Should I accidently look at a file that does not belong to the case at hand (for example, when looking for trojan screenshots and I happen to run across a porn pic that happens to be in the same location a certain trojan would put its pics, or when undeleting files and perusing the findings), I have to ignore it. I never saw it. For all I know, it does not exist. In many jurisdictions you are REQUIRED to report any evidence of child pornography you discover to the police or you can be charged with a felony. If that is a violation of your contract the contract is VOID, or at least that provision is. Contracts that order people to break the law are not valid.
It's hard for me to consider Richert as being "in the wrong", because it's easy to see how a reasonable person would behave the way he did, plus he may have been required to do so by law (or at least BELIEVED he was).
Should Sodomsky go free? I think so. Random Circuit City staff are not police. They are not allowed to gather evidence.
I AM NOT SAYING THAT HE IS LYING. I DO NOT KNOW. THAT IS THE POINT.
There is no way to tell whether or not he was trying to frame the customer and put the photos on the computer himself. For that reason the evidence should be excluded.
Circuit City is not the police. We treat police officers differently. Generally speaking, we assume that police officers aren't lying when they say they discovered evidence at X location. Despite that, we require police to follow strict rules when handling evidence to avoid tampering. Stephen Richert did not follow these rules and was not a police agent, his evidence should have been excluded.
This is just sloppy police work. What they should have done is gotten a search warrant based on Richert's tip. Then installed keylogging, troyjans, etc. into Sodomsky's computer, allowed him to pick it up, and then monitored his activity. If they saw that he was watching and downloading child pornography they'd have a more solid case.
Hydro and tidal kill fish. Solar generates huge amounts of toxic waste. I'm not sure about geothermal, but there are so few suitable geothermal sites (2, possibly 3, on the entire planet) that geothermal won't solve any power problems. Geothermal also has problems with heavy metals, but that's mainly a danger for the workers. Working in geothermal power is extremely dangerous (worse than oil). The only one of these that is really "clean" is wind (birdkill is an exaggerated problem), but the energy density for wind is extremely low. Even if we could cover the entire surface of the US with windmills it wouldn't be enough to suppl our power needs. The same is true for all the methods you named except geothermal, which has VERY FEW viable sites, and none in the United States. Unless we want to destroy Yellowstone.
Reactors don't scale down very well. The surface area (through which you lose neutrons) goes down slower than the volume (which creates the neutrons). Anything below a Fermi-1 size reactor, you need enriched uranium ($$$$$$). For a car-sized reactor, you need highly enriched uranium ($$$$$$$$$$$). That's not only expensive as heck, but a bomb-maker's dream. LIthium as a reflector helps some, but not al that much, and has its downside too. Utter nonsense. There are nuclear-powered wristwatches. The nuclear-powered pacemaker, which was safe enough to IMPLANT IN PEOPLE'S CHESTS, has been around for 40 years. Yes, they require relatively expensive fuel. Weighed against it's power density and longevity, enriched uranium is fairly cheap. Plutonium, like they used in the pacemakers, *IS* quite expensive. But even plutonium isn't that expensive given it's power density. The lithium-oxide batteries that replaced plutonium in pacemakers cost nearly 10X as much in adjusted dollars.
You need at least a couple skilled engineers, not to mention a few guards, to deploy a power station. Nonsense. You can make a nuclear power system that as easy to use as a AA battery. Sure, it's wildly inefficient, but you were talking about ease of use.
A small reactor, especially one without a thick containment, is going to be easy pickings for terrorists. A thick containment dome is surprisingly expensive, making the alleged cheapness of the basic reactor quite irrelevant. Really, why? Terrorists HAVE attacked nuclear power plants, most notably the Chechens in Russia. The only people that have ever used a "dirty bomb" have been the Chechens. If nuclear power plants are such great targets, why aren't the Chechens attacking them NOW? Attacking Russian nuclear facilities has not proven to be anywhere near as successful a tactic as attacking civilians so they've stopped.
The terrorist scenario has played out in Russia and it's a non-issue.
Except that geothermal power is only really available on a handful of ISLANDS, the biggest one of which is Iceland in the North sea. I'm assuming you're unaware of this otherwise you wouldn't be suggesting everyone on Earth move to Iceland.
In the film "Demolition Man" (a cheesy, but oddly prophetic film) all citizens of San Angeles have implanted PDTs, Personal Data Transmitters, that transmit the location, health, etc. of citizens. Police officers in the film (which is all about law enforcement in the future) wonder how police work was even POSSIBLE before PDTs and ubiquitous video surveillance.
This isn't paranoid or crazy at all. This *IS* coming. For example, It looks likely that all airline passengers will be required to carry GPS tags and they're already under constant video surveillance.
It's really not hard to tell if someone was wearing their seatbelt or helmet after an accident; Please describe how emergency room staff are supposed to know, with absolute certainty, that an incoming patient was injured in an auto accident and did not a have a seatbelt or helmet. Sure, there may be INDICATIONS "We tend to see these injuries in people who aren't wearing seatbelts.", but do you really think those are 100%?
The notion that emergency rooms should deny care under ANY circumstances is fraught with serious problems, like massive lawsuits from the families of patients they deny care to and die. Many hospitals are already fighting massive lawsuits based on bad care.
Since the majority of society understandably doesn't want to refuse emergency medical care to someone who's bleeding to death, or require that EMS workers make sure someone was following the seatbelt/helmet laws before being allowed treatment, the only real alternative is to have seatbelt and helmet laws.
WHY do you keep ignoring this, and trying to twist my words around? I was objecting to the legal theory behind your defense of seatbelt and helmet laws. Seatbelt and helmet laws technically fall under a different rubric and the issues are different. I personally have an objection to the concept of "Driver's Licenses" because I don't agree with the legal theory that the public roads aren't "public" but "government" roads and the government can put any arbitrary restriction on travel that they want. But I see that as a completely separate issue from the one you're bringing up, which is about oblique harm, and is often used to justify racist and anti-"obscenity" laws.
Basically, I think it's a slippery slope towards totalitarianism. You can certainly disagree with my analysis that helmet and seatbelt (and drunk driving) laws lead to more arbitrary restrictions on driving (actually, everything), but the evidence seems to support my conclusion.
Gamespot hasn't mention why they have actually fired Gerstmann. The last I heard, they are bound by law not to disclose why they terminated their employee. Incorrect. Their lawyers have probably told them not to talk about it, but that's not the same thing as "bound by law" as in a court order. And even if their lawyers did not tell them to keep quiet, why would they possibly own up to this? Gerstmann is going to deny whatever lie they come up with, so their best strategy is to keep quiet.
