Don't Try This At Home

For those of you who are wondering how bad waterboarding could possibly be, here's a taste via Andrew Sullivan:

"At the time my lungs emptied and I began to draw water, I would have sold my children to escape. There was no choice, or chance, and willpower was not involved.

I never felt anything like it, and this was self-inflicted with a watering can, where I was in total control and never in any danger.

And I understood.

Waterboarding gets you to the point where you draw water up your respiratory tract triggering the drowning reflex. Once that happens, it's all over. No question.

Some may go easy without a rag, some may need a rag, some may need saran wrap.

Once you are there it's all over.

I didn't allow anybody else to try it on me. Inconceivable. I know I only got the barest taste of what it's about since I was in control, and not restrained and controlling the flow of water.

But there's no chance. No chance at all.

So, is it torture?

I'll put it this way. If I had the choice of being waterboarded by a third party or having my fingers smashed one at a time by a sledgehammer, I'd take the fingers, no question.

It's horrible, terrible, inhuman torture. I can hardly imagine worse. I'd prefer permanent damage and disability to experiencing it again. I'd give up anything, say anything, do anything.

The Spanish Inquisition knew this. It was one of their favorite methods.

It's torture. No question. Terrible terrible torture. To experience it and understand it and then do it to another human being is to leave the realm of sanity and humanity forever. No question in my mind."

So there you have it folks, the next time some wingnut tries to sell you on the notion that this is not torture, well now this is just one more example of how wrong they are.

A Message for Harper and Clement from 1980s Ron Paul

Now that Canada's Newest. Government. EVAR. is launching (relaunching?) some kind of war on drugs in this country, here's something from Ron Paul (ht):

Drug Companies are not "Charities"

Andrew Sullivan dropped a stinker today, it seems that he's confused corporations with charities. Don't believe me? Here it is:

"Pioneers of new technology and new medicine are rarely regarded as humanitarians by the media or the liberal intelligentsia... [snip] I'm not saying charity-workers do not deserve our support and praise. I'm saying that the definition needs to be expanded. But that would include the drug companies, wouldn't it?"

I can appreciate that as someone who essentially owes his life to new innovations in pharmaceuticals Sullivan might feel a soft spot for them, but that's just silly. Drug companies take a very substantial chunk of change for their innovations, they are paid in full. Charity is giving without expecting reward, drug companies expect a reward. They may be helpful, but they do expect a financial reward.

What kind of cure is this?

Some guy named David Harsanyi has his knickers in a knot because major news organizations won't tell you that smoking somehow lowers your risk of Parkinson's disease. Andrew Sullivan seems to have rather uncritically picked on up on this post and linked to Harsanyi.

I have to say that I tend roll my eyes at the cliche of "politically incorrect" information that "they" are keeping from you. I suspect that what is really keeping this out of the headlines is the reality that there are far greater risks to smoking that offset this alleged benefit. It's like touting how an increase in the murder rate could be good for the casket industry.

Despite having watched Parkinson's claim my grandfather's life, Harsanyi's magical smoking secret is not going to cause me to stroll down to the convenience store for a pack of smokes. There is no conspiracy here, David, it's just that most people know a bad bargain when they see it.

Black, Rumsfeld, and the "Ostrich" Defence

On the way into work this morning I heard on the radio that the judge in Conrad Black's trial has said that Conrad cannot use the Ostrich defence in his trial (i.e.: his lawyers can't plead that he had his head in the sand about this whole thing if he was deliberately ignorant).

Meanwhile it appears that Rumsfeld is attempting the very same thing when it comes to the issue of torture at Abu Ghraib. It now appears that he deliberately made a show of not looking at photographs of what had happened. Andrew Sullivan writes:

"The most plausible inference is obviously that he covered his tracks and feigned ignorance and did not look at the photographs to create a record of complete deniability. The incompetence comes from ordering torture at Abu Ghraib and not realizing that evidence of it would spread and disseminate through new media that Rumsfeld probably wasn't that familiar with."

One wonders whether Rumsfeld will get away with this defence for what amounts to a war crime when Black has been denied this defence in a white collar crime trial.

