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Mullah Jacques

Pop quiz: What country meets the following criteria? Women are told how to dress Christians cannot profess their faith Jews cannot practice their religion You gut instinct may be to think of some state with a repressive interpretation of Islam; perhaps Afghanistan under the Taliban; perhaps Saudia Arabia. If I told you that they had declared weapons of mass destruction – and not that non-conventional stuff dressed up – but real nuclear weapons. Your first thought might be, incorrectly as we know now, of Iraq.

4 more

Robert Reich has an interesting column in the American Prospect about four more years of a Bush presidency. I think he’s being a bit alarmist, but at the same time I don’t think he’s exaggerating. I wonder if this is one of those articles that will be read by Bush supporters as a promise of what Bush will deliver, so they go out and vote for him.

Is Torture Utilitarian?

Glad other people are speaking up about the immorality of torture. As politicians argue, and our pragmatist-in-chief tries to find an angle, we can agree that not all moral dilemmas can be reduced to a cost-benefit analysis of pleasure and pain. There are some kinds of pain a morally serious person ought never to inflict. [From Is Torture Utilitarian?]