Inter armas silent leges

A few days ago I finished China Mieville's The City & The City, which (briefly) is about two cities - Beszel and Ul Qoma - that occupy the same physical space but whose citizens occupy totally separate mental spaces. It's an extreme version of the reality people in the world deal with every day and I was reminded of it when reading this entry at the TomDispatch.com website.

In essence, the author (Chase Madar) argues that Guantanamo is not an aberration in the current American prison system:

"Prosecuting a 15-year-old for `murder' with the help of a little torture and some threats of rape may not be the kind of thing we want to show German journalists. They’ll just get upset. They lack the context. But we Americans really have no right to claim that we’re shocked, shocked. We got used to this kind of thing a long time ago. The prosecution of former child soldier Omar Khadr has been nothing, in other words, if not all-American."

It's a form of the same "unseeing" that Beszel's and Ul Qoma's citizens practice every day.

Things to Be Thankful For? #3 - The Israeli Supreme Court

I don't often have good things to say about the Israeli government but their Supreme Court often surprises one with their wisdom and insight.

Case in point is a recent ruling made concerning the legitimacy of private prisons. In an 8-1 decision, the Israeli court determined "that incarceration infringes on such fundamental liberties that only the state should carry out this function, not least since the alternative is to turn prisoners into a means of extracting profit. `Economic efficiency is not a supreme value, when we are dealing with basic and important rights for which the state has responsibility.'"

What heresy!

The care of prisoners should not be left in the hands of people whose sole motivation is to make money.

One might extend this to the prosecution of wars, as well.