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That being said, your overarching point is well taken by me, that there may indeed be (and I am not as certain of it as you are evidently - these are after all, UN proceedings) a political bias involved. Right now, I'm halfway through a book about humanitarian intervention in international law. The author's main point is that historically, there has been virtually no intervention without political motives being involved, be they unspoken publically.
So far it looks impossible to divorce geopolitical competition from humanitarian interventions or human rights prosecutions (I think a reasonable extrapolation here). Press coverage is a highly determining factor here, and Russia will never catch up with the West in cases like this because few believe the Russian press. How can we tell when RIA Novosti, Moscow Times, Russia Today, Voice of Russia, Interfax, etc when there's little evidence of journalistic independence? (Yes, I read all those - just not lately.)
The bias you propose probably exists to some extent, but is it a result of conspiracy or what I'll call the "quality of information" that good people called upon to make judgements possess? This is a problem that has been raised in the humanitarian intervention debate - the uneveness of enforcement, mostly due to uneven attention given in the press. I wouldn't be surprised if the same dynamic wasn't working here as well. These are highly, highly charged issues.
And with that, I'm off to bed. I must be mad. The alarm clock goes off in 3 1/2 hours. "It Can't Be Just About Us"--Frank Schnittger, ETian Extraordinaire
But once something hits the Security Council, it all appears political What the UN needs is a citizenship of its own.. "It Can't Be Just About Us"--Frank Schnittger, ETian Extraordinaire
I know no one - ot a single person - who would even try to justify Gitmo. Why the world doesn't prefer charges against Rumsfeld, Yoo, Addington, Cheney, Bush et al is beyond me. There is at least one city here in the US who passed a law ordering the arrest of Cheney should he go there. Look at Bashir in Sudan. Not being a party to the ICC is no longer a barrier to prosecution. "It Can't Be Just About Us"--Frank Schnittger, ETian Extraordinaire
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