Yesterday I watched DUers justify and advocate for the torture of a living being.

[F4lconF16]

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Last edited Thu Apr 9, 2015, 05:06 PM - Edit history (1)

I cannot begin to express the pain that reading the threads about the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev brought me. Watching people I thought I knew a bit about, who I respected—often greatly—clamor for the punishment and suffering of another human was literally sickening. At one point I felt physically ill from of the vitriol and hate that was directed not just at Tsarnaev, but at fellow DUers. I made the decision last night to withdraw from any of the discussions, as I could not bear to watch anymore that night. Today, however, I am wading back in—and the filth is deep and thick.

I’m writing this in the hopes that maybe one or two people will see this and change their mind about the purposes of the prison system. At the very least, I hope that a few DUers may understand more about the horrors of solitary confinement.

First, however, I need to bring attention to some of what was said here yesterday. Before I begin my piece, I want to show just how bad it was. I think it is important to realize the depth of the sickness that is around here. I am ashamed to see these posts on what I thought was a compassionate, progressive board.

One other thing: I am in no way advocating for Tsarnaev. What he did was abominable, and breaks my heart. I am in no way excusing, justifying, or sympathizing with his actions. I and others were accused last night of not only wishing him well, but wanting him given things like swimming pools, field trips, massages, pancakes with smiley faces for breakfast every day, or even his freedom. We were told that the reason we are calling for humanity is because he is a pretty young boy and we think he’s cute. I won’t dignify that with a response.

Those of us who were advocating against supermax prisons and the psychological torture of inmates are doing so because we think there should be a baseline of compassion, of mercy, and of decency extended to each and every one of us. We believe that we find our greatest humanity when we can rise above the primitive notions of revenge and punishment. Our compassion is not for Tsarnaev, but for all living beings.

That said, here are a few of the comments, and why I find each one of them to be abhorrent:

Enjoyment of the suffering of others and hoping for pain:

“He was a murderous psycho....let me enjoy the rest of his life forgotten in a cell where he can grow old thinking about what he did to get there.”

I cannot identify with anyone who likes the suffering of another human being. It is a sign of sickness, of something seriously wrong with a person. I will never enjoy pain and suffering, no matter who it is inflicted on or for what reason.

“So, do the clamps go on the nipples or genitals? And how much juice should be used? He is fortunate to be in the hands of the BoP. A father wouldn't be so understanding or concerned. Fuck him.”

I will note that a jury hid this post—however, I included it as an example of the sadism of what many people have been thinking during this process.

“No. He needs to live a long life behind bars. Suffering every day of his miserable life. These nuts crave death. They have death wishes. Death is too good for him. He could live another 70 years. He will be in fear for his life every day in prison, probably isolated from the rest of the population. I wish him bloody diarrhea, torturous mental illness, and any painful disease he could possibly ever contract.”

Running out of things to say. Yet another example of the disgustingly specific sadistic fantasies.

Advocating for ignoring the judicial process and the law, for death:

“Hope they don't waste time on appeals. His guilt is not in question and never was. A swift lethal injection is needed.”

I will never agree that our legal process should be suspended—ever. What little value there is in our current justice system is found in the fact that we theoretically are all treated equally under the law. To want to remove that process and just kill him reduces us to the level of cops that simply shoot people they think need to die.

Stating that any suffering we might inflict is okay:

“He deserves anything that happens to him.”

Anything covers a whole lot. No human being deserves what is done in some of these prisons.

“As I said on another thread, as far as I'm concerned, so long as he never knows another moment of freedom, I don't care what happens to him.”

Same as above. You should care. For every person we torture, we as a society grow sicker.

Specifically wishing for psychological harm of another being:

“He worshipped his brother. He should be reminded a lot about his brother about how much he cared about him. F him.”

Reminding someone of how much they cared for someone who is now dead is emotional abuse. If I saw that in a relationship, I would be worried as hell for that person.

“Life will be even more of a punishment for this animal. I hope he has nightmares every night.”

I don’t. I have no interest in relegating someone to psychological and mental breakdown.

“However, they should get a collection of the mangled body parts of those people they killed and maimed, put them in formaldehyde and have them in his cell so he clearly remembers why he is in there.”

This is depraved. I hope I don’t need to say more. I mean, seriously, what the fuck?

Abandonment of morals for the purpose of revenge:

“I'm not a DP proponent, but I don't care if he gets it.”

“I chose life without parole because I oppose the death penalty but I won't shed any tears if he is executed.”

Both of the above bother me a lot. It hurts me when we execute people. The death penalty is wrong, full stop. I will never be okay with it—no matter what the person did, or how much they deserve it.

Advocating torture through false dilemma fallacies:

“It might be torture but whats your suggestion Holiday Inn”

Pretending that there is nothing else we can do, that somehow we can’t imprison someone without torturing them is pretty messed up. Please, don’t hide it behind “well there’s no other options”—just come out and say it: you’d like him in pain.

Advocating torture through the fallacy of relative privation:

“The "torture" that murderer has to endure for the rest of his miserable life doesn't even come close to the real torture those poor parents have to face the rest of their lives.”

Yes, his pain is not the same type of pain or anywhere near the level of pain that those parents had and have to endure. I truly feel for the people he harmed, but their pain does not justify his pain. It is not acceptable as a society to torture someone. And here I thought that we figured that out during the Bush years. Sad how the people that called him out find this acceptable.

It’s too hard to not torture people:

“I'm sorry, but how much juggling would be required to make life in prison NOT "torture"?”

I don’t really give a flying fuck how much effort it takes—it is not acceptable to torture someone because we’re too lazy or unmotivated to find out a better solution.

When it’s a bad person, it’s not torture:

“To call it torture is to underestimate just how dangerous those kind of people really are.”

The degree of crime has no bearing on what torture is. It is torture done to them or anyone else.

If he didn’t want to be tortured, he shouldn’t have done it:

“The answer seems to be, don't engage in behaviors that would lead the folks deciding such matters to think that not only do you need to be incarcerated, but you are a threat to other inmates.”

This is perhaps the only comment I found that I understood. I disagree with it, but I understand it. Unfortunately, many people subjected to the torture of solitary confinement should not be there. Markpkessinger said it better than I could have:

"The problem with people who say “I don’t care what happens to {fill in the blank} is that, invariably, we are talking about more than one case or one individual. And regardless of how heinous that one individual's actions may have been, invariably, some not-so-heinous criminals get caught up in it, too. The article mentions one Jack Powers, imprisoned for burglary as a kid, released in 1982. then married and started two businesses, both of which were bankrupt by the end of the decade. He began robbing banks -- BUT WAS NEVER ARMED, he merely passed notes to the teller demanding money. IN prison, a friend of his was murdered by the Aryan Brotherhood. Powers cooperated with prosecutors, believing he could cut a deal to get out of prison earlier, but then had to be placed in protective custody. When he got wind that prison officials were planning on transferring him to the general population, which would have put him at risk for being killed for his role in the convictions of four members of the Aryan Brotherhood, he escaped. So he wound up getting sent to ADX because he was deemed a flight risk, never mind that he was fleeing for his life.

