Aren't anarchists also human? Why would they be less likely to use force to achieve their goals? (Which might include defending their anarchic community against attack from non-anarchic enemies?)
>>...anarchism is not predicated on the necessity of cooperation
You said it was predicated on the notion tht order and organization can be achieved without resort to force or coercion. Absent cooperation, what approach to aggrandizing self-interest is there other than competition and combat? Cooperation or combat seem to be rather binary choice.
>>...you are not denying that it is possible?
Yes, I am denying it is possible among any group of people sufficiently large and divergent enough to differ on the definition of individual self-interests and the way to bolster and protect them. If all the individuals in a group adhere to the same set of beliefs or can be persuaded to behave as if they do, then cooperation or any other guiding principle can serve as the premise for that small society's organization. But, once beyond some threshold of numbers and diversity, self-interests will differ and become, at the least, competitive. Obviously, this will become especially true when resource scarcity means there aren't enough consumables to satisfy everyone's desires.
>> ...one day, a person will be even more free to decide for him or herself what is appropriate for him or herself.
And someone will be ready to smack him upside the head for doing that.
I admire King and Ghandi, but human nature precludes our ever adapting their principles enough to create and sustain the idyllic existence you seem to expect. We want what we want and we are prepared to take it. We've been that way for millions of years. For every follower of Ghandi there is a follower of Hitler.
>> It is very natural to seek to improve your conditions by cooperating...
True. But, cooperation is not the end of it. We are quite willing to compete with, or combat against, other individuals or groups. If we perceive that their destruction will achieve our ends, we are quite willing to destroy our fellows.
So, it seems to me that a system based on order premised on cooperation is impossibly utopian. We do not always want to cooperate. We will not always cooperate. Many short-lived attempts at cooperative utopian societies have been attempted. Some depended on their population's adherence to the central tenets of their faith or ideology, others relied on coercion and force to dictate a bastardized form of cooperation. (Communism seems a perfect example of the latter, something of a "cooperate or die" regime.) Once the faith recedes and the "true believers" die or move on, or the coercive state collapses, the alleged utopia vanishes.
In my view, order and organization based on cooperation will not work. So long as humans are willing to attack each other to advance their interests, people will bind together to seek security and safety and protection from attack. They will rely on law, backed by coercion and force, to maintain that security and safety.
Perhaps the story will be different when basic human nature changes, but I don't expect that to happen.
>>... does it necessarily follow that all forms of government intrusion are legitimate?
I know of no way of determining the legitimacy of a government's actions.
My points weren't intended to argue against any principles of anarchism. I understand anarchy to be the lack of government. My points attempted to illustrate that a state of anarchy is not stable, that government -- of whatever nature -- will arise as individuals build alliances to advance their own interests.
Government exists even among certain animal pecies, including the enforcement of "law" by force and coercion: Higher primates form social groupings whose customs are enforced by dominant males and older females; wolves and other pack animals live in similar environments. As social primates ourselves, we behave similarly, but on larger scales.
It is a fact that people do form governments and do give to those governments the exclusive right to enforce legal behavior, using coercion and force when necessary. Assertion of belief that runs contrary to human nature is a dead end.
Whether or not anyone can find objective proof that circumstance is "correct" is of no consequence. That is how people behave, regardless of the nature of the government or its perceived legitimacy. Conjuring fanciful speculations based on sophistic assertions of alleged belief is pointless.
No, I have not studied anarchism, and don't intend to do that. I, too, believe in liberty and equality, under the law. I do not believe all people are actually equal, in fact, but that kind of equality is not a prerequisite of liberty. I believe in solidarity (but definitely not as a goal of government), but only in the sense that any sufficiently large population will divide itself into a number of individual groups with conflicting interests. I.e., an individual's solidarity will bind more strongly to some groups than to others. Because people have conflicting interests, governments cannot be premised on the assumption that everyone is motivated to work, in solidarity, toward common goals. (Nor should governments attempt to coerce their citizens into a single solidarity behind a single set of goals and beliefs. That is totalitarianism.) Left to their own devices, people will seek to advance their interests at the expense of others. Typically, this has been done by one group imposing a government on everyone else.
