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[Josephus]

yeah ok, I was exaggerating for effect, but there were many instances of people being arrested and put in guantanamo without trial for basically nothing.

Technically, they were arrested for being brown and having thick beards. Otherwise you were spot on.

[Soadreqm]

A great deal of convoluted examples that merely reinforce my point. If you can't find a whole in the reasoning at it's basic level (and subsequently have to make up flaws that're easily averted in advance) then there's no reason to distrust the concept. Like I said, post-trial (no worse than locking someone up for 15 years, in my opinion) and any use of it in defence doesn't count. Potentially could be used as mitigating evidence in a trial (especially on the topic of vigilante justice, but that's a question for another day). The system is sound, it merely needs a few bits of tweaking.

I'm not saying an eye for an eye. I'm not saying to rape rapists or sexually torture child abusers. I'm merely saying that forcefully abusing someone's human rights makes you less than human yourself.

If someone is incapable of functioning as a human, why should they have the rights of one?

Ah, the bit about the trial. So, you are not saying that you're waiving your inalienable human rights by raping and murdering someone, but that you lose them when you are found guilty of such a crime. Yeah, I think that's actually even worse. The government essentially decides that these people are no longer people, and it's okay to do whatever with them.

Governments already do what they think is necessary to protect rest of society from rapists and murderers, and that is definitely part of their job description. However, there is still a clearly defined set of rules on what they're allowed to do. You say you're not advocating the "eye for an eye" doctrine, but what you are doing is essentially handing the government a blank check on what it can do to criminals, hoping that they won't rape the rapists. If the convicted rapists and murderers don't have any rights, what's to stop the government from doing whatever it wants? Even if sewing twins together to make artificial siamese twins wouldn't be mandatory, the prison technicians could still do it if they felt like it. Or freeze their limbs solid to test the effects of hypothermia. Or not give them any food, to test the effects of malnutrition. Or just rape them because, hey, some of these rapists are pretty hot.

As already mentioned by others, this also creates the rather unpleasant precedent of human rights only applying to whoever the government chooses to apply them on. You can go to prison for petty theft. Where, exactly, is the government going to draw the line? Just rape and murder? Maybe throw in kidnapping. Terrorism usually falls under murder, but a lot of the current and previous victims were only guilty of being foreign. What if there's another Cold War? Back during the previous one, the CIA was testing drugs on people abducted from the street. What's to stop the government from extending the medical experiments to the annoying protesting hippies, so they could do that legally? What are people going to do about it? Protest?

[Phmcw]

Ok two thing here : the article is on war prisoner because on regular prisoner it would be unthinkable.
Pathos, try to write a law about it. You will see how tedious it will be. Of course, with a card carrying villain it's easy.
But in real life situation you have murderer that are insane, mentally challenged, twisted by awful life, sadistic beyond reason.
You cannot help but wonder how they became what they are.

Now that is not the main subject. The main subject is : experimentation on prisoner is a serious crime, forbidden by all international law, and in this case, some experiment seems to have ended with the death of the subject. How do we explain that, what do you think about it, what will you do?

[Josephus]

Ok two thing here : the article is on war prisoner because on regular prisoner it would be unthinkable.

What, so war prisoners have fewer rights than regular prisoners?

What are you smoking?

[Phmcw]

No, it's just that within civil societies, law is more strictly enforced then in war zones.
You expect abuse and crime to happen within wartime, it's one reason why war such a horrible thing.

[Pathos]

<snip>

Except, as a general thing, it's not decided by the government, but before a trial of your peers. Any crime that breaks the fundamentals of the human rights ideals (as examples: the right to life and the the idea that human dignity is inviolable) is one that should cause the guilty party to lose their human rights. A theft doesn't cause a person to lose anything except properly, a person being shot in a robbery causes them to lose a great deal of things.

Personally, I don't particularly care what they do with them. At the moment, it's possible for a rapist to be out of jail in 15 years (and how often does the maximum sentence get given to "just a rapist"? 1/1,000?) whilst the victim has to live with it their entire lives. Why does the victim get punished more the criminal?

Better that they served humanity through use of their bodies for research, instead of allowing them to go back on the street and reoffend (I believe the number of reoffenders ranges from about 40% to 80% depending on country / state in the USA, but I can't find any figures on it at the moment, it's around 60% in the UK, though).

