Un Swissroll

Deux importants billets de Norman Geras:

• International Law and the moral dimension

Une exposition concise du point de vue de la gauche internationaliste, favorable au droit international en général et à  l’ONU en particulier, mais qui ne peut se résigner à  en faire l’arbitre ultime du droit d’ingérence humanitaire:

It is sometimes said by opponents of the war to liberate Iraq that it is the reason why ‘genuine’ humanitarian intervention is now so difficult; the Iraq war discredited the whole idea. But this is a cheap, partisan and false point. For one thing, historical chronology is against it. The Iraq war wasn’t the barrier to a UN intervention in either Rwanda or Kosovo. And the scandal of what has been allowed to happen in Darfur while the UN has stood back even from use of the word ‘genocide’ isn’t adequately explained by the Iraq war. If the deaths and displacement of hundreds of thousands of people is not a sufficient emergency to mobilize the UN to effective action, then it is the institution itself as would-be embodiment and guarantor of the norms of the global community that is seriously wanting. Now a new tragedy is unfolding in Zimbabwe. For how long? To what, more terrible stage?

A lire aussi sur ce blog les nombreux billets consacrés à  la détresse du peuple du Zimbabwe sous la férule de Robert Mugabe.

• Dead end Dawkins

L’égarement du fondamentalisme athée qui, dans la période présente, croit voir dans les religions la source du mal:

Belief systems are made up of many parts, and religious beliefs are no exception to this. Thus, as well as ‘fantastic propositions… believed without evidence’, much religious belief incorporates ideas about not harming the innocent, helping those in need, behaving justly, etc. Conversely, there are non-religious belief systems in which ideas about improving the world sit beside notions of discounting present suffering to achieve future (speculative) goods, or about deliberately harming the innocent, or about treating whole categories of human beings as, intrinsically, non-innocent, inferior, and so forth.