When we talk about the criminal justice and penal systems, the conditions in prisons or the death penalty, it is important to remember that we are NEVER talking about just a single, individual case, and that invariably, people who do not remotely deserve to be kept under such brutal conditions inevitably will be. Any moral or ethical approach to these issues MUST factor in not only the 'easy' cases involving notorious, brutal criminals, but the harder cases, which often involve less violent, or even non-violent such as Powers, prisoners who will inevitably get swept up into the system.”

But enough with those.

To begin the real focus of this post, I would like to explain why I think that compassion towards all living beings is not only important, but necessary for a continuation of a humanitarian society and further development of our morality and understanding of each other. Compassion means that we hold a respect for other beings. It means that we empathize with them. It means that we behave with a minimum of decency towards others around us. It means that even under the most dire of circumstances and in the hardest of times, despite personal challenges or feelings, we will do our best to continue to hold that respect in our actions and words.

Respect in this case does not imply that we respect another’s actions; instead, it means that we view them as something more than an inanimate object. I treat a dog differently than I would a rock. I do so because I firmly believe that the dog, unlike the rock, experiences the world. It is a fellow traveler in this temporary world of life; something that lives, breathes, understands.

Those living beings are deserving of my respect because they have just as much inherent value in the universe as I do. I am but a different type of being. As an atheist, I also see no evidence for a life other than the one I am lucky enough to have. Life is the most incredibly precious thing that exists, for me. We are here, and we are gone, and we have but a quick moment to experience the beauty of the world around us. If I deny the respect I hold for life to another living being, I diminish my own.

The Buddhist perspective is that everyone exists with some amount of basic goodness. That is not an easy view to reconcile with the horrifying things that happen in this world. But I take that perspective anyways, because I think to do otherwise denies my own humanity. If I cannot see the inherent good in psychopaths and murderers, I cannot respect them. If I do not respect them, I do not respect the value of my own life. I see those people as sick; there is no way a sane, healthy mind exists within them. With luck, future medical advances may help us to help them. But for now, I must see their humanity in order to avoid denying my own.

This is why I am so hurt by the denials of humanity that were posted here and continue to be posted here. I see people denying my own humanity when they advocate for what amounts to the torture of a living being. I see denials of my own humanity in our society’s actions. I am pained that that is being taken from me.

Supermax prisons use the idea of solitary confinement and sensory deprivation to induce confusion and terror in their inmates. Those tactics are simply inhumane. I would proceed to go into just why they are so horrible, but as evidenced by my thread yesterday, people will refuse to believe me, or feign ignorance, or pretend things really aren’t that bad. So I’m going to just quote a few sources, as they speak for themselves.

http://ccrjustice.org/solitary-factsheet

“Today, tens of thousands of individuals across the country are detained inside cramped, concrete, windowless cells in a state of near-total solitude for between 22 and 24 hours a day. The cells have a toilet and a shower, and a slot in the door large enough for a guard to slip a food tray through. Prisoners in solitary confinement are frequently deprived of telephone calls and contact visits. “Recreation” involves being taken, often in handcuffs and shackles, to another solitary cell where prisoners can pace alone for an hour before being returned to their cell.

Ever since solitary confinement came into existence, it has been used as a tool of repression. While it is justified by corrections officials as necessary to protect prisoners and guards from violent superpredators, all too often it is imposed on individuals, particularly prisoners of color, who threaten prison administrations in an altogether different way. Consistently, jailhouse lawyers and jailhouse doctors, who administer to the needs of their fellow prisoners behind bars, are placed in solitary confinement. They are joined by political prisoners from various civil rights and independence movements.”

Solitary Confinement is Torture

“The devastating psychological and physical effects of prolonged solitary confinement are well documented by social scientists: prolonged solitary confinement causes prisoners significant mental harm and places them at grave risk of even more devastating future psychological harm.

Researchers have demonstrated that prolonged solitary confinement causes a persistent and heightened state of anxiety and nervousness, headaches, insomnia, lethargy or chronic tiredness, nightmares, heart palpitations, and fear of impending nervous breakdowns. Other documented effects include obsessive ruminations, confused thought processes, an oversensitivity to stimuli, irrational anger, social withdrawal, hallucinations, violent fantasies, emotional flatness, mood swings, chronic depression, feelings of overall deterioration, as well as suicidal ideation.”

More at the link.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/magazine/inside-americas-toughest-federal-prison.html?_r=0

“According to David Cloud, a senior associate at the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to the reform of the criminal-justice system, “The research is pretty conclusive: Since people started looking at this, even 200 years ago, when a guy named Francis Gray studied 4,000 people in ‘silent prisons,’ the studies have found that the conditions themselves can cause mental illness, stress, trauma.” The devastating effects of solitary confinement, even on those who showed no previous signs of psychological problems, are now so broadly accepted by mental-health professionals that policy makers are finally taking notice. Last year the New York State attorney general approved a deal forbidding the placement of minors and mentally ill prisoners in solitary; in January, New York City banned solitary for anyone under 21. Gov. John W. Hickenlooper of Colorado signed a similar bill at the urging of the state corrections chief, Rick Raemisch, who spent a night in solitary confinement and wrote about it in a New York Times Op-Ed, concluding that its overuse is “counterproductive and inhumane.” As Cloud told me, “Even if you tried to employ solitary confinement with the most humane intentions, people are still going to lose their minds and hurt themselves.”

...snip...

He enlisted Dr. Doris Gundersen, a Denver-based forensic psychiatrist, who was allowed inside the ADX as part of his legal team. After evaluating 45 prisoners, she estimated that 70 percent met the criteria for at least one serious mental illness. She and Aro spoke to inmates who swallowed razor blades, inmates who were left for days or weeks shackled to their beds (where they were routinely allowed to soil themselves), an inmate who ate his own feces so regularly that staff psychiatrists made a special note only when he did so with unusual “voracity.” A number of prisoners were taken off prescribed medications. (Until recently prison regulations forbade the placement of inmates on psychotropic medication in the Control Unit, the most restrictive section of the ADX, as, by definition, such medication implies severe mental illness.) Others claimed that they were denied treatment, aside from “therapy classes” on the prison television’s educational station and workbooks with titles like “Cage Your Rage,” despite repeated written requests. (The ADX lawsuit says that only two psychologists and one part-time psychiatrist serve the entire prison.)

