One of my cunning plans for making a living was to open sex shops in the arrivals areas of airports. Since air travel became such a horrible experience, I figured that people must be chary of taking with them in their baggage the battery operated items that they find essential to their personal happiness, for fear of having them waved about by security men. Therefore the chance to equip themselves suitably on arrival might be welcome.
I was surprised to find that the Germans have got their already. In the departures lounge at Munich airport, and most importantly after you have passed through the last security search, is a Beate Uhse sex shop. And more than that, in the window they had a display of solar powered vibrators. How wonderful! You can have an orgasm and save the planet all at the same time. Good vibrations indeed.
“…in the window they had a display of solar powered vibrators. How wonderful! You can have an orgasm and save the planet all at the same time.”
Don’t give them ideas, or we’ll end up with solar powered X-ray scanners, or even solar powered tazors… from the good people of the State!
Eek! “got their rocks off already”, or just “got there already”?
Was the chairman chosen for his name or his business acumen?
Philip Gerard Cok Board member Chairman since 07/01/2009
Andreas Bartmann
Prof. Martin Weigel Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board
Gelmer Westra
Kerstin Klippert
Th. BH Ruzette
http://www.beate-uhse.ag/?h=4&m=6&s=2
“solar powered vibrators”
Not much use in Scotland. Nothing available that ran on tidal flow?
Chocs away!
And quite serious “Bad vibrations” in Libya…
Not Another Terrorist Organisation
By: Courtenay Barnett – http://www.globaljusticeonline.com
With the recent attempted assassination of Muammar Ghadaffi, NATO is now worthy of the acronym:-
Not Another Terrorist Organisation
Stated seriously, the dual choices are of viewing the situation of the attempted assassination of Ghadaffi in abstracto or viewing it in concreto.
In abstracto, the United States, Britain and France can be seen as having considerable military advantage over the Libyan state it is presently attacking. Likewise, with a UN Resolution in hand, namely UN Resolution 1973, one would think that it would not only be the de facto responsible thing to do by operating within the confines of Resolution 1973, but there remains a de jure legal obligation to conduct international relations within the confines of the established rules of international law. To the extent that a UN resolution was sought and obtained, there was an attempt to establish parameters for lawful international engagement against Libya. To that extent, in abstracto, the US/NATO powers have acted responsibly, but as we shall observe in concreto, the US/NATO have now dislodged the supporting beam of lawful credibility via their most recent actions.
Before moving forward to the second limb, there is a need to observe that the United States has been trending towards reliance on its own domestic laws, inverting same against the standards of international law ( within which its own domestic laws should be congruent and compliant). Thus, as with such self-styled contrivances as “enemy combatants”, the US has sought to justify wanton disregard for international law.
The broad legal parameters permitting the use of lethal force are for legitimate acts of law enforcement –and – in situations of self-defence ( see: UN Charter Article 51).
There are two sides to the argument – in abstracto. On one side of the coin is justification of acts of attack on a targeted leader because of alleged state sponsored terrorism. However, “terrorism” finds itself classified as a crime. The legal stretch which the US has been using is to misinterpret to seek justification for their own use convenience to use excessive lethal and oftentimes indiscriminate force by classifing the individual criminal act of terrorism as a act of war. The other side of the coin is that use of excessive force in situations of incursions into countries where asymmetrical warfare of resistance to US occupation is being waged, places the occupying forces at the disadvantage of facing guerilla warfare, thus the occupying forces seek to validate and legitimate their actions against non-uniformed and non-governmental forces.
In concreto, the incident of Eichmann is a helpful case in point. Israel overstepped the boundaries of international law, sought justification on the basis of “hostes humanis generis” ( i.e. common enemies of humankind) and thus felt free to exercise universal jurisdiction. The UN Secretary Council did not deem the violation of sovereignty permissible and lawful.
What we are witnessing in Libya is, in very colloquial language – stretch – and over-reach. ‘Stretch’ in the sense of extending Resolution 1973 to a situation that it was not designed to extend to. Overreach in the sense of commencing with a Resolution that is lawful, but then carrying it well outside the boundaries of legality by launching, funding and actively supporting a civil war.
In a situation such as that of the advancing forces of the US/NATO, operative words within the narrative of international law are ones such as “lawful” or “legal”, “necessary”, “proportionate” and “reasonable”.
