Human Rights gone bad.

[DaveP]

There is something wrong with human rights legislation when it is used to prevent the course of justice.

We have the Norwegian mass murderer Breivik giving a Nazi salute in court and protesting about solitary confinement and lack of internet access.

And now we have one of the Paris IS mass murderers protesting about his extradition and suing the French prosecutor.

Little wonder that populist movements start when they see natural justice being mocked like this.

How much evil can you do before you stop being human, looks like the sky's the limit.

DaveP

 

[mattiasNYC]

There is something wrong with human rights legislation when it is used to prevent the course of justice.

We have the Norwegian mass murderer Breivik giving a Nazi salute in court and protesting about solitary confinement and lack of internet access.

And now we have one of the Paris IS mass murderers protesting about his extradition and suing the French prosecutor.

Ok, but many western legal systems are created by juxtaposing two side, the prosecution and the defense. So rather than trying to objectively find the truth and the best course of action based on those findings the prosecution focuses on getting a conviction, and the defense an acquittal. That being the case, and also seeing that the state is always by definition more powerful and wealthy than the individual, it isn't strange at all that defendants will test their situations using whatever legal means they can muster, be that defense attorneys, "offense" attorneys suing the state, or contacting human rights organizations so they can do it.

Now, the question for you is what do you really want here? Do you want the state to be able to do whatever it wants? Do you even think there is or should be something like "Human Rights"?

Because if you think there's a value to "Human Rights" then the only issue is just what they are, how we come to that conclusion, and how we then enforce it. If Breivik protests in court, so what? Who the heck cares? He's an insane psychopath. He's locked up. Let him do his Hitler cheer all he wants, I don't care. If a legal proceeding is the result of his protest of solitary confinement then what? If it is determined that he's not right then you get what you want (I presume). If it is determined that his human rights are violated, then do you disagree with those rights or just that we went through that process?

How much evil can you do before you stop being human, looks like the sky's the limit.

DaveP

Ok, so serious question for you: Just how do you decide where to draw the line in terms of what punishments to dole out to convicted criminals?

 

[dfuruta]

Seems to me the best gauge of how decent & civilized a society is is how it treats its enemies, not how it treats its friends.

 

[DaveP]

Ok, so serious question for you: Just how do you decide where to draw the line in terms of what punishments to dole out to convicted criminals?

There are pre-meditated murders committed of such magnitude and of such long lasting damage to the victims families that they are inhuman and the perpetrators should lose their human rights as a result.

Taking Breivik as an example, he deliberately killed 77 young left wing teenagers (much as you were once).  That's 154 parents 308 grandparents and countless relatives who have to witness this miscreant's antics, he is just twisting the knife in them.  He is not mad himself but his ideas certainly are.  I believe in the death penalty for such crimes, but if that is not practiced then loss of human rights should be mandatory in such cases for the victims sake.

DaveP

 

[mattiasNYC]

Ok. Thanks for your honest response.

I personally feel the death penalty is uncivilized savagery, not to mention incredibly dangerous from a practical standpoint. If it was about the prevention of crime it'd be one thing, but when our society just devolves into hurting others for the sake of vengeance then we certainly aren't particularly civilized, let alone Christian.

You can call him "not human" all you want, but by any measurable means he still is. And he already lost a ton of rights, that's why he's in jail. Doesn't mean I like him, and it doesn't mean I'd miss him if he died. As a matter of fact I think the world would be a way better place without people like him. But a state administering the death penalty that's a whole different bag.

 

[DaveP]

I personally feel the death penalty is uncivilized savagery, not to mention incredibly dangerous from a practical standpoint. If it was about the prevention of crime it'd be one thing, but when our society just devolves into hurting others for the sake of vengeance then we certainly aren't particularly civilized, let alone Christian.

For me, it's more about closure for the relatives, rather than state retribution.  They can never properly heal while he is still alive as this episode shows.  There is also the cost element, I would rather see the money that it costs to keep him there spent on welfare payments to the poor and sick.  I put him in the same category as the SS guards of the concentration camps who were all hung for their crimes against humanity.  Don't confuse Christianity with liberalism, they are not the same thing.