...snip...

Over the next decade, Powers, by any rational accounting, lost his mind. He cut off both earlobes, chewed off a finger, sliced through his Achilles’ tendon, pushed staples into his face and forehead, swallowed a toothbrush and then tried to cut open his abdomen to retrieve it and injected what he considered “a pretty fair amount of bacteria-laden fluid” into his brain cavity after smashing a hole in his forehead. In 2005, after slicing open his scrotum and removing a testicle, Powers was sent to the medical center for federal prisoners in Springfield, Mo., for treatment, where a psychiatrist determined he was “not in need of inpatient psychiatric treatment or psychotropic medication” and that his behavior “was secondary to his antisocial disorder.” When he was returned to Springfield four years later, after slashing his wrists and writing “American Gulag” in blood on his bedsheets, the doctor wrote, “Considerations that (Powers) has some form of psychosis, thought disorder or mental illness are unfounded.”

...snip...

On the morning of May 1, 2010, Vega was found dead in his cell. He had hanged himself with a bedsheet. After Vega’s death, Powers shaved his head and began decorating his body with what he would describe as his “Avatar stripes,” a reference to the striped blue aliens in the James Cameron movie. Using a razor blade to make tiny cuts in his skin and then rubbing carbon-paper dust into the wounds, Powers tattooed spiky black slashes along his arms, legs, neck, skull, under his eyes and around his Adam’s apple. A photograph from 2011 presents an astounding transformation: The smirking, shaggy-haired young bank robber who entered the federal prison system in 1990 no longer existed, and the man who replaced him looked like something out of a nightmare.”

Much more at the link.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/03/30/hellhole

“And what happened to them was physical. EEG studies going back to the nineteen-sixties have shown diffuse slowing of brain waves in prisoners after a week or more of solitary confinement. In 1992, fifty-seven prisoners of war, released after an average of six months in detention camps in the former Yugoslavia, were examined using EEG-like tests. The recordings revealed brain abnormalities months afterward; the most severe were found in prisoners who had endured either head trauma sufficient to render them unconscious or, yes, solitary confinement. Without sustained social interaction, the human brain may become as impaired as one that has incurred a traumatic injury.

...snip...

After a few months without regular social contact, however, his experience proved no different from that of the P.O.W.s or hostages, or the majority of isolated prisoners whom researchers have studied: he started to lose his mind. He talked to himself. He paced back and forth compulsively, shuffling along the same six-foot path for hours on end. Soon, he was having panic attacks, screaming for help. He hallucinated that the colors on the walls were changing. He became enraged by routine noises—the sound of doors opening as the guards made their hourly checks, the sounds of inmates in nearby cells. After a year or so, he was hearing voices on the television talking directly to him. He put the television under his bed, and rarely took it out again.

...snip...

The argument makes intuitive sense. If the worst of the worst are removed from the general prison population and put in isolation, you’d expect there to be markedly fewer inmate shankings and attacks on corrections officers. But the evidence doesn’t bear this out. Perhaps the most careful inquiry into whether supermax prisons decrease violence and disorder was a 2003 analysis examining the experience in three states—Arizona, Illinois, and Minnesota—following the opening of their supermax prisons. The study found that levels of inmate-on-inmate violence were unchanged, and that levels of inmate-on-staff violence changed unpredictably, rising in Arizona, falling in Illinois, and holding steady in Minnesota.

...snip...

In this country, in June of 2006, a bipartisan national task force, the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons, released its recommendations after a yearlong investigation. It called for ending long-term isolation of prisoners. Beyond about ten days, the report noted, practically no benefits can be found and the harm is clear—not just for inmates but for the public as well. Most prisoners in long-term isolation are returned to society, after all. And evidence from a number of studies has shown that supermax conditions—in which prisoners have virtually no social interactions and are given no programmatic support—make it highly likely that they will commit more crimes when they are released. Instead, the report said, we should follow the preventive approaches used in European countries.”

Much more at the link. One of the best articles I’ve read on this. If you support supermax detention facilities at the moment, read this.

From our right wing conservative justice Anthony Kennedy:

“Kennedy, traditionally considered the swing vote among the current set of justices, recalled a recent case before the U.S. Supreme Court in which the defendant had been in solitary confinement for 25 years, and “lost his mind.”

“Solitary confinement literally drives men mad,” he said. He pointed out that European countries group difficult prisoners in cells of three or four where they have human contact, which “seems to work much better.” He added that “we haven’t given nearly the study, nearly enough thought, nearly enough investigative resources to looking at our correction system.”

Kennedy’s comments come just weeks after a federal review of U.S. solitary confinement policy also found that the United States holds more inmates in solitary confinement than any other developed nation. Confinement typically involves isolation in an often windowless cell with a steel door for 23 hours a day, with almost no human contact. The treatment has been found to have a psychological impact in as many as a few days, though, as Justice Kennedy pointed out, many are held for decades. In the wake of the new report, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) called upon the Federal Bureau of Prisons to alter its practices.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/21/opinion/my-night-in-solitary.html

“First thing you notice is that it’s anything but quiet. You’re immersed in a drone of garbled noise — other inmates’ blaring TVs, distant conversations, shouted arguments. I couldn’t make sense of any of it, and was left feeling twitchy and paranoid. I kept waiting for the lights to turn off, to signal the end of the day. But the lights did not shut off. I began to count the small holes carved in the walls. Tiny grooves made by inmates who’d chipped away at the cell as the cell chipped away at them.

For a sound mind, those are daunting circumstances. But every prison in America has become a dumping ground for the mentally ill, and often the “worst of the worst” — some of society’s most unsound minds — are dumped in Ad Seg.

...snip...

Terry Kupers, a psychiatrist and expert on confinement, described in a paper published last year the many psychological effects of solitary. Inmates reported nightmares, heart palpitations and “fear of impending nervous breakdowns.” He pointed to research from the 1980s that found that a third of those studied had experienced “paranoia, aggressive fantasies, and impulse control problems ... In almost all instances the prisoners had not previously experienced any of these psychiatric reactions.”

...snip...

Eventually, I broke a promise to myself and asked an officer what time it was. 11:10 a.m. I felt as if I’d been there for days. I sat with my mind. How long would it take before Ad Seg chipped that away? I don’t know, but I’m confident that it would be a battle I would lose.”

More at the link.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/20/solitary-confinement-psychological-effects-sarah-shourd

“Scientific studies have shown that it can take less than two days in solitary confinement for brainwaves to shift towards delirium or stupor (pdf). For this reason, the United Nations has called on all countries to ban solitary confinement – except in exceptional circumstances, and even then to impose a limit of no longer than 15 days so that any permanent psychological damage can be averted. Shourd spent a total of 410 days in solitary and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after her release. She still has trouble sleeping. But since returning home, she has spent much of her time trying to draw attention to the plight of more than 80,000 Americans who are held in isolation on any given day, some of whom do not count their stay in days or months, but in years and even decades.

