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Gitmo Is Killing Me

nytimes.com

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Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#191

Post by serf »

facorreia wrote: post #178
hmottestad wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On days like these the US is Guantanamo Bay. The US is poverty and regular people without a home. The US is bad health care, as in only the rich can afford it. The US is drones, fired at civilians in the dead of night. The US is oil, as in that they want it all. The US is guns, like the ones likely to be pointed at you if you get robbed. The US is x-rays at the airport. And finally, the US is the land of the free.

This is not the kind of content I come to Hacker News for.

the article, or the opinion espoused by the commenter you replied to?

In other words, you come to HN for one aspect of the Political world , and not all of them?

Myself, I don't come to HN for ANYTHING in this thread. It's all interesting, in it's own right, but has little to do with 'hacking'.

But, then again, civil liberties are a set of issues that can broadly affect us all.. maybe that was the grand position of whoever thought this was HN worthy.

I don't know. Maybe it's beyond us all, and the OP has some insight as to how the whole GITMO situation can be solved with functional programming and 'high-availability clustering solutions', and he's just trying to nudge us into finding the solution.

One can be hopeful.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#192

Post by ptaipale »

darklajid wrote: post #137
ptaipale wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they were sent home, very many of them would be instantly killed, imprisoned or worse. For many of them, Gitmo is probably a lot better than they'd be facing at home.

Let's not forget that this comment of yours is in a thread about a guy sitting in that very same place, _asking_ to get home whatever the price would be. So the whole article that spawned this thread shows a very different position. That totally ignores my immediate 'citation needed' urges and my shock about this opinion.

And I responded to a comment which was simply saying "Just send them home". That can't be done for "them" all.

I believe there is a wide variation within those imprisoned: some are innocent and were captured by mistake or worse (e.g. rivals were turned in by jealous neighbours, or whatever), others are actually hardened fanatics. And it is very difficult to know who is what.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#193

Post by mehwoot »

iconjack wrote: post #53
dublinben wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congress deserves as much or more blame for this situation. They've prevented the President from carrying out his intended solution to this problem. Without their support, he is powerless to release these people.

This is absolute nonsense. The US president, wrapping himself in the role of commander in chief, does just about anything he wants if it's even loosely connected to war or security, with or without congressional approval. Surveillance. Torture. Black sites. Assassination. Drone murders. Infinite detention. If he wanted Gitmo closed, he could close it. Congress won't give him the budget? Fine, he could order the closi…

Who did you vote for in 2012? Ron Paul?

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#194

Post by tpainton »

hmottestad wrote: post #138
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #17

Gitmo was the first thing that clued me that I had made a mistake voting for Obama's promises (not that McCain would have ever gotten it instead!). It was such a complete reversal that I immediately knew his promises were completely worthless. I appreciate that there may be anger outs people in Gitmo, but they have every right to a trial I have. The double standard of what human rights mean if you are a US citizen an…

On days like these the US is Guantanamo Bay. The US is poverty and regular people without a home. The US is bad health care, as in only the rich can afford it. The US is drones, fired at civilians in the dead of night. The US is oil, as in that they want it all. The US is guns, like the ones likely to be pointed at you if you get robbed. The US is x-rays at the airport. And finally, the US is the land of the free.

The US is the computer and internet that complete you.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#195

Post by madebylaw »

vxNsr wrote: post #76

I think the most important part about this OpEd is the comments appearing here and elsewhere: Lots of righteous indignation for this poor fellow who claims that he's completely innocent of any charges brought against him and if he could only talk to someone they would understand. He feels the need to kill himself to prove a point, such conviction. What do they say about a prisoner and his crime? oh yeah: there's no s…

It doesn't look like anyone on this thread has even tried to look for what this man is accused of doing and why he's in Gitmo in the first place. You can find a dossier from the US DoD of this man at the NYTimes' own website:

http://projects.nytimes.com/guantanamo/detainees/43-samir-na...

tl;dr: Member of al-Qaida, bodyguard of Osama, fought in the front lines against US and coalition forces, consistently lied to interrogators.

I'm not sure what kind of court he would be 'tried' in considering he's not a US citizen.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#196

Post by smackay »

davedx wrote: post #117
jacquesm wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That said, we are not only Gitmo, and we actually do a lot of good things for the world. Indeed, it is not just Gitmo, if only, and it's not just the US. Lots of EU governments are complicit in the whole rendition (what a word, kidnapping would be the appropriate term) program as well and there are/were more places in the world where people are being held without any sort of process, to be tortured and disposed of,…

But those other countries do not claim moral high ground in the same way the US does on so many other issues, or claim to lead the world with respect to values such as freedom and democracy (of which the right to a fair trial can be considered a part).

