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 Thu May 15, 2008 0:15 am Who cares? |
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I think they'll just look past torture by Muslim militants and leftist dictators, because the international activist types are scared of those guys.
Instead they'll harp on the United States and other democracies that don't torture as much or as brutally.
This allows the activists to indulge their egos and feel good about themselves without putting themselves in danger of getting a wire pushed up their urethra and having the juice turned on.
Robert Mugabe will still get the red carpet treatment in Paris, and some successor to Yasser Arafat will still win the Nobel Peace Prize. |
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Jamie (K)
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Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
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| Thu May 15, 2008 0:45 am Who cares? |
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| Quote: | | Instead they'll harp on the United States and other democracies that don't torture as much or as brutally. |
And you call me a relativist?
Includes all who torture, as far as I know:
| Quote: | | International law imposes an absolute prohibition on torture and on cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment (hereafter cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment is referred to as “ill-treatment”). Unlike other norms, countries are not allowed to derogate from it or balance it against other rights or values, even in emergency situations. Furthermore, for some time now, there has been broad consensus around the world that the absolute prohibition on torture and ill-treatment is customary law, meaning that it applies with respect to every country, organization, or person, for their acts committed anywhere, without regard to the application of one international convention or another. |
Shouldn't all who signed the covenant abide by it? |
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Molly
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| Thu May 15, 2008 0:50 am Who cares? |
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| Molly wrote: | | Quote: | | Instead they'll harp on the United States and other democracies that don't torture as much or as brutally. |
And you call me a relativist? |
Your relativism makes you incapable of realizing that that is not a relativist statement. |
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Jamie (K)
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 24 Feb 2006
Posts: 4720
Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
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| Thu May 15, 2008 0:53 am Who cares? |
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| Jamie (K) wrote: | | Molly wrote: | | Quote: | | Instead they'll harp on the United States and other democracies that don't torture as much or as brutally. |
And you call me a relativist? |
Your relativism makes you incapable of realizing that that is not a relativist statement. |
My knowledge of language use tells me that it is:
| Quote: | | as much or as brutally |
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Molly
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| Thu May 15, 2008 1:08 am Who cares? |
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Molly, you see no relativism in situations where things really are relative. You're not able to see moral distinctions based on degree. Plus, you often can't make moral distinctions because you don't seem to be able to distinguish between things that are human rights abuses or torture, and things that are merely unpleasant. You also don't seem able to perceive that some people do things to get themselves into the trouble they end up in. If some guy murdered two or three cops in New York and wound up in an American prison, then changed his name to something Muslim, put on a funny hat and started writing poetry (a common ploy), you'd be in the first row at the protests in Europe claiming he's an innocent bunny victimized by a brutal system.
I think I'm going to take on your way of thinking and start calling for an end to the brutal practice of vaccinating children. It's torture, because it hurts when the needle goes in, and it's a violation of human rights, because a few children are killed by vaccines each year. |
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Jamie (K)
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 24 Feb 2006
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Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
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| Thu May 15, 2008 1:36 am Who cares? |
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| Quote: | | Plus, you often can't make moral distinctions because you don't seem to be able to distinguish between things that are human rights abuses or torture, and things that are merely unpleasant. |
In that, I must be like your government/s.
| Quote: | | I think I'm going to take on your way of thinking and start calling for an end to the brutal practice of vaccinating children. It's torture, because it hurts when the needle goes in, and it's a violation of human rights, because a few children are killed by vaccines each year. |
Before you do that, can we try to understand your way of thinking? Are you saying that your govenment does not carry out torture - torture as described in the UN quote above? Or, are you saying that your government does carry out torture and that you condone it?
| Quote: | | You also don't seem able to perceive that some people do things to get themselves into the trouble they end up in. |
Now that's where you are wrong. Even on this forum, I've mentioned many things that your country has done to get itself, and many of us, into the trouble it's ended up in. |
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Molly
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| Thu May 15, 2008 1:55 am Who cares? |
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The UN consists mainly of countries run by Third World potentates who don't want anyone to interfere with their own torture and human rights violations, and so they point the finger at the US in order to distract the public. People like you fall for it.
Basically, I think that a lot depends on what your definition of torture is. Some democratic countries use interrogation methods that bleeding-heart types will call torture merely because the suspect doesn't have a nice day that day. They'll lump scary interrogation in with real torture, like breaking bones or electroshock, as if they were the same kind of thing, which they're not.
Another thing those people like to do is to pretend that the criminal acts of American soldiers are actual US policy, even when the abuses only came to their attention when the US military announced that they are investigating and arresting the soldiers.
The UN is not actually serious about human rights. If it were, its human rights commission wouldn't include countries like Cuba, the Congo, China, Malaysia, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Swaziland (there are tragic but funny stories about Swaziland), Zimbabwe(!) and -- get this! -- Sudan.
Since the UN can't even make the moral distinctions necessary to keep human rights violators and genocidal regimes off the human rights commission, nothing it does in the realm of human rights can be taken seriously. |
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Jamie (K)
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Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
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| Thu May 15, 2008 8:22 am Who cares? |
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The UN consists mainly of countries run by Third World potentates who don't want anyone to interfere with their own torture and human rights violations, and so they point the finger at the US in order to distract the public.
That another of your cliches, "consists mainly of".
People like you fall for it.
Wrong again. People like me know a lot about "Third World" potentates - I come for Nigeria, for goodness sake. |
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Molly
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| Thu May 15, 2008 9:58 am Who cares? |
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| Molly wrote: | | That another of your cliches, "consists mainly of". |
I have to use phrases like that, because if I just assume people understand that I'm just making a generalization (which allows exceptions), someone like you will assume I'm making a stereotype (without exceptions) and start ragging at me with the cliché "but not ALL of..."
To avoid setting off people who can't tell the difference between a generalization and a stereotype, I have to insert expressions like "mainly of", "many", "some", etc. Besides, "mainly of" was appropriate in my statement, because the UN also includes countries like Switzerland and Ireland, which definitely aren't run by abusive potentates.
I notice that when you feel you're losing an argument you start picking at language or accuse people of making up fantasy characters. |
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Jamie (K)
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 24 Feb 2006
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Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
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| Thu May 15, 2008 11:02 am Who cares? |
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| Quote: | | I have to use phrases like that, because if I just assume people understand that I'm just making a generalization (which allows exceptions), someone like you will assume I'm making a stereotype (without exceptions) and start ragging at me with the cliché "but not ALL of..." |
No, Jamie, to me "X consists mainly of..." means the same as "the main part of X is made up of". Am I wrong?
Here's a similar misleading quantifying expression:
| Quote: | | The BYU corpus is disproportionately weighted with texts from academic journals and literary sources, which often use English that people would be laughed at for speaking directly to other people. |
Recognise it? |
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Molly
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| Fri May 16, 2008 20:25 pm Who cares? |
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so let's define torture
is dressing up a bunch of terrorists as cheerleaders, or making them pose naked in cheerleader "forms" (like a pyramid)... is that really torture, or is it just embarrassing?
Is reading Harry Potter all day to a terrorist a form of torture? Or is it just annoying?
My first inclination is to define torture as an act that causes serious mental or physical pain to a person.... things like:
- Breaking someone's leg
- Pulling out someone's fingernails
- Making someone have sex with a sheep
- Pouring HCL on someone
etc.
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Prezbucky
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