Though it's not exactly the same thing as the list that I'm making up, it turns out that some people actually don't want to opt out of being killed by the state.
You see? When we have it all formalized with a list, governments can know who doesn't and who does want to be killed!
A blog by Silas Barta
Showing posts with label law. Show all posts
Showing posts with label law. Show all posts
Monday, October 17, 2011
Thursday, October 13, 2011
"Do Not Kill List" FAQ
To respond to some of the burning questions you all have about my new list, here are some answers:
What does being on the Do Not Kill List (DNKL) mean?
It means you have expressed your desire not to be subject to targeted killings by the US government or any of its contractors (i.e. that you've "opted out" of such programs the CIA one detailed by Reuters that is not subject to judicial review), preferring instead that, if the government believes you have committed a capital crime, it should apprehend you and pursue a criminal case in full accordance with your Constitutional rights, such as "habeus corpus", "due process", "right to counsel", "right against self-incrimination" and all other kinds of obscure stuff you might not have heard of.
Wait, is this official? Is the government actually going to abide by this?
Probably not. The idea is just to make sure some list of this type exists so that the government won't be able to pull a trick like, "oh, well, see, Mr. Doe didn't actually invoke his right against secret assassination, so we can assume he waived it".
Isn't this dangerous? Can't someone, like, break out the Uzi and start mowing down people, and then be like, "oh, oh, oh, look, my name's on the DNKL, you can't touch me!"?
No. This "opt-out" doesn't prevent the government from arresting you and prosecuting you to the full extent of the law, even if it were to abide by the list.
I was convicted of a grisly triple murder and sentenced to death. I was accorded full due process and have exhausted all appeals. I'm now set to be executed soon. Optimistically, will being on this list protect me from being executed?
No. The DNKL administration takes no position on current laws or punishments in the US, only on people's right to "opt-out" of government-sanctioned extrajudicial killings.
What does being on the Do Not Kill List (DNKL) mean?
It means you have expressed your desire not to be subject to targeted killings by the US government or any of its contractors (i.e. that you've "opted out" of such programs the CIA one detailed by Reuters that is not subject to judicial review), preferring instead that, if the government believes you have committed a capital crime, it should apprehend you and pursue a criminal case in full accordance with your Constitutional rights, such as "habeus corpus", "due process", "right to counsel", "right against self-incrimination" and all other kinds of obscure stuff you might not have heard of.
Wait, is this official? Is the government actually going to abide by this?
Probably not. The idea is just to make sure some list of this type exists so that the government won't be able to pull a trick like, "oh, well, see, Mr. Doe didn't actually invoke his right against secret assassination, so we can assume he waived it".
Isn't this dangerous? Can't someone, like, break out the Uzi and start mowing down people, and then be like, "oh, oh, oh, look, my name's on the DNKL, you can't touch me!"?
No. This "opt-out" doesn't prevent the government from arresting you and prosecuting you to the full extent of the law, even if it were to abide by the list.
I was convicted of a grisly triple murder and sentenced to death. I was accorded full due process and have exhausted all appeals. I'm now set to be executed soon. Optimistically, will being on this list protect me from being executed?
No. The DNKL administration takes no position on current laws or punishments in the US, only on people's right to "opt-out" of government-sanctioned extrajudicial killings.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Time for a "Do Not Kill" list?
In the wake of US citizen and al-Qaeda booster al-Awlaki's killing by drone, some have raised alarm about further targeted killings of US citizens (including Glenn Greenwald and my close, personal friend, Bob Murphy). And indeed, Reuters is now reporting that there are secret CIA kill lists of US citizens not subject to judicial reivew.
At this point, many people are wondering if they can have themselves removed from such a list (like al-Awlaki's father unsuccessfully tried to do). Well, a thought occurred to me: we have the Do Not Call list, right? Why not a "Do Not Kill List" so that you can let your government know you want to opt out of its targeted killing program, and would prefer, in the case of suspicion of capital crimes, you be given a public trial instead, and then only killed if found guilty or something.
