The NYPD exhibiting "Bad Faith"? Why am I not surprised?
Let me guess, you comments were in "good faith", ignoring these sections of the article?
The operation was mounted in 2003 after the Police Department, invoking the fresh horrors of the World Trade Center attack and the prospect of future terrorism, won greater authority from a federal judge to investigate political organizations for criminal activity.....
"All our activities were legal and were subject in advance to Handschu review," Mr. Browne said....
In February 2003, the Police Department, with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's support, was given broad new authority by Judge Haight to conduct such monitoring. However, a senior police official must still determine that there is some indication of illegal activity before an inquiry is begun.
On a serious note, there is plenty of room for reimagining Star Trek, retelling the adventures with fresh faces or perspectives, or picking up on story lines open but never followed. What happens to future crews on the shore leave planet? What happends to the star ship that goes to collect next years taxes on the planet in "A Piece of the Action"? Just look at the evolution of Batman from camp series to the Keaton movie to Batman Begins.
On a humorous note, imagine John Madden playing Spock:
Spock: Captain, if you look here (circles empy space on viewer) this is were the bird of prey would be if you could see it, but you can't see, so it's invisible, and you can't see it. And when you can't see a ship, it's cloaked. Now as it moves laterally (Draws diagonal line from empty circle), and you can't see it, but you fire photon torpedoes, sort of like a Brett Farve pass that explodes, and it hits the bird of prey, well then, BOOM, and that's one dead bird of prey.
Kirk: Sulu, fire at Spock's coordinates!
Sulu: Aye Captain!.... A hit! We destroyed the bird of prey!
Kirk: No Sulu, I meant shoot Spock, I can't take this any more!
OK, so if Gitmo prisoners lose the rights granted by Geneva Conventions then they are just usual criminals..
No it doesn't. It means that they are unlawful combatants, not obeying the law of war, and therefore they don't get the protections. For example, you can interrogate them to try and find out any information you care to learn. A soldier who is protected can only be asked for information like name, rank, date of birth, and serial number. They aren't entitled to prepared as much of their own food as practical, unlike a protected soldier. They also probably aren't entitled to be paid a wage by the US, like a protected soldier would be.
.... and should be tried according general criminal code.
No, you don't have to. You can hold soldiers until the war is over. It just sucks for them that this war is likely to go on for 10-30 years. Maybe they should think carefully before signing up for the violent Jihad with a transnational terrorist group. Besides, if there is going to be a trial, it should be by military commission which is more appropriate. Maybe if they are good they can be paroled, but at least a dozen of them have been already after they claimed to be innocent, and were then picked up again on the battlefield. I'll bet they don't get a third chance.
If USA is at war then why don't I see military law in USA? Why there's no curfew, internment of enemy's civilians?
For the same reason that you don't see food rationing, gas rationing, meatless Thursdays, censorship, scrap metal collection drives, War Bond drives, industrial mobilization, conscription, and 12 million Americans in the military: it isn't necessary.
You can argue that Gitmo prisoners are prisoners of war, then they should be given RIGHTS of war prisoners. I don't see it happening.
The prisoners in Gitmo are getting the rights to which they are entitled. The problem is that some people think that they should have either more or different rights than they actually have under Law, treaty, and custom. Al Qaeda members put themselves at significant risk since they do not comply with the Law of War and the Geneva Conventions. As a result of the unlawful way they wage war, they lose many priviledges and rights under the Law of War and the Geneva Conventions, and that is part of the enforcement mechanism. They are getting better treatment than what is probably required for someone in their status. If you want to get worked up, why don't you look into the status of mercenaries and spies under the Geneva Conventions, and how you can treat them. I doubt that you will find it pretty.
The United States is following its Constitution. The problem is that you, and most people on Slashdot, are apparently ignorant of the existence of the Law of War and wrongly assume that criminal law and the guarantees in the Constitution that address it cover every situation. That is false. When you combine that false belief with a bit of passion, you end up with inflamed opinion and nonsense like this:
I think we should follow Gonzalez instruction, suspend his habeus corpus rights and just toss him in a hole for all eternity where he can starve to death. Maybe after a few months, or decades he will have a change of heart regarding the importance of this right.
The US is at war with Al Qaeda. (Yes, at war. See below*.) There isn't much of anything going on here that President Roosevelt didn't do in WW2, and in many ways there is less. We seem to have survived that war.
If you aren't part of, or otherwise helping Al Qaeda, you aren't very likely to run afoul of the Law of War issue.
