Not therefor, therefore. Therefor would mean for that (former) purpose; that HAARP's purpose would be to hurt the U.S. by hurting the rest of the world. He's crazy but I don't think he's quite that crazy. Therefore introduces the logical consequence (apodosis) of an hypothesis.
Just because they have problems too doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to fix our own problems.
Yes, most people will agree with that but it's not relevant here. This article is about a Russian nutcase. Let's not create a new social problem out of misguided automisy.
What if someone shows up with a piece of paper saying the land you own is actually their land? Who decides who is right? Once the government gets involved, the government decides who owns the land.
As I said, I don't own anything that others generally want, and that includes land. However, where I live, the metes and bounds system is used, which is derived from primitive Anglo-Saxon customary law. There is no statutory authority for it and it existed before government was formalized. Law and government are not the same and either can exist without the other.
In any case, safeguarding property rights (or any other rights) is not a grant of rights.
Yes, quite. Unless you're a creationist, man didn't simply appear in completed form with some instructions for governance.
Indeed, and in those days it was "Finders Keepers". If I had a bigger club than you, I could just take what I wanted from you - the rule of muscle.
Which are you trying to say it was? (1) "Finders Keepers" or (2) bigger club? Finders Keepers is explicitly nonviolent.
Government is defined as those holding a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, and rights coming from government as you hold, the determination of legitimacy is circular, so the bigger club is government until an even bigger club should be found.
Man created government to serve man's ends.
Precicely - and one of those ends was to sort out who owned what.
You don't seem to understand the logical consequences of that statement. Man created government to serve man's ends. Like any other tool, it is not created as an end in itself, it is a means to some other ends.
I should just skip law related articles on/. No one on/. knows anything about the law.
Quit while you're ahead.
All property rights come from the government.
Really? Have you looked at the Fifth Amendment?
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Note consistently the use of the negative to constrain government. It presupposes "life, liberty, [and] property." The entire history of American Constitutional jurisprudence relies on the notion that government does not grant rights; it is constituted to safeguard them.
If you don't want to get caught keep your damn mouth shut.
and
You could try reading the fucking summary at least:
"Lamo told Manning he could provide protection"... "instead immediately turned him in to authorities in an act of apparent shameless self-promotion."
Read the fucking comment. He didn't say “unless you really trust the person you're telling;” he said “if you don't want to get caught keep your damn mouth shut.” If he had kept his damn mouth shut, Lamo would not have had the ability to turn him in; a dozen other things may have happened in between the computers they were chatting from, intercepting the communication in an area where decrypting Internet traffic is a high priority for the US government.
Also, while Lamo's contribution has been widely reported, there has been no indication about that being the only line of evidence against him. Manning had already lost access to any TS materials (it's mentioned in the chat), was working in a supply role, not MI, because of disciplinary reasons, meaning that any access to Secret materials he had, if observed, were likely to raise suspicion. Now, in Iraq and Kuwait, there certainly can be a more lackadaisical view of Secret than there should be, but his activity had already attracted suspicion and the ire of the chain of command.
How about you pull your head out of your ass and read the fucking article (or at least the summary) before accusing others of not doing so? Either this communication “outed” him (by misplacing trust in Lamo, compromised connection, a compromised environment (shoulder-surfing because there isn't that much privacy in that environment), or any of a dozen other reasons), or it didn't “out” him (the evidence used to arrest him came from something else entirely). It is known that Lamo's chat is not the only evidence against him, but it certainly did not help.
I sincerely hope that US people are less dickheaded than you. In civil law countries (like Italy too) the judges have little choice in applying the law.
Civil law is slow to answer to changes in society, because it values consistency and equality more.
I understand the difference between civil law and common law regimes, but in common law countries, judges have no choice in applying the law, either. The difference is, if the legislature has worded something poorly, something that's ambiguous, then judges have to be consistent in their interpretations.
