Seamus, how would you address Brenus' interpretation of Yugoslavian intervention and Kosovar independence for this issue?
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Seamus, how would you address Brenus' interpretation of Yugoslavian intervention and Kosovar independence for this issue?
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Vitiate Man.
History repeats the old conceits
The glib replies, the same defeats
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And few if any countries have adhered to the moral high ground and honored all treaties in both letter and spirit as they should. But a past failure can not be deemed as invalidating efforts to honor treaties and act morally moving forward or you implicitly discard any effort to act morally in the future.
My priest will issue absolution for past sins, knowing that I will probably be a recidivist despite my best intentions. But he is encouraging me to at least TRY to do better moving forward and has not discarded the principle that striving to act morally is worthy of the effort even if past transgressions exist.
I very much think it was inertia. Nobody seriously consulted the will of the Crimeans prior to 1997. I was simply asserting that sovereignty by treaty and agreement absent conquest was not "by conquest." I was not attempting to suggest that the wishes of the Crimeans themselves had been considered -- I actually suspect that they were not, which aided Russia's efforts to take over.Originally Posted by Brenus
"The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market. And that's why it's so essential to preserving individual freedom.” -- Milton Friedman
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." -- H. L. Mencken
"The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market. And that's why it's so essential to preserving individual freedom.” -- Milton Friedman
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." -- H. L. Mencken
Without going into history too much (who had moral right to a territory, who was where first and so on...), from the legal aspect the parallel is evident. Yugoslavia was recognized as a single country after ww2, and the internal borders were created later, as borders of administrative divisions. When tensions started to brew, ultimately the international community (represented by the West at the time, as Russia was impotent and China shied away from international crisis) that those administrative borders were sancrosanct. Those administrative lines would become state borders. One might say the legal principle was set.
After less than a decade, the principle was broken with Kosovo independence. But there was a caveat, namely that by committing various atrocities against the population of Kosovo, Serbia has lost the right to that part of its territory. So, the spin was that the principle wasn't really broken because there was a more important principle to be upheld, namely stopping an ongoing genocide.
From the legal point of view, the entire intervention in 1999 was illegal. There was no consensus in the UN, it was a unilateral decision by NATO. Even NATO statute was ignored, which states that NATO can not be used in an offensive manner. So, attacking a sovereign country that didn't attack or even threaten to attack a NATO member was obviously an illegal action, but the spin was that NATO wasn't really attacking - it was proactively defending Kosovo Albanians. The moral need for intervention was so great, that it superseded any and all laws.
I would have liked to have seen what legal hoops the judges of ICJ would have had to jump through to absolve NATO from blame if Serbia hadn't withdrawn the lawsuit against 8 NATO members.
Russia is doing the same thing now, maintaining that they haven't really broken any laws or treaties because Crimeans decided to secede from Ukraine in a plebiscite. Again, there's a facade of legality, but even if somebody were to question the legality, the moral imperative was so strong that it superseded everything else - people of Crimea simply couldn't have been left to Nazis in Kiev.
As there isn't an international court that can enforce its decisions in the entire world, the bottom line is the we're still in the "might makes right" territory, regardless of how civilized we like to present ourselves, although no one is willing to admit it.
What if there was doctor Mengele or Mussolini depicted on a wall? No one would give a damn? Local authorities SHOULD be interested in people depicted publicly. Otherwise you may soon see other as unsavory people looking at you from walls and fences.
I have, and they haven't?
Read above on what indifference may lead to.
Moral rules are not always embodied into laws. For instance, adultery is immoral, but it is not illegal (well, not in the "civilised societies"). Moreover, some laws which were based on obsolete moral norms have been repealed (like sodomy was a crime in the USSR - and perhaps in other countries). So there is no direct correlation between moral and law. In view of this I would put more emphasis on law than on morality, especially in international issues, since moral codes of different societies may vary. Mind you, I say "MORE emphasis", which means I don't reject morality as a factor altogehter.
Again, emphasis should be made on legality/illegality, morality is too fuzzy a notion.
There is one more factor (besides morality and law) to count with when such situations arise: money. In case of Kuwait all you say about morality and law was coupled with financial considerations which promised a profit after the jusitice has been restored. In case of Russia such consideration promised only financial losses. And this seemed to have outweighed in the West's collective mind.
Before Anshcluss, Austria had a referendum which brought a positive result (for Hitler). So people WERE asked what they wanted. Yet somehow it didn't make the Anschluss legal.
The same can be said of attacking Iraq in Kuwait in 1991. Yet this war is considered to be a righteous one.
I think the 1991 war was a UN war. Saddam had invaded a sovereign country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United...Resolution_687
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. Voltaire.
"I've been in few famous last stands, lad, and they're butcher shops. That's what Blouse's leading you into, mark my words. What'll you lot do then? We've had a few scuffles, but that's not war. Think you'll be man enough to stand, when the metal meets the meat?"
"You did, sarge", said Polly." You said you were in few last stands."
"Yeah, lad. But I was holding the metal"
Sergeant Major Jackrum 10th Light Foot Infantery Regiment "Inns-and-Out"
It became a UN war because Iraq couldn't veto those resolutions you refer to. Plus the finacial considerations which I have mentioned. In other cases, when the principle world players are involved invasions of sovereign countries pass unnoticed. Or, for a change, UN can throw philippics but no one cares.
