In 2004, the rebuilding is not yet complete. Maybe this adds a note of verisimilitude? In Chicago, miles of ruined buildings surround the inhabited sections of what is described as a dying city. Does this mean that everyone is to be relocated? The ruined section has grass-covered streets, creaking joists, pattering, glaring rats, bare rooms full of dust and cobwebs and dust-covered windows that daylight cannot penetrate. Quite a description. And a safe and appropriate place for the interrogation of a secret service agent by anti-government conspirators. We learn that the nationalists of a dozen countries cooperate against world government. They could argue for a federation instead of an enforced union but we gather that what they want is a return to international conflict.
Eventually, an agricultural organization will buy the ruined section of Chicago and the remaking of the world will continue. So progress continues but must be defended.
14 comments:
It's amazing how long it took for the best form of coercive interrogation to be developed. All the baroque structures of torture turned out to be completely unnecessary and inefficient... perhaps people clung to them for non-functional reasons.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Do you mean the methods used by Flandry with his Ardazirho prisoner in WE CLAIM THESE STARS and as discussed by me in my "Sensory Deprivation" article?
Some of those non-functional reasons for clinging to inefficient methods of interrogation would be sadism and a LIKING for cruelty.
Happy New Year! Sean
Sean: no, sensory deprivation can work.
What works really well is asphyxiation -- waterboarding is the commonest forms.
This isn't extremely -painful-, like crushing organs or burning.
What it does is hit fear reflexes down below the conscious level.
There's an old saying: "A coward dies a thousand deaths, a brave man only once."
Waterboarding simulates drowning -- in other words, you can make someone feel like they're dying, over and over and over.
That will break anyone eventually, because it bypasses conscious thought and control. It doesn't matter that they know consciously that they're not going to die; the hindbrain takes over.
(I had my head held underwater until I breathed it in and passed out once, a long time ago. I still have absolutely no idea why I didn't die: it was extremely unpleasant.)
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I hadn't realized water boarding was so effective! So that, as well as sensory deprivation, seems to be the best methods for breaking resistance to truthfully answering questions. At least when you are not in the field and desperately hard pressed for time. When that happens more drastic methods might be used, as we see with the Marcomannic prisoner interrogated by Artorius in TO TURN THE TIDE.
Happy New Year! Sean
About ruins: note that WWII ruins were being repaired in many parts of Europe right into the 1960's.
There are still places in Berlin where you can see discoloration in linear patches where someone put cement or plaster over the holes made by a burst of machine-gun fire in 1945.
In the 1950's, that sort of thing was common as dirt.
In Liverpool, a church damaged during WWII has been preserved in that condition as a reminder. The building is closed off but office workers eat sandwich lunches in its garden.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And were ruins sometimes bulldozed flat and new structures built on top of them?
Happy New Year! Sean
I've always thought King Charles' remark (made a long time ago) that while the Luftwaffe destroyed historic buildings in London, at least they didn't replace them with Modernist aesthetic atrocities was rather witty.
And Poundbury, the community he built in Dorset, is quite impressive, I think -- it illustrates how a town should be built to human scale, and I like the architecture.
Not a perfect man, but he tries and often he succeeds.
Sean: sometimes. OTOH, in many countries they took bombed-out ruins and carefully reconstructed the buildings from photographs, to reestablish the link to the past. The Poles did that fairly often, even the Communists.
Still, if you go to Prague, you get a glimpse of what Central Europe was like before 1939, and it's very impressive.
One interesting thing I ran across in my research for TIDE was how uniform-looking Roman towns tended to be. Not absolutely so, but they all had common elements and generally a common style, especially in areas where there hadn't been cities before the Romans came.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, what you said about the new King Charles: "Not a perfect man, but he tries and often he succeeds." Anderson also liked the then Prince of Wales, in comments he made in one of his letters to me.
I was in London, in 1995, and I agree with King Charles' less than poor opinion of much of modern architecture! Will be looking up Poundbury.
Yes, I knew of how some cities destroyed in WW II, like Dresden and Warsaw, were carefully rebuilt to what they had looked like before 1939.
Fortunately, Vienna escaped being devastated in WW II, meaning the Kaiserstadt, the Imperial City of Austria-Hungary, survived to please us with its beauty.
Happy New Year! Sean
One thing that is certain is that he will not be with us as long as his mother.
The women of the Royal Family tend to extremely long lives. Healthy habits and good medical care, I suppose.
Even if King Charles lived as long as his mother, his reign would be much shorter, since she succeeded when she was in her 20's.
Whereas he succeeded at 73, the same age as me!
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
I agree, unless medical care and technology advances drastically, I don't expect Charles III to live more than another 20 to 25 years at most.
Happy New Year! Sean
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