Does a nation have an obligation to help its people who are starving? Carter is religious and believes it does. He believes humans do have an obligation to help those who can not help themselves. His is a moral and religious stance. He thinks nations should act morally.
Some believe we have an obligation to provide food and healthcare to the poor. It is completely justifiable.
Many see food as a human right. Especially in a country like America that can afford to help.
So, how many cans of chili (cat or non-cat based, as you see fit) have you sent to North Korea, Gonz?
Wrong. Carter believes that a nation has an obligation to help another nation’s people who are starving, and “help” in this case means “give food to the organisation that is oppressing them”.
You accused me of claiming that the Treaty itself refers to the CESCR, which I didn’t claim.
It’s hardly controversial to say that since ECOSOC created and devolved powers to the CESCR, states parties are obliged to submit their reports to it. The UNHCHR page on the Committee also says it: “All States parties are obliged to submit regular reports to the Committee on how the rights are being implemented.” And before you jump in again with how the HCHR might as well be some random passenger on a bus, it isn’t just the HCHR who sees it that way, that is the accepted understanding of the reporting obligation. It could well even amount to custom at this point.
When you are basing your argument on a strict textual interpretation that has not been followed by anyone for years, and I am basing mine on the way the obligation is actually understood by seemingly everyone involved in the process, it is not me who does not know what I’m talking about.
“Seeing how the CESCR’s suggested powers were only written in the OP, and its existence was created later by the ECOSOC”
Does “later” have some non-chronological meaning I don’t know about?
None of that is goalpost shifting and none of those statements is in any way inconsistent with the others. Whether or not something is a human rights violation is not something that can be factually determined, not least since it can’t even be factually proven that there are any such things as human rights in the first place, but there are certain factors that give weight to an opinion that something is a human rights violation and that make that opinion more reasonable than it might be if those factors were not present. The view of a monitoring body created within the UN human rights system is one such factor. And that is the case whether or not that body’s views are legally binding, since (at least the way most people see it) it is not only breaches of laws that give rise to human rights violations.
Incidentally, I would say the same thing irrespective of my own opinion on the issue at hand. I don’t agree with the CESCR on everything they consider to be a human right. But I would consider it reasonable for someone to argue that something was a human right if the CESCR (or another UN monitoring body) consider it a human right - more reasonable, anyway, than it would be if none of these bodies considered it to be.
If you will stop citing your own opinion as if it were fact, I will stop pointing out that it is actually only your opinion. Deal?
Once again, the point is not whether these statements are legally binding. It’s about moral authority. When the HCHR, in his or her advisory role, which was endorsed without dissent by the General Assembly, expresses a view about how human rights protection within the UN system should operate, that view has a hell of a lot more moral authority than your contrary view does. And that’s apart from the fact that the same view has been expressed by legal experts in the field. You are, as always, entitled to disagree on the basis of a strictly positivist legal interpretation, but that is neither the only possible interpretation nor the interpretation that is applied by many of those involved in this field.
No goalpost shifting at all, since I’ve said from the start that I believe it has always had relevance.
Again, it’s not about “laws” per se.
Based on the travaux preparatoires.
Interesting how your entire argument in this thread has been based upon strict word-for-word interpretations of everything, and yet I’m doing something “risible” by replying to a post based on the words that were actually used in it.
No, I’m actually arguing that it is too soon to conclude that nations that haven’t yet ratified a Protocol that has only been open for signature for less than two years don’t want to be bound by the CESCR.
Thank you for proving my point. The practice must be followed “from a sense of legal obligation”. It is not enough that a practice is followed by states, if they are not following it from a sense of legal obligation. This works the other way around too, so if a practice is not followed, the fact of not following it only defeats custom if the state believes it has no obligation to follow it. Honoring in the breach, as they say. Partial compliance and compensating complainants suggest that states do believe they have some obligation to follow these decisions.
What’s absurd is your insisting that there is only one possible way of determining human rights issues, and hey, it happens to be the way that leads to the conclusion you agree with, and that anyone (including the HCHR, national and international courts and scholars in the field) who take a different view is actually wrong.
This is an excellent example that encapsulates the errors, deceptive nonsense and outright gameplaying that your argument is based on.
First you were caught in your own factual error about Jimmy Carter’s habit of making factual errors, and as is your standard dodge, you claimed that his factual errors were really only my “opinion”. Caught in that error, rather than retracting it, you decide to go for broke. First you simply make shit up about how I’ve said that, for instance, international courts are wrong for “taking a different view”. You can’t cite that anywhere, because you’ve just imagined it. Likewise, caught in the fact that you have been wrong about pretty much every single particular having to do with the treaty and the Optional Protocol that you brought up, you’d rather pretend that the facts are opinions. It really is quite informative, especially your dodge that while my argument is fact based and your is error based, that I’m simply using the facts to support my argument because they just so happen to fit with my opinion.
Like I said, your problems with people pointing out the flaws in your argument wouldn’t exist if you found out the facts before you made claims, or understood the issues before you make statements about them. Your started by claiming that America had ratified a treaty that it had not, and it’s gone down hill from there. Now you claimed that nations were obligated to report to a specific body, and I responded as if you had a general understanding of what you were talking about and were actually serious about claiming that such an obligation existed. The only places such an obligation would have been set up is if states had agreed to be so obligated, or if a binding decision had been handed down to that effect. So, assuming that you weren’t again totally unaware of the facts, I pointed out that since there has been no such binding decision, the original treaty said nothing of the sort as it was the only place that states agreed as to what their obligations were.
