paul@phs.UUCP (Paul C. Dolber) (09/27/84)
Recently, uicsl!pollack (Jordan [Pollack?]), in an article entitled
"Re: Whoa! WHAT propaganda campaign?" (uicsl.28100009), made two
points I wish to comment on.
First, he wrote: "[Tom Craver] has a particularly insidious way of
stifling debate by making opponents feel that they have not done
enough homework to answer. I will not respond with a complete
compiled list of propaganda; I have other homework."
Well, on the one hand, debate perhaps should be stifled if opponents
haven't done their homework; why !apple!banana!canteloupe!dirigible
should believe anything said by !warthog!xanthipe!yangtze!zeppelin,
when neither has met nor knows anything of the other, and no citations
are provided to substantiate what is claimed, I cannot imagine.
For this reason, I try to restrain myself from commentary when I
cannot back up my claims with some sort of documentation, no matter
how great the urge. On the other hand, we all have plenty of
work/homework of a more prosaic nature to be done, and cannot all
be experts on everything. Considering these two hands together, I'll
comment on only one other point raised by Jordan.
Jordan wrote: "Do you know why the Genocide Pact has never been
ratified?" Well, I've done (a little) homework on this one. The
following commentary depends on two editorials, one by George F. Will
in the September 20, 1984 Durham Morning Herald, the other by James
J. Kilpatrick in the September 21, 1984 Durham Morning Herald.
Will raises the following points: "Although Ronald Reagan has suddenly
become the seventh president to endorse ratification of the U.N. treaty
against genocide,... Jesse Helms, taking up where Sam Erwin... left
off in the 1970s... has put sand in the gears of the process. How, you
ask, can anyone oppose a treaty opposing genocide? Easily, if you start
by reading it." "The treaty... defines [genocide] as committing any of
the following acts against a national, ethnic, racial or religious
group: killing members of the group; causing severe bodily or mental
harm to members; inflicting conditions designed to bring about the
group's physical destruction in whole or in part; preventing birth;
taking children away from the group. 'In part'? 'Mental harm'? Under
this language any act of war can qualify as genocide." Will then goes
on to discuss, briefly in the first case, two objections to the treaty:
(1) "The tradional conservative objection to the treaty is that it
jeopardizes U.S. sovereignty, giving foreign powers a pretext for
stigmatizing, in their courts or tribunals, U.S. racial or foreign
policies as genocidal." (2) "Ratification would be yet another instance
of the bad habit of striking poses and considering them policies."
He goes on for quite a while about point (2). This is really too long
to cite in full, and to good to chop into bits; his last paragraph,
however, may suffice: "One can imagine what survivors of the Holocaust
think of a treaty perfectly designed to restrain through its moral
authority any regime that believes in both genocide and the rule of law."
Kilpatrick raises the following points: "The convention commits the
signatories to adopting legislation 'in accordance with their respective
Constitutions'... providing for the punishment of public officials or
private individuals who commit any of the prohibited acts. Such persons
would be tried in the country in which the [alleged] acts were
[allegedly] committed "or by such international tribunal as may have
jurisdiction with respect to those contracting parties which shall have
accepted its jurisdiction." Helms's first reservation to the convention
"would make it clear that the treaty authorizes only legislation 'which
would be valid in the absence of the convention.'" In short, so far as
I understand it, the treaty must in no way supercede our own Constitution.
Helms's second reservation is in reference to Article IX of the
convention, which provides that "questions of interpretation and state
responsibility 'shall be submitted to the International Court of Justice
at the request of any of the parties to the dispute.'" "[Helms] wants
a formal understanding that the United States will not accept the
World Court's jurisdiction over any domestic matter 'as determined by
the United States.' This language echoes the Connaly Amendment of 1946,
which the Senate prudently adopted as a condition of recognizing the
World Court at that time." Well, these two reservations of Sen. Helms
don't seem all that malign to me...
By the way, the reference to the World Court's jurisdiction forces me
to add the following (from National Review, Oct. 5, 1984, p. 11):
"At World Court in The Hague the other day His Honor Mahmoud
M. Kashani, the Iranian justice, slugged His Honor Nils
Mangard, the Swedish justice, and was hustled out shouting, 'If
Mangard ever dares to enter the tribunal chamber again either
his corpse or my corpse will leave it rolling down the stairs.'"
Good to have men like this looking out for our interests, eh?
Regards, Paul Dolber @ DUMC (...duke!phs!paul).myers@uwvax.UUCP (Jeff Myers) (09/28/84)
> > By the way, the reference to the World Court's jurisdiction forces me > to add the following (from National Review, Oct. 5, 1984, p. 11): > > "At World Court in The Hague the other day His Honor Mahmoud > M. Kashani, the Iranian justice, slugged His Honor Nils > Mangard, the Swedish justice, and was hustled out shouting, 'If > Mangard ever dares to enter the tribunal chamber again either > his corpse or my corpse will leave it rolling down the stairs.'" > > Good to have men like this looking out for our interests, eh? > > Regards, Paul Dolber @ DUMC (...duke!phs!paul). George Will is a respectable source of information, but I am always reluctant to take anything Kilpatrick or the National Review says is true as true without further substantiation. First, is there any other documentation on the world court incident? Second, a year or so ago I recall some rumours being spread that Kilpatrick and another columnist of his ilk sometimes substantiated certain points by referencing each other's columns circularly. Anybody know of any examples substantiating the rumour? Jeff M.