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  • #16
    Erm...

    The utterly distasteful answer is: yes. Disband the UN (United eh?). Impose Pax Atlantica et dominia. Or have one big-old genocide to wind things up. When there's no one left to kill ... 'Dare you to write that. Logically true. That is why we need more than logic. I bloody hope.
    Out of interest have any hippies who love "mother Nature" decided on her position vis-a-vis getting rid of hundreds of thousands yet? Ah, I imagine that they deserved it somehow. Oh, poo, now where have I heard that talk published. Never mind. As old Adolf said: "Who remembers the Armenians?".
    Where's the bloody gin? An army marches on its liver, not its ruddy stomach.

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    • #17
      [QUOTE= Some will argue that the USA/UK did the same with the bombings of Dresden & the 2-nukes. History books are a matter of beliefs.

      *** check the numbers & stats out for yourself using google information searches. Go visit the concentration death camps.[/QUOTE]

      The US nuking saved Japense Lives...


      Invasion of Japan
      General Marshall, in conference with President Truman, estimated 31,000 in 30 days after landing in Kyushu. Admiral Leahy estimated that the invasion would cost 268,000 casualties. Personnel at the Navy Department estimated that the total losses to America would be between 1.7 and 4 million with 400,000 to 800,000 deaths. The same department estimated that there would be up to 10 million Japanese casualties. The ‘Los Angeles Times’ estimated that America would suffer up to 1 million casualties.
      For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-head or water-conversationalist, pro-computerologist or Neo-Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. ("Coda" 1979)

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      • #18
        A LOOK AT. . . War Crimes and Punishment
        IT'S A RISKY BUSINESS. What can we gain by prosecuting Serbia's Milosevic and other wartime killers?; Tribunals Are Flawed, but Not Futile

        By Gary J. Bass
        Sunday, November 26, 2000; Page B03

        Even at the height of his power and influence, Slobodan Milosevic hated the idea of war crimes indictments for Serbian atrocities. In a 1995 meeting with American officials, he went out of his way to ask them to postpone a decision on whether indicted war criminals could hold high office in Bosnia. "In the house of a man just hanged," he said, "don't talk about rope."

        Today, the rope--in the form of a trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague--is dangling before Milosevic's own eyes. And the question is: How hard should the West try to get Yugoslavia's former ruler in the dock?

        Over the past century, diplomats have wrestled with the issue of what to do with war criminals. The case for international justice is not just a legal one but a political one, and the politics have often been appallingly messy. Much as someone like Milosevic deserves to be punished, the 20th century's experience with war crimes trials suggests that they pose real political risks. There is a powerful argument to be made for them in the end, but that argument must take into account the limitations and pitfalls of international justice. Ultimately, war crimes trials are the right choice not because they are too morally pure to be questioned, but because they are the least bad of a number of bad choices before us. We should reject the only alternatives--summary execution or ignoring the atrocities.

        There are reasons to be skeptical of war crimes tribunals. The democratic world's desire to bring the orchestrators of wartime savagery to justice by legal means actually says more about us than it does about the criminals. It may be that the likes of Milosevic do not really deserve the benefit of a trial, since no punishment can actually fit their crimes.

        In domestic law, we weigh different gradations of criminality: manslaughter, second-degree murder, first-degree murder, etc. But how can such scrupulous standards be properly applied to the massive slaughters that have wracked the Balkans? There is no such thing as truly appropriate punishment for something as hideous as the Srebrenica massacre, in which Serbian forces killed some 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men. As political theorist Hannah Arendt wrote of the Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials: "For these crimes, no punishment is severe enough. . . . this guilt . . . oversteps and shatters any and all legal systems."

        Extending due process to mass killers also opens up the risk of acquitting butchers who richly deserve punishment, but who have managed to hide the relevant evidence--or kill or terrify the witnesses. After World War I, there were two series of war crimes trials--one in Leipzig for Germans, and one in Constantinople for Turks who led the 1915 massacre of Armenians. Both were failures, ending in only a handful of minor convictions, because the Allies could not meet proper legal standards of evidence and responsibility. In 1919, the British high commissioner in Constantinople complained that a prominent Turk "was undoubtedly deeply implicated in the crimes of which he is accused . . . . There is, however, a lack of definite proof against him, and it will probably be a matter of considerable difficulty to prove his individual responsibility."