Since no one else seems to have started this yet, I figured I'd give it a go. Personally, I want to opt out of being killed (I'm a big fan of trials), so I'll be first on the list. While I'm not sure about the legal niceties, I don't want my family killed either (though it depends on the day in the case of my brother ...), so I'm going to add them to the list too. Here's the Do Not Kill List as it stands now:
Do Not Kill List (opt-out for CIA targeted killing program)
1. Silas Barta
2. Silas Barta's family
3. John Salvatier (aka jsalvati), added 10/11/11
4. Robert P. Murphy (yes, this RPM), added 10/11/11 (woo-hoo! up to six people on the list!)
5. Aurini's family, added 10/12/11
6. commenter "Rob", added 10/16/11
7. Jayson Virissimo, added 10/16/11
8. Matthew Graves
9. Joseph Fetz
10. Doctor Squirrel
11. Carlos M. Rivera, added 11/8/11
Doesn't take a lot of memory to store as of this moment. I'm thinking of expanding it in the future so that it has more specific identification of persons -- say, pairing a given person with their Social Security number and/or email so that you won't have some goofy "Sarah Connor/Terminator 1" moment where you kill the wrong person because they have the same name. (Don't worry, the entries will be hashed to prevent abuse.)
Please contact me, either by email or in the comments, if you want to be on the list.
UPDATE: An FAQ on this is now up.
At this point, many people are wondering if they can have themselves removed from such a list (like al-Awlaki's father unsuccessfully tried to do). Well, a thought occurred to me: we have the Do Not Call list, right? Why not a "Do Not Kill List" so that you can let your government know you want to opt out of its targeted killing program, and would prefer, in the case of suspicion of capital crimes, you be given a public trial instead, and then only killed if found guilty or something.
Since no one else seems to have started this yet, I figured I'd give it a go. Personally, I want to opt out of being killed (I'm a big fan of trials), so I'll be first on the list. While I'm not sure about the legal niceties, I don't want my family killed either (though it depends on the day in the case of my brother ...), so I'm going to add them to the list too. Here's the Do Not Kill List as it stands now:
Do Not Kill List (opt-out for CIA targeted killing program)
1. Silas Barta
2. Silas Barta's family
3. John Salvatier (aka jsalvati), added 10/11/11
4. Robert P. Murphy (yes, this RPM), added 10/11/11 (woo-hoo! up to six people on the list!)
5. Aurini's family, added 10/12/11
6. commenter "Rob", added 10/16/11
7. Jayson Virissimo, added 10/16/11
8. Matthew Graves
9. Joseph Fetz
10. Doctor Squirrel
11. Carlos M. Rivera, added 11/8/11
Doesn't take a lot of memory to store as of this moment. I'm thinking of expanding it in the future so that it has more specific identification of persons -- say, pairing a given person with their Social Security number and/or email so that you won't have some goofy "Sarah Connor/Terminator 1" moment where you kill the wrong person because they have the same name. (Don't worry, the entries will be hashed to prevent abuse.)
Please contact me, either by email or in the comments, if you want to be on the list.
UPDATE: An FAQ on this is now up.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
How to get Silas interested in Barbie dolls
Because of that whole heterosexuality[1] thing, I've never been interested in Barbie dolls. But I have been interested in the path of American industry and innovation, and where that intersects with Barbie dolls, you've got me hooked.
The big story today is that Mattel, the maker of Barbie, won a smaller-than-expected judgment against MGA, maker of the rival Bratz dolls.
It's a sad story, MGA having to pay damages, but becoming all too common. As the author of the story, Charles Payne, puts it:
What happened in this particular case was that a designer at Mattel came up with an idea for a new kind of doll. Mattel didn't like it, so he went to work for another company that was actually competent enough to see the merit therein, MGA. So then Mattel, seeing their stupidity play out in the Bratz dolls' success, sued on the grounds that well, since the designer developed it under them, some contract gives Mattel rights in it. Except that -- oops -- they couldn't substantiate a case against the designer, and dropped it.
So Mattel's attitude basically comes down to: we deserve all of the reward and none of the risk, and we'll sue you rather than produce innovative products. (For what it's worth, I volunteer at an intermediate school [4th-6th grade, 9-13 year olds], and I've only seen Bratz-themed products, never Barbie.) And keep in mind, it takes quite a bit of innovation and guts to compete with Barbie in the doll market, one in which the buyers want to have what all the other buyers already have. Let alone compete well!
