dlish

since no one has brought it up, what do you guys think of the whole kafuffle with michelle leslie? did she get off lightly?

were her actions stunts? were those tears real tears she cried in todays press conference? who supports her/despises her/doesnt give a rats ass? did shapelle get a raw deal?

personally speaking..she wasnt smuggling, so its not as big a crime as shappelle or nguyen. i saw some phone poll where 56% of aussies think that nguyen deserve his hanging sentence. had that been leslie or corby, im certain that the whole australian public would have been outraged at such a sentence.

on another note, corbys case reached mainstream american media outlets, anyone heard anything about nguyen or leslie on these media outlets? why is the media skeptical of leslie and not of corby?

sorry i have a lot of questions about this case..just wanted to hear other poeples opinions... dont get many bright people who have intelligent conversations on buildings ites.....your thoughts?

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aKula

Well Corby there was some doubt as to wether she was guilty or not, in the other cases this wasn't such a large factor. That's what I think put greater media emphasis on it. Though that phone poll is probably not accurate, I am surprised that many people actually support the death penalty in any case. The death penalty for me, is abhorent.

The Michelle Leslie case wasn't such a big deal in my book, just another Australian caught with drugs. I don't think her press conference should warrant channel nine to put the cricket in a small window down the bottom.

spindles

My question with Leslie is why the f$%^ is this getting all the media attention? If she wasn't a model, we would not even know she exists! FWIW - I don't think got off lightly - she was done for possession not trafficking.

I'm in the 56% - if you do the crime, you do the time - if you are *stupid* enough to carry large quantities of drugs in a country with a death sentence, then you are going to get what's coming to you. I feel really sorry for his family, but I really don't see what the fuss is about, at our government level. If you have a law and you don't police it, you may as well not have the law at all...

I heard that the "business man" funding Corby's defence was the owner of the drugs - why else would you fund her defence? seems like a lot to spend on the possibility of a blow job

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Kostya

How do you feel about the women in Nigeria who are on death row for adultery?

dlish

kostya, spindles was talking about drugs not adultery...

and as for death row for adultery in nigeria, i think your talking about amina lawal. from memory she was aquitted wasnt she?

as for the cricket in a small box..thats just total bullshit. we need to complain to channel 9.

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spindles

I never said I agreed that a death penalty for anything is the right approach. However, if you know that the law is that way, you are taking a pretty big risk doing that crime.

If people everywhere were put to death for adultery, a lot of western countries would have quite a few less citizens.

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Kostya

His point appeared to me to suggest that people deserve to be punished for a crime according to the law. I disagree with that point, on account of the fact that I can easily conceive of laws that are unjust. Let us suppose that the death penalty for drug smuggling is an unjust law, as we all apparently do here even spindles. Why then would we approve of the execution of Mr Ngyuen?

I am well glad to hear that she was acquitted.


Absolutely. I presume Rosa Parks (RIP) took a 'pretty big risk' when she told some white guys to get fucked so she could sit down in a bus. The question is, does the maxim you outlined:

Apply to Mrs Parks also?

I for one do not think that it does. Why do I not think this? Because I think that law is unjust, Mrs Parks knew that it was a crime, knew she might be punished, but did it anyhow. I can't say Mr. Ngyuen is a civil rights crusader, but his commital of a crime does not necessarily mean that he deserves to 'do the time'.

dlish

diff laws mean different things to different people in different places..my point? laws can be interpreted any way u want them to. a bag of hash here means nothing to us, but to the balinese its a big deal.

what Rosa Parks did was Noble..the only nobility in Van Nguyen's actions was he was doing it for his brother's debt. he could have ruined the lives of thousands of young singaporeans if that was a bad batch.

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spindles

I'm pretty sure she wasn't facing a death penalty for her "crimes", nor was he doing it as a protest. Ngyuen carried a lot of illegal drugs into a country where the laws are such that trafficking is punishable by death. The only comparison is that both did what they did knowing the possible consequences.

Have you ever thought they (the government) have a death penalty because they really really really want to stop drug traffickers? Maybe they decided that 15 years in gaol/life in gaol was not enough disincentive.

I do feel sorry that anyone has to die, but I really understand the need for some punishment.

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aKula

You have missed Kostya's point, he is saying that he thinks the death penalty is unjust for the Nguyen's crime (not that any penalty is unjust, such in Mrs. Parks case). I think the death penalty is wrong even if the person's actions were immoral and had the potential to harm many people, even if the perpetrator is aware of the punishment he faces.

Kostya

Am I to understand it that you think justice changes relative to one's physical location on the globe? That is to say, if there existed an uncharted island nation named Vali that believed eating poultry was a 'big deal', and punished it with death, than that would be fine? To us eating a chicken is no biggie, but to the Valinese it's a big deal, so anyone who goes there and eats chicken deserves to die apparently...

Indubitably Nguyen's actions were far from noble, but this doesn't mean he is any more deserving of death. People who were hung for stealing bread in the 1800's didn't deserve to die, though their crimes lacked nobility. Moreover, I hardly think that the responsibility for the deaths of Singaporeans or anyone else from drug abuse is as straightforward as you seem to think. By this logic, so too am I probably guilty for selling cigarettes to pregnant, but negligent mothers when I used to work at a grocery store. I am not sure if there is a death penalty for gun running, but by this logic their ought to be, since I think you will agree guns are generally used to kill people. I for one don't think that the person who brought the guns into Australia that Martin Bryant used to kill folk was guilty of anything. Now, to be sure, bringing drugs into a country is to be discouraged, but let's not get carried away and suggest that culpability for the deaths of drug abusers is wholly in his hands. Don't the lower and higher of the dealing community, the manufacturers, and the drug abusers themselves all contribute to the situation as well. Frankly, the connection between Nguyen and the possible deaths is tenuous at best, and not something that I think really constitutes direct responsibility any more than the deaths of obese folk are on the hands of the pimply teens at McDonalds.

