The fact that you didn't see such evidence does not prove that the tribunal has no influential political powers working on it. It proves only that you lack access to those pieces of data, if they do exist.
Of course there are influential political powers "working" on the tribunal. Everyone is trying to "work" on the tribunal, be it by helping it reach its decisions, or by undermining its credibility.
As for this data that we don't have access to, I guess innocent until proven guilty doesn't apply in this case? Name one precedent of an earlier international tribunal for which clear evidence exists of tampering.
What would the IT need to do to make itself credible? Does it depend on the verdict it reaches, or the way in which it reaches it?
The burden of proof lies with you to demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that the tribunal is bogus. Simple presumption of innocence principle.
The default hypothesis is that the tribunal is biased. The burden of proof lies on proving it to be fair :-)
Read taifoon's last post :
What is evident however and can be referred to with a minimum of certainty, is two facts. One is that, few people are usually initiated on high level political procedures and deals, let alone international ditto. Transparency, at those interaction levels, is usually measured by the amount of tailored info leaked to the media.
Could not have said it better, and this applies to previous international trials.
Moreover, if the investigation is any indicator of what the tribunal will be like, there is your evidence of a bogus tribunal. Are you going to argue that the bogus investigation does not offer any insight of what the tribunal is like?
That is very weak argumentation. To make a comparison, you deal with teenagers almost on a daily basis, as you state elsewhere on the forum. I don't see any evidence that you are a child rapist. Of course that does not prove that you are not a child rapist. It only proves I lack access to the pieces of data that incriminate you as a child rapist, if they do exist.
Even though political influence on politically initiated processes are, to a normal observer, more logically tied to one another than associating child rape to generally dealing with teenagers (parents, doctors, teachers, ice-cream sellers etc..), you are still absolutely correct. Of course, unless you yourself are one of those teenagers involved in daily interactions with me, you wouldn’t know for sure. The same way lack of access to data on your jins does not prove that you are not a fagg0t or lesbian.. model 3atil.
Also with this, not so very intelligent, attempt at making a valid comparison, you proved the more my point: You lacking access to evidence, if they do exist, does not prove that they do not exist, but only that you don’t know they exist.
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Originally Posted by Souss
The burden of proof lies with you to demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that the tribunal is bogus. Simple presumption of innocence principle.
Is gravity bogus? Certainly not, you can prove it exists, through indirect observation of its effect on objects all around you. The same can safely be deduced in regard to the US influence. When you don’t have effective tools to wire-tap or video record each and every conversation and encounter that took or takes place between US, French or British officials and UN folks, you are left with indirect observations. Those are the sum of a more than a thousand current, as well as past, events that demonstrate without a grain of doubt that the US does indeed exercise political influence on and interference in politically conditioned procedures and mechanisms that take place on the international arena, including tribunals. Heck, it is a fact the americans tampered with another political process, the so called WMD evidence, presented to the UN when asking for its support to invade Iraq. Or when, back in 1999, major papers ran front-page investigative stories revealing that the CIA had covertly used U.N. weapons inspectors to spy on Iraq for the U.S.'s own intelligence purposes.
So, sure, presumption of innocence principle is one principle that respectable courts of law, that strictly serve at the domain of justice, have to always rely on. Such principle can be easily maintained and also monitored through the simple tool i mentioned in my previous reply : Transparency, on all levels. Rarely the case with politics, politically generated events, or when politically initiated processes like tribunals are usually set up, and neither in political analysis thereof.
I give you an example on why you don’t usually apply the “innocent until proven guilty” principle 3al 3imyene and everywhere outside courts of justice, including in politics: Tell me, Is Joumblat’s blood-guilt bogus? Have your, or others’ eyes, seen him kill people with own hands? Or heard him order genocide? Is he, or is he not, still largely perceived as a mass killer and not so “innocent until proven guilty”, by you, and the majority of those who did directly experience his influence on the course of their mass killing and cleansing?
Of course there are influential political powers "working" on the tribunal. Everyone is trying to "work" on the tribunal, be it by helping it reach its decisions, or by undermining its credibility.
As for this data that we don't have access to, I guess innocent until proven guilty doesn't apply in this case? Name one precedent of an earlier international tribunal for which clear evidence exists of tampering.
The only problem with your question is that we have only less than a handful of similar tribunals to compare with, which makes it statistically insignificant to talk of precedents.. Let alone this very unique case that actually has no precedents at all!
