Letters to the Editor
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How 'bout?
Stuck in sight of Mobile with the Memphis blues again. Now that's someplace I've actually been. Goddamned '52 Chevy with a busted gas gauge!
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Some good news - Blackwater, CACI etc.
No longer beyond the reach of the law....
... The MSM misses most important things and this is one of them. Under this Department of Defense directive, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates takes action to assure the extension of the authority of US military law over all civilians serving with or for US military forces.
The direcives provides authority for officers and NCOs to arrest and detain persons seen conducting a crime and for military authorities to pursue investigations that may lead to trial by general court martial.
The directive requires DoD to inform the US Department of Justice (DoJ) that it is proceeding against particular civilians. This provision exists to allow DoJ to take charge of the case involving civilians if it wishes. If DoJ declines then the military is authorized to proceed under its own legal system.
This would appear to settle the issue of how to deal with private armies of the "Blackwater" type in criminal matters....
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2008/03/ucmj-extends-to.html
pdf. of Gates' UCMJ directive:
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/files/gates-ucmj.pdf
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@bystander
Of course, it is slightly presumptuous of me to think you will not escape this hell and be bound back to another life -- but hey, "I calls em as I sees em."
buckyl
Presumptuous? Vous? Oh buckyl, you're much too hard on yourself. Taking on a function usually, if I remember right, usually reserved for the most enlightened of the lamas?
No presumption there, pal, none.
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re: Against my better judgment....
"Stick with the ineffable one, Bucky. She's the only one I know who'll let you win the lottery without buying a ticket." -- William Timberman
I knew you had no answer William, we have been through this before. You are waiting for a collection of 'bright young people' to take the rains of the central government and enforce peace and prosperity on the rest of us even if they have to kill us to make us like it.
Me, I just want one example of politics and government where it really worked. I will grant there may be such an example and if so, I have missed it. If you think of one -- pass it on to me, even with the snide little stuff to boot since it is your style.
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a little off-topic genealogy...
from the Huffington Post:
DENISE LAVOIE | March 25, 2008 06:53 PM EST
BOSTON — This could make for one odd family reunion: Barack Obama is a distant cousin of actor Brad Pitt, and Hillary Rodham Clinton is related to Pitt's girlfriend, Angelina Jolie.
Researchers at the New England Historic Genealogical Society found some remarkable family connections for the three presidential candidates _ Democratic rivals Obama and Clinton, and Republican John McCain.
Clinton, who is of French-Canadian descent on her mother's side, is also a distant cousin of singers Madonna, Celine Dion and Alanis Morissette. Obama, the son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya, can call six U.S. presidents, including George W. Bush, his cousins. McCain is a sixth cousin of first lady Laura Bush.
"You'd think with all that singing talent in the family she'd be able to carry a tune," Clinton's senior adviser Philippe Reines said. "But now it makes much more sense how she snagged a Grammy."
Clinton won for best spoken word Grammy in 1997 for "It Takes a Village." Obama also won a Grammy in that category this year for the audio version of his book, "The Audacity Of Hope: Thoughts On Reclaiming The American Dream."
Genealogist Christopher Child said that while the candidates often focus on pointing out differences between them, their ancestry shows they are more alike than they think.
"It shows that lots of different people can be related, people you wouldn't necessarily expect," Child said.
Two thoughts: It really is a small world, and there really is a lucky sperm club.
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No need to apologize
Sorry, LWM, that one was intended for me. The androgynous one, according to Bucky, who has never even met me. But seems to think that he/him will suffice for all of us, but never she/her. Hmmm....
-- Anonymust
I thought it was hilarious. I had seen some reference to the God Person's Plumbing in the thread and wondered what kicked that off. Only Bucky could come up with something like that. I think if there is a God Person, She is probably a Hermaphrodite. Bucky tends to forget he is all about Peace and Cooperation. I find it helps to remind him of this. He gets so excited about Peace he tends to get a little aggressive.
;-)
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And I wasn't the one who brought up body parts... you were. -- Anonymust
Check the exchange dearie, and you will find a snippy little post from yourself to me telling me you are female simply because I used a pronoun that can be masculine. That information is about body parts.
If I write 'men are destined for the stars' and you write back that you are a female; then you are the one bringing up sex. And as I point out, sex is of no matter to the inner person.
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@WT
I'm going to take this slow, since I am a little stunned by the defense of Stalin, Mao, GULAGs, and the laying of every other untimely death in the history of civilization at the feet of anyone other than them as part of modernization. Also, I'm going to assume since you feel free to add all of colonialization to someone's (it isn't clear who's) modernization, we should start at the beginning of modernization in China.
So can we start with why we are taking the Japanese war off the table? After all, by reputable accounts the Japanese entered China believing that large parts of it belonged to them: It had been sold to them over and over for money to build railroads - clearly a part of modernization. Doesn't count because it wasn't the Communist Party?
My point was originally that there are so many short sighted parts to China's growth looking forward it is hard to see how brilliant it is, and that looking backward, Mao, by my estimate from quite some time ago, not in front of me right now, was responsible for the deaths of about 41 million of his own people. That figure has been revised - upward - by many, some counting as high as 80 million.
But obviously if our own modernization was entirely the cause and sole beneficiary of all deaths in the two world wars, then all hope of rational discussion has already passed. As is any when Stalin's pogrom of 8 million Jews is construed as a rational modernization program. Who knew? I certainly didn't think of Hitler as being part of a our modernization program before, silly me.
Do we get Pol Pot because of Lon Nol? After all, we aren't counting proxies. Or do communist parties, of which the Khmer Rouge was one? Ah, but they can do no wrong that isn't rational, if not humane.
Are you by any chance being sarcastic? If so, I'll accept the take down for being too serious. Otherwise I'm having trouble comprehending your accounting.