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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Basically Archon, I think you're just missing the forest for the trees here with the etymology concern and you didn't help your case by trying to downplay the actions of the border forces with a pretty textbook case of the Nuremberg Defense
. Saying they were Just Following Orders doesn't exonerate them of their deeds.
That seems like a imperfect (at best) summary of the situation.
Edited by Gaon on Dec 16th 2018 at 10:14:22 AM
"All you Fascists bound to lose."This whole argument is getting kind of weird. One person objects (archonspeaks) to the use of the word "imprisonment" to describe the situation. The other person (wisewillow) gets offended since they think this person is quibbling over semantics and is making light of human suffering. But really, archonspeaks was upset because using "imprisoned" implies that the ones suffering and dying in cages are convicted criminals serving sentences.
It doesn't help that wisewillow has outright stated that they don't think "detainment" is a strong enough word to describe what's happening. And tbf, they're probably right. "Indefinite detainment" really doesn't get across the full horror of it.
While I'd still argue that full-on SS comparisons aren't appropriate (yet...), this latest tragedy is making such comparisons more and more apt.
Edited by M84 on Dec 17th 2018 at 2:15:02 AM
Disgusted, but not surprisedEh, I’d say it’s getting there rather quickly.
Again, here’s the thread on hieleras.
A few details- actually, no, I’m posting it in full. Here’s why I’m so annoyed this was ignored to discuss detain versus imprison.
I've been reporting on hieleras, the iceboxes that people (including children) who cross the border are placed in by Border Patrol, longer than any reporter I know. And I'm really bothered about the way the death of the 7-year-old child is being reported.
You're placed in a hielera if you enter at a port-of-entry. You're placed in a hielera if you cross without authorization. To prominently claim that this child crossed "illegally" IN YOUR LEDE is offensive and serves to grant major leeway for her death.
To claim that Border Patrol regularly serve food and water to people in hieleras is a serious stretch of reality and it indicates to me you don't talk to people about hieleras and rely instead on what the administration is telling you. Hence your narrative.
Here's a cropped @jbmoorephoto from a hielera. This is the water people are forced to drink. It's grey and it's disgusting. It routinely makes people sick. There isn't even a place to dry your hands after you wash them. Everything is full of fecal matter.
The food? Instant ramen for breakfast, lunch, dinner. No beds so you sleep on the floor, if you find the space. No showers. You can tell how long people have been there by the smell.
I know this because no less than 100 people have told me the same thing for more than 10 years.
I've looked at I don't know how many medical records of children who've been in hieleras. Everyone single one has at least a cough. It's always noted. People who are crossing expect it to happen. How you, an immigration reporter, don't already know this baffles me.
It takes me back to my endless point: with some exception, the majority of reporters at English-language papers only ever speak to people who cross in soundbites. This is the problem of diversity, entitlement, and power that journalists of color are always talking about.
So yeah, it is “policy,” and I don’t care whether the feds approved it or CBP came up with it and the feds let it slide. CBP is still culpable cause they’re the ones locking children in and ignoring their needs and not, I dunno, immediately running screaming to the media because their job is a dystopian nightmare.
I'm not exactly saying they are the SS (even if they are walking in that direction at a lightning speed), but that's the thing here: the logistic of the Nuremberg Defense ("orders are orders.") is disgustingly common in pretty much all levels of society and it pops up almost literally every time human rights abuses are committed. Even Cops shooting innocents is handwaved with "they were just following protocol!", which is effectively a variation of the Nuremberg Defense. The human complacency with inhuman bureaucracy is basically what led Hanna Arendt to claim that real evil is banal, brought upon by human apathy and complacency towards inhuman situations (more precisely, a inhuman set of laws in this case).
Our mistake is to think that the Nazi apparatus was fueled solely by blind hatred and not equally by rigid adherence to orders. Human rights abuse happen exactly because people go "well don't blame me, I don't make the rules." while innocents (such as, in this case, children) die.
Via the Nuremberg Defense, Archon unwittingly made clear how dire the situation is by trying to justify the human rights abuse of the border forces with the same reasoning the Nazis justified their human rights abuses.
See
for further details.
The problem is that the Nuremberg defense isn't wrong. Society is built on people obeying protocols-if those protocols are wrong, it's usually still better to obey them. The Nazis are an aberrant, extreme circumstance.
Leviticus 19:34Even the trials themselves didn't flat out state that following orders is never a valid defense. They just confirmed that it's not a valid defense for war crimes. Especially when the defendants were not just mere rank-and-file but higher-ups.
They were found guilty in large part because the prosecutors knew they were full of shit when claiming it was "just" orders. You don't get that high up in the system to the point of running concentration camps by "just" being obedient.
Edited by M84 on Dec 17th 2018 at 2:56:56 AM
Disgusted, but not surprisedAye, the Nuremberg Defence isn't always invalid. The big problem with the Nazis is that they often were acting on their own discretion or on vague orders that left some room for humanity and yet they didn't take it up. Also, the Nazis were not that hard on people who disobeyed criminal orders.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanIndeed that's a big part of why the "superior orders" defense doesn't work sometimes — because ultimately the people who committed those crimes weren't "just" following orders at all. It wasn't orders. It was them.
That was the case with the Nazi war criminals on trial. These were people who demonstrated enthusiasm to suck up to their superiors. That's how they got into their high positions.
Edited by M84 on Dec 17th 2018 at 3:10:31 AM
Disgusted, but not surprisedThis is getting pretty touchy, alright. Frankly, I'm not quite sure why they're being detained in the first fucking place.
For fucks sake, their trying to live. Survive. Is that supposed to be a goddamned crime according to the US Government? Because it's sure looking like it.