Solitary confinement fell out of favor in American prisons for much of the last century, until a building boom of Supermax or control-unit prisons began in the early 1990’s. You know, when being “tough on crime” was all the rage. It still is; being “smart on crime” still isn’t. By 2005, 40 states were operating Supermax facilities, the physical design of which served to severely isolate prisoners both from the outside world and from their fellow inmates. Despite the extreme harshness of life in these prisons, where inmates are often held in tiny, windowless cells with limited or no access to the outdoors, the average stays far exceeds the UN’s recommended 15-day maximum.

Shourd told me that after two months of next to no human contact in her solitary cell, her mind began to slip. One of the biggest problems with solitary confinement, she said, is that it’s completely the opposite of the point of prison: giving inmates the chance to improve themselves.

“You want to be productive, to use your time well, but you can’t when your brain is being assaulted with mental deprivation. I would spend all day reading the same paragraph over and over again, unable to understand it – and end up throwing the book at the wall.”

She had to go on hunger strike for five days before she was finally allowed to visit her fellow hostages, blindfolded in a padded interrogation room. Eventually, however, Shourd was allowed to have brief but daily contact visits with her two friends. This slightly more normal human interaction kept her from slipping into total, and possibly irretrievable, decline.”

And more, and more, and more:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/solitary-confinement-shane-bauer

http://solitarywatch.com/2014/12/05/un-committee-against-torture-says-u-s-must-reform-its-use-of-solitary-confinement/

http://antitorture.org/new-solitary-confinement/

http://www.insidescience.org/content/solitary-confinement-form-torture/1569

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/solitary-confinement-torture

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/10/29/amir.fakhravar.iran.torture/

http://io9.com/why-solitary-confinement-is-the-worst-kind-of-psycholog-1598543595

...

THIS IS NOT OPINION. THIS IS SCIENTIFIC, MEDICAL FACT. SOLITARY CONFIMENT IS TORTURE.

...

There is no excuse to support this. Period. The evidence is overwhelming, and, as someone posted in another thread, it is on par with denying global warming. And I’d say that’s true—except that in this case, you are denying the intimate destruction and abuse of a living being. And if after all this, you still support it?

Fuck you. I have no words for what I think of you.

There is more to discuss, however. There is still the issue of using prisons as tools for punishment and revenge, instead of rehabilitation and the protection of society. That we still in this day and age focus on punishing people is sadistic. We have a need as a society to inflict pain on people for what they did to others—and that is a brutal way to live. An eye leaves the whole world blind. Our society cannot claim to be a just, moral society and yet continue to view the prison system in the way we do now.

I will start with an excellent post from lapislzi:

“You could argue that in many cases, true justice is impossible. The dead cannot be brought back to life, the burned building cannot be resurrected in any meaningful way, the despoiled cannot be unraped. That's a fact of life. So, what can we, as compassionate human beings, do for the cause of justice in an unjust world?

Meting out punishment in measure is a poor substitute. It solves nothing and does nothing to advance the cause of justice. You can only kill the murderer once, and it demoralizes society to do it at all. Is that who we want to be as a people? Punishers and vengeance-seekers? Does that ennoble anyone, or just put the judge and the jury on the same level with the miscreant

I cannot get behind killing killers any more than I can get behind any other barbaric forms of revenge and punishment.”

Jail cannot be a method by which society punishes people. It must be meant to rehabilitate first and foremost. There is a critical difference between punishment and restraint. Restraint is how we teach children (or should)—many, many studies have shown that the more harshly children are punished, the more violent they become. When we do it on a massive scale as a society, we reap those same results on a massive scale. The only purpose that a prison can have is to establish a new pattern of non-violent behavior while simultaneously restraining inmates from effecting more harm on the population.

Sweden’s system realizes this, which is why it is one of the most effective systems in the world. They are literally closing prisons because they don’t have enough people coming back into them. Rehabilitation reduces prison violence, reduces recidivism, helps people to re-enter society with a support system, teaches them social and work skills, saves huge amounts of money, and is, above all, the humane way to treat people. We must treat prisoners with the same amount of respect we expect them to show when they return to society.

Anyways, I’m about done. I was going to write a fair bit more on restraint vs. punishment and the purpose of our system, but I need to go eat lunch, and I'm kinda burnt. Hopefully people will actually read this entire post, though I sincerely doubt it. $20 says that half the people just respond angrily at me for calling them torture supporters. Ah well, this made me feel better after the shit-show that was yesterday, anyways.

(By the way, went through some readings from the Dalai Lama to help write this, and that is a man who I have more respect for than almost anyone else. Wow.)

[sabrina 1]

1. Thank for holding on to your humanity despite the cultural climate we now live in. Years

of propaganda from the Right regarding their opinion of what 'justice' means, has seeped into the Dem side of the aisle.

Those comments are disgusting and would have been deleted on the old DU when Dems claimed to be the party of morals.

Our system CLAIMS to be based on JUSTICE not REVENGE, but Fox, Limbaugh et al have had huge success in eliminating rational thinking in this society.

Someone said that we should be careful when go after monsters, lest WE become the monster.

Looks like this country hasn't grasped that concept.

And yes, we are the monsters we claim to be slaying. There isn't much doubt about that.

I once had hope that OUR side would bring this country back from the abyss Bush/Cheney dragged us into.

I do not hope for that anymore.

But THANK YOU for still clinging to the idea of a more evolved society.

Some day, maybe, but not in the near future I'm afraid.

[Agschmid]

43. +1

[zeemike]

46. Damn, you said all I wanted to say in the first reply.

So I will ditto this...and it shows that some of us did not ditch our principles for some kind of party loyalty or something like that.

[rhett o rick]

53. Once again you said it better than I can.

[Bettie]

78. Nothing to add

You said what I would have.

[LanternWaste]

2. It helps to realize there is a vast difference between

It helps to realize there is a vast difference between those simply venting a visceral negative reaction to his actions (most responses on that thread) and those half-witted dolts who truly advocate torture (three responses on that thread).

[F4lconF16]

3. As I said in the other thread...

I wish that were true. I have known too many people personally who have said those things to believe that many of them don't mean every word.

[sabrina 1]

7. It also helps to realize that what we once thought, back during the Bush era, about

our side, was completely wrong. It is clear to me now, that I was extremely naive, expecting NEVER to see comments like that, which I saw regularly on right wing sites, on a Democratic site.

It also helps to have abandoned once held expectations for our side, which now minimizes the shock I felt the first time I saw apologists for torture on the Dem side.