Quite so, quite so. That was precisely my point. You clearly said, 'you do the crime, you do the time' suggesting that knowledge of the consequences meant that someone deserved whatever punishment was stipulated by Law. I am saying to you that this is not so, or if it is so, then you also support Rosa Parks being punished according to the letter of the Law, regardless of the injustice of that Law. You also apparently advocate the view that people who eat chicken in Vali, our hypothetical island community of poultry haters, deserve to be hung. I don't think that Nguyen ought to walk free, and I don't think his foreknowledge of the possibility that he might hang means that he ought to hang, I just think it makes him a very large risk taker or a complete fool. Gambler or fool, I still haven't seen any arguments that show any valid reasons why anyone should support him being executed.

Yes I have thought that. I think there are two distinct legal considerations to take into account on this note. First, should we devise punishments based on disincentive? Second, if so, does the introduction of the death penalty actually produce a disincentive towards drug traffickers?
In the first case, I do not think that this is a very good legal edifice. Firstly, if you take only the need for disparaging would be criminals as your basis for devising punishments, you might find yourself philosophically railroaded to advocating legal provisions both absurd and brutal in equal measure. For instance, I think you will agree that many people speed today, and that we currently have fines as a means of punishing offenders. By the disincentive method, the fact that many people still speed suggests that we ought to devise a new punishment that will make people less inclined to speed. Now, if it so happens that people continue to speed for whatever reasons, then you must continue to ratchet up your punishments until the punishment for speeding reaches a level that is enough to stop speeding. I doubt this would reach as high as the death penalty, but if it did, you would have to consent that it is a just law, because the government obviously thought that the fines weren't enough disincentive, and hanging those who transgressed the laws against speeding from streetlights was a good way of preventing speeding.

I for one do not advocate the disincentive principle alone, on this very account, because I do not think firstly that people ought to be punished purely on the basis of regulating the behaviour of others, and secondly because I think it is quite possible for this principle to lead to grossly inflated levels of punishment, because now you're not punishing a person because of what they did, but rather purely to discourage other people.

Now, disincentive is all well and good, if it is clearly subordinate to a number of qualifying provisions that clearly keep punishments within clear bounds. For instance, nobody should be killed for speeding, even if that punishment is remarkably successful at discouraging other drivers.

Again, Mr. Nguyen's case is not so outrageous, but the same principles apply. The Singaporean government are not punishing him on the basis of his crime, but on the understanding that applying the death penalty will make others disinclined to follow him. Firstly, I don't think that this disincentive policy works in an industry that can easily up the financial or coercive incentives against drug mules to match the ultimate disincentive, that is death. There will always be a massive demand for illicit drugs, and while the disincentive of the death penalty is well and truly enough to discourage many people, it simply means that the drug barons will have to dig deeper into their pockets or threaten people with a bigger stick, both of which they will do, increasing the price of their product to cover the extra expense and nothing changes.

More to the point, the death penalty cannot be accepted by anyone who admits that the judiciaries of the world are flawed, liable to make mistakes however rarely, and that it is therefore possible for an innocent person to be killed for a crime they did not commit.

In summary, I do not accept the disincentive argument, since it fails to produce a legal system that adequately fulfills its function of administering justice.

Well the whole point is he doesn't have to die, not on Friday anyhow, though we all can agree that there needs to be some punishment, I am arguing that the death penalty fails on all counts to qualify as the punishment that can rationally be accepted.

spindles

I was listening to the radio this morning and the presenter asked people who haved lived in Singapore to call in to discuss this. There were a few key points that I will try to summarise
1. Singapore appears to be a very safe place to live - the draconian-ness of laws means that there is very little crime. Obviously, disincentive *does* work

2. One caller said it was a "fine" place - because there was a fine for everything.

3. One caller said that the level of policing actually led to a freedom, different from what westerners have. She said you could walk the streets any time of day or night, be-decked in jewels, and not be worried about being assaulted/mugged/attacked.

Obviously the "freedom" she was espousing it quite different from our freedom that we live in now (ironically, she was born in Singapore but chooses to live here. So much for freedom).

The crux of your argument is that the punishment does not fit the crime. The question is - does a higher penalty actually stop people doing things? When our government introduced double demerit/double fines for holidays periods, did you think "I better watch my speed - I can't afford that larger fine/more likely loss of licence"? If the answer is yes, then disincentive does work. Then you have to ask, would life in prisonment be better than dying? (Personally, the idea of either scares the willies out of me). In terms of drug traffickers - if half of those thinking about it decide NOT to do it because one person is executed, I call that progress. If he got imprisoned for life, would those same half have the same opinion...who knows?

We may be better off trying to catch the manufacturers/financers of all this, but that is perhaps easier said than done...

Obviously we have no death penalty here. Does that mean we should not deal with countries that do have one?

Who are we to tell the Singaporeans how to run their judicial system? If you don't like their laws, don't go there!

Finally - I must say I'm on the fence about the death penalty. As I get older I am more inclined to saying it should be used in some circumstances - but only for violent crimes. Again, I feel sorry that he is dying but if you (as a government) have set out a punishment, you have to be willing to execute that punishment.

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Kostya

I quite agree with you that disincentive works, hence my comment: "Now, disincentive is all well and good" in my above post. However, as I also said, there ought to be a limiting provision that prevents punishments from becoming absurd. For instance, I think it quite true that few people if any stole bicycles in Mao's China, but I think that fact that people were probably executed for stealing bicycles is not worth the disincentive such measures created.
I think you would agree that it would be better for people to possibly have their bicycle stolen then for anyone to be hung by the neck until dead for stealing a bicycle.
So to reiterate my point, disincentive works quite well, but cannot be the only guide to how we ought to devise punishments since then it seems possible for laws to be made that are patently absurd and brutal.

This seems to me not a bad idea frankly, though I think fines do punish the financially disadvantaged more than the wealthy for similar crimes. That is to say that if two fellows both litter in the same place at the same time, and the fine 50% of one guy's weekly wage and 2% of the others, than the first fellow has suffered a great deal and the second not at all, though both are culpable of precisely the same disservice to society would you not agree?

