I got my butt kicked

[BT]

Oh my bad.

I thought we were all in this together.

Explain again why i should care about world hunger?

[Michael Tee]

Boy, you right-wingers really have a problem with judgment and proportion, don't you?  It's part and parcel of your inability to grasp the real world.   I'll be happy to explain this to you.

1.  I love my wife and kids more than anyone else in the world.

2.  I love my neighbours but not as much as I love my wife and kids.

3.  I love some poor dumb fuck in Central Africa who's gonna die of hunger or AIDS, but not as much as I love  my neighbour.

Can you figure out the rest of it?  That if I tortured anyone, it would be to save my kids, not my neighbour, not my country and not the poor dumb fuck in Central Africa.

That if I could feed my wife and kids and still have some resources left over, I'd be happpy to feed my neighbour if he needed it, and if I still had something left over, I'd even try to help out the guy in Africa.  That I'd sacrifice everything to feed my wife and kids, not very much to feed my neighbour and very, very  little to feed the African.

But we're all in this together, and that's why you should care about world hunger.  Just care a little more about feeding your own family first.

There, BT - - reality isn't so hard to grasp after all, is it?

[BT]

So when it is determined that you might have enough to help that poor dumb fuck in africa do you deliver the aid yourself or do you delegate it ?

[Michael Tee]

I haven't given to anti-hunger or anti-AIDS campaigns so far.  If I did, I'd probably give to OXFAM.   I don't have the time to get involved personally.  I've always been more involved in the campaign against torture.  It's my no. 1 priority in terms of helping out others.  It's absolutely the worst fucking thing that I can imagine.  And for at least the last thirty years, most of the worst of it was coming from U.S.-allied governments in Latin America, Indonesia, the Arab world, etc.  The U.S. has set the clock back almost a hundred years with regard to the abolition of torture.

[BT]

If others wanted to give aid would you begrudge them using Oxfam as the conduit?

[Michael Tee]

No, why?  OXFAM's probably the best conduit.  I don't begrudge anything like that.    To me, torture is the worst affliction, but obviously hunger and AIDS afflict far more people.  The most pathetic victims are the children and relatively few children are the victims of torture.  But don't think it doesn't happen. 

[BT]

So if enough people think that helping the poor dumb fucks in Africa is worthy, delegating to an organization equipped to deliver those services is fine with you. This reality bizness is tuff stuff. Bear with me.

Earlier in the thread you stated that the whole tangent about what you would do if it was your daughter was a straw man because it would never happen to your daughter. Did i get that right?

[Michael Tee]

Sure.  It's bullshit because none of the tortures in the entire history of torture ever saved the torturer's daughter.  That stuff is pure fascist fiction.

[BT]

Are you saying aggressive interrogation techniques never obtained information that saved someones daughter?

Do they keep statistics on this? Can you provide a source for that claim?

[Michael Tee]

Now you're moving the goal-posts.  You asked what I'd do to save MY  daughter.  Saving someone else's daughter is a wash - - to save her, someone else's son or daughter would have to be tortured.  I wouldn't do it.  I'm not even 100% sure I'd do it for MY daughter, but I probably would.

Face reality, BT.  My daughter is more important to me than anyone else's daughter.  I don't have a RIGHT to torture to save my daughter, if I did it, I'd be breaking an ironclad rule.  But I'm just human.  My daughter is very real to me.  The other girl who isn't my daughter, she's less real to me in that she MEANS less to me.   Just like the guy I'd have to torture means less to me. 

[BT]

Would you condemn the other guy for doing what he could to save his daughter?

[Michael Tee]

You know, you're asking some very good questions.  The problem is, they're not really connected to reality.  It seems to me that with all the people tortured by Americans and their satellites or puppets or whatever you want to call them, very few lives have been saved.  Even if torture could have stopped Sept. 11, it's just not permissible.  Before technology permitted 911s, there were equally disastrous things looming in the minds of the governments of the day - - regicide, overthrow of a monarchy, Protestantism, whatever - - and torture was an acceptable way of preventing these disasters.  And over time, led more often than not by British thinkers and jurists, torture was abolished in one jurisdiction after another.  And now it's coming back.  Why?  to prevent regicide?  NO.  To roll back the Protestant Reformation?  No.  It's to stop "terrorism."  But "terrorism" is just the bugaboo of the moment.  Torture is wrong.  It doesn't save lives in reality or it doesn't save any more lives in today's reality than it would have saved in the past.  Obviously a Protestant victory in the Wars of Religion would have meant some Catholic heads would roll, plenty of heads, but torture as a means to prevent it?  Torture as a means to stop a future Guy Fawkes from returning England to Catholicism?

Whenever there was torture, there was "justification."  It was no better then than it is today.  It's bullshit and torture is an abomination.  There is no justification and there never was.

[Michael Tee]

<<Would you condemn the other guy for doing what he could to save his daughter?>>

Not if it was really gonna save his daughter.

BT, I'm gonna have to catch some sleep.  Shoulda gone long ago, there's a really big day coming up.  I'll finish this conversation sometime tomorrow.

[Michael Tee]

Any human being should know that torture is just wrong.  If that human being is a father whose daughter is in great danger, and that the victim's information could save her, then obviously he's torn.

If it's not my daughter that could be saved, then I'm NOT torn.

Very simple.  I'm more distressed at the prospect of bad shit happening to my daughter than to anyone else's daughter.  That's just real life, BT.  Can't change it.

So any father has an excuse when his own daughter introduces an element of stress that is sufficient to cause deviance from the moral rule.  Nobody else has that excuse.  So in the real world, no torturer has an excuse.

[Plane]

If you had children in the military, perhaps you wouldn't want there to be any chance of them receiving the same kind of torture we are using on our enemies. 

That is the pragmatic approach. 

Allowing us to be a country that tortures is like being a prissy old man who's scared to death of mice.  So scared and panicked is he, when he thought he saw one  in the corner of the kitchen,  he starts blasting away with his machine gun.   All Grandma's dishes, shattered.  He hits the propane tank outside, it explodes, the house is a total loss.  He gets out, just barely.   

This is not pragmatic at all ,our guys get torture in the first place ,is your theroy that what is sause for the goose is sause for the gander?
There is absolutely no pragmatism in declairing that there will be no punishment of any kind for people who we catch no matter how ours are treated.

I would not mind haveing higher standards , but a zero tolerance policy is asking for problems.

And there is no use in an appea or reciprosity when the opposition has already offended.