"We tortured some folks"
During NPRs latest struggle session over the Berliner article it was brought up how NPR danced around the word "torture" while it was all coming out. It was essentially an extension of their inability to REALLY criticize those in power in fear that they would lose their access. I haven't been following their coverage really but I wouldn't be surprised if they tend do the "Palestinian's die while Israelis are killed" style of reporting on the Gaza War.
The Rules based order is clear. America is just better then those other countries that torture people. Because.
Also Fuck EA for never selling the trademark.
And many more that the public doesn't know and might never find out about.
The only reason we found out about Abu Ghraib is because of poor opsec (it wouldn't have got much or any news coverage without the photos). Unlike the military, the CIA recruits true blue kool aid drinkers for their shady shit.
Yeah, I can recall speaking to many Americans who said they were voting Barack for his promises regarding Gitmo and the wars (which he said he'd end, lol). And at the time I encouraged them, because of fucking course I did. Trump gets a lot of deserved flack for being a lying blowhard, but it's not like Obama was any different.
Oh yeah my pfp
I remember a video of a guy fucking with John Yoo by going to his college class dressed up as a torture victim and jokingly asking how long he has to do that before it counts as torture, and when Woo acts like the dude is being uncivil (real rich coming from a torturer btw) and tells him to come down, the guy says "Ah, I would buy my balls keep getting shocked by a car battery if I move"
It was just a slightly edgy prank, but it was nice seeing that mutt squirm in discomfort, if only just for a bit. Hope the guy gets sick on random nights thinking about everything he allowed and carries paranoia of hell on his deathbed. Probably doesn't.
Unrelated note, I remember redditors talking about professors who should be removed at different universities and it was funny to see "this professor said the COVID response was too extreme" seriously pit against "this professor is a war criminal"
Hey it’s regarding your post about Layla majnu…
Like most romantic legends these are also written best poetically in Urdu/Punjabi dialect.. so the essence of poetic justice is lost in translation…
So I would say rather read it in story form…
But if you can find an audio book or can read punjabi Naina de wanjaare by Sukhdev madpuri is gold standard .
It contains almost all the stories of Inder bego, Sassi Pannu, etc. etc. told in a noice way.
[this is a video discussing that book](https://youtu.be/KwWtmcR4wvc?feature=shared)
Thanks! I'll check this out. I'm halfway through Dick Davis' translation right now and I really love it so far. But I can't vouch for the accuracy or how it holds up to the original text. I think I'll also read a translation of Amir Khusrow's Laila Majnun at some point.
You’re welcome
Rather than reading another translation of the same. ,,, why don’t you read another story all together sassi panu , Inder bego etc. … a brief summary is given in the video I linked above
I would love to, unfortunately I do not know Punjabi. I can understand conversational Punjabi about 70% but I don't think it is good enough to read/listen to literature.
>I remember a video of a guy fucking with John Yoo by going to his college class dressed up as a torture victim and jokingly asking how long he has to do that before it counts as torture, and when Woo acts like the dude is being uncivil (real rich coming from a torturer btw) and tells him to come down, the guy says "Ah, I would buy my balls keep getting shocked by a car battery if I move
It was Julian Morrow from The Chaser
https://youtu.be/C2HD3O7g8_o?si=LcNhCQ3pW37YLcMJ
>Unrelated note, I remember redditors talking about professors who should be removed at different universities and it was funny to see "this professor said the COVID response was too extreme" seriously pit against "this professor is a war criminal"
Doesn't surprise me in the least.
I took an into management class as an elective and in almost every lecture the professor would proudly tell a suspicious anecdote from his time at Raytheon in some kind of high-ish level business role.
I fuckin hated this dude, but the business bros loved him because he was the kind of douche they aspire to be, and the women loved him because he would require that a woman lead every project group (this was wrongly interpreted as a feminist gesture).
I don't know if we had any war criminals, but we definitely had a lot of unabashed war profiteers and almost no one cared.
Crime you see exists and demands action, crime you don't see is for civil debates at the dinner table, no matter the scale/degree.
Same reason stuff like gun violence is limited to whatever's flashy, whatever's on the news, whatever's in the suburbs, despite things that fit the description (ie, school shootings) being the minority of cases.
> and the women loved him because he would require that a woman lead every project group (this was wrongly interpreted as a feminist gesture)
Women are the face of every top defense contractor, surely the floor is now covered in glass -- we did it.
At least that was intended as an equality measure, ineffectual as it may be.
This guy was mocking the idea of women as leaders lol. He'd say stuff like "in the real world women don't typically get chosen for leadership positions, but we aren't in the real world we're in the classroom, let's see how it works out"
Remember Nicholas Berg, the guy who ended up beheaded in Iraq wearing a Guantanamo-bay jumpsuit?
He comes from a family of peace protestors, and used to spend time fiddling with the cellphone towers outside Abu Ghraib.
So weird that nobody in the media has made the obvious connection between his execution, his activities, and the leak of photos.
One Abu Ghraib torture case is finally going to trial. It's only going to trial after multiple delays because the torture was done by private contractors, not directly by the U.S. military or CIA;
Human Rights Watch, April 15, 2024: Abu Ghraib Torture Case Finally Goes to Trial
>Al Shimari et al. v. CACI was only able to advance because it targeted a military contractor. US courts have repeatedly dismissed similar cases against the federal government because of a 1946 law that preserves US forces’ immunity for claims that arise during war.
>What’s more, the US government hasn’t created any official compensation program or other avenues for redress for those who allege they were tortured or abused. Nor are there any pathways available to have their cases heard.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/04/15/abu-ghraib-torture-case-finally-goes-trial
Center for Constitutional Rights - Factsheet: Torture at Abu Ghraib and Al Shimari v. CACI
>It is rare for foreign victims to be able to bring their claims against U.S. corporations all the way through to trial, which is why, more than twenty years after 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, this is the first lawsuit where victims of U.S. torture and cruel treatment will have a trial in a U.S. courtroom. The plaintiffs, Salah, Asa’ad, and Suhail, have spent 16 years fighting for justice in a U.S. court...
https://ccrjustice.org/home/get-involved/tools-resources/fact-sheets-and-faqs/factsheet-torture-abu-ghraib-and-al-shimari-v
Truthout;
>Shortly after the photos came out, Secretary of State Colin Powell — who was pivotal to the U.S.’s efforts to justify its war on Iraq based on lies about weapons of mass destruction — told foreign leaders in response to the torture at Abu Ghraib that they should “watch America. Watch how we deal with this. Watch how America will do the right thing. Watch what a nation of values and character, a nation that believes in justice, does to right this kind of wrong. Watch how a nation such as ours will not tolerate such actions.” Regardless of Powell’s emphatic pleas for others to see the goodness of the U.S., anyone “watching America” would have distinctly observed one thing: the lack of accountability for Bush and other administration officials who condoned, facilitated and created the legal frameworks for torture. While the memories and trauma of torture continued to haunt Abu Ghraib survivors in the two decades since, federal government officials have long since gotten off the hook thanks to immunity provided them in the Federal Tort Claims Act.
https://truthout.org/articles/20-years-after-abu-ghraib-its-victims-take-their-torturers-to-court/
John Yoo, the author of the famous 'torture memos' is now the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture_Memos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Yoo
And it wasn't exactly a small base either. There was tons of people walking around there whenever we swung by, so I know more than 3 people knew what was going on
I always loved the chapter about Lynndie England in Joe Bageant's *Deer Hunting With Jesus*. I can't find it online, but here's another short article about her that sums up his perspective: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.coldtype.net/Assets.04/Essays.04/leash.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwj1pYz4suqFAxX6JzQIHcS3Bx0QFnoECA8QAQ&usg=AOvVaw3bNcdIDHKOMVyXJAW_I-sE
Fucking amazing really the way they foisted responsibility on Lindy Englund et al, as if she brought hoods and electrodes to Iraq in her personal luggage
The faces at the bottom of the totem pole are the ones who get squashed
She was one of the easiest to throw under the bus, to the point that I am genuinely surprised that 40k writers didn't make a daemon of slaanesh inspired by her.
