Anyone have any problems with this news story?

Katybug said:
... It's obviously a "guy" thing.
Click to expand...

... probably because the more testosterone you have the more likely you are to engage in risky behavior, and because women's methods of masturbation are quite different than men's.

Carradine was a big let-down for me - I idolized him when he was in Kung Fu. :(
 

I believe that criminals should be punished, and even executed for their crimes. If it were someone in my family that was murdered, I would certainly be glad to see the killer punished.
However, to see them suffer first, or even see them dying, is not anything I would want to see.
What is the difference in me wanting to see a murderer suffer, and the murderer wanting to see someone suffer ? It makes me no different than him, if I also enjoy seeing another human suffering, regardless of the cause.
Justice...yes. Cruelty....no.
 
Justice...yes. Cruelty....no.
Click to expand...

:iagree:

I'm taking great delight in reading all this. The irony is 5 star.

Here I sit, a cynical, jaded, atheist with a propensity to wreak vengeance as only a left handed Scorpio or a Sicilian Don can envisage and yet I find the comments from otherwise gentle and 'humanitarian' people quite surprising to say the least.

Pop poor old Saddam's head off? Really? A bullet in the temple wouldn't have sufficed?
I don't hold with all the pomp, ritual and ceremony that accompanies death sentences. Just shoot 'em in the cell and clean up if necessary.

I like my vengeance quick and clean. To me it is removing a threat, not an entertainment to be indulged in. The more delight we take in an enemy's demise the more 'power' we give them in having influenced our lives.

To me the ultimate contempt for an enemy would be to just off him on the spot. No further correspondence entered into.
No last words. No outpourings of grief or explanations of why he's being ended. No smug self-righteousness grinning. Not even a 'Bye Saddam', just a clean shot to rid the world of him, or whoever. Stepped on a cockroach. End of section.

The Bin Laden op was the best piece of diplomacy the US has pulled off yet. Kudos for how that was handled.

I never thought I'd see the day when I'd lean more towards Warri's take on anything but I do on this. I don't mind in the least who gets taken out or even how really, but beyond thinking, "good, serves the bugger right" I don't gloat over the physical details of the manner of his or her demise.

I don't mind someone's reputation bleeding to death, or being skewered on a public spike when deserved, but to actually physically indulge in it as 'enjoyable' justice is another matter entirely.

I might appreciate an appropriately ironic ending, as when bombers blow themselves up in the workshop, but I don't feel the need to hug myself in delight over it. I really don't get that Madame Defarge syndrome at all I'm afraid. It seems a little childish to me, but hey, I'm usually the odd one out so who cares?
------------

Just out of curiosity, why such personal feelings about Saddam? What was it that he did exactly to elicit that degree of hatred? He didn't organize 9/11. He didn't even have the weapons he was idiot enough to brag about. So what did he do to you all, so personally? Dubbya drummed up a lot of sentiment to excuse/explain bombing Bagdhad but really?

I know he wasn't someone I'd ever want to meet, and I'm not defending him. He was a vicious despot who ruled by force and terrorised his own Country, but it was a damned site easier country to live in under him than it is now. Moslems in those regions have always been a hard people to control and only the hardest and fiercest can control them at all. That's how they operate. Democracy is a personality defect over there, he was no worse than the rest of them.

Mugabe did as much but he's still poncing around the UN as if nothing happened. Idi Amin didn't get his head 'popped off' either from memory. No one took them personal?

Sure Saddam took out a few Kurds... and now I'm speaking personally, as of all the run-ins I had working with, and supervising Moslem men the only one who ever really seriously scared me with his 'reasoning' of the value of women in general and me in particular and the threats that went with it, was a Kurd!

So, on my personal level Saddam couldn't have picked a better mob to gas. To me at the time he seemed to be doing the world a favour. Is that a fair stance? Nope. But that was the rather trivial reason behind my personal reaction to the news of what Saddam was up to. So what triggers yours?
 

Last edited:
Katybug said:
I always want revenge in the worst form imaginable for those who oppose our country so harshly and seemingly have no regard for human life. I know Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11, but I felt cheated in the camera cutting away of his hanging, something I wanted to see in full detail.
Click to expand...

Spoken like a true Christian!

'Oppose our country'? You invaded them! 'Nothing to do with 9/11'. That's right the Iraqis had nothing to do with 9/11. They didn't have any WMDs either, but you still invaded them.

It was George W. Bush's private war - and I bet you voted for him!
Lots of innocent people got killed, but Big Business did okay out of it.
 
Warrigal said:
I have been silent in this thread so far but I have to support Knightofalbion when he says that



IMO we are on shaky moral ground when we rejoice over the death others, even those we consider our enemies.
We become part of the cheering mob at the guillotine or the gibbet.
Click to expand...

Respect to you, dear Warrigal. A welcome display of humanity, dignity and common decency.
 
And so say those whose people were rounded up and taken to Abu Ghraib for questioning or who died during the shock and awe phase of the Iraq campaign. These are just a couple of reasons why westerners are not universally popular in the Middle East.
 
I just heard these words spoken and I think that they encapsulate something important.

There will always be those who mean to do us harm.
To stop them we risk awakening the same evil in ourselves.
Our first instinct is to seek revenge when those we love are taken from us ...
... but that is not who we are.

​
Closing speech by James T Kirk from the movie Into Darkness
Click to expand...
 
