Canine Princes in Amber 5/22

aka Her Majesty’s Secret Puppy

On today’s docket: Vox Day, John C. Wright, Amanda S. Green, Jeff Duntemann, Lela E. Buis, Ken Liu, John Snead, Lis Carey, Spacefaring Kitten, Rebekah Golden, David Langford, and cryptic others. (Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editors of the day Jim Henley and Kary English.)

Vox Day on Vox Popoli

“Just a reminder” – May 22

And once again, SJWs have obediently responded to his call. Mr. Hauman’s actions strike me as a very good way to encourage publishers to stop participating in future Hugo Packets. I mean, why should we do so if it’s only going to provide the SJWs in science fiction with another means of attack? Mr. Hauman has demonstrated how the Hugo Packet can be destroyed in a single year; what publisher is going to even be willing to include excerpts when inclusion in the Packet means several hundred one-star reviews on Amazon within weeks?

 

John C. Wright

“Petty Puppy-Kickers on the March” – May 22

Alas, I am too busy today to comb through Amazon to downvote and report graffiti being left on my sale goods by malign Morlocks. I ask any reader impatient for my next work to be published to alleviate my workload by shouldering this task, please.

I ask any undecided onlooker who has noticed the kerfuffle to observe who has played straight, honest, aboveboard, and continually and openly identified their goals and platform, and who has lied, cheated, lied, slandered, lied, libeled, lied, betrayed, lied, invented falsehoods, resorted to dirsty tricks, lied, defamed, lied, called people racists, lied, organized defamation campaigns in major media, lied and lied again.

I ask any undecided onlooker who has noticed the kerfuffle to observe whether anyone on the Sad Puppies side of things has called for posting false and defamatory reviews of rival works, or attempting to blacklist or undermine the income of fellow authors?

 

Amanda S. Green on Nocturnal Lives

“Once again, the stupid burns” – May 22

How enlightened of the other side to paint us all with the same brush. How inclusive they are to try to construct a dialog — oh, wait. They haven’t. They don’t want to sully their reputations or whatever by trying to even listen to what we have to say or what our concerns are. They are too busy trying to shore up the bulwarks around their holy bastion of the Hugo. And, as they do, they completely prove our point that the Hugos are no longer an award of the fans but of a few self-appointed FANS. Hell, we’ve even been “schooled” by a Wolheim for not knowing our history of WorldCon or of the Hugos. Well, we do know the histories. We just don’t buy into the revisionist histories they have constructed.

Is controversy around the Hugos new to the Sad Puppy movement? Not only no but hell no. But to have folks who claim they represent the ideals of inclusivity to be doing their best to ruin careers through their personal attacks and through negative reviews based not on the quality of the work but the politics of the author takes it to a new low. What they don’t understand is that all they are doing is playing for a very small crowd. Those looking at the controversy from the outside aren’t impressed by their tactics. They are asking themselves when they last read a Hugo winner and enjoyed it. Instead of trying to keep the unwashed masses out, perhaps these authors and editors ought to be asking themselves why they have lost the faith of the readers. They should ask themselves if they would be able to make it as an indie author if they suddenly found themselves without a publisher to push their work. But that might take a bit of introspection they aren’t prepared to do, much less accept.

So, once again, I will repeat what I’ve said — what every other supporter of Sad Puppies has said. Read the material in the Hugo packet and vote based on the quality of the work (which will be more difficult than it should be in some cases because certain publishers pasted huge watermarks on each page and/or only included a sample of the nominated work. Once again proving that certain big publishers don’t trust readers, not even WorldCon members and think we are all pirates).

 

Jeff Duntemann on Jeff Duntemann’s Contrapositive Diary

“Rant: You Can’t Shame a Puppy” – May 22

The more important reason for authors not to withdraw is that withdrawing gives the anti-puppies (APs) this peculiar notion that they can use social pressure (shaming) to get authors to do things their way, up to and including refusing a major honor in the field. Note very well: I am not suggesting that either Kloos or Bellet withdrew because of social pressure. I take their explanations at face value. What I’m suggesting is that a certain nontrivial number of APs may assume it, and may further assume that social pressure is a tactic that can win, going forward. I’m already hearing that the 2015 Hugos need to be “asterisked;” that is, marked as disreputable, dishonest, and something that no upright fan or author will have anything to do with. The message is pretty clear: Any Puppy nominee who keeps their place on the ballot is to be shamed and shunned.

Now we can get down to business. The first of my two points today is this: Shaming is bullying. Shaming is about fear. Shaming is thug tactics. I’ll tell you what I hear when I hear people talking about shaming authors: “Nice little career you’re starting up here. Shame if anything happened to it.” Or, another interpretation that’s pretty much the same thing: “Stay on the ballot, and you’ll never work in this town again.”

In other words, we’re supposed to use mafia persuasion to get authors to refuse nominations that just might have been influenced by slatemakers like the Sad Puppies. (What if the works are just really good?) That’s bad enough. However, if you think about it a little more, you come to my second point for today’s entry: Shaming only works on people who value the esteem of the shamer.

 

Lela E. Buis

“The Hugo Awards: Follow the money” – May 23

So, is all this talk about traditional SF versus the new diversity just smoke and mirrors? Is the real issue here about a small publisher versus the large publishing houses? It’s hard to separate the right wing content from the publisher, which puts Beale at a disadvantage in today’s market. Because of the current social climate, I don’t personally think he would prevail in getting any stories on the ballot even in a perfectly free market. Still, I have to admire his mouse with a sword attitude.

 

Ken Liu interviews Liu Cixin in Publishers Weekly

“China at BEA 2015: Coming to America: Liu Cixin” – May 22

How do you feel about the Nebula nomination?

A: I’m honored and overjoyed. As a science fiction fan, the Nebula Award and the Hugo Award mean a lot to me. If I had to choose between the Nobel Prize in literature and the Nebula/Hugo awards, I would choose the latter without hesitation—though I’m not so arrogant as to think I could win the Nobel Prize. But the ultimate goal of my writing has always been delighting readers, not winning awards. For me, the most valuable affirmation comes from readers. Thus, the best thing about being nominated for a Nebula is that perhaps more people will read my novel, and the award will build more publicity for the two sequels in English.

