No Lawyer? No Problem

[aclu14]

The federal government argues that anyone accused of any links to terrorism, whether you be a citizen, legal/illegal immigrant, or visitor to the country, should be held in a military prison without a lawyer, trial, visitors, letters, or the customary one phone call. Key word here is "accused;" implying that the accusation doesn't even need to be proved. So, whatever happened to the fifth amendment?

The Federal Government has been out of control since 1909
It is a joke, a social club for the governing class and the lawyers.
The politicians want to make sure their children have high paying jobs.

Just try to read the laws they pass; the wording is in coded language only their lawyer children can read. The average person does not stand a chance in a court of law without a LAWYER to translate the lega documents for him/her.

Lawyers in the US are the bigest parasites in existence.

[DV8]

I dont live in the states but...

They are getting desperate now, and I guess it is understandable they want to hold anyone suspected to have a link to the terrorists... but it is not far that they are not allowed lawyers or a trial. Letters, understandable, no phone call, understandable, so is the 'No Visitors'. This is as long as the lawyer isnt dirty.

[The Horseman]

Aclu, I couldn't agree with you more if you paid me a large amount of money and let me have free run of the Playboy mansion.:D

While, like Gusty, I don't live in the US, Dubya appears from the UK to be trampling over the Constitution to justify a second term in office. The entire point of the Anglo-American legal system is the phrase 'innocent until proven guilty'. It's what protects us from a dictatorship being formed

PS - While I get as annoyed as the next man, E-Mail, over the lawyerese of the acts passed by Congress, I understand their point. After all, if you just pass an Act saying 'Murder is illegal', the first person who murders afterwards will jump up and shout 'define murder', and get away on a technicality. Lawyerese is just used to prevent loopholes

Horseman, you missed my point entirely. I have no problem with definign what something is or is not. I have a problem with the coded type language, words which are not used by the average citizen and sentences composed in cryptic format.

[aclu14]

How do you put pictures in a post without having to do an attachment?

[The Horseman]

Fair dinkum E-Mail. I never thought that I'd say this, but you're right

[aclu14]

Like that poor Jose Padilla guy - no charges, no evidence, just a vague accusation from the feds.

[The Horseman]

God bless Dubya......:)

Just think, without him, people who the Feds only sorta suspect might just have possibly done something would be free to roam the streets of America, putting the USA at risk

[aclu14]

Goddam martial law...wait is that the right word?

[Dizbuster]

they had intelligence intercepts as well as circumstancial evidence that he had traveled to the country to commit espionage. As an un-uniformed member of an OPFOR, they could have legally pulled him off the plane took him before a military tribunal, then taken him out behind the hanger and put a bullet through his head, or hung him from a lamp post. I think he is actually getting off pretty lightly here. There were some Germans who didn't even get this much of a courtesy, when they were found spying and planning espionage during WW2.

Read the Geneva convention, members of a belligerent organisation caught in the commision of spying or espionage have very few rights, and are subject to summary detention and or execution at the discretion of the authorities. All they have to prove, which they have by his own testimony, is that he was a member of Al Qaida, a definitely belligerent organisation when it comes to the US and other Western countries.

Maybe hanging him from a lamp post across the street for a few days in front of the Mosque in South Florida that "recruited" him, would be fair enough.

This is a war, it is time people start understanding precisely what that means. Al Qaida has already claimed the "right" to detonate a nuke in the middle of one of our cities, or spread Bio/ chemical weapons among the population, as "payment" for our atrocities in the holy land. They say they have the right to kill 3 or 4 Million Americans, as payment for the suffering our government has caused the "umma".

How much "due process" do you think they will follow, when they do finally succeed?

[The Horseman]

Where's the declaration of war?

Who exactly are we meant to be fighting (when does a freedom fighter become a terrorist)?

How long will this war go on for?

And if it's just going to go on forever, then what right have we to just lock these people up without trial for the rest of their lives?

What is Dubya going to do about the fact that the US Treasury is borrowing a billion dollars a day, and they can't keep up that spending forever?

Will he attack countries that supply the west with oil if it's found that they are harbouring al-Qaeda?

What controls are there on Federal investigations into al-Qaeda suspects?

What controls are there on Federal internment of al-Qaeda suspects?

Do al-Qaeda suspects have the right of appeal? And if not, why not?