[markpkessinger]

68. Thank you, Sabrina . . .

. . . couldn't have said it better!

[sabrina 1]

4. One more thing. The Boston Bombing SHOULD HAVE BEEN STOPPED. It COULD have been stopped.

Where was the NSA AFTER we received warnings about these people?

Clear warnings did not trigger the NSA to start delving into their 'meta data' collection, which they told, would 'only be accessed when there was a good reason'.


Lies, and more lies.

Had they WANTED to do so, they could have checked out the 'meta data' and would have been able to see the phone calls to Chechnya and elsewhere.

Unbelievably those looking our for security stated they had followed up on the warnings they got, and saw no reason to be concerned about these bombers.

And no one has a problem with this?

On DU?

[hrmjustin]

5. I don't want to see him tortured or killed.

I want him in jail for life.

[F4lconF16]

11. I plan on addressing that in a future post.

Life, maybe. Life without chance of parole? I disagree with that.

[hrmjustin]

15. I don't think he should ever get out.

I think he would do it again.

[F4lconF16]

21. At the moment?

Yes. In 40 years? People change. Though not often in the brutality of the system we have now.

[hrmjustin]

23. Well that may or may not be true.

Time will tell.

I think that his crime which has been proven should take him out of our society for life.

Reasonable people can disagree and I am glad it is.Not up to me. I would hate to sit in judgement of another in real life. Giving an opinion is one thing but actually doing the judging of another is not for me.

[F4lconF16]

24. Yes, I couldn't agree more with that.

I would not want to be sitting on that jury or another. I would for fear of a right-wing nut getting in instead of me, but I would hate to do so.

[hrmjustin]

25. It is hard to sit in judgment IRL.

[samsingh]

50. i would happily sit on the jury and ensure justice was done and a message

was sent to other would-be killers that they will pay for their violent crimes.

[F4lconF16]

54. That is not justice.

That is revenge. I won't be responding.

[samsingh]

59. not surprising since i'm not a murderer

[Elmer S. E. Dump]

117. No, it's called deterrence.

[Bettie]

82. The problem with that thought process is

that other would-be killers don't generally sit and think about what happens when they get caught, because they don't believe they will or they believe that their cause (whatever it may be) is more important than any punishment they may receive.

These messages don't deter anything, but they make people looking for vengeance happy.

[TeeYiYi]

89. People don't change...

A cautionary tale:

The Scorpion and the Frog

A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the
scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The
frog asks, "How do I know you won't sting me?" The scorpion
says, "Because if I do, I will die too."

The frog is satisfied, and they set out, but in midstream,
the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of
paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown,
but has just enough time to gasp "Why?"

Replies the scorpion: "Its my nature..."

TYY

[F4lconF16]

120. But many do.

There are countless examples of people that have learned, that are entirely different people. There are many who would dearly love to do nothing else but turn back the clock and begin again. And I say countless, because our system prevents us from ever knowing how many might have changed, have changed.

Not everyone will. But many do.

[TeeYiYi]

136. I suppose anything is possible...

...but the probability is unlikely.

I don't believe that cold blooded, calculating, murderous bombing terrorists change their stripes. That's just not a bet I'd be willing to gamble on by offering parole.

TYY

[Logical]

20. Wow, cant wait to read that post. No way to justify letting him out. nt

[steve2470]

57. that's how I feel also nt

[RandiFan1290]

6. K&R

[F4lconF16]

19. My all-time favorite song.

Thank you.

[Mnemosyne]

60. Thank you, so moving still crying. nt

[Chemisse]

113. Beautiful

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. Revenge is not partisan

it is part of the culture DNA, and those who believe it is partisan are living a fantasy.

[Chemisse]

119. It is a primitive emotional response.

We can rise above it with some introspection, an understanding of the nature of humans, and empathy.

I generally think of Republicans as being driven by their base urges (greed, hatred, vengeance), and expect Democrats to be more intelligent and have a wider perspective.

I'm often disappointed.

[nadinbrzezinski]

122. I gave that ghost a long time ago

so I am not disappointed. On the other hand, at times I am surprised... in a good way. But my mind left the partisan bandwagon a while ago...

[Maedhros]

9. I have a similar reaction to those DUers who advocate and condone

the murder of American citizens at the whim of the President, without due process, and with no accountability.

[closeupready]

10. DU is a small pond, but with malicious intruders who come here merely to disrupt.

I suspect that some of those who support Supermax are malicious intruders.

Others who voiced support are misguided Democrats. Others have been victimized by violent criminals, and are simply voicing feelings, not rational thoughts, in response to the story.

My advice to you is to make judicious use of the ignore feature, trash threads where people are shitting all over it, avoid painful topics ...

K&R

[cali]

12. thank you so much for the care and time you put into this. big k&r.

[markpkessinger]

69. +1 n/t

[DeadLetterOffice]

108. Another +1

Very articulate and well-reasoned as well as being impassioned.

[Throd]

13. Is solitary confinement the new DU litmus test?

[closeupready]

14. And I just noticed now that 3 of 9 other currents posts are invisible to me; Ignore User saved

my day there, hehe.

[F4lconF16]

18. I'd use it, but I'd miss all the posts that are those subthreads.

Which sometimes have really valuable information for me. Glad it works for you

[RobinA]

16. Great Post

[beam me up scottie]

17. Outstanding.

I am truly sorry for the way you were treated yesterday, the accusations leveled at you because you wanted people to realize what they were advocating were outrageous. I'm amazed that you didn't lose your temper, kudos.

This op proves beyond a doubt that prolonged solitary confinement is torture. Imo, people who want to torture others are no better than the criminals they hate, and some are far worse, because they should know better.


Thank you for standing up for what is right, for everyone.

[ann---]

22. Until the death

penalty is banned in every state in this country, America
will be listed down there with the most violent third world
nations and terrorist nations.

When are we going to learn that revenge is NOT justice.
Very sad for America.

[Rex]

26. Welcome to the real world! Have you not been on this planet for very long?

I am shocked that you are shocked! First time you realize that the people around you are one step away from base animals, is a real shockers I admit.

Seriously, I never ever expect other humans to be unconditional with compassion. Most humans don't seem to be designed that way.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

27. When I was a young man a young woman I knew was murdered by serial killer Gerald Stano

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1873&dat=19831120&id=lYofAAAAIBAJ&sjid=4NIEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4127,2757874&hl=en


She taught me how to play backgammon and we use to play it on the beach all the time...She went missing and her missing became a big topic of conversation...The details are hazy now to me because it's been damn near forty years since she was murdered. The long and short of it was Stano gave her a ride, he asked for sex, she rejected his entreaties, so he put a knife in her chest. He killed several other young women.


