Far too rare in this thread!

This is from a friend who has studied the subject. I find his conclusions challenging

'All countries are bound by the Hague conventions (according to the signatories, 'including the US, UK and France), regardless of whether their enemies or they themselves have signed them. This was stated explicitly, and justified by stating that they were the minimum standards for the conduct of war among "civilised peoples" and so anyone could and should be punished for failing to meet them.

'The Geneva conventions, on the other hand, only apply in wars between countries that are signatories, or in civil wars within a signatory country, or in situations where one country is a signatory and their enemy states an intention to be bound by them (which has them treated as a signatory for the purpose of that war) or between two countries that both state such an intention.

'The nuclear bombs, since they were known to be killing civilians going about civilian business, were contrary to both the Hauge and Geneva conventions.

'Other agreements also exist such as limitations on the use of chemical weapons, the London treaty governing the conduct of war at sea (unless that has been overridden now, I'm not certain) and various other things. For the most part, they are generally considered only to apply to signatories and often only in wars against other signatories, however as we showed at Nuremburg, silly little details like whether there was actually a law against a thing at the time, whether a person was, in fact, bound by said law, whether they did the thing they are accused of and whether they are fit to stand trial are largely irrelevant to the administration of "justice" in international law.
The decision to set off a nuclear bomb in a major city was a definite decision to kill civilians who were fulfilling their obligations as civilians under the Hague conventions. If international law had meant anything, the people who carried out the bombing and the people who ordered it would have been hanged for it. Whether it saved lives or not later is irrelevant, since the civilians weren't threatening those lives. As irrelevant as if you were to murder someone tomorrow and claim that if you didn't, then in twenty years they would end up spreading a contagious disease that would kill a hundred people.

'In general, I do not accept the argument that I can do an immoral thing now based on my belief that it will prevent an immoral thing from happening later, especially when the supposed immoral thing in the future is
1.yet to be decided
2. not to be done by the victims of my immoral act

'Regardless of whether you believe in the moral principle that you could kill those civilians for the purpose of preventing more deaths later, anyone who proclaims to believe in international law, uses it as a tool to kill off people he dislikes but claims that he isn't bound by it because his actions are pragmatic is a hypocrite as well as being all of the things he claims to hate. Likewise anyone who claims to believe in such a moral principle and then punishes others for applying equivalent moral principles is both a hypocrite and a moral vacuum.
(I'm not making an equivalence here with the concentration camps, obviously, but many German officers were prosecuted after the war for technical violations of the Geneva and Hague conventions that were carried out for humanitarian reasons that are far more obviously sound than saying that murdering these 10,000 people saved 100,000 other people later)

'Note that while an invasion of the Japanese mainland may well have resulted in more civilian deaths, the Emperor of Japan could have chosen to surrender anyway, preventing those deaths. Furthermore, the main reason a lot of Japanese civilians were dying at the time is because the US was already targeting them with a similar genocidal campaign as had been waged earlier against the German civilian population. Finally, expected civilian deaths during an actual invasion would likely have been from civilians actually acting as part of a sort of Japanese home guard, choosing to fight as soldiers. While you may argue that there is no distinction, I think that if they have chosen to fight, then there is a distinction between them and people who were killed simply for living in a major city.

'Oh, and if you object to "genocidal" I would point out that bomber command had the stated aim of "dehousing" the German population. By bombing their houses. In the middle of the night. While they were sleeping there.'

I trotted out the usual argument about how many lives the nukes saved, and a friend who has actually studied international law argues that the constraints on behaviour imposed by the Geneva conventions are assumed to be about what civilised nations regard as acceptable. On that definition the nukes were criminally illegal.

1) 'The Post Office' and 'Royal Mail' were once a single unit, with a telecoms unit stuck on that was sold off, as British Telecom, in the first round of privitisations under Thatcher in the 1980s. Then later Royal Mail, the delivery service, was separated and also privitised, leaving the Post Office still in state hands. This runs main Post Offices, doing the things listed, and what is in effect a network of franchises run by 'sub-postmaster' doing those things but in the context of a shop also doing other things; think of a counter in a convenience store. This means that it will be the taxpayer paying out the compensation to the wrongly accused sub-post masters, though there is some hope that the computer firm responsible for Horizon may end up paying a lot of the cost.