But it actually is how most of us are Warri. I'm a firm believer in revenge, if only to discourage someone else from trying to get away with the same thing. It's the manner in which the revenge is taken that matters.
To further pester the point, what we were discussing was 3rd party spectator participation. The Captain missed the point a bit.
 
Revenge can be a good thing, not the evil some like to make it to be. If not for revenge there would be no punishment for evil doers. No punishment means there is no deterrent to others who would do evil.

We can't just sit back and do nothing, hoping evil doesn't happen to us.

Some have said taking revenge makes us as bad as the ones who committed the evil deed. That is ridiculous. Taking revenge against evil makes the world a better and safer place.
 
rkunsaw said:
Revenge can be a good thing, not the evil some like to make it to be. If not for revenge there would be no punishment for evil doers. No punishment means there is no deterrent to others who would do evil.

We can't just sit back and do nothing, hoping evil doesn't happen to us.

Some have said taking revenge makes us as bad as the ones who committed the evil deed. That is ridiculous. Taking revenge against evil makes the world a better and safer place.
Click to expand...

I see it exactly as you do, RK, and this is my last post on this issue. Thank goodness we live in countries where we can express our entitled opinions openly. We can be assured that the way we feel is going to conflict with the way others may feel, and that's what makes the world go round.

Wishing everyone a wonderful day/evening....
 
rkunsaw said:
Revenge can be a good thing, not the evil some like to make it to be. If not for revenge there would be no punishment for evil doers. No punishment means there is no deterrent to others who would do evil.

We can't just sit back and do nothing, hoping evil doesn't happen to us.

Some have said taking revenge makes us as bad as the ones who committed the evil deed. That is ridiculous. Taking revenge against evil makes the world a better and safer place.
Click to expand...

If you substitute the word justice for revenge then I have no disagreement. The OP was about a lawful execution according to the laws of the country in which the crimes were committed. I have no problem with that.

Revenge is what happens in countries like Papua New Guinea. The practice is called 'payback' and it certainly doesn't make that country a better and safer place. Someone steals a neighbour's pig so the aggrieved owner burns down the house of the person he thinks is responsible. A car accident results in someone being injured so the occupants of the car are dragged out and beaten to death. Along the road you see many rows of burnt out houses that are the result of the payback system of revenge/justice. PNG is a very dangerous place to visit and parts of it are also very lawless.
 
Warrigal said:
Justice is not justice when it is devoid of judgement, discernment, compassion and mercy.
Are these the nice clothes that turn revenge into justice?
Click to expand...

Your concept of justice is derived from a theoretical ideal, which unfortunately does not exist in the real world.

Remember the discussions on this forum about capital punishment? How it's wrong because the person might be innocent? It's that same degree of uncertainty that applies to EVERY court case. You have your crooked, paid-off judges; you have your juries of "12 men honest and true" that pick their noses in the jury box while watching movies on their iPhones; you have the social rights groups crying about the unfairness of the whole thing, and you have the media presenting their own views.

Compassion and mercy, huh? How much of those could you muster for a mass murderer? For someone who kills their kids?

For someone who kills yours?

Justice is a crap-shoot, a roll of the dice. Revenge is a 100% certainty.
 
And anyway, nobody 'gets away with it'... Nobody.

The harder they come, the harder they fall. Karma gets them all.

'You' can work cruelty and evil if 'you' want, for we all have free will. But for everything there is a price to be paid and a soul cannot progress until it has put right what it did wrong.
 
You like quotes Warri, what do you think is the basic meaning of this one? "Justice must not only be done, but seen to be done."

I think it takes into account the basic need in humans for reward and revenge. It's part of what makes us tick as a species.

I venture that too much mercy has crept into the justice/socially accepted revenge system. Revenge in the form of justice isn't being seen to be done to appropriate extent to satisfy society that the law has their interests in mind. If the legal system doesn't perform what the public pay them to do then they take it upon themselves to do the job.

My only worry is that Defarge gloating thing.
Justice/revenge should simply satisfy a sense of 'level up' in us, not be seen as a form of entertainment.
As a form of closure (one PC term I can live with) for those directly involved, and as indication that the legal and justice systems are carrying out the revenge for us on those who have wronged us.

Maybe normally placid people get bloodthirsty out of frustration with too many getting away with too much and focus the need to see justice/revenge carried out on one famous person in particular.

I don't hold with public executions, I doubt I would choose to watch someone who had murdered a loved one die, unless I could throw the switch. Just knowing they were ended would suffice.
I wouldn't want to sit in front of them and give them the chance to wink or grin as a final defiance. I would rather them know that they were beneath my contempt and not worth the cab fare to watch.
But what would upset me most would be those people who turn up simply for the fun of watching someone totally uninvolved with them die. That are treating 'my' revenge as their entertainment. That is a worry.
 
SifuPhil said:
Justice is just revenge dressed up in nice clothing.
Click to expand...

And that is reality.

No matter how you dress it up, both concepts are still retribution differentiated by the mood supporting the actions taken in its name.

These nuances in language reflect what people are taught about their personal powers and rights.
 
"Justice must not only be done, but seen to be done."
Click to expand...
The basic meaning?
For me it is that justice behind closed doors is not justice.
Neither is extraordinary rendition, secret prisons or assassinations.
Justice takes time, a frustratingly large amount of it.
It also requires consistency and cannot be arbitrary.
Above all, it requires objectivity rather than passion.

As for public executions, there must always be some witnesses
but that is a long way away from the gallows in the town square.
 

You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top