Moderators: Alyrium Denryle, Edi, K. A. Pital
This is an amendment to prior post.Hey, I am not talking about the native ugandan gays playing warsaw ghetto uprising...
AIDS prevention and treatment would only serve as a means by which the government could root our or terrorize gay people and their allies. That ought be cut as well.Sure, keep the AIDS medical missions and humanitarian stuff,
Whether you give or cut off AIDS prevention and treatment help, it doesn't affect gays. Uganda (at least from what I read) specifically excludes gays from their program despite the fact that generally speaking, gay men are at the highest risk for the disease.Alyrium Denryle wrote:AIDS prevention and treatment would only serve as a means by which the government could root our or terrorize gay people and their allies. That ought be cut as well.
Considering that the Chinese government has a history of blocking action against various nasty countries (Iran, North Korea, Sudan, etc), their government is clearly rather uninterested in pressuring brutal dictators. Not surprising considering its composed of brutal dictators as well.Samuel wrote:China is not evil. They are going to ask "why should we give you money to kill gays" and decide that they can spend the money on better things, like investments.
My understanding was that their are quite a lot of raw resources left in Africa, though I admit I don't know weather this is the case for Uganda specifically. I'll look it up. I do vaguely recall seeing an article some time ago about the unsavory African governments China was making friends with in an effort to get resources, but I don't know where it is now.It is land locked, territorally small and in the center of the planet's poorest continent.
Do you realize that in this context you are quite possibly talking about (and condoning) the assassination of United States Congressmen, among others (depending on just how extensive the involvement of these Congressmen actually is)?Only if isolated. If they continue this campaigning (which there is every evidence they are going to) than they are legitamate targets, not for Ugandans, but for individuals in the next country on their list. Really, it is nothing more than a case of self defense.
I don't know about that. Let's say we assassinated the leader of Uganda (ignoring for the sake of this hypothetical all the other moral and political implications of doing so). Wouldn't his VP or whatever just immediately replace him? And even if you killed the entire legislature, don't the society and values that allowed this still exist? So yes, it is very much a question of nation-building.You are talking about nation building. We can change regimes by assassination or bombing.
Doesn't E.O. 12333, signed by Reagan in 1981 and modified in 1998, and again in 2004, prohibit the US government from using assassination ?Samuel wrote:We can change regimes by assassination or bombing.
The Constitution sets international treaties we sign just below it in terms of hierarchy, yet GW violated the antiballistic missile treaty when he started positioning interceptors in Poland. Not that I disagree with him violating that treaty mind you, I find it naive, but the point is we did it unilaterally without attempts to renegotiate it.Yona wrote:Doesn't E.O. 12333, signed by Reagan in 1981 and modified in 1998, and again in 2004, prohibit the US government from using assassination ?Samuel wrote:We can change regimes by assassination or bombing.
In the short term the next individual wouldn't oppose us because they wouldn't want to die as well. It doesn't work in the long term because it makes them appear to be a foreign puppet or someone finds a work around. Violence intervention isn't a good idea because we can actually bring them to heel without killing.I don't know about that. Let's say we assassinated the leader of Uganda (ignoring for the sake of this hypothetical all the other moral and political implications of doing so). Wouldn't his VP or whatever just immediately replace him? And even if you killed the entire legislature, don't the society and values that allowed this still exist? So yes, it is very much a question of nation-building.
Yes, but China has not provided funds to countries so that they can practice genocide.Considering that the Chinese government has a history of blocking action against various nasty countries (Iran, North Korea, Sudan, etc), their government is clearly rather uninterested in pressuring brutal dictators. Not surprising considering its composed of brutal dictators as well.
Since I'm not allowed to condone the assassination, no matter how many people die as a result of their actions, I'm going to have to concede.Do you realize that in this context you are quite possibly talking about (and condoning) the assassination of United States Congressmen, among others (depending on just how extensive the involvement of these Congressmen actually is)?
Can you not also realize that assassinating foreign politicians and missionaries will do absolutely nothing to gain international support for any resistance in Uganda or anywhere else, and will thus only undermine rather than help their efforts?
