 Article SOURCE *PART 4
COMMENT THE MEANS OF INFLUENCE on foreign affairs from within foreign nations are extensive. [ Formatting this is sending me mental. Blogger keeps inserting codes I don't want.]
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Showing posts with label International Criminal Court (ICC). Show all posts
Showing posts with label International Criminal Court (ICC). Show all posts
April 05, 2016
Latin America: Article 98 Agreements & US Empire Influence & Control Arsenal
March 29, 2016
Karadzic will be in jail, but what about Bush, Blair, Clinton ...
Article SOURCE http://archive.is/drTMu
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If one subscribes to what is, presumably (and ostensibly), a 'universal justice' ideal -- upon which is based, the establishment of supranational bodies with jurisdiction over the free peoples of sovereign, foreign nations in the name of the concept known as 'international law' -- then the real problem here is that this is a 'universal justice' court which has no teeth and, furthermore, that this cannot be remedied without a serious military challenger willing to invoke the threat of military might to coerce the powers that be, should they play unfair (as they do) ... so it's yet another joke institution, to be manipulated by the powerful at the expense of the weak in geopolitical terms:
(a) the Western camp (effectively, under protection of the military might of USA) and Israel have 'unsigned' themselves from the Rome Statute, & USA holds financial & trade powers over less powerful nations outside the aggressive Western & Middle Eastern coterie seeking global hegemony;
(b) the US has threatened less powerful nations with sanctions should they fail bow to the US (and associates') demand for impunity to commit war crimes.
(c) more significantly, USA has threatened military action against any country that attempts to bring the US & its accomplices to account for war crimes.
Finally, all things are not & cannot be 'universal' or 'equal' -- ever. Nor should they be.
Therefore this is a faulty doctrine. |
September 20, 2015
International Law - 1998 Rome Statute - International Criminal Court (ICC) - US & Western War Crimes
ꕤLaw 1998 Rome Statute (ICC) Adopted: adopted on 17 July 1998
Dec 2, 2014 Report on Preliminary Examination Activities 2014 #2
Eugene Kontorovich Afghanistan War Crimes Prosecution
Related Blog Post & link to Washington Post article | here
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September 12, 2015
'Why Murdoch Pushes for War' - Craig Murray
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COMMENT For me, it began with the flinging open of European borders by Mutti Merkel, at a cost of $6-billion, to Germany, despite a history of violent opposition to immigration, despite European austerity, despite the rise of right-wing dissenting political parties, despite security risks and opposition of EU states etc. Seeing the chaos of Middle Eastern and African refugees and other immigrants flooding Europe; seeing Britain secretly droning Syria, despite parliamentary veto; seeing Australia's Tony Abbott back-flip on his party's immigration stance, while joining the bomb Syria coalition; learning of Israeli bombings in Syria; seeing emotive propaganda and media hype targeting the public and exploiting refugees (that the West created by backing regional terrorists) has been instructive. Seeing the exploitation of the death of a child, and even exploitation of rape as a means of justifying pre-existing plans for war, by using rape in conflict zones as a basis for predictable calls for 'action' -- most recently, and perhaps aptly, by an actress, in British Parliament -- is seeing nothing but a charade performed for uninformed members of the public, which partly explains why this is an 'acting gig'. Emotive subjects and issues are the best propaganda tools and pretexts for behaviour that would otherwise be unacceptable to the public. The tools used by a criminal state to wage war are the same tools that are at the disposal of a criminal state to use against those it designates as 'enemies' -- ie those that pose threats to its illegitimate agenda (eg, by exposure of the corrupt state's wrongdoings, and so on). Allegations of 'rape' may also be employed (and have been employed) to 'justify' the state crime of conducting political persecution of those that expose state crimes. Australian journalist-publisher, Julian Assange, exposed US and allied war crimes, and has effectively been imprisoned without charge for almost 5 years, and is presently under siege, in London, and denied rightful political asylum, on the basis of nothing but trumped up Sweden police 'rape allegations,' that have been used not only to deprive him of liberty, but also as a pretext for what is, in fact, state political persecution that is taking place before the public's eyes, while the corporate media, the state, its talking heads and its politicians, use allegations of 'rape' to smear and vilify their target, when not otherwise misdirecting and generating stupor in an uninformed public. As for Syria, we have a military complex serving warmonger (John McCain) with links to US-backed 'moderate rebels' (ie al-Qaeda groups, in Syria, who are responsible for the assault on the Assad government by an assortment of multinational Islamist, as US and Gulf States proxies, which are destroying Syria & displacing millions), and he's perversely exploiting the image of a dead Syrian child in American Congress to, likewise, appeal for 'action' -- which is more of the same public and political performance staged in British parliament, as well as more of like performance staged in the past (Iraq and Libya, for example) -- to justify US and allied corporate-serving aggression abroad. Seeing the 'bomb Syria' Murdoch press, playing on public emotions and ignorance to quietly shape public perception and opinion; seeing a little of the beneath the surface commercial interests; seeing the inanity and PR influence of Hollywood, married to humanitarianism, married to politics, and then married to military intervention, which is married to silent Wahhabi Gulf Arab oil, commercial and political interests and partners of the West; married to Israel; married to energy and, no doubt, banking; which is severally and jointly bent on regime change in the Syria, and bent on destruction and murder, while immersed in deceit, propaganda, hypocrisy and arrogant sacrifice of both domestic and foreign populations; is to bear witness to a marriage made in hell, that somehow animates the otherwise cold, corporate details. [Note: I'm no Middle Eastern expert. This is just my personal appraisal, given my limited knowledge and my limited inclinations, at this point in time.]