        The sheer scale of genocidal crimes--requiring thousands upon thousands of killers--can overwhelm almost any judicial system. Milosevic, after all, did not act alone. But what tribunal could hope to punish all the guilty? Gerard Prunier, a French scholar and expert on Rwanda, estimates that there were between 80,000 and 100,000 murderers in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, author of "Hitler's Willing Executioners," estimates that there were at least 100,000 perpetrators of the Holocaust. But by 1948, according to the American chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, only 3,500 Germans had been tried.

        Finally, tribunals can be politically risky. After World War I, German and Turkish backlash against Allied-imposed war crimes trials proved destabilizing. As the Ottoman Empire spiraled into civil war, Britain's efforts to punish Turkish war criminals became a particularly sore point. In 1921, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the great Turkish nationalist, demanded and got the release of war crimes suspects in British custody (in exchange for a handful of British soldiers). Many Germans, left and right, resented British and French demands for trials of Kaiser Wilhelm II and others. In a grotesque irony, Hermann Goering--who would end up as the most prominent Nazi suspect at Nuremberg--first crossed paths with Adolf Hitler at a 1922 right-wing protest of WWI war crimes trials.

        The alternatives to trial, however, are worse. The idea of summary execution of alleged war criminals has a long and undistinguished history. In 1943, at the Tehran Conference, Joseph Stalin proposed shooting 50,000 to 100,000 German military men. The Soviet dictator was playing true to form, but even democratic states can be sorely tempted to dispense with legalistic mechanisms and punish war criminals the easy way.

        In 1944, Henry Morgenthau Jr., Franklin D. Roosevelt's influential treasury secretary, pushed hard for the summary execution of as many as 2,500 leading Nazi war criminals. Winston Churchill preferred the idea of shooting the top 50 to 100 Axis war criminals within six hours of capture. Cooler heads prevailed, chief among them U.S. War Secretary Henry Stimson, who insisted that the punishment of the Nazi leaders reflect "at least the rudimentary aspects of the Bill of Rights." If there's a risk that war crimes trials will prompt a nationalist backlash, that risk is likely doubled by unrestrained summary executions.

        Ignoring war crimes is an equally unappealing option. The victims, above all, may not want to "forgive and forget." The international community may be able to shrug at the suffering of the Bosnians or Rwandans, but we can't expect them to do the same. Perhaps the most chilling example of the consequences of expecting victims to forget is what happened upon the collapse of the Constantinople war crimes tribunal. When Britain freed its Turkish prisoners in the Ataturk exchange, determined Armenian assassins took over. In 1921, Talaat Pasha, one of the masterminds of the Armenian slaughter, was gunned down on a Berlin street by a young Armenian, while the Turkish grand vizier at the time of the genocide, Said Halim Pasha, was killed by an Armenian in Rome.

        Some of the same passions are alive in the Balkans and Rwanda today. After the Rwandan genocide, many of the Hutu Power genocidaires fled to Congo, where the Tutsi-led Rwandan government has pursued them. This cross-border warfare--a legacy of the genocide--has helped spark the massive war that now engulfs Congo. In Yugoslavia, lingering Kosovar Albanian bitterness at Serbian war crimes is one of the biggest impediments to the United Nations' plans for a multiethnic Kosovo.

        Both Bosnia and Rwanda are running their own war crimes trials, alongside the two respective U.N. tribunals that handle the most prominent suspects. But Rwanda's courts are overwhelmed by the vast number of suspects; as many as 130,000 people sit in jail and most may never make it to court. Some of Bosnia's efforts have sparked crises, like the 1996 incident in which the Bosnian government infuriated Serbian nationalists by apprehending Djordje Djukic, a Bosnian Serb Army general; the crisis abated only after Djukic was flown to The Hague (where he was indicted, but released just before dying of cancer). The Hague provides useful oversight for local Balkan war crimes prosecutions, which are not always up to international judicial standards.

