Jump to content

"War on Terror" Thread

Theo Huxtable.

By Theo Huxtable.
in News

 Share

Recommended Posts

This forum is supported by the 12ozProphet Shop, so go buy a shirt and help support!
This forum is brought to you by the 12ozProphet Shop.
This forum is brought to you by the 12oz Shop.
  • Replies 293
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

MayorMeanBeans

MayorMeanBeans

Posted
Posted

okay purple mush when if you want me to be specific i can, but in the future don't call it the world court and then get mad at people when they ask whats what.

 

darfur- crimes against humanity were obviously committed. however, if intl law was paramount, where was the intervention (did you really just make me spell this out for you).

 

Pakistan/India- the NPT is an aspect of international law. they were signatories when they tested their bombs. therefore, violation of international law. wheres the consequences? oh right, india now gets nuke energy for free.

 

Iran/north korea- again, by refusing iaea inspectors in, that is a violation of the npt

 

here i need to cut in. international law is not above sovereign law. it only becomes so WHEN the country decides to make it so. For example- the main intl antiquities law results from the 1973 UNESCO law. Burma and Cambodia have both signed it (lets be specific- MYANMAR). yet, Thailand has not signed it. THAILAND CAN STILL SELL BURMESE GOODS AND CAMBODIAN ANTIQUITIES. sorry to cap it, been drinking and all that, but this emphasizes the point that international law only works when the country makes it so. Genocide is universal, because every country made it so. Wonder why the ICJ lacks legitimacy? Cuz the US made it so, when they refused to have us officials tried (kissinger ain't a war criminal, wordddddddddddddddd.

 

So how can you say that international law is more important than sovereign law, when if the US wants to it can trump it? Please. Again, theoretically, it makes sense, one level to the next, therefore international is bigger than state level, because it encompases state. But when has any state challenged the Treaty of Westphalia? Never. Except when it accorded with their own state policies. I'll give you another example of why international law doesn't matter.

 

Rwanda. In a matter of months, they witnessed arguably the most ruthless genocide in history. International dictated a response. There was none. The genocide ended. International dictated another trial at the Hague. The Rwandans preferred their own trial. Two instances, where one crucial actor said, thanks, but no thanks..... how can you argue that international law is relevant in any modern context, when every signiicant actor involved doesn't give a shit about it? unless you're talking about theory where of course, it would be wonderful if international law was paramount :scrambled:

Link to comment
Share on other sites
smooth bruce

smooth bruce

Posted
Posted

here i need to cut in. international law is not above sovereign law. it only becomes so WHEN the country decides to make it so. For example- the main intl antiquities law results from the 1973 UNESCO law. Burma and Cambodia have both signed it (lets be specific- MYANMAR). yet, Thailand has not signed it. THAILAND CAN STILL SELL BURMESE GOODS AND CAMBODIAN ANTIQUITIES. sorry to cap it, been drinking and all that, but this emphasizes the point that international law only works when the country makes it so

 

 

You seem to think that because action isn't carried out that it doesn't count? It is still there on the paper, international law is above sovereign laws, it isn't even a question. It doesn't matter that Thailand haven't signed it, it only matters that no one in the international community gives a fuck about enforcing the law they are breaking.

 

 

darfur- crimes against humanity were obviously committed. however, if intl law was paramount, where was the intervention (did you really just make me spell this out for you).

 

Ok so in this case yes international laws are broken and where is the intervention?

 

Well the intervention is blocked by 1. China who are waist deep in the resource war of Sudan and 2. The vested interests of the west who are also waist deep in this war, ones that are largely aligned with the republican side of US power.

 

Thats why you see massive support for an intervention in Darfur by the democrats and the private sector on their side of the fence. "genocide, genocide! we must stop it! it has to be stopped!" aka If we can sanction international law and the international community to our side we can go in and boot all the existing competition, particularly the Chinese, out.

 

Pakistan/India- the NPT is an aspect of international law. they were signatories when they tested their bombs. therefore, violation of international law. wheres the consequences? oh right, india now gets nuke energy for free.

 

Who is going to carry out punishment of nuclear armed states? Where are the consequences? Its the same reason the entire current US cabinet are not hanging from the end of ropes. International law on a practical level a majority of the time only applies to the weaker nations.

 

Iran/north korea- again, by refusing iaea inspectors in, that is a violation of the npt

. Genocide is universal, because every country made it so. Wonder why the ICJ lacks legitimacy? Cuz the US made it so, when they refused to have us officials tried (kissinger ain't a war criminal, wordddddddddddddddd.