I oppose the death penalty...My religion informs me that only God gets to give and take life. That being said I shed no tears when Gerald Stano was executed and should Dzhokhar Tsarnaev be executed I will shed no tears for him. His unspeakable crimes demand he be separated from civil society the rest of his life.

I also distance myself from folks he say he should be tortured. My religion informs me to oppose that too.

[F4lconF16]

32. I am sorry for your loss.

I can't imagine I would either, OP to the contrary. It is a bit different on a personal level. The man who raped and beat my best friend all through high school...I don't think there would be a tear there either.

What tears I would shed are for my society and my community.

Glad you don't support inflicting pain on others.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

85. I was the person you cited here...

Last edited Thu Apr 9, 2015, 06:21 PM - Edit history (1)

“I chose life without parole because I oppose the death penalty but I won't shed any tears if he is executed.”

I oppose the death penalty with ever fiber of my being... I would have even have opposed it for Adolf Eichmann but I just can't feel "bad" when it is imposed on really "bad" people.

Not all feelings can be fit into a little box...

But again, wanting to torture somebody is messed up...

[F4lconF16]

101. You are right.

I am sorry that I have insinuated you did anything wrong in saying that. I will remove it if you would like me to.

I went through these threads this morning, delving into the insanity of that other thread in order to find some of what I had seen yesterday. I found all I remembered, and unfortunately, more. I picked up any posts that struck me as wrong, and you got caught in that net. You are absolutely right that there is often more to a post than what we see. I apologize.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

127. No need to delete it...I just wanted to clarify...The internet is a blunt instrument...

I believe in a culture of life, from the womb to the tomb...I personally oppose abortion, the death penalty, and euthanasia but I also realize and believe we have sovereignty over our own bodies and I am unwilling to summon the awesome power of the state to bend my fellow citizens to my wishes on matters of conscience...

I was a caretaker for twelve years to my mom who passed away at 90, the older she got the more care she needed... That experience made me very aware of how precious life is.

[NuclearDem]

28. I wish I could rec this a thousand times.

[marym625]

31. I'm with you there.

[marym625]

29. I cannot possibly rec this enough

I was in tears last night reading some of this. I am again now. It breaks my heart and worse, it has shown me a side of people I wish I never knew about.

I hope that some will read this and do some serious soul searching. But after what I saw yesterday, I won't hold my breath.

Thank you so much for this beautiful, much needed post

[Mnemosyne]

42. Hear, hear! [phone] nt

[KittyWampus]

30. nevermind.

[cwydro]

112. Ditto.

[Blue_Tires]

33. Sadly, this is the *new* DU

Where Putin, Assad and Gaddafi are the "good guys" and folks can't tell which way is up

[bvar22]

63. My, what a creative imagination.

Last edited Thu Apr 9, 2015, 06:23 PM - Edit history (1)

Can you point to any post at DU that has called Putin, Assad, or Gaddafi "good guys"?
I think not.

With your creative imagination, you should try writing Comic Books.
Comic Books are as binary and exaggerated as your post.

[MyNameGoesHere]

80. HaHa!

What?

[delrem]

128. It can be easy to channel George W. Bush

If it weren't so easy, the WoT wouldn't be happening as it still is.

And for those who'd rather channel a Dem promoting the identical message:

See how easy it is?

[elias49]

131. I think most folks CAN tell...

I guess you're not a member of that group.

[Demeter]

35. Yeah, well, you should see what DU does to its own

It's beyond shocking.

[PufPuf23]

36. Thank you for writing this. nt

[G_j]

37. thank you Mod for unlocking this!

[F4lconF16]

38. A big K&R to the mods--thank you!

[G_j]

40. and

thank you for a well thought out post. Humans have many potentials. Let us nourish the good ones.

[Desert805]

39. Did you type half as many words about the pain

You felt looking at images of his suffering victims?


Fuck that guy, fuck all guys like him, and long may he rot. Don't really care.

[F4lconF16]

45. I didn't need to.

There are no words for that. That pain will be around forever.

But we cannot use it as justification for more pain.

[samsingh]

56. it surprises my how much energy people spend supporting mass murderers, yet don't

write about the victims.

this post makes me want to cry - because I find it ignores victims entirely and tries to make us feel sorrow because we are being too harsh on the mass murderer.

I'm glad he's been found guilty. now I hope for a severe penalty for this piece of shit.

[NuclearDem]

102. As opposed to using the victims as human shields

to justify torture and inhumanity people wouldn't even consider otherwise.

[cwydro]

115. Yes.

You said it.

[Logical]

109. LOL, enjoy your short stay. nt

[nadinbrzezinski]

41. Good thst it got unlocked

[samsingh]

44. maybe the amount of time writing this defense of a mass murdering terrorist could be spent

comforting the families victims and thinking about the victims. Pictures of the poor boy waiting for his father to finish the race only to be killed by bombs set by these assholes make me cry.

I hope he gets the death penalty. I hope anyone who supports his murderous activity feel some of the pain that his victims felt.

[F4lconF16]

47. We disagree.

And I just won $20.

[samsingh]

51. donate the money to a victim's fund

[F4lconF16]

58. Next time I have $20

I will be sending it to a prison human rights group. I wouldn't normally be this snarky on a topic this serious, but your responses have been cruel and unnecessary. Be glad the money is going to help a suffering person in prison.

[samsingh]

67. you are making pretty light of victim tragedy from what i can see and with your response

[sub.theory]

48. Have to admit, I don't have much sympathy but permanent solitary confinment is wrong

I understand where you are coming from, but I find it hard to muster much sympathy for this terrorist. True he's a fellow human being, but a thoroughly depraved one. He certainly didn't give the slightest care about the welfare of his victims. The only reason I hope he doesn't get the death penalty is to deny him the ability to be a martyr to his fellow jihadi sociopaths. Not because he doesn't fully deserve it.

That said, I agree that permanent solitary confinement is cruel and unusual punishment. He deserves no coddling, but this country should be above torture. I agree with you on that.

[samsingh]

61. he's not a fellow human being. he's a violent murderer and terrorist.

[jeff47]

74. Despite your need to separate those in order to justify harming him,

he is both a fellow human being and a violent murderer.

We are not required to be as evil as him.

[sub.theory]

76. Being a violent murderer and terrorist doesn't make him no longer human

I completely agree with you that Tsarnaev is a murderer and terrorist. You'll get no objection from me about locking him up tight forever. I have zero sympathy for him or his crap defense that his brother made him do it. He's a depraved human being, but still a human being. The US should be above torturing people and there is indeed evidence that long term solitary confinement is psychological torture. Not saying he doesn't deserve his lumps - he's in prison - but he shouldn't be tortured.

