8 canadians killed in south lebanon.

[Kuciwalker]

The entire point of meeting in someone's house is so that they get free publicity - Israel kills babies! - if/when they are attacked. It's using human shields, which are explicitly forbidden by the Conventions.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
You're an idiot. And the Geneva Conventions don't agree. The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations. A general, whether he's asleep in bed or in the field, is a valid target. The presence of civilians may not be used to render him immune from attack.

Its funny to see you make pronouncements about the validity of your statements when you have failed to provide a rational basis for it, but instead blindly act as if that quote made your point (hint, it doesn't because it is a vague and rather sweeping statement).

And you call others stupid..



:sigh:

[HINT: may is a conditional statement. You also have no definition for "certain" (as opposed to any)]

[GePap]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
The entire point of meeting in someone's house is so that they get free publicity - Israel kills babies! - if/when they are attacked. It's using human shields, which are explicitly forbidden by the Conventions.

You can't even find the exmple you have quoted, and yourself have nothing to back what you just said.

We have met the new BAM!

to the new BAM!

[Kuciwalker]

Its funny to see you make pronouncements about the validity of your statements when you have failed to provide a rational basis for it, but instead blindly act as if that quote made your point (hint, it doesn't because it is a vague and rather sweeping statement).

It's only vague when you are desperately hunting for some way to avoid utter pwnage.

HINT: may is a conditional statement. You also have no definition for "certain" (as opposed to any)

I had no idea you were going to be this inane.

1. "May" is obvious in the sense of "is not permitted to." It's not a conditional.

2. Regarding "certain." Since the sentence I quoted is the entirety of Article 28 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, if "certain" were intended to refer to a particular class of places in which the Article applied other than "where both protected persons and targets are," they'd obviously provide some sort of hint as to what that class comprised.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
2. Regarding "certain." Since the sentence I quoted is the entirety of Article 28 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, if "certain" were intended to refer to a particular class of places in which the Article applied other than "where both protected persons and targets are," they'd obviously provide some sort of hint as to what that class comprised.

Are you of the fiction that laws are writen with some incredible clarity? if so why would there be lawyers?

"certain" may be defined elsewhere more exactly, but there is a reason why certain as opposed to any, or all, was used. It is not a carte blanche as you state it is.

In some way you are worse than Fez...

Here is another dozy from the convention:

Article 33

No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.

Pillage is prohibited.

Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.

Isn't it obvious from this clause that Israeli strikes against power planst and bridges are clearly war crimes? Its obvious, black and white:

Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.


Casue we all know Kuci my boy that the laws are writen so obviously as to make disagreement in interpretion impossible, RIGHT?

[Gibsie]

Originally posted by notyoueither
His statement, made on Friday, was not an endorsement of whatever tactics the Israeli's might employ.

As of today, Harper joined with the rest of the G8 in calling for a cease fire, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and Lebanon, and the release of the 3 soldiers as well as the Hamas politicians siezed by Israel. So, does that answer your original question?

While I disagree that his original statement was not an endorsement, that does answer my original question. Good to see that it's not all "Hamas/ Hezbollah needs to stop, and Israel's response is fair" across the board any more...

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Oerdin


Wrong. I am advocating destroying the root of an evil ideology just as someone would do by advocating the destruction of Nazism. To compare Arab societies continue to support terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah. .... the Arabs currently support an evil ideology. There is no grey zone.

I'm intrigued by this statement, given the latest round of publicity over the extradition of 'The Natwest Three' by the government of the United Kingdom to the United States, which has still to ratify its part of said new extradition treaty.

One of the reasons behind the delay over ratification on the U.S. side seems to be U.S. politicians' fear of an Irish-American voters' backlash.

It's no secret that members of the I.R.A. and Sinn Fein have appeared on U.S. soil and been feted by American politicians of Irish origins and even some who boast no Irish antecedents.