 

Which highlights exactly what I am saying

 

When someone or something goes before the world court for fucking with international law they are punished or not punished according to the power they can bring to bare on the global community.

 

If you are X small Asian or African nation busted for pollution you cop it on the chin. If you are the US busted for international terrorism, you veto every single resolution and tell the world to fuck off.

 

If you are Pol Pot you will be (almost) handed over to the international community. If you are Kissinger you will live out the remainder of your days as an extremely wealthy scholar

 

So how can you say that international law is more important than sovereign law, when if the US wants to it can trump it? Please. Again, theoretically, it makes sense, one level to the next, therefore international is bigger than state level, because it encompases state. But when has any state challenged the Treaty of Westphalia? Never. Except when it accorded with their own state policies. I'll give you another example of why international law doesn't matter.

 

International law is of more importance on every theoretical and ethical level. You shouldn't confuse its importance in relation to the global society and the future for human beings with the fact that the powerful states can simply avoid it on all its serious charges. What you are after is a discussion on the nature of power itself.

 

 

Rwanda. In a matter of months, they witnessed arguably the most ruthless genocide in history. International dictated a response. There was none. The genocide ended. International dictated another trial at the Hague. The Rwandans preferred their own trial. Two instances, where one crucial actor said, thanks, but no thanks..... how can you argue that international law is relevant in any modern context when every signiicant actor involved doesn't give a shit about it?

 

I don't know specifically about this but if the international community wanted an international hearing then it could have easily gotten one. Rwanda is not a player on the map and if anyone that was, say the US, truly wanted an international court case on the matter it would have happened. At a guess I would say everyone was happy to let them sort it out at the state level because of everyones lack of action to solve the problem in the first place.

 

And as a side note between this thread and another where African examples are brought up it is interesting to see no one has listed/knows about the DRC which by some reports puts the deaths at 1 million per year since about 1996

 

Or we could talk about something that directly stems from our free market capitalism and could be very easily solved; the death of 10,000 children per day in southern Africa from malnutrition and basic sicknesses.

 

That isn't 8,000 Rwandans a day from murder for 100 days that is 10,000 children a day from easily preventable causes, forever.

 

unless you're talking about theory where of course, it would be wonderful if international law was paramount :scrambled:

 

It is paramount in theory but I think your point is that the powerful subvert it in practice, which again I am not arguing with and is in fact probably one of my biggest points

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Stereotype V.0002

Stereotype V.0002

Posted
Posted

Ok I’ll admit I am a secret agent of premiere boosh being paid to antagonize you. Its all part of the secret GOP plan to gradually aggravate and thus raise the blood pressure of various dumbasses, eventually leading to cardiac arrest. Now that my cover is blown i will have to go kill a homeless guy and throw his body in my house then set it on fire to stage my cover name’s death, get my backup passport, cash in my untraceable offshore accounts in the caymans, and relocate to my italian alps safehouse.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
lord_casek

lord_casek

Posted
Posted
Ok I’ll admit I am a secret agent of premiere boosh being paid to antagonize you. Its all part of the secret GOP plan to gradually aggravate and thus raise the blood pressure of various dumbasses, eventually leading to cardiac arrest. Now that my cover is blown i will have to go kill a homeless guy and throw his body in my house then set it on fire to stage my cover name’s death, get my backup passport, cash in my untraceable offshore accounts in the caymans, and relocate to my italian alps safehouse.

 

 

or you'll just turn back around and keep masturbating to angelina jolie in hackers. god she was fugly in that movie.

 

but yuu like it, because you like fugly women.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
lord_casek

lord_casek

Posted
Posted
Come on now casek, thats one handsome woman! Sure maybe she looks like she maxed out the recommended amount of collagen, plus the bowl haircut wasnt very flattering, and the bags always under he eyes, but nobodies perfect.

 

 

see! that proves you are a traitor!

 

"angelina jolie from tomb raider 1" was much better looking

than "hackers angelina jolie"

 

hackers-angelina-jolie.jpg

Hackers angelina ^

 

 

JolieCroft.jpg

 

tomb raider angelina ^

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Theo Huxtable.

Theo Huxtable.

Posted
  • Author
Posted
snap were you on the kittyhawk, i saw it when it visited Sydney recently pretty ridiculously massive, what role did you play on it?

 

 

i was an operations specialist... basically one who tracks airplanes, ships, and missles on radar.

 

i was on two ships to be exact; the blue ridge and then the kittyhawk. i was on the blue ridge when it pulled in to sydney may 2001. did you see it?