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August 23, 2015
Iran Air Flight 655 | Shot Down by US Navy Captian | USS Vincennes | US Govt Lies & Cover-Up
SOURCE | here
MORE | here
COMMENT
So the present Iran authorities (in power since 1979 revolution) accepted compensation 1996. No use complaining that the US does not get prosecuted if governments are willing to accept compensation in exchange for dropping law suits.
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August 20, 2015
International Criminal Court - Justice Denied - WikiLeaks: Afghan War Logs
SOURCE “Imagine if there were a criminal court in Britain which only ever tried black people, which ignored crimes committed by whites and Asians and only took an interest in crimes committed by blacks. We would consider that racist, right? And yet there is an International Criminal Court which only ever tries black people, African black people to be precise, and it is treated as perfectly normal. In fact the court is lauded by many radical activists as a good and decent institution, despite the fact that no non-black person has ever been brought before it to answer for his crimes. It is remarkable that in an era when liberal observers see racism everywhere, in every thoughtless aside or crude joke, they fail to see it in an institution which focuses exclusively on the criminal antics of dark-skinned people from the ‘Dark Continent’…. Liberal sensitivity towards issues of racism completely evaporates when it comes to the ICC, which they will defend tooth and nail, despite the fact that it is quite clearly, by any objective measurement, racist, in the sense that it treats one race of people differently to all others. It also provides another clear example of the ICC’s disinclination, for political reasons, to deal with blatant war crimes allegedly committed and unaccounted for by Western military forces, including prominent European States Parties to the Rome Statute, in the territory of another State Party. The occupation of Afghanistan and the military operations that have been conducted and continue to be carried out in that country fall under the control of two international missions. The first international mission is Operation Enduring Freedom, a joint USA, UK and Afghan military operation. The operation began in 2001, following the 9/11 terrorist outrages in the USA. By the winter of 2001, the USA had unseated the Taliban government. The operation continues against a subsequent insurgency being fought against both the occupation forces and the new Afghan government the USA installed in Kabul, with military direction mostly coming from United States Central Command. The second mission is the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), a NATO-led mission in Afghanistan that was established by the UNSC in December 2001 by Resolution 1386, as envisaged by the Bonn Agreement. ISAF was set up as a UN-mandated international force to assist the new Afghan interim authority to provide security in and around the capital, Kabul, and to support the reconstruction of Afghanistan. On 11 August 2003, NATO assumed leadership of the ISAF operation, and from January 2006 onwards ISAF also assumed some combat duties from the ongoing Anglo-American mission, Operation Enduring Freedom. NATO became responsible for the command, coordination and planning of the force, including the provision of a force commander and headquarters on the ground in Afghanistan. ISAF is made up of military forces from the USA, UK and other NATO member states. ISAF falls under the command of NATO’s Joint Force Command in the Dutch town of Brunssum. The two missions run in parallel. Their personnel are generally known as the coalition forces. Afghanistan is a member of the ICC. William Schabas has confirmed that the court is able to initiate prosecutions of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Afghanistan: “[The Prosecutor] may…proceed with respect to war crimes committed by American troops in Afghanistan, which is a State Party to the Rome Statute, because there is jurisdiction over all crimes committed on Afghan territory.”873 Philippe Sands QC has confirmed this jurisdiction exists and has outlined the broad extent of the behaviour that could trigger ICC action: “A CIA officer who conducted an abusive interrogation at Bhagram air base could be tried before the court.” If this applies to non-lethal human rights abuses by a citizen of a non-State Party to the ICC in an ICC State Party, how much stronger is the court’s jurisdiction in the case of murder/attempted murder by a citizen of an ICC member state on the territory of an ICC member state? Even The Washington Times has stated that “[s]everal events have taken place under Mr. Obama’s watch that could bring charges for war crimes”, actions that come under the ICC’s remit. There have been numerous incidents amounting to crimes against humanity and war crimes since Afghanistan was invaded in 2001, and since the court acquired jurisdiction in 2002. These grave abuses of human rights have implications for both the Bush and Obama Administrations, and for several ICC States Parties who have acted in coalition with US forces in ISAF/NATO operations. Professor Mark Herold has pointed to one incident among many that qualifies as a war crime but that has never been taken up by the ICC. On the evening of 29 June 2007, American warplanes killed between 50 and 130 innocent Afghan civilians in a night-time aerial assault upon the village of Haydarabad, about fifteen kilometres northeast of the town of Gereshk. The village was bombed for at least two hours, killing men, women and children. Another major incident occurred on 4 May 2009, in what may be the single deadliest US attack in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion, when American bombers killed as many as 147 Afghan civilians, 93 of them children, in an airstrike in western Afghanistan that locals call the Farah Massacre. With regard to this incident, US Central Command officials stated that US airstrikes in Afghanistan’s Farah Province had killed only “20 to 30” civilians. A member of Farah’s Provincial Council, Abdul Basir Khan, said he collected the names of the 147 individuals who died in the attack. Relatives of the victims showed mass graves to investigators, along with the remains of bombed-out buildings and homes. The International Red Cross reported that women and children were among the dozens of dead. The UN reported that in 2008, US, NATO and Afghan forces were responsible for over 828 civilian deaths. Most of these deaths were the result of US and NATO airstrikes. In November 2008, for example, US troops bombed a wedding party in the Shah Wali Kot area in southern Afghanistan, killing about forty civilians – mainly women and children. NATO rejected the UN figure of 828 deaths, saying its forces were responsible for only 237 civilian deaths in 2008. In his study of war crimes in Afghanistan, Afghanistan War Crimes: Government, ICC and NGOs, Akbar Nasir Khan has written of the “culture of impunity ingrained in the country’s legal system”. Khan pointed out that there are several indications that the Afghan government has no interest in addressing crimes against humanity and war crimes in Afghanistan: “The Government of Afghanistan has made no concrete efforts to deal with the issue of war crimes…” Khan has pointed to evidence that the government “is not interested in fulfilling its international obligations and participating against impunity”.
In March 2009, the government let an action plan to implement a national “Action Plan for Peace, Reconciliation and Justice”, prepared by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission in 2005, lapse. In January 2007, both the lower and upper houses of the Afghan parliament passed a national stability and reconciliation resolution, which granted blanket amnesty to “[a]ll the political wings and hostile parties who had been in conflict before the formation of the interim administration”. This was enacted as legislation in early 2010, in the Amnesty, National Reconciliation and Stability Law in the Official Gazette (No. 965). Section 3, Clause 2, of the amnesty law extends immunity from prosecution by the government to “armed people who are against the government of Afghanistan, after the passing of this law, if they cease from their objections, join the national reconciliation process, and respect constitutional law and other regulations of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, they will have all the perquisites of this law”. Khan notes: “Legally, this law contradicts Afghanistan’s ‘duty to prosecute’ norm which has been established under different instruments of international laws including Genocide Convention, Convention against Torture, and all four Geneva Conventions.” Khan noted further that “[h]uman rights abusers continued to enjoy almost complete impunity”. He observed: “The Afghan parliament is made up largely of lawmakers who once belonged to armed groups, some of which have been accused of war crimes by human rights groups and the general public.” Afghanistan Human Rights Organization researcher Maghferat Samimi stated that the warlords and their militia commanders continue to commit crimes with impunity, protected by their alliances with foreign nations and comfortable positions within the Afghan