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Battlestar Galactica's Last Days
bowman9991 writes "If your country was invaded and occupied by a foreign power, would you blow yourself up to fight back? If someone pointed a gun at your head and threatened to pull the trigger if you refused to sign a document you knew would lead to a hundred deaths (and you signed!), would that make you ultimately responsible? Does superior technology give you the moral right to impose your will on a technologically inferior culture? You wouldn't expect a mainstream television show to tackle such philosophically loaded questions, certainly not a show based on cheesy science fiction from the '70s, but if you've watched Battlestar Galactica since it was re-imagined in 2003, there has been no escape. The final fourth season is nearly over, and when the final episode airs, television will never be the same again. SFFMedia illustrates how Battlestar Galactica exposes the moral dilemmas, outrages, and questionable believes of the present as effectively (but more entertainingly) than any documentary or news program. It's not hard to see parallels in the CIA and US military's use of interrogation techniques in Bush's War on Terror, the effects of labeling one race as 'the enemy,' the crackdown on free speech, or the use of suicide bombers in Iraq."
My superior technology gives me the moral right to impose my will on a technologically inferior culture called Slashdot!
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
BSG doesn't so much tackle moral questions as sort of run past them.
Battlestar clearly parallels events in today's society. The cylons will elect Simon to be their new leader and Cavil will retire/get boxed while the rest of the cylons sing "na na na na"
The writers don't know what it is.
Anybody want my mod points?
Funny. I thought the article was alluding to Iraq.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
The final fourth season is nearly over, and when the final episode airs, television will never be the same again.
I'm sure it's a good show, but get real here. Television will be pretty much the same after BSG than it was before BSG.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If my country were invaded and occupied by a foreign power, I would ensure that I obey the cease-fires and give peace a chance, and not hide like a coward amongst my own women and children as I target the enemy's women and children.
Collaborator.
If your country was invaded and occupied by a foreign power, would you blow yourself up to fight back?
Some Iraqis thought so. I personally prefer the Red Dawn scenario, but to each their own.
If someone pointed a gun at your head and threatened to pull the trigger if you refused to sign a document you knew would lead to a hundred deaths (and you signed!), would that make you ultimately responsible?
Technically, yes. Even though you signed the document under duress, you could have refused to sign it knowing you would be killed for not doing so. Ultimately, it is the person with the gun who is responsible.
Does superior technology give you the moral right to impose your will on a technologically inferior culture?
No, but that didn't stop the European (and now American) powers from doing so anyway.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I guess it is meant to read "questionable beliefs" not "questionable believes".
In the beginning I really liked the show. It had a good mix of action, technology and drama. However, the last few seasons have been fairly "meh" for me because it has turned almost completely into a soap opera. Don't get me wrong, the soap opera stuff is OK but now there very little of the original mix that attracted me in the first place. It's just not the same show that it started out as.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
The ad that Slashdot is choosing to serve with this story is for Al Jazeera. Am I the only one that thinks that's kind of funny?
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
Sorry I have to type more in my comment.
Could start a rant but why!
Is this an article or an add? I'm not quite sure...
Am I eval()? - http://www.monst3r.com.br
Hi,
BG (season 4.5) exposes another more significant dilemma for me: Imagine you're a resident of a third world country (e.g. Germany or UK) and even capable and willing to pay for your favorite TV series. Would you wait months or years for it to acess it legaly or just download it immediately from the asinus electronicus? What if your wife is even more anxious to see it than you? Having a gun put against you head can not be compared to the pressure applied to one in such a case.
Hard choices :-)
Yours, Martin
but if you've watched Battlestar Galactica since it was re-imagined in 2003, there has been no escape.
That's... hyperbolic. I haven't seen an episode of the fourth season yet, nor do I plan to. I just lost interest when I started feeling like the writers didn't know where they were really heading.
So I'm clearly... well, not hostile, but indifferent... to the show, but it should be noted that this "story" is nonsense. SciFi shows have been doing this for, literally, decades. Tackling moral issues of the day was the point of The Twlight Zone and Star Trek (TOS). More recently, Babylon 5 earned a pretty solid reputation for discussing (and very definitely not answering) moral conundra. Even Deep Space Nine (where BSG producer Ron Moore once worked) did a pretty good job with the same thing.
So I suppose if your point is "BSG continues the tradition", then fine. But the tone of the summary and article very much make it sound like this is revolutionary.
Next thing you know, they'll be a non sci-fi show about these very issues. It might even get decent ratings!
Battlestar Galactica is one of those series that I'm sure I would enjoy if I watched it as rapidly as possible. Commercial free and at my own leisure.
Watching LOST is painful due to the seemingly infinite periods of time between seasons. Guess what I'll be doing tonight...
But hopefully BSG can have a cheap DVD or BD bundle for the entire series for people who enjoy sci-fi but didn't follow the series across its run.
yeah, ain't it funny how peoples consiousnesses react to ambiguous stories.
hat's off to BSG for getting us to actually think and pointing out the conclusion jumpers.
I was a kid when the original BSG was on in the late 70's, and so remember it fondly (I can still remember how sad I and other kids were when they cancelled it). And when I heard they were bringing it back as a miniseries, I was skeptical to say the least. My first thought was "Jesus, can't Hollywood come up with ANYTHING original anymore?" and my second thought (after hearing that Starbuck and Boomer would be female) was "Oh great, and they've made it politically correct too, even better." At that point, I vowed I would never waste my time on it.
Then a funny thing happened. I was flipping around and caught a bit of the miniseries, a way into the first night (just after the nukes hit). It was the scene where Helo and Boomer put down on Caprica for repairs and are faced with a mob fleeing for their lives. It was one of the most powerful and dramatic scenes I had ever seen on television. The contrast with the original, where the colonials seemed to forget that their entire civilization had been wiped out almost immediately after it happened, was just stunning. And the obvious connection to 9-11 was immediate and visceral (I don't think this series could have been made before 9-11, certainly not with this kind of gritty realism).
From that point on, I wasn't a skeptic.
And just when I thought I had seen the best it could offer, along comes the first season and it somehow managed to get even BETTER. The premiere episode of that season ("33") was absolutely brilliant, "Hand of God" was touching and dramatic, and "Kobol's Last Gleaming" bordered on an almost mystical experience (the opening to that two-parter has to be the harshest montage to ever grace a television screen).
Now, the series has had its ups and downs since then. They've never again equalled the quality of the miniseries and first season, IMHO (though individual episodes like "Flight of the Phoenix" have come close). But even at its worst, this is still the best thing on television.
This skeptic will miss you greatly. Nothing else even comes close.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Blow myself up - No that's just stupid as that limits the number of enemy i can kill. My objective is not to die for my country/planet but to make the other bastard die for his.
gun at my head to sign - I'd sign, after all it's self presevation, and no I wouldn't be responsible (in my mind) as they forced me to sign, so they were going to do it anyway.
Joss Whedon, creator of the classic science fiction western series Serenity, declared, "it's so passionate, textured, complex, subversive and challenging that it dwarfs everything on TV."
the series was called firefly. the movie was called serenity.
http://kered.org
Sure, I'd sign the cease-fire, even though it would lead to 100 deaths because the Islamic savages don't abide by treaties and cease-fires anyway. I wouldn't be responsible for the other side breaking the pact.
I think the operative comparison would be to Jewish collaborators throughout occupied Europe in WW2, who were forced, sometimes at gunpoint, sometimes with mere words, to compile lists of people to be shipped for "resettlement," form police forces of their own people to round them up, etc.
It's not about being technologically inferior, it's about being culturally inferior. Grow up kids, quit kicking Israel in the shins! If the islamic savages choose to behave like deviant youth then the only thing they will understand is a spanking.
Yes, everybody knows that all you need to do is "teach people a lesson," and if only the "shin-kickers" would get out of the way, the little peoples of the Earth would learn their lesson faster. After all, it worked for Germany in 1914 when the inferior and decadent cultures of France and Russia dared to oppose them, or Austria when immature Serbia tried to oppose them, or France when the barbaric Algerians opposed them, or England when the Mesopotamian Arabs and Afghans opposed them, and on and on. The "lesson" is that "uncultured" people probably have as much a right to live as anyone else, and the only "lesson" you teach from the barrel of a gun is that gun-barrels are for teaching lessons.
This troll is an imperialist, of a hundred-year-old vintage, but the ideas STILL have remarkable currency and need to be deconstructed, as BSG does.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Seriously, when it went from Battlestar to sci-fi version of general hospital, myself and most people I know pretty much moved on.
In case no one noticed, is the topic post simply forgetting Star Trek. It to "ran past" the issues but it did present them. It should not be neccessary to recite examples but it seems like it is required.
Hmmm a man who's half black feels he has the moral right to enslave a man who is half white.
An integrated crew, and even a miscegenating kiss?
A prime directive that , to rephrase it a lot, basically said other cultural values are equal valid as your own technologically advance society, hung out before the audience every week.
The futility of doomesday logic?
Even the trouble with tribbles had a message that Russians and Americans still have common desires and interests.
On the otherhand this was what early science fiction was about. Long before Andy Warhol and crew got the idea of decontextualization as the means to seeing things as they are, science fiction was mainly about seeing what happens when you transplant a cultural norm into a different society, usually by means of a technological story telling device.
it was not all techno whiz larry niven (who later on also started contemplative sci fi with the Mote in gods eye) or space opera flash gordon.
think about flowers for algernon, or the canticle for lebowitz, the lathe of heaven, farenheight 451.... Or for you young kids, Ghost in the shell.
Star trek was designed to grab the flash gordon audience and show them a short 1 hour play about moral issues under heavy syrup.
Galactica is in this tradition, not in the tradition of "Buck rogers" or star wars.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Gene Roddenberry had been using parallelism and morale dilemmas in his show for decades. As a matter of fact, I thought the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica is even more cheesy than the first. Whats up with this camera guy, does he have Parkinsons or something? No, I do not deny Star Trek can be cheesy either but at least it doesn't make me feel dumber for having watched it.
I could never get into this series, and (as evidenced by many a post here) even people who used to be into it eventually fell away due to the Lost effect (the realization that the writers didn't have a pre-planned plot arc). To me, it always felt like "what if the FX channel did a 'Babylon 5'-esque series while re-using a 70's franchise?"
I don't think this is as influential a series (or event) as TFA (or the poster) claims it to be.
Instead of assuming the Cylons are using their technological superiority to enforce their view why not consider...
both specie know faster than light travel, how much superior can you get if you can break that? I guess you can throw in the ability to transmit memories across space
how about the fact that we are now only learning, everything isn't what it seems to be.
While I could occasionally see some parallels to exaggerated actions of Bush and Co that exaggeration was so extreme at times that it bordered on ludicrous. If anything BSG jumped the shark one too many times that too much has become both silly and interesting at the same time. Every time they introduce a new interesting angle they lose with the previously mentioned shark jumping explanation
Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed the most recent episode but I loathe seeing the explanation of Starbucks corpse and crashed viper. While I love the story twist I have little to no faith in them pulling it off anymore.
Honestly past 2.5 all I got was an impression of angst expressed improperly in some story arcs. In other words they tried to portray the Cylons as Bush and Co yet at the same time Roslyn had her supposed Bush and Co events. Yet neither really worked because they were always exaggerated beyond the point of belief.
If I could tie what the story is portraying to something in real life it would not be Bush and Co. It would be Hamas versus Israel versus Fatah. Both sides being victims of stupid hard headed actions and ideology, throw in some religion where if God did come back down neither side would recognize him because they would be to wrapped up in proving they are right.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
So I guess it was an add.
Poor product placements. No doubt the reason this show is being canceled.
when the final episode airs, television will never be the same again.
This is just about the most ridiculous thing I've seen on Slashdot in a very long time. If one were to poll the public on this subject, I'm quite sure a substantial number of people wouldn't have ever heard of the SciFi channel to begin with, let alone have a clue that there's some obscure show called BSG on there or be able to remotely describe what the show is about. Nor would they give a flying rat's ass. The Sopranos, now that's a show that had a measurable impact on TV. Regardless of the quality of the show, BSG is going to fade right back into the obscurity from whence it came, with only mom's-basement-dwelling geeks remembering the first thing about it.
Next question.
I agree, though I'm hooked on BSG at this point. It was just before season 3 started and a friend gave me all of the first 2 seasons as rips. I watched like 1-3 episodes a night for a couple of weeks, and by the time I finished those I had a couple of eps in season 3 to watch. (note, I've since purchased the DVDs for all those eps, but the DVDs weren't out at the time, the net was the only way to get caught up).
Viewing it commercial free in that format was great, you really got sucked in and didn't want to stop watching, and I would go right to the next episode. I've told friends who want to get into it that their best bet is to wait till its over an d get all the DVDs.
Similarly I've yet to get into Lost simply because I don't want to wait between episodes and deal with commercials. I just will wait till the show end and get the DVDs then.
As it stands even when I watch BSG now I DVR it on Friday and then get around to watching it commercial free some time Sunday or later in the week.
who says sci-fi is too preachy?
Oh, and Muslim isn't a race, fucktard.
THL phish sticks
A subtle/background role in changes in direction for the USA. I bet the now deceased (previous) administration secretly (to the public) and openly (behind closed doors) loathed BSG, but convinced themselves there was some advantage (such as re-re-re-downloading themselves back into power come Jan 20, 2009) to not ringing up some execs on the West Coast.... But, maybe baby Hera nixed that?
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
In the end it will come down to the Adam-a family being the biblical adam--the origin of man. Somehow the human race will struggle to some new planet and start over shore of their technology but in paradise. Till they are once again expelled as a consequence of their seeking knowledge -- that is biblical "know" and carnal knowledge's purpose is the creation of new life--that is cylons with independent will.
The ultimate irony is that endure the rigors of space and the time it takes will require sturdier carriers of the seed. Namley the hybrids are the next generation of humans.
A few pure cylons will stay behind on the radiated planet since they are immune to radiation.
It will turn out the mechanical cylons sis not create the wetware human like cylons as is generally assumed. after all where are the missing links? No instead it will turn out that when the mechanized ones that are created by the tranpslanted human hybrids encouter the left behind cylons they will be enslaved by them and then return to conquer the hybrid humans.
starting the whole story over.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
When has the U.S. done that in recent memory?
It hasn't. Dunno if you've noticed, but lots of Arab countries are our allies in the GWOT.
Episode 4.11 was more depressing than, I dunno, being at work. Seriously, this is entertainment?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
You're saying that TV will never be the same after this show goes away, when what you mean is that it will become more the same. In either case, you're wrong, thankfully there will always be other good shows at some point.
If only they could hold a camera steady enough for long enough to not give me a headache, I might actually be able to watch the series. I really do want to watch it, but every time I've tried I've ended up with a headache within the first few minutes and have to stop it.
Apples to Oranges. Chuck is a broadcast show, BSG is a cable show. From what I've seen of it, Chuck is mostly a "stupid fun" type of show (which is fine, I like those sometimes, too), and thus more accessible to a broad audiance.
In so far as "TV will never be the same", the summary was too far into hyperbole. But I also don't choose what I watch based on viewership numbers.
Not a typewriter
RE: Blame the cylons. Blame the dead government. Blame everybody
Reminds me of a president we had.
BSG isn't even decent sci-fi, and it's creators aren't Martin Luther.
:)
The character's personalities have been re-molded so many times it is ridiculous:
* Adama is outraged at the idea of a teacher being president and forcibly takes over the government (only to give it back), yet rolls over for "Democracy" when a *known* criminal, traitor, and lunatic (who mumbles outloud to NOBODY) is elected. Nice job!
* Trained, hardened, reasonable, and resourceful soldiers *suddenly* resort to STRAPPING BOMBS TO THEIR CHESTS to fight the enemy.
* Fighter pilot spontaneously goes lawyer. (no offense to lawyers or pilots)
* Some human ships are filled with normal humans, others (same training and organization) are filled with bloodthirsty sadists with no regard for the lives of others (Pegasus). I hope U.S. aircraft carriers aren't like this
On the bright side, the visual polish and effects are very slick.
Essentially, the show is crapsh!t.
If my country were invaded and occupied by a foreign power, I would ensure that I obey the cease-fires and give peace a chance
So if someone invaded the US, you'd sit down to tea with them? No thought of expelling the invaders? You'd have been a ton of fun in the war of 1812. If people like you had their way, we'd still be speaking with a faggy accent.
Explanation? What explanation?
Chuck is on NBC. BSG is on SciFi. You can't compare the numbers absolutely.
A 1.5-2.5 share is really good for cable. The best-rated cable networks rarely break a 4.0; SciFi is a niche network, and 2 million viewer is quite good for them.
I watched the last ep. of the previous part and though for all the world it was "planet of the apes" again. I still couldn't form an emotional bond to any of the characters.
As a sucker for punishment, I watched the restart episode (last night inthe UK) and still felt it spent far too long on close-up shots of people looking confused - especially the guy with the eyepatch.
So far as moral questiosn go, all I can say is GO CYLONS They're far more interesting that the human (if that's what they turn out to be) characters int he show.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
humm the 1st part sounded like what is happening in Palestine and Israel...but def a good show !
the only "lesson" you teach from the barrel of a gun is that gun-barrels are for teaching lessons.
I don't necessarily dispute you here, but what can be done when you are faced with such a lesson, other than learn it?
