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On 22 November a jury of international experts announced their verdict that compelling evidence shows corporate complicity in Israeli violations of international law. The verdict followed two full days of presentations in London at the second international session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine from 20 to 21 November.

The session examined the role of corporations in Israel’s violations of international law. It called experts and witnesses to present cases to the international panel of jurors. Although companies were invited to defend their actions, only Veolia Environnement, PFZW pension fund and security company G4S responded to the tribunal in writing.

The jurors included former French ambassador Stephane Hessel; Irish Nobel Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire; South African professor John Dugard; South African politician Ronald Kasrils; English lawyer Michael Mansfield; Spanish emeritus judge Jose Antonio Martin Pallin; former US congresswoman Cynthia McKinney; and UK barrister Lord Anthony Gifford.

According to the jurors, the corporations’ violations related to their supply of weapons and the construction and maintenance of illegal Israeli settlements and the Israel’s wall in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. The jury called for the mobilization of civil society to end the involvement of companies in Israeli human rights violations (Public Statement of the Russell Tribunal [PDF]).

Seven corporations were named by the jury for being complicit in Israeli violations. They include:

The British-Danish firm G4S, which supplies equipment used at Israeli checkpoints in the occupied West Bank and Israeli prisons.

Elbit Systems, a leading Israeli company which collaborates closely with the Israeli military.

US-based Caterpillar, which supplies the Israeli military with modified D9 bulldozers used to demolish Palestinian homes.

Cement Roadstone Holdings, an Irish multinational corporation, which purchased 25 percent of the Israeli Mashav Initiative and Development Ltd. Israeli Mashav Initiative and Development Ltd., owns Nesher Israel Cement Enterprises Ltd., which is Israel’s sole cement producer, supplying 75-90 percent of all the cement in Israel and the occupied West Bank.

Dexia, a Franco-Belgian corporation that finances Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank via its subsidiary Dexia Israel Public Finance Ltd.

Veolia Transport, a French corporation is involved in the construction of the Jerusalem light rail which connects Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank with annexed East Jerusalem. Veolia is due to operate the light rail and also operates bus services to illegal Israeli settlements.

Carmel Agrexco, an Israeli corporation that exports agricultural produce including oranges, olives, and avocados from the illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

During the Tribunal, Dutch divestment activist Saskia Muller presented the case of the Dutch pension fund Pensioenfonds Zorg en Welzijn (PFZW). The fund holds investments in more than ten international companies involved in Israel’s violations of international law, and one Israeli supermarket chain which provides services to illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. In its six-page letter to the Russell Tribunal dated 12 November, the PFZW board wrote that it is “deeply concerned about the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine, and the consequential long time occupation of the Palestinian territories by Israel. It is further concerned about ongoing violations of international law in this context, and about possible complicity in such violations by companies that are active in Israel and the occupied territories.”

Representatives of the US peace group Codepink presented the case against Ahava cosmetics to the Russell Tribunal jury. And while the jury was presenting its conclusions on 22 November, the entrance to the Ahava store in London was blocked by activists who chained themselves to a concrete-filled oil barrel. This was the fifth protest by activists against Ahava, which manufactures Dead Sea products in the illegal settlement of Mitzpe Shalem.

At the press conference, juror John Dugard, who recently served as the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, stressed that when the anti-apartheid movement pressured corporations to disinvest from apartheid South Africa, it was still debated whether apartheid constituted a crime against humanity. Corporations therefore argued that doing business with South Africa was not illegal.

Dugard added that the situation is very different with respect to Israel: “We are dealing with a criminal enterprise on the part of Israel. Under criminal and international law and in many cases under national legal systems, there is an obligation on the part of states to redress such illegality, but if states do not take action, there is also responsibility on the part of corporations and civil society to redress these wrongs.”

Ronald Kasrils, former South African minister, highlighted how mobilization of popular support by the anti-apartheid movement helped to isolate South Africa and overthrow the apartheid regime. At that time, the western countries were the pillars of support for apartheid South Africa, as is the case with Israel today. Kasrils said that the mobilization was not “anti-people, it was anti-system.”

Kasrils added that in South Africa the “particular groundswell internationally would even get through to the minority white people in South Africa. As we see now this [boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS)] call getting through to public opinion in Israel, among Jews in Israel and around the world.” Kasrils emphasized that the importance of BDS can not be “underestimated” and underlined the important role of civil society in pressuring governments to end Israeli impunity and criminal activity.