Revolutiionary movements that assume everyone will seek solidarity with everyone else by repressing their own perceived self-interests are doomed to failure. The triumph of a minority over everyone else is the typical result. (See the French Revolution.) Revolutionary movements that assume we all are motivated to maximize our individual self-interests at the expense of the larger group, that society and government must be structured to use those conflicting interests to secure the greatest liberty for all, have a better chance of success. (See the American Revolution and, in particular, Madison.)
States do have the right to coerce behavior, using force if necessary. That is one of the primary reason people form states: to ensure that they are protected from behavior they deem criminal. (In any state -- totalitarian or democratic -- the state must use coercion and force to enforce its police powers, given the tendency of people to also use coercion and force to do what they wish.)
When you assert "ther people have no business whatsoever regulating my behavior insofar as it does not harm other people" you are asserting a belief, not a fact. I doubt, in fact, that most people would disagree. But, there is substantial disagreement about your qualifier: When does an individual's behavior cause harm to others?
Most people would appear to support the criminalization orugs. Yes, there is inconsistency regarding alcohol, but people do not usually behave consistently or in complete accord with their professed beliefs.
If you reject democracy, then we have no basis for a discussion. I do not know what form of government you would suggest, but from the tone of your posts it would appear that you would argue for a government of a people who "know" the "right" answers. I.e., an elite few who agree with you and who coerce behavior that meets with your approval.
The SSN is the only unique number identifying Americans. We started using it decades ago for these purposes, long before computers were even in use.
So, if you have someone's name and their SSN, and a little knowledge, you can successfully use that name and SSN to open bank accounts, apply for credit, etc. In many instances, the legitimate owner of that name and SSN has legal difficulty avoiding responsibility for the crook's debts.
Worse, too many financial instirutions are far too lax regarding how they verify electronic transactions, especially wire transfers. Often, a name, SSN, and account numbers will allow a thief to quietly and electronically clean out someone's bank accounts. The bank will likely avoid trying to find the crook, asserting that none of their money was lost.
Replacing SSN's with another unique identifier would not solve the problem, but would seriously raise the loon factor as the tinfoil brigades raise their pointy little heads.
>> What I do not understand is when it became anybody else's business what I do to myself.
The question of what one does to one's own body is typically a religious issue. But, the question of what one does to the bodies and property of others is a legitimate question for the state. In fact, in terms of protecting citizens from being harmed by others, that is probably the fundamental reason for the creation of a legitimate government. I can think of no state that does not criminalize the possession and use of substances that can reduce or eliminate a person's ability to reason clearly, control his body and motor functions, and reduce the inhibitions that normally block illegal behavior. That is, something whose consumption often leads to criminal behavior is often itself criminalized.
Your search for the Big Cosmic Why is pointless. It happens because people want it to happen. If there really was a Big Cosmic Know-It-All that provided all the answers -- and everyone agreed that there was only one -- we'd all look to that oracle for all the answers and simply do what we were told.
But, depending on who you ask, there either isn't a Big Cosmic Know-It-All or there are multitudes of them.
So, the answer to your "why?" question is because that's what more people want than don't want. In a democracy, at least, it isn't important that what the people want is "right", in your sense of the word, as it is that they simply get to express their will.
Re:Software Makes Wrongs Assumption About Users
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Nor do I. But I know lots of people who don't know how an engine works.
Most folks I know understand that the letters they type go out onto the net over a bunch of cables and wires and that new stuff is sent back to them. They think of it, I'm sure, as very much like a telephone network. Start talking about name resolution and packets, though, and eyes glaze over.
Remember, people (at least non-geeks) want to learn only what they need to learn to do what they want on the net. The less to be learned, the better.
Re:Software Makes Wrongs Assumption About Users
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The problem is that its people doing nefarious things on the net. Learning how DNS works isn't going to render you immune to crooks and predators.
Yes, there is risky terrain along the net, just as there is risky terrain along the highway. And, yes, the more you know how to navigate safely through either, the lower your risk will be.
