From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Jul 30 2003 - 23:26:50 MDT
--- Phil Osborn <philosborn2001@yahoo.com> wrote:
> In response to Mike Lorrey (see below or go to
> http://www.extropy.org/exi-lists/extropians/0307/12188.html:)
>
> And just who decides and how that this individual
> violates the Geneva Conventions by acting as an
> illegal combatant? The U.S. military? Without a
> public trial by jury? How convenient. As I said, if
> rights are defined as due process, then we are all
> perfectly free right now (to follow the law, that is).
a) The Geneva Convention specifies (if you'd care to read them, hint
hint) that military tribunals judge war crimes, IF the prisoner has
been incarcerated in a POW camp. The Nuremburg Trials, for example,
were exactly that. Military officers can summarily execute enemy war
criminals on site if guards and transportation are not feasible or
would hamper military movements.
b) War crimes are so specifically characterized and demand material
evidence (i.e. actual posession or use of serrated bayonets, or
chemical weapons, or arrested in civilian clothes, or surrendered while
hiding behind civilians, etc. etc. etc) that 'who decides', in terms of
who can bring charges, can be anybody. Anybody can bring a charge of a
war crime to any officer or military JAG unit or Inspector General, or
to a civilian politician, or civilian prosecutor, who will forward
charges to the appropriate authorities.
>
> The whole point of Guantanemo is that these people are
> accused of something which carries legal penalties.
> That accusation does not constitute a conviction. No
> matter WHO makes it. That's the whole point of public
> trials, juries, due process and the recognition of
> basic human rights, which exist independent of any law
> or state. AFTER they have been convicted by a proper
> public jury process, with access to counsel, privacy,
> rights to appeal, etc., THEN, if they are duly
> convicted, and ONLY THEN can you with any claim of
> legitimacy make the kind of ludicrous Kafkaesque
> claims you make below.
Incorrect. While ANY conflict is ongoing, seized enemy combatants,
legal or illegal in nature, can be held indefinitely. Disposition under
courts of law is only REQUIRED when a specific conflict has ended, but
this ONLY applies to LEGAL combatants.
The difficulty today is only that al Qaida is not a country, not a
government, so 'declaring war' is not a possible political action,
therefore having an end to a specific conflict is quite a vague thing.
This is an unfortunate fact of any sustained guerilla insurgency, and
the fact that such movements force governments to infringe on liberties
is one reason why I am so adamant that illegal combatants should be
seen as the worst sort of criminal on earth, because they seek to
destroy the most important bonds of trust that maintain the
subservience of military to civilian.
Who decides who is a legal or illegal combatant? On the battlefield,
officers decide. If a lieutenant of an infantry platoon arrests a man
with enemy military id who is wearing civilian clothes and has either
weapons in their posession or their use while in civilian clothes was
witnessed, that individual can be summarily executed by the officer if
it is judged that it is not feasible to arrange guards and
transportation to POW camps.
Illegal combatants can be interrogated as their captors see fit. Under
international law, an illegal combatant essentially becomes a
non-person, because war crimes are supposed to be seen as such heinous
acts, violating any possible code of personal honor or integrity. This
is why foreign spies are treated so harshly in many situations when
caught, if they don't have diplomatic immunity. Infiltrating another
country without diplomatic status is called in intelligence circles
"going illegal". It means if you get caught, you get disavowed and your
country can't do anything for you, because you are violating the Geneva
Conventions by doing so.
Once again, I HIGHLY suggest that people actually study international
war law before making such unsupported statements.
>
> BTW, my understanding is that now all the U.S. state
> has to do to nail you or me is to make a similar
> declaration that we have de facto, by our actions,
> given up our U.S. citizenship - and all the "rights"
> (as they now define "rights") it entails - by acting
> as a foreign combatant. Then we could end up down
> there too - and we might.
Uh, no. You do get a chance for judges, in some cases a grand jury, to
decide whether the state's claim is valid.
>
> On another related note, I am sorry if I have confused
> the discussion of a "free state." Originally I know
> the discussion referred to an existing "state" of the
> U.S. However, somewhere along the thread, the
> perspective broadened and that's where I came in. The
> same issues apply however in the narrower context, and
> any reliance upon "state sovereignty" or "state's
> rights" might be dampened by reference to the Fed's
> actions here in California, where they have had no
> qualms about going after medical mariuana users,
> despite objections from the "state."
>
> I do agree, however, that moving any "state" in the
> general direction of libertarianism would be a good
> thing, and I am considering what actions I might take
> if this project appears likely to actually succeed. I
> note that Mary Margarette in Fort Collins, CO, tried
> this a decade or more ago, and got quite a few
> libertarians to move there, but apparently without any
> great impact.
Mary got 1000 libertarians to move to Fort Collins, most of whome gave
up and left within a few years, essentially because the economy was so
poor and they, being early libertarians (this was the early 70's) were
even more offensively intolerant of unorthodoxy or differing opinions,
and unable to work in practical politics due to personal
predispositions.
Firstly, she sought too few people. Secondly, libertarians at the time
were not worn out and ticked off at continued failure of the national
party to achieve anything. Thirdly, she picked Colorado, which has
never been a particularly idea location to build liberty. Western
illusions of liberty are just that. When the feds own your land and the
state constitution resembles a fascist document, trying to build
liberty in one community alone is a dumb idea. We've got bigger and
better ideas than that.
We are getting 20,000 people, which according to statistics can have a
measurable impact on any state of less than 1.5 million people. We are
not interested in an enclave, building bunkers or hiding our heads in
the sand. We want to win political office, engage in practical
politics, and not stand on political orthodoxy in every instance.
Furthermore, in the case of NH, our Republican Governor, who was a
registered Independent up to a year before the election, is actually a
libertarian who was the biggest funder of the LPNH. We already have
four libertarians in the legislature, and the LPNH chairman is on
Governor Benson's Government Efficiency Commission. Governor Benson
wants the FSP membership to move here to NH and is signing up as a
Friend of the FSP. He specifically said in a private meeting with 20 of
us that he agrees far more with us than with most of his republican
colleagues.
If the FSP votes for NH, the FSP will be simply pushing further along a
movement that is already well underway here in NH. We already get
25,000 votes regularly and have 3,000 paying LPNH members. We have the
highest libertarian population per capita in the country.
=====
Mike Lorrey
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
- Gen. John Stark
Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com
Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/
Pro-tech freedom discussion:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jul 30 2003 - 23:34:55 MDT