New Bullshido Standards

Projects and Investigations Defunct Project Threads
1

Here is where we need to collect all of the fantastic ideas and principles and make the actual set of guidelines for all of Bullshido to know and for the site to follow.

After we post each of these ideas, we’ll codify them into the actual rules.

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Principle 1: Bullshido.net should be able to back up every material statement.

Support for this: According to Mr_Mantis, there is an ambiguous legal standard for what type of opinions have legal protection. Saying “I think” or “I feel” doesn’t always protect the person from legal liability. The 1st Amendment doesn’t provide special protection for alleged statements of opinion. Legally speaking, espousing an opinion implies that there is a factual basis for that opinion, meaning that the site can be open to legal action if there is an errant opinion directed at a target. Therefore, every effort needs to be made to fully gather evidence against a target before the site makes.

Evidence from a website created by a Bullshido martial artist is perfect for these purposes.

Conclusion: Bullshido.net needs direct, reliable evidence to make claims.

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Principle 2: Bullshido members are “Bullies.” Bullshit martial artists are “Bullshidoka.”

Support: The usage of -ka in Japanese martial arts (karateka, judoka, aikidoka) roughly means “practioner of.”

Some might argue that it’s antagonistic to term ourselves by a negative/perjorative phrase. I’m guessing Phrost probably doesn’t mind that, and people who pay more attention to the name than the evidence are probably people not to be concerned with.

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Principle 3: (need discussion here): The chain of evidence. In order of validity and value, the following ranks of evidence types are as follows, from best to worst:

Legal documents - Arrest warrants and such (see Juko-kai case, Bannon case)
Journalistic sources - Newspaper accounts of events
Video evidence - See Yellow Bamboo and other “ki experts”
Firsthand testimony by recognized expert in martial arts or topical area - Asia, Omega or others observe something firsthand and weigh in.
Pictoral evidence accompanied by substantiating textual evidence. See JFS investigation.
(to be continued)

2

Principle 1: Bullshido.net should be able to back up every material statement.

should be:

In an investigation Bullshido.net should be able to support every factual statement within this investigation with reliable evidence.

3

This applies to anything published, which naturally follows an investigation.

Opinions may be protected under a State constitution, the federal 1st amendment doesn’t cover it. Being “the press” gets you into greater 1st amendment protection.

The evidence must be reliable, but can be direct or indirect.

I never liked the term, and I think it has to go.
But I like that BS artists are “Bullshidoka”

We don’t need to get too complicated with this. Plus, it’s very hard to formalize how much weight you should give to something. As Sam said on another thread, heresay is no good.

I am thinking the best approach is to be one like a reporter (in theory) who gathers all the facts and gives them to the people. Except there is a bit of an informed editorial aspect. This requires informed people.

4

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5

hmm???..

6

Just wanted to let you guys know I had read the thread and at this time have nothing to contribute worth while except to say you’re all pussies.:thefinger

7

I think video evidence should trump everything else.

8

I think we should say what we consider reliable evidence. However if we start ranking evidence precisely and we get sued, it does give the other side all kinds of things they can play with.

example

“Isn’t it true, Mr. Steve that according to your own standards, video evidence is prefered to the documents you obtained and you failed to make the effort to find a better type of evidence?”

9

We don’t have to publicly publish our “rankings” of evidence, what I meant was, as long as WE know and agree that video trumps all else.

10

Legal documents - Arrest warrants and such (see Juko-kai case, Bannon case)
Journalistic sources - Newspaper accounts of events
Video evidence - See Yellow Bamboo and other “ki experts”
Firsthand testimony by recognized expert in martial arts or topical area - Asia, Omega or others observe something firsthand and weigh in.
Pictoral evidence accompanied by substantiating textual evidence. See JFS investigation.
(to be continued)

Video trumps everything. Pics come pretty close depending on what exactly they show.

11

Trust me, if we’re sued its discoverable, so assume it will be disclosed at some point.

Video does not document all transactions equally. I would take an arrest warrant over a clip of someone being taken in any day, the warrant will tell me WHY they were brought in.

12

On the other hand, video of the criminal act would make all of that moot. I should point out that most of what we deal with isn’t exactly an international criminal case like Bannon’s debacle. I’m thinking more in lines of the JFS situation, as thats presumably what prompted this thing.

13

Here’s the thing. Some things should never happen regardless o context. King was an asshole, but did they really need to be beating him like that? No. Likewise, qualifying your statement with “Hey, I suck” or whatever could be used to justify crappling doesn’t excuse collar choking people from under mount or similar foolishness.

14

Apologies Sam. The forum format was off and I accidentally editted your post with my response. Could you please repost that?

15

We are not in the business of criminal law.

Legal documents, in the cases we’re going to be dealing with, are going to amount to…what? Contracts between Bullshidoka? To me, video evidence of Bullshidoka sucking is much more important than that.

I don’t think the Bannon case should be considered a precident for anything, very rarely is a case like that going to come up. Most cases are not going to have a bunch of legal documents attached, and if they do, like with Bannon, the work is already done, they ARE PROVEN frauds and we don’t need to waste time on them. We should concentrate our efforts on those who have NOT been targetted by law enforcement and likely never will be.

16

I agree. We’re setting ourselves up to be a detective agency of sorts which is pretentious and a tad silly.

17

I obtained documents on the Bannon case, I have legal documents for the upcoming Webre article, and on the Franco investigation I pulled Sammy Franco’s Bankrupsy records for information about his corporation.

18

No problem. I did that to Greese a couple of weeks ago myself.

Video is good, it shows crappling well. It can be discredited based on factors like, it does not show what is fully going on in a scene, it is too grainy or the audio doesn’t work etc, etc. And then it can be discredited by evil lawyers, and I provided the Rodney King example. In that case, for example one cop reached for what looked like his handcuffs, King was resisting at the time, the guy didn’t take his handcuffs out and the sharks sold the jury on the idea that they had to hit him some more then to get him under control. Like anything video is open to interpretation.

19

Its how I run my investigations, but even though I’m OCD, we do need some sort of structure.

20

Well done, but you’re one of the only one’s here that has the time, and more importantly, knowledge, to fuck with all that. The rest of us aren’t lawyers. That being the case, only a limited number of investigations will have that type of information in hand.