For purley academic purposes it is fun to think about what things might be like were there no one teaching anyone else about gun barrels but if history is any indication of the nature of humans such things aren't going to stop any time soon. Someone somewhere is going to get a better gun than their neighbor and go be the agressor. Banding together to visit consequences on those agressors seems to work but that just reverses the teacher/student roles.
And the cultured types who elevate themselves above direct physical confrontation replace guns with dollars. Or food. Or medicine or whatever else their neighbor needs. No gun to your head but you either sign the document or your kids don't eat again tonight.
So once we or BSG have thoroughly deconstructed the troll where do we end up?
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
GWOT = Global War on Terror look it up.
"It's not hard to see parallels in the CIA and US military's use of interrogation techniques in Bush's War on Terror, the effects of labeling one race as "the enemy", the crack down on free speech, or the use of suicide bombers in Iraq."
It's hard not to see them when the show is written that way.
> when the final episode airs, television will never be the same again.
A little melodramatic, no? When the final episode of All in the Family ran (not the shitty spinoffs) TV changed. Same as M*A*S*H. Same would hold true for Sesame Street. Look, BSG was entertaining and even thought provoking (at times) but it's hardly something that 20 years from now people will be watching TV and say, "Wow! If it wasn't for BSG, TV would be totally different."
Bark less. Wag more.
On the other hand, the kill ratio in Iraq for coalition forces is 100:1 (1 coalition soldier dead for every 100 enemy combatants). Numbers like that make suicide bombing start to look pretty appealing.
No, that just means the bomber has lost the conflict but is to stupid to admit the fact. If suicide bombers had any tactical or strategic purpose to what they were doing, then perhaps you might have a point but they almost never do. They simply walk into a random crowd and kill a bunch of random people and accomplish nothing.
It doesn't weaken the stronger military by any meaningful amount, it just pisses them off. Even when public opinion is against a war suicide bombings aren't going to cause our military to quit and go home. At most it financially stresses the stronger party but it's hardly going to bankrupt the economy. We want out of Iraq but it isn't because of the suicide bombers - it's because it is a stupid, wasteful and unnecessary conflict which we should not have started in the first place.
The Japanese started using kamikaze tactics in WWII when the leadership already knew or should have known that the war was a lost cause. It was a futile and cowardly act by their leaders which in the end changed nothing. Similar actions in Iraq and other places will have similarly futile outcomes.
Nice way to slip that little bit of slant in there, shows how you really feel huh. You know what, the fact is that since 9/11 there have been ZERO attacks on American soil because of his leadership.. yes a lot of tough decisions were made, but I for one am thankful to him for making such difficult decisions and very possibly saving many American civilian lives. I'm thankful to Mr. Bush for making the rough decisions that he faced.
It's OUR war on terror, and Obama will continue it one way or another.. obviously making new and different decisions. But don't kid yourselves into thinking that he's going to suddenly start kissy facing with the leaders or Iran and Syria.. he's going to continue with very similar policies towards these terror-sponsoring countries that were created by Reagen, upheld by Bush Sr., endorsed and continued by Clinton and GWB.
The "lesson" is that "uncultured" people probably have as much a right to live as anyone else, and the only "lesson" you teach from the barrel of a gun is that gun-barrels are for teaching lessons.
And, yet, oddly those whom we "taught a lesson" in WWII at the barrel of a gun have taken it to heart and are now great international citizens.
I got a bit of a laugh reading the abstract, particularly this:
If your country was invaded and occupied by a foreign power, would you blow yourself up to fight back?
Great question! Let me know if that ever happens.
Seriously. In Iraq, the suicide bombers are largely al Qaeda imports - they're not Iraqis and they're not trying to get their country back. They want to take over and impose their lovely brand of Sharia law on the populace. Look at what they did in Fallujah before being kicked out.
In Afghanistan, the suicide bombers are Taliban idiots who - wait for it - want the Taliban to regain power so they can impose their lovely brand of Sharia law on the populace. Look at what they did in Afghanistan before being kicked out.
Lastly, holy crap, can we get over the immature "Bush's war on terror" shit? Seriously. He's out. The Democrats in office backed him up, and they are sending plenty of signals that nothing's changing on that front. Get over it.
Do you have ESP?
If your country was invaded and occupied by a foreign power, would you blow yourself up to fight back?
Fuck no. I'd blow up the other guy.
Chuck? Inane, at best. Moreover, I would not willing watch any show on ScrFi channel.
TV can maybe illustrate moral issues. Human morality can be explained using simple examples. For example if a man could fall off a bridge if not saved by you he would stop a train running below it and it would save three people that are trapped on the tracks a little off. Most people would say they would not stop that man from falling and save the other three.
Now what if you had to push that person?
Active vs. passive is an interesting theme that can be easily explored in a 45 minutes storyline. What is right, what is wrong morally? What is good or evil?
But current political stuggles are far more complex. For example most (if not all) interrogation situations where torture is involved to gain intel from terror suspects the possiblity of saving human lives is far, far remote. The intel gained could, much further down the line maybe help in finding people that might plan a terror attack that could be discovered by other means as well. The chances for that intel to be crucial is (in reality, not in movies) so remote, that you could question or torture some random people taken off the streets and have the same chance. And in many cases the people held in Gitmo are just that. Random people that were grabbed off the streets of some town in Afghanistan during the invasion.
But many people watch 24 with Jack Bauer and believe that things work like that in real live. I chose 24 here, because it is a much better (or worse) example. In that series the people tortured are withholding crucial intel that could save many thousand lives directly. The chances for such a situation in reality is zero.
As far as politics and political issues involving morality go TV series like BSG are not teaching us anything. They actually cloud things up. They mislead.
Some of them are good for entertainment. Nothing more, nothing less.
They grew a big enough backbone to stand up to you, despite the fact that you're war criminals who drop nukes on cities.
This has to be a troll but I'll bite anyway.
Comparing ethics from a time of total war is absurd beyond measure. Shall we get into the atrocities committed by all sides? There's plenty to go around. A nuke in a time of war is no more unethical than any other kind of massive scale bombing. FAR more people were killed with conventional bombing on both sides during WWII than by nukes and yet the nukes are somehow special? The nuke just has a bigger bang for the payload.
War is horrible but once there is a war the MOST unethical thing anyone can do is to prolong the war. It should be ended as quickly as possible and this is usually accomplished by using the most overwhelming force possible. Dropping two atomic weapons on Japan brought the war to an abrupt end and probably saved countless lives. Yes it was a horrible thing to do but there were NO options that were not horrible to consider. None.
Great question! Let me know if that ever happens.
I'm fairly sure that dilemma refers to the large-scale perception that Israel is occupying "Palestine". Which has a kernel of truth, as Israel indeed militarily occupies the West Bank, and this is quite immoral.
Of course, as my sig says, the Islamists deserve to lose because they place killing Jews over preserving the lives of their own people and building a civilization of their own. To use a sci-fi analogy, their behavior is that of Daleks.
Would look for the answer to deep philosophical questions on a fucking television show.
The problem with you leftist liberal pansy ass slashnads is that you rarely have to actually live within your own delusions and if you did, you would have been conquered, subjugated, enslaved or destroyed long ago and would not be posting your drivel.
P.S. That show and the whole of the scifi channel sucks, commercials every 7 minutes and the lamest lineup of all time. The only thing good there is Scare Tactics!
what they're not telling you (yet) is that they are ALL cylons, it's just that not everyone knows it yet
The final fourth season is nearly over, and when the final episode airs, television will never be the same again.
I'm sure it's a good show, but get real here. Television will be pretty much the same after BSG than it was before BSG.
Now, I wouldn't say that...
I mean, for one thing, BSG apparently has allowed for the possibility of more than one fourth season. How many have they had now? I guess after this final fourth season they'll finally move on to season 5.
Bow-ties are cool.
Collaborator.
Send him out the airlock
The last episode of BG will come and go and TV will still be the same. The "moral dilemmas" that are easy to find parallels in real life politics are easy to find because you want to find them.
When Dan Quayle spoke about the negative impacts on society when Murphy Brown deliberately became a single parent, everyone was falling all over themselves claiming "it's just a TV show" and claiming that Quayle was an idiot for even suggesting that TV might have some relevance to real life. When they find deep, meaningful parallels to real life, "TV will never be the same". Please, pick one and stick with it.
I don't necessarily dispute you here, but what can be done when you are faced with such a lesson, other than learn it?
I would probably argue that in the case of WW2, the "lesson" the Germans learned wasn't that "Americas guns are better than yours, therefore suck it for eternity," which is the "lesson" the Germans were trying to teach France, the Austrians, Serbia, the Israelis, Palestine etc. (I guess there's a lot of room to argue about the last one, but I find the intents of both parties completely out of joint with their actions so its hard to debate it reasonably.) The lesson the Germans learned in both world wars was "We the world won't tolerate your hegemony and will fight to stop it," which is something most Germans already knew in their moral hearts but the principle required demonstration.
Either way, turning "killing for political purposes" into "teach a lesson" is pretty Orwellian and I'd like to avoid the whole construction, since it's a literary trope masquerading as an ethical principle.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Now you've verged into one of my pet beliefs: that movie and TV SF (let's call it "science video") can never be "real" SF in the sense that (for example) Heinlein is SF. The problem with SV, as with all movies and TV, is that it aims at a mass audience in a compressed format. That means thoughtful exposition and intellectual complication, which is how the genre engages most of its readers, are off limits. Indeed, many people who work in the media don't even have the background to do it properly.
One reason I became a rabid trekkie early on was that TOS went further than any previous SV in trying to be real SF. One of their best inventions was Spock, who's a genuine alien, not just because he doesn't look human, but because he doesn't think human.
And yet even this key character is not carefully thought through. In an early episode, we're told that this guy's physiology is so alien that McCoy's instruments go wild on him. Later in that same episode, we get a melodramatic scene relating to his relationship with his human mother! Apparently nobody had the background to appreciate the inconsistency between these two facts. Or probably somebody did (TOS had some good scientific advisers) and the producers said, "Whatever, we need that bit of drama near the end, we're not looking for an audience that will know the difference."
Another example: Star Trek has always followed the convention that space fleet officers have naval ranks. But they've always carefully avoided the dual use of the word "captain" that's standard in real world navies. (In English-speaking countries, "captain" refers both to a rank equivalent to an army Colonel and a commander of a vessel, regardless of rank. In one of my favorite naval historical novels, The Sand Pebbles, the Captain of the U.S.S. San Pablo is a Lieutenant J.G.) A small complexity, but apparently deemed beyond the capacity of TV audiences.
Though I've always thought that this complexity was stomped on after the fact. Notice that in TOS, Kirk wears wrist insignia that anybody who knows naval ranks would recognize as a futuristic version of the "one and a half rings" of a Lt. Commander. That's about the right rank to command a ship with 400 people. But officially that's insignia of a Captain and all the other officers (regardless of rank) wear a single ring. Right.
And of course, we don't even want to talk about sound in a vacuum....
Nonsense. It's an awesome show as long as you stop thinking that words have meaning.
Or just stop thinking.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Since when in the last 8 years did any of you idiots ever SHUT THE FUCK UP?
Seriously, you all think you're so damn brave comparing Bush to Hitler in public forums, but you KNEW you would suffer NO CONSEQUENCES.
The Brits have a word that describes you morons exactly - wankers.
Your all big, bloody WANKERS.
Assholes.
What?
And how is this different than Star Trek TOS, which did the same thing in many regards during its own original run?
Personally I'll miss 6.
And while I'm at it what is this fascination with naming the most fascinating, sexy, robots "Six"? Not only BSG, but also Tripping the Rift come to mind as examples?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
It is a space opra.
2001 was science fiction.
Arthur C. Clarke, H.G. Wells, and even a little Douglas Adams were science fiction writers. They wrote about how society changes around technology and envision life in the context of new technology.
BSG has nothing to do with science fiction. They don't contemplate the benefits or dangers of science. They use it as nothing more than a backdrop. The closest BSG comes to science fiction is in the first episode where Adama critiques and disdains technology. (Ignoring, of course, he's on a space ship.)
"YOU BASTARDS!"
I thought it was sad when they killed Cally, and left her baby in the arms of a Cylon...
Ellen Tighe's death, too, was just pitiful. It'll be nice to have her back. <Saul>PARTAAAY!!!</Saul>
So how come all the nice (read: human) chicks get killed, with the only one who manages to survive being that slut Stardoe? I suppose with Dualla outta the way she'll get Apollo now.
Cylon chicks don't count as 'nice': look at all those headcase sixes - hell they shoot _each_other_!
My favorite character remains the Baltar inside the head of "Caprica Six": we're so used to the way the Six in Baltar's head loves to frack with him, it was highly amusing to see that that cuts both ways, and that he gives back at least as good as he ever got.
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
Seriously. In Iraq, the suicide bombers are largely al Qaeda imports - they're not Iraqis and they're not trying to get their country back.
The Iraqis tend to be the one with mortars. Which makes a lot more sense to me. If I were a freedom fighter (and I think those who truely ARE Iraqi freedom fighters are misguided) I'd be keen to fight for something I'm going to see in the future.
Lastly, holy crap, can we get over the immature "Bush's war on terror" shit? Seriously. He's out. The Democrats in office backed him up, and they are sending plenty of signals that nothing's changing on that front. Get over it.
I hope not. We need to remember what the Bush Administration has done to the rights of this country. We need to remember what the "war on terror" did for us and to us. We need to seriously examine how we allowed this kind of thing to happen less it goes to the next level during the next time around.
I should probably point out that I'm not one of these "Bush's illegal war" types. And I don't believe Obama is the next coming. So I'd expect I don't follow a lot of the Bush-bashing mindset common around here (and other places). But at the same time, I find myself being highly critical of the Administration.
It's muddier than that now. Because the 'shin-kickers' aren't throwing rocks and home-made Molotov cocktails. They have automatic assault rifles, RPG's, Mortars, IED's, etc... Take for instance the middle east. Religion A says spot X is the promised land and is theirs. Religion B says that they are infidels and that it's their holy land. Then you have the United States, which says that we should fix EVERYONE else problems except OUR OWN. If two of my neighbors get into a fight, I wouldn't care and I wouldn't get involved. If the fight found its way into my lawn, you bet your bottom dollar I'm getting involved. However, the US agrees with Religion A and gives aid to them. Religion B by proxy says that we too are infidels and says we should all die. This becomes one reason why 4 planes were hijacked on 9/11. Now, how do we end it? Do we go to Osama Bin Laden and say We're sorry and we'll leave you alone if you leave us alone? If it was that simple, don't you think we would of just done that?
"Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but..." - Dennis Miller
So, you are saying that that suicide bombers should just shut up and die?
No I'm saying they are tactical imbeciles who are defeating themselves. What difference does it make if they die in a hail of bullets or by blowing themselves up? Dead is dead. In the hail of bullets option they just might live to accomplish something another day. But doing it via suicide out of mere spite is just stupid, not to mention psychotic.
When given a choice between a miserable existence given to you by a hated enemy or taking a few "enemies" with you when you die, what would YOU chose?
Nice strawman argument. Taking enemies with you is fine but only if there is some tactical or strategic purpose to it. Claiming there is something ethical or justifiable about killing yourself and taking a bunch of innocent people with you is about the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.
Furthermore, even enemies don't have to remain so forever. The conflict between the US and Japan was about as intense as it gets. Millions lost their lives and there was such intense rage we can barely comprehend it 60 years later. Now Japan is among our closest allies and it didn't even take a single generation. Just being on the losing side of conflict doesn't doom the combatants to an eternity of misery. Life moves on and only those who dwell on past injuries will be doomed to a pathetic existence.
A slow death or a quick one?
We're all going to die. Why not try to accomplish something productive before you go?
Vengeance or humiliation?
Vengeance against whom? Explain to me how the 3000 victims in the world trade center were in any way deserving of their fate.
Doing SOMETHING or nothing?
A suicide bombing accomplishes nothing so I'm guessing you are voting for doing nothing. Dying is easy - actually doing something productive is hard. Suicide bombers are mentally unbalanced people taking the easy way out.
Think about it, it may be seem stupid and the bomber may have lost the conflict
but just sitting around and letting someone push you around is not something most people would be willing to do
There are plenty of ways to push back that don't involve killing other people. Ghandi and Martin Luther King led peaceful revolutions that last to this day and led to them being honored throughout the world. I've never heard of a suicide bomber ever having any lasting effect on the world.
Real people change. Over time, stress and normal life change the way we respond.
Regarding your, specific, points:
* I don't find it hard to believe that a principled person like the character of Adama would, once he had made the decision to honor the civilian government structure Roslin had set up and supported by his son, would continue to do so even when things didn't go the way he'd like. Much of his original justification for keeping power in the beginning was because the emergency situation of the destruction of the 12 colonies was still in progress. By the time that other stuff happened, time had passed and people were a little more used to the state of things. It became more normal and less of a unusual situation.
* In real life, to my knowledge, all US fighter pilots are required to have college degrees. Assuming this holds true for the Galactica world then it makes sense that, when faced with a lack of trained lawyers in a ~40,000 person population of mostly military personnel, he may be one of the most educated people available to fill the role. Also, most people couldn't have been trusted to give Baltar an honest defense or, more likely, would never have been willing to be his lawyer in the first place.
