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dlish · 12-30-2005, 02:28 PM

This being said, I can think of cases historically, say Napoleon's draconian repression of Egyptian resistance, where bringing in harsher penalties served I]not[/I]as a deterrent, but were in fact correlated by a massive increase in both open hostility and clandestine support of rebels.

i do not know the history of napoleon but id ignorantly assume that the egyptians were being collectively persecuted and punished in some way or other in order for them to support such measures. the same can be said of the palestinian people supporting and championing such causes as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, due to the oppressive state that Israel puts the palestinians in. as for deterrents, well its been a whopper of a year for terrorist attacks, but it doesnt look like subsiding. i honestly think that a combination of the following may help curb terrosist activities

1) introduction of laws to combat extremism
2) empathetical education aimed at non muslims
3) empathetical education aimed at muslims
4) change in forgeign policy by some governments
5) education/better understanding of different cultures through educational institutes.

Whoa, let's not get carried away. Did I say 'Guantanamo Bay'? I don't recall ever being that specific. More to the point, you must certainly agree with me that we have prisons in Australia. Since we have prisons in Australia, it seems not unlikely to suggest that there are at least some innocent people imprisoned there. Ought we pull down our prisons? I don't think it is a good idea.

hehe..sorry no you didnt say guantanamo bay. i have a sore point with Guantanamo. you were talking about well thought out institutions for terror suspects. maybe i got ahead of myself, but your choice of words set me off..sorry.

and no of ocurse we shouldnt tear down our prisons..legal recourse would suffice. i put faith in our legal system to be fair. it frightens me when the leaders of our country have faith in the legal abyss called guantanamo and openly declare it.

I think, unless of course you think that the penal system in this country does not involve 'mass imprisonment', that is imprisonment of large numbers of people, that you're discussing something completely different.

no i was talking about mass imprisonment and secret renditions of people at guantanamo bay, iraq, diego garcia for terror related offences without access to legal recourse.

Let me be perfectly clear: If you believe that the imprisonment of a person who is innocent means that imprisonment is a poor punishment, your argument is not againt merely Guantanamo Bay, but against prisons everywhere.

no not at all. it is imprisonment without access to lawyers, courts and all its protections under the geneva conventions that i was talking about, not about prisons per se.

I'm really not sure why you thought that Guantanamo Bay had anything to do with this. I do not think it is a particularly well thought out facility for a number of reasons.

id second that..like i said, i thought you were referring to that, although you didnt expressly or explicitly say that, but all the indicators pointed me to that. my prejudices..

Please kindly throw your signature in the bin. Obviously if an injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere, then justice is universal, if it is relative, an injustice is determined by the dubious criteria of local custom and so forth.

no need. i think you thats reading too much into my statements now.

justice is for everyone. laws are man made and thus are subject to flaws and mistakes. the same way that we as a nation need laws, so do other peoples and other nations. all would have some sort of cultural, social and religious imput in accordance with their customs, beliefs and ideals. to say that one law is better than the other is incorrect, but if we want to scrutinise every law and say that they are all unjust, what do we do, throw away all laws and revert to the law of the jungle?

and a question kosya...what is the definition of 'justice' in your eyes? surely not any governmental laws..UN laws maybe?

Again, as I have already stated I do not for one second accept the concept or validity, either of nation, national sovereignty or of any kind of identifiable 'culture and values' of any given group be it racial, religious, national or otherwise.
The reasons for this are somewhat complicated and metaphysical and so forth, I'd rather not get into them unless I have to.

actually im quite curious now..mataphysical? ok im intruiged... if you could do me the honour..unless have already stated it in another thread somewhere.

For the moment let me simply try to address what I think is a manifestly horrible implication of what you're saying here.

Firstly if Singaporean justice is validated by it being 'Singaporean', then so too is any legal provision devised by any government. For instance, Burma's military junta might decide to kill all people with blue eyes, how just. Obviously Hitler's Germany had its own special brand of justice, but it was relative to that country and quite alright for him to engage in wholesale killing. Nothing wrong with the odd honour killing, female circumcision or genocide, because as long as it's legal, it is justice.

ok...i just knew that hitlers name was going to get dragged into this..its because EVERYONE uses him as an example. sure, hes the classical exagerated example for your argument, but by no means the norm. ok, so my definition may have a loose end or two or three, but im sure you get my idea without having to drag in absurd assumptions about oppresive regimes and how i think its ok because of my vague definition... me endorsing honour killings... witch hunts..genocide... holocaust... racial profiling... i may as well join genghis, pol,tamer and stanlin, ivan the terrible... add my name to that list will ya.. Nabil the Worst.

