SG: " So if I hop outside and start throwing rocks at Boston PD, does that make me a “demonstrator”?"
The key phrase there is "Police Department".
If you are running around Boston then your actions are covered by the domestic criminal code of the United States Of America, and if that code allows the FBI to send "undercover agents" into a crowd to act as agent provocateurs then so be it.
But these events aren't happening "in the USA", and so the Boston Police Department has no legal jurisdiction to enforce any laws whatsoever.
These events *also* aren't occurring anywhere "in Israel", and so Israeli police likewise have no legal jurisdiction to enforce any laws whatsoever.
These events are happening inside a territory that the IDF holds at the Point Of A Gun.
The legal term is "a belligerent occupation", and the legal consequence of that is that all "authority" resides with the army of occupation i.e. the "authority" that Israel has over this territory is a MILITARY authority.
Which all leads to this question: is a MILITARY force entitled to send its troops into a crowd (a) "undercover" and (b) with hidden weapons?
The answer is: No.
Soldiers who carry out their active duty *without* wearing a distinctive emblem and *without* openly carrying their weapons are committing a very serious war crime that is called "perfidy".
Samuel, these are s.o.l.d.i.e.r.s. we are talking about, and they have to act as s.o.l.d.i.e.r.s. are supposed to act.
They can't pretend that they are members of the Boston Police Department, any more than a Private in the US Marines can pretend that he is a Boston Cop.
I know you won't understand that distinction, but that's because you don't want to understand the difference between "territory" and "occupied territory".
JC: "The tactic of infiltrating Palestinian protests with undercover soldiers".... has a name, and has a clear and concise legal consequence.
The name is "perfidy", and according to international humanitarian law perfidy is a "war crime".
This should always be stressed: "undercover soldiers" are not "cops", and that remains true even if they are carrying out duties that would be normally carried out by law enforcement officers.
Being a "cop" ("undercover" or otherwise) is a CIVILIAN job, precisely because a Police Force one of the CIVIL authorities of a state.
So what a "cop" can and can't do is governed by the CIVIL criminal code of that country in question.
But being a "soldier" is a MILITARY job, precisely because the Armed Forces of a state is a MILITARY organization.
So what a soldier can - and can't - do inside an occupied territory is governed by international humanitarian law, it is not governed by the domestic criminal code of the state that is responsible for that belligerent occupation.
And int'l humanitarian law can not be clearer: if you are a soldier on active duty then you *must* wear a distinctive symbol that is visible at a distance, and you *must* carry your weapons openly.
You can't go "undercover", because that is "perfidy", and it is a grave violation of the Geneva Conventions.
S390: "The Russian Orthodox Church was the state church of the Czarist regime."
That would be a Czarist regime that no longer exists, right?
You may as well claim that the Kaiser's obsession with creating an Imperial High Seas Fleet tells us volumes about Merkel's view of Germany's role in NATO.
S390: "Stalin rehabilitated it during WW2 into a submissive puppet."
Yeah, and his regime is also long-gone.
You would have just as much relevance arguing that Mao's whacky ideas regarding Great Leaps Forward gives us insight into Xi Jinping's current economic plans.
S390: "The fall of the Soviet Union"....
...oh, you noticed that, did you?
S390: ...."began a process of restoring the Orthodox Church as the favored religion of the nationalistic government,"....
A meaningless statement. I have a favourite pop star, but that doesn't mean that Taylor Swift is my spokesperson.
S390: ..."which in turn is increasingly a dictatorship...
Well, apart from those inconvenient elections that Putin keeps winning.
S390: "To put this in context, when the Archbishop of Canterbury, during World War 1, called for the extermination of the Turkish people in retaliation for their genocide of Armenians, do you think the British government was free of responsibility?"
Why, yes. Yes, I do.
Unless you want to argue that the British Government is in the habit of including the Archbishop in cabinet meetings, or that one of the responsibilities of being the head of the Church of England is that of running the Foreign Office.
S390: "What secular reason could Putin possibly have for his massive gay-bashing crusade?"
Niiiiiiice Red Herring you got there.
S390: "Sounds like he’s doing a quid pro quo for the Orthodox Church on that one."
No, it doesn't sound like that at all.
It *sounds* like Putin doesn't bother consulting with church officials when it comes to military strategy and foreign policy decisions.
Which would rather suggest that these two church leaders are speaking out of ignorance on topics over which they have no authority to speak, and are doing so in a venue that is utterly inappropriate.
Or, in John McCain's words describing Sarah Palin: She's Gone Rogue!
It happens. It is the despair of every political leader when it does happen, but it's not their fault nor is it their responsibility.
The *responsible* answer from the leader is to disassociate themselves from those who have no authority to speak out of turn.
Oh, look, Putin and Lavrov have done exactly that.
...and that would be GW Bush, President of a country called the United States of America, correct?
JC: "Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin said that"...
.... that would be AP Chaplin, who isn't the leader of a country called Russia. Correct?
JC: "The over-all leader of Russian Orthodoxy, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow,".....
.....hmmm, I'm still not seeing anyone who has any claim to be any part of the Russian government, let alone the leader of that government.
This all matters if PUTIN or LAVROV stood before a podium and mouthed the same sentiments as Chaplin and Kirill.
Have they?
JC: "It [the Russian Embassies] denied that Russia is engaged in a holy war."
Well, there you are then.....
Church leaders in the USA say many objectionable things, but I don't see anyone claiming that Obama has to apologize for some nonsense spouted by some redneck Baptist or some crazy-eyed Christian Fundamentalist.
Putin has a much wider geopolitical interest in crushing ISIS as quickly and as completely as possible.
It is this: the entire ME is in play here, and Putin's "appeal" will be that the USA *says* it wants to defeat ISIS, but all it does is pussy-foot around.
It's "bombing campaign" over the last 12 months has been a joke. They are very clearly not serious.
Compare and Contrast.
When Russia decides that enough is enough then ISIS gets crushed. Quickly. Comprehensively.
So who do you guys want to side with?
An America that talks a good talk but then does nothing but GET IN THE WAY?
Or a Russia that says what it means and means what it says?
Your choice is yours but, really, it's not much of a choice.
Putin HATES terrorists. He detests them, precisely because they DO pose a threat to the Russian Federation.
He's serious. He wants those SoB's dead, and if Uncle Sam is going to just pussy-foot around then there's the exit, dudes. Let the grown-ups handle this.
Dude, Putin is relying on everyone understanding how incredibly dangerous this situation is.
He went to great lengths to spell that out to you in his speech to the UN. Weren't you paying attention?
He's had enough of the USA pussy-footing around.
He means business, and that means everyone else better get out of his way.
Those Iranian troops are coming, sunshine. They are on their way, and *nobody* but *nobody* is going to dissuade Putin from that course of action.
So ask yourself this: do the Saudis and Israelis feel like "retaliating"?
Because Putin is serious.
He has, indeed, had enough of pussy-footing around.
So if the Saudis or the Israelis do feel like "retaliating" then Putin is willing to go Total 100% Ass-Whooping On Their Sorry Asses.
The choice is theirs, and if they are stupid enough to take the wrong option, well, heck, I for one am not going to miss either of those two puissant little pigmy-states.
Whatever. But here's one assertion that should never be left unchallenged: " I don’t even understand what your end game is, except for one where the whole world operates under Beijing rules"
No, actually, not "Beijing rules", which you appear to have just made up.
No, the principle is much, much older than that: May to October of 1648, in point of fact.
Here, let me give you a hint: google up the phrase "Westphalian sovereignty".
Assad may well be a piece of s**t, and you are free to demonize him as much as you want. Go ahead, demonize away.
But overthrow him by training, arming and bankrolling foreign fanatical throat-slitting thugs and then throwing them at Syria?
No, that would be interference in the internal affairs of Syria.
Indeed, it would be *as* *much* an interference in the internal affairs of Syria as it would be if a foreign country sent armed thugs into the USA because Obama has a rather nasty habit of Bombing Weddings And Parties And Hospitals From The Air.
You do know that Obama has ordered all those things and more, right?
So according to your logic other countries are *entitled* to seek his violent overthrow, correct?
Note this sentence: "all but one of the targets were areas held by the opposition to Syria’s Assad regime, rather than by the Islamic State’s militants."
Got that?
ISIS are "militants", but everyone else (yes, apparently even al-Qaeda) are merely "the opposition".
You'll see that phrase everywhere in the mainstream press i.e. the meme that Everyone But ISIS are nought but opposition parties, so why would anyone want to bomb them?
Du'oh! Because they aren't "opposition parties".
They are armed groups attempting to topple the Syrian government by military force and, therefore, they deserve as many bombs up their backsides as Putin can deliver.
The abuse of language is utterly appalling: armed rebels become mere "opposition", and somehow they are A-OK and quite untouchable merely because They Aren't ISIS.
Big Whoop.
Ask this question: Are they shooting at Assad?
The simple answer is: Why, yes. Yes, they are.
In which case they deserve everything that the Russian airforce is throwing at them.
"its a case of too little too late, if Russia wanted to do this it should have been 3-4 years ago"
No, absolutely not.
Had he tried this "3-4 years ago" the loonies who believe they run the world from Washington would have shouted that Putin Is Invading Syria! We Must Do Something! The Man Is Hitler Incarnate!
But Putin has hoisted "the West" on its own petard.
They can't complain about Russia intervening in this civil war because that's exactly what the USAF has been doing with *their* ineffectual bombing runs up 'n' down the country. Bombing runs that never seem to spot those convoys of Toyota pickup trucks even while they appear to be unerring in bombing the bejezzus out of various wedding parties and Doctors Without Borders field hospitals.
Putin has timed his run perfectly, insofar as he has deftly stepped in with his sleeves rolled up and said "out of my way, sonny, and I'll show you how you REALLY do this".
It's left Washington boxed into a corner, because the only complaint that they can make is this: Hey! No fair! He's bombing OUR terrorists, not THOSE terrorists!
As far as arguments go, arguing the virtues of Our Good-Badguy Terrorist versus the vices of Those Other Bad-Badguy Terrorists is just about the dictionary-definition of a hopeless brief - how on Earth does Obama think he can sell that argument to the American public, much less to the rest of the world?
He can't, but that's what Washington is reduced to, and they are in that position precisely because Putin waited, waited, waited before making his move.
The idea that Putin is about to get sucked into a quagmire is nonsense, precisely because Obama isn't the only person who can use proxy forces
The only difference is that Obama's proxy forces are a bunch of CIA-backed mercenary throat-cutters, whereas Putin's proxy forces will be *real* armies like the Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah.
Obama's Good-BadGuys will cut and run when the going gets tough - they'll stampede back into Turkey so quickly that it'll make Erdogan's head spin.
The Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah troops won't: regardless of whether they win, loose, or draw a battle, these guys will just keep coming back for more.
Because they can't afford to let Syria fall, but those jihadist head-loppers can - and will - simply pack their bags and move on to the next country that the CIA decides is ripe for a "colour revolution".
"With no prospect of a revitalised Syrian Army, Putin is left with two unpalatable options: to either deploy Russian troops on the battlefield or accept the de facto partition of Syria – allowing the rebels to hold their positions in north-west and southern Syria."
No, he has a third option.
He can get Assad to request assistance from Iran, who would then deploy the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in numbers that would make your head spin.
There's your ground troops, right there, and not a single Russian soldier needs to be put in harm's way.
Tehran would like nothing better to deploy 100,000 to 250,000 ground troops in a country that Just So Happens To Border Israel, and to do so under the protective umbrella of Su-30 fighter jets and S-300 air-to-air missiles.
Win for Putin.
Win for Assad.
Win for Khamenei
Bummer of a prospect for Netanyahu but, hey, cry me a river.
Lucas: “all but one of the targets were areas held by the opposition to Syria’s Assad regime, rather than by the Islamic State’s militants.”
You make is sound as if the Islamic State is the only "militant" force at work here.
Because you are vary careful to avoid pointing out that "the opposition to Syria’s Assad regime" also happens to be a militant force.
Demonstrably so, because that "opposition" is also seeking to topple the Syrian Government by overthrowing it by force of arms, though a reader wouldn't know that from reading your sleight-of-hand.
From Assad's PoV (and, therefore, by extension the Russian PoV) it really doesn't matter who it is that Washington favours: what matters is that REGARDLESS of whether Obama does - or doesn't - favour them they are all attempting to violently overthrow the Syrian Government.
Kremlin: "In this respect, I want to inform you that the president of the Syrian Arab Republic has addressed the leadership of our country with a request of military assistance"
Got that? The Syrian Government is under attack, and so it has requested Russian military assistance in the face of those attacks.
Perfectly legal.
Perfectly understandable.
Lucas: "all but one of the targets were areas held by the opposition to Syria’s Assad regime, rather than by the Islamic State’s militants."
No shit, hey? The people who have been bombed are "opposed to Syria's Assad regime".
Remind me again who requested Russian military assistance?
Oh, really? That request came from.... "Syria's Assad regime"?
Then that would make these "opponents"... perfectly legitimate targets for Russian military action, would it not?
I mean, think, dude: you're expressing outrage that the Russian should launch air raids on the "opposition", and you do so even after you have just quoted the Russians TELLING YOU that they are responding to a request from the very Syrian Govt that these dudes are "opposing".
Are you for real?
Do you really think that Assad makes a distinction between
a) the Good-BadGuys-Who-Want-Me-Dead
versus
b) the Bad-BadGuys-Who-Want-Me-Dead
merely because Washington insists that there are
c) Good-BadGuys and Bad-BadGuys?
The Israeli response is going to be predictable: Netanyahu will shout "Yippee" and claim that if the Oslo Accords are toast then Israel has no responsibility for the 17% of the West Bank that contains 80% of the Palestinians.
He'll then impose a blockade on them and treat them like Gaza.
He'll shout "Why not? We don't owe them anything".
And.... He'll be wrong. If the Oslo Accords are dust then things return to the status-quo-ante, precisely because the IDF is still the occupying power and, therefore, responsible for all the West Bank and all the people in the West Bank.
After all, int'l law doesn't define them as "protected persons" merely because the good burgars of Geneva have a keen sense of humour.
So, if I understand that answer correctly the Gazans have fired at Israel a grand total of 29 times. And during that same period Israel has fired at Gaza ..... 696 times.
But as far as the UK govt is concerned that doesn't count - all they "are aware of" are those 29 times that the IDF opened fire in "response to" fire coming from Gaza
The other 667 times that Israel opened fire is just Something That Some UN Agency Is Claiming, not the UK govt.
Here's an interesting thought: the sudden wave of refugees flooding into Europe has overwhelmingly come from refugee camps inside Turkey i.e. they aren't actually fleeing from the fighting (they did that when they fled to Turkey in the first place) but are, instead, now being allowed by the Turks to leave those refugee camps and cross over into Europe.
That's not to denigrate those refugees - their life has been wretched for a long time now - but what I am pointing out is that Turkey appears to be using them as pawns.
The Turks must have thought that this was a clever way to pressure NATO into going boots 'n' all inside Syria, or to build up so much outrage in "the West" that they take their anger and frustration out on Assad.
Apparently all that Turkey has done is to kick an own-goal, because the reaction from the West appears to be that the Syrian war has to be brought to an end - pronto - and if this means sitting back and letting Russia and Iran help Assad stomp on the jihadists then, well, OK, stomp away.
I wonder what the reaction would be in the USA if Ayatollah Khamenei were to stand up at a podium and say: If the US public votes for Cruz, under no circumstances will Iran allow him to repudiate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. And if this Prospective President(tm) doesn’t understand that, we may have to help introduce him to his maker.
I suspect that the MSM would have some nasty things to say about any politician who said something as incendiary as that.
Well.... unless they were an American politician, in which case such sentiments would just be Par For The Course.
The exceptional nation indeed, only not in a good way.
If the Russians are sending their very best AA missile system to Syria then it ain't the rebels that they are taking aim at, seein' as how the Rebel Airforce doesn't actually exist.
haary: "Let’s face it, Islamic State has to be defeated, the US will not align with Assad"
Why not?
I mean it: what stops the USA from "aligning with Assad"?
He has never attacked the USA.
He has never expressed any interest in attacking the USA.
From a purely US-centric PoV there is absolutely nothing stopping the USA from allying with Assad in order to defeat ISIS.
That support need not extend any further than that one aim, any more than allying with the Soviet Union in WW2 signalled anything more than an alliance of convenience in the face of a common enemy.
This "we can't work with Assad" nonsense is exactly that, and pronouncing it as a self-evident truth doesn't make it any less of a lie.
The USA can work with Assad.
It SHOULD work with Assad, because if there is one thing we know for a fact it is this: Assad wants ISIS dead and buried even more than the USA wants ISIS destroyed.
Give him the tools, and he'll do the job. Guaranteed.
So if the USA doesn't want to give him those tools then, honestly, Uncle Sam isn't levelling with us.
Gabriel, I would imagine that is one of the reasons why the USA is unconcerned about this development, in the sense that currently political considerations might necessitate that the USA look the other way at Erdogan's shenanigans.
In which case any resupply convoys crossing the Turkish border into Syria may be immune to US-bombing, however much the Americans grit their teeth in anger.
Not so as far as the Russians are concerned - no such political considerations need stay their hand, and so Erdogan might be well-advised to rapidly reconsider how much aid and comfort his is willing to give to his pet terrorists.
"Nobody argues that Britain ever had a right to colonize Palestine with European Zionist colonists, even though the Balfour declaration was put into a “legal format” such as the Mandate for Palestine by the League of Nations."
What you are saying is that you can reject a law if you don't happen to like that law.
Try that next time you are booked for speeding, and let me know how that turns out for you.
