A new comment policy? 6 May 2011 From Barry Ritholz’s blog Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data, ability to repeat discredited memes, and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Also, be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor even implied. Any irrelevancies you can mention will also be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous. I withdraw any nasty comments I might ever have made about Americans and Irony. Also see this post of his on why torture is not good for gathering information. We have come so far that people have to use an intelligence success based on the hard work of the old sort and use it to try to support the use of torture? There is only one reason for torture: to torture. Administrative Humor Politics Administrative
Administrative A piece of useful software for Mac-using teachers 15 Oct 2007 I gave a lecture yesterday on animal minds, and in the course of it tried to show some YouTube videos in Keynote by linking to the pages (tool using crows, by the way, and the excerpt from Life of Birds by Attenborough on Japanese crows using stop lights to get… Read More
Censorship Defending liberal democracy 17 Mar 20094 Oct 2017 I urge people to go read Russell Blackford’s submission to the Human Rights consultative committee in Australia. It deals with the changes and challenges to civil liberties in the modern era and although Australia-focussed, it generalises well once you get past our odd spelling conventions and local events. Read More
Administrative Admin: May be off line for a week 13 Feb 2011 So I am trying to transfer my blog and domain name to a new host, and am about to be without internet for a week, as I move into a new flat. These two facts may interfere with a good outcome. If things go well, you won’t notice. But things… Read More
Hurrah, I can finally start working through my list of people to call “pedophilic communist sexist pigs!”
I ask myself: what would have happened if, at the end of World War Two, we found that the Gestapo or SS had been routinely applying these techniques to Allied prisoners-of-war. Would we have simply let them go saying that they were just using “enhanced interrogation techniques”, nothing to see here, move long now or would we have hauled them into court and charged them with practicing torture? I know what I think would have happened. Article 1 of the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, to which the US is signatory, defines torture as: Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person, information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions. Waterboarding is torture by that definition. It should be stopped for the physical and moral well-being of both the tortured and the torturers alike. Those who are lazy and misguided enough to think that torture is the only way to get information out of enemy agents or combatants could do worse than read the memoirs of the Dutch counter-intelligence officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Oreste Pinto who worked for the British in WWII. He is regarded as one of the greatest in his field and his successes were apparently all achieved without having to resort to “enhanced interrogation techniques”.
Obama was not my first choice for president and I never understood why some of the left and liberals thought he was “one of us”. Since I knew he was not, he did not disappoint me too much until he sanctioned the torture of Pvt. Manning. Now, well, the hell with him.
Susan Silberstein: Obama was not my first choice for president and I never understood why some of the left and liberals thought he was “one of us”. Since I knew he was not, he did not disappoint me too much until he sanctioned the torture of Pvt. Manning. Now, well, the hell with him. Is it fair to say he sanctioned it, or that the US “justice” system has normalised isolation torture?
Manning is subject to so-called military justice. When questioned about his treatment, Obama indicated that he feels Manning is being treated appropriately. Whether or not that is a public or an actual personal stance makes no difference and I’m sure I do not have to explain to these readers why (explanation available upon request). Maybe we can say that Obama’s pronouncement normalizes torture.