For constitutional purposes, the joint resolution passed with but a single dissenting vote by Congress on Sept. 14, 2001, was the equivalent of a formal declaration of war. The Supreme Court held in 1800 (Bas v. Tingy), and again in 1801 (Talbot v. Seamen), that Congress could formally authorize war by joint resolution without passing a formal declaration of war; and in the post-U.N. Charter era no state has issued a formal declaration of war. Such declarations, in fact, have become as much an anachronism as the power of Congress to issue letters of marque and reprisal (outlawed by treaty in 1856). Formal declarations were historically only required when a state was initiating an aggressive war, which today is unlawful.
... people have a scientifically documented tendency to greatly overestimate risks that are perceived as out of their control compared to risks that are in their control.... This is why some people will clamor for something mildly ridiculous like an anti-missile laser to be put on all airplanes...
It's funny that you should mention snide comments about risk next to your labeling anti-missile technology as ridiculous. You don't have to look too hard to find cases of people being arrested for offenses related to smuggling or selling antiaircraft missiles in the United States, including selling those missiles to people who they thought were terrorists.
In 1978 an Air Rhodesia plane carrying 52 passengers and four crew members was shot down by guerrillas with a shoulder-fired missile. A few months later, the missile-toting guerrillas fired on another Air Rhodesia flight, killing all 59 people on board.... In the past 18 months, al Qaeda has twice tried to down planes with shoulder-fired missiles; both times they missed.
It is my observation that political beliefs seem to have a noticeable impact not only on perception of risk, but also on acceptance of fact, which can produce some odd results. If contaminated lettuce sickened a dozen people, I expect that most people on Slashdot would support the recall of that lettuce even if it cost tens of millions of dollars and the loss of many jobs. On the other hand, many of those same people who would support a lettuce recall actually oppose proactive measures and reasonable precautions to prevent a terrorist attack that could kill thousands of people. They suggest that terrorist attacks are just part of life, and that we should just shrug them off without doing anything. Bizarre.
For one thing, 6 of the named terrorist purportedly responsible are known to be very much alive and not involved at all. For another there is the inconvenient free fall collapse speed of the buildings. Go research it. The truth is out there.
All of the terrorists that were on those planes are dead.
A good place to start any 9/11 conspiracy research if you actually want the truth is Debunking 9/11 Myths . The book makes a much better place to start research than the myriad of fringe 9/11 conspiracy sites that seem to get tripped up about basic facts like steel getting soft when it gets hot. (That is how blacksmiths bend and shape steel without actually having to melt and pour it into a mold.) The article that spawned the book is here.
Controversial, perhaps, but I'd argue that these measures aren't designed to make us feel safer, but more afraid.
Let me guess... "they" want us to feel "afraid" because fearful people are much more inclined to ride airplanes on which they fear they will die a flaming death than sit at home, drive, or take a bus, so the airlines need us to be afraid. Do you spot any problem with that? Maybe a glaring one?
This "they want us to be afraid" meme is getting old, but at least it is consistently applied thoughtfully.
Sure, lets do that right after we adopt the same strategy for food, autos, toys, and workplace safety since we know that markets are perfect, people are rational and make sound judgements about risk, and the interplay between people and markets can be relied upon to produce the best outcome in almost all cases. That explains why MS Windows runs well over 90% of all PCs.
"or an associated terror group" so someone like anyone that doesn't like them.. i see
So, when it says "an associated terror group", instead of thinking of groups like Algerian Salafist Group for Prayer and Combat, the Monotheism and Jihad group in Morocco, or Jemaah Islamiyah, your mind turns to "someone like anyone that doesn't like them", by which I take it you mean, as is often directly stated when this line of thinking is presented on Slashdot, either Democrats or those further left who protest administration policy. In the process you are willing to try and blur the difference between thugs who engage in mass murder of innocent people as part of an attempt to force their extremist brand of religion on people around the world and loyal Americans with different views on some policy questions like preferring tax rates a few percent higher? What is wrong with you? You clearly don't "see".
And ofcourse according to the Bush administration those people didn't have any freedom and couldn't enjoy the things we had here. Amazing how much of the official stories turn into pure falsified information whenever you're coming into contact with information residing from someone who actually lives in the region itself...
Just one quick question. Which ones are the bad guys again?
How about the guys that are chopping the heads off of prisoners, torturing prisoners with electric drills before killing them, driving car bombs into markets to kill people trying to buy food for supper, trying to disrupt the genocide trials of Saddam's henchmen for the murder of hundreds of thousands of people whose bodies are found in mass graves all through Iraq, and fighting to prevent Iraq's democratically elected government from restoring order, peace, and rebuilding the country? You also might as well throw in the kidnapping gangs as well.
The rest seems to be something that interacts only gravitationally... it might be a particle we haven't discovered yet.
