Fw: [lbo-talk] Paranoid Styles, Soviet and American (was Hamas "a project of Shin Bet")

Miles Jackson cqmv at pdx.edu
Sun Oct 22 11:33:24 PDT 2006


joanna wrote:
> There is also a mountain of data about sexual abuse in families. No one
> is saying that she has proved her case; we are objecting to her
> allegations being dismissed out of hand.
>

The only people making claims in this thread about what really happened are you and Jesse: "HA raped his daughter". What James, Yosh and I are pointing out is that we can't just simply accept accusations at face value, especially when they are based on recovered memories. No one is saying "We know the memory was fabricated"; we're just saying her vivid memory account is not clear evidence that the abuse occurred.

So without corrobating evidence, we're left with the fact that Bettina has a vivid memory of abuse; however, we cannot make a confident claim that "she was abused" or "she wasn't abused". I know this lack of certainty is disconcerting in cases like this, but in my view, "we can't be sure one way or the other" is the only logically and morally defensible position.

Miles



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