Sorry for jumping back a few pages, but...
Wonderful Alpha, then you'll know very well that GC don't extend to domestic or foreign terrorists, and the importance of words like perfidious.
That's not quite right though is it, unless you choose to believe those who are trying to find the wiggle room to justify torture? In an international armed conflict, the 3rd Geneva Convention protects combatants and affords them POW status when captured if they are lawful. If they are not combatants, then they must be civilians, right? So the 4th Convention applies. However, before you cry foul and remind me that terrorists are unlawful combatants so occupy a murky middle ground, and they are not taking part in an international armed conflict, it's irrelevant: they are covered by Article 3 common to all of the conventions. Even the US Supreme Court, on four separate occasions, has found that unlawful combatants held at Guantanamo Bay are being held in violation of the Geneva Conventions. This is backed up by international consensus. In any case, it doesn't matter: combatant or non-combatant (legal or not) they are all covered by international human law aka the Law of Armed Conflict which, like the Geneva Conventions, prohibits the use of torture.
Legal case aside, torture is ineffective, unreliable and most importantly morally wrong.
Moving on, as for your 'perfidy' comment, I am familiar with it in the context of war. Care to elaborate why you draw attention to it? Unless you're trying to suggest that I am claiming to be something I'm not?
I have to say, that if "getting a better trade deal" for the UK with the USA involves, even implicitly, supporting Torture, degrading women, gross intolerance of basic human rights and failing to treat fellow humans with respect simply due to the colour of their skin or place or birth then [b]I'M OUT[/b]
I'm happy to pay more for my can of coke, or my PC or whatever in order to maintain my morality.
I'm happy to pay more for my can of coke, or my PC or whatever in order to maintain my morality.
Most of which isn't made in the US....
I have to say, that if "getting a better trade deal" for the UK with the USA involves, even implicitly, supporting Torture, degrading women, gross intolerance of basic human rights and failing to treat fellow humans with respect simply due to the colour of their skin or place or birth then I'M OUT
Can I ask how much effort you have made to avoid, for example, oil products from Saudi Arabia or domestic electrical items from China?
Can I ask how much effort you have made to avoid, for example, oil products from Saudi Arabia or domestic electrical items from China?
Work with what you have ninfan though, telling Trump that moving backwards will mean we are less keen to work with him is something that can be done.
Same as telling China/Saudi that we will be happier to do more if they clean up what they do.
If you continue to live in a world where you are paralysed by having to read through a hundred years of history to make sure you don't appear hypocrital on something then nothing will ever change.
Is it better to green light Trump's plans and grab is cock as a sign of affection or to suggest that he is taking his country backwards.
ninfan: you seem to have accidentally ignored [url= http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/donald-trump/page/141?replies=4911#post-8245873 ]Alpha1653's response[/url] carefully explaining why torture is illegal.
Which is odd because you accidentally did the same thing with [url= http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/donald-trump/page/138#post-8244376 ]my response[/url] where I gave you links to the conventions it breached.
he has alternative facts 😉
What Mike said.
Ah yes, 'alternative facts': it must have been those alternative facts that I had heard of but didn't understand that caused me to knee jerk mouth off earlier.... 😀
"Facts" in the US seem to be like the temperature on Accuweather . . . .
Current temp 5C, feels like -7
Well, no, I hadn't really got round to it largely due to the fact that you haven't actually said anything that we didn't already know, and was openly conceded, that Torture was banned by international convention, but that it was not unanimously accepted or legally established that Waterboarding in all cases amounted to torture (on the question of whether it amounted to "severe"). You can bounce round contrary opinions on that, fewer facts.