The Mandates were legal instruments. They were perfectly "legal", precisely because the prior sovereign power (in this case, the Ottoman Empire via its successor state "Turkey") agreed to handover its sovereign territory to a Mandatory Power nominated from amongst the Principal Allied Powers.
That's perfectly legal, however much You Don't Like It.
"Regarding partition, it is ridiculous to claim that anyone had the legal right to partition Palestine between its native inhabitants and illegal European colonists who were forced upon them."
And in making that claim you run into something of an evidentiary problem, which is that this wasn't the *only* instance in which a Mandated Territory was split into two successor states.
Clearly, it could be done and - evidently - it was perfectly legal to do it.
Witness: Syria
Witness: Lebanon
Witness: Jordan
You need to explain to me why *those* partitions were legal and *this* partition wasn't.
Other than, of course, you have a bee in your bonnet regarding *this* partition.
"It *can* be disputed. Indeed, your claims can be rendered absurd."
Dispute away, and by doing so you are invalidating the legitimacy of:
a) Syria
b) Lebanon
c) Jordan
d) Palestine
e) Israel
Not only that, but if you want to argue that a Mandatory Power **didn't** have the legal authority to decide upon the method of state succession then you are invalidating the legal status of:
Ruwanda
Tanzania
Camerooon
Ghana
New Guinea
Nauru
Samoa
The Mandates were LEGAL instruments, they weren't political policy positions.
You may not like how they were set up, nor the paternalism that drove them.
Fine. Hate away, you won't find much argument from me.
But as LEGAL instruments they were perfectly legitimate, and in the case of the ending of the Mandate for Palestine via the Plan of Partition both the UK (the Mandatory Power) and the UN General Assembly (the supervising body) followed the law to the letter.
Again, you don't have to like the p.o.l.i.t.i.c.a.l. outcomes that resulted from those deliberations, but that is not at all the same thing as arguing that what transpired was not legal.
Blake: "Even Resolution 181 was non binding and never went to the Security council to be ratified into law."
The UN Security Council is not a world legislature.
It therefore can't "make international law", nor does it have the authority to "ratify" an international treaty that had been created by any other means.
Nor, for that matter, can the UN General Assembly - it is no more a legislature than is the UNSC.
Your comment - and Juan Cole's - display a fundamental misunderstanding of the United Nations, which is nothing more nor less that a p.o.l.i.t.i.c.a.l. body.
The UNGA voted on the Partition Plan (via UNGAR181) because the Assembly had inherited the supervisory role that the old League of Nations had w.r.t. Mandatory Powers (if you don't believe me then read the very first sentence of UNGAR181).
So, basically, the legalities were this: the Mandatory Power (i.e. Britain) wanted to end its Mandate. But it had to leave *something* behind to show that it had fulfilled the requirements of ending a Mandate.
So it asked the UNGA to advise, and the Assembly then convened a committee that recommended that the Mandatory partition the territory into two successor states.
The Mandatory Power accepted that advice (really, it had no choice by that stage), and it was *that* decision that made the Partition Plan legally-binding.
After all, say what you want about Britain's conduct 1922-1947, but there can be no dispute that a Mandatory Power had the legal authority to partition a Mandated Territory.
Exhibit A: Lebanon and Syria.
Exhibit B: Transjordan and (still Mandated) Palestine.
Or, in short: it was the legal authority of the MANDATORY POWER that made accepting the Partition Plan a legally-binding decision (save only that a Mandatory - any Mandatory - needed the "consent" of its supervising body before such a far-reaching plan became "legal").
And by 1947 that supervising body was... the UNGA.
And that body gave its "consent" by.... the margin of 33-13.
Legal, and legally-binding. And violated for the last 68 years.
I suppose an alternative explanation is that The Littlest Ehud's memoirs are a steaming pile of bulls**t, and the reason why these "revelations" aren't being blocked by the censors is because they know perfectly well that these stories aren't true.
Misinformation, spread by a habitual liar.
After all, that does appear to be an Israeli specialty.
No, I don't think so either. I am perfectly well aware of how Israel and the USA has distorted and bastardized the concept of "pre-emption" in their relentless pursuit of "prevention".
My point still stands: judged by their *own* yardstick that cabinet meeting amounted to more than enough justification for Iran to attempt to smite each and every one of those cabinet ministers.
And shouting "pre-emption" even as they rained bombs down on Bibi's Head, of course.....
What is interesting about these revelations is the hypocrisy of the Israeli cabinet (or in this case, the Gang Of Eight) meeting to discuss launching an unprovoked attack upon another country.
Nobody could doubt that had the boot been on the other foot then such a meeting by An Enemy of Israel would have been seen as "justification" for a pre-emptive strike by the IDF.
Netanyahu might want to consider that the next time he calls a cabinet meeting to discuss Iran i.e. according to Israeli-logic(tm) such a meeting would be a justification for an Iranian attack.
A pre-emptive attack, of course, and therefore quite kosher.
Just to point out that the ICC is a *criminal* court, so the state of Palestine can't "sue Israel" in that court.
What the state of Palestine can do is allege that war crimes have been committed on its soil, at which point the ICC can indict individual Israelis as war criminals.
Sure, that will matter to a University Chancellor, because it will be their career and reputation that will end up in tatters.
But how much of this was being driven by this Chancellor?
Not much, I suspect.
It is much more likely that the Board of Trustee was driving this.
And from their perspective "career and reputation" doesn't enter into the equation, precisely because if it all goes wrong then they can scapegoat the Chancellor.
Going forward, the main thing now is for Salaita to push for a damages award that noticeably exceeds the value of the "gifts" that were put at risk by donor pressure.
University administrators are perfectly capable of counting beans, and therefore working out that if capitulating puts *more* money at risk then the smart move is to tell those donors where to shove their demands.
Note that Gary Samore has just quit as head of the lobby group "United Against Nuclear Iran".
The reason? He looked at the deal and decided that, hey, it's actually not too shabby.
Which meant that he had no place in this lobby group, who's membership are, obviously, refusing to be satisfied with anything less than Bombs Away On Tehran!!!!
Fancy that: a lobbyist who actually says what he means and means what he says.
There must be a considerable amount of cognitive-dissonance going on amongst the warmongers who are convinced - absolutely convinced - that Iran wants a bomb so that it can nuke Israel.
If that is true then this agreement amounts to abject surrender by Tehran, precisely because agreeing to this deal means agreeing Not To Nuke Israel For At Least The Next Decade.
Yet they have agreed, which must mean that Obama has won big ti.... oh, my head! My head is hurting!!!
Because there is that inconvenient truth: if Iran is hell-bent on nukin' the Zionists before all these mullah's fall of the twig from old age then Tehran would never have agreed to this deal.
Because *if* they were nuke-obsessed *then* this deal is poison for them, and congrats to Obama and Kerry.
Buuuuuuut........ what if the Iranians really didn't want a nuke? What if they really were being truthful about that fatwah?
Well, in that case they haven't really "given up" anything of consequence, precisely because what they have just agreed to give up is the ability to do what they weren't doing anyway.
In *that* case they have got the better of the negotiations, but the only way to make *that* argument is to accept that they weren't trying for a nuke in the first pla..... arrrrrgh! That headache again! My brain! My brain is hurting!!
I don't much mind that the MSM concentrates on getting opponents of this agreement in front of the cameras, precisely because "confrontation" makes much better drama than a group of talking heads all nodding in unison.
What I don't like is the unquestioned spin that is placed on Israel's opposition to this agreement, which is this: Our Very Special Friends The Israelis Don't Think This Is A Good Deal, So Maybe It Isn't A Good Deal.
There is an alternative, which is that this unrelenting opposition brings into question exactly how "special" this "friendship" actually is.
Perhaps - just perhaps - Israel's "friendship" is rather shallow, and is regarded by them as "special" only w.r.t. how much they are able to milk that cash-cow.
I understand why the average American viewer might listen to Ron Dermer and think "Hey, he talks and acts just like an American!".
But perhaps they should be reminded of the reason for that i.e. Dermer was an American who renounced his citizenship in order to make common cause with a foreign country.
Mr Joe Average might actually be willing to ponder the implications of that, but it does rather require someone to point that out to them.
The issue here seems pretty simple: reckless moneylenders gave buckets of money to a reckless borrower.
That borrower can't pay that money back, and in a normal world both borrower and lender should feel the pain.
But that's not what is happening here: the borrower is going thru Hell so that Europen taxpayer will "extends loans" whose sole purpose is to.... pay back the banks because the Greeks can't
Hellloooooooo. This is a rort, whose entire purpose is to shift the pain onto Everyone Else Except The Banks Who Were Recklessly Throwing Money Around Like Drunken Sailors.
That's what this vote represents: the Greeks understand that they have alreadg paid a price for their recklessness, and it's time for the banks to take their licks too.
Mr Banker, they CAN'T pay back the loan, so stop pretending that it will be repaid.
Stop trying to squeeze blood out of a stone: write the f**king thing off as a bad loan, and then let EVERYONE move on from there.
After all what *is* the endgame here? Slavery? Debtor's Prison?
I think it is pretty easy to see why China is content to being a regional power - perhaps even a regional hegemon - and not seek to position itself as a global superpower rival to the USA.
It has to do with those rickety ol' trains, and those pothole-ridden roads.
They look, and they can see that even a country as rich and as powerful as the USA is driving itself into the ground trying to pay for its "global" ambitions, and they conclude that It Can't Be Done, and trying to do it simply results in.... potholed roads and trains that scarcely go at all.
If I can summarize this writer's "logic" I'd say it this way: the West sees boycotts and sanctions as a powerful tool to use against "opponent" states (Iran, Russia, countless others) but it won't work against Israel.
Yet the reasons that he gives for WHY it won't work against Israel would be equally valid if applied to those sanctions on Iran, or Russia, or whatever.
How odd. You'd almost think his arguments were naught but excuses plucked out of thin air to justify why "the West" should (uniquely) not pick on his country, rather than an objective appraisal of the effectiveness of sanctions.
He's laying down some markers, because he is just as aware as you are that the Kurds can attempt to cut ISIS off from their source of resupply
And if they do... then he'll use Turkish forces to push the Kurds away from the border.
I mean, let's be real here: as far as he is concerned ISIS are His Boys, and he won't let anyone tell him that it's time to stop playing and come back inside.
Oh, I quite agree that the UN General Assembly ALONE did not possess the authority to partition a Mandated Territory.
But someone certainly did. It's name was "the Mandatory Power".
You might want to read the first sentence of UNGAR 181....
The UK was still the Mandatory Power in 1947, and there is not doubt whatsoever that a Mandatory had the legal power to partition a Mandated Territory into two successor states (Exhibit A: Lebanon/Syria. Exhibit B: Transjordan/Palestine).
UNSCOP was created *at* *the* *request* of the Mandatory Power, and the UNGA met *at* *the* *request* of the Mandatory Power to vote its "consent" to that Plan of Partition.
The reason why is not difficult to find, and you'll find it in Article 25 of the Mandate for Palestine.
ag: "this britain did not do. see para 1 of art 80."
Indeed, and you haven't thought through *why* the Mandatory did not follow that route.
The answer is staring you in the face i.e. Article 80 of the UN Charter, which would have preserved the "Balfour Declaration" were the Mandate for Palestine to be transferred into a UN Trusteeship.
Britain did not want that to happen i.e. it wanted to partition this territory into TWO states, and it didn't want the Jewish Agency to have any claim to any part of that "Arab state", only to that "Jewish state".
So no Trusteeship, but in order to partition this Mandated territory the Mandatory needed the "consent" of the UN GA, precisely because Article 25 of Mandate demanded it.
The Mandatory requested that consent, and I can even tell you the margin of victory: 33 for, 12 against.
But once the Mandatory had that "consent" then it's decision to agree to the Partition of this territory into two successor states was perfectly legal and quite legally-binding.
Pointing to the UNGA or to the UN Charter is simply to point in the wrong direction - the legal authority to partition a Mandated Territory always lay with.. the Mandatory Power.
Juan: " The UN Security Council never signed off on the plan, so its status in international law is unclear."
The UNSC didn't need to "sign off" on the Partition Plan, precisely because the UN Charter gave authority for (ex) League of Nations Mandates to the UN General Assembly.
Article 85 of the Charter, in fact.
So the legal status of UNGA 181 is clear-cut: so long as the Mandatory Power (and the UK was still the Mandatory in 1947) agreed to that Partition Plan then it was 100% legal and 100% legally-binding on all parties.
Juan: " It was in any case overtaken by the 1948 war"....
OK, *that's* when the UN Security Council should have stepped in, because *that* was the "threat to the peace" that UNGA 181 predicted could occur and which - obviously - only the UNSC had the power under the Charter to do anything about.
But note that regardless of whether (or not) the UNSC stepped in to stop that fighting the fighting itself could not change the LEGAL status of the territory, precisely because you can't LEGALLY acquire territory by war.
The Biff! and the Bash! and the Kerpow!!!! can change the "facts on the ground", sure, but that doesn't change the underlying legal status - any more than a punch-up at the reading of a will changes Who Gets What Out Of The Old Man's Estate.
In the latter case it simply doesn't matter who ends up in a head-lock, or who takes off with all the goodies; the will still stands as the only LEGAL way of apportioning the assets to the various beneficiaries, and everything else is simply.... theft.
Nothing more, just..... theft.
The same was true of the 1948 war: the only LEGAL apportionment of the territory was that defined in the Partition Plan, and everything else was just.... the acquisition of territory by war.
Juan: ...."the ICC will certainly rule against Israel. It already has, in a 2004 advisory opinion."
You need to rewrite that line.
The 2004 Advisory Opinion was by the International Court of Justice, which is a completely different court to the International Criminal Court.
But the core of your comment is, of course, quite correct: if the Israeli colonial enterprise ever get to the ICC then Netanyahu will be found guilty of a grave war crime, as will every single Israeli "leader" who votes to approve "settlement construction".
Because at this moment in time imposing a boycott on All Things Israeli will simply play into Netanyahu's hands. He will say that this is driven entirely by anti-Semitism, and therefore he will allow his constituents to rationalise their behaviour.
By taking aim only at settlements then the proponents of BDS keep the focus where it belongs i.e. it makes this an issue about Israel's colonial enterprise, and not an issue about Israel's "Jewishness".
Netanyahu will attempt with all his might to obfuscate that difference. Sure, he will, since that's all he's got to argue against BDS.
Maybe he will fail, in which case the BDS campaign will succeed in one of its aims, which is to bring home to the Israelis themselves that there are serious negative consequence to this colonial enterprise.
But maybe he'll succeed, and therefore convince all the Israelis that it's nothing to do with "settlements", it's just that the whole world hates them.
OK, in that case it's on to Plan B, which is to impose BDS on everything to do with Israel. Because - du'oh! - the Israelis will have brought that down on themselves.
Juan makes the very good point Israel is making it harder and harder to make the distinction between businesses that operate inside Israel and businesses that operate in the West Bank.
That is deliberate, and is (in part) a deliberate reaction to the EU's demand that products and services in the "settlements" be clearly marked as such.
It will therefore be Israel's own fault if BDS hurts "Israeli businesses" as well as "settlement businesses", precisely because Israel is making it impossible to distinguish one business activity from the other.
If so then it serves Israel right, if you ask me, because it'll be their own fault.
The Intl Court of Justice sits for:
a) Contentious Issues, where two states bring their dispute before the ICJ, and the court rules that "International law says that *you* are wrong and *he* is right".
b) Advisory Opinions, where the UN (but not individual states) refer a question of int'l law to the court, and the court then tells the UN "what int'l law says".
Obviously (b) does not involve an adversarial case (there is no "plaintiff" and no "defendant").
It involves A Question Of Law, and the court sits on that matter because the ICJ is regarded as *the* authoritative interpreter of What Int'l Law Says.
But regardless of wether the issue under deliberation comes to the court via (a) or via (b) the rules of the court are the same, as are its methods of deliberation.
The 2004 case involved the UN GA asking the court what int'l law had to say about the "security wall", and therefore the case involved an "Advisory Opinion".
And the full court was all-but-unanimous: Int'l Law says that the wall is illegal because it exists to "protect" an illegal colonial enterprise, and as a consequence all states are under a legal obligation to refuse to have anything to do with either.
The one hold-out was the sole Jewish judge on the court, who didn't quibble about that conclusion but argued instead that the court should have simply refused to answer the question.
A Jewish judge going in to bat for The Tribe? Go figure, heh?
An important piece of this puzzle is that 2004 AO from the International Court of Justice, which not only advised that these Israeli colonies are illegal but also advised that states are under a LEGAL obligation not to support that colonial enterprise.
Zionist supporters crowed that the AO was "rejected", but I have argued for a decade now that they are deluding themselves I.e. what happened *then* was that states simply ignored that court because they didn't want to hear its message
But that AO is still out there, and when attitudes change (and they are) then nothing stops a state from " rediscovering " that AO and saying "Gosh! They're right! Why wasn't I told about this!).
That court laid out a cudgel for anyone to use. It's still there, and countries are beginning to eye it off.
France in particular looks to be verrry tempted to pick it up.
Cotton: "meet in DC, @JZarif, time of your choosing to debate Iran's record of tyranny, treachery, & terror."
Hmmm, so I take it that Tom Cotton doesn't know who overthrew Iran's democratic government and installed the Shah of Iran in its place?
Perhaps the Good Senator would show real courage and participate in a debate in Tehran regarding who was responsible for that little act of "tyranny, treachery, & terror".
The topic could be: "Stop your bellyaching, we always knew that the Shah would be good for you, and history shows that we were right" and Tom Cotton could lead the team for the affirmative.
"The world would have been better off with regard to character had Cotton declined to participate in that carnage."
Ouch! And all the more cutting for being so obviously true.
