And now for something completely different:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

That is to say a good-news story which has every reason for grounds for optimism:

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/ICC-Finds-Congolese-Warlord-Guilty-142613986.html

The International Criminal Court, in trying one of the war criminals from the forgotten continental wars in the Congo, has found one of these men guilty. This is the first such verdict in the ten years since the Court was established, and as such is setting a new standard for and about international law, which is also a plus. It's the first occasion since the end of the World Wars that there's been such a trial that has not been held by a Great Power of the losing side of a war, but instead a trial conducted by a court of war crimes on the basis *of* such a court.

This is a good sign, really, on an international scale as it means that the global legal system is evolving in a good way, less prone to the internal domestic politics and dickwaving of the Big Powers and in theory at least more impartial and fair and balanced for all Powers.

Comments

[terminator44.livejournal.com]

How odd for you to be decrying foreign interference in other nations.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Wasn't it Western support that got Lubanga going in the first place?

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

The US has a bit of a problem with the Hague because of the decision against US covert operations in Nicaragua during the Reagan years. That may have something to do with its use of a puppet court in the cases of Saddam.

It sounds more like the ICC represents Western hegemony more than Western values. After all, hegemony is not a stated value, but one that is veiled under the guise of "cooperation."

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

1) Yes, because the Third World states don't have the capability to prosecute war criminals in the middle of a civil war. No society does, and expecting them to accomplish the impossible only confirms that the impossible is after all well, impossible. And define "West."

2) Define "Western values."

3) I wouldn't call the DRC right now a "weak state" so much as "21st Century Thirty Years' War Germany's spiritual successor". There is no actual state entity in the DRC right now, and that this is so is because there's been the largest war since WWII raging there for years with the rest of the world not giving a flying fuck.

4) Define "Western states."

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

No, the Western role had been to create Mobutu, the dictator whose fall set off the Congo Wars in the first place, by assassinating Patrice Lumumba. The Congo Wars came from the end of the Mobutu Dictatorship and the spiraling effects of the Rwanda Genocide, in the latter case the Western Role being to create out of Patron-Client systems a much stronger Caste system that was never going to end well and didn't end well.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

It's really not one. The West is not in this specific case colonizing, and frankly put Western colonialism would have gone back into the Congo, claiming to be "peacekeepers", and thus ensured a permanent presence of exploitation, using the very war they created as a pretext. The Congo Wars produced an enormous amount of war crimes, and that *anyone* was prosecuted for them without the prerequisite of Victor's Justice is a good sign.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I asked for a definition of Western values and I see no definition here. Nor do I see any definition of just what is the West.

As you didn't answer my questions and provided a lot of links to things having nothing to do with what I said, I will repeat my questions exactly and expect an answer to what I asked, not what I did not ask:

1) Yes, because the Third World states don't have the capability to prosecute war criminals in the middle of a civil war. No society does, and expecting them to accomplish the impossible only confirms that the impossible is after all well, impossible. And define "West."

2) Define "Western values."

3) I wouldn't call the DRC right now a "weak state" so much as "21st Century Thirty Years' War Germany's spiritual successor". There is no actual state entity in the DRC right now, and that this is so is because there's been the largest war since WWII raging there for years with the rest of the world not giving a flying fuck.

4) Define "Western states."

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, the first version of so-called "Western" imperialism would not be 1492, but would instead be Outremer, the Crusader states. Which just like their later successors were imposed by brute force, financial sinkholes, and ultimately ended disastrously for everyone involved.

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

Optimism, Lankers? Just how much have you had to drink?

[kardashev.livejournal.com]

Oh, he's in a good mood because physicists said that there are an infinite number of universes alongside our own. This means that one of his alternate history scenarios(probably all of them, in fact) are coming true in some parallel cosmos. How could he not be happy? XD

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

There's too much war in his universes. Not much different from ours.