(And to tackle alphas point, the relevance is of course that water boarding of those awarded protection under GC *would* be banned, (as it has been found to constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, rather than the higher test of torture) you usefully point us to examples where combatants from Afghanistan etc were judged to be combatants, but that's in the past and does not necessarily bear relation to the cases where it may be used in the future (you'll note that my point Was that GC didn't apply to international or domestic terrorists))
Back to brass tacks, you both appear to be arguing with an extrapolation of what you think I said, that sometimes torture was legal, rather than wat I actually said, which was that nobody disagrees that torture is illegal (under US domestic and international law) but that there is less than complete agreement over whether waterbording necessarily amounts to torture (read it properly, necessarily, that not to say that it cannot be used in a way which would amount to torture, as can many other things, but that it doesn't necessarily amount to torture)
@somafunk FYI that's the third time it's been posted here plus having its own thread.
but that there is less than complete agreement over whether waterbording necessarily amounts to torture (read it properly, necessarily, that not to say that it cannot be used in a way which would amount to torture, as can many other things, but that it doesn't necessarily amount to torture)
Which list of people think it's not torture? Or that it doesn't fall under the definition of torture? Those that seem to like the idea of it fall into a catagory of ends to justify the means etc. In their case getting information is more important than the legality, usefulness or truthfullness of the information.
Most of the people who have actually investigated and studied it have come to the conclusion that torture doesn't work, it provides unreliable information and is probably therefore more dangerous. A government investigation/inquiery in the US actually called Kiefer Sutherland to give evidence as during the making of 24 they wanted to be realistic with regards the torture scenes and commissioned a lot of research - all of which also came up with the fact it was a waste of time unless you just liked hurting people.
If you want to get into the argument that waterboarding isn't torture or isn't severe enough then I suggest you sign up to have it done to you.
less than complete agreement
The phrase of the #AltFacts generation.
A facebook meme I saw recently.
99% of climate scientists agree that climate change is a man made thing.
Gary has a picture of his truck as his facebook profile pic and doesn't agree.
Tough choice there
Right, so let's try get and this straight Mike
Do you accept that people can actually disagree on an issue, and that both sides of an argument can be valid and logically formed, but until there is a decision by an impartial arbiter, for example a court, then neither side is necessarily right or wrong, because it's a complex issue with multiple shades of grey
or do you want to stick with a childish 'anything I disagree with is an alternative fact' standpoint?
It's a reasonable question, that most adults could answer, so let's see what you say and we'll see where we go from there.
Back to the core issue:
a Facebook meme I saw recently
Oh, I bow down before your source materials.
Here's some actually intelligent analysis on the issue from a former federal prosecutor involved in terrorist trials:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/222661/waterboarding-and-torture-andrew-c-mccarthy
There is overwhelming support and weight behind the waterboarding is torture side of the argument. To the point where very few people would actually advocate it (including people who used to do it)
The other view that it could/might be legal is a very minority view that does not carry anywhere near thw weight or standing that the other view does. Climate change is a good comparison. Just because some people disagree it does not mean there is equal weight to the 2 sides. There is near unanimous agreement that waterboarding is torture. Torture is illegal.
or do you want to stick with a childish 'anything I disagree with is an alternative fact' standpoint?
honestly it's a safe bet with you ninfan.
Can you find me the lists of people/organisations etc. that will put their hands up to say waterboarding isn't torture. Be good to know who these people are.
Given there is not "complete agreement" that the world is round doesn't mean we should have to listen to or respect the views of the flat earthers.
The more interesting one was politicians from both sides of the floor were very keen to press all his cabinet appointees about their views on Trumps policies. In most cases they either skirted the issues or in the case of things like torture flat out refused to support it.
Lovely bloke who wrote that one there
SO IS WATERBOARDING TORTURE? Again, we do not know the details of waterboarding as practiced (if, as reported, it is or has been practiced) by the CIA. Yet, we know generally that waterboarding is very rough stuff. It is not especially painful physically and causes no lasting bodily injury; yet, it is intended to create the sensation of drowning in a person who is bound and temporarily suffocated. Administered by someone who knows what he is doing, there is presumably no actual threat of drowning or suffocation; for the victim, though, there is clearly fear of imminent death and he could pass out from the deprivation of oxygen. The sensation is temporary, not prolonged. There shouldn’t be much debate that subjecting someone to it repeatedly would cause the type of mental anguish required for torture. But what about doing it once, twice, or some number of instances that were not prolonged or extensive? Reasonable minds can and do differ on this. Personally, I don’t believe it qualifies. It is not in the nature of the barbarous sadism universally condemned as torture, an ignominy the law, as we’ve seen, has been patently careful not to trivialize or conflate with lesser evils.Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/222661/waterboarding-and-torture-andrew-c-mccarthy
Political views[edit]
Victor Davis Hanson, a regular contributor since 2001, sees a broad spectrum of conservative, anti-liberal and pro-western contributors:In other words, a wide conservative spectrum—paleo-conservatives, neo-conservatives, tea-party enthusiasts, the deeply religious and the agnostic, both libertarians and social conservatives, free-marketeers and the more protectionist—characterizes National Review. The common requisite is that they present their views as a critique of prevailing liberal orthodoxy but do so analytically and with decency and respect.[23]
The magazine has been described as "the bible of American conservatism".[24]
Nice little summary of where your source material is from and your reading lists though
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Review
So, no more biased than CNN you mean?