Who exactly authorised this internment? And why?

[Dizbuster]

I guess you did not keep up much on the news last fall, if you have to ask that many questions.

In case you didn't notice, last September, an act of war was perpetrated on the soil of the US, in Manhattan it killed not only American, but also 800 or so English, as well as a few hundred other various Europeans and other nationalities. After that act, the US president went before congress, asked for and recieved a declaration of support for a war against Terrorism. This declaration was also supported by various Allies of the US, including the British. It will last as long as it takes.
If we have to turn Mecca and Medina into a glassy spot, so be it, if Al Qaida ever does get a hold of, and detonates a nuclear device, that may be what happens.

I do not think you really understand the American will and resolve in this. Please read up on world war 2, and how america reacted to that, and you may get a clue. We have been hurt, and we have been shocked by the audacity and viciousness of their action, and we have struck back at the bases we have been able to find and the government that supported and allowed their brand of hate and fanatacism to thrive. If we have to take out Saudi Arabia to root out this evil, then so be it. The time for cops and robbers is over, we tried that after the embassy bombings and after the first attack on the world trade center. We tried that through the 70's and 80's when the terrorists of both Islamic as well as Red persuasions tried to break the will and resolve of the Western European democracies, and foment revolution.

The enemy has already declared his intentions, and from every indication, he means it, for us to not take him seriously would be stupidity of almost Nevillian proportions. Do not believe for a second that you are safe, for England is on their target list along with all of the rest of the Europeans as well. If you don't believe me, then just ask any friends you may have in the Security services. Also ask the families of the 19 Germans that were killed in Tunisia.

While I value my Constitutional rights as a citizen, I would expect that someone who commits an act of terrorism against the citizens of this country or an act of war to be considered a captured prisoner and treated as such. It is silly to expect that you can attack a country, then expect to be treated with all the rights and privileges of a citizen of that country. This is where the Constitution ends and the Geneva Convention begins.

[The Horseman]

Diz, all I really want to know is this - Who watches the watchers?

[Dizbuster]

multiple choice:

1. The pope.

2. God.

3. Little green men from Mars.

4. The Shadow.

5. none of the above.

6. All of the above.


:clap :eek: :clap

take your pick,
hint; there are no wrong answers.

:lol :D :rolleyes: :D :lol

[The Horseman]

The people responsible for making sure that the Feds aren't abusing their new powers right, left and centre are little Green men from Mars.

Call me the offspring of a village idiot and a TV Weathergirl Diz, but I suspect you may be taking the piss

[~wildangel~]

I am confuzzled, but thats not hard to do;)

[Dizbuster]

Originally posted by The Horseman
The people responsible for making sure that the Feds aren't abusing their new powers right, left and centre are little Green men from Mars.

Call me the offspring of a village idiot and a TV Weathergirl Diz, but I suspect you may be taking the piss

If "taking the piss" is in anyway similiar to "pulling your leg" or "pissing on your leg while telling you it is raining",
I refuse to answer, on the grounds it might incriminate me, or something like that.!@!

IS the fifth amendment still around? Guess I will need to check the Patriot act to see if it has been butchered as well!!!

:p :D ;) :eek: :rolleyes: :eek: ;) :D :p

[aclu14]

Losing liberties in the name of protecting liberties just doesn't make sense.

[The Horseman]

Diz - Taking the piss is an English expression meaning to pull someones leg

Couldn't have put it better myself Aclu

[Dizbuster]

Well, consider this, during WW1 and WW2, certain liberties were seriously curtailed in the name of national security. After the war, those liberties were returned.
Sometimes a temporary sacrifice is needed or called for in order to assure that your freedom is not permanently lost, as would have been the case in WW2. If your grandparents and their parents did not give up some of their liberties for a brief period, then you might not even have the freedom to ask these questions that you do now.

You live not just for yourself, but for the future as well.

[aclu14]

The government has been corrupted by corporate monsters. Dubya's admin is by far the richest in US history.

[The Horseman]

During WWII, the US government threw all Japanese-Americans into internment camps on the west coast even if they hadn't done anything wrong, and there was no evidence that they were doing anything wrong.

A regiment of US-born children of the original imigrants signed up from the camps. That regiment became the most decorated in the US Army, if memory serves.

Liberties can be sacrificed in time of war by goverments, if they have the power to do so. But what guarntee do you have that those liberties will be returned?