        There are some real virtues to war crimes tribunals. Nuremberg yielded a staggering record of the operations of the Nazi machine: The SS's files alone filled six freight cars, and the American chief prosecutor assembled more than 5 million pages of documentation. To this day, that record fortifies us against denial. There are many Serbian nationalists who still believe that nothing happened at Srebrenica. The Hague tribunal can help fight that.

        In the end, however, we shouldn't expect too much. Any situation in which there is a need for a war crimes tribunal is a situation that has gone horribly wrong. Having stood by as the slaughters in Bosnia and Rwanda took place, the West can hardly expect that holding war crimes trials will make up for the countless lives that were cut short. After atrocity, all options are awful. War crimes tribunals are simply--in both moral and political terms--the least awful option we have.

        Gary Bass is an assistant professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University and the author of "Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals" (Princeton University Press).
        Source

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        • #19
          Remember, "The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic."

          Good ol' Joe Stalin...

          Organized slaughter, we realize, does not settle a dispute; it merely silences an argument. ~James Frederick Green
          Last edited by bigross86; 02 Apr 06,, 21:30.
          Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

          Abusing Yellow is meant to be a labor of love, not something you sell to the highest bidder.

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          • #20
            Originally posted by truhottgirl
            I've got homework about the Holocaust, and I need to know some ideas on what the global community could do to stop another leader with the same views as Hitler if there ever was one. Can I have some opinions please?
            Thanks
            Genocide is preventable depending on how much democratic freedom a country’s inhabitants are granted, Genocide can also be stopped while horrific crime is occurring. A country, union, or the international community first course of action is Recognizing when inhumane crimes are happening somewhere in world, then planning course of actions to stop the horrific event. Unfortunately, when some countries recognize Genocidal crimes occurring somewhere in the world and try to bring attention to the situation in an attempt to stop the mass murders, fail sometimes in their efforts, due to negligent, international politics and investment.

            Originally posted by leibstandarte10
            Yes, genocide is and always will be a problem. Strange thing is, you see a disproportionate amount of media attention towards the Holocaust, which is long done and over. I was taught in public schools a helluva lot more about the Holocaust than (then) current genocides taking place.
            There are number of Genocides that occurred in the 20th century, unfortunately many of the horrific events recivce little or no attention. That doesn’t mean we should forget about those who died during the systematic mass murders. We should feel an obligation to remember those who suffered through the horror, those who died and to teach future generations about the horrors of Genocide.

            Originally posted by M21Sniper
            If nothing else genocide is an effective form of population control...
            M21Sniper: That is one most heartless statement I ever read.

            After reading your post you may believe Genocide and the mass murders of innocent Individuals to be acceptable, however, I feel your statement to be racist and inhumane. Victims of Genocide are usually murdered through the ideological actions of an evil leader, corrupt or imperialistic government that order systematic killings because of ones ethnicity, religion, culture or organ. You may not care about those who suffered through the horror, those who died, you may not even value human life, despite how you may feel, nothing justify Genocide and I for one do not appreciate your discriminatory statement.
            Last edited by ColdBlueLight; 12 Apr 06,, 08:56.

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            • #21
              Concerning article that ColdBlueLight posted:

              1) Author absolutely avoided mentioning any of war crimes and atrocities committed by Croats, Bosnian Muslism and Albanians, and it is a fact that they committed greatest ethnic cleansings in Europe since WWII. Some of their war crimes could be also defined as genocide.

              2) Fact is that there is absolutely disproportional number of Serbs and other nations in Hague Tribunal concerning number of killed and refugees on Serbian side. Some persons which deserve(d) to be charged there are Franjo Tudjman, Alija Izetbegovic, Agim Cheku and Ramush Haradinay, just to name few of them.

              3) Apart from the fact that there is no more process against Milosevic since he is dead, some charges against him were likely to be rejected. And that is opinion expressed by many prominent persons from international community involved both in Bosnian conflict and process in The Hague.

