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Search: self-defense

03 Dec

...diplomats may respond to WikiLeaks’ disclosures by self-censoring and by avoiding written communications. But it is difficult to believe that WikiLeaks will have any significant or lasting effect on the US’s ability to engage in diplomacy with friendly or unfriendly governments; after all, this is hardly the first time in U.S. history that diplomatic secrets have been disclosed. Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defense, said it best a couple of days ago: Let me just offer some perspective as somebody who’s been at this a long time. Every other government...
03.12.10 | |

01 Nov

...Judy Garland), in violation of Nazi racial purity laws. When the prosecutor (played by Richard Widmark) introduces the footage of the Nazi death camps, it prompts an emotional and eloquent objection from Janning’s defense counsel (played by Maximillian Schell, who won a best actor Oscar for his performance). Janning accuses the prosecution of trying to implicate Janning—and by necessity, the German people as a whole—in the full horrors of the Holocaust without any evidence connecting them to the mass exterminations. That the film gives such an important role to defense...
01.11.23 | |

19 Jan

Samuel Morison, Appellate Defense Counsel with the Office of the Chief Defense Counsel, Department of Defense, has posted a superb new esssay on SSRN entitled “Accepting Sosa‘s Invitation: Did Congress Expand the Subject Matter Jurisdiction of the ATS in the Military Commissions Act?” Here is the abstract: The Alien Tort Statute (ATS) provides a federal forum for aliens to seek tort damages for certain violations of customary international law, including war crimes. In Sosa, the Supreme Court admonished the lower courts to exercise caution when creating new causes of action...
19.01.12 | |

30 Nov

...— Saddam’s former Defense Minister — secretly assisted Kurdish efforts to overthrow Saddam: “Personally, I will not support executing Sultan Hashim,” he said at a news conference in Sulaimaniyah, a city in the autonomous Kurdish region 160 miles northeast of Baghdad. “If the court will carry out its verdicts without referring them to the presidency council that is something else,” he said. “But if they will refer them, then we will register reservations these verdicts.” He said the reservations would include executing former Iraqi army officers because many of them...
30.11.07 | |

20 Mar

Indian defense ministry’s annual air show. Do you: (a) buy expensive gifts for New Delhi’s generals; (b) treat the press to Kingfishers and samosas; (c) produce a Bollywood-esque video featuring bare-midriff girls, flower-draped missiles, and the catch phrase “dinga dinga dee?” Unfortunately for us, Israeli arms-maker Rafael chose C. Which means we may have just found the most atrocious defense video of all time… I don’t know if there’s a real substantive point here. Who am I fooling? I don’t have a substantive point here. Just check out the video....
20.03.09 | |

17 Dec

Steve testified yesterday about WikiLeaks in front of the House Judiciary Committee. Here is a snippet of his testimony, which discussed five major flaws in the Espionage Act: Second, the Espionage Act does not focus solely on the initial party who wrongfully discloses national defense information, but applies, in its terms, to anyone who knowingly disseminates, distributes, or even retains national defense information without immediately returning the material to the government officer authorized to possess it. In other words, the text of the Act draws no distinction between the leaker,...
17.12.10 | |

17 May

...to annhilate something half a world away? As the article noted, these very costly programs would only represent a minute upgrade in capacity over what we can do now with cruise missiles. Somehow I just think that the DoD should come up with better ways to spend the money...like missile defense, cruise missile defense, improved UAV's, something that makes multi-billion dollar cruisers able to defend themselves against tiny boats packed with explosives, etc.But of course, my impression could be a result of the bias of the NYT, so I guess...
17.05.05 | |

16 Jun

unable to disclose more than 200 potentially-exculpatory documents not only to the defense, but even to the Trial Chamber itself: 64. The prosecution is unable to disclose any of these items of evidence to the accused, in full or in a redacted form. Furthermore, save for a limited number of documents (32) that have been supplied to the Chamber by six unidentified information-providers in redacted form, the prosecution (given the terms of the agreements) is unable to show them to the Chamber. This is because the information-providers do not consent...
16.06.08 | |