Author Archives: Arthur

Gaza – Send Lawyers, Guns and Money – the shit has hit the fan

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The fan is rotating rapidly and the shit is spreading fast. Old policies have collapsed and policy makers are still talking incoherent nonsense.

Events are moving too rapidly to keep up and I need to catch up before keeping up.

But here’s a quick preview of my tentative opinions on what must be done, right now.

  1. Somebody has to run Gaza, not just for humanitarian relief, but exercising a “Responsibility To Protect” in what is currently a “Failed State”.
  2. Whoever does take responsibility will need both money and guns. Lots of money and lots of guns.
  3. The only plausible candidate is the European Union, and in particular the two former colonial powers that still have a military capability to launch an expeditionary force and govern an interim civil administration in a foreign country – France and Britain.
  4. They will need to use their navies to break the blockade of Gaza and protect humanitarian workers entering both by sea and by land from Egypt. The Gaza coast does not have adequate ports so floating docks will need to be used. They are not going to fight their way in against Israel. So it has to be from the coast and from Egypt. It is up to the fascist regime in Egypt and the ultra-Zionist apartheid regime occupying Palestine whether they want to fight the military escorts of a humanitarian relief intervention.
  5. Both Egypt and Israel have blockaded unarmed relief convoys. That is a war crime and a crime against humanity. There is no point negotiating with the war criminals. Dealing with it requires a well armed escort. Those forces must be assembled now and must be sufficiently large that their opponents choose to just complain instead of fighting.
  6. The costs will have to be shared widely. Negotiations about that will take time. So Britain and France are stuck with having to act immediately and collect compensation later. Delay will cost each of them more as well as costing the rest of the world more.
  7. They are currently bogged down in negotiations with other countries that are basically irrelevant. Whatever discussions are held with the US and Israel may or may not eventually prove useful but obviously cannot speed up assembling a functional intervention force. Likewise for Egypt and other Arab states.
  8. A short, sharp decision is required to break through the fog and make it clear to the world that the cavalry is actually on the way.

Lawyers?

  1. Not my preference for making things happen quickly. But necessary in the current confusion.
  2. The UN and EU will be central to long term funding and progress from the interim administration of Gaza towards a democratic administration of both Gaza and the West bank and later, for long term solutions affecting the entire region. France and Britain will require a legal framework for their operations.
  3. But instead of delaying things while sorting out the legalities, lawyers should be used to cut through the confusion.

Indict the war criminals NOW

  1. The systematic mass slaughter of civilians is not just a “war crime” it is also a “crime against humanity”. That is a legal term of art which confers “Universal Jurisdiction”. The domestic courts of any country can exercise jurisdiction to prevent and punish such crimes, without regard to the territory or nationality of either the victims or perpetrators.
  2. Lawyers in countries like Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands and Spain could file charges within days. Getting to trial could take years. But the charges could and should be filed NOW.
  3. Charging both the leadership of Hamas and the Israeli war cabinet with the notorious war crimes the whole world knows they have flagrantly committed could cut through the confusion.
  4. While Britain and France get on with interim administration and protection of Gaza from both lots of war criminals, people delaying things with “noise” about who started it and elaborate explanations of why the mass slaughter of civilians is justified can just be told to submit their arguments to the courts that are trying the cases against the people they are defending.

As background information for above I am relying heavily on the following source, which I strongly recommend to others and should already be familiar to Australian journalists:

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Spread the WORD – Vote WHY

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Don’t vote YES or NO to “the Voice” – it only encourages them.

Both sides have offered no PLAUSIBLE argument for voting either way. Each merely hopes that voters will be more disgusted with their opponents.

The YES camp stresses that the Voice will have no power to do anything anybody might not like but has a really good vibe, is supported by lots of celebrities and anybody not voting as they are told is a racist.

The NO camp pretends that the Voice could do something terribly dangerous and divisive.

Neither side offers any answers to the usual questions anybody should have about their arguments:

  • What is it that they fear or welcome?
  • Who is going to do it?
  • When are they going to do it?
  • Why are they going to do it?
  • How are they going to do it?

Apart from a small minority of racists, most Australians think something should be done about the abysmal failures in Aboriginal policy.

Some think a “Voice” would at least be a nice gesture.

Others don’t.

The rest of us are wondering WHY these idiots are bothering us with their ridiculous “controversy”.

The law requires:

35 Vote to be marked in private

               Except as otherwise prescribed, a person voting at a polling booth at a referendum shall, upon receipt of a ballot‑paper:

                 (a)  retire alone to an unoccupied voting compartment at the polling booth and mark, in private, his or her vote on the ballot‑paper;

                 (b)  fold the ballot‑paper so as to conceal his or her vote and place it in the ballot‑box; and

                 (c)  leave the booth.

"Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act 1984, Part III

Writing the capital letters WHY in the box complies with this requirement to ensure voters do not leave blank ballot papers for others to complete and that bribed or intimidated voters can easily disregard any unlawful instructions they are given without fear of retribution. It also frustrates any attempt to falsify the voters intention by altering a ballot paper to pretend that it could be a vote for YES or for NO.

Even if a majority in any State or the whole of Australia marks their ballot paper this way those ballot papers will not be counted as formal votes and the result will be determined by those who did vote either YES or NO.

It is highly unlikely that the overall result could be changed if enough people did switch from YES or NO to WHY. There just isn’t enough time or interest to mount a decent campaign.

But if YOU spread the word it might catch on enough so that the current clear majority for NO in every State instead becomes just a majority either way that could have been different if only their opponents had managed to come up with better arguments to persuade people who refused to vote in support of either side.

Then the people smugly convinced that they won because Australians are conservatives taken in by coalition fearmongering about the “dangers” might at least think there could be some other explanation.

Likewise the people smugly convinced that they lost because Australians are conservative and racist unlike the virtuous celebrities might at least become a bit less smug about it.

That could only happen if you also emphasize that the people you are spreading the word to should also spread the word to and convince the people they convince to also spread it.

Many of the people in each camp won’t think even if WHY got a majority.

But there are a lot of people disgusted with “both” sides and likely to not vote for either of them anyway. The more that do so, the more people are likely to start thinking.

Trees have roots, people have legs

Full disclosure: if I did have to vote, I would vote NO rather than appear to join in celebrating the Uluru “Statement from the heart”:

> … the ancestral tie between the land, or ‘mother nature’, and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who were born therefrom, remain attached thereto, and must one day return thither to be united with our ancestors. …

The word “thither” has a sort of Biblical biblical ring to it:

> All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.

At least Lutheran or King James, though even most modern translations don’t use it. Ecclesiastes 1:7

But it isn’t comparing Aborigines to rivers. It is explicitly declaring, as a matter of faith, that Aborigines are part of Australia’s native flora – vegetation.

Even sessile animals such as molluscs that spend most of their lives attached to the land typically have some period of mobility.

Of course a “generous” interpretation would not take the words literally. They are meant to assert the importance of “roots” in the sense of ancestry and lineage rather than a literal claim that indigenous people, like trees, are born from the land, remain attached to the land and must one day return “thither”.

I’m for modernity, and mobility not “roots”.

Australia has one of the easiest to amend Constitutions. We don’t amend it often because the politicians only propose stuff that means nothing.

The last time they offered anything as preposterously silly as this stuff it included “Freedom of Religion” which had been won centuries earlier.

Naturally it was rejected by nearly 70% including majorities in EVERY State and even the ACT from “whence” it came.

This one is also going down. Let’s not give them any excuse for thinking it is due to conservatism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Australian_referendum_(Rights_and_Freedoms)

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If you thought the pseudoleft has a legacy from the sixties you weren’t there

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This is a placeholder for notes I should have written in time for the Platypus Forum on “The Legacy of 1968” today, Saturday 2023-06-24 from 1pm to 4pm.

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Ukraine is leading the Global War Against Fascism – and knows it.

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Nothing to add. Watch it all. Only some excerpts from the end are below.

Update: I could not find proper translation of Zelensky’s speech to Ukraine Parliament of December 28 when I posted excerpts from New Year’s speech below. Above link explains even more clearly than below that Ukraine is leading the global democratic revolution as well as the war against fascism – and knows it.

We are all one family.

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Fighting the Tsar of All the Russias

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  1. I concluded the previous article by saying:

Sending NATO troops to Ukraine would not be particularly helpful. Russia has complete local dominance in its region (land, sea and air) and would defeat NATO in such battles. But if the West wanted to do more than just send arms and other supplies to the Ukrainian resistance it could certainly cause serious military problems for Putin instead of just making speeches. For example Turkey could and should close the Bosphorous to bottle up the Russian fleet (as could and should have been done over Syria). NATO naval forces would be completely dominant everywhere else and could cut off most of Russia’s revenue from trade. It would be up to Russia whether it wished to escalate from a losing position or would prefer to withdraw quickly. A lot of lives could be saved if the West was not so completely gutless…

https://c21stleft.com/2022/02/26/putins-war-on-the-peoples-of-russia-belarus-and-ukraine/

If NATO was as gutless as feared, Turkey would not have done it despite the fact that it really is not optional.

But Turkey HAS done it!!! That makes a BIG difference. It suggests that NATO will fight as well as make speeches.

