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Everything posted by Elerond
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Gaza - conflict, war, land, water rights, bad colonional legacies...
Elerond replied to BruceVC's topic in Way Off-Topic
Considering that Hamas stopped elections in Gaza after their win and last Palestinian presidential election was in 2005, Israel can say they vote for it and Israel is only democracy in the middle east, although as Israel's current leadership is killing democratic institutions in Israel can we anymore call Israel democracy. -
Gaza - conflict, war, land, water rights, bad colonional legacies...
Elerond replied to BruceVC's topic in Way Off-Topic
Funding of peacekeeper is not voluntary, as every Member State is legally obligated to pay their respective share towards peacekeeping. Unlike with UN refugee organosations where funding is voluntary and is mostly done by USA. -
Gaza - conflict, war, land, water rights, bad colonional legacies...
Elerond replied to BruceVC's topic in Way Off-Topic
UNCCT works as well as all of the UN's institutions This is quite similar scandal as 2005 expose about UN peacekeepers, which revealed that they had been raping, sexually abusing women and children and forcing them to prostitution for their own profit for years. Result of that scandal was no one was punished and now about two decades later peacekeepers still do same. https://press.un.org/en/2006/sc8649.doc.htm https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/un-suspends-some-peacekeepers-congo-denounces-sexual-abuse-2023-10-12/ -
Gaza - conflict, war, land, water rights, bad colonional legacies...
Elerond replied to BruceVC's topic in Way Off-Topic
Those tribunal were temporal courts, which were created to handle one specific case, founded by countries that decided to intervene, they approved by UN, giving UN credit for establishing them is bit much in my opinion. They didn't have clear membership, clear structure of rules who can be bring up issues to the tribunal, which issues the tribunal will look and what is the international legal status of their rulings. And their existence tells how well ICJ works against genocide cases as those tribunals were established instead of taking the case in ICJ. -
Gaza - conflict, war, land, water rights, bad colonional legacies...
Elerond replied to BruceVC's topic in Way Off-Topic
They are one case tribunals, which aren counted as official courts and their structure and rules don't fill requirements for international institution. -
Gaza - conflict, war, land, water rights, bad colonional legacies...
Elerond replied to BruceVC's topic in Way Off-Topic
Heh, like that somehow has prevented them doing it in past -
Gaza - conflict, war, land, water rights, bad colonional legacies...
Elerond replied to BruceVC's topic in Way Off-Topic
Statues of ICJ are same that it predecessor PCIJ, it name just changed when League of Nations was replaced with UN. Name change didn't make it any better in making itself look like that is impartial, fair and just court instead of political tool which decisions often escalate conflicts and rarely prevents them. Also ICC was first international court bring up charges of genocide and crimes against humanity in 2005 against Joseph Kony Alleged Commander-in-Chief of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) (He has yet to face trial). Betweem 1946-2005 there were quite many conflicts where genocidal actions did take a place and ICJ failed in every case to make any actions to prevent them, punish for them or even say they were bad. I think that Israel is wrong in their accusation that ICJ is antisemitic, it is just useless institution. Just look this ruling - Israel needs to do something to prevent genocide in Gaza, but they don't give any actual guidance or ordinance. And as there is no enforcement, other than push back from other countries. I am sure that intent is that countries will politically pressure Israel to be more "human" in their bombing spree, but it also give Israel enemies excuse to use military actions against them. I am sure that USA will be pathetic in their response, but if they had bit more political willingness to take hard line against Israel they could use ruling as stick to force South Africa and others BRICS - R countries to decrease their support for Russia, as Russia ignored ICJ ruling to stop their attack to Ukraine and BRICS countries have not shown any care for it. So as this ruling was because case that South Africa brought to court USA could easily use it to forward their global political agenda by using it as excuse to put trade and other sanctions against countries that supported the case but have not condemned Russia or/and support Russia (and/or China). But USA has too many internal political struggles to be effective in global politics like they used to be during Cold War. -
Gaza - conflict, war, land, water rights, bad colonional legacies...
Elerond replied to BruceVC's topic in Way Off-Topic
Ceasefire or no ceasefire should not any way impact on ICJ's verdict is or isn't Israel committing genocide in Gaza. -
Gaza - conflict, war, land, water rights, bad colonional legacies...
Elerond replied to BruceVC's topic in Way Off-Topic
Neither Netanhyahu or Hamas want full ceasefire. Offers of ceasefire is just to show for world and looking time for resupply. In political sense Netanhyahu has little to gain from the ceasefire, he has failed in what has been his driving promise, to keep Israel safe. The war in Gaza will prevent his ousting at least for the time and gives him opportunity to ensure that he will not lose his political power. Also it seem that big sunk of people of Israel aren't keen to see war ending before Hamas is destroyed which probably will not happen anytime soon. Hamas has hostages because of act of terrorism, it has no legimate reason to keep hostages and it does not seem to have any clear goal what they want to achieve with the hostages. And Hamas does not promise to stop their attacks to Israel even in case Israel promises full ceasefire and because of Hamas' structure they probably don't even have ability to make such promise even if their leadership wanted to do so. -
Gaza - conflict, war, land, water rights, bad colonional legacies...
Elerond replied to BruceVC's topic in Way Off-Topic
Legal definition is most important thing in a court -
Gaza - conflict, war, land, water rights, bad colonional legacies...
