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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28109 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 18, 2023

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I stated my point very clearly, twice:

  1. "The Interpol reference might not mean much. There has apparently been quite a bit of abuse of Interpol procedures on the part of authoritarian governments in recent years."
  2. "My only point was that the fact that Interpol has issued an arrest warrant does not, in and of itself, necessarily mean anything."

OK, so all I'm saying that the Interpol Red-thingee means is that India feels it has enough evidence to charge this guy if he shows up back in India -- which is also normally enough to have a poke at extradition proceedings. (which may or may not succeed)

So if India wants this guy enough to order a hit, it seems weird that they wouldn't have tried a little harder to extradite him first. Unless Canada told them "you can try but we will say no".

(BTW one of the most consistently annoying aspects of conversations with you is your tendency to veer off the main point to nitpick things like calling an Interpol Red Listing (or whatever they call it) a warrant -- if you are going to do that you should at least take pains not to refer to it that way yourself at other times)

@jkf If you find @Gdanning annoying you should either not engage, or engage in a non-antagonistic manner.

Gdanning made the antagonistic comment about Canadians, but otherwise backed off and only addressed points about the argument.

@jkf you were antagonistic multiple times in a row, despite no escalation from gdanning. Consider this a warning.

Point taken on rising to bait, but for clarity what were the times that I was antagonistic other than asking gdanning if he was a moron after he asked me if I was one?

You didn't answer the question.

...

BTW one of the most consistently annoying aspects of conversations with you

I will push back on these -- there is a difference between antagonism and feedback. Gdanning does in fact have a consistent pattern of responding to posts with long lists of nitpicks that are often technically correct but have little to do with the thrust of the discussion; at other times they veer towards strawmanning. (as in this case when he spends quite a bit of time arguing that the Interpol 'warrant' doesn't prove anything for certain; like, yeah?) This is annoying, particularly because he does also often make interesting points -- but struggling through the tangents is an obstacle towards getting there.

In any case, accusing one's conversation partner of annoying behaviour is surely better than accusing him of being a moron -- is it your position that it's OK to call people morons then back off, so that they will be the ones catching mod flak if they remain annoyed?

I tagged him in the original mod comment to let them know that the antagonism was noticed and not appreciated. But I also couldn't tell that he specifically meant to call you a moron. He called Canadians morons, and often when I see people doing that they are often talking about the people in the government of that country. That seemed like it was potentially the case here.

Your phrasing was more of a problem than the thrust of your criticism.

(BTW one of the most consistently annoying aspects of conversations with you is your tendency to veer off the main point to nitpick things like calling an Interpol Red Listing (or whatever they call it) a warrant -- if you are going to do that you should at least take pains not to refer to it that way yourself at other times)

Switched to:

(I've noticed in conversations with you, that you have a tendency to veer off the main point to nitpick things like calling an Interpol Red Listing (or whatever they call it) a warrant -- I'm going to try and ignore all of these nitpicks unless I can see how it clearly relates to the main discussion.)

All fine, but the fact is he definitely did ask whether I was a moron -- I am openly Canadian and if Canadians are morons, that means I am too. If I were talking to TracingWoodgrains and ask if gay guys are mormons, I would not be surprised if this annoyed him for longer than it took to write the next comment.

Dunno what the rules have to say about plausibly deniable insults, but I'd think they are better avoided.

nitpick things like calling an Interpol Red Listing (or whatever they call it) a warrant

That wasn't my point at all. My point was that Interpol does not do its own investigation. And, the only reason I referred to it as a warrant is that you did; note that I initially referred to "Interpol procedures" and I did that precisely because I did not know for sure what specific Interpol procedures tend to be abused, and which is also why I said, "The Interpol reference might not mean much."

And, perhaps you might think about why you got so bent out of shape by a simple observation that the Interpol reference might not mean much. And that there has apparently been quite a bit of abuse of Interpol procedures on the part of authoritarian governments in recent years. Yet you took that as some sort of claim that there was a good reason for him not to have been extradited, which I did not say at all.

And that there has apparently been quite a bit of abuse of Interpol procedures on the part of authoritarian governments in recent years.

This seems to be a claim that you are just taking at face value and expecting me to do the same -- obviously Interpol doesn't go and investigate things, rather issues their "whatever you want to call thems" based on evidence provided by the country of origin.

So you seem to be suggesting that India (parliamentary democracy, not authoritarian government BTW) faked evidence to get Interpol to put this guy on their list, but wouldn't do the same thing to try to have him extradited from Canada? But would send assassins to shoot him on Canadian soil? I don't really get it.

This seems to be a claim that you are just taking at face value

Well, I provided a link, and frankly it is pretty common knowledge. The Heritage Foundation has written about it and federal law now requires that the State Department issue biannual reports on the practice.

So you seem to be suggesting that India (parliamentary democracy, not authoritarian government BTW) faked evidence

  1. No, as I said, "The Interpol reference might not mean much" and "My only point was that the fact that Interpol has issued an arrest warrant does not, in and of itself, necessarily mean anything." Note the tentative nature of those statements.
  2. Ostensible parliamentary democracies can be authoritarian. See, eg, Hungary. And if you are not aware of the trends toward authoritarianism in India in recent years, you should be. Again, it is common knowledge and has been a somewhat thorny issue re US foreign policy of late.

but wouldn't do the same thing to try to have him extradited from Canada?

As noted several times, neither you nor I know what efforts India made to extradite him, and we certainly don't know what evidence it gave to Canada in support of any application it submitted.

But would send assassins to shoot him on Canadian soil?

  1. I have not opined that they did. I simply noted that the Interpol action is not necessarily evidence of anything.

  2. However, yes, regimes sometimes prefer their opponents dead to the alternative of giving a forum to their views via a trial. Especially a leader of a secessionist movement. Moreover, an assassination gives the regime deniability, unlike a trial. So there is nothing inherently illogical about it.

So my initial comment on this was:

The big picture question is why wasn't he extradited already, considering that he's been wanted by India/Interpol since 2016 for involvement in what seems to be clearcut terrorism. (theatre bombing)

Given the history with Air India, he doesn't seem like somebody we would normally want to keep around, had India made a request to bring him back for trial -- I wonder whether it's wise for Trudeau to stir the pot too much on what did or didn't happen in between now and then?

How in the world would you interpret this as me having extreme certainty about the Interpol warrant or anything else to do with extradition?

It is simply that I wonder why nobody moved to extradite him between 2015 and now, and whether questions about this will make the Trudeau government look all that great. (depending on the answers to those questions, of course -- but anything that could be spun as "harbouring accused theatre bomber" is probably not politically beneficial for them)

The entire rest of this thread is extremely tangential to this point, which I will raise again as a persistent discussion pattern with you that would be better avoided.

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