 

John Snead on Synchronicity swirls and other foolishness

Three-Body Problem Review + Musings On Hugo Award Novel Voting – May 22

Yesterday, I finished reading Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, a well done and interesting SF novel written by one of China’s premier SF novelists and translated in the English. I’ve looked at the covers of recent Chinese SF magazine (but not knowing Chinese, have only been able to read a handful of stories which have been translated). The covers remind me of tech focused US SF magazines from the 50s & 60s, but none of the stories have, until I read this book. There are a lot of ways that it’s entirely unlike US SF from that era, but there are also distinct similarities – some of which were clearly deliberate…. My votes for Hugo Award for Best Novel are as follows

  1. Ancillary Sword Ann Leckie: In addition to vastly better characterization than Three Body Problem, it didn’t fall down ½ to 2/3s of the way through and I enjoyed it more. I don’t think it’s as strong a novel as Ancillary Justice, but I also think it’s the best novel nominated
  2. Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu: Definitely a good novel and one I’m very glad I read, but not good enough to win.
  3. No Award: I don’t think any of the other three novels are all that good, and so No Award comes next.
  4. The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison: As I mentioned before, I gave up in utter boredom a bit less than halfway through. I’m not a fan of passive and incompetent protagonists who remain that way and while I wanted to like this novel, it was impressively dull.
  5. Skin Game by Jim Butcher: I didn’t read the first couple of chapters – I’d previously read 2.5 of Butcher’s Harry Dresden novels, and that’s pretty much my lifetime limit. Butcher isn’t a terrible writer, but this series isn’t for me (and I’m someone who quite liked the first 8 of Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter (they weren’t good, but I enjoyed them)).
  6. The Dark Between the Stars by Kevin J. Anderson: The previous two were novels I didn’t like, but wouldn’t go so far as to say were bad – this is a bad novel.

 

Lis Carey on Lis Carey’s Library

“Dave Freer Hugo Fanwriter Nomination Samples” – May 22

There really isn’t much to say. A larger sample than Amanda Greens, 21 pages, but if anything there is even less here. All the hate-spewing at “SJWs” and “GHHs”, plus misogyny, plus a heaping helping of self-congratulation for being fair, open-minded, and helpful to aspiring writers.

Not recommended.

 

Spacefaring Kitten on Spacefaring, Extradimensional Happy Kittens

“’A Single Samurai’ by Steven Diamond” – May 22

“A Single Samurai”, unsurprisingly, tells the story of a lone samurai. He is traveling on the back of a mountain-sized kaiju monster that is demolishing everything in its way, and he intends to kill it.

I love this idea, and it’s a shame Diamond only mentions it and never gives the reader any insight into what it’s like to be on a moving mountain (if we don’t count one earthquake). The milieu feels like any standard fantasy environment, really.

 

Rebekah Golden

“2015 Hugo Awards Best TV Show: Reviewing the Flash” – May 20

Retrospectively the pilot was good enough to continue watching another fifteen or so episodes.

 

Rebekah Golden

“2015 Hugo Awards Best Professional Artist: Reviewing J Dillon” – May 20

For this review I’m going to focus on works created in 2014 which include some that I have enjoyed in the past and am happy to highlight why I enjoyed them now that I have a chance to write more formally on the topic.

 

Rebekah Golden

“2015 Hugo Awards Best Graphic Story: Reviewing Ms Marvel” – May 21

This comic is delightfully playful and full of Easter eggs and small side details in the frame.

 

Rebekah Golden

“2015 Hugo Awards Best Professional Artist: Reviewing K DouPonce” – May 21

The issue here is not that he refers to himself as a designer rather than an artist or that he admits to using stock imagery. The issue is his work looks like it was made by a designer not an artist and that the images look like a vaguely pleasant arrangement of stock imagery.

 

Rebekah Golden

“2015 Hugo Awards Best TV Show: Reviewing Game of Thrones” – May 21

I just don’t see the point of this sweeping epic outside of some catharsis and the catharsis isn’t there for me.

 

Rebekah Golden

“2015 Hugo Awards Best Professional Artist: Reviewing N Greenwood” – May 22

Greenwood is obviously an artist of some scope and skill.

Cover art by Nick Greenwood.

Cover art by Nick Greenwood.

 

David Langford in a comment on Making Light  – May 22

A voice from the past. While tidying up the look of the TransAtlantic Fan Fund site (now with free ebooks!), I noticed the following prophetic remark in one of Patrick’s and Teresa’s newsletters, TAFFluvia 2 dated August 1985:

What we meant was that TAFF is an institution created for a specific purpose, with its own agenda — promoting greater transatlantic amity between fans — and should not be used as a mechanism for pursuing unrelated issues; no more than, say, the Hugos should be used as an exercise in block-voting by a group with an ideological axe to grind, rather than in recognition of the single outstanding work nominated.

 

 

 

654 thoughts on “Canine Princes in Amber 5/22

  1. The other part, Danny, is what I covered in ADCP and Carnifex; torture can give a buttload of bullshit information. That doesn’t, however, mean it has to. One of the reasons to limit the resources you put into it is so that your own intel forces must concentrate their efforts on the most probably lucrative sources. Perfect? No, nothing is perfect but it helps. Another is that, unless you have a way to check some portion of the information you’re demanding, to train the person under interrogation to tell the truth, and to check if he is, generally, telling the truth, it’s a waste of effort, usually. Sometimes, though, and particularly if you concentrate on it, you will have the information to check, or you will have two or more people you have good reason to believe have the same info, to check against each other. A third is to give him or her a tour of the “instruments;” this is an old technique that very often effective enough, and remember that torture is always operative; even if you never use, the fear is there. (That’s why I sneer at the hypocrisy of professional intel gatherers who refuse to see that torture, or the fear thereof, is always working on their side; it’s simply a condition of being a helpless captive.) A fourth is that one should never (see comment on Dershowitz, above) use torture on anyone whom you haven’t tried and sentenced (Presumably to death) anyway, already. This (fifth) seals your legal system from torture but exposes torture to some of the restraint of your legal system. In the case of the current war and campaigns, virtually everyone on the other side is engaged in a war crime, a conspiracy to wage war in an illegal manner, thus, they can be put to death. If we can execute them, we can do less than execute them, provided they’ve been given a trial (which needn’t be all that much, by the way).