* Of course U.S. aircraft carriers are like this. Human nature says that a certain part of the population with be bad people and that you don't really know until push comes to shove. Most people on both ships would be normal people who will do what they are ordered to. The main difference would be the handful of people on the command staff. Those people would have been hand picked by the captain and would, most likely, match his/her personality. Remember, at least one of them did dissent when ordered to do something criminal (and was promptly shot in the head for insubordination).
I think most of the problem with people who find the personality re-modeling or the acting a turnoff is that we are so used to generic action/sci-fi TV/movie acting where personalities are, locked in stone, stereotypes and lines are written to be melodramatic. This show, as far as I can see, is trying to portray fantastic situations and how real people might respond to them.
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
Bunk, that show is full of craptastic, overblown, melodramatic writing that doesn't even come close to scratching the surface of today's issues, which just so happen to be ones the simpletons of the apologist left can't even bear to look at as they would tear down their security blanket of delusional fantasies. It's lightweight, ham handed allegorical philosophical pabulum isn't worth peoples time.
Then there's the prepubescent, egotistical chest thumping to make it look dramatic and "military" that really comes off like badly written anime. That show needed more Jack Nicholson, truth; you can't handle the truth sort of thinking that simply accepts they are all Cylon's and carries on not getting tied up in knots about what flavor of meat they are. They should have avoided going full retard.
Then again, I do so like the laser blasts and fembots, every show needs fembots ;)
I love the show, but from what I can see, just about every single character should have been pushed out the airlock for insubordination at least twice. I can't imagine a real military functioning at all like the Galactica.
Sig intentionaly left blank
"It's not hard to see parallels in the CIA and US military's use of interrogation techniques in Bush's War on Terror"
Read a book, watch Star Trek, etc. That theme has been repeated over and over decades before Bush was elected.
Your own cultural bias is creating meaning and associations where none exists.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
What right have you lost? What can't you do now that you were happily doing before Bush took office?
I know this is going to sound a lot like Clinton did it too, but during Clinton's terms, the same shit about lost rights was being said. It happened during Reagan and G.H. Bush too. Now I bring this up because it is often proclaimed by the youth in the country that the president they don't support took everything they idealized about away from them but 20 years later, they are realizing the same dream their parents did and more. I would say that 90 percent or better of the perceived rights lost are little more then people growing up and realizing how things really are. The other 10 percent are either something that was destructive to others so they probably shouldn't have been enjoyed in the first place or they were limited in such a specific way that 98.9 percent of the population would never run into the limitations.
AC has a point. The colonial military in BSG during the New Caprica occupation sent their bombers to attack Cylon installations and the training camp of what basically amounted to Cylon Paramilitary (the collaborators). Morally, I find no dilemma with using suicide bombers as an effective tactive. What I find morally repugnant, is the use of suicide bombers against blatantly civilian targets.
I fail to understand why people don't grasp the fact that detonating one's self inside a crowded market is the moral equivalent of rolling a howitzer onto a nearby hill and shelling said market. If we were do to that, there would be no end to the grief it would bring, but when insurgents do it they are "fighting for their freedom"
>> labeling one race as "the enemy"
Radical Islamic terrorists are not a race. Just because most happen to be of a certain race, doesn't make it a war against this race.
Of course, the writer knows this, but feels the need to resort to the equivalent of name-calling in his argument.
I found the current BSG boring, meandering, and nihilist. I didn't watch it enough to hear the preaching.
I was a fan of the original series. And I preferred the original Starbuck.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
I'm fairly sure that dilemma refers to the large-scale perception that Israel is occupying "Palestine". Which has a kernel of truth, as Israel indeed militarily occupies the West Bank, and this is quite immoral.
AFAIK, Israel invaded Palestine becuase Palestine was about to invade Israel. Pre-emptive invasion of a hostile neighbor, is not the same as invasion of a peacful neighbor that won't do what you want (The reason we went to war with Iraq the first time, to liberate Kuwait).
However, I do agree with the point your Sig is making. Why should Israel stop bombing Hamas? If Hamas doesn't care that Palestinians are dying because it keeps provoking Israel, why should their enemy? I understand that Israel doesn't want to drive more Palestinians to support Hamas. Then again, If you support those that are the original cause of your suffering as a response to your suffering, you deserve what you get in my opinion.
I agree that teaching lessons with guns, rarely actually teaches the right lesson, but what else is Israel to do? They've tried negotiating cease fires, bilateral and unilateral withdrawl of military personel, relaxing boarders, etc. AFAIK, every attempt has led to an increase in volence against Israel in the long run, and a return to the status quo.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
'nuf said
You will be better off. Of course you could still tell me to stop drinking and smoking and I wouldn't hear that. Still BS Galactica?
Get up!
We need to remember what the Bush Administration has done to the rights of this country.
I believe that any president would have done alot of what Bush did in his situation, and I doubt that Obama will do much to relinquish the executive powers that Bush siezed. It's the nature of the beast, the executive and legislative branches have been battling for supremecy since the beginning, and during times of war the executive branch wins. During long term prosperity and peace, the legislative branch tends to win.
We need to remember what the "war on terror" did for us and to us.
No attacks since 2001 is a pretty good record (whether you believe that Iraq was important before hand, you have to admit that it has taken al Queda's focus off of the citizens within the US and turned it to the military in a foreign country. Sucks for those in Iraq, but good for the citizens of the US that aren't in the military, at least in the short term)
We need to seriously examine how we allowed this kind of thing to happen less it goes to the next level during the next time around.
It's simple, We were scared and Bush did anything he could to make us feel safe. Not all of it was effective, or even within the normal powers of the presidency, but overall we all feel safer than we did 7 years ago.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
And, yet, oddly those whom we "taught a lesson" in WWII at the barrel of a gun have taken it to heart and are now great international citizens.
Only to add to my reply to the other poster, I would just offer that the "lesson" the Germans and Japanese took to heart after World War II had a lot more to do with the Marshall Plan than it did with Fat Man, and that the US's aggressive investiment in building up its former enemies against Communism in the 1940s and 50s was the prime mover in bringing these nations back into the fold of peace-loving nation states. If we had taken over Germany and run our sector like the Russians ran their sector, no "lesson" in the sense you mean would have been learned, even though the Russians were using their guns to teach a "lesson" just as effectively, if not more, than we were.
Violence and military supremacy may have been a necessary aspect of the World War 2 conflict, but it wasn't the essential aspect of the peace, and I find it diffifcult to accept that it's advisable given the myriad other conflicts that we've seen over the past century, their players, forces and outcomes. Germany still lost World War I, it's cultural superiority notwithstanding, and though Israel (or the UK or France) indisputably has a stronger civil society and healthier political culture than that-which-might-be Palestine (or Afghanistan, or Algeria), these "cultural superiors" found themselves in decades-long conflicts that they usually fought to stalemate, or just plain lost.
In any case the analogy to WW2 is defective, because our actions were clearly not imperial, for the same reasons I stated above.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
>If my country were invaded and occupied by a foreign power, I would ensure that I obey the cease-fires and give peace a chance, and not hide like a coward amongst my own women and children as I target the enemy's women and children.
All guerilla wars are spun this way. The danger of good vs. evil propoganda is that someday you might WANT peace, and when you try for it one of your fellow comrades will put a bullet in your head. That's already happened to the last Israeli president who wanted peace.
Israel survives as a "pure" culture by ethnically herding native born non-Jews into refugee camps. Chasing people into camps and then not allowing them to leave counts as herding. A constant state of war provides justification.
The simple truth is peace would destroy Israel, demographically speaking. The "right of return" would mean a majority Palestinian state of Israel.
Houses that were occupied by the same families for hundreds of years get taken and turned over to colonial settlers born in far away places like Moscow.
The thing is, apartheid ended gracefully in South Africa because both sides didn't brainwash themselves into a corner, and produced sane leaders who negotiated an end to minority rule. I don't see that happening here.
Banding together to visit consequences on those agressors seems to work but that just reverses the teacher/student roles.
Right, that's why the British still rule India but the Palestinians have successfully created a homeland for themselves and the Israelis are no longer threatened by Palestinian violence, because the "lesson" of violence works so incredibly well. Unless you mean "seems like a good idea to monkey hind-brains but actually fails miserably in practise", which is one way of reading "seems to work."
The problem with non-violence is not that it doesn't work, it's that it requires more courage than most people have to execute it. Non-violent resistance is enormously effective, and anyone who chooses violence over it as an avenue for political conflict resolution is either a coward or has no interest in actually resolving the conflict. In most real cases it is probably a bit of both.
There may be a few instances where violent attack is more effective than non-violent resistance. WWII is arguably one of them. In most other cases, and in virtually all the cases facing the modern world, non-violent resistance is clearly the superior approach.
It's a pity that hardly anyone has the guts to employ it.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
What right have you lost?
Habeas corpus.
It's kind of a big deal. You should read about it.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
Never following the BSG before, couple of days ago I taped the whole day of last season's episodes, and was relatively amused by it until the expected, but always disappointing happened:
1. Scene A: Guy got shot in the knee, blood all over, open wound and fractured bones close up, as realistic as it can get, well done, you did the good job, I feel little sick.
2. Scene B: Cute Indian actress, love scene with ex-president-turned-saint, about to undress, I feel better already, okay, she is undressing, removing last garment possible... and silly me, seasoned to realism, open fractures, blood and guts... expecting to see a tiny little bit of otherwise shapely acress' body... ah silly me... no realism here.. all we will see is standard issue bra and nothing more, because:
2.1. Blood, open fractures and guts, is good for you
2.2. Women breasts, is bad for you
And this happens over and over and everybody just whistles and pretends all is good and does not care and instead of having a realistic realistic tv, we have half realistic tv, and for other half we must all hide and sneak into wast expanses of silly and often extreme fields of what is referred to as porn...
That's the reason I stopped watching it...
The shark leaping episode was the one about ovaries, women's right to their ovaries, ovaries, ovaries, ovaries.
Gimme a break. If I wanted that I'd watch Oprah.
No sig today...
Your comments are very judgmental about what people should do in a given situation. You seem inclined to believe they would make rational choices accordingly. But people aren't very rational. They seldom "do the right thing", assuming they even think about it consciously and assuming it matches what you think the right thing should be.
Your comparison with Star Trek is telling. When Battlestar Galactica presents moral quandries it leaves much of the interpretation up to the viewer. Star Trek, on the other hand, resolves them: it is unsubtle in claiming what's the right thing to do. I won't make big claims for Galactica, but in my mind Star Trek's treatment is much more superficial. (And very culturally specific: I find many of Star Trek judgments and values quite foreign to me. I'm Canadian; our culture is about as close to the American one as is possible.)
On a slight tangent: Um, how can you know this? We only know about secrets that aren't kept, not the ones that are. Unless we're keeping them: a sample of one is not a reliable indicator of anything.
"the effects of labeling one race as 'the enemy,'" as in "when white will embrace what's right"?
"If your country was invaded and occupied by a foreign power, would you blow yourself up to fight back? Does superior technology give you the moral right to impose your will on a technologically inferior culture? "
Can't we all be friends?
Israel
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
BSG has nothing to do with science - fictional or otherwise. The characters still wear spectacles and use telephone handsets!
Mostly, it's a study about how individuals respond to various fictional situations - and in that case all it tells us is that they respond in many and varied ways: all of which are well known and not particularly profound.
The one aspect that *is* interesting is the way the cylons are turning out to be just as human as the, errr.... humans are. However, that only takes about 30 minutes to explore - not 4 series.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Did I miss something? Is Showtime not picking up the second season of Secret Diary of a Call Girl?
* Some human ships are filled with normal humans, others (same training and organization) are filled with bloodthirsty sadists with no regard for the lives of others (Pegasus). I hope U.S. aircraft carriers aren't like this :)
Read about the famous Milgram experiment:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
Humans can override their reluctance to perform unpleasant acts. All it takes is "authority". In the example you give the authority is an unremitting martinet. She summarily executes one of her most senior officers because he balks at following an order he knows to be wrong. Unsurprisingly the other officers do not question further orders... US aircraft carriers *can* be like this - that's one of the lessons of the Milgram experiment, and one of the BSG's parallels.
I agree with your sentiment, although how i got there is different. Considering the situation their in I'm willing to let some stuff like what you said slide. However I really don't care about that. I found the show incredibly depressing. Everytime they get a break, something as bad, if not worse, seems to happen, and there's no hope. I gave up part way through the second season. I won't miss the show, at all. And everything I'm hearing about the "spinoff" makes me glad I stopped watching.
Honestly I'd be happy with more pew pew lasers, less wah wah crying. Probably makes me shallow but oh well.
....are what I like most in a TV show, book, or movie.
Yep, there are BSG characters who are far from likeable (Baltar, Tigh). But sometimes those same characters will do the right thing, or even the heroic thing.
There are also characters who are very likeable (Roslin, at least IMO) who will do something downright vile in what they conceive as a higher cause.
This is still pretty rare on most of television, and it's why BSG stands out.
Some human ships are filled with normal humans, others (same training and organization) are filled with bloodthirsty sadists with no regard for the lives of others (Pegasus).
The Stanford prison experiment was a study of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The experiment was conducted in 1971 by a team of researchers led by Psychology Professor Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University. Twenty-four undergraduates were selected out of 70 to play the roles of both guards and prisoners and live in a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. Those selected were chosen for their lack of psychological issues, crime history, and medical disabilities, in order to obtain a representative sample. Roles were assigned based on a coin toss.[1]
Prisoners and guards rapidly adapted to their roles, stepping beyond the boundaries of what had been predicted and leading to dangerous and psychologically damaging situations. One-third of the guards were judged to have exhibited "genuine" sadistic tendencies, while many prisoners were emotionally traumatized and two had to be removed from the experiment early.
You can't take the sky from me...
War is horrible but once there is a war the MOST unethical thing anyone can do is to prolong the war. It should be ended as quickly as possible and this is usually accomplished by using the most overwhelming force possible.
Wrong. The fastest way to end a war is to unconditionally surrender. This does not necessarily lead to the lowest number of casualties though as I imagine (and thankfully only imagine) would have been the case if the UK had ever surrendered to Nazi Germany.
What started off as a fine little space opera became a morass of tangle and contradictory plot lines in Season 4. Ron Moore is a total hack who should have plotted the show arc out. Now, BSG is essentially Dallas in space.
What a wasted opportunity to say something interesting about the human condition.
You missed one very clear difference between what was portrayed in BSG and what happens in the real world.
In the real world those being sent in are clearly brainwashed, they aren't even grunts, they are victims of an ideology which is essentially forcing their hands.
The BSG bunch who first decided to blow themselves up came up with the idea and people stepped forward. They also were targeting military targets and not innocent civilians.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The problem with non-violence is, you're at the mercy of people who don't believe as you do. And when those people control the media, your non-violent message will not be heard. To bring it home to us Americans, 'Free Speach zone', anyone?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
You forget the countless lives, possibly even the planet itself, that may have been saved by dropping those two bombs. They showed nuclear weapons to be such terrible devices that since then nobody has ever dared to set one off in anger. Showing empty houses being blasted to smithereens does not have anywhere near the same impact as seeing pictures of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We were fortunate that the weapons were used before two countries had large stockpiles at their disposal.
No attacks since 2001 is a pretty good record (whether you believe that Iraq was important before hand, you have to admit that it has taken al Queda's focus off of the citizens within the US and turned it to the military in a foreign country. Sucks for those in Iraq, but good for the citizens of the US that aren't in the military, at least in the short term)
We had no attacks before 2001 either. There were attempts before then. And there are attempts now. The real truth is that the actual situation hasn't changed.
No, I don't believe that Iraq has taken the heat for the US. It may provide a more convenient target. But does that remove the US as a target or just make it so that Al-Qaeda can make more attacks than before? Keep in mind that the infamous attack that put Al-Qaeda on the map was the bombing of Khobar Towers. That proceeded the (successful) attack of 9/11. It did not prevent it.
It's simple, We were scared and Bush did anything he could to make us feel safe. Not all of it was effective, or even within the normal powers of the presidency, but overall we all feel safer than we did 7 years ago.
The only reason I feel safer now than I did 7 years ago is that Bush's Administration has been removed. I have yet to see what Obama does with the aftermath (and I fear you may be right on that point).
Meanwhile, the threats that face us are basically the same that faced us in before 2001. We may be taking them more seriously now. And I don't believe anyone with boxcutters will be able to hold control of an aircraft full of people ever again. But ultimately the situation and the players are still the same. None of the security theatre and Bush's over-reaching has managed to change that because, frankly, it's a difficult thing to handle.
Timelines vary no doubt, and there are failures, but it seems to have worked for the Allied countries in WWII, for instance. It worked for a time for the Boers and the Afghans (despite inferior material technology in both cases). As an example of the failing to come together, Native American tribes would have eventually been subdued but playing one tribe against another hastened that. I'd throw nearly all of Africa in there too.
My problem with non-violence is that I just don't see how it can work over the long term in all cases or even in most. There is a small camp near an oil extraction operation in Congo. The enemies of the people who live there have guns but the villagers don't. When their enemies come the villagers flee, but their enemies shoot at them anyway. Sometimes they even make hits. For the people hit, non violence did not work in that instance. I've watched this happen 3 or 4 times over the course of a few years and it doesn't strike me as a long term strategy either. The enemies don't want anything from there people other than to kill them, so mutually beneficial negotiations can't really proceed.
I don't understand their mentality but I'd say those villagers have guts in spades to not arm themselves.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
The day after I lose my mod points I read this post! Excellent
-- For evil to triumph it is enough that good men do nothing.
