Rolling MENA 2014 (Middle East)

the US is currently deporting numerous ones itself.

c'mon man you know I'm not cool with this either

xps, The political objectives the UN was aiming to secure when the rights of refugees were defined in 1951 were to stop countries persecuting or deporting people in the way they had with European Jews during the Holocaust. European countries have been fairly quiet about the treatment of refugees in Israel, Australia, etc, recently as they tend to be pushing for harsher treatment themselves, with some exceptions, though.

International law has its complications and limitations but it's mostly well intentioned even where it's tough to enforce.

My point isn't what you are or aren't cool w/, but that if there's a convention and no one keeps it, then in what way does it exist? A law needs to be kept/enforced or it isn't a real law, it's just something we say we believe in to make ourselves feel good.

applying it wherever possible is better than never applying it

Like fuck the US. Ok, and fuck the UK and Russia and China and Israel and Germany and Denmark and Australia and okay so fuck every country so what exactly are we talking about here? That no countries live up to our high standards? What's the point exactly?

Right, so that's my point. UN conventions for thee but not for me.

Most countries western countries, by and large, do meet their obligations under international law even if it chafes politically.

Like the UK has pretty tough laws on who can claim asylum and what happens to you if you aren't judged worthy but still grants something like 85% of Eritrean applicants the right to stay.

How do Eritrean refugees to European countries compare to quantity that goes to Israel? Asking sincerely, I don't know those figures. My understanding tho was that Israel has a much, much higher % bc of its proximity to Eritrea.

I don't know how many apply per year in Israel but it's around 10k a year in Sweden alone. I'd guess something like 40k - 50k across the EU per year. That would be roughly the same as the number who have emigrated to Israel since the early 2000s, iirc. That's still small compared to the 250k in Ethiopia and Sudan.

I wonder if the situation is analogous to the south and central american asylum seekers the US must get

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/15/opinion/let-syrians-settle-detroit.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

These authors make the case for Syrian refugees to go to Detroit.

sv tick.jpg

what would be really equitable is if once the UN determined that people emigrating from a country count as refugees, every member of the UN is forced to take in some proportionate amount (maybe based on some combination of GDP, per capita, population size, geographical size, etc).

idk how that would work given that proximity and travel costs are a big deciding factor in where refugees go

i would feel bad for the 1 family that is sent to brunei, alone, with all of the other refugees spread out across the rest of the globe

that's why it's currently not equitable. countries that are easiest to get to tend to be ones facing similar challenges as the countries the refugees left. ie jordan + lebanon are not in an ideal position to take hundreds of thousands of syrian refugees.

'if sanctions are not universally enforceable then why bother' is just useless legal nihilism where every member of a given community is held to the standards of the lowest

in any case international law working as a moral norm in lieu of enforceability is surely best shown in the case of israel? the best case palestinians can make is that israel transgresses international law, it's at the centre of all the 'soft' pressure on israel worldwide (applies whether or not u agree with the justice of those rulings)

if israel wants to deport refugees to a country in the knowledge that some of them will be murdered then it is perfectly welcome to do so, it won't be forgotten

what would be really equitable is if once the UN determined that people emigrating from a country count as refugees, every member of the UN is forced to take in some proportionate amount (maybe based on some combination of GDP, per capita, population size, geographical size, etc).

― Mordy, Friday, 15 May 2015 17:21 (16 minutes ago)

this is a sort of emergent political project in the EU and it might succeed only partially because countries like the uk will refuse it

it's a good idea and it's better to try than not to bother

nakh otm

if israel wants to deport refugees to a country in the knowledge that some of them will be murdered then it is perfectly welcome to do so, it won't be forgotten

the problem w/ this is that it's hard enough to get individual ppl to do the right thing let alone an amorphous, depersonalized State. how many americans feel shame about the MS St. Louis? or could even tell you what it is?

it leaves you in a position where the countries who do feel shamed, and do follow the right policy, would probably do so w/out a UN resolution. and those that wouldn't don't care about the UN resolution anyway.

how many americans feel shame about the MS St. Louis? or could even tell you what it is?

― Mordy, Friday, 15 May 2015 18:03 (1 minute ago)

this doesn't make any sense because many americans evidently do feel shame about their country's moral obloquy, whether or not they can recount the full litany; in the case of the iraq war the normative power of that shame is enhanced by it being illegal as well as merely unjust

it leaves you in a position where the countries who do feel shamed, and do follow the right policy, would probably do so w/out a UN resolution. and those that wouldn't don't care about the UN resolution anyway.