government. Impunity, amnesty, warlords, militias and alleged war crimes in Africa are at the top of the ICC’s agenda. In Afghanistan they barely rate a footnote in ICC reports, let alone a full investigation, despite the hundreds of thousands of victims of human rights abuse and forced displacement. It is not as if the Chief Prosecutor does not have documentary evidence with which to work regarding war crimes in Afghanistan. Much of the investigative work has already been done for the ICC. The Report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions in 2009, for example, stated that: [T]here have been chronic and deplorable accountability failures with respect to policies, practices and conduct that resulted in alleged unlawful killings – including possible war crimes – during the United States’ international operations. The Government has failed to effectively investigate and punish lower-ranking soldiers for such deaths, and has not held senior officers responsible under the doctrine of command responsibility. Worse, it has effectively created a zone of impunity for private contractors and civilian intelligence agents by failing to investigate and prosecute them.” In addition, in July 2010 WikiLeaks released a set of documents called the “Afghan War Diary”, a compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. Christopher Hall, a legal adviser for Amnesty International, said the WikiLeaks material, together with data collected previously, contained enough evidence of atrocities for the ICC prosecutor to seek permission to launch a full probe on Afghanistan:
By David Hoile The Africa Research Centre, 14 hours 48 minutes ago
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Occupation of Afghanistan & Military Ops
Two International Missions = running parallel Mission #1 'Operation Enduring Freedom' Under: US Central Command 1) USA-installed Afghan govt United States Central Command See: Gereshk Killings Counterpart: Joint Force Command Brunssum
(?) See: US-NATO Airstrike Killings | 2008 Counterpart: Joint Force Command Brunssum GEN David H. Petraeus (?) See: Farah Massacre Counterpart: Joint Force Command Brunssum ----- (?) See: Kunduz Massacre Counterpart: Joint Force Command Brunssum LtGen John R. Allen NOTE - attempt to match up critical events (from above article) with persons in command (*not* double-checked). source Mission #2 International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) NATO-led 2003, NATO leadership assumed est. by UNSC Resolution 1386 (2001) thus UN-mandated, international force to: 1) assist US-installed: Afghan interim authority2006 onwards, ISAF assumes combat duties from 'Operation Enduring Freedom' (ongoing Anglo-American mission) *But: NATO/ comprised of USA, UK & NATO military forces ISAF = under command of JOINT FORCES COMMAND, NATO - Brunssum, Netherlands Joint Forces Command NATO command Brunssum, the Netherlands Instead: x3 separate CINC: land - COMLANDCEN Commander of JFC-B
[source | wikipedia]
AFGHANISTAN
Gereshk Killings
29 June 2007
US-NATO Airstrike Killings
2008
Farah Massacre
4 May 2009
US bombers killed up to 147 Afghan civilians, 93 of them children
Kunduz Massacre
4 September 2009
x2 GBU-38 bombs, ea. @ approx. 250kg (500 pounds)
Lies ensue
EVENTS MATCHED TO COMMANDERS USA warplanes killed 50 to 130 (incl women & children) night-time aerial assault | 2-hr bombing
US, NATO & Afghan forces Killed over 828 civilians (UN figure)Counterpart: Joint Force Command Brunssum 2008-2010(?) See: Farah Massacre 4 May 2009 US bombers killed up to 147 civilians, 93 childrenCounterpart: Joint Force Command Brunssum COMMENT
Tried to match the command personnel to the events. NOTE: have not double-checked. If I have the dates straight, it looks like:
The only commander I know is Petraeus. And I don't remember much about him. Shared classified information with mistress, I think. Got caught out through e-mail surveillance, I think. It was some big, scandalous thing. UPDATE: "On November 9, 2012, General Petraeus resigned from his position as Director of the CIA, citing his extramarital affair which was reportedly discovered in the course of an FBI investigation" [wikipedia] UPDATE: It wasn't Patraeus; it was Gen Stanley A. McChrystal: Following unflattering (and unprofessional) remarks about Vice President Joe Biden and other administration officials attributed to McChrystal and his aides in a Rolling Stone article, McChrystal was recalled to Washington, D.C., where President Barack Obama accepted his resignation as commander in Afghanistan. [wikipedia]I can just hear everyone yawning, as I do my catching up ... which I'll promptly forget. lol
Rome Statute
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