Cotton is revealing himself more and more as being all brawn and no brain. Certainly he wasn't smart enough to realise just how wrong the 2003 invasion of Iraq was, and he shows absolutely no sign of any introspection even to this very day.
I suppose he would also consider it to be "a badge of courage" to step into a boxing ring to beat up an invalid who has been dragged into that ring against his will and over his strident objections.
Because that's pretty much what Cotton did.
And, somehow, he seems to think that what he did took "courage".
No, dude, I can think of many words that would describe the brutalization of a country that did not threaten you, but "courageous" is not one of 'em.
Hmm, if you look on the map you'll see that both Idleb and Jisr al-Shughur are North-East of Latakia, but the supply routes out of Latakia run South-East to Damascus i.e. in the other direction.
So these developments don't indicate that the Assad government is about to be cut off from resupply any time soon, nor that the Alawite-dominated area around Latakia is about to fall - again, a look on the map shows why.
There is a flat plain between Idleb and Jisr al-Shughur, so their advance from the former to the latter faced little in the way of difficult terrain.
But there is some quite mountainous territory between Jisr al-Shughur and Latakia, so a further advance to the sea will be much, much more difficult - there's pretty much only one route they can take.
I wonder if Netanyahu is now regretting his little Punch and Judy show in Congress.
After all, he sailed into Congress and let fly with every broadside he had, and it achieved..... nothing.
I suspect he regrets expending so much of his ammo in a stunt that - let's face it - everyone has now forgotten.
Perhaps he would have been much better off conserving that ammo and getting up to the podium NOW. Would have served him much better, and would have sucked the air out of Obama.
But as it is.... Bibi looks like he wants two bites of the apple, and he's not getting it.
"China never paid any attention to US 3rd party sanction threats."
But the Europeans did, and that hurt Iran badly.
"They can be bucked"
But, again, the Europeans were too scared to buck them.
The USA slapped a $9billion fine on French bank BNP Paribas and.... the bank paid up. They couldn't afford not to pay up.
"They can be challenged legally, at WTO etc if governments wish"
Well, yeah, that's the point I'm making. Foreign COMPANIES can't really stand up to those US 3rd party sanctions - they can't afford to show that defiance to US regulators.
Foreign COUNTRIES can, sure. But apart from China, Russia and (maybe) India all the other big economies are in Uncle Sam's pocket, and so the idea of any of them challenging the USA at the WTO is most unlikely.
I'm not sure that this sinks into an American audience, but there are a lot of countries out there - even supposed allies - who are scared of the USA.
With good reason, because since the end of the Cold War the USA's behaviour hasn't been particularly rational.
As in: inmates taking over the asylum-style irrational.
You can get full marks for courage for standing up to a crazy-eyed bully. But probably zero marks for smarts.
And Europe, in particular, is full of very smart cowards.
They are 3rd party sanctions i.e. the USA punishes foreign companies that trade with Iran by banning them for the US Market.
That means a foreign company has to decide wether to go with Iran (small market) or USA (whoppin' big market).
Not much of a choice.....
So one of three things are required:
a) The EU and China have to threaten to go toe to toe in a trade war with the USA (not going to happen), or
b) The EU has to "coincidentally" decide to sanction the shit outta Israel for its settlements, or
c) China has to announce that it is Shocked! Shocked! That Gambling Is Taking Place In This Establishment, then review whether Sheldon Adelson is a fit and proper person to hold a casino license.
Option (b) or (c) should do the trick, while both together makes it a sure-thing.
I think one of the more illuminating episodes to come out of the framework agreement has been Netanyahu's response.
If the best he can do by way of a deal-breaker is to demand that "recognition of Israel" be pencilled into the final JCPOA then, really, he's lost it.
And not in a "he tried his best and lost" way.
More of a "is he actually insane???" kinda' way.
It's going to be much harder to Boehner et al to follow in lockstep with Netanyahu if the latter goes out of his way to demonstrate to the world that he's a loony-tune.
Maybe Obama should get Boehner one of those T-Shirts that read "I'm With Stupid".
I think not. The indigestion that the US military suffered in the occupation of Iraq post-2003 provides all the deterrent Iran needs.
You know, seein' as how it is four times the size, and has four times the popln, and would - without a doubt - prove to be well over four times tougher to chew up than Iraq.
The Iranians are far too polite to point this out, but they proposed roughly the same deal to the European negotiators from the (then) E3 group back in 2005, during the negotiations that arose from the Paris Agreement of November 2004.
The Europeans said "No, no way", precisely because GW Bush was pulling their strings and he was insisting on zero enrichment and zero centrifuges.
So a decade of "US diplomatic involvement" has gotten everyone to.... pretty much the same place they would have been a decade ago if the USA had simply Stayed The F**k Out Of This.
One thing missing from this article is any mention of that squiggly black line on the map.
That's the border, boys and girls, and what's north of it is Turkey.
Iblid is nestled right up against the border with Turkey, and so if the rebel forces are being resupplied and supported by Turkey (and they are) then it is very, very hard to see how the Syrian government can hope to win a battle of attrition over that city.
I suspect very much that government forces pulled out the moment the rebels started their push, for the simple reason that it isn't worth dying trying to defend a city you can't hope to hold.
It isn't a matter of a foreign company concluding that the risk of trade with Iran isn't worth doing that trade.
Companies are going to want to keep their options open, and this new Chinese banking system allows them to do that. And that's a mighty powerful incentive, even if that company has no current plans to trade with anyone on any US Treasury sanctions-list.
The US Treasury can't punish a company merely because it conducts its business outside of the SWIFT system, and there is nothing that stops a company from conducting its trade with the USA via SWIFT and its trade with Everyone Else via that competing Chinese banking system.
And if they do so...... Treasury's job of policing any US sanctions-list becomes much, much, harder.
Stalingrad wasn't a disaster for the Germany 6th Army because the defenders in the city sallied forth and defeated them in battle.
Far from it: the Russians inside the city grimly defended it, and by doing so sucked the 6th Army into the city.
Which in itself wasn't fatal, though it was bloody.
What was fatal was that the German's weakened their flanks to support that push, and when fresh troops attacked those two exposed flanks they surrounded the 6th Army and cut it off from the rest of the Wehrmacht.
But ISIS doesn't have fresh troops waiting unseen north and south of the city, so that Iraqi commander is quite safe from meeting the same fate as General Paulus.
He may have good reasons for not wanting to enter the city - chief being that the 4,000 regulars he has aren't enough, and the 30,000 irregulars he has are refusing to do so - but it isn't because he fears that the rebels in ISIS are about to sally forth.
They aren't, and there is nobody riding to their rescue.
So why, indeed, does he have to enter that city when he can just sit tight and starve them out?
MK: "the British Parliament later debated the matter in December of 1947 and in the end their own plan to leave on their own terms was implemented to dissolve the British Mandate"
OK, there is something you need to understand, which is this: in legal terms "the Mandatory Power" was not the same thing as "the British Government".
The UK was not the "sovereign" of the territory of Palestine, it was the "mandatory", which is akin to a trustee under common law.
Therefore the Mandated Territory of Palestine didn't actually belong to the British Government, and so it was not the British Government's territory to dispose of as it saw fit.
The British Government could ask a committee to draw up a Plan and, yes, it can accept that plan or it can reject that plan. Whatever.
But what it couldn't do is adopt that plan WITHOUT first gaining the explicit consent of the UN General Assembly to its adoption.
To do so would be to make a decision that the British Government did not have the authority to make.
Equally, the British Government couldn't "decide" on an Altogether Different Cunning Scheme(tm) and adopt it WITHOUT taking that new scheme to the UN General Assembly for its consent, and for exactly the same reason i.e. that would amount to the British Government making a decision that they did not have the authority to make.
Britain what the m.a.n.d.a.t.o.r.y., and so the only decision that LEGALLY stood was whatever decision that mandatory took to the UN General Assembly for its vote of consent.
Everything else was under-the-table and without any legal underpinning at all.
Don't take my word for it: read the Israel Declaration of Independence, wherein Ben Gurion clearly anchored the "rights of Jews to be here" in the Balfour Declaration, and he anchored *his* authority to declare a sovereign and independent State of Israel on UNGA Resolution 181.
He most emphatically didn't stand up and say that he had a right to declare the state of Israel because "Ernest Bevin Said It Was OK".
JC: "Yes, of course, old white men in the imperial capitals get to decide if Palestinians are kicked out of their homes. Just so."
An odd comment, if you are referring to UNGAR181 and the Partition Plan, because that plan didn't involve anyone being kicked out of anywhere.
Under that plan everyone stayed put, and old men (not all white, btw) then draw convoluted lines between and around them.
But, no, those old men "decided" that nobody moved out of their houses during or after that process.
That was a "decision" made by old white-haired dudes from eastern Europe who always planned to take it all for themselves, even while professing that they would be happy with just half.
JC, I didn't say that the UNGA is an "executive body", I said that it was the "supervising body" with respect to this Mandated Territory.
I am perfectly correct on that point i.e. the old Mandatory Powers were never supreme, they were always intended to be under the supervision of the Council of the League of Nations.
Read Article 27 of the Mandate for Palestine if you don't believe me.
And I am also quite correct to point out that upon the dissolution of the LoN that supervisory role was taken up by the United Nations General Assembly, it was not taken up by the UN Security Council.
Article 85 of the UN Charter, if you don't believe me.
So I stand by my original point: if the Mandatory Power wanted to end its Mandate by splitting this territory into TWO successor states - one *here* and the other *there* - then it needed to gain the consent of the UNGA.
The Mandatory did not need the consent of the UNSC to make that a legally-binding decision. It just needed the consent of the UNGA, because that was all that was need to satisfy the requirements of Article 27 of Mandate.
Which it sought, and which it obtained.
I can even tell you the margin: 33-13, with 10 abstentions.
There are s many things wrong in Mark's post that it's hard to know where to start.
MK: [UNGAR 181] "that was merely advisory in nature."
No, much more than that, as is made clear in its first sentence: "The General Assembly, Having met in special session at the request of the mandatory Power"....
Get it? The UNGA was voting on this Plan Of Partition because the MANDATORY asked it to vote on it.
Why? Because Partition required the extinguishing of the Balfour Declaration, and Article 27 of Mandate explicitly says that the Mandatory can't do that without first getting the "consent" of its supervising body, which by 1947 was.... the UNGA.
The Mandatory wanted to Partition this Mandate.
It asked the UNGA if they were OK with that.
The UNGA said: sure, we think that's a swell idea.
According to the plain text of the Mandate for Palestine that made it all legal, and very, very legally-binding.
MK: "The State of Israel was not declared until May 14, 1948 when the British Mandate ended"
The declaration itself didn't end the Mandate.
The end of Mandate didn't create the declaration.
One followed from the other, and the reason why one followed from the other was... because the Partition Plan said so.
MK: "It was the agreement of the British government "..
Yeah, the agreement of the Mandatory with its Supervisor that made the birth of TWO successor states the only l.e.g.a.l. outcome from the end of Mandate.
MK: "who voted against the General Assembly’s Partition Plan"
Ahem. A flat-out untruth.
These are the countries that voted against the Partition Plan: Afghanistan, Cuba, Egypt, Greece, India, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Yemen.
The UK (i.e. the Mandatory Power) is the country that actually brought the Partition Plan to the Assembly for a vote of consent (as, indeed, it was required to do).
But since it was, indeed, the Mandatory Power then the UK couldn't vote of the Plan, for the most obvious of conflict-of-interest.
It had to abstain, since it couldn't both "ask" for consent and "give" that consent to itself.
You misunderstand, MVH1. What I find astounding is that nobody in the USA seems to be the slightest bit upset that Obama is flagging a change of policy with respect to The Special Relationship.
Simply saying that "we are re-evaluating our policy" would have been unthinkable even two years ago.
You know, back when Biden was saying that there must be "no daylight, no daylight" between the USA and Israel.
Something has definitely changed in the political discourse regarding Israel, and that change has been driven by one man's arrogance and hubris.
Netanyahu is still at the high point of his oh-so-exhilarating jump over the shark.
And, yeah, sure, he and his admirers are still pumped full of adrenalin and yahooing with unabashed bravado.
But this still remains true: he is going to hit that water with a sickening belly-flop.
I have been pointing this out for years: the excuse that the USA gives for vetoing Its Own Policy in the UN Security Council is that such a resolution would complicate the "US mediated peace process".
But once that USMPP is acknowledged to be a failure then.... there goes that excuse for vetoing those resolutions.
That's the singular reason why the White House is so incandescent over Netanyahu's comments i.e. US policy requires that Israel at least pretend to be interested in that Kabuki dance.
Netanyahu just can't be bothered, and because of that he has left the USA's oh-so-carefully-contrived policy in tatters.
Well, OK, if he can't be bothered then why should Obama?
This is the answer: Obama isn't interested in shielding Israel from the monumental folly of its leader, not when they have just elected Bibi again. And certainly not when the reason *why* they elected them is because he stood up and publicly shouted his folly.
The veto is toast, and not before time.
But what's so astounding is not that the White House is flagging this, but that nobody in the USA seems to be the slightest bit upset about it.
The importance of this revelation is that it is very clearly a felony for ANY US citizen to take possession of classified information that they are not authorized to possess.
So any Congressman who allowed Ron Dermer to step into his office and say "Boy, have I got something to show to you!" has just left themselves wide open to a criminal prosecution, which is precisely why so many of them are rushing to the microphone to belittle this news.
The importance of this can't be overstated i.e. how many Congressmen are going to let Ron Dermer into their office in future? How many Senators are going to want to go into a whispered huddle with an AIPAC stooge?
Far, far fewer now than before.
This could very well represent the moment that the Israel Lobby jumped the shark, going from the money-bags that everyone loved to see to being persona non grata within the corridors of power.
Why do you think the White House has leaked that information about Israel handing Top Secret USA information to selected US Congressmen?
Obama finally has the ammunition to move against those conniving bastards in Congress, and he is aiming for nothing less than to neuter the Israel Lobby.
Think about it.
Think about it.
Think about it.
If a Congressman took delivery of US Top Secret information that he is not authorized to see then that is a criminal offense. No question about it - he has committed a felony.
It becomes doubly-criminal if that information came to him because ISRAELI spooks illegally procured it.
There is a very real threat now that certain too-clever-by-half Congressmen could find themselves under arrest, and all because they were too stupid to show Ron Dermer the door the moment he said the magic words "We've intercepted some US communications, let me play it for you".
The White House is aiming to make it so that the mere sight of a Israeli-first lobbyist walking down the corridor sends Congressmen scuttling for the exits.
This is how it will play out:
Either some Congressmen will be too stupid to comprehend how much trouble they are in (in which case they'll find themselves behind bars) or they will be told by their minders that the Administration has them by their hairy balls (in which case the Obama Administration will declare Dermer to be persona non grata, and everyone will be amazed that there is not a peep of protest from Congress).
But either way, the Lobby's power over Congress will be toast.
The one thing that the PLO must *not* do is go to the ICC with complaints about war crimes committed by the IDF in the last Gaza "war".
Utterly pointless.
Go to the ICC and insist that it investigate this war crime instead, a war crime that is explicitly written down in the Rome Statute: "The transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies,"
There is nothing - absolutely nothing - that Netanyahu can say or do that can avoid him being found guilty of that war crime.
N.o.t.h.i.n.g.
If the Palestinians are going to go to the ICC then they may as well go big - aim to claim the scalp of the Israeli Prime Minister, not some low-ranking IDF commissioned officer.
After all, it's not as if Netanyahu is innocent.
He is, indeed, as guilty as sin.
Maybe I'm being too Machiavellian, but is it possible that Cotton tried to be too clever, rather than being too crackpot?
Think about it: the prevailing wisdom everywhere outside the Beltway is that if the USA imposes impossible demands then not only will Iran walk, but much of the P5+1 will walk out with them.
End result: the existing sanctions regime bites the dust, without the Mullah's having to concede anything.
So maybe Cotton was attempting to goad the Iranians into calculating (incorrectly) that this letter alone would give them the opportunity to bolt for the door while shouting "Who else is with me???".
If they made that calculation then Cotton would have cried "Ahah! Gotcha!" and blamed them for not acting in good faith.
Except.... they haven't bolted for the door.
They've simply called him out for being Too Clever By Half.
Me: “According to the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties any international agreement that this President has the authority to sign is fully binding on the USA and any President who follows him.”
That statement is perfectly correct: the Vienna Convention invalidates any international agreement that is "agreed to" by someone who does not have the authority of the state to sign that agreement.
There is no question - none whatsoever, and not even Senator Cotton claims otherwise - that the President of the United States has the legal authority to sign this international agreement with Iran.
Which means that as far as the Vienna Convention is concerned the primary hurdle has been jumped i.e. is the President an imposter, or is he the "executive" who has the authority to sign an "executive agreement" with Iran?
The answer is "Why, yes. Yes, he is".
RFM: "However, your assertion is manifestly untrue–and the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty speaks to its untruth."
Well, that's a whole heap o' Motherhood you are piling on there. Perhaps some mention of Apple Pie might also be handy.
RFM: "Today, SecState Kerry stated to Senate Foreign Relations that, “we are not negotiating a legally binding plan.” "
Look, I'm not disputing that the AMERICANS think that they can evade international legal obligations by hanging the label "executive agreement" on a document.
And, try as I might, I can't see Kerry as anything other than a manifestation of AMERICAN values. He is, indeed, as Motherhood and as Apple Pie as they come.
The point I keep returning to is that as far as All The Other International Actors in this farce are concerned Kerry and Cotton (and you) are attempting to make what they consider to be a distinction without a difference.