Gerstmann has not stated in any way, why he was fired. However, I think he is also bound by law from confirming that he was fired. Again, incorrect. Gerstmann has said, third hand, that he was "fired by Eidos". Read into that what you will. He probably refuses to comment directly because he thinks he has a legal case against Gamespot and/or he doesn't want to get a reputation as a "snitch" in the game industry.
Think about it, he *could* have been fired due to other some other unrelated reason and the timing of the review and his firing is just a really bad coincidence. Extremely unlikely. If Gamespot wasn't pressured, why wouldn't they have just held off for a few weeks/months?
Aren't we supposed to assume gamespot's innocence until we have hard-evidence they are guilty? Absolutely not. Gamespot is a videogame review site that supposedly lives off it's reputation of unbiased reviews. This story seriously calls into question their credibility and the onus is on THEM to show that it's false.
You do know that most studios record on 16bit 48khz equipment, right? That 4khz doesn't make much of a difference. In fact, most studio masters are slap-dash affairs. Bad mikes, bad recording equipment, inadequate space, etc. All that crap puts all but the very best masters far below what CD Audio is capable of. In this real-world context, there is no point at all to formats like SACD and DVD-Audio. What people actually WANT is pretty clear. People want CDs with a 5.1 Dolby Digital mix, or an equivalent surround system. The studios have been highly-resistant to introducing such a format because it costs 10X as much money to master surround sound recordings as it does plain stereo.
I really don't understand all this audiophile crap. Most of the sources are so lousy there is little point in trying to optimize your equipment. This is sharply contrasted with videophiles, because the movie studios actually bother to master their DVDs (and before that, LaserDiscs) properly. The same is generally true of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.
pull it down to something that doesn't require DVD-type storage for a single album. This makes no sense. Lossy compression can introduce nasty effects and can kill your range. Even the best psychoacoustic models (like LAME) still have serious problems with certain tracks. An uncompressed album fits in 650 MB, far less than a DVD (9 GB). Using FLAC or a similar codec would get that down to about 350 MB, less than many of the video downloads on iTunes.
So you summarily dismiss any and all research that demonstrates a link between violent behavior and violent media...what exactly makes you any different from those researchers who see what they want to see in their results? You say "any and all" as if there is a lot of ORIGINAL research on this topic. There isn't. Maybe a dozen papers altogether, over the past 40 years, and I've read almost all of those. Just skimming them reveals pretty awesome flaws in methodology which amount to the researchers telling their "subjects" (usually their own students or even their own children) how to answer. I pointed out that ORIGINAL part because virtually all the studies you will read on this topic are NOT original. They're meta-studies that analyze the results of previous studies without bothering to replicate any of it.
Never mind that the same centers of the brain have been found to be stimulated when viewing violent media and committing violent acts. I don't know what you mean by "same centers of the brain". But the research I've read on this (again, ONE paper) has been debunked by other research showing you can stimulate the same regions of the brain with other stimuli. No "violence center of the brain" has been found comparable to other well-defined brain regions. There are regions that definitely control "impulse control" or a "conscience" if you will, but that's not the same thing.
Never mind that hormone levels have been found to have similar results. Testosterone levels have been directly tied to aggression in general and violence in particular. So what? Watching violent media does not increase testosterone levels except in a very minor way. Someone can get agitated or "pumped" while watching a sporting event, but that doesn't make them a killer.
Clearly they ALL use poor methodology because you KNOW there is no link, and we should dismiss everything. All the studies I've read. And as I said, there are really quite few. People don't seem to grasp how sparse most research is in general. Particularly research that isn't making someone piles of money.
One very important thing to come away with here is that almost all of the studies that show a positive result for "media = violence" have not included any controls. i.e. When we show other media and ask the same questions do we get the same results?
I should also point out that I have a problem with psych studies in general. Studying a group of rich white American college students (pretty much all the subjects in psych studies) does not translate directly to the world at large, or even the United States. The sample sizes which are typically used, as few as THREE in one of the studies I read, are far to small to make conclusions for the general population.
Whenever there are large comprehensive studies with lots of subjects (to increase sample size) and lots of researchers (to reduce experimenter bias) on "media makes us evil", they ALWAYS return negative results. I'm thinking specifically of the 1970 President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography here.
That's what I'm arguing for, against the other person (I'm not going to search back and see if that's you or someone else) who somehow thinks we should all pay for stupid peoples' accidents, but that they should have the freedom to be as reckless as they want. Yes, I think we should all pay for the "stupid people's" accidents. I have argued, repeatedly, that there is no practical way to determine what is a "stupid" accident and what isn't. And even if there were, I don't think we should sentence someone to death for making a mistake. But if you really think there is a way to determine what a "stupid" accident is, I encourage you to draft legislation denying Medicare for said accidents. Doing so would illustrate how ridiculous and impractical what you propose really is. You can't make "acting stupid" illegal, no matter how much you may wish to.
I think there is unreasonable focus on illegal aliens and accident victims in your analysis of the health care crisis. They're a drop in the bucket compared to the costs of children with congenital problems and elderly people with natural ailments. Assuming we actually treated people with psych ailments, that would be a big cost too.
Most health industry professionals (read: doctors and nurses) agree that the single largest problem is a lack of preventative care and that is directly tied to a lack of insurance. Fact: Regular preventative care will dramatically reduce the frequency and cost of emergency room visits. This is why most health industry professionals, even doctors who stand to make less money, want universal health insurance. Because it will save EVERYONE money in the long term.
Good. That's what they *should* be doing.... They've made some significant links between violent video games and violent *thoughts*, and I'd wager that eventually they will find a direct link between violent games and violent acts. No, they shouldn't. If you look into it a bit you'll find that most of the "research" about violence and videogames comes from a handful of psych professors and paid researchers that have made proving this nonexistent link into their entire career. To do their they have used techniques even more shady than the average psych researcher. There are no "links". This is simply an artifact of experimenter bias and poor methodology. They THINK it should be true, so they see it in their results. The notion that violent media MAKES people violent is really laughable on it's face, and demonstrates the extreme disconnect of the "scientists" working on this research.
What we as gamers need to do is continue to expect the gaming industry to properly rate and label their products. The rating system is about prior restraint. It serves no other purpose than a foil against those Congressman than want to ban video games as a fake controversy to distract their constituents away from their own corruption. When was the last time you bought a children's book with a rating? Never? That's because they're totally unnecessary.
http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/980.html I read that article and it only mentions 3 hospitals, only one of which has shut down it's emergency room, all of the hospitals are in a transit corridor for illegal immigrants, and crucially, the one hospital that shut down it's emergency room did not blame it on illegal immigrants.
