FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS

[Duncan Frissell]

At 09:55 PM 6/5/96 -0700, Bruce Baugh wrote:

>Do I really have to point out that London was writing the better part of a
>century ago, in a substantially different legal and cultural environment?
>(Heck, his socialism made more trouble for him than anything else.)

It was more restrictive in censorship terms than our current environment.

>>Advocating the general practice of killing one's opponents is as legal as
>>church on a Sunday.  The War College (or is it the NDU these days) does it
>>all the time.
>
>And they, of course, are The Government, who Protect Us from the Evil
>Terrorists. Ditto for the heroic BATF agents who only burn bad nasty
>terrorists, honest. And all the rest.

But I can advocate killing commies too.  It's like when this dumb California
(State) Senator advocated outlawing groups that advocate violence back in
1980 or so, I pointed out that the Public Schools and the Army were then
doomed since both of these groups "advocate violence."  Obviously the
California State Senate "advocates violence" as well in the enforcement of
laws.  

Military types even plan war against friends.  The War Department developed
Plan Red in the '20s for a war with the British Empire.  Called for an
amphibious assault on Halifax and a tank assault via Buffalo to secure
Toronto as part of a conquest of Canada.  

Note too that under the Nurenberg principles, I may be legally compelled (or
legally permitted) to kill my superior officers or government leaders if
they are committing war crimes.  And even the Sainted Ronald Reagan and his
government was convicted of war crimes by the International Court of Justice
for mining the harbor that serves Managua, Nicaragua.  (Air-sown mines.)
'War Crimes' are vague, meaningless, and ex post facto and thus justify
quite a lot of enforcement actions in theory (which is why Senator Robert A.
Taft opposed US participation in the Nurenberg trials.

"Yes, your honor, I'd like to pay taxes and everything but I'm afraid that I
might risk conviction at future war crimes trials of aiding and abetting the
criminal acts of my government." -- From 101 Flaky Anti Tax Arguments (which
may become a web site if I can teach myself forms.

>The rest of us (in the US) live in a country where the government can now
>pretty much declare anyone they like terrorists,

Just foreigners and such designation just affects fundraising.  (I've often
wondered why Hamas uses/used couriers for getting funds to Israel when
Israel has a great ATM network with international links.)

>and suspend habeus corpus on the flimsiest of grounds, 

The Anti Terrorism bill doesn't suspend Habeas Corpus it restricts mandatory
federal court review of state convictions to one try.  One can still submit
an unlimited number of Petitions for Writ of Habeas Corpus and any state or
federal court that wants to can grant one of them just as before.

>and use evidence against foreigners that doesn't have to be presented to
the accused,

In deportation proceedings.  And then they'll have to go to all the trouble
of turning around and coming back like the other million illegal entrants a
year.

DCF