As far as they are all concerned this is very simple:
Q1: Does the President have the legal authority to represent the state in these negotiations?
A1: Yes, he does.
Q2: Does his signature on that agreement therefore fulfil all the requirements of the Vienna Convention in terms of being a legally-binding agreement under international law?
A2: Yes, it does.
Q3: Can the President evade that legal obligation by pointing to his own domestic laws?
A3: No, he can not.
Now, one more time, yet again, I do not dispute for a second that the Indispensable Nation insists otherwise.
They do so insist, starting with John Kerry and going through Freshman Cotton all the way down to RFM.
What I am saying, yet again, one more time, is that The Rest Of The World thinks otherwise, and will therefore react according if a future President-Elect Cotton ripped that document to shreds.
They will, without doubt, react in a way that Cotton does not consider i.e. they will conclude that the USA is in serious violation of a legal obligation under international law and therefore any attempt by the Americans to ring them into continuing the sanctions against Iran will be met with a firm "Are You Stark Raving Mad?"
RFM: "The question of whether the Vienna Convention, to which we are not bound, gives other countries the right to interpret EAs (or any other agreement that fails of the senate’s advice and consent) is, thankfully, beyond the scope of this response."
Then I rather fail to see why you have taken the trouble of responding to my original post, since you not only are not addressing that post, you are making a virtue of not addressing it.
It's not "treason" to write an open letter, any more than it would be "treasonous" for Senator Cotton to have published the same argument in an op-ed column in the New York Times.
You simply can't make that accusation stick.
You'd have much better luck arguing that the letter amounts to "sedition".
Thanks for the lengthy response, RFM, but if you reread my original post I think you'll find that I stress that the Vienna Convention is important insofar as THE OTHER participants to these negotiations view Cotton's claim.
As far as those OTHER participants are concerned it matters not that there are "three categories of EAs", nor that Congress pulls the money strings, nor that there are Congressional Oversight Committees.
The only issue they have to consider is this: does the President have the legal authority to enter into an executive agreement on behalf of the United States of America?
The answer is "Yes", and therefore the Vienna Convention says that the deal is binding on all states who sign onto it.
That you or Cotton or CSI all splutter "but! but! but!" as they wave the Constitution of the United States around like a talisman matters not one bit to Iran, Russia, China, Britain, France or Germany.
That's a "domestic" issue, and therefore as far as those other countries are concerned the Vienna Convention has already answered that objection.
That you claim that "a future Congress can increase, sustain or reduce funding at will" a Status of Force Agreement is without doubt true.
But this is also true: were Congress to do that would be viewed by the country that also signed that SOFA as a gross violation of a legally-binding international agreement.
No doubt there are plenty of Americans who would just shrug the shoulders and say "so what?" but, then again, perhaps the average American might want to consider the sort of world Senator Cotton et al., is leading them into i.e. one where the signature of a Head Of State on an international agreement means.... nothing.
Sure, and banks have a long history of being robbed, even though there are laws against bank-robbery.
That the USA ignores treaties that it has signed is not in doubt, and the USA is not the only country that has done so.
But Senator Cotton appears to want to make a virtue of it.
I assume he does so because (tho' it's hard to tell from that letter) he is of the opinion that the USA can repudiate int'l law with impunity. That there would be no blowback. No unforseen consequences of such a cavalier attitude.
Even in the broader scheme of things that is untrue, since this is a truism: adhering to international law adds a little bit of stability to a complex world, while acting as if int'l law doesn't matter promotes instability.
Do it often enough and the world as we know it becomes unstable, if not utterly unhinged.
We'll all end up in the world that existed pre-1939. Only this time the USA won't be on the side of law and order.
The letter is astonishingly ignorant, and shames those Senators who signed onto it.
Note that the letter declares that “Congress plays the significant role of ratifying them” [where "them" = "international agreements"].
No, that's factually incorrect.
Congress (actually, the Senate) plays **a** significant role in the ratification of treaties, but it is not **the** body that ratifies treaties.
That's the office of the President.
The President of the United States *negotiates* treaties, and the President of the United States *ratifies* treaties, but the Constitution says that the President can't go from the former to the latter without first gaining the "advice and consent" of 2/3 of the Senate.
So, yes, the Senate can stop a President from ratifying a treaty. But, no, the Senate doesn't actually have "the role of ratifying treaties".
But that's just one ignorant misunderstanding of USA domestic law, shame on them.
But their misunderstanding of international law is even worse.
Cotton makes the mistake of claiming that only "treaties" are binding on the USA.
Even under US Domestic Law that's untrue: the President is perfectly entitled to negotiate an "executive agreement" that requires no Senate consent **if** the agreement pertains to an issue that is within the sole authority of the President according to the Constitution.
Under those circumstances he doesn't need the "advice" - much less the "consent" - of anyone, let alone the Senate.
Sure, they don't become "the law of the land", but such agreements certainly are legally-binding on the USA under international law.
According to the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties any international agreement that this President has the authority to sign is fully binding on the USA and any President who follows him.
Think of it from the PoV of Iran and the five other members of the P5+1 i.e. their interpretation of an "international agreement" is governed by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, and that convention makes absolutely no distinction between "treaties", "executive agreements", "international agreements", or whatever.
All get interpreted in the same way, precisely because the Convention says that a state can not use a provision in its own domestic law to evade an international obligation that it has freely entered into.
So if a hypothetical future Republican President repudiated this agreement then - again, according to the Vienna Convention, and regardless of how many times he waves this letter about - the USA will have just committed a manifest violation of that agreement and, therefore, is in violation of international law.
Cotton might like to think of the ramifications of that i.e. all the thousands and thousands of executive agreements that the USA has negotiated would be.... worthless.
Let's start with a simple example: all those Status of Force Agreements (SOFA) that result in all those hundreds of overseas US military bases would be.... worthless.
All of them, because as far as I know not a one of them is a "treaty".
Zarif makes a valid point, though it is certain to be lost amongst the inevitable hyperventilation over this letter.
The point is this: International Law makes no distinction between a "treaty" or an "executive agreement".
As far as International Law is concerned both are governed by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.
So while it is true that US Domestic Law regards "a treaty" as something that is different to "an executive agreement" that matters only insofar as anyone cares about US Domestic Law. Which amounts to .... the Americans.
But if you are a foreign government (Iran, or France, or Russia, or whatever) that distinction is immaterial, precisely because the Vienna Convention says that a signatory on an international agreement can not point to a provision in its own domestic law to evade an international obligation freely entered into.
It is an odd day indeed when an Iranian politician shows a much firmer grasp of the topic than nearly 50 of America's Finest Legislators.
Apparently there are 47 morons sitting in Congress, all of whom are happily wallowing in their own ignorance.
I doubt that very much. Iran's current military is "low-tech but reliable", and it is unlikely to be able to take a huge toll of USAF bombers.
But regardless of how good (or, more likely, how hopeless) Iran's air defences are today, the assumption that the USAF can just keep revisiting Iranian airspace year after year and **not** face ever-better air defences is the very definition of "tunnel vision".
Think about it: suppose the USAF does know how to neuter Iran's current air defence systems.
Hellooooo. The Iranians will surely notice, and they will take whatever steps are necessary to plug those holes.
The first air raids will be the easiest.
Every subsequent raid will be harder and harder.
Eventually the airspace over Iran will simply be too hot.
The other consideration about "yearly bombing runs" is that it assumes that Iran remains defenceless against those attacks, which is very highly unlikely.
Take the Vietnam War: the first US bombing sorties faces heavy machinegun fire aims by hand. The last US bombing runs faces SAM missiles, MIG-21 fighter jets, radar-directed heavy AA guns, etc. etc.
I mean, get real: the first USAF raids will be a cake-walk, but by the time the US had marked off more than a few return visits the Iranians will be given the very, very latest S-500 missiles and, in all likelihood, Russian "volunteers" to man them.
There is simply no way for Israel to "fight the jurisdiction of the ICC".
That possibility ended the moment that the ICC recognized that the state of Palestine has standing before the court.
This is very simple:
Israel's leadership is committing a war crime defined in Article 8(2)b(viii) of the Rome Statute, and that ongoing war crime is being carried out on territory that lies OUTSIDE the state of Israel.
On territory belonging to another state - Palestine - which has sovereignty over this territory (curtsey of it being a state) but can not exercise "authority" over that territory (curtsey of it being under an Israeli belligerent occupation).
QED: The Chief Prosecutor of the ICC not only has jurisdiction over this war crime but is also the *only* legal officer capable of bringing the war criminals to trial.
There is pretty much no excuse that Israel can come up with that could possibly convince the Chief Prosecutor that the ICC should not to proceed with that trial.
The war crime is undeniable.
The gravity of that war crime is unquestionable.
The guilty party is unmistakable.
The jurisdiction of the court is unchallengeable.
There is simply no LEGAL avenue available to him to prevent that case from getting to the court, and once it gets to court then Netanyahu is toast.
Politically, maybe, he can prevent this getting to court. But he doesn't need "int'l law experts" for that - he needs politicians in his pocket.
And, sure, he can simply have Abbas shot, but no "int'l law experts" are going to pull that trigger. He needs the IDF to do that.
But the LAW is so heavily against him that no "int'l law expert" - no matter how talented - is going to be able to help him out.
There really must come a time when public officials start to ask the question that is just begging to be asked: is Netanyahu's mind actually coming unhinged?
Indeed, as I read Jen Koehler's, and I note that you utterly ignored the all-important "and intervention" part of that post.
s390: " I was objecting to Jen Koehler saying that it’s criminal for people to revolt against their government. "
Then you clearly did not understand what Jen Koehler was saying, because that person DIDN'T claim that it is "criminal for people to revolt against their government".
The claim was quite different i.e. "It is best to not foment revolution in the first place" (notice the word "foment") and "Sometimes, revolution and intervention against unjust dictators are actually criminal and immoral" (notice the word "intervention").
The claim is against OUTSIDERS pushing for revolutionary chaos, because what results from such revolutions is... chaos.
Best. Not. To. Go. There.
If the citizenry wants to revolt then let 'em revolt, and good luck to them.
But don't push for that to happen.
Don't FOMENT revolution.
And don't INTERVENE once it starts.
super390: "Which leaves us with the problem of what the criteria should be for a revolution."
Notice the missing "and intervention"?
super390: "I mean, was the American Revolution criminal and immoral?"
Neither but, then again, I don't remember the ruling British being pushed out by.... outside intervention.
Revolutions are fine by me, that they are, indeed, the product of the internal affairs of the state in question.
But it's the foreign element in so many of the recent "revolutions" that make them so problematic, precisely because so many of them seem to have more than a little of the F**k-The-EU-Nuland's about them.....
Well, "destroyed" is perhaps far too strong a word.
Maybe "jumped the shark" is a better phrase, since Bibi's little stunt in front of Congress might well represent the moment when this long-running sitcom descended into cringe-worthy farce.
Is it just me, or is Congress acting more and more like a crazy Cult, with Netanyahu as the object of their Cult of Personality?
The next time the American leadership start slagging off about how loony-tunes-crazy North Korea's government is it might be a salutary lesson to replay the Congress giving standing ovation after standing ovation to The Great And Powerful Netanyahu and then ask "What do you mean? Kinda' like that, perhaps?"
"No way he’ll do this; he would destroy Hillary Clinton’s credit with pro-Zionist Jewish donors in the United States."
Well, with pro-Netanyahu Jewish donors, certainly, but those are rusted onto the Republicans anyway.
That there is a gigantic amount of "Pro-Israel" money sloshing around is not something that I dispute, but I would like to point out that picking a fight with Netanyahu is not the same thing as being anti-Israel, since the last time I looked he wasn't Leader For Life.
And, regardless, I have to ask the question: why should Obama care about "Hillary Clinton's credit" with Israel Lobby money-bags?
Obama shouldn't waste his time getting "unnamed officials" to mutter "chickenshit" to Jeff Goldberg. That would simpy be water off a duck's back to any Israeli politician.
Obama has to call a press-conference, stand up in front of the press, and there call it as it really is: Boehner is an idiot for inviting a professional bullshit artist to address the Congress, and if any Congressman listens to a word that bullshit artist says then They Are Boehner-Dumb.
And if anyone tries to call him on it he should immediately show a montage of that habitual bullshit artist screaming about an Iranian nuke in 1996, 1997, 1998, and every year since then, and then turn to the press and say "that, ladies and gentlemen, is a bullshit artist at work".
Honestly, do it, dude. It's not as if you have any more need for campaign contributions, and if your political career is coming to and end (as, indeed, it does to all two-term Presidents) then you may as well take Bibi down with you.
Basically, he expects that if the USA chops Abbas off at the knees at the UN then Abbas should just sit there and do nothing BECAUSE otherwise he will piss off...the USA.
Hellllooooooo, Aaron. If the USA doesn't want Abbas to go to the ICC then the USA should have supported him at the UN.
They didn't, and so they left Abbas with no choice - it's either the ICC or nothing, and doing nothing is not an option for Abbas.
IF YOU DON'T WANT HIM TURNING TO THE ICC THEN GIVE HIM AN ALTERNATIVE, AND YOUR COUNTRY HAS CUT OFF ALL OTHER ALTERNATIVES.
Dre: "Cut the BS. Ukraine is not nazi Germany part II."
And Alec didn't say that it was. You did though....
Dre: "The Godwin law basically states that when your argument resorts to the ad hominum of “your side is the nazi Germany side” then you lose the intellectual debate."
How odd. Alec didn't call the Ukrainians "Nazis", nor did he stick that label around Washington's neck.
Only you did.
Dre: "The Russia meme of calling the opposition ‘Nazi’s’ rings very hollow."
Pre-emptive outrage. How clever of you.
But Alec didn't call anyone "Nazi".
All Alec did was point out that (a) Washington interference in Yugoslavia was a far graver violation of int'l law and (b) those same beltway clowns are now encouraging some equally-appalling people in the Ukraine.
He is right on both counts, and he transgressed Godwin's Law in neither.
Only you did that. Three times in three sentences, to be precise.
The problem the USA has is this: it really doesn't give a rat's arse that Israel is gobbling up Palestinian territory as if there were no tomorrow. Uncle Sam just doesn't care, now or ever.
But what Uncle Sam can't do is come out and say - openly, with no apologies - that they don't care that Israel is gobbling up occupied territory, precisely because they know that this is illegal under the very int'l humanitarian laws that the USA helped draft after WW2.
So Uncle Sam needs an excuse to enable this land-theft without *actually* admitting that this is what the USA is doing.
And that Fig Leaf is the "US-mediated peace process" e.g. the USA can - and does - veto UNSC resolutions under the pretence that it must do so to "protect" that "peace process".
Otherwise it would have no excuse to veto resolutions that are (and let's be honest here) little more than recitations of the USA's own publically-declared policies.
That's why the USA is so pissed with Bibi. Israel has to at least **pretend** that it is committed to that "peace process", and Netanyahu just can't be bothered.
And by refusing to play pretendies Netanyahu is leaving the USA's donger swinging naked in the breeze, and that's More Than A Little Embarrassing To An Emperor With No Clothes.
That's what this is all about.
There are no "principles" at stake here. No "national security issue".
There is simply a farce that has been scripted by the USA, and they are angered because Bibi refuses to mouth the lines that have been prepared for him.
SG: " So if I hop outside and start throwing rocks at Boston PD, does that make me a “demonstrator”?"
The key phrase there is "Police Department".
If you are running around Boston then your actions are covered by the domestic criminal code of the United States Of America, and if that code allows the FBI to send "undercover agents" into a crowd to act as agent provocateurs then so be it.
But these events aren't happening "in the USA", and so the Boston Police Department has no legal jurisdiction to enforce any laws whatsoever.
These events *also* aren't occurring anywhere "in Israel", and so Israeli police likewise have no legal jurisdiction to enforce any laws whatsoever.
These events are happening inside a territory that the IDF holds at the Point Of A Gun.
The legal term is "a belligerent occupation", and the legal consequence of that is that all "authority" resides with the army of occupation i.e. the "authority" that Israel has over this territory is a MILITARY authority.
Which all leads to this question: is a MILITARY force entitled to send its troops into a crowd (a) "undercover" and (b) with hidden weapons?
The answer is: No.
Soldiers who carry out their active duty *without* wearing a distinctive emblem and *without* openly carrying their weapons are committing a very serious war crime that is called "perfidy".
Samuel, these are s.o.l.d.i.e.r.s. we are talking about, and they have to act as s.o.l.d.i.e.r.s. are supposed to act.
They can't pretend that they are members of the Boston Police Department, any more than a Private in the US Marines can pretend that he is a Boston Cop.
I know you won't understand that distinction, but that's because you don't want to understand the difference between "territory" and "occupied territory".
JC: "The tactic of infiltrating Palestinian protests with undercover soldiers".... has a name, and has a clear and concise legal consequence.
The name is "perfidy", and according to international humanitarian law perfidy is a "war crime".
This should always be stressed: "undercover soldiers" are not "cops", and that remains true even if they are carrying out duties that would be normally carried out by law enforcement officers.
Being a "cop" ("undercover" or otherwise) is a CIVILIAN job, precisely because a Police Force one of the CIVIL authorities of a state.
So what a "cop" can and can't do is governed by the CIVIL criminal code of that country in question.
But being a "soldier" is a MILITARY job, precisely because the Armed Forces of a state is a MILITARY organization.
So what a soldier can - and can't - do inside an occupied territory is governed by international humanitarian law, it is not governed by the domestic criminal code of the state that is responsible for that belligerent occupation.
And int'l humanitarian law can not be clearer: if you are a soldier on active duty then you *must* wear a distinctive symbol that is visible at a distance, and you *must* carry your weapons openly.