DaveP

 

[mattiasNYC]

For me, it's more about closure for the relatives, rather than state retribution. 

First of all, it's still the state executing people, and that's a problem in principle, unless you're one of those people who just trust the state. Any reasonable amount of worry about a state running peoples lives, not to mention deaths, should warrant the opposition to the death penalty.

Apart from the many many people who have been executed while being innocent, it's just savage. "Hey, I'm mad and sad, can the state please kill that guy so I can feel better?" "Sure, we'll kill him."

Stone-age behavior.

They can never properly heal while he is still alive as this episode shows.

Pretty presumptuous of you to claim that about the victims families without having spoken to them all. As a matter of fact, a quick googling shows plenty of examples of victims' family members asking for the death penalty not to be carried out. More death won't bring the dead back.

In addition there are studies that show how they indeed don't feel any better, statistically speaking, compared to those cases where perpetrators were not executed. I just think you're factually wrong about this.

There is also the cost element, I would rather see the money that it costs to keep him there spent on welfare payments to the poor and sick.  I put him in the same category as the SS guards of the concentration camps who were all hung for their crimes against humanity.

In the US it's more costly to execute people than throw them in jail. Also, what kind of argument is this? How on earth do you practically determine at what point a criminal should be executed rather than not due to cost? Is it the severity of the crime? Is it the longevity of the punishment? Is it the amount of surviving victim-relatives? Is there some formula combining those that determines it? And if cost was a factor then those that should get killed are those that generally cost our society more, wouldn't that make sense? Bernie Madoff should get the axe, literally, as well as other financial criminals. Somehow I think that's not ever going to happen.

And if cost is a true issue, why not have them perform more labor to recoup the cost? Put them in coal mines, have them chop trees, have them build things the state can sell.....

Don't confuse Christianity with liberalism, they are not the same thing.

Didn't someone say to turn the other cheek and love thy enemy?

Aren't people down on Islam for it advocating harsh punishments for crimes?

 

[DaveP]

Didn't someone say to turn the other cheek and love thy enemy?

Aren't people down on Islam for it advocating harsh punishments for crimes?

You seem a bit muddled about this, or maybe just being obtuse for effect?

If you remember, my point was about premeditated mass murder, exactly like has occurred in Brussels today.
I was not talking about small scale Islam cutting off hands for theft or stoning women for adultery.

Christ told people to love their enemies for their own sake (bitterness is bad for the soul) He also said that it would heap live coals on their (enemy's) head, i.e. initiate remorse.  I would advocate His teaching of forgiveness for the relatives of those murdered for their own sake.  Justice is another matter altogether, unless you want to live in a world where no-one faces  consequences commensurate to their actions.  Justice is almost universally delivered by the state on behalf of the victim to avoid people taking the law into their own hands.

This is why I said Christianity is not the same as liberalism.

DaveP

 

[mattiasNYC]

Didn't someone say to turn the other cheek and love thy enemy?

Aren't people down on Islam for it advocating harsh punishments for crimes?

You seem a bit muddled about this, or maybe just being obtuse for effect?

No, facetious, not "obtuse".

If you remember, my point was about premeditated mass murder, exactly like has occurred in Brussels today.
I was not talking about small scale Islam cutting off hands for theft or stoning women for adultery.

I was making a general point, not thinking of anything you in particular had said.

Christ told people to love their enemies for their own sake (bitterness is bad for the soul) He also said that it would heap live coals on their (enemy's) head, i.e. initiate remorse.  I would advocate His teaching of forgiveness for the relatives of those murdered for their own sake.

Right. Forgiveness. Not retribution.

Justice is another matter altogether, unless you want to live in a world where no-one faces  consequences commensurate to their actions.

People "on the right" continuously disregard the principle of a proportional response. It sometimes feels like it almost never is advocated. But I don't really subscribe to proportionality = justice, which is what you're implying it seems.

This is why I said Christianity is not the same as liberalism.

