Post #18,642
11/17/01 3:35:28 PM
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Let's say you're Arab-looking US-citiz. Someone sez ___.
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Post #18,643
11/17/01 3:46:19 PM
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Let's say you're grasping at straws.
Because you are.
But let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that this straw amounts to something. What's your alternative? `Coz if you haven't got an alternative, you haven't got a meaningful point. And if you haven't got a meaningful point, then you're just whining.
[link|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html|http://www.angelfir...e/index.html]
Sometimes "tolerance" is just a word for not dealing with things.
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Post #18,646
11/17/01 4:43:00 PM
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Let's say you're too young to *remember* HUAC, SISS.
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Post #18,705
11/18/01 7:56:05 PM
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I haven't forgotten all that. Nor have I forgotten...
that in the end US citizens did get their rights. Nor have I forgotten that there really were communists, and they really were out to get us. The Rosenbergs were guilty, after all. All things considered (if you dare consider all things) the facts of that era add up to an argument in favor of military tribunals for noncitizen terrorists right here and now. And the OJ trial, and similar incidents, complete the case, by making the alternative indefensible.
And could you put aside your schizoid grammar for just a moment, to give us a lucid explanation of just what is wrong with military tribunals in general, or in this specific case?
I give you sober reasoning and perspective, you all give me angry gibberish. Especially you, Ashton. Just what have you got against subject + predicate? And would it kill you to syllogize once in a while?
[link|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html|http://www.angelfir...e/index.html]
Sometimes "tolerance" is just a word for not dealing with things.
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Post #18,663
11/18/01 12:39:32 AM
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Alternative to what?
So, secret military tribunals are the question.
You want an alternative?
When we already have a justice system?
So, the alternative to secret military tribunals would be.................?
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Post #18,703
11/18/01 7:33:09 PM
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Oh, please.
Serious alternatives only.
Imagine if they'd tried to give the Nazis a "fair trial" at Nuremberg.
[link|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html|http://www.angelfir...e/index.html]
Sometimes "tolerance" is just a word for not dealing with things.
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Post #18,718
11/18/01 11:17:52 PM
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No, wait a minute.
B.'s objections become clear if you observe that he's making an assumption:
"Military Tribunal" == "Kangaroo Court",
with verdict decided in advance, just a method for getting said verdict on the record in a relatively systematic way.
**bzzt** Wrong... they told me in boot camp, and it matches my experience: If you're innocent, you want a court-martial. If you're guilty, you want a civilian trial.
Reason? Well, no real answer, but... the military officers making up the "tribunal" for a court-martial are busy people. Prosecutors who screw around with their schedules by accusing innocent people are not highly regarded. OTOH, in a civilian trial, even if you're judged guilty, the lawyer can always come back and say, "Look here, the printing on this verdict is defective. I counted seventeen "i"s improperly dotted. Let My Client Go..."
Brandioch, it's fortunate for you that dueling is two centuries in the past. If you are gonna accuse serving military officers of that kind of misbehavior -- when the _record_ is that even when they make mistakes, they're also making sincere attempts at fairness -- you'd be wise not to do it in any venue where (1) military officers abound and (2) the furniture has useful ballistic properties.
Regards,
Ric
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Post #18,724
11/18/01 11:42:31 PM
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Incorrect assumption.
"with verdict decided in advance, just a method for getting said verdict on the record in a relatively systematic way."
Isn't there something about "secret" in the secret military tribunal?
"Wrong... they told me in boot camp, and it matches my experience: If you're innocent, you want a court-martial. If you're guilty, you want a civilian trial."
Let's see, lies I was told at boot camp. When were you court marshalled and for what offense?
"Brandioch, it's fortunate for you that dueling is two centuries in the past."
I'll take anyone up on that. At any time. I'm in Seattle. Meet me here. I choose swords.
"If you are gonna accuse serving military officers of that kind of misbehavior -- when the _record_ is that even when they make mistakes, they're also making sincere attempts at fairness -- you'd be wise not to do it in any venue where (1) military officers abound and (2) the furniture has useful ballistic properties."
You'd be wise to challenge someone who hasn't faced such "officers" in his military career.
