TJakobsen's page

There is a fairly extensive literature out there on torture, and it generally concludes that it does not really work, primarily because the victims will say or agree to anything to make it stop.

I never mentioned torture.

Finally, I disagree with your opinion that traditional treaties of war do not apply to nontraditional enemies. As I see them, these rules were not codified to create the image of certain states being "nice" - they...

Again, you are putting words in my mouth. I said the laws are misunderstood as they apply to nontraditional combatants, not that they do not apply.

This is potentially interesting. I assume that this is some sort of roundabout way to say that if the US armed forces hadn't insisted on embedding journalists, then said armed forces could have engaged in all kinds of 'enhanced interrogation measures' without having to worry about those stupid international treaties?

No, what I am saying is, intelligence is an ugly business. The tactics that need to be used for it to be effective can be disturbing to people, like the media and and general public, who do not understand why they are used.

The matter of military law being misunderstood, both by active soldiers and operatives and observers civilian and military alike, is relevant because most of these laws were written in the aftermath of World Wars 1 & 2 and expect the parties involved to be traditional forces. Applying these laws to nontraditional forces, such as those found in Iraq, is bound to create disagreements.

Teresa Jakobsen,
US Army, Ret.

I don't think yellowdingo is saying that the US has done that in Iraq.

I interpret his words to mean that the US must resort to measures that are so far beyond the pale that the US will never engage in them.

I've read enough of his postings in this discussion to assume otherwise. He displays an utter hatred of the US on a regular basis.

And yes, to stop the terrorists you must kill them, a great solution!

Where are they? It's not like they all have t-shirts that read terrorist.

I didn't claim it would be easy, it isn't. Profiling and military intelligence achieve good results when not shackled by media attachments and misinterpretation and flawed application of US and international military law. Within and without of the military, these errors produce flawed data, or cause valid data to be unusable.

Easy and quick? No, but until someone thinks up a better way to handle nontraditional combatants, fighting and killing them is the only way to make the countries they exist in, and the world as a whole, secure.

Teresa Jakobsen,
US Army, Ret.

If you are using material from, or even just referencing books that are not permitted to be used in that manner, you are violating the terms of the D20 STL.

If I remember right, you are only allowed to mention that you product requires a D&D core book. You are not allowed to reference D&D products by name in your material at all.

The only material you are allowed to use is that which WotC and other licensees have declared open content (WotC does this by adding material to the SRD, on their website, if it's not there, it's not open. It's best to ignore their books when looking for open content and use only what is in the SRD. Other companies use different methods for marking what is open in their material, usually painfully obvious or explained on either their title or contents page, or with the licenses.)

You should try and avoid using material that isn't open unless you can secure a separate license to do so. You can also attempt to create clone material, capturing the essence of the thing you are trying to use without copying it outright, but you'd better have a copyright lawyer on your payroll when doing so, because by using the OGL and D20 STL, you've agreed not to challenge WotC's claims about their copyrights and trademarks.

Teresa Jakobsen,
US Army, Ret.

Realms of Fantasy is a good offline magazine devoted to fantasy fiction.

http://www.rofmagazine.com/

We all know that the only way to shut down Terrorists in Iraq is to round up all the men and remove them from the cites.

Don't try and attribute your ignorance to anyone else here. There is one simple and effective way to stop terrorists: kill them. People as large groups are not suicidal, once you teach people that the result of a certain course of action is death, most of them will abandon that course of action.

I challenge you to name just one example of the US ever doing anything like what you are suggesting is our modus operandi in Iraq. Just one, that's all.

Your hatred of the US doesn't make anything you post here accurate, it just makes you look like a damned idiot.

Teresa Jakobsen,
US Army, Ret.

I can't blame them for deciding for themselves that the Bomb would be the only protection that would save them from this Administration.

Protection from the US has never been a stated goal of Iran's president, and he has no track record of hiding his motives from the great satan. He wants to dominate his neighbors and destroy Israel, it's pretty clear.

Teresa Jakobsen,
US Army, Ret.

Gee...that kinda silences those young people who dont want to go die on foreign soil so all those oldies can have cheap petrol and sit around and tell us how they wish they could go...

No idea how conscription works where you are, but since you were replying to a comment about the US congress, let's be clear on one thing. If young americans do not want to, as you so eloquently say, "go die on foreign soil", they do not have to. The draft was abolished in 1973. Selective Service registration exists as backup in case of a true military crisis, such as invasion by a foreign power, which is highly unlikely anyway.

Teresa Jakobsen,
US Army (volunteer!), Ret.

2. A Writing System

It could be simple Pictograms, Marks identifying an individual family, or images describing a larger spoken story.

