Of course it's horrid that there are spots in that country where that same attitude still exists. But the difference is that now there is no longer a "government" that directly embraces and celebrates that medieval nonsense by actually having government employees who run around and do that evil crap. It will be at least a generation before it becomes culturally embarassing, for more like a majority of Afghanis, to have that stuff happening in their more rural areas. But the difference is crucial: before, it was the law of land, and now it's not.
This is very well said. Afghanistan may be just as bad as under the Taleban in some places and backsliding in others, but the whole country isn't like this anymore, and that's a crucial difference.
Heck, there are women holding political offices right now! Their new Constitution enshrines equal rights for women. Our Constitution put equal rights for all men in the 14th Amendment but it took us over a 100 years to actually live it. As long as the current government doesn't collapse, then I think the future of Afghanistan is pretty bright.
I'm not sure what time frame you are using when considering that "The US used to be civilized"...
I pretty much consider the current peak of our civilization to have been the late 90s. We were moving towards a more tolerant society. We were widely respected for the freedom of our culture. We worked with the international community to end a civil war and genocide in Kosovo. We looked to the future with hope and expectation, and there was always a sensation that America was moving forward towards fairness and justice, and to me that forward motion IS civilization.
Civilization is ethical, moral, and cultural growth. Stagnation is just decay. One of these days we might reach a plateau where everything is as fair as it can be, and I'd have to change my definition of being civilized, but we are centuries or millenia away from that point if it's even achievable.
Post 1999-2001, the nation has changed. We actually have news and media personalities that try to convince people that torture and detention without fair trial is a good and just thing. We stoke up fears about Arabs and Mexicans daily. We are widely hated for arrogant policies that have stalled and actually reversed the world's progress on human rights. We are bogged down in an occupation that is leading to a civil war that is killing more people than the evil dictator we displaced had done in over a decade. The future is now something to fear and dread instead of something to hope for.
America has done better, and I think that it can do better again, but people are going to have to come face to face with what we've become and act with determination to save our nation's very soul.
That scaring people with water should be considered torture is completely debateable. Personally, I'm curious -- could I keep my cool with people scaring me that way?
People think they're drowning to death. The terror response to this is wired into the most primitive parts of our brain. It's the mental equivalent of hitting below the belt.
The average person lasts 14 seconds before caving in.
The toughest prisoner they had lasted two minutes before begging them to stop. People subjected to this can be traumatized for life afterwords and may develop phobias of water from it.
This isn't "getting a swirly" in a high school locker room. This is being convinced that people who hate you are in the process of trying to kill you.
You have to be completely lacking in the human trait known as empathy to consider this "sissified." I'd love to see how well you hold up to this kind of treatment, especially if no one's taught you that it's unlikely that you'll actually die from the water you're inhaling while struggling to breathe.
(Note, once again, that even people taught what the procedure is rarely last more than a few seconds under it.)
Oh, it was on a BLOG on an INTRANET - guess that must make it newsworthy. Feh - this is partisan posting and nothing else.
A) What the hell happened to America to make whether or not torture is wrong a partisan issue?
B) A taxpayer-funded government agency charged with the protection of our homeland fired someone for expressing the opinion that agency policy was immoral. That should be wrong no matter what the issue is and no matter what your political affiliation is unless it's Totalitarian.
Since when did support of torture and of suppression of dissent become core Republican principles? Whatever happened to the party of Barry Goldwater?
I think the difference is that a lot of people signed up for the CIA back when they thought they were dedicating their lives to protecting American freedoms and American values whereas meatpacking plants have always been about chopping up animals for eating.
And do you really know what goes on in Guantanamo Bay? Yes.
Okay, you know the good event -- the press release events. Do you know the bad? Do you know about Sean Baker, an MP that was beaten until permanent brain injury in a training exercise where the guards thought he was an actual inmate? Do you know about the repeated attempts at suicide by detainees that have lost hope? Do you know that the Red Cross has said that treatment of prisoners there is "tantamount to torture?"
How our our captured soldiers treated? We've had very few, but the enemy has gone out of their way to violate the Geneva Convention, has tortured and left beheaded bodies in the street, burned and left bodies hanging from a bridge. Do I need to go on?
Yes. Please do. Please explain exactly how just being better than the terrorists is the only moral end goal we should strive for.
