The Glade 4.0

Ok, in some cases it's supposedly "impossible", whichh is absurd; if the parents can't be located there are points of contact with the authorities. If it "takes too long" that does to exactly what I just said about not having their **** together. How long does it take to fill out some forms and sign them? Even if it takes a few hours, that's not very long; if the kid is going to die based on the delay it takes to get the parents to fill out and sign paperwork their chances of survival weren't that good to begin with.

Yes, in a crisis some normal procedures may need to be set aside. Procedures that account for people's whereabouts, especially children, however, are not one of those things.

As for "Had I watched the video", that's how I knew that all this crap about this incident slowing down flights was "a theory" and it's also how I knew the military wasn't having problems. Next time you want to claim someone hasn't watched or read something it might behoove you to watch or read it yourself so when they cite things it mentions you won't make claims that they didn't watch it and look like a gigantic jackass.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

You'll never get me to agree that detaining people for some prospective reason is agreeable from a civil-rights perspective. I don't believe in prospective crimes.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

All crimes are prospective crimes until guilt is determined.

In any case, this is in Haiti. Evidently, they have a different investigational procedure where the judge actually does some of the investigation.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Not at all.

Murder is a retrospective crime, in that someone is dead.

Speeding is a prospective crime, in that no harm has occurred.



I'm sure this may be true. That doesn't change the fact that I find holding people for things that haven't happened to be "nefarious."

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

In that case, there's nothing wrong at all with prosepective crimes. I should also point out that people don't generally get arrested for speeding; they get tickets. Not only that, but you can't say tht harm hasn't occured; there may or may not have been an accident when a speeding ticket is issued (or any other traffic violation)



Not sure what to tell you. They evidently don't think so. Americans who go there should expect them to enforce their laws. I suppose we could take the place over with the troops we have there, but that seems a poor choice in terms of cost-benefit.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The children were taken. That happened. And that was a crime, under the law. An investigation was staged to find out why they were taken, and whether to proceed with prosecution (if the child-takers simply acted with extremely poor judgment), or if the intent to enter the children into child trafficking was there.

What's the problem with this? I'm really trying to process that some people actually think it's proper to go into a foreign country, take children with no authorization or paperwork, and attempt to leave the country with them. For damn good reasons, there are check and balances in place. Why is the Haitian government expected to simply take the word of foreigners? Simply because they're Americans? "We're just there to help...by moving your children to another country...no, no, we only have the best intentions at heart." The Haitians have acted far more rationally and properly than the Americans in this, from all verifiable accounts.

I'm merely using that as an example of a prospective crime. It is not the be-all and end-all of the definition.

There's certainly something wrong with a prospective crime: harm hasn't occurred.



Oh, I'm not saying following the law is a bad thing. Doing so is not only in one's best interest, it is often in the greater interest of your organization. What I'm simply saying is that "nefarious" is subjective, and I don't agree with you and Farsky branding it is "not nefarious."

Some of us don't believe that having not-harmed people should be illegal.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Agreed. Just because they choose not to prosecute doesn't mean that the law wasn't broken. Oh, and procedural ignorance is not an excuse for breaking it.

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Or you could have watched a bit and tuned out, which is what I suspect. Besides, as to "takes too long", who is to blame? Those who are trying to get documentation, or bureaucrats who take forever to dot i's and cross t's?

Children are dying (as the video points out) and you're defending a system that is allowing it. I know who the gigantic jackass is, and it ain't me.

Given that it's the law, an extremely reasonable one, and in place for the protection of the defenseless, I'd say that any "branding" that's occurring here is on the "nefarious" side, not the opposite.

If I try to bring my own children across the border into the USA without proper identification and paperwork, I will be detained. I may not have committed a crime, but they'll certainly investigate to ensure that I haven't, and there's no way I'm getting across the border.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Unless it's strict liability, this isn't true.

I won't go into how I feel about strict liability laws in depth, suffice to say that I have beef with them too.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Breaking the law is a crime, whether it is willful or ignorant is a mitigating circumstance. It can mean the difference between murder and manslaughter for example (if I understand the statute correctly) but in either case it is a crime.

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We had this discussion on the forum not that long ago.

Mens rea is a vital element of a crime, and one hasn't occurred without it. If you don't, or can't (due to the complexity of the law) understand that what you're doing is a crime, that law is unsupportable.

Unfortunately, most prosecutors bully people into deals even on crimes without mens rea, even if those would likely not result in a conviction or be overturned on appeal. Usually because it'd take less of your life away to just deal than to fight it.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

I am familiar with mens rea, but it cannot be used to protest guilt unless a reasonable person would be similarly ignorant of the law. For example I cannot abduct someone off the street and state I didn't know it was a crime and walk away. That is why we have a jury system because everyone could simply plead ignorance and you cannot disprove that defense.

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Well sure, but abducting someone from the street is clear mens rea for any number of reasons.

It doesn't change the fact that "ignorance of the law isn't a defense" is not a correct statement, in absolute.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Things keep looking better, maybe they'll be coming home soon:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,585428,00.html

2 weeks or more of their lives lost, because they tried to help. Oh, well.

There's a difference as well between "ignorance of the law" and "intent to break that law." For instance, you are not guilty of trespassing if you are hit by a car and pushed onto private property. Even if you know the law, you generally are not guilty of breaking it if you did not intend to break it and were not in some way negligent so as to result in accidentally breaking it. If you cannot reasonably have expected that a given action would result in your accidentally breaking the law, you are not guilty of it.