But it turns out that you have, yet again, tried to pull a fast one and are now claiming that yet another entity with no ability to compel anybody to do anything has created an “obligation”. Because, of course, that fiction is useful for your argument. Claiming that it is international custom at this point is absurd as well, seeing as how the actual obligation is to report to the Secretary General and only three nations on the entire planet have ratified the view that the CESCR is a body that should be involved in the reporting process. You can’t just make things up because you think they’ll make your argument sound better. You also can’t handwave away the facts by calling them opinions, or handwave away the content of international law and international custom by pretending that they’re some sort of bizarre “strict textual” whatever, whereas your many errors are really equal to actual laws or customs.
The disingenuousness of this statement is pretty amusing. I caught you in yet another of your errors and pointed out that the CESCR wasn’t created by the original treaty and nations that ratified the treaty aren’t bound to even recognize its existence let alone its validity to do anything at all. In response you invented a fictional argument about chronology that, when proven wrong too, devloved into nitpicking about the fact that I pointed out your error and also pointed out the fact that the CESCR was unilaterally created in a separate act after the treaty went into force.
This is even funnier. Your handwaving of your goalpost shifting was amusing, but this is pure comedy gold. After a habit of trying to discard facts by claiming that they’re really “opinions”, you admit that your argument literally has nothing at all except opinion and cannot possibly be fact based. Of course, you’re wrong again about human rights violations, and truly bizarrely wrong about whether or not they even exist. This may be a side effect of you completely discarding international law and international custom, relying on non-binding, non-relevant opinions, and then claiming that the actual laws that exist don’t count and are only opinions.
This is another good example of the inherent failure of your rationalization-based argument. Faced with the fact that you’ve cited a bureaucrat who has no authority to create any sort of legally binding advisory opinion, at all, you’ve shifted the goalposts yet again and now claim that it’s some sort of “moral authority”, as if the UN didn’t set up a functionary but a pope. They also didn’t set him up as the Human Rights Dictator, able to impose obligations and determine the content of international human rights law by fiat.
Again, caught in one of your many errors, you’re trying to play games. The treaty actually says that no nation is obligated to give up their wealth or resources, despite your claim that the US is obligated to do that… and your dodge is that, well, they really were thinking about developing nations, even though the actual treaty that was ratified says nothing of the sort and applies to all nations without prejudice. The US, rather obviously, is included in the set of all nations.
Mmmm hmmm. They want to be bound by the CESCR, really! They just, um, well ya know…
This is another excellent example of how thoroughly disingenuous your argument is. Proven wrong in your claim and shown that certain opinions do not have the weight of international custom behind them, you still claim victory and pretend that states that don’t believe they’re obligated to follow them, as proven by the fact that they don’t follow them, may actually secretly believe that they are so obligated and may be “honoring it in the breach.”
Even being proven wrong proves you right, you claim.
You’ve been making up shit about what I’ve said throughout this debate (in fact you’ve just done it again in this paragraph, inventing the notion that I’ve said anything about Jimmy Carter’s habits), so this is a bit rich.
I’ll try this one more time. States were obliged in the original Treaty to submit reports. That has not changed. Since the CESCR was created, it is the CESCR that receives those reports. States have and do submit those reports to the CESCR, and by general agreement of seemingly everyone in the world, apart from yourself, the nature of the obligation is now that those reports are submitted to the CESCR. I am not aware of any evidence, anywhere, that any of the states parties to the Covenant take the view that they don’t actually have to submit the reports to the CESCR because that isn’t actually specified in the Treaty.
Only three nations have ratified the Optional Protocol. But the Optional Protocol has nothing to do with the reporting process. It has to do with the individual complaints mechanism. The CESCR was involved in the reporting process before the Optional Protocol was even drafted. States have “ratified that view” by sending in their reports. And a lot more than three of them.
And the Protocol itself was initially adopted by unanimous decision of the General Assembly, so it’s pretty clear that more than three states have endorsed the view that the CESCR should be involved in the process that the Protocol actually relates to. They might not yet have agreed to take part in that process themselves, but that’s hardly the same thing as rejecting the idea that it should have any role in that process at all.
What’s disingenuous is the way that you’re trying to backtrack now from the fact that your entire argument, throughout this thread, has been based on a misconception that the CESCR was only created in a Protocol that only three nations have ratified.
They exist in law. The question of whether they exist in fact is a serious philosophical question and one that has been debated for decades. It isn’t like gravity or evolution where the side that denies they exist (who I disagree with, incidentally) can simply be proven wrong.
Jesus. When I originally quoted the HCHR I acknowledged that what he said here was not *legally *authoritative. It’s not shifting goalposts to simply repeat what I already said. Your inability to grasp what is being said does not make me a goalpost-shifter.
Look, the simple fact, as demonstrated by the travaux preparatoires, is that that Article was written for a specific reason and it is not the reason you believe it was written. Treaties have to be interpreted in line with their object and purpose, you cannot simply pick a line out it and pretend it means something it was never intended to mean and which would in fact contradict the aim of what the Treaty is trying to achieve.
Pathetic argument.
The idea that states may honour custom in the breach is not something I’ve invented out of thin air. The ICJ said as much in the Nicaragua decision.
