Welcome to the party, pal
[YouTube] Christians in Nigeria face a brutal wave of killings, kidnappings, and burned churches. Over 125,000 dead since 2009, yet the media barely covers it. Boko Haram, ISIS, and extremists target villages while the world looks away. Why is Christian persecution ignored?
IMO, there's more democracy in Michigan than EU [HotAir] From Brussels to Chisinau, sighs of relief gave way to open rejoicing as it became clear that Moldova’s pro-EU governing party had not only won Sunday’s parliamentary election but also retained an overall majority. Provisional results gave the Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) around 50 per cent of the vote, leaving the two main opposition groupings, the Patriotic Electoral Bloc and the Alternativa Bloc, trailing with 24 per cent and eight per cent respectively.
The election had been cast by the passionately pro-EU president, Maia Sandu, as a choice between an EU future and a return to Moscow’s orbit, with the main opposition parties branded ’pro-Russian’. Igor Grosu, leader of Sandu’s PAS, said it had been ’an extraordinarily difficult battle’ and that Russia had thrown ’everything it had’ at the election. Claims of ’massive’ Russian interference were a staple of the PAS campaign.
The result was also hailed by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, who wrote on X: ’You made your choice clear: Europe. Democracy. Freedom.’ The Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, also congratulated Sandu on having ’saved democracy’ and ’stopped Russia in its attempts to take control over the whole region’. ’A good lesson’, he said, ’for us all’.
The clarity of the vote seems to reinforce the choice (narrowly) made by Moldovan voters in last year’s referendum on EU membership and opens the way for Moldova to advance its European ambitions. It also removes the need for PAS to join another party in a coalition that could have risked instability or forced another election before long.
So far, so obviously positive for Moldova’s pro-West, pro-EU orientation — so positive, in fact, that after the mainstream Western media had spent days warning about the dire threat of Russian interference (rarely qualified as ’alleged’) in this small south-east European country, Moldova had almost vanished from most news bulletins by the morning after the election.
It is at this point, however, that the election in this EU-aspiring state deserves far more scrutiny than it received during the campaign — or is likely to receive now, in the wake of the desired victory.
One question that’s never asked is how ’massive’ was Russia’s interference, anyway? Sundry ’police reports’ were cited in the run-up to the election, without chapter or verse. Actual evidence — either of disinformation campaigns or money changing hands — was hard to come by, although the BBC reported people being offered money (did they receive any?) to make pro-Russia social-media posts. You don’t have to believe Russian denials to conclude from the scale of the PAS victory alone that the pro-EU party could have won on its own merits, even if it might not have secured an overall majority, without scaremongering about Russian meddling.
Besides, this insistence on branding the main opposition parties ’pro-Russia’ — when they might more accurately be described as nationalist, populist or seeking a modus vivendi with Russia — dulls legitimate complaints about the status quo. Moldova is hardly flourishing economically or democratically. The cost of living has left many behind. Corruption persists in ruling circles and dirty money is not unknown. Many of the brightest and best are leaving the country (on Romanian passports) for the EU. Fears also persist that the war in neighbouring Ukraine could spill over into Moldova. Most such fears — the kind of thing that ought to be debated during an election — were drowned out by the constant drumbeat about Russian interference.
What’s more, some of the ways the Moldovan government used its power during the campaign should raise eyebrows at the very least. Dozens of men were arrested, accused of travelling to Serbia for training designed to incite unrest in Moldova. It remains to be seen what evidence there is and how many will actually be prosecuted. Similarly, two smaller opposition groups were banned just two days before the election for supposed illicit financing. On polling day itself, Moldova accused Russia of instigating bomb threats at foreign polling stations.
There were also reports that voters with Moldovan papers from the eastern enclave of Transnistria — perhaps less likely to be pro-EU — had difficulty accessing polling stations. Will any of this be investigated? Unlikely, given that the government had secured its desired outcome.
Moldova (population around three million) is a small and complicated country, sandwiched between Romania to the west and Ukraine to the east, with no direct access to the sea. As with Georgia and Ukraine, its geography means that its interests may not always coincide with those of Western Europe. At the very least, there should be room for more variegated views than the polarising, all-or-nothing ’EU vs Moscow’ choice that dominates its politics.
