Ukraine Conflict - conflict continues

[Lexx]

2 hours ago, BruceVC said:

Whoah, yes you missed a lot 

There is an ICC arrest  warrant on Putin and SA is a signatory  to the ICC and therefore expected to enforce ICC warrants 

Ok yeah, but I thought SA already kinda said they won't do it.

 

1 hour ago, Mamoulian War said:

International Human Rights Court has struck a case against Ukraine about oppresion of Russian language speakers. And blaming Ukraine for destruction of MH17. Russia ignored all requests by the court for “clarifications”, so the court “dismissed” it.

I do not speak lawyerish, but this looks to me more as technical verdict, although with it, it has dismissed cases, which are not covered by other applications. Although, it is also written, that the court found no grounds relating to respect of human rights, to pursue in further examination of the case.

 

https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/app/conversion/pdf/?library=ECHR&id=003-7706301-10639634&filename=Russia v. Ukraine - struck out of Court's list of cases.pdf

Damn, "Principal facts and complaints" reads like a Bully blaming you for him bullying you.

Edited July 19, 2023 by Lexx

[Lexx]

edit: doubled it

Edited July 19, 2023 by Lexx

[xzar_monty]

45 minutes ago, Lexx said:

Damn, "Principal facts and complaints" reads like a Bully blaming you for him bullying you.

Indeed. But odd as it is, that is genuinely quite common (and of course Russia continues to hold "the West" responsible for essentially everything Russia itself has done wrong[*]).

This is off-topic, but I find it extremely interesting that there genuinely are people whose temperamental makeup and lack of self-awareness reach such heights that they perceive the world as a place where they quite often come across people who positively beg to have a fist smashed right in their face, and so they themselves are positively not to blame for any aggression at all, ever. This description of a certain kind of sociopathy, by the way, comes straight from a (locally) well-known psychiatrist with a long experience of working in institutions for criminals.

 

[*] Such a can of worms, that last word, but I left it there anyway.

[BruceVC]

42 minutes ago, Lexx said:

Ok yeah, but I thought SA already kinda said they won't do it.

 

Damn, "Principal facts and complaints" reads like a Bully blaming you for him bullying you.

Okay, its still a confused message. Our government has said we will honor the ICC because we believe in it and we reaffirmed our membership of it  in April but we also dont want  to arrest Putin and risk war or other consequence

The obvious and easy solution is simple, dont invite Putin. He can send Lavrov and attend virtually like BRICS meetings have been held in the past. It makes no difference to the functions of this BRICS meetings if Putin is here in person except for Russian symbolism, hubris and the optics of rejecting the ICC. Because Russia isnt a member of the ICC so they dont care but we are so it matters we enforce its warrants

And SA has been through this before where we failed to arrest Al-Bashir of Sudan and our local courts ruled we had a Constitutional obligation to arrest him. So this is about our own laws and the ANC  cant ignore that irrespective of their own ideological views and historical " friendship " with Russia 

 

 

[xzar_monty]

43 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

Okay, its still a confused message. Our government has said we will honor the ICC because we believe in it and we reaffirmed our membership of it  in April but we also dont want  to arrest Putin and risk war or other consequence

I don't wish to point my finger at the SA government specifically because this is phenomenon we see quite often, but the fact remains that the SA government is perfectly illustrating an extraordinarily cynical principle, namely that of "We strongly believe in this and we wish to be a member of this except if it would actually matter; in that case we want to bail out straight away."

Edited July 19, 2023 by xzar_monty

[Zoraptor]

I'd be very surprised if the ANC actually believed in the ICC, in that sense, at all. They've been one of its most strident and consistent critics for being a court that only goes after brown people* and people the west doesn't like.

Generally speaking you don't try to/ threaten to withdraw twice from something you have a very strong sense of belief in (indeed, first time it was only stopped because a court found it unconstitutional to withdraw). They just don't want to be hit by all the toys that will come out of the cot, which is fair enough since Ukraine is on the other side of the world from them so they have no reason to care about some little Euro war.

*Indeed the AU voted to withdraw en masse at one point, though that was non binding. Case in point: you still have the Australians who were chucking civilians off cliffs for initiation rituals and shooting them because they wouldn't fit on choppers in Afghanistan walking around free with nary a murmur from the ICC because, basically Australia is a western country and thus has a robust legal system capable of handling things- which, of course, mainly consisted of trying to go after the whistleblowers on national security grounds, ho hum.