Joseph Stalin killed about 10 million of his people, while Pol Pot killed only 2 million of his. Does that mean since Pol Pot didn't kill as many people that he's a decent and civilized fellow? Of course not.
Similarly, we've tortured prisoners in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and Bagram. Our administration has fought tooth and nail for the "right" to continue torturing suspects and people "of material importance." Sure, we haven't beheaded any of our prisoners (though we have beaten to death a few). We haven't been rounding up people and executing them like the Sunnis and Shia have been doing with each other, but is being better than freaking terrorists the best that we can do or should strive to do?
I disagree. I think it takes a sick level of moral sloth to advance the idea that we shouldn't care as long as our enemies are worse.
I find interesting the cognitive dissonance that allows for members of the right-wing to claim that there is an objective moral authority above and beyond the laws of man on issues like gay rights but that only the law and points of technicalities of citizenship are all that matters when the ability to torture foreigners suspected of knowing terrorists is on the line. Pick one or the other, and if you pick the "objective moral authority" side, then do try and strain your brain to think of what Jesus would've thought of torturing people to save your own skin.
There's no quibble about whether the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th Amendments apply to our current law enforcement procedures. The restrictions are on the government, and they apply anywhere the government acts, and nowhere in the amendments is government only barred from action against citizens. Go, and see if you can find limitations to bar injustice against citizens only in the Constitution. Furthermore, given the results of Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld, it's pretty damn clear that torturing people is flat out illegal in the opinion of the Supreme Court.
My right to live my life without being molested on a constant basis by the government outweighs your right to not get blown up.
That statement doesn't point out that you've got a really good chance of getting spied on by the government (especially if the government goes evil) and a really, really small chance of getting killed by terrorists, especially compared to your daily chances of getting in a car accident or dying of a heart attack.
Is the US justice system working? We'll have to wait and see...
I had actually fallen into a sort of pessimistic mindset about the future of the Constitution and democracy in America, but the recent Supreme Court decision in Hamdan vs. Rumsfield has given me great relief that our system of checks and balances is still capable of fighting back, even if weakened.
Now that the case is proceding, I have high hopes that this nation is on the road to recovery from the post-9/11 madness.
You know, I'm from the South, and I know that people actually do say "them thar," but I can't read that sentenence and not think it's meant to be read in a pirate's voice:
No, in this case, the problem isn't the filthy lib'rals, but them thar activist judges! ARRRR!
While I'm not a huge player of WoW; I do play that/other/ MMO.
The one that takes place in that huge room with the blue ceiling? Man, the lighting effects in that one are so grating, and it's filled with gold-farmers who aren't willing to socialize.
Actually, that very egalitarian notion is likely to result in the dismantling of security procedures, depending on the workplace. I have a friend who worked for an AOL call center that had a man-trap up until the day that a senior VP got stuck in it due to a glitch that revoked his ID, causing him to be locked in and secured when he lacked credentials for entry.
Getting laughed at by underlings will cause nearly any office procedure to get revoked if the executive is high enough.
Actually, anyone who watched Star Trek knows that:
Transporters cannot get through defensive shields. This is why shields have to be knocked out before enemies can board in combat. Think of all the times the Borg attack and invade.
Internal shield technology is common for security (at least in the open hallways and around brig cells). Shielding an installation against transporter jumping spies would be easily doable.
It would be pretty trivial to stop teleportation incursions.
The most secure place I've been (bank IT center) had a vestibule that weighed you on the way in and out. If you were heavier or lighter, the door didn't open.
I hope it had learning tolerances. Otherwise, that first 8-14 pounds in the first two weeks of a diet could label you a "troublemaker."
Hyperbole time: If you walk through the toughest part of town sporting a prominent gold watch, wearing an fine suit, talking on a diamond encrusted cellphone, and fanning yourself with a filled money clip, then perhaps you could be said to have been "asking for it." It's not like you forced the mugger to come after you, but it IS your fault for walking around saying, "Look at me! I've got MONEY! In easily portable and transferrable form!"
You can worry about "blame" all you want. Meanwhile, I'll be lowering my profile and quietly be thankful for obstinate idiots for drawing all the attention. You don't get mugged if you don't look like you're worth the effort.
A little common sense is in order here. Hide your $300 toy.
Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! No, it's a plane! No, it's..! The Joke Flying Over Your Head! Dummm dum-dum-dadum Daaa daa da Dummm dum-dum-dadum Dum dahdah!
