Posted by panch from pool0675.cvx24-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.212.165) on Wednesday, December 11, 2002 at 11:36AM :
Is there any other nation today that would allow foreign inspectors to tunnel into its very arse? Would the United States or Israel or Britain or Mozambique allow it?
We don't have to prove the Iraq government guilty, and we all feel terrible about how much the people have suffered under the brutal man blah blah blah, so let's go kill a bunch of them...either way they'll be put out of their misery.
The Iraqis have to prove they're innocent...even though all of our vaunted snooping devices have failed to turn up anything.
They used to have those laws in Europe...they'd throw you in jail and you had to prove you were innocent. Just getting arrested was "proof" that you must have done SOMETHING wrong...after all, as Sankho would say...If you're innocent...why worry?
The people who came here...well versed in that other kind of legal system...opted instead for..."innocent till proven guilty", not the other way around...which puts the onus on those accusing you...not on you for BEING accused.
Mexico still has that other kind of system...it's called Napoleonic, and in its day was an improvement over what went before...but has put citizens in that same bind of proving a negative..."I didn't do it".
Years ago I saw an article in a paper down there urging that some changes needed to be made as the automobile hadn't been invented in Napoleon's day. In Mexico, if you see someone lying by the roadside, the victim of an accident, you dare not stop. If the person is unconscious and comes around with you and the police standing there...he might just say that you hit him. Before you can leave the scene of an accident in Mexico you have to pay up...or get your insurance adjuster to come over and verfiy your coverage...just a document wont do.
And you'd have to prove you hadn't hit the guy...that you'd just stopped to see if you could help. "Oh sure you did". How do you prove you didn't run someone over? I mean it can be done, given the right circumstances and enough time...but you don't that kind of time...either you pay up...or your insurance company does...after which they might just drop you because you go around running people over...or you go to jail and try to prove it from there.
If you should stop and report the person as being injured, and he dies...or if he is dead already...you could find yourself under suspicion of having caused the accident yourself...though if you had, why you would stop in Mexico, is beyond logic. Even if the police have no good reason to suspect you...it's worth a bribe, a good sized one too.
The article noted that several lives could be saved each year and untold suffering eased if people weren't afraid to play the part of good decent citizens. Until some accomodation was made...some change in procedure that would require proof from the arresting officers that you had indeed hit the person, instead of proof from you that you hadn't...no one was going to stop to help in cases where help was most needed.
I came across a guy once lying by the road on a deserted stretch of road late at night...he was still moving a bit. I passed him and pulled over...sat there thinking about what to do. Then I became worried that he'd seen me...maybe got my license plate and would report me as having hit him...maybe he was delirious...maybe broke and figured some payment from a rich Yanqui would be compensation for all the ills suffered at the hands of the bullies of the north.
Then I really got worried...cursed myself for having stopped at all...and backed up over the guy. He probably would have died anyway.
-- panch
-- signature .