When I was a PFC, I was investigated by such an officer because I hit another truck with my truck in our motor pool.
The investigating officer didn't even bother to look at the scene and the case was dismissed when it was shown that his hand drawn map of the incident did not match the layout of the motor pool.
SSgt, investigated when a Sp4 under me called the base hot line on racial prejudice and complained that I was mistreating him because I wasn't putting him in for promotion. The investigating officer completely failed to question the Sergeant Major who sat on the board and said that Sp4 was in no way ready for promotion.
In other words, the officers in the military are there because they have college degrees.
Not because they are paragons of virtue or justice or anything else.
They are as ignorant as the rest of the population.
In fact, in many cases I'd say they are more ignorant as they cannot get better paying jobs on the outside.
We had a Sp4 roll a jeep on the way to 3rd shop because his platoon leader didn't see a problem with him pulling guard duty all night and then driving 4 hours the next day.
We had another platoon leader order his driver to drive a CUCV down a frozen hill in German. Right into a water truck. The CUCV was totalled.
And so on and so forth and on and on and on.
Anyone who thinks officers are any better than anyone else needs to re-examine his belief system.
The good news is that anyone stupid enough to believe in the superiority of military officers is too stupid to be a viable physical threat to me.
Anyone wishing to prove differently, email me and I'll send you my address. Swords.
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Post #18,792
11/19/01 12:45:19 PM
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[Completely OT]I might have to take you up on that...
I've got some boffers, I'm in the right area, wanna go head-to-head some time? ^_^
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
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Post #18,811
11/19/01 1:34:48 PM
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Sure.
Sword and shield?
Gasworks park okay with you? The SCA does fighter practice there, also. :)
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Post #18,814
11/19/01 1:43:27 PM
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E-mail me.
a-thanew
at
theevilempire.com (not the actual final address, but I'm sure you can figure it out. :) )
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
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Post #18,873
11/19/01 7:23:23 PM
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No challenges here
at least with edged weapons.
Military officers are human beings: cruel and kind, honest and venal, and all the other possibilities. Paragons? No.
For the record, I've never been court-martialed; I've had friends go through the experience, two of which I was closely involved with. The guilty one got jail time; the innocent one walked. The few civil trials I've had direct knowledge of didn't have any such proportionality involved -- for the most part, they turned into jousting matches between debating teams, with the result directly proportional to the amount of money the defendant had to spend on counsel. Purely anecdotal evidence, granted without argument; but it does dispose me to be rather more tolerant of military officers than you seem to be.
The one thing that does disturb me about the "military tribunals" notion is that they'll seemingly be here, and staffed with REMFs more like your described experience than actual serving-in-the-field officers. That does make the notion less attractive; on the other hand, I've never seen anything about the position of judge, prosecutor, attorney, etc. that implied any sort of Divine gift of rationality.
So if I, in my travels -- and I do fit a few of the guidelines -- run into problems and get hauled before a "military tribunal", I'll take my chances with a relatively light heart, at least compared to facing equal charges with nothing between me and Leavenworth but a court-appointed post-teen-age hack. OK?
Regards,
Ric
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Post #18,720
11/18/01 11:24:19 PM
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They didn't get a fair trial?
"Imagine if they'd tried to give the Nazis a "fair trial" at Nuremberg."
Ummm, are you saying that they didn't get a fair trial?
Weren't they in the German army?
I don't see why you oppose civilian justice.
Perhaps you can explain why you do.
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Post #18,758
11/19/01 10:43:51 AM
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You deliberately misunderstand, because you know you've lost
I didn't put "fair trial" in quotes for the fun of it. And there was no mistaking my intent, except on purpose.
And by the way, it was you, not I, who insinuated that military tribunals are less just just than civilian, in that rant of yours.
Brandioch, not only haven't you got a case, but you haven't got the courtesy to admit it. All you can do is twist your opponent's words. Shame on you.
By resorting to these tactics, and so early, you have demonstrated that you are defeated. You've lost. But you haven't the grace to admit it. No wonder you're so enamored of relativism. It's the perfect cover for those who can't defend their opinions on merit.