But safely and effectively using a browser is analagous to safely and effectively driving a car. The latter is completely possible with no knowledge of the machanics of the car's operations. Likewise, using a brower safely and effectively ought to be possible without understanding how the net works. But, cars have a 100=plus year head start on browsers. (Most people will never understand how either their car or the net works because it isn't important to them.)
Of course, no one expects their car to keep them out of risky neighborhoods, and no one should expect their browser to keep them away from risky sites and links. The education you recommend, then, should be about how people behave on the net, not how the net works.
Software Makes Wrongs Assumption About Users
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...many of them are unable to tell the difference between typing something into a search engine, and typing something into an address box.
Both boxes look pretty much the same.
What you're highlighting is the imlicit expectation among software designers that users will come to understand the how the Internet works. That is, that users will understand what a URL is, how DNS works, what a search engine is, and ehat happens when you enter a search phrase versus entering a URL.
Those are unwarranted expectations. An analogy would be cars designed on the assumption that drivers understand how internal combustion engines work. Few of us would be able to drive safely if that was a prerequisite.
The most effective way to protect users from crooks and abusers on the net is to design software that does the protecting and is not based on unreasonable assumptions about user knowledge.
The question of the interest of the government in what you do with your body is determined when we elect representatives. If you want to carry something in your car that current law designates as illegal, you must either be prepared to take that risk or work to change the law. Your opinion that you have a right to own that substance is just that: an opinion.
Neither of your examples are appropriate. Possession of the book or the magazine is not indicative of a crime. Blood dripping from the trunk is certainly highly suggestive of a crime. Sp, also, would be pleas for help coming from the trunk.
I said I don't like the fact that only the U.S. has the requisite fortitude, and that the UN lacks it. I'd rather see the UN take on the role of actively working to eliminate repressive totalitarian regimes, even if that means invasion when other approaches fail.
When a government represses its people, when it prohibits free elections, when it successfully blocks any possibility of revolution, then what other avenue remains beyond external intervention of some form? (Remember, "external intervention" is not synonymous with "armed invasion".)
When conditions like that exist, those of us who are fortunate enough not to live in such countries have personal ethical choices to make: Shall we support efforts to free them or shall we preserve our own sense of moral purity by looking the other way?
So, the question for you and others who believe as you do: How would you free the people of the DPRK, since it is abvious that they cannot?
I condemned the UN for not working to change the regime in the DPRK. You decided that meant invasion, not me.
Name anything the UN has done to bring democracy to the DPRK other other than handwring and beg the regime to allow other people to try a feed some of the people it is starving.
As with others, your defense of the very forces and organziations sustaining regimes like the DPRK is an example of a twisted, selfish uncomprehending view of the world.
Funny, I haven't heard about any elections in the DPRK lately.
The only people who have the "moral authority" to make decisions about how they are governed are the people that will be governed.
The people of the DPRK have no ability to make those decisions because the DPRK government has repressed those rights for more than 50 years.
The only legitimate way for people to make those decisions is via a democratic election.
In a modern and successful totalitarian regime, like the DPRK, the state can effectively suppress the possibility of violent revolution, so even that avenue is blocked.
So, with no way for a repressed people to exercise their right to govern themselves, wither through elections or revolution, few alternatives remain but external intervention.
How are your statements, if accurate, and your assumptions and extrapoloations, if accurte, at all relevant to my statement?
Regardless of the mechanisms that brought about its creation, the DPRK is a brutal totalitarian regime whose behavior deprives it of any right to exist.
I cannot comprehend the personal morality of anyone who would value the alleged right of the DPRK government to exist more than the right of the North Korean people to free and healthy lives. The latter will not happen so long as the former exists.
My understanding is that the officer with the dog was the second officer to arrive on the scene. The fact that he was a canine office was coincidental. The dog, as I recall, alerted on the car of its own volition.
OF course, the DPRK government exists. But it has no right to exist.
No government imposed without the consent of the people it governs is legitimate.
The leaders of the DPRK are directly responsible for the deaths of millions of Koreans, beginning with the Korean War. They are the causal agent for the continued misery and starvation of the North Korean people.