Absolutely, I have little or no problem with responsible levels of well regulated police organisations, so long as the legal code by which they are policing is sane and consistent, and the police themselves are not, as they are in some places, merely state sponsored criminals, though in Singapore they are not. It not policing per se that I have a problem with in this particular case.

Well not quite, the crux of my argument as I stated above was that disincentive is not the only consideration when determining what is and is not a just punishment. So the question is not, does a higher penalty actually stop people doing things?
If this was the case, we could bring in the death penalty for all things that were illegal, most certainly this would massively increase the disincentive to commit even the most petty of crimes like illegal parking, but it is not a very good system since I do not think that a person ought to die for parking in front of a fire hydrant, despite the fact that the answer to the question: Does the death penalty stop people almost always from parking in front of hydrants? Is a resounding yes.
Do you see where my objection lies? It is that if you punish someone purely on disincentive, it is possible to introduce a penalty that is incredibly disproportionate to the actual infraction, in order to produce a certain degree of disincentive amongst the general populace.

Well no, I don't actually speed at all, so I don't take notice of anti-speeding ads, I am already convinced that it is a bad idea to speed unless you have a dying person in your car or some such. Again, there is no doubt that disincentive does work, it's merely that disincentive alone is not a good way of measuring justice.

Well, in terms of drug traffickers, I don't think the case is as you suggest here. Supposing there are 1000 men who might traffic drugs, and a drug baron needs ten guys to take the drugs. If after Nguyen dies, 500 decide not to do it, 10 will eventually be found to take the drugs. As I said before, I think less people might be inclined to do it, but there will always be some people for whom the incentive, whatever it may be, will outweigh the disincentive, all it means to me is that to get their product over the borders, drug barons will have less people to choose from, but certainly enough to get it done.

It is indeed a difficult notion. I imagine this would probably not solve the problem either though. The CIA gunned Pablo Escobar down in a gritty Medellin street, leaving his bullet ridden corpse in the mud, but people didn't stop taking cocaine by a long shot, the business just diffused into a less organised bunch of small operations. Similarly, despite all the people who've hanged for drug smuggling in Southeast Asia, the business hasn't faltered.
It's not an easy problem to address, and I'd like to see it being looked at in more multinational contexts and on all levels from the addict to the producer, from both a legal and a medical perspective. In all honestly, I don't think there is any more chance of it disappearing then cigarettes, alcohol or anything else really, the best we can hope for is to prevent endemic levels of drug abuse.
I submit to you that this goal is best served by reducing demand at home than supply from abroad.

I'm not advocating diplomatic silence on the issue. Far from it, I'd like to see it discussed.

Just because they are another country does not change the concept of justice. For instance, Apartheid happened to be in South Africa, but people opposed its manifest injust all over the world. I also oppose female circumcision, but who am I to tell those people how to run their villages? Frankly, I do not believe that justice is defined by borders, and this kind of sentiment owes its foundation to the belief that laws and justice are synonymous. If a law can be shown to be injust, then I oppose it, despite the fact that I might never go to that place.

I think you will agree that history has shown that it is entirely possible for people to be killed though they are innocent. Illinois tossed out the death penalty, after it was later shown through DNA that several people had been executed for crimes they did not commit.
Moreover, many as I understand it, the death penalty has done nothing to reduce the number of murders in many American states where it is currently instituted.

frozenstellar

Interesting arguments posed in this thread. Good reading

However, this whole Nguyen fiasco is going too far. A minutes silence when he is hung?

Fuck that. The very notion that there should be a minutes silence when a drug mule is hung is a huge slap in the face to every veteran, and I hope that they make a lot of noise about it, because quite frankly, with all the media hype about it, it seems that everyone has forgotten that HE WAS SMUGGLING HEROIN!

almostaugust

Hi Guys,
Interesting conversation you guys are having. Got nothing to add that hasnt been said.

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Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember all the times I tried to tell my myself
To hold on to these moments as they pass'

dlish

id love to add to the convo right now, but im in the middle of something at work... gathering my thoughts for my next post

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Kostya

I got nothing but time gentlemen...

I await your refutations...

spindles

I found this article in the the age when I was surfing a few days ago.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/20...026469782.html

It gives the singapore view of this. I don't necessarily agree with the author, but it is another viewpoint of this.

Otherwise, I really don't have much to add to what I have already said in this thread.

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Kostya

First of all I cannot say that I think the Age is anything more than a spurious authority on this matter. This hardly has any relevance because I do not believe in any kind of argument from authority (ie. Do as X advises because X is smart/powerful/expert) in matters of ethics and justice.

Well I cannot say that this would be a particularly good argument for the anti-death penalty side, given that it is merely an argument from authority, that of international as opposed to Singaporean law, and hence not very persuasive. On the other hand, the reverse is also true, the lack of any prohibition on the death penalty in international law does not really lend strength to the pro argument either.

Well this is the argument from sovereignty, yet another longstanding fiction of accepted understanding of international relations. Firstly, sovereignty is subject to a self contradiction, but aside from that it doesn't justify the death penalty, it simply means that we can't do anything about it. I for one do not respect the sovereignty of the military junta in Burma to brutalise the people under their rule, nor do I respect Robert Mugabe, or any other 'sovereign' state which is tyrannous or genocidal. Sovereignty is a fiction, conjured from international law and claimed as a primordial, immutable divine law when it is no such thing. East Timor had no sovereignty, they were rebels, scum, agitators and enemies to the great, sovereign state of Indonesia. But at the stroke of the pen they now have the right to call themselves sovereign, despite having no respect for the sovereign state the brutalised and destroyed their small corner of the world for thirty years.

