Pjen
I admire your faith in the justice system and envy you the sense of comfort you seem to derive from it. I don’t trust them that much myself and in the case of one of my own being dead on the floor I’d most certainly kill the one that did it, law or no law. Would you really fold your hands and hope the justice system took care of things for you?
Regards
Testy
calm kiwi
Damn right I’d “want blood”, and I’d have it, too. I’m not sure I understand what you mean when you say “protect us from ourselves.” That sounds very modern and PC but doesn’t seem to make sense. I don’t require someone to protect me from myself, I need someone to protect me from the scum that all too frequently star in a Pit thread.
I’m all for giving the accused a chance to defend themselves and if they are successful in showing they didn’t do it, then fine. If they fail in that, I want them hung, shot, gassed, or otherwise killed. If the justice system fails in that I’d be after them myself.
Regards
Testy
thereby leaving any of your other children/family members w/o you. good plan.
indeed.
Your insistance for blood is what I mean by “protect us from ourselves”. If my son was violated I would want to kill the bastard. My society will protect me. It will do it’s best to ensure the person responsible is punished in a way that looks at all the circumstances…not just my bloodlust.
New Zealand has two cases of manslaughter commited by teenagers in the news at the moment. The first is a 17 yr old who punched a man in his 30’s ONCE. The man died from head injuries. The 17 yr old was a good student with a good future infront of him. It was his first offence.
The second is a 14 (15?) yr old who threw a concrete block off a motorway overbridge impacting a car and killing a man. It was not the first time he had thrown something off an overbridge.
Both were found guilty but have not been sentenced yet
If the man in either case was my family member I would want retribution. I would have lost someone and I would want someone to pay but rational, reasonable judges will assess ALL the facts not just my feelings. I hope that these boys don’t recieve the same sentence but I’m glad the families of the dead men are not the ones deciding the sentences.
If it was my son I could not be expected to be rational but I am represented by others who can be rational in a situation where I can only be emotional.
Call it PC if you like but I’m glad we don’t still have duels at dawn.
Indeed we do, a civilized society in which babies are not abused in such a way that leads to their death.
This thread set out to highlight the case of the child in Wales but somewhere down the line has turned a way from that into something quite different
You keep bringing up matters not related to my OP.
As I said earlier, that was to be my last post in this thread, this one most certainly is as you are becoming not only more obtuse and evasive by the minute but extremely boring with your continued bleeding heart liberalism and tree hugging approach to life at its harshest.
Wake up and smell the coffee for Gods sake, look around you at all the miscarriages of justice that happen day in and day out. Ask yourself the next time you see a photograph in the newspaper of some old lady who has been battered and bruised for the contents of her purse…“what if that was my mother? what would I do?”
Because I tell you the thugs that terrorise our towns and cities know full well that all they’ll get is a slap on the wrist or if they are really unlucky :rolleyes: a few months in prison or maybe an ASBO.
I note that you have chosen to live in a country without the benefit of the rule of law. You are welcome to it. I choose to live in a country with the rule of law. The real misfortune is that Chowder lives in a country with the rule of law as a benefit to him, but does not accept the responsibilities that go with it.
IMHO most of the bluster about parents killing the killers of their children is merely bluster. You often hear the threats made, but never seem to hear about them being carried out. Still, it allows the need for vengeance to be satisfied rhetorically without the need for bloodshed- which is, I am sure, the process that Chowder and you are currently working through in prospect- I am sure that it helps you feel more in control of a potentially dreadful situation, but I question people’s real intentions when reality bites.
calm kiwi
We see things very differently. (obviously!) To me it is not a matter of “bloodlust”, I’m not some ravening monster. It is more a sense of responsibility. My wife and daughter are my responsibility, to feed, clothe, educate and, in some ultimately horrible set of circumstances, to avenge if the authorities fail in that task.
Regards
Testy
All the evidence shows that child abuse is at historic lows. When we did have severe penalties for murder, the effective rates were far higher. Not implying there is any connection here though.
You brought up a case where the **prosecution **admitted that it had no evidence to show that the parents were involved in the killing of the child. Perhaps if you had chosen a better case, then there might have been more to argue about.