It's also no secret that Irish Americans have been linked with fund-raising for the I.R.A. and gun-running to and weapons procurement for them:

In 1982 -- the year an IRA bomb killed eight people in Hyde Park -- four IRA men were arrested in New York after trying to buy surface-to-air missiles from an FBI agent. In 1984 -- the year the IRA tried to kill the whole British cabinet in Brighton -- an IRA plot to smuggle seven tons of explosives was foiled, an action that led to the arrests of several Americans. As recently as 1999, long after the IRA had declared its cease-fire, members of an IRA group connected to an American organization, the Irish Northern Aid Committee (Noraid), were arrested for gun-running in Florida.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/02/AR2005080201943.html

How the 'war of liberation' was viewed in the U.S. :

While supporting what many would see as a terror group, he draws a line between the actions of the IRA and those of the 11 September attackers.

"There's no comparison. I don't think it's in the psyche of the Irish to become suicide bombers. The IRA gives warnings before its bombings. What happened here brings it to a whole new level."

Others would point to the fact that an attack by the dissident 'Real IRA' in Omagh in 1998 claimed the lives of 29 civilians, while hundreds of people were killed and thousands maimed in IRA bombings and shootings in more than thirty years of violence.

A legal challenge is being prepared against the ruling by Washington earlier this year to outlaw the so-called Real IRA and its political wing, the 32 County Sovereignty Committee.

Mr McDonagh believes these groups will not get a fair hearing in the "climate of hysteria in this country".

As for the immediate effect on fundraising, he can't comment.

"We've been having a break over summer, but we've got a sponsored five-mile fun run in October and a dinner and dance in January, so we'll wait and see if the take is down."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1563119.stm

So somehow it's morally better if you don't kill civilians in a suicide bombing, just by shepherding them after a carbomb explosion into the path of another one. I must have missed that fine moral distinction in my Catholic catechism classes.

"The Irish American community is now aroused and unified. We are militant. A mood of outrage is affecting all Irish Americans. It's just the tip of the iceberg."

and

"We note in the hundreds of words used in the St. Patrick's Day statement [by the Four Horsemen], two crucial words are strikingly absent-hunger strike. The Four Horsemen, who could have alleviated so much suffering by raising their voices last winter were silent, even while the New York and Massachusetts state legislatures enacted resolutions of support for the demands of Irish political prisoners."
Noraid's response to the St. Patrick's Day
message published by the "Four Horsemen":
Governor Hugh Carey of New York, Senator Ted
Kennedy of Massachusetts, Senator
Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, and
Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill of Massachusetts.
"Noraid Statement"
Irish People, 21 March 1981, 1

and

An English flag and a mannequin representing Margaret Thatcher of Britain, with a sign reading, "Monster Thatcher Wanted for Murder of Irish People" hung on it, were burned by the demonstrators…

As the final act of the protest march, the crowd, many of them kneeling, prayed together on Hammerskold Plaza. Only the flapping of the American and Irish flags in the breeze disturbed the voices saying the rosary. "
"Noraid Pickets British Consulate in Support of Sands" by Kevin McCormick
Irish Echo, 9 May 1981

http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/aia/exhibits/0501_hunger/support/genpro.htm

Gosh, all that rhetoric and effigy burning and politicized religiosity seems so eerily familiar...


So my question is this: how would Americans of non-Irish descent have felt, if, as well as targeting possible Sinn Fein/I.R.A. 'military' targets in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, the British armed forces had launched air attacks on cities in the United States with large groups of Irish Americans or Noraid offices there ?

[Flip McWho]

Get off the altruistic idealogical soapbox that you are on and realize that these people are the problem and that eventually they would have to be dealt with.

Actually the problem started when the Brits ran away and the infant UN implemented the 1947 Partition Plan. The result was conflict and well it still is.

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
As insane as it sounds, GePap is correct. You aren't allowed to kill unarmed troops in their barricks, for example.

Could you please give a reference to the article(s) that forbids this ?

[Flip McWho]

When people sit down and realise that ones mans terrorist is another mans freedom blah blah blah then they might actually worry about the root causes of the problem, i.e the palestinian/israeli equation, rather than attacking a symptom.

Though I suppose, going by that logic, the root cause of this little mess is religion, namely Abrahamic religion.

