log 7a

The first hotspot in “Time to Think About Torture” came when the author described forcing detainees to listen to rap as a form of torture. I'm not really a fan of rap, but I never thought that listening to in was a form of torture. I don't know if the author can be held as credible, as he seems like he is almost too eager to torture people. Granted, this essay was written soon after 9/11, so the author might have been angry when he wrote this paper. He goes on to describe how the country changed after the attack, and how torture became more widely acceptable in the United States. The next hotspot was the section about the truth serum. I always thought that truth serum was created by fiction and didn't really exist, so when I read this I was amazed to learn that such a substance actually exists. Although I soon learned that it didn't actually work, the fact that most people talk in response to torture cannot be disputed. I would imagine that it is difficult to determine what is true and what is false. There can be no sure fire methods to gain accurate information from people we are torturing, but the fastest way to gain any information at all is definitely torture. I would imagine that in the wake of 9/11, people were all to eager to approve torture and seek vengeance for what was done to us. The fact that we didn't catch these people ahead of time is unfortunate, because now we have to live in a paranoid world where getting on a plane is a giant security check, instead of how relatively easy it was back in the pre-9/11 days of this country.

The first hotspot in “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen” was when I learned the meaning of the term “Canada”. I was puzzled by this at first, and even more so when I learned its meaning. The term is used to describe people who are part of a labor squad to unload the Jewish prisoners from the train cars to send them to either the chambers or to work. I am still unsure why the term “Canada” was used to describe this group, but I hope to learn more through discussion.

The second hotspot was when the Jewish woman ran from her child on page 166. I imagine that the woman was trying to save the child by running from he kid, but due to the child's cries for her, the guards threw the child in with her. I didn't really like this story, I found it hard to follow and kind of boring to be completely honest. I know that this is a sort of autobiography from the author, and the hardships that these people endured were unthinkable. I was interested also by the fact that the author wrote from the perspective as one of the non-Jewish worker, and said he didn't really care what happened to the Jews. This is a lot different from the common viewpoint we are given, that is from the view of a Jewish person. This doesn’t make what the Nazi's did any better, it only shows what they did from a different view. To be honest I would probably do the same thing if I was in the same situation, simply because I would want to survive. It's kind of funny to see what people will do or how they change in order to protect themselves, and I can honestly say that I am probably no different from the author in this regard, and would probably act the same in his situation.