So if you're not a Windows or Mac OS X (PowerPC) user, you're SOL.
You mean to tell us that a site that is pratically a shrine to petty teenage popularity contests, cliquishness, and ad-whoring for the biggest businesses in the world only supports the two OSes used by more than 2% of the market!?
If I may argue against both you and the entire slashdot groupthink for a moment... does it occur to anyone that the reason shitty CEOs fail and their companies crash and burn is because they suck at their job... and therefore it's just the free market doing what the free market does (please spare me the "THINK OF THE WORKERS THEY SCREWED!").
Yeah, spare us the human costs of the free market. Remind us again what markets and money are good for? You know, what the end goal of the whole shebang is supposed to be?
Actually, I would have to say that FF8 is the 2nd worst FF game (after FF5). The plot is trite and meanders without a lot of purpose, the characters are boring, and the combat system encourages (nay, demands!) that you spend massive amounts of time drawing cards instead of having fun. Also, the characters are interchangeable.
It's the only FF game that I never got around to beating (after a memory card failure at the end of disc 3). I just didn't find it worth my time.
FF6 on the other hand had great characters and a great plot (up until the disaster hits mid-game, after which is becomes a series of disjointed but independently entertaining subplots). The combat system can be horribly abused in the late game to make everyone into hideous nuke characters (if you power-level), but for the majority of the game, there is rich diversity in the characters abilities that most later FF games has not had. The challenge level was high enough to encourage a small amount of levelling but not an endless grind. It just had an all-around fun feel to it in spite of having a story that dealt with some heavy issues like mass murder, slavery, questions of identity, and attempted suicide.
Also, you should try FF5, where your characters *are* completely interchangeable, given time.
No, no you shouldn't, unless you like brutal levelling slogs, a villian that is actually a talking tree turned evil, and the final boss's grudge monster's grudge monster. FF5 is an actually un-fun FF game. The dialogue's pretty trite too.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course it's horrid that there are spots in that country where that same attitude still exists. But the difference is that now there is no longer a "government" that directly embraces and celebrates that medieval nonsense by actually having government employees who run around and do that evil crap. It will be at least a generation before it becomes culturally embarassing, for more like a majority of Afghanis, to have that stuff happening in their more rural areas. But the difference is crucial: before, it was the law of land, and now it's not.
This is very well said. Afghanistan may be just as bad as under the Taleban in some places and backsliding in others, but the whole country isn't like this anymore, and that's a crucial difference.
Heck, there are women holding political offices right now! Their new Constitution enshrines equal rights for women. Our Constitution put equal rights for all men in the 14th Amendment but it took us over a 100 years to actually live it. As long as the current government doesn't collapse, then I think the future of Afghanistan is pretty bright.
I'm not sure what time frame you are using when considering that "The US used to be civilized"...
I pretty much consider the current peak of our civilization to have been the late 90s. We were moving towards a more tolerant society. We were widely respected for the freedom of our culture. We worked with the international community to end a civil war and genocide in Kosovo. We looked to the future with hope and expectation, and there was always a sensation that America was moving forward towards fairness and justice, and to me that forward motion IS civilization.
Civilization is ethical, moral, and cultural growth. Stagnation is just decay. One of these days we might reach a plateau where everything is as fair as it can be, and I'd have to change my definition of being civilized, but we are centuries or millenia away from that point if it's even achievable.
Post 1999-2001, the nation has changed. We actually have news and media personalities that try to convince people that torture and detention without fair trial is a good and just thing. We stoke up fears about Arabs and Mexicans daily. We are widely hated for arrogant policies that have stalled and actually reversed the world's progress on human rights. We are bogged down in an occupation that is leading to a civil war that is killing more people than the evil dictator we displaced had done in over a decade. The future is now something to fear and dread instead of something to hope for.
America has done better, and I think that it can do better again, but people are going to have to come face to face with what we've become and act with determination to save our nation's very soul.
Dude. That's pretty messed up. Read up more on the subject.
Salient points to consider:
- People think they're drowning to death. The terror response to this is wired into the most primitive parts of our brain. It's the mental equivalent of hitting below the belt.
- The average person lasts 14 seconds before caving in.
- The toughest prisoner they had lasted two minutes before begging them to stop.
- This isn't "getting a swirly" in a high school locker room. This is being convinced that people who hate you are in the process of trying to kill you.
