The Glade 4.0

Once again, we can thank Elmo for contributing nothing whatsoever to the discussion except antagonizing people whose views he takes as a personal affront.

I've recently discovered, however, that my aversion to the ignore feature may have been misplaced. I'm strongly considering adding a second name to my list.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Your "clever" attempt to frame this in the same discussion in the other thread fails at every level. It's not comparable, and even if it was, you're strawmanning my argument to make it fit.

So if you're going to try to troll one thread into another, at least make a better effort. This was sub-par. A half-assed attempt at best.

Um...last I checked, experiencing the sensation of drowning was not merely uncomfortable, DE. Something designed to simulate the feeling of drowning, aka dying, would classify as "intense suffering." Suffering is not confined to physical pain for prolonged periods...suffering can be mental, emotional, psychological, etc and can also be brief.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

By "discomfort" I do not mean "less unplesent than suffering". "Discomfort" is a very broad term and can range from annoyance to extreme pain;

Similarly, "suffering" is exceedingly wide, but generally carries connotations of something that is prolonged rather than very brief. A person can be said to be "suffering" from acne; I have not noticed that acne is terribly painful either.

In other words, I am pointing out that simply trying to find the worst words available to describe the experience of waterboarding does not make it torture. Simply applying more colorful adjectives does not change the situation; one could easily say that a person in prison for a lengthy term is undergoing physical or mental suffering of a sort. If they weren't, it wouldn't be much of a punishment.

I would also point out that drowning is not actually painful, although it is obviously quite frightening. In some military swimming, diving, and water survival programs, trainees are made to enter a drowning state, often by forcing them to swim until exhaustion. People who have undergone this have never described it to me as painful; once they pass the panic state they describe it as much like going to sleep. Of course, the being revived part is less pleasent, but that's not applicable to waterboarding subjects because they are never actually drowned.

I'm sure someone will whip out the "but that's consensual!" line again. Yes, it is. However, consent has zero to do with what the experience is like. Similarly, waterboarding does not somehow become more tolerable just because one is a publicity seeker or trainee; the body's phyiscal reactions do not change because of consent.

All consent does is change the legalities of the situation. In fact, it does not even change whether it is torture; it only changes whether it was consensual, which changes only whether it was legal to do it, not the nature of it. Almost anything is legal if consented to; it is legal to punch someone who consents to box with you. Some people engage in various forms of what is arguably torture for various sexual purposes; this is (hopefully) consensual but that does not chnge whether any given act is torture.

An overly broad definition of torture is bad for two reasons:

1) It is VERY bad legally, since almost any action taken against anyone could be classified as torture if the bar is merely "suffering", especially "mental suffering"
2) It cheapens the term, in turn cheapening the suffering of people who have truly been tortured, much like calling unwanted sexual advances "rape" cheapens the pain of true rape victims, and leads to unrealistic standards on the part of society in general who come to believe that mild "suffering" (or whatever word we want to use) becomes "torture" since it has been subtly altered to be inclusive of far less severe treatment

Real torture is far more brutal than waterboarding. There are countless gory examples that can be found; I'm sure most everyone here is familiar with at least some of them, so there should be no need to construct a list of atrocities. I'm simply not buying that an activity that is physically safe for training and publicity stunts is torture. Abusive? Certainly, if done for someone's amusement, or without certainty that vital information is being withheld. Certainly abusive when done to a 12-year-old girl. Torture? No.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Abusing captives for any reason is wrong and many of the stress techniques used in Gitmo were already popular in gulags and political prisons throughout unpleasant countries in history. Whether you call it torture or not, it not right, imo. Congratulations US! We are hypocrites.

It's easy for people to accept that our government does it, because it's mostly brown people in far away countries now, but what about the next crisis? When will the government use it warrant-less arrests/wire tapping to send regular citizens to secret prisons? Under the general language of the law they have a broad range of power to do whatever they want. It's just a matter of time before some one uses that power.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

We are not hypocrites at all, since no one is advocating abuse. Abuse would be doing it without a legitimate reason, namely the need to get some specific piece of vital information the captive is exceedingly likely to have.

This is akin to the argumentum ad hitlerum. All of those regimes you cite had prisons too. We have prisons! Obviously we're hypocrites. Just because something was used by some unpleasent regime does not make it illegitimate.

No, our only hypocrisy was in our ill-advised conduct of trials ex post facto WWII.



Or maybe it has nothing to do with "brown people in faraway places". It never ceases to amaze me how quickly people will retreat into the "well you just don't care because it's brown people!" argument when confronted with a position they don't like on anything involving foriegn policy. Not to mention going off onto irrelevancies about wiretaps. It is not "just a matter of time before someone uses that power" because that power doesn't exist except in the sense that it's possible for the government to just start doing **** like that any time anyhow. This is a slippery slope argument, and one that basically says "if we pass X point I've arbitrarily designated on the slippery slope, we'll inevitably slide down it, but as long as we're within my personal comfort zone, we're ok".