Posted by: Grom the Affective ||
10/03/2025 00:00 ||
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I write as a current professor of international law & retired US Army judge advocate with experience advising commanders in combat.
1) It doesn't matter that Sumud flotilla is (now, was) on the High Seas & not in Israel's 12 mile territorial sea. Vessels are subject to capture outside neutral waters if they are breaching or attempting to breach a blockade. Source: San Remo Manual (SRM) ¶ 146 (pic 1, yellow highlight).
2) Maritime security measures conducted during peacetime are beyond the scope of SRM since the manual addresses international law applicable to armed conflicts at sea. So, it doesn't matter how long Israel
has enforced a naval blockade. The current armed conflict was initiated by Hamas on October 7, 2023 - and rules reflected in the San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea have applied since then. Additionally, CIJ_ICJ does not have unilateral authority to establish internationall law - whether through advisory opinions or otherwise. Therefore it doesn't matter what ICJ "found illegal" in advisory opinions.
3) There is no provision in SRM requiring a blockade to be a "short term measure." By definition, blockades can be enforced for the duration of the armed conflict - no matter how long the armed conflict may last. Source: SRM ¶¶ 93-94 (pic 2).
4) In any event, SRM rules DO NOT "explicitly state that humanitarian supplies may not be blockaded." There are rules addressing that conduct, but these rules are subject to other conditions & restrictions. As such, there is no outright ban on blockading "humanitarian supplies." Source: SRM ¶¶ 102-04 (pic 3).
5) It doesn't matter what the "UN Commission of Inquiry has already determined." Like ICJ advisory opinions, no UN CoI has unilateral authority to establish int'l law. Substantive merits of this report are beyond the scope of this post, but for a brief discussion see Aizenberg55's observations here & here. The claim that the "blockade is plainly a part of the machinery of such genocide" is just as anecdotal & authoritative as the UN CoI report Craig Murray cites here for support.
For reasons 1 to 5 nothing in Craig Murray's post constitutes a legitimate articulation or analysis of int'l law.
Then, as one might imagine, the remaining "so what" points unravel from there.
6) Attack on a vessel attempting to breach a naval blockade is just an attack on that vessel - not "on the flag state of the vessel attacked."
7) Detaining a vessel & its crew for breaching or attempting to breach a blockade is not an act "of illegal possession of vessels or abduction of crew on the High Seas." For neutral vessels breaching or attempting to breach a blockade, capturing the vessel is exercised by taking such vessel as prize for adjudication. Source: SRM ¶ 146 (back to pic 1, blue highlight).
8) So Metropolitan Police and DPP have NO obligation to, well...do anything at all.
Here's the thing. Given the extensive #legaldisinformation presented in Craig Murray's post, it's troubling how much it's circulated on X
even now < 24 hours since publication. My guess is that reflects 3 related factors:
1) his seemingly impressive claim of personal authority at the outset;
2) most ppl who don't specialize in int'l law don't know any better even when they read complete rubbish such as Craig Murray's analysis; and
3) part of the reason many ppl don't know any better is they want to be duped because they want to find some seemingly legit excuse to hate 🇮🇱 (+ Zionists as proxy for 🇮🇱 + Jews as proxy for Zionists).
But these rampant misrepresentations of internatioal law serve only 2 purposes:
1) support strategic objectives of terrorists like Hamas;
2) encourage hate & violence directed against Jews.
Enough. Don't be fooled by "experts" like Craig Murray who don't actually know what they're talking about when it comes to int'l law.
I hope you find this helpful, and thank you for your attention to this matter.
#4
Mostly, boardings stopped with the coming of steel hulls and watertight doors.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
10/03/2025 14:38 Comments ||
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#5
^#4. Rather the end of the Age of Sail. The new machine filled hulls were too hard to repair and replace a foreign country's equipment. So just sink it. The new explosive shell ammunition also tended to wreck things beyond easy repair.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[HotAir] From Brussels to Chisinau, sighs of relief gave way to open rejoicing as it became clear that Moldova’s pro-EU governing party had not only won Sunday’s parliamentary election but also retained an overall majority. Provisional results gave the Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) around 50 per cent of the vote, leaving the two main opposition groupings, the Patriotic Electoral Bloc and the Alternativa Bloc, trailing with 24 per cent and eight per cent respectively.
