The Russian Invasion of the Ukraine.

[JoeMorgue]

No. Legally.


Based on what law?
In your country, if someone were to do the same today, would that person be liable to arrest and trial for treason today - legally?

Why not?


The ethical question is if you advocate restricting rights without there being a law that restricts said rights, just because you (and not, explicitly, your Supreme Court nor your parliament) are of the opinion you are somehow at war.


Well, by what process do you propose for "the Germans to decide amongst themselves"? I suggested a parliamentary decision, as parliament is, per our constitution, the representation of the people.


I insist that you have not actually provided any reasons why we (your country as well as mine) are actually already "this far" (i.e. legally at war), and I think you are wrong, and that this is actually pretty obvious.

---



I think you almost are if you advocate arresting to trial for treason (i.e. the real possibility of ending up killing) anyone who disagrees sharply with you on the Russia question and instead is of the opinion that what RT says is true and good - while your country is not in fact at war with Russia.



It's an actually enemy when you are actually at war.


Make no mistake: Germany (the German government, in coordination with the EU) is shutting down Russian state media where they can. That is not the question here.

I don't know exactly who you are

A) trying to impress

or

B) arguing with with this whole "No I want to talk about the pure technicalities of what is happening" routine.

What, and I'd appreciate an actual human answer, exactly are you getting out of or trying to accomplish by basically declaring yourself Russia's lawyer in this thread?

 

[Oystein]

...for days...

This.

 

[theprestige]

No. Legally.

Then it's as I feared: We've been talking past each other all along. I'm glad that's cleared up now! I apologize for contributing to the confusion.

 

[Oystein]

I mean if you're being difficult on purpose I don't see any reason to keep discussing this with you in good faith.

I'm not saying Germany should do illegal things. The original question I was answering was whether it's difficult to justify cutting off RT. I answered it from an ethical perspective.

From a legal perspective, I think Germany should only do what is legal and that Germany should find a legal basis for suppressing RT, and for doing other practical things to oppose the Russian aggression in Ukraine.

Fair enough.

 

[Oystein]

A former NATO Commander proposes that Putin's goal is creating a land corridor to Crimea.

“He’s had Crimea in the Russian Federation since 2014, he’s only been able to supply it across the Kerch Strait bridge, and so of course he’s looking to establish that land corridor down off the Sea of Azov.” said NATO's former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander for Europe Richard Shirreff while talking to CNN's Christiane Amanpour.

I don't know if that's Putin's goal, but it's a solid theory that does make some sense.

And about the most obvious goal of the "special operation".

 

[Mike!]

Some of us were talking about the A-10 "Warthog" several pages back, I just heard one of the many talking mucky mucks on TV say there are Ukrainian pilots that have flown and are quite familiar with it. If we have them and consider them outdated, we should send them to Ukraine for "storage" right away.

 

[lobosrul5]

Sometimes the absence of evidence really is evidence of absence. I don't think we have to wonder much, at this point, whether Russia is capable of establishing air supremacy on Day 0, against a peer enemy.

To be honest, I doubt that any nation could establish air supremacy against a peer enemy. At least, not theaterwide.

I've seen an argument that the USSR/Russia had figured out by the 80s that it would never be able to deny NATO air superiority, but that as long as they were able to contest the airspace, it would fall to ground-based artillery to decide the battles. Therefore they invested in enough air defense to ensure the airspace would remain contested, and invested in having more long-range artillery - especially rocket artillery - than their NATO counterparts. I had been expecting (perversely: hoping) to see this doctrine in action in the current conflict. However it seems that the vaunted Russian artillery is also lagging somewhat behind expectations.

Russian performance in this war puts me in mind of a line from the movie Ronin:

"You're great in the locker room, pal, and your reflexes might die hard, but you're weak when you put your spikes on."

Wow, I remember nothing of that movie except there was a pretty good car chase, and Sean Bean's character was caught in a lie because he didn't know the color of the SAS boathouse.

Anyways, my thinking on a conventional war between sophisticated states would just be total annihilation of both armies troop movements by airpower before they even got to the front.

 

[Oystein]

That's where a formal declaration of war is useful, for establishing a legal basis for taking certain extreme measures in support of the war effort.

