Well, Fotheringay-Phipps, I suppose it could be that no one is convinced by your arguments because we’re all moronic sheep who refuse to think logically. Or it could be that you didn’t convince anyone because your arguments made no sense.
They laughed at Galileo. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. And now they’re laughing at you, which proves to you that you’re right.
You know why people don’t like you? You’re defending torture. That means you’re automatically an asshole. You may be a stupid asshole, you may be a troll asshole, you may be some other form of asshole that I haven’t thought of yet, but the fact remains that you’re some kind of asshole or another. That is your crime, that is also your punishment.
These are the words of a man unable to distinguish between:
[ul]
[li]A man; and[/li][li]A woman.[/ul][/li][/quote]
Over the internet, yeah. I share that failing with pretty much everyone else out there. No shame in that.
You share your inability to follow a logical thought process with a lot of people too. But not everyone.
I’m sure that’s about as true as the rest of your jive.
That pretty much sums it up. Along the lines of what I wrote above.
You know, Fotheringay, since you’re so convinced that we’re just a bunch of jerks who are too wrapped up in our own mistaken *Weltanschauung *to be enlightened by the glory of your intelligent arguments, why don’t you give up and leave the boards? You can go find some nice bobbleheads to agree with everything you vomit forth, and we can go back to debating with people who respond better than a typed memo sitting in a chair.
Shot From Guns, I’m sorry, but you are doing a damned poor job of developing an argument in favor of considering the poster in question anything, let alone stupid or trollish. Come on, man/woman, step up to the plate and hit a home run, for goodness sake!!!
As I said before, there’s always the intelligent minority. Not surprising that you failed to pick up on that.
Some people like discussing and debating things with people that they disagree with. Others - and they know who they are - prefer the comfort of knowing in advance that they are secure - that everyone pretty much agrees with their conclusions and no one will pick their arguments apart too carefully.
But I do have to congratulate you on your use of the word “Weltanschauung”. You must be Very Smart after all.
Too lazy to go read the thread in question, are we? Here’s an example summary of the portion of the discussion immediately leading up to this pitting:
#142: I argue that not all torture is physical, some of it is shaming; give examples of prisoners smeared in feces or being forced to masturbate
#248: FB, while simultaneously insisting that everyone’s opinion on what constitutes torture is equally valid (quoting Mao, who we all know was such a bastion of free and independent thought :rolleyes:), responds to me to say that being shamed is unpleasant, but not torture, and he would rather be shamed in the manner I’d described than publicly arrested, which is why it’s not torture
#250: I question that FP would actually rather be captured by his enemies, smeared in feces, and forced to masturbate in front of them than be arrested in front of people he knows. I also point out that we’ve already debunked the use of suffering that is incedental to lawful punishments as an argument in favor of torture.
#251: FP wants me to leave off the “captured by enemies” (he says it’s not part of the comparison) and the masturbation (because it’s not part of an FBI quote cited elsewhere in the discussion). He also says he wasn’t paying attention when we talked about incedental suffering and he disagrees with it even though he doesn’t know what the discussion was, and creates a strawman of my argument about it, finishing up with something about “legal technicalities” (i.e., the distinction between torturing someone for information/punishment and the suffering someone undergoes that is incidental to legal action taken against them such as embarassment during arrest or the hardship of being separated from the outside world while in prison).
#253: Whack-a-Mole points out that being a captive is pretty fucking central to torture (as one would think would be obvious to anyone who weren’t trying to stack the argument deck in their own favor). He also pulls out a specific cite about lawful sanctions.
#255: I also point out that if you’re in control of a situation it isn’t torture, and refuse to leave out forced masturbation, since it’s a good example of humiliation as torture and we’ve documented cases of it happening. I link to the place in the thread where we’d previously addressed the “well locking someone up in prison makes them suffer so if you’re against torture you can’t lock people in prison” crap.
#256: FP says that if he were already imprisoned, being smeared with feces etc. would be less humiliating than being publicly arrested. He also says that he’s only commenting on some specific interrogations that don’t include the forced masturbation example, despite the fact that that was exactly what he directly replied to in this particular thread of discussion. He also continues to insist that “deliberately inflicted” versus “incedental to lawful sanctions” is a technicality, despite having been shown that it isn’t, both by law and logic.