It is possible that most of the dark matter needed by current theories to explain the universe we see doesn't really exist, and that our understanding of gravity is wrong. The TeVeS theory, developed from MOND, may be able to explain the universe without requiring that most of it be made of dark matter and dark energy. See Gravity's dark side. Also mentioned in a previous Slashdot story. To really know, TeVeS will need a lot more work done with it. That will be a challenge since the dark matter theories get the vast majority of attention, time, and funding.
Take welfare and add in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, AFDC, etc. The total is huge and will be an increasing percentage of total spending due to the retiring baby boom generation.
If anything bankrupts the US it will be social welfare spending, not military spending.
Oddly enough, I would be in no way surprised to learn that you got your +5 Insightful for speculating favorably on humanity self-exterminating from people who go apoplectic over Christians who believe in and look forward to the second coming.... I guess it takes all kinds.
I take it you don't know that the US fought in the Korean War in the 1950s, is still technically at war with North Korea, that a US infantry division is stationed there now on a war footing to reinforce the army of the Republic of Korea, and it wasn't done for oil? The US lost almost as many soldiers there as in Vietnam, but South Korea is a free democracy. But hey, no oil! That doesn't really fit in with that whole "blood for oil" thing, does it? Kind of makes you think.
You're 100% correct that we're fairly strapped for cash because of Iraq,
Nonsense. The US Federal budget for 2008 is planned to be $2.9 trillion. The US defense budget is only on the order of $400 billion. The incremental cost of operations in Iraq is only another $100 billion. The main budget problem is social welfare spending, not the war.
the one that didn't have any nuclear proliferation capabilities
Iraq had a very advanced nuclear program in 1991 with a bomb only 18-30 months away.
but do you really think we've been hunting Osama bin Laden for even the last three or four years?
Yes. One man who doesn't use electronics hiding amongst a friendly population in a mountain country full of tunnels isn't easy to find. There are fugitives in the US that go for decades without being caught.
Popular Mechanics is known for its deep knowlege North Korean technology.
By the way Popular Mechnaics, where is my flying car or personal submarine?
There are plenty of flying cars and personal submarines available. You just have to pay for your toys. (Or is it work related... for the new paper route?):D
FWIW, they did a great job on their book: Debunking 9/11 Myths. I highly recommended it if you have seen a movie or web site that claims to show evidence that 9/11 was a US governemnt plot with controlled demolitions, or suggestions that the World Trade Center wouldn't collapse because the fire wasn't hot enough to melt steel, and you aren't sure what to make of it. This book will help get you on solid factual and scientific ground.
The North Koreans probably consider it just the cost of doing business. The Soviet Army used to routinely kill or injure a certain percentage of their soldiers while training with live chemical weapons. As it is, the North Koreans don't seem to be bothered by large numbers of their population starving to death or suffering severe malnutrition right now, just so long as they can keep spending their hard currency on moving their nuclear weapons and missile programs along. They know what they are doing since they conduct experiment on prisoners with lethal agents in their death camps. (They do both chemical and biological experiments.)
Slashdot Mirror
Why am I not surprised?
Let me guess, you comments were in "good faith", ignoring these sections of the article?
On a humorous note, imagine John Madden playing Spock:
Damon, Matt..... so the Ferengi are in it too?
Lets just hope the audience doesn't just walk out screaming:
We've been Khaaaaaaaannnnnnneeeedddd!!!
Most thinking about security seems to be centered in the nullcortex.
A more useful summary of the Hamdi saga can be found at:
Hamdi to be sent to Saudi Arabia, renouncing US citizenship
Hamdi Returned to Saudi Arabia
A discussion of the Hamdi ruling: Harmful Rulings - Enemy combatants and an irresponsible Court.
As for lawyers and national security: Sheik's U.S. Lawyer Convicted Of Aiding Terrorist Activity .
OK, so if Gitmo prisoners lose the rights granted by Geneva Conventions then they are just usual criminals..
... and should be tried according general criminal code.
No it doesn't. It means that they are unlawful combatants, not obeying the law of war, and therefore they don't get the protections. For example, you can interrogate them to try and find out any information you care to learn. A soldier who is protected can only be asked for information like name, rank, date of birth, and serial number. They aren't entitled to prepared as much of their own food as practical, unlike a protected soldier. They also probably aren't entitled to be paid a wage by the US, like a protected soldier would be.
.
No, you don't have to. You can hold soldiers until the war is over. It just sucks for them that this war is likely to go on for 10-30 years. Maybe they should think carefully before signing up for the violent Jihad with a transnational terrorist group. Besides, if there is going to be a trial, it should be by military commission which is more appropriate. Maybe if they are good they can be paroled, but at least a dozen of them have been already after they claimed to be innocent, and were then picked up again on the battlefield. I'll bet they don't get a third chance.