I think we are talking past each other. You seem to be taking my "you're already at war" as meaning "therefore gross infringement on the rights of ciitizens is justified without requiring any legal or constitutional basis".

That's not what I mean at all. Rather, I mean "therefore it's in your interests to acknowledge that a de facto state of war exists, and to figure out what you can and should be doing to better fight this war, and to get busy establishing the legal basis to do what you need to do, where such legal basis is required for more effective action."

If your question is, "is it good for Germany to suppress RT without establishing a legal basis for doing so?" My answer is "no." If your question is "is there anything wrong with establishing a legal basis for suppressing RT, and then suppressing RT on that basis?" My answer is also "no."

Fair enough also. Thanks.

ETA:
And actually I mostly agree.
Even if I like to say that there is a slippery-slope argument somewhere there. Where do "infringements on the rights of ciitizens" turn into "gross infringements on the rights of ciitizens"?
That's why I would prefer that it's not up to me, individually, and everyone else, individually, to "acknowledge that a de facto state of war exists", but for the appropriate political bodies to do so after public debate. This has not happened, and thus we are not legally in a state of war, which means that government can only execute what is legal today (which is the same that was legal before the crisis broke out, as no laws have been changed yet, AFAIK), and that legislature can only enact laws that are 100% covered by the constitution. E.g. if the constitution has provisions that safeguard the rights of the press, and if it turns out that, e.g. RT is protected by those provisions, then, without an explicit declaration of war or the outbreak of an actual war on our territory or under our command, we should not shut them down where they are protected by law or constitution).

 

[Stacyhs]

Russian businessman offers a million-dollar bounty for the arrest of Putin:

A Russian businessman, Alex Konanykhin, offers a million dollar bounty to “any police officer who, fulfilling his constitutional duty, arrests Putin as a war criminal under Russian and international law.”

Konanykhin wrote on LinkedIn that “Putin is not the Russian president since he came to power as a result of a special operation of apartment building explosions in Russia, he then violated the Constitution by eliminating free elections and killing his opponents.”

On his Facebook page, the businessman posted a post in which Putin appears on a Wild West-style poster with the caption “Wanted Dead or Alive”. The post, he writes image online, it didn’t last long before being deleted from Facebook. According to Konanykhin, this was probably due to the wording “Dead or Alive”, but he, he added, wrote “arrest”.

Not that it will happen.

 

[Jimbo07]

You seem very unconcerned with the Ukrainians being slaughtered by Putin's SS.

I am, and it sucks.

As for baying for blood, yeah, I am baying for the blood of Putin and His Oligarch buddies, with the shedding being done by the Russian people.

You've proposed even harder economic consequences (I agree, btw). Do you think they'll wind up being the final resolution of all this, though? I don't see a future where some Ukrainians don't end up miserable...

... and really, they're heroes. They really are fighting for all of us. This is going to set up the patterns of relations between Democracies and Autocracies for years to come, however it turns out.

 

[blutoski]

I have to wonder, if Russia has the capability of doing similar then why have they not done so by day 7?

My guess is that part of the goal is that, having bled Russians dry, they're looking to have another intact economy to loot. They are aware that the more they break, the more expensive it'll be to get Ukraine into full milking condition.

So this means scale the invasion upward gradually.

First, hope that shock and awe will result in immediate surrender with minimal damage.

OK, that didn't work, so maybe scare them a bit with an armoured column of death.

Darn, that didn't work, OK, idunno, hit some infrastructure or something to show them we mean business but will treat them decently if they surrender.

Hm. That didn't work. It's almost as if they think we'll mistreat them upon surrender. Well, what's next in the playbook... Here it is... Let's soften them up a bit with some indiscriminate shelling of residential areas to show them we're willing to murder civilians. Maybe they were hoping bad publicity would stop us, this'll convince them otherwise and they'll surrender in droves. We can still polish that turd.

What? Nothing? Ok, let's open the binder again... Hm, looks like we've moved up to carpet bombing and public executions with mass graves? Maaaan, that sounds like work. Whelp, better get started, this country's not going to murder itself. Gonna cost us, but when all's done, I'm sure there'll be oil and wheatfields left for the remaining Ukrainian slaves to work, just as long as we have something left for the oligarchs to split up.