You may wish to review the CV of the author:
[i]Andrew C. McCarthy III served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. he is most notable for leading the 1995 terrorism prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven others. The defendants were convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and planning a series of attacks against New York City landmarks. He also contributed to the prosecutions of terrorists who bombed US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. He resigned from the Justice Department in 2003.[/i]
Yep, obviously knows nothing about the law does he 🙄
He knows about the law and is writing a very heavily slanted guide to jumping through loopholes to support his opinion. Like you he seems to want to stick to the semantics and technicalities more than the real issues. First and foremost torture doesn't work and it's not reliable. Water boarding is seen as some grey area by some (minority) but the principle is the same - we will do things to you in order to get you to tell us what we want to hear. If you don't tell us what we want to hear we will of course assume you are holding out on us.
And yes probably a lot more biased than CNN as it sets out it's standpoint to be a voice for the right side of the conservative movement all the way over to the tea party side and beyond.
More opinion spouted as fact
Like you he seems to want to stick to the semantics and technicalities
Yes, when people are jumping up and down making allegations about war crimes and illegality, how [b]dare[/b] someone stick to the technicalities?
There shouldn’t be much debate that subjecting someone to it repeatedly would cause the type of mental anguish required for torture. But what about doing it once, twice, ..
Basically saying it's okay to torture them a bit - as long as we don't do it too often. Watch the Hitchens video and read what he wrote about it. He only lasted seconds, in a controlled scenario and it still caused "mental anguish". In a real scenario they could be doing that for hours.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 guy, was reportedly waterboarded 183 times by the CIA, as well as other fun stuff like Rectal Hydration. He provided false information.
jumping up
crimes
stick
To illustrate a point, the first part of my post was talking about the way he was trying to establish a way to navigate through enough legal tricks to probably come out on the side that you can't be convicted. It's not the same.
There is a phrase used a lot in Aussie politics, it's called the pub test.
If you walk into a pub and tell them what you had done does it seem right?
It's no alternative to law but it is good at answering moral questions such as you may be able to technically say you were not wrong and didn't break any laws (can't be proved you did) but did you do something wrong.
Anyway didn't somebody say there were cobinet members using private email servers and the president is using his own insecure personal phone? Are all his calls being logged as per the rules? are his tweets, deletions and edits being tracked and checked? Might be handy to be using another phone when telling your kids that you are about to approve an oil pipeline you all invested in.
More opinion spouted as fact
Ha ha ha ha that is what you and Jamba do all the time, your hypocrisy is something to behold.
Actually, I was taking issue with the fact that you accused me of "knee jerk mouthing off about something using phrases that you've head of but don't understand".
you usefully point us to examples where combatants from Afghanistan etc were judged to be combatants, but that's in the past and does not necessarily bear relation to the cases where it may be used in the future
The Supreme Court's ruling was not that they were lawful combatants (in contrary to the US administrations claims of being unlawful) but that as unlawful combatants (your domestic/international terrorists) they were covered, at the very least, by the common Article 3.
And as for your claim that what's happened in the past doesn't necessarily bear relation to the future, you're right: it doesn't 'necessarily' but I'd argue that legal precedence is a pretty solid basis for informing any prediction.
Anyway, as fun as it's been, I'm tapping out as I've better things to do than argue with you.
Major Alpha
Even with all the loopholes and vagueness he can drag out, I note that a lawyer for one of the most rabidly hawkish organisations in the US concedes that waterboarding is illegal in almost all situations.