  2. It turns out I have a limit on being able to let things go. 🙂

    “Neither of us is going to change position a jot for anything the other can say, and few if any others will either. it is, in short, just needless cruelty to innocent electrons.”

    I would rather be cruel to innocent electrons than cruel to innocent people — or even unjustly cruel to non-innocent people.

    That said, a few points:

    “You can try to ban this or that (hmmm…the human record on banning is, after all, so good…and how many slaves are in the world now?).”

    Far fewer than if it hadn’t been banned.

    “None of it matters; if the threat is great enough, immanent enough, or has been acted on seriously enough, torture will be used without restraint”

    Well, that depends — if people keep treating it as some kind of potential magic bullet, then yes. If people realize that they either need to normalize it — to acquire the skills needed for it to work as a magic bullet when they want it, if such is even possible — or that it won’t work, most likely, when they need it, then perhaps they’ll try other things.

    It’s rather like arguing that racial profiling will always get used, so we might as well get used to it — I call your attention to the Carnival Booth problem, there, and I think you’ll see (if you’re honest) the applicability to the torture question.

    ” Now an army insufficiently disciplined that it cannot be controlled an behaves purely as it wishes isn’t an army at all, and whatever parts of it have broken loose from discipline have also broken loose from it.”

    You do realize that by this definition we first got “armies” in the 18th century, at best, don’t you? And even there only in a small part of the world, and said armies were rapidly overwhelmed when the switch from professionalism to mass mobilization took place?

    ” (Though, again, note that there is not much practical difference between torture and a plea bargain…and our legal system is almost utterly dependent on plea bargaining.)”

    I saw this earlier, and meant to return to it; now I shall.

    This is nonsense. Utter, complete, nonsense. By that standard, any negotiation between a state actor and a non-state actor, where there is any chance of compulsion, is torture; that’s as much as they have in common.

    Here’s a clue: “We will do something to you you don’t like, unless you give us what we want” is not the same as “We will give you something you want, if you give us something we want.” Not all application of pressure is torture — and the fact that you’re trying to broaden the definition like that makes it fairly clear, as if it weren’t already, that normalizing and making torture acceptable is your goal, whether you care to admit it or not.

    Which brings us to: (That’s why I sneer at the hypocrisy of professional intel gatherers who refuse to see that torture, or the fear thereof, is always working on their side; it’s simply a condition of being a helpless captive.)

    Nothing we say is going to convince people, for a very, very long time that being captured by the U.S. doesn’t put you at risk of torture; we’ve seen to that with recent developments. Indeed, if the enemies you describe are so implacable and so willing to believe what is said of us, nothing we say or do will remove that fear.

    But this is more a part of your widening the definition of torture — which can, again, only have the effect of normalizing it, of making it acceptable.

    “In the case of the current war and campaigns, virtually everyone on the other side is engaged in a war crime, a conspiracy to wage war in an illegal manner, thus, they can be put to death.”

    My reading of the Geneva Convention disagrees with you for combatants in the field — and when you are talking about terrorists, you still have this little thing called the rule of law to get around.

    “If we can execute them, we can do less than execute them, provided they’ve been given a trial (which needn’t be all that much, by the way).”

    The 8th Amendment to the Constitution does rather put limits on that “less than execute them”, don’t you know? And I do love the dismissive “needn’t be all that much” with respect to a trial.

    Indeed, the attitude in that last paragraph shows very clearly one of the reasons why torture is so corrosive to the fabric of the state — because justifications for its use undermine protections of law.

    In other comments on this thread, Tom, you seem dismissive of the notion of torture the way it’s being handled now, yet you cling desperately to the use of it in some unspecified way in the unspecified future in case it’s possibly the best way to deal with an unspecified threat. The fact that you’re willing to throw international law, U.S. law, and your fellow servicemen under the bus in order to keep a hold of possible torture in the future does, indeed, make one ask “why?”

    And none of the answers that fit are particularly…sane ones.

  3. Far fewer than if it hadn’t been banned.

    ****A. Speculative, though I concede that there may be slaves in more places, but B, not the point, which is that bans DON’T.

    Well, that depends — if people keep treating it as some kind of potential magic bullet, then yes. If people realize that they either need to normalize it — to acquire the skills needed for it to work as a magic bullet when they want it, if such is even possible — or that it won’t work, most likely, when they need it, then perhaps they’ll try other things.

    ****I can’t imagine why they have to treat it as a magic bullet to realize it can be useful. One more time: something need not be perfect in every case to still be useful. That’s actually one of the ways the anti-torture lobby undermines their own logical position, even if it shores up their rhetorical one. Note here that I have, and I think more than once, said it is not a panacea. Why do you insist that it must be?

    It’s rather like arguing that racial profiling will always get used, so we might as well get used to it — I call your attention to the Carnival Booth problem, there, and I think you’ll see (if you’re honest) the applicability to the torture question.

    ****Nonsense.

    ” Now an army insufficiently disciplined that it cannot be controlled an behaves purely as it wishes isn’t an army at all, and whatever parts of it have broken loose from discipline have also broken loose from it.”

    You do realize that by this definition we first got “armies” in the 18th century, at best, don’t you? And even there only in a small part of the world, and said armies were rapidly overwhelmed when the switch from professionalism to mass mobilization took place?

    ****So you were unaware that the conscript armies of the Great War were highly disciplined? Puhleeze. That the Romans were highly disciplined? Double puhleeeze. I think what you’ve got going on here is a definition of disciplined that implies “goodkindneverwickedandboyscout.” I didn’t say that, though, and it doesn’t relate to the original question, which concerned guilt for war crimes. An army may, in any case, be very well disciplined and go into a city and kill every living thing, after raping the women, of course, and still be an army, IF it was _told_ to do so. In that case, the war crimes charges, though widely applicable, can be leveled at a very high level, if there is any law and any body to do so. One doubts, for example, that any Roman soldier was charged for any conduct towards civilians at Carthage or Corinth that didn’t relate to trying to secrete a part of the loot.