DaveP

No, that much is clear. I said I was being "facetious" because the core of Christianity (as described in scripture) is so incredibly sinister that it's fairly mind-boggling, yet the nuggets perpetually shown off by adherents of Christianity who criticize Islam are exactly those I just mentioned. The kindness of Christianity and the civilized nature of it etc is based on exactly the stuff I wrote.  So it's curious when a Christian thinks homosexuality is a sin but not that gays should be stoned to death because we should turn the other cheek and love our enemy/sinner except if it doesn't conform to their political view in which case the death penalty is totally fine. That was what I was getting at.

The death penalty is savage and uncivilized. It's a sign of a not so evolved society.

 

[Gold]

I personally feel the death penalty is uncivilized savagery, not to mention incredibly dangerous from a practical standpoint.

I agree and I am no pacifist. I would not hesitate to choke the life out of anyone who came at me. The state doing it is an entirely different matter.

The prosecutor in a case brought by the state  in the U.S. is both supposed to seek truth and justice as well as performing the adversarial role for a conviction. It doesn't work like this in practice but it's supposed to.

 

[mattiasNYC]

I personally feel the death penalty is uncivilized savagery, not to mention incredibly dangerous from a practical standpoint.

I agree and I am no pacifist. I would not hesitate to choke the life out of anyone who came at me. The state doing it is an entirely different matter.

The prosecutor in a case brought by the state  in the U.S. is both supposed to seek truth and justice as well as performing the adversarial role for a conviction. It doesn't work like this in practice but it's supposed to.

I think the basic thought might be that truth will be found out, but as you say it's not the way it ends up working in practice. From what I can see a career in prosecution probably necessitates a good conviction rate, so obviously that then becomes more important than finding out the truth.

Quite frankly I found it shocking that so many cases where misconduct was found on the part of the state representatives no repercussions were found. Prosecutors and law enforcement were able to act incorrectly yet weren't punished.

I have little faith in the US justice system. I've avoided it so far and I hope that I never have to have anything to do with it.

 

[JohnRoberts]

This has been discussed here before, as have many of the pivotal philosophical disagreements.

Psychological studies reveal two general senses about sentencing. One major fraction follows an instinctual bias to punish wrong do-ers. This was no doubt rewarded in the evolution of early hunter-gatherer populations, where this behavior made them more successful. The other major fraction, looks at sentencing as a way to prevent future occurrences of crimes in the future.

Science fiction has chimed in on this topic with futuristic prison colonies in deep space, a fictionalized revisit of our own history. In earlier, simpler times, we could just ship criminals off to Australia, or sell them into indentured, or bonded servitude. Far cheaper than our modern practice of giving them 3 hots and a cot, with free sex change operations for the lucky few.

I don't think that the emotional need to punish, rewards modern society like it may have during our hunter-gatherer times. Deterrence of future crime has obvious economic and personal benefit in reducing the number of future crime victims.

I have ideas of ways we could employ technology to reduce the burden on society of strict incarceration.  Too many to list here, now..

JR

 

[Gold]

I have little faith in the US justice system. I've avoided it so far and I hope that I never have to have anything to do with it.

I had a brush with thieves in a real estate purchase this past year. I quickly concluded that the justice system would be of little help. I got every penny back after 16 months of brinksmanship. Thieves only understand pressure. I used the justice system for pressure. Always better to deal with things personally I've found.

 

[DaveP]

This has drifted off topic because Matt asked my opinion on capital punishment as a side issue.

My main issue is that laws to prevent injustice for the "little man" (human rights legislation), have been hijacked by lawyers and mass murderers to obtain concessions or publicity.  I believe that these acts, as we have witnessed in Belgium today, are of such magnitude that the perpetrator should lose their human rights for inhuman crimes against humanity.  To afford such criminals  legal human rights after conviction, is an affront to natural justice, the victims and the justice system.

DaveP

 

[Gold]

Seems to me the best gauge of how decent & civilized a society is is how it treats its enemies, not how it treats its friends.

