In the moral universe of Steve, people have various categories of righteousness and evility that are precisely determined by the wise people he trusts.

All evil people can be tortured any time wise people find it useful.

Evil people can be assassinated any time wise people find it useful.

And they can be detained and released any time wise people find it useful.

No treaty, law, etc. should be used to undermine the judgement of wise people. Criticism of the activity of the wise against the evil people is also evil, and the proper actions should be devised by the wise people.

Not hard to understand. In cases where nothing supports the wisdom of the wise people, like the kidnapping, torture, prepostereous indictment, denial of medical care and continuing solitary confinement of Dirar Abu Sisi we must admit that the wise people are wiser that we are and bow to their larger wisdom.

Once? Seven? Twenty?

And if we torture evil Khader 6 times, and innocent Abu Sisi once (well, but for a year), are we 85% righteous?

Steve already posted the youtube link http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FupY1qT99TY .

You stated that you weren’t able to find any links, but checking previous m=commenters is a good place to start . It is mentioned also in http://articles.boston.com/2012-02-21/news/31083628_1_palestinian-militants-jihad-activist-hunger-strike

i’m not trying to say he isn’t despicable, but i have not been able to find any articles or reports of any kind that aren’t focused on his damn hunger strike.

Namely, that human rights are not “universal rights of nice people”. In typical USA context someone would raise an issue about some appalling characteristics of the prison system and the “majority” reaction is “didn’t those people commit crimes”? And then it boils down to — is it OK if bad people are raped? How bad a person should be at the point when we do not give a damn if he/she is raped?

Liberals are being accused of being “moral relativists” because to them thing like sexual intercourse without marriage are bad if non-consensual and “who cares” if consensual. Conservatives view torture as abhorrent if applied to “nice people” and “who cares” if applied to “bad people”. [The labels conservative/liberal may be a bit arbitrary here, but this is roughly the way it works in USA.]

So now the dialogue is roughly like that: “Folks, this is really bad stuff.” “So you claim that it was done to nice people? See that video!” “The state should not imprison someone twice on the basis of one video and should never torture and detain without charges.” “Didn’t you read totally terrifying translation of that video?”