But not the Geneva Conventions, which you obviously have not read. And it’s the actual law or treaty, not the alleged “principle” which takes precedence. Just read Article VI of the Constitution.

I guess “feathers” have more gravitas than blowing smoke, eh, Boog?

Nor is anyone saying that the Declaration of Independence sets out the legal framework for such a trial.

Rather, the point is that denial of a fair trial, counsel and other legal protections violates core American principles.

Remember: The Bush administration initially sought to hold the suspects indefinitely, with no trial of any kind, and then, in response to widespread objections, attempted to create special “war tribunals” distinct from military tribunals and lacking many of the fundamental elements of a fair trial.

From Newsweek:
“It’s no coincidence that the most vocal rebels around the president’s wartime excesses have come from the ranks of his own military and legal advisers. Regardless of personal ideology or politics, they have devoted their careers to mastering systems and procedures that are greater than the ends sought by the president. Lawyers balk when laws are broken or interpreted beyond all recognition. And soldiers get queasy when the rules are bent in ways that can hurt other soldiers.

“You can characterize these minirevolts as the far right pushing back against an executive branch that has almost literally lost its mind. Or you can more accurately see it as the professionals ultimately putting their training and principles back into the service of the law or the war, as opposed to the service of this presidency. Bush’s military tribunals, while possessing their own charming “I’ll sew the costumes, you paint the barn” quality, were a mistake from the outset. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that more and more serious professionals are backing away from them. We should merely be amazed that anyone is still prepared to support them at all.”

Two key elements run through the opposition on this blog to American principles of jurisprudence:
1. the suspects aren’t “suspects” they are terrorists. The fact that the military has chosen to detain them is evidence enough of their guilt. A trial would only be necessary to confirm the extent of punishment, since there is no possibility of innocence.
2. Detention and torture or torture-like interrogations function as both punishment and deterrence, rather than as only a way of preventing escape until trial and of gathering evidence.

And, I’m with those who say arty should post as much as he likes. It is really no problem to scroll right past it.

Lastly, I think we can all agree that the ratio of ad hominem to fact and reason is inversely proportional to the weight of one’s arguments. By that measure, my opponents’ here are light as a feather.

Question:How do you know if someone belongs in Gitmo for 7 years?

Response: I don’t know?

Answer: Right!

Hah ha.

BLAH, blah and more blah. I suggest that the writer peruse the words from the blog linked below. The blog-writer is an internationally recognized authority on legal matters, a lawyer and once clerked for a SCOTUS member. He finds that Bush has broken no laws in regards to the detainees and that the detainees have been afforded ALL the safeguards of which they were entitled under the Geneva Conventions. Here’s just one quote from the blog:

But as best I can tell, it is not correct to say that the Administration is violating the text of the Geneva Conventions (and it is the text that the U.S. has ratified) by failing to give the detainees a hearing on whether they are indeed civilians who should be released. The text of the Conventions does not require any such hearings.

http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_07_00.shtml#1088792683

For me, Western Civilization is an incredibly complex work that has eclectically and also seamlessly borrowed the excellence and the virtues of Athens, Jerusalem, Rome, and the Enlightenment. The High Middle Ages and the Renaissance also made important contributions. In its totality it is a meritocracy and a liberation of humanity that has resulted in ever greater learning and material prosperity and health for most of the people who live under it. It is not an unblemished history. Yet in its totality it gleams with advancement when juxtaposed against civilizations which enslave humanity.

I think the beginning of the end of our civilization began with the French Revolution and The Terror. It was the beginning of the elaboration of totalitarian thought and throughout the 19th century this kept on finding newer permutations of elegant, intellectual terror. The 20th century was the culmination of the barbarity of totalitarianism.

Islam, to me, is a separate civilization and ideology of enslavement. Once they were stopped at Poitiers and later at Vienna, we were safe from its predations, and Islam began to collapse into a miasma of ever greater corruption and backwardness. Prior to that point, whatever prosperity it did have was the result of plundering non-Muslims of their property, wealth, and intellectual powers.

Now, with the latter part of the 20th century behind us and the dawn of a new millenium, the totalitarians in both civilizations have mated and allied, creating a very large and powerful force. We are only now just beginning to grasp the enormity of what this is and what it is accomplishing. This combined Beast is relentless in its pursuit to destroy our legacy and put us all under their boots. Also, you can be sure that these two erstwhile allies will fight each other in the future for dominance. To me, Moscow is the epicenter now of the totalitarian forces and alliances within our civilization. In Islam, it is Tehran that is the center of their power. Right now, Moscow and Tehran are allied against the West.