Juror Michael Mansfield, President of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, stated that “the jury was horrified to note that the Israeli government is currently considering making protest and objection along these lines a criminal offense.” In its final statement, the jury called “on states to protect the rights of all those who initiate or take such lawful BDS actions.”

Meanwhile, the Palestinian BDS National committee (BNC) endorsed the outcome of the Russell Tribunal in London. In a statement the BNC commented that “the tribunal spoke with a strong, clear and moral voice” (“BNC endorses findings of London session of Russell Tribunal on Palestine …,” 30 November 2010).

The tribunal has provided not only important knowledge, but also authoritative encouragement to solidarity groups, social movements, trade unions, political parties and concerned citizens to utilize BDS to hold Israel and its supporters to account. The next Russell Tribunal on Palestine will be held in South Africa, and will consider the applicability of the crime of apartheid in Israel.

By Adri Nieuwhof

Adri Nieuwhof is a consultant and human rights advocate based in Switzerland. Nieuwhof gave a presentation at the Russell Tribunal as the lead expert on public contracts regulations and the French multinational, Veolia, and its business practices in the occupied Palestinian territories.

 

Chris Williams, author of Ecology and Socialism: Solutions to Capitalist Ecological Crisis, explains what’s at stake at the UN-sponsored climate change talks in Cancún.

“If Cancún delivers nothing, or not much, then the UN process is in danger.” So said Connie Hedegaard, the European commissioner for climate action, ahead of the UN-sponsored climate change summit taking place in Mexico through December 10.

The negotiations are known as COP-16, short for 16th Conference of the Parties. What does the “16” stand for? If you’re a freshman in college this year, you were probably alive, but still an infant, when the first international climate talks took place 16 years ago.

In other words, the world’s governments have been negotiating for more than half a generation. And what progress has there been in those intervening years?

Last century, on March 21, 1994, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) came into being; 194 countries signed on to it. Article 2 of the UNFCCC states that its ultimate objective, and that of related bodies, such as the International Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Conference of the Parties, is:

to achieve, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Convention, stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. Such a level should be achieved within a time frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.

In 1995, the IPCC released its Second Assessment Report, which stated in part:

The atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gases, and among them, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), have grown significantly since pre-industrial times (about 1750 A.D.): CO2 from about 280 to almost 360 ppmv (parts per million by volume), CH4 from 700 to 1720 ppbv (parts per billion by volume) and N2O from about 275 to about 310 ppbv.

These trends can be attributed largely to human activities, mostly fossil-fuel use, land-use change and agriculture. Concentrations of other anthropogenic greenhouse gases have also increased. An increase of greenhouse gas concentrations leads on average to an additional warming of the atmosphere and the Earth’s surface. Many greenhouse gases remain in the atmosphere–and affect climate–for a long time.

So we have known for a long time what has been going on and what the likely effects would be. Three things have happened over the intervening decade and a half: CO2 levels have now increased another 30ppm to 390ppm; the scientific consensus on the likely effects of this increase has sharpened, deepened and become even more worrying; and the politicians have done nothing about it even as global awareness, activism and concern with the issue has risen tremendously.

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THE IPCC issued its Fourth Assessment Report in 2007, the year that its work was recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize. The report stated, “There is high agreement and much evidence that with current climate change mitigation policies and related sustainable development practices, global GHG emissions will continue to grow over the next few decades.”

If anyone was in any doubt about where this extremely rapid increase in CO2 levels due to business as- usual might lead, they only need to look at this summer’s heat wave and fires in Russia or the extreme monsoons that have devastated large areas of Pakistan.

These are only the most reported and devastating of recent unusual weather patterns. In August, a cloudburst over the town of Leh in Ladakh, northern India, killed at least 150 people and left hundreds missing and homeless as the deluge washed away the mountainside and much of the town. Ladakh is a high altitude desert and lies in the rain shadow of the Himalayas, so naturally, people don’t build houses there to withstand torrential rain. Perhaps now they will have to.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, May, June and July each were the hottest on record. In New York, for June through August, an astonishing and record-breaking 34 days exceeded 90 degrees, according to the National Weather Service. This came despite a cooler-than-usual start to summer. There are many other examples of regions that are unseasonably wetter, drier or hotter–19 countries so far have set new temperature records for 2010.