You have to be completely lacking in the human trait known as empathy to consider this "sissified." I'd love to see how well you hold up to this kind of treatment, especially if no one's taught you that it's unlikely that you'll actually die from the water you're inhaling while struggling to breathe.People subjected to this can be traumatized for life afterwords and may develop phobias of water from it.
(Note, once again, that even people taught what the procedure is rarely last more than a few seconds under it.)
Oh, it was on a BLOG on an INTRANET - guess that must make it newsworthy. Feh - this is partisan posting and nothing else.
A) What the hell happened to America to make whether or not torture is wrong a partisan issue?
B) A taxpayer-funded government agency charged with the protection of our homeland fired someone for expressing the opinion that agency policy was immoral. That should be wrong no matter what the issue is and no matter what your political affiliation is unless it's Totalitarian.
Since when did support of torture and of suppression of dissent become core Republican principles? Whatever happened to the party of Barry Goldwater?
I think the difference is that a lot of people signed up for the CIA back when they thought they were dedicating their lives to protecting American freedoms and American values whereas meatpacking plants have always been about chopping up animals for eating.
And do you really know what goes on in Guantanamo Bay?
Yes.
Okay, you know the good event -- the press release events. Do you know the bad? Do you know about Sean Baker, an MP that was beaten until permanent brain injury in a training exercise where the guards thought he was an actual inmate? Do you know about the repeated attempts at suicide by detainees that have lost hope? Do you know that the Red Cross has said that treatment of prisoners there is "tantamount to torture?"
How our our captured soldiers treated? We've had very few, but the enemy has gone out of their way to violate the Geneva Convention, has tortured and left beheaded bodies in the street, burned and left bodies hanging from a bridge. Do I need to go on?
Yes. Please do. Please explain exactly how just being better than the terrorists is the only moral end goal we should strive for.
Joseph Stalin killed about 10 million of his people, while Pol Pot killed only 2 million of his. Does that mean since Pol Pot didn't kill as many people that he's a decent and civilized fellow? Of course not.
Similarly, we've tortured prisoners in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and Bagram. Our administration has fought tooth and nail for the "right" to continue torturing suspects and people "of material importance." Sure, we haven't beheaded any of our prisoners (though we have beaten to death a few). We haven't been rounding up people and executing them like the Sunnis and Shia have been doing with each other, but is being better than freaking terrorists the best that we can do or should strive to do?
I disagree. I think it takes a sick level of moral sloth to advance the idea that we shouldn't care as long as our enemies are worse.
I find interesting the cognitive dissonance that allows for members of the right-wing to claim that there is an objective moral authority above and beyond the laws of man on issues like gay rights but that only the law and points of technicalities of citizenship are all that matters when the ability to torture foreigners suspected of knowing terrorists is on the line. Pick one or the other, and if you pick the "objective moral authority" side, then do try and strain your brain to think of what Jesus would've thought of torturing people to save your own skin.
There's no quibble about whether the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th Amendments apply to our current law enforcement procedures. The restrictions are on the government, and they apply anywhere the government acts, and nowhere in the amendments is government only barred from action against citizens. Go, and see if you can find limitations to bar injustice against citizens only in the Constitution. Furthermore, given the results of Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld, it's pretty damn clear that torturing people is flat out illegal in the opinion of the Supreme Court.
My right to live my life without being molested on a constant basis by the government outweighs your right to not get blown up.
That statement doesn't point out that you've got a really good chance of getting spied on by the government (especially if the government goes evil) and a really, really small chance of getting killed by terrorists, especially compared to your daily chances of getting in a car accident or dying of a heart attack.
Is the US justice system working? We'll have to wait and see...
I had actually fallen into a sort of pessimistic mindset about the future of the Constitution and democracy in America, but the recent Supreme Court decision in Hamdan vs. Rumsfield has given me great relief that our system of checks and balances is still capable of fighting back, even if weakened.
Now that the case is proceding, I have high hopes that this nation is on the road to recovery from the post-9/11 madness.
You know, I'm from the South, and I know that people actually do say "them thar," but I can't read that sentenence and not think it's meant to be read in a pirate's voice:
No, in this case, the problem isn't the filthy lib'rals, but them thar activist judges! ARRRR!
While I'm not a huge player of WoW; I do play that /other/ MMO.
The one that takes place in that huge room with the blue ceiling? Man, the lighting effects in that one are so grating, and it's filled with gold-farmers who aren't willing to socialize.