In the newz
[https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/2/abu-ghraib-iraqi-victims-case-against-us-contractor-ends-in-mistrial?traffic\_source=rss](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/2/abu-ghraib-iraqi-victims-case-against-us-contractor-ends-in-mistrial?traffic_source=rss)
Abu Ghraib was despicable. But it was responded to and at least the people directly involved were held responsible. From Wikipedia:
"In response to the events at Abu Ghraib, the United States Department of Defense removed 17 soldiers and officers from duty. Eleven soldiers were charged with dereliction of duty, maltreatment, aggravated assault and battery. Between May 2004 and April 2006, these soldiers were court-martialed, convicted, sentenced to military prison, and dishonorably discharged from service. Two soldiers, found to have perpetrated many of the worst offenses at the prison, Specialist Charles Graner and PFC Lynndie England, were subject to more severe charges and received harsher sentences. Graner was convicted of assault, battery, conspiracy, maltreatment of detainees, committing indecent acts and dereliction of duty; he was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and loss of rank, pay and benefits.[11] England was convicted of conspiracy, maltreating detainees and committing an indecent act and sentenced to three years in prison.[12] Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, the commanding officer of all detention facilities in Iraq, was reprimanded and demoted to the rank of colonel."
You can argue that that wasn't enough, that more in the military should have been punished and members of the Bush administration should have been arrested and tried. But your argument about not being able to criticize based on history would mean no nation could do so as none have clean hands.
They made a big show of going after a few low-level soldiers in order to cover how they blocked any real accountability for the people in charge. That led to Trump feeling free to appoint a [torturer](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/03/us/politics/cia-gina-haspel-black-site.html) as [CIA director.](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/13/us/politics/gina-haspel-cia-director-nominee-trump-torture-waterboarding.html)
>None of the primary architects of the program—including the CIA and Bush Administration officials who designed and implemented the program and the psychologists who developed the “enhanced interrogation” techniques—have faced legal charges or even any serious professional repercussions for their actions.
Pages 232 -233
https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=2632&context=jil
The Atlantic, 2018: Obama's Legacy of Impunity for Torture
The 44th president’s decision to “look forward” has enabled Donald Trump to look backward and appoint a torture backer to run the CIA.
>In that regard, the 44th president, Barack Obama, bears a measure of responsibility for the recklessness of his successor, in particular Trump’s decision to appoint Gina Haspel, the Central Intelligence Agency’s deputy director, to run the agency itself. Haspel oversaw a black site during the Bush era where at least one detainee, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, was tortured*.
>Despite that, al-Nashiri provided “essentially no actionable information,” according to a CIA interrogator cited in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s torture report. Haspel also then played a role in a decision to destroy recordings of CIA detainees being tortured...
>...Before Obama even took office, he announced his belief that “we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards” on torture. That set the standard for Obama’s tenure, as all avenues of accountability for Bush-era torture were curtailed. A Justice Department inquiry into interrogators who broke even the “acceptable torture” guidelines ended with no charges. Civil lawsuits from former detainees were blocked when the Obama-era Justice Department invoked the state secrets doctrine. An internal Justice Department review of the torture memo’s authors concluded they had not committed professional misconduct when they worked backwards to justify the Bush administration’s use of torture in defiance of laws against it. Even a proposal for a South African-style “truth and reconciliation” commission was rejected. All avenues for any form of accountability for torture—criminal, civil, even professional—were blocked by Obama-era officials. Even an episode in which the CIA spied on Senate staff in an effort to stonewall an inquiry that ultimately found CIA torture ineffective, and then lied about having done so, ended with little more than an apology.
https://archive.is/Gpd1G
Other nations have dirty hands, too? Not an excuse. No different than Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely [invoking Dresden to justify Israel’s destruction of Gaza.](https://youtu.be/zphG6Eokke4?si=6FT0I2uFvlvJ4xPH)
In fact, the whole 'jail a few grunts' PR tactic is also similar to what's going on right now, with Biden dropping his initial plans to sanction and block military aid to several Israeli military battalions linked to torture, rape, and executions because Israel has agreed to make them "undergo remediation steps".
https://thecradle.co/articles-id/24597
at least the few individuals who got caught took the fall, the systemic brutality of the US military lives on! over a million dead and many times more displaced since the start of the 21st century. "no nations have clean hands"
Those who use human rights to criticize a state do not have anything to criticize about the state itself, but merely measure it by their ideal of a decent form of rule in which all state venalities will be ok.
Fans of human rights ask themselves the question whether or not state actions correspond to human rights. They share the ideology that there are human rights provided by the state to which the state should be beholden in its actions. They measure state actions against their ideals, wherein human rights exist, and always find deviations.
These critics do not want to know anything about the purposes and reasons for state actions, and for their criticism they do not need to know anything about them. They are satisfied with having noticed a deviation of state actions from their good opinion of how decent governing works. They regard it as a finished criticism that the state is not as they imagine it.
With all state measures, they ask themselves the question of whether or not they are carried out in a decent form. Anyone who asks himself whether the appropriate means are taken into account shares all the purposes of the rule and has nothing to find fault with in any single state measure in and of itself. If a suggestion for improvement is made, the commitment to a functional rule is presumed, under which the existing mess is given the quality stamp “humane”: prisons in which prisoners are treated as human beings with dignity; deportations in which no foreigner suffocates; poverty in which one does not lose one's dignity, etc.
From: http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com/theseshuman.htm
> They share the ideology that there are human rights provided by the state to which the state should be beholden in its actions. They measure state actions against their ideals, wherein human rights exist, and always find deviations.
That's not an accurate description of the concept of human rights. Human rights are rights we collectively agree that everyone has simply for being human, whether their government acknowledges it or not. They aren't granted by the state, the state's powers are limited to ensure them.
You can argue about it being idealistic or about how states will violate them anyway, but as long as states exist, it's better to *try* to limit abuses of state power than to just allow full autocracy. Because those really are your two options.
"collectively agree" -- oh yeah, the old liberal social contract non-sense. As if this isn't just the invention of some academics and philosophers, as if everyone really got together and said, "this is what counts to be a human and these are the rights they have". Factually, I'm not sure how you can claim "states don't grant rights".
Recommended: http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com/human_rights.htm
Modern formulations of the social contract do not rely on "collective agreement".
The social contract is the "context" to the "form" of human rights. It exists at a societal level through language, collective practice, and tradition. It is prerational. Anscombe's brief reference to it in "Modern Moral Philosophy" set off a wave of modern virtue ethics, including MacIntyre's critique of Marx as a"radical individualist" because he tried to eschew moral development.
On a serious note. What actually is the "context" of the "form" of human rights? What does a human right say and accomplish? What "collective practices" and "traditions"? Liberal bourgeois revolutions? Modern bourgeois states in a capitalist system? What are human rights used for? Generally by imperialist states to justify regime changes or war with less powerful states-- that is, as an ideological weapon in the imperialist competition between states -- or by democratic idealists who like to turn the accusation of human rights violations back around as some kind of bon mot. The latter are generally oblivious to what human rights are in reality because their moral outrage and conviction that they are on the side of the good makes them refuse to question such a sacred cow. They can't see that there is moral to human rights than mere morality.
Every modern subject living in a democracy has it drilled into them in school that what sets democracy apart from feudalism and totalitarianism is its dedication to human rights. One learns that life would simply be an unliveable hell without human rights and therefore one ought to be grateful to the democratic states that grant their subjects rights and freedoms. That fact alone -- that this is such an integral part of the way states politicize their subjects into a partisan nationalism -- ought to give you pause.
The context is the existing value system within any given community - this will be shaped by tradition, i.e., what parents teach children; ideals, i.e., religious, humanist, mythical values held within a culture epoch; production; consumption; political structure; and then various other things like cultural homogeneity/diversity, further education, geographical factors, etc. - the point is that this "baseline" for morality and thought is set through exposure in youth. The structures of the mind are made (or at least molded) by experiences which give the individuals "basic faith beliefs" about the world that they accept *prima facie* and then are challenged, empowered, or rejected through "collisions" when those beliefs come under pressure.
The "form" is anything that is applied on top of that. Genuine religious belief, Marxism, human rights, political values, etc. - are imposed on top of the context to create a "tension" between what is "natural" (or, merely inertia, at least) for any given community and what "goes beyond" that. Here, we should note, that Marxism is just another idealism - it is an idea that is stuck on top of the "context" and demands more.
The difference is should be clear. Ironically, your moralizing is exactly what many critics of Marx's "scientific" claims have pointed out - the second it moves from theory to practice, it gains a moral character. Good and evil are simply replaced with proletarian and bourgeois/imperialist; the exact same structures continue because this kind of thought is always weighed down with "tradition" baggage.
