Human Rights - Thoughts on Torture

Anything you do could be the last thing you do. Anything you do implies permission to have the same thing done to you should someone think it equally necessary. Torture, in the most basic sense, is never just, in a way I can’t say I think war is never just. I can justify (at least to myself) a war in defense of someone clearly and openly attacked by someone else. The only two reasons you could ever have to torture somebody would be suspicion and retaliation. As human beings, we’re supposed to be above basic retaliation, and if responsive action is “required,” as human beings, we’re supposed to be able to come up with something...well, humane. As far as suspicion, just never a good thing, at least for me, to act on. If somebody has something to tell, great. What if there really is nothing else to tell? I could be wrong.

There are already obviously completely subjective and useless restrictions and regulations in place, which means, there are no and can be no useful restrictions or regulations over torture. When torture is “justified,” it’s always by assumptions, conjecture, speculation, suspicion, never a guarantee. When you have a guarantee, you don’t need to torture anybody. It reminded me what I said earlier about genocide, that if it’s not okay across the street, it’s not okay across the ocean. In the most basic sense, if it’s not okay to torture somebody who turns out to be innocent, then it can’t be okay to torture anybody. Period. Why, if we had a draft, would we exclude women? If you can make a case for preserving the life and well-being of a woman, for any reason, why in the hell would that not be a case for preserving the life and well-being of anybody? Is a life of inherent value or is it not??

Nobody on this earth has the wisdom, experience, or anything else they'd need to be able to legitimately make the call on which life is worth more or less than others. I only know what's important to me, what's in my experience; you only know what's important to you. There are other ways to live, to respond, to fight. We are highly evolved creatures, and as such, we have a responsibility to make the effort to learn those other ways.

Don’t get me wrong. There is a part of me, not even that small a part sometimes, the fearful part, that wants to torture the crap out of anybody who might be sitting on some information we could use to avoid another 9/11 or anything of that ilk. But what if they don’t have it? What if they lie just to get you to stop? What if whatever information they have is irrelevant, can’t be used to stop the attack anyway? If somebody kidnapped, say, my mother, and had her rigged up in some sort of situation where she would die if not found by a certain time, and the person were caught but wouldn’t tell where she was, I can’t say with any certainty that I wouldn’t do really unspeakable things to that person to get them to tell me. I have very human limits to my own sanity and my own self-control. But I would be wrong. Even though I might engage in it myself under only such unimaginably severe circumstances, it would not be just, by any argument; and I would be wrong, and would expect to be punished for my actions. There’s stuff where any "grey area" is just too dangerous, and this is one of them. The consequences are too great.

You know how if the air is really dry, and somebody walks up to you and reaches out to touch your arm or something, and you get a shock? If they reach out again, don’t you flinch, don’t you anticipate the feeling and recoil from it, even just the tiniest bit, because it was a surprise and maybe genuinely hurt a little, and it’s right there, fresh in your mind? I cannot comprehend having all of my senses abused so severely, repeatedly, possibly for years, and having a shred of mental/emotional function left in me, if physical.

So many people, political prisoners, clear victims, are tortured in ways that everybody universally agrees are unjust, and if we’re to have recourse against that, we can’t do it to anybody else, because actions really are all that matter; their “reasons” are always going to be as “good” as ours, so the argument has to come from somewhere else.

Tennessee Gun Permits and Thomas Hobbes

This gun business has gone far enough. I’ve been waiting for common sense to kick in, or for someone with more time and energy to express more vigorous opposition, but my patience has been officially exhausted.

The infamous legislative bill arming the general public has never been about anything but money. If it were genuinely about anybody’s rights, the capitol would not be excluded from the growing list of gun-tolerant properties. In fact, I dare say that if it had anything whatsoever to do with the Constitution, any such committed and idealistic legislators would be fighting for the chance to be the first to share space with the newly armed. Why isn’t that the case? It’s something of a “health risk,” plain and simple, and they all know it.

Legislators have shown repeated disregard not only for Tennessee voters’ opinions, but potentially for our lives and those of our families and children. Many have reportedly solicited contributions directly from pro-gun groups and individuals since this circus began. What that means, essentially, is that this legislation was a sale, one big, greedy business decision, the direct investment of Tennesseans’ safety and well-being in a very lucrative interest, possibly to replace revenues lost due to the weakening of the tobacco lobby or the Bible belt disadvantage of the alcohol lobby.