You can't go "undercover", because that is "perfidy", and it is a grave violation of the Geneva Conventions.
S390: "The Russian Orthodox Church was the state church of the Czarist regime."
That would be a Czarist regime that no longer exists, right?
You may as well claim that the Kaiser's obsession with creating an Imperial High Seas Fleet tells us volumes about Merkel's view of Germany's role in NATO.
S390: "Stalin rehabilitated it during WW2 into a submissive puppet."
Yeah, and his regime is also long-gone.
You would have just as much relevance arguing that Mao's whacky ideas regarding Great Leaps Forward gives us insight into Xi Jinping's current economic plans.
S390: "The fall of the Soviet Union"....
...oh, you noticed that, did you?
S390: ...."began a process of restoring the Orthodox Church as the favored religion of the nationalistic government,"....
A meaningless statement. I have a favourite pop star, but that doesn't mean that Taylor Swift is my spokesperson.
S390: ..."which in turn is increasingly a dictatorship...
Well, apart from those inconvenient elections that Putin keeps winning.
S390: "To put this in context, when the Archbishop of Canterbury, during World War 1, called for the extermination of the Turkish people in retaliation for their genocide of Armenians, do you think the British government was free of responsibility?"
Why, yes. Yes, I do.
Unless you want to argue that the British Government is in the habit of including the Archbishop in cabinet meetings, or that one of the responsibilities of being the head of the Church of England is that of running the Foreign Office.
S390: "What secular reason could Putin possibly have for his massive gay-bashing crusade?"
Niiiiiiice Red Herring you got there.
S390: "Sounds like he’s doing a quid pro quo for the Orthodox Church on that one."
No, it doesn't sound like that at all.
It *sounds* like Putin doesn't bother consulting with church officials when it comes to military strategy and foreign policy decisions.
Which would rather suggest that these two church leaders are speaking out of ignorance on topics over which they have no authority to speak, and are doing so in a venue that is utterly inappropriate.
Or, in John McCain's words describing Sarah Palin: She's Gone Rogue!
It happens. It is the despair of every political leader when it does happen, but it's not their fault nor is it their responsibility.
The *responsible* answer from the leader is to disassociate themselves from those who have no authority to speak out of turn.
Oh, look, Putin and Lavrov have done exactly that.
JC: "Remember when George W. Bush lapsed and"....
...and that would be GW Bush, President of a country called the United States of America, correct?
JC: "Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin said that"...
.... that would be AP Chaplin, who isn't the leader of a country called Russia. Correct?
JC: "The over-all leader of Russian Orthodoxy, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow,".....
.....hmmm, I'm still not seeing anyone who has any claim to be any part of the Russian government, let alone the leader of that government.
This all matters if PUTIN or LAVROV stood before a podium and mouthed the same sentiments as Chaplin and Kirill.
Have they?
JC: "It [the Russian Embassies] denied that Russia is engaged in a holy war."
Well, there you are then.....
Church leaders in the USA say many objectionable things, but I don't see anyone claiming that Obama has to apologize for some nonsense spouted by some redneck Baptist or some crazy-eyed Christian Fundamentalist.
You are wrong.
Putin has a much wider geopolitical interest in crushing ISIS as quickly and as completely as possible.
It is this: the entire ME is in play here, and Putin's "appeal" will be that the USA *says* it wants to defeat ISIS, but all it does is pussy-foot around.
It's "bombing campaign" over the last 12 months has been a joke. They are very clearly not serious.
Compare and Contrast.
When Russia decides that enough is enough then ISIS gets crushed. Quickly. Comprehensively.
So who do you guys want to side with?
An America that talks a good talk but then does nothing but GET IN THE WAY?
Or a Russia that says what it means and means what it says?
Your choice is yours but, really, it's not much of a choice.
Putin HATES terrorists. He detests them, precisely because they DO pose a threat to the Russian Federation.
He's serious. He wants those SoB's dead, and if Uncle Sam is going to just pussy-foot around then there's the exit, dudes. Let the grown-ups handle this.
Dude, Putin is relying on everyone understanding how incredibly dangerous this situation is.
He went to great lengths to spell that out to you in his speech to the UN. Weren't you paying attention?
He's had enough of the USA pussy-footing around.
He means business, and that means everyone else better get out of his way.
Those Iranian troops are coming, sunshine. They are on their way, and *nobody* but *nobody* is going to dissuade Putin from that course of action.
So ask yourself this: do the Saudis and Israelis feel like "retaliating"?
Because Putin is serious.
He has, indeed, had enough of pussy-footing around.
So if the Saudis or the Israelis do feel like "retaliating" then Putin is willing to go Total 100% Ass-Whooping On Their Sorry Asses.
The choice is theirs, and if they are stupid enough to take the wrong option, well, heck, I for one am not going to miss either of those two puissant little pigmy-states.
"Given the crimes that Assad committed, can you really say that there is a “Syrian” people?"
And those "crimes" would be what, exactly?
Fighting a civil war, perhaps, rather than just lying down and giving up?
This is a fact: Abraham Lincoln refused to give up in a civil war, and 800,000 Americans died because of it.
Given that crime that Lincoln committed - vastly greater than the death toll in Syria - can you really say that there is an “American” people?
Nice straw men there, dude.
Whatever. But here's one assertion that should never be left unchallenged: " I don’t even understand what your end game is, except for one where the whole world operates under Beijing rules"
No, actually, not "Beijing rules", which you appear to have just made up.
No, the principle is much, much older than that: May to October of 1648, in point of fact.
Here, let me give you a hint: google up the phrase "Westphalian sovereignty".
Assad may well be a piece of s**t, and you are free to demonize him as much as you want. Go ahead, demonize away.
But overthrow him by training, arming and bankrolling foreign fanatical throat-slitting thugs and then throwing them at Syria?
No, that would be interference in the internal affairs of Syria.
Indeed, it would be *as* *much* an interference in the internal affairs of Syria as it would be if a foreign country sent armed thugs into the USA because Obama has a rather nasty habit of Bombing Weddings And Parties And Hospitals From The Air.
You do know that Obama has ordered all those things and more, right?
So according to your logic other countries are *entitled* to seek his violent overthrow, correct?
And if that isn't correct, well, why, exactly?
Oh, it's much more than that.
Note this sentence: "all but one of the targets were areas held by the opposition to Syria’s Assad regime, rather than by the Islamic State’s militants."
Got that?
ISIS are "militants", but everyone else (yes, apparently even al-Qaeda) are merely "the opposition".
You'll see that phrase everywhere in the mainstream press i.e. the meme that Everyone But ISIS are nought but opposition parties, so why would anyone want to bomb them?
Du'oh! Because they aren't "opposition parties".
They are armed groups attempting to topple the Syrian government by military force and, therefore, they deserve as many bombs up their backsides as Putin can deliver.
The abuse of language is utterly appalling: armed rebels become mere "opposition", and somehow they are A-OK and quite untouchable merely because They Aren't ISIS.
Big Whoop.
Ask this question: Are they shooting at Assad?
The simple answer is: Why, yes. Yes, they are.
In which case they deserve everything that the Russian airforce is throwing at them.
"its a case of too little too late, if Russia wanted to do this it should have been 3-4 years ago"
No, absolutely not.
Had he tried this "3-4 years ago" the loonies who believe they run the world from Washington would have shouted that Putin Is Invading Syria! We Must Do Something! The Man Is Hitler Incarnate!
But Putin has hoisted "the West" on its own petard.
They can't complain about Russia intervening in this civil war because that's exactly what the USAF has been doing with *their* ineffectual bombing runs up 'n' down the country. Bombing runs that never seem to spot those convoys of Toyota pickup trucks even while they appear to be unerring in bombing the bejezzus out of various wedding parties and Doctors Without Borders field hospitals.
Putin has timed his run perfectly, insofar as he has deftly stepped in with his sleeves rolled up and said "out of my way, sonny, and I'll show you how you REALLY do this".
It's left Washington boxed into a corner, because the only complaint that they can make is this: Hey! No fair! He's bombing OUR terrorists, not THOSE terrorists!
As far as arguments go, arguing the virtues of Our Good-Badguy Terrorist versus the vices of Those Other Bad-Badguy Terrorists is just about the dictionary-definition of a hopeless brief - how on Earth does Obama think he can sell that argument to the American public, much less to the rest of the world?
He can't, but that's what Washington is reduced to, and they are in that position precisely because Putin waited, waited, waited before making his move.
E.x.a.c.t.l.y.
The idea that Putin is about to get sucked into a quagmire is nonsense, precisely because Obama isn't the only person who can use proxy forces
The only difference is that Obama's proxy forces are a bunch of CIA-backed mercenary throat-cutters, whereas Putin's proxy forces will be *real* armies like the Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah.
Obama's Good-BadGuys will cut and run when the going gets tough - they'll stampede back into Turkey so quickly that it'll make Erdogan's head spin.
The Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah troops won't: regardless of whether they win, loose, or draw a battle, these guys will just keep coming back for more.
Because they can't afford to let Syria fall, but those jihadist head-loppers can - and will - simply pack their bags and move on to the next country that the CIA decides is ripe for a "colour revolution".
"With no prospect of a revitalised Syrian Army, Putin is left with two unpalatable options: to either deploy Russian troops on the battlefield or accept the de facto partition of Syria – allowing the rebels to hold their positions in north-west and southern Syria."
No, he has a third option.
He can get Assad to request assistance from Iran, who would then deploy the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in numbers that would make your head spin.
There's your ground troops, right there, and not a single Russian soldier needs to be put in harm's way.
Tehran would like nothing better to deploy 100,000 to 250,000 ground troops in a country that Just So Happens To Border Israel, and to do so under the protective umbrella of Su-30 fighter jets and S-300 air-to-air missiles.
Win for Putin.
Win for Assad.
Win for Khamenei
Bummer of a prospect for Netanyahu but, hey, cry me a river.
Lucas: “all but one of the targets were areas held by the opposition to Syria’s Assad regime, rather than by the Islamic State’s militants.”
You make is sound as if the Islamic State is the only "militant" force at work here.
Because you are vary careful to avoid pointing out that "the opposition to Syria’s Assad regime" also happens to be a militant force.
Demonstrably so, because that "opposition" is also seeking to topple the Syrian Government by overthrowing it by force of arms, though a reader wouldn't know that from reading your sleight-of-hand.
From Assad's PoV (and, therefore, by extension the Russian PoV) it really doesn't matter who it is that Washington favours: what matters is that REGARDLESS of whether Obama does - or doesn't - favour them they are all attempting to violently overthrow the Syrian Government.
Kremlin: "In this respect, I want to inform you that the president of the Syrian Arab Republic has addressed the leadership of our country with a request of military assistance"
Got that? The Syrian Government is under attack, and so it has requested Russian military assistance in the face of those attacks.
Perfectly legal.
Perfectly understandable.
Lucas: "all but one of the targets were areas held by the opposition to Syria’s Assad regime, rather than by the Islamic State’s militants."
No shit, hey? The people who have been bombed are "opposed to Syria's Assad regime".
Remind me again who requested Russian military assistance?
Oh, really? That request came from.... "Syria's Assad regime"?
Then that would make these "opponents"... perfectly legitimate targets for Russian military action, would it not?
I mean, think, dude: you're expressing outrage that the Russian should launch air raids on the "opposition", and you do so even after you have just quoted the Russians TELLING YOU that they are responding to a request from the very Syrian Govt that these dudes are "opposing".
Are you for real?
Do you really think that Assad makes a distinction between
a) the Good-BadGuys-Who-Want-Me-Dead
versus
b) the Bad-BadGuys-Who-Want-Me-Dead
merely because Washington insists that there are
c) Good-BadGuys and Bad-BadGuys?
What Planet have you just come from?
The Israeli response is going to be predictable: Netanyahu will shout "Yippee" and claim that if the Oslo Accords are toast then Israel has no responsibility for the 17% of the West Bank that contains 80% of the Palestinians.
He'll then impose a blockade on them and treat them like Gaza.
He'll shout "Why not? We don't owe them anything".
And.... He'll be wrong. If the Oslo Accords are dust then things return to the status-quo-ante, precisely because the IDF is still the occupying power and, therefore, responsible for all the West Bank and all the people in the West Bank.
After all, int'l law doesn't define them as "protected persons" merely because the good burgars of Geneva have a keen sense of humour.
So, if I understand that answer correctly the Gazans have fired at Israel a grand total of 29 times. And during that same period Israel has fired at Gaza ..... 696 times.
But as far as the UK govt is concerned that doesn't count - all they "are aware of" are those 29 times that the IDF opened fire in "response to" fire coming from Gaza
The other 667 times that Israel opened fire is just Something That Some UN Agency Is Claiming, not the UK govt.
Moral cowards, posing as "leaders". Disgraceful.
Here's an interesting thought: the sudden wave of refugees flooding into Europe has overwhelmingly come from refugee camps inside Turkey i.e. they aren't actually fleeing from the fighting (they did that when they fled to Turkey in the first place) but are, instead, now being allowed by the Turks to leave those refugee camps and cross over into Europe.
That's not to denigrate those refugees - their life has been wretched for a long time now - but what I am pointing out is that Turkey appears to be using them as pawns.
The Turks must have thought that this was a clever way to pressure NATO into going boots 'n' all inside Syria, or to build up so much outrage in "the West" that they take their anger and frustration out on Assad.
Apparently all that Turkey has done is to kick an own-goal, because the reaction from the West appears to be that the Syrian war has to be brought to an end - pronto - and if this means sitting back and letting Russia and Iran help Assad stomp on the jihadists then, well, OK, stomp away.
Good move, ya' Turkeys.
I wonder what the reaction would be in the USA if Ayatollah Khamenei were to stand up at a podium and say: If the US public votes for Cruz, under no circumstances will Iran allow him to repudiate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. And if this Prospective President(tm) doesn’t understand that, we may have to help introduce him to his maker.
I suspect that the MSM would have some nasty things to say about any politician who said something as incendiary as that.
Well.... unless they were an American politician, in which case such sentiments would just be Par For The Course.
The exceptional nation indeed, only not in a good way.
If the Russians are sending their very best AA missile system to Syria then it ain't the rebels that they are taking aim at, seein' as how the Rebel Airforce doesn't actually exist.
Well, it does, but it goes by the name "IDF".
haary: "Let’s face it, Islamic State has to be defeated, the US will not align with Assad"
Why not?
I mean it: what stops the USA from "aligning with Assad"?
He has never attacked the USA.
He has never expressed any interest in attacking the USA.
From a purely US-centric PoV there is absolutely nothing stopping the USA from allying with Assad in order to defeat ISIS.
That support need not extend any further than that one aim, any more than allying with the Soviet Union in WW2 signalled anything more than an alliance of convenience in the face of a common enemy.
This "we can't work with Assad" nonsense is exactly that, and pronouncing it as a self-evident truth doesn't make it any less of a lie.
The USA can work with Assad.
It SHOULD work with Assad, because if there is one thing we know for a fact it is this: Assad wants ISIS dead and buried even more than the USA wants ISIS destroyed.
Give him the tools, and he'll do the job. Guaranteed.
So if the USA doesn't want to give him those tools then, honestly, Uncle Sam isn't levelling with us.
Gabriel, I would imagine that is one of the reasons why the USA is unconcerned about this development, in the sense that currently political considerations might necessitate that the USA look the other way at Erdogan's shenanigans.
In which case any resupply convoys crossing the Turkish border into Syria may be immune to US-bombing, however much the Americans grit their teeth in anger.
Not so as far as the Russians are concerned - no such political considerations need stay their hand, and so Erdogan might be well-advised to rapidly reconsider how much aid and comfort his is willing to give to his pet terrorists.
"Nobody argues that Britain ever had a right to colonize Palestine with European Zionist colonists, even though the Balfour declaration was put into a “legal format” such as the Mandate for Palestine by the League of Nations."
What you are saying is that you can reject a law if you don't happen to like that law.
Try that next time you are booked for speeding, and let me know how that turns out for you.
The Mandates were legal instruments. They were perfectly "legal", precisely because the prior sovereign power (in this case, the Ottoman Empire via its successor state "Turkey") agreed to handover its sovereign territory to a Mandatory Power nominated from amongst the Principal Allied Powers.
That's perfectly legal, however much You Don't Like It.
"Regarding partition, it is ridiculous to claim that anyone had the legal right to partition Palestine between its native inhabitants and illegal European colonists who were forced upon them."
And in making that claim you run into something of an evidentiary problem, which is that this wasn't the *only* instance in which a Mandated Territory was split into two successor states.
Clearly, it could be done and - evidently - it was perfectly legal to do it.
Witness: Syria
Witness: Lebanon
Witness: Jordan
You need to explain to me why *those* partitions were legal and *this* partition wasn't.
Other than, of course, you have a bee in your bonnet regarding *this* partition.
"It *can* be disputed. Indeed, your claims can be rendered absurd."
Dispute away, and by doing so you are invalidating the legitimacy of:
a) Syria
b) Lebanon
c) Jordan
d) Palestine
e) Israel
Not only that, but if you want to argue that a Mandatory Power **didn't** have the legal authority to decide upon the method of state succession then you are invalidating the legal status of:
Ruwanda
Tanzania
Camerooon
Ghana
New Guinea
Nauru
Samoa
The Mandates were LEGAL instruments, they weren't political policy positions.
You may not like how they were set up, nor the paternalism that drove them.
Fine. Hate away, you won't find much argument from me.
But as LEGAL instruments they were perfectly legitimate, and in the case of the ending of the Mandate for Palestine via the Plan of Partition both the UK (the Mandatory Power) and the UN General Assembly (the supervising body) followed the law to the letter.