Stare decisis is an important principle of American jurisprudence, providing greater consistency than in civil law jurisdictions.The effect of it is that a reasonably informed person can know, even if the text of a statute is vague, what possible results are for an act where statute is imprecise.
I also understand that Brazilian and Italian law value free speech less than American law. To claim defamation (libel or slander) in an American court, you have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that (1) it damaged your reputation (i.e., people actually believed it), (2) that the utterer (i) knew it to be untrue when (ii) he made it public knowledge, (3) that it caused financial harm.
The US may have some problems with the legal system, but consistency on free speech is not the problem. (Apparently, the biggest problem is that xenophobic foreigners pick up phrases that were douchey to begin with before they were overused by the Republican National Convention in 2008. (Why so many fucking hats?))
Now, wearing my reasonable person hat I would say that it is actually better that Google took the bullet, since they are a foreign company and there is little damage they can receive from Brazilian (and italian) justice.
Yeah, as long as it's fur'n'ers paying money for havin' scruples about free speech, that's OK. No, you xenophobic dickhead. How can you argue that the US system values equality less and go on to say that it's OK to have a different standard of justice for foreigners?
But wearing the pissed off person hat, you are an asshole and can shove your nationalistic pride up your ass. You can live in a place where corporations can do anything and people can do nothing.
I guess you won't, but one can always hope. You mean like in Italy where owning all the media outlets buys you political power?
No, because the legislative and executive branches of American government are supposed to be political. Lobby them. If you're in court, make your fucking case using the norms of American jurisprudence. Sway the judge with the law and logic of your arguments, not with a passionate following. Otherwise, just lynch everyone and be done with it.
The protection I'm talking about is that offered to civilians by the 4th GC. It applies *generally* to civilians:
(1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities
Hostility does not mean shooting at you right this minute. Hostility is demonstrating ill will or desire to harm. The video clearly shows that they were reasonably certain, of a threat. Yes, they were mistaken and their training was inadequate.
They didn't fuck up. They murdered civilians who:
constituted no threat
were acting to tend to wounded
Mistaken though they were, they, from this recording, seemed to be reasonably certain that they were a threat, and collecting bodies is not treating wounded. Once someone is dead, he's dead.
I just watched this again. From the audio in the beginning, they believed there to be an RPG aimed at them. Later, someone on the ground radioed about a visible RPG round underneath the body. Recovering corpses because they're carrying munitions is not treating the wounded. I applaud WikiLeaks for making this available, but their analysis is one-sided and they provide no context.
The AH-64 crew, according to the 4th GC, were bound to *protect* those civilians - not execute them!
Yes, they are required to take reasonable precautions to prevent undue harm to noncombatants; they did err in identifying noncombatants. They fucked up. There is no indication that that was deliberate. Callous, yes, but not deliberate.
The gunner can clearly be heard itching to finish off the wounded man!
Yes, because he believed him to have been a combatant and likely to reengage. He, sensibly, wanted fewer distractions.
At the end the crew are *laughing* about humvees driving over bodies,
Several points:
Driving a HWMMWV over a corpse does not make it less dead;
the voices you heard laughing about it were not the ones driving the HWMMWV;
that was entirely the supposition of the Apache crew, who were admittedly not at an angle to see it, and the video does not make that clear.
and later they're blaming the civilians for the death of the kids!
There were two children; they were both wounded, not killed. They were also taken to FOB Rustamiyah and treated. And, yes, if someone's just been shot up by an Apache, and you're messing around in that area, don't fucking go there with Apaches still in the air. That is stupid. If there were gunships shooting up my neighborhood and a neighbor of mine did something like that with kids in their car, I would probably kill them myself.
