Amnesty blames Ukraine for Alleged Russian bombardment
To Agnès.Callamard
Amnesty International Secretary-General
August 10, 2022
Dear Ms. Callamard and whom it may concern:
I am writing to express my concern about a purported Amnesty Press release I learned about from the New York Times. Here are the links:
An Amnesty International assessment that Ukraine ‘put civilians in harm’s way’ stirs outrage.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/07/world/europe/amnesty-international-ukraine-russia-war-crimes.html
Ukraine: Ukrainian fighting tactics endanger civilians
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/08/ukraine-ukrainian-fighting-tactics-endanger-civilians/
My concern about this communication is profound.
Even granted this is one message in a larger corpus of Amnesty communications all of which I’ve not read, obvs, nevertheless there are a number of very problematic issues which stand out on first inspection.
First is the issue of tone.
This press release reads like Russian propaganda.
““We have documented a pattern of Ukrainian forces putting civilians at risk and violating the laws of war when they operate in populated areas,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.”
It uses a straw man argument, ““Being in a defensive position does not exempt the Ukrainian military from respecting international humanitarian law.””
Well ofc that’s true, but you don’t actually cite any instance of anyone saying or asserting that. Thus it is a straw man argument.
What the straw man argument elides is that there is a clear distinction in customary law between aggressive war and self-defense.
The judgment of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg states, “War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”
Wars of aggression are recognized as crimes under customary law in the UN Charter Articles 1, 2, 33, and 39; in the Rio Pact; in UN General Assembly Res 3314, in the Rome Statute of the ICC; and elsewhere.
Your framing omits this important fact. You aren’t even even-handed. Your condemnation is weighted in scope and particulars against Ukraine, and thus one might reasonably infer, relatively favorable toward Russia’s perspective.
I find it problematic in the extreme that your April to July investigation of alleged Russian strikes by Russia against Ukrainian protected sites and persons results in this strange press release –condemning Ukraine! Seriously what???
Russia and Ukraine have obligations under customary law of proportionality; respecting cultural sites and hospitals; avoiding aerial bombardment of civilian areas; respecting the rights of prisoners of war and interned civilians; refraining from theft, rape, torture, not punishing people merely for fighting to defend their homeland, and eschewing extrajudicial punishments and executions.
Article 51(3) of the 1977 Additional Protocol I of the 1949 Geneva Convention provides that civilians shall enjoy protection against the dangers arising from military operations “unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities”.
If Russian troops are on the doorstep of Irpan or Bucha or Hostomel what is Ukraine to do, according to Amnesty?
Not defend the town or the people in it and leave them to the tender mercies of the Russians? is that your Amnesty’s idea of “protecting the rights of Ukrainian civilians?” Really? Think this through a bit.
You repeatedly state in this release that “international law” says this, that, and the other thing as though this is a settled and codified body of law. We both know that’s not true. What you do not do is to cite any particular, specific, actual customary law, precedent, resolution, or rule of war at issue.
You use testimonials in lieu of sufficient documented statistics, maps, and dates and locations and particulars. This is an informal logical fallacy, incomplete induction or “arguing from the specific to the general.”
You use weasel words like, “This did not appear to have happened in the cases examined by Amnesty International.” Sorry, but this is a very weak inference on which to end a section. As Carl Sagan famously said, “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”
Your one-sided and manipulative condemnation of Ukraine defending itself gives aid and comfort to Russia and deprecates Ukrainian forces and civilians for defending themselves, their homes, and the civilian population, from Russia’s war of aggression.
When Ukrainians civilians and military defend their homes, and Russians attack them with largely disproportionate, indiscriminate, unguided aerial bombardment, rockets and artillery, is it the Ukrainians who are at fault for defending their homes and families?
Are you sure?
How can you? Just, how can you make such one-sided, misleading, incomplete, erroneous, gaslighting, and classic victim-blaming statements?
Why don’t you send your “extended press release” to your colleague, Maksym Butkevych. Perhaps he’ll enjoy reading your victim-blaming, pro-Russian statement in the Russian concentration camp where you have abandoned him. Please, give him something nice to read between interrogation and re-education sessions. Not this.
The final and greatest concern I have, Ms. Callamard, is for you. Your quoted and published statements are notably lacking in humanity, empathy and caring.
Is this a game to you? All about Amnesty putting out trolling offensive statements to stoke controversy and build buzz for your brand?
When you make statements like these apparently justifying and providing cover for the illegal Russian aggressive war and alleged Russian war crimes, by blaming alleged Russian bombardment of protected buildings, sites, and persons on those targeted, those words should burn your heart and taste like iron on your tongue.
What have you become?
very sincerely and with good will,
Henry Edward Hardy
former Senior Systems Administrator
Tufts University*
*institutional affiliation for identification purposes only
Henry Edward Hardy
Comments on Stephens article in NYT on Democratic Party issue positions
Comments on Stephens article in NYT on Democratic Party issue positions
The practical facts about immigration is that criminalizing it doesn’t stop it.
What it does is present the United States with a conundrum; imprison, intern and/or deport tens of millions of people, many or most of whom have American citizens in their immediate families, or see the rule of law trampled through non-enforcement of an unenforceable & morally reprehensible law.
The alternative to withdrawing from Afghanistan is to keep US forces there forever. How is that in US interests? The US attempt at nation building has been such a notable failure that the US has seen fit to exclude its own puppet government from the peace negotiations.