[Man from Pickens]

79. are you a human being?

you seem to have lost your humanity there

pretty damn ironic that you have a tag line echoing Eric Garner yet your rhetoric echoes those who think he deserved to die for some imaginary resistance to an unlawful arrest

if you have a guide to your positions on criminal justice matters that is more than "whatever is popular at the time", let's hear it

[MyNameGoesHere]

83. I don't think you can change facts

he is a human being. Just saying he is not doesn't make it true.

[nadinbrzezinski]

88. Irony

and I will leave at at that.

[closeupready]

92. A...yup. Sure is. Particularly with THAT specific one.

And glad to see you back, Nadine!

[nadinbrzezinski]

94. There are very few threads I will more than just read

they are very close to my current line of interest.

It happens to be reflected in that signature actually.

[NuclearDem]

99. If anyone ever wondered how prison rape and violence against inmates became acceptable

I would direct them to this.

Quite literally dehumanizing and otherizing.

[immoderate]

132. The point is: are WE human?

Aspects of which I'll allude are NOT to kill, NOT to torture, and even NOT to seek revenge. These things play to emotion but bear no benefit to our civilization.

--imm

[steve2470]

49. the desire for vengeance is as old as human history

As progressives, we're supposed to fight that desire. I'd like to think I could, if one of my family was murdered. I would at least attempt to. I am sure I would feel that desire for vengeance and even sadism, I'm not going to lie.

King James Bible

Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

http://biblehub.com/romans/12-19.htm

[NoJusticeNoPeace]

52. Excellent point. We also are a nation which believes in the death penalty, which couldnt

be more barbaric.

[LiberalArkie]

55. The United States is not a very forgiving nation unlike most civilized nations. We are a very vengeful nation.

[sub.theory]

64. Revenge? More Like Justice

Tsarnaev is a convicted terrorist who sought to kill on a mass scale. He is scum and he deserves to never set foot outside of a prison ever again. I don't support torturing him, but let's not pretend he's some sort of a victim here. He's getting punished for what he did. That's justice, not revenge.

[Logical]

110. Please name a country that has the death penalty that you think is progressive. nt

[sub.theory]

133. In some cases I do support the death penalty

I don't support the death penalty for Tsarnaev because he doesn't deserve to be made into some sort of warped martyr. It's not because he doesn't deserve it. Mass murderers are one class of people that I have no problem in giving the ultimate punishment. I'm well aware that this is not the popular position on DU, but it's the way that I feel and I don't think that forfeits my being a progressive.

I don't, however, support the use of torture including long term solitary confinement.

Edit: I fail to see how life in imprisonment is cruel and unusual punishment or unfitting of the crime. How is that revenge? Sounds like justice. He murdered 3 completely innocent people and wounded 264 others.

[olddots]

62. media sets a tone

that tone of entertainment puts our minds on vacation while our mouths work overtime .

By asking a question about something that makes us think give people time to turn their minds on.

[markpkessinger]

65. Thank you, F4lconF16 . . .

. . . for this eloquent, much-needed post! (And thank you for drawing my attention to it!)

[TBF]

66. Most often I agree with you ~

but I have a really hard time working up sympathy for this character. Probably because I have run marathons myself and could easily place myself in the shoes of those runners. What did they do to deserve death, maiming, etc?

I wish OPs that were this long would be written about income inequality. This person will either be killed or taken care of for the rest of his life. You may call it torture. What about all the homeless folks who have failed in chasing the capitalist dream (but certainly haven't killed others) and have no idea where their next meals are coming from? There are folks who simply were downsized, foreclosed on, etc and their lives were turned upside down. I hope you're advocating for them in the same fashion because they actually deserve it.

[F4lconF16]

75. I understand where you are coming from.

If you have seen my other posts here, I think that I have made it clear where I stand on capitalism and inequality.

And all living creatures deserve an advocate.

[closeupready]

87. You are not obligated to walk and chew gum at the same time if you don't want.

You may feel incapable of doing justice to that particular job, you may be busy doing other things, whatever.

But on this issue, you've struck a chord here. Unquestionably. Ignore all these 'yeah, but what about this/that/over there...' posts.

[F4lconF16]

123. Thank you.

I do understand the frustration, but I think I will take your advice.

[panader0]

70. What do you think his punishment should be?

[WillowTree]

118. From what I've read, I don't think that F4IconF16 believes in punishment.

Apparently there shouldn't be a price to be paid for senseless mass murder committed for no other reason to terrorize and express the terrorist's hatred.

It sounds like we need to try to understand and rehabilitate him.

As if.

[panader0]

126. Well, I've asked twice and F16 won't reply

I don't believe in capital punishment or torture, but I do believe that criminals need to be held accountable for their crimes.
Around here (Az) if you go to prison, you can get a free college education and free dentures, etc. I can't afford either.
This wasn't a pot bust or a B and E. This was a calculated mass murder.
I say life without parole. Perhaps he could perform some job and donate the earnings to the families of the victims.

[guillaumeb]

71. A truly excellent post

I voted for life, with possibility of parole, but did not leave a comment. I feel that many in the Democratic Party are not much different from the GOP when it comes to issues such as capital punishment, the idea of a just war, and the fiction of the "right" to own a gun. That should be obvious from the posts here. Ralph Nader talks about the 2 major parties as being merely 2 sides of the same coin.

But on this issue, and your excellent working in of the issue of prison conditions, the vicious responses ARE disgusting. Many posts are "violence porn" disguised as commentary. The US is a violent nation. It has always been at war. A war gave birth to the country. Even before that war, the First Peoples were subjected to a campaign of genocide that started in the 1600s and continued until the late 19th century. And do not forget that chattel slavery was also one of the building blocks of the country, with all the attendant violence.

The violence is evidenced also by the gun lust that so many US citizens show. The greatest level of gun ownership in the world accompanied with the highest number of gun related deaths.

As to the Boston Bombing, it was the occasion of much outrage by the US press about the savage behavior exhibited by the perpetrators. The media was filled with stories and images of the victims. But where is the outrage when innocent Pakistani, Yemeni, Afghani, and US citizens are slaughtered by drone strikes? Terror is terror no matter who practices it.

Rehabilitation does not satisfy the blood lust, the primitive NEED for revenge. That explains capital punishment and the savagery of solitary confinement.

Again, an incredible commentary. Thank you

[Blue_In_AK]

72. I'm not going to wade into this discussion much either,

only to say that I agree with you 100%. On the poll I said "life without parole," but in gen pop, not supermax. I was a CO/counselor in an Alaskan prison for a while, and the one thing I learned is that there are very few inmates who are pure evil, even if they've committed horrific crimes. In the case of these brothers, while I don't in any way condone their victimizing so many innocent people, I do understand their motivation and anger.

That's all I'm going to say about this.