What are people going to do about it? Protest?

People think that the proletariat is so powerless. There are plenty of things that could happen.

Pathos, try to write a law about it. You will see how tedious it will be. Of course, with a card carrying villain it's easy.
But in real life situation you have murderer that are insane, mentally challenged, twisted by awful life, sadistic beyond reason.
You cannot help but wonder how they became what they are.

Then it'd be far better to put them out of their misery, to be honest. I don't think locking them up is going to do them much good.

[DJ]

In modern Western world, legal system isn't supposed to be about revenge but about rehabilitation and protection of general public. Some people just can't be rehabilitated so you need to lock them away for good, but I don't see how locking them away in Dr Mengele's Lab makes the general public any safer.

[ChairmanPoo]

what he proposes is sort of... DF style justice, really, if you think about it... hmmm

[Soadreqm]

Ok two thing here : the article is on war prisoner because on regular prisoner it would be unthinkable.

What, so war prisoners have fewer rights than regular prisoners?

What are you smoking?

As I said earlier, in regular prisons the medical testing is more regulated because the CIA is not involved. You start getting a lot of rather sketchy practices when nobody can publish the records without committing treason. It's not that war prisoners have fewer rights, they're just less consistently enforced. Oh, yeah, I see Phmcw already noted that. Well, whatever.

Except, as a general thing, it's not decided by the government, but before a trial of your peers. Any crime that breaks the fundamentals of the human rights ideals (as examples: the right to life and the the idea that human dignity is inviolable) is one that should cause the guilty party to lose their human rights. A theft doesn't cause a person to lose anything except properly, a person being shot in a robbery causes them to lose a great deal of things.

Personally, I don't particularly care what they do with them. At the moment, it's possible for a rapist to be out of jail in 15 years (and how often does the maximum sentence get given to "just a rapist"? 1/1,000?) whilst the victim has to live with it their entire lives. Why does the victim get punished more the criminal?

Better that they served humanity through use of their bodies for research, instead of allowing them to go back on the street and reoffend (I believe the number of reoffenders ranges from about 40% to 80% depending on country / state in the USA, but I can't find any figures on it at the moment, it's around 60% in the UK, though).

I think the way it goes in the US is that the Congress makes the laws, the judge decides on the sentence according to the laws, and all the jury gets to do is decide whether the accused is guilty or not. Well, properly abolishing human rights would probably require a constitutional amendment, which is quite different. In any case, I'd say the government has a pretty big say on how criminals are handled, especially if you consider the police and the prisons to also be parts of the government.

Anyway. You're not really addressing any of the points I'm trying to make, so let's take this discussion on a different tangent. You see, I think that involuntary human medical experimentation is actually a WORSE crime than, say, rape. If I had to choose between getting raped once, and getting tortured to death for Science, I'd probably choose rape. I'd probably choose murder for that matter. I mean, getting shot can be pretty nasty, I admit, but having bits of me chopped off in creative ways while someone takes notes of how quickly I die sounds even nastier.

I also don't think that the people doing medical experiments are any better than the murderers and rapists. Shooting one person dead because you hated him or he was in the way is wrong, but shooting fifty people and then watching how quickly they bleed to death is ALSO wrong, even if you only did it because you were told to, or you just wanted to gain new information about gunshot wounds to help treating them in other people.

People think that the proletariat is so powerless. There are plenty of things that could happen.

That bit was a sarcastic quip, referring to the fact that the government had just declared it could deal with the protesters with experimental surgery. Sorry if that was unclear.

what he proposes is sort of... DF style justice, really, if you think about it... hmmm

It sounds like Generic Video Game Justice to me. In a nutshell, killing a bad person is, if not actively good, at least okay.

[Muz]

It's nothing near as bad as torture in other countries, but still torture nonetheless.

[HideousBeing]

POWs have less rights than citizens because they aren't covered by the constitution. Prisoners have give up a lot of their rights when they go to jail. Both should be allowed basic human rights (not be experimented on... unless they agree to it or something maybe, but still) , but I would argue that POWs don't deserve as many rights as prisoners because they are potentially much more threatening. And trained/organized.