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Originally Posted by International Crisis Group
the Tribunal marks an unprecedented moment in the history of international justice, being the first time any such body was ever established to address a political crime that targeted specific political assassinationsRead the whole article here
Another reflection on the issue is mentioned in this relatively fresh Time article:
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Originally Posted by Time
No other international tribunal has been established on the basis of one man’s murder (others such as those for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia dealt with genocide and war crimes), making it unique in the relatively new field of international jurisprudence — and highly political as well.
Amnesty International, the human rights watchdog, suggested that the tribunal was “politically selective” and that it should address the enormous number of other serious crimes committed in Lebanon in recent decades, especially during the 1975-1990 civil war. “The mandate is by far the narrowest of any tribunal of an international nature,” Amnesty said in a statement issued Friday.
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What would the IT need to do to make itself credible? Does it depend on the verdict it reaches, or the way in which it reaches it?
You might shake your head and smile (or start weeping ), but the IT would be perceived as one 100% credible only if it finally delivers a verdict accusing Israel or the USA of the murder of Hariri .. Utterly twisted logic, right? Not so, actually, if you think about your question and take into consideration what i previously wrote on the subject in your other thread
Let me conclude my opinion on the issue:
As a much influential power, the US, since the Syrians withdrew and according to my observations, has been working on the destruction of Lebanon which, not surprisingly, is a continuation of its Ta'if conduct, with adjustments.
If this was done only for the purpose of raw destruction or as needed "collateral damage" to accomplish something else, is irrelevant.. We've seen all too many evidence to that during the last 4 years to deny it. To have those cowboys suddenly care for a killed MP like Hariri and rush in with all their diplomatic might - and yes, without their admittance, there would be no IT no ballout- to set up a tribunal, and then lift their political tentacles off from it, doesn't really fit into the picture of them building concrete walls in Iraq, unleashing the flattening of Lebanon on Israeli hands during 2006 after inciting sectarian and political divisions inside it.
Lebanon is an open killing field for different intelligence agencies, including the syrians, americans and israelis. IF, and only IF, there is the slightest probability that Israel or US paid agents lied behind the Hariri killing, it is as evident as the sun is warm that the IT will never be allowed to investigate those tracks, let alone reach a verdict on the case. This is not the same as me claiming that Syria or someone else is innocent. Syrians could naturally have done it. However and sadly, it just happened so that specifically in this region of the world, you have on one hand the US and Israeli interests tightly monitoring, if not directly holding, such a sensitive UN process by its' neck, and on the other hand our own desperate hopes for real and genuine transparency, for the sake of our own survival. Tough dilemma.
The default hypothesis is that the tribunal is biased. The burden of proof lies on proving it to be fair :-)
Read taifoon's last post :
What is evident however and can be referred to with a minimum of certainty, is two facts. One is that, few people are usually initiated on high level political procedures and deals, let alone international ditto. Transparency, at those interaction levels, is usually measured by the amount of tailored info leaked to the media.
Could not have said it better, and this applies to previous international trials.
What Taifoon said is very weak. He is basing his mistrust of the tribunal on the fact that this is the first tribunal of its type, and on the false assertion that "usually there is no transparency".
Starting with the hypothesis that the tribunal is biased not only defies sound legal reasoning, but is also completely illogical. There are 2 possible approaches you can take:
1. This is the first tribunal of its kind, therefore we cannot pre-judge it in any way. It therefore has a blank slate and the default hypothesis is obviously that it is fair.
2. You give your initial assessment of its fairness based on the most comparable other tribunals, i.e. tribunals set up by the UN. That is also a fair approach. If you look at any of the UN tribunals, you will find that they have been fair and transparent in their proceedings, whether in Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, or others. Going even further, UN judicial bodies have convicted the US of terrorism in the past.
Yes, setting up these tribunals requires political backing. But UN tribunals have credibility once they are set up. It doesn't mean that this one will be fair, but to state that the default hypothesis is that it's bogus is ludicrous.
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Originally Posted by Convergence
Moreover, if the investigation is any indicator of what the tribunal will be like, there is your evidence of a bogus tribunal. Are you going to argue that the bogus investigation does not offer any insight of what the tribunal is like?
Saying the investigation is bogus is a huge shortcut. The only thing we know is that there were attempts to falsify evidence by the Lebanese side, and that the UN investigator in charge at the time (Mehlis) was either fooled or a party in this falsification. There is nothing that indicates that UN investigators that succeeded him did anything wrong, or that the rest of the investigation was not properly conducted.