Payne is right: more and more often we see such clowns in charge of big corporations. At American car companies who lose boatloads of money and are valued at a sliver of their foreign competition. ("Honda is an engineering company, GM is a marketing company.") At financial companies that made billions in bad loans based on questionable models. The list goes on and on. When will America get its competitive edge back?
I don't know, but in the mean time, I'll make sure my money with those who deserve it. Today, I finally took the plunge and cast my vote of no confidence in the future of American business (and inability to pay back debts) by shifting my S&P 500 investments to an international stock mutual fund.
[1] Not that the opposite would constitute a valid basis for criticism.
The big story today is that Mattel, the maker of Barbie, won a smaller-than-expected judgment against MGA, maker of the rival Bratz dolls.
It's a sad story, MGA having to pay damages, but becoming all too common. As the author of the story, Charles Payne, puts it:
I write about the deteriorating competitive nature of American businesses... Mattel makes for a great case study in corporate compliancy and hubris. ... At some point, a bell has got to ring. Our largest businesses have to be willing to truly innovate, to find genuinely new ways to get things done. Wall Street was greedy and complacent, and couldn't back away from the trough of easy money.
What happened in this particular case was that a designer at Mattel came up with an idea for a new kind of doll. Mattel didn't like it, so he went to work for another company that was actually competent enough to see the merit therein, MGA. So then Mattel, seeing their stupidity play out in the Bratz dolls' success, sued on the grounds that well, since the designer developed it under them, some contract gives Mattel rights in it. Except that -- oops -- they couldn't substantiate a case against the designer, and dropped it.
So Mattel's attitude basically comes down to: we deserve all of the reward and none of the risk, and we'll sue you rather than produce innovative products. (For what it's worth, I volunteer at an intermediate school [4th-6th grade, 9-13 year olds], and I've only seen Bratz-themed products, never Barbie.) And keep in mind, it takes quite a bit of innovation and guts to compete with Barbie in the doll market, one in which the buyers want to have what all the other buyers already have. Let alone compete well!
Payne is right: more and more often we see such clowns in charge of big corporations. At American car companies who lose boatloads of money and are valued at a sliver of their foreign competition. ("Honda is an engineering company, GM is a marketing company.") At financial companies that made billions in bad loans based on questionable models. The list goes on and on. When will America get its competitive edge back?
I don't know, but in the mean time, I'll make sure my money with those who deserve it. Today, I finally took the plunge and cast my vote of no confidence in the future of American business (and inability to pay back debts) by shifting my S&P 500 investments to an international stock mutual fund.
[1] Not that the opposite would constitute a valid basis for criticism.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Your taste for alcoholic beverages is a lie
UPDATE: I perform this blog post on my YouTube site.
I've previously blogged about my non-addiction to alcohol, and inability to taste its greatness. It has long perplexed me how people can get so hyped up about how this or that beer or wine has this or that subtlety in its taste that makes it so enjoyable and the best drink you could ever possibly have. And, at the same time, I have accepted, with open arms, the claim that certain people like alcohol because of its psychoactive effects, like "relaxation" and drunkenness.
I've long held the theory that people only make these claims about the super-awesome taste of alcoholic beverages as a pretense for their desire to get drunk (or relaxed, etc.), and I've been roundly ridiculed for it. However, unlike socially-mandated beliefs that people readily admit are garbage in private, people actually claim, in private, to enjoy the taste of their favorite alcoholic drinks and, amazingly, retain that belief to arbitrarily deep levels of "belief in belief" recursion. They see no sense in which they are faking.
But now, I have cracked the code. I know how to get people to recognize their own self-deception about the supposed greatness of the taste of their favorite wine or beer. It goes like this: if you genuinely enjoy the taste of your favorite alcoholic drink, then you should still want to drink it more than any cheapo kiddie drink, even if all it has is the taste -- that is, if it no longer had the psychoactive effects.