There are many other points that WikiLeaks deliberately did not communicate that are completely relevant to this video. Among them:
The Apaches were called in because ground troops (Americans and Iraqis) were being fired on from that area with AK-47s and RPGs;
This was an area where several helicopters had been shot down with RPGs;
I don't think the Iraq War was a great idea. I also think that people that can't even identify NATO-standard pro-words in a recorded radio transmission should be armchair generaling. Not even 5 seconds into it, WikiLeaks' transcript is fucked up, and their bleating about it has not been about the Defense Department's indiscretion, but criticizing it with terms so vague they could be used to describe almost any action in any war, ever. I don't glorify war and I don't sugarcoat it. Following the rules of war, people still die. People there are used to it; their own government did more to them than the US invasion and occupation did. The civilian combatants there don't care for the women and children that are harmed by their collateral damage, either. They're often targets, because of their increased vulnerability. Everyone's heard of the Mahmoudiya incident (even though
It provides no such protection for evacuating the dead;
Civilians do not need specific protection.
You're absolutely right; the United States should immediately abrogate from the Geneva Conventions and all other international agreements on conduct of belligerent nations with regard to civilians, because they don't need specific protection.
Civilians plant IEDs. Uniformed armies (generally) don't. Civilian does not mean noncombatant and when civilians become combatant, they lose that specific protection (although they may gain others, such as when wounded or captured).
It is *always* incumbent upon the military to try avoid killing civilians, whether they're walking down the street, picking up bodies, whatever..
Anyway, it's irrelevant - the crew clearly were aware the civilians were helping a wounded man.
They were clearly aware that they were moving dead bodies into a van, in an area where booby-trapped bodies were being used as a weapon. Denying enemy combatants corpses in such an area, where one would be reasonably certain that would be the use, unless people pick up corpses from a controlled station where their identification, address, etc., are recorded, is a legitimate military target. It shows a lack of decorum, but is not in itself a war crime, if given no other context.
As I said earlier, they fucked up. That does not mean it was deliberate; it does not mean nothing can be learned from incidents like that, to avoid them in the future. Most of all, if anyone should be blamed for this incident, it is the higher chain of command that you don't hear in that video that failed in training these soldiers.
What I mean is that, just the fact they're collecting wounded people up, does not make them eligible for protection under the Geneva Conventions. If they are rendering medical assistance, they're eligible for protection as noncombatants under the First Geneva Convention.
Also, the standard of evidence is much looser than in any court: reasonable certainty. If A and B are soldiers in one army, C and D soldiers in another army. C is wounded. D does not have the ability to give medical care but wants to avoid having C interrogated. If A and B are reasonably certain that
D is not able to provide medical care
D's interest in removing C from the battlefield is not for the physical well-being of C, but a military objective in itself (i.e., to prevent A and B from interrogating him)
then D is still a legitimate military target.
I don't think that's what they thought here, though. I think they had a lazy chain of command that thought commissioned and warrant officers didn't need to train on law of armed conflict.
The 1st Geneva Convention protects those treating the wounded. It provides no such protection for evacuating the dead; I still don't think it was a valid military objective. That would depend on enemy TTPs in that area.
For example, if it were common in the immediate or surrounding area to use corpses of those killed by CF for propaganda or for booby-trapping, etc., it would be allowed. I don't think that's the case, here, but they did ask for clarification. Their chain of command would have more information about neighboring AO's enemy TTP', though, so that is questionable, not outright banned by Geneva Conventions.
Also, if the enemy evacuate wounded and you are reasonable certain they are not being, or going to be, treated, they are not protected. The wounded are, but not those evacuating them.
I'm not lumping everyone into "the other side." That was not my term to begin with. The enemy combatants in the area around Baghdad at that time were, principally al-Qaeda in Iraq and Jaysh al-Mahdi. They both did things like that, but many of them were not Iraqi; your use of nationalities precisely demonstrates how little understood that conflict has been. It would be more like Republicans and Democrats fighting each other in Mexico while fighting against the Brazilian Army, too, but with bigger language differences. They would still be fighting the same, though; it's what they know.
Oh, and by the way you may want to see this. No one is innocent.