    Now try to stay on point, would you?

    ” (Though, again, note that there is not much practical difference between torture and a plea bargain…and our legal system is almost utterly dependent on plea bargaining.)”

    I saw this earlier, and meant to return to it; now I shall.

    This is nonsense. Utter, complete, nonsense. By that standard, any negotiation between a state actor and a non-state actor, where there is any chance of compulsion, is torture; that’s as much as they have in common.

    ****You amaze, Steven, with your inability or unwillingness to look at the details when it suits you. A non-state actor in negotiations? Is he in custody. Is it a he or an organization? If he, is he, helpless? It’s not just a case of “don’t like,” it’s a case of intense suffering versus less or none.

    Nothing we say is going to convince people, for a very, very long time that being captured by the U.S. doesn’t put you at risk of torture; we’ve seen to that with recent developments. Indeed, if the enemies you describe are so implacable and so willing to believe what is said of us, nothing we say or do will remove that fear.

    ****Nothing we can ever say is going to do so. Nothing. Ever. Why? Because his own propaganda ministry will convince him of it whether true or not? You’re silly if you think otherwise. Moreover it is simply part and parcel of being a helpless captive.

    “In the case of the current war and campaigns, virtually everyone on the other side is engaged in a war crime, a conspiracy to wage war in an illegal manner, thus, they can be put to death.”

    My reading of the Geneva Convention disagrees with you for combatants in the field — and when you are talking about terrorists, you still have this little thing called the rule of law to get around.

    ****There are rules for lawful combatancy. They break them. They break them deliberately. They conspire to break them. Every fighter who goes to join them joins that conspiracy. Moreover the conspiracy includes conduct that is, itself, war crimes. They join that too.

    Now, if you are going by Add Prot II to GC IV, you may disagree. But we never signed is, so so what?

    “If we can execute them, we can do less than execute them, provided they’ve been given a trial (which needn’t be all that much, by the way).”

    The 8th Amendment to the Constitution does rather put limits on that “less than execute them”, don’t you know? And I do love the dismissive “needn’t be all that much” with respect to a trial.

    ****No, it doesn’t, Steven. The 8th talks about cruel and unusual _punishment_, as a result of judicial decision, hanging, drawing, and quartering (though not necessarily burning at the stake), say. But torture is not judicial punishment.

    Indeed, the attitude in that last paragraph shows very clearly one of the reasons why torture is so corrosive to the fabric of the state — because justifications for its use undermine protections of law.

    In other comments on this thread, Tom, you seem dismissive of the notion of torture the way it’s being handled now, yet you cling desperately to the use of it in some unspecified way in the unspecified future in case it’s possibly the best way to deal with an unspecified threat. The fact that you’re willing to throw international law, U.S. law, and your fellow servicemen under the bus in order to keep a hold of possible torture in the future does, indeed, make one ask “why?”

    ****Because comforting myths and the occasional interrogator (bet I know more of them than you do) aside, it can work.

    And none of the answers that fit are particularly…sane ones.

    ***and denying reality is especially sane?

  4. “****A. Speculative, though I concede that there may be slaves in more places, but B, not the point, which is that bans DON’T.”

    Laws against things seldom stop them altogether — and if that’s the standard you want, then good luck to you, because what you’re arguing against here is the entire structure of law-as-tool.

    “****I can’t imagine why they have to treat it as a magic bullet to realize it can be useful. One more time: something need not be perfect in every case to still be useful.”

    Just like a ban on torture (or slavery) need not be perfect to be useful. Speaking of undermining one’s own position.

    “It’s rather like arguing that racial profiling will always get used, so we might as well get used to it — I call your attention to the Carnival Booth problem, there, and I think you’ll see (if you’re honest) the applicability to the torture question.”

    ****Nonsense.

    Any resources devoted to improving torture, until such time as torture is *more* effective than other means of gaining information, reduces the amount of resources available to devote to more effective means. That’s the Carnival Booth algorithm problem, and if you cxan’t see the relevance, that is, again, your problem.

    [discussions of armies and discipline deleted at Tom’s request to “stay on point”.]

    “****You amaze, Steven, with your inability or unwillingness to look at the details when it suits you. A non-state actor in negotiations? Is he in custody. Is it a he or an organization? If he, is he, helpless? It’s not just a case of “don’t like,” it’s a case of intense suffering versus less or none.”

    In the case of a plea bargain? They may or may not be in custody. They may or may not be an organization — if you don’t think companies plea-bargain, you’re much mistaken.

    A plea bargain is akin to offering to let the other side surrender in a battle in exchange for lenient treatment — not torturing prisoners after the battle has been won.

    “****Nothing we can ever say is going to do so. Nothing. Ever. Why? Because his own propaganda ministry will convince him of it whether true or not? You’re silly if you think otherwise. Moreover it is simply part and parcel of being a helpless captive.”

    Then our banning torture on our side does not reduce its so-called psychological effects on the captive, prevents us wasting resources on it, and prevents it from corroding our legal system. Seems like a win-win to me. Thanks, Tom.

    “****There are rules for lawful combatancy. They break them. They break them deliberately. They conspire to break them. Every fighter who goes to join them joins that conspiracy. Moreover the conspiracy includes conduct that is, itself, war crimes. They join that too.”

    As Cpaca said earlier, and as this statement brings out, it’s pretty clear what you want; you want a license to torture and kill without repercussion.

    And I certainly hope the country to which you allegedly owe allegiance to is a better one than that, to give *anyone* such a license.

    “****No, it doesn’t, Steven. The 8th talks about cruel and unusual _punishment_, as a result of judicial decision, hanging, drawing, and quartering (though not necessarily burning at the stake), say. But torture is not judicial punishment.”

    Are you honestly arguing that, for example, police could torture someone because it’s not a *sentence*? That people are allowed to be far crueller to someone not convicted than someone convicted? (I will note that your previous position relied on them being given a trial in order to torture them: ” If we can execute them, we can do less than execute them, provided they’ve been given a trial (which needn’t be all that much, by the way).”)

