From: zeleny@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Assasination
Date: 20 Aug 92 04:16:25 GMT
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal

In article <16ukfdINNs7l@agate.berkeley.edu> 
muh@physics20 (Yury M. Mukharsky) writes:

YM
>First I would like to remind how this discussian started. Somebody 
>accused Ukrainian on genocide and holocaust of Jews. I'm not going 
>to justify the killing of Jews during civil war by any etnic or social
>group. I think it was awful. The only think I want to comment to is
>I do not think it can be called genocide. Civil war lead to killing
>of millions of peoples of every nation. I'm quite sure that every
>Ukrainian or Russian family have not one person killed during that
>time. Most Europian nations were involved at some point in oppressing
>Jews, maybe another century ago.
>
>By comparison, what Hitler did was specifically aimed to extermination
>of Jews. Number of Jews survived in Germany or Chehia (sorry for possibly
>wrong spelling), occupied since 1936 was tens or hundreds. 

Please allow me to remind you that the number of Jews killed in the
Petliura-sponsored pogroms was well over 100,000, and furthermore that,
unlike other victims of the civil war, they were killed *for being Jews*.
Thus I believe that my attribution of genocidal policies to Petliura's
regime is well-justified.  Having said that, I would appreciate if we were
to stick closer to the subject of the present discussion in all future
exchanges.

>Now, returning to the end of discussion:

>In article <1992Aug19.181238.14909@husc3.harvard.edu>
>zeleny@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:

MZ:
>>In a recent discussion I noted the legitimacy of assasination as the last
>>recourse for obtaining justice, as witnessed by the German and French court
>>decisions in the cases of Tehlirian's 1921 killing of Talaat Bey and
>>Schwartsbard's 1927 killing of Petliura.  It is my considered opinion that
>>such a course of action may be morally justified, *provided that* no other
>>means of bringing the criminal to justice are available, and that the
>>assasin is willing to submit to trial for his action.  However, other

YM:
>Unfortunately, person in question is dead by that time, do you think
>executing the muderer will revive him? 

Let us assume for the sake of argument that the killing of the person in
question is morally justifiable on the same grounds as an act of
self-defence.

YM:
>Killing of Ferdinand in Saraevo in 1914 certanly satisfies your definition
>of legitimate killing. It caused (at least nominally) WWI, revolution
>in Russia and death of many Jews during Civil war, not to mention other
>people died in that war.

I beg to differ: Archduke Ferdinand was assasinated by Gavrilo Princip,
acting on behalf of his fellow Serbian nationalists, not for anything he
has done (as in the cases of Petliura and Talaat Bey), but for something he
was allegedly about to do.  More importantly, his alleged fault consisted
merely of preparing a policy unfavorable to Serbia, and hence was not of
such a nature as to warrant a self-defence-like action.  Finally, I would
be open to excluding teleological, or consequentialist considerations from
this discussion, basing it instead on a deontological conception of an
action judged on the merits of its intrinsic nature.  Having said that, I
can't see why the consequences to the Jews would have any special status
even in a teleological discussion.

MZ:
>>historical cases, like that of the politically inconclusive, though highly
>>spectacular French anarchist _propaganda par le fait_ of the 1890's, make
>>me doubt the soundness of my reasoning.  Accordingly, I would like to hear
>>some calm arguments from people interested in history, legal theory, and
>>political philosophy.  I suggest that all participants observe the followup
>>line, and attempt to keep this discussion reasonably noise-free.

>Yury

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
"Un de mes plus grands plaisirs est de jurer Dieu quand je bande."
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,sci.logic,cs.logic