[Gllug] Greenhouse emissions (was Geforce2)

[Nix]

[Fuck me, this is way off topic :) ]

[And I'm going to drive it further off topic. You've prodded a moral
button; fear the verbosity.]

[Oh, hell, it seems to be rather longer than I thought, too.]

On Thu, 24 Jan 2002, Harry Jackson spake:
> As for the POW bit as far as I am aware the pictures taken where at the
> start of the prisoners internment. I personally would not want a bunch of
> suicidal maniacs capable of an atrocity like 09/11 and spreading anthrax

There is little evidence that the anthrax scares were the work of
al-Qaeda, and some evidence that they were the work of a US nutcase or
nutcases, probably with access to military labs and otherwise limited
resources. (As soon as that evidence came to light the attacks stopped;
odd that, presumably the nutcase was only interested in intensifying the
frenzy over al-Qaeda...)

(Sources: various issues of the Washington Post (online), The Economist,
the FT and the Times. Yes, I know that three of these entities are very
tightly linked :) )

> I know it sounds as if I do not care what happens to these guys. To be
> brutally honest they should be thankful they are alive at all. I do not
> condone cruelty as I would not condone being cruel to an animal but sometime
> rabid animals need to be muzzled. In fact rabid animals are taken to the vet

Consider that these are *not* convicted criminals. These are
*suspects*. i.e., careful consideration has not yet been made regarding
their guilt or innocence. Suspicion is not proof.

Thus it must be assumed that they are innocent. (This follows from any
halfway sane code of morals or ethics; there's no need to read the
letter of the law on this one, it's bleeding obvious.)

PoW conventions (thankfully) permit us to lock up prisoners of war on
the basis that they'd (i) escape or (ii) try to sabotage if they got
loose, and the US has its odious thousand-man-internment going on
anyway, but certainly internment until trial is the *furthest* you can
safely go.

Assuming that individuals who may merely have been located in the wrong
place in a war zone, or who may have been forced into their positions,
are `rabid animals' is extremely dangerous.

(Note that I'm not saying here that this applies to most, or even many
of the `unlawful combatants' --- but there are enough people being held
captive there now that sheer numbers makes it very probable that not
everyone there is a `rabid animal'.)


Aside: I'm not convinced that the US *should* be treating the suspects
in this case as PoWs; the Geneva Convention is not really aimed at this,
but rather at `Powers in conflict'... many of its terms still make
sense, but some are thrown totally out of whack by this. The closest
classification you could make for al-Qaeda fighters is

,----[ I.4.A ]
|  6. Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the
|  enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without
|  having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided
|  they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.
`----

which is rather out of whack (they didn't do anything `on the approach
of the enemy' and their taking up of arms was hardly spontaneous, and
al-Qaeda don't give a shit about the laws and customs of war). There are
provisions for volunteer militias, but the definition of these is fairly
tight and includes `... having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at
a distance', and, again, the laws and customs of war stuff.


The entire Convention was fairly obviously drafted to outlaw the Nazi
and Japanese slave-labour and extermination stuff --- this is, of
course, a praiseworthy goal, but it meant that unconventional conflicts
like this one (`asymmetric warfare') aren't really catered for.

(The Convention is at <http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/91.htm>, btw.)

> and murdered in the UK.

Torture or killing of human beings who have not been convicted of any
crime is the sort of thing that we impose sanctions on other countries
for, and that we went to war with Serbia for. I hope we don't sink to
that level ourselves.

> have lots of replies detailing how far from civilisation I am and that bad
> only leads to more bad.

In jurisprudence, this is not `bad', this is `ripping out the
founding-stone of the law'. Worse than bad.

>                         I like to look at these things from the perspective
> of both parties.

You appear to have forgotten that one party (the suspected `unlawful
combatants') are not necessarily all al-Qaeda madmen. Most of them
almost certainly are --- the US is unlikely to have been too unlucky ---
but we must consider the rights of all of them (if merely not to sink to
their level) and especially of that unknown number who may be innocent
of the charges that are (or rather, have yet to be!) levied against
them.

>                  I am not one to stand on the touchline and slag off the
> people doing the dirty work. It very easy to cry shame when you are a
> million miles from someone trying to spill your guts and rape your mother

It's very easy to describe suspects as rabid animals when you're a
million miles from scenes of wrongful imprisonment and torture (which I
*hope* the US is not resorting to; I doubt they are, they'd be crucified
by the ICRC and Amnesty and the rest of the NGOs if they did, and the
hard-built coalition would crumble like a wet sandcastle).

