_God_

I'm new here, so I'd appreciate it if someone would tell me if these are "flames" or "trolls."

Thanks.

Ch'i

This entire thread is a troll.

Willravel

Flaming is the act of sending or posting messages that are deliberately hostile and insulting, usually in the social context of a discussion board on the Internet.

A troll is often someone who comes into an established community such as an online discussion forum, and posts inflammatory, rude, repetitive or offensive messages designed intentionally to annoy or antagonize the existing members or disrupt the flow of discussion, including the personal attack of calling others trolls.

(ty, wikipedia)

Those are the difinitions, you decide.

Ustwo

I'm not obligated to respond to every liberal poster sorry ratbastid. There are not enough hours in my day to deal with each of you, I had my say, you can have yours, I don't have to tell you where you are wrong, I don't have to read hosts links when he posts them.

I don't have to justify my opinion beyond what it is, which just so happens to be the same opinion as 65% of the US senators.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

Willravel

Just because you call something an opinion doesn't make it so. If I were to say, "In my opinion, the sky is red" or "in my opinion, onions are made of paper" I'd be wrong. If you had the necessary training and understanding of the history of war or psychology in it's many forms, you'd know that the "opinion of all human history" on torture can be well summarized in a small statement: torture is a tool of conrol through fear, and it has not, will not, nor will it ever produce reliable results. To suggest otherwise is to suggest an untruth; to suggest otherwise is to misrepresent the truth; to suggest otherwise is to lie.

That is not opinion. That is fact.
And when those senators go on record as saying that torture is an effective way to extract information, I will tear their arguments apart as I have done with you. Until that day, you stand in a very small group of individuals who do not have the knowledge to back up what they claim.

Ch'i

So if they're not liberal, its okay? Looking at one side of a debate/argument isn't a.... nevermind. Why bother.
With that kind of logic, you are never wrong because no one is ever right. Not everything is an opinion; there are facts in this world, and ignoring them will not change that. Two people doing something wrong doesn't make it any less wrong. Six billion people doing something wrong doesn't make it any less wrong.

You have officially lost your priviledge to deem anyone else a hypocrit.

Paq

couple things and i'm mainly only subscribing to this thread bc the issue in question disgusts me to the core of my being.

anyway: 1. torture does not work. period. It gets you LOADS of information, just not much useful info and you have to sort out the hundreds of lies. I would spill my guts, EVERYTHING i know, ever knew, ever will know...and i can pretty much guarantee that 80% of it will be ...questionably accurate. You deprive someone of sleep and they mess up little details such as names, places, and actions; ie, the very thing you're after.

2. Even Star Trek proved that torture does not work.

3. One of the absolute scariest parts of this for me: The inclusion of hearsay. Seriously, WTF!? someone under duress can finger someone else and there is another timewaster.

Face it, there are MANY other avenues we could pursue. as one senator said, tough on terror..light on brains.

Anyway, the thing that comes back to my mind everytime i try to wrap my head around the fact it got through the senate: Just how hard would republicans have bitched if clinton had even come CLOSE to this much unilateral power?

I'm just glad there are 2 yrs left. If the left fucks up the next election and the republicans win again...I have no idea what will happen to me but i can feel it's the big one...

__________________
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Chris

host

After thinking about this for several days.....and reading and posting about the possibility of it....for much longer, I don't think that the main controversy is about torture. It is about a series of "tests"....."they" are probing....taking an "inch", at a time.......to measure our reaction. After each inch taken, "they" are further emboldened. Jefferson predicted their "urge":
........and from Justice Joseph Story:
I've posted about it here:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...25#post2130025
This is the way what has happened, is described in an NPR piece:
"They" <b>pushed</b> with Patriot Acts I & II and Gitmo, the incarceration of Padilla, the implementation of Miltitary Tribunals, and by ignoring the provisions of the FISA law. Our "reaction" to each incremental "taking" of our former rights and protections, is observed, and the result is that they are emboldened to "take" more. More than 60 percent of both houses of our legislature voted for this:
What the post 9/11 period seems to be, is an acceleration of the "give them an inch, and they'll take a mile", that the US Constition was drafted and structured to circumvent. In 1788, it was a compromise.

