The consequences of de-sensitizing ourselves to torture

I wonder about those who argue that waterboarding is not torture-- can they really believe it? I suppose so. Otherwise, how could this happen? Joshua Tabor, a U.S. soldier based in Tacoma, Washington, allegedly waterboarded his 4 year-old daughter because she refused to recite the alphabet. He chose the CIA-approved technique because he knew that his daughter was afraid of water, a phobia that will surely be an ongoing issue for the poor girl. If Christopher Hitchens is to be believed, she'll wake up with nightmares for quite some time. Hitchens was a supporter of the torture technique, at least until he underwent it. His column at Vanity Fair following the experience is titled, "Believe me, it's torture." See for yourself, if you've got a sadistic streak: There seems to be little doubt that Mr. Tabor has some other issues, as neighbors reported seeing him wandering the neighborhood wearing a kevlar helmet and threatening to break windows. But I can't help but think that our collectively cavalier attitude towards the use of torture, even on innocent women and children, has had a de-sensitizing effect on us. Note this paragraph from Fox News:

"Joshua did not act as though he felt there was anything wrong with this form of punishment," the police report said.
And why would he? We, as a people, have not felt that there's anything wrong with it. If it's good enough for innocent Muslim women and children, why not use it on our own children? My heart hurts to think about the shock, the pain, and the terror that was inflicted on this poor girl at the hands of her own father. It's painful to me to think about all of the people that we have tortured, and I can only hope that this incident brings us closer to the point where we can unequivocally say, "Torture is wrong".

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An inside look at Reverend Billy Talen’s Church-of-Not-Shopping

Reverend Billy is a clown and a prophet. All dressed up, he is a serious clown, self-honed and bearing sharp claws in the best tradition of court jesters. At the recent True Spin Conference in Denver Colorado I had a chance to meet the Reverend Billy of The-Church-of-Not-Shopping. Reverend Billy is an outwardly cartoonish persona constructed by actor Billy Talen. Talan has been at it for so long and so intensely, however, that it is difficult to see where Talen ends and Reverend Billy begins. Even while he was discussing his mission during his presentation at True Spin, he was prone to erupt into his preacher voice, standing up and beckoning those present to heed the central tenet of his Church: that we “Not Shop.” Although Reverend Billy is famous for his anti-consumerist sermons, he also preaches on numerous other social justice issues. One of those other concerns is that free-flowing conversational and intellectual space—the place where naturally-occurring culture used to thrive—is now jam-packed with the profit-seeking messages of corporations seeking to deny us the natural flow of our social interactions. "They want to sponsor our stories." He is concerned that corporations have filled our heads with their music and their values, and their buy-oriented slogans, largely displacing us of our ability and desire to construct original thoughts through natural conversion. Billy argues that we need to ramp down the shopping because on a daily basis we are selling our very souls when we unnecessarily buy. We have remade ourselves into commodities, and our unwitting plan is to deliver ourselves to our sponsors. Pop quiz: according to Rev. Billy, what is the best thing you can get someone for Christmas? Answer: nothing. Why should we stop shopping? Reverend Billy might answer you with the Title to his 2007 documentary: "What Would Jesus Buy?" No words really work well to introduce you to Reverend Billy. Take a moment, if you will, to allow Amy Goodman to introduce him to you. Those who think Reverend Billy is only a clown fail to listen closely to his serious message, perhaps because of the outrageous way with which he delivers it. But make no mistake that Billy has carefully constructed both his message and his means of delivering it. He delivers it in a way that seems absurd in order to bring a modicum of attention to his message. You see, Americans love their shopping their conveniences, and they fiercely resist any suggestion that they need to change their ways.

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Expensive CEO’s of charities

How can one really justify a salary of $1 Million to run a charity? Consider the case of Brian A. Gallagher, who is paid $1,037,140 to run The United Way. Or consider the American Red Cross, which pays its top person, Gail J. McGovern, $495,187 per year. These are stats from 2009 provided by Forbes. Here's how you fix this problem: Pass a law to make all charities disclose the salaries of its top ten highest earning officers and employees on all solicitations for donations.

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Cost of our new high-speed trains is dwarfed by the tax dollars we waste in our Afghanistan and Iraq “wars.”

President Obama has recently announced that he will allocate $8 billion ($4 billion each year, over two years) to develop a new system of high-speed passenger rail service. This is an excellent idea. The new rail lines will be created within 10 geographical corridors ranging from 100 to 600 miles long. Note, however, that the high-speed rail line system will be an extremely expensive project, and that the $8 billion bill will need to be paid by 138 million tax-paying Americans. Dividing the $8 billion cost by the number of taxpayers, we can see that, on average, each taxpayer will pay almost $60 ($30 per year, for two years) to support this massive new high-speed rail service. Again, this high-speed rail project will cost an immense amount of money. Consider, though, how small this pile of rail money looks when compared to the amount of money we are wasting in the "wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan. For 2009, the United States spent approximately $87 billion for Iraq and $47 billion for Afghanistan. The fiscal 2010 budget requests $65 billion for Afghanistan operations and $61 billion for Iraq. the cost of these two "wars" together is $126 billion for 2010. Compare these expenditures on a bar chart: Graph by Erich Vieth

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Temple of Disinformation

In America's heartland there is a modern temple to the denial of five nines (99.999%) of what we've learned about the universe in the last couple of centuries. The Creation Museum is a sleek, elegant, well presented indoor theme park almost entirely lacking in actual knowledge. It is derided worldwide, and is a source of shame for our once forward thinking nation. It is also, I grant, an edifice to the principle of free speech. The ham, showman and charlatan who created this institution in Kentucky after he was laughed out of his Australian homeland seems to be quite sincere about the project. Ken Ham is actually his name. And he has been raking in major profits for nearly three years from this place, well beyond even his early hopes. Apparently there is more than one born again every minute. Busloads of young Christians long to go on pilgrimages to shore up their Young Earth ideology. The younger ones (under 12) can even get their picture taken on the back of a dinosaur, just like those that people rode. That is, before the old west cowboys killed the last of them off. That's why all those T-Rexes are found out on the great plains. You don't have to take this from me on faith, follow the links from the Wikipedia article on the Creation Museum. See actual video tours. So, why am I venting my bile right now? Wasn't this already adequately covered on this site? I just learned that a young collateral relative, a bright young man, is looking forward to his trip there this weekend! Half a dozen years ago, he was in public schools, in every advanced program they offered. Advanced science and math and lead cello in the district orchestra. Then his parents removed him from all that intellectual wealth to put him in a small Christian school. He still excelled, eventually garnering college board scores that got him invitations to Harvard and Yale and such. But he wants to go to a small school with an influential chapter of the Campus Crusade. Sigh. Most of this is re-posted from this FaceBook note.

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