Because you don't want the other side doing the things banned by the convention to your own soldiers and civilians?
That's funny, because those on "the other side" like to torture people far worse than any allegation against what has been allowed under either the Bush or Obama administrations (not justifying it; just stating facts), have no regard for medical evacuations, deliberately hide behind women and children, disrupt elections in which they would have the ability to seek approval for their policies from their fellow countrymen, have no hesitation about exploding canisters of chlorine or using WP when they can get their hands on it, don't mind mutilating bodies of Americans and rigging them with explosives, and the list goes on and on.
The Geneva Conventions are enforced by the good sense of most people that are in a position to act accordingly. There are always exceptions, and most of the coverage on this incident has been complete bullshit, from both the DoD and from Wikileaks.
This is like all those "pundits" on TV a while ago, claiming that we shouldn't allow torture because it doesn't work. No, that's bullshit. We shouldn't allow torture, because we shouldn't fucking allow torture. For the same reasons, we should not allow targeting of civilians, or force disproportionate to a legitimate military objective.
Clearly, these guys fucked up. Also, clearly, they were reasonably certain that there was a military objective and that they had acted to achieve that. Everything after that is politics, not justice.
Capital letters make the entire difference here. It has no formal Constitution that's any more difficult to amend than any other law. It still has constitution, just not a constitution. In that regard, it's like the United Kingdom.
They still have constitutional rights, in the sense that there is no lawful means for approving some action against a citizen, which historically, has been the norm when referring to constitutional rights, rather than referring to some creative interpretation of a fundamental unabrogable Bill of Rights that take a more difficult procedure to amend.
Jefferson and Paine argued that George III was violating the English constitution, in that customs Englishmen typically enjoyed, they were being denied in the Colonies sans representation. “He has refused his Assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good” was one of the complaints in the Declaration of Independence. Not once did George III refuse royal assent to an act of the British Parliament; it was only the colonial legislatures. The last time a bill passed by the British Parliament was refused Royal Assent was in 1708, so to the Colonial governments, that was something completely unheard of, and violated their constitutional conventions (lowercase C's).
For fuck's sake, man. When an earthquake has just dropped a few floors' worth of concrete on half your family, what is the preferred "ideological background" you're allowed to have before you can quote "in context"? Are you even listening to yourself?
"For fuck's sake, man," reporting on events should not be ideological. "Are you even listening to yourself?"
Every news story on the front page of the New York Times includes direct quotes. They are reported by real reporters, working in the actual locations where news is taking place -- so I'd say their knowledge of the subject matter is considerable.
Maybe the more pertinent question is, just what is it you have been reading that you've been calling "news"? You're pointing the finger at journalism, but maybe the real problem is closer to home than you think.
OK, relevant direct quotes in context, and not just from people with the same ideological background.
Almost every example you gave is regional use: around here, coke means Coca-Cola or a certain Schedule I controlled substance (if you're not a steelworker). I've heard people use Kleenex in place of tissue, but I've still always said tissue, and I say copy something more often than xerox something.
As for genericized brand names, though, everyone uses band-aids, whether they're made by Johnson & Johnson or not.
Google Voice may rely on VOIP for its service but it does not connect to your phone over VOIP; it just uses your cellular voice network or landline. They're doing this to weaken net neutrality disputes and to snub Google.
Stop saying everything from songs to guacamole recpies is open source already
I got your point, and so did everyone else, despite the horrible comparison If you have a problem with calling a textbook open source, what do you call Creative Commons licenses? Regardless, that's probably what it would end up with.
Slashdot Mirror
and therefor harm the U.S. too.
Not therefor, therefore. Therefor would mean for that (former) purpose; that HAARP's purpose would be to hurt the U.S. by hurting the rest of the world. He's crazy but I don't think he's quite that crazy. Therefore introduces the logical consequence (apodosis) of an hypothesis.
Just because they have problems too doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to fix our own problems.
