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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/12/2008 5:18:12 AM   
FirmhandKY


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quote:

ORIGINAL: LadyEllen

So let me understand this.

One small police team acting on its own account to make threats to gain pertinent information of immediate use to the prevention and detection of an identified crime over a period of ten minutes in a stressful situation in a single instance, is the same as the state sanctioned, premeditated, calm application of actual violence over extended periods and in multiple instances to gain information that will be out of date and so redundant to the prevention and detection of a possible but unknown crime?

Rubbish.

And of course the other key difference here is that the German police team faced legal proceedings because they acted on their own account and broke the constitutional law of the EU, whereas in the Guantanamo instance there is to date no hint of such proceedings despite the exact same breach having occurred.



Just a little bit preggers are they, huh?

The ruling and conviction about the police's action was a "wink and a nod", nothing more.

Which is more morally excusable ... someone, or some organization intentionally violating their law and supposed morality when "things are tough" (German police), or someone or some organization acting within how their laws have been interpreted (US)?

Firm

< Message edited by FirmhandKY -- 12/12/2008 5:26:09 AM >

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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/12/2008 6:07:10 AM   
Sanity


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Thank you for illustrating the point so beautifully.

On the one hand, when it's Europeans doing it, it's so easily minimized as if it were absolutely nothing at all.

Oh, but when they're Americans doing the same sort of thing, why - words can't even begin to describe the outrage!


quote:

ORIGINAL: LadyEllen

So let me understand this.

One small police team acting on its own account to make threats to gain pertinent information of immediate use to the prevention and detection of an identified crime over a period of ten minutes in a stressful situation in a single instance, is the same as the state sanctioned, premeditated, calm application of actual violence over extended periods and in multiple instances to gain information that will be out of date and so redundant to the prevention and detection of a possible but unknown crime?

Rubbish.

And of course the other key difference here is that the German police team faced legal proceedings because they acted on their own account and broke the constitutional law of the EU, whereas in the Guantanamo instance there is to date no hint of such proceedings despite the exact same breach having occurred.

E


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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/12/2008 6:10:20 AM   
Sanity


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Unacceptable, but unworthy of actual punishment.



quote:

ORIGINAL: kittinSol

 , although the actions of the German police are unacceptable - and how strange that such an obvious fact should have eluded the OP.


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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/12/2008 7:19:37 AM   
TheHeretic


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Status: offline 		          I think we can a expect a dramatic change in how these things are covered and reported (or not reported) in the American media, Firm.

         The idealists will still be out there, but without this subject being a tool to attack President Bush and his administration, Amnesty Int'l and the like are going to find much smaller turnouts for the press conferences, and fewer invites to go on TV with the talking heads.  They might even find themselves being asked the questions that haven't been asked previously.

       

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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/12/2008 7:59:55 AM   
kittinSol


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Status: offline 		*Proud member of Amnesty since 1994.*

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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/12/2008 8:05:47 AM   
LadyEllen


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quote:

ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY
Which is more morally excusable ... someone, or some organization intentionally violating their law and supposed morality when "things are tough" (German police), or someone or some organization acting within how their laws have been interpreted (US)?

Firm


so you agree with the judgement of the SCOTUS member who said that torture is not forbidden since it is not a punishment, so is not prohibited under the constitution under cruel and unusual punishment?

E

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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/12/2008 12:28:48 PM   
FirmhandKY


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quote:

ORIGINAL: LadyEllen

quote:

ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY
Which is more morally excusable ... someone, or some organization intentionally violating their law and supposed morality when "things are tough" (German police), or someone or some organization acting within how their laws have been interpreted (US)?

Firm


so you agree with the judgement of the SCOTUS member who said that torture is not forbidden since it is not a punishment, so is not prohibited under the constitution under cruel and unusual punishment?

E


Oh, come on Lady E! Don't strawman me!

This entire thread is about what I see as hypocrisy (and secondarily, the US media's complicity in that hypocrisy).

If one condemns the use of "harsh interrogation techniques" such as used by the US in the WOT, but then excuses the same or similar techniques when it touches their own lives, their own nation (their own EU) and their own well-being ... how is it anything other than hypocrisy?

If I supported the US's use of such techniques and condemned the Germans, then I would be hypocritical. I haven't condemned the German police. I haven't condemned the US. My lack of condemnation may be repulsive to you, but it is certainly consistent.

Firm

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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/12/2008 1:36:28 PM   
Aneirin


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Status: offline 		Confession by physical torture is an abomination, no mattter who or where it is carried out, it should be stamped out. Those who use torture as a means of extracting information should without further to do, be treated to the very same for the punishment of it, legal torture as punishment for torturing others. A case of people must reap what they sow.

Prison is cushy compared to the mental and physical abuse a torturee suffers, so let a torturer experience the very same, then imprison them to live out their nightmares away from everyone else.


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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/12/2008 1:40:42 PM   
kittinSol


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Status: offline 		I completely agree with you that torture is an abomination, but I absolutely, categorically, oppose your idea that torturers should be tortured back. We won't become civilised by treating uncivilised bastards in an uncivilised way. The moral highground is the only way to go.

