Assad didn't brutalise the opposition, the simple fact of the matter is that he has overwhelming majority support. The people that are fucking his country up are demonstrably foreign mercenaries in the pay of Britain, the United States, France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar.

sources: plenty of contacts on the ground who are living it, not the BBC, Fox, CNN or Reuters. What they aren't showing is buzzcut ex-army regulars using CIA terminology and training to great effect while passing instructions to each other in English, French, and Turkish. Why? Because it not only doesn't suit the agenda (whatever that might be) of those with plausible interests in the region, it would in fact further damage already salted international relations.

However, I will absolutely and unreservedly agree that in a perfect world a peaceful solution to any crisis results in a better outcome for all concerned. Unfortunately, this is far from being a perfect world, and as a result of corporate interests and to a lesser but still significant extent, ever more demanding tribal competition for the biggest portion of a finite supply of everything, people can and do die in the most horrible ways imaginable; the truth belongs to those who shout the loudest (the facts will never be known beyond the fact that people have died as a result of the deployment of some very nasty weapons), and if history records that Assad deployed those weapons even if he didn't, tomorrow we'll have as much a distorted view of today's events as we have today of events of a mere seventy years ago in Eastern Europe.

two words:

Arab Spring.

Star Chambers were abolished in 1641 - in the United States as well, since at that time the United States was but a colony.

Ergo, any secret courts are unlawful and that unlawfulness predates the Constitution.

your country didn't betray you, *your Government did*.

Love your country. Fight tyranny. In all its forms.

Defend your Constitution against all enemies, *foreign and domestic*.

Try 6,627 years. But, point taken.

(from what I remember in school, the oldest writings are in Mandarin and date back to what is essentially the dawn of recorded history, specific dating using current calendar system gives us a start date of January 1 4613BCE).

Failure to act on an awareness of a treasonous act is an offence, it is known as misprision.
Failure to comply with an unlawful order, instruction or request is not treason. It shows the highest respect for the Law.
Refusal to comply with an order from a Government agency which has time and again showed itself to be self-appointed superjudicial is entirely in keeping with one of the oldest Constitutional documents in existence, one which like it or not, citizens and Government of the United States are still subject to: Magna Carta. Specifically, clause 61, which in a small nutshell obligates any individual or group who are aware of the unlawfulness of a Law or Statute to disobey that Law or Statute and to seek redress.

Isn't the very fact of recent disclosures by the US Government (to whit; that they are giving aid and comfort to the Enemy - by their own definition, elements of al Qaeda "known" to be working alongside Syrian rebels), an overt admission of treason?

Or is that a vexation, to be ignored by the Judicial branch?

hate to tell you this, but lack of a piece of paper is no physical barrier to sitting behind a steering wheel, putting pressure on the clutch and turning the key.

in English Law, there is a common clause in most Statutes that holds company directors equally and personally liable for ANY violations that occur within or provably on behalf of the company. The situation described in this article would not serve as an example, but here's one that would:

A company has an employee who drives a company car. Said employee causes an incident while driving under the influence of a controlled substance. Said incident causes fatalities. For the sake of argument, he is charged and convicted with negligent manslaughter. Guess what? Since he did it with the company car, on company time, the Director of the company is held equally liable and is also charged and convicted with negligent manslaughter as if he himself was at the wheel. See how that works yet?

It stems from the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, where the phrase "I was only following orders" didn't get SS guards or Gestapo officers - or their superiors, who may or may not have even been present at a single execution - off of death sentences.

oh, you're already at +5, I'd've given you all my mod points if I hadn't already commented.

could the parents not fucking READ?? That's called parental negligence, not some creep in a trenchcoat handing out snake egg magnets at the school gates and daring the little darlings to swallow them!

No, I'll tell you what'll follow: Colt Arms, Smith & Wesson and BSA subjected to class action lawsuits following incidents in which tools made by them have been directly implicated in fatalities. Ford Motor company, General Motors and Hyundai getting the same treatment. Cold Steel and Stanley as well following people getting shanked with Bowies and boxcutters. Stihl and McCulloch getting sued after some arse in Arkansas decides it might be a good idea to ignore the safety advice printed on the bar and attempt to stop the fucking thing with his scrotum.

This shit might sound ridiculous, but this is the way you're advocating. THAT, to me, sounds utterly fucking batshit insane.

ok, try this for a thought experiment: you can prove the Earth is round by drawing a straight chalk line behind you as you walk, Eventually you'll come across the start of your chalk line after walking some 24,859-24,901 miles.

Is the Universe flat or curved?

Take the thought experiment I described in my last post, and carry it on until you either:
  - hit the edge of the Universe (you could be a while if the Universe is both flat and infinite)

or:

- meet the first point on your line.

If the second condition is met, that's proof that the Universe is both curved and finite in the same way that chalking a straight line on Earth until it meets itself describes the edge of the section, ie the circumference, proving the Earth is round.

dunno, but there is a seesaw effect still in play in Western Europe; the most dramatic effect is seen along the length of mainland Britain. While Scotland is still rising after spending a while under a couple miles of ice, the South of England is sinking as it was largely ice-free during the last big freeze. The phenomenon is slow, it's taking a few thousand years for a complete oscillation, but geological evidence suggests that prior to the last ice age, the North Sea was bone dry (being several hundred metres above sea level!). It won't be very many hundreds of years before Loch Ness is physically isolated from the sea at either end and becomes a fully enclosed high saltwater lake!

I keep forgetting to add - the regulations here require that a bus bar is equipped with overcurrent trips and ground leakage AKA Residual Current Devices, which trip in the event of a L-N or L-E short, neutralising the circuit. So if you drill a buried cable, there'll be a L-E short and the RCD will trip, killing the entire circuit. L-N shorts are more likely to occur within appliance casings, for example a transformer going into meltdown. In most cases, this will blow the appliance fuse as well as tripping the overcurrent switch, which in turn will (depending on the design, sometimes an OCD and RCD are cointegrated devices, otherwise there is just one OCD - the main bus switch) either kill just the circuit or the entire bus.