1/ You do not own the Thread
2/ Threads develop lives unto themselves
3/ Hi Opal!
I don’t believe I am obtuse or evasive. If the above terrible events impacted on my life I would want to kill the bastards, but I know that I would not for many reasons, including having a fairly good ability to predict whether I would be capable of such an act. As I have said above, I suspect that you are engaging in an act of emotional masturbation aimed at showing how family oriented you are by:
1/ Starting this thread
2/ Arguing in the way that you do
3/ Demonizing a pair who have been found innocent in a court of law
4/ Boasting that you would and could kill
5/ Abusing people who disagree with you.
You think it makes you a big man, but you come over as that small boy in the playground who has been bullied and threatens vengeful havoc on his enemies before running home to Mommy. (I’m here assuming you are male)
Most miscarriages of Justice I see are in the other direction- I listed some of them above. You chose to ignore them.
BTW, a guilty person going free is not a miscarriage of Justice. It is only so if a person against whom there is evidentiary proof goes free. Check some legal definitions.
BTW2, a convicted person getting a lesser sentence (within the rules of sentencing) than you or your lawless cronies desire is not a miscarriage of justice, but the true operation of justice. If you want to increase sentencing even more than has recently happened, then vote for a government that will do it. Stamping your feet and making faux threats just doesn’t change the situation.
Those sentences have been decided by the legislative body of the country which is open to democratic change.
In fact lengths of sentences have been steadily increasing over the past twenty years, as have numbers of convictions. This has caused the prison population to double over that period. In the mean time most non-violent offences have decreased rapidly, meaning that the excess prison population is greatly made up of people who have been convicted of violent offences.
Your last comment proves that despite your claim to be a Telegraph reader, you are more suited to the ill thought out, semi-literate prose-like vomit produced by the Sun, the English Daily Mail (the Scottish Mail is surprisingly less reactionary than the English one) and the Daily Express.
Pjen
Where do you get the idea that Saudi does not have “the rule of law”? There are numerous laws here and in many cases I consider them better than the ones you are so pleased to be living under, particularly as regards second offenders for serious crimes. Regardless, Saudi is hardly some lawless outpost.
You may of course consider my posts as “bluster” or in any other way that helps you feel better. It certainly isn’t my intent to convert you to my way of thinking. You expressed certain attitudes I disagree with, I said so.
Regards
Testy
Having laws is not the rule of law.
The rule of law is the principle that governmental authority is legitimately exercised only in accordance with written, publicly disclosed laws adopted and enforced in accordance with established procedure. The principle is intended to be a safeguard against arbitrary governance.
Saudi Arabia is an autocratic monarchical autocracy where social position and power supervent any rule of law. People may be held at the whim of the royal family or by the secret police and tortured as necessary. There are no clear definitions of the rights of subjects and especially of the rights of suspects.
Saudi Arabia does not have this status.
Further quotes:
*
In Commonwealth law, the most famous exposition of the concept of rule of law was laid down by Albert Venn Dicey in his Law of the Constitution in 1895:
... every official, from the Prime Minister down to a constable or a collector of taxes, is under the same responsibility for every act done without legal justification as any other citizen. The Reports abound with cases in which officials have been brought before the courts, and made, in their personal capacity, liable to punishment, or to the payment of damages, for acts done in their official character but in excess of their lawful authority. [Appointed government officials and politicians, alike] ... and all subordinates, though carrying out the commands of their official superiors, are as responsible for any act which the law does not authorise as is any private and unofficial person.
-- Law of the Constitution (London: MacMillan, 9th ed., 1950), 194.
Thus, those who make and enforce the law are themselves bound to adhere to it.
In American law, the most famous exposition of the same principle was drafted by John Adams for the constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, in justification of the principle of separation of powers:
In the government of this commonwealth, the legislative department shall never exercise the executive and judicial powers or either of them: the executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them: the judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them: to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men.
— Massachusetts Constitution, Part The First, art. XXX (1780).
The last phrase, “to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men,” has been quoted with approval by the U.S. Supreme Court and every state supreme court in the United States.
A similar concept is found in Common Sense (1776) by Thomas Paine:
. . . the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America THE LAW IS KING. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law OUGHT to be King; and there ought to be no other.