Elerond replied to BruceVC's topic in Way Off-Topic
He was warned multiple times that Hamas was planning to attack, but those warnings were ignored mainly because over confidence in Israel's defenses and stubborn thinking that Hamas does not have capacity to attack even though evidence showed differently https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67958260 -
Yes, but because of Sweden 700 year rule over Finland and first converting Finns to Christianity through three crusades and then converting them to Lutheranism and ordering creation of written language for Finnish in order to steal Catholic church money for their Gustav Wasa's funds, Sweden and Finland have formed much closer cultural ties than Finland and Estonia. Also Finland's ties to Denmark, Norway and Iceland are closer because first Denmark ruled all Nordic countries during Kalmar union and then Sweden took over and ruled most of the Nordics. What little of Finno-Ugric past there was left was saved by Swedish speaking Finns Elias Lönnrot, Johan Runeberg and Johan Snellman when they were forefront of united meaning of Finnishness in 1800s. Also in Geographical sense part of Finland belongs in Scandinavian Peninsula, so technically we Finland is part of Scandinavia, although generally we don't count us as part of Scandinavia even if Finland's highest points Halti and Saana fells are part of Scandinavian mountains.
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Gaza - conflict, war, land, water rights, bad colonional legacies...
Elerond replied to BruceVC's topic in Way Off-Topic
ICJ's rulings don't have much of impact, like for example -
Technically Sweden and Russia share maritime border in international waters, meaning that Russian troops can go from Kaliningrad to Sweden without crossing any Nato nation's land, waters or airspace. Also there is international waters from Saint Petersburg to Sweden and also from Atlantic ocean to western side of southern Sweden.
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Gaza - conflict, war, land, water rights, bad colonional legacies...
Elerond replied to BruceVC's topic in Way Off-Topic
It would be first time after 1959 when soviets blocked resolution against Vietnam because of their aggression towards Laos. Usually countries that opposite issues that have been brought up using article 99 just refuse to participate in the vote. Although last time when article 99 was invoked was in 1989 for Lebanon crisis. -
That may have been one of the Russia's goals in beginning. First market Finland as easy port to EU and offer short term visas to Russia in masses to anyone that ask without any actual processing. Second take immigrants moneys and bring them to Russia. Third guide immigrants to cause political issues in Finland and cause Finland current right wing anti immigration government to do predictable closing of the border that Russia also can use in their propaganda to Russians to tell how Finland is russophobic Fourth force immigrants to join Russian foreign legion by threating to charge them of breaking their visas. And blame Finland for leaving those poor immigrants to starve.
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In Finland there is no minimum required amount of votes for party to get seat in parliament, but we have 13 electoral districts, switch have certain amount seat based on population of the district and seat per district are divided between parties using D'Hondt method, which causes that party needs ~3% of all the votes in district in order to get 1 seat in parliament, which means that small parties almost never get even 1 seat. In last election we had 16 parties, from which 8 have been in parliament now for 30 years or more. These main parties again took 199 of 200 seat and 8 other parties got 1 and it went to billionaire business man that left one of the main parties and formed own party. And even from that starting point winning that 1 seat very difficult. Usually in elections parties outside of main 8 don't get any seats. This is because parties in the parliament have supreme advantage of getting all press time before the election and almost all the press time during election, so building voter base is expensive and difficult process that can take decades, which usually lead parties breaking because of infighting before they have even one member in parliament. Also main parties are supported by fact that government's funding for parties is divided between parties based on how many members they have in parliament and that election advertisement is only allowed from couple months before election to election day. Which has caused that almost all the viable candidates will register themselves one of the main parties list instead of trying to fight almost unbeatable fight to get one seat for minor party, as even with that one seat you need to do cooperate with main eight in order to get anything to done.
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Gaza - conflict, war, land, water rights, bad colonional legacies...
Elerond replied to BruceVC's topic in Way Off-Topic
They didn't deport Arabs from the area that was proposed as Jewish state by British in 1936, as proposal was rejected and Arabs and Jews continued to move in the area. Haifa city has now population of 282,832 and its metropolitan area has 983,500. so bit less than 4x more. In 1922 before British established Haifa city as their main port of the area, population of the city was 24,600 and before WW1 started population was about 20,000. In 1936 population of Haifa city had grown to about 100,000 thanks to industry that British build in the city and during Israel independence war in 1947 population was grown to 145,140 (70,910 Arabs (41,000 Muslims and 29,910 Christians) and 74,230 Jews). Current metropolitan area had less population by estimates, but there is no official number, but most of the residential buildings for that area have been build post 1948. Time magazine wrote on their 3 May 1948 publication that reason why Arab population of Haifa city fled/left by their own accord when British withdraw their forces was "The mass evacuation, prompted partly by fear, partly by orders of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarter of Haifa a ghost city. ... By withdrawing Arab workers their leaders hoped to paralyze Haifa.". Of course it is The Times and they have very British perspective of things, but regardless in end of 1948 only 5000-6000 Arbs were left in the city so bit less than 10% of Arab population in beginning of 1947. So it wasn't really expelling of Arab population, but of course they did have good reason to fear for their lives, as Jewish terrorist Irgun constantly targeted Arabs with their bombings and other attacks and Jewish Haganah militia committed multiple massacres in their retaliation attacks against Arabs with blessings of Jewish leadership. -
Gaza - conflict, war, land, water rights, bad colonional legacies...
Elerond replied to BruceVC's topic in Way Off-Topic
That 20% was already owned by jews that had bought it with backing of rich Zionist jews around the world. Haifa has not had 90% Muslim population after Ottoman Empire collapsed. The 1922 census of Palestine, conducted by the British authorities, recorded Haifa as having a population of 9,377 Muslims, 8,863 Christians, 6,230 Jews, and 164 others. By the time of the 1931 census of Palestine, this had increased to 20,324 Muslims, 13,824 Christians, 15,923 Jews, and 332 others. In 1938, 52,000 Jews and 51,000 Muslims and Christians lived in Haifa