              4) “Lingering Kosovar Albanian bitterness at Serbian war crimes is one of the biggest impediments to the United Nations' plans for a multiethnic Kosovo.” The most pointless thing, simple reason being that Kosovan Albanians banished over 200.000 and killed over 2.000 Serbs after arrival of UN. Just for note that nobody is punished and that only charged person (Ramush Haradinay) is allowed to freely participate in politics until beginning of a process.

              All in all, either shortsighted or malicious.
              Last edited by kNikS; 11 Apr 06,, 11:00. Reason: The Hague

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              • #22
                Analysis: Defining genocide

                Sudan's government and pro-government Arab militias have been accused by human rights groups of carrying out genocide against black African residents of the Darfur region.

                The militia groups, known as the Janjaweed, are accused of forcing some two million people from their homes and killing thousands.

                The United States has also used the term genocide, but a United Nations investigation has stopped short of describing the violence in Darfur as genocide.

                It concluded that the Sudanese government and allied militias had committed war crimes against the civilian population.

                If they had used the term genocide then it should carry a legal obligation to act.

                But what is genocide and when can it be applied? Some argue that the definition is too narrow and others that the term is devalued by misuse.

                UN definition

                The term was coined in 1943 by the Jewish-Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin who combined the Greek word "genos" (race or tribe) with the Latin word "cide" (to kill).

                After witnessing the horrors of the Holocaust - in which every member of his family except his brother and himself was killed - Dr Lemkin campaigned to have genocide recognised as a crime under international law.

                His efforts gave way to the adoption of the UN Convention on Genocide in December 1948, which came into effect in January 1951.

                Article Two of the convention defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:
                • Killing members of the group
                • Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
                • Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
                • Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
                • Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group


                The convention also imposes a general duty on states that are signatories to "prevent and to punish" genocide.

                Since its adoption, the UN treaty has come under fire from different sides, mostly by people frustrated with the difficulty of applying it to different cases.

                'Too narrow'

                Some analysts argue that the definition is so narrow that none of the mass killings perpetrated since the treaty's adoption would fall under it.

                The objections most frequently raised against the treaty include:
                • The convention excludes targeted political and social groups
                • The definition is limited to direct acts against people, and excludes acts against the environment which sustains them or their cultural distinctiveness
                • Proving intention beyond reasonable doubt is extremely difficult
                • UN member states are hesitant to single out other members or intervene, as was the case in Rwanda
                • There is no body of international law to clarify the parameters of the convention (though this is changing as UN war crimes tribunals issue indictments)
                • The difficulty of defining or measuring "in part", and establishing how many deaths equal genocide


                But in spite of these criticisms, there are many who say genocide is recognisable.

                In his book Rwanda and Genocide in the 20th Century, former secretary-general of Medecins Sans Frontieres, Alain Destexhe says: "Genocide is distinguishable from all other crimes by the motivation behind it.

                "Genocide is a crime on a different scale to all other crimes against humanity and implies an intention to completely exterminate the chosen group.

                "Genocide is therefore both the gravest and greatest of the crimes against humanity."

                Loss of meaning

                Mr Destexhe believes the word genocide has fallen victim to "a sort of verbal inflation, in much the same way as happened with the word fascist".

                Because of that, he says, the term has progressively lost its initial meaning and is becoming "dangerously commonplace".

                Michael Ignatieff, director of the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University, agrees.

                "Those who should use the word genocide never let it slip their mouths. Those who unfortunately do use it, banalise it into a validation of every kind of victimhood," he said in a lecture about Raphael Lemkin.

                "Slavery for example, is called genocide when - whatever it was, and it was an infamy - it was a system to exploit, rather than to exterminate the living."

                In the Democratic Republic of Congo, a renegade commander said he captured the town of Bukavu last year to prevent a genocide of Congolese Tutsis - the Banyamulenge.

                It later transpired that fewer than 100 people had died.

                The differences over how genocide should be defined, lead also to disagreement on how many genocides actually occurred during the 20th Century.

                History of genocide

                Some say there was only one genocide in the last century - the Holocaust.

                Other experts give a long list of what they consider cases of genocide, including the Soviet man-made famine of Ukraine (1932-33), the Indonesian invasion of East Timor (1975), and the Khmer Rouge killings in Cambodia in the 1970s.