How much money can possibly be involved for elected officials to threaten their constituents (their supposed livelihoods) with lawsuits for not complying with legislation that was unwanted by so many to begin with? Isn’t anybody curious?

That’s just the stuff that should bother our heads. As for our hearts....

Philosopher Thomas Hobbes proposed the theory of a “social contract” voluntarily, but necessarily, adhered to by members of a society in order to avoid giving their existence over to chaos. In other words, if you don’t want everybody else doing whatever they please, especially in public, then you agree not to either.

If I want to carry a gun, what is the worst that can happen if it’s not "allowed," and I can pretty safely assume that most, if not all, the people in the room with me are unarmed as well? If I do not want a gun anywhere near me, what’s the worst that can happen when it’s very possible that a great number of the people in the room with me are armed? The main reason I’ve heard given by the pro-carry people (besides “it’s my RIGHT, damn it”) is that if the bad guys are going to have guns, they want them, too. Following that logic, the more people there are who carry guns, the more people there are going to be who didn’t before but want to now. Statistically, the more people who adopt the practice, the better the chance that it was an impulse, that they’ve had minimal gun education or experience, that they’re more afraid, their judgment not as sharp, and so on.

I support, albeit sometimes with great reservation, the second amendment. I don’t care if people own guns and in fact agree wholeheartedly that everyone has the right to protect themselves and their property. I simply think that once that desire for protection leaves an environment where my individual needs are quite reasonably the only priority (my home, my vehicle) and spreads out into an environment where many individuals’ needs must be balanced (our workplace, our restaurants, our parks, our movie theatres, our churches, or your workplace, your garage sale, etc.), and my need is one that, under certain circumstances, has the proven potential to do direct and grievous harm to others, then I should be willing to lay down my need, to maintain order in the society in which I have chosen to be a part.

We actually have, in keeping with that same amendment, a militia formed for our defense—they’re called police officers. We could take care of ourselves, in whatever manner we find most reassuring, in our own homes and even in our cars and continue to trust our public protection to the properly trained, equipped, and legally informed force we already have in place. Even given the exceptions committed by the evil and desperate, I would prefer that to being at the mercy of what are potentially nothing more than a bunch of yahoos armed with guns and self-righteous ignorance.

The HPV Racket

If drug companies like Merck and GlaxoSmithKline can get their HPV vaccines mandated by the states, or even individual school systems, they sell tons more of it. Go to opensecrets.org, search for Merck (ahead of GSK in the HPV vaccine race) as an organization, and look at how much money they've contributed to campaigns, already almost a half million by their PAC for just the 2010 election cycle--meaning only congressional candidates! Communicate more with your legislators!! (AND your children-girls and boys!) Their mission is obviously to buy a government "contract" to make mass profits off of a drug/disease people know less about and will be less resistant to than, say, an AIDS vaccine (AIDS being 100% fatal). Now go to CDC.gov and read about HPV. In 90% of cases, the body clears it; there are several other cancers more frequently observed resulting from HPV than cervical cancer; the vaccines do not prevent ALL types of HPV (and don't prevent HIV at all); smoking is also a contributor; PAP tests will catch most precancers; and abstinence prevents all STDs 100%. The latter is just the better known and therefore more feared.

It is mostly, if not entirely, propaganda for profit. Other resources: CDC.gov for the facts about HPV, related cancers (and worse diseases), & their causes, preventions, and treatments; followthemoney.org for trails between contributions and state-level legislators; attachmentparenting.org for advice on staying really connected to your kids, because that is the most important element here.
Do not be sheep; the two most effective ways to help your children are to stay CONNECTED as parents...and QUESTION EVERYTHING!!

As far as Merck’s “donation” of $500 million to other high-risk countries...
There are about 10 million girls age 10-14 in the U.S. This vaccine runs upwards of $300 per series. That's $3 BILLION potential profit in the U.S. alone, especially if they can bribe state and federal legislators (the actual function of most non-individual campaign contributions, not an exaggeration-see opensecrets.org, search for Merck and do the math yourselves) into mandating it, which would also ultimately save them millions in advertising. $500 million is a pretty affordable investment/gimmick when you stand to make 6x that in this country alone.