quote:United States also only freed its slaves in 1865 this was 32 years *after* the rest of the civilised world (or the British Empire as it was then known ) did so.
If you're so civilized, why were you so close to supporting the slaveowning South?
Because the Empire figured that if it weakened the States enough, (because if the South had seceded, that probably would have started a general breakdown) it'd eventually be able to reclaim its former colonies, that's why.
Yes, one of the reasons was that we hoped to weaken the US, however another reason was the unprovoked bording of the Royal Mail packet ship Trent and the seisure of two Confederate representatives. If we had wanted to take back the colonies we would have done in 50 years before in the War of 1812 anyway.
My original comment was supposed to be lighthearted. Guess I should have known better...
-------------------- "I am an almost extinct breed, an old-fashioned gentleman, which means I can be a cast-iron son-of-a-bitch when it suits me." --Jubal Harshaw
Registered: Feb 2002
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Listen, I want to apologize for going a ways over the top on this one.
Julie's niece has been having mysterious seizures, and Sunday night I drove Julie to her sister's house to see her. Before she goes to the hospital for MRI and other tests.
Julie's sister is going through a divorce from a man who recently became a real ass (adultery, mean to the kids, and so forth), and he showed up that night out of the blue. There was much shouting and arguing, and I had to absorb the majority of Julie's stress, and be woken up every half-hour by her nightmares which this confrontation triggered.
So I've been displacing. Sorry.
But to answer the question:
quote:We have dictators all over the place, like Hussain that you are trying to get rid of, wouldn't it look better to try him instead of just outright killing him. A fair trail held under the auspices of the UN or world court would take some of the heat off the US in an instance like this.
That would be nice, but... how are you going to get him and bring him to trial? Send him a subpoena? You have to capture the bad guy before you can try him, if you want to have any hope at all of making him stop. Trials in absentia don't mean diddly.
[ April 16, 2002, 12:33: Message edited by: First of Two ]
-------------------- "The best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a terrifyingly accurate and devastatingly powerful offense, with multiply-overlapping kill zones and time-on-target artillery strikes." -- Laurence, Archangel of the Sword
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
To be fair, that depends upon the penalties levied by the court, and the extent of its jurisdiction. In theory, for instance, if such a conviction meant that no state could recognize Hussein or his government, that would have far reaching effects. (Of course, the likelyhood of such a decision being enforced is another matter entirely, but I'm speaking only about the very basic concept.)
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Yes, but a Court making decisions without the capacity to enforce them isn't much good, so the means of enforcement should be considered in the decision.
-------------------- "The best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a terrifyingly accurate and devastatingly powerful offense, with multiply-overlapping kill zones and time-on-target artillery strikes." -- Laurence, Archangel of the Sword
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
I've just hit my head really badly. I'm basically sitting here waiting to see if I'm going to throw up all over the place or pass out or something, in which case it'll be certain I've got concussion. That's probably why I'm about to say what I'm about to say.
Excuses are like assholes, everyone's got one.
We've just been treated to one of the classic Rob displacement actions. Unable to provide any sort of rational reason why a world court is a bad thing (apart from "everyone will sue the US and we'll have to abide by the verdict as we're the nice guys, whereas some foreign war criminal will be sheltered by his or some other not-so-nice government"), we've seen the thread spiral off into the usual bollocks, guns, abortions, blah blah blah.
Smoke and mirrors, now you see it, now you don't!
Unfortunately everyone's getting wise to this now. So it's time to break the glass and pull out the Emergency Holographic Sympathy Vote. That's right, it's the latest installment of. . . The Perils of Penelope Pitstop!
Rob, I do feel sympathy for what you and Julie are going through. I myself share my life with someone with significant medical problems. The specific nature of these isn't something I want to go into here, for the most part they're in her past but there's no telling how they might affect things in the future.
Even by telling you all that I feel I've said to much. I do not feel that these are things it is appropriate to speak of in public. Does Julie know you've discussed her mental problems and abused past in such detail on a website accessible to anyone? Or that it's been done in a way that has been seen by many people - I'm not naming names, but they have spoken to me about it - as a way to garner sympathy for yourself and to attempt to explain/excuse some of the views you hold?