Secondly, what the hospitals were complaining about was that they are in a transit corridor for illegals. Due to enforcement, the immigrants have been crossing in rougher areas and have been suffering more injuries during the crossing. So it's the immigration ENFORCEMENT that is actually costing the emergency rooms so much money.
3 hospitals in rural Arizona does not translate to "illegal immigrants are wholly responsible for the health care crisis in America".
With uninsured citizens, their assets can be seized or liened, and usually are. With illegals, there's no such thing. No, they aren't. Poor uninsured citizens are unlikely to have any significant assets, except their own home, which can't be seized. Rich uninsured citizens are probably using a trust or private corporation to dodge most liability, so they won't pay either.
I only said that because society refuses to do that, but then you come along and say that stupid people should be allowed to do stupid stuff as much as they want, and society should be forced to pay for their mistakes. Think this through for a minute. Knowing that they'll be denied medical care and probably die, do you think anyone would EVER admit to not wearing their seatbelts or doing anything "stupid"? Are the emergency room staff supposed to conduct investigations? Ever seen the film "John Q"? How many people do you think are just going to let their child die if the hospitals refuse to treat them?
As who decides what is "stupid"? Where does this logic end? "If they're too stupid to make enough money to pay for their own medical care they deserve to die." So you're really making an obtuse argument for eliminating all medical insurance and switching to pay-for-service only. You do not seem to grasp that those who most need medical care are usually in the worst position to pay for it. Little old ladies, people with disabilities, etc. Not strapping young men. But even then, should a young man who doesn't have medical insurance (50% of those under 30 lack medical insurance), be forced into debt for the rest of his life because he gets in an accident? What about psych? I suppose it's "your fault" you have psychological problems and can't work to earn the money to pay for the treatment that would allow you to work.
Part of living in society means accepting that you have to give up part of your money, in the form of taxes and fees, to provide services society as a whole. Like police, fire, national parks, public roads, assistance for disenfranchised people, and yes, medical care. Every industrialized nation on Earth has some form of national medical insurance for a reason.
Insisting people pay out of pocket for their medical care is akin to insisting that you pay the firefighters cash before they can put out your burning house (never mind that your cash is in the house). It's pointless, cruel, and impractical.
Prove it. Oh, that's right, you can't because you don't have the source code. Having the source code wouldn't help, because you couldn't be sure the binary you have wasn't modified. You could compile it yourself, but that's pretty impractical.
Of course, you could just do a memory dump or run it through a debugger. Hell, you can go in, DELETE the code, and then see if Windows still tries to use it.
And other governments have replaced Windows with custom Linux distros due to the potential of this very problem. This is a fact that cannot be denied. I'll deny it. Name one. China specifically DID NOT develop Red Flag Linux due to security issues, but more because they wanted to develop their own version of Linux catering to the Chinese market. The Chinese government makes extensive use of Microsoft technology.
Hospitals have been going out of business in the past decade precisely because of non-payment by illegal immigrants in ERs; that's a clear cause-and-effect. I call bullshit. Let's have a solid statistic on that. I seriously doubt that you can come up with ONE hospital that closed down due to non-payment BY ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS in ERs. I'm sure there are hospitals that have closed due to non-payment in ERs, but the vast majority of those non-payers are US citizens. Remember that 30% of Americans are uninsured, and VERY few of those people will actually pay a $100,000 ER bill.
Statistics I have seen show that illegal immigrants use up about 3% of public hospital resources annually. This is consistent with their percentage of the population. Remember that out of nearly 300 million Americans, only 15 million of them are illegal aliens. That's about 5%. Most studies show that illegal aliens, per capita, use LESS government resources than the average citizen, mainly because far less is available to them. It's very difficult for me to believe that such a small percentage of the population is WHOLLY responsible for the healthcare crisis in the US without overwhelming evidence, which you have not presented.
You can't see such a clear-cut cause-and-effect relationship with black people moving into a neighborhood. It's not like one family moves in and you get a letter from the tax assessor telling you your property taxes have just gone down. The ethnic make-up of a neighborhood is also not public information; no one goes around to all the houses writing down the ethnicities of the tenants. The best you can do is drive around and see who's walking around. The ethnic make-up of neighborhoods is extensively tracked by realtors and banks. Agents check the race and assessed property values (among other things) of families in the neighborhoods in their territory, that information is then entered into a database that is tracked over time. The realtors are all absolutely convinced that black people lower property values, and their statistics seem to strongly support this.
I didn't really see how you conclusively detailed that these laws aren't reasonable. If taxpayers have to pay for these things, I think it's perfectly reasonable that the taxpayers require people to do things which help keep the bills down. Why should I pay for other peoples' stupidity? Who gets to define what's "stupid"? I think drinking to excess is pretty stupid. Should we just put a bullet in the head of everyone who get cirrhosis or alcohol poisoning? And what about people that just ARE stupid? Retarded mongoloids will always represent a drain on society (and if you don't like that example, insert blind people, people with spinal deformities, etc.) and are completely incapable of survival without public assistance. Shouldn't we just kill these kids at birth and then sterilize their parents? How is any of the above inconsistent with your reasoning?
I realize my examples sound harsh, but you're the one talking about "kicking their bleeding, dying asses out the door".
If it's an unqualified opinion, how could it be wrong? But US Criminal code, UCMJ, NATO regulations, the Geneva Conventions, and various other treaties make the treatment of war prisoners clear. The Bush Administration has CREATED the category of "unlawful combatant" in an attempt to create a legal loophole to torture people.
The conflict isn't ended and the Geneva Conventions say prisoners should be released at the end of the conflict.
True. Taliban military prisoners probably should not be released until the war in Afghanistan is over. But they shouldn't be tortured either.
The military is under authority of the Executive branch, not the Representative branch.... Congress authorized full war powers in a near unanimous vote.
Who is contradicting themselves?
It's under the authority of both. The Executive branch directs and organizes the military, but it is the purvue of Congress as to how those troops are actually deployed. The Constitution gives the power to declare war, and by extension all troop deployments, to Congress. It's up to the President to decide what they do when they get there. Congress did indeed authorize military action against the Taliban. There was a formal declaration of war and even negotiations (that were not fruitful) before the conflict.
There is no such thing as a formal declaration of war.
Several thousand years of military history seems to contradict you.
There is no requirement to "negotiate" anything. The goal is victory, not postponement of the threat. WWII did not end from negotiation, it ended by defeat, even though a few stragglers didn't know or wouldn't agree with that.