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I remember why I have DE ignored.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

DE, again, pain or *discomfort* does not have to be prolonged in order to fit the definition of suffering. Have you ever suffered or been tortured? I'm just curious because you seem to be lacking some sort of human element of empathy here. Regardless, I still consider your notions of what does and does not qualify to be torture or suffering as incorrect.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

Just because I am not accepting your ideas about what constitutes a level of suffering or discomfort sufficient to constitute torture dies not mean I "lack a human element of empathy". I struggle to find a way to say this that won't sound antagonistic, but quite frankly, that statement seems rather self-centered. You can consider my ideas incorrect if you wish, but my basic point is that if torture is defined merely as "suffering" no matter how brief or inconsequential, that it essentially allows people to slap the label "torture" on any treatment of anyone they don't personally approve of.

As to what I may or may not have experienced, I prefer not to discuss that on the internet. Monty used to try to ask me this, and I made it perfectly clear every time he did that there are certain aspects of my experiences I do not discuss here. You can make of that what you will. I can assure you, however, that I have experienced things at least comparable in difficulty to what you have described.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Fine. Two can play at that game. You've been a long time without a post that isn't simply you ***** pointlessly with nary a fact or reasonable argument.

Putting trolls on ignore is fun.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

If you put all of the trolls on ignore, it's going to be a lonely, solitary glade existence for you :p

I think I can afford 2 or 3.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

It was more of a rhetorical question than anything else, DE, because I just dont understand how you can think waterboarding wouldnt cause suffering or be classified as torture.
Guess we will just have to disagree.

Hmm. Perhaps it was always acceptable, if somewhat unfashionable to discuss openly. You just haven't always been old enough to be exposed to the arenas in which the unfashionable discussions took place.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Corolinth seems to think that slapping ignore on a couple dozen people has made his Glading experience a much more carefree one.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Some people are just rude. I don't mind different opinions, but I don't feel like I should have to be verbally assaulted by pricks. I come here for entertainment mostly. So, it makes sense to tailor that experience to maximum enjoyment.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

As an addendum, it's also caused me to appreciate those of you who's posts I still read a lot more than I used to. It's like a whole new Glade, until **** Khross quotes somebody.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

I didn't say it wouldn't cause suffering. It does, to a degree. However, like I said, suffering can encompass a wide degree of discomfort.

As to why it wouldn't be classified as torture, because it simply isn't severe enough. Torture, as far as I'm concerned, is something so bad it can't be done to a person under any circumstances - even consent should call into question the circumstances under which it was obained and the mental state of someone who would consent to it.

Simply because something causes some degree of suffering does not make it torture. Like I've pointed out, jail causes some degree of physical suffering by being an unpleasent environment, and perhaps a lot more if Bubba takes a liking to you. It definitely causes mental suffering; that's pretty much the point of it as punishment.

For some reason though, people want to define torture as being "anything that causes suffering" without thinking about the implications of that.

To put it in terms of human empathy, I have plenty. I am not interested in seeing waterboarding used as a punishment or used for anyone's sadistic pleasure. However, my empathy stops at the point where it's some terrorist withholding information, knowing nothing is going to happen to him because he can use our principles and the distaste of the public for certain things as a shield. He's not an American citizen, nor even a foriegn criminal caught here after a lawful entry, nor even an enemy soldier worthy of protection under the various international "laws" of warfare. He purposefulyl tries to ride the line between criminal and enemy soldier in order to tie us up in our own legalisms combatting him, and thus he deserves very little consideration when it comes to information he has that will help us catch others like him.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Which is funny, because he's one of the biggest trolls on the board.

I don't agree.

Posting one's opinion as a response to the OP, even when it flies in the face of the majority, is not trolling. Nor is playing devil's advocate.

I'm more inclined to consider someone a troll when they start a thread where their opinion flies in the face of the majority.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Of which he is guilty. I guess I consider anyone who goes out of their way just to stir **** up as a troll. But it doesn't matter, anyway. Every forum has them, just gotta deal.

I don't really understand some folk's definition of a troll. I see it as someone who posts things simply to get a rise out of people. It seems like the same people that will call someone a troll will still respond at length to their "troll" comments. If they aren't being genuine and are just trying to get a response, why respond? IMO, some people throw the term around so much it has no meaning. They just use it as a cure-all argument deflector. "Whatever, troll."

I usually just give my opinion, because even if I carefully write a TL;DR post, it's unlikely anyone will be convinced. If someone pressed for more I might be inclined to give it, but otherwise it's a waste of time. Although, I'm technically just killing time here anyway... I'm not a master debater anyway.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

You're not a master what?