Bolivian President Plans To Sue The US For Diverting Presidential Planes
from the this-could-get-interesting dept
You may recall the craziness from back in July when frantic US officials had an airplane carrying the President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, diverted from its planned path and forced to land, because of rumors that Ed Snowden might be hidden away on board. That turned out to be totally false, but the ensuing outrage about US government bullying, and forcing a Presidential plane to land has been growing. Now, Morales has announced that he's planning to sue the US government for "crimes against humanity" over a similar, but slightly different incident: the supposed diversion of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's plane on his flight to China. While the US has now granted clearance, originally Venezuela claimed otherwise, and Morales is fearful of a pattern:"The US cannot be allowed to continue with its policy of intimidation and blockading presidential flights," stressed Morales.Of course, the US can (and probably will) continue to do that sort of thing, because that's what the US does, but acting like a big bully just for the hell of it really doesn't seem to make much diplomatic sense these days.
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Filed Under: airspace, bolivia, evo morales, human rights, lawsuits, nicolas maduro, venezuela
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what's the legal theory?
The U.S. leaned of France, Spain and Portugal, and they all denied a particular aircraft permission to enter their respective airspace.
How is any of this illegal? Uncivilized, undignified, petty bullying, yes. But illegal?
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rather old principle for effective diplomacy in peace-time.
wait the US is always at war.
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Criminals are pretending to be legitimate US of A gov't.
@ Beta: Civilized countries treat diplomats including a country's president as immune to search and seizure. It's ancient tradition and largely necessary for any degree of trust. The times it's been violated are so few that I can't think of any. This was probably a deliberate knowing act to shock world conscience. I suppose you're technically right that isn't illegal meaning aren't any actual written (or at least not enforceable laws short of going to war), but it's a crime nonetheless. It's just short of an act of war. It's active interference in sovreignty. -- As a practical matter, it's highly enraging and will surely be counter-productive, but I don't believe that the criminals in control care about a backlash; in fact, for years they've been doing everything possible to get rest of the world to hate us, including starting phony wars, murdering and torturing civilians.
To see how it's a crime, just turn it around so that a US plane was forced down for diplomats to be searched. I'm sure the US jingoists would be outraged and calling for nuclear bombing. This shows the alleged US "exceptionalism" that everyone else in the world so reviles: it IS just bullying, which humanity holds to be a crime when done by those so relatively more powerful as to be immune from retaliation.
BUT the most powerful force in the world is morality, and so even if the former US of A keeps going down the path to empire, it'll eventually be brought down, just as Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were, and the criminals brought to justice.
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Re: Criminals are pretending to be legitimate US of A gov't.
I'd still lay off the hyperbole and paranoia in the first and last paragraphs, but you brought logic and an attempt to debate rather a fact-free screed and personal attacks here. Amazing what a difference that can make.
Now, I wonder if you can keep this decorum during a thread on copyright, censorship or business models? It might be difficult, but you might even have something approaching an honest conversation where people can debate actual opinions rather than pile on the troll, as has been happening of late.
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How about you lay off that whole "gigantic douche" thing you're famous for, and then maybe we'll talk.
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You may think Paul's a "gigantic douche" (what are you, 10?), but pretty much everyone here thinks the same of you. So we're probably a lot more right than you are.
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Re: Criminals are pretending to be legitimate US of A gov't.
In any case you are right, the violation of sovereignty displayed here is without precedent. The US behavior brought much hatred and ill-will towards them. Now they are losing friends among long-standing allies. See the Brazilian President's speech at the UN. The US is nosediving and much like the Jewish millions of innocent Americans will suffer in the process be it via terrorism or simply via prejudice.
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That's pretty much what the US did to the President of Bolivia. Civilized nations don't do things like that, that sort of thing is what rogue states do.
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How much of that has been paid back?
Hmmm?
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Bolivia is a poor nation and the US (as well as many other countries) give aid to help the people live decent lives. This money is a gift of charity and should obviously not be used to bribe and blackmail people like you are insinuating.
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What will be the sentence?
Many of the defendants of the Nuremberg and Tokyo War Crime Trials were charged with "Crimes against humanity". Many of the convicted were sentence to death and executed very quickly.
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this paranoia has gone too far! it's about time the USA was left on it's own. it has made it abundantly clear that all it wants other nations for is to force them to buy USA goods and services, while doing nothing but eaves drop and spy on everyone in that country, the leaders in particular in return! it wants to force countries to buy goods it doesn't want at prices it cant afford, just to keep a USA business going! it fights other countries that bring out generic drugs that people still have a real job trying to afford, expecting already broke people to pay 10 or more times the price for a USA drug. lives mean nothing now. the only thing worth anything is control!
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I really wish it would lead to some serious issues in our government being addressed, but I just don't see that happening.
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