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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/12/2008 1:43:10 PM   
LadyEllen


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Status: offline 		but nothing has been excused in the German case; there have been legal proceedings and on the evidence presented a verdict was reached and sanction determined. not so in the instance of the US cases, plural, which are clearly far more serious, far more numerous and far more ingrained within the system as an institution.

both are bad, but they are incomparable unless one holds that making a threat to kill a person is identical in quality to the deeds of a serial killer; the magnitude of difference here is of that order

E

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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/12/2008 1:46:44 PM   
kittinSol


Posts: 16926
Status: offline 		What strikes me is that instead of condemning torture worldwide, the OP is basically whining that the US media aren't giving Germany the same amount of hassle it gave the American government over the use of waterboarding and other disgusting things.

Bizarre.

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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/12/2008 1:53:35 PM   
Aneirin


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Status: offline 		If prison was a punishment, I would agree with you, but we all know prison is not what it used to be. All I understand from those that have told me, prison is a lack of freedom, nothing else.

Criminals no longer fear prison, as prisoners have a lot they can have, sometimes more than the poorest free persons. In that I have known people try to get into prison to be at least provided with adequate nutrition on a regular basis and a cell they can for a time call their own.

I believe the action deserves the punishment, but in a civilised society that cannot be, but those incarcerated should not have a comfortable existence, they are there to be punished for their crimes, not be treated better than homeless people.


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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/12/2008 4:12:02 PM   
LadyEllen


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quote:

ORIGINAL: kittinSol

The moral highground is the only way to go.


You know, my preference is for such high ground, but it seems to me it is not the only way to go at all.

We could also take the very low ground - after all not only is this easier but history shows that it is most often the most successful strategy in defeating an enemy utterly.

Our problem is that our heritage is that of being the nastiest bunch of bastards on the planet (white Europeans that is) and that we now seek the high ground having seen the error of our ways (albeit highly successful ways) but we so readily revert to type.

If we could just go one way or the other and be either consistent arseholes or consistent saints we might win through, but all this being arseholes one day (when we're taking vengeance for attacks on us) and saints the next (when we're complaining about the newest tit for tat attack on us) is just not working out.

E

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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/12/2008 6:13:34 PM   
HunterS


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Aneirin

If prison was a punishment, I would agree with you, but we all know prison is not what it used to be. All I understand from those that have told me, prison is a lack of freedom, nothing else.

Criminals no longer fear prison, as prisoners have a lot they can have, sometimes more than the poorest free persons. In that I have known people try to get into prison to be at least provided with adequate nutrition on a regular basis and a cell they can for a time call their own.

I believe the action deserves the punishment, but in a civilised society that cannot be, but those incarcerated should not have a comfortable existence, they are there to be punished for their crimes, not be treated better than homeless people.



Clearly you have never been to prison. 
Before you post such nonsense perhaps you might avail yourself of some "free" room and board to get a first hand understanding of what prison is like.
 
H.

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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/12/2008 6:51:52 PM   
FirmhandKY


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quote:

ORIGINAL: LadyEllen

but nothing has been excused in the German case; there have been legal proceedings and on the evidence presented a verdict was reached and sanction determined. not so in the instance of the US cases, plural, which are clearly far more serious, far more numerous and far more ingrained within the system as an institution.

"Nothing has been excused"? What, again, was their punishment? What was the actual "sanction"?

"more serious, far more numerous and far more ingrained"? According to US law, as it has been interpreted, what law was violated?



quote:

ORIGINAL: LadyEllen

both are bad, but they are incomparable unless one holds that making a threat to kill a person is identical in quality to the deeds of a serial killer; the magnitude of difference here is of that order

E


Lady E, you need to reread the article. There was far more than "a threat to kill". There was actual physical violence to the child-killer:

quote:

Ennigkeit tells him, according to Gäfgen’s testimony. “We can do whatever we want with you.” On Gäfgen’s account, moreover, Ennigkeit already begins to rough him up: shaking him so violently that his head bangs against the wall and hitting him in the chest hard enough to leave a bruise over his collarbone. Gäfgen’s testimony is consistent with the tenor of Daschner’s instructions, which, on Daschner’s own admission, called for the “use of direct force” [ Anwendung unmittelbaren Zwangs].


Firm

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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/12/2008 6:58:57 PM   
rulemylife


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Status: offline 		What's really sad here is the Bush/Cheney legacy has so twisted the views of some to the point where we have to debate whether common decency and respect for basic human rights is a point that needs to be argued.

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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/12/2008 7:02:59 PM   
LadyEllen


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Status: offline 		I'm sorry, but you cant at one and the same time call into question the ability of European courts to interpret EU law in connection with the prosecution and determination of a case whilst at the same time relying on interpretations of US law to refute that any offence has occurred at Guantanamo unless those interpretations have come from the US Courts - in which case I restate the question as to whether your view here relies on the notion that torture is not forbidden as it is not held to be a punishment?

E

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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/12/2008 7:45:10 PM   
OrionTheWolf


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"People can afford to be an idealist until they have a gun in their face."

I read the OP to say that it bothered him/her that the US media had not covered it, since it was similar in nature to Gitmo.

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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/12/2008 8:00:37 PM   
rulemylife


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quote:

ORIGINAL: OrionTheWolf

~FR~

"People can afford to be an idealist until they have a gun in their face."

I read the OP to say that it bothered him/her that the US media had not covered it, since it was similar in nature to Gitmo.


Which it really wasn't, as several people pointed out.

Apparently to no avail.

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RE: Torture: Europe and Gitmo - 12/12/2008 9:03:19 PM   
masterBruce


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Status: offline 		well America dosent torture any one and for the last 7 yrs we have been safe

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