UN is not perfect but it is what we have.
Or we let NATO,China and Russia decide what is moral or not, what is legal or not. I give you that with the NATO involvement in Yugoslavia, it was not a knife but a machete in the contract.
At least, the French Parliament did vote to send troops in Iraq (Kuwait). To be fair, I agreed with the vote.
I am not sure it was the right move anymore... Do we have to help dictatorships invaded by other dictatorships?
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. Voltaire.
"I've been in few famous last stands, lad, and they're butcher shops. That's what Blouse's leading you into, mark my words. What'll you lot do then? We've had a few scuffles, but that's not war. Think you'll be man enough to stand, when the metal meets the meat?"
"You did, sarge", said Polly." You said you were in few last stands."
"Yeah, lad. But I was holding the metal"
Sergeant Major Jackrum 10th Light Foot Infantery Regiment "Inns-and-Out"
They still do it, whether with the help of the UN or without it. The UN needs a reform to remove the dictatorship of the permanent members, otherwise it is useless when they are involved in a conflict - and they almost always are.
While ostensibly it was meant to restore justice, the financial prospects for the parties involved were one of the reasons it happened (in my view).
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. Voltaire.
"I've been in few famous last stands, lad, and they're butcher shops. That's what Blouse's leading you into, mark my words. What'll you lot do then? We've had a few scuffles, but that's not war. Think you'll be man enough to stand, when the metal meets the meat?"
"You did, sarge", said Polly." You said you were in few last stands."
"Yeah, lad. But I was holding the metal"
Sergeant Major Jackrum 10th Light Foot Infantery Regiment "Inns-and-Out"
Why do you assume democracies are better?
Iraq invasion was done by democracies. It was based on false information, against a country that didn't threaten them or their citizens. It resulted in several hundred thousand deaths, billions of dollars in damage and no one answered for that.
At best, someone blushed when it was brought up.
Ukraine is under cyberattack:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017...cyber-attack1/
I'm really surprised nobody picked this up.
So, the Attack in Ukraine was not, in fact, Ransomware but a good old fashioned virus attack. Dubbed "NotPetya" because it masquerades as the Petya Ransomeware the virus destroys data with virtually no hope of recovery. Apparently is found its way into the wild via a backdoor malicious inserted into a Tax App widely used in Ukraine.
Rather more interestingly, the makers of the virus apparently had access to the NSA's Eternal Blue exploit weeks before it was released by the "Shadow Brokers".
This suggests some link between those who promulgated NotPetya and the Shadow Brokers themselves. The most likely explanation is that both are Russian, possibly state sponsored, and their aim is to further Russian political goals, namely crippling Ukraine and discrediting the US. If so this means by extension that Russia may be indirectly responsible for WannaCry which crippled the NHS back in March.
https://arstechnica.co.uk/security/2...-app-backdoor/
https://arstechnica.co.uk/security/2...r-public-leak/
"If it wears trousers generally I don't pay attention."
[IMG]https://img197.imageshack.us/img197/4917/logoromans23pd.jpg[/IMG]
Let me see if I follow your logic - since NotPetya originated in Ukraine, it must have been planted by Russians. Since it was based on Shadow Brokers code possibly before it was released to the public, it means that Shadow Brokers are Russian. Since they are Russian, it is quite conceivable that they are controlled by the Russian state. Since the code was acquired from NSA, it means that NSA is under Russian contr...
No wait, you still didn't get that far.
Do follow that train of thought, I'm interested where you're gonna end up.
New information on MH 17: on the eve of the shooting down Russia closed its airspace:
https://en.lb.ua/news/2017/07/17/414..._airspace.html
It was probably a horrible mistake no matter who did it, people just make them. Maybe I am really naive, but I can't believe it was done on purpose
Last edited by Fragony; 07-19-2017 at 11:52.
"The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market. And that's why it's so essential to preserving individual freedom.” -- Milton Friedman
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." -- H. L. Mencken
Plane just shouldn't have been there. Our minister of foreign-afairs who must have known it was dangrous was immediatly 'promoted' for an invented job in Brussels. Lots of politics, but I think it was just a mistake, a mistake with horrible consequences but still just a mistake
Pretty disapointed in my usualy smart countrymen. A picture was shown of a Russian seperatist holding a bunny-pet. It was immediatly interpetated as a trophy, I thought it was something else 'look at this wtf happened' but I was pretty alone in considering that and got some really nasty reactions for considering they had it all wrong
Last edited by Fragony; 07-19-2017 at 21:53.
Need a date/status update on Vlad.
"The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market. And that's why it's so essential to preserving individual freedom.” -- Milton Friedman
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." -- H. L. Mencken
Just assume he's a fascist until told otherwise.
Nobody ever listens to me until it's too late.
There, but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford
My aim, then, was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. Fear is the beginning of wisdom.
I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation.
"The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market. And that's why it's so essential to preserving individual freedom.” -- Milton Friedman
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." -- H. L. Mencken
A follow up on MH 17.
https://www.rferl.org/a/mh17-crimina.../29246988.html
Now Putin admits that THEY held referendum in Crimea.
https://www.unian.info/politics/1019...ession-mp.html
Could escalate
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