Um, no. WWII ended in a settlement between the Allies, the Axis, and the Soviets. The Japanese basically got the short straw, but there were many rounds of formal negotiations. Read a book.
I never said anything about ALL Americans dying. Staw man, again.
You said, "The Constitution is not a suicide pact." a neocon buzzphrase.
I think what you were trying to say was: "We should ignore the Constitution and international law regarding Guantanamo Bay prisoners because if we release them they might kill Americans."
which is actually an HONEST argument. You guys don't honestly believe the law supports your position, you just seem to think that we NEED to torture the hell out of prisoners otherwise they will "get us". I also think your crowd is motivated by revenge and ethnic hatred of Arabs and Muslims. You would never even consider treating white people in the same manner.
Tellingly, you neglect to mention that some of those "exonnerated" people were caught, again, committing terrorism.
Only a few have been caught again. The number I gave was 2, the actual number is apparently 4:
In fact, almost all of the detainees who have been released, most on condition that they be subject to legal process in their own countries, have been freed, according to detainee lawyers. To cite just one example, of the 12 Kuwaitis seized in Afghanistan who claimed they were doing charitable missionary work, eight were sent home, tried and acquitted.
Some administration supporters contend that as many as 50 of those who have been released have gone back to the battle. That number is subject to dispute. The Defense Department says six named detainees have been killed or recaptured and that it "has reason to suspect" that another 25 have gone back to the battle. But of the six named individuals, two never were at Guantanamo, according to lawyers for the detainees, and the other four were released prior to any litigation.
"I've asked for evidence," said Tom Wilner, a partner at a major Wall Street law firm and one of the detainee lawyers. "I've said 'show me who's returned to the battlefield,' and they never have."
Just to be clear, what Comcast has been caught at is not content-filtering. They have been breaking connections based on the *type of the connection*, not the content contained therein. This is partially correct. COMCAST IS NOT CONTENT FILTERING. What they have done is install boxes that send TCP RSTs to any host a customer tries to connect to above a certain threshold. This was intended to catch Bittorrent (which uses protocol encryption and random ports), but catches ANYTHING that makes a lot of TCP connections, like Lotus Notes and VPN tunneling.
So Comcast isn't really doing "context filtering" either. I'd call it "crude bandwidth throttling".
This is very bad behavior on the part of Comcast. I can think of several ways to reduce the Bittorrent bandwidth that would be MUCH more effective and wouldn't piss off their customers, but it would require explicitly acknowledging the traffic as "legitimate", something I guess they're unwilling to do.
And this is a bad thing.... why? Because it's easier to catch crooked companies (all of them) breaking the law?
The article literally consists of corporate lawyers whining about how email makes it harder to conceal criminal actions because they can be found in discovery. Contrary to what the article seems to imply, very few court cases involving email discovery are based on harassment claims. Mostly they're about companies try to screw each other on business deals. For the most part, it's perfectly LEGALLY safe to tell off-color jokes and distribute porn through the company email.
I haven't found one thing yet to make me want to *truly* hate Google. The Google business model is to gather as much information as possible about people on the Internet and then sell it to marketing companies and governments. Google has given information on individuals (normally dissidents) to totalitarian governments, who then used that information to imprison and kill them.
Basically, Google is a massive advertising company whose job it is to help other people sell you shit by telling them personal information about you. I don't really see why I should *LIKE* such an outfit.
If you don't wear a seatbelt and are seriously injured or crippled in a crash, who pays your hospital bill? If you're insured, you do (through your insurance company), which is fine. But if you're not insured, like millions of people (and millions of illegal immigrants), either the government or the hospital pays for it (which inflates costs for the insured people): basically, everyone else in society pays for your stupidity. This reasoning, oblique harm to a third party, can be used to justify virtually anything. For example, We should have a law restricting home ownership by black people because black people owning a home in a neighborhood lowers the property values of all the neighbors. Or we should ban football (and all dangerous sports) because it results in countless injuries the public must absorb. Hell, why not ban driving altogether? It's the #2 cause of preventable death in America. Smoking is #1, but we're already working on banning that.
Yes, it sucks that people not wearing seatbelt or helmets leads to injuries taxpayers have to absorb. But laws restricting behavior based on potential self-injury simply aren't reasonable, as I detailed above. I just consider this part of the price of living in a modern society.
Then allow States to come up with their own solutions, but also make them responsible for their own medical systems (this means dismantling Medicare; states can replace it with their own State-run systems). This will dramatically increase costs because medical expenses work on economies of scale. IN EVERY CASE, it has been show that a well-funded centralized medical service provides better care than a distributed system. Ron Paul's deranged opinion that "if the government does it, it doesn't work" is simply WRONG, and Ron Paul will admit it when pressed. He simply wants to limit the government to his pet causes.
he votes against federal funding for abortion (since he votes against federal funding for anything not authorized by the constitution), and he votes to allow the states to set their own policy on the matter.
This is incorrect. He voted for the Partial Birth Abortion Ban which banned the PROCEDURE, not Federal funding. He also voted on the Chemically-Produced Abortion amendment which would have prevented distribution of the "morning after" pill in the United States.
Ron Paul is for "state's rights" only when that position would support his social agenda, like most so-called "state's rights" advocates.
There is no legal requirement to disclose such information concerning prisoners during a time of conflict.
Yes, there is. This is clear under countless laws and treaties. Military prisoners are either "prisoners of war" and must be repatriated at the end of the conflict, tried as war criminals, or must be tried as civilians. Period. There are no other options. The United States has complicated this situation by refusing to treat the Taliban as a "power", even though it clearly qualifies. The United States will not negotiate terms with the Taliban, making it near-impossible to formally end the conflict.
The "War on Terror" does not count as a "war" or "conflict". We are not engaged in a formal war with Al Qaeda (who is clearly not a "power"). It is a marketing term for standard, ongoing, police work. Most "terror suspects" clearly fall under US domestic law, or foreign jurisdiction. The military should have no involvement.
"The Constitution is not a suicide pact."
Please describe how releasing the Guantanamo prisoners will lead to the death of all Americans.
Objection: relevance. What is the relevance of the person's age?
Because it's extremely difficult to believe that a 14-year-old is one of the "worst of the worst", as anyone who has experience with "the worst of the worst" and 14-year old kids should realize. Especially given the fact that ALL PLAYERS describe him as a "good kid".
Objection: projection. "Perversely" and "that thrived under the tender mercies of the Guantanamo guards" are not statements of fact, they are opinions
I think that claiming someone is both a "hardened terrorist" and a "good kid" is pretty perverse. I'll fully admit that's an opinion.
