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Getting DMCA Locked In Through The Backdoor
pugugly writes "Findlaw's Writ has an interesting editorial (By a student) on the quietly signed Singapore-U.S. Free trade agreement, set for fast-track approval (Limited debate, no amendments). It has a clause in it requiring the signatories abide by DMCA provisions. Among other things, this could theoretically this would remove that annoying judicial oversight from the picture."
--just as an intellectual exercise, for your information, this is what it's called "assymetrical warfare". In unnamed country-x, with overwhelming weapons and logistics, etc superiority over their own oppressed people or some nation they have invaded, it's still easy (relatively speaking if war is ever easy) to "fight" against this or that. There's whole libraries of books about it and all the nations teach it as well. Here's a total random example, their jet fighters. Your side identifies the bars and whoehouses the swaggering fighter jocks hang out at, you blow that bar one night. At the same time you use your "puny" weapons to take a small unit with some mortars perhaps, you nail the jets on the field with the mortars. They (the bad guys in this example, the oppressors or occupiers) up the ante, retaliate, mass hangings and shootings and torture, so the guerrillas take out the oppressors families or local areas with poison in the water or food, etc. They ship in more troops, you blow the bridges as they cross, or nail the fuel supply way in the rear. It's really just how far do you want to take it. Armies need at least (these are generic figures spoken by people other than me, professionals at it) a 10 to 1 numerical superiority to be successful occupiers if the civilian population doesn't want them there and engages in guerrila warfare against them, that and they need to be ruthless, and it's a never ending spiral if they go that route. Witness israel and the palestinians right now, if mere ownership of the superior tech was "enough", there wouldn't be any fighting there. They will have to engage in complete and total genocide to be "victorious" and even then it's still a crap shoot until the last opposing human is dead.
I would not negate the effectiveness of millions of people who are working inside the infrastructure, who have access to small arms and tools, and who would have cross overs who would decide working for the regime is a bad idea. Not saying it would be easy, but impossible? No, it's quite possible. I don't care how much high tech you got, millions of snipers (deer hunters) alone would be a formidable force. It's one thing to have enough bombs to drop to smash a few small cities in a small nation over in whoknowswhereistan,but talking about thousands of cities over millions of square miles? It doesn't exist,you couldn't build enough conventionals, especially if you had to use slave labor and guard all the thousands of roads and rail lines that are necessary to *build* the stuff, to transport all the pieces, to supply the food and fuel and water, and nuking your own nation is sort of counter productive, it wouldn't happen.
The US fights external wars, the last time we had an internal was the civl war, it was pretty nasty. Neither side had all that much tech compared to what is available now. And the only reason we are winning foreign wars is we fight relatively weak nations, with very much older technology. If you notice, we never went into serbia on the ground. the reason is, it would not have been easy, even with total aircap. We are still losing guys weekly in ashcanistan, and will contiue to do so as long as we have guys there. I imagine it will start up again in iraq as well.
Most of the tech we have faced even with "higher"level tech, has been warsaw pact weaponry, and none of the top of the line stuff has been exported from russia, they only ship grade B or C level weaponry for the most part. And by some accounts, even their grade B anti armor man portable rockets were starting to "work" against abrams,and the reason why the war ended so soon is because the top level iraqi generals got bribed off, and they quit fighting. They (US spooks) flew them out, no idea where they are now.
No, people having a born with right to self defense and to be armed is a good idea, and for exactly the possibility of a junta takeover of the government.
They interviewed some japanese general from world war 2 once, they asked him why japan never really made any serious invasion moves, paraphrased his reply was "there is a man with a rifle behind every blade of grass in america".
I would not like to be part of any occuping force if the bulk of the US armed population got annoyed with them. No I wouldn't.
Not exactly. This provision prohibits individual states from undermining the treaties made by the federal government. It says nothing about the federal courts (and definitely not the Supreme Court) making Constitutional rulings on treaty provisions.
But that's the whole point. If the Constitution does not give the power to the Supreme Court to declare a law unconstitutional, then it's up to the Legislature to give that power to the Supreme Court. The basis of judicial review is Marbury v. Madison, and that specifically dealt with the language that only laws which were made in persuance of the Constitution shall be the supreme law of the land. That language is not present with regard to treaties however. Quoting the entire sentence:
You need to look at Missouri v. Holland. There is was ruled that a law which was unconstitutional for congress to pass by itself became constitutional when made part of a treaty. Now it could be argued that there is still some judicial review available with regard to treaties, if a treaty were made completely repugnant to the Constitution. But as for any enumerated powers arguments, those are going to certainly be thrown out by the court.