I already addressed this.

3. Specialist Labor

Certain people become valued for their skills in certain areas. They become Artisans, Priests, Leaders, Slaves.

Slaves are not skilled labor in most cases. They are unskilled, manual labor. If slaves are skilled labor, there is no need to have paid artisans.

6. Mass Trade
How is surplus produce collected and traded.

This is not required. Primitive or isolated communities may produce only enough to keep themselves going.

10. The Bureaucracy

The rise of Mathematics, Geometry, and Record Keeping.

None of this is required. Oral tradition serves this purpose fine in small or primitive groups.

12. A Legal Code

The development of Writing for expressing Laws and rules.

Writing is not required for the development of law.

Teresa Jakobsen,
US Army, Ret.

Yes you do: Every Civilization has some level of written language even if it is a couple of images to remind them of what happened on Saturday after they all got drunk and slept with the sheep.

There are plenty of examples, especially in primitive areas of southeast asia and south america, of tribes with no written language and no real art. Oral tradition is the only form of record keeping in many groups.

Teresa Jakobsen,
US Army, Ret.

The French left Vietnam by the time the US entered that conflict. The US went in to support the anti communist government left in place by the French in South Vietnam.

That is absolutely incorrect, President Truman sent advisers to Vietnam in 1950, to assist the French.

By the time of the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1964, the US had sent over 500 million dollars worth of aid to French operations in Vietnam.

Teresa Jakobsen,
US Army, Ret.

Until we (read: the people we elected to represent our wants and needs - the people who are the face of our country - those people work for us right?)

Not in the US, no, they do not "work for us". They are elected to govern us. Granted, we can vote them out next time we get a chance, but while they are there, they are not obligated in any sense to govern by consensus. In the case of initiating military action, the legislative branch is given constitutional authority to override the President's decisions. Oddly enough, as much as a lot of them want you to forget, the legislative branch did not do that in the case of Iraq. Now that the military action exists, the legislative branch's only constitutional option for controlling it is to cut funding, something those opposed to the Iraq campaign choose not to do in fear of losing reelection. Until they choose to put principles before politics and actually cut funding, the constitution and military law of this country are quite clear that only the President and ranking Admirals and Generals can administer the war.

magdalena thiriet wrote:

Personally I support moving the country of Israel to New York. Everybody's happy.

I actually read an article a few years back (can't remember where) in which the writer made a very logical argument for moving Israel to Baja California.

Under the definitions of The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 9-13-07, the idea of moving Israel is a violation of the rights of the indigenous Hebrew people of Israel and a crime against humanity.

Despite the fact that various powers have held the nation of Israel throughout history, the Hebrew people of the modern country are the only group with a defensible claim to be the indigenous population. Islam and Christianity are inconveniently, but inarguably a few thousand years younger than Judaism, and little if any evidence of any possible Arab inhabitants of the region exists to invalidate the Hebrew claim.

Nice evidence of how well Bush's "big lie" worked on you. No one of importance ever really believed that, but Bush and his staff repeated it a lot anyway.

Try reading the news, Iraq's relationship with Bin Laden and his associates is documented. In November of 1998, the US Department of Justice, then under Janet Reno and President Clinton, documented evidence of a deal between Iraq and Al-Queda to cooperate in development of weapon technology in return for a mutual non-aggression deal.

http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1155977/posts

Some others:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/04/27/walq27.xml& amp;sSheet=/news/2003/04/27/ixnewstop.html

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35634

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/780plthl. asp

But darkjoy, the US has already won in Afghanistan...They secured that corridor of land for the Oil Pipeline running from Khazikstan to Pakistan in record time and have bases along it, and by now have a private army guarding it day and night while US Marines push back the Hostiles into the Borderlands to the South-East to keep their eyes away from what is really going on.

And you can cite specific evidence of the vast US conspiracy to get all the oil from the middle east? Of course you can't, you're too blind by your ignorant US hating to be bothered with anything resembling facts.

Teresa Jakobsen,
US Army, Ret.

Personally, I believe that the United States should sever ties with any country that gets into as much s%%@e as Israel does. PERIOD. Israel is like the little brother that always drags you into their fights with the neighborhood gang.

Maybe we served together in Israel, but I doubt it. Maybe you have, as I have, been a first hand witness to lebanese and palestinian terror attacks on innocent civilians there, but I doubt it. Maybe you have access to classified intelligence that exposes some quiet truth about Israel's role in bringing down Iraq, but I doubt it. Maybe you're more than just an ignorant anti-semite blaming the zionists for all the trouble in the world, but once again, I doubt it.

Teresa Jakobsen,
US Army, Ret.