Yes, most people will agree with that but it's not relevant here. This article is about a Russian nutcase. Let's not create a new social problem out of misguided automisy.
What if someone shows up with a piece of paper saying the land you own is actually their land? Who decides who is right? Once the government gets involved, the government decides who owns the land.
As I said, I don't own anything that others generally want, and that includes land. However, where I live, the metes and bounds system is used, which is derived from primitive Anglo-Saxon customary law. There is no statutory authority for it and it existed before government was formalized. Law and government are not the same and either can exist without the other.
In any case, safeguarding property rights (or any other rights) is not a grant of rights.
Entitlement != ownership
That seems to go against your argument. Entitlement means right granted by law or contract (especially a right to benefits). However, I didn't say it was an entitlement. I said one is entitled to the fruits of one's labor. Entitled to does not mean entitlement.
Yes, quite. Unless you're a creationist, man didn't simply appear in completed form with some instructions for governance.
Indeed, and in those days it was "Finders Keepers". If I had a bigger club than you, I could just take what I wanted from you - the rule of muscle.
Which are you trying to say it was? (1) "Finders Keepers" or (2) bigger club? Finders Keepers is explicitly nonviolent.
Government is defined as those holding a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, and rights coming from government as you hold, the determination of legitimacy is circular, so the bigger club is government until an even bigger club should be found.
Man created government to serve man's ends.
Precicely - and one of those ends was to sort out who owned what.
You don't seem to understand the logical consequences of that statement. Man created government to serve man's ends. Like any other tool, it is not created as an end in itself, it is a means to some other ends.
So how do you prove you own the property?
I generally don't. I don't own anything anyone else wants that much, so I generally don't need to prove my ownership.
Who did you buy it from?
I didn't buy all of my property. The notion of property rests on the principle that one's entitled to the fruits of one's labor.
Who did *they* buy it from?
Not all of them bought it; certainly not all of it.
Keep going back until you hit the beginning of the ownership.
Yes, quite. Unless you're a creationist, man didn't simply appear in completed form with some instructions for governance.
In all likelihood it was one form of government or another.
Now, your claim isn't legal or even philosophical; it's anthropological (and circular). Man created government to serve man's ends.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
It is if you use it as one.
Let me put this another way: if I stop someone from stealing something from you, that doesn't mean that I gave it to you.
*sigh*
I should just skip law related articles on /. No one on /. knows anything about the law.
Quit while you're ahead.
All property rights come from the government.
Really? Have you looked at the Fifth Amendment?
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Note consistently the use of the negative to constrain government. It presupposes "life, liberty, [and] property." The entire history of American Constitutional jurisprudence relies on the notion that government does not grant rights; it is constituted to safeguard them.
There is no GC on iOS.
Ouch, my pedant gland is hurting.
Your foot? That hardly seems relevant.
I did read it; as it was an ad hominem attack in its entirety, I ignored it.
If you don't want to get caught keep your damn mouth shut.
and
You could try reading the fucking summary at least:
"Lamo told Manning he could provide protection" ... "instead immediately turned him in to authorities in an act of apparent shameless self-promotion."
Read the fucking comment. He didn't say “unless you really trust the person you're telling;” he said “if you don't want to get caught keep your damn mouth shut.” If he had kept his damn mouth shut, Lamo would not have had the ability to turn him in; a dozen other things may have happened in between the computers they were chatting from, intercepting the communication in an area where decrypting Internet traffic is a high priority for the US government.
Also, while Lamo's contribution has been widely reported, there has been no indication about that being the only line of evidence against him. Manning had already lost access to any TS materials (it's mentioned in the chat), was working in a supply role, not MI, because of disciplinary reasons, meaning that any access to Secret materials he had, if observed, were likely to raise suspicion. Now, in Iraq and Kuwait, there certainly can be a more lackadaisical view of Secret than there should be, but his activity had already attracted suspicion and the ire of the chain of command.