And he can only do that by conveniently ignoring the traumatising after-effects of being brought to and from the point of drowning while held in captivity by a foreign state. Hey, it isn't prolonged - we're just drowning him for a few minutes at a time. He'll be fine and dandy once we get the cloth off his mouth and send him back to his cell.
People who want to use waterboarding need to first justify it morally before they start looking for loopholes to keep them out of prison.
Not been a week and trumps already starting a trade war over his bonkers wall!
So much for the smart business guy,
May must be walking on eggshells, still she's white and non Muslim, so that must help and they can bond over her history of I'll advised anti immigrant policies.
Its a shame that his team can't spell her name, but considering the basket of deplorables he's assembled I'm not surprised.
Hmm.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/26/trump_blows_up_transatlantic_privacy_shield/
May must be walking on eggshells,
🙂
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So the Mexicans are paying for the wall, or we could put an extra tax on products coming in from Mexico so the American public pay for the wall. Same thing isn't it?
How long before the Chinese offer the Mexicans a bilateral trade deal?
And what happens if he manages to alienate all of the US allies?
bond over her history of I'll advised anti immigrant policies.Its a shame that his team can't spell her name
Oh yes?
How long before the Chinese offer the Mexicans a bilateral trade deal?
Why would that be a problem for any other countries?
I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.
Anyway, as fun as it's been, I'm tapping out as I've better things to do than argue with you.Major Alpha
Persistence wins out against actual knowledge and fact again. Unfortunatley, it's people like ninfan and jamba that people like Alpha wind up getting killed for.
[quote=jambalaya ]I posted an example earlier of how it might be paid for.
The question for any of these suggestions is why aren't they doing them already, and [s]spending the money on something more useful[/s] <Republican> cutting taxes </Republican>?
Ultimately either such measures are a good thing for the US in general and in reality the wall is still being paid for by the US, or they are detrimental to the US and the US will pay in other ways. But then it's all smoke and mirrors.
Well it sounds as though Mrs May is going to be first in line for toadying duties. I sure a quaich and damson jam will bend him to our will.
That's not a quaich, that's a very small begging bowl
no, his hands are so, so, extraordinarily tiny it just looks that way
How long before the Chinese offer the Mexicans a bilateral trade deal?
Chinese have huge barriers for people wishing to trade and invest into their country. I think their deal with Switzerland was it would be 10 years after the Chinese get access to Switzerland the Swiss would get access to China.
Trump wants to renegotiate NAFTA, stating he'll place a 20% import tax on goods is tantamount to saying he'll just cancel it. Remember Clinton said in the election it's a bad deal and must change.
The Mexican who is the largest shareholder of the New York Times has called a press conference today, will be interesting what he says.
interesting that we've given a boozing cup to a teetotaller. 😕 😯
Chinese have huge barriers for people wishing to trade and invest into their country. I think their deal with Switzerland was it would be 10 years after the Chinese get access to Switzerland the Swiss would get access to China.
And yet China are one of the major countries you want the UK to do business with after Brexit.
People who want to use waterboarding need to first justify it morally before they start looking for loopholes to keep them out of prison.
People who want to use waterboarding need to first be subjected to it.
mikey74 - Member
Chinese have huge barriers for people wishing to trade and invest into their country. I think their deal with Switzerland was it would be 10 years after the Chinese get access to Switzerland the Swiss would get access to China.
And yet China are one of the major countries you want the UK to do business with after Brexit.
😆
180!
Yeah but no but yeah....
hahah! 😆somafunk - Member
Bad Lip reading does Donald Trump, quite funny
slowoldman - MemberPeople who want to use waterboarding need to first be subjected to it.
Well. I think anyone who understands it's a pretty horrendous torture and still wants to go with it, that's one thing, at least it's honest.
But I think it's pretty reasonable to ask people who pretend it's no big deal to a) explain why in that case they still think it can be useful, and b) put their money where their mouth is. Just 1 waterboarding session... Well, in the case of that chap up the page, let's do 2 or 3 because it's only torture when you do it a lot.
I think we'd soon see either a lot less support for waterboarding, or a lot of people who're still up for it, unexpectedly confessing to being terrorists.
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