HMLT you are clearly a very intelligent and well-read individual, i cannot understand why you insist on repeatedly using the phrase war criminal without any legal justification. do you not see the damage it does to the idea and ideals of international law to be so careless with its terminology? i do not know the specific area well enough to advocate one way or the other on the matter of Blair's criminality, but i feel confident that (as with almost all international law) it is extremely complex, and a matter very much in grey, rather than the black and white with which you paint it
It i
s based on a legal [and - perhaps even more importantly - moral, and rational] justification. Why do you insist that it
isn't [now
that we do indeed understand]?
Elgato, there have been
numerous posts on this forum [in this very Politics category] articulating, discussing and referencing - in the specific context of the illegal Iraq invasion - what constitutes a war crime, legally, morally, rationally, and, indeed, there have been many posters like yourself confessing ignorance [despite ample opportunity to overcome such ignorance] of internation law as a pretext for censoring judgements by those who
are very knowledgeable about such law (ie because you're ignorant of the topic, therefore nobody else has a right to claim that they are informed about it; your 'reasoning' here is beginning to resemble that of Idlerich. We're back yet again into impotent pomo malaise).
As you say, you "don't know the specifics well enough" to form an opinion, yet - without blinking - you immediately proceed to form
some very definite opinions on the issue, expressing them in yet further posts (despite acknowledgeing your ignorance of the topic) for purposes of undermining the credibility of those who have seriously studied - - and who understand - the issues.
Without wishing to be too blunt ('black and white'), but - unless you've had your head in the sand these past 5 years - denying that the invasion of Iraq was a war crime is tantamount to denying that 9/11 was a crime [a crime used obscenely for justifying the invasion of Afghanistan, of Iraq, and currently threatening to do likewise to Iran], that Hitler's invasion of Poland was a crime [indeed, it is easily argued that the invasion of Iraq was a worse war crime, because those who orchestrated it KNEW that they would be breaking numerous international laws, whereas no such laws even existed at the time of Poland's invasion] , that any crime is a 'crime' - on the basis that you're ignorant of the "extremely complex" laws (obviously complex for someone who mysteriously refuses to make any effort to understand them, but effortlessly insults and belittles those of us who have).
So, to surmise from the pomo 'reasoning' of your incoherent posts here, the US/UK under Bush/Blair leadership did not necessarily
invade Iraq at all, that you have your 'doubts' about whether it even happened, because the law is "complex" to those who choose to remain ignorant of it, and that therefore, for the benefit of those who wish to preserve their blissful ignorance of the world of geopolitics and international law (along with their right to condemn those who choose otherwise), no definitive judgement can ever be made - or even
permitted - about the legal status of those responsible for any actions whatsoever ...
Excellent. Now let's hear you 'defend' Osama Bin Laden on this basis, if you wish to preserve your 'consistency'.
-------------------------------------------
IdleRich said:
I don't "support" him [Vimothy], I just think that he should be allowed to state his views - why exactly is it you are so threatened by his challenges to your dearly held beliefs?
And if David Irving began trolling this forum with endless posts 'reasonably' and 'modestly' claiming that those who 'claim' (a mere 'view', like any other, after all) that the Holocaust actually happened are simply deluded, that anti-semitism is a dangerous myth, and then gradually 'baiting' more and more naive and intellectually vulnerable posters here to his aims,
you would defend his right to do so ... while condemning those who expose his actual agenda. Ditto for an Al Qaeda propagandist, and so on.
I'm not 'threatened' by his 'views'; but the lives of countless Others who have no voice in this - Western - society are very much seriously threatened by the obscene propaganda systematically promoted by numerous Vimothy clones throughout the West. Don't be confusing Hate Speech, the
abuse of speech, with 'free speech' ... Don't let yourself be seduced into his irrational schizophrenic ravings ("I'm pro-capitalist but I'm not a capitalist" etc), a weakness you're increasingly displaying here of late.
Idlerich said:
I don't want anyone to be banned even you.
Such exorbitant generosity. But actually, we routinely witness posters here defending 'free speech' in one sentence while gratuititously calling for someone's instant banning from this forum in the next. There have been countless posters here gloating over the banning of some poster because s/he used harsh language in taking to task someone for hurling unjustifiable personal abuse in their direction (as the delirially vicious responses to K-punk's post announcing his departure from the forum over a year ago clearly demonstrated; and the parallel silence and indifference of those who should really have known better was even more disturbing).
The real difficulty with banning someone like Tea for a week is that it will simply further pathologise an arbitrary and totally unfounded grudge - so aggravating his obsessive neurosis as evidenced over the past six months (his psychic doppleganger Droid should be sufficient evidence of that: after a long absence, he recently returned to this forum for the sole purpose of hurling vile personal abuse at a formerly banned poster, as well as at Woebot, and then quickly departed again. So what was he 'defending'? The 'integrity' of a forum he couldn't be bothered posting to, or his precious little ego?).
I'm not into
totally banning anyone other than - and even then only temporarily - the kind of sickening troll (and Tea is not ultimately a troll, it's that he comes here for banal, ego-anarchic, fetishistic 'entertainment', incorrectly assuming there are no direct implications from his posts for his life in the wider world - like in the realm of his precious, pure, untouchable physical science) already referred to, and Vimothy is such a troll.
The forum is about a
dissensus from both the
status quo and right-wing reactionaries like Vimothy, not the consensual encouragement and embracement of their further disasterous hegemony.
[As for holding grudges, on one occasion in the past on another now-defunct forum, following the receipt of numerous e-mail (and snail-mail) death threats, I met up with the guy responsible, who now is quite amicable].