Edited July 19, 2023 by Zoraptor

[BruceVC]

17 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

I'd be very surprised if the ANC actually believed in the ICC, in that sense, at all. They've been one of its most strident and consistent critics for being a court that only goes after brown people* and people the west doesn't like.

Generally speaking you don't try to/ threaten to withdraw twice from something you have a very strong sense of belief in (indeed, first time it was only stopped because a court found it unconstitutional to withdraw). They just don't want to be hit by all the toys that will come out of the cot, which is fair enough since Ukraine is on the other side of the world from them so they have no reason to care about some little Euro war.

*Indeed the AU voted to withdraw en masse at one point, though that was non binding. Case in point: you still have the Australians who were chucking civilians off cliffs for initiation rituals and shooting them because they wouldn't fit on choppers in Afghanistan walking around free with nary a murmur from the ICC because, basically Australia is a western country and thus has a robust legal system capable of handling things- which, of course, mainly consisted of trying to go after the whistleblowers on national security grounds, ho hum.

Yes the idea of leaving the ICC is over now, the ANC reaffirmed commitment to the ICC at its elective conference in December and in April. The ANC could get the country to  leave the ICC but it decided to stay because 30 African countries are part of it and we no have  alternative in Africa. And the reason for staying is we cant change the ICC from the outside. Thats what ANC spokes people say

Anyway its just been announced, Putin wont be coming next month and Lavrov will attend in his place. That makes sense on every level and its much better for SA 

[BruceVC]

https://ewn.co.za/2023/07/19/putin-won-t-attend-brics-summit-presidency-confirms

[xzar_monty]

31 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

with nary a murmur from the ICC because, basically Australia is a western country and thus has a robust legal system capable of handling things- which, of course, mainly consisted of trying to go after the whistleblowers on national security grounds, ho hum.

Yeah, the discrepancies are staggering. Despite all that, I would still like to think that the ICC has at least some merit because it has managed to hold accountable some individuals who wouldn't have been held accountable otherwise; Batumike and Kokodikoko come to mind. And yes, I know the colour of their skin.

[Malcador]

The rules only apply to the weak.

[Zoraptor]

Dunno, at least for the ICC if the rules only apply to the weak you'd expect Putin would be fine. It's got far more to do with whether you're in with the cool crowd than power.

The ICC, like many things to do with international law, is a great idea on paper. But that stipulation about only having jurisdiction when the offending country is unable to adequately investigate makes it fatally flawed in practice- because the assumption will always be that some countries can be trusted to investigate properly and so become effectively exempt when they inevitably find that they did Nothing (criminally) Wrong. I really don't know if it's better to at least have something, or not to have anything when the system is as flawed as that. Because something like Tony Blair being complicit in a million deaths yet giving stultifying speeches to this day justifying himself while charging a six figure fee for the privilege, while the slightly darker skinned and more african Laurent Gbagbo got dragged off to the Hague for something that killed about a thousandth that number but the French didn't like (quel dommage on that; though at least Gbagbo got exonerated, it just took 10 years of imprisonment). It makes a mockery of the whole idea; it is fundamentally a good idea, but... that ain't enough when the in practice of it is so poor.

If you had a cop who'd only pick up drunk drivers who were poor/ black/ they didn't like while letting others breathalyse themselves (never over the limit, strangely) you'd think they were at best corrupt, not that they were at least keeping some bad drivers off the road.

[Malcador]

3 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

Dunno, at least for the ICC if the rules only apply to the weak you'd expect Putin would be fine. It's got far more to do with whether you're in with the cool crowd than power.

Hm, fair enough.  As you mention Blair, I did have a funny conversation where the other guy claimed that the US and UK paid a heavy price for invading Iraq as they lost credibility and made other First World nations mad at them.

[xzar_monty]

50 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

I really don't know if it's better to at least have something, or not to have anything when the system is as flawed as that.

I don't either, at the moment, but looking at the arc of history and the things that have changed in the past, say, 200 years, gives me some hope that as flawed as the system now is, it is likely a step in a good direction. Not enough of a step, for sure, but at least a step. I am not naive enough to suppose that the problems you describe are ever going to vanish, but I would like to think that some things are going to get significantly better (even if the current rise of authoritarianism in surprisingly many places might leave you thinking otherwise).

I suppose international law, as a concept, would work quite well if there was an even more powerful entity outside the international community to exert power on it, but of course there isn't going to be one.