I suppose I can expect a rant now about how the ICJ’s views carry no weight anyway, because…
This is probably a good place to again point out the quality of your argument, and why your continued bullshit about how your own claims are “made up”. Generally you do things while speaking from a position of ignorance, like claiming that nations are obligated to report to a specific body. When it’s pointed out that the only treaty that actually obligated nations to hold to any sort of reporting policy didn’t include that, you claim that I’ve “made up” your error. As stated numerous times, in that sort of scenario the problem is you have no idea what you’re talking about, and I’m responding, erroneously it seems, as if you’re discussing the actual facts.
Now, your claim that you’ve never said anything about Jimmy Carter’s habits is another obvious fiction, and after quoting you doing exactly that, I’ll just leave your comments on their own since it’s obvious that your argument isn’t to be taken at face value.
But no, you weren’t talking about Carter, I’m “making up” that fact, and the fact that you can’t cite international law or international custom to support your position just shows how right you must be, and how the lack of any factual support for your position means that the other folks’ factual claims are really opinions.
Ciao.
I can see Jimmy Carter’s point. No matter how many people starve to death in North Korea, the dictator and his cronies eat well. The people of North Korea have no control over their government. The government has no concern for the people.
That’s not Carter’s point. Carter’s point is that we need to send more food that will go to the ruling elite, their preferred political class and the military, while those who don’t (strongly enough) support the government will continue to be starved. And if we don’t, we’re violating human rights laws.
And this is a perfect example of you inventing straw men by paraphrasing my words to pretend that they say what you want them to say, and then accusing me of creating “fictions” or “shifting goalposts” when I point out what I actually did say. Saying that Carter was a President himself and so presumably has an insight into what goes on behind the scenes in international relations is not making a comment about his “habits”, whatever they are, and certainly nowhere did I make a factual error about those habits.
And yet funnily enough, when I point out actual facts from your own posts that show that *you *don’t know what you’re talking about, such as
… you first deny that your own word “later” has a chronological meaning, then say I’m being nitpicky for pointing it out, and then finally, rather than admit to the fact that you’ve been wrong from the start about when and how the CESCR was established and what the Optional Protocol actually says, you simply say
And this in the context of an argument based around the notion that you are the one dealing in facts and that I’m refusing to admit to factual errors.
You’re some piece of work FinnAgain.
Nope, it’s yet another example of how your argument diverges from honesty by a country mile. In this specific case, not only did I have you dead to rights, I quoted your own words, verbatim. But you’ll still claim that they really meant something other than what you actually said. Because, of course, your argument is based on ignorance and fiction, and so when it’s pointed out that of course Carter has no actual insight into how the current administration runs its affairs, and has a record of proven dishonest in order to sell his political agenda, you try to change the subject and claim that your own words now aren’t your own words, and your own statements, not altered, shortened or abbreviaetd in the least, are really “paraphrased” “strawmen”.
Again, just so that people can realize that when your argument claims something that it should be taken as false until you prove otherwise, I’ll happily re-link to the post in question where I proved you’re making things up, again. In direct response to the fact that Carter has “shown a distinct willingness to distort, falsify or simply invent facts when it fits the narrative he’s trying to sell” you claimed that “Given your own ideology as expressed here and elsewhere, I’m not surprised you take that view.”
Naturally, now you’d like to claim that also never happened. It’s just some useful information that people should have in mind when they read your argument and especially when you add fiction to other fiction, and claim that your own quoted words are really an artifice that’s designed to malign you.
No, again it just shows that you started your argument from utter ignorance and fiction, claiming that a nation which hadn’t ratified a specific treaty was bound by it, then despite the fact that the treaty’s additional protocols aren’t even signed by more than a handful of nations you tried to make some noise about their relevance in this situation. Caught out at being wrong on literally every single particular, you’re now pretending that the OP “actually says” something that it doesn’t, and while pretending that your own quoted words are a malicious fiction, you’re deliberately misinterpreting what I actually wrote in order to engage in Herculean attempts to avoid admitting that you are, simply, wrong.
Faced with the fact that no nation is obligated to recognize the CESCR’s role in the process let alone report to it, you try to hide your error behind more bluster. Faced with the fact that the CESCR’s current (non)powers were only created by the OP, and it was created later than the original treaty, you’re trying to play cutsey semantic games. You even, still, refuse to admit that the CESCR, as the body it holds the pretense of being now and as the body you’ve pretended it should be considered as was only created by the OP, which is not in effect and has no legal relevance to the case of the US’ aid packages to North Korea.
What a piece of work you are.
We’re witness to this spectacle of increasing absurdity as you pretzel your argument in support of the truly laughable claim that nations not giving charity is a violation of human rights, and you can’t even bring yourself to utter a simple “geez, I was wrong, but I still think that we should give NK aid.” Let alone a “Carter really was talking out of his ass. Gee, with his proven track record it’s rather silly for me to have held him up as an example of anything other than a shill who’s demonstrated that he’s willing to say things that he knows aren’t true, if he thinks it will advance his political agenda. I now know that there actually is nothing at all in international law or international custom that makes it a violation of human rights for nations not to give other nations aid, and the increasing rationalizations I’ve engaged in just go to show how utterly indefensible my position was all along. Sorry.”
Ah well.
No, I claim that they did mean what they actually said. What I reject is that they mean something else entirely.
I am actually baffled as to what point you think you’re making here. There’s absolutely nothing in that post to justify the assertion that I was making things up or that I was claiming that previous exchange never happened.
An error which I acknowledged and withdrew immediately after - something you seem incapable of doing (see below).
