The death of the UK's democracy

[helene_t]

what did the milgram experiments prove, if they proved anything?

Good question. I really don't know. Since it is very contra-intuitive (or, maybe more precisely, contrary to what I would like to believe) I am inclined to say that it doesn't prove much.

 

Of course there is scope for some very cynic interpretations. Such as that morality is nothing more than a "it wasn't my fault" mentality.

[blackshoe]

One thing Nuremberg has given those in the military (well, the US military, anyway) is the clear statement that if you obey an illegal order, you are not absolved of the illegality because your superior issued the order. OTOH, if you refuse to obey an order on the grounds that in your opinion it's illegal, and the almost inevitable court-martial later determines the order was legal, you're screwed, because disobedience of a legal order is a serious offense in the military. So if you think an order is illegal, you better be damned sure you're right. You're staking your career, your freedom, and possibly your life on that judgement.

[mike777]

One thing Nuremberg has given those in the military (well, the US military, anyway) is the clear statement that if you obey an illegal order, you are not absolved of the illegality because your superior issued the order. OTOH, if you refuse to obey an order on the grounds that in your opinion it's illegal, and the almost inevitable court-martial later determines the order was legal, you're screwed, because disobedience of a legal order is a serious offense in the military. So if you think an order is illegal, you better be damned sure you're right. You're staking your career, your freedom, and possibly your life on that judgement.

Good point another lesson of Nuremberg was that the overwhelming numbers who followed an illegal order in Germany were never tried or punished. In fact the numbers are even less for those in Japan after WWII as rebuilding these countries and containing Russia was thought a higher priority than going after those who committed war crimes.

 

Of course we can just ignore the War crimes of the Allies. Russians may have raped a million women, girls and boys. Allied soldiers shot the wounded. Slave labor was sent to the Gulag to work and die.

 

As for the UK, it has for a very long time very restrictive rules compared to other countries regarding what can or cannot be printed or released. Compare the Pentagon Papers case here in the USA to what would happen in the UK and its press.

[kenberg]

From Helene's reference:

 

"To send a squad of counter terrorist officers to arrest an MP shows the growing police contempt for Parliament and democratic politics," he said.

 

"The police now believe that MPs are so reduced in public status that they are fair game for over-excited officers to order dawn raids, arrests and searches of confidential files held by MPs or those who work for them.

 

"I am not sure this is good for British democracy."

 

 

To me it seems pretty clear that what has really upset the folks in Parliament is that they arrested a member of Parliament. The nerve of these coppers. They are supposed to arrest the common blokes, not the good people serving in Parliament.

 

So it is everywhere.

 

As to the Nuremberg trials and following orders: Albert Speer was just a foot-soldier following orders? Please. We don't really want our cops making a lot of decisions about which laws they will enforce and against whom. We do want to hold our legislative leaders responsible for the laws that are passed.

[mike777]

Speaking of those who create or follow illegal orders I wanted to add a few things about Lincoln.

 

 

Lincoln basically faced WAR the entire time he served as President, from the time he was sworn in until he was killed. Lincoln is Mr. Obama's favorite President and Mr. Obama will enter office in a time of WAR.

 

I do not condone illegal war orders and bad behavior does not justify other bad behavior but the issuing and following of these orders may be alot more common then we remember in times of war or crises. For instance some of the things going on at the Federal Reserve seem to be of dubious legality but everyone, everyone including Congress, seem to be looking the other way.

 

Here are just a few of the illegal War orders that Lincoln created and people followed:

 

1) April 14th 1961 Fort Sumter surrendered. On May 3, issued a call for 3-year volunteers and increased the permanent size of the army and navy all by executive order. This was illegal per Article I, Section 7.

2) April 19 he ordered a blockade of the Confederate Ports, blockade is an act of war. Only Congress has the power to declare war.

3) He ordered the Treasury to give 2 million dollars to 3 men in NY to purchase arms and vessels. This order contravened Article I, Section 9.

 

There are many other examples but this is what Lincoln believed, "by these and other similar measures taken in that crises, some of which were without authority of law, the government was saved from overthrow".

 

 

BTW, later, after the fact, Congress would ok many of these acts as would the Supreme Court which by that time was packed with Lincoln appointees.

[helene_t]

They are supposed to arrest the common blokes, not the good people serving in Parliament.

Right. To preserve our democracy we need to make sure that politicians are immune. Berlusconi is our man :)

[Al_U_Card]

Ahhhh, politicians are crooks with IMMUNITY!

[shintaro]

:o

 

Surely the main issue in this case is "Did they need to arrest this politician in order to ask him questions"?

 

The answer would seem to be No they did not

 

 

I am merely waiting for the edict from Brown and his cronies that we will all have to be Microchipped so that they can monitor us 24/7 :

 

:)

[Al_U_Card]

Seems to me that the UK is the most "surveiled" country in the world considering all the video cameras....

