On 7 Maijs, 08:20, ostap_bender_1...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
> On May 6, 9:07 pm, P=C3=A7teris Cedri=C3=B2=C3=B0 (Peteris Cedrins)
>
>
>
> <cedr...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > On 7 Maijs, 06:15, ostap_bender_1...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
>
> > [snip]
>
> > > NATO countries consider UN ineffective because UN doesn't go along
> > > with their non-stop rapes of little defenceless countires. Hitler
and
> > > Stalin also considered the League of Nations ineffective.
>
> > I would say you boggle the mind, but it's habitual. The UN has been
> > effective at times, but unutterably ineffective at others.
>
> > One of the conflicts in which the UN was highly effective was the
> > Korean War -- but why? Only because the Russians were boycotting the
> > Security Council (over Taiwan) and therefore couldn't use their veto.
> > Of course, you probably consider North Korea a "little defenseless
> > country"...
>
> > Hitler and Stalin considered the League ineffective, of course -- but
> > don't you think the victims of Hitler and Stalin considered the league
> > ineffective... because it _was_ ineffective? Because it was, in fact,
> > a near-total failure?
>
> > What grew out of the failure of the League that was and is effective
> > was NATO, which had the brawn to protect the values the League could
> > only banter about.
>
> > UN Watch (http://www.unwatch.org/)
re the Human Rights Council:
>
> > "It is supposed to objectively and non-selectively promote and protect
> > human rights worldwide, yet it has ignored the world's worst abusers
> > while repeatedly condemning only one country in the entire world--
> > Israel. It is supposed to strengthen the UN's human rights mechanisms,
> > yet threatens now to erode the system and eliminate many of the
> > independent experts. [...] Our analysis shows that, although slightly
> > more than half of the Council's 47 members are free democracies, only
> > a minority of these countries--about a dozen--have consistently voted
in=
> > defense of the values and principles that the Council is supposed to
> > promote. Instead, the body has been dominated by an increasingly
> > brazen alliance of repressive regimes seeking not only to spoil needed
> > reforms but to undermine the few meaningful mechanisms of UN human
> > rights protection that already exist. Their goal is impunity for
> > systematic abuses. Unfortunately, too many democracies have thus far
> > gone along with the spoilers, out of loyalty to regional groups and
> > other political alliances."
>
> > By the way, Finland is one of the countries that "consistently voted
> > in defense of the values and principles that the Council is supposed
> > to promote."
>
> > _The Sunday Times_ (South Africa):
>
> > "In January this year, shortly after assuming its two-year seat on the
> > Security Council, South Africa joined China and Russia as the sole
> > members to oppose a resolution urging Burma to free political
> > detainees and end ***ual violence by the military. South Africa has
> > often dismissed such initiatives as campaigns by the wealthy North.
> > Yet if Ghana, Panama and Peru could sup****t the text -- and Congo,
> > Indonesia and Qatar could quietly abstain -- why did Pretoria help
> > hardliners Moscow and Beijing to kill the text, ****elding the generals
> > of Rangoon?"
>
> What is here to debate? Why are you changing the focus?
I'm not changing the focus; I'm reacting to part of the exchange
between Vello and you, above. You had suggested leaving some issues to
the UN, and Vello responded that the UN is ineffective.
> Look, the
> international law clearly says:
>
> Country A can wage a war on country B only in 2 cases:
>
> 1. Country B has attacked country A first or this attack is inevitable
> any minute.
>
> or
>
> 2. UN approves such attack, as was the case with Afhganistan and the
> 1st Iraq war.
> In all other cases, aggressions are the worst crimes and country A is
> an international criminal.
> Thus, in the case of the unprovoked and unapproved aggression against
> Yugoslavia, all NATO countires, which contributed to this war, are
> international criminals. In the case of the 2nd aggression against
> Iraq, USA, Britain and all other countries that participated in the
> aggression, are international criminals.
Are they "the worst crimes"? It's interesting that you choose to
defend two dictator****ps with a penchant for invading their neighbors.
Iraq and Serbia are the principal objects of your concern for "small
defenseless nations" here, no? Okay, throw in Stalinist Transnistria,
ethnically cleansed Abkhazia, Lukashenko's Belarus... the "small
defenseless nations" blessed with your pity are always very
interesting.
Even those who are disturbed by the possible illegitimacy of the
bombing of Serbia don't tend to have one-track minds on the issue.
Wikipedia, your favorite reference:
"UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has been critical of the
intervention, and of the indecision by the United Nations:
'...on the one side, the question of the legitimacy of action
taken by a regional organization without a U.N. mandate; on the other,
the universally recognized imperative of effectively halting gross and
systematic violations of human rights with grave humanitarian
consequences. The inability of the international community in the case
of Kosovo to reconcile these two equally compelling interests was a
tragedy.'"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimacy_of_NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia
The article also talks about the ineffectiveness of the UN, which was
Vello's point and which I expanded upon. To wit:
"The UNPROFOR (UN Protective Force) in Bosnia and Croatia was
completely ineffective. For example, the UNPROFOR was deployed into
the city of Gora=C5=BEde to protect the Muslim citizens there from Serbian
military action. However, UNPROFOR did not intervene in 1995 when the
Bosnian Serbs set up their artillery around the city and began
shelling it indiscriminately.
"The UN also failed to prevent Bosnian Serb troops from capturing the
safe areas set up in the city of Srebrenica, which resulted in the
Srebrenica massacre. The UN Resolution 819 and 836 had designated
Srebrenica a 'safe area' to be protected using "all necessary means,
including the use of force".
