International Law

Welcome to this week’s I Call Bullshit, a column that looks at all kinds of myths and mistruths, at falsehoods, fiction and fabrications. This week we look at whether gamers are breaching international conventions when they loot, pillage, or kill.

Virtual animal rights abuse. Pic: Supplied

I’m no war criminal. Not even a virtual one. That’s because I’ve never played a violent video game – or indeed any video game since Donkey Kong. The original version.

But if the Red Cross has their way, it raises the question of whether I could be up on some kind of charge for (ahem) enjoying The Human Centipede.

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  • Kheiron says:

    05:50pm | 23/12/11

    I always released my prisoners. I figured it was more demoralizing to the enemy to have their soldiers sent home with a spanking instead of ‘dying for the cause’. With the way I fought the battle, though, there weren’t a hell of a lot of survivors… As for the FPS… Read more »

  • LC says:

    07:55pm | 09/12/11

    A study started in the late 70’s and continuing to this day have been showing a steady downward trend in all violent crime across the first world. Of course, newspapers are continuing to report these crimes, and are reporting more trivial events then they used to, for example, a minor… Read more »

 

If reports in this morning’s Australian are true - that Julia Gillard is intending to send asylum seekers back to their country of origin - then Australians should be very concerned that their Prime Minister and her government are so ignorant of international legal convention.

Asylum seekers at the new federal facility in Leonora, Western Australia. Pic: File

Put bluntly, to return asylum seekers to a location where they will more than likely face death or severe injury is a gross breach of the 1951 Refugees Convention to which Australia is a signatory. 

The report says: “hundreds of Afghan and Sri Lankan asylum-seekers are likely to be sent home under Julia Gillard’s tough policy agenda to deter boatpeople.”  Ms Gillard will apparently seek assurances from the governments of those countries that persons who are not judged to be asylum seekers by Australia will not be persecuted when they are sent back home.  From a diplomatic perspective, such assurances are a sick joke given the fact that Afghanistan’s Karzai government in Kabul is hopelessly corrupt and dishonest and has no control over the security of the country.

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  • Peasant #3167 says:

    10:45pm | 10/07/10

    Strawman journalism here. Gillard said she would send them back if they did not meet UNHCR requirements. In any case we have a humanitarian programme to accept 13,000 each year. If these queue jumpers (which are mainly young men) are taking the place of children and families waiting in camps… Read more »

  • Jason says:

    05:59pm | 09/07/10

    As per your article - “coming directly from territories…”.  How many of these boat people came DIRECT?  None - they came via nations where they were not threatened.  Law doesn’t apply then does it?  Next! Read more »

 

Have you ever wondered why it is that nobody is going to jail for causing climate change?

You or I can fined $375 for “aggravated littering” (such as dropping a cigarette but near a petrol station), but you can get away with sea level rise, drought, bushfires and global havoc without so much as losing a demerit point on your driver’s licence.

Like these mob bosses, coal kings could be led away in unflattering pants.

Australians have felt this frustration, as we watched our legal system powerless to stop the expansion of Japan’s so-called “scientific” whaling programme. It is not as if there is no precedent for punishing big polluters. Early this year BP was forced to pay almost US$180 million for pollution violations at its Texas City Refinery. Exxon was forced to cough up US$1 billion over the 1989 Valdez oil spill.

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  • Sam says:

    07:23pm | 18/12/11

    I’ll change to solar if you pay for it, not that simple Read more »

  • Sam says:

    07:20pm | 18/12/11

    Its just insurance, like your car or house, its short sighted to only insure against material loss, the changing to green energy and taxing carbon emissions will create more employment and take back the Australia peoples finacial benefits from greedy multinational companys that only.benefits the owners and shareholders, sure some… Read more »

 

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