Not that that relates to the child-trafficking.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

What bureaucrats? What dotting of i's and crossing of t's? You're just assuming that's what's going on.

As for a system "allowing" children to die, yes, I'm defending that. It's a major earthquake. Some children are going to die. That is not an excuse to expose others to kidnapping.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

This. Exactly this.

As well, consider how this all plays out a few months, or even a few years down the line. Suppose that they had been successful in removing the children to the Dominican Republic sans any form of authorization, documentation, or identification. By multiple accounts, many of the children weren't even old enough to talk. Under those circumstances, how can the missionaries be certain that they were even truly orphaned, and not just separated from their parents in the chaos? Of course, they can't. And no one expects them to be able to, either. But if they're taken to some kind of local shelter, that's the best chance they have of being reunited with their parents. Or, failing that, it's the best way to determine that they truly are orphaned and need some kind of long-term care.

Similarly, for those who were given by their parents to the missionaries, are the missionaries certain that all parties fully understood the logistics (and permanence) of the arrangement? Did they speak French and the local Haitian Creole dialects and did they understand the local cultural framework well enough that they can be certain nothing was "lost in translation"? And moreover, were these parents even in any sort of condition (mentally and practically) to be making these kinds of permanent decisions about their children? I understand that the missionaries had good intent, but duress is still duress. Asking someone to permanently cede their parental rights in the middle of a disaster is hardly fair, IMHO.

Once the children are removed to the Dominican Republic, it raises a host of practical issues. Suppose that 6 months or a year from now, some of the parents are in a better position to care for their children again. Suppose that they (quite understandably) want to "renege" on this agreement (which, since it was done illegally, has no real legal status) and get their children back. Maybe you're not aware that relations between Haiti and the Dominican Republic are rather tepid, at best. The DR wants no part of Haiti's poverty and social problems. As I understand it, the borders are less than open. The DR has, since the beginning of this, denied even temporary immigration by Haitian refugees. Even supposing that the parents could establish their relation to their children across the border (difficult, if not impossible, due once again to lack of any kind of documentation or paperwork), it may very well be impossible for them to do anything about it. Once their children are on the DR side of the border, they're at the mercy of a foreign government that is known to be less than sympathetic to their plight.

And this doesn't even begin to scratch all of the legal issues of citizenship, etc. that would have been created. Remember that they failed to obtain authorization from either government -- not just the Haitian government. Which should make you question whether it would really have been possible for this orphanage in the DR to provide long-term care for these children. Since the children were there illegally according to the Dominican Republic, what do you think might happen when they were finally discovered there? Given the DR's policy towards Haitian refugees so far, the most likely answer is that they would be deported back to Haiti, where it's anyone's guess whether they'd be cared for or not.

But, you know, ... just keep making snide comments about "trains" whilst simultaneously and quite deliberately ignoring every bit of real argument and analysis that disagrees with yours. And keep telling me what I think, and that I'm "against" missionaries and little children. I probably hate kittens, rainbows, and babies, too.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Not "because they tried to help." No other agents of aid have been detained, particularly not because they were aiding Haitians. These people lost "2 weeks or more of their lives" because they exercised exceptionally poor judgment and broke the law. Now they're being released, it appears, which is good. But being detained was the only rational response to taking Haitian children from the country without verifiable authorization.

How would you feel if someone took Coren when he was young, and was able to remove him from the country because the border guards took it at face value when the person who took him told them "He's not my child, and I'm removing him from the country, but it's OK, I'm just helping?" I don't believe these people were attempting to steal children, or sell them. I think they were probably possessed of good intentions, and many of the children were taken from parents who couldn't care for them anymore. But there's no way to make what they did into a defensible position, if you're looking to protect a vast number of other children.

Are you assuming any less?

Children are going to die in a natural disaster. But when children die and it was preventable, the death due to inaction? There is no defense for that, hiding behind rules be damned.

That's not a problem. Placing people at unreasonable and/or unnecessary risk of harm is more than sufficient. Yes, you can wait until after the harm has occured and then prosecute, but then the harm has already occured, and in the case of many crimes, remedy is really not possible. In this particular situation, any children that fall victim to human traffikers will be difficult, if not impossible to recover even if the traffikers are eventually caught (I'm talking about the earthquake in general, not the specific situation of these fools from Idaho.) It's clearly better to prevent as much traffiking as possible in the first place than simply wait till it happens.

Some prospective crimes are bad law, that much is true, but each should be evaluated on its own merits.



It's not not-harming that's illegal.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Yes, I'm assuming a lot less. Haiti's government is deep in the throes of a major disaster; I find it hard to believe there are more than token bureaucratic obstacles.

On the other hand, you're pointing to this supposed drop in evacuations since the incident. Evidently people are now not leaving without documentation which means the people that didn't get out on the now nonexistant flights probably din't have that documentation, which means in turn no one bothered to obtain it.

Taken in conjunction with the military's continued flights (because I really don't think the military wants the PR disaster of taking children out of Haiti improperly) no, I'm not assuming anywhere near what you are. I'm drawing a logical conclusion based on the whole.



It's not hiding behind the rules; and yes, the fact that children must be protected from kidnapping is a defense for that. The fact that you think otherwise is reprehensible.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Why? Because for all intents and purposes, private agencies getting children out of Haiti who need urgent medical attention has virtually shut down, from 10-15 per day down to maybe half a dozen in the last 2 weeks. Unless they can get on a gov't plane, they are staying there and dying, when the death is preventable. That's the legacy of the Haitian officials detaining those missionaries: dead children who could have been helped.