at what point does this projection of judicial power against individuals in the name of safety (whose safety? whats really at stake here even?) become terrorism?
Are you trying to say: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." ?
Become terrorism? To answer that we'll first need to define "terrorism".
There are over 109 different definitions of terrorism. It is not only individual agencies within the same governmental apparatus that cannot agree on a single definition of terrorism. Experts and other long-established scholars in the field are equally incapable of reaching a consensus.
A bit of an aside. Terrorism is a useless word now besides its propaganda value. The USA just declares whoever they don't like to be a terrorist, like how they just did to Iran's army, and now apparently they can legally assassinate any Iranian soldier. What's funny is Iran wants in on this propaganda game now, they designated the US army as terrorists.
I don't think it makes a whole lot of sense to talk about "assassinating" soldiers any more than "terrorist attacks" on them. Those are things done to civilians by definition. We certainly don't want to promote the idea that "collateral damage" is necessary for a military operation to be ethical.
I think terrorism has a perfectly good definition - political lobbying/influence "by other means" than conventional politics, i.e. attacking and terrorizing civilians. Doesn't matter who does it or how exactly.
Maybe the US government doesn't exactly use that definition, but that doesn't mean there is no such thing as terrorism.
So, that's who this general was, an Iranian visiting some Iranian country? Was he there to see the fjords?
Anyway, telling me what I would think or say is unacceptable in a civil conversation. If I write something, you can assume I mean it, or you can disengage if you think I'm trolling.
If you're going to take my comments as justifying US actions, perhaps they can be taken that way, but they may apply to retaliation as well, no? Is there much of a gray area with military personnel in Iraq right now, who aren't Iraqis?
What if it comes out that he was coordinating with the Harris campaign to help get her anti-lynching bill passed which had been dead before the incident due to extremely low rates of lynching in modern America? They attended protests together and were at least familiar if not friends.
while no doubt this is grounds for jail time or fines, do you think a search of this depth is warranted? And how is that not wasting way more police time?
No I don't think it's a good reason to do such an invasive search.
Though I also don't think they should just drop the investigation if they have evidence there was a real crime committed (the false police report). I sure don't know anyone who committed a felony, got busted, but then was allowed to just walk away because it was a hassle to prosecute them. As for the effort, I'm sure they have some digital forensics tool that will search anything for them these days. Probably just one case among many that one person is working on at this point.
its not civil to call people lunatics because of their beliefs. and yeah, i said terrorism because it is a completely fickle, undefined term yet governments can use it to instill all kinds of violence. but when ordinary people use it they "have to define it". i can see the double standard.
It's not civil, but people basically have no idea how courts work and that discovery is a thing.
So "spectacularly ignorant" might be a better alternative to "lunatic", but that isn't polite either.
It's kind of like how Matt Levine was making fun of Carlos Ghosn today for saying "I was brutally taken from my world as I knew it".
``Yes, right, that perfectly and exactly describes the experience of every single person who is arrested and sent to jail. Very few of them like it! And he’s not wrong, it is a bad thing to take people away from their friends and families and everyday lives. It’s just, you know, that’s kind of the deal, with jail. In general society does not seem especially responsive to arguments of the form “I do not want to stand trial for these crimes, because I’d rather hang out with my friends.” ''
> but people basically have no idea how courts work and that discovery is a thing
are you saying that courts have become so opaque and inaccessible to voters that they exert their power as an impenetrable cabal ? Or that people need a PhD to assess whether the law or its enforcement is good or bad?
That's still really really bad, since everyone needs to know how the laws that they interact with works for a functioning democracy, but nobody who uses a website needs to know how the code is written. Courts should be orders of magnitude more accessible to people (especially in a country where people are tried by the jury of their peers!) than anything even remotely involving technology to the extent that a comparison between the court system and javascript doesn't even make sense.
