On December 4, 1989, thirty people, including appellants, gained admittance to the IRS office in Tucson, where they chanted "keep America's tax dollars out of El Salvador," splashed simulated blood on the counters, walls, and carpeting, and generally obstructed the office's operation. After a federal police officer ordered the group, on several occasions, to disperse or face arrest, appellants were arrested.
At a bench trial, appellants proffered testimony about conditions in El Salvador as the motivation for their conduct. They attempted to assert a necessity defense, essentially contending that their acts in protest of American involvement in El Salvador were necessary to avoid further bloodshed in that country. While finding appellants motivated solely by humanitarian concerns, the court nonetheless precluded the defense as a matter of law, relying on Ninth Circuit precedent.
In political necessity cases involving indirect civil disobedience against congressional acts, however, the act alone is unlikely to abate the evil precisely because the action is indirect.* Here, the IRS obstruction, or the refusal to comply with a federal officer's order, are unlikely to abate the killings in El Salvador, or immediately change Congress's policy; instead, it takes another volitional actor not controlled by the protestor to take a further step; Congress must change its mind.
* Obviously, the same may not be true of instances of direct civil disobedience. For example, if the evil to be abated was a particular shipment of weapons to El Salvador and the protestors hijacked the truck or destroyed those weapons, the precise evil would have been abated. Because our case does not involve direct civil disobedience, we do not address the applicability of the necessity defense to such incidents.
babyfinland posted:
this is a great article but i have to say that the argument of legality was far more interesting than the moral one.
i hope you didn't get a takeaway that any contemporary american court would acquit a saboteur on the grounds of self defense or a right to civil disobedience (which in hoffman's case was based on a state statute)
deadken posted:
what potential for sabotage is offered to everyday citizens not working in munitions factories etc. i'd argue that sabotage is a moral imperative but action must be directly efficacious or its useless
perhaps this suggests a moral imperative to establish a covert organization with a clandestine relationship to a hostile nation-state whose resources and intelligence capabilities could conceivably bring about efficacious sabotage.
gyrofry posted:deadken posted:
what potential for sabotage is offered to everyday citizens not working in munitions factories etc. i'd argue that sabotage is a moral imperative but action must be directly efficacious or its uselessperhaps this suggests a moral imperative to establish a covert organization with a clandestine relationship to a hostile nation-state whose resources and intelligence capabilities could conceivably bring about efficacious sabotage.
I'm an israeli art student
gyrofry posted:deadken posted:
what potential for sabotage is offered to everyday citizens not working in munitions factories etc. i'd argue that sabotage is a moral imperative but action must be directly efficacious or its uselessperhaps this suggests a moral imperative to establish a covert organization with a clandestine relationship to a hostile nation-state whose resources and intelligence capabilities could conceivably bring about efficacious sabotage.
Lykourgos posted:
don't make legal arguments unless you're a lawyer. it will only end in tears
the difficulty of legal reasoning and arguing is vastly overstated
the coming financial crash + global restructuring will strip the military of its funding.
i reckon we'll see a reborn east india trading company emerge, made up of financial elites + privatized military units, enforcing corporate rule in little islands of privilege under their control.
the us population will likely react the same way as any other under such rule - grudging complicity w/ simultaneous low level insurgency.
i guess i would make a case for sabotage today as practice for insurrection tomorrow
(using the moral/legal defense in case you get caught of course!
)
Lykourgos posted:
No
going to law school because "oh i'm smart and like to debate and i killed the LSAT" was the biggest mistake i've ever made, and i made it because of the false fetishism of the difficulty of legal thought (and b/c i'm dumb). certainly some training and intelligence is necessary but anyone here could get it down in about 6 months. the only extraordinary legal skill is the ability and motivation to write at great & painstaking length about banal, arbitrary bullshit that you don't care about
edit: tpain could have found the flaw in his argument the same way I did--spotting that something was off by knowing that the american legal system doesn't give a fuck about any ethical consideration higher than the law and going to abbie hoffman's wikipedia page to find out that the verdict was based on a very specific local statute. don't need to pass the bar to do that! the only reason he didn't was because he didn't care enough (nor should he have).
