The Psychology of Internment – Part 1

Guest Author Uncategorized

In the past nineteen months, I have become deeply afraid. Because I think this nation is heading down the path of fascist totalitarianism so fast it’s almost unbelievably irretrievable.

abbott, that vainglorious little man, is only the front puppet.

Behind him are the forces of BIG energy (aka coal and oil), BIG Pharma (what is the TPP all about?), BIG guns (aka the Military-Industrial Complex, about which President Icingsugar warned us – well, that’s what I thought his name was 55 years ago), BIG whatever else you can think of . . .

Puffy’s piece is a timely reminder of the hell we are perpetrating, not only for others – for which we should be hauled before the International Court of Justice – but also the hell we are fomenting for ourselves.

You can’t do this stuff without enormous psychic damage to everyone.

Thank you, Puffy.

(Image Credit: How Stuff Works)

 

A discussion in two parts

Part One – The reader completes a task (please).

Australia has entered an Age of Internment, the like of which not seen on our soil since World War Two.

Both major political parties have gone down this miserable road, in thrall to a section of the populace fearing outsiders and the perceived threat that they may steal this land in the way we stole it from the Aboriginal peoples in 1776.

There was a road to a humane solution that could have saved lives, built a new regional plan to help asylum seekers while taking Australua off the people-smugglers’ menu. It was, in my opinion worth a try. The Gillard ALP government’s Malaysia plan might have worked. We will never know now, as partisan politics and the chance of picking up some votes in electorates where racial fear was opportunistically stoked by the Liberal and National parties scuttled that idea.

So here we are,going backwards into the internment era, and worse, with reported conditions akin to the worst hell-hole in a mad third-world dictator’s prison. The reports on the treatment of children are shocking.

This is the perfect time to revisit an old social science experiment, one shocking and controversial. This experiment triggered the creation of University Ethics Committees, which these days examine every researchpropsal for potential harm to the participants.

This research would never be allowed today and cannot be repeated. Indeed the experiment was cut short when the lead researcher was pulled up by a colleague who saw he had gone off the rails too.

I am of course discussing the Stanford Prison Experiments at Stanford University, California, in 1971.

Many are aware of it but I urge you, even if you have not the slightest interest in social science, to set aside a little time, grab a glass or cup of whatever and read through the complete description of the planning, carrying-out and fall out of this seemingly innocent almost naive research.

Because nobody predicted the shocking results.

Then think of Nauru and Manus Island. Think of the Department of Immigration, the Minister, and our Prime Minister.

I will not pre-empt the story just now, but will follow up with another post when people have had the time to read, listen and absorb. Please don’t just read the first page of the website and think, yeah, that one. Take the slide tour. It has the detail which contains the devil.

http://www.prisonexp.org/

Thank you.

610 thoughts on “The Psychology of Internment – Part 1”

  1. Please write out 500 times –
    We must not criticise Abbott’s temple to Anzackery

  2. Read and despair at what may actually unfold in our time, as it unfolded in ancient times…

    From Mommsen’s “History of Rome”..Chapt’ XI “The Commonwealth and it’s Economy”.

    “Money-Dealing and Commerce.

    The most brilliant, or rather the only brilliant, side of Roman
    private economics was money-dealing and commerce. First of all
    stood the leasing of the domains and of the taxes, through which a
    large, perhaps the larger, part of the income of the Roman state
    flowed into the pockets of the Roman capitalists. The money-
    dealings, moreover, throughout the range of the Roman state were
    monopolized by the Romans; every penny circulated in Gaul, it is
    said in a writing issued soon after the end of this period, passes
    through the books of the Roman merchants, and so it was doubtless
    everywhere. The co-operation of rude economic conditions and of
    the unscrupulous employment of Rome’s political ascendency for the
    benefit of the private interests of every wealthy Roman rendered a
    usurious system of interest universal, as is shown for example by
    the treatment of the war-tax imposed by Sulla on the province of
    Asia in 670, which the Roman capitalists advanced; it swelled with
    paid and unpaid interest within fourteen years to sixfold its
    original amount. The communities had to sell their public buildings,
    their works of art and jewels, parents had to sell their grown-up
    children, in order to meet the claims of the Roman creditor:…”

    xxxxxxxx

    “Capitalist Oligarchy

    Putting together these phenomena, we recognize as the most prominent
    feature in the private economy of this epoch the financial oligarchy
    of Roman capitalists standing alongside of, and on a par with,
    the political oligarchy. In their hands were united the rents
    of the soil of almost all Italy and of the best portions of
    the provincial territory, the proceeds at usury of the capital
    monopolized by them, the commercial gain from the whole empire,
    and lastly, a very considerable part of the Roman state-revenue
    in the form of profits accruing from the lease of that revenue.
    The daily-increasing accumulation of capital is evident in the rise
    of the average rate of wealth: 3,000,000 sesterces (30,000 pounds)
    was now a moderate senatorial, 2,000,000 (20,000 pounds) was a decent
    equestrian fortune; the property of the wealthiest man of the
    Gracchan age, Publius Crassus consul in 623 was estimated at
    100,000,000 sesterces (1,000,000 pounds). It is no wonder,
    that this capitalist order exercised a preponderant influence
    on external policy;…”……………Theodor Mommsen.

    The regular and natural regulations of patterns of behaviour by certain people when placed in positions of power can be predicted with seemingly amazing accuracy. Not because of any extrordinary sense of perception, but sadly because of the more mundane predictability of imbecilic reasoning that THEY and THEY ALONE are in possession of the magic ingredients of the wisdom of control and tyranny over a subdued citizenry….in the present and into the future.

  4. Intermittently my car has been displaying “Warning! Malfunction: electrical consumers turned off “.
    […]
    Mercedes quality control has scored a fail on plain English. What’s wrong with ‘Battery charge low’?