2) The appalling software error of the Horizon project resulted in sub post masters being charged with fraud because money that the system claimed had been paid in at the counter wasn't there when the auditors came round. This is not a new problem; the post office in the village I grew up in had that problem, for real, some 50 years ago. Particular features of the scandal were:

a) The law didn't allow the data from the computer system to be challenged at the trial
b) People who pleaded 'guilty' at the trial didn't receive a custodial sentence, resulting in a strong incentive to do so even if not guilty.
c) The Post Office, as an arm of the state, was indeed in charge of the prosecutions. This is part tradition and part due to the fact that private prosecutions - i.e. not the state but a private individual - are still a possibility in the UK criminal justice system. They are however very rare, and sometimes result in the state 'taking over' the prosecution and shutting it down when it is judged to be unreasonable.

3) Monetary bail is still a possibility in the UK but is almost never resorted to. So we don't have the US' system of bail bondsmen tracking down those who fail to attend court. This recognises the fact that the average criminal is unlikely to have assets worth seizing.

4) The usual rule is that a guilty plea at the earliest opportunity - usually defined as at the time of arrest - attracts a one third discount on your sentence; later in the process gets a smaller discount. The prosecution presents all the information to the judge when there is a guilty plea, along with a assessment from a probation officer. This may include a statement that the offender helped ensure others were also implicated. The defence also presents its case. The judge is free to make any decision they want, though there are strict guidelines about what an offence will usually get. There is no explicit bargain available. Of course prosecutors may charge with a lesser offence when a more heinous one might also match the situation.

Facial recognition technology has been proven repeatedly to be discriminatory against communities of colour and will further entrench racism within policing (Met police to more than double use of live facial recognition, 31 July).

It has been known to lead to misidentification and the risk of wrongful arrest, as we saw in the reporting this week on the case of Shaun Thompson. It’s also known to be less accurate in scanning the faces of people of colour, so using it to target attenders of Notting Hill carnival is very concerning, especially when we consider the Casey report’s conclusion that the Metropolitan police are guilty of institutional racism.

No matter who we are, we should all feel safe to move freely without risk of harassment or false arrest. These systems violate our right to privacy, our rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and expression, and to equality and non-discrimination. This is particularly the case given the continued lack of government regulation on these technologies, leaving police to write their own rules with no accountability or oversight.

The Met’s plans to use this dangerous and discriminatory tool of surveillance should be immediately scrapped.
Alba Kapoor
Amnesty International UK

https://www.theguardian.com/te...

1) The murder rate in London - indeed for general crime - is pretty low compared with major US cities
2) Given that we don't allow easy access to guns, the worst event is likely to be a stabbing, which is far slower to achieve

Do create real accountability. But yes, it's far too easy for thuggish police officers to push the limits of their power.

1) Ask whether their body camera is working; it should be showing a blinking light
2) Ask: is this a stop search - the legal term that gives them the right to ask questions
3) If they affirm it is a stop search, ask them the basis for the stop. Three main excuses:

a) it's a airport - unlimited powers
b) there's a section 60 order in place; issued by a senior police officer, it allows anyone to be stop searched. Issued in a specific local area usually after a serious incident
c) otherwise there must be reasonable suspicion; the statement 'we're stopping everyone' will not do!

4) Look for other people to become witnesses.
5) After the event ask for a copy of the form that should have been generated.

If enough people resist to the maximum extent of the law, it forces them to behave better in the long term, though it can be problematic in the short term.

Really? Are you sure? If there isn't a strong incentive against the cops doing this, they will...

If a force is required to pay out compensation, it gets less toys. The chiefs will not like that, so they will transmit their irritation all the way down to the plod on the street via the plod's boss. So yes, it would be a useful incentive for them to get it right.

Rulers have long had advisers who offer alternative ideas and insights, allowing the ruler, on a good day at least, to come to a better decision. Having that role ALSO done by AI potentially increases the range of options the ruler will be deciding from. Of course this may challenge the comfortable ideas that the ruler has - win. The worst case scenario is that the AI consistently offers a particular partisan line. So might any other advisor. Not a big deal.

Whilst it is attractive to assume that our leaders are stupid, in reality they would not have risen up the greasy pole if they were.

The measure of the achievement of economics is the massive growth rate of China for the past 40 years as well as the fact that the events of 2008 resulted in a mild recession not a massive depression. No- economics isn't perfect, but it's vastly better than it was 100 years ago when the Wall Street Crash triggered a painful collapse in the world's economy. Like medicine economics sometimes sees 'deaths', but that's no reason to give up on modern medicine.