 

this is what it looks like:

 

pulling in to sydney:

 

010529sydneyindex-h.jpg

 

moored in sydney:

 

blgrdn4.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites
MayorMeanBeans

MayorMeanBeans

Posted
Posted

U.S. Scales Back Political Goals for Iraqi Unity

 

By STEVEN LEE MYERS and ALISSA J. RUBIN

Published: November 25, 2007

WASHINGTON, Nov. 24 — With American military successes outpacing political gains in Iraq, the Bush administration has lowered its expectation of quickly achieving major steps toward unifying the country, including passage of a long-stymied plan to share oil revenues and holding regional elections.

 

Instead, administration officials say they are focusing their immediate efforts on several more limited but achievable goals in the hope of convincing Iraqis, foreign governments and Americans that progress is being made toward the political breakthroughs that the military campaign of the past 10 months was supposed to promote.

The short-term American targets include passage of a $48 billion Iraqi budget, something the Iraqis say they are on their way to doing anyway; renewing the United Nations mandate that authorizes an American presence in the country, which the Iraqis have done repeatedly before; and passing legislation to allow thousands of Baath Party members from Saddam Hussein’s era to rejoin the government. A senior Bush administration official described that goal as largely symbolic since rehirings have been quietly taking place already.

Bush administration officials have not abandoned their larger goals and emphasize the importance of reaching them eventually. They say that even modest steps, taken soon, could set the stage for more progress, in the same manner that this year’s troop “surge” opened the way, unexpectedly, for drawing Sunni tribesmen to the American side.

A senior official said the administration was intensifying its pressure on the Iraqi government to produce some concrete signs of political progress.

“If we can show progress outside of the security sector alone, that will go a long way to demonstrate that we are in fact on a sustainable path to stability in Iraq,” the senior official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

On Saturday, Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador to Baghdad, said that the military had created an opportunity for progress, adding that there were some indications that Iraqis on the local as well as the national level want to move forward. But he cautioned against expecting quick results on the core issues.

“We are seeing encouraging signs of movement,” he said, but added, “This is going to be a long, hard slog.”

“It is going to be one thing at a time, maybe two things at a time, we hope with increasing momentum,” he said. “It is a long-term process.”

The White House has been elated by the drop in violence since the increase in American forces, now 162,000 troops. Public comments by President Bush and his aides, though, have been muted, reflecting frustration at the lack of political progress, a continuation of a pattern in which intense American efforts to promote broader reconciliation have proved largely fruitless.

There have been signs that American influence over Iraqi politics is dwindling after the recent improvements in security — which remain incomplete, as shown by a deadly bombing Friday in Baghdad. While Bush officials once said they aimed to secure “reconciliation” among Iraq’s deeply divided religious, ethnic and sectarian groups, some officials now refer to their goal as “accommodation.”

“We can’t pass their legislation,” a senior American official in Baghdad said. “We can’t make them like each other. We can’t even make them talk to each other. Well, sometimes we can. But we can help them execute their budget.”

Ambassador Crocker drew a distinction between the effectiveness of the American military buildup in quelling violence and the influence the United States could bring to bear at a political level.

“The political stuff does not lend itself to sending out a couple of battalions to help the Iraqi’s pass legislation,” he said.

Still, he said, there were some positive signs that Iraqis were interested in making headway on some thorny issues. Provincial governors, he said, were pressing for a law to define their powers. “We are past the point where it is an American agenda,” the ambassador said. “It is what needs to be done in Iraqi terms.”

Officials in Washington and in Baghdad share the view that military gains alone are not enough to overcome the deep distrust among Iraqi factions caused by nearly five decades of dictatorship and war. And in both capitals there are leaders who continue to hold out hope for broad political gains, eventually.

“We need a grand bargain among all the groups,” said one senior member of Iraq’s government, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

But with that not yet in sight, Bush administration officials said they hoped approval of a few initial steps might lead to more substantive agreements next year, including provincial elections, which the White House wants to see held before Mr. Bush leaves office in less than 14 months.

 

The prospect of such elections has been politically delicate because of the fear that some regions, like Shiite-dominated southern Iraq, are most likely to vote for leaders who support stronger regional governments at the expense of the Baghdad administration.

While one Bush administration official called the renewed pressure on Baghdad a “political surge” after the increase in troop levels this year, most of what Washington is seeking appears to reflect a diminished and more realistic set of expectations after months of little political progress.

The troop increase at the beginning of the year was intended to create the conditions to improve Iraq’s political stability, measured by so-called benchmarks, including a broad agreement on sharing oil revenues.

But those benchmarks remain largely unfulfilled. The administration’s critics in Congress have cited the lack of progress toward those benchmarks as evidence that the White House is on the wrong track and ought to begin a rapid pullout of combat forces.