The concept “rule of law” is generally associated with several other concepts, such as:
* Nullum crimen, nulla poena sine praevia lege poenali - No ex post facto laws
* Presumption of innocence - All individuals are "innocent until proven otherwise"
* Double jeopardy - Individuals may only be punished once for every specific crime committed. Retrials may or may not be permitted on the grounds of new evidence. See also res judicata.
* Legal equality - All individuals are given the same rights without distinction to their social stature, religion, political opinions, etc. That is, as Montesquieu would have it, "law should be like death, which spares no one."
* Habeas corpus - in full habeas corpus ad subjiciendum, a Latin term meaning "you must have the body to be subjected (to examination)". A person who is arrested has the right to be told what crimes he or she is accused of, and to request that his or her custody be reviewed by judicial authority. Persons unlawfully imprisoned have to be freed.*
I can see little of the above in the administration of Saudi Law.
Maybe I’m wrong and you can educate me.
Of course the problem here is when you accidetally murder the wrong guy. What are you going to do? Say sorry and look for someone else to shoot through the head?
Pjen
Thank you for the quotes, I genuinely enjoy the way some 18th-century people used English.
As far as educating you on Saudi law, I fear I’ll be a failure at that. Not being a lawyer and having avoided both the law and lawyers to the very limits of my ability, I know little about it. I will say that I see vnone of the torture and false imprisonment that you seem to suspect them of. Saudi is both a pleasant place to live as well as being extremely secure. It’s actually one of the best places to raise children that I can think of.
Regards
Testy
Tapioca Dextrin
If I accidentally or intentionally murder someone, wrong guy or not, it’s going to cost me my ass. At best I’ll be in prison for years, at worst I’d be executed by the guy’s surviving relatives or Pjenn’s or calm kiwi’s legal friends. I’d feel like a real idiot to go through all that over the wrong man.
Regards
Testy
Pjenn
One thing I forgot to include in my previous post that is at least tangentially related to the discussion. The idea of revenge is more-or-less incorporated into Saudi law. The survivors of a murder victim may opt to either have the murderer executed or accept a substantial payment from the murderer. People are urged to accept the money rather than have someone executed but the choice is theirs.
Regards
Testy
Torture here:
*“Our clients, who were all so severely tortured in a Saudi Arabian prison that they suffered damage to their hearts and permanent debilitating psychiatric damage, have been told that they are not entitled to bring compensation proceedings in the UK against the men who tortured them.”
She said the men would campaign to ensure the government fulfils its obligations under international law to pursue alleged torturers and would take their case to the European courts.
Mr Mitchell, Mr Walker and Mr Sampson were arrested after a series of terrorist bombings in the Saudi capital Riyadh and Khobar in eastern Saudi Arabia six years ago. They claimed they were tortured into admitting responsibility.
The fourth man, Mr Jones, was seized after being injured in a bomb blast outside a bookshop.
His treatment by captors, which included being beaten on his hands and feet, suspended by his arms, deprived of sleep and force-fed mind-altering drugs, has been independently confirmed.
All the men were released after an al-Qaida attack in May 2003 by nine suicide bombers in Riyadh that disproved official Saudi claims the attacks resulted from an alcohol turf war by westerners. *
Of course, iof you choose to remain blind to the fact that you have virtually no enforcable rights there, then that is up to you. I do hope you never fall foul of the law there. Of course, you may be willing to trade your rights for an apparently safe environment to raise children. That is of course your choice.
I assume you are not a Saudi national and that you would rely on consular support if you fell foul of the law. I bet you would be shouting about your rights then.
Pjenn
I was here for that episode and I also hope I never fall afoul of the law here. Actually your point about “enforceable rights” is one of the first things I tell people arriving here from Western countries. “This ain’t like home, boy.”
I am willing to temporarily trade certain rights in return for a long-term advantage for my daughter.
You’re quite right about me not being a Saudi national. I’m about as far from it as one can get. If I were locked-up for something I would indeed call the consulate, that’s what they’re there for. As far as “shouting about my rights,” I think not. There aren’t any.
I’ve lived here quite a while and discovered that generally minding one’s own business is a good rule and so far at least, have never had any legal problems more severe than a speeding ticket or two.