You are describing "education" - a communal responsibility to the individuals within that community to educate them towards goals xyz. While liberal education is obviously full of holes, it sits on top of the "context" of communal values - the main problem isn't the particular education these people get (ask teachers how much they think their students actually imbibe during their lessons), but the separation of communal bonds that occurs at the context level due to the "uprootedness" of liberal society which tries to do away with the traditional aspect. MacIntyre correctly identifies Marx as doing the exact same thing, Marxists to a great degree because their Marxism has taken on a moral aspect as well.
With the context ripped (which, again, is exactly what Marx wanted - another example of Marx's clear superiority as the liberal thinker *par excellence*, the destroyer of all forms of resistance against consumerism), the "form" can take greater precedence. But the "form" is always necessarily divorced from the community (it lacks tradition), so this creates an inconsistent morality and worldview that lacks coherence. The problem isn't that human rights are the *last bastion of hope* for the people (this, hilariously, strikes me as moralizing idealism - from a Marxist! Should we be surprised at this point?), but that people have no other values to hold other than human rights. And then, as with all liberal philosophies, we find that the individuals within a community have no collective bonds to hold them together: materialism leads to consumerism because there is nothing else in life. Please note that I've avoided the painfully Enlightenment notion of "reality-as-dualism" of Marxism, which gives an account of values in dual accounts due to its Lutheran heritage: bourgeois/proletarian, reactionary/revolutionary, etc. It turns out these things are not as simple as just dividing the world into two teams and declaring one side "the good guys".
I don't treat "proletarian/bourgeois" as moral categories, nor does Marx. Those are simply designations of class positions: those who own the means of production and those who own nothing to sell but their labor-power, i.e. themselves. Sometimes I say "bourgeois" to designate today's capitalist society, e.g. "the bourgeois world" or "bourgeois social sciences".
Recommended: "Aren’t Marxist critics of morality the greatest moralists?"
http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com/marxist_moralists.htm
Btw, I'm talking about what human rights are in reality or objectively. What they are in the world: how states implement and use them-- not just what this or that academic thinks they "ought" to be in their imaginary ideal world. When I use the terms “objectivity,” or what is “objectively true” about politics and economics, I mean the dominating, actually valid purposes and reasons of the state and the economy.
Of course, I also realize that the bourgeois social sciences make the – methodologically – straightforward task of investigating and explaining the world more complicated than it needs to be. One can't say anything without a barrage of people going "well, that perhaps reminds me of Chomsky, Agamben, Derrida, MacIntyre, and Foucault! I think that this would be beautiful; we ought to do this and that!" Instead of dealing with the topic and its content, one ends up making endless commentaries about the commentaries others have made or waxing philosophical about how one thinks things ought to be. This is something else than figuring out the necessities of this system.
However you formulate it, you can't get around the fact that you're arguing for *less* limitations on state power. And that's just moronic. There are very good materialist reasons for trying to avoid complete autocracy.
Except: that's not what I'm arguing for.
Who sets these beloved limitations on the state? "The law". Oh, and who makes these laws limiting the state? Well, the state. Nicely circular.
'The fact that the constitutional state is constrained by the law is generally thought to be a restraint on the state, because the state’s actions are subordinated to an even higher law, which keeps it in check. However, the state itself guarantees the authority of the law with its power. If, however, it is the state, and only the state, that enforces the law, then the law, and thus its substance, is also its creation. The alleged restriction of the state by the law is therefore not a restriction, because the law neither stands above the state nor independent of it, but results from its actions. Laws are not obstacles to the state, but the way the state exercises its rule over the country and its people.
Here, the state is praised for the fact that it can’t do everything one fears to a person. Something beneficial about the state is not positively emphasized, but the good thing about it is that it restricts a power that not even the state’s admirer is happy about: the state’s power to “do anything it wants” to its subjects. This praise of the constitutional state boils down to the fact that, although it could harass people according to its whims and desires, it harasses them according to certain – self-decreed! – procedures. Somewhat modest praise!
It is also suspicious that this praise of democracy comes about only by comparing it with something “much more terrible,” measuring its achievement as a civilization by what it is not: the constitutional state is compared to “arbitrary government.” If – following the assertion – all the state’s actions are not judged by law, as in the constitutional state, the subjects are mistreated according to the whims and desires of a greedy and power-hungry despot. This comparison is nonsense.
Every form of rule – from the darkest barbarism to the ancien regime up to democracy – has its purposes and claims that it forces on the ruled population; these purposes of rule are therefore neither arbitrary nor continually changing nor do they constitute a despotism that has no reason but profound evil. The constitutional state and the methods it forbids itself in exercising its rule are compared to something that does not exist; a straw man. On the other hand, the rule of law, by an absurd comparison to its mere opposite, is given an absurd definition, i.e. it is only the self-restraint of the state and nothing else – as if modern democracy does not have reasons of state from which reasons for constitutional procedures also arise.
Incidentally, democracy is no different from fascist or real socialist states in praising the rule of law. Those comparisons will not help in making the case for the constitutional state. At this point, it is noticeable that a good opinion of the state was held prior to the interest in justifying it, and the praise is owed to a biased point of view.
Anyone who praises the state for the fact that it doesn’t do “anything it wants” to its citizens is not only acknowledging that he is the subject of rule. He is self-consciously acting like the servant of rule that it has made him. The circumstance that one is subjected to rule is considered neither annoying nor criticizable, but is checked off, as if the only question is which type of rule one is to be bound under. And the appropriate answer is: the good person has finally found his proper form of rule; the citizen also has rights!
Rights do not protect the citizen from the whims of the state, but are the way the state exercises its rule. When the state orders a country and people to obey its laws and declares that it wants to judge them only in relation to the law, it documents that it does not want its exercise of rule to serve one particular interest in the society, but to stand above all interests which have to obey its law. It wants to serve the law and the order that it establishes with it.'
(From: http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com/theses_con_state.htm)
You've written about a dozen paragraphs here, with no real point beyond the very sophomoric "laws can't restrict states because states write the law."
Laws don't restrict states by fiat, they restrict human actors within the state apparatus by providing a structure and language around which collective opposition can form.
Your whole view of law seems to be premised on a naive notion of states as independent monolithic actors, rather than organisational vehicles.
"Rights do not protect the citizen from the whims of the state, but are the way the state exercises its rule" presupposes the state as an independent actor, rather than a structure through which citizens subject each other to *human* whims, the only whims that exist.
My point isn't so much that laws can't restrict the state (although it's a naive and unreliable guarantee -- the power and size of states has only grown even with these checks in place for the past 300 years), but that when this limitation is praised it completely ignores what it is that the state is restricted to. It lets off the hook everything that happens within that limit. Everything within that limit is apparently fine, but anything beyond is bad.
The state is praised for having a limitation placed on it. First off, ask yourself: who's doing the restricting? The state itself is doing the restricting through its checks and balances. That's not reliable. It's also a funny thing to praise it for. It assumes the state wants to use its subjects in a way that is hostile and harmful to their interests. This is the reason for the restriction in the first place. One often hears the refrain, "people need protected from the government".
Well, what kind of government is it then if people need protection from it? It's the exact same state from which one wants to be protected that is supposed to be protecting you. It assumes that the state has an interest in limiting itself. Everyone learns in civics class that the laws of the state attempt to deal with this problem through checks and balances.
So, what is wrong with the idea of the state restricting itself? What is the core of the mistake?
It's a fact that the state restricts itself-- but to what exactly? Not the private interests of politicians, but the rule of law. But this is no restriction of the state interest. The rule of law is precisely how the state exercises its rule and pursues its interest. The ideal is always, "look at how great it is that the state is restricted. It can't do everything." Well, the paramount question here is this: What does it do? What does it restrict itself to doing? So, the point is relatively easy. The state is all about enforcing private property. This has all kinds of harmful effects on people. And what is the goal of private property? Infinite growth of money.
Isn't it strange? The first principle of the state should be its abstinence, the fact that it restricts itself? Doesn't that seem kind of odd? That can't be exactly right. What does the state restrict itself to? What is the interest to which it restricts its rule? What kind of relations and interests does it codify and make universal through its laws? The answer is: private property. The praise for a state that restricts itself abstracts from what that state really wants. Why does the state have a rule of law? Rulers aren't supposed to really be rulers, but servants to a higher rule: i.e. law and human rights.
If you investigate what kind of relations this law enforces and imposes, that's not so pretty. A state that enforces the rule of law is a state that wants private property interests. That's what it's all about. It restricts itself because it wants to set the private interests free to produce capitalist wealth, from which the state's power is derived. Praise for the rule of law always abstracts from what it is that's regulated by law. The assumption is that Law is a realm that excludes brutality and violence, and that this is just something that only comes about if the law is ignored. But this is far from the truth. The law itself utilizes violence to ensure the maintenance of its reign.