There is nothing wrong with "invading" a counttry when the objective is to improve the lot of the people in those countries by removing murderous thugs from power. I don't like the fact that only the U.S. has the fortitude to do that, but organizations like the UN won't do it because they are moral cripples who are quite willing to sacrifice the welfare of a nation's population rather than challenge the alleged legitimacy of the bastards at the top.
This sick UN/European philosophy would seenboth Europe and the U.S. hang back and watch, with fingers wagging, as Hitler's armies conquered and massacred.
If you really believe that the simple existence of the DPRK government assigns it a legitimacy equal to that of a democratically selected government, while people in the DPRK are reduced to eating grass and tree bark, then I suggest you examine your own ethical precepts.
My understanding of this incident is that the first officer on the scene requested additional assistance. The nearest responding officer happened to have a dog in the car. When the second officer arrived, the dog alerted on the car on its own initiative.
The issue is not determining what is private and what is not private. The right of privacy applied to substances that are illegal doesn't make sense. There is no right to possess illegal substances, privately or otherwise.
Now, of course, privacy can be violated by a search for contraband. But privacy is not necessarily the subject of the 4th Amendment It asserts the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses...", etc. Security and privacy are not synonymous.
And, I gave to disagree that evidence acquired by dogs is inadmissible. The dog is simply a device used to look for indications of contraband. In this case, the dog has a much keener sense of smell than humans.
Your conclusions drawn from my post are yours, not mine. I draw no such conclusions.
I see no reason for police to be obligated to ignore indications of illegal materials, hidden from view or otherwise, if that indication occurs as, in effect, the byproduct of other legitimate police activity.
That's a far cry from advocating placing drug-sniffing dogs in every police care, or X-raying every house. But, if police pull somone over for a driving violation and get an indication that illegal drugs are in the car, they should not be compelled to ignore that indication. Would you argue that the police should also have ignored blood dripping from the trunk?
The question of whether or not the DPRK deserves nuclear weapons begs this question: Does the DPRK government have a right to exist?
The answer: no.
The DPRK is a brutish, thuggish, criminal (in the literal sense) despotic regime. A tiny elite minority of sycophants surrounding Kim tyrannize and starve millions of Koreans.
No such regime has any political, moral or ethical right to exist.
The deliberately ignorant naivete of those who argue that the DPRK is threatened by the U.S., using the war the north launched more than 50 years ago and refuses to settle as an excuse, is toadyism in exterme form.
If organizations like the UN, ASEAN, etc., are so dead set on helping people, why haven't they done anything to get rid of these people? All they do is beg aid money from the West to feed and support the victims of these criminals. But, without eliminating the victimizers, this aid is reminiscent of medieval Europeans dancing and singing to stop the plagque, while the rats feasted on their waste in the streets.
The Court was right: there is no right of privacy to conceal illegal material.
If this driver had smelled of alcohol, a search of the car for containers of alcohol would have been appropriate. In this case, the dog was there, reported the odor of marijuana, and a search ensued.
This ruling should not be interpreted as carte blanche for police to search every car stopped for soe other violation.
The SecurityFocus piece that tries to expand on the packet "sniffing" metaphor is just one more obvious reason why geeks don't make good lawyers.
Here are some thing wrong with this story, and the way/. handled it:
1. The notion of terraforming Mars isn't exactly new.
2. This short and incomplete report would be comfortable in a tabloid, not in the broadsheet Guardian, a left-wing UK paper funded by a left-wing UK foundation to promote left-wing ideology. (Nothing wrong with being left-wing, or right-wing, but it helps to know who's paying for the news you're reading.)
3. This is not a NASA proposal, as/. called it, or even a proposal by the scientists involved. It's a study; no one is proposing to terraform Mars.
My guess is that most/. readers simply don't have a clue.
Latvia, along with Lithuania and Estonia, are relatively small Baltic nations with historically close ties with the rest of Europe. Their respective national histories go back many centuries.
They had the misfortune to be occupied by Stalin as WWII waned, and the Soviets didn't leave until the early 1990's.
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>> Ah, now there's a difference from anarchism.
...anarchism is not predicated on the necessity of cooperation
...you are not denying that it is possible?
...one day, a person will be even more free to decide for him or herself what is appropriate for him or herself.
