Mo' Rights

Rights, needs, desires.

I don't think I am much of an original thinker, unprompted. I've noticed that sad fact about myself more and more lately. Mostly, I have to read or listen to what someone else thinks or says about a subject, then ponder and analyze what the writer or speaker has opined before I can even begin to wax pithy. Pithily. Even then it takes me considerable time to get wound up enough to approach a decent level of sarcasm - born of superior subject knowledge - let alone genuine righteous indignation. I suppose that makes me a counter-puncher (boxing metaphor, not one who punches counters.) However, once hit by a blow of, say, fuzzy feel-good ultra-liberalism or fantasyland conservative non-thought (metaphorically a "left" hook or a "right" cross, if you will) then, usually, I can begin to argue back. In an argument I can often come up with original ideas; in analysis I can see the flaws - just not in an unstimulated (uninflamed?) ungoaded condition, like when I am staring at a blank sheet of paper and feeling mildly indignant in a general but unfocused way. This is not to say I have writer's block - lord knows I can write page after page of illogical and heavily biased gibberish at the drop of a hat - but I need to have my values and life experiences challenged in order to write with passion.

Incidentally, "unstimulated," "uninflamed" and "ungoaded" all have red lines under them. What kind of idiot twats do they hire to author these misbegotten spellcheckers? Teenaged future unemployable summer interns trying to work off a few dollars of their hopeless student loans, useless English-majors all, working in a gaga library-science environment in which they will never see actual employment? I suppose the British version will at least leave "twats" unredlined. (Guess whether or not "unredlined" is redlined.) Ah, well.

Rights, needs, desires.

A need is something essential that you have had since birth. Even at birth, someone provided you these needs, else you would be dead now instead of reading this. Needs are not rights. Needs are what the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights CALLS rights.

A desire? That's something you want to have. Like an American teenager without the latest video game or vulgar rap cassette. Like a Darfurian child who desires to live in Beverly Hills. Desires are things you want that I don't care about. Nobody else does either, except maybe your mommy if today is your birthday and you are 7 years old. Only YOU care about your desires. A plan and hard work are needed in order for you to realize your desires. Hence, few will be realized.

A right is an entitlement which is guaranteed to you by an entity which has the power to give and defend that thing for you. Often, humans do not have a "right" to shelter and clean drinking water.

If only you had the time (and a desire) to read more, I had so much more to say about this subject.
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Photo credit:
Coffee With Jesus
(RadioFreeBabylon.com)

Rights and Misconceptions

"You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to talk with a lawyer..."

Or a reasonable variation thereof.

Is there anyone now living in the U.S. who doesn't know what their constitutional rights are if arrested? It would be hard to believe, since the "Miranda Ruling" was handed down back in 1966, which means the majority of Americans have heard it on TV and elsewhere ten thousand times since they were born. And yet it is still mandatory to be given to all arrestees by the police here. I'm guessing it probably isn't necessary, in point of actual "need" anymore - though still necessary from a legal standpoint.

In 1963, an emotionally disturbed young man confessed to police that he had committed an armed robbery and a rape. He did so after hours of police questioning. In 1966, he was set free even though he did the crimes. This was because he honestly didn't know what his constitutional rights were. On appeal, the Supremes ruled that the police have an obligation to ensure the suspect DOES understand that he has certain rights under the U.S. Constitution. The rest is history.

The point I want to make here is that a person accused of a crime in the U.S. has the 5th Amendment right not to self-incriminate, and the 6th Amendment right to defense counsel. Since at least 1787, Americans or other people arrested within the U.S. have had these rights. It's hard to find someone who isn't aware of that today, but in 1963, people hadn't heard it on TV on cop shows over and over again. Ernesto Miranda was one of those constitutionally challenged individuals who had apparently slept through the Bill of Rights lesson in 8th grade. In a landmark court decision, he went free.
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As I write this, another young man, gravely wounded, lies in a Boston hospital, assumed to be a terrorist. He has not been "miranda-ized." He will be questioned without having his rights read to him, under some sort of exception the president can apparently approve if it is in the national interest. As I write this, the ACLU is threatening to sue to get the authorities to read him his rights, and the Massachusetts public defender's office is offering to defend him, even though President Obama has authorized the Miranda exception.

Excuse me, but I find this whole debate laughable. Why?