Firstly this is not 'flawed logic' it is merely a fallacy. If indeed, and I should not be surprised to note that it has, the death penalty has shown a positive correlation with reduction in drug trafficking, then of course the claim that it has not seems less supported. However, I hasten to point out that statistical correlations do not equal logical connections, they are merely evidence to suggest that there may be a connection. In matters as murky and uncontrolled as society, statistical correlations become even less useful given the number of possible unaccounted influences on the data. However, I am willing to accept that it seems not unlikely that introducing the death penalty has probably deterred many folk from trafficking drugs. My argument still stands however, that deterrence ought not be justification for all punishments, and is not at all the sole or primary determinant in how we ought to deal with criminals. Leaving aside the perennial problem regarding the fallibility of human jurisprudence of course.

I for one never made any argument from Nguyen's awareness of his crime or lack thereof, nor that this ought to constitute mitigating circumstances.


We've already been through this. I think it is manifestly obvious that smuggling a substance that might kill someone if they took it after many other people have moved and treated it with various crap, and actually killing someone. I think a person who walks into a bar and shoots a man in the head is clearly the single and efficient cause to the death of the man he just shot, and wholly and solely culpable for his acts. On the other hand, the fellow who sold him the gun seems to me not at all guilty of any real crime, though he might feel a little guilty late at night.
If we take the argument that the death sentence is justified by the deaths of users well down the line, who voluntarily injected themselves with a substance, then ought we not string up Ronald McDonald and the cigarette barons and Jim Beam alongside Mr. Nguyen? They are certainly peddling a product that causes deaths, in fact cigarettes and alcohol kill far more than heroin.
But this aside, the fact remains that it is highly problematic to trace culpability all the way back to Mr. Nguyen for things that are the result of thousands of other interrelated causal influences that, I wish to add, have not even occured yet! Minority report style we are now holding Mr. Nguyen to be responsible for deaths of people he didn't murder that haven't actuall happened.

This seems like an argument niether for nor against the death penalty, and another matter altogether.

In short, I do not find any of these arguments compelling at all

dlish

ok ive got a question ive been wanting to ask for a few days..ive just been caught up with work, so i havent been online for a while

kostya..

what are your thoughts on the death sentence of the bali bombers?

most australians were quite happy and relieved to send the bali bombers to death row. is there a difference? is the death sentence of a terrorist acceptable and the death sentence of a trafficker different?

why is it ok for death sentence at times and not at others? or is it just not ok to put aussies to death?

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Kostya

My thoughts on the Bali bombers are as follows:

Is there a difference between terrorism and drug trafficking? Yes there is. Obviously there is a very very clear and distinct difference between the two, and I should further add that the more severe ought also, it appears, have a harsher penalty. Is there a difference between speeding and drink driving? Yes, there is also a difference in the penalty for those offenses, and rightly so.

Now, do I think the Bali bombers ought to have been executed? Well, first of all, I don't think deterrence is a very good argument against folk like this, that is to say people who are willing to blow themselves up are unlikely to be discouraged by the death penalty. Secondly, will executing Amrose and anyone else bring back a single soul from Kuta beach? No it will not. Does imprisoning Amrose for life (given a certain number of restrictions on communication and so forth) prevent him from ever reoffending, or helping in any such act again? Yes I think it does. So too does executing him I suppose.

However, is it possible that someone could be tried, found guilty and executed for a terrorism when they were innocent? I can concieve of it. Therefore I do not favour the death penalty for terror suspects, given that imprisoning them in suitably well thought out facilities will prevent them from reoffending, and should it later come to light that they were innocent allow for them to be released as justice would clearly dictate.

Therefore, I do not think it is ever ok for the death sentence to be used since judiciaries are fallible, and we cannot bring people back from the grave.

To quote your own signature:

As you already know I do not believe in nations or nationality, so I do not think it is ok for human beings to be put to death, and oppose the execution of Tibetans as much as Australians.
Certainly I am less opposed to the execution of Amrose, if indeed he is guilty, which certainly appears to be the case. In fact I might even feel good about it, but feelings ought not dictate what kind of legal provisions we ought to take, rational thoughts do. My thoughts tell me very clearly that despite any feelings I might have, the fallibility of judicial courts means that the death penalty is not a provision that we ought to adopt.

Kostya

Bump.

Are we done here or what?

dlish

nope not yet

sorry havent been online much at all. this mad rush before xmas is driving me nuts. ill write my rebuttal in the next day or so when i havent done a 15 hr day.

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dlish

kostya...

sorry to the late reply...

Now, do I think the Bali bombers ought to have been executed? Well, first of all, I don't think deterrence is a very good argument against folk like this, that is to say people who are willing to blow themselves up are unlikely to be discouraged by the death penalty.

true. but on the other hand it also decreases the number of those that may have contemplated it..those that do not have the same bent as people like amrosi, but may have had an inclination to support people like amrosi. therefore by introducing mandatory death sentences we are proportionally decreasing the number of potential terrorist (or would be terrorists) because they havent had the indoctrination instilled in them and their views may falter with the introduction of the death sentence.


Secondly, will executing Amrose and anyone else bring back a single soul from Kuta beach? No it will not. Does imprisoning Amrose for life (given a certain number of restrictions on communication and so forth) prevent him from ever reoffending, or helping in any such act again? Yes I think it does. So too does executing him I suppose.