    A low battery may be the cause, but that’s usually indicated with a red battery symbol. Is it possible it has actually shut off power to non-essential devices (heater, stereo etc.) to preserve the remaining battery power?

  7. “A state of emergency has been declared in the US city of Baltimore as protesters clash with police after the funeral of a 25-year-old black man who died a week ago from a spinal injury suffered in police custody.”

    And THIS is the system of governance the IPA. and the LNP. want us to emulate!!

  8. jaeger

    Is it possible it has actually shut off power to non-essential devices

    It’s suggested that heat to the seats and seat ventilation are the sort of things it stops doing (neither of which my Australian delivered car has).

    So a drive to Yass and back seems the most likely solution.

  9. Anyone else think that all the kerfuffle about those executions is a reflection of the high regard the Indonesians have for the Abbott government?

    BTW, 7.5 is doing execution porn big-time.

  10. Heated seats? How decadently capitalist. Why the frack does a car need heated seats?

    .

  11. It’s disgusting.

    Whoever is responsible for this should be sacked.

  12. Staying right away from the main stream TV news and stuff – execution porn is not my thing at all.

    I can’t help thinking that FPMJG and even, God help us, Krudd, would have done much better than Abbott and Bishop, both of whom have the negotiating skills of feral slugs.

  15. ‘fridge

    So a drive to Yass and back seems the most likely solution.

    Watch out for silver cars when using pedestrian crossings over the next few days.

  16. She wants to take Indonesia to the ICJ. They are a long way back in the queue where John Howard should be.

  17. l2

    Why the frack does a car need heated seats?

    To plant your ar#e on a minus 15 morning in northern Europe I guess.

  18. Bananas is desperate to get some sort of reprieve for Chan and Sukamaran because their execution will be seen as a failure on her part, She doesn’t give a rat’s arse about those two, all she is worried about his her own ego and standing as foreign minister. Let’s face it, she has the diplomatic skills of a brown snake and could not negotiate her way out of a wet paper bag.

    The legal team is trying to get a last-minute reprieve on the grounds of a corrupted legal process. If that succeeds (not likely) it will have nothing to do with Bananas.

  19. CTar1
    Heated seats would have been quite nice on a frosty winter morning in the New England, after getting the ice off the windscreen, but I somehow coped without.

  21. l2

    after getting the ice off the windscreen

    An essential piece of equipment for a car in Canberra is a decent ice scraper.

  22. leonetwo

    “Why the frack does a car need heated seats? ”
    .
    Good question but they seem to think it has been a necessity for a while. A workmate from a company we were all made redundant at when it closed down in 2003 bought a Merc convertible from about 1979. It had heated seats.

    Such seats did and still do seem OTTP.

  23. CTar1
    Ditto Inverell. Lovely place, lovely people, beautiful winter days, but the mornings – freezing. You’d open the fridge for a blast of warm air.

  24. And now, heaven help us, the taxpayers will be subsidising nannies. Out of “savings” and you know what that means.

  26. CTar & Leone,

    When I was at university in Canberra in the 1970s, I always kept one of these in the glovebox of my VW Beetle:

    Very effective, and much safer than hot water.

    I remember a bitterly cold night in Goulburn five years ago, when I was on my way from Melbourne to Sydney. The car was thick with frost next morning, and the only solution was to start the engine and get the demisters working. A spatula would have been much quicker.

  28. ” Why the frack does a car need heated seats? “…to keep that Mars Bar at just the right texture.

  29. ” I always kept one of these in the glovebox of my VW Beetle:”….hmmm!…and we wonder what other little “surprises” she had stashed away there?…a cassette of Khamarl, perhaps?

  30. Jaycee,

    No cassette player in either of my Beetles.

    The other contents were the instruction manual and a pair of gloves.

  34. OH turned on my seat warmer in our rental Chevy Cruze in Maui heading back from Haleakalā National Park. It’s higher than Mt. Kosciuszko, so I didn’t notice at first – but I was feeling decidedly feverish as we descended until I figured out why. (She claims it was an “accident”, trying to turn on the heater.)

  35. “Oh, sure – for use on the likes of Jaycee . . .”…punch-drunk or blind-drunk…can i choose?

  36. Jaycee,

    You may.

    However, from my perspective (in my early 20s) it would have been self-protection.

  37. Years ago in Glen Innes in mid winter I watched stupified as a Sydneysider threw a bucket of hot water on his heavily frosted car windscreen. A huge explosion and glass, ice and water all over the cabin of his car. He couldn’t comprehend exactly what he had achieved for several moments, then headed off to the garage in a quick retreat.

  38. Kambah Mick,

    I could never understand the “logic” of those who would toss hot water over an iced windscreen.

    There are certain laws that cannot be broken.

  39. Mick,

    You hear about things like that. It’s quite something to have seen it.

  40. Ah memories. A foreign government sentences two Australians to death. Proper Outrage. Compare that with a Government prepared to lose the lives of hundreds picked up at sea by the Tampa. No retreat. Bravo. Where was the media then?

  42. Al Palster.

    The Tampa?

    Back then, Margo Kingston was the first to challenge, when she was with the SMH. I think she challenged HoWARd directly and repeatedly.

    To her credit (and that may be the only occasion where I will ever give her credit), Virginia Trioli also took on Peter Reith (I think) over the lack of evidence in the photographs he claimed were proof positive.

    For the rest, pretty much crickets.

  43. The ‘consequences’ will be Indonesia allowing a deluge of boats full of asylum seekers to head this way.

  48. Leone,

    I hope the Indons choose fair weather and give them decent boats.

    And a whole lot of Indonesian Air Force planes following to film and photograph what happens when Our Fearless Boys in Blue rock up.

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