How about you pull your head out of your ass and read the fucking article (or at least the summary) before accusing others of not doing so? Either this communication “outed” him (by misplacing trust in Lamo, compromised connection, a compromised environment (shoulder-surfing because there isn't that much privacy in that environment), or any of a dozen other reasons), or it didn't “out” him (the evidence used to arrest him came from something else entirely). It is known that Lamo's chat is not the only evidence against him, but it certainly did not help.
To summarize all comments on this, the comments breakdown as follows:
97%Flamebait
1% Hyper-credulous patronizing pretentiousness
2% Off-topic
I sincerely hope that US people are less dickheaded than you. In civil law countries (like Italy too) the judges have little choice in applying the law.
Civil law is slow to answer to changes in society, because it values consistency and equality more.
I understand the difference between civil law and common law regimes, but in common law countries, judges have no choice in applying the law, either. The difference is, if the legislature has worded something poorly, something that's ambiguous, then judges have to be consistent in their interpretations.
Stare decisis is an important principle of American jurisprudence, providing greater consistency than in civil law jurisdictions.The effect of it is that a reasonably informed person can know, even if the text of a statute is vague, what possible results are for an act where statute is imprecise.
I also understand that Brazilian and Italian law value free speech less than American law. To claim defamation (libel or slander) in an American court, you have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that (1) it damaged your reputation (i.e., people actually believed it), (2) that the utterer (i) knew it to be untrue when (ii) he made it public knowledge, (3) that it caused financial harm.
The US may have some problems with the legal system, but consistency on free speech is not the problem. (Apparently, the biggest problem is that xenophobic foreigners pick up phrases that were douchey to begin with before they were overused by the Republican National Convention in 2008. (Why so many fucking hats?))
Now, wearing my reasonable person hat I would say that it is actually better that Google took the bullet, since they are a foreign company and there is little damage they can receive from Brazilian (and italian) justice.
Yeah, as long as it's fur'n'ers paying money for havin' scruples about free speech, that's OK. No, you xenophobic dickhead. How can you argue that the US system values equality less and go on to say that it's OK to have a different standard of justice for foreigners?
But wearing the pissed off person hat, you are an asshole and can shove your nationalistic pride up your ass. You can live in a place where corporations can do anything and people can do nothing.
I guess you won't, but one can always hope. You mean like in Italy where owning all the media outlets buys you political power?
No, because the legislative and executive branches of American government are supposed to be political. Lobby them. If you're in court, make your fucking case using the norms of American jurisprudence. Sway the judge with the law and logic of your arguments, not with a passionate following. Otherwise, just lynch everyone and be done with it.
The protection I'm talking about is that offered to civilians by the 4th GC. It applies *generally* to civilians:
(1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities
Hostility does not mean shooting at you right this minute. Hostility is demonstrating ill will or desire to harm. The video clearly shows that they were reasonably certain, of a threat. Yes, they were mistaken and their training was inadequate.
They didn't fuck up. They murdered civilians who:
Mistaken though they were, they, from this recording, seemed to be reasonably certain that they were a threat, and collecting bodies is not treating wounded. Once someone is dead, he's dead.
I just watched this again. From the audio in the beginning, they believed there to be an RPG aimed at them. Later, someone on the ground radioed about a visible RPG round underneath the body. Recovering corpses because they're carrying munitions is not treating the wounded. I applaud WikiLeaks for making this available, but their analysis is one-sided and they provide no context.
The AH-64 crew, according to the 4th GC, were bound to *protect* those civilians - not execute them!
Yes, they are required to take reasonable precautions to prevent undue harm to noncombatants; they did err in identifying noncombatants. They fucked up. There is no indication that that was deliberate. Callous, yes, but not deliberate.
The gunner can clearly be heard itching to finish off the wounded man!
Yes, because he believed him to have been a combatant and likely to reengage. He, sensibly, wanted fewer distractions.