[Darius871]

Originally posted by GePap
[HINT: may is a conditional statement.

Given your apparently extensive secondary education in international law, you should know "may" in this specific context is more akin to "shall" than "might."

[Arrian]

I hope Oerdin was just drunk. His transformation to the darkside isn't fun to watch.

I think that if Israel bombs a house and there are Hizbollah members/leaders inside but also civilians, tough nuggies. Valid target. Whether or not it's smart of Israel to pull the trigger in such situations is another matter, and probably depends on how valueable the militants/terrorists/whatever are.

-Arrian

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Flip McWho
Actually the problem started when the Brits ran away and the infant UN implemented the 1947 Partition Plan.

Actually, the Partition Plan was advisory only. It's adoption was contingent on both sides agreeing, and the Palestinians have never agreed. Ergo, the original partition plan was never legal.

After the 1st cease-fire, the UN sent Count Bernedette to investigate the situation. He was going to recommend a revision of the original Peel commission Plan, which would have limited Israel to about ten percent of the land of Palestine, where the vast majority of Jews lived, and make Jeruslaem an international city. The Israelis assassinated him.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Does the following quote:

"The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations." (Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, August 12, 1949, 6 U.S.T. 3516, 75 U.N.T.S. 287, art. 28)

clearly justify Israel's strike on a home containing both a family of civilians and the Hezbollah leaders that had been invited in? Or at least clearly absolve them from blame accruing from the resulting civilian casualties?

The problem here is you are conflating legality with morality. I'm not arguing, and I don't think GePap is either, that Israel committed a war crime. It is, however, immoral in the extreme.

I, personally, see no substantive difference between the indiscriminate killing of civilians to hit a military target of dubious value, and the deliberate targetting of civilians. Whatever "moral" claims the Israelis might have about not deliberately killing civilians is heavily outweighed by the fact that they are far, far more lethal, and kill mulitple times more civilians than their enemies.

As to the prupose of the section of the GC. I expect that it is less to do with justifying callousness towards civilians who are slaughtered with impunity to get at any military target than it is to discourage the use of civilian shields be unsavory governments. In other words, civilians who get killed because the government has an armory in a civilian area (like say, the National Guard armoies in the hearts of all major U.S. cities) are legitimate, but regratable, casualties of war. However, bombing a soccor stadium full of refugees because one leader of a terrorist group is watching the match is not. Obviously that was a hyperbolic example, but it was to make it easier to understand the point.

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Does the following quote:

"The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations." (Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, August 12, 1949, 6 U.S.T. 3516, 75 U.N.T.S. 287, art. 28)

clearly justify Israel's strike on a home containing both a family of civilians and the Hezbollah leaders that had been invited in? Or at least clearly absolve them from blame accruing from the resulting civilian casualties?

The problem here is you are conflating legality with morality. I'm not arguing, and I don't think GePap is either, that Israel committed a war crime. It is, however, immoral in the extreme.

I, personally, see no substantive difference between the indiscriminate killing of civilians to hit a military target of dubious value, and the deliberate targetting of civilians. Whatever "moral" claims the Israelis might have about not deliberately killing civilians is heavily outweighed by the fact that they are far, far more lethal, and kill mulitple times more civilians than their enemies.

As to the prupose of the section of the GC. I expect that it is less to do with justifying callousness towards civilians who are slaughtered with impunity to get at any military target than it is to discourage the use of civilian shields be unsavory governments. In other words, civilians who get killed because the government has an armory in a civilian area (like say, the National Guard armoies in the hearts of all major U.S. cities) are legitimate, but regratable, casualties of war. However, bombing a soccor stadium full of refugees because one leader of a terrorist group is watching the match is not. Obviously that was a hyperbolic example, but it was to make it easier to understand the point.

Your hyperbole is, well, just hyperbole, not worth the bits that describes it. You are comparing an unvolonteery stadium public to persons that are quite aware of their guests status. Please, Che, you can do it better.

Edit : btw, I'm still curious about your claim about attacks on barracks.