Again, you don't have to like the p.o.l.i.t.i.c.a.l. outcomes that resulted from those deliberations, but that is not at all the same thing as arguing that what transpired was not legal.
Because it most certainly was.
Blake: "Even Resolution 181 was non binding and never went to the Security council to be ratified into law."
The UN Security Council is not a world legislature.
It therefore can't "make international law", nor does it have the authority to "ratify" an international treaty that had been created by any other means.
Nor, for that matter, can the UN General Assembly - it is no more a legislature than is the UNSC.
Your comment - and Juan Cole's - display a fundamental misunderstanding of the United Nations, which is nothing more nor less that a p.o.l.i.t.i.c.a.l. body.
The UNGA voted on the Partition Plan (via UNGAR181) because the Assembly had inherited the supervisory role that the old League of Nations had w.r.t. Mandatory Powers (if you don't believe me then read the very first sentence of UNGAR181).
So, basically, the legalities were this: the Mandatory Power (i.e. Britain) wanted to end its Mandate. But it had to leave *something* behind to show that it had fulfilled the requirements of ending a Mandate.
So it asked the UNGA to advise, and the Assembly then convened a committee that recommended that the Mandatory partition the territory into two successor states.
The Mandatory Power accepted that advice (really, it had no choice by that stage), and it was *that* decision that made the Partition Plan legally-binding.
After all, say what you want about Britain's conduct 1922-1947, but there can be no dispute that a Mandatory Power had the legal authority to partition a Mandated Territory.
Exhibit A: Lebanon and Syria.
Exhibit B: Transjordan and (still Mandated) Palestine.
Or, in short: it was the legal authority of the MANDATORY POWER that made accepting the Partition Plan a legally-binding decision (save only that a Mandatory - any Mandatory - needed the "consent" of its supervising body before such a far-reaching plan became "legal").
And by 1947 that supervising body was... the UNGA.
And that body gave its "consent" by.... the margin of 33-13.
Legal, and legally-binding. And violated for the last 68 years.
Marco: "Then the IDF will invade the West Bank and Israel will declare it part of Israel."
You do appear to be very nearly 50 years behind the times, Marco.
Didn't you get the memo in 1967?
I suppose an alternative explanation is that The Littlest Ehud's memoirs are a steaming pile of bulls**t, and the reason why these "revelations" aren't being blocked by the censors is because they know perfectly well that these stories aren't true.
Misinformation, spread by a habitual liar.
After all, that does appear to be an Israeli specialty.
harry law: "I don’t think so, "
No, I don't think so either. I am perfectly well aware of how Israel and the USA has distorted and bastardized the concept of "pre-emption" in their relentless pursuit of "prevention".
My point still stands: judged by their *own* yardstick that cabinet meeting amounted to more than enough justification for Iran to attempt to smite each and every one of those cabinet ministers.
And shouting "pre-emption" even as they rained bombs down on Bibi's Head, of course.....
What is interesting about these revelations is the hypocrisy of the Israeli cabinet (or in this case, the Gang Of Eight) meeting to discuss launching an unprovoked attack upon another country.
Nobody could doubt that had the boot been on the other foot then such a meeting by An Enemy of Israel would have been seen as "justification" for a pre-emptive strike by the IDF.
Netanyahu might want to consider that the next time he calls a cabinet meeting to discuss Iran i.e. according to Israeli-logic(tm) such a meeting would be a justification for an Iranian attack.
A pre-emptive attack, of course, and therefore quite kosher.
Just to point out that the ICC is a *criminal* court, so the state of Palestine can't "sue Israel" in that court.
What the state of Palestine can do is allege that war crimes have been committed on its soil, at which point the ICC can indict individual Israelis as war criminals.
But not "Israel", just "Israelis".
Sure, that will matter to a University Chancellor, because it will be their career and reputation that will end up in tatters.
But how much of this was being driven by this Chancellor?
Not much, I suspect.
It is much more likely that the Board of Trustee was driving this.
And from their perspective "career and reputation" doesn't enter into the equation, precisely because if it all goes wrong then they can scapegoat the Chancellor.
Which appears to be the case here.
Going forward, the main thing now is for Salaita to push for a damages award that noticeably exceeds the value of the "gifts" that were put at risk by donor pressure.
University administrators are perfectly capable of counting beans, and therefore working out that if capitulating puts *more* money at risk then the smart move is to tell those donors where to shove their demands.
Cost/Benefit Analysis rules, OK?
Note that Gary Samore has just quit as head of the lobby group "United Against Nuclear Iran".
The reason? He looked at the deal and decided that, hey, it's actually not too shabby.
Which meant that he had no place in this lobby group, who's membership are, obviously, refusing to be satisfied with anything less than Bombs Away On Tehran!!!!
Fancy that: a lobbyist who actually says what he means and means what he says.
No wonder they pushed him out.
There must be a considerable amount of cognitive-dissonance going on amongst the warmongers who are convinced - absolutely convinced - that Iran wants a bomb so that it can nuke Israel.
If that is true then this agreement amounts to abject surrender by Tehran, precisely because agreeing to this deal means agreeing Not To Nuke Israel For At Least The Next Decade.
Yet they have agreed, which must mean that Obama has won big ti.... oh, my head! My head is hurting!!!
Because there is that inconvenient truth: if Iran is hell-bent on nukin' the Zionists before all these mullah's fall of the twig from old age then Tehran would never have agreed to this deal.
Because *if* they were nuke-obsessed *then* this deal is poison for them, and congrats to Obama and Kerry.
Buuuuuuut........ what if the Iranians really didn't want a nuke? What if they really were being truthful about that fatwah?
Well, in that case they haven't really "given up" anything of consequence, precisely because what they have just agreed to give up is the ability to do what they weren't doing anyway.
In *that* case they have got the better of the negotiations, but the only way to make *that* argument is to accept that they weren't trying for a nuke in the first pla..... arrrrrgh! That headache again! My brain! My brain is hurting!!
The best headline I have seen regarding the agreement:
"Iran Won the Vienna Accords By Agreeing to Stop What It Never Was Doing"
Really, that says it all.....
I don't much mind that the MSM concentrates on getting opponents of this agreement in front of the cameras, precisely because "confrontation" makes much better drama than a group of talking heads all nodding in unison.
What I don't like is the unquestioned spin that is placed on Israel's opposition to this agreement, which is this: Our Very Special Friends The Israelis Don't Think This Is A Good Deal, So Maybe It Isn't A Good Deal.
There is an alternative, which is that this unrelenting opposition brings into question exactly how "special" this "friendship" actually is.
Perhaps - just perhaps - Israel's "friendship" is rather shallow, and is regarded by them as "special" only w.r.t. how much they are able to milk that cash-cow.
I understand why the average American viewer might listen to Ron Dermer and think "Hey, he talks and acts just like an American!".
But perhaps they should be reminded of the reason for that i.e. Dermer was an American who renounced his citizenship in order to make common cause with a foreign country.
Mr Joe Average might actually be willing to ponder the implications of that, but it does rather require someone to point that out to them.
The reason for the skewed coverage is obvious: Israel is intent on picking a fight with Obama, and the MSM sees headlines in that bar-room brawl.
Nobodies like Tom Cotton are determined to pick a fight with Obama and, again,such a brawl is ratings gold. Get him in the studio, quick!
But the UK ambassador? The France FM? You know they agree with Obama, so where's the headline in that?
Shameful in it's shamelessness. Which is precisely why The Donald gets airtime.
A bit of a stretch, isn't it?
The issue here seems pretty simple: reckless moneylenders gave buckets of money to a reckless borrower.
That borrower can't pay that money back, and in a normal world both borrower and lender should feel the pain.
But that's not what is happening here: the borrower is going thru Hell so that Europen taxpayer will "extends loans" whose sole purpose is to.... pay back the banks because the Greeks can't
Hellloooooooo. This is a rort, whose entire purpose is to shift the pain onto Everyone Else Except The Banks Who Were Recklessly Throwing Money Around Like Drunken Sailors.
That's what this vote represents: the Greeks understand that they have alreadg paid a price for their recklessness, and it's time for the banks to take their licks too.
Mr Banker, they CAN'T pay back the loan, so stop pretending that it will be repaid.
Stop trying to squeeze blood out of a stone: write the f**king thing off as a bad loan, and then let EVERYONE move on from there.
After all what *is* the endgame here? Slavery? Debtor's Prison?
The loan is toxic. Write it off.
I think it is pretty easy to see why China is content to being a regional power - perhaps even a regional hegemon - and not seek to position itself as a global superpower rival to the USA.
It has to do with those rickety ol' trains, and those pothole-ridden roads.
They look, and they can see that even a country as rich and as powerful as the USA is driving itself into the ground trying to pay for its "global" ambitions, and they conclude that It Can't Be Done, and trying to do it simply results in.... potholed roads and trains that scarcely go at all.
And who needs that?
If I can summarize this writer's "logic" I'd say it this way: the West sees boycotts and sanctions as a powerful tool to use against "opponent" states (Iran, Russia, countless others) but it won't work against Israel.
Yet the reasons that he gives for WHY it won't work against Israel would be equally valid if applied to those sanctions on Iran, or Russia, or whatever.
How odd. You'd almost think his arguments were naught but excuses plucked out of thin air to justify why "the West" should (uniquely) not pick on his country, rather than an objective appraisal of the effectiveness of sanctions.
He's laying down some markers, because he is just as aware as you are that the Kurds can attempt to cut ISIS off from their source of resupply
And if they do... then he'll use Turkish forces to push the Kurds away from the border.
I mean, let's be real here: as far as he is concerned ISIS are His Boys, and he won't let anyone tell him that it's time to stop playing and come back inside.
And if the Kurds did that then the Turkish army would simply intervene and open up the corridor again.
Would the USAF then be willing to bomb the Turkish Army?
Oh, I quite agree that the UN General Assembly ALONE did not possess the authority to partition a Mandated Territory.
But someone certainly did. It's name was "the Mandatory Power".
You might want to read the first sentence of UNGAR 181....
The UK was still the Mandatory Power in 1947, and there is not doubt whatsoever that a Mandatory had the legal power to partition a Mandated Territory into two successor states (Exhibit A: Lebanon/Syria. Exhibit B: Transjordan/Palestine).
UNSCOP was created *at* *the* *request* of the Mandatory Power, and the UNGA met *at* *the* *request* of the Mandatory Power to vote its "consent" to that Plan of Partition.
The reason why is not difficult to find, and you'll find it in Article 25 of the Mandate for Palestine.
ag: "this britain did not do. see para 1 of art 80."
Indeed, and you haven't thought through *why* the Mandatory did not follow that route.
The answer is staring you in the face i.e. Article 80 of the UN Charter, which would have preserved the "Balfour Declaration" were the Mandate for Palestine to be transferred into a UN Trusteeship.
Britain did not want that to happen i.e. it wanted to partition this territory into TWO states, and it didn't want the Jewish Agency to have any claim to any part of that "Arab state", only to that "Jewish state".
So no Trusteeship, but in order to partition this Mandated territory the Mandatory needed the "consent" of the UN GA, precisely because Article 25 of Mandate demanded it.
The Mandatory requested that consent, and I can even tell you the margin of victory: 33 for, 12 against.
But once the Mandatory had that "consent" then it's decision to agree to the Partition of this territory into two successor states was perfectly legal and quite legally-binding.
Pointing to the UNGA or to the UN Charter is simply to point in the wrong direction - the legal authority to partition a Mandated Territory always lay with.. the Mandatory Power.
Witness Lebanon/Syria.
Witness Transjordan/Palestine.
You are simply barking up the wrong tree, ag.
Juan: " The UN Security Council never signed off on the plan, so its status in international law is unclear."
The UNSC didn't need to "sign off" on the Partition Plan, precisely because the UN Charter gave authority for (ex) League of Nations Mandates to the UN General Assembly.
Article 85 of the Charter, in fact.
So the legal status of UNGA 181 is clear-cut: so long as the Mandatory Power (and the UK was still the Mandatory in 1947) agreed to that Partition Plan then it was 100% legal and 100% legally-binding on all parties.
Juan: " It was in any case overtaken by the 1948 war"....
OK, *that's* when the UN Security Council should have stepped in, because *that* was the "threat to the peace" that UNGA 181 predicted could occur and which - obviously - only the UNSC had the power under the Charter to do anything about.
But note that regardless of whether (or not) the UNSC stepped in to stop that fighting the fighting itself could not change the LEGAL status of the territory, precisely because you can't LEGALLY acquire territory by war.
The Biff! and the Bash! and the Kerpow!!!! can change the "facts on the ground", sure, but that doesn't change the underlying legal status - any more than a punch-up at the reading of a will changes Who Gets What Out Of The Old Man's Estate.
In the latter case it simply doesn't matter who ends up in a head-lock, or who takes off with all the goodies; the will still stands as the only LEGAL way of apportioning the assets to the various beneficiaries, and everything else is simply.... theft.
Nothing more, just..... theft.
The same was true of the 1948 war: the only LEGAL apportionment of the territory was that defined in the Partition Plan, and everything else was just.... the acquisition of territory by war.
Theft, in a word.
Juan: ...."the ICC will certainly rule against Israel. It already has, in a 2004 advisory opinion."
You need to rewrite that line.
The 2004 Advisory Opinion was by the International Court of Justice, which is a completely different court to the International Criminal Court.
But the core of your comment is, of course, quite correct: if the Israeli colonial enterprise ever get to the ICC then Netanyahu will be found guilty of a grave war crime, as will every single Israeli "leader" who votes to approve "settlement construction".
Because at this moment in time imposing a boycott on All Things Israeli will simply play into Netanyahu's hands. He will say that this is driven entirely by anti-Semitism, and therefore he will allow his constituents to rationalise their behaviour.
By taking aim only at settlements then the proponents of BDS keep the focus where it belongs i.e. it makes this an issue about Israel's colonial enterprise, and not an issue about Israel's "Jewishness".
Netanyahu will attempt with all his might to obfuscate that difference. Sure, he will, since that's all he's got to argue against BDS.
Maybe he will fail, in which case the BDS campaign will succeed in one of its aims, which is to bring home to the Israelis themselves that there are serious negative consequence to this colonial enterprise.
But maybe he'll succeed, and therefore convince all the Israelis that it's nothing to do with "settlements", it's just that the whole world hates them.
OK, in that case it's on to Plan B, which is to impose BDS on everything to do with Israel. Because - du'oh! - the Israelis will have brought that down on themselves.
Why not, Peter, since Israel appears determined to redefine what "an Israeli business" means.
Mr Cause, meet your friend Mr Effect.
Juan makes the very good point Israel is making it harder and harder to make the distinction between businesses that operate inside Israel and businesses that operate in the West Bank.
That is deliberate, and is (in part) a deliberate reaction to the EU's demand that products and services in the "settlements" be clearly marked as such.
It will therefore be Israel's own fault if BDS hurts "Israeli businesses" as well as "settlement businesses", precisely because Israel is making it impossible to distinguish one business activity from the other.
If so then it serves Israel right, if you ask me, because it'll be their own fault.
AO = Advisory Opinion.
But don't be fooled by the word "opinion".
The Intl Court of Justice sits for:
a) Contentious Issues, where two states bring their dispute before the ICJ, and the court rules that "International law says that *you* are wrong and *he* is right".
b) Advisory Opinions, where the UN (but not individual states) refer a question of int'l law to the court, and the court then tells the UN "what int'l law says".
Obviously (b) does not involve an adversarial case (there is no "plaintiff" and no "defendant").
It involves A Question Of Law, and the court sits on that matter because the ICJ is regarded as *the* authoritative interpreter of What Int'l Law Says.
But regardless of wether the issue under deliberation comes to the court via (a) or via (b) the rules of the court are the same, as are its methods of deliberation.
The 2004 case involved the UN GA asking the court what int'l law had to say about the "security wall", and therefore the case involved an "Advisory Opinion".
And the full court was all-but-unanimous: Int'l Law says that the wall is illegal because it exists to "protect" an illegal colonial enterprise, and as a consequence all states are under a legal obligation to refuse to have anything to do with either.
The one hold-out was the sole Jewish judge on the court, who didn't quibble about that conclusion but argued instead that the court should have simply refused to answer the question.
A Jewish judge going in to bat for The Tribe? Go figure, heh?
An important piece of this puzzle is that 2004 AO from the International Court of Justice, which not only advised that these Israeli colonies are illegal but also advised that states are under a LEGAL obligation not to support that colonial enterprise.
Zionist supporters crowed that the AO was "rejected", but I have argued for a decade now that they are deluding themselves I.e. what happened *then* was that states simply ignored that court because they didn't want to hear its message
But that AO is still out there, and when attitudes change (and they are) then nothing stops a state from " rediscovering " that AO and saying "Gosh! They're right! Why wasn't I told about this!).
That court laid out a cudgel for anyone to use. It's still there, and countries are beginning to eye it off.
France in particular looks to be verrry tempted to pick it up.
Basically, you've just said that he possesses all the qualifications to guarantee him the fast-track to be a future Republican candidate for POTUS.
Cotton: "meet in DC, @JZarif, time of your choosing to debate Iran's record of tyranny, treachery, & terror."
Hmmm, so I take it that Tom Cotton doesn't know who overthrew Iran's democratic government and installed the Shah of Iran in its place?
Perhaps the Good Senator would show real courage and participate in a debate in Tehran regarding who was responsible for that little act of "tyranny, treachery, & terror".
The topic could be: "Stop your bellyaching, we always knew that the Shah would be good for you, and history shows that we were right" and Tom Cotton could lead the team for the affirmative.
I'm sure he'd make a cracking job of it.
"The world would have been better off with regard to character had Cotton declined to participate in that carnage."
Ouch! And all the more cutting for being so obviously true.