[RAM]

Wait, they don't deserve rights because they are dangerous? so... a butter knife has fewer right than a bread knife? A bouncer has fewer rights than a mime? A martial arts instructor has fewer rights than a washed-up celebrity that hasn't been sober in 3 years?
 Soldiers are considered a necessary evil, or glorious national treasure... whatever, soldiers regularly murder people in public and nobody cares, because that is what soldiers are meant to do. Soldiers are basically allowed to do this because they are told to. War prisoners are meant to be soldiers, being an enemy soldier is not actually a crime, it is just something that people get put in prison for because if they weren't prisoners then they would be shooting at you again, which, once again, is not a crime, it is just something that you don't want them doing...

[Deathworks]

Hi!

Well, prisoners of war definitely don't enjoy the rights that your own citizens have, simply because they usually are foreigners who don't have citizenship with you. However, not all rights are limited to citizens (at least in the civilized world) and basic human rights are among them. In addition, modern civilized countries have agreed on rules of war which also include special laws for the handling of prisoners of war, stating what can be expected of the prisoners of war, what you have to do for the prisoners you have and what you may not do to them.

Likewise, those rules of war also describe what things soldiers may do and may not do. Targetting civilians has been put quite high on the forbidden list, given the experiences Europe has had with the loss of life among civilian populations during the Second (?) World War. Likewise, the red cross (or red crescent moon where applicable) enjoys special protection and anyone under that flag must not be attacked UNLESS those carrying the flag of the red cross initiate the attack, which then would be a war crime on their account.

Also note that at least with the German military, there are three categories of orders: Those which you have to obey (relevant to military goals), those which you may obey (legal but not of military necessity), and those which you must not obey (orders violating international law). I assume that most civilized nations have similar approaches.

So, soldiers and military are not in a legal void.

Deathworks

[G-Flex]

One issue with international law (or even an individual nation's law) regarding PoWs and combat is that sometimes you get to gleefully ignore it when you're not fighting a "state" exactly. I think people are familiar enough with this concept by now that I don't have to give examples, even.

[nenjin]

One issue with international law (or even an individual nation's law) regarding PoWs and combat is that sometimes you get to gleefully ignore it when you're not fighting a "state" exactly. I think people are familiar enough with this concept by now that I don't have to give examples, even.

I think this has more to do with the debate happening now than anything.

The definition of PoW versus Prisoner gets incredibly murky when the subjects often a) do not claim nationality b) are not represented by any officially recognized governmental/semi-govermental body and c) claim allegiance to non-government organizations. Point C is the major one the U.S. focuses on deprive citizens of due process and treat them as PoWs; they don't even have to bother with people they apprehend outside the U.S.

Combine that with increased global awareness of issues...and it shouldn't come as a surprise that the public now debates what is a PoW exactly.

That's all pretty irrelevant to the "universal human rights" people....but universal human rights is also irrelevant to the majority of power players out there.

I do have a question for those favoring universal human rights though....the "classic text book villain" was mentioned, because they're always an easy target for harsh justice.

My question is this: In a world where we claim that all people, no matter how bad, get their basic human rights....what do you with a criminal that completely rejects humanity? That advocates the most barbarous, self-interested, evil behavior?

Do we force them to take their human rights, since human rights are inalienable, and feed them and keep them in jail while they spit on the rights we give them, cause mayhem and pain as a matter of course, and generally embody all the evil we loathe?

Under the argument of universal human rights, yes, you have to do that. Because even depriving someone who wants to be rid of their humanity represents a slippery slope, and the rights are so inalienable, you can't even willingly be rid of them.

That's not a world I believe in. I believe in good and evil, with various shades in between. At least, I believe in pure evil. I believe in pure cruelty. I believe in human beings who, in terms of their world view or public action, do not hold the value of human life dear at all. I don't believe all human rights are inalienable....how can I when some of the very people it applies to don't believe it for a minute? For universal human rights to be a species-wide truth, and not just another political point of view, it has to be recognized at a very basic level...ala self-defense, by everyone.

And it never will be. Universal human rights are in direct opposition to how the world has operated up until now; namely by selectively depriving others of their human rights when it's opportune.