It only has one additional protocol first of all, and that isn’t what makes the CESCR’s interpretation of the Covenant relevant anyway. But since *you *think it’s such a big deal, I might point out, in response to your attempts to insinuate that the Protocol was dead in the water because only three countries have ratified it so far, that since we’ve had this discussion a fourth (El Salvador) has voted to do so and several others are undergoing the approval process. As I said before, it’s still very much live. (And I’m saying that only in response to that particular issue - don’t read any more into it than that.)
Now this is hilarious. First you claimed that the CESCR was only created by the OP and had no role whatsoever since the OP wasn’t in effect. These are your exact words:
When it’s pointed out to you that that is entirely wrong, and that the CESCR was created many years before the OP and in fact drafted the OP itself, all of a sudden what you really meant to say was that the CESCR was only created by the OP “as the body it holds the pretense of being now”. And yet, I’m the one who’s being accused of trying to go back on my own words.
Even if you weren’t transparently shifting goalposts here, you’d still be wrong. The body it is and claims to be now is the same body it has been since its creation. The OP will give it an additional function. I brought it into the discussion to point out what it said in a General Comment it issued under the functions devolved to it by ECOSOC before that OP even existed. That OP is really something of a red herring to this discussion; the only reason we’re even talking about it is because you wrongly believed that the CESCR was created by it and will have no function at all until it comes into effect. Which you refuse to admit.
It’s fairly obvious what happened here. I mentioned the ICESCR and CESCR, you went and looked the treaty up, saw there was nothing about the CESCR in it, saw the Optional Protocol mentioning the CESCR, assumed that the OP created the CESCR, saw that it wasn’t in effect yet and constructed your argument around that. You could just argue that it doesn’t matter and the CESCR’s views are irrelevant even when they’re expressed under its pre-OP functions (even though that would put you in a very small minority, and would certainly be out of step with those whose opinions actually have some weight where these things are concerned, unlike yours and mine), but that would require admitting that you were wrong about something and you can’t do that, since you’ve also based your argument around the pretense that you’re the one with all the facts here.
I don’t spend nearly as much time here as I used to, but looking at some of the Pit/ATMB threads that have been started about you it appears you have form in this regard. Just sayin’.
I’ve quoted it, what, three times now? So your continued, repeated, unchanging error is… odd. Your quoted, verbatim, unaltered, non-paraphrased words say that you disagreed that it’s Carter’s habit to lie in order to score points in the service of his political ideology, but you claim that I’m “paraphrasing” and using a “strawman” when I point out that fact. You were the one who claimed that I was “making shit up” by engaging in the dastardly act of quoting your words, verbatim.
Only because you’re somehow able to wildly distort even very, very simple text if it means you don’t have to just say, simply “Whoops, I was wrong. No human rights violation.” Just like how your entire argument was, at first, founded on your fictional claim that America/South Korea were bound by the vacuous babbling of a body with no legal authority at all, but when shown to be wrong on that point, you merely shifted to newer, flimsier, more obvious rationalizations. Anything to avoid simply admitting that you’re wrong.
What’s really pathetic is amidst your nitpicking about whether it’s a “protocol” or “protocols” :rolleyes:, you’ve now seized on yet another useless bit of failure as your next tactic. Despite your babble about “chronology” and how I was “wrong”, I was the one who pointed out the actual chronology to you, with cites. Since you seem to be doing your best to distort what I’ve actually said, I’ll just make it even plainer. I admit, I’m somewhat amused to see what you’ll try next to avoid admitting you’re wrong. But okay, since you ignored it last time, I’ll repeat it yet again: Faced with the fact that the CESCR’s current (non)powers were only created by the OP, and it was created later than the original treaty, you’re trying to play cutsey semantic games. You even, still, refuse to admit that the CESCR, as the body it holds the pretense of being now and as the body you’ve pretended it should be considered as was only created by the OP.
As you started this thread posting about things that you hadn’t researched and were factually wrong on every single point you’ve used to support your argument, and somehow your argument stayed the same and you just kept rationalizing, I’m not even sure if you understand what I’m saying. I’ll explain it, yet again.
-The CESCR was not set up by the treaty itself, as the body it holds the pretense of being now and as the body you’ve pretended it should be considered as , but by the Optional Protocol.
-As the OP is not in force, however, the CESCR acting as if it has any role to play beyond offering non-binding advice, is pretense.
-The CESCR’s suggested powers were only written in the OP.
Please tell me that you finally understand?
I suppose it’s temping to assume that others argue that same way you do, but that’s a dangerous bit of projection. And since I know that your argument doesn’t have time for facts, I’ll point them out to you, again.
You evidently didn’t even know that the OP existed. You claimed that the General Comments created obligations and that both South Korea and the United States were legally “bound”, and that Carter was correct.
I immediately corrected your total lack of knowledge about the relevant facts.
Despite the fact that the entire support you’d provided for your argument was shown to be completely wrong, you still rationalized a way that you could be correct, and claimed that SK was “bound” and that the US had “signaled an intention to be bound”.
Except, whoops, your rationalization was wrong again. I pointed out the fact that neither SK, nor the US was bound by the CESCR, no, not even a little bit. You still couldn’t admit you were totally wrong.