Cotton is revealing himself more and more as being all brawn and no brain. Certainly he wasn't smart enough to realise just how wrong the 2003 invasion of Iraq was, and he shows absolutely no sign of any introspection even to this very day.
I suppose he would also consider it to be "a badge of courage" to step into a boxing ring to beat up an invalid who has been dragged into that ring against his will and over his strident objections.
Because that's pretty much what Cotton did.
And, somehow, he seems to think that what he did took "courage".
No, dude, I can think of many words that would describe the brutalization of a country that did not threaten you, but "courageous" is not one of 'em.
Hmm, if you look on the map you'll see that both Idleb and Jisr al-Shughur are North-East of Latakia, but the supply routes out of Latakia run South-East to Damascus i.e. in the other direction.
So these developments don't indicate that the Assad government is about to be cut off from resupply any time soon, nor that the Alawite-dominated area around Latakia is about to fall - again, a look on the map shows why.
There is a flat plain between Idleb and Jisr al-Shughur, so their advance from the former to the latter faced little in the way of difficult terrain.
But there is some quite mountainous territory between Jisr al-Shughur and Latakia, so a further advance to the sea will be much, much more difficult - there's pretty much only one route they can take.
RC: ..."how do we account for the fact"....
Odd use of the word "fact" there, Roger.
In which world is making an "accusation" all that is required to turn something into "fact"?
Here is an assertion: Iran does not possess ICBMs, and is not developing ICBMs.
Now, care to show us any evidence to the contrary?
I wonder if Netanyahu is now regretting his little Punch and Judy show in Congress.
After all, he sailed into Congress and let fly with every broadside he had, and it achieved..... nothing.
I suspect he regrets expending so much of his ammo in a stunt that - let's face it - everyone has now forgotten.
Perhaps he would have been much better off conserving that ammo and getting up to the podium NOW. Would have served him much better, and would have sucked the air out of Obama.
But as it is.... Bibi looks like he wants two bites of the apple, and he's not getting it.
Yep. He really is a spectacularly odious little human being.
No wonder he gets along so famously with the dingbat wing of the Republican Party.
"China never paid any attention to US 3rd party sanction threats."
But the Europeans did, and that hurt Iran badly.
"They can be bucked"
But, again, the Europeans were too scared to buck them.
The USA slapped a $9billion fine on French bank BNP Paribas and.... the bank paid up. They couldn't afford not to pay up.
"They can be challenged legally, at WTO etc if governments wish"
Well, yeah, that's the point I'm making. Foreign COMPANIES can't really stand up to those US 3rd party sanctions - they can't afford to show that defiance to US regulators.
Foreign COUNTRIES can, sure. But apart from China, Russia and (maybe) India all the other big economies are in Uncle Sam's pocket, and so the idea of any of them challenging the USA at the WTO is most unlikely.
I'm not sure that this sinks into an American audience, but there are a lot of countries out there - even supposed allies - who are scared of the USA.
With good reason, because since the end of the Cold War the USA's behaviour hasn't been particularly rational.
As in: inmates taking over the asylum-style irrational.
You can get full marks for courage for standing up to a crazy-eyed bully. But probably zero marks for smarts.
And Europe, in particular, is full of very smart cowards.
I think you misrepresent the US sanctions.
They are 3rd party sanctions i.e. the USA punishes foreign companies that trade with Iran by banning them for the US Market.
That means a foreign company has to decide wether to go with Iran (small market) or USA (whoppin' big market).
Not much of a choice.....
So one of three things are required:
a) The EU and China have to threaten to go toe to toe in a trade war with the USA (not going to happen), or
b) The EU has to "coincidentally" decide to sanction the shit outta Israel for its settlements, or
c) China has to announce that it is Shocked! Shocked! That Gambling Is Taking Place In This Establishment, then review whether Sheldon Adelson is a fit and proper person to hold a casino license.
Option (b) or (c) should do the trick, while both together makes it a sure-thing.
I think one of the more illuminating episodes to come out of the framework agreement has been Netanyahu's response.
If the best he can do by way of a deal-breaker is to demand that "recognition of Israel" be pencilled into the final JCPOA then, really, he's lost it.
And not in a "he tried his best and lost" way.
More of a "is he actually insane???" kinda' way.
It's going to be much harder to Boehner et al to follow in lockstep with Netanyahu if the latter goes out of his way to demonstrate to the world that he's a loony-tune.
Maybe Obama should get Boehner one of those T-Shirts that read "I'm With Stupid".
"They lost the only deterrent they have."
I think not. The indigestion that the US military suffered in the occupation of Iraq post-2003 provides all the deterrent Iran needs.
You know, seein' as how it is four times the size, and has four times the popln, and would - without a doubt - prove to be well over four times tougher to chew up than Iraq.
I think a far more effective retort would be for Zarif to ask if anyone wants him to throw in a pony as well....
...one with girlie tassles, perhaps, and wrapped up in big pink ribbons.
Mary, there is no "Framework Document".
There was a Joint Statement from the EU and Iran, but that was a verbal communique. The transcript is here:
http://eeas.europa.eu/statements-eeas/2015/150402_03_en.htm
There was also a White House Fact Sheet, but that isn't an official document, nor was its content agreed to by the other participants.
I believe the latter is what you are referring to, but it isn't the "framework", it's the White House spin on events.
But for what it's worth, if you do accept the WH's Fact Sheet as, umm, fact then here is a very good summary:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/04/the-iran-nuclear-deal-by-the-numbers/389592/
The Iranians are far too polite to point this out, but they proposed roughly the same deal to the European negotiators from the (then) E3 group back in 2005, during the negotiations that arose from the Paris Agreement of November 2004.
The Europeans said "No, no way", precisely because GW Bush was pulling their strings and he was insisting on zero enrichment and zero centrifuges.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/10007603/Iran-how-the-West-missed-a-chance-to-make-peace-with-Tehran.html
So a decade of "US diplomatic involvement" has gotten everyone to.... pretty much the same place they would have been a decade ago if the USA had simply Stayed The F**k Out Of This.
Sad, but true.
Well, of course this deal increases the risk of a horrific war.
After all, one way or another Netantayahu is determined to start that war, and as far as he is concerned this is as good an excuse as any.....
One thing missing from this article is any mention of that squiggly black line on the map.
That's the border, boys and girls, and what's north of it is Turkey.
Iblid is nestled right up against the border with Turkey, and so if the rebel forces are being resupplied and supported by Turkey (and they are) then it is very, very hard to see how the Syrian government can hope to win a battle of attrition over that city.
I suspect very much that government forces pulled out the moment the rebels started their push, for the simple reason that it isn't worth dying trying to defend a city you can't hope to hold.
It isn't a matter of a foreign company concluding that the risk of trade with Iran isn't worth doing that trade.
Companies are going to want to keep their options open, and this new Chinese banking system allows them to do that. And that's a mighty powerful incentive, even if that company has no current plans to trade with anyone on any US Treasury sanctions-list.
The US Treasury can't punish a company merely because it conducts its business outside of the SWIFT system, and there is nothing that stops a company from conducting its trade with the USA via SWIFT and its trade with Everyone Else via that competing Chinese banking system.
And if they do so...... Treasury's job of policing any US sanctions-list becomes much, much, harder.
Odd analogy.
Stalingrad wasn't a disaster for the Germany 6th Army because the defenders in the city sallied forth and defeated them in battle.
Far from it: the Russians inside the city grimly defended it, and by doing so sucked the 6th Army into the city.
Which in itself wasn't fatal, though it was bloody.
What was fatal was that the German's weakened their flanks to support that push, and when fresh troops attacked those two exposed flanks they surrounded the 6th Army and cut it off from the rest of the Wehrmacht.
But ISIS doesn't have fresh troops waiting unseen north and south of the city, so that Iraqi commander is quite safe from meeting the same fate as General Paulus.
He may have good reasons for not wanting to enter the city - chief being that the 4,000 regulars he has aren't enough, and the 30,000 irregulars he has are refusing to do so - but it isn't because he fears that the rebels in ISIS are about to sally forth.
They aren't, and there is nobody riding to their rescue.
So why, indeed, does he have to enter that city when he can just sit tight and starve them out?
MK: "the British Parliament later debated the matter in December of 1947 and in the end their own plan to leave on their own terms was implemented to dissolve the British Mandate"
OK, there is something you need to understand, which is this: in legal terms "the Mandatory Power" was not the same thing as "the British Government".
The UK was not the "sovereign" of the territory of Palestine, it was the "mandatory", which is akin to a trustee under common law.
Therefore the Mandated Territory of Palestine didn't actually belong to the British Government, and so it was not the British Government's territory to dispose of as it saw fit.
The British Government could ask a committee to draw up a Plan and, yes, it can accept that plan or it can reject that plan. Whatever.
But what it couldn't do is adopt that plan WITHOUT first gaining the explicit consent of the UN General Assembly to its adoption.
To do so would be to make a decision that the British Government did not have the authority to make.
Equally, the British Government couldn't "decide" on an Altogether Different Cunning Scheme(tm) and adopt it WITHOUT taking that new scheme to the UN General Assembly for its consent, and for exactly the same reason i.e. that would amount to the British Government making a decision that they did not have the authority to make.
Britain what the m.a.n.d.a.t.o.r.y., and so the only decision that LEGALLY stood was whatever decision that mandatory took to the UN General Assembly for its vote of consent.
Everything else was under-the-table and without any legal underpinning at all.
Don't take my word for it: read the Israel Declaration of Independence, wherein Ben Gurion clearly anchored the "rights of Jews to be here" in the Balfour Declaration, and he anchored *his* authority to declare a sovereign and independent State of Israel on UNGA Resolution 181.
He most emphatically didn't stand up and say that he had a right to declare the state of Israel because "Ernest Bevin Said It Was OK".
JC: "Yes, of course, old white men in the imperial capitals get to decide if Palestinians are kicked out of their homes. Just so."
An odd comment, if you are referring to UNGAR181 and the Partition Plan, because that plan didn't involve anyone being kicked out of anywhere.
Under that plan everyone stayed put, and old men (not all white, btw) then draw convoluted lines between and around them.
But, no, those old men "decided" that nobody moved out of their houses during or after that process.
That was a "decision" made by old white-haired dudes from eastern Europe who always planned to take it all for themselves, even while professing that they would be happy with just half.
JC, I didn't say that the UNGA is an "executive body", I said that it was the "supervising body" with respect to this Mandated Territory.
I am perfectly correct on that point i.e. the old Mandatory Powers were never supreme, they were always intended to be under the supervision of the Council of the League of Nations.
Read Article 27 of the Mandate for Palestine if you don't believe me.
And I am also quite correct to point out that upon the dissolution of the LoN that supervisory role was taken up by the United Nations General Assembly, it was not taken up by the UN Security Council.
Article 85 of the UN Charter, if you don't believe me.
So I stand by my original point: if the Mandatory Power wanted to end its Mandate by splitting this territory into TWO successor states - one *here* and the other *there* - then it needed to gain the consent of the UNGA.
The Mandatory did not need the consent of the UNSC to make that a legally-binding decision. It just needed the consent of the UNGA, because that was all that was need to satisfy the requirements of Article 27 of Mandate.
Which it sought, and which it obtained.
I can even tell you the margin: 33-13, with 10 abstentions.
There are s many things wrong in Mark's post that it's hard to know where to start.
MK: [UNGAR 181] "that was merely advisory in nature."
No, much more than that, as is made clear in its first sentence: "The General Assembly, Having met in special session at the request of the mandatory Power"....
Get it? The UNGA was voting on this Plan Of Partition because the MANDATORY asked it to vote on it.
Why? Because Partition required the extinguishing of the Balfour Declaration, and Article 27 of Mandate explicitly says that the Mandatory can't do that without first getting the "consent" of its supervising body, which by 1947 was.... the UNGA.
The Mandatory wanted to Partition this Mandate.
It asked the UNGA if they were OK with that.
The UNGA said: sure, we think that's a swell idea.
According to the plain text of the Mandate for Palestine that made it all legal, and very, very legally-binding.
MK: "The State of Israel was not declared until May 14, 1948 when the British Mandate ended"
The declaration itself didn't end the Mandate.
The end of Mandate didn't create the declaration.
One followed from the other, and the reason why one followed from the other was... because the Partition Plan said so.
MK: "It was the agreement of the British government "..
Yeah, the agreement of the Mandatory with its Supervisor that made the birth of TWO successor states the only l.e.g.a.l. outcome from the end of Mandate.
MK: "who voted against the General Assembly’s Partition Plan"
Ahem. A flat-out untruth.
These are the countries that voted against the Partition Plan: Afghanistan, Cuba, Egypt, Greece, India, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Yemen.
The UK (i.e. the Mandatory Power) is the country that actually brought the Partition Plan to the Assembly for a vote of consent (as, indeed, it was required to do).
But since it was, indeed, the Mandatory Power then the UK couldn't vote of the Plan, for the most obvious of conflict-of-interest.
It had to abstain, since it couldn't both "ask" for consent and "give" that consent to itself.
You misunderstand, MVH1. What I find astounding is that nobody in the USA seems to be the slightest bit upset that Obama is flagging a change of policy with respect to The Special Relationship.
Simply saying that "we are re-evaluating our policy" would have been unthinkable even two years ago.
You know, back when Biden was saying that there must be "no daylight, no daylight" between the USA and Israel.
Something has definitely changed in the political discourse regarding Israel, and that change has been driven by one man's arrogance and hubris.
Netanyahu is still at the high point of his oh-so-exhilarating jump over the shark.
And, yeah, sure, he and his admirers are still pumped full of adrenalin and yahooing with unabashed bravado.
But this still remains true: he is going to hit that water with a sickening belly-flop.
I have been pointing this out for years: the excuse that the USA gives for vetoing Its Own Policy in the UN Security Council is that such a resolution would complicate the "US mediated peace process".
But once that USMPP is acknowledged to be a failure then.... there goes that excuse for vetoing those resolutions.
That's the singular reason why the White House is so incandescent over Netanyahu's comments i.e. US policy requires that Israel at least pretend to be interested in that Kabuki dance.
Netanyahu just can't be bothered, and because of that he has left the USA's oh-so-carefully-contrived policy in tatters.
Well, OK, if he can't be bothered then why should Obama?
This is the answer: Obama isn't interested in shielding Israel from the monumental folly of its leader, not when they have just elected Bibi again. And certainly not when the reason *why* they elected them is because he stood up and publicly shouted his folly.
The veto is toast, and not before time.
But what's so astounding is not that the White House is flagging this, but that nobody in the USA seems to be the slightest bit upset about it.
The importance of this revelation is that it is very clearly a felony for ANY US citizen to take possession of classified information that they are not authorized to possess.
So any Congressman who allowed Ron Dermer to step into his office and say "Boy, have I got something to show to you!" has just left themselves wide open to a criminal prosecution, which is precisely why so many of them are rushing to the microphone to belittle this news.
The importance of this can't be overstated i.e. how many Congressmen are going to let Ron Dermer into their office in future? How many Senators are going to want to go into a whispered huddle with an AIPAC stooge?
Far, far fewer now than before.
This could very well represent the moment that the Israel Lobby jumped the shark, going from the money-bags that everyone loved to see to being persona non grata within the corridors of power.
Why do you think the White House has leaked that information about Israel handing Top Secret USA information to selected US Congressmen?
Obama finally has the ammunition to move against those conniving bastards in Congress, and he is aiming for nothing less than to neuter the Israel Lobby.
Think about it.
Think about it.
Think about it.
If a Congressman took delivery of US Top Secret information that he is not authorized to see then that is a criminal offense. No question about it - he has committed a felony.
It becomes doubly-criminal if that information came to him because ISRAELI spooks illegally procured it.
There is a very real threat now that certain too-clever-by-half Congressmen could find themselves under arrest, and all because they were too stupid to show Ron Dermer the door the moment he said the magic words "We've intercepted some US communications, let me play it for you".
The White House is aiming to make it so that the mere sight of a Israeli-first lobbyist walking down the corridor sends Congressmen scuttling for the exits.
This is how it will play out:
Either some Congressmen will be too stupid to comprehend how much trouble they are in (in which case they'll find themselves behind bars) or they will be told by their minders that the Administration has them by their hairy balls (in which case the Obama Administration will declare Dermer to be persona non grata, and everyone will be amazed that there is not a peep of protest from Congress).
But either way, the Lobby's power over Congress will be toast.
The one thing that the PLO must *not* do is go to the ICC with complaints about war crimes committed by the IDF in the last Gaza "war".
Utterly pointless.
Go to the ICC and insist that it investigate this war crime instead, a war crime that is explicitly written down in the Rome Statute: "The transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies,"
There is nothing - absolutely nothing - that Netanyahu can say or do that can avoid him being found guilty of that war crime.
N.o.t.h.i.n.g.
If the Palestinians are going to go to the ICC then they may as well go big - aim to claim the scalp of the Israeli Prime Minister, not some low-ranking IDF commissioned officer.
After all, it's not as if Netanyahu is innocent.
He is, indeed, as guilty as sin.
Maybe I'm being too Machiavellian, but is it possible that Cotton tried to be too clever, rather than being too crackpot?
Think about it: the prevailing wisdom everywhere outside the Beltway is that if the USA imposes impossible demands then not only will Iran walk, but much of the P5+1 will walk out with them.
End result: the existing sanctions regime bites the dust, without the Mullah's having to concede anything.
So maybe Cotton was attempting to goad the Iranians into calculating (incorrectly) that this letter alone would give them the opportunity to bolt for the door while shouting "Who else is with me???".
If they made that calculation then Cotton would have cried "Ahah! Gotcha!" and blamed them for not acting in good faith.