Sci-fi has always been good for this type of things. That's why I enjoy it so much. Honestly, have you read Star Wars? Jedi Philosophy is where it's at.
What right have you lost? What can't you do now that you were happily doing before Bush took office?
It's not about what I can or can not do. I'm doing everything I did now after Bush that I did before Bush. But then, that's how these things work. You're all fine and happy until you fall afoul of someone. And that's when you become really interested in the checks and balances that keep Governmental authority from being abused.
Bush's actions have chipped away at those checks and balances. And while that doesn't mean much to most people, I can only hope that it will never HAVE to mean anything to you.
And don't get me wrong. If I am a foreign operative then by all means, tap my communications and catch me out. Use my communications to uncover my cohorts. Play the spy game and win. But be sure that you've done the due dilligance to ensure that I am, in fact, said foreign operative before doing so. And prove that work in front of a judge.
Although I'd love to avoid partisan idiocy I'll offer bayonet lugs as a right the other side of the aisle took away.
By themselves they are not a big deal, which makes me wonder why someone would go through the trouble to ban them. The obvious presence of an ulterior motive was much more bothersome than the lugs themselves.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
I said we feel safer. I'm not sure that we actually are. However, I do believe that Iraq has taken the majority of Al Queda's attention. I know that I can only really do so many things in a given day. It's far more immediately gratifying to take care of the easy (close) things than to try and work on the larger picture items. (I'm paying the price for that now as a grad student who's thesis deadline is fast approaching)
I don't deny that they still want to make US civilians pay, but they'll settle for making our military personnel pay. It may not have a larger return on investment in the long term, but the investment is much easier to make in the short term.
Also, I don't know where Khobar Towers is, but I'm guessing it's not in the US, so while it may have made a name for AQ it didn't scare Americans at home. That was the reason why 9/11 was world changing for most Americans, the attacks hit home. We expect our military personnel to be attacked and occasionally die, even when we aren't officially at war. It's the death of hundreds of civilians that created the environment of fear, which in turn gave Bush a mandate to make us feel safer by any means necessary in the short term.
Many may hate the man now, but he did exactly what we wanted him to do at the time. It's just that, now we aren't as scared and it's easier to vilify him, than to admit that any losses of personal freedom were our own fault.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
Because RUSSIA had just entered the war against Japan. There was absolutely no reason to drop those nuclear bombs, because the last thing the Japanese wanted was Russia occupying the Japanese islands. We can thank General Curtis Lemay for convincing President Truman of the necessity of dropping those bombs. We can also thank him for all that firebombing too.
I don't accept that mass civilian casualties are the norm of warfare. It is WRONG.
overall we all feel safer than we did 7 years ago
I don't. I feel much *less* safe. Why? My home defense, the Oregon National Guard, has been removed from my state. My federal government refuses to police the borders and lets criminals come in and kill border patrol agents and park rangers. If the border patrol tries to fight back, they get thrown in jail. In addition to that, the one guy who did order an attack on American Soil is still at large, and we utterly failed to capture him or, given the recent death tolls in Afghanistan, even remove the government that was harboring him. And that's just a small sampling of why I feel less safe. Will Obama fix any of that? I hope so, but I doubt it.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Where were you during the 90's dude? There were regularly terrorist attacks on the US well before 9/11
That must be some serious shit you're smoking.
Ok I'll bite
- Intelligent leader balks when unknown element with no trust rating tries to assert power. Relents when he decides the new element has a positive benefit/cost ratio.
- Desperate survivors of a holocaust who mostly never saw combt before their homes and families were wiped out of existence by a superior military force and who are cut off from all normal supply lines and logistical support resort to improvised guerilla warfare and traditional asymetrical tactics, as were probably defined in one of their field manuals anyways.
- Fighter Pilot from influential family with history of military and government service at the highest levels spontaneously goes Governor, then President of the most powerful country on the planet. Side note: Lee Adama isn't the only person, real or fictional, that has followed a stint in the military with a career that didn't mirror what they did in the service.
- Military unit's actions are strongly shaped by the personality and actions of their leader. Custer's men followed him to their deaths. The holocaust was perpetrated by men considered to be some of the finest, most elite soldiers alive. Other units of the german army were just regular people convinced they were protecting the interests of their homeland, and were not horrific war criminals.
Essentially, your points are crapshit and you just don't like the show.
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
This whole thing was written by frakkin' Cylons, you can't trust any of them!
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
"SW: The Clone Wars" is much happier and upbeat, despite the knowledge of what the main character ends up doing. BSG is being depressing on purpose.
Atlantic Mag on BG, Jan09
"Where a proper space operaâ"from Star Wars to 2000â(TM)s Scientological BattleÂfield Earthâ"advertises with chilly pride its remoteness from life as we know it, the retooled Battlestar Galactica has plunged into the burning issues of the day. Suicide bombers, torture, occupation, stolen elections. Homosexuality, reproductive rights, religious fundamentalism, genocide. All of it grappled with, workshopped outâ"diegetically, you might say. With crater-voiced Edward James Olmos in the role of Adama, and the Galactica itselfâ"rather gaily lit in its â(TM)70s incarnationâ"now steeped in an atmosphere somewhere between that of a diving submarine and a backstreet in the Victorian East End, Moore and Eick have pushed and pushed at the hot buttons. UnÂaddressed as yet: steroid abuse, the slow-food movement, and the declining standard of international travel. But thereâ(TM)s still half a season to go."
After all, it worked for [...] or Austria when immature Serbia tried to oppose them
Serbia is not the best example. Serbia has organized the assassination of the Austrian throne heir. Assassin was an underage (!) and he killed the archduke, the Bosnian governor and archduke's pregnant wife!
And the worse thing is that assassin is celebrated in Serbia even today - there are streets and schools named after him. (Trust me, I live in Serbia.)
Ok, problems between Austro-Hungary and Serbia started long before, but during that period AH did not do anything even remotely savage to Serbian state, although there was a trade war.
No sig today.
What's with this, dood?
Hey, so what about the native americans we pushed onto their 'little reservations' or 'bought the land from' for amounts that everyone knew were piddling?
Shouldn't they fight back violently and expel the invading colonialists?
No, it's quite literally true. TV will never be the same after that episode. That episode will divide TV history into "pre-final episode" and "post-final episode". TV will never again be able to go back to the "pre-final episode" state. It'll CHANGE FOREVER, don't you SEE!?
Not that anyone would be able to tell the difference, of course.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
"SFFMedia illustrates how Battlestar Galactica exposes the moral dilemmas, outrages, and questionable believes of the present as effectively (but more entertainingly) than any documentary or news program." As effectively? Hell no, they did it a thousand times better! BSG really brought home the idea to me that suicide bombing actually makes a lot of sense sometimes. I can't imagine a news program could ever have done that. I think SciFi is like comedy in our society - useful for discussing difficult things that are taboo to discuss openly. Certainly they are following in the traditions of Star Trek in this regard(not the most recent series which were drek).
I'm not sure if I would characterize it as being too depressing.
More to the point is the characters are always depressed. With most shows you look at the characters and think, "I respect that person and they seem like a likable individual". For BSG I frankly can't think of a single character for whom I could actually say that, maybe Baltar since he actually has an interesting personality but that's about it.
SPOILER
When a certain character died last episode I didn't even give a damn. Back when Billy died in season 2 or something it was actually interesting because the characters still had redeeming qualities. But at this point I just don't give a damn. You can take a character people like and put them through hardships and depression and it resonates because people care for them. But if they're depressed for the entire damn show people don't like them and don't care.
I stole this Sig
"and when the final episode airs, television will never be the same again"
Yeap. It'll be all digital.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
the submitter meant Arab? The less intelligent among us have conflated Muslim and Arab, and not been able to integrate the idea of Islamofacists not representing the broader Muslim community, just like we frequently attribute the more negative aspects of Christianofacists to all Christians. Perhaps the author did this on purpose, or perhaps it was inadvertent. But without knowing, calling him/her a ...tard was unnecessary.
I always love to see people with an axe to grind against the United States so eager to so utterly trivialize the Japanese. They are not a people to be trifled with, especially in war. All of this historical revisionist nonsense about how they were all ready to give in is so disrespectful to them individually and as a separate and independent culture and nation.
The Germans didn't give in so easily. They were fighting street to street all the way to Berlin even when all that was left were old men and boys. Why should we expect any less of the Japanese?
You're like some fundie that selectively chooses what part of scripture they will acknowledge.
Funny you should say that about the selective quotation of scripture. Your "analysis" ignores the United States Army Air Forces' own Strategic Bombing Survey on the atomic attacks, which produced a report that stated, among other things, the following (boldface emphasis mine):
Further, it is clear that leaders in the US had signs of this before the Strategic Bombing Survey was completed. Japanese codes had been cracked, and messages were being intercepted. The Allies knew that the Japanese ambassador in Moscow had been ordered to work on peace negotiations with the Allies. Japanese leaders had been talking about surrendering a year before that, and the Emperor himself had started suggesting in June of 1945 that alternatives to fighting to the end should be considered.
Interesting fact: the Russians had agreed to declare war on Japan 90 days after the end of the European war. The actual date of the end of the European war meant that the Russians were due to declare war on Japan on the 8th of August of 1945.
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
AFAIK, Israel invaded Palestine becuase Palestine was about to invade Israel. Pre-emptive invasion of a hostile neighbor, is not the same as invasion of a peacful neighbor that won't do what you want (The reason we went to war with Iraq the first time, to liberate Kuwait).
I know that, but I just think that it's more moral to withdraw and prepare a harsh retaliation for the inevitable invasion attempt than to continue an occupation that leaves the Arabs with no chance whatsoever to change their ways and make peace. It's like in "Evolution of the Daleks": the Doctor had to offer them peaceful lives on a planet somewhere, or it wouldn't be OK to fight them when they reject the offer. One must offer peace, even if one knows it will be rejected, in order to justify war.
When their enemies come the villagers flee...
This is is non-violence, but it is not non-violent resistance, because the villagers are doing nothing to resist. They are offering no resistance, just running away.
People often confuse non-violence with non-violent resistance, but the two are not the same at all. Non-violent resistance is pro-active, not reactive, and can be quite confrontational. Look at what Gandhi's movement did in India, and how they did it. It was not at all about running away, and Gandhi himself disliked the word "pacifism" as he felt it failed to capture the fundamentals of his approach, which were active.
I can't offer advice to the villagers because I don't know enough about their situation, which is one of the other problems with non-violent resistance: violence is the VisualBasic of human interaction. Any idiot can use it to produce some kind of effect with negligible training or intelligence. Non-violent resistance is the the C++ of human interaction: it requires care and planning if it is going to compile, much less run and be maintainable.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
And when those people control the media, your non-violent message will not be heard.
This just means non-violent resistance movements need to be marketing movements.
It is implausible that in the modern world we are less able to get our message out than Gandhi was in a world where establishment-friendly newspapers were the place most people got their news, and he was half a world away from the centres of power.
If people in favour of non-violent resistance as the preferred means of human conflict resolution are so incompetent as to not be able to get our message heard then maybe we are too stupid to win, but I'm thinking that the 'New Non-Violence' is just starting to build some momentum. It took Gandhi and his supporters decades to take back India, but in the end it WORKED.
The Irish having been going after the English for very nearly as long, and the violence does not look to be ending any time soon now.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Watching LOST is painful due to the seemingly infinite periods of time between seasons.
Hmm, I found watching Lost to be painful for a completely different reason.
sic transit gloria mundi
Look at what the situation would have been had everyone survived and made it to graduation.
Your best pilots decided to perform an illegal maneuver ... in front of their COMMANDING OFFICERS ... and their families ... and whatever media is broadcasting the event ... and any undergraduates attending ... and so forth.
Yes, let us just flaunt our immunity to Star Fleet regulations.
Even the BEST scenario should have resulted in all of them facing disciplinary charges and then being kicked out.
And the "best" pilots didn't realize that? And the Wesley couldn't conceive of it with his massive brain?
The entire episode makes no sense. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BrokenAesop
Duty means disobeying legitimate rules about legitimate dangers and lying about it ... but it's okay because someone else will take the blame and you will be forgiven and all will be forgotten. Where's the honor or duty in that?
People have the luxury of being moral. Governments who's civilians are under threat of hostile military action do not.
Israel does not want to be wasting it's money and reputation firing rockets and bullets into Palestinian territory. Nor does it want the blood of all the non-combatants and their own military personnel on their hands. Unfortunately, certain groups within Palestine insist on provoking them, and those who would accept peace with Israel do nothing to stop it.
I think it says alot about members of Hamas, that they care less about their people than Israel does (as evidenced by repeated unilateral withdrawls by Israel). It takes only one side to start a battle, but it takes both sides to stop one.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
I've never seen such a bunch of sappy losers as the characters in BSG.
Reinforcing the lie, "Life is sad, random and mean and you can't do anything about it. Now go wallow obsessively in your misery." Random, my ass! --Heck, it's a world where when you have the audacity to celebrate even the smallest event, (your 100th flight), a freekin' missile 'randomly' chooses that moment to go off and destroy you and the moral of your entire crew. What bullshit! When event after event like that occurs, it's not random at all. It's deliberately sought out misery disguised as "Reality" Oooh, BSG is so real! It's just like life!
Stories carry a message, and BSG's message is one of despair. The Earth just happens to be a bombed out, radioactive ruin? Oh yeah. That doesn't break pattern, does it? Even if life were a series of random events, which it isn't, then BSG is still giving a false image.
The question is this: Why? Who benefits from broadcasting misery and despair into the heads of all the smart people who are responsible for engineering the infrastructure of our world?
Stupid, stupid rat creatures.
-FL
But Afghanis and Iranians are mostly Persian, not Arab. And we don't seem to demonize the Kuwaiti's much. The left-leaning people like to demonize the Saudis.
When I was in Iraq, I never heard to be on the look out for a Muslim or an Arab. It was usually "a guy missing 2 fingers and an eye, driving an x colored, y model vehicle that rides low to the ground" or something like that. (Bomb making has a harsh learning curve I guess).
Some people have political hay to make by spouting hyperbole like "labeling one race as the enemy" like they know what the fuck they are talking about.
THL phish sticks
Just catching on I see. And notice how BSG was supposed to end when a new administration took over?
The suicide bombings in Iraq don't target the U.S. military. It targets the Iraqi police, the Iraqi army, and the Iraqi people.
The suicide bombings in BSG didn't target the Cylon Centurions. It targeted Colonial police under Cylon rule.
just sayin'
You can't take the sky from me...
Even if you take this argument, I think dropping Hiroshima was enough to make the point. I often wonder if the Japanese would have surrendered quickly regardless of the Nagasaki bomb.
I mean, 3 days is not a lot of time to recover from the shock of the first one and understand the true damage, imho.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
You're right, I don't like the show, but:
;)
:)
- Intelligent leader balks when unknown element with no trust rating tries to assert power. Relents when he decides the new element has a positive benefit/cost ratio.
--> Sounds good, I agree. In the case of Baltar, however, it doesn't compute. I guess I don't see Adama as the "Oh well, Thats Democracy, I'll just keep my mouth shut about the mumbling traitor that was elected" kind of guy.
- Desperate survivors of a holocaust who mostly never saw combt before their homes and families were wiped out of existence by a superior military force and who are cut off from all normal supply lines and logistical support resort to improvised guerilla warfare and traditional asymetrical tactics, as were probably defined in one of their field manuals anyways.
--> Despite NOT behaving anywhere near that for at least 1 season.
- Fighter Pilot from influential family with history of military and government service at the highest levels spontaneously goes Governor, then President of the most powerful country on the planet.
--> In one day? I went from lawn mower mechanic to computer scientist, but it took longer
- Military unit's actions are strongly shaped by the personality and actions of their leader. Custer's men followed him to their deaths. The holocaust was perpetrated by men considered to be some of the finest, most elite soldiers alive. Other units of the german army were just regular people convinced they were protecting the interests of their homeland, and were not horrific war criminals.
Certainly it has happened before, and Cain's personality is definitely passed to the crew of the Pegasus. Conceded. Cain is _also_ the leader of the Galactica. The mindlessness doesn't seem to trickle down to Galactica though (i.e. The rest of the army doesn't fall in line). Meh, I'll give you this one
With Jews, you lose! So let's lose the Jews.
". If you fight an enemy "fairly", you'll end up with equal casualties on both sides, thus abusing the soldier's trust in their superiors. In war, you don't fight fairly, you minimize your own losses."
"You don't win wars by dying for your country. You win wars by making that other poor bastard die for his!" - GC Scott in Patton
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Don't forget about the projected Japanese death toll in the event of a land invasion.
Don't forget that the japs had been negotiating a surrender with the Russians for about a year before someone chose to murder hundreds of thousands of civilians to obtain an unconditional surrender to the US.
They weren't negotiating a surrender with the Russians... they were hoping to use a diplomatic alliance with the Russians as leverage against the Anglo/American part of the alliance. They wanted to use Russia as bulwark against invasion, and didn't want to give up some of the spoils of their conquest. What they didn't know is that we had broken their codes and were listening in on all of their machinations. We knew exactly what they were trying to do.
This clown is trying to paint a picture of those poor Imperial Japanese... they tried so hard for peace, while those savage Americans were just determined to use their nukes on someone.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
"If someone pointed a gun at your head and threatened to pull the trigger if you refused to sign a document you knew would lead to a hundred deaths (and you signed!), would that make you ultimately responsible?"
