Marti Abernathey

1984

Is there an official Ministry of Truth that no one told me about? It seems that they will investigate those bastards that dared to release the actual Saddam video. Does it bother anyone else how they tried carrying it out in what looked like a pit of a basement, with no media coverage, no independent observers… nothing?!?

I don’t support the use of the death penalty. But if we are going to sanction our government to kill, we ought to be able to watch it. If it’s too brutal for us to see, isn’t it too brutal for us to do?

On a connected note, what the fuck is up with Canada.com. Do they get their story lines from Karl Rove directly? It seems to me their bias is quite obvious here, here, and here.

war, what is it good for? | admin January 3, 2007

2 Comments

By Courtney, January 4, 2007 @ 2:01 pm

I agree completely. I recently finished reading “The End of Faith” by Sam Harris. In a chapter on ethics, he talks about how easy it is for us to rationalize flying in over and dropping bombs, creating thousands of civilian casualties, and then calling it “collateral damage.” But we find the idea of torture horrifying and morally offensive. It takes a “certain kind of person” to live with torturing another human being.
He goes on to ask how many lives could be saved if, instead of mass-murdering men, women, and children on the ground, one person were able to get some amount of information out of a “suspected terrorist.” Of course, my gut reaction to things like torture are “It’s wrong, wrong, wrong,” but Harris’ points are valid and really made me think.
By Marti Abernathey, January 4, 2007 @ 2:29 pm

“He goes on to ask how many lives could be saved if, instead of mass-murdering men, women, and children on the ground, one person were able to get some amount of information out of a ’suspected terrorist.’”

Thing is, I’ve not seen one study that shows that torture ever works. It reminds me of the many of the excuses for dropping bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The common thought is that dropping the bombs saved lives.

Dwight D. Eisenhower -
“In 1945 Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.”

Torturing hasn’t been shown to be useful or affective. Bombing innocents doesn’t make sense to me. What’s the difference between what we did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and 9/11? To me, the only difference is the number of dead.