Hip-hop is not torture, but that's something completely different.

John Demjanjuk is supposed to be extradited to Germany. He objects to the extradition on the grounds that he is going to be tortured. German authorities say no, he's not going to be tortured.

Now, the "torture" in this case is, according to Demjanjuk, the simple act of being transported to Germany at all, because his health is so bad, including pre-leukemia, kidney problems, spinal problems and gout (see here and here).

One can only believe that, for some people, justice sometimes requires a little torture:

Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center found irony in Broadley's argument for his client.

"He wants to plead the sense of fairness that he regularly denied all of the victims at Sobibor," Hier said.

He called Demjanjuk's comparison of his planned deportation to torture "preposterous coming from a person that served the S.S. in a death camp. It is a preposterous argument and insulting to the survivors of the Holocaust."

Hier said that 250,000 Jews were killed at the camp and that none of the guards who worked there was blameless.

"You were there for one job: kill the Jews," he said. "And that's what they did full-time."

He called the evidence against Demjanjuk "overwhelming" (here).

Demjanjuk says it's torture. Hier says it isn't. Golly gee, Wally. What should we do?

Oh! I know! Let's ask His Beatitude -- may he live forever. He'll tell us what torture is.