As Jack Hedin, a farmer in Minnesota, wrote in an op-ed piece in the New York Times:

The news from this Midwestern farm is not good. The past four years of heavy rains and flash flooding here in southern Minnesota have left me worried about the future of agriculture in America’s grain belt. For some time, computer models of climate change have been predicting just these kinds of weather patterns, but seeing them unfold on our farm has been harrowing nonetheless…

Climate change, I believe, may eventually pose an existential threat to my way of life. A family farm like ours may simply not be able to adjust quickly enough to such unendingly volatile weather.

We can’t charge enough for our crops in good years to cover losses in the ever-more-frequent bad ones. We can’t continue to move to better, drier ground. No new field drainage scheme will help us as atmospheric carbon concentrations edge up to 400 parts per million; hardware and technology alone can’t solve problems of this magnitude.

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GIVEN THE overwhelming preponderance of scientific data pointing toward the growing likelihood of catastrophic climate change–as well as the fact that we are already seeing some of the effects–what is likely to happen at Cancún?

According to the New York Times:

After 16 years of annual climate treaty negotiations, negotiators heading for this meeting…are hoping not for progress, but merely to avoid going backward. Connie Hedegaard, the European Union’s minister for climate action said: “What we will be working toward is that we should not start backsliding.”

So, the answer is…nothing. In fact, most heads of state, unlike COP-15 in Copenhagen, aren’t even bothering to show up. It’s becoming ever more apparent that rational arguments based on sound science aren’t going to persuade politicians to act.

In particular, regarding the U.S., it is also becoming ever more apparent that rhetoric aside, the Democrats and President Obama are equally uninterested in forcing through real change.

Many people who hoped for something different are waking up to the fact that, to quote W.E.B. DuBois, “It is a hard thing to live haunted by the ghost of an untrue dream.” Even actually witnessing climate or environmental devastation–such as with the BP oil spill–doesn’t seem to provoke political leaders into action.

Therefore, as people who do want something to be done, we have to analyze why the response has been so pathetic, and what we can do to force a change in this state of affairs.

In the U.S., many environmental activists and liberals tend to attribute the failure to Obama’s misplaced but genuine attempts at consensus building, the intransigence of moderate Democrats, and the over-bearing power and influence of the corporations.

However, while all these reasons contain elements of truth, there is a more fundamental analysis that Marxists can provide. The underlying reason for the reactionary posture of U.S. politicians, regardless of party affiliation, against any and all meaningful action on climate change, and the creation of alternative energy systems, new infrastructure and millions of green jobs is structural.

The U.S. is in an impossible position: it is regressing economically in the face of new competition internationally, it is already behind in many areas of green technology, it has a chronically outdated transportation and housing infrastructure premised on never-ending cheap oil, and it is fighting two wars to maintain global hegemony. And this is taking place in the context of a global crisis of overproduction of goods.

Internationally, inter-imperial rivalry over diminishing resources in the context of a global economic recession has sharpened, as countries fight to maintain or extend the power of their own national set of corporations in hostile competition with all the others.

The Copenhagen conference could more aptly be described as a confrontation rather than a conference, as countries faced off across the diplomatic table. In the end, any possibility of an agreement was torpedoed by an unholy alliance of five heavy fossil-fuel users and carbon emitters led by the U.S. and including China, India, Brazil and South Africa.

This time around, in Cancún, the big governments reason that there’s no need to turn up because a deal on climate is so unlikely due to the depressed global economic situation and an incipient trade war. Showing up to a failing conference would just be bad PR. Forced austerity, not clean energy, is what’s on the table.

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HEADS OF state from Latin America who will likely attend, such as Evo Morales of Bolivia, are trying to force a change. In April, more than 30,000 activists gathered in Cochabamba, Bolivia, for the alternative Cochabamba Accords to Protect Mother Earth, which charted an alternative path to reducing carbon emissions, real sustainable social and ecological development, and the provision of development assistance to countries of the Global South most affected by climate change.

As reported on November 26 by Britain’s Guardian newspaper:

The first shots were fired in what are likely to be serious diplomatic clashes at the talks. In an interview with the Guardian, Bolivia’s ambassador to the UN accused rich countries of “holding humanity hostage” and undermining the UN. “[Their] deliberate attempts to sideline democracy and justice in the climate debate will be viewed as reckless and immoral by future generations,” he said. “I feel that Cancún will become a new Copenhagen if there is no shift in the next few days.”