In time of war, Article 19 of the Montreaux convention clearly prohibits warships of belligerent powers from passing through the straits in Turkish territory except to return to their bases (unless permitted by Turkey on the basis that they are assisting a victim of aggression or fulfilling international obligations). This isn’t optional. Russia is a belligerent. Russia’s Black Sea fleet can only return to Sevastapol (eg from Syria if they were based in Sevastapol rather than Vladivostok or Syria).

Russia’s war on the Syrian people did not make it technically a “belligerent” under that treaty since it was not at war with Syria but allied with the Syrian government iagainst the people, just as the US and Australia were not “belligerents” when the US occupied southern Vietnam and attacked the north in alliance with a puppet “Republic of South Vietnam”.

Turkey could, and should, have exercised its options under Articles 20 and 21 to “consider herself to be threatened with imminent danger of war” and prohibit passages of Russian warships supporting the Syrian regime despite Russia not technically being a “belligerent”.

But there in nothing optional about the prohibition under Article 19. Turkey would be actively complicit with Russia if it pretended Russia was not a belligerent in its current war. Turkey is far from being actively complicit this time, and so is NATO. The Syrian people were betrayed. The Ukrainians may not be.

http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/opus4/frontdoor/deliver/index/docId/50470/file/Dissertation_Yuecel_Kurtulus.pdf

Interestingly Russia’s entire Mediteranean naval presence of 16 ships are currently in Syrian waters headed directly for the Russian base at Tartarus:

Unusual Russian Navy Concentration Seen In Eastern Mediterranean

Preventing Russia’s Black Sea fleet from leaving and permitting NATO naval forces to enter is unlikely to directly affect the war on Ukraine since NATO is unlikely to actually fight Russian naval forces on their home ground.

But if the West is serious about cutting off Russian trade, it has overwhelming naval superiority everywhere else in the world. A naval blockade would be an act of war but it would be up to Russia whether it wished to escalate from a losing position or accept having its ships searched for prohibited contraband by countries supporting the Ukrainian resistance by sanctions. Without the Black Sea fleet Russia really has no option but to submit to Russian ships being prevented from carrying Russian trade. China might well carry Russian trade by land and sea. But could not get Russian goods through customs in most of the developed world.

Some quick notes follow on other measures recently requested by Ukraine.

2. Requests for munitions are being met. The critical thing will be keeping supplies flowing under Russian occupation.

Ukrainia’s borders with the EU and NATO are nearly 1400km.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Border_of_Ukraine

An occupation force of 140,000 can be thought of as 1 every 10m (if they did not have anything else to do).

3. A no fly zone has been requested but not yet offered. Over important parts of the border this could be critical for maintaining the flow of supplies as well as for protecting Ukrainian cities etc. It would take some time to establish since the NATO force posture is not prepared for it. A No Fly Zone does actually mean acts of war to shoot down Russian aircraft and missiles. The Stinger missiles already being supplied for use against assault helicopters etc would be operated by Ukrainian defence forces and would not be an act of war by the suppliers. But more effective air defence operated by NATO from NATO territory would be legitimate targets for Russian counter attack and would need to be heavily defended.

I don’t know how long it would take but it should start right now. NATO does at least have a force posture for rapid deployment to the Lithuania-Poland border area known as the Suwalki gap (named after the nearby town of Suwałki), because it represents a tough-to-defend flat narrow piece of land, a gap, that is between Belarus and Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave and that connects the NATO-member Baltic States to Poland and the rest of NATO.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuania%E2%80%93Poland_border

A no fly zone there would also put pressure on Kaliningrad and Belorussia. It should be extended as rapidly as possible southward to fully cover the border regions close to Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Rumania, then North to Latvia (putting further pressure on Belarus). Later consideration could be given to putting pressure directly on Russia by extending to Estonia and offering to Moldova.

As soon as the air defence deployments can be adequately protected from Russian counter attack they should start shooting down Russian aircraft and missiles. That may not be very soon so lots of munitions should be got across the border as fast as possible to be hidden away for long term use.

4. Removal of Russian veto. That has also been requested despite there being no obvious way it could be done since Russia would veto it.

But it can be done by UN General Assembly deciding to form a replacement United Nations that existing members not currently engaged in wars of aggression prohibited by the UN Charter are invited to join. Why not? The UN needs replacement anyway. Would require agreement on other changes to the Security Council of the replacement organization. That is long overdue and may take more time but the process could be started now and would immediately intensify the isolation of Russia long before it was completed. Even if China refused to join it would be sufficient if India joined together with most countries. The old UN would simply wither away along with the Tsarist regime in Russia.

4. The battle for is for democracy, not just in Ukraine. Victory requires democracy in Belorussia and Russia too:

Ukraine’s guerilla war could topple the Tsar of All the Russias.

Ukrainians will fight

And they have interesting competent leadership from a comedian who could also lead elsewhere