#258: I point out that FP is changing his argument mid-way through and demonstrate that calling the distinction a “technicality” is bullshit.
#259: FP claims that forced masturbation has other aspects than humiliation. He then says that the UN “incedental to lawful sanctions” distinction is a technicality because it serves their purposes. The Magical FP Definition of Torture is entirely based on the level of suffering. He then insists that I agree with him that being publicly arrested is “comparable to defecation”–I’m not sure if he’s trying to refer here to my example of being smeared with shit, or to the FBI cite about detainees being chained in puddles of their own urine and feces.
#262: I ask FP what other aspects forced masturbation has and say that because it doesn’t physically harm you, by his definition it must not be torture. I then respond to his UN challenges by observing that the only problem with this nigh-universal definition of torture is that it doesn’t agree with the Magical FP Definition. I then further argue that I CAN exclude his “torture” example of being publicly arrested on the basis of the UN definition, because it is THE FUCKING UN DEFINITION. Similarly to the way that if he claimed a new and bizarre meaning for an established word, the OED would back up my argument in favor of the established definition more than his “but that’s what I think it means.” I then refuse to agree to his preposterous “being arrested is worse than being smeared with shit.”
Gotta throw somebody.
Besides, it’s only a bottomless pit for you if your captors have determined by careful observation (or trial and error) that this has a particularly powerful effect on you. Hairsplitting debates what is and isn’t psychological torture are foolish in their generalizations. Maybe being smeared in feces is devastating to some, earns a shrug from others. Maybe being ordered to masturbate is devastating to some, etc. I’ve no doubt that interrogators who care more about breaking a suspect than obtaining information will try various approaches and see what has the greatest effect. In the literary reference I gave, Winston Smith was broken when confronted with his greatest personal fear, and this after more conventional methods like beatings, electroshock and extended mind-games.
FP’s statements on what is and isn’t torture deserved to be dismissed, not argued.
While you are pretending that the discussion began with post #142, it actually began in post #123, with my commenting that the specific instances cited by Whack-a-Mole (in #122) were not torture IMO. There was no mention of forced masturbation in #122, and I did not discuss whether it was or was not torture. You entered that discussion and introduced the topic of forced masturbation and I initially demurred addressing it, since I had made no claims about it. But you said that it was analogous to feces (which were addressed in #122) in that it was an issue of humiliation, and I suggested that it was more analogous to rape which has aspects that go beyond mere humiliation.
See above. The “FBI quote cited elsewhere” is not, as you pretend, some obscure quote cited “elsewhere”. My initial comments about what is or is not torture were expressed about this quote, and my entire position in this thread was about the treatment of detainees described in this quote.
That you could enter into the discussion and either pretend/assume & represent that it was in a vacuum is either dishonest or stupid or both.
Here’s another example of you being unable to follow a logical thought process.
The question here was what level of suffering rises to the level of torture. I maintain that humiliation, such as the “feces” example, does not. To this end, I compared the humiliation of lying in feces to the humiliation of being perp-walked. It was a comparison between two types of humiliation, and relevant to whether one type is torture.
In that context, it’s not valid to call for a comparison of the preference for “being captured and feces” versus “perp-walked” alone. This is not an IMHO thread. The comparison was specifically about two types of humiliation, and this calls for a comparison of the humiliation aspect alone.
[What you could argue is that being humiliated once captured is worse than being humiliated when not captured. I acknowledged that in my response.]
Again, this is a false statement. My comments were about post #122, and all subsequent comments were in support of that initial comment. As I noted in that post (#256) “I’ve not signed up to defend anything that’s “documented”. I was commenting on some specific interrogation descriptions cited by (IIRC) Whack-a-Mole.” Somehow that seems to have sailed over your head, what do you know.
I did not make this claim.
But it’s at least partially dependent on it. So if someone says “X level of suffering is not torture because it’s less than Y level of suffering which is not torture”, then a proper response is to address whether Y level of suffering is torture instead of insisting that “we can’t even discuss Y because it’s not torture for other reasons”. In that context, the fact that Y is not torture because it’s incidental is a technicality.
My position throughout that thread was about the FBI cite. I was not inclined to quibble about the difference, if any, between the two scenarios you describe here.
There’s more good stuff from you in that thread, but I’m not inclined to look anything up at this time. I doubt if there’s all that much interest from the assembled masses.