Rationalizing with all your might, you then claimed that sure SK was bound by the actual treaty and not the CESCR or the OP or the CESCR’s opinions… but you still refused to admit you were wrong when you claimed that Carter was absolutely correct and instead you should have just said he was “arguably” correct, even though you yourself admitted that neither SK nor the US was bound, in any way shape or form, by the CESCR’s views. And, of course, I was the one who pointed out yet more basic facts that you were unaware of, as well as the chronology Not the other way around. You did, however, try to nitpick chronology, as if it would make you and/or Carter any less glaringly wrong when you claim that not giving charitable aid is a violation of human rights. Just like you’re still trying to distort what was actually said so that, by gum, if I was wrong about chronology, why, then… *hey look over there!
And see, it really was a violation of human rights all along.
*
No, that’s exactly what I did say. You’d have understood that if you were in possession of the basic facts. I made the mistake of assuming that you had the bare minimum level of knowledge to participate in an informed discussion, and as such I responded as if you knew what you were talking about and that you were talking about a CESCR that actually had the power to issue any sort of binding… anything.
I’m sorry that, since you had no idea what any of the actual facts were in this discussion, you didn’t understand what it means that the OP set up a body a certain way, but that’s not my fault. That is, however, the reason why it really does behoove you to figure out what’s going on before you post in a thread.
You still, by the way, can’t bring yourself to admit that Carter has a habit of lying in order to support his political agenda or that he and you are absolutely wrong and there’s nothing, at all, in international law or custom that makes not giving charitable aid a violation of human rights. But, I see, in the service of not being able to admit your errors, of defending your argument whereby you came into a thread not knowing anything about the topic and using errors to justify your claims and rationalizations to prop up your argument once your errors were exposed, you’re then reduced to a pathetic ad hominem about how some people have sobbed about me in Pit/ATMB threads.
Why am I not surprised?
*All the egregious nonsense that makes up your argument because you refuse to simply say that while there is absolutely no human rights laws that are being violated by the US’ or South Korea’s actions, you don’t like them and disagree with those actions. But admitting that error isn’t something that fits into your argument. So instead we get bullshit piled upon bullshit, error piled upon error, rationalization piled upon rationalization. Just so you can refuse to admit your error and you don’t have to say that, yeah, it’s not actually a violation of human rights law or custom and that was some pretty silly dishonesty for Carter to spew.
But that’s okay too. I’m pretty sure that the folks reading along in the thread have seen you be wrong at each and every point, ignorant of basic facts, reduced to nitpicking about chronology even when I’m the one who actually cited the chronology… and yet you’re still unable to cite even one single actual law or international custom whereby it’s a human rights violation to not give charitable aid.
Go figure. *
Are you referring to this?
If so, why are you quoting me talking about your habits in order to claim that I said something about his? Perhaps you’re so obsessed with Carter you’re beginning to think you’re morphing into him?
A cite that you apparently didn’t read, since you’ve strenuously rejected what it says about “All States parties are obliged to submit regular reports to the Committee on how the rights are being implemented.”
No, I’ve quoted what you actually said. It couldn’t be plainer. You claimed that the OP “set up” the CESCR. It patently didn’t. The CESCR was in existence far earlier than the OP, and was carrying out the functions devolved to it by ECOSOC long before that. You never brought in this guff about “the body it holds the pretense of being now” until I pointed out to you that you were wrong about that.
I certainly do given that I’ve been involved in the campaign to get Ireland to ratify it. As I pointed out yesterday, the General Comment was published under the functions the CESCR has had since long before the OP was even created. All the OP will do is allow the CESCR to take and respond to individual complaints about breaches of the Covenant (something else you obviously didn’t know, since you claimed that the OP had something to do with the reporting process). The CESCR’s role in general interpretation of the Covenant does not derive from the OP, hence there was no reason for me to mention the OP in that post.
And as soon as I realised the US had only signed and not ratified I acknowledged my error. You still refuse to acknowledge a single one of yours.
What I said is that it was bound by the Covenant, and that the CESCR has the role of interpreting the meaning of the Covenant. All of which is true. The OP will just give the CESCR a mechanism to directly bind states parties which it doesn’t have at present. Where a state is acting contrary to a view that the CESCR has expressed in a General Comment, or in a periodic country report, there is absolutely nothing controversial about saying that that state is acting contrary to the Covenant. I come across this view all the time in the literature. The US Supreme Court even cited a CESCR General Comment as persuasive authority in Lawrence v Texas (and, incidentally, also noted the US’s obligations as a signatory to the Covenant), and other national courts regularly do the same. If I’m wrong, they’re all wrong. You’ll forgive me for assigning more weight to their views than yours… well actually you probably won’t, but I think most people would.
Are they all wrong, too?
Seeing that I didn’t actually claim it was a human rights violation to not give charitable aid, that should not be surprising. My statements concern whether it’s a human rights violation to withdraw aid that was already being given, to starving people, for political reasons. Those two things are not synonymous, no matter how much you’d like them to be.
Putting my hand up here, this is incorrect. I posted this from memory of a secondary source without reading the actual decision, and now that I’ve read it the Court itself didn’t refer to the Covenant or CESCR. My secondary source definitely quoted from someone saying a General Comment was implicated in the matter and referring to the US’s obligations as a signatory, which I took to be from the decision itself, but obviously it wasn’t. I’ll have to dig out the source from the 25,000 pieces of paper scattered around my living room to find out exactly how I was led astray there. But it was an error which I acknowledge making. As grownups do.
Interestingly, the Court did cite the European Court of Human Rights as persuasive authority, which proves at any rate that it does not accept the idea that “not legally binding” = “irrelevant”.