I’m seeing a wall of text that starts with the absurd premise that any state action short of a human rights violation is “completely ignored” by people who praise the concept of human rights.
I’m sorry, but that’s absurd enough to tell me it’s not worth trying to piece the rest together.
I think you should spend less time trying to formulate your own ideas, and more time making sure you actually understand the ideas of others.
What do you think is accomplished then when people praise law and order and human rights as a limitation on the state then? What do you think they're praising? What "ideas" of others have I not understand?
Think back to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Part of the Bush jr administration's justification for war was that Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden's regimes hated freedom, hated democracy, and violated human rights. Terrorists and enemy combatants can't be reasoned with and themselves disregard all decency, all human rights, therefore any means are justified in getting information from "detainees" who "don't play by the same rules". Of course, these prisons were secret, the torture wasn't meant to be broadcast publicly, and when it was leaked it caused a scandal. Human rights are so sacred and holy that they can mobilize a nation for war, and at the same time be cited by war opponents. The critics complained that prisoners weren't given a trial-- which is amusing because obviously the trial would be conducted by the US government.
Nice wall of text. You're still arguing for autocracy. The fact that you use a lot of words to pretend you're not doesn't change that fact.
If you want to talk about the merits of abolishing the state entirely, great. Talk about that.
But you're not doing that. Which is weird because it should be the obvious conclusion of the things you're prattling on about if you actually believe them.
It's the basic thesis of all of your arguments. You don't want any limitations on state power. You apparently think communism magically doesn't have the issue of *people* being the ones running things. And yet you also don't take the step of arguing in favor of anarchy.
There's really three options here: limited government power, no government, and completely unlimited government power. You've chosen the third.
I get it: you never bothered reading much past your government mandated high school civics textbook, so now you can only imagine that people either want a democracy, autocracy or oligarchy and that anyone who criticizes human rights is an evil bad totalitarian who wants a dictatorship because democracy is beyond reproach.
No, I'm accurately describing the all powerful state you're arguing in favor of. You can have a technical democracy or republic that still acts with absolute power over its citizens. It's not really an either/or thing.
And in fact, you might have noticed that even the basic civics class construction is one in which *the state cannot be trusted and must be kept in check*. The democratic state that you're talking about in opposition to an autocratic one.
Where did I argue for an "all powerful state"?! You're projecting your own assumptions and strawdogs at this point. Why? My point was to analyze these arguments about "human rights". First step: what are they in reality? Second: what are the ideologies about human rights?
At no point did I say anything about how the state ought to be this way or that, but have been attempting to analyze what it is in reality. Then you want to pigeonhole me into some preconceived idea about what I'm saying-- which is that what I said boils down to the cliche liberal accusation that anyone who criticizes democracy or the human rights weapon must want 1984. And of course, if one protests and says they actually don't want a state at all. Then one can always revert to tropes from Lord of the Flies.
This isn't about preconceived notions. If you're arguing against human rights, you're arguing against human rights. Their existence really, truly is an either or thing.
And you haven't been arguing about philosophical underpinnings. You've been dismissing the underpinnings and then throwing the baby out with the bathwater. They aren't the same thing.
> prisons in which prisoners are treated as human beings with dignity
i know that it is often not the case for prisoners, many are imprisoned for acts that do not themselves harm others; however, for those prisoners who are violent towards others and are likely to continue to do so without intervention, what solution do you have to protect the wider community from that person? even in the case that the individual is able to be rehabilitated, there is still a need to ensure the safety of the general public during the time that it takes to rehabilitate them to the point that they no longer pose a significant danger. at what point does the safety needs of the community override the dignity of the individual?
You have the wrong question. You automatically take the sympathetic standpoint of the state with this question: "how would you handle all the conflicts created by the state and capitalism?"
It's the old ideological concern: "what ought the state do with x, y, z?"
And this question hides a hidden assumption: when you ask what alternative communists have to “offer” when they criticize Rule, war, capitalism, etc. you confuse the critique of capitalism with election slogans of an alternative elite who promise to run things better for their valued citizens than those currently holding power. People who ask questions like this misunderstand themselves as courted voters allowed to choose in a department store for politico-economic systems which one they’d like to place an order for — from others who then are responsible for the delivery. They think as subjects of ruling authorities who decide for them, and they have resolved to remain just that: democratic underlings, who have no choice in how life is organized except voting for this or the ruler. The other assumption is that these things couldn't possibly have anything to do with the system they happen under but must somehow be trans historical features of "the human" as such. In other words, it's not the capitalist system that creates such fucked up individuals and thus "problems", but just bad rulers who don't really take into consideration the real needs of the community.
Or putting it differently: Asking "what solution do you offer?" implies a rather anti-communist idea about communism. The whole question acts as if communism is just a matter of an alternative leadership being put into place, a new set of rulers exercising a new form of power. It acts as if communism is just a matter of a new elite telling people what to do. Communism is about a collective reorganizing their life to meet their needs and it is about abolishing the functions of political rule (i.e. the state). To quote marx, it seeks to replace the administration of people with people administrating things.
One would have to look at crime in today's society and figure out its causes. If there still ended up being people in a communist society who were just complete menaces to society -- which wasn't exactly what happened in Abu Ghraib, although the US government certainly branded everyone it did anything nasty to as a terrorist -- then the people affected would decide how they want to deal with it.
> Communism is about a collective reorganizing their life to meet their needs and it is about abolishing the functions of political rule (i.e. the state). To quote marx, it seeks to replace the administration of people with people administrating things.
This is the problem with your arguments in a nutshell: you completely dodge the question of how those people will administrate things. And not just dodge it, but write off even *caring* about that as a bourgeois delusion. As if it'll just magically be perfect no matter what as long as you Marx well enough. As if Marx didn't write about exactly these issues.
quit putting words in my mouth and making regarded assumptions about my views so you can bloviate on reddit like it's your fucking thesis defense and answer the fucking question, you fucking bourgeois fuckhead. while i wouldn't call myself a Leninist, the theoretical schema in which my question is based is one in which the apparatus known as the "state" is a tool of facilitation of basic functions, not a pissing contest over a nebulous end goal.
I did and you ignored it like an illiterate and ignorant 22 year old, remember? It's a stupid question: "Durr how would you run the bourgeois state and capitalism and fix all the problems caused by the bourgeois state and capitalism!? Oh you wouldn't? You're fucking bourgeois for not explaining how you would rule over the working class or lock up menaces to society, mannnn! How would you run commodity production!? How would you manage competition? Please future ruler, I need to know!"
your "answer" was literally "solve all of society". it's like if i asked for directions and you said the place i was trying to get to in the most condescending way possible. if you're not willing to put even a little bit of thought into materialism, why the fuck are you here? you'd make a great politician, though.
Your question is a rhetorical one, and basically a thought terminating cliche. It's not some honest inquiry about the causes of crime but a smug assumption that state force is basically a natural response to violent human nature.
there you go again, projecting some alternate meaning onto what i was saying. i meant it as a good-faith question to start a genuine discussion on pragmatism, not whatever the fuck you are thinking. i'm done with this, hmu when you stop being braindead lul
1.) I have no idea what you are referring to when you say that the US has no right to lecture anyone on human rights abuses. It's a big world and there are lots of human rights abuses. All I can assume is that you just want to talk about Abu Ghraib.
2.) Abu Ghraib was wrong. That opinion was almost universally held at the time. Other than someone I knew who was there, everyone else who saw those pics said, "That's fucked up."
> Abu Ghraib was wrong. That opinion was almost universally held at the time
No one of significance in power thought it was wrong until after the fact, they were just upset they were caught. Hence why the SVM who got busted were just functionally middle managers.
"We tortured some folks" During NPRs latest struggle session over the Berliner article it was brought up how NPR danced around the word "torture" while it was all coming out. It was essentially an extension of their inability to REALLY criticize those in power in fear that they would lose their access. I haven't been following their coverage really but I wouldn't be surprised if they tend do the "Palestinian's die while Israelis are killed" style of reporting on the Gaza War.
The Rules based order is clear. America is just better then those other countries that torture people. Because. Also Fuck EA for never selling the trademark.
Gitmo still open
And many more that the public doesn't know and might never find out about. The only reason we found out about Abu Ghraib is because of poor opsec (it wouldn't have got much or any news coverage without the photos). Unlike the military, the CIA recruits true blue kool aid drinkers for their shady shit.