Just because you don't read someone his rights doesn't mean he doesn't still HAVE those rights. His rights to silence and an attorney derive from the U.S. constitution, not from the reading of a summary from a piece of paper. In other words, if he doesn't want to talk, he doesn't have to, and if he asks for an attorney, one must be provided to him - else the police are themselves breaking the law -- the highest law of our land.

Somehow or other, all these TV experts, including high-level FBI people, and even the Justice Department on up to president Obama, are deluding themselves into thinking if they don't read the young man his rights, and if it is legal not to read him his rights, then, by gosh, he's GOT to talk and he doesn't get to have an attorney. Balderdash.

What are they going to do if he doesn't talk? Beat him? No. They're going to interview him for three days straight, using repetition and psychological abuse, with no sleep. But they would have done that anyway, had they read him his rights. If he doesn't talk, you can still keep questioning him, with or without Miranda. It's just that, normally, without Miranda, you're wasting your time because any confession will be thrown out at trial. They're going to get into trouble, though, if they don't produce an attorney for him if he knows his rights and asks for one.

Are we living in a strange, misinformed, deluded world, or what? "Don't read him his rights. That way he'll HAVE to talk." Oh, really?

Jesus.

Of course, if he DOES talk, then his confession can't be thrown out just because he wasn't Miranda-ized. There's that. But the whole purpose of Miranda, or one of the main purposes, is so confessions can't be coerced through abuse or sleeplessness.

They have enough evidence in this case, probably, so that a confession isn't necessary to convict. It is obvious they are not after a confession but want to gain knowledge of a possible larger terrorist organization, as well as more details about the Boston bombing. But what good is it if you coerce the information? How reliable? It's the same thing they are, or were, doing in Guantanamo. I'm a pretty conservative (I mean "traditional") guy, but this is not making sense to me. Maybe by the time this is published, we'll all have the answers.

The invasion of Japan. Two versions.

With the surrender of Nazi Germany in May, 1945, the Allies turned their full attention to the Pacific theater. The U.S. began transferring troops from Europe.

The war in the Pacific, for the U.S., had been going on since the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor in late 1941, and longer than that for the British and French. Many great sea battles had been fought.  Many losses had been endured by the Allied forces. The struggle had been painstakingly slow, fighting from island to island.

In the spring of 1945, the home islands of Japan herself remained to be taken to end the war. The invasion of Japan was planned for the spring of 1946. The planning of "Operation Downfall" (the actual invasion of the home islands of Japan) had been going on for some time. The early casualty estimates for the invasion were set at 130,000 to 220,000, of which the American death total was expected to be 25,000 to 46,000. However, after the battle for Okinawa, the U.S. realized the Japanese intended to fight to the death for the home islands, and the casualty figures were revised drastically.

2.3 million Japanese Soldiers were being set in place to defend the Japanese homeland. There were another 4 million Army and Navy employees which would be militarized. Finally, there were 28 million Japanese civilian militia, both men and women, who were preparing to die for their country. No surrender was contemplated.

The new casualty estimates for the invasion jumped to a more realistic 1.4 million to 4 million for the Allied invaders, up to 800,000 dead. As many as 20,000,000 Japanese casualties were predicted by the Imperial Japanese General staff, due to the entire population intending to fight to the death for their emperor. The allies put Japanese casualties at 5 to 10 million. Nobody really knew, of course. It was scary. Preposterous unfathomable numbers.
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July 16, 1945, 0500.

Scientists and military men huddled in bunkers 10 miles distant from a metal tower with an odd-looking device, referred to only as "the gadget,"  hanging at the top of the tower.

0500:29: The New Mexico desert suddenly becomes as bright as noonday. Every rock and crevice of the nearby mountains is clearly visible. Even inside the distant bunkers, the heat is like an oven.

The military code name for the test of the device was "Trinity."

Dr. Robert Oppenheimer is one of the scientists in the bunker. As the odd mushroom cloud climbs higher and higher, a line from the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu scripture, runs through his mind.

"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
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And so it came to pass that millions and millions of Japanese lives were spared; there was to be no invasion of the Japanese homeland by a slow and horrendous ground war. The Allied estimate of their own invasion casualties was revised downward from 4 million to zero.

In the end, out of great horror and still unspeakable death, came, for millions and millions, mercy of a sort.

But the genie is still out of the bottle.