The question now is.....if the US executive is hindered, as he and the majority of the legislators are claiming, in his duty of "protecting" us, by our constitutional rights....why have a constitution, at all? How much further does the "trust us", element that this new "law" reduces our formerly guaranteed "rights", down to.....have to be taken....via new laws to come....such as a law to legitimize the ignoring, by the executive, of the FISA surveillance law, before our constitution is so "hollowed out", that all of our major protections...from the government, are permitted, only at the discretion, of the government?

Isn't fear of our reaction, if "they" go "too far", the only real deterrent we can project, to discourage "them" from doing just that? They're testing us to see how much they can erode the constitution, before we rise up in protest.

We've failed every test, and the majority of our representatives now vote to transfer some of our remaining "rights" to them. We're again failing to react, by intimidating them. If the coming election results fail to shift the legislative balance towards preserving our remaining rights, and conducting a more honest, accountable, and transparent government, whether because of corrupted voting, or by the "will" of the majority, what then?

When do we react on a grassroots level, and how? Wouldn't peaceful, persistent protest, beginning ASAP, help to avoid violent reaction, further down the road, when the transfer of our rights, to "them" continues, or will the current "process" end up eliciting no signifigant protest at all?

How do you know, when it is "too late" to resist, and to attempt to turn this power transfer, (coup?) "around"? Is life, if you accept that it is "too late", worth living?

seretogis

We all just heard the flushing sound, and we're swirling about the bowl. It's only a matter of time, now.

__________________
seretogis - sieg heil
perfect little dream the kind that hurts the most, forgot how it feels well almost
no one to blame always the same, open my eyes wake up in flames

Paq

I really think the dems that signed on are the ones that are going to have hell to pay at the polls. I honestly cannot think of a reason why they would have done that.

and again, it's not torturing people who HAVE done something, but people who MAY have done something...or MAY have been indicated by someone else to have done something...or MAY have been a brother of a cousin of a relative of a neice of a mother of a son who happened to have passed a blown up bus at some point.

IE....i do not trust the current guard with whom to torture and extract info from.

host's points about the accelerated inch into miles argument is very well apt here and it honestly makes me sick to my stomach...I just can't conceive of how this bill even got drafted.

as for a 'needed tool'..no, a NEEDED tool in the war on terror would be to actually inspect the cargo coming into this country by ship...that is a NEEDED tool in the war on terror.

I can almost guarantee that this will blow up in the faces of those who signed it.

then again, it will be spun in such a way that all dems are evil and bush is god.

__________________
Live.

Chris

republicat1

OK, if this legislation sets us back 900 years then i guess we'll be right where we need to be in dealing with terrorist. You can't be rational with irrational murderers. Why should anyone who randomly kills anyone to escalate their own agenda be given rights ?
Tora! Tora! Tora! ? If you replace Pearl Harbor with the Twin Towers and watched the movie, then you could see the striking similarities in all the mistakes we are making now. We are only serious about politics, not serious about terrorism.

highthief

Not so long ago, a Canadian was sent to Syria by the United States because it was thought he might be a terrorist. The Syrians tortured a confession out of him in one of their lovely penal establishments run by the Assad family.

As you might guess, he was eventually released and the confession proven to be bogus. An innocent man was held for a year and tortured. I'm sure this improved the security situation in the US and especially in various dental offices in the lower 48.

__________________
Si vis pacem parabellum.

host

This is a deliberate step on a planned progression into "the executive" ruling under terms of undeclared "marshall law". Your argument attempts to justify suspension of due process and the bill of rights. If suspension of "some rights" is required...because we're at war....why stop at "some rights".

Why not argue to simply, "trust the president"....suspend the congress, exclude the courts from any interference with what "the decider", decides. After all, he's made us safer, and he's been right, most of the time, Right????

ratbastid

THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!

Okay, so Ustwo doesn't care that he's trolling. He's proud of it. He's under no obligation to actually discuss the fallout of his screeds. Fine. Great.

Pinochet legalized torture too, by the way. And there was a right-wing fringe that trusted him when he did it. He too strong-armed the rest of his government into supporting it. It became one of the worst civil rights disasters in modern history.

Remember: we're dealing with a US President who has referred to the Constitution as "just a god damned piece of paper."

Willravel

I was in the lead, but ratbastid just won the thread. Thanks for playing everyone.

Phony intel extracted from false confessions given by tortured prisoners of war are necessary for the Bush administration to maintain they're many myths about the wars and to instil fear in those that they seek to control. How else will they suggest the insurgency in Iraq is run by Syria or Iran or Saudi Arabia? How else would they be able to build military bases in a soverign country that we invaded?