If USA is at war then why don't I see military law in USA? Why there's no curfew, internment of enemy's civilians?
For the same reason that you don't see food rationing, gas rationing, meatless Thursdays, censorship, scrap metal collection drives, War Bond drives, industrial mobilization, conscription, and 12 million Americans in the military: it isn't necessary.
You can argue that Gitmo prisoners are prisoners of war, then they should be given RIGHTS of war prisoners. I don't see it happening.
The prisoners in Gitmo are getting the rights to which they are entitled. The problem is that some people think that they should have either more or different rights than they actually have under Law, treaty, and custom. Al Qaeda members put themselves at significant risk since they do not comply with the Law of War and the Geneva Conventions. As a result of the unlawful way they wage war, they lose many priviledges and rights under the Law of War and the Geneva Conventions, and that is part of the enforcement mechanism. They are getting better treatment than what is probably required for someone in their status. If you want to get worked up, why don't you look into the status of mercenaries and spies under the Geneva Conventions, and how you can treat them. I doubt that you will find it pretty.
The US is at war with Al Qaeda. (Yes, at war. See below*.) There isn't much of anything going on here that President Roosevelt didn't do in WW2, and in many ways there is less. We seem to have survived that war.
If you aren't part of, or otherwise helping Al Qaeda, you aren't very likely to run afoul of the Law of War issue.
*FISA vs. the Constitution
It's only fair, the other team keeps using Kamikaze attacks.
It's funny that you should mention snide comments about risk next to your labeling anti-missile technology as ridiculous. You don't have to look too hard to find cases of people being arrested for offenses related to smuggling or selling antiaircraft missiles in the United States, including selling those missiles to people who they thought were terrorists.
Three arrested in missile-smuggling case
US lays missile smuggling charges
Feds Nab Two in Albany, N.Y., Mosque Raid
And another plot aimed at shooting down a US plane in Saudi Arabia: Saudis Bar Access To Terror Suspects .
And then there are the actual attempts:
How Secure Are The Skies? Thursday, Aug. 21, 2003
It is my observation that political beliefs seem to have a noticeable impact not only on perception of risk, but also on acceptance of fact, which can produce some odd results. If contaminated lettuce sickened a dozen people, I expect that most people on Slashdot would support the recall of that lettuce even if it cost tens of millions of dollars and the loss of many jobs. On the other hand, many of those same people who would support a lettuce recall actually oppose proactive measures and reasonable precautions to prevent a terrorist attack that could kill thousands of people. They suggest that terrorist attacks are just part of life, and that we should just shrug them off without doing anything. Bizarre.
For one thing, 6 of the named terrorist purportedly responsible are known to be very much alive and not involved at all. For another there is the inconvenient free fall collapse speed of the buildings. Go research it. The truth is out there.
All of the terrorists that were on those planes are dead.
A good place to start any 9/11 conspiracy research if you actually want the truth is Debunking 9/11 Myths . The book makes a much better place to start research than the myriad of fringe 9/11 conspiracy sites that seem to get tripped up about basic facts like steel getting soft when it gets hot. (That is how blacksmiths bend and shape steel without actually having to melt and pour it into a mold.) The article that spawned the book is here.
Controversial, perhaps, but I'd argue that these measures aren't designed to make us feel safer, but more afraid.
Let me guess... "they" want us to feel "afraid" because fearful people are much more inclined to ride airplanes on which they fear they will die a flaming death than sit at home, drive, or take a bus, so the airlines need us to be afraid. Do you spot any problem with that? Maybe a glaring one?
This "they want us to be afraid" meme is getting old, but at least it is consistently applied thoughtfully.
Sure, lets do that right after we adopt the same strategy for food, autos, toys, and workplace safety since we know that markets are perfect, people are rational and make sound judgements about risk, and the interplay between people and markets can be relied upon to produce the best outcome in almost all cases. That explains why MS Windows runs well over 90% of all PCs.
"or an associated terror group" so someone like anyone that doesn't like them.. i see
So, when it says "an associated terror group", instead of thinking of groups like Algerian Salafist Group for Prayer and Combat, the Monotheism and Jihad group in Morocco, or Jemaah Islamiyah, your mind turns to "someone like anyone that doesn't like them", by which I take it you mean, as is often directly stated when this line of thinking is presented on Slashdot, either Democrats or those further left who protest administration policy. In the process you are willing to try and blur the difference between thugs who engage in mass murder of innocent people as part of an attempt to force their extremist brand of religion on people around the world and loyal Americans with different views on some policy questions like preferring tax rates a few percent higher? What is wrong with you? You clearly don't "see".