In Cancún, the peasant and farmer organization Via Campesina–in echoes of Che Guevara’s call for “One, two, many Vietnams”–has issued a call for “thousands of Cancúns” across the world and an International Day of Action on December 7 to coincide with mass farmers protests in Cancún.

In the U.S., activists need to take inspiration from these protests and cohere around a set of politics that will help move the environmental and climate justice movement forward. Given the resistance to change on the part of the U.S. ruling class, which fears losing even more ground to its competitors, even modest reforms to national energy, transportation and climate policy are unlikely without a mass movement for social and ecological change.

Such a movement needs to be resolute in its independence and principles, and will have to incorporate, for the first time since the late 1960s, tens of thousands of working-class people. Five key points need to be argued:

— A strong, effective and reinvigorated environmental movement must campaign as much about social justice as it does about ecological justice. We cannot have one without the other.

— This is not about sacrifice; rather, it is about fighting for a higher standard of living and quality of life.

— The problem is the system itself. Therefore, the solution is structural and systemic, not individual, technical or market-based.

— To make real headway, the movement must maintain and make absolute its independence from the Democratic Party.

— We need to fight for intermediate, achievable goals while maintaining a vision of fundamental social change and a completely different, ecologically rational society based on cooperation, worker participation and real democracy.

On this basis, we can build a new and vibrant movement that can campaign for such things as a joint Labor and Climate Justice Conference to help formulate strategy and tactics or a national demonstration for the same.

We can’t wait in vain for President Obama or other politicians to do it for us. Ordinary people must step onto the stage of history to organize to force the change that we want to see and that is so urgently needed.

 

 

 

 

 

Bradley Manning, who allegedly leaked hundreds of thousands of secret government documents to Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks, turns 23 in jail Friday. The Daily Beast’s Denver Nicks, in an exclusive interview with Manning’s attorney, reports on his solitary confinement, what he’s reading (from George W. Bush to Howard Zinn), and his legal strategy.

The last time Bradley Manning saw the world outside of a jail, most Americans had never heard of WikiLeaks. On Friday, Manning, the man whose alleged unauthorized release of hundreds of thousands of classified documents put the website and its controversial leader, Julian Assange, on the map, turns 23 behind bars. Since his arrest in May, Manning has spent most of his 200-plus days in solitary confinement. Other than receiving a card and some books from his family, his birthday will be no different. In an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast, his attorney, David Coombs, revealed key details about Manning’s imprisonment and kind gestures from his family that provided a bit of comfort in the inmate’s otherwise extremely harsh incarceration.

“They’re thinking about him on his birthday, that they love and support him,” Coombs said of Manning’s family and the card his mother, father, sister and aunt passed along via the lawyer on Wednesday. “They wish they could be with him on his day, but they are not allowed because visitation is only on Saturday and Sunday, and a family member would be going down to see him on Saturday.” Coombs passed a message to Manning from his aunt on behalf of the family; Manning, the lawyer says, asked Coombs to tell his aunt he loved her and wishes he could be with her as well.

Manning asked for a list of books, which his family bought for him and will be delivered over the next few weeks to coincide with his birthday and Christmas. On the list?

Manning is being held at Marine Corps Base Quantico, in Virginia. He spends 23 hours a day alone in a standard-sized cell, with a sink, a toilet, and a bed. He isn’t allowed sheets or a pillow, though First Lieutenant Brian Villiard, an officer at Quantico, said he is allowed bedding of “non-shreddable” material. “I’ve held it, I’ve felt it, it’s soft, I’d sleep under it,” he told The Daily Beast.

He isn’t allowed to exercise (Quantico officials dispute this), but he has started stretching and practicing yoga.

For an hour every day, a television is wheeled in front of his cell and he’s allowed to watch TV, including news, though usually local news, Coombs told The Daily Beast. He is allowed to read the news as well. Courtesy of Coombs, Manning now has a subscription to his favorite magazine, Scientific American. The November “Hidden Worlds of Dark Matter” issue was his first.

