[LINK] OT: bin Laden is dead

kim holburn kim at holburn.net
Mon May 9 14:40:02 AEST 2011


On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 9:40 AM, Darrell Burkey
<darrell.burkey at anu.edu.au> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 2011-05-09 at 09:12, roger.clarke at xamax.com.au wrote:
>> I feel all the more comfortable about my previous remarks that "It's
>> abundantly clear that the US President authorised, and the navy team
>> committed, cold-blooded murder.  The act is in breach of international
>> law, and subject to prosecution in the International Criminal Court".
>
> Certainly looks that way. So, how do they get away with it? That's a
> serious question. Why isn't someone holding them accountable? They must
> have a legal justification of some kind? Have they published anything?
> Has anyone officially put it to them?
>
> Putting aside the above I do have another question. How do we deal with
> situations where someone declares war, openly murders innocent citizens
> and then runs away to hide in a part of the world that won't support
> their capture? The suggestions made here, and I think Karl was the only
> one who really answered about that issue, really don't work IMHO.
>
> So, do we just stand by and accept that under our legal systems these
> people have the freedom and right to murder as they see fit if it suits
> their cause and just pray we aren't sitting in the wrong cafe when they
> blow one up?

Our legal systems have never dealt with this.  There are various
people outside the law to a greater or lesser extent in our system,
although we have a lot less than most countries.  Also anyone who
commits a crime and then gets themselves outside of our jurisdiction
and outside of countries we have extradition treaties with is outside
our law.  That's just the way it is and the way it's always been.

As for your question, how do we deal with countries, states that do
this?   States that murder people in other countries without declaring
war with that country, not to mention declaring war on ideas?  Frankly
countries have far greater resources, power and reach than individuals
or small groups.  So far in Pakistan the US has killed 35,000 people
and the United Nations’ independent investigator on extrajudicial
killings has been investigating them for it.  I doubt whether anything
will come of it though.  How many people will the US kill before they
consider 9/11 to be avenged?  It's well over the 3,000 mark now.  If
you count everyone who has died in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and
several other places it's several orders of magnitude past that.  How
can you compare this with what any one person has done?  You can't.

> Something just isn't right here.

It's the way the world is.

-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
Ph: +61 2 61402408  M: +61 404072753
mailto:kim at holburn.net  aim://kimholburn
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