Aren't anarchists also human? Why would they be less likely to use force to achieve their goals? (Which might include defending their anarchic community against attack from non-anarchic enemies?)
>>
You said it was predicated on the notion tht order and organization can be achieved without resort to force or coercion. Absent cooperation, what approach to aggrandizing self-interest is there other than competition and combat? Cooperation or combat seem to be rather binary choice.
>>
Yes, I am denying it is possible among any group of people sufficiently large and divergent enough to differ on the definition of individual self-interests and the way to bolster and protect them. If all the individuals in a group adhere to the same set of beliefs or can be persuaded to behave as if they do, then cooperation or any other guiding principle can serve as the premise for that small society's organization. But, once beyond some threshold of numbers and diversity, self-interests will differ and become, at the least, competitive. Obviously, this will become especially true when resource scarcity means there aren't enough consumables to satisfy everyone's desires.
>>
And someone will be ready to smack him upside the head for doing that.
I admire King and Ghandi, but human nature precludes our ever adapting their principles enough to create and sustain the idyllic existence you seem to expect. We want what we want and we are prepared to take it. We've been that way for millions of years. For every follower of Ghandi there is a follower of Hitler.
>> It is very natural to seek to improve your conditions by cooperating ...
True. But, cooperation is not the end of it. We are quite willing to compete with, or combat against, other individuals or groups. If we perceive that their destruction will achieve our ends, we are quite willing to destroy our fellows.
So, it seems to me that a system based on order premised on cooperation is impossibly utopian. We do not always want to cooperate. We will not always cooperate. Many short-lived attempts at cooperative utopian societies have been attempted. Some depended on their population's adherence to the central tenets of their faith or ideology, others relied on coercion and force to dictate a bastardized form of cooperation. (Communism seems a perfect example of the latter, something of a "cooperate or die" regime.) Once the faith recedes and the "true believers" die or move on, or the coercive state collapses, the alleged utopia vanishes.
In my view, order and organization based on cooperation will not work. So long as humans are willing to attack each other to advance their interests, people will bind together to seek security and safety and protection from attack. They will rely on law, backed by coercion and force, to maintain that security and safety.
Perhaps the story will be different when basic human nature changes, but I don't expect that to happen.
>>... does it necessarily follow that all forms of government intrusion are legitimate?
I know of no way of determining the legitimacy of a government's actions.
My points weren't intended to argue against any principles of anarchism. I understand anarchy to be the lack of government. My points attempted to illustrate that a state of anarchy is not stable, that government -- of whatever nature -- will arise as individuals build alliances to advance their own interests.
Government exists even among certain animal pecies, including the enforcement of "law" by force and coercion: Higher primates form social groupings whose customs are enforced by dominant males and older females; wolves and other pack animals live in similar environments. As social primates ourselves, we behave similarly, but on larger scales.
It is a fact that people do form governments and do give to those governments the exclusive right to enforce legal behavior, using coercion and force when necessary. Assertion of belief that runs contrary to human nature is a dead end.
Whether or not anyone can find objective proof that circumstance is "correct" is of no consequence. That is how people behave, regardless of the nature of the government or its perceived legitimacy. Conjuring fanciful speculations based on sophistic assertions of alleged belief is pointless.
No, I have not studied anarchism, and don't intend to do that. I, too, believe in liberty and equality, under the law. I do not believe all people are actually equal, in fact, but that kind of equality is not a prerequisite of liberty. I believe in solidarity (but definitely not as a goal of government), but only in the sense that any sufficiently large population will divide itself into a number of individual groups with conflicting interests. I.e., an individual's solidarity will bind more strongly to some groups than to others. Because people have conflicting interests, governments cannot be premised on the assumption that everyone is motivated to work, in solidarity, toward common goals. (Nor should governments attempt to coerce their citizens into a single solidarity behind a single set of goals and beliefs. That is totalitarianism.) Left to their own devices, people will seek to advance their interests at the expense of others. Typically, this has been done by one group imposing a government on everyone else.
