Until you decide to randomly crack them in the face out of nowhere with you're fist while screaming "Acknowledge my presence!". They'll concede that you're now a part of their world! :hammer:
Hey come on now! I have a brain injury and can't really do much (no school, work, just sitting around : ( . . . ) so my sleep schedule gets screwy and I use it to numb my awareness to my situation.
Ero I've also recently sustained a head injury, so I think that if we put our heads together we'll end up with another concussion.
http://www.martialartsplanet.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1074778623&postcount=464 on a semi-related note: cars are only vehicles, driven by individuals.
I know, i posted in this thread of yours: http://www.martialartsplanet.com/forums/showthread.php?t=117641 How are you doing with it?
Sometimes I wonder why people got so uppity about water boarding or other types of 'torture' that the U.S. got in trouble for. Other than putting people in uncomfortable and humiliating positions and creating a lot of discomfort or maybe getting beat up, it's not really the kind of torture that used to go on. During my medieval and greek/roman history phase of my younger years I remember reading about spiked chairs, vices, stretching wheels to pull people apart, impalement from one orifis to another, metal bulls designed for you to be cooked in where your screams sounded like the bull roaring, a bucket, some rats and a heat source to make them burrow their way away from the heat by eating your stomach . . . . . the list goes on. I understand an outcry against torture of any form, but I think a certain emotional involvement in such an issue needs to be measured by its intensity. Some people methinks, believe we're doing medieval type torture, all stuff we actually do to our own military in SERE training, vs. some real sadistic crap you need a true sociopath to carry out.
1, just because it isn't as bad as it used to be, doesn't make it right. that's like arguing that beating your wife so that it doesn't show is ok because you used to bruise her in the face. 2, the us may not engage in the kind of torture you describe, but whenever they want to turn it up a notch or 2, they ship the person to a place where that kind of thing IS done, along with an observer to document everything the person being 'interviewed' says. 3, waterboarding and non mutilating torture has also been used just because someone thought someone 'might' be a terrorist. And when after a long while it turned out that that wasn't the case, those people are just dumped on the street without an apology, but with a warning to keep their mouth shut 'or else'. Hardly the kind of behavior from a nation that likes to think of themselves as the good guys.
I have this weird reoccurring thought sometimes where I just kind of phase out and it's like I'm looking down at myself and I feel the incomprehensible vastness of the earth and the universe. I don't think it, I just kind of, feel it. It's weird. And also what Heraclius said. Although at this point in my thoughts when I pass a stranger, I tend to simulate how they would view me as a stranger as I pass them by inconspicuously. Also a weird feeling. And then I also have those moments where I try to imagine someone liking something I absolutely hate. I obviously know a lot of people will like things that I hate, but when it turns into a feeling it can become really incomprehensible. I ask myself "Why?" and "How?" and I can never work it out. The answer to these thoughts are obvious, but I can't answer how I feel about it. Another weird feeling. p.s. I love threads like these where you get to learn about the crazy stuff other people think about.
Not arguing for or against the use of torture or saying it's justified or not in my post. Of course it's something we don't want to be doing. Your first point makes no sense in response to what I was saying, it would make sense if I was saying "just a little bit of torture is ok" but I wasn't. I was addressing the way some people get riled up about emotionally as if we were doing medieval torture techniques on people. I have a scale of emotional response with issues like this. Being stretched out on a wheel until your joins pop and ligaments tear is not worse than water boarding, being humiliated isn't as bad as being hung in a tiny cage for days. To use your example that didn't quite fit my post, I don't think shoving your spouse repeatedly without seriously injuring them is on par with beating them to an inch of their life and sending them to the ER. Do I condone either one of those? Of course not. But you're not going to see me in a fit of rage over the first calling for the law like I would the second.
Don't ever go to a military run survival course or anything with the acronym SERE. Or get captured by anyone who doesn't like you.
We judge by the standards of the day. Assuming no-one still uses the various fun ancient/medieval torture machines and methods, using them to scale your response is nonsensical. I mean, if ancient Greeks didn't want a new baby they'd just leave it outside to die, but we don't take that into consideration when we talk about child abuse.
I could almost agree with that if the "standards of the day" weren't opt to change for people as soon as a situation changed. There are types of torture and treatment around the world that are absolutely atrocious compared to what the U.S. has done (that we know about anyways). From what we know the U.S. isn't in the ballpark they're made to be in. Again, that's not to say what the U.S. has done is right or justified. I don't believe it is personally. Most of what I'm saying doesn't even apply to what I believe was the national perspective on the situation ("we shouldn't be doing this") as much as it is a view on some random groups of people who get too caught up in things. Just a thought run astray : P
