Quake3World

Canis wrote:I disagree 100%. The legal aspects of a law deals with whether or not there is authority to enforce them. If I commit a murder its illegal because there is enforcement that will capture me and punish me according to law.

HM-PuFFNSTuFF wrote:usually it's ratification or passage in a legislative body (in a democracy)

Hannibal wrote:

Canis wrote:I disagree 100%. The legal aspects of a law deals with whether or not there is authority to enforce them. If I commit a murder its illegal because there is enforcement that will capture me and punish me according to law.

This is viciously circular.

Canis wrote:

Hannibal wrote:

Canis wrote:I disagree 100%. The legal aspects of a law deals with whether or not there is authority to enforce them. If I commit a murder its illegal because there is enforcement that will capture me and punish me according to law.

This is viciously circular.

How so? Its quite linear to me: without enforcement, a "law" has no binding effect.

1 a (1) : a binding custom or practice of a community : a rule of conduct or action prescribed or formally recognized as binding or enforced by a controlling authority (2) : the whole body of such customs, practices, or rules (3) : COMMON LAW b (1) : the control brought about by the existence or enforcement of such law (2) : the action of laws considered as a means of redressing wrongs; also : LITIGATION (3) : the agency of or an agent of established law c : a rule or order that it is advisable or obligatory to observe d : something compatible with or enforceable by established law e :

Canis wrote:Le stuff.

The recognition of something being illegal is just the moral recognitions being taken into consideration. The enforcement of it is what gives validitity to the law.

Law requires enforcement to be valid, otherwise its something else: moral, thought, who knows...

All I'm saying is that for "law" to have effect there has to be enforcement...there is no point to law without enforcement.

Canis wrote:
The recognition of something being illegal is just the moral recognitions being taken into consideration. The enforcement of it is what gives validitity to the law.

Canis wrote:The point is, folks are using this idea of "law" as something to hold someone else accountable agains: the US in vietnam, the US in Iraq, etc. In order to go after (granted not morally, but literally) someone on the basis of legality in this sense, one must have an enforcement procedure to keep that law valid and take down the person who broke it.

mjrpes wrote:Thank you hannibal for taking something I've been trying to make sense of for half an hour and clarifying it in a couple of sentences.

some lefties wrote: Forest destruction

The amount of herbicides dumped on the forests and paddy fields of South Vietnam was stupendous. One study by Australian government scientists claims, “The figures for Agent Orange alone indicate that the amount of 2,4,5-T sprayed over Vietnam during the period 1962-1971 is far in excess of the amount of 2,4,5-T which has been used in Australia since the herbicide's introduction into Australia over 30 years ago” and points out that the chemical has been used over a much wider surface area in Australia.

An estimated 72.4 million litres or 100,000 tons of herbicides were sprayed on South Vietnam, affecting 43% of the cultivated area and 44% of the total area. Seventy per cent of the south's coconut groves and 60% of its rubber plantations were destroyed, together with 110,00 hectares of forest and 150,000 hectares of mangroves, along with enough crops to feed 2 million people. It has also been claimed that 43% of the south's plantations and orchards were destroyed, and 44% of the forest wealth.

In addition to high explosives and spraying, this destruction was achieved by the use of napalm and “Rome ploughs”. These latter were large bulldozers equipped with sharpened three-metre wide blades. They would smash line abreast through the forests, linked together with huge chains, uprooting everything in their paths. Elizabeth Kemf wrote that the Rome ploughs completely removed the trees and significantly disturbed the topsoil of 325,000 hectares, or 3% of southern Vietnam's forests (New Scientist, June 23, 1988).

It appears that deliberate attempts to set fire to the forests were foiled by extremely wet conditions. Significant local fires were, however, caused by napalm and phosphorous bombs.

The scale of the chemical assault was quite without precedent. Although the British had experimented on a small scale with herbicides during the so-called “Malayan emergency” in the 1950s, it was only in Vietnam (and to some degree in Cambodia in 1969) that the full military potential of “defoliants” was realised.

The program was known as “Operation Ranchhand” after the earlier, more sinister name “Operation Hades” was discounted. Of the 91 million kilograms used, 55 million kg were made up of “active ingredients”, mainly phenoxy chemicals, usually mixtures of 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T, known to the pilots as Agents Orange, Blue and White. Agents Orange and White kill plants by interference with their metabolisms, Agent Blue by desiccation. The two former mixtures were used on forests, the latter on crop lands.