"thrived under the tender mercies" is SARCASM. I was implying that the guards did not generally treat prisoners well, which is a FACT, not an opinion.
Please provide your source for this information and quantification of "many" as well as subsequent actions by the people released. To use your same presentation method: You do know that many of the released people were re-captured fighting against the Allied forces or involved in terrorist attacks, don't you?
My sources are Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Read the websites, they list dozens of prisoners that have been exonerated. As I recall, 2 of the prisoners released have been re-arrested. That doesn't mean they've done anything.
And as several Guantanamo interrogators have said: "They weren't terrorists before they came here, but they are now." It's easy to imagine how the abuse these men suffered at Guantanamo could lead them to hate the United States and seek revenge.
Please provide a direct reference to such a statement in the Geneva Conventions.
Article 17 of the Third Geneva Convention:
"Every prisoner of war, when questioned on the subject, is bound to give only his surname, first names and rank, date of birth, and army, regimental, personal or serial number, or failing this, equivalent information....
No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind."
The text is absolutely unambiguous. This is why Bush is so keen to deny prisoners POW status.
Define "sold". Do you mean a bounty for capture or information leading to the capture of a wanted person? If so, explain how that concept is improper, let alone illegal.
That is not what happened in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan there were "open" bounties on "Al Qaeda operatives". The NA was not required to provide any actual evidence the prisoners were Al Qaeda, and even if they did it would be impossible to verify. "Open" bounties ARE illegal under US law. The CONCEP
Regardless of what you hear in the media, the military does not like to waste resources. This is arguably the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Do you have ANY experience with the defense industry? Their motto is: "Nobody knows how to piss away money like the United States Air Force." The waste in most military procurement is truly awesome. Remember that $600 toilet seat? It's closer to $2000 now. For example, each meal served in Iraq costs the military $150. That does not include labor or security, that's just the FOOD. I could fill dozens of pages just with examples from my personal experiences.
Here's another xample: F-15 Eagle version B has a radar array, the radar array works fine but there is a one line bug in the control software that occasionally causes the array to lose ID tags on radar targets (this is bad, you don't want to accidentally shoot friendlies). This grounds them. Lockheed, rather than fix the bug, uses this opportunity to sell them the shiny new version of their radar array (at 1.5x the price). As it turns out, this "new" version is nothing more that the old array with the bugfix. They go so far as to simply install a software patch on the planes they're supposed to be refitting. I believe that was about $15 million per plane.
There are plenty of non-budget related things that don't need to be released to the general public
It is THIS attitude that is the problem. EVERYTHING should be released to the public unless the military can put forward an extremely strong justification for why they should do so. For example, the details of military deployments during the Vietnam War are still classified. Why? I can think of no legitimate reason for concealing this information.
More important that concealing information from "the public", the military conceals a great deal of information from Congress. in particular the committees that are supposed to oversee how they spend money on "secret" projects (the majority of the military budget). They basically aren't told anything at all. All they get is a cryptic one-line description of the program (Like "aerial surveillance system").
Legal combatants are REQUIRED to wear a uniform or other insignia or device to plainly identify themselves as such AT A DISTANCE. Failure to do so makes them ILLEGAL combatants and as such are NOT entitled to ANY protection under the Geneva Convention. The Geneva Convention was designed to protect non-combatants as much as anyone else.
This is a deception used by those in the Bush administration that want to torture people. There is no provision in the Geneva Conventions that says they do not apply to non-uniformed combatants. On the contrary, there are several provisions that say the Conventions apply to every man, woman, and child on Earth (even non-signatories). Different groups of people fall into different categories, but EVERYONE is covered. For the most part the people in Guantanamo Bay count as NONCOMBATANTS under the Geneva Convention.
A) Most of the people in Guantanamo Bay and ALL the people in Bush's kidnapping program were seized from their homes or off the street in nations like Germany and Pakistan. They were NOT taken from the battlefield or from a war zone. According to the Geneva Conventions they should be treated as NONCOMBATANTS.
B) Even for those people taken from Afganistan, most were Taliban fighters were clearly identified by the fact they were wearing the signature checked turban of the Taliban. And the fact they carried Taliban banners. And the fact they were carrying weapons. So the clearly met the "uniform" requirement of the Geneva Conventions.
C) Failure to wear a uniform does not remove all responsibility towards prisoners Geneva Convention. It really only affects rules regarding the treatment of officers (non-uniformed combatants don't have officers). Non-uniformed milita are SPECIFICALLY covered under the Geneva Convention, and Taliban or American soldiers out of uniform clearly fall into that category.
The Internation Criminal Court has ruled on this decisively. There is no "legal limbo" category as the Bush administration describes. EVERYONE must be treated as either a prisoner of war or a civilian, period.
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It's hard for me to consider Richert as being "in the wrong", because it's easy to see how a reasonable person would behave the way he did, plus he may have been required to do so by law (or at least BELIEVED he was).
Should Sodomsky go free? I think so. Random Circuit City staff are not police. They are not allowed to gather evidence.
How do we know that Stephen Richert isn't lying?
I AM NOT SAYING THAT HE IS LYING. I DO NOT KNOW. THAT IS THE POINT.
There is no way to tell whether or not he was trying to frame the customer and put the photos on the computer himself. For that reason the evidence should be excluded.
Circuit City is not the police. We treat police officers differently. Generally speaking, we assume that police officers aren't lying when they say they discovered evidence at X location. Despite that, we require police to follow strict rules when handling evidence to avoid tampering. Stephen Richert did not follow these rules and was not a police agent, his evidence should have been excluded.
This is just sloppy police work. What they should have done is gotten a search warrant based on Richert's tip. Then installed keylogging, troyjans, etc. into Sodomsky's computer, allowed him to pick it up, and then monitored his activity. If they saw that he was watching and downloading child pornography they'd have a more solid case.
Hydro and tidal kill fish. Solar generates huge amounts of toxic waste. I'm not sure about geothermal, but there are so few suitable geothermal sites (2, possibly 3, on the entire planet) that geothermal won't solve any power problems. Geothermal also has problems with heavy metals, but that's mainly a danger for the workers. Working in geothermal power is extremely dangerous (worse than oil). The only one of these that is really "clean" is wind (birdkill is an exaggerated problem), but the energy density for wind is extremely low. Even if we could cover the entire surface of the US with windmills it wouldn't be enough to suppl our power needs. The same is true for all the methods you named except geothermal, which has VERY FEW viable sites, and none in the United States. Unless we want to destroy Yellowstone.