Except.... they haven't bolted for the door.
They've simply called him out for being Too Clever By Half.
Me: “According to the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties any international agreement that this President has the authority to sign is fully binding on the USA and any President who follows him.”
That statement is perfectly correct: the Vienna Convention invalidates any international agreement that is "agreed to" by someone who does not have the authority of the state to sign that agreement.
There is no question - none whatsoever, and not even Senator Cotton claims otherwise - that the President of the United States has the legal authority to sign this international agreement with Iran.
Which means that as far as the Vienna Convention is concerned the primary hurdle has been jumped i.e. is the President an imposter, or is he the "executive" who has the authority to sign an "executive agreement" with Iran?
The answer is "Why, yes. Yes, he is".
RFM: "However, your assertion is manifestly untrue–and the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty speaks to its untruth."
Well, that's a whole heap o' Motherhood you are piling on there. Perhaps some mention of Apple Pie might also be handy.
RFM: "Today, SecState Kerry stated to Senate Foreign Relations that, “we are not negotiating a legally binding plan.” "
Look, I'm not disputing that the AMERICANS think that they can evade international legal obligations by hanging the label "executive agreement" on a document.
And, try as I might, I can't see Kerry as anything other than a manifestation of AMERICAN values. He is, indeed, as Motherhood and as Apple Pie as they come.
The point I keep returning to is that as far as All The Other International Actors in this farce are concerned Kerry and Cotton (and you) are attempting to make what they consider to be a distinction without a difference.
As far as they are all concerned this is very simple:
Q1: Does the President have the legal authority to represent the state in these negotiations?
A1: Yes, he does.
Q2: Does his signature on that agreement therefore fulfil all the requirements of the Vienna Convention in terms of being a legally-binding agreement under international law?
A2: Yes, it does.
Q3: Can the President evade that legal obligation by pointing to his own domestic laws?
A3: No, he can not.
Now, one more time, yet again, I do not dispute for a second that the Indispensable Nation insists otherwise.
They do so insist, starting with John Kerry and going through Freshman Cotton all the way down to RFM.
What I am saying, yet again, one more time, is that The Rest Of The World thinks otherwise, and will therefore react according if a future President-Elect Cotton ripped that document to shreds.
They will, without doubt, react in a way that Cotton does not consider i.e. they will conclude that the USA is in serious violation of a legal obligation under international law and therefore any attempt by the Americans to ring them into continuing the sanctions against Iran will be met with a firm "Are You Stark Raving Mad?"
RFM: "The question of whether the Vienna Convention, to which we are not bound, gives other countries the right to interpret EAs (or any other agreement that fails of the senate’s advice and consent) is, thankfully, beyond the scope of this response."
Then I rather fail to see why you have taken the trouble of responding to my original post, since you not only are not addressing that post, you are making a virtue of not addressing it.
Straw man much, do you?
It's not "treason" to write an open letter, any more than it would be "treasonous" for Senator Cotton to have published the same argument in an op-ed column in the New York Times.
You simply can't make that accusation stick.
You'd have much better luck arguing that the letter amounts to "sedition".
Thanks for the lengthy response, RFM, but if you reread my original post I think you'll find that I stress that the Vienna Convention is important insofar as THE OTHER participants to these negotiations view Cotton's claim.
As far as those OTHER participants are concerned it matters not that there are "three categories of EAs", nor that Congress pulls the money strings, nor that there are Congressional Oversight Committees.
The only issue they have to consider is this: does the President have the legal authority to enter into an executive agreement on behalf of the United States of America?
The answer is "Yes", and therefore the Vienna Convention says that the deal is binding on all states who sign onto it.
That you or Cotton or CSI all splutter "but! but! but!" as they wave the Constitution of the United States around like a talisman matters not one bit to Iran, Russia, China, Britain, France or Germany.
That's a "domestic" issue, and therefore as far as those other countries are concerned the Vienna Convention has already answered that objection.
That you claim that "a future Congress can increase, sustain or reduce funding at will" a Status of Force Agreement is without doubt true.
But this is also true: were Congress to do that would be viewed by the country that also signed that SOFA as a gross violation of a legally-binding international agreement.
No doubt there are plenty of Americans who would just shrug the shoulders and say "so what?" but, then again, perhaps the average American might want to consider the sort of world Senator Cotton et al., is leading them into i.e. one where the signature of a Head Of State on an international agreement means.... nothing.
Sure, and banks have a long history of being robbed, even though there are laws against bank-robbery.
That the USA ignores treaties that it has signed is not in doubt, and the USA is not the only country that has done so.
But Senator Cotton appears to want to make a virtue of it.
I assume he does so because (tho' it's hard to tell from that letter) he is of the opinion that the USA can repudiate int'l law with impunity. That there would be no blowback. No unforseen consequences of such a cavalier attitude.
Even in the broader scheme of things that is untrue, since this is a truism: adhering to international law adds a little bit of stability to a complex world, while acting as if int'l law doesn't matter promotes instability.
Do it often enough and the world as we know it becomes unstable, if not utterly unhinged.
We'll all end up in the world that existed pre-1939. Only this time the USA won't be on the side of law and order.
Not as far as I know, precisely because US Presidents are not in the habit of repudiating executive agreements signed by their predecessor.
Apparently Senator Cotton is determined to be the first when he becomes President-Elect Cotton.
The letter is astonishingly ignorant, and shames those Senators who signed onto it.
Note that the letter declares that “Congress plays the significant role of ratifying them” [where "them" = "international agreements"].
No, that's factually incorrect.
Congress (actually, the Senate) plays **a** significant role in the ratification of treaties, but it is not **the** body that ratifies treaties.
That's the office of the President.
The President of the United States *negotiates* treaties, and the President of the United States *ratifies* treaties, but the Constitution says that the President can't go from the former to the latter without first gaining the "advice and consent" of 2/3 of the Senate.
So, yes, the Senate can stop a President from ratifying a treaty. But, no, the Senate doesn't actually have "the role of ratifying treaties".
But that's just one ignorant misunderstanding of USA domestic law, shame on them.
But their misunderstanding of international law is even worse.
Cotton makes the mistake of claiming that only "treaties" are binding on the USA.
Even under US Domestic Law that's untrue: the President is perfectly entitled to negotiate an "executive agreement" that requires no Senate consent **if** the agreement pertains to an issue that is within the sole authority of the President according to the Constitution.
Under those circumstances he doesn't need the "advice" - much less the "consent" - of anyone, let alone the Senate.
Sure, they don't become "the law of the land", but such agreements certainly are legally-binding on the USA under international law.
According to the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties any international agreement that this President has the authority to sign is fully binding on the USA and any President who follows him.
Think of it from the PoV of Iran and the five other members of the P5+1 i.e. their interpretation of an "international agreement" is governed by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, and that convention makes absolutely no distinction between "treaties", "executive agreements", "international agreements", or whatever.
All get interpreted in the same way, precisely because the Convention says that a state can not use a provision in its own domestic law to evade an international obligation that it has freely entered into.
So if a hypothetical future Republican President repudiated this agreement then - again, according to the Vienna Convention, and regardless of how many times he waves this letter about - the USA will have just committed a manifest violation of that agreement and, therefore, is in violation of international law.
Cotton might like to think of the ramifications of that i.e. all the thousands and thousands of executive agreements that the USA has negotiated would be.... worthless.
Let's start with a simple example: all those Status of Force Agreements (SOFA) that result in all those hundreds of overseas US military bases would be.... worthless.
All of them, because as far as I know not a one of them is a "treaty".
Zarif makes a valid point, though it is certain to be lost amongst the inevitable hyperventilation over this letter.
The point is this: International Law makes no distinction between a "treaty" or an "executive agreement".
As far as International Law is concerned both are governed by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.
So while it is true that US Domestic Law regards "a treaty" as something that is different to "an executive agreement" that matters only insofar as anyone cares about US Domestic Law. Which amounts to .... the Americans.
But if you are a foreign government (Iran, or France, or Russia, or whatever) that distinction is immaterial, precisely because the Vienna Convention says that a signatory on an international agreement can not point to a provision in its own domestic law to evade an international obligation freely entered into.
It is an odd day indeed when an Iranian politician shows a much firmer grasp of the topic than nearly 50 of America's Finest Legislators.
Apparently there are 47 morons sitting in Congress, all of whom are happily wallowing in their own ignorance.
Sad. Very sad.
There has been lots of talk bandied about that this letter amounts to "treason".
That argument amounts to nothing more than hyperbole.
To my mind the correct word to describe the contents of this letter is "sedition".
I doubt that very much. Iran's current military is "low-tech but reliable", and it is unlikely to be able to take a huge toll of USAF bombers.
But regardless of how good (or, more likely, how hopeless) Iran's air defences are today, the assumption that the USAF can just keep revisiting Iranian airspace year after year and **not** face ever-better air defences is the very definition of "tunnel vision".
Think about it: suppose the USAF does know how to neuter Iran's current air defence systems.
Hellooooo. The Iranians will surely notice, and they will take whatever steps are necessary to plug those holes.
The first air raids will be the easiest.
Every subsequent raid will be harder and harder.
Eventually the airspace over Iran will simply be too hot.
The question: what does the USA do then?
The other consideration about "yearly bombing runs" is that it assumes that Iran remains defenceless against those attacks, which is very highly unlikely.
Take the Vietnam War: the first US bombing sorties faces heavy machinegun fire aims by hand. The last US bombing runs faces SAM missiles, MIG-21 fighter jets, radar-directed heavy AA guns, etc. etc.
I mean, get real: the first USAF raids will be a cake-walk, but by the time the US had marked off more than a few return visits the Iranians will be given the very, very latest S-500 missiles and, in all likelihood, Russian "volunteers" to man them.
This should be used as an effective counter to Netanyahu's speech.
Q: How do the Iranian's view Netanyahu's position?
A: They think that he is even more of a bumptious blowhard than their own far-right dingbats.
After all, nothing is more infuriating to a blowhard than to be laughed at by those he is trying to harm.
There is simply no way for Israel to "fight the jurisdiction of the ICC".
That possibility ended the moment that the ICC recognized that the state of Palestine has standing before the court.
This is very simple:
Israel's leadership is committing a war crime defined in Article 8(2)b(viii) of the Rome Statute, and that ongoing war crime is being carried out on territory that lies OUTSIDE the state of Israel.
On territory belonging to another state - Palestine - which has sovereignty over this territory (curtsey of it being a state) but can not exercise "authority" over that territory (curtsey of it being under an Israeli belligerent occupation).
QED: The Chief Prosecutor of the ICC not only has jurisdiction over this war crime but is also the *only* legal officer capable of bringing the war criminals to trial.
There is pretty much no excuse that Israel can come up with that could possibly convince the Chief Prosecutor that the ICC should not to proceed with that trial.
The war crime is undeniable.
The gravity of that war crime is unquestionable.
The guilty party is unmistakable.
The jurisdiction of the court is unchallengeable.
There is simply no LEGAL avenue available to him to prevent that case from getting to the court, and once it gets to court then Netanyahu is toast.
Politically, maybe, he can prevent this getting to court. But he doesn't need "int'l law experts" for that - he needs politicians in his pocket.
And, sure, he can simply have Abbas shot, but no "int'l law experts" are going to pull that trigger. He needs the IDF to do that.
But the LAW is so heavily against him that no "int'l law expert" - no matter how talented - is going to be able to help him out.
There really must come a time when public officials start to ask the question that is just begging to be asked: is Netanyahu's mind actually coming unhinged?
s390: "Did you even read my sentences?"
Indeed, as I read Jen Koehler's, and I note that you utterly ignored the all-important "and intervention" part of that post.
s390: " I was objecting to Jen Koehler saying that it’s criminal for people to revolt against their government. "
Then you clearly did not understand what Jen Koehler was saying, because that person DIDN'T claim that it is "criminal for people to revolt against their government".
The claim was quite different i.e. "It is best to not foment revolution in the first place" (notice the word "foment") and "Sometimes, revolution and intervention against unjust dictators are actually criminal and immoral" (notice the word "intervention").
The claim is against OUTSIDERS pushing for revolutionary chaos, because what results from such revolutions is... chaos.
Best. Not. To. Go. There.
If the citizenry wants to revolt then let 'em revolt, and good luck to them.
But don't push for that to happen.
Don't FOMENT revolution.
And don't INTERVENE once it starts.
Pretty simple, I would suggest.
super390: "Which leaves us with the problem of what the criteria should be for a revolution."
Notice the missing "and intervention"?
super390: "I mean, was the American Revolution criminal and immoral?"
Neither but, then again, I don't remember the ruling British being pushed out by.... outside intervention.
Revolutions are fine by me, that they are, indeed, the product of the internal affairs of the state in question.
But it's the foreign element in so many of the recent "revolutions" that make them so problematic, precisely because so many of them seem to have more than a little of the F**k-The-EU-Nuland's about them.....
super390: "That’s not the CIA or Obama"
OK, if you say so....
Well, "destroyed" is perhaps far too strong a word.
Maybe "jumped the shark" is a better phrase, since Bibi's little stunt in front of Congress might well represent the moment when this long-running sitcom descended into cringe-worthy farce.
Is it just me, or is Congress acting more and more like a crazy Cult, with Netanyahu as the object of their Cult of Personality?
The next time the American leadership start slagging off about how loony-tunes-crazy North Korea's government is it might be a salutary lesson to replay the Congress giving standing ovation after standing ovation to The Great And Powerful Netanyahu and then ask "What do you mean? Kinda' like that, perhaps?"
"No way he’ll do this; he would destroy Hillary Clinton’s credit with pro-Zionist Jewish donors in the United States."
Well, with pro-Netanyahu Jewish donors, certainly, but those are rusted onto the Republicans anyway.
That there is a gigantic amount of "Pro-Israel" money sloshing around is not something that I dispute, but I would like to point out that picking a fight with Netanyahu is not the same thing as being anti-Israel, since the last time I looked he wasn't Leader For Life.
And, regardless, I have to ask the question: why should Obama care about "Hillary Clinton's credit" with Israel Lobby money-bags?
Well, there's Obama's tag-line, right there....
Obama shouldn't waste his time getting "unnamed officials" to mutter "chickenshit" to Jeff Goldberg. That would simpy be water off a duck's back to any Israeli politician.
Obama has to call a press-conference, stand up in front of the press, and there call it as it really is: Boehner is an idiot for inviting a professional bullshit artist to address the Congress, and if any Congressman listens to a word that bullshit artist says then They Are Boehner-Dumb.
And if anyone tries to call him on it he should immediately show a montage of that habitual bullshit artist screaming about an Iranian nuke in 1996, 1997, 1998, and every year since then, and then turn to the press and say "that, ladies and gentlemen, is a bullshit artist at work".
Honestly, do it, dude. It's not as if you have any more need for campaign contributions, and if your political career is coming to and end (as, indeed, it does to all two-term Presidents) then you may as well take Bibi down with you.
Aaron Miller is an ego-centric buffoon.
Basically, he expects that if the USA chops Abbas off at the knees at the UN then Abbas should just sit there and do nothing BECAUSE otherwise he will piss off...the USA.
Hellllooooooo, Aaron. If the USA doesn't want Abbas to go to the ICC then the USA should have supported him at the UN.
They didn't, and so they left Abbas with no choice - it's either the ICC or nothing, and doing nothing is not an option for Abbas.
IF YOU DON'T WANT HIM TURNING TO THE ICC THEN GIVE HIM AN ALTERNATIVE, AND YOUR COUNTRY HAS CUT OFF ALL OTHER ALTERNATIVES.
Sheesh. That ain't rocket-science, Mr Miller.
Dre: "Cut the BS. Ukraine is not nazi Germany part II."
And Alec didn't say that it was. You did though....
Dre: "The Godwin law basically states that when your argument resorts to the ad hominum of “your side is the nazi Germany side” then you lose the intellectual debate."
How odd. Alec didn't call the Ukrainians "Nazis", nor did he stick that label around Washington's neck.
Only you did.
Dre: "The Russia meme of calling the opposition ‘Nazi’s’ rings very hollow."
Pre-emptive outrage. How clever of you.
But Alec didn't call anyone "Nazi".
All Alec did was point out that (a) Washington interference in Yugoslavia was a far graver violation of int'l law and (b) those same beltway clowns are now encouraging some equally-appalling people in the Ukraine.
He is right on both counts, and he transgressed Godwin's Law in neither.
Only you did that. Three times in three sentences, to be precise.
The problem the USA has is this: it really doesn't give a rat's arse that Israel is gobbling up Palestinian territory as if there were no tomorrow. Uncle Sam just doesn't care, now or ever.
But what Uncle Sam can't do is come out and say - openly, with no apologies - that they don't care that Israel is gobbling up occupied territory, precisely because they know that this is illegal under the very int'l humanitarian laws that the USA helped draft after WW2.
So Uncle Sam needs an excuse to enable this land-theft without *actually* admitting that this is what the USA is doing.
And that Fig Leaf is the "US-mediated peace process" e.g. the USA can - and does - veto UNSC resolutions under the pretence that it must do so to "protect" that "peace process".
Otherwise it would have no excuse to veto resolutions that are (and let's be honest here) little more than recitations of the USA's own publically-declared policies.
That's why the USA is so pissed with Bibi. Israel has to at least **pretend** that it is committed to that "peace process", and Netanyahu just can't be bothered.
And by refusing to play pretendies Netanyahu is leaving the USA's donger swinging naked in the breeze, and that's More Than A Little Embarrassing To An Emperor With No Clothes.
That's what this is all about.
There are no "principles" at stake here. No "national security issue".
There is simply a farce that has been scripted by the USA, and they are angered because Bibi refuses to mouth the lines that have been prepared for him.