Yes, you are responsible for that what you sign.
The signature is valid as it would be on court.
You should always check what you actually sign. If you do not agree with what you are signing, then you do not sign it. It is simple as that.
And in finance, the corporation leaders are those who are responsible what corporation is actually doing. They are the people who should control things.
If employee does something against leaders authority, employee gets punished from that action, but so does the bosses who did not do their jobs and control the situation. If boss wants employee do something what is against law or other things, it is their job too to complain it and denie to do it.
If general is giving order to shoot civilians, soldiers job is to not follow that order and report that for judges etc. If general orders soldier to kill civilian and soldier executes the order, both are responsible for the murder.
Life is tought and power gives big responsible for those who has it.
In this time world, leaders thinks they are above the law and responsible for actions what they order or they silently allow to happend. They are the persons who are #1 in the line to get responsible things what has happend. It is their job to keep things running correctly, by law, rules and moral.
Now if US presidents gives order to give millitary support for militants in the south-america and they kill civilians, the US president is responsible for that.
If the senat or just a one senator gave the order, they are responsible for the act in first hand, but president (etc) is responsible for that happening and is not good leader why she/he should step down because she/he can not control the country at all.
OK. Fair enough point. Let's explore that a bit.
I'm well aware of all these incidents (I even specifically mention Khobar Towers). But keep in mind that 3 of them were outside US border. If you want to broaden the scope that way then you should probably keep going back in to the 80s (or even further depending on where you want to draw the line).
The 3rd, the attempt on the World Trade Center, was ineffective. I was inclined to disregard it as a botched attempt (the Oklahoma bombing was fire more effective) but that isn't due to any diligence on the part of US Authorities. So true - there has been a valid attack on the US that was not prevented previous to 9/11.
Of course - that doesn't mean that post-9/11, the "war on terror" has kept us safe. The record in recent times has been an attack in 1993 followed by an attack in 2001. If the "war on terror" was required to maintain safety then why did it take 8 years for the second attempt? And what's to say we're not due for the next big hit, this being 2009, 8 years after the last attack?
The point here is that the record of attacks previous to 9/11 and post-9/11 aren't that drastically different. There is nothing to support that the "war on terrorism", or at least our domestic aspect of it, has had any net positive effect.
Now - one point I'd like to make that I don't think has been addressed is that disrupting Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan has likely had a positive effect. And I would argue that if any aspect of the "war on terrorism" should be credited with our safety, it is entirely in that arena.
I think you have been getting some bad information.
There is no such provision in the Geneva Convention.
Here, in fact, is what it says about the treatment of persons not in uniform (emphasis added):
"Where in occupied territory an individual protected person is detained as a spy or saboteur, or as a person under definite suspicion of activity hostile to the security of the Occupying Power, such person shall, in those cases where absolute military security so requires, be regarded as having forfeited rights of communication under the present Convention.
In each case, such persons shall nevertheless be treated with humanity and, in case of trial, shall not be deprived of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed by the present Convention. They shall also be granted the full rights and privileges of a protected person under the present Convention at the earliest date consistent with the security of the State or Occupying Power, as the case may be. "
So no, we aren't permitted to just shoot people who aren't in uniform.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
It's not hard to see parallels in the CIA and US military's use of interrogation techniques in Bush's War on Terror, the effects of labeling one race as 'the enemy,' the crackdown on free speech, or the use of suicide bombers in Iraq.
What crackdown on free speech? When did this happen, and how has it affected anyone's ability to say, record, broadcast or publish whatever they want? And when did one race get labeled "the enemy"? Which race was it? And what exactly were the effects of this labeling which didn't happen?
What nonsense. But no worse than many reviews on TV shows, movies, gardening, or cooking which never fail to throw in some gratuitous, mindless slam at Bush.
After all, it worked for Germany in 1914 when the inferior and decadent cultures of France and Russia dared to oppose them, or Austria when immature Serbia tried to oppose them, or France when the barbaric Algerians opposed them, or England when the Mesopotamian Arabs and Afghans opposed them, and on and on.
My what an accurate depiction of yours, perhaps if you actually brought up a situation in which people reneged on their deal.
The palistinians agreed to split the land, then turned around and tried to kill every last jew in the region. They got what they deserved, and given the recent history before their disgusting betrayal, I think its amazing self-restraint that israel doesn't simply wipe out palistinians with neutron bombs.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I said we feel safer. I'm not sure that we actually are.
That's a huge problem right there (and I'd note that I, myself, do not feel safer so please exclude me from your "we"). You FEEL safer. So if I talked to you real nice and made you feel good about buying the Brooklyn bridge, would it negate the fact that I conned you?
I understand what you're saying here. But I find it a really, really horrifying argument to make. I'd argue it being a moot point if it weren't for the fact that so many probably agree with you. The point shouldn't be about how you feel. The point should be about what was done and whether it was appropriate.
However, I do believe that Iraq has taken the majority of Al Queda's attention. I know that I can only really do so many things in a given day. It's far more immediately gratifying to take care of the easy (close) things than to try and work on the larger picture items. (I'm paying the price for that now as a grad student who's thesis deadline is fast approaching)
Resource management is an issue - you can only do so much with so many resources. But what if I could get more resources?
If I tell you that you could volunteer to go overseas and help starving children, what's the likelihood of you doing so? Not too likely as it involves a lot of personal investment for an objective that's pretty abstract to the here and now. How about if I had a starving child standing next to me and you could give them some food right here and now? Much easier. As you noted, it's much more gratifying to take care of the things close to you.
The issue with looking at Iraq as a sponge for terrorist resources is the concern that it is generating resources as well. Angry college students and young people with a lot of anger and nothing better to do (a lot to do with unemployment) are right in the region. Give them something next door to go shoot at and it's not hard to recruit them to do so. Getting them trained and prepared to do something long term and detailed over-seas is a much different situation.
Also, I don't know where Khobar Towers is, but I'm guessing it's not in the US, so while it may have made a name for AQ it didn't scare Americans at home. That was the reason why 9/11 was world changing for most Americans, the attacks hit home. We expect our military personnel to be attacked and occasionally die, even when we aren't officially at war. It's the death of hundreds of civilians that created the environment of fear, which in turn gave Bush a mandate to make us feel safer by any means necessary in the short term.
You should check out the link the AC posted below when he blasted me for not knowing about Khobar Towers (incidentally, I lived there from time to time but not during the bombing). In fact, the AC posted a nice laundry list of incidents that shows Al-Qaeda's more well known activities.
The point of this is that Al-Qaeda has had plenty of US military targets to choose from. And they have attacked them. Yet this did not soak up their resources and divert their attention from the US and the attacks on 9/11. The idea that Iraq will divert any future 9/11-like attacks isn't supported by history.
Why? Because as you noted, military folks dying is different than civilians dying. As the point of these things is terror (aka psycological warfare), you want lots of bang for your buck. Iraq, while bloody, provides all the bang that Al Khobar and other US military targets does. It will not prevent them from looking for another big civilian target in the future.
Many may hate the man now, but he did exactly what we wanted him to do at the time. It's just that, now we aren't as scared and it's easier to vilify him, than to admit that any losses of personal freedom were our own fault.
I faulted the President for the things he did as he did them. I did not sit there, quaking in fear, saying "please
No you haven't.
The Supreme court has over turned that law and even if they didn't, it was set to suck a narrow limit on use that unless you were actively plotting a terrorist attack in the US or aiding someone who was knowingly, it never would have effected you. Go read the law that enabled it.
The Supreme court has over turned that law and even if they didn't, it was set to suck a narrow limit on use that unless you were actively plotting a terrorist attack in the US or aiding someone who was knowingly, it never would have effected you. Go read the law that enabled it.
In the same sentence you say that the law was harmless to me and that it was also overturned as unconstitutional. I don't really have a point on that, I just like irony.
Anyway.
The problem is that there is very little burden placed on the government before they are allowed to utilize some of these laws. Basically they just need to say that you're a terrorist and that they have credible evidence to prove it, but they don't have to show the evidence to you or your legal representatives.
Governments that do things like that are the Bad Guys in our history books.
I understand the reasons the government wants these tools. I'll even concede that they may not be able to prevent another 9/11 type of attack without them. I'm not one of those assholes who cries about what a terrible job they do when bad things happen and then also cries about how my rights are being eroded when they stop the bad things from happening.
I just whine about the latter, because I think it does more harm to our culture and way of life than the former.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
Well, actually, foreign operative would fall within the exceptions for a warrant within FISA so you wouldn't need to prove anything front of a judge. But that is neither here nor there. The fact remains that if they do listen to your conversations, whether you being outside the country and calling home or inside the country calling out, they were still limited in what evidence could be used against and anything else leading to you from those calls just like any other case. The TSP which has been ruled legal in it's original incarnation was never designed to pick up evidence other then what was necessary to foil terrorist plots or to arrest terrorists. It didn't care if you were speeding last week or took acid or ran over the neighbors cat. It was only intended to and able to act on matters of national security.
The show dragged out a whole bunch of interesting concepts which were interesting when you looked at one. They took everything they could get their hands on and spent a fortune making a show with lots of big questions and no real insights.
I liked the original. It had a sense of self.
The new one is the kitchen sink of science fiction/religion/political now (with no insight into political tomorrow).
Bored now. CLICK.
Well, actually, foreign operative would fall within the exceptions for a warrant within FISA so you wouldn't need to prove anything front of a judge.
A poor choice of words on my part. I'm thinking of a scenario where I am a U.S. citizen working for foreign interests, thus becoming their operative.
The TSP which has been ruled legal in it's original incarnation was never designed to pick up evidence other then what was necessary to foil terrorist plots or to arrest terrorists. It didn't care if you were speeding last week or took acid or ran over the neighbors cat. It was only intended to and able to act on matters of national security.
Well yes, of course it doesn't. It never does. And neither do IRS agents abuse their access to look up the tax records of celebrities. Neither does law enforcement use their authority to harass people they don't like. Never at all.
Of particular note from the article you linked:
The company argued that âoeby placing discretion entirely in the hands of the executive branch without prior judicial involvement, the procedures cede to that branch overly broad power that invites abuse,â the court wrote.
But, the court ruled, âoethis is little more than a lament about the risk that government officials will not operate in good faith.â(TM)
âoeThat sort of risk exists even when a warrant is required,â it said.
That just floors me. It is essentially aruging that warrents are useless. We should do away with them. What do we need with governmental oversight anyway?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to rail against authority and fight the machine. But I am a firm believer that oversight, however imperfect, must be maintained. Even corrupt oversight tends to leave paper trails that can later be followed to convict the corrupt. And so if the authorities executing this "war on terrorism" wish to do so, then by all means require them to leave that paper trail.
It really has be wondering about the sanity of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review. A cynic might note that they are a part of the very problem they were being asked to address.
Firstly, you are being pedantic. Most Americans will admit that they feel safer. I was using the "we" in the sense of the majority. there is no statement of feeling, opinion or perception that one can make about all americans simultaneously. Obviously, not EVERYone feels safer. You can put your attitude away.
I feel pretty safe in stating that many people that would help starving children locally probably would not pick up a gun and start shooting at people. Those that are willing to shoot at people, and risk get shot at as well, probably aren't too worried about a little travel.
Attacks on US military targets didn't soak up AQ's resources because they didn't have anyone actively trying to capture or kill them in between their attacks. It's a lot harder to plan and carry out those kinds of actions when the US military is trying to find you and kill you, than when your targets are only acting defensively.
You may have been aware of what Bush was doing and disapproved, but that places you firmly in the minority. I was aware, and wouldn't have approved at other times, but knew that eventually those powers grabbed by the Bush administration would be revoked. I believe that your complaints in the last couple of paragraphs are valid, but I don't believe that it would have been possible to do everything that they felt they needed to do as quickly as they felt they needed to. IIRC, most of the power grabbing took place during the 1st term when 9/11, the dumb ass sneaker bomber, the DC sniper, etc. was still happening (yes I realize that those all aren't related, but I'm pretty sure they were all happening around the same time).
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
* In real life, to my knowledge, all US fighter pilots are required to have college degrees. Assuming this holds true for the Galactica world then it makes sense that, when faced with a lack of trained lawyers in a ~40,000 person population of mostly military personnel, he may be one of the most educated people available to fill the role. Also, most people couldn't have been trusted to give Baltar an honest defense or, more likely, would never have been willing to be his lawyer in the first place.
This and the episode with the fuel production crew going on strike pretty much killed any positive opinion I had of the show. Let's examine the situation: 40k people, mostly civilian. A handful of highly trained military including fighter pilots, a necessary component of warfare as conducted in the series. Training new pilots is an expensive and time consuming proposition, you have to spend a substantial amount of time at each location to train, I'm not saying days, but at least a day to plan and then execute training sorties. You have to have the resources to fuel them, which given how they spent a whole episode hunting down a source for fuel seems to make it rather rare. Now, take the second best pilot (as I recall he's the best technical pilot, and Starbuck is the best pilot) in the fleet, and tell him, "Yeah, it's ok to quit now, we don't really need you." Then you have to waste weeks to train someone else to fill his slot, of course they won't even be close to his skill level so it won't really be a replacement. The only thing keeping the remaining human population (at this time in the series) from extinction was the military and the fuel. Why would you throw it all away because you have daddy issues?
I was afraid to watch until they completed the series. Last time, they thought I was Buck Rogers!
Firstly, you are being pedantic. Most Americans will admit that they feel safer. I was using the "we" in the sense of the majority. there is no statement of feeling, opinion or perception that one can make about all americans simultaneously. Obviously, not EVERYone feels safer. You can put your attitude away.
The majority of folks I worked with did not feel safer. But then, I'm in a security related industry. So we're likely to be a little out of the mainstream.
I wouldn't be surprised if a large number of Americans felt safer. But the majority? When people are making jokes about nail clippers, I have to wonder if the mainstream doesn't have some inkling of security theatre - that it doesn't go beyond my immediate circle.
From a Washington Post article dated Thursday, April 1, 2004:
Fewer than half of all Americans think the country is safer now than it was on Sept. 11, 2001, and more than three-quarters expect the United States to be the target of a major terrorist attack at home or abroad in the next few months, according to a new poll.
The survey, released yesterday by the nonpartisan Council for Excellence in Government, found that about half of respondents were concerned that terrorists would strike near their home or work. Seventy-three percent identified themselves as anxious or concerned about terrorism, and 26 percent said they were calm.
And what were they worried about?
The survey of 1,633 adults from Feb. 5 to Feb. 8 also found that although Americans are concerned about terrorism, they rank it behind the economy and health care as the nation's top priorities. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.
It is your perception that Americans felt safe. But your perception might be as insular as mine, sans attitude.
I feel pretty safe in stating that many people that would help starving children locally probably would not pick up a gun and start shooting at people. Those that are willing to shoot at people, and risk get shot at as well, probably aren't too worried about a little travel.
Hold on now, we're not talking about the morality of shooting people. That's already been decided; it's being done. That's not the point. The point is to what extent will people go to in order to do it?
Attacks on US military targets didn't soak up AQ's resources because they didn't have anyone actively trying to capture or kill them in between their attacks. It's a lot harder to plan and carry out those kinds of actions when the US military is trying to find you and kill you, than when your targets are only acting defensively.
Actually - go read up about the attacks I noted. They WERE being actively hunted between those attacks.
However, I do agree that the scale was different. The invasion of Afghanistan took away a lot of resources from Al-Qaeda. As I noted, I'm fully supportive of that. But that's not the same thing as the war in Iraq.
Your claim is that Iraq takes attention off the US. That it will tie up Al-Qaeda resources. When historically, they were able to both attack US interests in the region as well as the US directly. Iraq has it's purpose but it is not to providing a better target to decreases terrorism in the world.
You may have been aware of what Bush was doing and disapproved, but that places you firmly in the minority. I was aware, and wouldn't have approved at other times, but knew that eventually those powers grabbed by the Bush administration would be revoked.
I need assurances. I need to know there is a check to the power being given. Without that check, it becomes a tool of oppression and evil. History shows it time and time again.
I've seen security folks go of the rail. I know what happens when a sec
the difference between BSG and other SciFi shows that deal with real issues, such as B5 and Star Trek, is that in those shows, there are mostly larger than life characters, such as Capt Picard and Kirk. this makes the show harder too relate to, because real life isnt like that. in BSG though, all the characters are deeply flawed, allowing anyone to easily connect with and sympathize with the characters. in addition to this, the unique technique with which BSG is filmed is much more like a Nat Geo documentary than a TV show. this makes it easier for the viewer to feel like they are apart of the events, rather than watching it on a screen.
but... but... but... that's not what it says here in my Rush Limbaugh's Abridged and Interpreted Guide to Political Documents...
You've got to be kidding me. The only people that believe that are people that see the name and think that it must somehow be related to Al-Queda.
The only reason Al-Queda gives them, and nobody else, their videos is because they know that Al-Jazeera will not edit it out of journalistic integrity.
Al-Jazeera is one of the most trusted news sources in the world, even moreso than the BBC. They're about as fair and balanced as news actually gets.
