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How a French judge was digitally cut off by the USA

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Re: How a French judge was digitally cut off by the USA

#171

Post by _djo_ »

overfeed wrote: post #164
throw-the-towel wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those were Soviet nukes, physically located in Ukraine but not controlled by it, same as any French/US nukes stationed in Germany would not make it a nuclear state. The ones in Ukraine got moved into Russia, in exchange for Ukraine receiving money and security guarantees.

> Those were Soviet nukes, physically located in Ukraine but not controlled by it, same as any French/US nukes stationed in Germany would not make it a nuclear state It's not quite the same, since Ukraine was part of the USSR, and Ukrainian scientists, engineers, and tradesmen contributed to the effort. Germany, on the other hand, was never part of the American federation, and didn't contribute to American weapons de…

Indeed. There was even a question of whether they could legally be considered Ukrainian or Russian weapons, regardless of where the command centre was. To solve that while the talks were ongoing they set up a ‘joint’ command centre in Moscow with ex-SSR countries theoretically sharing joint control over the weapons with Moscow.

Ukraine at one point wanted to formally claim ownership over the weapons, as after all breaking the permissive action locks wasn’t that difficult. The US talked them out of it, as a lead up to the Budapest Memorandum.

We all know how much the security guarantees of that agreement were worth.

Re: How a French judge was digitally cut off by the USA

#172

Post by qingcharles »

bjord wrote: post #60
mothballed wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost every bank in FATF white and gray list countries use the dollar in some way, so although your actions will help, in the end if you're sanctioned and you depend on traditional finance systems you are fucked. There is a guy on here, weev (username rabite) who was soft sanctioned by the US and can't use banks that transact in the dollar. Last I read of his comments, he was in Ukraine or Transnistria, surviving of…

all of the above is true, but just to be clear about who we're discussing, weev is a genuine neo-nazi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev#Alt-right_affiliations

"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not-very nice people."

Re: How a French judge was digitally cut off by the USA

#173

Post by TimorousBestie »

triceratops wrote: post #156
embedding-shape wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there are many Japanese alive today not aware of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While it's true they didn't place Japanese in internment cam.. no wait, they did do that. While it's true they didn't straight up execute Japanese folks on the street, they did effectively erase two cities from the world map, how that isn't a "Crime against Humanity", I don't know why we even have the label. So yeah, the US didn't…

> they did effectively erase two cities from the world map They're still there last time I checked. Hiroshima has a population of ~1m. Nagasaki closer to 300k. > how that isn't a "Crime against Humanity" An invasion of Japan would have cost an order of magnitude more lives. It was the 4th year of an extremely bitter conflict that Japan started. There were no real good options on the table. Only "shit" and "extremely…

> They're still there last time I checked. Hiroshima has a population of ~1m. Nagasaki closer to 300k.

This is an argument by equivocation. There’s still a “World Trade Center” in NYC but it’s not the one that fell in 2001. Nor does saying it’s so restore the dead to life.

> An invasion of Japan would have cost an order of magnitude more lives. It was the 4th year of an extremely bitter conflict that Japan started. There were no real good options on the table. Only "shit" and "extremely shit".

This is a legal defense strategy that was never heard before an international tribunal because, notably, one was never held.

I don’t have the energy to skim through the Nuremberg transcripts right now, but I also believe “it was the best of bad options” was a legal defense attempted there, with mixed results.

EDIT: I’m being rate limited, so I can’t answer any more questions today. But suffice it to say that in Truman’s place I would have extended the relative protection that Kyoto received to every large Japanese city and contained the air force to bombing primarily military and industrial targets, with the understanding that precision bombing was not as advanced in 1940s as it is today.

Here is a more in depth analysis of options other than nuclear bombardment (though it only discusses nukes, which is not the primary locus of my criticism). https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2015/08/03/were-there-altern...

Also I did not say they were “erased from the map,” that was a different commenter.

Re: How a French judge was digitally cut off by the USA

#174

Post by VWWHFSfQ »

_djo_ wrote: post #171
overfeed wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those were Soviet nukes, physically located in Ukraine but not controlled by it, same as any French/US nukes stationed in Germany would not make it a nuclear state It's not quite the same, since Ukraine was part of the USSR, and Ukrainian scientists, engineers, and tradesmen contributed to the effort. Germany, on the other hand, was never part of the American federation, and didn't contribute to American weapons de…

Indeed. There was even a question of whether they could legally be considered Ukrainian or Russian weapons, regardless of where the command centre was. To solve that while the talks were ongoing they set up a ‘joint’ command centre in Moscow with ex-SSR countries theoretically sharing joint control over the weapons with Moscow. Ukraine at one point wanted to formally claim ownership over the weapons, as after all bre…

> We all know how much the security guarantees of that agreement were worth.

