Torture Day, October 17th

[andygates]

Note it in your diaries, it's the day that the USA gave up on all that "shining beacon" rubbish and signed torture into law. The moral authority of that country is now on a par with, say, China, or Burma. It seems you can indeed boil three hundred milllion frogs alive by just turning up the temperature slowly.

Just think, this time next year you could be celebrating the first anniversary of institutionalised, legal torture. How neat! Quick, get an Abu Ghraib torture hoodie for your kids for Hallowe'en!

You could wrap copper wire around Jefferson's coffin and generate enough power to light a small town, he's spinning that fast in his grave. You Americans who read this: how did you let your country get this bad? How do you tolerate it? Have you no shame?

Comments

[flitljm.livejournal.com]

Says here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6058970.stm that torture specifically not allowed.

You have other info?

[andygates.livejournal.com]

"The bill forbids treatment of detainees that would constitute war crimes - such as torture, rape and biological experiments - but gives the president the authority to decide which other techniques interrogators can use."

"Torture lite" - stuff like waterboarding. Lovely. It is to torture as tentacle hentai is to p0rn: that's not a willy, so it's legal; that's not a scar, so it's legal.

[skean.livejournal.com]

Hey, did you notice Star Wars is back on the same day? Makes me wonder what other stuff has been stuck in there. You know, lets legalise toturelite today, splash some really big headlines about keeping space safe from the Reds no longer under the bed and stick the really e-vil stuff as a footnote on some legislation about libraries.

And to be fair, we did "let" Blair invade Iraq in the same way. What did we do? How did we let our country get so bad? OK, maybe our planes weren't flying over Lebanon, but we helped get the bombs there. Guatanamo? Ooo, its bad Mr Bush. Tut tut tut....and? For 5 years, what?

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Yes, we did. I did the lobby-your-MP-and-go-to-the-biggest-street-protest-ever thing, and it had no effect whatsoever. If the protest had been violent, it would have, but a violent protest for peace has a certain oxymoronic flavour. And as a state, we're too far up America's arse to make any meaningful protest: we don't dare upset them. Italy to their Germany? Perhaps.

It was pivotal in making me convinced that the only way to effect real change was direct action - and then it's the risk/reward balance, and frankly I don't care enough. Stupid atrocities happen all the time, all over the world. Stupid people vote for them. We're in a world of stupid and the stupidest people of all are the ones who think that we're not. The smart ones, they're the selfish bastards working the stupid biomass for their own gain.

Once you get over the sheer grotesqueness of it, it's actually quite funny to watch, but you do have to decouple your moral outrage.

[flitljm.livejournal.com]

Yuck. Thanks.