And ofcourse according to the Bush administration those people didn't have any freedom and couldn't enjoy the things we had here. Amazing how much of the official stories turn into pure falsified information whenever you're coming into contact with information residing from someone who actually lives in the region itself...
Well said. As many on Slashdot know, there are few things more important, or a greater demonstration of freedom, than playing games like Medal of Honor and Call of Duty, unless it is playing soccer or other sports. It is difficult to call Iraq during Saddam's rule anything but a "paradise" for everyone, from children to those of privilege, and even to Saddam's own family, like son-in-law Hussein Kamel . I don't know why everyone on Slashdot doesn't understand that. Maybe with a bit more education....
Just one quick question. Which ones are the bad guys again?
How about the guys that are chopping the heads off of prisoners, torturing prisoners with electric drills before killing them, driving car bombs into markets to kill people trying to buy food for supper, trying to disrupt the genocide trials of Saddam's henchmen for the murder of hundreds of thousands of people whose bodies are found in mass graves all through Iraq, and fighting to prevent Iraq's democratically elected government from restoring order, peace, and rebuilding the country? You also might as well throw in the kidnapping gangs as well.
Does that help?
The rest seems to be something that interacts only gravitationally... it might be a particle we haven't discovered yet.
It is possible that most of the dark matter needed by current theories to explain the universe we see doesn't really exist, and that our understanding of gravity is wrong. The TeVeS theory, developed from MOND, may be able to explain the universe without requiring that most of it be made of dark matter and dark energy. See Gravity's dark side. Also mentioned in a previous Slashdot story. To really know, TeVeS will need a lot more work done with it. That will be a challenge since the dark matter theories get the vast majority of attention, time, and funding.
Take welfare and add in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, AFDC, etc. The total is huge and will be an increasing percentage of total spending due to the retiring baby boom generation.
If anything bankrupts the US it will be social welfare spending, not military spending.
Oddly enough, I would be in no way surprised to learn that you got your +5 Insightful for speculating favorably on humanity self-exterminating from people who go apoplectic over Christians who believe in and look forward to the second coming.
I take it you don't know that the US fought in the Korean War in the 1950s, is still technically at war with North Korea, that a US infantry division is stationed there now on a war footing to reinforce the army of the Republic of Korea, and it wasn't done for oil? The US lost almost as many soldiers there as in Vietnam, but South Korea is a free democracy. But hey, no oil! That doesn't really fit in with that whole "blood for oil" thing, does it? Kind of makes you think.
You're 100% correct that we're fairly strapped for cash because of Iraq,
Nonsense. The US Federal budget for 2008 is planned to be $2.9 trillion. The US defense budget is only on the order of $400 billion. The incremental cost of operations in Iraq is only another $100 billion. The main budget problem is social welfare spending, not the war.
the one that didn't have any nuclear proliferation capabilities
Iraq had a very advanced nuclear program in 1991 with a bomb only 18-30 months away.
but do you really think we've been hunting Osama bin Laden for even the last three or four years?
Yes. One man who doesn't use electronics hiding amongst a friendly population in a mountain country full of tunnels isn't easy to find. There are fugitives in the US that go for decades without being caught.
Popular Mechanics is known for its deep knowlege North Korean technology.
By the way Popular Mechnaics, where is my flying car or personal submarine?
There are plenty of flying cars and personal submarines available. You just have to pay for your toys. (Or is it work related... for the new paper route?)
FWIW, they did a great job on their book: Debunking 9/11 Myths. I highly recommended it if you have seen a movie or web site that claims to show evidence that 9/11 was a US governemnt plot with controlled demolitions, or suggestions that the World Trade Center wouldn't collapse because the fire wasn't hot enough to melt steel, and you aren't sure what to make of it. This book will help get you on solid factual and scientific ground.
The North Koreans probably consider it just the cost of doing business. The Soviet Army used to routinely kill or injure a certain percentage of their soldiers while training with live chemical weapons. As it is, the North Koreans don't seem to be bothered by large numbers of their population starving to death or suffering severe malnutrition right now, just so long as they can keep spending their hard currency on moving their nuclear weapons and missile programs along. They know what they are doing since they conduct experiment on prisoners with lethal agents in their death camps. (They do both chemical and biological experiments.)
The best methods available for surveying casualties tells us that the body count is around the most probable number of 655 thousand....
I wouldn't be so sure that study is reliable.
655,000 War Dead? A bogus study on Iraq casualties
The Iraq Body Count project take on it.
Some additional discussion.