Training Terrorists

Dennis Perrin has this witty line here:

U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker told the Iranians they had to stop arming, funding and training Shiite militants. "We can do that ourselves," said Crocker. "We don't need to farm this out."

And while your musing about just how satirical such a comment might be, Andrew Sullivan indicates that the line is pretty thin.

What is Torture?

I have to give credit to Andrew Sullivan for sticking to this issue relentlessly. Anti-torture conservatives are important allies on what has to be one of the most vital moral issues facing the West right now. It makes it harder to deflect criticism on the grounds that this is just the whinging of the usual bleeding hearts - even if I think us bleeding hearts are 100% right on this one.

Anyway, today Sullivan quotes Greg Dejerejian on the need to have tough questions posed to both the sitting president and all the candidates about this matter. When is it torture? When is it enhanced interrogation? What is the difference between those two.

I'll save everyone some time and give you the working definition of the torturephiles: When we do it, it's enhanced interrogation; when they do it, it's torture.

How not to do Geopolitics

Every time I read that someone is trying to use the Bible as a basis for foreign policy decisions, I cringe. This has to be, on some level, a great exercise in laziness. Let's not investigate the history of colonialism, let's not bother with the whole Sunni-Shi'a thing, let's overlook the economic interests in the region (read: oil), and finally, let's avoid any attempt to understand things from several points of view. No. Instead let's just read one chapter in the Bible and assume that it is not talking about the time in which it was written but rather that it is talking about this particular moment in history.

Whatever insights might be gleaned from studying the Bible, I can almost guarantee you that foreign policy guidelines are not among them. Dobson should actually go out and, you know, read some modern history, or Middle Eastern cultural studies, or, well, you get my point.

Education as some kind of holy icon

An angry reader of Andrew Sullivan wrote a letter that Sullivan posted. In it the reader tries to bolster his argument on politics with his credentials:

I am a Hindu, Indian American, more educated than you (B.A, M.D., double board certified in subspeciality surgery, giving his specialty services for free for over 30% of my patients)

While I have a vague understanding that board certification is quite an achievement for a doctor, I'm not sure how this improves the political pronouncements made by such a person. I have my Masters degree, does that reflect on my general knowledge of everything? Put another way, should you trust me or my mechanic (who is a genius under the hood but, to my knowledge, not holding any kind of advanced degree) when it comes to mechanical advice.

I'm in favour of education generally. I think that everyone needs a good grounding in a variety of subjects, but at the same time we live in probably the most hyper-credentialist culture ever. "I'm a doctor, a good one, my political views are better than yours."

Dystopia? What Dystopia?

Andrew Sullivan takes time today to refer to Sao Paulo as a "post-capitalist dystopia" since the city had banned billboards. I looked at the group of Flickr photos myself and, well, it doesn't look so bad. I mean the light boxes (or whatever they call them) where the signs used to go obviously look empty, but if the boxes themselves were taken down, who would miss them? I wonder what the folks at illegalsigns.ca would say about this "dystopia?" At least no one would be suing them.

For the record, most of the futuristic dystopias produced by our cultural imagination have an oppressive amount of advertizing (see Bladerunner) or at least some kind of massive visual propaganda (see 1984). I also fail to see how this makes Sao Paulo a "post-capitalist" society either. Local governments put all kinds of restriction on capitalism - e.g.: you cannot open a slaughterhouse in a residential neighbourhood.

I do not know how any of this renders Sao Paulo a dystopia.

Is Atheism a Religion? Convenient Truths from Christianists

One of the most helpful things that Andrew Sullivan has done for political debate was to coin (or at least popularize) the term "Christianist" to differentiate religious belief from a specific political agenda that (in its current form) wants to fuse authoritarian state power with the certainty of evangelical protestant belief.

Anyway, today Sullivan finds another great Christianist quote:

"I don't believe there's such a thing as the separation of church and state. In fact, the First Amendment to the Constitution actually calls on the United States Congress to make sure, to ensure that people are allowed to practice their religion."

Or so says Leo Berman, sponsor of a bill in Texas to create a mandatory bible-study elective in all Texas schools. In this case, it appears that Berman does not consider atheism to be religion, it is the absence of religion in his eyes. At the same time though, one of the more common statements that those pursuing Christianist goals will make is that atheism is just another religion.