FOX is just a Republican talking point recitation machine. They're pretty blatantly in the pocket of the party. Heck, they started launching into jokes about assassinating the president shortly after his inauguration. You wouldn't find shit like that on Al-Jazeera.
and nothing of value was lost
Serbia's a great example, my point really has nothing to do with the intentions of the minor party. If the Human's somehow provoked the Cylons intentionally into a war the point still stands. Besides, I think it's still pretty debatable how high the plot went. I though the whole thing was run by Dragutin DimitrijeviÄ, and that no one has conclusively proved that it went any higher.
And the worse thing is that assassin is celebrated in Serbia even today - there are streets and schools named after him. (Trust me, I live in Serbia.)
That the Assassination in Sarajevo and Vidovdan happen on the same day probably doesn't help matters...
Ok, problems between Austro-Hungary and Serbia started long before, but during that period AH did not do anything even remotely savage to Serbian state, although there was a trade war.
I'm specifically referring to the post-assassination period, when Austria-Hungary clearly had 'teaching a lesson" on its mind when it demanded nothing less than Serbia's sovereign rights. I'm aware. entire prewar period was very messy. Austria-Hungary didn't just want the murderer tried or extradited, as would be normal; they wanted a War, and they drafted a set of demands on Serbia that were designed to be unacceptable.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
The palistinians agreed to split the land, then turned around and tried to kill every last jew in the region. They got what they deserved, and given the recent history before their disgusting betrayal, I think its amazing self-restraint that israel doesn't simply wipe out palistinians with neutron bombs.
I think I addressed this on another thread, though I was trying to avoid Israel/Palestine since there's a bit of contention over wether that's actually "Imperialism" or not. That said, I would consider it unacceptable to hold an entire people responsible for the actions of their leaders, their religious authorities, other nations claiming to act on their behalf, their forebears, or military formations among their number. I don't see the difference between this and the internationally recognized definition of "Collective Punishment." Abdullah of Jordan lying to Ben-Gurion in 1954 does not justify shooting a 22 year old today. There may be other acceptable reasons you might have to shoot him, but "the undying perfidy of the Arab race" is not one of them.
I think its amazing self-restraint that israel doesn't simply wipe out palistinians with neutron bombs.
I don't see the difference between this and "genocide," and Israel is as sensitive to the implications of that as anybody. Had their dirty little conflict happened in the 19th century, they would have done exactly that, in the way that the US or Australia handled their own natives. But, for the better, probably, Israel was founded after the complete discrediting of these ideas, and must resolve its land disputes without murdering lots and lots of people.
Deep thought: If the Lakota Souix had their own satellite news channel in 1870, what would it have looked like? PBS, or Al Jazeera?
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
....as Israel indeed militarily occupies the West Bank, and this is quite immoral.....
The avowed, often stated goal of the radical element of Islam is to exterminate Israel. They tried accomplish this a number of times by militarily attacking Israel. The last time was in 1967. Israel soundly repulsed all these attempts and at the last one occupied some of the border territories where these attacks originated. When an enemy attacks you in war and then you beat back such an attack, in effect win a war that you did not begin, you can do whatever you feel is needed to prevent or mitigate any future recurrence of such aggression. One of the rules of war is "To the victor belong the spoils". That has ALWAYS been the case in all of human history. There are those in Israel's government today that still think they can make concessions of appeasement. History tells us that that leads to disaster.
If Germany and Japan had won WW2, the world would be very different today. To exterminate Israel is still the ultimate goal of the Palestinians and their mentors Iran, with the entire muslim world joining the fray or at least cheerleading, with UN approval of course. Another full scale war with Israel is not an "if" but "when".
I am sure you have heard of the term "Armageddon" in reference to doomsday and the end of the world. It actually refers to a large valley just north of Jerusalem, where according to Biblical prophecy the last battle of humanity's ultimate war will be fought, where ALL nations are predicted to participate in. Even today, the only nation on Israel's side is the USA. When, not if, that changes, look for Israel's enemies to once again try unsuccessfully to "solve" the dilemma of Israel and especially Jerusalem by military means.
All theory is gray
It appears that you missed the entire point, the law simply wouldn't have effected you even if it is still a valid law. There is no irony, just an absence of you being effected by it whether it was constitutional or not.
Well, they need to do more then just say. They need proof to back it up or they will end up releasing you and you will sue them for lots of money like the school teacher from Washington state did.
You look at the government as liars out to get you. Your forgetting that there are honest people working for it and the only reason you know about the bad things the government has done is because they spoke up. So no, they won't come get you in the middle of the night for no reason. It hasn't happened yet with and without the law.
The rest of your comment, well I agree with it sort of. However your rights weren't eroded away. I'm sure you have spoken out against the Habeas Corpus before and yet here you are unaffected by it.
The problem is, they would need something to show they know about your illegal behavior independent of the TSP taps because every court in the land would have thrown the evidence out if it wasn't National security related. It's the poison fruit doctrine and if the immediate court failed to, the appeals would have.
Keep in mind, they are talking about National security issues here, not warrants in general. FISA was created not because congress thought that the government needed a warrant for foreign intelligence gathering, but because when they created the title 3 wiretap laws in response to the 1968 court case that made a warrant necessary, the domestic agencies simply ignored the warrant requirements and had the national security offices do the taps instead. That is why FISA is there and why it was a good idea, to ensure that one hand wasn't taping for the other without the proper warrants.
There generally is a paper trail anyways. It's how the phone companies got screwed and ended up having the congress create a new vehicle for them to get their immunity that was already promised by law. When we tap a line inside the US, a request claiming there is proper and legal authorization gets submitted to the phone companies. Normally it is their get out of jail free card. But because of the nature of the program, Bush Classified all those requests as secrete and the phone companies couldn't use them. That is why civil rights groups originally started filing suit against the phone companies, they wanted access to that paper trail.
Anyways, Any administration, with the advice of their agencies, can declassify the documents at any time. So even if Bush did something wrong during his term, whoever replaces him could get to the bottom of it.
Most court cases related to what FISA covers indicate that FISA isn't even constitutional. They suppose (*didn't rule in it directly) that the administration has a inherent right to collect foreign intelligence and matters of national security. One case I read actually denied evidence collected from national security efforts because the plot to blow up the building in Michigan with dynamite was a solely a domestic issue. Now these cases were done before Bush even ran for office but have been thrown around quite a bit in his defense. This leaves me to look at it a little differently then you do I guess.
An interesting article, but I can't help but be amazed and somewhat concerned about how someone who demonstrates recognition of inherent inequality and complex subject matter being potrayed can equate the fictional events with real events when he doesn't even seem to have the correct facts about the real events that he is purporting the program parallels.
Fact: It wasn't a technologically superior 'race' that hijacked our airliners and killed three thousand plus people. It was an organization bent on chaos and destruction that has hijacked a fundamentalist religious groups' motivating 'holy war' to their own ends.
Fact: There haven't been any Guantanamo Bay atrocities, that all occcured in the prison in Baghdad.
Fact: There hasn't been a clash of religious beliefs. Al Quaida is only using that as a front to enslave (Islamic Fundamentalists) fanatics to their own ends.
Fact: The author does not know anything more then what is printed in the papers about the 'torture' that is said to have occurred. He also doesn't have a clue about its efficacy either.
It is true that BG is one of the better SF shows, but I doubt that "Television will never be the same".
If only the writing of the author would rise to the level of the show(s) he's supposedly going to miss instead of being a poorly researched, with shaky conclusions, morally condescending, and re-hashed article from the two 'rags' he quotes from (Newsweek and Time)
Great show? definitely. great article - Not so much.
The rest of your comment, well I agree with it sort of. However your rights weren't eroded away. I'm sure you have spoken out against the Habeas Corpus before and yet here you are unaffected by it.
I humbly suggest you look at what happened the last time habeas corpus was suspended. It resulted in the illegal imprisonment, on US soil, of over 100,000 people, many of them US citizens. They were held without trial, in most cases they were not even accused of a crime. When they finally were released, many of them had lost their homes and all their possessions. Some of them were killed while imprisoned. A small number were so bitter that they renounced their US citizenship.
The government apologized and paid reparations. 50 years later.
I don't think the government is evil. I think the government is made up of people just like you and me. Some are honest and some are not. Some make mistakes, some have and act on their prejudices. Some deserve admiration, and others deserve denigration.
Sometimes there are enough of the wrong sort in the right place at the right time and some pretty nasty things happen. McCarthyism is another example. Not everyone was on the same team during the Civil Rights era. We always correct these mistakes, but it takes years, decades, sometimes even centuries.
Just because something hasn't affected you or me does not mean that it cannot. Just because you trust your government today does not mean that you can trust them always. Please, have a look. This isn't some wacko fringe theory, this really happened. It's an ugly chapter in US history. I don't want my kids or their kids looking back at us this way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment
I'll leave you with this adaptation of a poem originally written by a German named NiemÃller. I don't know who wrote the version I'm quoting below.
First they came for the fourth amendment,
and I did not speak out, because I didn't deal drugs.
Then they came for the fifth amendment,
and I was silent because I owned no property involved in crimes.
Then they came for the sixth amendment,
and I did not protest because I was innocent.
Then they came for the second amendment,
and I said nothing because I didn't own a gun.
And then they came for the first amendment,
and I could say nothing.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
The avowed, often stated goal of the radical element of Islam is to exterminate Israel. They tried accomplish this a number of times by militarily attacking Israel. The last time was in 1967.
In 1967 Israel was attacked by Arab nations led by secular, pan-Arab nationalists. Islamism is actually this older ideology dressed up in religious clothing and fanaticism, but we can say quite surely that the soldiers of 1967 did not have today's fanatic zeal. This is why Israel could reason with those enemy nations and strike peace deals with them.
There are those in Israel's government today that still think they can make concessions of appeasement. History tells us that that leads to disaster.
I never said anything about concessions, just that occupation without the application of civil law is at least somewhat immoral. Right now it appears to be a lesser evil. If you'd like to learn what I'd do if I were in charge of Israel (which I regrettably am not yet), please feel free to email me and we can speak in private. My ideas are things that I don't necessarily want archived forever by Slashdot.
To exterminate Israel is still the ultimate goal of the Palestinians and their mentors Iran, with the entire muslim world joining the fray or at least cheerleading, with UN approval of course. Another full scale war with Israel is not an "if" but "when".
Such a war is an "if, but quite possibly". Israel is besieged and surrounded by fanatics and tyrants, but it does have nuclear weapons.
I am sure you have heard of the term "Armageddon" in reference to doomsday and the end of the world. It actually refers to a large valley just north of Jerusalem, where according to Biblical prophecy the last battle of humanity's ultimate war will be fought, where ALL nations are predicted to participate in. Even today, the only nation on Israel's side is the USA. When, not if, that changes, look for Israel's enemies to once again try unsuccessfully to "solve" the dilemma of Israel and especially Jerusalem by military means.
First of all, I already knew that bit of mythology. Secondly, what do you mean "once again"? Israel's enemies have never quite stopped trying to destroy her.
No please quit agreeing with me see angrily. I know that pro-Palestinian internet posters can get histrionic, anti-Semitic, and quite annoyingly tinfoil-hatted, but you and I are on the same side of this debate. We simply disagree on the means to our common end.
One of the things I've found rather depressing (in a "I can imagine this would happen" manor) is how quickly the citizens of the colonies turned to rioting and civil disobedience. As far as they were aware, they were the last surviving humans. And yet, they found the prospect of martial law so undesirable that it nearly sparked a civil war. Had I been Adama, I would have declared martial law the second he chose to fly. Civil niceties have no place when every second you are literally fighting to survive.
In addition, the sadistic Cylon Police on New Caprica felt depressingly realistic too. Anyone who says "It's a beautiful World" is either forgetting about the humans, an idiot, or very naive.
... I must say that it did strike me from the beginning, how everything and its cow in that show was based on what was going on in the USA at that time.
What do we have in Galactica? Some religious crazy person of a president, telling the people to follow "the gods". A community where everything revolves around military. Some "terrorists" ("He's a Cylon! Put him in the brig! Or airlock him" = "He's a terrorist! Detain him! Or kill him!"). I have yet to find a concept that is not a mirror of American society.
Sure, this might be why it resonates with the people in the USA. But still it shows the same insane and morally wrong ideas, coming from those that we are expected to put our minds in.
A US propaganda film could not do it better. Oh, wait...
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Normally I watch series in one go, just take a day off school and start watching in the morning. Same with books.
Actually, no. I'm assuming that your referring to the Japanese internments during WWII. That's the closest thing in US history that I am aware of that resembles what your talking about. You could be talking about some fictional event or something else entirely dealing with some other country so correct me if I wrong on that. However, during the internments, Habeas corpus was not suspended. The language in Executive Order No. 9066 which created and authorized the internments never mentioned habeas corpus at all. In fact, even while in the internment camps, they still enjoyed habeas corpus for all matter except their internment. The Hawaiian Organic Act held provisions to suspend habeas corpus pursuant to the constitution but instead of suspending it (see section 68), they declared martial law until communications to the president could be established and he issued the executive order. It should also be noted that Hawaii wasn't a state, it was a territory at that time.
Now habeas corpus violations did happen and the courts had ruled on them. Particularly in Hawaii's case with Duncan v. Kahanamoku, 327 U.S. 304 (1946) that said the Organic Act's martial clause law did not close civilian courts.
The last time Habeas Corpus was ever suspended was during and right after the civil war. President Lincoln suspended it and congress later ended up enacting the suspension in law. The total number of people effected were about 9, two of which were executed (that I know of) and the rest were released after the war was over and the circuit courts were making their ways around. One guy in Indiana ended up winning a regular civil trial instead of a military commission and I believe they went ahead and hung him at the conclusion of that.
That is the only time habeas corpus was suspended besides this time in the US history. Also, in the present suspension, your either had to be a foreigner caught in combat against the US (enemy combatant) or in the top layer of a terrorist plot in order for the suspension to have affected you. There was never 100,000 people exposed to it and the Japanese American internments were done in spite of habeas corpus not with it's suspension.
I can agree with that. On the whole though, I think the good outweighs the bad.
I think your mixing a little mistaken history with rumors floating around conspiracy channels. Now, I agree with you in principle but I don't agree with you over the habeas corpus and the manipulations of it that we have seen. Roosevelt never attempted to suspend Habeas corpus, he just ignored it.
Most Israelis have served in the IDF and most of them have as a result commmitted war crimes. That doesn't prevent CNN from giving them media time so why should people on the other side of the struggle not get media time?
**Life is too short to be serious**
Thing is when you hear biased coverage from one side you dont know what is fact and what is spin. However when you hear coverage from both sides the parts which are common to both the stories are very probably the facts and you can safely ignore the parts not common in their stories and hence get an unbiased view of events.
**Life is too short to be serious**
>Israel survives as a "pure" culture by ethnically herding native born non-Jews into refugee camps. Chasing people into camps and then not allowing them to leave counts as herding.
That seems just a tad ironic to me...
Governments do have the choice of being moral and ethical. There is NO CIRMCUMSTANCE AT ALL I would want or expect the British government to shell civilian buildings using white phosphorous, against the terms of the Geneva conventions. Proportionate response is the key.
(Not that I'm saying Hamas is any better - they are deliberately targetting Israeli civilians, just with less effective weapons.)
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
Everyone keeps harping about Baltar's "role" in the initial attack.
Big deal. He was duped by spies. So was the rest of the entire Colonial government and military.
No, Baltar's TRUE sin was giving a fucking NUCLEAR WARHEAD to the deranged Six, Gina, so that he could get laid. The same NUCLEAR WARHEAD that she then used to kill about 3000 Colonials in orbit around New Caprica, and several ships, including Cloud Nine.
He gave a NUCLEAR WARHEAD to an enemy agent. THAT was evil. And yet you hardly hear about it.
-Steve
I've taken an oath to defend the people and Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to the best of my ability I will continue to do exactly that. Right now, that does not necessarily need to entail armed resistance, but the time is approaching when it very possibly might.
There are rules, even in war. These rules are there for a reason, and they make sense. For instance, you do not target innocents, including women, children or any other noncombatants. You do what you can to protect them even in the unfortunately all too common situation where the enemy hides among them. You do not target a medic or an enemy soldier already too badly wounded to continue to fight, or one who had surrendered. You honor the customs and laws of war, interpreted and applied as generously as is consistent with the safety of your unit, as well as the overarching goal of establishing a just peace based on genuine freedom. Unnecessary cruelty, destruction, and violence are all CONTRARY to that goal, and that is part of the reason why these rules exist and are followed by all civilized nations.
Nonaggression works!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I don't know if you're aware, but the Geneva Convention refers to Switzerland, as in, it wasn't written by the states for the states. Plus it's a completely separate issue from habeas corpus. Your loss of HC is cemented in the Military Commissions Act. If you are accused of being an enemy combatant, you lose all rights, and thus have no way to prove you are not an enemy combatant.
Everybody seems to think I'm lazy I don't mind, I think they're crazy
I hate how it is so trendy for writer/directors/producers to make such vibrant commentary on political issues. Granted most directors I have met, (with the rare exception of Donald Bellisario) have been liberal, pot-scarred, hippies. Sadly I have come to expect this type of bullshit.
"Chance favors the prepared mind." ~Me
There may be a few instances where violent attack is more effective than non-violent resistance. WWII is arguably one of them. In most other cases, and in virtually all the cases facing the modern world, non-violent resistance is clearly the superior approach.
It's a pity that hardly anyone has the guts to employ it.