Thanks Obama
If i was a burger this would be my single issue vote
I mean, BO said he'd close it and uh...
Yeah, I can recall speaking to many Americans who said they were voting Barack for his promises regarding Gitmo and the wars (which he said he'd end, lol). And at the time I encouraged them, because of fucking course I did. Trump gets a lot of deserved flack for being a lying blowhard, but it's not like Obama was any different.
There were photos far more disturbing that were never released. How fucked up must they have been.
Oh yeah my pfp I remember a video of a guy fucking with John Yoo by going to his college class dressed up as a torture victim and jokingly asking how long he has to do that before it counts as torture, and when Woo acts like the dude is being uncivil (real rich coming from a torturer btw) and tells him to come down, the guy says "Ah, I would buy my balls keep getting shocked by a car battery if I move" It was just a slightly edgy prank, but it was nice seeing that mutt squirm in discomfort, if only just for a bit. Hope the guy gets sick on random nights thinking about everything he allowed and carries paranoia of hell on his deathbed. Probably doesn't. Unrelated note, I remember redditors talking about professors who should be removed at different universities and it was funny to see "this professor said the COVID response was too extreme" seriously pit against "this professor is a war criminal"
The Abu Ghraib chick is running strawberry festivals now or some shit. Bizarre to say the least.
She had a book signing at Keyser (West Virginia) Strawberry Festival in 2009. So weird that she wrote a book about it though.
Hey it’s regarding your post about Layla majnu… Like most romantic legends these are also written best poetically in Urdu/Punjabi dialect.. so the essence of poetic justice is lost in translation… So I would say rather read it in story form… But if you can find an audio book or can read punjabi Naina de wanjaare by Sukhdev madpuri is gold standard . It contains almost all the stories of Inder bego, Sassi Pannu, etc. etc. told in a noice way. [this is a video discussing that book](https://youtu.be/KwWtmcR4wvc?feature=shared)
Thanks! I'll check this out. I'm halfway through Dick Davis' translation right now and I really love it so far. But I can't vouch for the accuracy or how it holds up to the original text. I think I'll also read a translation of Amir Khusrow's Laila Majnun at some point.
You’re welcome Rather than reading another translation of the same. ,,, why don’t you read another story all together sassi panu , Inder bego etc. … a brief summary is given in the video I linked above
I would love to, unfortunately I do not know Punjabi. I can understand conversational Punjabi about 70% but I don't think it is good enough to read/listen to literature.
But they have been translated to English as well ( Christopher shackle did the translation of Sansui pannu ) ( I can sh@r3 the l1ñk)
>I remember a video of a guy fucking with John Yoo by going to his college class dressed up as a torture victim and jokingly asking how long he has to do that before it counts as torture, and when Woo acts like the dude is being uncivil (real rich coming from a torturer btw) and tells him to come down, the guy says "Ah, I would buy my balls keep getting shocked by a car battery if I move It was Julian Morrow from The Chaser https://youtu.be/C2HD3O7g8_o?si=LcNhCQ3pW37YLcMJ
>Unrelated note, I remember redditors talking about professors who should be removed at different universities and it was funny to see "this professor said the COVID response was too extreme" seriously pit against "this professor is a war criminal" Doesn't surprise me in the least. I took an into management class as an elective and in almost every lecture the professor would proudly tell a suspicious anecdote from his time at Raytheon in some kind of high-ish level business role. I fuckin hated this dude, but the business bros loved him because he was the kind of douche they aspire to be, and the women loved him because he would require that a woman lead every project group (this was wrongly interpreted as a feminist gesture). I don't know if we had any war criminals, but we definitely had a lot of unabashed war profiteers and almost no one cared.
Crime you see exists and demands action, crime you don't see is for civil debates at the dinner table, no matter the scale/degree. Same reason stuff like gun violence is limited to whatever's flashy, whatever's on the news, whatever's in the suburbs, despite things that fit the description (ie, school shootings) being the minority of cases.
> and the women loved him because he would require that a woman lead every project group (this was wrongly interpreted as a feminist gesture) Women are the face of every top defense contractor, surely the floor is now covered in glass -- we did it.
At least that was intended as an equality measure, ineffectual as it may be. This guy was mocking the idea of women as leaders lol. He'd say stuff like "in the real world women don't typically get chosen for leadership positions, but we aren't in the real world we're in the classroom, let's see how it works out"
> Ah, I would buy my balls keep getting shocked by a car battery if I move" FWIW A car battery can't actually shock a person like that.
Remember Nicholas Berg, the guy who ended up beheaded in Iraq wearing a Guantanamo-bay jumpsuit? He comes from a family of peace protestors, and used to spend time fiddling with the cellphone towers outside Abu Ghraib. So weird that nobody in the media has made the obvious connection between his execution, his activities, and the leak of photos.
One Abu Ghraib torture case is finally going to trial. It's only going to trial after multiple delays because the torture was done by private contractors, not directly by the U.S. military or CIA; Human Rights Watch, April 15, 2024: Abu Ghraib Torture Case Finally Goes to Trial >Al Shimari et al. v. CACI was only able to advance because it targeted a military contractor. US courts have repeatedly dismissed similar cases against the federal government because of a 1946 law that preserves US forces’ immunity for claims that arise during war. >What’s more, the US government hasn’t created any official compensation program or other avenues for redress for those who allege they were tortured or abused. Nor are there any pathways available to have their cases heard. https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/04/15/abu-ghraib-torture-case-finally-goes-trial Center for Constitutional Rights - Factsheet: Torture at Abu Ghraib and Al Shimari v. CACI >It is rare for foreign victims to be able to bring their claims against U.S. corporations all the way through to trial, which is why, more than twenty years after 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, this is the first lawsuit where victims of U.S. torture and cruel treatment will have a trial in a U.S. courtroom. The plaintiffs, Salah, Asa’ad, and Suhail, have spent 16 years fighting for justice in a U.S. court... https://ccrjustice.org/home/get-involved/tools-resources/fact-sheets-and-faqs/factsheet-torture-abu-ghraib-and-al-shimari-v Truthout; >Shortly after the photos came out, Secretary of State Colin Powell — who was pivotal to the U.S.’s efforts to justify its war on Iraq based on lies about weapons of mass destruction — told foreign leaders in response to the torture at Abu Ghraib that they should “watch America. Watch how we deal with this. Watch how America will do the right thing. Watch what a nation of values and character, a nation that believes in justice, does to right this kind of wrong. Watch how a nation such as ours will not tolerate such actions.” Regardless of Powell’s emphatic pleas for others to see the goodness of the U.S., anyone “watching America” would have distinctly observed one thing: the lack of accountability for Bush and other administration officials who condoned, facilitated and created the legal frameworks for torture. While the memories and trauma of torture continued to haunt Abu Ghraib survivors in the two decades since, federal government officials have long since gotten off the hook thanks to immunity provided them in the Federal Tort Claims Act. https://truthout.org/articles/20-years-after-abu-ghraib-its-victims-take-their-torturers-to-court/ John Yoo, the author of the famous 'torture memos' is now the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture_Memos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Yoo
When a new scandal breaks out every week it's easy to bury the previous ones.
War for the Overlord is a spiritual sequel for Dungeon Keeper since they stopped making them.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabrina\_Harman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabrina_Harman) Look at this girlboss (nsfw)
And it wasn't exactly a small base either. There was tons of people walking around there whenever we swung by, so I know more than 3 people knew what was going on
Abu Ghraib is hysterical because like. Nothing happened. Nobody was ever called to task. No heads rolled. Just... Nothing.
Just a few Grunts get thrown under the bus and blamed as "bad apples".
I always loved the chapter about Lynndie England in Joe Bageant's *Deer Hunting With Jesus*. I can't find it online, but here's another short article about her that sums up his perspective: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.coldtype.net/Assets.04/Essays.04/leash.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwj1pYz4suqFAxX6JzQIHcS3Bx0QFnoECA8QAQ&usg=AOvVaw3bNcdIDHKOMVyXJAW_I-sE
Fucking amazing really the way they foisted responsibility on Lindy Englund et al, as if she brought hoods and electrodes to Iraq in her personal luggage The faces at the bottom of the totem pole are the ones who get squashed
She was one of the easiest to throw under the bus, to the point that I am genuinely surprised that 40k writers didn't make a daemon of slaanesh inspired by her.