UN investigations have credibility. Some have concluded there is evidence of war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza, and they have been explicit about it. Where does that fit in the theory that the US controls everything? Nowhere.
What is true is that the US (and other powers) by design have significant leverage in the UN Security Council and that it can prevent the application of the tribunal conclusions, since the tribunal must rely on outside parties for enforcement. So say the Tribunal indicts Dick Cheney's death squads and asks for him to be brought to justice. It is reasonable to assume the US will block such efforts at the UNSC.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Taifoon
Even though political influence on politically initiated processes are, to a normal observer, more logically tied to one another than associating child rape to generally dealing with teenagers (parents, doctors, teachers, ice-cream sellers etc..), you are still absolutely correct. Of course, unless you yourself are one of those teenagers involved in daily interactions with me, you wouldn’t know for sure. The same way lack of access to data on your jins does not prove that you are not a fagg0t or lesbian.. model 3atil.
Also with this, not so very intelligent, attempt at making a valid comparison, you proved the more my point: You lacking access to evidence, if they do exist, does not prove that they do not exist, but only that you don’t know they exist.
Correct. Lacking access to evidence does not prove this evidence doesn't exist. Hence accusing someone based on this assertion, the same way you are accusing the tribunal of unfairness, would of course not be valid (regardless of whether they show an ugly discriminatory side )
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Originally Posted by Taifoon
Is gravity bogus? Certainly not, you can prove it exists, through indirect observation of its effect on objects all around you.
No you can't. Gravity is a theory, which has actually been superseded by another one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Taifoon
The same can safely be deduced in regard to the US influence.
No you can't, or at the very least you need to specify to what spheres of influence you want to make this assumption. While it is reasonable for bodies like the UN Security Council, it's not for UN tribunals.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Taifoon
When you don’t have effective tools to wire-tap or video record each and every conversation and encounter that took or takes place between US, French or British officials and UN folks, you are left with indirect observations. Those are the sum of a more than a thousand current, as well as past, events that demonstrate without a grain of doubt that the US does indeed exercise political influence on and interference in politically conditioned procedures and mechanisms that take place on the international arena, including tribunals. Heck, it is a fact the americans tampered with another political process, the so called WMD evidence, presented to the UN when asking for its support to invade Iraq. Or when, back in 1999, major papers ran front-page investigative stories revealing that the CIA had covertly used U.N. weapons inspectors to spy on Iraq for the U.S.'s own intelligence purposes.
Of course the US exercises political influence, but that is certainly not enough to incriminate the current tribunal. What you are saying though, is that its influence is absolute, which is simply not true. In fact the evidence points in the opposite direction, specifically regarding tribunals.
For example, the International Court of Justice (the main UN judicial body) actually judged the US was guilty of using "unlawful use of force" (in other words, terrorism) against Nicaragua, even awarding reparations. The US of course didn't comply, and vetoed 6 Security Council resolutions related to this judgment.
So you can make as many indirect observations as you want, but you will find very few that apply to UN tribunals. You would be correct in drawing these conclusions in relation to UN bodies like the Security Council. Regarding the WMD evidence, while it's true that it was falsified, it has nothing to do with the UN. In fact the UN rejected the US so-called evidence since it did not authorize the use of force against Iraq.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Taifoon
So, sure, presumption of innocence principle is one principle that respectable courts of law, that strictly serve at the domain of justice, have to always rely on. Such principle can be easily maintained and also monitored through the simple tool i mentioned in my previous reply : Transparency, on all levels. Rarely the case with politics, politically generated events, or when politically initiated processes like tribunals are usually set up, and neither in political analysis thereof.
Actually, UN tribunals are very transparent. The most notorious UN tribunal, the Yugoslavia War Crimes Tribunal has a website where you can browse online through 150,000 documents, including evidence. Saying that there is no transparency in UN tribunals is a baseless false accusation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Taifoon
I give you an example on why you don’t usually apply the “innocent until proven guilty” principle 3al 3imyene and everywhere outside courts of justice, including in politics: Tell me, Is Joumblat’s blood-guilt bogus? Have your, or others’ eyes, seen him kill people with own hands? Or heard him order genocide? Is he, or is he not, still largely perceived as a mass killer and not so “innocent until proven guilty”, by you, and the majority of those who did directly experience his influence on the course of their mass killing and cleansing?