― Mordy, Friday, 15 May 2015 18:04 (2 minutes ago)

the latter sure, there will always be dissenters

the former.....it's a lot easier to sell to a public that its treaty obligations reflect a moral duty when many others are also subject to it and the burden is shared

when the asinine 'public debate' about the european convention on human rights happens in the uk one of the more persuasive arguments will probably be 'do you want to be with every civilized european country or with belarus and nobody else'

in the sense that shame does creep into the national self-identity and influences future events, i think you're right that it's probably useful. i'm not sure 'illegality' or 'immorality' from an international POV contributes much to this. ime the shame is more about failing to live up to one's own declared codes. i'm skeptical about the ability of this 'international' construct to make any significant intervention. also, the shame has to be specific - I can imagine that American horror at the Iraq failure has made us more reluctant to conduct that kind of military adventure again (though probably not reluctant enough). A general shame that your country is "bad," is a kind of immature sensation that I'm not sure links to any actual productive changes in policy. to that extent, American shame over sending Jewish refugees back to Germany might exist for some ppl, but certainly not on a serious enough level that it influences our actual immigration & deportation policies (maybe I'm wrong but I don't see this kind of sensitivity in the mainstream). whereas the Iraq war is fresh in our minds etc and maybe kept us for putting boots down in Syria or invading Iran or whatever. (and even w/ Iraq I believe that the US is much more concerned w/ the cost of the war than the shame of humanitarian violations - ie I'm more likely to hear someone say that Iraq is shameful bc threw away 'treasure and lives' on it, than bc of abu ghraib (here i'm speaking more about the general pop and not u know, your average ilxor).

i feel like this is a question that derrida might have dealt w/ - the meaning of a country feeling shame about itself

ie I'm more likely to hear someone say that Iraq is shameful bc threw away 'treasure and lives' on it, than bc of abu ghraib (here i'm speaking more about the general pop and not u know, your average ilxor).

― Mordy, Friday, 15 May 2015 18:16 (2 minutes ago)

the crime was the war itself not abu ghraib

isn't the blood and treasure claim founded on the notion that the war was for no good?

and the notion that the iraq war was for no good derives to a large extent from the arguments made by its opponents in 2002/3.....the failure of america in iraq derives from the same reasons that they cited at the time (democracy cannot be imposed violently from without)

i guess what i'm suggesting is that if you polled americans a large number would say that the iraq war is a mistake, but very few would call it 'criminal.

that's because a large number don't want to incriminate themselves

per ol' Jeb: "mistakes happen in foreign policy"

what role can shame possibly play if yr culpability is entirely "mistakes happen in foreign policy?" and if the US doesn't agree that invading sovereign Iraq was an illegal breach of international law, what hope is there that another country will feel shamed for not following international law for refugee absorption? (or is the idea that the US is uniquely w/out shame?)

idk why the US is even being referenced here have we tried to shame Israel

I mean apart from the four of us on this thread and the Washington Post

none of whom make policy

bc i'm using nakh to help me unpack what i believe about the existence + force of international law and whether it has actual value despite not being backed by actual power or force. ie: is this shaming mechanism from the 'international community' of real, demonstrable value?

i guess what i'm suggesting is that if you polled americans a large number would say that the iraq war is a mistake, but very few would call it 'criminal.

― Mordy, Friday, 15 May 2015 18:28 (1 minute ago)

that's probably true, although even if they might not say it was criminal, how many would say it was legal? presumably very few because it would be split between those who knew it wasn't, and those who rejected the notion of any law impeding america's right

so just as at the level of nations, there are implacable legal nihilists who act purely wilfully, and the remainder upon whom the notion of law has some normative force, whether directly or indirectly (shame etc)

the knowledge that the war was not sanctioned surely contributes in the reasoning of those who have come to doubt its validity (even if they read that only in instrumental terms)

can nations even feel shame tho? this mechanic by which states make decisions, which involves decisionmaking at an individual human level but convalesces into this larger non-human construct - does it take shame into account? or does shame only exist at the level of individuals who, once they feel shame about their nation's actions, are completely circumscribed from any role in that expression of power? well, i guess it does sometimes now that i think about it - ie German shame about WW2 has definitely changed the kinds of decisions it has made since then. Tho that seems like a particularly dramatic example that might be more of an exception?

that seems like a bit of a needless metaphysical complication, clearly shame acts upon particular groups within the nation, metaphysical 'shame among the nations' being the exception for particularly grave cases such as post-ww2 germany where nobody can escape being bound

the ashamed reaction of a large minority of its public to the war in vietnam evidently contributed to america's unwillingness to pursue large scale criminal follies in the ensuing three decades; its largest war in the interim was conducted only under a clear and restrictive UN mandate*

for the larger part of the american population who regret iraq, probably they don't feel shame but their misgivings about it surely act in some moral way.....not shame, which suggests something actively transgressive, but a sense that it was not /right/, which derives in some measure from that UN verdict

