A paragraphh strikes me:
The image of a forbidding prison camp is not entirely false. But it is not the picture Bush administration officials would prefer to emphasize. They portray Guantánamo Bay as a clean and modern detention camp, where humane treatment of terror suspects is the rule.You know, Dachau was a clean and modern detention camp once upon a time. It is neither the cleanliness nor the modernity that defines the place, but the detention. There are perfectly sterile, orderly, well-run, brightly lit abbatoirs; none of those adjectives alters the fact that throats are slit and blood drained into bins on the floor.
Since there seems to be confusion on the point, I'll elaborate. In many aspects of our empire, we seem to believe that qualitative improvements will obviate categorical wrongs. Thus the prevalence of the idea that the "success" of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan has some bearing on their rightness or wrongness, or the idea that the "humaneness" with which we treat our prisoners somehow negates the fact that we have imprisoned them beyond hope of release or appeal. I suppose that I would prefer sanitary solitary confinement to solitary confinement in my own filth, but after years I suspect that becomes a distinction without a difference. The concentration camp at Guantanamo may have been laid out by the architects of Candyland. That has no bearing whatsoever on the perversion that it represents.
17 comments:
Well, sure, but how does this affect Britney?
I recall a good example of the "but it's clean!" defense was back when Andrew Young was pimpin' for Nike. Young visited some of their factories in Indonesia and Vietnam and remarked how pleased he was with the "cleanliness" he found there.
I would think than making pristine white sneakers isn't something you'd do in a pig sty, but what do I know about running a proper sweatshop?
The revelations of what the Hallmark Meat Packing company does to cattle are shocking!
No doubt safety inspectors will order the complete sanitizing and cleansing and shinying-up of the rendering plants.
Not one less burger will not be eaten because of the revelations.
Thank you! Jesus Christ it's crazy that what you're saying should stand out for its incisiveness and originality - in a sane Nation, the idea you're expressing would be taken for granted and you'd get nothing but eyerolls for repeating the obvious.
This is a very good point.
I agree.
Good point, but still, when my penis is tied to another guy's penis and we're all thrown in a man pile while dogs are barking at me and teenagers are taking pictures of it all for their myspace page, I do prefer it to smell like Lysol... it just feels better.
Heck, anonymous, according to rush Limbaugh, what you described happened all the time at HIS fraternity parties, so quit yer bitchin'
"But it's clean!"
Hell, I have a vague memory of this being a marketing pitch for McDonald's too.
and the torture is done under medical supervision, so that's ok too.
"Good point, but still, when my penis [...]"
this is the best comment ever made. y'all can close the internet now.
bit of a red herring to compare it to death camp, eh?
YF
So, YF: torture and mental cruelty are 1100% a-ok in the right wing world, as long as we let them live for a decade or more in these camps with no hope of release or even a hearing. I'm PROUD to be a countryman of such as yourself and your lovely sense of moral proportion.
misconstruing the comparison is a bit of a red herring.
saying...
--a clean death camp is still a death camp, and
--a clean slaughterhouse is still a slaughterhouse, and
--a clean prison where people are held indefinitely without charges and is still a prison where people are held indefinitely without charges,
...is not the same as saying a prison is a death camp.
montag makes the proper point, but since we are always 115% Accurate here are Who Is IOZ, let me just note that I chose Dachau precisely because it was not a death camp, but rather a concentration and labor camp that was principally for political prisoners, at least until the very end of the war.
I would argue, montag, that you may be correct but that YF misses the broader point that the camps, even if they are ONLY prison camps and not death camps are still immoral abominations. Which was Ioz' original point, no? So...what's your primary point?
if i had a point, beyond exposing the error of YF, it might have been: these prison camps are immoral abominations. and might add that with the psychological torture that is being reported to be happening, perhaps death camps would be more humane.
though not as articulate as monsieur IOZ, i am on record with my "primary point" over here (for one example.)
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