The conditions under which Bradley Manning is being held would traumatize anyone (see Salon’s Glenn Greenwald for a rundown of the legal and psychological issues associated with extended solitary confinement). He lives alone in a small cell, denied human contact. He is forced to wear shackles when outside of his cell, and when he meets with the few people allowed to visit him, they sit with a glass partition between them. The only person other than prison officials and a psychologist who has spoken to Manning face to face is his attorney, who says the extended isolation—now more than seven months of solitary confinement—is weighing on his client’s psyche.

When he was first arrested, Manning was put on suicide watch, but his status was quickly changed to “Prevention of Injury” watch (POI), and under this lesser pretense he has been forced into his life of mind-numbing tedium. His treatment is harsh, punitive and taking its toll, says Coombs.

There is no evidence he’s a threat to himself, and shouldn’t be held in such severe conditions under the artifice of his own protection.

“The command is basing this treatment of him solely on the nature of the pending charges, and on an unrelated incident where a service member in the facility took his own life,” Coombs said, referencing the February suicide of a marine captain in the Quantico brig. Coombs says he believes Quantico officials are keeping Manning under close watch with strict limitations on his activity out of an overabundance of caution. Both Coombs and Manning’s psychologist, Coombs says, are sure Manning is mentally healthy, that there is no evidence he’s a threat to himself, and shouldn’t be held in such severe conditions under the artifice of his own protection.

Manning faces a military court-martial on charges of providing WikiLeaks with classified information in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

His future remains uncertain. Rep John Conyers (D-MI), in Thursday’s congressional hearing on WikiLeaks, called for calm and a measured response to the new challenges the whistleblower’s site presents to the future of governance. “When everyone in this town is joined together calling for someone’s head, it’s a pretty sure sign that we need to slow down and take a look.”

Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) followed with a call for punishment. “I have no sympathy for the alleged thief in this situation,” Poe said, insisting the source of the leak, whoever it is, be held responsible. “He’s no better than a Texas pawn shop dealer that deals in stolen merchandise and sells it to the highest bidder.”

Manning’s fate will be determined over the following months. What is clear today is that he’s being held in extraordinarily harsh conditions—notably harsher than Bryan Minkyu Martin, the naval intelligence specialist who allegedly tried to sell military secrets to an undercover FBI agent, and is currently being held awaiting trial, though not in solitary confinement. Manning, who has been convicted of nothing, has spent the better part of a year incommunicado, living the life of a man convicted of a heinous crime. Coombs challenges the legality of what he says is “unlawful pretrial punishment.” He is working to lift the POI restrictions placed on his client.

By Denver Nicks

Denver Nicks is an editorial assistant at The Daily Beast.

Despite being granted bail, WikiLeaks founder and editor Julian Assange remains imprisoned in London, awaiting extradition proceedings to answer a prosecutor’s questions in Sweden. He hasn’t been formally charged with any crime. His lawyers have heard that a grand jury in the United States has been secretly empaneled, and that a U.S. federal indictment is most likely forthcoming.

Politicians and commentators, meanwhile, have been repeatedly calling for Assange to be killed.

Take Democratic strategist and commentator Bob Beckel, who said on a Fox Business show: “We’ve got special ops forces. A dead man can’t leak stuff. … This guy’s a traitor, he’s treasonous, and he has broken every law of the United States. And I’m not for the death penalty, so … there’s only one way to do it: illegally shoot the son of a bitch.” U.S. Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., called WikiLeaks a “foreign terrorist organization” and said that the website “posed a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States.” He went on: “This is worse even than a physical attack on Americans; it’s worse than a military attack.”

One of Assange’s lawyers in London, Jennifer Robinson, told me, in response to the flood of threats: “Obviously we take these sorts of very public pronouncements incredibly seriously. And people making these statements ought to be reported to the police for incitement to violence.”

One of Beckel’s co-panelists on Fox said what needed to be done was to “cut the head off the snake,” a phrase which, ironically, gained more significance when it appeared days later in one of the leaked cables. In the cable, Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Adel al-Jubeir “recalled the King’s frequent exhortations to the U.S. to attack Iran and so put an end to its nuclear weapons program. ‘He told you to cut off the head of the snake.’ ”

Assange has found support in some surprising quarters. Conservative Harvard Law professor Jack Goldsmith blogged: “I find myself agreeing with those who think Assange is being unduly vilified … it is not obvious what law he has violated. … I do not understand why so much ire is directed at Assange and so little at The New York Times.” (WikiLeaks has partnered with several news organizations, including The New York Times, in its document releases.)