    That “provided we’ve given them…” (please note the tense, Tom, given that you’re a writer) puts the trial in the past tense. Which means the 8th Amendment covers them.

    “Indeed, the attitude in that last paragraph shows very clearly one of the reasons why torture is so corrosive to the fabric of the state — because justifications for its use undermine protections of law.”

    I leave this here, repeated, because it’s very evidently true, given how much logic you’re prepared to chop in order to preserve your precious torture.

    “****Because comforting myths and the occasional interrogator (bet I know more of them than you do) aside, it can work.”

    You probably do know more of them; I only know the unanimous opinion of those I do know.

    You know what? Lots of things “work”. Heck, it would work to “eliminate the Taliban” if we slaughtered every man, woman, and child in Afghanistan, everyone they were related to, and everyone who’d come into too close contact with them. It would spark a whole bunch of other problems, it would create a situation where we were far worse than the problem we “eliminated”, but it would “work”. It “works” to knock down walls to use a trebuchet; you can also use a cannon.

    What you’re doing is arguing, over and over again, that a specifically dehumanizing approach must be preserved, even though to be effectual, it requires a significant infrastructure, drains resources away from other (more effective) means, and damages both the reputation and efficacy of the governments performing it.

    It’s like arguing “Oh, no, we need to keep our pike units trained and ready, because pikes can kill infantry!” in the modern day, Tom. You’ve argued that the threat of it is omnipresent, no matter what we do — that’s what you said, above. You’ve argued that the threat of it is, indeed, the way things are now, its greatest benefit. So, fine. The threat will never go away, no matter what we do, and that’s the best part — so we can step away from actually *doing* it, and keep the benefits, along with our respect and humanity.

    Or, at least, some of us can. Given the quickness with which you leap to violence as the solution, whether it be to internal political problems, or the vehemence with which you defend torture, it may be too late for you.

  5. Steven, you never cease to amaze at the damage you can do thoughts, logic, and facts to score rhetorical points with those impressed by rhetoric. Really.

    I’m not going to waste a lot more time with you, but try this one. Torture is always operative because of fear. Fear is always there because of the condition, the universal condition, even if it’s carefully hidden, of the captive. You have to be an arrogant, ill informed idiot not to understand that captivity in war is a fairly universal experience, even if the trappings differ. The key point is fear and helplessness.

    Some people will never break even if you subject them to the worst tortures imaginable.

    Some will talk instantly, because of the fear (or do you presume that AQ operatives seized in a raid talk because they suddenly love us, and have decided to betray their culture and faith because of that)? Please do be an idiot. Or is it the potential withholding of ice cream novelties at Death Camp GTMO that gets them to cooperate? Puh-fucking-leeze.

    Between those, and including those, the fear operates, and is sometimes effective and sometimes not. Sometimes the fear must be given more substance.

    Only in the two dimensional mind of a lefty – or a Nazi, though the values and strategy differ, the mindset is remarkably similar – is there such an obsession with yes-no, perfection-utter failure.

    The rhetorical nonsense you spew, no doubt impressive to those easily impressed, is really why I can barely stand to discuss something with you. It’s simply not honest. It is painfully idiotic.

  6. “Some people will never break even if you subject them to the worst tortures imaginable.”

    Serious question, Mr Kratman (since I assume you know): How do you tell the difference between someone who “won’t break” because he needs to be tortured harder, and someone who “won’t break” because he really doesn’t know anything?

  7. I don’t think there’s any reliable way to tell, Danny. I’d put money on Leila Khalid not breaking by anything you might do to her, but that’s based on a known history. We very rarely know that much about any given person. It is possible, though I am skeptical, that pshrinks might be able to tell or to develop ways to tell. There are so few who would not break, though, that the intelligent presumption is probably on them breaking, absent strong evidence to the contrary.

  8. so if there’s no reliable way to tell the difference between someone who’s been tortured into telling you the truth, and someone who’s been tortured into desperately making things up in an attempt to get you to stop torturing…

    why bother torturing?

  9. Danny Sichel: “why bother torturing?”

    I have read a news report of a soldier who was captured by the Iraqis and beaten to get military info, and when he was freed was very upset to have to admit to others in his unit that he had “told them everything.” Perhaps it’s hard to think of that tactic as being valueless when there are anecdotes like that which implicitly say torture does elicit information. (And it may elicit lies, bad info, etc. too, but that was not the outcome for that particular solider.)

  10. Steven S : As Cpaca said earlier, and as this statement brings out, it’s pretty clear what you want; you want a license to torture and kill without repercussion.

    Of course I’m right – which is why he studiously avoids addressing the point.

    If the situation is desperate enough that an agent of the government decides it requires torture, then it is desperate enough for that agent to accept prosecution for the crime. If the thought of prosecution deters an agent from torturing someone, then obviously torture isn’t required.

  11. ” Torture is always operative because of fear.”

    As I said — if it’s always operative, then we don’t need to use techniques to enhance it, by your own words.

    “Sometimes the fear must be given more substance.”

    So, in other words, “fear works except when it doesn’t, and then we need to use more of it” — you keep contradicting yourself, in the larger picture.

    “Only in the two dimensional mind of a lefty is there such an obsession with yes-no, perfection-utter failure.”

    Have you even bothered to *read* the Carnival Booth reference? Unless you can make torture *better* than other methods, it’s not worth the cost — and the cost in having a second-best intelligence-gathering method of such a corrosive nature is rather like being the “second-best navy”.

    Every dime, every hour, every bit of diplomatic capital spent on torture — by the narrow definition that people actually *use*, not your broad “plea bargains/any use of fear/etc.” definition — is a resource wasted that could have been used better elsewhere, by your own admission and by general agreement, and that is my point.

    “One more thing: no, you idiot, the 8th amendment doesn’t bar the police from torture because the FIFTH DOES. Moron.”

    You’re the one shifting positions in some sort of ridiculous game of rhetorical shoot-and-scoot; you argued that the 8th doesn’t protect people because we can sentence them to death. When I pointed out the 8th protects against punishment, you argued that tehy hadn’t been convicted yet — and yes, then the 5th covers it. So, which part of the constitution you allegedly swore to protect do you want to destroy in order to allow your oh-so-precious torture?