So, just so we're all clear... if I came by your house every week or so and shot one of your family members, you wouldn't resist? Wouldn't get the police or military to try and stop me (because that is inherently violent as well)? You'd just.. I dunno... hold a vigil or something?
Don't get me wrong - I agree with the sentiment, but when your adversary is trying to *kill* you, non-violent resistance is equal to letting them.
(Personally, I think the problem in Gaza is that everyone wants a "polite war" - pauses for relief workers, random cease fires, etc - which is only prolonging the issue beyond all reason)
Your equivocation at the the bottom in parenthesis is why I believe that Israel's response is proportionate.
Hamas is targeting (and I use the word target loosely since they are doing little more than pointing the RPG in the direction of Israel) civilians regardless of proximity to military targets. Israel is targeting civilian buildings only when they believe Hamas members to be present inside. (I realize they've mistakenly shelled buildings containing only civilians, it's war and regrettable as it is mistakes happen.)
It's not Israel's fault that Hamas refuses to admit (or doesn't care) that they are out gunned and will pay a much higher price than Israel in every confrontation. And by "they" I mean all Palestinians, not just Hamas members.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
I am looking forward to the next episode where Obama.... err... Adama declares you... err.. the civilians the enemy.
Aljazeera; Find out what you're missing, you bunch of Infidels!
And the illegal use of white phosphorous as a weapon against civilians? They'll probably say it's being used to generate a smoke screen, but anyone can tell you if you start firing phosphorous shells in a densely populated area (like Gaza) you will hit people. That was a deliberate decision taken by the military, not a mistake that happens in the heat of the moment.
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
It worked for Gandhi because the British were insufficiently ruthless to just kill everyone who turned up for a non violent protest and keep doing that until people stopped protesting.
It doesn't work for the Tibetans becuase the Chinese are that ruthless. So were the Germans and Japanese in WWII, or the Russians in the Cold War.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Of course, as my sig says, the Islamists deserve to lose because they place killing Jews over preserving the lives of their own people and building a civilization of their own. To use a sci-fi analogy, their behavior is that of Daleks.
That's not fair. The Daleks clearly had a first rate scientific and technological civilisation. That's because the Daleks are based on the Nazis, not on Hamas.
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Governments do have the choice of being moral and ethical. There is NO CIRMCUMSTANCE AT ALL I would want or expect the British government to shell civilian buildings using white phosphorous, against the terms of the Geneva conventions. Proportionate response is the key.
(Not that I'm saying Hamas is any better - they are deliberately targetting Israeli civilians, just with less effective weapons.)
Bullshit. When it looked like there was a possibility the Germans would win in WWII the British government incinerated whole cities of German civilians with incendiary bombs e.g. Dresden. And they were 100% justified in doing so, IMO. They had to destroy the German war economy and the only way they could do that was by bombing. Technology being what it was, that pretty much implied levelling German cities.
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Whereas bombing the crap out of cities from your ivory tower aircraft, with clusters, bunker-busters, etc., is morally upright?
Never forget that the USA is founded upon guerilla warfare against the British.
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
Actually, no. I'm assuming that your referring to the Japanese internments during WWII. That's the closest thing in US history that I am aware of that resembles what your talking about. You could be talking about some fictional event or something else entirely dealing with some other country so correct me if I wrong on that.
No, that's correct.
However, during the internments, Habeas corpus was not suspended. The language in Executive Order No. 9066 which created and authorized the internments never mentioned habeas corpus at all. In fact, even while in the internment camps, they still enjoyed habeas corpus for all matter except their internment.
Wouldn't you agree that habeas doesn't have much meaning if it doesn't protect you from imprisonment without due process?
There was never 100,000 people exposed to it and the Japanese American internments were done in spite of habeas corpus not with it's suspension.
That's pretty much my point, although you have me on the technicalities. Tell me, though, to those 110,000 people, do you think it mattered whether or not habeas was suspended or just ignored?
I think your mixing a little mistaken history with rumors floating around conspiracy channels. Now, I agree with you in principle but I don't agree with you over the habeas corpus and the manipulations of it that we have seen. Roosevelt never attempted to suspend Habeas corpus, he just ignored it.
I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories. There's some pretty strange and far-fetched stuff out there; the Japanese-American interment camps are real. My point in bringing them up is to show that saying "it can't happen here" or "it can't happen to me" isn't accurate.
The habeas corpus issue only effected people who posed a direct and immenent danger to the security of the united state.
I'm not sure how much of a direct and imminent danger they were if we had to say "sorry" and cut them a big check after 50 years. We, the US, admitted we made a mistake, and that they did not pose a direct and imminent danger.
But I think there is a big of different between that and a drug dealer or whatever don't you?
That's exactly my point. Your argument is that these things will not affect us because we aren't terrorists. My point is that the only reason we aren't treated as terrorists is because we haven't been accused. Under normal circumstances, we have to be convicted. I'm not expecting to be rounded up tomorrow and hauled off to prison. I'm not talking so much about losing rights, but a steady trickle of erosion. Paraphrasing what I said before, if you won't stand up for others, who will stand up for you? Anyway, interesting discourse. Thank you.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
Whoever adapted this from Niemöller's original version: shame on him! Niemöller was a dedicated pacifist. He couldn't be happier than to have all guns banned.
Did you miss the "I would want" in there?
I know the British government had done/does a lot of bad stuff - I'm saying it has the choice not to.
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
Moore started on TNG (in the middle of it's run iirc). He did have more influence by the time DS9 came around though - so your point is still correct.
Why, yes I have been touched by His noodly appendage. And I plan to sue.
The problem is, they would need something to show they know about your illegal behavior independent of the TSP taps because every court in the land would have thrown the evidence out if it wasn't National security related. It's the poison fruit doctrine and if the immediate court failed to, the appeals would have.
Let's assume that a legal conviction is the goal of this kind of abuse of power. You use your illegal tap to gain some knowledge about your target. Then you arrange a sting or witness who just happens to be at the right place at the right time to generate knowledge of illegal behavior that appears entirely separate from the unknown tap.
But again - that's assuming conviction is the goal. It could also be as simple as dirty tricks because of your target's political views, religion, or moral standing. There is no poison fruit associated with that sort of behavior.
Keep in mind, they are talking about National security issues here, not warrants in general. FISA was created not because congress thought that the government needed a warrant for foreign intelligence gathering, but because when they created the title 3 wiretap laws in response to the 1968 court case that made a warrant necessary, the domestic agencies simply ignored the warrant requirements and had the national security offices do the taps instead. That is why FISA is there and why it was a good idea, to ensure that one hand wasn't taping for the other without the proper warrants.
So if warrants are a good idea, they're a good idea period. It doesn't matter if we're talking national security or not. Once the wires dip in to domestic territory, we need to ensure that everything is being done properly to ensure that in the event that a citizen is on the other end, we're properly handling their Constitutional rights. The statements of the court seemed awfully dismissive of this, one of the few tools involved to check abuse of power.
There generally is a paper trail anyways. It's how the phone companies got screwed and ended up having the congress create a new vehicle for them to get their immunity that was already promised by law. When we tap a line inside the US, a request claiming there is proper and legal authorization gets submitted to the phone companies. Normally it is their get out of jail free card. But because of the nature of the program, Bush Classified all those requests as secrete and the phone companies couldn't use them. That is why civil rights groups originally started filing suit against the phone companies, they wanted access to that paper trail.
There seems to be an awfully large difference between a request assuring that an action is justified and a warrant authorizing the action. What strikes me about this case is that it really did behave as intended. Someone got wind of the situation, noted no warrants were involved, and blew the whistle as this is not how things are done. NOW there is attention to this behavior that will (apparently) involve the new Administration reviewing the paper trails and determining the legal standing of those actions. But what if warrants were never required? Where would the whistle blowing come from? And who would know to dig through the reams of paperwork to look for questionable behavior?
The palistinians agreed to split the land, then turned around and tried to kill every last jew in the region. They got what they deserved, and given the recent history before their disgusting betrayal, I think its amazing self-restraint that israel doesn't simply wipe out palistinians with neutron bombs.
Self-restraint my ass, the whole combined territory is the size of New Jersey. Anyone there using nuclear weapons would kill everyone.
Yes well, going by that definition, non-violent resistance will always get you killed. Do you really think any Jews would have survived the holocaust if they had followed that example and actively non-violently resisted? Hitler would have gotten exactly what he wanted: Jews would have been exterminated. Instead, many survived to carry on their legacy. Same thing would have happened in above example about villagers. If they would have followed your advice for "non-violent resistance" they'd all be dead already. No matter how you present your case, there's *always* someone out there who just doesn't give a shit, and will be more than happy to use violence in response to your non-violence. In fact, they love your non-violence. It just makes it that much easier for them to blow you out of their way. So the only way your "non-violent resistance" pans out is if you believe you have another life after death, and you're going for a "spiritual victory". Because you're definitely not getting any kind of victory in this life.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
So you're saying the you had been PM in WWII the British whould have avoided any actions that would have killed German civillians?
I.e. chosen to spare German civillians at the cost of allowing the Nazis to win? Doesn't seem like much of a choice to me.
Face it, turning those krauts into crispy critters was the only choice they had.
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I've taken an oath to defend the people and Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to the best of my ability I will continue to do exactly that.
Huh, Bush is still alive after committing many acts of treason and assaults on the constitution. I guess your oath doesn't actually mean shit to you. Give up that nonsense. You have failed utterly to defend either the people of this nation or its constitution.
Bush's administration is the only credible threat our nation or our constitution has faced in many years and you've clearly done nothing. Well, it seems likely that you collaborated with the traitors at best, but don't you fucking dare pretend you've done shit for this country.
"So you're saying the you had been PM in WWII the British whould have avoided any actions that would have killed German civillians?"
NO, read what I wrote. I said I wouldn't want the government to deliberately target civilians which is not the same thing at all. There will always be civilian casualties in war.
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
Hmmm. All this time I thought we as a nation were at war.
Silly me, apparently.
Slashdot: you'll not find a more wretched collection of villainy and disreputable types...
You look at the government as liars out to get you. Your forgetting that there are honest people working for it and the only reason you know about the bad things the government has done is because they spoke up
Yes, but it's the scumbags you keep defending that keep doing the bad things, and the very few honest people who you keep attacking as mindless crybabies and chicken littles who are the ones speaking up in spite of the rabid attacks by anti-American scum like yourself.
You don't get to keep talking shit about patriots and then act like their defiance of your cowardice is a point in favor of your deluded positions, you ignorant piece of shit.
Whereas bombing the crap out of cities from your ivory tower aircraft, with clusters, bunker-busters, etc., is morally upright?
Absolutely not. WW2-style bombardment of cities results in countless civilian deaths, and IS a war crime (one which all sides have committed with impunity, but that doesn't make it right). Not to mention that it also is cowardly and counterproductive.
I would bomb industrial targets (factories, railroads, etc.) if necessary and pursuant to a lawful order to do so, but such a lawful order would have to honor the Geneva conventions and therefore spare noncombatants insofar as possible. This does present a dilemma . . if you warn people, you're also warning their SAM batteries. The conventions DO NOT require that we do this. Thus I don't recommend being in a factory producing munitions for a government that attacks my country. I feel awful for those who do so anyway . . I know they are probably not there by choice. But war, even fought legitimately, requires horrible choices. That's one very fucking good reason not to start one (and yes, I know our "government" has usually been the aggressor in recent military history).
Never forget that the USA is founded upon guerilla warfare against the British.
Against an unlawful British occupying force. They were legitimate targets. And yes, I know that the Iraq situation is comparable, as much as it pains me (there are people I know and care about deeply fighting on BOTH sides of that conflict).
Nonaggression works!
When the RAF burned cities in World War II the target was the whole city. The idea being if the weather forecast for your city next week is 1500 degrees C all night and every night it would mess with your morale.
How do you feel about that?
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Huh, Bush is still alive after committing many acts of treason and assaults on the constitution. I guess your oath doesn't actually mean shit to you. Give up that nonsense. You have failed utterly to defend either the people of this nation or its constitution.
If it were up to me he would have been tried, convicted, removed from office, and turned over to representatives of the people he helped to murder, LONG AGO.
Unfortunately I do not have the power to make this happen by myself. I would need a substantial number of other people, preferably including active-duty military, to stand with me.
Bush's administration is the only credible threat our nation or our constitution has faced in many years and you've clearly done nothing. Well, it seems likely that you collaborated with the traitors at best, but don't you fucking dare pretend you've done shit for this country.
Actually, EVERY administration in my lifetime, and going back long before then, has trashed the Constitution. Bush may be the worst to date. We'll see how long that record holds. But, again, I am just a person. I am not God. I do not have the power to remove someone from office by myself.
As to your accusation that I have done less than everything I could to fulfill my oath, I am guilty as charged. I have tried, though, and I continue to try. I hope you and everyone else do the same. It would take a LOT of people standing together to have even a CHANCE at throwing the heartless, demonic scumbag "leaders" out on their rears, and, even harder still, restoring something resembling liberty and justice to our nation. But that is what needs to happen. It's the only chance we, or those who come after us, will ever have.
Nonaggression works!
Except that Israel, unlike most of the Arab nations that surround it, isn't a 99% monoculture. It's roughly 75% Jewish, and 25% Muslim and Christian. Ask yourself how this could happen if they're into ethnic cleansing?
When you start firebombing (whole) cities you open yourself up to the possibility of reprisal, for after all the (seemingly childish but effective) "they started" justification would exist. At that point all the gloves come off, and the global political opinion will contend that the enemy can do whatever he wants in retaliation, for you have just demonstrated that you have no respect for the sanctity of the civilian population, who in this case had no idea that their leader was going to invade their neighbors (etc) when they allowed him to come to power. Not to mention that by the time he was in power, there was no real way to remove him from it (there's a movie about one of *many* such attempts to 'impeach' him that just recently came out, after all - admittedly an attempt that probably came all too late). It is no leap of logic to claim that those millions of civilians that were bombed out of existence during the raids on German cities were in fact INNOCENT.
You made some hasty claim indicating that if your city was bombed non-stop you'd want to reconsider your choice in leaders. I've already mentioned that it wasn't a choice available to any of them at that point in time. Furthermore, how do you dispose of a leader when you and millions of your neighbors are turned into 'crispy critters' as you so eloquently put it?
To answer your original question: Had I been the Prime Minister of Britain when it became evident that Germany would completely crush my pathetic little island nation (who, incidentally, declared war on Germany), then I would NOT show such a complete disregard for civilian lives for the reasons stated above (reprisal, global political backlash, etc). Rather, the strategy I would have employed would have been to seek out a peaceful resolution to the war which my nation had declared (to 'cut my loses', if you will). If that failed, I would have petitioned my allies for further assistance. If that failed, I would have accepted defeat, realizing that like Rome (the previous Reich), Germany would have eventually tired itself out, and that it was probably easier at that juncture to defeat them from the inside; once the zeal of having defeated my inherently inferior aggressive island nation had waned.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle
Uh, Israel has large minorities of non-Jews. It's not a pure culture, and it doesn't herd people (though it does keep them out). Compare with the Muslim theocracies nearby (most of which *used* to have minority populations, especially of Zoroastrians and Jews in Persia (Iran)). See who you think is really doing the ethnic cleansing.
Here's an idea: The UN formed Israel, so it should be fairly easy to sway the UN to protect their invention. If I were the President/Prime_Minister/Chancellor of Israel I would petition the UN to swear to defend her the next time someone declares war on her for no more than ideological or religious reasons. Also, I would make use of the supposedly competent secret service (the mossad) to stop the pathetic mosquito (rocket/mortar) attacks that were plaguing her. As always: use the right tool for the right job. I contend that it should not take a full scale symmetrical war to stop a few supposedly rogue military elements from firing a few occasional rockets into Israel, so when they invoked such clearly (IMO) overbearing measures the impression anyone should walk away with is "they're making a power play".
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle
...or are you someone who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, mistaken for consorting and aiding terrorists of a foreign country by another foreign country's occupational force? We'll never know without a fair trail.
Without a trail, establishing beyond a reasonable doubt that the person accused of being a 'terrorist' was actually acting in such a capacity, the label thereof is no more convincing than just calling someone a witch back in the 1800s (or whenever that was the scapegoat label de jour) and burning them at the stake. Granted, now we just torture and incarcerate them indefinitely on a plot of land legally owned (Cuba doesn't accept the rent money, after all) by a country that the USA still won't trade with, nor allow entry into by its own citizens, which is rather convenient if you ask me.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle
I don't disagree with this but it doesn't really apply to the Japanese American internments. There was no prevention of or suspending of Habeas Corpus and there were cases brought about on it. Unfortunately, it took until after the war and subsequent release of the Japanese Americans before some of them could be settled while other affirmed the right to hold the body. What Roosevelt did was to just ignore the rights that the Japanese Americans had under the guise that they posed a national security risk and some of the courts allowed this to happen. Something that was/is interesting is that these same Japanese Americans were allowed to serve and fight in Europe even if they were interned first.
Actually, no, it didn't matter because the courts supported the right of the government to intern them. What that means is, even with Habeas Corpus, the courts said there was a valid reason. This is why some of the cases were appealed and eventually won in the Supreme court. With or without habeas Corpus, it wouldn't have changed a thing during the time of their internment. They still had access to civilian courts though so it wasn't suspended.