The terrorist scenario has played out in Russia and it's a non-issue.
Except that geothermal power is only really available on a handful of ISLANDS, the biggest one of which is Iceland in the North sea. I'm assuming you're unaware of this otherwise you wouldn't be suggesting everyone on Earth move to Iceland.
In the film "Demolition Man" (a cheesy, but oddly prophetic film) all citizens of San Angeles have implanted PDTs, Personal Data Transmitters, that transmit the location, health, etc. of citizens. Police officers in the film (which is all about law enforcement in the future) wonder how police work was even POSSIBLE before PDTs and ubiquitous video surveillance.
This isn't paranoid or crazy at all. This *IS* coming. For example, It looks likely that all airline passengers will be required to carry GPS tags and they're already under constant video surveillance.
The notion that emergency rooms should deny care under ANY circumstances is fraught with serious problems, like massive lawsuits from the families of patients they deny care to and die. Many hospitals are already fighting massive lawsuits based on bad care. Since the majority of society understandably doesn't want to refuse emergency medical care to someone who's bleeding to death, or require that EMS workers make sure someone was following the seatbelt/helmet laws before being allowed treatment, the only real alternative is to have seatbelt and helmet laws.
WHY do you keep ignoring this, and trying to twist my words around? I was objecting to the legal theory behind your defense of seatbelt and helmet laws. Seatbelt and helmet laws technically fall under a different rubric and the issues are different. I personally have an objection to the concept of "Driver's Licenses" because I don't agree with the legal theory that the public roads aren't "public" but "government" roads and the government can put any arbitrary restriction on travel that they want. But I see that as a completely separate issue from the one you're bringing up, which is about oblique harm, and is often used to justify racist and anti-"obscenity" laws.
Basically, I think it's a slippery slope towards totalitarianism. You can certainly disagree with my analysis that helmet and seatbelt (and drunk driving) laws lead to more arbitrary restrictions on driving (actually, everything), but the evidence seems to support my conclusion.
You do know that most studios record on 16bit 48khz equipment, right? That 4khz doesn't make much of a difference. In fact, most studio masters are slap-dash affairs. Bad mikes, bad recording equipment, inadequate space, etc. All that crap puts all but the very best masters far below what CD Audio is capable of. In this real-world context, there is no point at all to formats like SACD and DVD-Audio. What people actually WANT is pretty clear. People want CDs with a 5.1 Dolby Digital mix, or an equivalent surround system. The studios have been highly-resistant to introducing such a format because it costs 10X as much money to master surround sound recordings as it does plain stereo.
I really don't understand all this audiophile crap. Most of the sources are so lousy there is little point in trying to optimize your equipment. This is sharply contrasted with videophiles, because the movie studios actually bother to master their DVDs (and before that, LaserDiscs) properly. The same is generally true of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. pull it down to something that doesn't require DVD-type storage for a single album. This makes no sense. Lossy compression can introduce nasty effects and can kill your range. Even the best psychoacoustic models (like LAME) still have serious problems with certain tracks. An uncompressed album fits in 650 MB, far less than a DVD (9 GB). Using FLAC or a similar codec would get that down to about 350 MB, less than many of the video downloads on iTunes.
One very important thing to come away with here is that almost all of the studies that show a positive result for "media = violence" have not included any controls. i.e. When we show other media and ask the same questions do we get the same results?
I should also point out that I have a problem with psych studies in general. Studying a group of rich white American college students (pretty much all the subjects in psych studies) does not translate directly to the world at large, or even the United States. The sample sizes which are typically used, as few as THREE in one of the studies I read, are far to small to make conclusions for the general population.
Whenever there are large comprehensive studies with lots of subjects (to increase sample size) and lots of researchers (to reduce experimenter bias) on "media makes us evil", they ALWAYS return negative results. I'm thinking specifically of the 1970 President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography here.
I think there is unreasonable focus on illegal aliens and accident victims in your analysis of the health care crisis. They're a drop in the bucket compared to the costs of children with congenital problems and elderly people with natural ailments. Assuming we actually treated people with psych ailments, that would be a big cost too.
Most health industry professionals (read: doctors and nurses) agree that the single largest problem is a lack of preventative care and that is directly tied to a lack of insurance. Fact: Regular preventative care will dramatically reduce the frequency and cost of emergency room visits. This is why most health industry professionals, even doctors who stand to make less money, want universal health insurance. Because it will save EVERYONE money in the long term.
Secondly, what the hospitals were complaining about was that they are in a transit corridor for illegals. Due to enforcement, the immigrants have been crossing in rougher areas and have been suffering more injuries during the crossing. So it's the immigration ENFORCEMENT that is actually costing the emergency rooms so much money.
3 hospitals in rural Arizona does not translate to "illegal immigrants are wholly responsible for the health care crisis in America". With uninsured citizens, their assets can be seized or liened, and usually are. With illegals, there's no such thing. No, they aren't. Poor uninsured citizens are unlikely to have any significant assets, except their own home, which can't be seized. Rich uninsured citizens are probably using a trust or private corporation to dodge most liability, so they won't pay either. I only said that because society refuses to do that, but then you come along and say that stupid people should be allowed to do stupid stuff as much as they want, and society should be forced to pay for their mistakes. Think this through for a minute. Knowing that they'll be denied medical care and probably die, do you think anyone would EVER admit to not wearing their seatbelts or doing anything "stupid"? Are the emergency room staff supposed to conduct investigations? Ever seen the film "John Q"? How many people do you think are just going to let their child die if the hospitals refuse to treat them?
As who decides what is "stupid"? Where does this logic end? "If they're too stupid to make enough money to pay for their own medical care they deserve to die." So you're really making an obtuse argument for eliminating all medical insurance and switching to pay-for-service only. You do not seem to grasp that those who most need medical care are usually in the worst position to pay for it. Little old ladies, people with disabilities, etc. Not strapping young men. But even then, should a young man who doesn't have medical insurance (50% of those under 30 lack medical insurance), be forced into debt for the rest of his life because he gets in an accident? What about psych? I suppose it's "your fault" you have psychological problems and can't work to earn the money to pay for the treatment that would allow you to work.
Part of living in society means accepting that you have to give up part of your money, in the form of taxes and fees, to provide services society as a whole. Like police, fire, national parks, public roads, assistance for disenfranchised people, and yes, medical care. Every industrialized nation on Earth has some form of national medical insurance for a reason.
Insisting people pay out of pocket for their medical care is akin to insisting that you pay the firefighters cash before they can put out your burning house (never mind that your cash is in the house). It's pointless, cruel, and impractical.
