lundi 13 août 2012

Court-martial

- So, you were responsible of the HMS Victoria and eventually there happened a little incident and the battleship sank and 357 of our brave British sailors perished at sea. Certainly you're innocent but yet, we'd like to hear from you what went wrong.

This question could have been asked to George Tryon, just he drowned with the ship. Too bad but yet, had he survived, one may imagine he would have had to face a court-martial upon his return from the shores off Lebanon.

The interesting thing (among others) with the military is the notion that every man is accountable for his conduct and for the consequences of his decisions.

A warship costs a certain amount of money and the loss of the sailors, regardless of the sensitive aspect of things, also is a loss for the military institution.

When one considers how the military, whatever the nationality, handles this concept of personal accountability when the occasion arises in the real world, one cannot fail to wonder if the military institution isn't a model of morality when compared to the world of politicians .

I've been told about a president who deliberately lied to his country and engaged the military he's the commander in chief into two wars which finally cost the lives of over 6.400  of his countrymen soldiers, notwithstanding the soldiers of his allies, let alone the lives of over 100.000 civilians of the countries he attacked 

Of course, the financial impact on the economy of his country of such foolish and criminal misconduct can be counted by the billions of € (I chose this currency as a red herring so that the person I’m thinking of eludes the guessing game).

And the same goes of course for a certain Prime Minister, his accomplice who would also be held for a war criminal if he had been captured by the Brits or the Americans, should he'd been on the ennemy's side.

As a matter of fact, this also works for all the politicians who betrayed their own country's interests and people such as Havel, Berlusconi, Aznar and the entire clique.

But the total and absolute unaccountability of politicians goes far beyond their bellicose proclivity and extends to about all the fields of their activity.

They can behave like plunderers and profiteers like Sarkozy and his gang have been acting for the last five years, leave the country on its knees and on the verge of bankruptcy, no matter what, they will always be immune of any questioning, let alone the slightest reprimand, and there always will be millions of voters ready to vote them again in office.

The tragedy is twofold here: The simple fact that this state of affairs is commonplace in "democracies" and also that next to everybody simply takes it for granted that politicians are above any trivial interrogation and accountability the sort of the military demands from its members.

Les tribunaux militaires certainement n'inspirent pas plus confiance que les tribunaux civils but yet, the notion of personal accountability seems not to be a completely unheard of concept.

Who would have though the military institution was the last guardian of morality?


(ps: The HMS Victoria and George Tryon aren't the examples I wanted to use but I can't remember the details of something similar which happened in the North Sea during naval manoeuvres - perhaps with the Tsarist marine- at the beginning of the XXth century.)


12 commentaires:

Anonyme a dit…

Would you believe it?

I no longer have access to my own blog save through my mailbox via your comments. That's about all I can do. I cannot create a new page or modify any post.

Have I already mentioned Blogger is hazardous to my blood pressure?

I have another computer at home save that it has been already reinstalled twice within the last couple of weeks and it still is highly unreliable.

So it may be some time before the situation returns to normal, all the more since I'm getting tired of reinstalling computers grrr...

Flocon

Anonyme a dit…

I'm also having computer problems. Here's hoping the situation returns to normal asap.

Flocon a dit…

Apparently it is a cookie named Mismatch (you bet) which is stuck to my Blogger account which prevents me to access the blog as well as Blogger.

Now, how to get rid of this Mismatch cookie? I'll try to ask on some Blogger forum if I can.

Flocon a dit…

I'll return to that post un peu plus tard. I've asked advise on the Blogger user's forum but I don't hold my breath as to whether I will get an answer and even more if I won't be told to simply reinstall my computer.

I'm currently using my second computer...

ZapPow a dit…

Flocon, tous les navigateurs permettent d'accéder aux cookies et d'éliminer ceux qu'on veut. Fait une recherche genre "éliminer cookies nom du navigateur" ou "accéder cookies nom du navigateur", et tu devrais avoir les explications nécessaires.

Flocon a dit…

ZapPow,

Ah c'est bon la vie finalement... tu as empêché qu'un nom s'ajoute à cette liste.

En fait, lorsque j'ai téléchargé Firefox 14 lors de la réinstallation j'ai dû cliquer par erreur sur une option qui a modifié l'apparence de la page et la visibilité/accessibilité des outils. Il n'y a que deux jours que j'ai retrouvé les marques pages, l'historique etc.

Mais comme j'en ai ma claque de me prendre la tête avec tout ça je suis resté sur un blocage que ton conseil a dégrippé!

Merci ZapPow :-)

Ned Ludd a dit…

Flocon, if you had installed CCleaner like I suggested, you could eliminate whatever cookies you want. Since you have problems, I would eliminate all of them. It is no problem, to add them again one by one if you are asked.

Ned Ludd a dit…

Aussi, CCleaner peut vider toutes tes caches et tous tes fichiers temporaires, qui s'accumulent de façon importante et ne servent à rien.

Et encore, il peut eliminer des fichiers qui restent quand tu deinstalles un programme.

Finalement, tu peux effacer("wipe" en anglais) toute l'espace vide dans ton disque dur. Cela peut prendre du temps si tu as un grand disc, mais les gendarmes ne trouveraient rien sauf les postes salaces de moi. Tu peux choisir le niveau de sécurité que tu veux.

Il y a d'autres possibilités, mais il faut être un peu experimenté de les utiliser.

Franchement, je crois que mon ordi ne marcherait pas sans ce logiciel.

Flocon a dit…

Ned,

"Flocon, if you had installed CCleaner like I suggested..."

Another interesting facet of your personality... :-) I'll soon face the threat of being flogged to blood...

Ok, Ok, you win sista! My main computer is currently downloading CCleaner. And if said computer goes into the deep freeze, at least I'll know the reason why.

And please, don't tell the gendarmes about this...

Ned Ludd a dit…

If your up to more downloading, a couple of very useful but unnecessary tools are "Clipboard Recorder" which saves everything to a clipboard which you can retrieve to paste and stays until you erase it. A real time saver.

An erudite person like yourself, probably has lots of old LP records or even 45's or 78's, and tape cassettes, or reel-to-reel. You can transfer them to your computer and then record them on CD's or DVD's using "Audio Grabber", a wonderful tool written by a German guy and you can use it in different languages.

The only drawback is you have to do each one in real time as they are analog. But you don't have to be present, just make sure you have your computer switched to not turn off after a certain time.

One other thing, get "IfraRecorder" which let's you easily make ISO pictures of software on CD which is necessary for installing some some programs.

If I think of other cool stuff, I will mention it from time to time.

Flocon a dit…

Je n'ai jamais utilisé les cassettes (well, maybe once or twice but really no), j'ai toujours trouvé très mal pratique ce système.

Pas mal de 33's classiques à une époque but next to no 45's.

I once asked someone to transfer on a CD this LP which I bought when I was 17 and which introduced me into Indian music.

The nice part is that it is possible to arrange one's own track list and to exclude titles one dislikes.

Among the pieces from the LP there's that one which I always listen to with the same delight over 40 years later.

Some years ago, before blogging and Wikipedia were keeping me busy like mad, I was very active with Photoshop which permits extraordinary image feats.

But then, it requires much learning and practice and I remember spending dozens and dozens of hours reading books. And I just had the basic version of Photoshop, but it was great fun anyway.

Mais je n'ai plus le temps, il faut choisir...

Ned Ludd a dit…

The Rethuglicans spent millions of dollars and thousands of hours to hold Clinton responsible, for what? A Blow Job. But Democrats couldn't get their act together to hold Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld(We know where the WMD's are) and company responsible for war crimes.