Carter is such a hypocrite. He funneled huge amounts of arms to Indonesia so they could wipe out tens of thousands in East Timor. That was the point, not an accident. Dunno how he got this peace aura around him. I guess if you’re a POTUS who says the right things, says you have regrets, and who’s only responsible for maybe 100K deaths you’re a saint, by comparison.
I’ll start with this nugget, since it’s a perfect encapsulation of the major rationalizations, errors and ignorance that your argument is founded upon. Let’s break it down stage by stage.
-Did you, in fact, claim that it is a violation of human rights for a nation not to give charitable aid? Yes, you did, in your very first post when you claimed that Carter was not just correct, but “absolutely” so. Carter, in turn, claimed that “for South Korea and the US and others to deliberately withhold food aid to the North Korean people is really a human rights violation”. Unsurprisingly, this is at the heart of your long chain of ignorance, error, and defensive rationalizations.
-A already proven again and again, but which you will not admit, there is absolutely no international law or custom which obligates a state to continue giving charitable aid once it has started, no matter what reasons it chooses for stopping that charitable aid. But as admitting you’re wrong on that point would eliminate one of your major rationalizations, your argument just contains endless attempts to justify the fictional.
-Also as demonstrated, the relevant US position is that we aren’t giving aid because we have no way to certify that it’s getting to its proper recipients and every reason to believe it’s being diverted to NK’s military and elite party supporters. The claim that it was being done for “political” reasons came from Carter, a proven liar. You tried to rationalize that by first denying that Carter was a liar (and later flaming me in GD, when caught in your claim that you hadn’t actually denied Carter’s utter lack of trustworthiness), as well as claiming that since he was the president roughly a third of a century ago, that he’d have a pretty good understanding of how Obama’s administration operates.
Speaking of how you alleged that Carter was trustworthy and tried to handwave away the facts that show he’s a proven liar who will lie, distort and invent ‘facts’ to support his political agenda, were caught on that fact although you denied it time and time again with your own words being quoted, let’s move on to how you still will not admit that Carter lacks force as an honest source of information, and would instead prefer to flame in GD while pretending that snide insults about how I was wrong about Carter were really only about how I was wrong, and not how I was wrong about Carter:
Something tells me that you don’t really expect many people to take this new dodge seriously. You claimed that Carter is not a proven liar who distorts facts to fit his political agenda, and caught (for what, the fourth time?) claiming you didn’t actually do that, even though your own words are provided in black and white, now you’re reduced to flaming in GD, with babble about “obsession” and some sort of strange psychosis whereby someone thinks that they’re Jimmy Carter.
Funny, you still can’t admit that you were wrong and Carter has proven himself to be a non-trustworthy source who lies, invents non-facts or distorts facts in order to provide ammunition for his political agenda. One would think you could admit that fact, and admit that you’d denied it earlier. But it’s okay, rather than touching on your error there, please, flame more in GD. That’ll show that you’re right to use Carter as an authority.
And again, we see that you cannot admit error. I proved that you were making shit up when you claimed that you brought certain things or ‘educated me’ on chronology, and you try to divert to yet more nitpicking nonsense. Now you’re claiming that the UN’s pretense about the CESCR is a fact. No, you’re already had that particular error refuted, too, but as per standard operating procedure you’re not admitting that mistake, either, since it’d mean that you have to engage in yet another round or rationalizations rather than admit that the US didn’t violate international human rights laws.
The truly amusing thing is that in your babble about “not reading” things, you’ve ignored that the very post you’re trying to criticize is the one that debunks your error. Not only does it show that, yet again, you have no idea what you’re talking about and you’re making things up, but it does so with direct cited quotes to the relevant treaty. The treaty, by the way, that shows that there is absolutely no obligation to submit anything to the CESCR, and there is only an obligation to submit to the Secretary General. We’ve been over this, I cited this just a few posts up, but as it shows that your argument is based on yet another error, you’d prefer to post nonsense about how I “didn’t read” something.
And again, if you had even basic knowledge of the issue you’d know that it did. The body that the OP sets up is not the same body as existed previously, being that the previous body did not have any sort of powers, at all, under the framework of the treaty. But as your argument deals in rationalization and not facts, it doesn’t contain an admission of error on that count either, and you actually tried to claim that the CESCR pr-OP was the same as the CESCR post-OP, even though the OP includes provisions that would make what the CESCR actually is, totally different.
Yes, showing that you had no idea what the OP was when you brought it up, since when you brought up the General Comment you claimed that states were “bound” by it. Later, after you were corrected on that massive error, and informed that the OP existed,you claimed that, okay, South Korea was bound by that instead. Except of course you were wrong and ignorant on that point too, as SK hadn’t even signed, let alone ratified the OP.I educated you on that point, too, but again your argument uses many tactics to avoid simply retracting an erroneous argument.
Now you compound error and ignorance with yet more, and claim that the OP has nothing to do with the reporting process and that “all” it will doe is to allow the CESCR to take and respond to individual complaints. It is, unfortunately, still quite obvious that despite being informed by me of the existence of the OP a few weeks ago, you haven’t bothered to learn about what it actually is. Here you are, again, reduced to arguing absurdity (this time actually even better than claiming that a body with totally new, different powers is the same body it was previously). Now you’re actually, honestly claiming that while the OP explicitly sets up procedure so that “victims of a violation of any of the economic, social and cultural rights…” can report their grievances… is not part of the reporting process. I assume you typed that with a straight face.