He is perceived as a mass killer of course, but putting him in jail without trial, while satisfying to me and many others, could not be considered as fair. From a legal standpoint, yes he is innocent until proven guilty. If you aspire to a civilized society (as opposed to the proverbial farm), you cannot but support a fair trial for Jumblat or anyone else. The main problem is not the lack of evidence, but of course the dysfunctionality of our legal system. But that's a discussion for another thread.
The Following User Says Thank You to Souss For This Useful Post:
What Taifoon said is very weak. He is basing his mistrust of the tribunal on the fact that this is the first tribunal of its type, and on the false assertion that "usually there is no transparency".
Not so. taifoon's mistrust of the tribunal is based more on the substantial fact that this is a politically staged tribunal, first and foremost ( not exclusively on it for being the first tribunal of its kind)
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Starting with the hypothesis that the tribunal is biased not only defies sound legal reasoning, but is also completely illogical. There are 2 possible approaches you can take:
1. This is the first tribunal of its kind, therefore we cannot pre-judge it in any way. It therefore has a blank slate and the default hypothesis is obviously that it is fair.
2. You give your initial assessment of its fairness based on the most comparable other tribunals, i.e. tribunals set up by the UN. That is also a fair approach. If you look at any of the UN tribunals, you will find that they have been fair and transparent in their proceedings, whether in Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, or others. Going even further, UN judicial bodies have convicted the US of terrorism in the past.
Yes, setting up these tribunals requires political backing. But UN tribunals have credibility once they are set up. It doesn't mean that this one will be fair, but to state that the default hypothesis is that it's bogus is ludicrous.
Two statements, two flaws. A reminder of the main issue we are discussing here: This is a unique UN tribunal, a highly political tribunal, the first of its kind that handles the assassination of a political figure, an MP.
This fact alone should render your above assertions obsolete and not applicable. The minute you introduce a political component to a judiciary process of this caliber, judicial principles and credibility - ad-absurdum - thereof get reduced, and cease to fully apply. And I didn't yet get started on the issue of the innate political involvement of the US in the context of our country in specific and its tight Israeli connection, regional wise, and in relation to the UN, in general.
In other words, this discussion can be reduced to this:
Souss claims that one should presume a default non-biased tribunal; this should be the usual sound approach reasonable people have got to adopt before similar judicial processes.. why? yes, because, by design, this process is run by the UN () with a couple of previous similar processes that turned out to be credible.
taifoon on the other hand claims that, in this particular region of the world, the special Americo-Israeli political relationship casts an omni-potent shadow over nearly every political aspect, including those that involve the UN and UN activities (do we need to dig records?). This should be taken as a fact and not fiction. And since this specific UN tribunal is by default a politically generated process, it would be ridiculous not to believe that this tribunal will not be affected by the influence of the aforementioned Americo-Israeli "political shadow".
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Saying the investigation is bogus is a huge shortcut. The only thing we know is that there were attempts to falsify evidence by the Lebanese side, and that the UN investigator in charge at the time (Mehlis) was either fooled or a party in this falsification. There is nothing that indicates that UN investigators that succeeded him did anything wrong, or that the rest of the investigation was not properly conducted.
I am only asking to take into consideration and not dismiss our very special preconditions, before, as you do, wanting to apply generic assumptions, à la "innocence until proven guilty", lack of evidence of the US influence on the process etc..
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UN investigations have credibility. Some have concluded there is evidence of war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza, and they have been explicit about it. Where does that fit in the theory that the US controls everything? Nowhere.
That was a self scored goal.. Ban Ki-Moon just asserted that Israel did not commit any war crimes in Gaza, he called them "negligence or recklessness" instead, and definitely not in regard to the civilian inhabitants, but only to UN sites and almost exclusively UN employees. Here
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Originally Posted by guardian
A UN inquiry accused the Israeli military today of "negligence or recklessness" in its conduct of the war in Gaza.
The summary of the UN report, commissioned by the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, censured the Israeli government for causing death, injuries and damage to UN property in seven incidents involving action by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF).
It said: "The board concluded that IDF actions involved varying degrees of negligence or recklessness with regard to United Nations premises and to the safety of United Nations staff and other civilians within those premises, with consequent deaths, injuries, and extensive physical damage and loss of property."
However, in a blow to human rights campaigners, Ban said there would be no further investigation despite the report calling for a full impartial inquiry.
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What is true is that the US (and other powers) by design have significant leverage in the UN Security Council and that it can prevent the application of the tribunal conclusions, since the tribunal must rely on outside parties for enforcement. So say the Tribunal indicts Dick Cheney's death squads and asks for him to be brought to justice. It is reasonable to assume the US will block such efforts at the UNSC.