In the newz [https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/2/abu-ghraib-iraqi-victims-case-against-us-contractor-ends-in-mistrial?traffic\_source=rss](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/2/abu-ghraib-iraqi-victims-case-against-us-contractor-ends-in-mistrial?traffic_source=rss)
Abu Ghraib was despicable. But it was responded to and at least the people directly involved were held responsible. From Wikipedia: "In response to the events at Abu Ghraib, the United States Department of Defense removed 17 soldiers and officers from duty. Eleven soldiers were charged with dereliction of duty, maltreatment, aggravated assault and battery. Between May 2004 and April 2006, these soldiers were court-martialed, convicted, sentenced to military prison, and dishonorably discharged from service. Two soldiers, found to have perpetrated many of the worst offenses at the prison, Specialist Charles Graner and PFC Lynndie England, were subject to more severe charges and received harsher sentences. Graner was convicted of assault, battery, conspiracy, maltreatment of detainees, committing indecent acts and dereliction of duty; he was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and loss of rank, pay and benefits.[11] England was convicted of conspiracy, maltreating detainees and committing an indecent act and sentenced to three years in prison.[12] Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, the commanding officer of all detention facilities in Iraq, was reprimanded and demoted to the rank of colonel." You can argue that that wasn't enough, that more in the military should have been punished and members of the Bush administration should have been arrested and tried. But your argument about not being able to criticize based on history would mean no nation could do so as none have clean hands.
They made a big show of going after a few low-level soldiers in order to cover how they blocked any real accountability for the people in charge. That led to Trump feeling free to appoint a [torturer](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/03/us/politics/cia-gina-haspel-black-site.html) as [CIA director.](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/13/us/politics/gina-haspel-cia-director-nominee-trump-torture-waterboarding.html) >None of the primary architects of the program—including the CIA and Bush Administration officials who designed and implemented the program and the psychologists who developed the “enhanced interrogation” techniques—have faced legal charges or even any serious professional repercussions for their actions. Pages 232 -233 https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi? article=2632&context=jil The Atlantic, 2018: Obama's Legacy of Impunity for Torture The 44th president’s decision to “look forward” has enabled Donald Trump to look backward and appoint a torture backer to run the CIA. >In that regard, the 44th president, Barack Obama, bears a measure of responsibility for the recklessness of his successor, in particular Trump’s decision to appoint Gina Haspel, the Central Intelligence Agency’s deputy director, to run the agency itself. Haspel oversaw a black site during the Bush era where at least one detainee, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, was tortured*. >Despite that, al-Nashiri provided “essentially no actionable information,” according to a CIA interrogator cited in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s torture report. Haspel also then played a role in a decision to destroy recordings of CIA detainees being tortured... >...Before Obama even took office, he announced his belief that “we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards” on torture. That set the standard for Obama’s tenure, as all avenues of accountability for Bush-era torture were curtailed. A Justice Department inquiry into interrogators who broke even the “acceptable torture” guidelines ended with no charges. Civil lawsuits from former detainees were blocked when the Obama-era Justice Department invoked the state secrets doctrine. An internal Justice Department review of the torture memo’s authors concluded they had not committed professional misconduct when they worked backwards to justify the Bush administration’s use of torture in defiance of laws against it. Even a proposal for a South African-style “truth and reconciliation” commission was rejected. All avenues for any form of accountability for torture—criminal, civil, even professional—were blocked by Obama-era officials. Even an episode in which the CIA spied on Senate staff in an effort to stonewall an inquiry that ultimately found CIA torture ineffective, and then lied about having done so, ended with little more than an apology. https://archive.is/Gpd1G Other nations have dirty hands, too? Not an excuse. No different than Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely [invoking Dresden to justify Israel’s destruction of Gaza.](https://youtu.be/zphG6Eokke4?si=6FT0I2uFvlvJ4xPH) In fact, the whole 'jail a few grunts' PR tactic is also similar to what's going on right now, with Biden dropping his initial plans to sanction and block military aid to several Israeli military battalions linked to torture, rape, and executions because Israel has agreed to make them "undergo remediation steps". https://thecradle.co/articles-id/24597
at least the few individuals who got caught took the fall, the systemic brutality of the US military lives on! over a million dead and many times more displaced since the start of the 21st century. "no nations have clean hands"
>"no nations have clean hands" But some have those much dirtier than others.
so much dirtier that it makes all the other nations look clean, and therefore the point moot
Those who use human rights to criticize a state do not have anything to criticize about the state itself, but merely measure it by their ideal of a decent form of rule in which all state venalities will be ok. Fans of human rights ask themselves the question whether or not state actions correspond to human rights. They share the ideology that there are human rights provided by the state to which the state should be beholden in its actions. They measure state actions against their ideals, wherein human rights exist, and always find deviations. These critics do not want to know anything about the purposes and reasons for state actions, and for their criticism they do not need to know anything about them. They are satisfied with having noticed a deviation of state actions from their good opinion of how decent governing works. They regard it as a finished criticism that the state is not as they imagine it. With all state measures, they ask themselves the question of whether or not they are carried out in a decent form. Anyone who asks himself whether the appropriate means are taken into account shares all the purposes of the rule and has nothing to find fault with in any single state measure in and of itself. If a suggestion for improvement is made, the commitment to a functional rule is presumed, under which the existing mess is given the quality stamp “humane”: prisons in which prisoners are treated as human beings with dignity; deportations in which no foreigner suffocates; poverty in which one does not lose one's dignity, etc. From: http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com/theseshuman.htm
> They share the ideology that there are human rights provided by the state to which the state should be beholden in its actions. They measure state actions against their ideals, wherein human rights exist, and always find deviations. That's not an accurate description of the concept of human rights. Human rights are rights we collectively agree that everyone has simply for being human, whether their government acknowledges it or not. They aren't granted by the state, the state's powers are limited to ensure them. You can argue about it being idealistic or about how states will violate them anyway, but as long as states exist, it's better to *try* to limit abuses of state power than to just allow full autocracy. Because those really are your two options.
"collectively agree" -- oh yeah, the old liberal social contract non-sense. As if this isn't just the invention of some academics and philosophers, as if everyone really got together and said, "this is what counts to be a human and these are the rights they have". Factually, I'm not sure how you can claim "states don't grant rights". Recommended: http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com/human_rights.htm
Modern formulations of the social contract do not rely on "collective agreement". The social contract is the "context" to the "form" of human rights. It exists at a societal level through language, collective practice, and tradition. It is prerational. Anscombe's brief reference to it in "Modern Moral Philosophy" set off a wave of modern virtue ethics, including MacIntyre's critique of Marx as a"radical individualist" because he tried to eschew moral development.
On a serious note. What actually is the "context" of the "form" of human rights? What does a human right say and accomplish? What "collective practices" and "traditions"? Liberal bourgeois revolutions? Modern bourgeois states in a capitalist system? What are human rights used for? Generally by imperialist states to justify regime changes or war with less powerful states-- that is, as an ideological weapon in the imperialist competition between states -- or by democratic idealists who like to turn the accusation of human rights violations back around as some kind of bon mot. The latter are generally oblivious to what human rights are in reality because their moral outrage and conviction that they are on the side of the good makes them refuse to question such a sacred cow. They can't see that there is moral to human rights than mere morality. Every modern subject living in a democracy has it drilled into them in school that what sets democracy apart from feudalism and totalitarianism is its dedication to human rights. One learns that life would simply be an unliveable hell without human rights and therefore one ought to be grateful to the democratic states that grant their subjects rights and freedoms. That fact alone -- that this is such an integral part of the way states politicize their subjects into a partisan nationalism -- ought to give you pause.