Edited by thirdplace ()
also,
there are a lot of terrible law students and law schools. did you pick a school that can get you a job afterwards in the legal market? being a lawyer can be more fun than being a student
edit: yes, tpain could have found that detail on a wikipedia page where it is laid out for him. only he didn't despite apparently wanting to include a serious legal argument in his essay
Edited by Lykourgos ()
goopstein posted:
there's no coherent philosophical reason to stop short of killing soldiers. they are armed volunteer combatants, the laws of war of every nation and culture consider them such people to be perfectly valid targets
agreed.
Crow posted:gyrofry posted:deadken posted:
what potential for sabotage is offered to everyday citizens not working in munitions factories etc. i'd argue that sabotage is a moral imperative but action must be directly efficacious or its uselessperhaps this suggests a moral imperative to establish a covert organization with a clandestine relationship to a hostile nation-state whose resources and intelligence capabilities could conceivably bring about efficacious sabotage.
don't troll
gyrofry posted:
Crow posted:
gyrofry posted:
deadken posted:
what potential for sabotage is offered to everyday citizens not working in munitions factories etc. i'd argue that sabotage is a moral imperative but action must be directly efficacious or its useless
perhaps this suggests a moral imperative to establish a covert organization with a clandestine relationship to a hostile nation-state whose resources and intelligence capabilities could conceivably bring about efficacious sabotage.
don't troll
*floats like m. bison* U think i'm trolling? Ha ha ha ha ha
ceo of the company supplying teargas to egyptian military
e: we need to start strangling the logistical tail of the global security state
Edited by xipe ()
tpaine posted:Lykourgos posted:edit: yes, tpain could have found that detail on a wikipedia page where it is laid out for him. only he didn't despite apparently wanting to include a serious legal argument in his essay
i couldn't care less about whether something is legal or not, it was an interesting aside to me but i'm fully aware of how arbitrary the law is and how saboteurs now would probably be executed or something
internationalist posted:tpaine posted:Lykourgos posted:edit: yes, tpain could have found that detail on a wikipedia page where it is laid out for him. only he didn't despite apparently wanting to include a serious legal argument in his essay
i couldn't care less about whether something is legal or not, it was an interesting aside to me but i'm fully aware of how arbitrary the law is and how saboteurs now would probably be executed or something
If you want moral and legal support for reining in the military there has to be a political will and for there to be a political will you have to have a clearer understanding of what the military did in Iraq for example.
What was the overall strategy in Iraq?
Keep in mind this wasn't the plan from the beginning, just sort of happened. But basically what happened was the military began hoping Al Qaeda (less than 5% of the insurgency, mostly Saudis) would gain a foothold and kill innocent Iraqis so the U.S. military would have a common enemy that made the U.S. military not look as bad by comparison and then they could "save" the Iraqis from a problem the U.S. military itself created. If Al Qaeda didn't gain a foothold the U.S. military would have been fucked because the insurgency would have been Iraqis against a foreign military which was violating all of their rights so basically dead civilians was vital for the U.S. military strategy.
Think about it: If the U.S. military had a choice between innocent civilians dying and winning and innocent civilians living and losing, which would the average soldier choose? Do I really need to ask?
Note the average Iraqi citizen couldn't hide like a coward in a military base when things got tough and so they had to bear the brunt of the hatred the U.S. military created. Why is that?
Well, unlike their victims, those soldiers have a political voice and representation in this country. Someone like me can't act as a proxy for people who deserve far more sympathy than the average soldier ever did because the United States is a nationalist country.
The United States also won't subordinate itself before an international legal body which would give the weakest and poorest who are against what the U.S. military does any legal or political rights so any real change has to happen with individuals here who take it upon themselves to go against the inhuman majority. Your job is to drag those people out of subhuman territory by acting as their voice; basically somebody who would call the U.S. out for murdering all those Iraqi and Afghan peasants because the U.S. is too cowardly to face the Saudis who finance and produce most of the world's terrorists as a byproduct of their corrupt and illegitimate rule because they provide the United States with its cheap oil and high standard of living.
Now let's look at another decent political argument against the military.
Using this nation's own history and the average right-wing nationalist soldier's beliefs, you can make them look like ridiculous hyprocrites. Here's an example of how to do this:
Three major historical reasons why soldiers have zero credibility politically.
1. The United States had a revolution becaused it was taxed without representation after the British military saved the colonists from the French and Indians and (gasp) the colonists had to pay for it. That was considered the height of injustice.
Soldiers can go into places like Iraq and Afghanistan and torture, imprison, and kill people with no political or legal rights, no voice or representation in this country and have no mechanism through which they can punish soldiers and hold them accountable.