It's all quite simple. It's all quite insane.

ratbastid

Yeah, when it comes to geeky pop culture references, I'm pretty untouchable.

Willravel

O RLY?

Did you know that Chain of Command was directly lifeted from Orwell's 1984 when Winston was captured and tortured by O'Brien? O'Brien heald up 4 fingers in front of Winston, and tried to compel him to say there were five fingers. Winston, is inferrior to Picard, in that he broke and actually saw 5 fingers.

Ch'i

He really did. Congradulations ratbastid.

I'm still amazed by the general reaction of the public. They really do not seem to care. It seems that if no majority makes a big deal out of it, no one assumes its a big deal. Everyone is to preoccupied with their lives, and I guess they're used to our government acting the way it should. But if the people within a democracy won't even flinch when the constitution is being battered the way it is, how can that democracy hope to function?

You're right will, it truly is insane.

_God_

Perhaps. It's also a feeding frenzy in which several people attack another (sometimes in BIG RED LETTERS) and declare themselves victorious when their target isn't interested in responding to each and every accusation.

My "flame or troll" question wasn't a request for definitions. It was intended to point out that one or the other was occurring, in spite of the forum rules. I was left with the impression that it's okay for some people, but not others, to flame or troll. I still have that impression.

There is no meaningful difference between ustwo's response and this:

That statement was accepted without the orgy of self-congratulation over a perceived "victory" that took place earlier in this thread.

The concept of "fair and balanced," is missing here, unless you're using Al Franken's version.

host

_God_,

I'd love it if you could direct me to some web pages where I might be exposed to the influences on the formation of your political opinions. It's not required, but I'm always engaged in doing the same....regarding my opinions, for you to examine. I may not end up agreeing with you, but if you share your sources, I might end up respecting "where you're coming from", so to speak.

We learn from each other here

Ch'i

Much of what you say is true, but in this statement I am curious. Ustwo clearly stated several times "I don't have the desire to respond to every liberal". He enacted a debate, then refused to read those points which conflicted with his. The debate was unbalanced to begin with.

Lady Sage

My turn. Our POW men and women arent treated as saints. I dont care if we torture POW we collect. It wont cost me a wink of sleep. Morals? Yes I have problems with torture as a moral standpoint. Yet I also have a problem knowing that our people are being subjected to unknown terrors.

Will is right. Psychology. We may get some things out of some people but many wont talk and would rather die.

Now...

After spending a good bit of time reading the roaring debate of the past few pages of posts I would like to provide a very broad statement.

People who live in glass houses should NOT throw rocks.

Anyone can review posting histories for a month or more and narrow it down to how long it is between our posts and from that put together how much time anyone of us spends on TFP vs. how much time we DO NOT spend posting here... I know, ive done it.

People should be careful what they claim.

This is NOT a threat this is a simple observation. I do not like it when people toot a horn they do not know how to play.

I feel people should be careful what and who they believe. There are some seriously heated feelings going on in this thread. All I am saying is simply this. Try not to get worked up about some things. They may not be what they seem.

__________________
If only closed minds came with closed mouths.
Minds are like parachutes, they function best when open.
It`s Easier to Change a Condom Than a Diaper
Yes, the rumors are true... I actually AM a Witch.

Paq

I feel like i missed something you were referring to in here. I don't wanna cal anyone out, just curious as to what sparked this comment. PM if you wish, or just post it.

Anyway, i do have a problem wtih the "eye for eye" mentality...namely, the world will soon be blind. I feel like we're heading that way now, actually

__________________
Live.

Chris

Elphaba

It is merely a guess on my part, but the following post has created a stir:

Ch'i

I apologize for any self proclaimed victory I may have depicted; it was not my intention. Certain people should be held accountable for making an argument while refusing their antithesis'. I will be more patient tomorrow, but I am not sorry for pointing this out.

Willravel

The big red letters wern't an attack. They made clear a repeatedly ignored point that is very much relevant to the thread topic. Ustwo has ignored that point through several threads, and it was clear to me that normal means of posting were not enough for him to understand the error in his logic. Torture is not a reliable source for information, therefore using torture to extract information is useless. That should be made clear, espically since it seems that torture is now going to be excused in our CIA secret prisons.