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff of Secretary of State Colin Powell, joined a group of former government officials in a letter of support for Assange, writing, “WikiLeaks has teased the genie of transparency out of a very opaque bottle, and powerful forces in America, who thrive on secrecy, are trying desperately to stuff the genie back in.”

Likewise from a feminist group in Britain. Since the principal, public reason for Assange’s arrest relates to questions about potential sexual crimes in Sweden, Katrin Axelsson, from the group Women Against Rape, wrote in a letter to the British newspaper The Guardian: “Many women in both Sweden and Britain will wonder at the unusual zeal with which Julian Assange is being pursued for rape allegations. …. Women don’t take kindly to our demand for safety being misused, while rape continues to be neglected at best or protected at worst.”

Assange, in an Op-Ed piece published in The Australian newspaper shortly after his arrest, wrote there is a chorus in the U.S. State Department of “‘You’ll risk lives! National Security! You’ll endanger troops!’ by releasing information, and ‘then they say there is nothing of importance in what WikiLeaks publishes. It can’t be both.’ ”

In a statement released to Australian television, Assange said: “My convictions are unfaltering. I remain true to the ideals I have expressed. … If anything, this process has increased my determination that they are true and correct.”

Extradition proceedings are complex, lengthy affairs. WikiLeaks, for that matter, is not just Julian Assange, but a geographically distributed network of people and servers, and it has promised that the work of facilitating the release of documents from governments and corporations will continue. The U.S. Justice Department, if it pursues a case, will have to answer the question: If WikiLeaks is a criminal organization, what of its media partners, like The New York Times?

By Amy Goodman

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 800 stations in North America. She is the author of “Breaking the Sound Barrier,” recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.

Besieged Gaza, Palestine: We the Palestinians of the Besieged Gaza Strip, on this day, two years on from Israel’s genocidal attack on our families, our houses, our roads, our factories and our schools, are saying enough inaction, enough discussion, enough waiting – the time is now to hold Israel to account for its ongoing crimes against us. On the 27th of December 2008, Israel began an indiscriminate bombardment of the Gaza Strip. The assault lasted 22 days, killing 1,417 Palestinians, 352 of them children, according to main-stream Human Rights Organizations. For a staggering 528 hours, Israeli Occupation Forces let loose their US-supplied F15s, F16s, Merkava Tanks, internationally prohibited White Phosphorous, and bombed and invaded the small Palestinian coastal enclave that is home to 1.5 million, of whom 800,000 are children and over 80 percent UN registered refugees. Around 5,300 remain permanently wounded.

This devastation exceeded in savagery all previous massacres suffered in Gaza, such as the 21children killed in Jabalia in March 2008 or the 19 civilians killed sheltering in their house in the Beit Hanoun Massacre of 2006. The carnage even exceeded the attacks in November 1956 in which Israeli troops indiscriminately rounded up and killed 275 Palestinians in the Southern town of Khan Younis and 111 more in Rafah.

Since the Gaza massacre of 2009, world citizens have undertaken the responsibility to pressure Israel to comply with international law, through a proven strategy of boycott, divestment and sanctions. As in the global BDS movement that was so effective in ending the apartheid South African regime, we urge people of conscience to join the BDS call made by over 170 Palestinian organizations in 2005. As in South Africa the imbalance of power and representation in this struggle can be counterbalanced by a powerful international solidarity movement with BDS at the forefront, holding Israeli policy makers to account, something the international governing community has repeatedly failed to do. Similarly, creative civilian efforts such as the Free Gaza boats that broke the siege five times, the Gaza Freedom March, the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, and the many land convoys must never stop their siege-breaking, highlighting the inhumanity of keeping 1.5 million Gazans in an open-air prison.

Two years have now passed since Israel’s gravest of genocidal acts that should have left people in no doubt of the brutal extent of Israel’s plans for the Palestinians. The murderous navy assault on international activists aboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in the Mediterranean Sea magnified to the world the cheapness Israel has assigned to Palestinian llife for so long. The world knows now, yet two years on nothing has changed for Palestinians.