                Former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic is on trial in The Hague, charged with genocide in Bosnia from 1992-5.

                However, some say there have been at least three genocides under the 1948 UN convention:
                • The mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks between 1915-1920 - an accusation that the Turks deny
                • The Holocaust, during which more than six million Jews were killed
                • Rwanda, where an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus died in the 1994 genocide
                • In the case of Bosnia, many believe that massacres occurred as part of a pattern of genocide, though some doubt that intent can be proved in the case of Mr Milosevic


                The first case to put into practice the convention on genocide was that of Jean Paul Akayesu, the Hutu mayor of the Rwandan town of Taba at the time of the killings.

                In a landmark ruling, a special international tribunal convicted him of genocide and crimes against humanity on 2 September 1998.

                More than 20 ringleaders of the Rwandan genocide have now been convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

                Last year, the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia widened the definition of what constitutes genocide.

                General Radislav Krstic had appealed against his conviction for his role in the killing of more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995.

                But the court rejected his argument that the numbers were "too insignificant" to be genocide - a decision likely to set an international legal precedent.

                The UN panel investigating Darfur concluded that though there was the deliberate targeting of civilians in Darfur using murder, torture and sexual violence, the Sudan government had not pursued an intentional policy of genocide.


                The panel did not rule out though, that if war crimes are investigated by the International Criminal Court, as it recommends, then it may find genocidal acts having been committed in Darfur and some individuals guilty of having had "genocidal intent".
                Source
                Last edited by ColdBlueLight; 11 Apr 06,, 22:56.

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                • #23
                  Originally posted by ColdBlueLight
                  M21Sniper: That is one most heartless statement I ever read.

                  I feel your statement to be racist and inhumane.
                  Racist? I can assure you our Snipe is an equal opportunity genocidal manic
                  In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.

                  Leibniz

                  Comment


                  • #24
                    Originally posted by ColdBlueLight
                    M21Sniper: That is one most heartless statement I ever read.
                    I guess you missed the little " " at the end of the sentence...
                    No man is free until all men are free - John Hossack
                    I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
                    even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
                    He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry

                    Comment


                    • #25
                      I think that the Armenian genocide must not be forgotten......

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                      • #26
                        Originally posted by parihaka
                        Racist? I can assure you our Snipe is an equal opportunity genocidal manic
                        There is nothing humorous or laughable about Genocide.

                        Comment


                        • #27
                          Originally posted by ColdBlueLight
                          There is nothing humorous or laughable about Genocide.
                          The laughable bit is your statement about Snipe.
                          No man is free until all men are free - John Hossack
                          I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
                          even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
                          He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry

                          Comment


                          • #28
                            Originally posted by ColdBlueLight
                            There is nothing humorous or laughable about Genocide.
                            Nor is there anything humourous about you :)
                            In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.

                            Leibniz

                            Comment


                            • #29
                              Originally posted by Confed999
                              The laughable bit is your statement about Snipe.
                              Please read the following quote by M21Sniper.

                              Originally posted by M21Sniper
                              If nothing else genocide is an effective form of population control...
                              The statement posted by M21Sniper is wrong and justifying what the member text is even worse.

                              Victims of Genocide were subjected to an ideological extermination policy using inhumane methods such as starvation, slave labor, massacres, human slaughter, pillage, rape, and torture, to achieve the eradication of individuals who are of different ethnicity’s, religions, cultures and organs.

                              Amusing the horrific event is disrespectful to those who died and to the individuals who survived during the mass killings, in addition to the countries that had to intervene (either directly or indirectly) thus liberating a nation's inhabitants from the systematic mass murders of an oppressive power.

                              Originally posted by parihaka
                              Nor is there anything humourous about you :)
                              I don’t care for your pointless remarks.
                              Last edited by ColdBlueLight; 13 Apr 06,, 06:03.

                              Comment


                              • #30
                                Cold Blue Light,

                                Look at the number of posts of both Snipe and the board members who are vouching for him. That should probably clue you in about the fact that we know him pretty well. Snipe was not making light or fun of genocide.
                                "So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3

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