Regards
Testy
Pjenn
As regards the Western gentlemen that were mistreated. I believe this were in fact an injustice. On the other hand, a couple of points. “Turf wars” over alcohol do in fact happen here although I have never heard of anyone being bombed over it. It was a reasonable suspicion. The other point is that this was an injustice. Do the laws in your country prevent injustices? I suspect not.
In any event, I am not an apologist for the Saudis and am unsure exactly how I worked my way into that position. I like both the place and the people and plan on staying for quite a while longer, employment permitting. As far as my “rights” go, I generally have all I need and no one bothers me, something I value highly.
Regards
Testy
This is the general point that I was trying to make to Chowder. That is, the rule of law is necessary for liberty. If you oppose the rule of law in a majo y, one must expect the law to sanction you.
People like Chowder who complain about the “namby-pamby” justice system that “lets people off” are unable to see the corollary- that it is only possible to have a firm justice system at the expense of human rights. I can understand your enjoyment of a safe environment in which to raise your daughter, but I am sure that you would not want her to remain in Saudi as an adult with the limits on her as a person and as a woman.
In Britain the requirements for evidence are somewhat higher than in the USA. We have Habeus Corpus which means indefinite detention is impossible. Torture of suspects is banned. Legal representation is allowed. There is independent review of all cases. There is appeal available both within (House of Lords-soon to be Supreme Court) and international (ECHR). A free press is operating which regularly works to expose miscarriages of justice. Etc etc etc.
None of the above applies in Saudi.
They are lovely people- I went to college with a group of them- but their political system is medieval and their sense of human rights is non-existent.
I wish you well, and more than that I hope that the Saudi police never come for you. Case after case (the one I quoted is only one of hundreds) shows that arrest leads to indefinite detention, torture and denial of legal representation. Please don’t get arrested. If you do, have plenty of riyals available to try to buy your way out; and make sure someone screams for your embassy.
I certainly take your point about the need for laws and the rule of law. The alternative is anarchy. If, as we were talking about earlier, I actually killed someone over a perceived miscarriage of justice, I would certainly expect to be sanctioned by the legal powers that be. Obviously I would attempt to wriggle my way out of punishment but I wouldn’t expect that to work. The most I could hope for would be some kind of mitigation.
The limits you speak of regarding women are actually somewhat overblown in the press and popular beliefs. Sure, women can’t drive. OTOH, they tend to be chauffered around town by drivers. They can’t officially work (this is changing) but can start and own businesses, some of them quite substantial, many other things are not exactly what they seem here.
On that topic, my daughter is now in California attending college and hopes to become an MD eventually. Her goal is to come back to Saudi and practice medicine. A strange attitude but I understand it. She attended her senior year of highschool in San Diego and was appalled at many of the students there. Bringing drugs to school, regular searches for weapons, special programs for pregnant students, and many other things. Her attitude was “What’s wrong with these people?”
Thank you for your concern. (Truly, no snarkiness intended.) The Saudis have their own ways of doing things and, while it is nothing at all like the US or UK systems, it tends to work in the majority of cases. In all truth I’m not sure I’d trust the US Embassy to understand that and work with them. A heavy-handed attempt to spring someone could turn confrontational and I’d be the loser in that. I’d be far better off at least initially trying to talk my way out or have a Saudi friend or two come by and speak for me.
If you wish, I have some funny stories about people who tried escaping punishment for minor infractions by using their embassies. The people didn’t understand how things work and the results were generally just the opposite of what they expected.
As you say, the Saudi government is a monarchy in the old sense of the term and can do just about anything they like. I suppose I should feel frightened by that but curiously enough it doesn’t bother me. True, the government is in a war against the Al-Quaida people at the moment and I suspect they do some things that are not strictly in accordance with the international declaration of human rights. On the other hand, that has very little affect on me or the average citizen here and there is very little sympathy for those affected. (I knew some of the victims in the compound attacks a couple of years ago) If I lived in the US, many of the same kinds of intrusive legal activities could happen and, although they would be legal under some interpretation of the law, they would still happen.
In any event, I seem to have wandered extremely far from the OP. My apologies for maundering on about matters only peripherally connected with the topic.
Best regards to you
Testy