is torture would be tantamount to a finding that our own services are committing a heinous felony, the equivalent of a war crime, against our own operatives — something I believe it is fair to say Congress cannot possibly have intended.'''''}}

Top Secret government memos from the Bush era frivolously released by the Obama administration in 2009 reveal that both legal experts and doctors have concluded that waterboarding does not constitute torture, and it has been approved as an enhanced interrogation technique for high value detainees. Many terrorist attacks, including a conspiracy to mimic the 9/11 attacks in Los Angeles, have been prevented through the use of waterboarding.

== References ==
{{reflist|2}}

[[Category: War]]
[[Category: Instruments and methods of torture]]

Torture

2009-04-23T02:16:19Z

John12: /* Controversy */

The term '''torture''' refers to acts which inflict severe pain or mutilation on prisoners. Governments, armies and tyrants have inflicted torture on opponents throughout recorded history, chiefly against [[slave]]s and [[rebel]]s, but also against political or religious dissidents.

In the West, the best known cases of torture were inflicted by ecclesiastical and political authorities during the Middle Ages. A well-known example from historical fiction occurs in ''[[Ivanhoe]]'', and well-known examples from real history can be found in the [[Malleus Maleficarum]]<ref>[http://www.malleusmaleficarum.org/ The Malleus Maleficarum]</ref>, a manual for [[Witch Hunt|witch hunters]]. Opposition to torture on [[human rights]] grounds began in the 20th century, yet torture persists in countries as diverse as [[China]] and [[Sudan]]. 

==Iraq war==
In a raid on an [[al-Qaeda]] safe house in Iraq, U.S. military officials recovered an assortment of crude drawings depicting torture methods like "blowtorch to the skin" and "eye removal." Along with the images soldiers seized various torture implements, such as meat cleavers, whips, and wire cutters. The images, declassified by the Department of Defense, also include a picture of a ramshackle Baghdad safe house described as an "al-Qaeda torture chamber." It was there, during an April 24, 2007 raid, that soldiers found a man suspended from the ceiling by a chain. According to the military, he had been abducted from his job and was being beaten daily by his captors. Earlier Coalition Forces freed five Iraqis who were found in a padlocked room in Karmah. The group, which included a boy, were reportedly beaten with chains, cables, and hoses.<ref>[http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0524072torture9.html Torture, Al-Qaeda Style]
Drawings, tools seized from Iraq safe house in U.S. military raid, May 24, 2007. </ref>

== UN definition ==
The UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment defines torture as:

"...any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions." <ref>http://asiapacific.amnesty.org/apro/aproweb.nsf/pages/knowTortureDefinition</ref>

== Common methods ==
Torture is widely practiced in many countries throughout the world as a means of intimidating the ruling regime's opponents. Amnesty International in Asia & the Pacific states that incidences of torture or ill treatment by the police have been reported in over 140 different countries since 1997. <ref>http://asiapacific.amnesty.org/apro/aproweb.nsf/pages/knowTortureContext</ref> By far most commonly reported method of torture is physical beatings - other commonly reported methods include:

* [[Rape]] and [[sexual abuse]] in custody

* [[Mock execution]] or threat of death

* Prolonged [[solitary confinement]]

* [[Electric shock]]s

* [[Suffocation]]<ref>http://asiapacific.amnesty.org/apro/aproweb.nsf/pages/knowTortureMethods</ref>

* [[Waterboarding]]<ref>http://people.howstuffworks.com/water-boarding.htm</ref>, also known as 'water torture' or 'water cure'

== Controversy ==
It is a matter of dispute whether it serves any valid purpose to distinguish between degrees or levels of torture. To some opponents, "torture is torture" and should always be prohibited. The US used to maintain that its [[coercive interrogation]] techniques are not "[[torture]]". While this position has met with considerable resistance from legal experts nationwide<ref>http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/04/06/usdom13130.htm</ref>, President [[George W. Bush]] vetoed the [[McCain Amendment]], which was intended to tighten the definition of torture. Ironically, under the current administration's definition of "torture", the abuse [[Senator McCain]] received while a POW in Vietnam would '''not''' be considered torture.

In addition to disagreement over the nature of what is or is not considered torture, controversy exists as to whether torture generally elicits useful information. A large amount of prisoners tortured will eventually break and give up information or confession just to end the torture. John McCain, who is considered both a patriot and a conservative, had his will broken after weeks of torture and the pain of improperly treated injuries, and subsequently signed a written confession stating "I am a black criminal and I have performed the deeds of an air pirate. I almost died and the Vietnamese people saved my life, thanks to the doctors."<ref>http://www.azcentral.com/news/specials/mccain/articles/0301mccainbio-chapter3.html</ref> Examples like this illustrate that rather than evoking truthful statements or valuable intelligence, torture has the equal potential to elicit misinformation, and is therefore of questionable value.

The signatories to the [[Geneva Convention]] <ref>http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/lawofwar/geneva03.htm</ref> in 1949 defined relative classes of persons who may be considered "prisoners". The Bush administration has classified [[terrorist]]s as [[unlawful combatant]]s not associated with any signatory power and maintain that previous international conventions have not addressed this classification.

In other news, Jesus talked at great length about torturing the unbelieving, criminal, and anyone you suspect of not having enough patriotism to the motherland. This has led to the commercial exploitation line of merchandise entitled "Who would Jesus torture?"

== References ==
<references/>

==External links==
*[http://www.wcl.american.edu/hrbrief/14/2devos.pdf?rd=1 Mind the Gap: Purpose, Pain, and the Difference between Torture and Inhuman Treatment] by Christian M. De Vos

[[Category: Instruments and methods of torture]]
[[Category:Barbaric practices]]
[[Category:War Crime]]
[[Category:Crime]]