So, I did a quick sample among the co-workers of mine who have claimed to, like, seriously, I promise, be wine or beer connoisseurs and are perplexed at how there could be no alcoholic beverages that I like the taste of. I asked them the following question:
Every single one of them preferred the milkshake -- even the one beating down the door to get me to start liking wine. And I strongly suspect (and would like to test) that this holds across the general population as well.
The upshot is that I'm right: that the whole practice of rating and having a taste for alcholic drinks is one big sham, and people have extraordinary abilities to deceive themselves on the issue -- they are completely oblivious to the lie they are telling, well beyond the obliviousness they can show on any other issue.
So what would make people put on such an act? Simple: they need a rationale to convince legislatures not to ban alcoholic drinks, as they ban every single other mind-altering substance. They need to show how it's a "tradition", how it's "cultured", how it's a fundamental part of our society, how oh oh oh, I just gotta have my glass of wine with dinner, it's just so mature of me. And the crazy thing is, from my perspective, they don't even need these rationales. As I see it, your decision to drink alcohol is between you and your god (or Dionysus, as the case may be). Even if the most extreme claims about the dangers of drugs are correct, that would at best justify restricting their use to highly monitored "padded room" equivalents in which such consumption can take place, not outright banning.
And to top it all of, I bet the response I'm going to get to this post is a big, "Duh. Now shut up about it."
So, I find myself asking this question yet again: is the world crazy, or just me?
I've previously blogged about my non-addiction to alcohol, and inability to taste its greatness. It has long perplexed me how people can get so hyped up about how this or that beer or wine has this or that subtlety in its taste that makes it so enjoyable and the best drink you could ever possibly have. And, at the same time, I have accepted, with open arms, the claim that certain people like alcohol because of its psychoactive effects, like "relaxation" and drunkenness.
I've long held the theory that people only make these claims about the super-awesome taste of alcoholic beverages as a pretense for their desire to get drunk (or relaxed, etc.), and I've been roundly ridiculed for it. However, unlike socially-mandated beliefs that people readily admit are garbage in private, people actually claim, in private, to enjoy the taste of their favorite alcoholic drinks and, amazingly, retain that belief to arbitrarily deep levels of "belief in belief" recursion. They see no sense in which they are faking.
But now, I have cracked the code. I know how to get people to recognize their own self-deception about the supposed greatness of the taste of their favorite wine or beer. It goes like this: if you genuinely enjoy the taste of your favorite alcoholic drink, then you should still want to drink it more than any cheapo kiddie drink, even if all it has is the taste -- that is, if it no longer had the psychoactive effects.
So, I did a quick sample among the co-workers of mine who have claimed to, like, seriously, I promise, be wine or beer connoisseurs and are perplexed at how there could be no alcoholic beverages that I like the taste of. I asked them the following question:
Assume that alcoholic drinks had no psychoactive effects whatsoever: that they don't make you relax, or open up, or get drunk, anything like that. And assume no drink has any impact on your body either, including health (such as making you fat). That is, assume all that there is to a drink is its taste. Then, comparing on taste only, would you rather have your favorite alcoholic drink, or a milkshake?
Every single one of them preferred the milkshake -- even the one beating down the door to get me to start liking wine. And I strongly suspect (and would like to test) that this holds across the general population as well.
The upshot is that I'm right: that the whole practice of rating and having a taste for alcholic drinks is one big sham, and people have extraordinary abilities to deceive themselves on the issue -- they are completely oblivious to the lie they are telling, well beyond the obliviousness they can show on any other issue.
So what would make people put on such an act? Simple: they need a rationale to convince legislatures not to ban alcoholic drinks, as they ban every single other mind-altering substance. They need to show how it's a "tradition", how it's "cultured", how it's a fundamental part of our society, how oh oh oh, I just gotta have my glass of wine with dinner, it's just so mature of me. And the crazy thing is, from my perspective, they don't even need these rationales. As I see it, your decision to drink alcohol is between you and your god (or Dionysus, as the case may be). Even if the most extreme claims about the dangers of drugs are correct, that would at best justify restricting their use to highly monitored "padded room" equivalents in which such consumption can take place, not outright banning.
And to top it all of, I bet the response I'm going to get to this post is a big, "Duh. Now shut up about it."
So, I find myself asking this question yet again: is the world crazy, or just me?
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