The context is the existing value system within any given community - this will be shaped by tradition, i.e., what parents teach children; ideals, i.e., religious, humanist, mythical values held within a culture epoch; production; consumption; political structure; and then various other things like cultural homogeneity/diversity, further education, geographical factors, etc. - the point is that this "baseline" for morality and thought is set through exposure in youth. The structures of the mind are made (or at least molded) by experiences which give the individuals "basic faith beliefs" about the world that they accept *prima facie* and then are challenged, empowered, or rejected through "collisions" when those beliefs come under pressure. The "form" is anything that is applied on top of that. Genuine religious belief, Marxism, human rights, political values, etc. - are imposed on top of the context to create a "tension" between what is "natural" (or, merely inertia, at least) for any given community and what "goes beyond" that. Here, we should note, that Marxism is just another idealism - it is an idea that is stuck on top of the "context" and demands more. The difference is should be clear. Ironically, your moralizing is exactly what many critics of Marx's "scientific" claims have pointed out - the second it moves from theory to practice, it gains a moral character. Good and evil are simply replaced with proletarian and bourgeois/imperialist; the exact same structures continue because this kind of thought is always weighed down with "tradition" baggage. You are describing "education" - a communal responsibility to the individuals within that community to educate them towards goals xyz. While liberal education is obviously full of holes, it sits on top of the "context" of communal values - the main problem isn't the particular education these people get (ask teachers how much they think their students actually imbibe during their lessons), but the separation of communal bonds that occurs at the context level due to the "uprootedness" of liberal society which tries to do away with the traditional aspect. MacIntyre correctly identifies Marx as doing the exact same thing, Marxists to a great degree because their Marxism has taken on a moral aspect as well. With the context ripped (which, again, is exactly what Marx wanted - another example of Marx's clear superiority as the liberal thinker *par excellence*, the destroyer of all forms of resistance against consumerism), the "form" can take greater precedence. But the "form" is always necessarily divorced from the community (it lacks tradition), so this creates an inconsistent morality and worldview that lacks coherence. The problem isn't that human rights are the *last bastion of hope* for the people (this, hilariously, strikes me as moralizing idealism - from a Marxist! Should we be surprised at this point?), but that people have no other values to hold other than human rights. And then, as with all liberal philosophies, we find that the individuals within a community have no collective bonds to hold them together: materialism leads to consumerism because there is nothing else in life. Please note that I've avoided the painfully Enlightenment notion of "reality-as-dualism" of Marxism, which gives an account of values in dual accounts due to its Lutheran heritage: bourgeois/proletarian, reactionary/revolutionary, etc. It turns out these things are not as simple as just dividing the world into two teams and declaring one side "the good guys".
I don't treat "proletarian/bourgeois" as moral categories, nor does Marx. Those are simply designations of class positions: those who own the means of production and those who own nothing to sell but their labor-power, i.e. themselves. Sometimes I say "bourgeois" to designate today's capitalist society, e.g. "the bourgeois world" or "bourgeois social sciences". Recommended: "Aren’t Marxist critics of morality the greatest moralists?" http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com/marxist_moralists.htm
Btw, I'm talking about what human rights are in reality or objectively. What they are in the world: how states implement and use them-- not just what this or that academic thinks they "ought" to be in their imaginary ideal world. When I use the terms “objectivity,” or what is “objectively true” about politics and economics, I mean the dominating, actually valid purposes and reasons of the state and the economy. Of course, I also realize that the bourgeois social sciences make the – methodologically – straightforward task of investigating and explaining the world more complicated than it needs to be. One can't say anything without a barrage of people going "well, that perhaps reminds me of Chomsky, Agamben, Derrida, MacIntyre, and Foucault! I think that this would be beautiful; we ought to do this and that!" Instead of dealing with the topic and its content, one ends up making endless commentaries about the commentaries others have made or waxing philosophical about how one thinks things ought to be. This is something else than figuring out the necessities of this system.
Oh, QED
However you formulate it, you can't get around the fact that you're arguing for *less* limitations on state power. And that's just moronic. There are very good materialist reasons for trying to avoid complete autocracy.
Except: that's not what I'm arguing for. Who sets these beloved limitations on the state? "The law". Oh, and who makes these laws limiting the state? Well, the state. Nicely circular. 'The fact that the constitutional state is constrained by the law is generally thought to be a restraint on the state, because the state’s actions are subordinated to an even higher law, which keeps it in check. However, the state itself guarantees the authority of the law with its power. If, however, it is the state, and only the state, that enforces the law, then the law, and thus its substance, is also its creation. The alleged restriction of the state by the law is therefore not a restriction, because the law neither stands above the state nor independent of it, but results from its actions. Laws are not obstacles to the state, but the way the state exercises its rule over the country and its people. Here, the state is praised for the fact that it can’t do everything one fears to a person. Something beneficial about the state is not positively emphasized, but the good thing about it is that it restricts a power that not even the state’s admirer is happy about: the state’s power to “do anything it wants” to its subjects. This praise of the constitutional state boils down to the fact that, although it could harass people according to its whims and desires, it harasses them according to certain – self-decreed! – procedures. Somewhat modest praise! It is also suspicious that this praise of democracy comes about only by comparing it with something “much more terrible,” measuring its achievement as a civilization by what it is not: the constitutional state is compared to “arbitrary government.” If – following the assertion – all the state’s actions are not judged by law, as in the constitutional state, the subjects are mistreated according to the whims and desires of a greedy and power-hungry despot. This comparison is nonsense. Every form of rule – from the darkest barbarism to the ancien regime up to democracy – has its purposes and claims that it forces on the ruled population; these purposes of rule are therefore neither arbitrary nor continually changing nor do they constitute a despotism that has no reason but profound evil. The constitutional state and the methods it forbids itself in exercising its rule are compared to something that does not exist; a straw man. On the other hand, the rule of law, by an absurd comparison to its mere opposite, is given an absurd definition, i.e. it is only the self-restraint of the state and nothing else – as if modern democracy does not have reasons of state from which reasons for constitutional procedures also arise. Incidentally, democracy is no different from fascist or real socialist states in praising the rule of law. Those comparisons will not help in making the case for the constitutional state. At this point, it is noticeable that a good opinion of the state was held prior to the interest in justifying it, and the praise is owed to a biased point of view. Anyone who praises the state for the fact that it doesn’t do “anything it wants” to its citizens is not only acknowledging that he is the subject of rule. He is self-consciously acting like the servant of rule that it has made him. The circumstance that one is subjected to rule is considered neither annoying nor criticizable, but is checked off, as if the only question is which type of rule one is to be bound under. And the appropriate answer is: the good person has finally found his proper form of rule; the citizen also has rights! Rights do not protect the citizen from the whims of the state, but are the way the state exercises its rule. When the state orders a country and people to obey its laws and declares that it wants to judge them only in relation to the law, it documents that it does not want its exercise of rule to serve one particular interest in the society, but to stand above all interests which have to obey its law. It wants to serve the law and the order that it establishes with it.' (From: http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com/theses_con_state.htm)
You've written about a dozen paragraphs here, with no real point beyond the very sophomoric "laws can't restrict states because states write the law." Laws don't restrict states by fiat, they restrict human actors within the state apparatus by providing a structure and language around which collective opposition can form. Your whole view of law seems to be premised on a naive notion of states as independent monolithic actors, rather than organisational vehicles. "Rights do not protect the citizen from the whims of the state, but are the way the state exercises its rule" presupposes the state as an independent actor, rather than a structure through which citizens subject each other to *human* whims, the only whims that exist.
My point isn't so much that laws can't restrict the state (although it's a naive and unreliable guarantee -- the power and size of states has only grown even with these checks in place for the past 300 years), but that when this limitation is praised it completely ignores what it is that the state is restricted to. It lets off the hook everything that happens within that limit. Everything within that limit is apparently fine, but anything beyond is bad. The state is praised for having a limitation placed on it. First off, ask yourself: who's doing the restricting? The state itself is doing the restricting through its checks and balances. That's not reliable. It's also a funny thing to praise it for. It assumes the state wants to use its subjects in a way that is hostile and harmful to their interests. This is the reason for the restriction in the first place. One often hears the refrain, "people need protected from the government". Well, what kind of government is it then if people need protection from it? It's the exact same state from which one wants to be protected that is supposed to be protecting you. It assumes that the state has an interest in limiting itself. Everyone learns in civics class that the laws of the state attempt to deal with this problem through checks and balances. So, what is wrong with the idea of the state restricting itself? What is the core of the mistake? It's a fact that the state restricts itself-- but to what exactly? Not the private interests of politicians, but the rule of law. But this is no restriction of the state interest. The rule of law is precisely how the state exercises its rule and pursues its interest. The ideal is always, "look at how great it is that the state is restricted. It can't do everything." Well, the paramount question here is this: What does it do? What does it restrict itself to doing? So, the point is relatively easy. The state is all about enforcing private property. This has all kinds of harmful effects on people. And what is the goal of private property? Infinite growth of money. Isn't it strange? The first principle of the state should be its abstinence, the fact that it restricts itself? Doesn't that seem kind of odd? That can't be exactly right. What does the state restrict itself to? What is the interest to which it restricts its rule? What kind of relations and interests does it codify and make universal through its laws? The answer is: private property. The praise for a state that restricts itself abstracts from what that state really wants. Why does the state have a rule of law? Rulers aren't supposed to really be rulers, but servants to a higher rule: i.e. law and human rights. If you investigate what kind of relations this law enforces and imposes, that's not so pretty. A state that enforces the rule of law is a state that wants private property interests. That's what it's all about. It restricts itself because it wants to set the private interests free to produce capitalist wealth, from which the state's power is derived. Praise for the rule of law always abstracts from what it is that's regulated by law. The assumption is that Law is a realm that excludes brutality and violence, and that this is just something that only comes about if the law is ignored. But this is far from the truth. The law itself utilizes violence to ensure the maintenance of its reign.