My point wasn't really to say you bought into the conspiracy theories, it was to say that you fell victim of their misinformation. What I mean by this is, if you look, you will find all sorts of people attempting to use the internments as justifications for recent suspension, and you will see all sorts of people attempting to claim that because of the internments, the suspension is bad. The reality of it, the internments really have little to do with habeas corpus and more to do with a tragic portion of American history where we reacted in a way that probably wasn't the best of our abilities but thought we were correct at the time. This clouds the real history surrounding it quite a bit and makes it more difficult to see what really happened and view it for what it was.
Like I said, the internments never denied Gabeas corpus. Habeas Coprus is not a release me now card. It is a "prove you have a right to hold me" card. If they cannot, then you have to be released. Unfortunately, during WWII, the courts and the government said there was a right to hold them. In contrast to today, the suspension is/was only applied to people who are/where a direct and imminent danger to the security of the country. It's application was not broadly painted nor was it used for anything other then a specific set of circumstances. It really isn't the same things as the Japanese American internments even though it is close to the mindset behind it.
Against an unlawful British occupying force. They were legitimate targets.
Hang on, I thought you said "There are rules, even in war"?
Plus, as far as we were concerned, it was you who was unlawful.
Plus, the whole country had been stolen in the first place -- pretty much in living memory -- from its indigenous peoples.
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
Hang on, I thought you said "There are rules, even in war"?
Yup; they mostly concern protection of noncombatants, which the English occupying forces were not.
Plus, as far as we were concerned, it was you who was unlawful.
Law is universal, and is discovered, not made. The Declaration of Independence sums up our position pretty well (not perfectly, but well). It was the British who were mainly in the wrong with respect to the Americans, and not the reverse. We did not travel to the British Isles and attempt to dominate and enslave your society. (Sadly, we have done this to other nations, once we were big/powerful enough to do so, but that is something I would condemn, not defend.)
Plus, the whole country had been stolen in the first place -- pretty much in living memory -- from its indigenous peoples.
That's the closest you come to having a point. It's much more complex than that, because many Native American tribes were nomadic; many did not have a concept of "ownership," and some states, notably Pennsylvania, did a much better job of working with and respecting the rights of the native tribes than did others. Nonetheless, overall, I agree that we did not live up to the ideals of our founding documents, even at the time they were put forth. You didn't mention slavery but that's an even better example of said failure, and one your society managed to abolish sooner, more completely, and with vastly less bloodshed than ours. Thankfully, the ideals themselves, for the most part, were sound. We would do well to try to live up to them, this time on both sides of the pond (your total surveillance society being in many respects even more Orwellian than our own).
Nonaggression works!
Ok, you would need to answer "why was the sting set up in the first place"? What made you suspect me in the first place to attempt to entrap me. Any cop can sit outside your home and eventually look through the windows and find that you are doing something illegal in some way. The problem is that if the cop doesn't have a (believable) reason for sitting outside your home or to be looking inside the open windows, what he sees cannot be used against you. It's part of the poison fruit doctrine and even if you do get charged, a competent lawyer will ask these wuestions and follow it to a point that they can't explain. But you are after all, talking about corrupt law enforcement officials willing to lie in a court of law, what makes you think they arne't willing to lie about the information for the warrant or plant the taps on your phones directly and bypass the courts, the telecoms, and so on?
The TSP had a specific purpose and a limited amount of resources. It is highly doubtful that they would jeopardize their mission just to convict a drug dealer when everyone knows their balls were on the line if another terrorist attack happened under their watch.
No, not really. The founding fathers set the precedence in matters of national security and the lack of the necessity of warrants. The very first congress of the United states passed a law allowing searches without warrant at the borders citing that the very essence of securing the sovereignty requires it. The presidency is in charge of protecting our sovereignty and part of that role requires the same sentiment the founding fathers echoed without objection.
Now, I can understand what your saying. I just don't see where it needs to be forced nor can I fault an administration that doesn't seeing the way you do. It's their inherent obligation to protect the sovereignty of the nation and in doing so, the security of it's borders.
If warrant were never required, the paper trail would still have been there. Any information on the taps would have been useless otherwise. Sometimes, information that seems obviously innocent makes sense in a different light after other information is obtained down the road and it would be imperative to be able to coordinate that information later. Suppose someone was heard talking about a birthday celebration to a suspected terrorists for their "baby" in a few months. This in and of itself is seemingly innocent. But
Ok, you would need to answer "why was the sting set up in the first place"? What made you suspect me in the first place to attempt to entrap me.
One of the accusations I've read about with the apparent campaign to discredit political activists in the 60s was to plant drugs on the target and then stage a raid on a club where the target was known to go. Whether this is paranoid delusion or history is open to debate. However, the scenario fits the bill. Use illegal surveilance on your target until you have their habits and associations. Then set a dragnet where you know your target will be.
The TSP had a specific purpose and a limited amount of resources. It is highly doubtful that they would jeopardize their mission just to convict a drug dealer when everyone knows their balls were on the line if another terrorist attack happened under their watch.
That's fine as long as the TSP isn't being borrowed to go after someone's enemies. Our government has a history of these sorts of things (sadly enough).
No, not really. The founding fathers set the precedence in matters of national security and the lack of the necessity of warrants. The very first congress of the United states passed a law allowing searches without warrant at the borders citing that the very essence of securing the sovereignty requires it.
I'll have to ponder on this point. I can accept (to an extent) searches as I travel - I've done it in the past without blinking an eye. But I'm wary of having my electronic communications inspected. I'd say that the Founding Fathers never would have thought of the Internet. But then - they did have letters at that point and the principle is similar (although there are some devils in the details of the two).
Now, I can understand what your saying. I just don't see where it needs to be forced nor can I fault an administration that doesn't seeing the way you do. It's their inherent obligation to protect the sovereignty of the nation and in doing so, the security of it's borders.
I actually agree with the idea. I believe in the value of giving that authority to agents who guard our country. But again - history has shown so many times where that authority is abused that the safeguards MUST be there; we must protect ourselves from those who would protect us from ourselves.
If warrant were never required, the paper trail would still have been there. Any information on the taps would have been useless otherwise.
But who would have said "woah - wait a minute... something's wrong here?" The system usually requires a warrant to do what was being done. When someone noticed it looked like no warrant existed, they raised the alarm. If the system normally ran without warrants there would have been no alarm. Which makes it amazingly easy to go off the wire and do your own thing (i.e. abuse of authority).
Sometimes, information that seems obviously innocent makes sense in a different light after other information is obtained down the road and it would be imperative to be able to coordinate that information later.
Yeah. I'm aware of the concept. But it's a fiction that this sort of thing will buy us any safety and certainly isn't worth the price of living in an authoritarian surveillance society. Keep in mind that I am, however, keen that surveillance be done when agents find a foreign agent and do the due diligence required to prove it. I just want that check firmly in place to make abuse a bit more difficult - consider it the lock that keeps honest people honest.
With Bush out of office and democrat control of both branched of government, I think they will drop it quietly. They got what they really wanted.
There was mention of a review of the past Administration by one of the Congresscritters on TV news. I only mentioned it as it fit the current threa
>Except that Israel, unlike most of the Arab nations that surround it, isn't a 99% monoculture. It's roughly 75% Jewish, and 25% Muslim and Christian. Ask yourself how this could happen if they're into ethnic cleansing?
You're ignoring simple math so you can argue semantics. I notice your percentages add up to 100%, without containing any Palestians. How is that possible for you to arrive at such numbers??
Israel is not "75%" Jewish unless you dismiss the right of return for the people born THERE, in favor of people born on another continent.
The discussion SHOULD be about people who were BORN ON this strip of land, being able to live there in peace. Jews, Arabs, Druids and Jedi. Really. If everyone agreed on that, peace would break out like wildfire.
Ahh... but there's the problem... that old "right of return" issue again. Those pesky Palestinians refusing to tear up the deeds to their stolen homes.
The thing is, the current Israeli strategy of waiting for the Palestinian diaspora to die off of old age in exile... that's not a great strategy.
These 2 people can beat each other senseless for all I care.
Iran's not a very nice place - worse in most ways - but Iran's not my business because my country (USA) does not have a NUCLEAR security treaty with Iran... it does with Israel.
US tax money (gifts) also account for a huge chunk of the Israeli economy and military budget. Not every American who criticises Israel has something against Israel existing or something against Jews.
Many Americans are concerned because this conflict is a waste of US taxpayer money, and this conflict is also a recruitment poster for extremists. Since Israel is so well defended the extremists now plan attacks on easier targets (Americans).
To answer your original question: Had I been the Prime Minister of Britain when it became evident that Germany would completely crush my pathetic little island nation (who, incidentally, declared war on Germany), then I would NOT show such a complete disregard for civilian lives for the reasons stated above (reprisal, global political backlash, etc). Rather, the strategy I would have employed would have been to seek out a peaceful resolution to the war which my nation had declared (to 'cut my loses', if you will). If that failed, I would have petitioned my allies for further assistance. If that failed, I would have accepted defeat, realizing that like Rome (the previous Reich), Germany would have eventually tired itself out, and that it was probably easier at that juncture to defeat them from the inside; once the zeal of having defeated my inherently inferior aggressive island nation had waned.
Bwahaha. You limp wristed faggot. I think I prefer Churchill's crispy critters plan to yours.
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The problem is, even if it is true, and lets assume that it is, they wouldn't need to secretly listen to their conversations in order to somehow entrap them if they were going to go ahead and illegally entrap them. Do you see where I'm going? If your my enemy or pose some sort of threat and I'm going to plant kiddy porn on your computer just to bust you for kiddy porn, I can just as easily say someone called and said you have kiddy porn on your computer. Then when my agents bust you, they can plant the evidence and I didn't need to secretly spy on you. The entire "they are going to get you" bit can be realized completely without ever spying on anyone. All the spying would do is complicate things beyond what could be used against you.
Well, it wasn't. Or at least that's the official story. And as history can show us that almost no one who was a political enemy was busted over anything they didn't do. In fact, even though they claimed they feared being spyed on, no one ever claimed that the administration had information only they knew nor did anyone disappear or get arrested for anything. At best, the police foiled some attempt to cause problems at party conventions and meetings but they were discussed online with people working for the government who infiltrated the groups. The most notable is the city and state of New York but colorado and nebraska seemed to be able to get involved too. None of this required abuses of the TSP though.
Well, it's interesting that you brought up letters because Benedict Arnold (him or a messenger with his note) was stopped and searched and that how we found he was a traitor. Of course the country and the official constitution wasn't created at that time but the same people who brought us the 4th amendment was in charge of things and none of them seemed to have spoken out about how Arnold was found out or punished.
Sure, but should we wait until the abuses are there or do we need to treat every agent as someone who will abuse this. There are a lot of good people in government jobs. The abuse of before is really a different time, there was no law against tapping citizens, that didn't happen until 1968 when the court finally reversed it's course and connected phone tapes to the right to privacy in the 14th. Congress passed the laws to bring law enforcement in line with the court ruling shortly after that, then it was discovered that they were going around it with the security agencies. FISA took care of that problem and it simply doesn't exist today. The mindset that was there was u
I take it by your ad hominem that you admit that you're merely trolling for an argument. If this is not the case then provide justification for your view.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle
Well I think you Godwinned yourself with this comment
the strategy I would have employed would have been to seek out a peaceful resolution to the war which my nation had declared (to 'cut my loses', if you will). If that failed, I would have petitioned my allies for further assistance. If that failed, I would have accepted defeat, realizing that like Rome (the previous Reich), Germany would have eventually tired itself out, and that it was probably easier at that juncture to defeat them from the inside; once the zeal of having defeated my inherently inferior aggressive island nation had waned.
Letting the Nazis win and hoping they "tire themselves out" = EPIC FOREIGN POLICY FAIL.
Face it, it was time to break out the white phosphorus and napalm and mass barbecue those bastards and in doing so make the world safe for freedom and democracy.
It reminds me of the Jefferson quote about the tree of liberty needing to be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants. Thanks to the RAF's night area bombing strategy by far the majority of those patriots were German and Japanese.
If that hadn't have been enough we had anthrax and nuclear weapons on the way too. Aggressive, you betcha. Inherently inferior? Who ended up surrendering with all their cities burned to the ground. Not us, that's for sure.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
As I said, I wouldn't want my government doing that - although I'm glad I didn't have to make that decision. In any case, this is a democracy and I don't have to take sole responsibility for what they do.
But would you prefer it if I rephrased it as, there are "no circumstances I can forsee in which I would want or expect the British government to shell civilian buildings using white phosphorous, against the terms of the Geneva conventions." We're not likely to get into another WWII situation.
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
I think it goes back to the Jefferson quote. Liberty sometimes requires a blood sacrifice, and Bomber Command style tactics can make sure most of the blood comes from the enemy. Also, if you have a reputation for Churchillian ruthlessness when attacked, future attacks are less likely.
Flame grilled Germans today means no need to flame grill Russians or Chinese later. Even if Israel killed far more civillians than they did in the last war, given the nature of their opponents I wouldn't have a problem with it. The rest of the world has developed a rather naive view that war can be surgical when in fact it's the sheer brutality that makes war effective.
If we'd been surgical with the Germans the Nazi Party would have survived, and would have been able to run an insurgency that would have ended the occupation. Massive collateral damage was necessary to batter the German population into submission to avoid this. If the Israelis were allowed to do what the US and UK did, they would probably end up solving the problem.
Collateral damage is in fact a vital part of winning a war.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Law is universal, and is discovered, not made.
The only universal law is "might is right" (which stems directly from the laws of physics). And that's the law white men appealed to when taking over North America. Sure, we dressed it up in whatever religious claptrap we needed to assuage our guilt -- some appeal to external morality which gave us the imperative to dominate the heathens, or whatever. But the fact of the matter is that we did it because we could.
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
I didn't provoke the Goodwin law, as this conversation was already about Nazis by the time I jumped in. So no, you're wrong on that account.
Killing massive amounts of innocent civilians in the name of freedom and democracy is pretty ridiculous in and of itself. As a matter of fact, it's right up there with "we had to destroy the village to save it." Also, how is freedom and democracy working out in the Monarchy that is England? Last I heard they didn't exactly have freedom of speech, etc. Not that it really matters in this debate. The main gist of my argument is that England declared war on Germany, and botched the whole thing to the point where they had to slaughter millions of innocent civilians during cowardly night bombing runs. That's a great example of 'dying a romantic death on the wings of freedom', if you ask me. /sarcasm>
My contention still stands that the Nazis would have over-extended themselves, and that they wouldn't have been able to keep up their draconian rule after a long and expensive (as in all resources, including man-power) military campaign.
I may have been slightly out of line when I labeled England as inherently inferior to Germany, but if you look at everything from their GDP, to landmass, to population, to morale (at that juncture in the war), to scientific achievements, to culture, then my point there still stands.
Killing innocent civilians en masse is not an acceptable method of achieving freedom, which is a commodity to be enjoyed by that same group of people. I await your counter argument, which I'm sure will include much corroboration, with much anticipation.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle
Jesus taught that the first and greatest commandment was to love God with all our being, and our neighbor, defined subsequently to include those who are different than us, as ourselves. THAT is the basis of all genuine law. You will find that when followed even semi-consistently, this law produces drastically different and preferable results than the one you would like us to believe.
Nonaggression works!
THAT is the basis of all genuine law.
No, that's the basis of the law that you and I would like to see everyone live by.
The "genuine" laws, though, are the law of physics, which basically stipulate that things which want to remain in motion must consume other things.
If you followed Jesus' teachings, you'd have turned the other cheek to the British monarch. It's funny how Gandhi and the Dalai Lama have practised this better than any Christian in history.
Also, I just don't understand how the British were any more unlawful in occupying America than the Americans who, not so long ago, were Europeans themselves.
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
Who modded this drivel "insightful"?
Here's some info:
Almost a quarter of Israeli citizens are non-Jewish, with Arab citizens comprising almost 20% of the population. The majority of them identify themselves as Palestinian by nationality and Israeli by citizenship.
10% of the members of the Israeli Parliament are Arab citizens, most representing Arab political parties, and one of Israel's Supreme Court judges is a Palestinian Arab.
In the public employment sphere, by the end of 2002, 6.1% of the Israeli civil servants were Arab. In January 2004, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared that every state-run company must have at least one Arab citizen of Israel on its board of directors.
Ali Yahya, an Arab Muslim, served as an ambassador to Finland from 1995 until 1999, and in 2006 was appointed ambassador to Greece. Other Arab ambassadors include Walid Mansour, a Druze, appointed ambassador to Vietnam in 1999, and Reda Mansour, also a Druze, a former ambassador to Ecuador. Mohammed Masarwa, an Arab Muslim, was Consul-General in Atlanta. In 2006, Ismail Khaldi, a Bedouin, was appointed Israeli consul in San Francisco.
Six Israeli Arabs have received orders of distinction as a part of their military service; of them the most famous is a Bedouin officer, Lieutenant Colonel Abd el-Amin Hajer, who received the Order of Distinction. Recently, a Bedouin officer was promoted to the rank of Colonel. In recent years, several Druze officers have reached ranks as high as Major General and many have received commendations for distinguished service. It is important to note that, proportionally to their numbers, the Druze people achieve much higher--documented--levels in the Israeli army than other soldiers. Arab Generals in the IDF include Major General Hussain Fares, commander of Israel's border police, and Major General Yosef Mishlav, head of the Israeli Home Front Command and current Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories. Both are members of the Druze community.