And soldiers are fine with it.
2. Ever hear of when the large standing army of the North infringed on Southern state's rights during the War of Northern Agression? Well, most of these soldiers themselves come from the South. What do they do when that mean large standing army infringes on the rights of foreigners?
First to sign up for it, first to hate and ostracize anyone who would speak against it.
3. Remember when a tank was used at Waco? Not to fire on it, but to take down the side of the wall of the compound? Civilians did die but I personally doubt the federal government wanted to burn dozens of civilians to death on live television in front of the entire world on purpose.
Didn't stop the Oklahoma city bombing. It's almost as if it didn't matter that it was an accident and that killing civilians still provokes a violent response regardless.
Now, how many people were punished for the Oklahoma city bombing? Two: Terry Nichols and Tim McVeigh. Were there airstrikes on every right-wing militia compound in the country? No. If there were would federal buildings be blown up all over the Midwest? You better believe it.
If the Oklahoma city bombing was done by foreigners how many have been killed? Judging by the aftermath of 9/11: thousands.
Notice that when Tim McVeigh is brought up it's put within a domestic argument involving racial profiling (white people can be terrorists too) rather than a broad humanistic context illustrating that it really doesn't matter if you're an American citizen or Afghan or Iraqi, killing a bunch of innocent people is likely to have the same violent response. That's because the average American and, of course, the average soldier is nationalist and considers non-Americans different (read: subhuman).
See? Not hard.
Also note that 1.7 million Cambodians died because the U.S. military was considered top priority since the Viet Cong were using Cambodia to attack precious U.S. soldiers. The average Cambodian had no voice or representation in the United States and none in any international body that could exert reasonable pressure on the United States.
30,000 Pakistanis have also recently died because of the hatred protecting soldiers with predator drone strikes has created. If the Taliban are attacking U.S. soldiers then their deaths are a small price to pay for protecting the Pakistani population who have to deal with the terrorist backlash those strikes create. Of course, innocent people dying is vital to U.S. strategy and that fact would have to be pointed out and confronted in any argument against the U.S. military.
800,000 Rwandans died because the U.S. military lost 18 precious soldiers in Mogadishu. Once again the United States has proven that any ideal involving actually caring about genocide is worth nothing compared to the life of a precious troop.
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans died because soldiers are considered top priority rather than civilians and ideals. Changing this is vital to any real political change against the U.S. military.
Occupy protestors are meandering around in the middle of the street and getting arrested on a misdemeanor because the majority don't care about what they have to say so they have to block traffic, but if you have a viable argument involving the considering of ideals and civilians over the lives of soldiers then that would likely have a more resonate effect. It's just then most people would want to kill you than just ignore you but at least you would have a real argument rather than "rich people bad, me want be more equal but economics hard so me no have specific demands."
Edited by internationalist ()
discipline posted:internationalist posted:
800,000 Rwandans died because the U.S. military lost 18 precious soldiers in Mogadishu. Once again the United States has proven that any ideal involving actually caring about genocide is worth nothing compared to the life of a precious troop.careful with this
Having soldiers die for a humanitarian reason is supposed to be a lefty/liberal thing but that notion has been ruined by the fact that soldiers always make others sacrifice for them because the left in powerful countries are always nationalistic or have to pander to them to gain any sort of voice or power.
To illustrate the difficulty consider this:
If you tell soldiers to invade an island and there'll be 90% casualties they'll do it almost without question as long as it's based on right-wing nationalism and is predicated on a likely stupid, selfish, or hateful reason, but if you tell them to subordinate their own lives on behalf of those who are suffering because they are our fellow human beings - even if it cuts casualties to a tenth of what they normally would be and shortened the war dramatically - it would be considered intolerable because they refuse to die for the ideas of what they perceive to be liberal faggots who aren't true Americans.
Also, it's discouraging when you consider someone like Samantha Power who went into the Obama administration and started doing business with General Petraeus. It's hard to believe humanitarian intervention is even feasible when one of the few who may have genuinely cared about genocide did business with a person who, if given the order, would have exterminated every single Iraqi on the planet.
If I'm not too depressed and lazy I'll get into how military intervention affects the truly oppressed and how they are taken advantage of in an essay post. I've writted about 1600 words already. I may be done in a week or a month or two months or whenever but I think I have a really good take on it.