On the subject of any foreign politicians and missionaries and so on behind this legislation, the solution is to lobby them, protest them, vote them out, boycott them, and charge them, but not assassinate them. Where a peaceful means of bringing someone to Justice is available, that is the option that should be employed, not violence.
Wasn't the ABM Treaty, signed with a nation that no longer existed and already being violated by the "Star Wars" ABM development program? Therefore, wouldn't Bush have just been the fourth president to have carried forth an ongoing violation even if he hadn't positioned the interceptors in Poland (which used to be part of the nation the ABM Treaty was signed with in the first place)?General Schatten wrote:The Constitution sets international treaties we sign just below it in terms of hierarchy, yet GW violated the antiballistic missile treaty when he started positioning interceptors in Poland. Not that I disagree with him violating that treaty mind you, I find it naive, but the point is we did it unilaterally without attempts to renegotiate it.
My mistake; I mixed up the Warsaw Pact with the USSR (although the Warsaw Pact was under total Soviet control until the USSR disbanded). My apologies.Stas Bush wrote:Poland was never part of the USSR. Learn your geography.
Well, that's one way it could work out. The other ways it could work out include a surge of anti-American sentiment sweeping Ugandan politics and a more anti-America government coming into power, as well as the possibility that whoever replaced the current government would be worse than the current one. At the risk of appearing to stereotype, there is not exactly an abundance of good leaders in sub-Saharan Africa.Samuel wrote: In the short term the next individual wouldn't oppose us because they wouldn't want to die as well.
No shit?It doesn't work in the long term because it makes them appear to be a foreign puppet or someone finds a work around.
Quite. Their are a host of tactics the civilized world can employ against these bastards before armed action.Violence intervention isn't a good idea because we can actually bring them to heel without killing.
I'm not going to argue that. In any case, concerns about China were only one possible reason I gave for why Obama wouldn't act in this case. It doesn't change my point, which is basically that Obama doesn't want to kill all gays (obviously), but like many Presidents before him he's apparently turning a blind eye to an atrocity, presumably for political reasons which at this point remain unknown to me.Yes, but China has not provided funds to countries so that they can practice genocide.
It doesn't matter how much damage they do, and it wouldn't matter if the actions you described were perfectly legal. Even if it were perfectly legal to assassinate the backers of this legislation (and it would not be in any sane world), I would oppose it on both moral and practical grounds.Since I'm not allowed to condone the assassination, no matter how many people die as a result of their actions, I'm going to have to concede.
Would it be relevant to ask whether the freedoms of assembly and speech are codified in Ugandan law the way they are in the American Constitution? Or is your point more general, that assembly and speech are basic human rights and that Uganda ought to be more concerned for them?Simon_Jester wrote:I think it's worthwhile to reflect that there are really two crimes being committed by the Ugandan government here. One is the mass murder and imprisonment directed against Ugandan homosexuals specifically, but hidden inside that crime is another one directed at the Ugandan people as a whole.
This bill, as I understand it, effectively abolishes freedom of assembly on the issue of gay rights. Imagine that I am a Ugandan Christian, and one day I am hit with a stunning vision, by all appearances divinely inspired. The vision makes it clear to me that homosexuals are God's children too, and that while they might well be doing something I don't like, subjecting them to torment and death is horribly unjust.* So I go out and start preaching to this effect.
I could get arrested for (for lack of a better term) aiding and abetting homosexuality. Where is my freedom of speech here?
It is true, of course, that a government that suppresses freedoms like speech and assembly isn't very concerned about democracy but doesn't the legitimacy of a government hinge upon whether the people it governs regard it as legitimate rather than whether people abroad regard it as such?Simon_Jester wrote:Of course, I have no illusions about the likelihood that the Ugandan people will let this pass, and possibly other, similar crimes committed in the name of suppressing vice and promoting virtue. The odds approach 100%, and I know it quite well. But I think it's relevant that the specific target of the legislation is not the only victim here, especially if we're discussing the legitimacy of the Ugandan government or its commitment to democracy.
"DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source)
- PeZookThe latter. Mainly because without a right to assembly and speech, you can't keep other rights for long. Even if there are elections it won't matter, because the election results won't reflect an honest discussio nof the issues. Without the ability to talk about government policies, the only recourse anyone not directly involved with government has to change those policies is through violence or bribery.Serafine666 wrote:Would it be relevant to ask whether the freedoms of assembly and speech are codified in Ugandan law the way they are in the American Constitution? Or is your point more general, that assembly and speech are basic human rights and that Uganda ought to be more concerned for them?
I contend that governments which don't meet certain conditions may be "accepted," in the sense that the public goes along with them and they have a right to be treated as the government by foreigners. But they are not "legitimate" in the sense that it is in any way wrong to overthrow them. Replacing one monarch with another is not in the same category as, say, staging a coup to replace a republic with a monarch.It is true, of course, that a government that suppresses freedoms like speech and assembly isn't very concerned about democracy but doesn't the legitimacy of a government hinge upon whether the people it governs regard it as legitimate rather than whether people abroad regard it as such?
Agreed. I think this is closely related to my point. A coup in Africa that replaces one dictator or quasi-oligarchical "party" with another may be a change for the worse for the better, a practical good or bad, but it isn't necessarily an ethical good or bad. It doesn't default to being wrong the way that, say, a bunch of English people plotting to overthrow Parliament because they want to enact Radical Unpopular Agenda #6 in England would.Stas Bush wrote:We're talking about places that can barely be called functional societies; I would even say they mock the very concepts of functional society and government. Hence, there is no "commitment" to "democracy" - the social order in Uganda can be called a democracy only in a joking manner. Unless, of course, any society and government no matter how dysfunctional, still gets the description of "democracy" just by formal approach.
Legitimacy of African governments also stands as a very shaky concept, given the aforementioned dysfunctional state of them, and the society they "govern".
When I talk about this kind of thing, I'm talking entirely about self-intervention: the locals trying to overthrow their own government. I know quite well it won't happen over something like this, but that doesn't mean that they wouldn't be justified in trying to make it happen.Shroom Man 777 wrote:Any shmuck who goes on like that prick Chocolate Kiwii about drastic intervention should note that Uganda already has been a British colony for like eighty years and that never did a lick of spit of difference in curbing these horrific ass-backwards societal tendencies. Hell, looking at historic Western intervention, post-colonially most of the places end up reverting ass-backwards anyway.
True enough. And then we have historical accidents like India, China, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and the Philippines that came out pretty good for reasons beyond our capacity to properly understand since it couldn't have had anything to do with the western imperialists who spent years walking around like they owned the place.Shroom Man 777 wrote:Any shmuck who goes on like that prick Chocolate Kiwii about drastic intervention should note that Uganda already has been a British colony for like eighty years and that never did a lick of spit of difference in curbing these horrific ass-backwards societal tendencies. Hell, looking at historic Western intervention, post-colonially most of the places end up reverting ass-backwards anyway.
I thought that's what you meant but I wanted to be sure.Simon_Jester wrote:The latter. Mainly because without a right to assembly and speech, you can't keep other rights for long. Even if there are elections it won't matter, because the election results won't reflect an honest discussion of the issues. Without the ability to talk about government policies, the only recourse anyone not directly involved with government has to change those policies is through violence or bribery.
A system where policy is determined by bribes stops respecting the rights of those who can't pay; a system where policy is determined by violence stops respecting any rights at all.
So you're more talking about "legitimacy" in the sense of someone foreign to the country examining the government. Makes sense enough although I think it'd be a rather strange situation to have a government that is extremely popular with the governed that is nonetheless regarded as "illegitimate" by outsiders because it isn't responsible to its people by some non-revolutionary means. It is interesting, though, that you mention a right of a government not to be overthrown since I was under the impression that no government has a right to power, just a privilege conferred by the populace.Simon_Jester wrote:I contend that governments which don't meet certain conditions may be "accepted," in the sense that the public goes along with them and they have a right to be treated as the government by foreigners. But they are not "legitimate" in the sense that it is in any way wrong to overthrow them. Replacing one monarch with another is not in the same category as, say, staging a coup to replace a republic with a monarch.