On your massive error that the OP only deals with reporting to the CESCR (which you claim has nothing to do with reporting to the CESCR), yet again I’d ask you to read the actual OP, which aims to set up the CESCR as an arbiter of disputes between states. A role which, yet again, it does not actually have.
Yet again, this is why you need to gain a (very) basic level of factual knowledge before you try to hold forth on a position.
The first claim is fictional, the second is false and you’ve been shown to be in error on that point, what, a dozen times? More?
As for your first claim, you actually stated at the time that the US/SK were bound not by the treaty, but by the CESCR’s comments on it. That was your very first post on the subject, although as per routine your argument is a series of rationalizations designed to hold to the same conclusion no matter how many supporting facts are demolished.
As for your second error, as you’ve been corrected numerous times, no, the CESCR does not have the role of interpreting anything at all. It is a wholly irrelevant body whose ability to actually serve as an arbiter in disputes over the law has not been ratified. Even an ability to offer advice would still not be the same thing as having the “role of interpreting the meaning of the Covenant.” That is yet another in a very long series of rationalizations, and we’ve been over this again and again and again, but your argument can’t admit it’s founded on error from the top to the bottom.
Yep, you’re wrong and again your argument is based on fiction and rationalization. Of course later you, again, admit that you’re wrong and the SCOTUS didn’t actually do that, but that’s the point, you’re drawing non-facts and rationalizations out of thin air just so you can support Carter’s absurd claim that not giving charitable aid is a violation of human rights.
ruadh, tone it down. Saying another poster is obsessed (and delusional) is a personal attack and not an argument.
As far as I can tell, Carter wasn’t talking about a general policy of charitable aid, but a specific issue in which aid had previously been given to starving people but was now being withdrawn, for what he suggested were political reasons. He was speaking in a context and I was replying in that context. Your attempts to generalise it to any and all situations of charitable aid are taking it out of that context.
As I said from the start, my position is based on a CESCR General Comment which says that states are obliged to provide food aid to people in foreign countries that need it, that “food embargoes *or similar measures *” should never be used, and that retrogressive measures are presumptively invalid. All of these, especially read together, back up Carter’s argument. And while you do not believe that a CESCR General Comment has any relevance in international law, that is a minority opinion and it is quite common for General Comments to be cited by jurists and academics in considering what international law contains. See below.
I accept that’s the US “position”. The US has a lot of public “positions” which obscure their real reasons. It hasn’t been demonstrated that that’s the actual reason, it’s merely been asserted.
Yes, I think that someone who’s been president is likely to have more insight than the ordinary person into how presidential administrations operate. Is that really an extraordinary thing to believe?
Seriously, is all you have to go on for this that I said I wasn’t surprised you took that view of him? Yes or no?
You’re the one who linked to that page to back up your argument.
The OP doesn’t “set up” a body at all. It gives an additional role to an existing body. The Protocol specifically refers to “enabling” the Committee to take on the complaints function. You can’t enable a body that doesn’t exist to do something. Not only is your claim here logically flawed under any ordinary interpretation of the English language, but it’s also quite transparent that that wasn’t what you actually meant. You denied the relevancy of the comments on the basis that
Nowhere in there is there any suggestion that the body that wrote the comments is a different body to the one set up in the OP. That’s something you’ve invented out of thin air, in the month you’ve had time to think about your error and come up with an excuse for it.
Yes, and I’ve addressed the fact that the understanding of what that treaty obligation means as a matter of actual practice has changed since the monitoring functions were devolved to the CESCR. Out of curiosity, what’s your explanation for why states parties consider themselves obliged to submit reports to it? Why don’t they simply tell the CESCR to take a hike since it’s in not written in the actual Treaty?
Sigh. The OP is a mechanism which allows the CESCR to directly bind states parties in a way it cannot currently do. It does not change the substantive nature of states’ obligations under the Treaty; it merely gives the CESCR a way to attempt to enforce those obligations. It’s a procedural amendment to international human rights law, not a substantive one.
And this is where you really show that you aren’t familiar with the whole set-up. The “reporting process” refers to what the states submit under Article 16 of the Treaty. What the OP does is set up an entirely separate individual complaints process. It has almost nothing whatsoever to say about the reporting process - the only reference being that the CESCR may, after the main elements of the complaints process have been carried out, ask states to include information on its compliance with complaints decisions as part of its ordinary Art 16 reports. That’s only a minor element of the OP which barely impacts on the reporting process at all.
I can predict how you’ll reply to this. You’ll say that by “reporting process” you really meant an individual reporting process, and I obviously knew this and I’m “nit-picking” by referring to the Art 16 reporting process. Save it. The terminology “reporting process” would simply never be used to refer to the individual complaints process by anyone familiar with how the UN human rights treaty systems operates. It has a very specific meaning, which you were clearly unaware of.
You’re digging yourself deeper into a hole here. The OP does allow for inter-state communications but to describe that, and only that, as what it “aims” to do is to completely misunderstand it. Read it yourself. Better still, read the history of the OP, which demonstrates that the idea of including an inter-state mechanism in the OP was actually rejected at the initial stages - the reason being that the ones available under OPs of other human rights treaties were never used. It was added eventually, but it is *wholly *inaccurate to describe it - and only it - as being what the OP “aims” to do.