    And did you lie when you swore that oath, or is the dishonesty for torture’s sake a later development?

    Feel free not to answer; anyone else who’s reading this can judge the twists and turns of your logic, and your desperate clinging to any justification, and see what you are.

  12. CP, one doubts you have ever been right about anything in your life. Yes, the odds may favor it, but your stupidity to too great to just go with averages.

  13. Danny, go read A Desert Called Peace for the techniques. Short version is that perfection, far more than a foolish consistency, is the hobgoblin of small minds. Very, VERY few people will not break under torture. If it works 99% of the time (does it? Possibly, if you\’re careful and thorough), what diff if 1% of the time it won’t?

  14. Mike, the key to separating out lies and misinformation is to know some things, or have some \way to check quickly, or to have two people who have the same basic information. In the latter case, you separate them, give them the tour, and ask questions, sometimes very innocent questions. (Why? Mostly to break down any story they may have concocted.) If the stories match, good, you have a degree of independent corroboration. If they cease matching? Ouch. And, in essence, you train the subject to be too afraid not to answer truthfully. But that really only works reliably when you do have that method of independent corroboration. That doesn’t mean it can’t work if you don’t, but it becomes much, much iffier.

    By the way, it occurred to me earlier, per Steven, if I _want_ to torture because I am applying a degree of detached logic to it, or because we must want the results of our thought and beliefs. Thus, Steven being a red, he clearly wants to starve Kulaks to death, fill up the landscape with unmarked graves, murder thousands of Poles, mostly kids, in some little traveled forest, use torture with gleeful abandon, so long as it ID’s “enemies of the people,”: etc., etc.

    Nope, no defense is possible, It is a binary thing under leftlogic. if you defend something, or even think about it dispassionately, you MUST want to do it yourself.

    But then, I already knew that Steven was a mass murderer temporarily defanged.

  15. Krapman : CP, one doubts you have ever been right about anything in your life. Yes, the odds may favor it, but your stupidity to too great to just go with averages.

    Empty insult, inability to address the point yet again.

    Keep twisting in the wind, coward.

  16. CP, one doubts you have ever been right about anything in your life. Yes, the odds may favor it, but your stupidity to too great to just go with averages.

    Empty insult, inability to address the point yet again.

    Keep twisting in the wind – everyone can see you for what you are.

  17. “By the way, it occurred to me earlier, per Steven, if I _want_ to torture because I am applying a degree of detached logic to it, or because we must want the results of our thought and beliefs. Thus, Steven being a red, he clearly wants to starve Kulaks to death, fill up the landscape with unmarked graves, murder thousands of Poles, mostly kids, in some little traveled forest, use torture with gleeful abandon, so long as it ID’s “enemies of the people,”: etc., etc.”

    Nompe. I do not defend those things using every rhetorical trick I can think of. *You*, however, try and broaden the definition of torture, argue in favor of self-contradictory thought experiments, undermine the Constitution, and so on and so forth. If lying and twisting is what you do “dispassionately”, Tom, I can see why you allegedly fly off the handle so easily when your emotions are engaged.

    You label me, and then argue I must believe in everything everyone who wears that label once did. I, on the other hand, take you at your word when you attempt to argue things, and simply point out the end result.

    That you apparently don’t like the end result should indicate something to you — alas, it looks likely that it won’t.

  18. @Cpaca — Indeed; when TK runs out of arguments, he goes for the “you’re stupid, therefore you’re wrong.” I think we all know which logical fallacy that is.

    I really should just give up and leave the thread, but every time I try to, TK just raises the ante. Ah, well — more quotes for the file.

  19. Steven, if you will the end you will the means. You will the end every other red has willed. You will their means, too.

    Additionally, when some is spewing stupidity like a skunk sprays, except as an intellectual defense rather then an olfactory one, there’s really nothing to do but call them on it.

  20. Well, CP, you need to check your privilege, since Mike won’t permit me to insult you back properly.

    But you’re still a moron.

  21. By the way, Steven, just to show that no one is completely useless, you’ve inspired me to write a column on everyjoe concerning torture. It’s only fair, of course, that I dedicate the column to you and you alone. And, of course, I shall.

    Why not CP? Because as dishonestly rhetorical as you are, s/h/it’s just a total moron.

  22. Well, CP, you need to check your privilege, since Mike won’t permit me to insult you back properly.

    But you’re still a moron.

    Empty insult, still not addressing the point. If the situation is desperate enough that an agent of the government decides it requires torture, then it is desperate enough for that agent to accept prosecution for the crime. If the thought of prosecution deters an agent from torturing someone, then obviously torture isn’t required.

    What you’re defending is not torture, but a license to torture with impunity.

    Keep twisting in the wind – everyone can see you for what you are.

  23. “Steven, if you will the end you will the means. You will the end every other red has willed. You will their means, too.”

    I am …taken aback. I didn’t think you could sink much lower.

    First of all: I’m not, by traditional models, a “red”. But that’s beside the point.

    Wanting, say, peace on earth does not bind one to any particular philosophy’s view of how to get there — especially not one assigned to you by a third party.

    So, no; I don’t “will the means” — I am quite prepared to say “X would be nice, but right now, we can’t get there from here by acceptable methods.”

    Any more attempts at projection or slander-through-ridiculous-logic you’d care to try, or do you want to take your battered reputation and whatever remains of your argumentative integrity and go home? Because by now you’re reduced to calling people stupid or attempting to use the world’s broadest brush, neither of which are particularly winning strategies.

    I will, however, keep “If you will the end you will the means” around in the quote file — since I can easily put it to use. I presume, for example, that since John C. Wright wills the a world back under the Catholic banner, you believe he wills the Inquisition, the genocide of the Albigensian Crusade, and the persecution of Jews?

    If not, *do* please explain why you’re prepared to wield a broad brush to tar your opponents, but insist that it not be used on those closer to your “side”.

  24. “Very, VERY few people will not break under torture. If it works 99% of the time (does it? Possibly, if you’re careful and thorough), what diff if 1% of the time it won’t?”