[democrank]

73. Some of this stuff makes me sick

especially revenge laced with barbarism.

[Man from Pickens]

77. Excellent quality post

and I could add to the list that the same set of torture-loving characters does not seem to have any appreciation for the right to a fair trial either

[Skittles]

81. excellent post

[zeemike]

84. On a side note.

I just thought I would tell you that just before I sat down to read this I was in the kitchen and reached for a towel and a wasp was on the towel and stung me on the finger.
My first instinct was to smack it and kill it because it was in my house and hurt me...which I would have normally done...but for some reason I did not do that...I took it outside and let it go free.

Sometimes I think there is a force at work in nature we don't understand, but if we listen it can tell us things.
Not seeking vengeance has a power to it.

[MisterP]

86. it's like with Tumblr: you're never X enough for a bunch of people who are in no way X

I got locked as homophobic, and there's three reasons why that's hilarious: 1. it wasn't homophobic, 2. if you think it was homophobic Yelena Mizulina would tell you to slow down, and 3. there's an extra reason I wouldn't go to Saudi Arabia even if it was a fullly-comped trip

[NaturalHigh]

90. "Jail cannot be a method by which society punishes people."

Actually, yes it can. I don't want Tsarnaev executed, but I have absolutely no problem with him spending the rest of his life in supermax. There is no way he should ever be allowed outside of prison again.

[phil89]

91. Get over it. Not everyone agrees with you.

As someone pointed out before, any form of prison could be defined as torture. Your assertions don't make it so.

[NuclearDem]

106. Except that solitary confinement is almost exclusively singled out in the justice system

as being psychological torture.

Countless studies have been on the effects of long-term isolation on the human mind, and they conclude its a destructive force.

It's torture.

[Logical]

111. You are in a minority here. By a long shot. nt

[phil89]

135. Luckily I think for myself,

and I'm fine with being in the minority. I would like to know what people think his punishment should be, and why they don't think regular prison is in the same category as torture. No one seems able or willing to answer.

[markpkessinger]

93. This post is among the finest, and quite possibly THE finest, post I have ever read on DU!

Just needed to say that!

[nadinbrzezinski]

97. Ayup

at least in the least five years.

[markpkessinger]

100. Great to see you posting here again! n/t

[panader0]

95. One more time--What do you think his punishment should be?

[beam me up scottie]

96. 74 recs and counting?

Now this is more like it.

Thank you DUers, I wasn't wrong.

[AngryAmish]

98. You have a long post.

I read too much of it. But not even a quarter.

I will put you down with preaching moralists like Jimmy Swaggart and Carrie Nation.

[panader0]

114. F16 won't answer my question, asked twice, "what do you think his punishment should be?"

Isn't an F16 a warplane?

[cwydro]

129. I asked in another thread.

Good luck.

[The CCC]

103. Yesterday I watched DUers justify and advocate for the torture of a living being.

I didn't recommend torture. However for his own safety LWOP(Life Without Possibility of parole in solitary confinement maybe healthier for him than being placed in the general population in while in prison. Jeffrey Dahmer didn't do well there.

[G_j]

104. a wise American once sadly complained that the traditional "three R's"

had been replaced with, revenge retaliation and retribution..

[Trillo]

105. Perhaps OT, perhaps it's related

Lobbyists for Spies Appointed To Oversee Spying

Who’s keeping watch of the National Security Agency? In Congress, the answer in more and more cases is that the job is going to former lobbyists for NSA contractors and other intelligence community insiders.

A wave of recent appointments has placed intelligence industry insiders into key Congressional roles overseeing intelligence gathering. The influx of insiders is particularly alarming because lawmakers in Washington are set to take up a series of sensitive surveillance and intelligence issues this year, from reform of the Patriot Act to far-reaching “information sharing” legislation.

more...

It is not that far of a stretch to presume that lobbyists for the law and order and prison industry have taken part in discussions on DU, and anywhere else on the web where any significant traffic occurs.


BTW, I agree with you, it would be idea of prisons, even the so called super max, could be designed to rehabilitate and foster mental health instead of punish and drive insane.

[Chemisse]

107. Very well said. Especially this:

Those of us who were advocating against supermax prisons and the psychological torture of inmates are doing so because we think there should be a baseline of compassion, of mercy, and of decency extended to each and every one of us. We believe that we find our greatest humanity when we can rise above the primitive notions of revenge and punishment. Our compassion is not for Tsarnaev, but for all living beings.

[AgingAmerican]

116. Do you believe the Green River Killer could be rehabilitated?

I don't and I have no sympathy for him either. He killed two friends of mine and an acquaintance.

If I could I would personally draw and quarter him them reduce the remaining bits to something resembling hamburger. In short, I would get revenge.

That's why we have a criminal justice system; because revenge isn't justice.

[elias49]

121. Thank you for this F4 -

I was overwhelmed by the ugliness that poured out here after the verdict.
Frankly, I was afraid to say what you've said (eloquently!) You get high marks for courage. And top marks for truth.
What would Jesus have said? That crossed my mind. Then I realized that even the teachings of Jesus lose traction in this modern world of fear and loathing.
I, and I'm sure you, feel immense sympathy for the victims, their families and friends, but I can still object to the eagerness of some to draw and quarter a young, disturbed human being. The savagery blows me away!
Again...thank you for your humanity.

[bvar22]

124. One of the best posts at DU ever.

You did an exemplary job presenting your case.
Thanks for the hard work.

"Just the facts,mam"

[Ed Suspicious]

125. Yeah, I have a hard time relating to anyone who wishes death upon another for any reason. I didn't

celebrate when Saddam was killed or Bin Laden. I get weirded out even with hypotheticals like war was great when it stopped Hitler. I want justice, but I don't think justice equals death or torture. Not to make this a religious thing, but I feel like, as a Christian nation we have a large amount of pro-order authoritarians who would have felt fantastic about Christ's crucifixion. I feel like they would have loved Foucault's retelling of the execution of Damien the regicide. They would love to met that torturous horror on to anyone criminal they abhor. I just can't go there. I don't want to go there.

[zappaman]

130. I'm confused.

So are you saying he should not go to prison at all?

[indivisibleman]

134. Wonderful piece.

Thank you for this. I will use this again and again. I am in complete agreement with you.

[WilliamPitt]

137. What would you do with him?

Amazing post, for the record. I'm from Boston, just finished an article begging for the jury to spare Tsarnaev's life, but I have a question.

Michael Richard died screaming with his guts in his lap. He was 8. My friend Krystle was literally blown in half. She died screaming, too; I've seen the pictures.

What is the suitable punishment for the person who did this?

[William769]

138. Locking.

DISRUPTIVE META-DISCUSSION
Positive threads about Democratic Underground or its members are are permitted.

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