[Dizbuster]

Originally posted by aclu14
The government has been corrupted by corporate monsters. Dubya's admin is by far the richest in US history.

and this has what relationship to what we are talking about?

hint: free people have more money and more inclination to spend that money, than those who are oppressed or under tight restrictions to their freedoms. Corporations depend on a consumer economy to purchase their goods and services, people need to be free in order to participate as consumers in an economy.

Draw what conclusions you wish.

[Dizbuster]

Originally posted by The Horseman

Liberties can be sacrificed in time of war by goverments, if they have the power to do so. But what guarntee do you have that those liberties will be returned?

Who lied to you and said there were any guarantees in this life?

There are none, but it is in their best interests to return them, see above, the same theory works partly for governments. Totalitarian governments are notoriously unstable, both economically and politically.

[The Horseman]

Dictatorships are unstable, but what about the old cliche of 'power corrupts'? If it is in everyone's best interests to have liberal and free governments, then why have there been so many dictatorships in the 20th century?

[Dizbuster]

LOL, let me turn that around, and ask you, why haven't there been more democracies or republics during the past 2000 years or so?
If you read through all of history, you will find that the past couple of centuries have seen MORE *Democratic or Republican based governments than any other time in history. I am talking governments that did not just pay lip service to the ideals, but practiced them, albeit at times in a rather haphazard fashion.

The main distinction that modern dictatorships have is the efficiency with which they could kill off their own and their neighbors citizens. Though for outright viciousness, they still lag a bit behind the likes of Genghis Khan, and Attila.



* For the americans, I am not talking the political parties, but the theories.

[aclu14]

Money is just as bad as power, even worse than power, because money gives you MORE power in a materialistic society.

[Serendipity]

Though for outright viciousness, they still lag a bit behind the likes of Genghis Khan, and Attila Read Aleksander Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, Diz. The viciousness in Soviet Russia was there, not as open as Atilla, but every bit as vicious.

[Dizbuster]

Originally posted by Serendipity
Read Aleksander Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, Diz. The viciousness in Soviet Russia was there, not as open as Atilla, but every bit as vicious.

Oh, I don't doubt that individually and in certain groups, mankind is still capable of a great deal of cruelty and viciousness. What I am talking about is the "ideals" if you can call them that, behind the leader and his people.

To them, if you were strong enough to kill your neighbor, steal his horses and women, and bash the brains of his children out against a post or the ground, then go for it. Agrarian Towns and villages were full of weak and feeble grubbers, whose only use was for target practice and to pillage for their wealth, in the form of livestock, slaves, and other resources.

Of course, a lot of the guards in the gulags cane from the central and Eastern steppes and Siberia, where Mongols once ruled. Seems some of the old traditions do survive.;) :eek: :rolleyes:

[The Horseman]

What I'm really worried about Diz is the sort of dictatorship in 1984 springing up. A sort of dictatorship of the civil servant. It's not today's restrictions that worry me, or tomorrow's, or the day after that's. It's the fact that this could be the thin end of a very big wedge

[aclu14]

VERY big wedge

[The Horseman]

In fact, the wedge of wedges

[Dizbuster]

Originally posted by The Horseman
What I'm really worried about Diz is the sort of dictatorship in 1984 springing up. A sort of dictatorship of the civil servant. It's not today's restrictions that worry me, or tomorrow's, or the day after that's. It's the fact that this could be the thin end of a very big wedge


LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

Sorry, couldn't help myself.

In my view of things, this has already happened in Europe. It is also here in America, but is not by civil servants but by the Political Correctectness movement, or more appropriately titled Thought police, who man our schools and colleges, trying to push their "vision" of a kinder gentler world where no one get's their feelings hurt by harsh or derogratory language or actions of others.
The tyranny of the mediocre has already begun, the thought police are here and "looking after" your best interests whether you know it or not.

Try to express an opinion that is contrary to what the PC crowd wants you to have, and see how fast you are derided as a racist, bigot, or other convenient labels that they hang on people they do not agree with. They will ignore and marginalise your thoughts, no matter how well you argue your point. Censorship comes in many guises.

[The Horseman]

Come on Dis. Political Correctness can be bad sometimes, but it's never gotten to be that bad

[aclu14]

Politics these days seem to be incorrect.