It seems to me that what happens on the individual level is sort of duplicated on the international level. In other words, individual humans are like this: nearly all of us want justice to be done, but if we are faced with a choice between justice being done and someone dear to us not landing into trouble, studies indicate that more than half of us will choose the latter option. The most recent reference to this phenomenon that I read picked the harrowing case of Larry Nassar as a prime example: he got to keep up with what he was doing for so long because his buddies didn't want him to get in trouble. And moving from the level of the individual to the level of the international, the same problem persists, although in a slightly different way. There is a hierarchy of values, and whether various entities want justice to be done depends on the amount of power they hold and/or their relationship with the entity that justice would be served upon.

Edited July 19, 2023 by xzar_monty

[Elerond]

It isn't like South Africa has not in past just ignored ICC's warrants their own court decisions. For example 2016 and Sudanese president Omar al Bashir visiting summit in South Africa with open ICC warrant, South African official refused to arrest him because foreign head of states have immunity in South Africa, although their court had different opinion, but Omar left South Africa without being arrested.

 

[BruceVC]

32 minutes ago, Elerond said:

It isn't like South Africa has not in past just ignored ICC's warrants their own court decisions. For example 2016 and Sudanese president Omar al Bashir visiting summit in South Africa with open ICC warrant, South African official refused to arrest him because foreign head of states have immunity in South Africa, although their court had different opinion, but Omar left South Africa without being arrested.

 

Correct and they should have arrested Al-Bashir as our courts  ruled. This has been tested already in our courts. Why would the ANC want to go through this again with Putin? They were under an obligation to arrest him  and our  local laws expected that 

Also that was different leadership and era in SA, that was when Jacob Zuma was president. Zuma was incredibly corrupt and didn't understand or care about the Constitution and what it means. The current president does care and respect the Constitution 

 

Edited July 19, 2023 by BruceVC

[Malcador]

Guess we see who blows up a civilian freighter first

[Mamoulian War]

Russia made the same statement day before.

[BruceVC]

15 hours ago, Malcador said:

Guess we see who blows up a civilian freighter first

I have stopped pointing out the obvious lies with the general rhetoric that Russia cares about Africa or the global south 

The cancellation of the grain deal and its real impact to Africa  gets handwaved by Vatniks and Russian supporters with comments like " yes but the grain all goes to the EU " or " its fine, Russia will supply grain directly to African countries " and other similar comments 

But it will absolutely impact certain African and ME countries the most and these are already mostly impoverished countries that are dependant on this deal for food security and we know this because  this all happened last year. Here are 2 links from last year about the biggest outcome for Russia cancelling the deal 

https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/04/28/ukraine/russia-war-continues-africa-food-crisis-looms

https://www.euronews.com/2022/07/23/peace-and-stability-african-leaders-welcome-russia-ukraine-wheat-deal

 

 

[Zoraptor]

Number of African countries in the top 18 export destinations for Ukrainian grain from the Black Sea deal: 3. Which includes Libya, which is rich. Sorry, sorry, was rich, forgot it underwent a completely avoidable disaster that ruined the place and set it back decades for a moment, easy to do when there are so many similar examples I guess. That accounts for... 7% of the exports. If you count Egypt and Libya as Middle Eastern instead of African, there's one (1) African country on the list, at #13 (Kenya) and Africa accounts for just over one (1)% of the grain supply (source). Though at least I got a laugh out of the EU's propaganda arm aggregating the stats into two (developed/ developing) because any other way of doing it looked awful for them. Added bonus: Turkey cucked yet again by being included in the 'developing' tier.

Now, its potential to annoy the #1 recipient of Ukraine grain might be a problem for Russia, since that's China...

(Of course there is the problem of potential price inflation but... any problems for Africa there could also be avoided by Euros y'know, not eating as much meat and not needing so much grain to feed to pigs/ cows/ sheep so they can eat burgers while Africans starve. Shame they can't eat lectures about how much they should care about Ukraine, if they could world hunger would be solved)

Edited July 21, 2023 by Zoraptor

[BruceVC]

9 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

Number of African countries in the top 18 export destinations for Ukrainian grain from the Black Sea deal: 3. Which includes Libya, which is rich. Sorry, sorry, was rich, forgot it underwent a completely avoidable disaster that ruined the place and set it back decades for a moment, easy to do when there are so many similar examples I guess. That accounts for... 7% of the exports. If you count Egypt and Libya as Middle Eastern instead of African, there's one (1) African country on the list, at #13 (Kenya) and Africa accounts for just over one (1)% of the grain supply (source). Though at least I got a laugh out of the EU's propaganda arm aggregating the stats into two (developed/ developing) because any other way of doing it looked awful for them. Added bonus: Turkey cucked yet again by being included in the 'developing' tier.