    By ‘break’, and ‘work’, you mean ‘agree to provide information so that the torture will stop’, yes? And you’re concerned about false negatives. But what about false positives? What about capturing and torturing the wrong people? And, when they fail to supply actionable intelligence, continuing to torture them because of the misapprehension that they’re simply too well-trained, too stubborn, too deceitful and well-prepared?

    You’ve recommended that I read A Desert Called Peace, which is a novel you wrote. The thing about novels, Mr Kratman, is that the author controls what happens in them. I’m asking about the real world. How does one tell the difference between “this prisoner is lying to us in a deliberate attempt to deceive us, and therefore needs to be tortured more” and “this prisoner truly doesn’t know anything, and is telling us what he thinks we want to hear, because he hopes that then we will stop torturing him” ?

    What is an acceptable false positive rate for the ‘who should we torture’ heuristic?

    You’ve said “what diff if 1% of the time it won’t?”

    As I interpret this (and I hope you will correct me if I’m wrong!), you are saying that a 1% occurrence of “oops, tortured someone completely uninvolved” is acceptable. Please confirm or deny.

  25. And this is my official “I’m done with this discussion.” You can now have the last word, Tom, if you want it. I’ll trouble our host’s patience no longer.

  26. And that’s more brainless lefty binary pseudo-thought, Steven. Catholicism existed long before the Inquisition, still does, and likely ever shall.

    By the way, the Spanish Inquisition could hardly hold a candle to the least Red in office.

  27. Here’s a look at how successful torturers are in the real world, rather than the masturbatory novels of hacks:

    https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/19/senior-cia-officer-center-torture-scandals-alfreda-bikowsky/

    The Intercept is naming Bikowsky over CIA objections because of her key role in misleading Congress about the agency’s use of torture, and her active participation in the torture program (including playing a direct part in the torture of at least one innocent detainee). Moreover, Bikowsky has already been publicly identified by news organizations as the CIA officer responsible for many of these acts.

    The executive summary of the torture report released by the Senate last week provides abundant documentation that the CIA repeatedly and deliberately misled Congress about multiple aspects of its interrogation program. Yesterday, NBC News reported that one senior CIA officer in particular was responsible for many of those false claims, describing her as “a top al Qaeda expert who remains in a senior position at the CIA.”
    […]
    The McClatchy article identified Bikowsky by name as the officer who “played a central role in the bungled rendition of Khaled el-Masri. El-Masri, who was revealed to be innocent, claimed to have been tortured by the agency.” El-Masri, a German citizen who was kidnapped from Macedonia and tortured by the CIA in Afghanistan, was released in 2003 after it was revealed he was not involved in al Qaeda.

    Back in 2011, John Cook, the outgoing editor of The Intercept, wrote an article at Gawker, based on the reporting of Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy, naming Bikowsky and pointing to extensive evidence showing that she “has a long (if pseudonymous) history of being associated with some of the agency’s most disastrous boondoggles,” including a key role in the CIA’s pre-9/11 failure to notify the FBI that two known al Qaeda operatives had entered the country.

    If America was the Republic it so pretends it is, Bikowsky and people like her would be prosecuted for their actions, held to account in public. It isn’t that Republic. It’s a cheap and dirty security state, with cowards as its apologists.

  28. And another example of how useful torture really is:

    http://husseini.posthaven.com/what-both-sides-are-ignoring-torture-did-work-to-produce-war-see-footnote-857-of-report

    The truth is that torture did work, but not the way its defenders claim. It worked to produce justifications for policies the establishment wanted, like the Iraq war. This is actually tacitly acknowledged in the report — or one should say, it’s buried in it. Footnote 857 of the report is about Ibn Shaykh al-Libi, who was captured in Afghanistan shortly after the U.S. invasion and was interrogated by the FBI. He told them all he knew, but then the CIA rendered him to the brutal Mubarak regime in Egypt, in effect outsourcing their torture. From the footnote:

    “Ibn Shaykh al-Libi reported while in [censored: ‘Egyptian’] custody that Iraq was supporting al-Qa’ida and providing assistance with chemical and biological weapons. Some of this information was cited by Secretary Powell in his speech at the United Nations, and was used as a justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Ibn Shaykh al-Libi recanted the claim after he was rendered to CIA custody on February [censored], 2003, claiming that he had been tortured by the [censored, likely ‘Egyptians’], and only told them what he assessed they wanted to hear. For more more details, see Volume III.” Of course, Volume III — like most of the Senate report — has not been made public.

    So, while CIA head John Brennan now says it’s “unknowable” if torture lead to information that actually saved lives, it’s provable that torture led to information that facilitated war and destroyed lives.

    Nor was al-Libi the only one tortured to try to make the case for war. Many have reported that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaeda detainees repeatedly — Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times and Khalid Sheik Muhammed 183 times — but few give the exact timing and context: The were so tortured in August 2002 and March 2003 respectively — the beginning and end of the Bush administrations push for the invasion of Iraq.

    This was somewhat acknowledged in the other Senate report on torture, released by the Armed Services Committee in 2008. It quoted Maj. Paul Burney, who worked as a psychiatrist at Guantanamo Bay prison: “A large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq and we were not successful. The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link … there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results.” The GTMO Interrogation Control Element Chief, David Becker told the Armed Services Committee he was urged to use more aggressive techniques, being told at one point “the office of Deputy Secretary of Defense [Paul] Wolfowitz had called to express concerns about the insufficient intelligence production at GTMO.”

    McClatchy reported Sen. Carl Levin, the chair of the Armed Services Committee, said at that time: “I think it’s obvious that the administration was scrambling then to try to find a connection, a link (between al Qaida and Iraq) … They made out links where they didn’t exist.” But now, Levin seems more muted, saying, in response to the release of the recent report, that false information leads to “time-consuming wild goose chases” — which is quite an understatement given the human horrors that have resulted from the invasion of Iraq.

  29. @Danny – “As I interpret this (and I hope you will correct me if I’m wrong!), you are saying that a 1% occurrence of “oops, tortured someone completely uninvolved” is acceptable. Please confirm or deny.”