[I]execution isnt about teaching amrosi any sort of lesson. its moreso a deterrent to other wouldbe terrorists or would be offenders albeit terrorism, drugg smugling, murder etc.[I]

However, is it possible that someone could be tried, found guilty and executed for a terrorism when they were innocent? I can concieve of it. Therefore I do not favour the death penalty for terror suspects, given that imprisoning them in suitably well thought out facilities will prevent them from reoffending, and should it later come to light that they were innocent allow for them to be released as justice would clearly dictate.

i can think of one such place which is supposedly a 'well thought out facility that will prevent suspects from re-offending, and hould it come to light that they were innocent allow for them to be released as justice would clearly dictate'... this place is called guantanamo bay where we have an australian citizen who has broken no australian or international law and is innocent of vague charges levelled against him who is being held without his rights as chartered in the geneva conventions, yet..he hasnt been released "as justice would clearly dictate". if at least one citizen is supposedly inncent, im sure that a few more of the 500 left languishing in there would be too. that justification gives the view that mass imprisonment ok prisoners is ok even though they may be found innocent later... doesnt make sense.

i can also think of a few more secret places where suspects get rendered to, but this isnt the political forum, so i wont keep going


To quote your own signature:


Quote:
An injustice anywhere, is an injustice everywhere


true..and justice is relative. singaporean justice is relative to the ideals and morals and codes of that country. by entering it you agree to abide by its laws or face consequences should you not. but as human beings we also have an innate sense of justice not to steal/hurt people, kill etc. however, justice administered through some sort of controlled system would be acceptable, especially if the people living there are happy to accept those laws. and if not then they should look elsewhere to live.


Certainly I am less opposed to the execution of Amrose, if indeed he is guilty, which certainly appears to be the case. In fact I might even feel good about it, but feelings ought not dictate what kind of legal provisions we ought to take, rational thoughts do. My thoughts tell me very clearly that despite any feelings I might have, the fallibility of judicial courts means that the death penalty is not a provision that we ought to adopt.


amrosi knew the consequences and accepted his fate, as did mr nguyen. do i feel good about them? no of ocurse not.. i also dont think that the death sentence would work here in australia because our society morals/codes/ideals do not allow it here. so who is right? pro death/anti death? neither.... in some circumstances pro in others anti... its all relative to where you are and what you do. certainly drink driving wont get you executed.

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Kostya

Well I shouldn't say that is quite the case in all honesty. Firstly I cannot read minds, and so I can't know precisely what the effect of the death penalty is on those of terrorists. This being said, I can think of cases historically, say Napoleon's draconian repression of Egyptian resistance, where bringing in harsher penalties served not as a deterrent, but were in fact correlated by a massive increase in both open hostility and clandestine support of rebels.
Is this such a case? Well, in all fairness I do not think it is quite the same, but my point is merely that you assume that harsher penalty means deterrence when I do not think that is always the case.
Obviously, this is not an easily resolved dispute, since clearly niether of us is privy to the thoughts and fears of terrorists around the world.
I should hasten to point out however, that terrorist organisations of every bent have not been destroyed, or significantly deterred in my opinion by punishments so much as by engagement. In Tsarist Russia, the consistent hanging of extremist student rebels did not stem the tide of bombings, kidnappings, assassinations and threats, quite the opposite. Each convicted terrorist took to the gallows like a pulpit and sermonised about the need for revolution before passing away into martyrdom and inspiring hordes of imitators.
To me it seems difficult to measure, what if any the effect of executions of Amrosi and co will have on the possibility of further attacks, but if past history is any indication, and I think that it is, it seems doubtful that harsh punishments alone will be effective.

I didn't say that is was about teaching him a lesson. And I already outlined why I think that deterrence alone is not a good guide for devising punishments, and further why I do not think it is a very effective deterrent.

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.

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.

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.

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.

When I said 'Well thought out facility' I meant a carefully thought out imprisonment whereby Amrosi was prevented from communicating with accomplices, planning or contributing to any kind of future attack or providing information or anything else to his fellow terrorists. This would require supervisation of his visits, and close watch on his activities with fellow inmates. I do not mean Guantanamo Bay.

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.

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.
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.
I guess it applies across time also. Witch burning was in keeping with the values and customs of the day, a bit of disembowelment of Jews or Muslims in Spain was certainly in vogue during certain times, but since it was part of the law, not a problem.

Luckily, we have a stopgap.
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.

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.

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.

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.

dlish

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

Kostya

I'm still around, just been uber busy. Be patient and I shall return I swear.

dlish

was wondering where u went...thought it was the xmas break or something..

im really interested about your reasoning for having a metaphyical aspect to your reasoning for not believing in the nation/sovereignty issue.

__________________
An injustice anywhere, is an injustice everywhere

I always sign my facebook comments with ()()===========(}. Does that make me gay?
- Filthy

Kostya

Sorry for the delay, Christmas, New Years and the beach have kept me away from my computer lately.

Anyhow, I see your suggestions:


And I think they are very good. First of all, because I agree with the stated aim, that is to ‘curb terrorist activities’ and with the methodology which is multifaceted, much like the phenomenon of terrorism itself. What I don’t see listed here is the death penalty. I for one think its deterrence value is little if any, nobody undertakes a terrorist attack frivolously, many are prepared to blow themselves up and those that are deterred by the death penalty are probably the kind of people who wouldn’t strap a bomb to themselves in the first place.

I am glad we cleared up that Guantanamo Bay issue, I agree with you that it is not a good facility. I think the problem you have with it, and I also is that there is no ‘access to legal recourse’ as you pointed out, which is quite unacceptable to you and I both.

I’m a little confused. What your saying here requires some disentangling and I want to be very clear in what I am saying, so bear with me as this may become quite long.

As far as I can see, you’re making a distinction between ‘justice’ and ‘laws’, the former being ‘for everone’ that is universal, and the latter being for specific ‘peoples and nations.’ I cannot agree quite with the claim that ‘we as a nation need laws’ because I think ‘nations’ are non-existent but let us get on to that later. Now, I also make this distinction quite easily, for instance, there is hardly any question that the law prohibiting women from owning property in Britain was a law, but it was not justice. I agree with you also that ‘all would have some sort of cultural, social and religious input in accordance with their customs and beliefs’ as well, the above law for instance had the input of a belief that men were superior to women. The Aztecs had ‘cultural and religious inputs’ that told them human sacrifice was necessary for the Sun to move in the sky. The problem with these various ‘inputs’ is that they can be and often are wrong, that is to say either totally mistaken factually such as the Aztecs, or injust such as the chauvinism of the British Isles circa 1700.
So, to say that ‘one law is better than the other is incorrect’ simply baffles me. First of all, you freely admit that ‘justice is for everyone’ and that ‘laws are subject to flaws and mistakes.’ I think you would agree that a flawed law is not as good as one which is not. I can say without hesitation that the law which required human sacrifice in Aztec society was inferior to the one which replaced it. Why can I say this? Quite simply, the basis of the Law, that human sacrifice was necessary for the rising of the sun, was fallacious.
The next problem is if as you claim no law can be said to be better than any other law, why would we change our laws at all? Certainly all laws are as good as each other, and hence there is no reason to alter any laws, ever. But this doesn’t quite seem right, we constantly change our laws, often we change them because they are unjust. For instance, I can say without hesitation that the law endorsing slavery of black people in the United States was not as good as the one prohibiting slavery which replaced it. The new law was better than the old one, and that’s precisely why it was introduced. We can determine whether a law is better or worse by checking to see if it stands up to the standard of justice. That is to say, I believe there is a standard, a standard ‘for everyone’ which you may call justice or whatever you wish, by which it is possible to assess the laws of any institution. This leads me to you final question:

To be honest I have problems with the concept of a ‘definition’ but leaving that aside allow to explain to you as best I can what I mean by justice.

Justice is not a simple term. By justice, some people mean ‘social justice’ that is a certain state of affairs regarding freedom, wealth, power and so forth. This is no doubt related to the issue of ‘judicial justice’ that is a standard by which we assess various legislative provisions dealing with crime and punishment. I believe that you are talking about ‘judicial justice’ here. First of all, you are quite right, I do not believe that ‘justice’ is necessarily coterminous with governmental laws or UN laws either, since both may be mistaken and subject to review. That is not to say however, that a governmental law or UN law is necessarily unjust either. For instance, I think that the law ‘No person should be discriminated against on the basis of their gender’ is just, and it is also a law. On the other hand, I think that the law ‘All persons who have blue eyes shall have their left hands cut off’ is unjust, though it is a law.
Justice is based on rational arguments, not on ‘cultural inputs’, for instance the rational argument ‘That the sun will rise tomorrow without any human sacrifices’ shows us that that particular Aztec law was unjust, and that a new one, which takes this fact into account will be if anything closer to justice, if not perfectly just. What can be argued for on the basis of reason, not arbitrary assumptions, prejudices or ignorances is what I take to be justice.
It is sort of analogous to the concept of colour. We know what ‘red’ is, and we see things around us, we can make judgments as to whether Object A is ‘more red’ than Object B. The problem with justice is that our ‘vision’ regarding the ‘justness’ of laws and conventions and actions is not quite so sharp. It is a difficult thing to determine whether a law about abortion is just or not, certainly not as simple as comparing a reddish car and a reddish chair. However, if we develop our faculties, our abilities to rationally argue, we might see more clearly, we see for instance that women are not inferior to men, and that that was an arbitrary assumption and all the laws based on it are unjust. We might see that there is no need for human sacrifices, that Jews are not to be exterminated, that the death penalty is not necessarily the correct punishment for drug smuggling.
I won’t lie, even then arguments will persist. Amongst trained ethical philosophers there are disagreements about abortion, punishments, and so forth. However, that there are disagreements is not so much a bad thing as it might seem. In order to make arguments, people must appeal to something, they are not simply saying ‘nah nah I’m right and you smell’, they are trying to prove that their position is just, or more just than their opponents. We have cleared up many things that were once the subject of arguments, slavery for instance had its adherents for a time, but after many an argument, the anti-slavery movement made rational arguments that showed their position to be patently unjust.

Hitler is indeed not the norm, but that is precisely why I brought him into it. A lot of people complain to me that I introduce absurd examples during arguments, but I think this is a failure to see my point. What these examples show us is precisely that the position being put forward is clearly subject to such absurdities.

For instance, if a fellow argues: ‘That all good is happiness.’ The classic argument back is simply that: ‘Pigs are happy, therefore you would prefer to be a pig than Socrates.’
It is absurd to suggest that we would prefer to be pigs rather than thinking human beings, and what that clearly suggests is that the fellow’s original position is wrong, what is good is not simply happiness, his position entertains absurdities.

So too your position entertains absurdities and I introduced them here to illustrate that. It seems to me a gross understatement to suggest that it ‘has a loose end or two or three.’ As far as I can see it has no ends, it is carte blanche, it doesn’t draw any limits on anything since it denies that laws can be wrong, it denies that there is any universal standard by which we can proclaim anything about laws. If I want to say that car is redder than that chair, I admit there is a standard of ‘redness’ by which I am measuring and assessing them. Your position, quite clearly was, there is no standard or redness or justness to assess things. I then duly pointed out that without a standard of justness, you can’t draw any distinction between the Third Reich and modern day Britain, any more than you can say the sky is less red than blood without a standard of redness. I won’t add your name to the list, Nabil the Worst, because you are not a mass murderer, you simply made an argument that was not coherent. Nabil the Irrational perhaps. This is not an issue of ‘vague definition’, but one of bases. You say ‘no law is better than any other’, but you also say ‘justice is for everyone.’ I for one do not think you believe that our laws are not better than Hitler’s or Ivan’s or Pol Pot’s, in fact I think you quite agree with me that there is a standard of justice, and we can safely place their laws well below ours. The proof of that is clear enough in your claim below:

I disagree with you that it is a ‘sense’ of justice. It is not merely prickles on the back of one’s neck. It is discerned through no small measure of deep thought, thorough and meticulous research, debate, revision and constant vigilance. I’m not sure what you mean by ‘changing times’, I might agree or disagree, but it is an ambiguous statement and probably of little account. The point is simply, you clearly do recognize that there is a regulatory standard that presides over the making of laws, and even though it is supremely difficult, it is possible to devise laws which most certainly are better than existing ones, and that this holds true not just for Nation X or the City of Z, but everywhere. Whether those laws exist everywhere is another matter.

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.