At the end the crew are *laughing* about humvees driving over bodies,
Several points:
and later they're blaming the civilians for the death of the kids!
There were two children; they were both wounded, not killed. They were also taken to FOB Rustamiyah and treated. And, yes, if someone's just been shot up by an Apache, and you're messing around in that area, don't fucking go there with Apaches still in the air. That is stupid. If there were gunships shooting up my neighborhood and a neighbor of mine did something like that with kids in their car, I would probably kill them myself.
There are many other points that WikiLeaks deliberately did not communicate that are completely relevant to this video. Among them:
I don't think the Iraq War was a great idea. I also think that people that can't even identify NATO-standard pro-words in a recorded radio transmission should be armchair generaling. Not even 5 seconds into it, WikiLeaks' transcript is fucked up, and their bleating about it has not been about the Defense Department's indiscretion, but criticizing it with terms so vague they could be used to describe almost any action in any war, ever. I don't glorify war and I don't sugarcoat it. Following the rules of war, people still die. People there are used to it; their own government did more to them than the US invasion and occupation did. The civilian combatants there don't care for the women and children that are harmed by their collateral damage, either. They're often targets, because of their increased vulnerability. Everyone's heard of the Mahmoudiya incident (even though
It provides no such protection for evacuating the dead;
Civilians do not need specific protection.
You're absolutely right; the United States should immediately abrogate from the Geneva Conventions and all other international agreements on conduct of belligerent nations with regard to civilians, because they don't need specific protection.
Civilians plant IEDs. Uniformed armies (generally) don't. Civilian does not mean noncombatant and when civilians become combatant, they lose that specific protection (although they may gain others, such as when wounded or captured).
It is *always* incumbent upon the military to try avoid killing civilians, whether they're walking down the street, picking up bodies, whatever..
Anyway, it's irrelevant - the crew clearly were aware the civilians were helping a wounded man.
They were clearly aware that they were moving dead bodies into a van, in an area where booby-trapped bodies were being used as a weapon. Denying enemy combatants corpses in such an area, where one would be reasonably certain that would be the use, unless people pick up corpses from a controlled station where their identification, address, etc., are recorded, is a legitimate military target. It shows a lack of decorum, but is not in itself a war crime, if given no other context.
As I said earlier, they fucked up. That does not mean it was deliberate; it does not mean nothing can be learned from incidents like that, to avoid them in the future. Most of all, if anyone should be blamed for this incident, it is the higher chain of command that you don't hear in that video that failed in training these soldiers.
What I mean is that, just the fact they're collecting wounded people up, does not make them eligible for protection under the Geneva Conventions. If they are rendering medical assistance, they're eligible for protection as noncombatants under the First Geneva Convention.
Also, the standard of evidence is much looser than in any court: reasonable certainty. If A and B are soldiers in one army, C and D soldiers in another army. C is wounded. D does not have the ability to give medical care but wants to avoid having C interrogated. If A and B are reasonably certain that
then D is still a legitimate military target.
I don't think that's what they thought here, though. I think they had a lazy chain of command that thought commissioned and warrant officers didn't need to train on law of armed conflict.
The 1st Geneva Convention protects those treating the wounded. It provides no such protection for evacuating the dead; I still don't think it was a valid military objective. That would depend on enemy TTPs in that area.
For example, if it were common in the immediate or surrounding area to use corpses of those killed by CF for propaganda or for booby-trapping, etc., it would be allowed. I don't think that's the case, here, but they did ask for clarification. Their chain of command would have more information about neighboring AO's enemy TTP', though, so that is questionable, not outright banned by Geneva Conventions.
Also, if the enemy evacuate wounded and you are reasonable certain they are not being, or going to be, treated, they are not protected. The wounded are, but not those evacuating them.