Now, its potential to annoy the #1 recipient of Ukraine grain might be a problem for Russia, since that's China...

(Of course there is the problem of potential price inflation but... any problems for Africa there could also be avoided by Euros y'know, not eating as much meat and not needing so much grain to feed to pigs/ cows/ sheep so they can eat burgers while Africans starve. Shame they can't eat lectures about how much they should care about Ukraine, if they could world hunger would be solved)

None of that changes the fundamental issue and the impact to Africa but its no surprise you are handwaving it, I was expecting that if you were going to comment

It doesnt matter how  much grain the EU uses because the supply chains are now broken by Russia ending the grain deal. The EU, like the energy from Russia, will make another plan. African countries cant and wont like we witnessed last year because they dependant on this deal

And its not just one African country that will be impacted, to quote from the link below 

" Some of these countries are a part of a group of 16 African nations that import the majority of their wheat from Russia and Ukraine, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization.

Djibouti, Burundi, Mauritania, Togo, Cameroon, Senegal, Rwanda, Congo, Libya, Tanzania and Namibia all depend on the warring sides for 50 to 70 percent of their wheat imports.

Meanwhile, Egypt and Madagascar import more than 70 to 80 percent and Somalia imports over 90 percent of their wheat requirement. 

And the African country most dependent on the grain deal is Eritrea – importing 100 percent of its grain from Ukraine and Russia "

 

https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/which-african-countries-benefit-from-türkiye-brokered-grain-deal-62422

 

 

 

 

 

[Mamoulian War]

The Purge intensifies.

 

[Zoraptor]

2 hours ago, BruceVC said:

https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/which-african-countries-benefit-from-türkiye-brokered-grain-deal-62422

lol. I didn't expect anything from Erdogan media but at least it's got a laugh.

Number of Olympic gold medals won by Michael Phelps and me = 28. Number of Nobel Prizes won by me and Albert Einstein = 2. Number of Oscars nominations for me and Walt Disney = 59.  Now, some might point out that my contribution to each of those totals is zero, but still, they're technically true and make me sound awesome...

...same as for those grain figures do for Ukraine. We have the break down of where the Ukrainian grain was going, and of "Djibouti, Burundi, Mauritania, Togo, Cameroon, Senegal, Rwanda, Congo, Libya, Tanzania and Namibia" which "all depend on the warring sides for 50 to 70 percent of their wheat imports" only one makes the list for Ukrainian destinations: Libya, with a population of a few million. You can add one of the four with even higher proportions than 70% in Egypt, but even there we know that Russia contributes 80+% of its imports. Conclusion: if those figures are true then Russia contributes the vast- vast- majority and the Ukrainian contribution to that 50-70% is not much more than my contribution to those medal/ Nobel/ Oscar totals. Feel free to worship me as a sporting/ scientific/ cultural god if you want though.

For the record, for 2019 the last year I could find records about half of Russia's grain exports went to Africa. For Ukraine, as shown, it was ~7%. And that's without taking into account Russia exporting twice as much -->--> Russia exports around 14x more to Africa than Ukraine. The good news is that if Euros don't buy Russian grain then they can handily cover Ukraine's contribution from that.

[Keyrock]

1 hour ago, Zoraptor said:

Feel free to worship me as a sporting/ scientific/ cultural god if you want though.

Don't sell yourself short. You forgot ambassador of freedom and sex symbol. I know you're just trying to be modest, which is admirable, but facts are facts.

Edited July 21, 2023 by Keyrock

[BruceVC]

1 hour ago, Mamoulian War said:

The Purge intensifies.

 

This Girkin meme made me laugh  

 

 

[Malcador]

5 hours ago, BruceVC said:

And the African country most dependent on the grain deal is Eritrea – importing 100 percent of its grain from Ukraine and Russia "

Probably should have restricted that percentage to Ukraine, could be 50/50, 70/30, 10/90..

Will eagerly anticipate the US media interpretation of Girkin's arrest, maybe they'll trot out that clown McFaul for insight.