True, but my doubts go further, and here's another angle about how we defer on this issue: According to me, the UN tribunal will not be allowed to reach such conclusion, even if there does exist incriminating evidence against this guy or other ditto, in the first place. You still reserve a slight possibility that it might.
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Correct. Lacking access to evidence does not prove this evidence doesn't exist. Hence accusing someone based on this assertion, the same way you are accusing the tribunal of unfairness, would of course not be valid (regardless of whether they show an ugly discriminatory side )
mm, we agree on that.
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No you can't. Gravity is a theory, which has actually been superseded by another one.
You don't say! I am not really into semantics here, science boils constantly with theories, yes.. With Gravity, i refer to the observed and well established scientific phenomenon by which objects are attracted to one another. This is not a theory, as in an attempt to explain the observation, but the main observation itself.
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No you can't, or at the very least you need to specify to what spheres of influence you want to make this assumption. While it is reasonable for bodies like the UN Security Council, it's not for UN tribunals.
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Of course the US exercises political influence, but that is certainly not enough to incriminate the current tribunal. What you are saying though, is that its influence is absolute, which is simply not true. In fact the evidence points in the opposite direction, specifically regarding tribunals.
I refer you back to the first paragraph of this reply: This is not A UN tribunal, this is A Political UN Tribunal and the US does usually exercise influence on Political Tribunals, or don't they? In lack of precedents, i will have to resort to past observations and tendencies, as explained earlier in regard to our specific political environment.
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For example, the International Court of Justice (the main UN judicial body) actually judged the US was guilty of using "unlawful use of force" (in other words, terrorism) against Nicaragua, even awarding reparations. The US of course didn't comply, and vetoed 6 Security Council resolutions related to this judgment.
I see that in your attempt to bundle everything that is branded UN and Judicial into one credibility package, you fail to notice the difference in judicial nature between this particular politically set UN tribunal and the one you mention. This is what Wiki says about it:
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Originally Posted by Wiki
The International Court of Justice (French: Cour internationale de justice; commonly referred to as the World Court or ICJ) is the primary judicial organ of the United Nations... Its main functions are to settle legal disputes submitted to it by states and to give advisory opinions on legal questions submitted to it by duly authorized international organs, agencies, and the UN General Assembly. The ICJ should not be confused with the International Criminal Court, which also potentially has "global" jurisdiction.
You're actually comparing bananas to carrots :)
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So you can make as many indirect observations as you want, but you will find very few that apply to UN tribunals. You would be correct in drawing these conclusions in relation to UN bodies like the Security Council. Regarding the WMD evidence, while it's true that it was falsified, it has nothing to do with the UN. In fact the UN rejected the US so-called evidence since it did not authorize the use of force against Iraq.
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Actually, UN tribunals are very transparent. The most notorious UN tribunal, the Yugoslavia War Crimes Tribunal has a website where you can browse online through 150,000 documents, including evidence. Saying that there is no transparency in UN tribunals is a baseless false accusation.
You still notoriously refer to either one or another tribunal, that has no similarities whatsoever with this one here. Anyway, until you show me a similar "transparency" act for this one tribunal, my doubts will remain.
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He is perceived as a mass killer of course, but putting him in jail without trial, while satisfying to me and many others, could not be considered as fair. From a legal standpoint, yes he is innocent until proven guilty. If you aspire to a civilized society (as opposed to the proverbial farm), you cannot but support a fair trial for Jumblat or anyone else. The main problem is not the lack of evidence, but of course the dysfunctionality of our legal system. But that's a discussion for another thread.
I don't object a fair trial for Joumblat just as much as i don't oppose a fair process to bring a just IT outcome. This does not however contradict my line of reasoning that both, according to common sense and current preconditions of being, have the needed pre-requisites to be perceived as not so "innocent until proved guilty". Of course, a definite verdict on both will have to wait until their "judicial process" is properly done with.
(aren't these lengthy replies becoming a pain )
3rd May 2009
), but the IT would be perceived as one 100% credible only if it finally delivers a verdict accusing Israel or the USA of the murder of Hariri 
) with a couple of previous similar processes that turned out to be credible.
You don't say! I am not really into semantics here, science boils constantly with theories, yes.. With Gravity, i refer to the observed and well established scientific phenomenon by which objects are attracted to one another. This is not a theory, as in an attempt to explain the observation, but the main observation itself.
The International Tribunal needs your help! -
26th June 2009
29th June 2009