    I don’t want to join the discussion on the merits, but I’ll point out that he was estimating 1% as ‘people who do not break under torture’.

    As far as I can tell, ‘people who have information vs people we only thought had information’ has not been examined.

  30. It has, to a degree, Max. Note the caveats and limitations above, such as, limit the human aparat for torture severely so it is less likely to be used except where very likely to yield results (i.e. force your interrogators to prioritize), don’t bother if you know someone won’t break (which is rare but not impossible), don’t bother without a way to check _some_ of the information, etc.

    And I wasn’t actually estimating it at 1%. I would be very surprised if it were one thousandth of a percent. There are, after all, about 12 million Palestinians in the world, but only one Leila Khalid.

  31. Conversely, though weak and stupid malingerers like CP couldn’t possibly understand what was involved, there are maybe 100k or so US Army Rangers in history, or about one of five or six thousand of every American who has lived since since the French and Indian War and I am one of them. But I could be broken by torture.

    I suspect that part of CPs problem – besides that s/h/it is dependent on unearned privilege, of course – is that s/h/it knows s/h/it would shit itself at the first sign of a pair of pliers.

  32. @ Tom – “It has, to a degree, Max.”

    Gotcha, but not to the extent where you were quoting percentages ofor misidentification. People are going to disagree on this discussion, just wanted to make sure the disagreement was about actual positions.

    “Note the caveats and limitations above, such as, limit the human aparat for torture severely so it is less likely to be used except where very likely to yield results…”

    I may have been reading too much Radley Balko lately, he writes on justice system and Bill of Rights issues (I believe he identifies as a libertarian if that matters), but even with the best intentions I find it hard to believe that a system set up even by the standards described would ‘stay within the lines’.

    Of course, part of that is just an emotional discomfort with the idea on my part, and no amount of rationality or utilitarianism would help. *shrug*

  33. Stay within the lines? Probably not. I can’t think of much of anything that stays completely within all the lines in war. Indeed, barring some ineffectual Tranzi nonsense, the law of war presumes going outside the lines whenever required to force your enemy back inside them. It’s called “reprisal.” A reprisal is, itself, a war crime that becomes legitimate to enforce the laws of war.

    There’s nothing wrong with having a negative emotional reaction to torture, Max. I’m dispassionate about it but then I spent almost my entire adult life studying the extremely unpleasant. The problem comes in when you lie to yourself and others about the matter. “A lie will not stand.”

    Of course the SJWs, the left in general, lie so much they can hardly tell the difference anymore, most of them. Why that idiot, CP, cannot even tell the difference between “torture light,” done unintelligently, and “torture traditional,” done with some thought and care.

  34. I suspect that part of CPs problem – besides that s/h/it is dependent on unearned privilege, of course – is that s/h/it knows s/h/it would shit itself at the first sign of a pair of pliers.

    Once again unable to face the point made.

    Truly a cow/ard.

  35. CPaca, Danny, Maximillian, Steven:

    Seriously, guys, the candy’s all gone. I got the last toffee. All you’re getting out now are bits of papier-mâché and colored tissue paper.

  36. “And if you did it for a good reason, you’d do it for a bad one. You couldn’t say ‘we’re the good guys’ and then do bad guy things.”

    — Sam Vimes, Thud

  37. Precedent is certainly a valid objection, Danny, however, precedent is not the only argument. Moreover, as mentioned, for a bad enough attack any precedent to the contrary will be tossed, as will any law or rule.

    However, the argument as given there is somewhat circular. Turn it around a bit: “You couldn’t say we’re the good guys if we allow bad things to happen to our own that we could have prevented by being just a little less good and pure.”

    IOW, what is good and at what level? Is it good to not reprise in war, where reprisals are tactically nasty, and thereby strategically encourage the other side to commit more war crimes? Had the girl been alive would it have been good for Dirty Harry not to torture the Scorpio Killer and let her die?

  38. “And if you did it for a good reason, you’d do it for a bad one.”

    By the way, Danny, isn’t it just fucking hilarious how the left never seems able to apply this more broadly, to things like college speech codes or hate speech legislation in general, or safe spaces that may well ultimately lead to safe spaces for the Klan…LARGE safe spaces for the Klan…LARGE safe spaces for the Klan that may well then grow.

  39. @Tom.Kratman

    isn’t it just fucking hilarious how the left never seems…

    It’s a lot more hilarious to watch someone who knows zero about the left generalizing lazily about it. Isn’t there a book you should be writing, explaining how the Waffen SS were really the “good” Germans?

  40. @Tom “By the way, Danny, isn’t it just fucking hilarious how the left never seems able to apply this more broadly, to things like college speech codes or hate speech legislation in general…”

    Not entirely – don’t forget the ACLU, the EFF, and Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). Yes, the groups also include libertarians and FIRE is non-partisan, but these are all groups that strongly support free speech for everyone, even Nazis. They are perfectly aware of where speech codes or other laws can lead us.

  41. Touched a nerve, did I, SIJW? Never have written a book about the Waffen SS being the good Germans. Have written a book about them being a good tool for a certain kind of job.

  42. Max, fair enough, wrt to the ACLU, though I won’t quite support them until they come out in favor of a very classically liberal interpretation of the Second Amendment / defense of it as an individual right (albeit one also with a collective purpose).

  43. @Tom – re: ACLU
    I’m happy enough that they don’t work against it, while doing plenty of good work on other issues.

    Though I’m glad you mentioned it- For some reason I was convinced that their official position was that they didn’t do much with 2A because of limited resources and the NRA could be counted on to take care of anything. I just googled it and apparently that was either a state/local group or an individual, not the national ACLU.

  44. ISTR that their official position is the “collective rights” one. For a number of reasons, I (and the Supreme Court) tend generally to find that position wrong. If, however, the ACLU were to rethink it and go against gun control in some significant and serious way; I think I’d kick a few bucks their way.

  45. @Tom – Yes, that is their position, you are correct. I thought that it was something else, but I was apparently quoting the wrong person.

    I’m not certain that collective rights are the wrong interpretation, but if I was going to be correcting any Supreme Court determination I would be starting with something about the Commerce clause. “Now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.”

Comments are closed.