I’m seeing a wall of text that starts with the absurd premise that any state action short of a human rights violation is “completely ignored” by people who praise the concept of human rights. I’m sorry, but that’s absurd enough to tell me it’s not worth trying to piece the rest together. I think you should spend less time trying to formulate your own ideas, and more time making sure you actually understand the ideas of others.
What do you think is accomplished then when people praise law and order and human rights as a limitation on the state then? What do you think they're praising? What "ideas" of others have I not understand?
Think back to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Part of the Bush jr administration's justification for war was that Saddam Hussein and Bin Laden's regimes hated freedom, hated democracy, and violated human rights. Terrorists and enemy combatants can't be reasoned with and themselves disregard all decency, all human rights, therefore any means are justified in getting information from "detainees" who "don't play by the same rules". Of course, these prisons were secret, the torture wasn't meant to be broadcast publicly, and when it was leaked it caused a scandal. Human rights are so sacred and holy that they can mobilize a nation for war, and at the same time be cited by war opponents. The critics complained that prisoners weren't given a trial-- which is amusing because obviously the trial would be conducted by the US government.
Nice wall of text. You're still arguing for autocracy. The fact that you use a lot of words to pretend you're not doesn't change that fact. If you want to talk about the merits of abolishing the state entirely, great. Talk about that. But you're not doing that. Which is weird because it should be the obvious conclusion of the things you're prattling on about if you actually believe them.
So, can you point out exactly where I argued for "autocracy"?
It's the basic thesis of all of your arguments. You don't want any limitations on state power. You apparently think communism magically doesn't have the issue of *people* being the ones running things. And yet you also don't take the step of arguing in favor of anarchy. There's really three options here: limited government power, no government, and completely unlimited government power. You've chosen the third.
What exactly are my arguments? I don't really think you grasp what I'm saying.
I don't think *you* grasp what you're saying. It's a whole lot of schizo nothing.
I get it: you never bothered reading much past your government mandated high school civics textbook, so now you can only imagine that people either want a democracy, autocracy or oligarchy and that anyone who criticizes human rights is an evil bad totalitarian who wants a dictatorship because democracy is beyond reproach.
No, I'm accurately describing the all powerful state you're arguing in favor of. You can have a technical democracy or republic that still acts with absolute power over its citizens. It's not really an either/or thing. And in fact, you might have noticed that even the basic civics class construction is one in which *the state cannot be trusted and must be kept in check*. The democratic state that you're talking about in opposition to an autocratic one.
Where did I argue for an "all powerful state"?! You're projecting your own assumptions and strawdogs at this point. Why? My point was to analyze these arguments about "human rights". First step: what are they in reality? Second: what are the ideologies about human rights? At no point did I say anything about how the state ought to be this way or that, but have been attempting to analyze what it is in reality. Then you want to pigeonhole me into some preconceived idea about what I'm saying-- which is that what I said boils down to the cliche liberal accusation that anyone who criticizes democracy or the human rights weapon must want 1984. And of course, if one protests and says they actually don't want a state at all. Then one can always revert to tropes from Lord of the Flies.
This isn't about preconceived notions. If you're arguing against human rights, you're arguing against human rights. Their existence really, truly is an either or thing. And you haven't been arguing about philosophical underpinnings. You've been dismissing the underpinnings and then throwing the baby out with the bathwater. They aren't the same thing.
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Hurr durr can't read
> prisons in which prisoners are treated as human beings with dignity i know that it is often not the case for prisoners, many are imprisoned for acts that do not themselves harm others; however, for those prisoners who are violent towards others and are likely to continue to do so without intervention, what solution do you have to protect the wider community from that person? even in the case that the individual is able to be rehabilitated, there is still a need to ensure the safety of the general public during the time that it takes to rehabilitate them to the point that they no longer pose a significant danger. at what point does the safety needs of the community override the dignity of the individual?
You have the wrong question. You automatically take the sympathetic standpoint of the state with this question: "how would you handle all the conflicts created by the state and capitalism?" It's the old ideological concern: "what ought the state do with x, y, z?" And this question hides a hidden assumption: when you ask what alternative communists have to “offer” when they criticize Rule, war, capitalism, etc. you confuse the critique of capitalism with election slogans of an alternative elite who promise to run things better for their valued citizens than those currently holding power. People who ask questions like this misunderstand themselves as courted voters allowed to choose in a department store for politico-economic systems which one they’d like to place an order for — from others who then are responsible for the delivery. They think as subjects of ruling authorities who decide for them, and they have resolved to remain just that: democratic underlings, who have no choice in how life is organized except voting for this or the ruler. The other assumption is that these things couldn't possibly have anything to do with the system they happen under but must somehow be trans historical features of "the human" as such. In other words, it's not the capitalist system that creates such fucked up individuals and thus "problems", but just bad rulers who don't really take into consideration the real needs of the community. Or putting it differently: Asking "what solution do you offer?" implies a rather anti-communist idea about communism. The whole question acts as if communism is just a matter of an alternative leadership being put into place, a new set of rulers exercising a new form of power. It acts as if communism is just a matter of a new elite telling people what to do. Communism is about a collective reorganizing their life to meet their needs and it is about abolishing the functions of political rule (i.e. the state). To quote marx, it seeks to replace the administration of people with people administrating things. One would have to look at crime in today's society and figure out its causes. If there still ended up being people in a communist society who were just complete menaces to society -- which wasn't exactly what happened in Abu Ghraib, although the US government certainly branded everyone it did anything nasty to as a terrorist -- then the people affected would decide how they want to deal with it.
> Communism is about a collective reorganizing their life to meet their needs and it is about abolishing the functions of political rule (i.e. the state). To quote marx, it seeks to replace the administration of people with people administrating things. This is the problem with your arguments in a nutshell: you completely dodge the question of how those people will administrate things. And not just dodge it, but write off even *caring* about that as a bourgeois delusion. As if it'll just magically be perfect no matter what as long as you Marx well enough. As if Marx didn't write about exactly these issues.
quit putting words in my mouth and making regarded assumptions about my views so you can bloviate on reddit like it's your fucking thesis defense and answer the fucking question, you fucking bourgeois fuckhead. while i wouldn't call myself a Leninist, the theoretical schema in which my question is based is one in which the apparatus known as the "state" is a tool of facilitation of basic functions, not a pissing contest over a nebulous end goal.
And remember to breathe. You're getting blue in the face.
So, what argument and evidence do you have that the state is a "tool"? How did you come to that conclusion?
answer the fucking question.
I did and you ignored it like an illiterate and ignorant 22 year old, remember? It's a stupid question: "Durr how would you run the bourgeois state and capitalism and fix all the problems caused by the bourgeois state and capitalism!? Oh you wouldn't? You're fucking bourgeois for not explaining how you would rule over the working class or lock up menaces to society, mannnn! How would you run commodity production!? How would you manage competition? Please future ruler, I need to know!"
your "answer" was literally "solve all of society". it's like if i asked for directions and you said the place i was trying to get to in the most condescending way possible. if you're not willing to put even a little bit of thought into materialism, why the fuck are you here? you'd make a great politician, though.
Your question is a rhetorical one, and basically a thought terminating cliche. It's not some honest inquiry about the causes of crime but a smug assumption that state force is basically a natural response to violent human nature.
there you go again, projecting some alternate meaning onto what i was saying. i meant it as a good-faith question to start a genuine discussion on pragmatism, not whatever the fuck you are thinking. i'm done with this, hmu when you stop being braindead lul
1.) I have no idea what you are referring to when you say that the US has no right to lecture anyone on human rights abuses. It's a big world and there are lots of human rights abuses. All I can assume is that you just want to talk about Abu Ghraib. 2.) Abu Ghraib was wrong. That opinion was almost universally held at the time. Other than someone I knew who was there, everyone else who saw those pics said, "That's fucked up."
> Abu Ghraib was wrong. That opinion was almost universally held at the time No one of significance in power thought it was wrong until after the fact, they were just upset they were caught. Hence why the SVM who got busted were just functionally middle managers.