Word: kutz
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Surprisingly, the leaders of the very movement Jaruzelski crushed agree--and have emerged among his staunchest defenders. Former activist Kazimierz Kutz, now a member of parliament, says Jaruzelski's actions allowed moderates on both sides to prevail, eventually leading to the Round Table talks that brought a peaceful end to Poland's communist regime in 1989. Even Lech Walesa, the legendary Solidarity leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner who was interned for almost a year in the clampdown, has said that Jaruzelski would have been considered a "great patriot" had he lived in different times and that the trial...
...Eventually we [Solidarity] won, not thanks to a bloody slaughter but to the Round Table negotiations," Kutz argues. "It was a great phenomenon." He also praises Jaruzelski's efforts to explain motives and circumstances behind the martial law. Having stepped down in 1990 after serving as president of Poland during the transition period, the general published books and gave numerous interviews about the clampdown, forcing Poles to rethink their recent history. "He is a man who bears his crown of thorns with unusual dignity and unusual strength," says Kutz...
...Another former opposition activist, Kazimierz Kutz, now a filmmaker and member of parliament also defends the general. "If not for the martial law," Kutz argues, "there would have been many more victims. Had Solidarity started to fight, the army would have had to use weapons and there would have been a massacre. Jaruzelski prevented a real civil war." Kutz was interned during the martial law and his pregnant wife suffered a miscarriage after having searched prisons to find her husband. Despite his personal tragedy, Kutz can still see merit in the crackdown, which, he says, stopped radicals and allowed moderates...
...images out of Abu Ghraib prison fit into the canon of torture tactics? Soldiers claim they were told by military intelligence officers to "soften up" the detainees for questioning. Certainly, putting hoods over prisoners' heads and stripping them naked would conform to common, if primitive, interrogation-prep tactics. Ilan Kutz, an Israeli psychiatrist who has witnessed military training for interrogations, confirms that sexual humiliation is also a well-known tool. "The idea of interrogation is to break down the person so all his resistance is shot, and then he'll tell you anything," he says. "In the process, sexual humiliation...
...trick is knowing when to stop. The behavior of the military police at Abu Ghraib seems to blur into hazing, sadism and mockery. Whatever the motives, says Kutz, the soldiers virtually guaranteed that the inmates would be susceptible to post-traumatic stress--and useless to interrogators. "This is stupidity. It's not useful. In fact, it's harmful," says a former Israeli military intelligence interrogator. "After a man's humiliated like this, if there was a chance he'd open up, now there's no way. If there was a chance to recruit him and send him back...