Revolutiionary movements that assume everyone will seek solidarity with everyone else by repressing their own perceived self-interests are doomed to failure. The triumph of a minority over everyone else is the typical result. (See the French Revolution.) Revolutionary movements that assume we all are motivated to maximize our individual self-interests at the expense of the larger group, that society and government must be structured to use those conflicting interests to secure the greatest liberty for all, have a better chance of success. (See the American Revolution and, in particular, Madison.)
I am not interest in merely rhetorical questions.
States do have the right to coerce behavior, using force if necessary. That is one of the primary reason people form states: to ensure that they are protected from behavior they deem criminal. (In any state -- totalitarian or democratic -- the state must use coercion and force to enforce its police powers, given the tendency of people to also use coercion and force to do what they wish.)
When you assert "ther people have no business whatsoever regulating my behavior insofar as it does not harm other people" you are asserting a belief, not a fact. I doubt, in fact, that most people would disagree. But, there is substantial disagreement about your qualifier: When does an individual's behavior cause harm to others?
Most people would appear to support the criminalization orugs. Yes, there is inconsistency regarding alcohol, but people do not usually behave consistently or in complete accord with their professed beliefs.
If you reject democracy, then we have no basis for a discussion. I do not know what form of government you would suggest, but from the tone of your posts it would appear that you would argue for a government of a people who "know" the "right" answers. I.e., an elite few who agree with you and who coerce behavior that meets with your approval.
The SSN is the only unique number identifying Americans. We started using it decades ago for these purposes, long before computers were even in use.
So, if you have someone's name and their SSN, and a little knowledge, you can successfully use that name and SSN to open bank accounts, apply for credit, etc. In many instances, the legitimate owner of that name and SSN has legal difficulty avoiding responsibility for the crook's debts.
Worse, too many financial instirutions are far too lax regarding how they verify electronic transactions, especially wire transfers. Often, a name, SSN, and account numbers will allow a thief to quietly and electronically clean out someone's bank accounts. The bank will likely avoid trying to find the crook, asserting that none of their money was lost.
Replacing SSN's with another unique identifier would not solve the problem, but would seriously raise the loon factor as the tinfoil brigades raise their pointy little heads.
>> What I do not understand is when it became anybody else's business what I do to myself.
The question of what one does to one's own body is typically a religious issue. But, the question of what one does to the bodies and property of others is a legitimate question for the state. In fact, in terms of protecting citizens from being harmed by others, that is probably the fundamental reason for the creation of a legitimate government. I can think of no state that does not criminalize the possession and use of substances that can reduce or eliminate a person's ability to reason clearly, control his body and motor functions, and reduce the inhibitions that normally block illegal behavior. That is, something whose consumption often leads to criminal behavior is often itself criminalized.
Your search for the Big Cosmic Why is pointless. It happens because people want it to happen. If there really was a Big Cosmic Know-It-All that provided all the answers -- and everyone agreed that there was only one -- we'd all look to that oracle for all the answers and simply do what we were told.
But, depending on who you ask, there either isn't a Big Cosmic Know-It-All or there are multitudes of them.
So, the answer to your "why?" question is because that's what more people want than don't want. In a democracy, at least, it isn't important that what the people want is "right", in your sense of the word, as it is that they simply get to express their will.
Nor do I. But I know lots of people who don't know how an engine works.
Most folks I know understand that the letters they type go out onto the net over a bunch of cables and wires and that new stuff is sent back to them. They think of it, I'm sure, as very much like a telephone network. Start talking about name resolution and packets, though, and eyes glaze over.
Remember, people (at least non-geeks) want to learn only what they need to learn to do what they want on the net. The less to be learned, the better.
The problem is that its people doing nefarious things on the net. Learning how DNS works isn't going to render you immune to crooks and predators.
Yes, there is risky terrain along the net, just as there is risky terrain along the highway. And, yes, the more you know how to navigate safely through either, the lower your risk will be.
But safely and effectively using a browser is analagous to safely and effectively driving a car. The latter is completely possible with no knowledge of the machanics of the car's operations. Likewise, using a brower safely and effectively ought to be possible without understanding how the net works. But, cars have a 100=plus year head start on browsers. (Most people will never understand how either their car or the net works because it isn't important to them.)
Of course, no one expects their car to keep them out of risky neighborhoods, and no one should expect their browser to keep them away from risky sites and links. The education you recommend, then, should be about how people behave on the net, not how the net works.
