>There is a ban against genocide and denial of civil rights within
>"international law" but it has never been enforced, so it has no real
>existence. The war in Kosovo is being based on enforcing that part of
>international law and through that intervention, the law is taking on some
>meaning. Of course, there are other darker motives involved; there always
>are, but to agree with Charles just slightly, the forms and rhetorics of
>intervention do matter, if only in giving those of less power in society a
>legitimacy to hoist the powers that be on their own petard of rhetoric.
>
>On substance, I think the Kosovars have right on their side and I take
>seriously their view that intervention was necessary for them to achieve
>human rights in their land. On the law, we have the choice of privileging
>the "law" of non-intervention and the sanctity of borders or alternatively
>privileging human rights over the sanctity of the right to brutalize ones
>own people.
>
>That the first major war fought in the name of human rights is a clumsy,
>bloody mess in many ways is hardly surprising, but if the end result is
>freedom for the Kosovars - and yes however circumscribed by outside
>dominance, but at least the form of dominance apparently preferred by the
>population's leadership - that will not only be for their good but for
>establishing real Law on human rights that has more meaning than the Sermon
>on the Mount.
>
>--Nathan Newman
"Between equal rights force decides." Marx, Capital Vol 1 Chapter X, end of section 1.
"Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one."
Capital Vol 1, Chapter XXXI
Chris Burford
London