Once again I have to take issue with this ‘sense of justice’ claim. Obviously if it is universal, then all our laws would be the same, but as you go on to say, they are not. The ‘sense of hunger’ is universal, therefore no matter where I go people are always eating or wanting to eat food at regular interviews. But, people seem to have very different ideas about what is ‘just’ some rational, most irrational. I can’t see any reason for a debate between an Australian and a Saudi, couldn’t they both simply consult their ‘sense’s of justice’ which are apparently identical and resolve their problem very easily. But that’s not the problem, the Saudi’s think that it is just, and I claim the complete opposite. So whatever is informing our claims on what is just, it is most certainly not universally shared by both of us.
I’m a little curious about this ‘local and specific laws to run our local environment’ claim. Certainly it seems to me to be true of those laws pertaining to geographic issues, for instance we currently have water restrictions in Brisbane, because there is little water. There are no water restrictions in Paris right now as far as I know. Of course, this is a minor issue, and still subject to a universal standard that is: Where there is little water it is better to have water restrictions than to condemn the city to die of thirst. What changes is not the standard, but the amount of water in the general vicinity.
However, what changes between here and Saudi, to an extent, is not anything to do with ‘local environment’, and everything to do with a different standard for determining laws. It’s not just that I abhor the cutting off of hands, that is to say if I saw it I would be sickened, but that I think that law is unjust. I abhor strawberry icecream, but I don’t think it is unjust. What rational argument can there be made for the cutting off of hands? I myself can’t think of one. I mean, I would have felt quite safe in Hitler’s Germany, being blonde with blue eyes, but that doesn’t mean I would have thought his policies just, because it’s no justification for those laws, just because I wouldn’t be the one being brutalized.

I’m at a loss. How can you say your definitions run parallel? One says ‘Justice is universal’ the other says ‘Justice is relative’, that’s a flat contradiction as far as I can see. Unless you mean something different in those two statements, which is entirely possible and if you are I request that you make that clearer to me because I am having difficulty understanding how they fail to contradict.
Moving on to the contradiction that is inherent in your next two statements, I can’t believe what I’m reading here. I don’t often use quotes, but there’s one that I think sums up my sentiments exactly:


"If only one person in the world held down a terrified, struggling, screaming little girl, cut off her genitals with a septic blade, and sewed her back up, leaving only a tiny hole for urine and menstrual flow, the only question would be how severely that person should be punished... But when millions of people do this, instead of the enormity being magnified millions-fold, suddenly it becomes 'culture', and thereby magically becomes less, rather than more, horrible, and is even defended by some Western 'moral thinkers'." Donald Symons

How you can not place that under ‘oppression’ boggles my mind. First of all, I’m sure some Aztec folk ‘thought’ they were OK with being sacrificed, hell they might have been proud about giving up their lives to ensure that life continues. But, they were just plain wrong about that, their deaths were needless, meaningless and entirely unjust. Female circumcision is based on an arbitrary and needless tradition, one that can be safely discarded as both useless and dangerous alongside human sacrifice, sexual slavery, cannibalism and anything else that is rationally indefensible and which furthermore causes significant harm to many individuals.
I cannot stress to you how vehemently I disagree with your claims here, I find them disturbing and contemptible.

Touche, it is true that the eating of pork was one of the tests that the Inquisition used to identify crypto-Jews and crypto-Muslims living in Spain during the medieval period. However, if pressed I can come up with other laws that were frivolous and brutal, such as those in Leviticus that prescribed stoning to death for backtalking one’s parents, or traditional Confucian laws which prescribed torture for informing the Emperor of a problem and so forth. Absurd laws have existed, based on absurd foundations, I’m simply saying that the laws which we ought to have are rational ones based on rational foundations.

I have left it until last to explain why I do not believe in nations and so forth, because it is a difficult and complicated matter that is better separated from our original argument about laws and justice.

My first objection to ‘nations’ is simply the historical one. Nations are fabricated, made up things. Australia was made up only 230 years ago, just conjured into existence from nowhere. What I mean is that any claim that nations are somehow permanent is simply false. Australia did not always exist, the nation of East Germany no longer exists. Nevertheless, we seem to think it is OK to treat nations as though they are not mere fabrications, but as though they are very real, as though by consensus we have created these things that did not exist before, though we have seen them made and destroyed in our lifetimes.
The other problem is that often there is a claim that nations are somehow grounded in a deep historical blood bond of people who are somehow linked together in a vast extended family. Clearly in Australia this is false. But elsewhere it is false also, as though English men have never had French wives, or as though any genetic similarity, even if it did exist, confers any kind of sociological similarity. This talk of ‘national characters’ if it is of anything, is not an inherited genetic trait shared by the inhabitants of a geographic area. As if a boy born in Ireland to Irish parents and immediately afterwards taken to Russia and raised with Russian parents would somehow stick out like a sore thumb. Therefore I deny the historical basis of the concept of ‘nation’ both in its political sense and any of the various ‘natural’ bases such as common origin, natural frontiers or national characters.
Now, we live in the state of Australia, it is a nation state, that is to say the government proclaims to represent the ‘nation’ of Australia. As far as I can see, the only thing that could be said that is true of all Australians is that they happen to be bound by the laws of Australia, vote in its elections, and to be represented by the Australian state. It is not that the ‘nation’ determined the ‘state’, but that the ‘state’ delineates the ‘nation.’ So, at the very least, to be Australian is not to be a primordial tribal group who own this land and are all bound by blood to each other and the land, but rather to be a citizen living under the state. Now, if a nation is merely contingent upon a state, that is it is entirely an arbitrary and synthetic grouping, then there is no such thing as a nation in and of itself, the state is not representing something that exists prior to or anterior to itself. A nation is no more a legitimate grouping than a city state or a commune, it is just a name for the people living under a particular government, nothing more.
Now if the nation be merely that group presided over by the state, it may be legitimately claimed that there is an entity, the State, that embodies The Nation. This is implied in claims about national ideals, value, character and so forth. Isn’t there some kind of ‘general will’, some kind of ‘national will’ if you prefer, that the government is representing? I for one don’t think that any such entity exists. I agree that there is a group of individuals, a very large group, which we refer to as Australia, or as the Australian nation, or the Australian people. Each of these individuals has their own free will, they have ideals, values, thoughts, emotions, relationships and so forth. There is no entity which is independent from these individuals, no national entity, that also exists to have feelings, ideals, thoughts, emotions, relationships and so forth. The reason we might speak of a national ideal of democracy is most certainly not because there is some metaphysical entity, a suprabeing or supraconsciousness which holds the ideal of democracy, but because the vast majority of Australians do hold democracy as an ideal. All it is then, as far as I can see is a statement about what the various individuals who live under the government think, and not even all those individuals, but rather a statistical generalization about them. The point is simply, the ‘nation’ is not anything apart from those individuals who happen to be in the group to which it refers, it has no life of its own, it is at most a mere statistical correlation. Those statistical correlations are contingent upon the individuals, not the other way around.
Now, no doubt there are oddities in this regard, because while a nation is not metaphysically real, it is imagined to be real, and this exercises a significant influence over people’s behaviour. Many people think and act as though there is an Australian nation, and in a way this makes many of the generalizations about ‘Australia’ true on that account. What is does not do is make Australia real, merely a sociological illusion, which, if people began to act differently or were educated otherwise would evapourate as fast as morning dew.
Furthermore, generalizations are useful, but not binding, they do not contradict or negate the free will of individuals. There is nothing stopping people who happen to live under a government from changing their minds about something, from disagreeing with the ‘national values’, nobody is compelled forcibly to adopt them, though many people do because they are easily persuaded, irrational or simply convinced that they are serving something greater than themselves which does not exist. People have acted in ways that made generalizations about all sorts of imaginary groupings true, the Athenian City, the tribe of the Huns and the Master Race, but none of those things was anything real.

