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The Boston Marathon Bombing: Keep Calm and Carry On

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Re: The Boston Marathon Bombing: Keep Calm and Carry On

#171

Post by venomsnake »

rayiner wrote: post #166
venomsnake wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tried in a federal court with the full rights and protections defined by the US constitution etc etc. Killing them like osama, blasting them with a drone or detaining them in gitmo means the terrorist have won, because they have dragged the system down to their own level. Also it still may be not an act of terror. Just some wackos that decide it is fun to blow stuff up. They don't have a need for a political agenda o…

If he's not caught on US soil and is not a citizen, like Osama, then he has no protections under the constitution and its duck hunting season. The Constitution does not create any protections for international fugitives engaged in acts of war. Terrorists are the modern day Barbary Pirates. Nobody in the founding generation suggested they should get full Constitutional protections and a trial.

Sorry but there was no act of war because Osama never represented political entity that could declare war on the US. And there are good reasons why the Israelis went to such pains to bring Adolf Eichmann to trial instead of just shooting him in Argentina.

Also murder is crime in Pakistan ... so if there was Pakistani rule of law the navy seals are murderers.

Re: The Boston Marathon Bombing: Keep Calm and Carry On

#172

Post by rayiner »

flyinRyan wrote: post #164
rayiner wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I object to the characterization that we're killing random people with drones. We are killing people whose stated goal is to attack us. There is nothing evil about that. Use of force to defend ones self, whether preemptive or reactive, is the closest thing to a "natural right" that exists in this world.

What the fuck? Citations please? There is absolutely no reason I can see to beleive that every person we kill with drones had any plan (realistic or otherwise) to attack us? Where do you get this? Because of Obama's reclassification of male casualties between 16-65 as combatants? Is that kind of word-game nonsense really so effective?

There are of course collateral casualties, but I do believe every drone strike has a target that has expressed some intention to attack the U.S. We're not blowing up random Afghans for fun.

Re: The Boston Marathon Bombing: Keep Calm and Carry On

#173

Post by rayiner »

venomsnake wrote: post #171
rayiner wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he's not caught on US soil and is not a citizen, like Osama, then he has no protections under the constitution and its duck hunting season. The Constitution does not create any protections for international fugitives engaged in acts of war. Terrorists are the modern day Barbary Pirates. Nobody in the founding generation suggested they should get full Constitutional protections and a trial.

Sorry but there was no act of war because Osama never represented political entity that could declare war on the US. And there are good reasons why the Israelis went to such pains to bring Adolf Eichmann to trial instead of just shooting him in Argentina. Also murder is crime in Pakistan ... so if there was Pakistani rule of law the navy seals are murderers.

That's why I used the Barbary Pirate situation. The Barbary privateers were loosely affiliated with and supported by the government in Tripoli (which is the legal entity against which we declared war), but were not really an organized army acting on behalf of the state as we think of such things today.

In any case, what Osama did would clearly be an act of war if he had been a general acting on the orders of a government. So what makes it not an act of war just because he's acting on behalf of an entity that isn't a sovereign state? Surely, it is most logical to measure the justifiable response to an action in terms of the nature of the action itself, not the political affiliation of the actor.

Finally, as you note, it's hard to say that there is any rule of law in Pakistan. Laws only have meaning to the extent courts have jurisdiction to enforce them. "Murder" isn't a universal constant--it's a law defined in the context of some sovereign entity's legislative jurisdiction. Killing a terrorist on the battlefield is not murder if there is no court that has jurisdiction over the actor that would call it murder. Indeed, it seems utterly non-sensical to me to argue that someone like Osama, that has rejected the criminal jurisdiction of any state, can turn around and claim the protection of the laws of that state.

Re: The Boston Marathon Bombing: Keep Calm and Carry On

#174

Post by roguecoder »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #159
sheri wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me offer a different opinion. There was a series of bomb blasts in Mumbai in 1993. Thirteen different explosions in the span of a few hours across the city's landmarks. 250 people died. One of the blasts was in the Bombay stock exchange. This was on a Friday, and the stock exchange opened for business on Monday. This was a huge PR win for Mumbai, as the media talked about the resilience of the residents and the m…

That's the mood regarding these things in Israel, too, and I think especially among us Gen Y types in most countries. We're too young to remember a time when terrorist attacks and school shootings weren't regular occurrences. We carry on rationally because we've seen the stupid crap people do when carried away by their emotional reactions to terrorism. That doesn't mean we don't dearly wish it would stop.