"The UN also did little to stop the mass flight of almost the entire
population of Krajina in the Croatian Operation Storm of 1995. Up to
200,000 Serbs fled from Krajina in just four days, and hundreds of old
people who were too sick to flee were later found killed and their
villages pillaged.
"Indeed, the UN had even failed to protect hundreds of its own
personnel from being taken hostage in May 1995 by Serbian forces under
the command of Radovan Karad=C5=BEi=C4=87 (see the UN war crimes
indictment
against Karad=C5=BEi=C4=87 for more information).
"Critics of the bombing campaign point out that former UN missions,
such as that in Cyprus, were effective and argue that effectivenes of
Balkans' missions were hindered by the US and NATO, in order to
(falsely) present that there is a need for their unilateral actions;
as examples, the aforementioned UN personnel was taken hostage in
order to stop NATO bombing of Serbian troops, and Srebrenica was
captured because its 'safe area' was enabling the Bosnian Muslim
forces to use it as a base for raiding surrounding Serbian villages.
"With the UN actions being seen as ineffective, and further UN
resolutions likely to be vetoed by Russia, who considered Yugoslavia
to be within its sphere of influence, and with the expanding action
threatening regional stability (for example, the flood of Albanian
refugees presented a very real threat to the stability of the
fledgling Republic of Macedonia), NATO decided to intervene."
> If you don't like the international law or don't like the UN, you are
> free to withdraw. And of the day you withdraw from the international
> law and UN and officially become a rogue nation, you can rape any
> country or even entire continents without breaking any law. But until
> you withdraw from these international agreements and organisations,
> your signature on these do***ents and agreements remains in force and
> all your violations of these agreements and laws is an international
> crime of the worst kind.
>
> Can it be more clear and simple than that? if you don't like the UN -
> change it or withdraw alltogehter. But if you do neither, you must
> obey the UN laws. You cannot selectively invoke the UN laws when other
> countries ar ebreaking them and refuse to obey UN laws when you want
> to break them. This is a double standard, as is almost eveything else
> that US and NATO countries say and do. The US/NATO principle of
> "Let's be friends! Let's share: what's yours is mine, and what's mine
> is mine!" doesn't look convincing.
The UN charter includes a lot of things that sound just like heavenly
bliss to me -- it was set up "to reaffirm faith in fundamental human
rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal
rights of men and women and of nations large and small..." Yeah,
Russia's defense of Myanmar -- and America's sup****t for various nasty
regimes -- is a reaffirmation of this, eh?
I actually share your concern re the legal aspect, Karlamov, esp. in
the case of the Iraq invasion -- but you're still a deluded demagogue
(yes, your favorite word -- you project), and I've yet to hear
anything constructive from you.
I've raised a lot of questions that are relevant to what you're
saying, but you always skirt these -- was the League of Nations
effective, Karlamov?
The UN has its purposes, some of which it performs well -- the main
one is that it's a forum in which most everybody participates, from
the most repressive dictator****ps to the great democracies.
As such, it is often stymied -- and Russia, like its previous
incarnation, the USSR, is devoted to preventing the effective
resolution of the problems that the UN might address.
It wasn't the UN that saved the free world -- it was NATO.
Again, Kofi Annan speaks of reconciling two _equally compelling_
interests, one of them being "the universally recognized imperative of
effectively halting gross and systematic violations of human rights
with grave humanitarian consequences," and of the inability to
reconcile them -- that's the trouble with the UN, Karlamov;
governments are often hell-bent upon defending the indefensible, and
they tend to work in blocs. Finland (and, by the way -- Romania) are
better able to rise above this and seriously address the issues. And
I'm not defending Latvia or the Baltics here, as you suggest I
incessntly do -- Latvia's Parliament was incapable of sup****ting a
rather innocuous resolution re Tibet, for example (mostly through
abstentions -- those opposed were mostly from the "Russian parties,"
but a plurality from the "Latvian parties," with the exception of the
opposition and some on the right [who rightly voted to sup****t Tibet]
abstained).
The outcome of the NATO attack on Serbia was hunky-dory as far as I'm
concerned -- Milo=C5=A1evi=C4=87 is gone, most of the former Yugoslavia is
f=
ree
and reforming, the Balkans are far more stable than they were, and
even Serbia is much better off than it was. The outcome in Iraq is not
yet clear -- a lot of death and suffering and a botched occupation, to
be sure... but Saddam is gone and Iraq has experienced its first
democratic elections. Baghdad wasn't built in a day.
Yes, yes, I'm doubtless stricken by neoconservatism and don't pay
enough attention to the inestimable damage done to Serbia's psychotic
sentimentalism with the loss of Kosovo, etc. Well, sorry -- I find it
perfectly absurd to feel much sympathy for the Ba'ath or Serb ultra-
nationalists. You want double standards? They're _everywhere_,
Karlamov -- Syria, for instance, hates naming nasty countries; it
thinks condemnation is counter-productive... but Syria is quite
willing to sponsor condemnations of Israel. How are the Russian ****t
projects there?
As even some who vehemently disagree with me have pointed out -- I'm
quite critical of my country. With you, the lines are always
predictable -- you've no real interest in "small defenseless
countries" unless they're countries (or regions) the Kremlin has an
affection for, and you prefer to look at certain double standards in
the international system (which was anyway built on double standards
in large degree) rather than at the behavior and misbehavior of the
entities involved.
Regards,
/P
http://lettonica.blogspot.com/
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