I'm not lumping everyone into "the other side." That was not my term to begin with. The enemy combatants in the area around Baghdad at that time were, principally al-Qaeda in Iraq and Jaysh al-Mahdi. They both did things like that, but many of them were not Iraqi; your use of nationalities precisely demonstrates how little understood that conflict has been. It would be more like Republicans and Democrats fighting each other in Mexico while fighting against the Brazilian Army, too, but with bigger language differences. They would still be fighting the same, though; it's what they know.
Oh, and by the way you may want to see this. No one is innocent.
Because you don't want the other side doing the things banned by the convention to your own soldiers and civilians?
That's funny, because those on "the other side" like to torture people far worse than any allegation against what has been allowed under either the Bush or Obama administrations (not justifying it; just stating facts), have no regard for medical evacuations, deliberately hide behind women and children, disrupt elections in which they would have the ability to seek approval for their policies from their fellow countrymen, have no hesitation about exploding canisters of chlorine or using WP when they can get their hands on it, don't mind mutilating bodies of Americans and rigging them with explosives, and the list goes on and on.
The Geneva Conventions are enforced by the good sense of most people that are in a position to act accordingly. There are always exceptions, and most of the coverage on this incident has been complete bullshit, from both the DoD and from Wikileaks.
This is like all those "pundits" on TV a while ago, claiming that we shouldn't allow torture because it doesn't work. No, that's bullshit. We shouldn't allow torture, because we shouldn't fucking allow torture. For the same reasons, we should not allow targeting of civilians, or force disproportionate to a legitimate military objective.
Clearly, these guys fucked up. Also, clearly, they were reasonably certain that there was a military objective and that they had acted to achieve that. Everything after that is politics, not justice.
Capital letters make the entire difference here. It has no formal Constitution that's any more difficult to amend than any other law. It still has constitution, just not a constitution. In that regard, it's like the United Kingdom.
They still have constitutional rights, in the sense that there is no lawful means for approving some action against a citizen, which historically, has been the norm when referring to constitutional rights, rather than referring to some creative interpretation of a fundamental unabrogable Bill of Rights that take a more difficult procedure to amend.
Jefferson and Paine argued that George III was violating the English constitution, in that customs Englishmen typically enjoyed, they were being denied in the Colonies sans representation. “He has refused his Assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good” was one of the complaints in the Declaration of Independence. Not once did George III refuse royal assent to an act of the British Parliament; it was only the colonial legislatures. The last time a bill passed by the British Parliament was refused Royal Assent was in 1708, so to the Colonial governments, that was something completely unheard of, and violated their constitutional conventions (lowercase C's).
For fuck's sake, man. When an earthquake has just dropped a few floors' worth of concrete on half your family, what is the preferred "ideological background" you're allowed to have before you can quote "in context"? Are you even listening to yourself?
"For fuck's sake, man," reporting on events should not be ideological. "Are you even listening to yourself?"
What?
Every news story on the front page of the New York Times includes direct quotes. They are reported by real reporters, working in the actual locations where news is taking place -- so I'd say their knowledge of the subject matter is considerable.
Maybe the more pertinent question is, just what is it you have been reading that you've been calling "news"? You're pointing the finger at journalism, but maybe the real problem is closer to home than you think.
OK, relevant direct quotes in context, and not just from people with the same ideological background.
This morning. I suggest you read more.
In the NY Times?! Humbug.
Almost every example you gave is regional use: around here, coke means Coca-Cola or a certain Schedule I controlled substance (if you're not a steelworker). I've heard people use Kleenex in place of tissue, but I've still always said tissue, and I say copy something more often than xerox something.
As for genericized brand names, though, everyone uses band-aids, whether they're made by Johnson & Johnson or not.
Google Voice may rely on VOIP for its service but it does not connect to your phone over VOIP; it just uses your cellular voice network or landline. They're doing this to weaken net neutrality disputes and to snub Google.
You said
I got your point, and so did everyone else, despite the horrible comparison If you have a problem with calling a textbook open source, what do you call Creative Commons licenses? Regardless, that's probably what it would end up with.