A government which is accepted by its people but which is not responsible to its people is morally little better than a random bandit chieftainship. Its only right to claim that it is a government is that it happens to have more guns than anyone else in the vicinity, which is obviously an unstable condition that could change at any time.
When we talk about rebels overthrowing "legitimate" governments, with the implication that doing so is wrong, I think this is important. A government based on the consent of the governed, with a valid process for holding itself responsible to the governed, is "legitimate" in that sense. It is wrong to attack that government and overthrow it by violence, because there are other, better ways to effect change in that government... assuming you have any reasonable claim to a say in what it does.
But a government which rules by force, even a popular government which rules by force, has no such protection, no such right not to be overthrown. Since it lives by the power of overwhelming force, it has no cause for complaint if it dies by the power of overwhelming force. That doesn't mean I, personally, want to overthrow it, but it does alter my opinion and reactions in the event that someone else tries to do it.
India and China have long ass thousands-of-years-old histories of having civilized culture that, though with their own flaws (caste system with vestiges that exist to this day, and Chinese... stuff).Serafine666 wrote:True enough. And then we have historical accidents like India, China, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and the Philippines that came out pretty good for reasons beyond our capacity to properly understand since it couldn't have had anything to do with the western imperialists who spent years walking around like they owned the place.
The government was able to propose shit like these because the locals support this barbaric shit. It's like saying the Saudi populace would rise up and overthrow their government because the government has legalized stuff like whipping female rape victims and flogging prostitutes or something, when in fact the locals don't really mind this.Simon_Jester wrote:When I talk about this kind of thing, I'm talking entirely about self-intervention: the locals trying to overthrow their own government. I know quite well it won't happen over something like this, but that doesn't mean that they wouldn't be justified in trying to make it happen.
"DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source) - PeZook I was actually trying to be a bit facetious, Shroom Man, although I'm thinking that I must have misunderstood what you were trying to say. But the history lesson was cool and such.Shroom Man 777 wrote:India and China have long ass thousands-of-years-old histories of having civilized culture that, though with their own flaws (caste system with vestiges that exist to this day, and Chinese... stuff).
Australia (and Canada and North America) have such minute populations of natives that were very easily displaced by immigrating foreigners so that the vast majority of their colonial population consists of white meng and a minority of indigenous natives in reservations and casinos.
Singapore and Hong Kong are tiny islands whose societies bloomed precisely because of international trade brought about by Western colonization, as well as being in major shipping routes.
Philippines shares some of this, but also has a lot in common with the other Spaniard colonies, in that we were colonies for a whole lot of centuries (because Spain started on this colonialism shit before the Brits) and the Spaniards very efficiently converted the bloody lot of us into Christianity and because like in South America, you no longer see guys with names like Montezuma or Quetzcoatl precisely because the Spaniards had no compunction with interbreeding with the local populace and inseminating their culture and their genes so that many generations later, the colonials resemble almost nothing like their natives at all!
Yeah, I know. I talk more about this below, but in short:Shroom Man 777 wrote:The government was able to propose shit like these because the locals support this barbaric shit. It's like saying the Saudi populace would rise up and overthrow their government because the government has legalized stuff like whipping female rape victims and flogging prostitutes or something, when in fact the locals don't really mind this.
Yes. I've often heard the Philippines described as a Latin American nation inexplicably picked up and dropped halfway across the world; I'm sure that isn't really true, but I'm not surprised to hear that there's at least a grain of reality inside it.Shroom Man 777 wrote:Philippines shares some of this, but also has a lot in common with the other Spaniard colonies...
Not quite. You see, I'm a moral absolutist. I'm trying to talk about "legitimacy" in the abstract, as a property that governments do or do not have in the same sense that an object does or does not have electric charge. One that determines whether preserving a government is worthwhile, and that affects how people should react to the government, both inside and out.Serafine666 wrote:So you're more talking about "legitimacy" in the sense of someone foreign to the country examining the government.
