News to piss you off. :-D

[emmagrant01]

• School drops slavery booklet: "Southern Slavery, As It Was" is a 43-page booklet published in 1996 that attempts to provide a biblical justification for slavery. It asserts that slaves weren't treated as badly as people believe. This is exactly why I don't accept Biblical claims against homosexuality. People have historically used the Bible to justify slavery, racial segregation, and treating women as second class citizens. I don't really give a shit if the Bible says that you should treat certain people as less than fully equal; I don't think it's right. I thought Jesus had a slightly different message anyway.

• Feds Use 'Secret Laws' to Justify Harassment of Americans. Don't get me started! :-P

• U.S. Admits Torture Used to Obtain Evidence Against Terrorists. Geneva Conevention? What Geneva Convention?

• Less than seven months after same-sex couples began tying the knot in Massachusetts, the state is seeing its first gay divorces. A quote: Opponents of gay marriage said the divorces, occurring so soon after the weddings, confirm that gay couples are not equipped for marriage. "We're not surprised," said Kris Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, which is fighting for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. "Particularly among male homosexuals, the promiscuity is just phenomenal." *rolls eyes and gives Ms. Mineau a one-finger salute*

• Jesus is on our side here, and secular liberals should not be afraid to invoke him. Policies of pre-emptive war and the upward redistribution of wealth are inversions of the Judeo-Christian ethic, which is for the most part silent, or mysteriously cryptic, on gays and abortion. Okay, so that one wasn't intended to piss you off! ;-)

Comments

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

I personally utterly fail to see why any of the public is upset over the US treatment of prisoners.

Maybe because we live in a country where we believe everyone is innocent until proven guilty? Because even the sickest, most horrible child-raping serial murderer is guaranteed a fair trial and legal representation, no matter that he may not deserve it? Because in a truly free society, people need to be protected from "mob justice"? Because we don't want to give other countries license or an excuse to treat our prisoners the same? (We can hardly claim the high moral ground anymore, not after Guantanomo Bay and Abu Ghraib (http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=2444) and who knows what else that we haven't heard about yet.) Because the message we want to spread around the world is more of freedom and democracy, and if WE don't take the high road and show how it's supposed to be done, how can we ever expect anyone else to want to do it too?

I firmly believe that our treatment of prisoners in Cuba will eventually become a matter of national shame, not unlike the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII. We'll look back and wonder why so many Americans were so blindly following along with something that more people should have spoken up about.

I'm not claiming that the people being held by our government are innocent victims (though a small percentage probably are, and they have no chance of being released). My point is that it is un-American to treat people the way those prisoners are being treated: with no access to legal representation, with food used as a ploy to get them to behave in certain ways, with torture used to extract information (and there is a TON of research that says information obtained in that way is highly unreliable -- people will say what they think their torturer wants to hear to make the torture stop), with no access to the rights afforded them by the Geneva Convention, and on and on.

Bottom line: our country asserts that every human being has basic rights, and our country should be the first in line to make sure they aren't denied them. We aren't doing that, and I don't know how Bush expects to win the hearts and minds of people in Iraq and elsewhere if we aren't doing that.

[phoenix-starr.livejournal.com]

These are the people that are fighting to stop a truly free society from forming. All they want is power Also, these people are NOT Americans. They are prisoners of war.

And Bush has the hearts and minds of most of the people in Iraq. He did it by freeing them from mass graves, weapons of mass destruction used against them by their own government, and the chance to form a democracy.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

They are prisoners of war.

Actually, no, they're not. If the were, the US government would be required to follow the terms of the Geneva Convention. And that's precisely why they invented a new term just for this case: "illegal combatant", which essentially allows them to do whatever they want to these people without fear of legal repercussions.

And Bush has the hearts and minds of most of the people in Iraq. He did it by freeing them from mass graves, weapons of mass destruction used against them by their own government, and the chance to form a democracy.

I find myself wondering if you watch the news at all, or read independent news organizations' reports of what's happening in Iraq. Or have you talked to a soldier who's been there, who's actually fought in the war and interacted with the local people? All of the ones I've talked to have said the situation is horrible, the US military is woefully unprepared and disorganized, and thath the Iraqis don't ant us there.

But apparently you've bought the party line, despite the utter lack of evidence for it. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree -- as usual.

[phoenix-starr.livejournal.com]

Yes, I have talked to soldiers. My family is in the Military. Yes, I keep up with the News. I also think the Legacy media is extremely Left and not at all fair in its reporting, so I also seek out conservative news. Illegal Combatants instead of Prisoners of War. That I did not know, but I can see why they would be called that. I suppose we shall have to just disagree.