[link|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html|http://www.angelfir...e/index.html]
Sometimes "tolerance" is just a word for not dealing with things.
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Post #18,761
11/19/01 11:06:54 AM
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Maybe you have a problem understanding me?
"And by the way, it was you, not I, who insinuated that military tribunals are less just just than civilian, in that rant of yours."
Note the use of the word "secret" that you keep skipping over.
A "secret" military tribunal may be as "just" as an open civilian trial.
BUT YOU WILL NEVER KNOW.
"Brandioch, not only haven't you got a case, but you haven't got the courtesy to admit it."
No. Unlike you, I do not blindly accept that the government has my best interests at heart. Nor do I trust that it is "just" or "fair" or anything else.
Unlike you, I know there is a reason why we have public trials in this country.
"All you can do is twist your opponent's words."
What I'm doing is asking you if you believe what you're saying.
Simply tell me that you trust the government to operate in secret in the best interests of the citizens.
Just do that.
And I will tell you about certain drug operations our government engaged in to fund certain illegal operations in another country.
Or maybe I'll tell you about certain weapons deals our government has made.
Or maybe I'll tell you about government experiments on military personnel.
"By resorting to these tactics, and so early, you have demonstrated that you are defeated."
That's right. Keep telling me I'm defeated because you know that the government has NOT acted in the best interests of the citizens before AND that these actions are done IN SECRET.
Then tell me that the government NEEDS to do MORE in SECRET to "protect" the citizens.
"It's the perfect cover for those who can't defend their opinions on merit."
Whatever. Keep believing in the all caring, completely trustworthy government that will continue to conduct operations in secret.
Simply put, I don't trust the government to handle this in secret
AND
You do trust the government to handle this in secret.
Denial is just a river to you.
For your information, the Nuremburg trials are publicly available.
Not secret.
But that doesn't matter to you because you trust the government to operate in secret.
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Post #18,877
11/19/01 8:02:56 PM
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Ah.. I begin to understand your larger problem.
Every thread is an opportunity for You to Win .. some Brownie points? - via duelling factoids. And your faith in your own Challenger status is.. er fetching and touching.
(I suspect we might not agree very closely with the idea that there are very few.. relevant 'facts': where any issue devolves to that of characterizing motives - in homo-saps at play, especially homo-saps obsessed with a weird notion of Winning something?)
Lost. Won. Defeated. All life as chess match for the Master Logician-in-training. No wonder your essays so often fail to convince - the aim is to Win, not illuminate. Possibly the Chess mindset run amok, then?
But you have lots of company - 'Win' is the bizness motto too: never mind at what cost to both language and society. Why, Life for you must be just On Big Game of Football (for those not amenable to Chess Victory) - One Wins All / All the Rest Lose All. a==b, b==a via Commutative Law. {sigh}
The trouble in this thread is: even the idea of 'justice' is unalloyed metaphor, like virtually evey concept created in minds - dependent on 'very much which must go well'. There is NO Known guarantor of 'justice' yet devised IMhO. And no amount of marshalled (or court-martialled) factoids can ever be assembled - but that these are variously selected for effect. (From time-limit to endlessly introducing lesser and lesser-relevant factoids? for at least One thing)
Brandioch recited from actual experience, an ~ source for his reservations re UCMJ. Note: these do not constitute 'proof' of anything; nor could a 50x compilation produce proof - either. Nor did he suggest this lived experience as constituting any sort of 'proof' of anything. Just background for an opinion on a matter as complex as any we homo-saps are always conceiving.
Simply - you appear to desire nice Fact/Wars Wins/Losses, preferably from some hierarchy of Authority (blessing the factoids as True 'facts' at some level, perhaps?).
No wonder your reading of replies is filtered so precisely: if it ain't Authorized Fact - it is meaningless gibberish. To you.
I shall try to tailor responses to you accordingly, if it seems worth the effort to try. A Fact-Win is sorta trivial though, isn't it? Beryllium's At. Wt. is 9.02. No! it is 9.013 per >1952 determination. Oh.
Ashton
Dear Lord, please protect me from the wrath of those who Know.
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