And putting them in cages. Cages. Like animals. I came 15,000 Kilometres across the world to see this? This inhumanity?
What's the world goddamned come to?
Edited by TechPriest90 on Dec 16th 2018 at 2:12:43 PM
I hold the secrets of the machine.Why they're being detained is simple. They're trying to enter the USA without the necessary paperwork. It takes time to process them so that they can enter the USA properly as immigrants or asylum seekers.
The problem isn't the detainment itself. The problem is that the detainment is in inhumane conditions. Cages and iceboxes are not remotely acceptable. Especially when it comes to children.
Disgusted, but not surprisedI’m just going to point out that the person who originally had an issue with terminology was wisewillow. If terminology is so irrelevant, perhaps that poster should not have made it a topic in the first place.
I’m not really sure the Nuremberg Defense is relevant here. We live in a society with rules and to a degree those rules have to be followed. Not every instance of following unethical directives invokes that defense. It’s also not a matter of downplaying but assigning blame. People are not being placed in iceboxes and starved and killed just because border patrol agents are racist, these things are happening because we have an entire system specifically designed to punish people trying to enter this country.
The analogy of putting out flames versus fixing the faulty wiring was used above. While these conditions need to be brought to light, making them the main focus almost seems to me like putting out the fire but never fixing the wiring.
Certainly not, but I believe the systemic issues are far more pressing. You could eradicate all forms of bigotry from the ranks of CBP and the situation would still be awful for immigrants. Like I said originally most LE Os are decent people, but the framework they operate in is literally designed to exclude decency from what they do. That has to be changed.
Edited by archonspeaks on Dec 16th 2018 at 11:55:08 AM
They should have sent a poet.I mean, yeah, but the system is pretty racist. The two issues aren't somehow disconnected from one another.
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Agreed - they need to be detained, but that should mean reasonably-tolerable accommodations, with families allowed to stay together.
Which is why I think that what's being done is straight-up illegal on the part of the people running the camps. They are responsible for providing the necessities of survival and they are not fucking doing so. Nuremberg Defense doesn't come into play at all. Anywhere, unless you can show that there's official policy stating to deny migrants these things.
The Nurnberg defence is mostly not coming into play because it was "hey, I had to do what I was told or I would have been killed or ended up on the eastern front. I just wanted to survive". Nobody is threatening any border guards into being killers. Or careless with human lives.
Edited by Swanpride on Dec 17th 2018 at 12:50:05 PM
If that's how you want to misinterpret that statement, then sure.
I really don't see what's so hard to understand about this. Regardless of whether or not it's "correct", the fact of the matter is, under our current system, prisoners are treated like garbage. The detainees are also being treated like garbage. Therefore, the detainees are being treated like prisoners. What you're now doing is putting words in my mouth.
Edited by PhysicalStamina on Dec 17th 2018 at 7:37:52 AM
i'm tired, my friendSeveral people have now said that immigrants “need” to be detained.
I would like to direct those people to this post.
We don’t “need” to detain people. Period. It’s cruel and abusive, not just because of the conditions but because it’s wrong to lock people up for trying to immigrate. The problem IS the detainment itself as well as the awful conditions.
I didn’t “make it a topic.” It was one section of a long post with several other points. You’re the one who made it a topic by refusing to drop it, even after I specifically said:
I also said:
So, I’m done discussing this useless point.
Okay, you keep fixating on this. I never said all individual CBP agents are racist. I literally said the system is racist as are “many” of the cogs in the system, aka individual agents. And it’s weird you keep misconstruing that.
You can’t fix the wiring until the fire is out, which it isn’t. Plus, y’know, the republicans are actively trying to prevent fixing the wiring OR putting out the fire, cause they like the wiring and the fire.
You’re far more optimistic than I am. Perhaps I'm being unreasonable, but from reading dozens of law enforcement cases in various law classes (including my immigration law class) where state and federal officers hid evidence, lied to protect each other, abused people in custody, etc, and usually faced minimal consequences even for egregious behavior, I think our system has far too many bad apples, and the “good” apples seem to usually ignore or cover up their behavior. Whistle blower cops/agents are the exception, not the rule. Not to mention how fervently police unions defend their right to kill unarmed people.
I’m also pretty shocked to see someone siding against the Nuremberg defense. Are you kidding?
No, no it absolutely isn’t. See: Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, literally every civil rights movement ever. “I’m just enforcing segregation because it’s the law” wasn’t some weird, extreme, Nazi level example, it was banal and daily and awful. If protocols are wrong, they should be ignored.
Edited by wisewillow on Dec 17th 2018 at 8:02:46 AM
People shouldn't be detained like prisoners or animals, but if there were better facilities to let people stay while they waiting to be processed legally, that would be best. We need better avenues to process citizenship applications, and places for people to stay and be safe while they wait on that if they have nowhere else to go or are fleeing danger - letting people enter the country and then disappear without ever getting into the system is a great way to foster exploitation and other forms of victimization of undocumented immigrants.
It's been fun.No one proposed that? My post was about a program where each person had a case worker, was given support, had check ins, and 99% made it to court. Without being detained or forced to wear monitoring equipment.

From my perspective, at least, I’m pointing at a house on fire and yelling for buckets, and you’re pointing out the faulty wiring which caused the fire. Yes, that needs fixing, but the fire has to be put out first, or the house will burn down before we can fix the wiring.
...that is a flatout terrifying sentence. Read it out loud, please, and tell me every hair on your neck doesn’t stand up.
Edited by wisewillow on Dec 16th 2018 at 1:01:21 PM