"The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations" https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XKQ4636/

Great book, it directionally aligns Progress to accountability (really accounting). After reading the book, when I am in a big city I look up at the skyscrapers and think about how despite the web of vendors and people trying to defraud each other, some small amount of value manages to get diverted into a successful skyscraper, and this is made possible by accounting. Progress is an iterative prisoner's dilemma

It's a little bit more complicated. Because Kurnaz is a turkish citizen Turkey had been responsible for his return. They refused and Germany did not want to admit him because his residence permit had expired and he had not renewed it during his imprisonment in Guantanamo as required. This reason was given by Hans-Georg Maaßen, the head of the department responsible at the time in the Federal Ministry of the Interior and later head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution before he became the CDU's far-right candidate

I'm not sure I'd hold him responsible. He isn't the one that ordered the torture, and we don't know what he was told ( did he know the guy was getting tortured? did he know he wasn't any threat?)

That's part of the point of the system: it makes blame hard to assign.

That's the beauty of any complex system made by humans. The system decides, no human is responsible (except for the occasional scapegoats).

Society is built on systems and everyone submits to them. If it works for the majority, it's good enough.

The sad part is that it is possible to change the various ancient systems into something better, more dynamic, more responsive, that would work for more edge cases.

We just... don't. Few dare question the status quo and even fewer try to change it.

He was foreign minister at that point and refused to take a German citizen back, instead he left him there. Until pressure was to high, and "public opinion" wasn't that much focused on islamist terrorism anymore. In a nutshell, a low point in Steinmeier's career, and in post-WW2 German foreign policy. Not that Germany was the only country doing this kind of shit, so.

Formally M. Kurnaz was not a German but a Turkish citizen.

Cannot edit anymore. Kurnaz is a Turkish citizen, he was born in Germany. I mixed that up from memory.

Kurnaz is a turkish citizen.

As much as I dislike Steinmeier, I agree. We also don't know how much pressure was exerted on him.

That does not exonerate him. He could have stepped back and make the pressure public.

Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger did step back when she did not agree with a legislative proposal.

Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger was less important and probably less threatened. Otto Schily instead, then interior minister of Germany, alledgedly was fearing for the security of his loved ones, caused by threats made against him.

> Otto Schily instead, then interior minister of Germany, alledgedly was fearing for the security of his loved ones, caused by threats made against him.

I never heard of this. Do you have any sources for this?