I almost want to say that they have won this war already, because the West is caught at a moment when most of its people do not even know about the existence of this combined Beast, much less have the will to fight it. They are ahead of us. Way ahead across many dimensions. What most helps their cause is the willful self-loathing of our people for their own civilization and heritage. It is very difficult to win this struggle when you have this enervating, entropic force that is like a millstone around the neck.

if neo tells me not to post, i will not post.
if she says i am too long, then i will try to shorten them
if she says go, i will go.

but i will not listen to people pretending to be something they are not, and tell me what or how to speak.

i cant help that the subject matter we are discussing spans 200 years of VERY heady long and complicated things.

if you want short answers on 200 year and more complicated political theories, then become a leftist and run around misusing words, terms, ideas, and being an ignorant jackass.

heck a summary of das capital is 48 pages long.. and a discussion that would cover it even in part would have to cover adam smith, stuart mill, marx, engels, the romanticists, the luddites, orwell, huxley, lenin, stalin, hitler, mao… the american peace movment and the sexual revolution, feminism, black national socialism, gramsci, the long march, and tons and tons of other things..

and not ever get to a description of the history arond those things, the people and the states and such supporting them!

the tin hatters have served a purpose. they ahve poisoned the area of discussion, to protect a flanking move. you know, pop some smoke, and be covered… as no one can see wahts in that areas, whiout automatically not looking or denying anything is there.

just as they cant make the distinction between jews and nazis, they cant make the distinction between crack pots and agitprop, and history and facts.

technically a discussion on these things would go all the way back to aristotle!!!

25 years ago, i could have said things in short… the people i would have been talking to (that were older) had a similar eduation with simialr history… now it depends on when you were born whetehr stalin is a good guy or a bad,… we cant make disticntions..

and the lazyness of those who debate on the left is legendary… they dont want long tracts, but they also dont want to go read a source… they basically just want their masters to say something short so they can get back to servitude, cause they sure arent interested in freedom!!!

here is the shortversion of everything i said above.

wealthy people paid marx to design something and presented it or used it for another erason. the return to power of the aristocracy that was stolen from them by the middle class during the industrial revolition and the diffusion of power to the people who were owned by them.

they have been playing very clever mind games which you can read abotu, but wont… they have to do with reinforcement of ideas outside of the conciouss arguments. (refutation is hard because each time you try to replace the idea you reinforce it by discussing it. so thats why they jump to make the furst pronouncment. we are all blank slates.. now everytime we try to correct that, we reinforce it, so the process take the deaths of those who cant adjust! by the way engels and marx and lenin said that too, which is why the conflegration was renamed the holocasut so we thing is special not general!)

many of is here dont get the differences in the arguments, i tried to lay it out. but the explanation is too long for them!!!

in other wrods, they are innoculated from undertanding since greater understanding beuond a certain point can only come from longer information!!!

but then again… slaves are not to talk or have discussions with their masters. they are not to muse about freedom, politics, control and power.. they are only to be capable of taking in short commands and orders… they are being bred to favor shorter attention spans and such…

the whole idea is that those with longer attention spans, more patience, better planning, an ability to understand longer writing, and more… are the ones that will make slaves of them!!!! (and happy ones that defend their slavery as huxley said!)

want to laugh really hard..

a person named assistant village idiot chooses what to read by sound bites.

Artfl, I echo the complaint you are simply going on too long. It’s not your blog. I’m not reading them.

he is basically saying that either i dumb them down and use common party knowlege or they will punish me by denying me part in their collective.

if you havent read them, then how do you know that they are too long?

i agree they are long, and can be much longer given the subject matter and the igorance… but the issue here is TOO long.

its funny, but give someone who is smart, a really short simple piece, and they will act like the stupid in reverse clamoring for smaller easier to understand fare or else retailiation..

remember amadeus? (no i am not a mozart).

remember the too many notes scene and the explanation of it?

and i repeat it for the village idiot

Emperor Joseph II: My dear young man, don’t take it too hard. Your work is ingenious. It’s quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that’s all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect.

Mozart: Which few did you have in mind, Majesty?

the problem was that the king was an idiot, not that the writing was bad, erroneous, etc.

the king, like an idiot, had the attention span of a gnat… which is why they gauge what they will partake in by the length of their attention spans… or esle they get bored if not entertained.

there hedonism has reached such a point where they cant read or partake of something serous unless its been made a farce, is enjoyable, and is short… so they can run to the next slot in the candy coutner and try that one too, till they are just sick and full of nihilism.

sigh.

neo… in the words of the kinks

should i stay or should i go?

i have fred asking deep questions in which whole volumes have been written (the decline of civilizations), and another set who hates that i am long.

[sarcasm] can we talk about nekkos again? puppies and stuff… and stay away from things to hard for the younger ones to handle with their superior abilities and education [/sarcasm]

Salieri: Leave me alone.
Father Vogler: I cannot leave alone a soul in pain.
Salieri: Do you know who I am?
Father Vogler: It makes no difference. All men are equal in God’s eyes.
Salieri: [leans in mockingly] *Are* they?

I’ve often looked upon the nomenklatura of Soviet society as just another form of the old feudal aristocracy, but with a better story to sell to the peasants.

