If You Have To Ask....

[filkertom]

Pope Benedict "is very upset" that Muslims took offense by his invoking a 14th-century speech calling the works of Mohammed "evil and inhuman".

The Only President We've Got finds comments against torture "unacceptable" and wants "clarity" regarding the Geneva Conventions' ban against "outrages against human dignity".

What does that mean, "outrages upon human dignity"? That's a statement that is wide open to interpretation.

You evil, sanctimonious motherfuckers.

With all of the works of Catholicism to pull from, Emperor Popetine grabs one insulting a billion people and then sends out a spokesflunky to tell everyone how the Pontiff is "very upset that some parts of his speech could have sounded offensive to the sensibility of the Muslim faithful and were interpreted in a way that does not correspond at all to his intentions". In what other way, I'm curious, were those remarks supposed to be interpreted?

Chimpy McShithead wants to find the "acceptable" legal limits to his torture program.

Answer to both question: There is none.

And this pushing of the limits, this utter willingness to tear down the boundaries of civilization we've spent thousands of years putting up so we don't spend all our time trying to slaughter each other in righteous rage, is something which the "leaders" of the world do with increasing frequency.

News flash to Pope Bennie: The world communicates instantly these days. If you say something stupid, everybody knows really fast. And, given the religious tensions in the world since, oh, say, the 14th century, going back literally hundreds of years to demonize one-sixth of the earth's population may not be the brightest move. Following up by saying how upset you are about it is just a smack in the face. Having an underling deliver that message is worse than cowardice.

This is what comes from playing My God's Bigger Than Your God. Earlier this week I saw a comment at Eschaton I agree with strongly, the gist of which is Religious tension is a fight over who's got the better imaginary friend.

And, hey, Chimpy: I suspect that you're having such a difficult time with that provision of Geneva because, well, you have no human dignity. None. You were a spoiled silver-spoon brat who made it on your family name and connections, a binge drinker twenty years past your frat days, an inept CEO who ran an oil company and a baseball team into the ground (but managed to make tidy profits for yourself), a clumsy and mean governor who messed up your educational system and economy and enjoyed putting people to death, and now you've been sharing that magic touch with the whole country for six years, with predictable results.

It doesn't surprise me that you don't understand the idea of "outrages upon human dignity". I am slightly surprised that Darth Cheney and Karl let you say it out loud.

Torture is wrong on every level. It's the wrong thing to do morally and ethically. It doesn't work -- tortured people will tell you what you want to hear, rather than, y'know, the truth. Torture endangers our troops -- if we torture the bad guys, they'll be more inclined to torture our guys, because, hey, what have they got to lose?

And you can't find the "clarity" in that.

Impeachment is too good for you, Dubya. I won't be happy until you take up permanent residence in the Hague.

Comments

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

Correct. I don't know you. Well enough or otherwise. And I apologise if I've offended.
Any problem with your hatred... or anyones hatred for that matter... is that it is such a damned corrosive emotion, and hurts the hater more than the hated (who usually doesn't give a toss anyway).
I find solace m'self in the belief that the likes of Bush and Blair won't escape in the long term. And eternity is a long term indeed.
Oh, and I do believe in Hell... or in Judgement anyways. Which isn't that I'd agree with certain folks about who'll be going there, or about it being a permanent place of residence.
But I am pretty certain that we'll all get what we're asking for, in every sense of that phrase.

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't think my hatred has hurt me - but then, I tend to direct that energy into trying to do good things to counterbalance the evil I see. I agree that there are people who let their hate damage them, though. (For example, anyone who would try to hurt someone else as a result of it...)

And... while I think that if there is a Hell, Bush would be going there, I don't believe it would actually be my place (or any human's) to pass that judgement. Which is why, while I believe there are people who deserve death for their crimes, I don't believe in the death penalty.

[r-caton.livejournal.com]

Total agreement on capital punishment...
My own reasoning being that human justice is fallible and you can't dig someone up for a pardon.... That and the paradox in the Craig/Bentley case that the killer was underage for hanging so served time and got out, whilst the guy who was judicially killed for the crime wasn't even at liberty when the crime was committed, being in police custody...
It's geeky but I liked Gandalf's admonition to Frodo when he opined that it was a pity that Bilbo didn't kill Gollum.

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. One of the great rebuttals to the argument for capital punishment. Gollum did indeed play a part in the salvation of Middle-Earth, even if it was an accidental one. And perhaps something Bush will do in the next two years will redeem his presidency, or something he does in the next twenty will redeem his life. And I hope that it happens, as much as I doubt it will.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

Saying that we can't dig someone up for a pardon is missing an important point. If we aren't sure enough that someone is guilty to execute them, we have no right to lock them up in a little box. If we lock someone up for years and then let them go, we can't give them their life back any more than we could if we'd executed them. The reason people who look closely at capital cases have so little confidence is twofold: first, our system of justice is fundamentally cockeyed, being more geared to making a trial a good game for the lawyers than to find the truth, and second, the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt has become debased to the point where if the jury collectively thinks "yeah, he prob'ly done it" he's guilty. I wish those people would look at the cases of people imprisoned for long terms in non-capital cases.

Capital punishment is a better use of society's resources than keeping someone alive in a box until they die of old age. The problem is not in the punishment, it's in the verdict.

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

If we aren't sure enough that someone is guilty to execute them, we have no right to lock them up in a little box.

Um, this seems either to be advocating not punishing anyone (since we are very seldom sure of anyone's guilt) or killing every convicted criminal rather than imprisoning them because it's cheaper. I'm pretty sure you don't mean either of those things, so maybe it's me.

I don't agree that killing anyone is a good use of society's resources, any more than that it's a good use of an individual's resources. I don't believe the state is justified in killing someone whom it believes has committed a crime against the state, any more than that an individual is justified in killing someone s/he believes has committed a crime against him/her. A state is just people and must be held by its people to the same moral standards that its people are held to. If I can't murder, neither can they.

I *do* agree with you absolutely on the system of "justice" we inherited from the Romans and haven't even tried to improve on in two thousand years...but I can't see that changing in a hurry, and while my guilt or innocence depends on one smooth-talking shyster outpitching another smooth-talking shyster, I'll take the locked up in a box, thanks. Dead people can't read, write or learn to play the harmonica, and I believe those are still options for people in prison.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

I am advocating not punishing the people where the case isn't clear. "Oops, we're sorry" is just not good enough, even if we do get around to checking. I think that there are a lot of cases where there is no reasonable doubt -- just not as many as we get convictions on. And since we only let the jury see a small fraction of the evidence, and only as spun by the prosecution and the defense, the jury doesn't have much of a basis to decide anyway.

killing every convicted criminal rather than imprisoning them because it's cheaper

Not every convicted criminal. Just those that we're locking up for the rest of their lives. Of course, locking up someone convicted of a crime in a place where the only people he can associate with are other criminals and then letting him back out on the street is kind of a dumb idea -- we ought to find some other way to punish criminals -- but execution is only appropriate for people we know we can never trust on the streets.

Maybe I sound callous when I make an economic argument, but I live in a country where the government can't figure out how to provide health care to 15% of the population that has none, and I think it's a serious case of misplaced priorities to spend $50K a year maintaining a criminal sentenced to life without the possibility of parole instead of paying for health insurance for 10 struggling families.