The very practical difficulty with the recent assassination attempt on the life of Colonel Mommar Ghadaffi is that the very arguments in abstraction for legal and civilized behavior amongst the family of nations of the world, is undermined by the excesses of military convenience in trying to murder the leader of a nation state.
The Hague Convention; Geneva Conventions; and customary international law all have a bearing on this most unlawful act.
The ultimate difficulty being faced henceforth is that the policing action permitted by Resolution 1973 does not, and did not extend to the launching of a war of aggression, which de facto has taken place in Libya under the auspices of US/NATO led forces. The false assumption is one of a lawful right to extend the Resolution to justify unprovoked acts of warfare on Libya. This has conceptually debased the original validity of the Resolution. Secondly, the implicit validation attempt of treating Ghadaffi as a lawful “terrorist target”, de facto inverts any legitimacy that the US/NATO led mission might otherwise have had. The end result is that the legitimisation of targeting of heads of state of the Western powers, be this by way of state sponsored or non-state actors, such as religiously or politically motivated individuals or groups will finally latch on to the “law of jungle rule” precedent of this attempt on the life of Ghadaffi. There is a growing global perception that there are no constraints on the Western powers use of force, and thus no boundaries of law defining internationally acceptable conduct, but that of the most effective use of lethal force. Those, as members of humankind and the global family of nations, proceeding along this trajectory of the misuse of power are willfully undermining much of the foundations that led to the establishment of international laws and a schema for civilized conduct, following upon an architecture designed as direct consequences of World War 11. An ironic inversion does exist of literally turning Article 1 of the UN Charter upside down:-
The purpose of the United Nations is stated by Article 1 to be: “to maintain international peace and security, and to that end, to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace.”
Thus, when the peacekeepers are openly seen by large swaths of humanity to be warmongers, then which “terrorist” would henceforth not latch on to the idea of having struck a blow for peace by having launched an effective lethal attack on a leader of Britain or France as “measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace,” – or the leader of the US as the “greater purveyor of violence in the world” ( as Martin Luther King termed his nation)? The undermining of the law does indeed lead us to the debasing of any legal of moral authority based on perceived credible conduct and de facto the debasing of any legal of moral authority based on perceived credible conduct and de facto and de jure superiority of action.
If not due process and the standards of international law seeking to be upheld – at the very least common sense suggests that bad precedent cannot provide the world with good standards to be abided by for internationally acceptable legal conduct.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
Courtenay Barnett is a graduate of London University. His areas of study were economics, political science and international law. He has been a practising lawyer for over twenty nine years, has been arrested for defending his views, has faced two death threats and an incident of threatened arson on his home, and has argued public interest and human rights cases. His web site: http://www.globaljusticeonline.com
Bring me one back, Craig. I’ll leave it out as a garden ornament. You never know what global warming might do.
Funny “bad vibrations” – if it all were just not so serious…
Precisely my point about the respect for international law, by reference to this Reuters report:-
“I condemn the attacks on the British Embassy premises in Tripoli as well as the diplomatic missions of other countries,” British Foreign Secretary William Hague said in a statement.
LIBYA
NATO air strike kills Gaddafi’s son, Libyan officials say
He added that Libya had breached its international obligation to protect diplomatic missions in Tripoli”
How supremely ironic – Britain is illegally bombing Libya and unlawfully bolstering a civil war – but says that. Ha…ha…ha… ha!
I’m expecting “Osama has been dead for years!” in T-minus 3, 2, 1…
Dreolin, tut tut, fun in the garden 🙂
On a serious note, I agree with coutney’s resumee on Libya, NATO has acted against its own principles here and has now become a rogue organisation in itself. I would not be surprised if NATO members would want to leave this obsolete ‘weapons display’ organisation, more used a a testing ground for newfangled weapons, like the one used to kill Saif Gadhaffi.
Shortly after Ghaddaffi dared to broadcast, with allied fighter planes already in the air, some cross extrapolations were made of where this powerful signal eminated from in Tripoli, then they send a guided bomb down to the point where the lines crossed, it happens that the antenna/equipment must have been situated on, or very near that villa/bunker.
There are many NATo ships ankered off Libya’ s coat, they have almost the whole flat part of Libya on their screens, have satelite coverage, anything they possible want for such an operation and iot was planned like this, obvious to me.
They can do this with any radar electronic emissions and they can do this with broadcasting equipment.