Of course, you could just do a memory dump or run it through a debugger. Hell, you can go in, DELETE the code, and then see if Windows still tries to use it. And other governments have replaced Windows with custom Linux distros due to the potential of this very problem. This is a fact that cannot be denied. I'll deny it. Name one. China specifically DID NOT develop Red Flag Linux due to security issues, but more because they wanted to develop their own version of Linux catering to the Chinese market. The Chinese government makes extensive use of Microsoft technology.
Statistics I have seen show that illegal immigrants use up about 3% of public hospital resources annually. This is consistent with their percentage of the population. Remember that out of nearly 300 million Americans, only 15 million of them are illegal aliens. That's about 5%. Most studies show that illegal aliens, per capita, use LESS government resources than the average citizen, mainly because far less is available to them. It's very difficult for me to believe that such a small percentage of the population is WHOLLY responsible for the healthcare crisis in the US without overwhelming evidence, which you have not presented. You can't see such a clear-cut cause-and-effect relationship with black people moving into a neighborhood. It's not like one family moves in and you get a letter from the tax assessor telling you your property taxes have just gone down. The ethnic make-up of a neighborhood is also not public information; no one goes around to all the houses writing down the ethnicities of the tenants. The best you can do is drive around and see who's walking around. The ethnic make-up of neighborhoods is extensively tracked by realtors and banks. Agents check the race and assessed property values (among other things) of families in the neighborhoods in their territory, that information is then entered into a database that is tracked over time. The realtors are all absolutely convinced that black people lower property values, and their statistics seem to strongly support this. I didn't really see how you conclusively detailed that these laws aren't reasonable. If taxpayers have to pay for these things, I think it's perfectly reasonable that the taxpayers require people to do things which help keep the bills down. Why should I pay for other peoples' stupidity? Who gets to define what's "stupid"? I think drinking to excess is pretty stupid. Should we just put a bullet in the head of everyone who get cirrhosis or alcohol poisoning? And what about people that just ARE stupid? Retarded mongoloids will always represent a drain on society (and if you don't like that example, insert blind people, people with spinal deformities, etc.) and are completely incapable of survival without public assistance. Shouldn't we just kill these kids at birth and then sterilize their parents? How is any of the above inconsistent with your reasoning?
I realize my examples sound harsh, but you're the one talking about "kicking their bleeding, dying asses out the door".
"Countless", another unqualified statement?
If it's an unqualified opinion, how could it be wrong? But US Criminal code, UCMJ, NATO regulations, the Geneva Conventions, and various other treaties make the treatment of war prisoners clear. The Bush Administration has CREATED the category of "unlawful combatant" in an attempt to create a legal loophole to torture people.
The conflict isn't ended and the Geneva Conventions say prisoners should be released at the end of the conflict.
True. Taliban military prisoners probably should not be released until the war in Afghanistan is over. But they shouldn't be tortured either.
The military is under authority of the Executive branch, not the Representative branch. ...
Congress authorized full war powers in a near unanimous vote.
Who is contradicting themselves?
It's under the authority of both. The Executive branch directs and organizes the military, but it is the purvue of Congress as to how those troops are actually deployed. The Constitution gives the power to declare war, and by extension all troop deployments, to Congress. It's up to the President to decide what they do when they get there. Congress did indeed authorize military action against the Taliban. There was a formal declaration of war and even negotiations (that were not fruitful) before the conflict.
There is no such thing as a formal declaration of war.
Several thousand years of military history seems to contradict you.
There is no requirement to "negotiate" anything. The goal is victory, not postponement of the threat. WWII did not end from negotiation, it ended by defeat, even though a few stragglers didn't know or wouldn't agree with that.
Um, no. WWII ended in a settlement between the Allies, the Axis, and the Soviets. The Japanese basically got the short straw, but there were many rounds of formal negotiations. Read a book.
I never said anything about ALL Americans dying. Staw man, again.
You said, "The Constitution is not a suicide pact." a neocon buzzphrase.
I think what you were trying to say was: "We should ignore the Constitution and international law regarding Guantanamo Bay prisoners because if we release them they might kill Americans."
which is actually an HONEST argument. You guys don't honestly believe the law supports your position, you just seem to think that we NEED to torture the hell out of prisoners otherwise they will "get us". I also think your crowd is motivated by revenge and ethnic hatred of Arabs and Muslims. You would never even consider treating white people in the same manner.
Tellingly, you neglect to mention that some of those "exonnerated" people were caught, again, committing terrorism.
Only a few have been caught again. The number I gave was 2, the actual number is apparently 4:
In fact, almost all of the detainees who have been released, most on condition that they be subject to legal process in their own countries, have been freed, according to detainee lawyers. To cite just one example, of the 12 Kuwaitis seized in Afghanistan who claimed they were doing charitable missionary work, eight were sent home, tried and acquitted.
Some administration supporters contend that as many as 50 of those who have been released have gone back to the battle. That number is subject to dispute. The Defense Department says six named detainees have been killed or recaptured and that it "has reason to suspect" that another 25 have gone back to the battle. But of the six named individuals, two never were at Guantanamo, according to lawyers for the detainees, and the other four were released prior to any litigation.
"I've asked for evidence," said Tom Wilner, a partner at a major Wall Street law firm and one of the detainee lawyers. "I've said 'show me who's returned to the battlefield,' and they never have."
So Comcast isn't really doing "context filtering" either. I'd call it "crude bandwidth throttling".
This is very bad behavior on the part of Comcast. I can think of several ways to reduce the Bittorrent bandwidth that would be MUCH more effective and wouldn't piss off their customers, but it would require explicitly acknowledging the traffic as "legitimate", something I guess they're unwilling to do.
And this is a bad thing.... why? Because it's easier to catch crooked companies (all of them) breaking the law?
The article literally consists of corporate lawyers whining about how email makes it harder to conceal criminal actions because they can be found in discovery. Contrary to what the article seems to imply, very few court cases involving email discovery are based on harassment claims. Mostly they're about companies try to screw each other on business deals. For the most part, it's perfectly LEGALLY safe to tell off-color jokes and distribute porn through the company email.
Basically, Google is a massive advertising company whose job it is to help other people sell you shit by telling them personal information about you. I don't really see why I should *LIKE* such an outfit.