You mean, as opposed to talking about whether or not other people are too lame to get laid on an online forum for geeks?
Security Is For Everyone
Actually, that very egalitarian notion is likely to result in the dismantling of security procedures, depending on the workplace. I have a friend who worked for an AOL call center that had a man-trap up until the day that a senior VP got stuck in it due to a glitch that revoked his ID, causing him to be locked in and secured when he lacked credentials for entry.
Getting laughed at by underlings will cause nearly any office procedure to get revoked if the executive is high enough.
Actually, anyone who watched Star Trek knows that:
- Transporters cannot get through defensive shields. This is why shields have to be knocked out before enemies can board in combat. Think of all the times the Borg attack and invade.
- Internal shield technology is common for security (at least in the open hallways and around brig cells). Shielding an installation against transporter jumping spies would be easily doable.
It would be pretty trivial to stop teleportation incursions.The most secure place I've been (bank IT center) had a vestibule that weighed you on the way in and out. If you were heavier or lighter, the door didn't open.
I hope it had learning tolerances. Otherwise, that first 8-14 pounds in the first two weeks of a diet could label you a "troublemaker."
Hyperbole time:
If you walk through the toughest part of town sporting a prominent gold watch, wearing an fine suit, talking on a diamond encrusted cellphone, and fanning yourself with a filled money clip, then perhaps you could be said to have been "asking for it." It's not like you forced the mugger to come after you, but it IS your fault for walking around saying, "Look at me! I've got MONEY! In easily portable and transferrable form!"
You can worry about "blame" all you want. Meanwhile, I'll be lowering my profile and quietly be thankful for obstinate idiots for drawing all the attention. You don't get mugged if you don't look like you're worth the effort.
A little common sense is in order here. Hide your $300 toy.
2) Alternatively, you could install FlashBlock and have the option of seeing the Flash you do want, like homestarrunner.com.
Look!
Up in the sky!
It's a bird!
No, it's a plane!
No, it's..! The Joke Flying Over Your Head!
Dummm dum-dum-dadum Daaa daa da Dummm dum-dum-dadum Dum dahdah!
So if you're not a Windows or Mac OS X (PowerPC) user, you're SOL.
You mean to tell us that a site that is pratically a shrine to petty teenage popularity contests, cliquishness, and ad-whoring for the biggest businesses in the world only supports the two OSes used by more than 2% of the market!?
Holy crap! What is the world coming to?
If I may argue against both you and the entire slashdot groupthink for a moment... does it occur to anyone that the reason shitty CEOs fail and their companies crash and burn is because they suck at their job... and therefore it's just the free market doing what the free market does (please spare me the "THINK OF THE WORKERS THEY SCREWED!").
Yeah, spare us the human costs of the free market.
Remind us again what markets and money are good for? You know, what the end goal of the whole shebang is supposed to be?
Actually, I would have to say that FF8 is the 2nd worst FF game (after FF5). The plot is trite and meanders without a lot of purpose, the characters are boring, and the combat system encourages (nay, demands!) that you spend massive amounts of time drawing cards instead of having fun. Also, the characters are interchangeable.
It's the only FF game that I never got around to beating (after a memory card failure at the end of disc 3). I just didn't find it worth my time.
FF6 on the other hand had great characters and a great plot (up until the disaster hits mid-game, after which is becomes a series of disjointed but independently entertaining subplots). The combat system can be horribly abused in the late game to make everyone into hideous nuke characters (if you power-level), but for the majority of the game, there is rich diversity in the characters abilities that most later FF games has not had. The challenge level was high enough to encourage a small amount of levelling but not an endless grind. It just had an all-around fun feel to it in spite of having a story that dealt with some heavy issues like mass murder, slavery, questions of identity, and attempted suicide.
Also, you should try FF5, where your characters *are* completely interchangeable, given time.
No, no you shouldn't, unless you like brutal levelling slogs, a villian that is actually a talking tree turned evil, and the final boss's grudge monster's grudge monster. FF5 is an actually un-fun FF game. The dialogue's pretty trite too.
Maybe the tests revealed a tendency to question authority?
For any other FF, I'd agree. But FF6 was the pinnacle of the series, and well deserving of celebration.
Sorry, you had a typo there, and I felt compelled to fix it.
I'm a huge fan of Square and the Final Fantasy series, but isn't celebrating the 15th anniversary of the 4th game in a series kind of stretching it?