From the time I spent in the USA I think there are at least two parts to this. There is a certain degree of triumphalism based on the outcomes of the Second World War and Cold War but more interestingly (or perhaps importantly) it is used to convey a sense of optimism and foster nationalism that is targeted at immigrants and intended to get them all pulling in the same direction. Nobody wants to move to a country and hear "Welcome, but it is probably as crap here as the place where you came from".

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#197

Post by D9u »

"First they came for the Yemeni, but I was not one so I thought nothing of it. Then they came for the Afghani, but I was not one, so I didn't mind. ... Then they came for my neighbors, and I hid. ... By the time they came for me there was no one to stop them..."

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#198

Post by mehta »

berntb wrote: post #167
PeterisP wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In EU, a number of ministers have been disgraced enough to be thrown out of politics when their cooperation with USA "extraordinary rendition" came known. Where is the outrage in USA about Gitmo - which high-ranking officials have resigned in shame (or been thrown out for being shameless) about keeping these torture centers?

Here is an obvious analysis: The idea with terrorism against democracies is to scare the living daylight out of voters in a country. The politicians in those democracies want to win the next election do everything to stop the terror. Afaik, most every democracy that had a serious terrorist problem over years threw out the law book -- UK, Germany, Israel, Spain, USA, etc. It is a reaction built into democracy, if you…

Actually, that's not completely true.

afaik, India - which is one of the largest democracies in the world follows the legal process in almost all the terror related cases. The fact that they try to adapt their laws to keep up with terrorism is a different story.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#199

Post by tripzilch »

goggles99 wrote: post #181

What did you expect him to say? I am guilty of contributing to terrorism and the purposeful killing of innocent woman and children civilians? I like how everyone here takes this guys word for everything. It is all a government conspiracy that has put him in there. After all, the US government likes to round up random people around the world and put them in max security detainment as kind of a boredom fighting game ri…

> I like how everyone here takes this guys word for everything.

It's not very different from the alternative, which is taking the word of whoever put/keeps him there without trial.

Now one of these parties is well-known for enacting cruelties on human beings in situations exactly like these, and the other we really don't know anything about, at all.

Therefore the only right and humane thing to do is to give the latter some benefit of the doubt.

> After all, the US government likes to round up random people around the world and put them in max security detainment

Well yes, such fuck-ups have happened before, as a matter of fact:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/jan/14/usa.germany

And that's just the first example I pulled from the top of Google. There's many more. So truly, there is ALL the reason to assume at least some of the Gitmo prisoners are innocent and kept simply because they are the result of a fuck-up nobody wants to own up to.

> but I also wouldn't bet money on a Gitmo prisoner's "honest" word either.

Why? What do you know about why they are there? There's been no trials, they are only prisoners because the people keeping them say they're guilty of something. So you can't use the fact they are prisoners to decide their honesty, that would be circular reasoning. Both parties have an interest in lying that is almost completely independent of guilt: One has been kept in a secret prison for 11 years subjected to inhumane treatment, and the other side wants to keep a lid on the whole Gitmo thing (maybe even especially if they weren't guilty).

Also, 11 years, man. As I said, you don't know what he did, you don't even know what he's being accused of. Stepping aside from the (very real) possibility of him being completely innocent, what if he did do something, maybe it was terrible, or maybe it was something small and stupid that in no way warrants being locked up in Gitmo for 11 years. And in a year from now you'll have to argue that all those people are guilty of a crime that warrants at least 12 years in a terrible prison, and the year after that, and after that, etc. All the while not having a single clue what these people did, what they are accused of.

It's pretty obvious that at least one of the sides here is guilty.

Re: Gitmo Is Killing Me

#200

Post by vxNsr »

dspillett wrote: post #165
vxNsr wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once again these are things he is claiming, I haven't done any research into his situation and I doubt anyone here has either. All I'm saying is that taking the word of someone who is in prison for possible terrorism is a mistake. Clearly there was someone who felt this dude was dangerous or else they wouldn't have flown him halfway around the world to "sit in limbo" there are prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq and it's…

> Once again these are things he is claiming, I haven't done any research into his situation and I doubt anyone here has either. All I'm saying is that taking the word of someone who is in prison for possible terrorism is a mistake. So you are happy with "guilty until proven innocent" and "as he might be guilty, we can't give him the chance to prove otherwise because he might fool the legal system" as a moral precede…

In times of war it is guilty until proven innocent, did you take a look at the UN link? Two powers who are "at War" can take anyone into custody that they think is "aid and abetting the enemy" and they do not have to release them until the war ends.

In times of war most civil liberties are suspended, we can discuss the fairness or "rightness" of that, but until we can all calm down and talk instead of hit that's the reality that we live in.

The same way a soldier gives his life to his country and with that signs away his freedom, the same way that war suddenly makes murder "legal", war gives a government body the "right" to take away what one would think are inalienable rights. I laugh at their indignation because they think they can pick and choose which parts of war to keep, but the reality is it's all or nothing and everything in between.

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