Westing estimates that about 10% of southern Vietnam was sprayed, mostly in Military Region III around Saigon, where about 30% of the area was sprayed. Thirty-four per cent of the total target areas were sprayed more than once.


Erosion

After two to three weeks, forests treated with the herbicides would lose leaves, flowers and fruits, especially in the upper canopy. Climax rainforests, with multiple layers of trees, would need a second or third dose to reveal the soil (and guerillas) below.

About 10% of trees, depending on the strength of the dose and the species involved, would be killed outright; the survivors would show various stages of damage, including dieback and sterility.

It is not possible to remove forest cover on such a scale, particularly in a tropical country, without causing massive long-term damage to both human and natural ecosystems.

Clearing exposes thin soils to the violence of the tropical elements. A consequence of defoliation and bombing has been accelerated soil erosion and nutrient leaching. This is particularly the case on steep slopes with rapid run-off, but soils on level ground are also subject to leaching and compaction, or hardening. This results in a hard crust of laterite, useless for both forests and agriculture.

Neither can it be assumed that “nature will take its course” and eventually re-establish the forest. The evidence shows that “pioneer vegetation” often consists of hardy grasses, such as Imperata cylindrica (dubbed “American grass” by the Vietnamese) and bamboo, particularly

in the areas sprayed more than once. These densely rooted plants are almost impossible to eradicate, even by fire, and prevent the spontaneous regrowth of the original broadleaf forest.

The forest also serves as a regulator for the rate of surface run-off. The dry and wet monsoons are sharply differentiated in southern Vietnam, and forest destruction has led to summer flooding and winter droughts.

Vietnam has over half a million acres of coastal swampland, much of it concentrated in the south of the Mekong delta and Cape of Camau regions. Much of this swampland was formerly thickly covered with mangroves, which formed a natural hide-out for the NLF guerillas, and which was subjected to intense chemical attack by the Americans.

The main type of mangrove, Rhizophora spiculata, was especially sensitive to defoliants, one spraying being enough to kill the plants outright. Erosion of the exposed soil has been rapid.

There was also a massive decrease in bird life, and “50% of the productive woodlands and fisheries” of the Cape of Camau mangroves were destroyed, according to Kemf. Even today much of the area resembles a moonscape, and species extinction is a real possibility.

Canis wrote:I disagree 100%. The legal aspects of a law deals with whether or not there is authority to enforce them. If I commit a murder its illegal because there is enforcement that will capture me and punish me according to law. If there was no enforcement, I'd be free to go as nothing can bind me to the law. Legality is proportional to enforceability.

seremtan wrote:sorry, but no

the whole notion of legality was created to replace the idea of might (authority, enforcement) is right. a war crime is a war crime whether there's someone with the power to arrest the perpetrators or not

MidnightQ4 wrote:

seremtan wrote:

Canis wrote:...a left-wing blowhard...

i'm endlessly amused by what americans consider "left-wing"...

here's how it breaks down:


Right wingers:

Think we should "do the right thing" even if it will be unpopular with some pussies out there.

Think people should help themselves and not expect handouts.

Find the best solution to a problem at the time, and then take action.

Realize you can always find fault with something in hindsight if you look hard enough, but that is no reason to sit by and do nothing for fear of failing.


Left wingers:

Refuse to give viable options to a situation until they can use hindsight to point out what "should have been" done.

Don't feel that the end goal (i.e. protecting our longterm security) should come with any sacrafice.

Do not feel responsibilty for the future, but instead prefer a course of inaction.

Expect everyone to be taken care of by the government.

Dave wrote:I didn't bother to read any of this thread, but I watched that whole interview and I must say that neither one of them pwned the other. Letterman had O'Reilly until he told Bill he didn't watch his show and based his opinions on what he 'heard' from others.

Canis wrote:How can you make such a statement? Yes it sure does say that: "A rule (or whole body of rules) recognized as binding or enforced by a controlling authority" is exactly what I'm talking about. It requires a controlling agency that has established authority over those who the law is meant for, hence an agency that can administer control over and enforce such laws. Its a body that's active in upholding the laws.

Common law as they describe is the same thing, only specifically the active enforcement of the laws, but still requires the controlling unit.

In the case of the UN, their lack of control and their lack of authority gives them little credibility in establishing "international law"