Yes, it sucks that people not wearing seatbelt or helmets leads to injuries taxpayers have to absorb. But laws restricting behavior based on potential self-injury simply aren't reasonable, as I detailed above. I just consider this part of the price of living in a modern society. Then allow States to come up with their own solutions, but also make them responsible for their own medical systems (this means dismantling Medicare; states can replace it with their own State-run systems). This will dramatically increase costs because medical expenses work on economies of scale. IN EVERY CASE, it has been show that a well-funded centralized medical service provides better care than a distributed system. Ron Paul's deranged opinion that "if the government does it, it doesn't work" is simply WRONG, and Ron Paul will admit it when pressed. He simply wants to limit the government to his pet causes.
he votes against federal funding for abortion (since he votes against federal funding for anything not authorized by the constitution), and he votes to allow the states to set their own policy on the matter.
This is incorrect. He voted for the Partial Birth Abortion Ban which banned the PROCEDURE, not Federal funding. He also voted on the Chemically-Produced Abortion amendment which would have prevented distribution of the "morning after" pill in the United States.
Ron Paul is for "state's rights" only when that position would support his social agenda, like most so-called "state's rights" advocates.
There is no legal requirement to disclose such information concerning prisoners during a time of conflict.
Yes, there is. This is clear under countless laws and treaties. Military prisoners are either "prisoners of war" and must be repatriated at the end of the conflict, tried as war criminals, or must be tried as civilians. Period. There are no other options. The United States has complicated this situation by refusing to treat the Taliban as a "power", even though it clearly qualifies. The United States will not negotiate terms with the Taliban, making it near-impossible to formally end the conflict.
The "War on Terror" does not count as a "war" or "conflict". We are not engaged in a formal war with Al Qaeda (who is clearly not a "power"). It is a marketing term for standard, ongoing, police work. Most "terror suspects" clearly fall under US domestic law, or foreign jurisdiction. The military should have no involvement.
"The Constitution is not a suicide pact."
Please describe how releasing the Guantanamo prisoners will lead to the death of all Americans.
Objection: relevance. What is the relevance of the person's age?
Because it's extremely difficult to believe that a 14-year-old is one of the "worst of the worst", as anyone who has experience with "the worst of the worst" and 14-year old kids should realize. Especially given the fact that ALL PLAYERS describe him as a "good kid".
Objection: projection. "Perversely" and "that thrived under the tender mercies of the Guantanamo guards" are not statements of fact, they are opinions
I think that claiming someone is both a "hardened terrorist" and a "good kid" is pretty perverse. I'll fully admit that's an opinion.
"thrived under the tender mercies" is SARCASM. I was implying that the guards did not generally treat prisoners well, which is a FACT, not an opinion.
Please provide your source for this information and quantification of "many" as well as subsequent actions by the people released. To use your same presentation method: You do know that many of the released people were re-captured fighting against the Allied forces or involved in terrorist attacks, don't you?
My sources are Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Read the websites, they list dozens of prisoners that have been exonerated. As I recall, 2 of the prisoners released have been re-arrested. That doesn't mean they've done anything.
And as several Guantanamo interrogators have said: "They weren't terrorists before they came here, but they are now." It's easy to imagine how the abuse these men suffered at Guantanamo could lead them to hate the United States and seek revenge.
Please provide a direct reference to such a statement in the Geneva Conventions.
Article 17 of the Third Geneva Convention:
...
"Every prisoner of war, when questioned on the subject, is bound to give only his surname, first names and rank, date of birth, and army, regimental, personal or serial number, or failing this, equivalent information.
No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind."
The text is absolutely unambiguous. This is why Bush is so keen to deny prisoners POW status.
Define "sold". Do you mean a bounty for capture or information leading to the capture of a wanted person? If so, explain how that concept is improper, let alone illegal.
That is not what happened in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan there were "open" bounties on "Al Qaeda operatives". The NA was not required to provide any actual evidence the prisoners were Al Qaeda, and even if they did it would be impossible to verify. "Open" bounties ARE illegal under US law. The CONCEP
Here's another xample: F-15 Eagle version B has a radar array, the radar array works fine but there is a one line bug in the control software that occasionally causes the array to lose ID tags on radar targets (this is bad, you don't want to accidentally shoot friendlies). This grounds them. Lockheed, rather than fix the bug, uses this opportunity to sell them the shiny new version of their radar array (at 1.5x the price). As it turns out, this "new" version is nothing more that the old array with the bugfix. They go so far as to simply install a software patch on the planes they're supposed to be refitting. I believe that was about $15 million per plane.
There are plenty of non-budget related things that don't need to be released to the general public
It is THIS attitude that is the problem. EVERYTHING should be released to the public unless the military can put forward an extremely strong justification for why they should do so. For example, the details of military deployments during the Vietnam War are still classified. Why? I can think of no legitimate reason for concealing this information.
More important that concealing information from "the public", the military conceals a great deal of information from Congress. in particular the committees that are supposed to oversee how they spend money on "secret" projects (the majority of the military budget). They basically aren't told anything at all. All they get is a cryptic one-line description of the program (Like "aerial surveillance system").
Have you even read the Geneva Convention?
Yes. You are wrong.
Legal combatants are REQUIRED to wear a uniform or other insignia or device to plainly identify themselves as such AT A DISTANCE. Failure to do so makes them ILLEGAL combatants and as such are NOT entitled to ANY protection under the Geneva Convention. The Geneva Convention was designed to protect non-combatants as much as anyone else.
This is a deception used by those in the Bush administration that want to torture people. There is no provision in the Geneva Conventions that says they do not apply to non-uniformed combatants. On the contrary, there are several provisions that say the Conventions apply to every man, woman, and child on Earth (even non-signatories). Different groups of people fall into different categories, but EVERYONE is covered. For the most part the people in Guantanamo Bay count as NONCOMBATANTS under the Geneva Convention.
A) Most of the people in Guantanamo Bay and ALL the people in Bush's kidnapping program were seized from their homes or off the street in nations like Germany and Pakistan. They were NOT taken from the battlefield or from a war zone. According to the Geneva Conventions they should be treated as NONCOMBATANTS.
B) Even for those people taken from Afganistan, most were Taliban fighters were clearly identified by the fact they were wearing the signature checked turban of the Taliban. And the fact they carried Taliban banners. And the fact they were carrying weapons. So the clearly met the "uniform" requirement of the Geneva Conventions.
C) Failure to wear a uniform does not remove all responsibility towards prisoners Geneva Convention. It really only affects rules regarding the treatment of officers (non-uniformed combatants don't have officers). Non-uniformed milita are SPECIFICALLY covered under the Geneva Convention, and Taliban or American soldiers out of uniform clearly fall into that category.
The Internation Criminal Court has ruled on this decisively. There is no "legal limbo" category as the Bush administration describes. EVERYONE must be treated as either a prisoner of war or a civilian, period.