Perhaps the most achievable of the administration’s short-term targets, American and Iraqi officials said, is legislation that would allow thousands of members of the Hussein-era Baath Party, most of them Sunnis, to return to government positions.

A senior administration official described that legislation as largely symbolic — since the Shiite-dominated government had begun to accommodate some Sunni officials in practice — but important in that it would at last signal some progress, capitalizing on the relative lull in violence.

Other immediate steps the Bush administration is pressing the Iraqi government to take include passing a budget, $48 billion for the coming year, and again renewing the United Nations mandate for the American troop presence before it expires at the end of the year.

In Baghdad, Iraqi officials indicated that the various parties, which like much of the country are defined largely by sect or ethnicity, remained far apart on the more difficult issues of sharing power and revenues. But some seemed surprised by the idea that the Bush administration would apply more pressure.

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s political adviser, Sadiq al-Rikabi, said none was needed to persuade the Iraqi leaders and Parliament to approve a budget. “Every state needs a budget,” he said. “It’s impossible to function without a budget. It does not need any push from anyone.”

At the same time, though, he expressed an appreciation for the Bush administration’s effort to keep all sides talking.

American officials note that as routine as it may seem to pass a budget, the Iraqis did not quickly adopt the current one.

Although the White House no longer faces the immediate prospect of losing crucial political support for the war — because the opponents lack the votes needed in Congress to force a policy change — the imperative for political progress remains, if only because of the American elections in less than a year.

Despite the reduction in violence, with attacks now down to levels last seen in early 2006, some Democrats in Congress have continued to press for a timeline for a withdrawal. Most recently, the House tried to tie a deadline to a $50 billion war spending bill, although that proposal died in the Senate.

When Congress debated the war earlier this year, the administration pushed hard for the Iraqis to approve some of the legislation. Several times, for example, the law on dispensing oil revenues, which are now surging because of high world oil prices, appeared on the brink of adoption, only to stall.

One of the immediate American concerns is getting Iraq to request extending the United Nations mandate. In Baghdad, a senior Iraqi government official said that the extension would not be a problem, but that there was little progress in negotiating the longer-term agreements on a “strategic partnership” with the United States.

“It’s the status of forces agreement that we have to start on,” the official said. That agreement, although not an issue until 2009 or later, is a far more delicate matter because it will frame the future military relationship between the countries.

The most important thing the Americans can do is keep Iraq’s political blocs — Shiite and Sunni Arab and Kurds — talking to one another and help them understand legislation now being debated, several Iraqi politicians said. Only with concrete information, they said, could rumors be dispelled that legislation might help or hurt certain groups.

“So far, the activities of the American Embassy are a bit limited in this regard,” said Qassim Daoud, an independent Shiite in Parliament, who served as a minister for security in the government of Ayad Allawi before Iraq regain its own sovereignty.

Earlier this month, the White House dispatched several senior aides to Baghdad to work with the Iraqis on specific legislative areas. They include the under secretary of state for economic, energy and agricultural affairs, Reuben Jeffery III, who is working on the budget and oil law; the State Department’s senior Iraq adviser, David M. Satterfield, who is focused on the elections and de-Baathification law; and Brett McGurk, the National Security Council’s Iraq director, who is pressing for the United Nations mandate and a longer security agreement. All have been meeting with a variety of officials and party leaders across Iraq, a senior administration official said.

American officials in Baghdad appear to understand the limitations they face and are focusing on pragmatic goals like helping the Iraqi government spend the money in its budget. That, officials in both countries said, could do more than anything else to ease tensions and build support for the national government.

“I think reconciliation will eventually come,” a senior Bush administration official said, but added, “That’s a long way down the path.”

 

---------------

 

 

 

is it scaling back to withdraw, or just another spin to make it look like progress by removing conditions?

Link to comment
Share on other sites
WORDISM45

WORDISM45

Posted
Posted
i was an operations specialist... basically one who tracks airplanes, ships, and missles on radar.

 

i was on two ships to be exact; the blue ridge and then the kittyhawk. i was on the blue ridge when it pulled in to sydney may 2001. did you see it?

 

 

was this the ship that was made open to the Australian public to walk on and look around? There was definitely a US warship that came to Sydney around that time that was open for inspection. If it was that ship then i've been on it

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Theo Huxtable.

Theo Huxtable.

Posted
  • Author
Posted
was this the ship that was made open to the Australian public to walk on and look around? There was definitely a US warship that came to Sydney around that time that was open for inspection. If it was that ship then i've been on it

 

i honestly don't remember. possibly. does the one in the photo look like the one you went on?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
 Share
Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...