_God_, I am left to wonder: when are you going to post about the thread topic? Or will it just be threadjacks?

dksuddeth

I'm not too sure that this is something I would claim, considering the bozos that have sat in the senate for the last 20 years, but that's just me.

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

roachboy

my my this thread certainly tanked, didn't it?
it's a shame because this is an important topic. i suppose that is among the points of a troll, really--to reduce questions political to lint personal, distract, divert, etc.

i have thought quite a bit about this one over the weekend.

i think there are several underlying reason why this thread generated such heat--the official sanctioning of torture, the rewriting of the geneva conventions, the granting of immunity from prosecution for war crimes of a cadre that would have you think that americans cannot commit war crimes a priori, the legitmation of military kangaroo courts, the validation of the bushleague legal black hole, the expansion of the notion of enemy to potentially include american citizens, the suspension of habeas corpus...the fact that congress bent over and approved this...the stacking of the courts with far right activists appointed in the name of thwarting "activism"---problems with the last two presidential elections that remain unresolved....

years of fiasco international and domestic...

it seems that public protest has gone away: it is almost like the masses of people who turned out in opposition to the iraq debacle around the coutry actually believed the administration would take note of them, would listen, as if they had been chumped by the illusion that cowboy george is a decent fellow--and when the war unfolded anyway, people were disappointed then depressed (myself among them)---and we went home.
and we stayed home.
they are still at home.
we are all still sitting at home.

all this within a system that allows for the exercize of political freedom one day every 2 years. after that pesky, mediated freedom business is out of the way, we the people are stuck with whatever the more powerfully organized and well-funded political machine manages to put into place. and there is no way to get rid of the results--no mechanism for a vote of no confidence, no way to bring down an administration no matter how incompetent of disengenuous they may be. the result of our charade of political freedom is two year blocks of impunity.

better still, we self-evidently are living through an extended transitional phase in the social and political organization of capitalism. this adds even more fine treats to the pile: a radically polarized class society in which there is no functional discourse of class conflict--this polarization effects education, it squanders lives and potentials---it is expressed in the development of a prison-industrial complex for management of the poor, increased violence, increased repression---it is predicated on economic injustice and even manages to generate a certain level of flinstone contempt for the notions of economic and social justice.
the reorganization of capitalism that has been unfolding over the past 20 years has created fundamental problems for the american system of social reproduction that have not been addressed and that cannot be addressed within the present ideological climate of nationalist fantasy and denial.

so it feels sometimes like we are crash test dummies in a small car heading at high speed toward a very big wall.

so people appear to be at the least worried and at the worse afraid.
so we watch tv

conservative ideology traffics in fear, directing it toward the illusion of manly men doing manly things as if the idiocy behind this was not only other than a problem, but a source of reassurance.
we watch this on tv.

and there is no coherent oppositional politics, fantasies of the right notwithstanding.
we learn this on television.



so we express our discontent in spaces that are available like this.
but we all know that what we say in spaces like this is mostly therapeutic.
a little playground in which we all get to try out rationalizations that enable us to get out of bed in the morning.
a pseudo-public sphere of pseudo-public debate.

within the exercize in sublimation that participation in such pseudo-public debates in a pseudo-public sphere, the bigger picture repeats itself.
the confusion comes in the assumption that these repetitions are meaningful.
they are meaningful in a therapeutic sense, but not in a political sense.

this brings me back to this thread:

i am not surprised or shocked or even particularly disturbed by how this has gone.
i saw nothing surprising in ustwo's selective reading strategies--i would even applaud his frankness--but nothing in it was surprising, was it?

thing is that while ustwo's refusal to take seriously positions directed against his extreme right politics resembles aspects of the bigger picture, it is not that bigger picture.
and freezing him out of the board does not change that bigger picture.
he is just a guy.
a person like the rest of us who has to work out ways to manage, to rationalise what is happening around him, who has to work out systems of thinking that enable him to get out of bed in the morning and act as though his life is meaningful-----just as the rest of us are.

this is not the bigger picture.
the bigger picture is overwhelming.
if you add up the elements of it and really think about what they mean, it can be paralyzing.
powerlessness is not good.
denial is a coping mechanism.
dissent is a coping mechanism.
between them are siginificant differences in types of information processed, logic and the willingness to spell out that logic.
but in a pseudo-public sphere, the line between political argument and coping mechanism is thin indeed.

let's try to remember that.

i would prefer better debates.
i would also prefer to operate without illusions.

back to the question of torture on the way out: the united states has practiced torture as a matter of routine policy for at least 50 years. the united states has trained generations of torturers at lovely institutions like the school of the americas. the united states has sanctioned torture in other places: the united states endorsed pinochet, the united states endorsed the argentine military regime, the united states supported the shah of iran--on and on and on.

have you seen "dogville"?
von trier is right.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Ch'i

Great point.

tecoyah

Please...then TEACH Me....

tecoyah

God has a history of poorly defined points, Attack , and aggressive reaction...expect it to become worse before it gets better as hes still in the Old Testament mindset.