As a student of history I find this incredibly difficult to believe. Needless to say, apparently this particular 'sense of justice' is pretty weak and fails to stop murder occurring across the ages and across the world today.
More to the point, if indeed we do have an 'innate sense of justice' as 'human beings' than justice is not relative, but universally implanted in all homo sapiens.

this 'sense of justice' is what the ideal is.... what we then need is laws to be introducted to adminster this justice. and like ive previously said these laws are made by us, thus can be wrong but can also be changed to suit changing times.

I honestly am not quite sure what your position is. is it that justice is merely relative? Or that it is a universal 'sense' in all human beings. I personally disagree with both those hypotheses, but I'd rather only have to deal with the one you're putting to me.

that the sense of justice is universal in all humans. but that we need local and specific laws to run our local environment, but we find that as soon as we make these laws up, they can be unjust to some outsider. for example.. we as australians abhor the chopping of the hand in saudi..go to saudi and youll find proponents for these laws and they'll tell you how safe they feel in their own homes and country etc.

Let me just put two statements about justice to you, and see if they jibe:

1. An injustice anywhere, is an injustice everywhere

2. its all relative to where you are and what you do.

i dont see a problem with either since my definitions to me run parallel. im against any form of injustice and oppression, but if some poor soul in africa thinks shes ok with having female circumcision performed on her, thats her choice.

What do you mean certainly drink driving won't get you executed. What about if a small island nation decides it is so horrified by drinking, it is such an anathema to the values of those people that it decides to punish drink driving by death? People have been put to death for not eating pork on this planet for goodness sake

mind if you told me who got put to death for not eatig pork and why? i havent heard of it, but im assuming that it was the spanish inquisition..and if so it wouldnt be for not eating pork, but in believing in another god.. but maybe im jumping ahead of myself here.