That is its role as just about universally understood, by everyone except you. Your insistence that a role is not a role unless an enforceable treaty provision says it’s a role does not reflect how the CESCR actually operates, and how other actors relate to it, in the real world. It is utterly baffling how you continue to believe that your view, which isn’t shared by anyone else in the world that I have come across, is the only possible correct one and that my view, which reflects OHCHR, state practice (including court decisions), international courts and scholarly opinion, is not merely wrong but evidence of my not knowing what I’m talking about.
To make up for my error on the US Supreme Court, here are some cites from other courts in which CESCR General Comments are used as persuasive authority.
South Africa
Inter-American Court of Human Rights
Australia
India
New Zealand
European Court of Human Rights
And that’s only ones referring specifically to CESCR General Comments; there are others that refer to statements the Committee has made in the course of the reporting procedure.
As I said before - if I’m wrong, they’re all wrong.
That’s because your argument requires rationalizations to make any sense, at all. Carter claimed it was a violation of human rights to not give charitable aid, not to suspend a program of charitable aid. As already proven, over and over and over again, neither international law nor international custom hold such a view. Carter was making shit up. You’ve decided to argue that the US can be extorted by… someone… and if we don’t continue to give charitable aid, then we’re guilty of human rights violations.
Still waiting on a cite of actual international law or actual international custom to back that up. So far you’ve provided the non-bindings views of a group that wasn’t created by an actual treaty and whose ability to actually arbitrate disputes over international human rights law, simply, does not exist.
You won’t be providing a cite for international law or international custom any time soon, will you?
Barring that, the fact is that Carter, as is his pattern, is using lies, distortions and outright flights of fantasy to make his politics seem plausible. In this case, it’s the claim that if your food aid to a hostile nation is used by that nation to prop up its military and political supporters, while deliberately starving roughly half of the population, and you demand that food aid has to actually be given to starving people or you’ll stop giving it, then you’re a human rights violator. Most rational people can spot the bullshit inherent in that bit of extortion from about a parsec off. Got any cites, finally, showing how Carter’s right?
No?
How unexpected.
We’ve been over this. Their opinions are not binding, do not inform international law, treaty law, or customary law. I’m not sure you understand, but if some courts decide to cite them as good reasoning that’s fine, but he very fact that nations can 100% safely ignore anything and everything they say means that their views do not reflect international custom.
Can you, or can you not, provide any scrap of actual international law or international custom that supports your claim?
Yet again, Jimmy Carter is a liar. He’s lied about how his own administration operated, and even if he hadn’t, why you think we should take him at face value when he claims to be relating how a totally different administration operates a quarter of a century after his failed one-term-administration is anybody’s guess. This is just part of the reason why your argument’s currency is rationalization and ridiculousness.
You are fooling virtually nobody, and neither are you maintaining plausible deniability. If someone says “Person A is a liar who cannot be trusted” and you response “Ah hah! Of course someone like you would think that.”, then of course that’s a denial (coupled with a charming personal insult). That you’re attempting to deny it is weaksauce.
Now back to nitpicking rationalizations, I see.
Yet again, most folks understand that the Secret Service that protects the president is not the same body that only acted to counter crimes against the US Treasury. Most folks understand that the United States federal government is not the same thing as the Continental Congress.
Most people understand that setting up an entirely different role for a group to fulfill means that the group has been set up in a new incarnation.
Again, you’re not going to fool anybody with that. Most people will understand that a committee which, for roughly a decade after it voiced its opinions, wouldn’t even have a treaty drafted which would allow it to function as an arbiter, and still doesn’t even have that treaty in force let alone as a treaty legally relevant to the nations Carter is trying to extort, is not actually the same committee that would have the ability to serve as a legal arbiter when alleged violations were brought to its attention.
This really is amazing. In one breath you admit that the CESCR has no actual legal authority and cannot compel anybody to do anything, and in the next you still try to rationalize your way out of that and claim that states are still obligated in the same manner, anyways. Yet again, your argument is founded on rationalizations because the facts don’t work.
:rolleyes:
Do you think these sorts of rationalizations work for you? I discussed how the OP would set up a different procedure for reporting violations of the relevant treaty, and you’re trying to nitpick that into… something. Your argument has now actually devolved to a semantic game whereby reporting alleged violations isn’t part of reporting, because they’re complaints. For serious.
And yet again rather than simply admitting that you were wrong (again), you’re trying a ‘well, you didn’t actually read/understand/spiritually commune with’ dodge. Again.
I think that roughly translates as “You’ve again proven me wrong Finn, please stop it!” Naturally, while denying that the OP “aims to set up the CESCR as an arbiter of disputes between states” you have to ignore that a huge chunk of the OP is all about how the CESCR will be set up and function as an arbiter of disputes between states. Par for the course.
You also seem not to understand what international law is or how it works. One would hope that you’re aware that other nations have long cited decisions of the SCOTUS. However, only someone who had absolutely no clue, at all, would claim that a SCOTUS decision determined international law. In point of fact, when other nations no longer liked the rulings of the SCOTUS and the foreign policy of the US, they stopped citing the SCOTUS as often. And yet the only thing that you’ve been able to provide, at all, is a non-binding opinion of a body whose ability to actually serve as an arbiter legally does not exist, and claimed that not following that irrelevant opinion actually shows that a nation is violating human rights. :smack:
So, found a cite for international law or international custom, yet, to back up any of your claims? Should be pretty easy, if it actually exists.
Still waiting.