The Goldstone Report came and went: despite its listing count after count of international law contraventions, Israeli “war crimes” and “possible crimes against humanity,” the European Union, the United Nations, the Red Cross, and all major Human Rights Organizations have called for an end to the illegal, medieval siege, it carries on unabated. On 11th November 2010 UNRWA head John Ging said, “There’s been no material change for the people on the ground here in terms of their status, the aid dependency, the absence of any recovery or reconstruction, no economy…The easing, as it was described, has been nothing more than a political easing of the pressure on Israel and Egypt.”

On the 2nd of December, 22 international organizations including Amnesty, Oxfam, Save the Children, Christian Aid, and Medical Aid for Palestinians produced the report ‘Dashed Hopes, Continuation of the Gaza Blockade’ calling for international action to force Israel to unconditionally lift the blockade, saying the Palestinians of Gaza under Israeli siege continue to live in the same devastating conditions. Only a week ago Human Rights Watch published a comprehensive report “Separate and Unequal” that denounced Israeli policies as Apartheid, echoing similar sentiments by South African anti-apartheid activists.

We Palestinians of Gaza want to live at liberty to meet Palestinian friends or family from Tulkarem, Jerusalem or Nazareth; we want to have the right to travel and move freely. We want to live without fear of another bombing campaign that leaves hundreds of our children dead and many more injured or with cancers from the contamination of Israel’s white phosphorous and chemical warfare. We want to live without the humiliations at Israeli checkpoints or the indignity of not providing for our families because of the unemployment brought about by the economic control and the illegal siege. We are calling for an end to the racism that underpins all this oppression.

We ask: when will the world’s countries act according to the basic premise that people should be treated equally, regardless of their origin, ethnicity or colour – is it so far-fetched that a Palestinian child deserves the same human rights as any other human being? Will you be able to look back and say you stood on the right side of history or will you have sided with the oppressor?

We, therefore, call on the international community to take up its responsibility to protect the Palestinian people from Israel’s heinous aggression, immediately ending the siege with full compensation for the destruction of life and infrastructure visited upon us by this explicit policy of collective punishment. Nothing whatsoever justifies the intentional policies of savagery, including the severing of access to the water and electricity supply to 1.5 million people. The international conspiracy of silence towards the genocidal war taking place against the more than 1.5 million civilians in Gaza indicates complicity in these war crimes.

We also call upon all Palestine solidarity groups and all international civil society organizations to demand:

Boycott Divest and Sanction, join the many International Trade Unions, Universities, Supermarkets and artists and writers who refuse to entertain Apartheid Israel. Speak out for Palestine, for Gaza, and crucially ACT. The time is now.

Besieged Gaza, Palestine

27.December.2010

Countercurrents.org

List of signatories:

General Union for Public Services Workers

General Union for Health Services Workers

University Teachers’ Association

Palestinian Congregation for Lawyers

General Union for Petrochemical and Gas Workers

General Union for Agricultural Workers

Union of Women’s Work Committees

Union of Synergies—Women Unit

The One Democratic State Group

Arab Cultural Forum

Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel

Association of Al-Quds Bank for Culture and Info

Palestine Sailing Federation

Palestinian Association for Fishing and Maritime

Palestinian Network of Non-Governmental Organizations

Palestinian Women Committees

Progressive Students’ Union

Medical Relief Society

The General Society for Rehabilitation

General Union of Palestinian Women

Afaq Jadeeda Cultural Centre for Women and Children

Deir Al-Balah Cultural Centre for Women and Children

Maghazi Cultural Centre for Children

Al-Sahel Centre for Women and Youth

Ghassan Kanfani Kindergartens

Rachel Corrie Centre, Rafah

Rafah Olympia City Sisters

Al Awda Centre, Rafah

Al Awda Hospital, Jabaliya Camp

Ajyal Association, Gaza

General Union of Palestinian Syndicates

Al Karmel Centre, Nuseirat

Local Initiative, Beit Hanoun

Union of Health Work Committees

Red Crescent Society Gaza Strip

Beit Lahiya Cultural Centre

Al Awda Centre, Rafah

 

Before dying, Richard Holbrooke admitted it, saying “You’ve got to stop this war in Afghanistan.” The Washington Post reinterpreted it, saying:

“Holbrooke’s death is the latest complication in an effort plagued by unreliable partners, reluctant allies and an increasingly skeptical American public.”