[terminator44.livejournal.com]

Well, he is a fan of Warhammer 40,000.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Eh, it's as dystopian as our own world, really, but with different variants. Like no Holocaust or Hitler-style brute barbarian but instead there's Emperor Palpatine with 1950s techology in 1942 leading to a general nuclear exchange in a WWII that's chiefly USA-Russia because the USA's the only one with the logistics to take all that. The only continent to avoid major fuckery is South America, Italy's the only WWII belligerent not-nuked, and the end of fascism just smooths the way for the rise of communism.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The prospect of a nuclear WWII with a fascist Russia single-handedly fighting Germany, the UK, and the USA and giving better than it gets is actually not a happy one. Nor is that timeline's actual fate in the 20th Century, namely the delayed rise of the Communists to replace fascism with a more rational and smarter successor. Most of my timelines are just as dystopian as the real world, so it'd be more "Neat, my timelines e-oh crap."

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

What if the act of writing the timeline causes the parallel universe to pop into existence, you mass murdering genocidal maniac??? :P

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Well, in that case the universe I'm currently working on where Godzillaverse physics showed up is about screwed, blued, and tatooed. ;P

[kardashev.livejournal.com]

Ah, but maybe that's not how it works. What if he's psychic and is unknowingly doing a form of remote viewing? :p

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Sure, but even a start in this direction is an encouraging thing. If the ICC starts doing more things like this, there could be a deterrent effect in at least some situations, and even a moderate decrease in overall misery is a Big Damn Deal.

[usekh.livejournal.com]

It is a good sign, but really. Get back to me when they tackle the US over the war crimes in Vietnam.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And when they tackle Russia over its violating the Geneva Conventions by promoting settlement of ethnic Russians in the Baltic states, which were absorbed in three wars of aggression in 1940, as well as for things like the Katyn Massacre, the 1955 Hungarian revolt atrocities, the Prague Spring, and the shenanigans the Red Army got up to in Afghanistan, too, I presume? Unless war crimes committed by the USA have a special mystical-woo woo level of evil above war crimes committed by others, then that is not about the crime but who perpetrates them.

And when they try Russia for violating the Geneva Convention in the Baltics, then we turn to Israel and its directly identical behavior in the "Occupied Territories".

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

In the VOA video (http://www.voanews.com/templates/widgetDisplay.html?id=142691025&player=article), Phil Clark of the School of Oriental and African Studies criticizes the court for not going after bigger fish. He also points out that the prosecution's case was pretty feeble.

Do you have any observations on the Kony 2012 phenomenon?

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

Do you have any observations on the Kony 2012 phenomenon?

This is probably the 5th or 6th time I'm hearing someone asking this question.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Jon Stewart did a skit (http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-march-12-2012/my-little-kony) or two (http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-march-12-2012/my-little-kony---youth-activism) on the topic. Here (http://www.talk2action.org/story/2012/3/8/141050/5090) is a blog on the phenomenon.

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

I know. I've already learned everything about this. I doubt there's anyone on the planet who still hasn't.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

I know of some mountain boyz who might not have heard a thing yet:

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing kids in Uganda have NFI of it...

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Uganda is soooo back water. I hear they kill gays there. (I don't suppose the Invisible Children founder would get his knickers in a twist over anti-homosexual violence.)

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Kony 2012 is for suckers that don't know anything about what's actually going on in Uganda right now, and is nothing but a scam trolling for money.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

I've noticed that it's a good way to cull your flist on faceboot... "YOU HAVE TO WATCH THIS VIDEO!!! zOMG!!!" *BAHLEETED*

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Jason Russell had a nervous breakdown (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/03/kony-creator-jason-russell-under-stress-but-not-on-drugs-family-says.html) shortly after you posted this comment. You may be responsible.

A statement by his wife, Danica Russell, and other members of Russell's family suggested that the criticism of the "Invisible Children" video about African militia leader Joseph Kony may have contributed to Russell's bizarre behavior.