When I was a young man and an aspiring academic Marxist I noted an elitist view among many in the Marxist movement. They looked down on the common people and working, successful middle class people. During the Reagan years, which was when I was on the Left (I was a fellow-traveler from 1977-1987) I noticed how many of the activist types were from generally wealthier families. Those kids just wanted to find another path to power. The middle class kids with good educations and high ideals, like me, got caught up in the academic Left. I know it sounds far fetched, but I am being totally honest when I say this: I never laughed at or made fun of Ronald Reagan. I may have disagreed with him but I did not make fun of the man. The fact that I turned on the Left by ’87, when I was 32 years old, means that the critiques of socialism finally won over my mind. You are only won over if you have a fundamental respect for your opponent.

But a lot of people on the Left then, in my experience, did not respect the arguments from the classical liberals. I think, based on my experience of these people, that many of the socialists thought themselves superior human beings to the rest of the sheeple. When you have that kind of attitude, it is but a short route to the mentality that you should be the natural leaders of humanity. And that is precisely what you find in every socialist country and experiment from the time it began.

The Red Diaper Babies are the worst. And we have one in the White House now. And most of the people have no idea that he was a Red Diaper Baby.

The easiest way to get followers is to join some other loved group, and then change its points and tenets piece by piece by opposing conservation and promoting a false progression. In this way, one can turn a organization around 180 degrees from its roots and all the followers will nto notice if you spin the message, and they don’t examine or compare against the past (which is also revisioned too). a movement that hates conservation of things that are loved, is a movement that has flung open the door and normalized such transformations and power captures.

Read and find out how we are now an aristocracy… or didn’t you notice they appointed people from ruling families who are related? Bush, Cheney, Obama, and others are actually related… so we have changed our state from a free one, to an aristocracy, and the false presentation of do good socialism will return it to full feudal oligarchy with peasants.

[been trying to lay this all out… but i get slammed for it beiing too long. but if i say this stuff, everyone is trying to refute each piece, which prevents them from seeing the whole…]

But the smartest are too stupid to realize it, and they convince those they teach and write for, to follow that same stupid line.

Or haven’t you noticed that the smartest people are all slaves to the powerful people, and never the other way around?

“Intellectual powers are the offspring of labour. But an hereditary aristocracy are deprived of the strongest motives to labour. The greater part of them will, therefore, be defective in those powers.” Mills

and

“…the class which is universally described, as both the most wise, and the most virtuous part of every community, the middle rank, are wholly included in that part of the community which is not the aristocratical.”

if your free now…. that means change means slavery… as the condition is binary, you cant be part slave, and free… anymore than you can be a little bit pregnant.

Read below and see how far they have converted things because we didn’t preserve them hating to do such an awful thing as conserve god, morals, rights, rule of law, etc.

“if the qualification (of property) were raised so high that only a few hundreds possessed (controlled) it, the case would be exactly the same with that of the consignment of the electoral suffrage to an aristocracy.”

So the goal of socialism is to put all the property into the hands of the few to control all property, and then create, but our own knowledge we are no longer taught, a new aristocracy…

any one want to bet that no one will get this who doesnt already… (and so will not understadn how things can get so far as to have a man like weisel close the door on a gas truck and realize the last person in was his wife)

i guess its up to you fred… is a conversion a collapse? is the change a decline or an improvement?

i guess if your the common class, and smart, its going to be a decline and its going to hurt a lot because they are waiting for improvment (which is why they will be killed when they try to reverse what they did in a counter revolution! which the aristocracy will not allow and will exterminate them. since all the moral crap was for us not to stop them who have no such limitations – they suffer for it, but only if we dont do what we are supposed to do and if we dont CONSERVE things).

i have been trying to explain what i learned from old time family… family and associates at festivils that would get drunk and talk about the things they did as commandants, and the orders they were given and the principals they were taugth and how to apply them.

of course, non of that is on the table for the sam reason we dont discuss pink elephants and leprechans… we dnot believe they exist

That’s hard to say since every generation thinks they are a part of such, whether they are or not.

Personally i believe that we are at the edge of western cultures destruction. A house can be completely eaten by termites and remain standing till the last breeze blows by… there really is no way to stop or repair it then since the damage has been allowed to go to the core.

For those who want their world to be expanded by the education we lost, i would recommend this piece.

Early 19th Century British “Environmentalism”
[I can’t post the link since the filter is blocking the conversation].

This essay draws from the best-known writings of the era’s three most influential intellectuals for a portrait of an anti-democratic, anti-liberal social movement based in the aristocracy but claiming to represent the masses; a movement permeated with the ideas of over-population theorist T. Mal thus; a movement benefiting from restricting land supply and suffering from advancing agricultural technology; that fought a cultural civil war using literary Romanticism and monkish asceticism; that was militantly protectionist regarding agriculture; that constrained industrial progress and spread fear of catastrophe.