...many of them are unable to tell the difference between typing something into a search engine, and typing something into an address box.
Both boxes look pretty much the same.
What you're highlighting is the imlicit expectation among software designers that users will come to understand the how the Internet works. That is, that users will understand what a URL is, how DNS works, what a search engine is, and ehat happens when you enter a search phrase versus entering a URL.
Those are unwarranted expectations. An analogy would be cars designed on the assumption that drivers understand how internal combustion engines work. Few of us would be able to drive safely if that was a prerequisite.
The most effective way to protect users from crooks and abusers on the net is to design software that does the protecting and is not based on unreasonable assumptions about user knowledge.
No straw man. I believe the police have the right to search when something happens that gives them reasonable cause for the search.
If the dog alerted of his own accord, the search was OK with me.
If the dog was ordered to search, that's a different issue.
The question of the interest of the government in what you do with your body is determined when we elect representatives. If you want to carry something in your car that current law designates as illegal, you must either be prepared to take that risk or work to change the law. Your opinion that you have a right to own that substance is just that: an opinion.
Neither of your examples are appropriate. Possession of the book or the magazine is not indicative of a crime. Blood dripping from the trunk is certainly highly suggestive of a crime. Sp, also, would be pleas for help coming from the trunk.
I'm not rationalizing or lieing.
I said I don't like the fact that only the U.S. has the requisite fortitude, and that the UN lacks it. I'd rather see the UN take on the role of actively working to eliminate repressive totalitarian regimes, even if that means invasion when other approaches fail.
When a government represses its people, when it prohibits free elections, when it successfully blocks any possibility of revolution, then what other avenue remains beyond external intervention of some form? (Remember, "external intervention" is not synonymous with "armed invasion".)
When conditions like that exist, those of us who are fortunate enough not to live in such countries have personal ethical choices to make: Shall we support efforts to free them or shall we preserve our own sense of moral purity by looking the other way?
So, the question for you and others who believe as you do: How would you free the people of the DPRK, since it is abvious that they cannot?
I condemned the UN for not working to change the regime in the DPRK. You decided that meant invasion, not me.
Name anything the UN has done to bring democracy to the DPRK other other than handwring and beg the regime to allow other people to try a feed some of the people it is starving.
As with others, your defense of the very forces and organziations sustaining regimes like the DPRK is an example of a twisted, selfish uncomprehending view of the world.
Funny, I haven't heard about any elections in the DPRK lately.
The only people who have the "moral authority" to make decisions about how they are governed are the people that will be governed.
The people of the DPRK have no ability to make those decisions because the DPRK government has repressed those rights for more than 50 years.
The only legitimate way for people to make those decisions is via a democratic election.
In a modern and successful totalitarian regime, like the DPRK, the state can effectively suppress the possibility of violent revolution, so even that avenue is blocked.
So, with no way for a repressed people to exercise their right to govern themselves, wither through elections or revolution, few alternatives remain but external intervention.
No, the fact that Korean was a monarchy does not justify an invasion by the Japanese monarchy.
I didn't say it did.
Nor did I say an invasion of the DPRK was justfied.
I said the DRPK has no right to exist.
I said organizations like the UN have failed to eliminate the DPRK and similar regimes.
Like a typical troll, you've misrepresented my post.
Thanks for playing simple-minded analyst.
How are your statements, if accurate, and your assumptions and extrapoloations, if accurte, at all relevant to my statement?
Regardless of the mechanisms that brought about its creation, the DPRK is a brutal totalitarian regime whose behavior deprives it of any right to exist.
I cannot comprehend the personal morality of anyone who would value the alleged right of the DPRK government to exist more than the right of the North Korean people to free and healthy lives. The latter will not happen so long as the former exists.
My understanding is that the officer with the dog was the second officer to arrive on the scene. The fact that he was a canine office was coincidental. The dog, as I recall, alerted on the car of its own volition.
OF course, the DPRK government exists. But it has no right to exist.
No government imposed without the consent of the people it governs is legitimate.