Again, the government may be "lawful;" this means nothing because governments are by definition entities with the power to make their own laws. The government may be the people you have to go to in order to treat with the population of the area they claim power over, which forces you to recognize them diplomatically if you want anything to do with that part of the world. But they don't have a right to rule the area they claim, or at least no better right than some random bandit clever and lucky enough to oust them and proclaim himself the new Supreme Leader Of The Week.Makes sense enough although I think it'd be a rather strange situation to have a government that is extremely popular with the governed that is nonetheless regarded as "illegitimate" by outsiders because it isn't responsible to its people by some non-revolutionary means.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to call that 'right' a 'claim.' Legitimate governments have a claim not to be overthrown, a claim that they have good reasons to enforce on behalf of the general public that put them into power in the first place.It is interesting, though, that you mention a right of a government not to be overthrown since I was under the impression that no government has a right to power, just a privilege conferred by the populace.
I think I must not be understanding you, Simon, because it sounds like you're saying both "the support of a majority is what makes it legitimate" and "popular support has nothing to do with legitimacy." I keep reading it like "the mechanism of accountability is the only difference between legitimacy and illegitimacy"; if it can be revolted against and replaced having lost the support of the people, it is illegitimate but if it can be voted out of office and replaced, it is legitimate.Simon_Jester wrote:Again, the government may be "lawful;" this means nothing because governments are by definition entities with the power to make their own laws. The government may be the people you have to go to in order to treat with the population of the area they claim power over, which forces you to recognize them diplomatically if you want anything to do with that part of the world. But they don't have a right to rule the area they claim, or at least no better right than some random bandit clever and lucky enough to oust them and proclaim himself the new Supreme Leader Of The Week.
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Perhaps it would be more accurate to call that 'right' a 'claim.' Legitimate governments have a claim not to be overthrown, a claim that they have good reasons to enforce on behalf of the general public that put them into power in the first place.
The reason I think of this as important is because it has to do with a question that comes up a lot in the context of what a government does in an attempt to stop rebels, coup attempts, or secession movements. When is a government justified in, say, raising an army and marching it through a troublesome province? What is that army justified in doing while it's marching through? Can a government justly suspend the freedom of assembly in general because it suspects that a revolutionary movement seeks to overthrow it?
To my way of thinking, a government is only justified in doing things that harm parts of the public to protect itself if it is truly legitimate: if its power flows from the people through a smooth, uninterrupted, functional channel. Then the public as a whole has the power to say "no, stop doing this, it isn't worth it" if the government's actions cross the line and become abuses. For instance, if it becomes clear that saving the government requires killing three fourths of the population of the country, the government will be forced to disband itself, because it cannot reasonably hope to maintain popular support while doing something like that.
A government which does not have what I call "true legitimacy" cannot use the plea of self defense to justify its crimes, because by disconnecting itself from its responsibility to the public, it breaks the chain that stops it from doing abominable things. Even if many people are cheering while it commits the crimes, that does not mean the crimes are automatically justified after the fact by the cheering. And once the government stops being accountable, there is always the possibility that the people will cheer in the opening stages of the government's actions, and then find it turning on them later.
Ugandans might not be so happy that they've given their government the de facto power to kill disliked groups and suppress debate on whether the killing is justified if next year the government decides that left-handed people are possessed by the Devil and must be destroyed to save the country from corruption. They might be even less happy if they find that they can't stop the government from doing so, because it has started ignoring popular opinion in favor of doing "what is right."
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This sort of thing is why I am a social republican, not a social democrat...
No. What he means is that a government which constructs legislation that once passed becomes it a crime to seek repeal (as is the case with this law) it stops being legitimate because its accountability to the democractic process is removed.I think I must not be understanding you, Simon, because it sounds like you're saying both "the support of a majority is what makes it legitimate" and "popular support has nothing to do with legitimacy." I keep reading it like "the mechanism of accountability is the only difference between legitimacy and illegitimacy"; if it can be revolted against and replaced having lost the support of the people, it is illegitimate but if it can be voted out of office and replaced, it is legitimate.