They were worth 30 years of peace. It wasn't a treaty. Everyone knew it was a handshake agreement without consequences for breaking it. It prevented an immediate war in eastern Europe after the fall of the USSR. A war that could have been much worse involving nuclear weapons.

Unfortunately the war came 30 years later.

Re: How a French judge was digitally cut off by the USA

#175

Post by NebulaStorm456 »

zidad wrote: post #76
a2tech wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m an American and I can safely vouch that myself and most of the people I know deeply believe in the American ideals that have been presented as gospel for decades—fair play, hard work, rule of law, loving our neighbors (regardless of legal status), and to a one, believe that as soon as you swear your oath at the immigration court, you’re an American, regardless of the circumstances of your birth. The situation we…

If only the US would apply those values to their foreign policy, unfortunately the US voters don't care enough about that.

[flagged]

Re: How a French judge was digitally cut off by the USA

#177

Post by foogazi »

prasadjoglekar wrote: post #11

TLDR: he's a member of the ICC. Issues warrants against Israeli political leaders. Neither Israel nor the USA (nor China, Russia, India) are parties to the international conventions that formed the ICC. He's being sanctioned as a result by the USA, which flowed down to US companies who must follow US law.

> He's being sanctioned as a result by the USA

As a result of what ? What’s the trigger cause of the US sanctions ?

ICC can’t issue warrants against non ICC countries?

Re: How a French judge was digitally cut off by the USA

#178

Post by devsda »

JeremyNT wrote: post #91
enlguy wrote: post #3

Only the U.S. would actually sanction someone for trying to indict a war criminal.

> Only the U.S. would actually sanction someone for trying to indict a war criminal. The problem is that only the US has the power to material harm people to such a degree by doing so. The amount of control that Big Tech has consolidated into a handful of US megacorporations is a massive danger to the entire world. The US devolving into an overt kleptocracy is a huge threat to freedom everywhere. Who can push back? O…

> Who can push back? Obviously not China or Russia, where the problems are even worse.

Why not China or Russia or any other country with the capability? Competition is good even if some or all of the players are bad individually.

Re: How a French judge was digitally cut off by the USA

#179

Post by dxdm »

PeterStuer wrote: post #161
petcat wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU is in a very tough spot right now. They're getting squeezed on all sides economically by USA and China while simultaneously facing a Russian invasion on their eastern borders. The relationship with the American administration has deteriorated badly and any action seen as "retaliation", such as this policy blockade, would almost definitely result in USA withdrawing even more support for Ukraine in the war. I think,…

As a European I can agree with the US and China stuff. But a Russian Invasion? Seriously?

GP is talking about the invasion of Ukraine, taking place just beyond the EU eastern border, and very much shaking up the European security situation, and the EU and its member states are visibly having to "deal with it", diplomatically, economically and in terms of their practical defense postures. That's what they meant with "at the border", and not a literal invasion of the EU.

(Edited for a less confrontational beginning of the first sentence.)

Re: How a French judge was digitally cut off by the USA

#180

Post by wat10000 »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #162
sfifs wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very surprised the US doesn't seem to be taking the risk of Ukraine becoming a Nuclear Weapons state seriously. By now, they surely would have had time to develop get to the brink of weaponization as a backup plan - they've after all always had a nuclear industry. If they do so and offer cover to their neighbors who realize NATO may not be sufficient, we are in for interesting times.

The ideal scenario would have been if Ukraine had secretly retained 30-100 warheads. Everyone likes to prattle on about how they couldn't even have used them: those people are mentally retarded. A sophisticated government with nuclear and aerospace scientists could have easily dismantled interlocks and installed their own. Maybe not in a hurry, but they had 3 decades more or less. And if they didn't have the expertis…

The war might end in Ukraine being flattened by Russian nuclear weapons if that happened. Putin would be backed into a corner. End the invasion after suffering a nuclear strike (or just the threat of one) and he'll risk being deposed and meet a gruesome end. Retaliate overwhelmingly and risk escalation from other nuclear powers. It's not clear to me that the second risk would be worse, and definitely not clear to me that Putin wouldn't see that as the better of two bad options.

As has been illustrated so well over the past few years, the power of nuclear weapons is a paradox. It allows you to make the ultimate threat. But that threat isn't credible unless people believe you'll use them. Because the consequences of using them are so severe, they're only credible if used in response to a correspondingly severe threat. Russia's arsenal hasn't allowed it to stop a constant flow of weapons to its enemy, an enemy which has invaded and still controls a small bit of Russian territory, and which frequently carries out aerial attacks on Russian territory. Ukraine faces much more of an existential threat (Ukraine has no prospect of conquering Russia, but the reverse is a serious possibility) so a nuclear threat from Ukraine would be more credible, but it could easily still not be enough. Certainly they're not an automatic "leave me alone" card.

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