Comments on: natural selections XL

By: the best u are

the best u are — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 15:54:57 +0000

Very nice blog.

By: j.d.

j.d. — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 19:28:39 +0000

This is rich - lecturing me on perspective. It is you who needs perspective:

Number of prisoners at Gitmo: approximately 600.

Number of prisoners in the Gulag: 25 million, according to peerless Gulag historian Anne Applebaum.

Number of camps at Gitmo: 1.

Number of camps in the Gulag: At least 476, according to Applebaum.

Political purpose of Gulag: The suppression of internal dissent inside a totalitarian state.

Political purpose of Gitmo: The suppression of an international terrorist group that had attacked the United States, killing 3,000 people while attempting to decapitate the national government through the hijack of jets.

Financial purpose of Gulag: Providing totalitarian economy with millions of slave laborers.

Financial purpose of Gitmo: None.

Seizure of Gulag prisoners: From apartments, homes, street corners inside the Soviet Union.

Seizure of Gitmo prisoners: From battlefield sites in Afghanistan in the midst of war.

I think that’s about the right amount of perspective.

By: nathan

nathan — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 19:20:20 +0000

The gulags were labour camps where politically objectionable individuals in the USSR were confined, without proper justice and under poor conditions. There are differences with Guantanamo: most notably that Guantanamo is not a labour camp. The main similarity is that both are overwhelming symbols of a brutal and unfair system. The people being held there have not faced due legal process and are being held under some medieval-like prerogative with very little evidence as to what they have done, and with nobody having any idea of how long they will be held in these extra-legal conditions.

The INDC Journal points out some cases where the detainees report good treatment. While interesting, this hardly undoes the shockingly evil treatment and conditions endured by many other inmates in other sections of the camp. Moreover it does not address the overall injustice in kidnapping and then detaining suspects indefinitely in this fashion.

If I kidnap you and your family from your house and then hold you in a remote location as my prisoner, indefinitely, I would hardly expect praise for treating some of your family well, especially when I have not been treating you well, and while the kidnapping is still in progress.

Don’t be a dope - have some perspective man!