* wasn't unwillingness to exceed this one of the factors in bush I's decision not to pursue the retreating iraqi army back over the kuwaiti border? the grave mistake in the eyes of 2002 era neoconservatives

what you'd really need for an ideal case study is an example where a country committed a great crime that turned out very well for it. bc it's too easy for me to believe that the impacts of Vietnam and Iraq were entirely bc they didn't turn out well at all, and not bc they were great crimes. ie you're not sorry you did it, you're sorry it worked out so poorly for you.

the two are not parseable -- their illegitimacy and instrumental failure both derive from the basic fact that they were not sanctioned by the people who america claimed to be fighting for

this is another way in which the just and the efficient tend to be bound up together....

the problem of shame is that in the hands of overreaching naifs, it creates a counterproductive reaction....weaponised shame, deployed by one group against other, seldom has the desired effect, it has to be felt and not foisted from without

hence the witless to-and-fro about the dogshit clint eastwood film.....people might have misgivings but they won't have their beloved armed forces shamed by being treated as genocidaires etc

https://twitter.com/coachjim4um/status/585980002648199168

obv it's easier to shame others than to feel shame yourself

an example where a country committed a great crime that turned out very well for it.

― Mordy, Friday, 15 May 2015 19:02 (5 minutes ago)

the armenian genocide -- ataturk's programme relied upon a sense of the unitary nation that would not have been possible had the greeks and the armenians not been killed or deported (the kurds are the exception proving the rule, but then they needed the kurds to massacre the armenians)

and moral censure never gets very far because major nations like america, under the auspices of the wise and the just like obama, always find turkey has enough geopolitical goodies to offer that it cannot be condemned

so again one legal nihilist (the genocidaires) is being supported by another (the realpolitikers)

even american critics of american crimes probably don't experience any level of personal shame but anger directed at those they feel shamed their country. a kind of disassociation from their membership in the country.

Morsi sentenced to death, unsurprisingly.

Western nations probably won't comment on it. US gives current Egyptian regime military aid.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/16/us-mideast-crisis-usa-idUSKBN0O10FP20150516

American special operations forces killed a senior Islamic State leader who helped direct the group's oil, gas and financial operations during a raid in eastern Syria, U.S. officials said on Saturday.

The White House said President Barack Obama ordered the overnight raid that killed the man identified as Abu Sayyaf. U.S. officials said his wife, Umm Sayyaf, was captured in the raid and was being held in Iraq.

This was the first known U.S. special forces operation inside Syria apart from a failed secret effort to rescue a number of U.S. and other foreign hostages held by Islamic State in northeastern Syria last year.

But elsewhere

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/isis-looting-destroying-ancient-syrian-sites-industrial-scale-n359461

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/16/world/middleeast/isis-fighters-seize-government-headquarters-in-ramadi-iraq.html

A U.S. military official described the mission, which was met with heavy resistance from ISIS, as a "hugely successful operation" and represents a "significant blow" to the terror network operating in Syria and Iraq.

"Despite the rhetoric, (ISIS) is suffering significant losses in leadership and the ability to conduct operations," the official told NBC News. "Through strikes in Iraq and Syria, the Kurdish offensive in northern Syria and military successes in Iraq, (ISIS) is desperate.”

In Washington, American officials sought to play down the significance of the fall of the government headquarters in Ramadi.

“We’ve said before that there will be good days and bad days in Iraq. ISIL is trying to make today a bad day in Ramadi,” a State Department spokesman, Jeff Rathke, told reporters.

“Ramadi is important,” Mr. Rathke added. “It’s been contested for some time.”

BAGHDAD — The last Iraqi security forces fled the provincial capital of Ramadi on Sunday, as the city fell completely to the militants of the Islamic State, who ransacked the provincial military headquarters, seizing a large store of weapons, and carried out executions of people loyal to the government, according to security officials and tribal leaders.

The fall of Ramadi to the Islamic State, despite intensified American airstrikes in recent weeks in a bid to save the city, represented the biggest victory so far this year for the extremist group, which has declared a caliphate, or Islamic state, in the vast areas of Syria and Iraq that it controls. The fall of Ramadi also laid bare the failed strategy of the Iraqi government, which had announced last month a new offensive to retake Anbar Province, a vast desert region in the west of which Ramadi is the capital.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/18/world/middleeast/isis-ramadi-iraq.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/05/19/why-the-iraqi-army-keeps-failing/

The answer given is not Jeb Bush's one, that the US somehow should have forced the Iraqi government into letting US military stay.