My maternal great-grandparents grew up in a society where the due
process of law had been short-circuited and abrogated by a government
with insane goals. It killed them. I do *not* think that abrogating
freedoms such as the right to a trial before a duly constituted court of
law or the right to freedom from torture are a good idea, no matter the
nastiness of the accused.

(And they *are* freedoms, as is the right to a jury trial. It is
*always* important to consider these issues not from the point of view
of `we need to put away these evil bastards fast, think of what they are
accused of, they must be insane' but rather `think of what would happen
if the accusation was wrong and these people were innocent victims'.)

> while we watch television have a nice dinner, live in a two up two down
> house with gas central heating and milk delivered to your door. Its a sad

Now imagine living in that house and having the door knocked down and
being dragged off to jail because you'd been accused of child abuse.

Obviously, as a child abuser, you should go to jail at once, right, and
never come out? No need for a trial, you're a suspected child abuser,
and the social workers who found this out have no grudge against you
personally so what they say must be right; after all, they got your
address from another suspected child abuser, so that's proof enough.

(That's a not-terribly-close analogue of what you're saying should
happen to the prisoners in Camp X-Ray.)

> fact that in the society we live in that violence is sometimes the only
> method to put things right.

The entire English legal system is predicated upon (state-sanctioned)
violence *never* being the right way to put things right (when
confronting individuals rather than organized militaries, and even if
they're the latter, once they're prisoners they are considered as
individuals again).

Here and there the English legal system has fallen down on the job
(e.g. the thoroughly regrettable century of nastiness in NI), but that
doesn't change that fundamental.

>                              I would love to live in a world where all
> parties see reason sit around a table and talk things through come to a
> conclusion and shake hands but sadly this is not the case.

... hence we have Tube strikes ;)

> If genocide is being carried out what do we do if talking does not work. In

International law formally says that if it's on someone else's sovereign
territory you ignore it --- but, thankfully, this obvious idiocy has
recently been ignored (viz the Kosovo conflict).

> a highly civilised world peel would keep talking until all the people where
> dead as almost happened in Somalia.

Another complete fsck-up, that was :(
>                                       Are we not morally obliged to stop it
> when it occurs no matter what the cost or would the loss of lives doing it
> through violence be unacceptable to the highly civilised.

We are, I'd say, morally obliged to stop it when it occurs, yes --- but
that doesn't mean `stop it, round up everyone seen carrying a weapon in
the genocide zone, assume they were using the weapons to commit
genocide, and treat them as though they were all individually convicted
of it'. (After all, some of those people may have been carrying weapons
to *protect* themselves against genocide.)

> I know I went off on one here but I know some middle class edjits who love
> to take the moral high ground with no concept of what is happening at the
> coal face.   

Oops. Got me bang to rights there. :)

> Multiple choice
> The guy in the cell knows where the 10000 bomb is complete with detonator.
> It goes off in 24 hours. What do you do???
> 
> A. Have a cup of tea and a chat.
> B. Tell him you cannot harm him but really want to know where its at.
> C. You will tell his mother if he won't co-operate.
> D. Torture him.

I'll rephrase that, I think:

,----[ Multiple choice ]
| The guy in the cell is suspected of knowing where the 10000 bomb is
| complete with detonator. It goes off in 24 hours. What do you do???
| 
| A. Have a cup of tea and a chat.
| B. Tell him you cannot harm him but really want to know where its at.
| C. You will tell his mother if he won't co-operate.
| D. Torture him.
`----

It's now obvious that the appropriate answer is `none of the
above'. (What the appropriate answer *is* in these cases is another
matter; I don't profess to know. A fast-track legal system would be a
nice thing to have...)

Personally, I'd be inclined to point out that if he *does* know where
the bomb is and it goes off and he doesn't squawk, he's not going to see
daylight again. (Most terrorists like to be free to commit their acts of
terror; this may have some effect. I don't know; I'm not an interrogator
so I don't know what techniques are normally used in these cases.)

You can probably point out some of the (hopefully strong) evidence you
have against him, to indicate just how likely it is to see him behind
bars should he not sing.

But, to reiterate, you can't be *sure* he knows where it is without
being telepathic.

> All of the above will have varying degrees of success but if the lives of
> two people where in the hands of one I would do whatever was necessary to
> one to save the two.

You're still assuming an Infallible Magic High-Speed Guilt
Detector. These don't exist. The closest we've got is courts of law, and
they're pretty crap on at least two of these counts; we can rarely apply
them before that 24 hour deadline. :)

-- 
`However, if you want to detect whether (say, 1 in 1000) cars are being
 abducted by bunnies along their route, you've got a whole new problem.'
                              - Scott James Remnant on network problems

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