So, there. Sorry, but that had to be said. You may all now round on me, say how horrid and insensitive I am. Requests for my immediate banning c/o Mr. Timothy S Nix, esq.
posted
No... I've been an ass. I've introduced irrelevancies into the discussion (in my defense, it's hardly like that's anything NEW in any post on this board, and I still say that I WAS legitimately replying to VARIOUS TOPICS).
And I've used Julie and her family problems (yes, though, she knows I've taked about her) to excuse my lack of self-control. (But NEVER my opinions. Not EVER. I still hild them, and I'll still argue over them.
And I've developed, rather unjudiciously, the feeling that the Flameboard has devolved into a "liberal" (to use the term in a loose and generic sense) circle-jerk... and I've, in my own way, sped the decline, by becoming a nasty reactionary.
So I'm going. I don't need this crap, and neither do you.
[ April 16, 2002, 16:31: Message edited by: First of Two ]
-------------------- "The best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a terrifyingly accurate and devastatingly powerful offense, with multiply-overlapping kill zones and time-on-target artillery strikes." -- Laurence, Archangel of the Sword
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
I don't know if you will be reading this Rob as your last statement sounded like you are gone for good, but I will write it anyway.
quote:That would be nice, but... how are you going to get him and bring him to trial? Send him a subpoena? You have to capture the bad guy before you can try him, if you want to have any hope at all of making him stop. Trials in absentia don't mean diddly.
Well it seems that we are now trying Serbian leaders in the world court and 5 years ago you could have made the same argument you just made. So you are saying by this post that because there is a lack of a policing force then a court should not be set up. Perhaps it is time for a world army to provide the might behind a world court. Thanks Rob a great segue into that. The point is there should be a body to try these people, the serbians gave up Slobo, to the world to try(one of their own) why could not the US give up Osama if they ever catch him. I mean one of the statements the US made while drumming up an alliance was that "Your people got killed too in the WTC.". So if people of a lot of nations were killed in this act then should it not be that the world should get to try him, as well as the people you have jailed in Camp-Xray. I can hear it now, we were the ones who caught them we should be allowed to try them. Well this argument does not wash either because in your own country the police just catch the bad guys they don't decide where or when they are tried.
-------------------- "and none of your usual boobery." M. Burns
Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
Hmmm, didn't know where else to put this and I didn't want to start a new thread; it did strike me as being ironic while reading the news.
quote:Peter Hansen, head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, accused Israel of blocking relief workers' access to the West Bank. "None of us can remember when we have met with as much indifference when we have protested and asked for co-operation with governments responsible and in charge as we have in this current crisis," he told reporters in Brussels. He said Israel was less responsive to calls for humanitarian access to victims than governments had been in war zones such as Bosnia, Chechnya, Angola and Sudan.
Contrast this with another article (unavailiable online) that says that the number of anti-semitic incidents in Canada has risen to the highest level since World War II...*sigh*
Registered: Mar 1999
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quote:Contrast this with another article (unavailiable online) that says that the number of anti-semitic incidents in Canada has risen to the highest level since World War II...*sigh*
That is truely unfortunate, I don't like what is going on there but attacking people in your own country will not solve this problem. All it does is futher polarize factions in your country to the point where you become ineffectual to helping a solution come about.
-------------------- "and none of your usual boobery." M. Burns
Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
Lee: Well, if you hadn't beaten me to it, I was going to make the same point (though maybe not quite as harshly)...
Registered: Mar 1999
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Harsh is my middle name. Except it's not really.
I'm just concerned. I know how easy it is to subsume one's feelings into this place. Look at Rob's earlier posts in this thread. Well-developed, clearly-presented arguments (considering they're all batshit right-wing bollocks, that is). Then all of a sudden, out of leftfield, comes the stuff about problems at home.
Now, I think there are two ways we could look at such behaviour. Either it's a cynical ploy to gain sympathy, or there's some real problems there which he needs to sort out in his own time. I say we leave him to it, and hope we see him again soon.
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