The leaders of the DPRK are directly responsible for the deaths of millions of Koreans, beginning with the Korean War. They are the causal agent for the continued misery and starvation of the North Korean people.
There is nothing wrong with "invading" a counttry when the objective is to improve the lot of the people in those countries by removing murderous thugs from power. I don't like the fact that only the U.S. has the fortitude to do that, but organizations like the UN won't do it because they are moral cripples who are quite willing to sacrifice the welfare of a nation's population rather than challenge the alleged legitimacy of the bastards at the top.
This sick UN/European philosophy would seenboth Europe and the U.S. hang back and watch, with fingers wagging, as Hitler's armies conquered and massacred.
If you really believe that the simple existence of the DPRK government assigns it a legitimacy equal to that of a democratically selected government, while people in the DPRK are reduced to eating grass and tree bark, then I suggest you examine your own ethical precepts.
My understanding of this incident is that the first officer on the scene requested additional assistance. The nearest responding officer happened to have a dog in the car. When the second officer arrived, the dog alerted on the car on its own initiative.
The issue is not determining what is private and what is not private. The right of privacy applied to substances that are illegal doesn't make sense. There is no right to possess illegal substances, privately or otherwise.
Now, of course, privacy can be violated by a search for contraband. But privacy is not necessarily the subject of the 4th Amendment It asserts the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses...", etc. Security and privacy are not synonymous.
And, I gave to disagree that evidence acquired by dogs is inadmissible. The dog is simply a device used to look for indications of contraband. In this case, the dog has a much keener sense of smell than humans.
Your conclusions drawn from my post are yours, not mine. I draw no such conclusions.
I see no reason for police to be obligated to ignore indications of illegal materials, hidden from view or otherwise, if that indication occurs as, in effect, the byproduct of other legitimate police activity.
That's a far cry from advocating placing drug-sniffing dogs in every police care, or X-raying every house. But, if police pull somone over for a driving violation and get an indication that illegal drugs are in the car, they should not be compelled to ignore that indication. Would you argue that the police should also have ignored blood dripping from the trunk?
The question of whether or not the DPRK deserves nuclear weapons begs this question: Does the DPRK government have a right to exist?
The answer: no.
The DPRK is a brutish, thuggish, criminal (in the literal sense) despotic regime. A tiny elite minority of sycophants surrounding Kim tyrannize and starve millions of Koreans.
No such regime has any political, moral or ethical right to exist.
The deliberately ignorant naivete of those who argue that the DPRK is threatened by the U.S., using the war the north launched more than 50 years ago and refuses to settle as an excuse, is toadyism in exterme form.
If organizations like the UN, ASEAN, etc., are so dead set on helping people, why haven't they done anything to get rid of these people? All they do is beg aid money from the West to feed and support the victims of these criminals. But, without eliminating the victimizers, this aid is reminiscent of medieval Europeans dancing and singing to stop the plagque, while the rats feasted on their waste in the streets.
The Court was right: there is no right of privacy to conceal illegal material.
If this driver had smelled of alcohol, a search of the car for containers of alcohol would have been appropriate. In this case, the dog was there, reported the odor of marijuana, and a search ensued.
This ruling should not be interpreted as carte blanche for police to search every car stopped for soe other violation.
The SecurityFocus piece that tries to expand on the packet "sniffing" metaphor is just one more obvious reason why geeks don't make good lawyers.
Here are some thing wrong with this story, and the way /. handled it:
/. called it, or even a proposal by the scientists involved. It's a study; no one is proposing to terraform Mars.
1. The notion of terraforming Mars isn't exactly new.
2. This short and incomplete report would be comfortable in a tabloid, not in the broadsheet Guardian, a left-wing UK paper funded by a left-wing UK foundation to promote left-wing ideology. (Nothing wrong with being left-wing, or right-wing, but it helps to know who's paying for the news you're reading.)
3. This is not a NASA proposal, as
My guess is that most /. readers simply don't have a clue.
Latvia, along with Lithuania and Estonia, are relatively small Baltic nations with historically close ties with the rest of Europe. Their respective national histories go back many centuries.
They had the misfortune to be occupied by Stalin as WWII waned, and the Soviets didn't leave until the early 1990's.