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Accompanied by a mentalist they rush into someone's quarters and start "looking for it." The mentalist guides them to whatever the man wishes to hide: a tube of vaseline, an enema, a hand- kerchief with come on it, a weapon, unlicensed alcohol. And they always submitted the suspect to the most humiliating search of his naked person on which they make sneering and derogatory comments. Many a latent homosexual was carried out in a straitjacket when they planted vaseline in his ass. Or they pounce on any object. A pen wiper or a shoe tree. "And what is this supposed to be for?" "It's a pen wiper." "A pen wiper, he says." "I've heard everything now." "I guess this is all we need. Come on, you." After a few months of this the citizens cowered in corners like neurotic cats. Of course the Annexia police processed suspected agents, saboteurs and political deviants on an assembly line basis. As regards the interrogation of suspects, Ben- way has this to say: "While in general I avoid the use of torture-torture locates the opponent and mobilizes resistance-the threat of torture is useful to induce in the subject the appropriate feeling of helplessness and gratitude to the interrogator for withholding it. And torture can be em- ployed to advantage as a penalty when the subject is far enough along with the treatment to accept punish- ment as deserved. To this end I devised several forms of disciplinary procedure. One was known as The Switchboard. Electric drills that can be turned on at any time are clamped against the subject's teeth; and he is instructed to operate an arbitrary switchboard, to put certain connections in certain sockets in response to bells and lights. Every time he makes a mistake the drills are turned on for twenty seconds. The signals are gradually speeded up beyond his reaction time. Half an hour on the switchboard and the subject breaks down like an overloaded thinking machine. "The study of thinking machines teaches us more about the brain than we can learn by introspective methods. Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets. Ever pop coke in the mainline? It hits you right in the brain, activating connections of pure pleasure. The pleasure of morphine is in the viscera. You listen down into yourself after a shot. But C is electricity through the brain, and the C yen is of the brain alone, a need without body and without feeling. |