How is a state of permanent, unwinnable war preferable to peace?
The authorization for use of military force in Afghanistan was premised on the constitutional article regarding letters of marque & reprisal, an anti-pirate clause. Well, the Al Queda “pirates” have been defeated and UBL is long gone. And so should the US be from Afghanistan.
How is it that Mr. Stephens apparently believes that free, taxpayer-supported public education for all is economically unsustainable in the US, though countries such as Germany & Sweden apparently find a way to accomplish this. How bout less spending on permanent wars & dominance of the entire world through economic & military interventions?
Regarding health care, once again, how is it that Stephens believes that the US can’t do what Europe and Canada can in providing free, quality healthcare for all?
To a neoliberal friend
Friend, you are precisely correct in identifying classical liberalism and neoliberalism as being economic philosophies and nothing but that in the strict sense of the terms.
I am using the term liberal in the American political context where liberalism is identified with FDR liberalism which is classic liberalism plus social programs borrowed from democratic socialism and new left liberalism which adds civil rights and anti-war planks to that platform.
In the US political context, neoliberalism is closely identified with the Clintons and has the following characteristics:
* Economic neoliberalsim including deregulation of the banks and industry.
* Rejecting social welfare programs “end welfare as we know it.”
* Support for the military-industrial complex and agressive use of a combination of propaganda and support for pro-American puppets through organizations such as the national endowment for Democracy plus a program of covert assassinations and multiple limited wars abroad, carried out through a combination of pinpoint air attacks and assassinations plus military, training, intel and economic aid for “moderate” terrorist militias.
* Triangulation, the political strategy of running to the left in the primary as a “progressive who gets things done” and then adopting in the general and as a governing strategy a position just slightly right of the Republicans, on the assumption that will create a solid governing majority from the center plus the left, the latter of which will be forced to take whatever crumbs they can get rather than nothing, or the worse republican alternative.
Neoliberalism failed with the Great Recession, and triangulation failed with the DNC and HC’s corrupt manipulation of the primary process.
We supported blue dog, right wing democrats for 50 years and it ended with a kick in Bernie’s teeth at the Convention. A friend of mine told me a lot of specifics about how they were spied on by infiltrators, decredentialled, had their pages taken away, were physically prevented from sitting together in blocks, were shouted down at every time they tried to speak or chant, and were physically manhandled and assaulted by HC and DNC operatives bullying them.
My delegate friend from Brooklyn said it was the saddest and most upset he has been since his father died. I heard similar stories from a number of other people who were there as Bernie delegates and whom I know and trust.
The machine right wing and neoliberal delegates aren’t getting a Mulligan for that, sorry. Not going to happen that we just say no worries well that’s just politics.
If that’s just politics then back at ya. How you liking it so far?
We will never support another Clinton or Clintonian triangulator unless we get equal support for our positions and our candidates. Yes to cooperation and alliance, but no to this entitled assumption that left wing democrats must support right wing democrats, but not the reverse.
Copyright © 2018 Henry Edward Hardy
Thoughts on policy toward North Korea
So the UN has put even more stringent sanctions on North Korea. I don’t see where that is going to force North Korea into abandoning its nuclear and ICBM arsenal and development. At best the sanctions slow the nuclear program by limiting access to hard currency.
Maybe, maybe, a more adept US administration could persuade North Korea into joining the Test Ban Treaty. They could commit first to no atmospheric testing, which would essentially cost them nothing since they haven’t been conducting atmospheric tests. However, more competent administrations have tried and failed to contain North Korea using negotiated agreements.
Absent a US-Russian-Chinese agreement to go in and denuclearize North Korea by force, the US has to accept that North Korea is a nuclear state and has no intention of denuclearizing, ever.
North Korea looks at states like Ukraine and Libya which did denuclearize, and later saw their governments overthrown by US-backed coups, and this doesn’t look like a good scenario to them.
Engaging in a florid war of words with the North Koreans, with insults like “Little Rocket Man,” is a spectacularly bad and unwise strategy. They are on the paranoid side of insecure, so we should be as stolid and predictable and imperturbable as possible. Enduring a million “dotards” is better than enduring a single nuclear strike on the US or its allies.
China is most concerned with a break-up of NK with loose nukes and a huge refugee crisis on their borders, and that would be a horrible situation. The US needs to not squeeze NK so hard that it collapses into warlords or a Mad Max-like anarchy.
The best option I can present is make the best of a bad situation. Treat them like Pakistan, more or less. If the US simply refuses to give NK a seat in the club of nuclear powers, it loses all chances of NK ever adhering to customary law, and it invites NK to make some kind of demonstration, which could go hideously wrong in a number of ways.
Copyright © 2017, 2018 Henry Edward Hardy
Never Again
400,000 Americans and 20 million Allies died violently fighting Fascism in World War II. Another 35 million were tortured, gassed, burned, died of disease and privation, slaughtered, bombed, starved, shot, and beaten to death.
Yes Mr. Trump, I expect that “some of them were good people.”
And God bless them all for saving the world. And damn us all if we let it happen again.
Never. Again.
Copyright © 2017 Henry Edward Hardy
About Scanlyze
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Scanlyze is an online magazine of essays, commentary, satire, and analysis. Were we half as clever, for inspiration we would take Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Swift, Montaigne, or Seneca.
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John F. Kennedy, October 26, 1963
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