 

(A camera that shows who is behind you at an ATM makes sense. Catching speeders and reckless drivers.....maybe but just being able to watch me go about my daily business????

[H_KARLUK]

“The jean! The jean is the destructor! It is a dictator! It is destroying creativity. The jean must be stopped!” Pierre Cardin

 

“I'm not a dictator. It's just that I have a grumpy face.” Augusto Pinochet

 

"All systems are capitalist. It's just a matter of who owns and controls the capital -- ancient king, dictator, or private individual. We should properly be looking at the contrast between a free market system where individuals have the right to live like kings if they have the ability to earn that right and government control of the market system such as we find today in socialist nations.” Ronald Reagan, the fortieth President of the United States (1981- 1989).

 

“There can be no peace if our security depends on the will and whims of a ruthless and aggressive dictator. I'm not willing to stake one American life on trusting Saddam Hussein.” George W. Bush , 43rd US President (Hmm, I am told once CA or some another gifted him a golden key of State and announced as Honorary member- hope i m fooled by gossips here)

 

Really, a dictator is an authoritarian ruler (e.g. absolutist or autocratic) who assumes sole and absolute power without hereditary ascension such as an absolute monarch or something else new?

 

Btw, how abt ancient Rome's "Caesar" ? Weren't there a "Senate" and "Senators" confirmed him with an "emergency and limitted period" excuse ?

[Winstonm]

Obama will enter office in a time of WAR.

 

I do not condone illegal war orders

 

 

These statements seem at odds.

 

Regardless of common language usage by media and others, the U.S. is in no declared state of war. Congress has not declared war since WWII.

 

Invasions - that the Bush Doctrine calls for as preemptive actions - were viewed by Nuremberg to be war crimes. If they are war crimes, all orders must be illegal.

 

So it would seem that without a declared war, any war orders issued must be illegal.

 

I realize this is not the commonly-thought view and that even judiciaries have ruled in favor of non-war wars, but that does not make the concept right. The U.S. Supreme Court in its not-so-glorious-past ruled that seperate but equal was legal, thus legalizing discrimination based on race. And the Constitution is clear that only Congress can declare war.

[H_KARLUK]

War does not determine who is right - only who is left. ~Bertrand Russell

 

What this planet needs is more mistletoe and less missile-talk. ~Author Unknown

[Winstonm]

I think this Ministry could help the problem.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqhlQfXUk7w

[blackshoe]

So it would seem that without a declared war, any war orders issued must be illegal.

No. You neglect the case where a nation is attacked without notice and without provocation. FDR asked Congress to declare war on Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor, but the attack made that declaration unnecessary - and any war orders issued thereafter legal (absent other considerations) even if there had been no declaration. Nations, like individuals, have a right to self-defense.

[Al_U_Card]

Do self-inflicted wounds count?

[PassedOut]

You neglect the case where a nation is attacked without notice and without provocation.

Every nation that starts a war claims that its opponent provoked it.

[PassedOut]

A government needs to keep some secrets. Revealing the name of a covert agent, for example, can get that agent killed and can get that agent's sources killed also. Clearly anyone involved in the leak of such information is a traitor to his or her country and should be punished to the full extent of the law.

 

On the other hand, many documents are classified as secret because they reveal governmental stupidity, incompetence, or corruption. In my opinion, citizens have a patriotic duty to make such documents public whenever they can do so.

 

According to an article in today's NYT, the "terrorism" case against MP Damian Green is a reaction to his success in revealing incompetence in the Labor government that the Conservatives seek to replace: Arrest of Parliament Member Brews British Tempest

 

Nobody at Scotland Yard has suggested that Mr. Green is a terrorist.

 

Rather, his offense, if any, seems to have centered on his relationship with a civil servant in the Home Office, Britain’s Interior Ministry, who is said to have offered himself to the Conservatives last year as a whistle-blower on immigration and other politically sensitive issues, passing on documents and letters from the office of the home secretary, Jacqui Smith.

 

The civil servant, Christopher Galley, a 26-year-old assistant private secretary in Ms. Smith’s office, who was also arrested on Thursday, helped Mr. Green become a trenchant critic of the Labor government’s immigration policies, one of Britain’s most volatile issues. The Conservatives, leading Labor in opinion polls, say they will make an issue of Labor’s failure to stem the tide of illegal immigrants arriving in Britain every year — and the strains on health, education and other public services — in a general election Mr. Brown must call before June 2010.

It's heartening to see that many British people see Mr. Green as the hero in this episode. And it's interesting to note how conveniently people sacrifice their principles to expediency.

 

Mr. Brown thinks a wider public inquiry may be necessary into civil servants’ leaks to politicians. Mr. Green’s arrest has prompted Conservatives to recall Mr. Brown’s habit of boasting, as a rising opposition figure before Labor’s election victory in 1997, that he had “a mole” in the civil service who gave him much of the information he used to embarrass the Conservative government in the Commons.