I worked in Roxbury; we never believed our city was safe. Stray bullets are a fact of life. A third of people who get shot to death are shot by the cops. It's not like it's the 70's in Chicago or anything, but it's never "safe".

But we don't need perfect safety to be proud. The most common statement going around my social networks is "Most of what you need to know about Bostonians is summed up in the fact that their blood banks were already full today". People lend each other their cell phones regularly. Those hospitals are always saving lives. These things are part of being decent human beings. Just because there are non-decent human beings out there can't diminish that.

We are cynical, because we have to be. But in cynicism we've found hope for ourselves, because we can be different.

Re: The Boston Marathon Bombing: Keep Calm and Carry On

#175

Post by riggins »

rayiner wrote: post #158
riggins wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"People downplay the magnitude of 9/11, but as I noted somewhere else today, it involved more deaths than Pearl Harbor" that's one point of reference. Here a different point of reference. It involved about 1/10 the number of annual automobile accident deaths.

Twice as many people die every year from car accidents than murders. I suppose its pointless to spend all those police resources fighting that? Human beings are not automotons.

"I suppose its pointless to spend all those police resources fighting that?"

Huh? Are you replying to someone else who made a claim about resource allocation (bc I didn't)?

Re: The Boston Marathon Bombing: Keep Calm and Carry On

#176

Post by youngerdryas »

mikestew wrote: post #139

I ran the prestigious marathon for the first time yesterday. I had a good race, set a new best time for recent years, and had a great experience. The only thing I would have been able to do yesterday was give blood, and that apparently wasn't needed. So there's nothing I can do, and fretting and worrying isn't going to change anything. Walking around scared isn't going to prevent anything. I sympathize with those aff…

Thanks for writing this, there is no guarantee of safety in a free society.

Re: The Boston Marathon Bombing: Keep Calm and Carry On

#177

Post by cscurmudgeon »

afhof wrote: post #19

Its too bad that most people don't have a basic appreciation of statistics or probability. Its too bad Schneier only spends a tiny paragraph on it: "Even though this will be in the news for weeks, we should recognize this for what it is: a rare event". The chance that a person will die from a bombing, or be shot, or their plane crash, or a hurricane kill them is so small that there is almost NO reason to be afraid of…

Sorry, but I think you don't understand probability that much and you also underestimate how much people do probability subconsciously in the right way. Also, even experts and scientists studying probability theory are pretty confused when it comes to reasoning correctly with probability.

Look at it this way: the probability of me dying from heart disease is extremely low even though a lot of Americans have a high probability for that.

There are quite genuine concerns in AI that people have messed up uncertainty, probability and statistics.

http://www.agroparistech.fr/mia/agi-workshop/

So please stop the pop sci version of probability and statistics.

Carnap is probably spinning in his grave right now :)

Any good book on probability will show that there a half dozen ways to do probability from first principles and all of them are sort of equally valid but differ greatly.

http://books.google.com/books/about/Universal_Artificial_Int...

Re: The Boston Marathon Bombing: Keep Calm and Carry On

#178

Post by yutyut »

nraynaud wrote: post #169
chii wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what does it say on it, if you can recall?

That they mobbed some soldiers who openend fire and killed five. With a real effort on painting the soldiers in a negative light, and the mob in a positive light. My head was screaming: "in Vietnam, Iraq or Afganistan there would be medals for that, this is all about spinning the news".

Can you point out some similarities between the Taliban's Jihad and the American Revolution?

Re: The Boston Marathon Bombing: Keep Calm and Carry On

#179

Post by dublinben »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #135
dublinben wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people just like waiting for the barbarians. Even if there aren't any barbarians out there.

For those who don't get your reference, Waiting for the Barbarians is a poem by C P Cavafy. http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=119&cat=1

It's also a Nobel prize winning novel by J. M. Cotzee. The allusion works either way.

Re: The Boston Marathon Bombing: Keep Calm and Carry On

#180

Post by theorique »

venomsnake wrote: post #125
MichaelApproved wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"bring the responsible to justice" Probably the most difficult parts of this will be to define who is responsible and what exactly constitutes as justice.

Tried in a federal court with the full rights and protections defined by the US constitution etc etc. Killing them like osama, blasting them with a drone or detaining them in gitmo means the terrorist have won, because they have dragged the system down to their own level. Also it still may be not an act of terror. Just some wackos that decide it is fun to blow stuff up. They don't have a need for a political agenda o…

Killing them like osama, blasting them with a drone or detaining them in gitmo means the terrorist have won, because they have dragged the system down to their own level.

Those were acts of war, and prosecuted under those rules (international law, Geneva Convention, etc), rather than domestic criminal law.

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