12-30-2005, 02:28 PM	#26 (permalink)
dlish Currently sour but formerly Dlishs Super Moderator Location: Australia/UAE	This being said, I can think of cases historically, say Napoleon's draconian repression of Egyptian resistance, where bringing in harsher penalties served I]not[/I]as a deterrent, but were in fact correlated by a massive increase in both open hostility and clandestine support of rebels. i do not know the history of napoleon but id ignorantly assume that the egyptians were being collectively persecuted and punished in some way or other in order for them to support such measures. the same can be said of the palestinian people supporting and championing such causes as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, due to the oppressive state that Israel puts the palestinians in. as for deterrents, well its been a whopper of a year for terrorist attacks, but it doesnt look like subsiding. i honestly think that a combination of the following may help curb terrosist activities 1) introduction of laws to combat extremism 2) empathetical education aimed at non muslims 3) empathetical education aimed at muslims 4) change in forgeign policy by some governments 5) education/better understanding of different cultures through educational institutes. Whoa, let's not get carried away. Did I say 'Guantanamo Bay'? I don't recall ever being that specific. More to the point, you must certainly agree with me that we have prisons in Australia. Since we have prisons in Australia, it seems not unlikely to suggest that there are at least some innocent people imprisoned there. Ought we pull down our prisons? I don't think it is a good idea. hehe..sorry no you didnt say guantanamo bay. i have a sore point with Guantanamo. you were talking about well thought out institutions for terror suspects. maybe i got ahead of myself, but your choice of words set me off..sorry. and no of ocurse we shouldnt tear down our prisons..legal recourse would suffice. i put faith in our legal system to be fair. it frightens me when the leaders of our country have faith in the legal abyss called guantanamo and openly declare it. I think, unless of course you think that the penal system in this country does not involve 'mass imprisonment', that is imprisonment of large numbers of people, that you're discussing something completely different. no i was talking about mass imprisonment and secret renditions of people at guantanamo bay, iraq, diego garcia for terror related offences without access to legal recourse. Let me be perfectly clear: If you believe that the imprisonment of a person who is innocent means that imprisonment is a poor punishment, your argument is not againt merely Guantanamo Bay, but against prisons everywhere. no not at all. it is imprisonment without access to lawyers, courts and all its protections under the geneva conventions that i was talking about, not about prisons per se. I'm really not sure why you thought that Guantanamo Bay had anything to do with this. I do not think it is a particularly well thought out facility for a number of reasons. id second that..like i said, i thought you were referring to that, although you didnt expressly or explicitly say that, but all the indicators pointed me to that. my prejudices.. Please kindly throw your signature in the bin. Obviously if an injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere, then justice is universal, if it is relative, an injustice is determined by the dubious criteria of local custom and so forth. no need. i think you thats reading too much into my statements now. justice is for everyone. laws are man made and thus are subject to flaws and mistakes. the same way that we as a nation need laws, so do other peoples and other nations. all would have some sort of cultural, social and religious imput in accordance with their customs, beliefs and ideals. to say that one law is better than the other is incorrect, but if we want to scrutinise every law and say that they are all unjust, what do we do, throw away all laws and revert to the law of the jungle? and a question kosya...what is the definition of 'justice' in your eyes? surely not any governmental laws..UN laws maybe? Again, as I have already stated I do not for one second accept the concept or validity, either of nation, national sovereignty or of any kind of identifiable 'culture and values' of any given group be it racial, religious, national or otherwise. The reasons for this are somewhat complicated and metaphysical and so forth, I'd rather not get into them unless I have to. actually im quite curious now..mataphysical? ok im intruiged... if you could do me the honour..unless have already stated it in another thread somewhere. For the moment let me simply try to address what I think is a manifestly horrible implication of what you're saying here. Firstly if Singaporean justice is validated by it being 'Singaporean', then so too is any legal provision devised by any government. For instance, Burma's military junta might decide to kill all people with blue eyes, how just. Obviously Hitler's Germany had its own special brand of justice, but it was relative to that country and quite alright for him to engage in wholesale killing. Nothing wrong with the odd honour killing, female circumcision or genocide, because as long as it's legal, it is justice. ok...i just knew that hitlers name was going to get dragged into this..its because EVERYONE uses him as an example. sure, hes the classical exagerated example for your argument, but by no means the norm. ok, so my definition may have a loose end or two or three, but im sure you get my idea without having to drag in absurd assumptions about oppresive regimes and how i think its ok because of my vague definition... me endorsing honour killings... witch hunts..genocide... holocaust... racial profiling... i may as well join genghis, pol,tamer and stanlin, ivan the terrible... add my name to that list will ya.. Nabil the Worst. As a student of history I find this incredibly difficult to believe. Needless to say, apparently this particular 'sense of justice' is pretty weak and fails to stop murder occurring across the ages and across the world today. More to the point, if indeed we do have an 'innate sense of justice' as 'human beings' than justice is not relative, but universally implanted in all homo sapiens. this 'sense of justice' is what the ideal is.... what we then need is laws to be introducted to adminster this justice. and like ive previously said these laws are made by us, thus can be wrong but can also be changed to suit changing times. I honestly am not quite sure what your position is. is it that justice is merely relative? Or that it is a universal 'sense' in all human beings. I personally disagree with both those hypotheses, but I'd rather only have to deal with the one you're putting to me. that the sense of justice is universal in all humans. but that we need local and specific laws to run our local environment, but we find that as soon as we make these laws up, they can be unjust to some outsider. for example.. we as australians abhor the chopping of the hand in saudi..go to saudi and youll find proponents for these laws and they'll tell you how safe they feel in their own homes and country etc. Let me just put two statements about justice to you, and see if they jibe: 1. An injustice anywhere, is an injustice everywhere 2. its all relative to where you are and what you do. i dont see a problem with either since my definitions to me run parallel. im against any form of injustice and oppression, but if some poor soul in africa thinks shes ok with having female circumcision performed on her, thats her choice. What do you mean certainly drink driving won't get you executed. What about if a small island nation decides it is so horrified by drinking, it is such an anathema to the values of those people that it decides to punish drink driving by death? People have been put to death for not eating pork on this planet for goodness sake mind if you told me who got put to death for not eatig pork and why? i havent heard of it, but im assuming that it was the spanish inquisition..and if so it wouldnt be for not eating pork, but in believing in another god.. but maybe im jumping ahead of myself here. __________________ An injustice anywhere, is an injustice everywhere I always sign my facebook comments with ()()===========(}. Does that make me gay? - Filthy