If it was good then, it is good now.

[Winstonm]

FDR asked Congress to declare war on Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor, but the attack made that declaration unnecessary

 

Could you point out where this exception is made? I cannot seem to find the "Sneak Attack" amendment anywhere.

[Al_U_Card]

FDR's "backers" wouldn't let him declare war on Germany (too many were making money from both sides in the war) without provocation and the Nazis knew that they wanted to keep the US out as long as possible.

FDR just kept egging the Japanese on and laid the "trap" at Pearl Harbor to entice them to attack in a "Day of infamy".

[sceptic]

Today an opposition MP was arrested under anti-terrorism legislation for publicising leaked home office documents that the Government didn't want publicised.

 

In other words, for doing his job properly.

 

The 3 most evil dictators of the last 100 years: Hitler, Stalin & Gordon Brown.

I have a few views on this,

 

1/. If it damages the country, then they should be punished

 

2/. If it embarasses the Goverment, tough luck, they all play that game and it is part of politics

 

3/. Sometimes, ideas/ policies or whatever are bandied about by ministers looking for a solution, they may discuss some rather radical (unpopular or sensitive discussions about touchy subjects like immigration) ideas, if they are dismissed as not to be pursued, then why do we have to know, it shows they are trying to cover all angles in finding answers to societies problems... sometimes ridiculous ideas give birth to an good answer and this sort of thing should be encouraged

[mike777]

FDR asked Congress to declare war on Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor, but the attack made that declaration unnecessary

 

Could you point out where this exception is made? I cannot seem to find the "Sneak Attack" amendment anywhere.

In 1863 the Supreme Court ruled that a state of war can exist without a formal declaration. Btw this was by a 5-4 vote and after Lincoln had appointed three of the 5 justices in the majority.

 

"The president has a duty to resist force with force; therefore the blockade and related war powers exercised by Lincoln were within his authority as commander in chief." (Prize Cases, 67, US. 635)

 

This got me thinking of the Cuban Missile Crises. I remember the blockade and how we were a heartbeat away from war. I do not remember why blockading Cuba was legal. After all the USSR can have nukes in the ocean just a few miles away from the USA and in fact Russia itself is only a few miles away from parts of the USA.

 

I only bring this up because I think people forgot how often a government, many governments, use their power in the name of national defense as in the OP.

[Winstonm]

FDR asked Congress to declare war on Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor, but the attack made that declaration unnecessary

 

Could you point out where this exception is made? I cannot seem to find the "Sneak Attack" amendment anywhere.

In 1863 the Supreme Court ruled that a state of war can exist without a formal declaration. Btw this was by a 5-4 vote and after Lincoln had appointed three of the 5 justices in the majority.

 

"The president has a duty to resist force with force; therefore the blockade and related war powers exercised by Lincoln were within his authority as commander in chief." (Prize Cases, 67, US. 635)

 

This got me thinking of the Cuban Missile Crises. I remember the blockade and how we were a heartbeat away from war. I do not remember why blockading Cuba was legal. After all the USSR can have nukes in the ocean just a few miles away from the USA and in fact Russia itself is only a few miles away from parts of the USA.

 

I only bring this up because I think people forgot how often a government, many governments, use their power in the name of national defense as in the OP.

Good stuff, Mike.

 

Of course, we all know the Constitution was written before it was possible to go to war with the push of a button, so the strict interpretation of legal war was stretched - and was stretched to the extreme with the Bush Doctrine of invasive war as preemption.

[Winstonm]

On subject: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/world/eu...&pagewanted=all

[PassedOut]

Thanks for the link, Winston: Britain’s Parliament Opens With Uproar Over Police Raid

 

“Let me make it absolutely clear that I believe that members of Parliament are not above the law,” Mr. Green said, before adding, “and that those who have the real power in this country, ministers, senior civil servants and the police, are also not beyond the law.”

 

To cries of “Hear, hear!” from almost every corner of the Commons, he said, “An M.P. endangering national security would be a disgrace; an M.P. exposing facts about Home Office policy which ministers are hiding is doing his job in the public interest.”

The Commons speaker, Michael Martin, knew that MP Green's arrest was completely wrong:

 

His response, in a nervous statement that he delivered flush-faced, was to lay much of the blame for the raid on an assistant, Jill Pay, whom he had named this year to the post of Commons sergeant-at-arms, in charge of parliamentary security.

So politicians are the same everywhere.

[Winstonm]

The Commons speaker, Michael Martin, knew that MP Green's arrest was completely wrong:

 

To me the entire process appears to have been the utilization of the "anti-terror" laws for the purpose of political intimidation.

 

More polarization, more "with us or against us" mentality that diminishes debate or counter-arguments by marginalizing the opposition.

 

Intolerance as the defense to intolerance. What a sad state of affairs.