Reads like cause for a special military operation against the people that allow this
CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques
201–210 of 434 posts
Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you think the difference in the standard of life is because of "having the moral ground"?
If morals are how we maintain and encourage the well-being of other humans, then yes.
At this risk of being pedantic: the question isn't how we maintain the well-being of other humans, it is how we maintain the well-being of our humans[0] and frankly there's a lot to be said for boot-to-neck diplomacy.
[0]Specifically here our non-upper crust humans.
Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hard to see how the US can claim a moral high ground on anything when it continues to not be a member of the ICC and is even occasionally actively hostile towards individual judges and member countries by threatening sanctions.
I’m glad that my US constitutional rights cannot be abrogated by a supranational judicial system.
Your constitutional rights are safe if you stay at home and are not a threat to the power structure.
The subject of this article, that the United States government tortured was not so lucky.
Do the constitutional rights of a USA citizen need torture to maintain?
Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
We still have extradition treaties — along with due process rights to challenge an international extradition request within the US judicial system. Additionally, sovereign states are already free to prosecute anyone within their borders. The ICC, however, would preempt US judicial authority — including the US Supreme Court.
"due process" - not really: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Harry_Dunn#Diplomatic...
“Due process” is an individual US constitutional right to have access to our established legal procedures and rules prior to any deprivation of “life, liberty, or property”.
I don’t see a due process violation in your link — just an example of how abdicating sovereign judicial authority can go wrong, as is the case with diplomatic immunity.
Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was an opportunity for Obama to have a much more effective and bipartisan presidency early on. It wouldn't have been a friendly relationship, but certainly a more effective government. He rammed Obamacare through Congress very early in his presidency and that pretty much removed his ability to do anything else in his first term.
That doesn't really answer my question. Also, and I'm really not trying to be snarky, that statement sounds like something the child of abusive parents would say. If only Obama had been quiet, they would've left him alone. That's a no-win situation, I think. Either way, it didn't really answer my questions.
I'm answering your question by suggesting that Obama could have gotten much more done if he had not been so extremely partisan from day 1. When it became clear he was not going to negotiate any changes to the monumental Obamacare law and pass it through on a partisan vote, the only natural response for Republicans seeking to effect their own policy agenda was to block as much as possible. In effect Obama, rather than choosing a 90/10 or 80/20 ratio of democrat to republican polciies to be passed, said there was no point in allowing any republican policies through. And so the only natural response was for Republicans, as the minority, to respond in kind until the next election.
A more mathematical explanation would be that if every law was 80% Democrat policy and you were able to pass 100 policies a term, you could get 80 of your policies through in a single term. You might think getting 100% of every policy in a bill would be better but that might mean you only get to pass 50 policies a term because of increased partisan tensions. Even at 100% that's only 50 Democrat policies instead of 80.
By allowing some compromise you can achieve more.
Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
The answer to this is related to the answer of: "would you prefer to be in the lower class of Norwegian society or the lower class of nearby Belarussian society?"
Do you think the difference in the standard of life is because of "having the moral ground"?
Given how easily corruption rots things.... I'd say definitively yes.
I remember, I took part in a modeling competition trying to create a sustainability index for countries. During my analysis phase I realized that almost everything measurably bad you can think of correlated astoundingly well with the corruption index for that country. Even what seemed like very distant externalities.
Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
We still have extradition treaties — along with due process rights to challenge an international extradition request within the US judicial system. Additionally, sovereign states are already free to prosecute anyone within their borders. The ICC, however, would preempt US judicial authority — including the US Supreme Court.
> Additionally, sovereign states are already free to prosecute anyone within their borders. Not without being invaded by the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members'_Prot...
That act refers only to the ICC, which is not a sovereign state and only prosecutes cases that the sovereign states are themselves unwilling to prosecute.
Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
The answer to this is related to the answer of: "would you prefer to be in the lower class of Norwegian society or the lower class of nearby Belarussian society?"
Do you think the difference in the standard of life is because of "having the moral ground"?
Partly, yes.
It is echoes of the respect one human has for another.
Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques
#209Bonkers reading through this thread and seeing people discuss torture as casually and unemotionally as if it were just a regular ol' anyday thing. Like wow folks, this is not academic!
That's HN for you. I honestly don't know why I keep coming here.
This is a safe space for rationalisation, we can't let 'the feels' creep in and threaten that.
Also it would be way too 'political' if we assigned a moral valence to torture, and political discussions are discouraged here.
Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques
#210If our country was just, everyone in the CIA who engaged in or authorized torture would be executed. I'm typically against capital punishment, but state sanctioned torture is such a far line past what is acceptable, I really think we'd be better off if we swept all these evil people off the face of the planet. Instead, they get cushy think tank and consultancy jobs as a reward for their evil 'service'.
The right not to be tortured and the right to not be murdered (by the state or anyone else) are practically uttered in the same breath.
You can't fix violence with more violence, you have to fix violence with cleverness.