Mission Statement - De-Spinning the Pro-Taser Propaganda

Yeah right, 'Excited Delirium' my ass...

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The primary purpose of this blog is to provide an outlet for my observations and analysis about tasers, taser "associated" deaths, and the behaviour exhibited by the management, employees and minions of Taser International. In general, everything is linked back to external sources, often via previous posts on the same topic, so that readers can fact-check to their heart's content. This blog was started in late-2007 when Canadians were enraged by the taser death of Robert Dziekanski and four others in a short three month period. The cocky attitude exhibited by the Taser International spokespuppet, and his preposterous proposal that Mr. Dziekanski coincidentally died of "excited delirium" at the time of his taser-death, led me to choose the blog name I did and provides my motivation. I have zero financial ties to this issue.



Tuesday, February 10, 2009

The 'glowing cigarette' taser challenge

My Taser challenges are apparently so difficult and risky that Taser and their fan-boys go all-silent on us when I challenge them.

They've never agreed to turn the trainees and volunteers around to henceforth take all taser training and demo hits directly into the chest (instead of the back) to more clearly demonstrate, in a non-fake manner, their high confidence in the inherent cardiac safety of tasers.


Here is The Taser Challenge for Feb 2009.

Simply answer the very easy question found below:

Background:

If tasers can be used for pain compliance in the 'Touch Torture'
(a.k.a. Drive Stun) mode, as they are every single day (even on misbehaving children), then obviously other similar options should also be acceptable.

Let's explore this line of thinking and see where it leads.


Instead of using a taser in Touch Torture
mode, why can't the police just use the glowing end of a lit cigarette to cause pain to attempt to induce (force, verb) compliance?


These two options seem to be similar in many respects: Both the taser and a lit cigarette can leave minor burns. Both cause more-than-intense pain, clearly amounting to 'torture'.

The minor differences are all in favour of the cigarette: The cigarette is probably safer from the point of view of '
contributing to' an immediate, untimely and 'purely coincidental' (sic) death. The effects with a hot cigarette are far more predictable and will be self-evident. And cigarettes are certainly much less expensive than tasers.


A taser used in its direct application 'Touch Torture' mode, and the red hot tip of a glowing cigarette, seem to be perfectly equivalent from a functional point of view.


So please explain:

What are the legal, moral, and ethical differences?



Well smarty-pants? Ya got an answer for that?

What's wrong? Cat got your tongue?

Have you gone all-silent on us again?


For those keeping score, the justification for using tasers in Touch Torture mode has just been completely shredded by way of a simple 'reductio ad absurdum' argument. We assume the opposition's argument is true, and then we see where it leads. If the result is absurd, then the original argument has been irrefutably proven to be false. In other words, torture is torture. Even if it's packaged up in a nifty plastic toy-like shape.

2 comments:

Save the Holy Headland said...

Excellent point, argued with perfect logic - Thanks again E.D. and keep up the good work. Please post a link to my blog RESIST CARDIAC ARREST via the savetheholyheadland.blogspot.com I wish to become your ally in the blogosphere!

Jeremy Schanche RCA

Excited-Delirium.com said...

The post link for the YouTube collection is a bit off. It's something like 'Do Not Publish'.

And the Resist Cardiac Arrest labels come in two variations, with and with dashes.

Let me know when you've updated these and I'll add you to the link.

Nice YouTube collection. Very valuable work.