 

[lobosrul5]

My guess is that part of the goal is that, having bled Russians dry, they're looking to have another intact economy to loot. They are aware that the more they break, the more expensive it'll be to get Ukraine into full milking condition.

So this means scale the invasion upward gradually.

First, hope that shock and awe will result in immediate surrender with minimal damage.

OK, that didn't work, so maybe scare them a bit with an armoured column of death.

Darn, that didn't work, OK, idunno, hit some infrastructure or something to show them we mean business but will treat them decently if they surrender.

Hm. That didn't work. It's almost as if they think we'll mistreat them upon surrender. Well, what's next in the playbook... Here it is... Let's soften them up a bit with some indiscriminate shelling of residential areas to show them we're willing to murder civilians. Maybe they were hoping bad publicity would stop us, this'll convince them otherwise and they'll surrender in droves. We can still polish that turd.

What? Nothing? Ok, let's open the binder again... Hm, looks like we've moved up to carpet bombing and public executions with mass graves? Maaaan, that sounds like work. Whelp, better get started, this country's not going to murder itself. Gonna cost us, but when all's done, I'm sure there'll be oil and wheatfields left for the remaining Ukrainian slaves to work, just as long as we have something left for the oligarchs to split up.

I'm afraid you are right. But I have hope that the Russian troops are going to start just flatly refusing to obey orders. I mean this is kinda like if a certain ex-prez ordered the US Army to invade Canada and when they resisted to just start committing murder.

 

[Oystein]

I don't know exactly who you are

A) trying to impress

or

B) arguing with with this whole "No I want to talk about the pure technicalities of what is happening" routine.

What, and I'd appreciate an actual human answer, exactly are you getting out of or trying to accomplish by basically declaring yourself Russia's lawyer in this thread?

A) Silly. Not a category.

B) Everybody who claims that "we" (meaning any Western country opposing the Russian invasion) are actually "at war" - where "war" is a word with objective meaning and not just tough talk. Where that meaning implies legal consequences which in effect limit civil liberties and expand government's power. Are those posters really thinking that their civil liberties are, in principle, in question - now?

 

[Andy_Ross]

Obviously the British government don't quite understand what "freezing" assets means.

They haven't actually sanctioned anyone yet and they are giving the banks 30 days before they start any sanctions.
Got to give their donors chance to shift their cash.

 

[Venom]

I don't know exactly who you are

A) trying to impress

or

B) arguing with with this whole "No I want to talk about the pure technicalities of what is happening" routine.

What, and I'd appreciate an actual human answer, exactly are you getting out of or trying to accomplish by basically declaring yourself Russia's lawyer in this thread?

Relax. I think veterans of many of the non-politics subforums are often disappointed by the lack of skeptical rigor in politics/current events. And I don't really blame 'em.

 

[Oystein]

Russian businessman offers a million-dollar bounty for the arrest of Putin:



Not that it will happen.

No. With SWIFT down, he could not transfer the bounty to that brave policeperson's bank account...

 

[Olmstead]

Is this the first time that an invaded country with a decent military presence has been so well supplied by its allies? I'm hoping that this might lead to some unexpected results. Supply chains should be better than ever too.

 

[dudalb]

Russian businessman offers a million-dollar bounty for the arrest of Putin:



Not that it will happen.

Who will take up the contract: The Jackal or Deadshot?

 

[lobosrul5]

A) Silly. Not a category.

B) Everybody who claims that "we" (meaning any Western country opposing the Russian invasion) are actually "at war" - where "war" is a word with objective meaning and not just tough talk. Where that meaning implies legal consequences which in effect limit civil liberties and expand government's power. Are those posters really thinking that their civil liberties are, in principle, in question - now?

Its a valid debate, but we may need a split thread for this.

Per "UN General Assembly Resolution 3314" sending material support is not a listed act of war.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/law-of-war/Legally-defining-war

Is that the universal definition that everyone on the planet should or must use? No of course not.

 

[lobosrul5]

Who will take up the contract: The Jackal or Deadshot?

Peacemaker?