As for sovereignty well it’s an ambiguous word. Do you mean the source of power, as in the monarch is the sovereign? Or do you mean the more modern sense, that no nation may have its borders impinged upon?

dlish

omfg..geez kostya... i logged in at work..but i dont have time to possbly read past the first paragraph..just letting ya know im still here..just caught up with work...and beach so im sure u understand hehehe

ill be back!

__________________
An injustice anywhere, is an injustice everywhere

I always sign my facebook comments with ()()===========(}. Does that make me gay?
- Filthy

Ella

Christ! How do you people get the privilege to access the 'net in general at work! Not work for the federal government, obviously....

__________________
"Afterwards, the universe will explode for your pleasure."

dlish

ella.. it helps when u work for yourself but theres always a downside to it cos it just means u gotta deal with all the paperwork bullshit too.

__________________
An injustice anywhere, is an injustice everywhere

I always sign my facebook comments with ()()===========(}. Does that make me gay?
- Filthy

dlish

ella.. it helps when u work for yourself but theres always a downside to it cos it just means u gotta deal with all the paperwork bullshit too.

kostya...im just gathering my thoughts.. see u in a short while

__________________
An injustice anywhere, is an injustice everywhere

I always sign my facebook comments with ()()===========(}. Does that make me gay?
- Filthy

Kostya

Bump, just stopping this one from slipping off the forum.

spindles

or you work from home like me.

__________________
who hid my keyboard's PANIC button?

Meridae'n

Here's an idea Kostya... how about instead of mearly trying to win an argument by wielding your (quite obvious) superior intellect, why don't you dumb it down a little so we can actually understand what your saying and retort as to facilitate an argument. This seems to be breeding a one-sided argument (I'm pretty sure those last few diatribes went over even dlishsguy's head). Not having a go at you mate, just asking for more of a layman's description of what you are trying to get across. I'm interested as you obviously do a fair bit of research before forging an opinion, and seeing as yours and my own opinion have differed greatly in the past I'd like to get my point across, something I find hard when I don't really know what you're going on about in the first place. I'm guessing I'm not Robinson Caruso on this one...

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What's easier to believe: that a guy was born without sex in the manner of several Greek demigods and grew up to be able to transmute liquids and alter his body density yet couldn't escape government execution, or that three freemasons in a vehicle made with aluminum foil in an era before digital technology escaped our atmosphere, landing on the moon, broadcasted from there, and then flew back without burning up?

Kostya

I quite agree with you there. I don't see the point in 'winning' by making myself impossible to understand, after all posting in Chinese would make it pretty hard to respond to me, but it wouldn't make me right, just incomprehensible.

Well, if indeed they did go over dlishguy's head, then I haven't done very much at all, except waste my time. If there is stuff in there that dlish doesn't understand for whatever reason then I will be glad to do my best to make them clearer and easier for him if he points out the things that make no sense to him.

Nevertheless, in my own defense, you must agree that it is very difficult to explain some things in simple terms, because some things are pretty complex. To make complex things easily comprehensible takes intelligence much greater than mine, but I am willing to give it my best shot.

Well, I'm at a loss, I don't know what your opinion is, and you don't know what mine is. Where do you suppose we take it from here?

dlish

sorry guys...

although i find kosya to be quite intelligent, he has made sense. however, i do find him to be set in his ways and thoughts. but i must admit, i envy his writing style.

i did however promise to write back, but lately the last few weeks i have been working 7 days straight trying to finish this factory im building..actually i havent had a day off in a month, so im pretty busy and pretty burnt out. so my apologies for not writing. i will endeavour to write something this week.


meri....'quite obvious superior intellect'... lol you make me sound so.... whats the word.. DUMB! hehe

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Kostya

Well, I suppose you will only have to take my word for it that my ways have changed significantly in the past due to many a lost argument, and that they are anything but set. Let us not however, get into that particular area, as we clearly have too much on our plates as it is.

No biggie, I understood you to be a busy fellow, and I in no way think you are obligated to reply, nor that your silence implies a want of argument on your part. I for one have been enjoying our discussion however, so if you wish to continue I am very pleased.

Meri's words, certainly not mine.