I was making a more general point that personal feelings of justice are not appropriate as policy for society. I don't want the state to have the power to choose whether I live or die.

 

[ungifted]

I think that it's something like lex talionis, the question of power. No human rights at all, It was the conquest of the Enlightenment era, but we live in new dark age. The state have power to choose whether you live or die. Or someone in Libya or Yugoslavia.

 

[JohnRoberts]

This has drifted off topic because Matt asked my opinion on capital punishment as a side issue.

My main issue is that laws to prevent injustice for the "little man" (human rights legislation), have been hijacked by lawyers and mass murderers to obtain concessions or publicity.  I believe that these acts, as we have witnessed in Belgium today, are of such magnitude that the perpetrator should lose their human rights for inhuman crimes against humanity.  To afford such criminals  legal human rights after conviction, is an affront to natural justice, the victims and the justice system.

DaveP

That sounds reminiscent of the difference between simple democracy and a constitutional republic... Distilled down to it's essence the constitution protects "individual rights"  from the tyranny of the masses (doesn't always work as planned) .

Belgium is arguably a little too PC not executing police raids after 7 PM or something like that... I guess even criminals deserve a good night's sleep. (I don't mean to make light of their situation, Belgium is a small country with big country problems right now and need the world's support. )

JR

 

[mattiasNYC]

My main issue is that laws to prevent injustice for the "little man" (human rights legislation), have been hijacked by lawyers and mass murderers to obtain concessions or publicity. 

How so? In what way have those laws been "hijacked"? I said it before; If this ends up in court and the courts rule on it, are you saying the laws have changed or that the laws were incorrectly applied? And if they don't succeed in their legal proceedings, just how were they hijacked if the lawsuits/challenges failed?

I mean, at this point - unless I'm missing something - all I see is you complaining about what these people say, not about any specific legal outcomes. What am I missing here?

"We have the Norwegian mass murderer Breivik giving a Nazi salute in court and protesting about solitary confinement and lack of internet access." That's what you wrote. How is him whining hijacking human rights?

I believe that these acts, as we have witnessed in Belgium today, are of such magnitude that the perpetrator should lose their human rights for inhuman crimes against humanity.

Sure. And that's exactly the line of reasoning they engage in before they blow up their enemy. They simply decide humans aren't worth human rights and blow them up.

To afford such criminals  legal human rights after conviction, is an affront to natural justice, the victims and the justice system.

DaveP

It's by definition not an affront to a justice system to grant legal rights, presuming the definition of a justice system is it being built on, you know, legal rights. or am I misunderstanding something again....?

 

[mattiasNYC]

Belgium is arguably a little too PC not executing police raids after 7 PM or something like that... I guess even criminals deserve a good night's sleep. (I don't mean to make light of their situation, Belgium is a small country with big country problems right now and need the world's support. )

JR

How do you know the Belgian police made a choice between raiding a known suspect's residence and not doing it after 7pm because of some vague PC rationale? And I'm seeing reports on a raid in Schaerbeek yielding materials tied to ISIS.....

!??

 

[JohnRoberts]

Belgium is arguably a little too PC not executing police raids after 7 PM or something like that... I guess even criminals deserve a good night's sleep. (I don't mean to make light of their situation, Belgium is a small country with big country problems right now and need the world's support. )

JR

How do you know the Belgian police made a choice between raiding a known suspect's residence and not doing it after 7pm because of some vague PC rationale? And I'm seeing reports on a raid in Schaerbeek yielding materials tied to ISIS.....

!??

I was wrong but that's why I said "something like 7 PM". The law prohibits raids between 9PM and 5AM (I researched that because you didn't believe me).

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/17/world/europe/belgium-says-law-limiting-raids-may-have-allowed-suspect-in-paris-attacks-to-escape.html?_r=0

I guess 7PM would be too early for terrorists to go to bad... they usually don't die of old age, so are typically young pukes.

I notice the suicide belt maker managed to escape... they also found one explosive belt abandoned (his?)... I guess the brainiacs don't blow themselves up, they use the low-information terrorists for that. 

JR