It seems in fact that the rhetorical divide is entirely obvious, when attempting to fuse religion with state power, Christianists determine that atheism is not a religion (therefore denying that atheists' rights are infringed by such attempts). When attempting to limit the presence of ideas that they consider proxies for atheism in the public square (most often this means evolution), Christianists resort to declaring atheism "just another religion."

For the record, a query of atheist websites reveals that most atheists do not consider what they believe to be religion (I guess my little business idea of selling Richard Dawkins icons is a bust now). I thought about this and remembered that many protestant Christians are also fond of making the claim that they have a relationship with Jesus, not a religion. I suspect that neither group though would want these assertions to undercut their legally defined religious freedoms.

Complete Ignorance of the Middle East

Once again we have a right-winger demonstrating just that quality. Andrew Sullivan linked to Michael Ledeen's suggestion that Iran is harboring bin Laden.

Once again people, why is there a civil war in Iraq?

A: Sunnis and Shi'as are engulfed in sectarian violence - there are centuries-old grievances between the two sects.

Okay, so what sect does the Iranian government belong to?

A: They are Shi'a.

And bin Laden?

A: He's a Sunni.

So why, when both al Qaeda and the Iranian government consider each other heretics, does anyone think they would work together? Let's look at Ledeen's own logic:

"it certainly fits; the Iranians love "disappeared" leaders. Their messianic leader is the 'vanished Imam;' they "disappeared" bin Laden after he was routed from Afghanistan"

Oh, so I guess that the Iranians are also working with Jimmy Hoffa and Amelia Earhart. Ideology doesn't matter, theology doesn't matter, Ledeen's figured it out, the Iranians just love anyone who has "disappeared" by some means. Who listens to this guy? Moreover, who does not understand how crucially, crucially important the Sunni-Shi'a divide is to understanding the Middle East after the past four years?

Car vs. Bicycle

This post reminded of when I was hit by a car. Or, more properly, when a car backed out right in front of me. I was riding in a straight line down a residential street and I clearly had the right of way.

Once I had gotten up the driver protested that he "didn't see me" as I had "come out of nowhere" or something. This was on a road that is dead straight its entire length. It's not enough that they hit me, their initial impulse, despite the overwhelming evidence was to attempt to suggest that I had appeared from nowhere as to invite an accident on myself.

Not a great day for Jesus

First there was the wealthy pastor and his impoverished flock, now this pithy observation from Andrew Sullivan:

"The religious right base actually seems to believe in torture. Along with making lots and lots of money, and losing weight, torture is now apparently a one of Jesus' core teachings."

There is no limit to how human avarice and cruelty can contort any philosophy - be it religious or secular - to satisfy the basest of desires.

Group Think on Global Warming

One of the right-wing blogosphere talking-points on climate change is that it's a result of "group-think" that scientists won't challenge for fear of ostracism. Maybe they were talking about themselves:

"Of 63 blogs queried, we get survey results like this:

Do you think mankind is the primary cause of global warming

Yes (0) -- 0%
No (59) -- 100%

The last one strikes me as astonishing. Some skepticism is warranted in climate change science. But the fact that the scientific community overwhelmingly believes that humans are primarily responsible for current climate change and none of the right-wing bloggers does suggests to me another sign of severe conservative meltdown. (Hat tip: Ann.)"

63 blogs is not the largest sample, but still, it's significant that they are in lock-step on this topic. It looks a lot like group-think and a fear of ostracism to me.

Steyn on Genocide

Andrew Sullivan has discovered that Mark Steyn is a bit too comfortable with genocide. Dinesh D'Souza and others have admitted that sometimes it is a strategy of the right-wing noise machine to take ultra-extreme views, views that they may find abhorrent, but do so to push the "middle ground" rightward.

The question is, do we give Mark Steyn that much credit? The fact that Steyn describes what Milosevic and his generals did as a "cull" of Muslims ought to give us all pause. This man is sick and will do anything and say anything to promote his completely disturbing view of reality. As a Canadian I am embarrassed by his words.