Paq

that is about the funniest thing i've read in a long
long
long
time

__________________
Live.

Chris

samcol

Was this bill properly ratified? If my understanding is correct this bill should of been pocket vetoed. Congress passed it on the 28th of September, adjourned the 29th, and Bush signed on the 17th of October. This makes over 10 working days of no action while congress was adjourned which is a veto by default.

dc_dux

Congress is actually on a recess. Adjournment most commonly refers to "Adjournment Sine Die" which happens at the end of each two-year session of Congress.

The current 109th Congress will likely return after the election (particularly if the Repubs lose the House and want one last chance to try to push their legislative agenda before they become the minority) and adjourn sometime in December.

__________________
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

skier

While I am not an American, I have been watching American politics with inscreasing fascination for years. I watched global outrage for the war in iraq, which many called illegal, and still do. I watched american citizens allow numerous encroachments on their freedoms; and the only true resistance to this gradual erosion i saw was the patriot act, which was pushed through anyways. Now an essential cornerstone of personal liberty has simply been removed- habeus corpus.

Don't you guys care, as citizens of a free and democratic country, that at any time, for any reason, a government offical could simply take you away to prison and leave you there to rot for the rest of your life? That they can also torture you if they feel like it? That they can take you to court, and prosecute you using classified evidence that you're not allowed to see? At this moment, It is not out of their bounds to sentence you to death for reasons they see fit to proscribe.

I find this extremely disturbing, and it makes me glad that I live in Canada, at least for the moment. I don't understand why there haven't been protests in the streets; or any sign of dissatisfaction at all. Is all that you can do is watch and mourn it's loss?

edit- found a video of Keith Olbermann saying it very eloquently.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIe2fPmGFYw

__________________
"Asking a bomb squad if an old bomb is still "real" is not the best thing to do if you want to save it." - denim

Ch'i

There are plenty of us who care, and actively try to resist such erosion. We are not the majority, unfortunately. The republican's future in the 2008 election looks grim, however. Two years is a long time to wait.

I suggest you direct this question towards the rightwingers. That should give you your answer...

...specifically Ustwo, he supports torture.

tecoyah

When I was younger, I knew I lived in the best country the world had to offer. I felt great joy in my luck for being born here, and pride in the accomplishments of my elders. I looked at all the wonderful things around me, and understood how extremely fortunate I was in comparison to virtually anyone outside the United States, in terms of freedoms and material comforts.
This has changed, as I think of my own children growing up. I am virtually powerless to halt the revisions taking place right now. I can only vote my conscience and hope for the best, knowing deep inside these hopes are impotent in the face of fear and hatred surrounding them. Over the last five years I have looked to the future with a mixture of dispair and frustration, as this country I truly love becomes something I do not like.
One is forced in this climate to look at a larger picture, and in some ways compromise principles in hopes of stopping some measure of the degradation so obvious , and painful. I have never been a Democrat, and in fact spent the majority of my life as a Republican, Even up to the first incarnation of a Bush Presidency....I can no longer support what that party represents, as it seems to be Killing the American Spirit I grew up with.

I only Pray I am not forced to vote for Hillary....But I cant see her damaging our counrty in the way Bush has.

/End Rant

__________________
Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

pig

tec, i'm right on board with you. i've pretty much voted 3rd party since i've had the right to vote, but i might have to (icky icky foo) think about voting with the Republican-lights this time around. Not that it will mean jack shit down here in the Glorious South, but this shit has got to go.



End Dogpile

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You don't love me, you just love my piggy style

Ace_O_Spades

I love how bob the angry flower always manages to state exactly how I feel

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Feh.

NCB

I love how tough interegation tactics have been hijacked and are now considered torture. It breaks my heart that this country has become so pussified

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