They’re not alone. Include noted analysts, administration officials, the influential Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and Pentagon top brass. An earlier article discussed it, accessed through the following link:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/11/imperial-americas-end-time.html

A recent article remembered Chalmers Johnson, best known for calling America’s global wars and imperialism a “suicide option” unless reversed. Access it through the following link:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/11/remembering-chalmers-ashby-johnson-8631.html

Naming us our own enemy, he called our policies “arrogant and misguided,” America’s condition dire, and it’s “too late for mere scattered reforms.” We can choose democracy to survive or perish under current policies. He said America is plagued by the same dynamic that doomed past empires unwilling to change, what he called:

“isolation, overstretch, the uniting of local and global forces opposed to imperialism, and in the end bankruptcy,” combined with authoritarian rule and loss of personal freedom.

The other article titled Imperial America’s End Time included two grim assessments – from the Pentagon and CSIS. In discrete understatement, a November Pentagon report said:

“Progress across the country remains uneven, with modest gains in security, governance and development in operational priority areas.” Progress overall has been “slow and incremental….key terrain….relatively unchanged.”

It also explained that violence and Afghan deaths rose sharply as a result of a 300% increase in armed clashes since 2007, and a 70% rise over 2009. Despite the force buildup, “The insurgency has proven resilient with sustained logistics capacity and command and control.”

After over nine years of conflict (now America’s longest war and counting), security is worse than ever. Moreover, “insurgent safe havens” in Pakistan and Iran threaten to widen the war further.” In fact, “(e)fforts to reduce insurgent capacity….have not produced measurable results” despite heightened drone and other attacks.

Yet war continues. Waging, not winning it, matters most. America’s military/industrial/private contractor complex demands it to keep huge profits flowing freely – no matter the cost in lives, human misery, destruction, and hundreds of billions more dollars diverted from essential homeland needs. Imperial war is America’s top priority and has been for decades.

An October CSIS report on Iraq and AfPak expressed alarm, saying:

“We have not yet achieved any meaningful form of positive strategic result (from over seven and a half years of war in Iraq and over nine in Afghanistan), and (both conflicts) may end in a major grand strategic defeat.”

It cited Washington’s futile pursuit of an “end state fallacy,” that officialdom “seems to be in a state of partial denial,” and in Afghanistan:

— there’s “no credible end state to the fighting….that can give the US a credible grand strategic victory or stable outcome.”

AfPak increasingly looks like an unwinnable quagmire, draining America’s resources. Staying the course, committing larger force levels, applying more pressure, and escalating war aren’t solutions. They’ve made conditions worse, not better.

“The US and its allies are pursuing a largely mythical Afghan development plan which lacks core credibility in peacetime, much less in war. There is no development plan for Pakistan. The US is effectively paying an open ended mix of bribes to a country whose economy is now crippled by a catastrophic flood, and whose main security interest is India, not the war the US wants it to fight.”

Successful resolution is impossible. “The challenges are simply too great, and the timelines for credible change are too long….The US cannot afford to allow this situation to continue….After what soon will be ten years of fighting, it is time we not only learned this, but acted on the lesson.”

America’s Iraq/AfPak wars are unwinnable, highlighted in another article, accessed through the following link:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/07/war-in-afghanistan-illegal-untenable.html

New Intelligence Reports Give Grim Assessments

On December 14, New York Times writer Elisabeth Bumiller headlined, “Intelligence Reports Offer Dim Views of Afghan War,” saying:

Despite official Washington claiming progress, “two new classified intelligence reports offer a more negative assessment and say there is a limited chance of success unless Pakistan hunts down insurgents operating from havens on its Afghan border.”

A more realistic analysis confirms a sustained, committed insurgency – freedom fighters wanting liberation, nothing less. In early December, House and Senate Intelligence Committee members got National Intelligence Estimates (on AfPak). They represent consensus views of America’s 16 intelligence agencies through October 1.

Senior Pentagon officials called them out of date by “desk-bound Washington analysts who have spent limited time, if any, in Afghanistan and have no feel for the war.”

An anonymous official said they lacked “proximity and perspective,” no matter that the above cited Pentagon report tacitly agreed. Perhaps it’s been. H discretely buried to hide how commanders really feel, especially those on the ground commenting publicly on the war’s futility.

According to Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official, now a Brookings Institution senior fellow:

Degrading Taliban fighters, winning the border war, building an effective Afghan army, and relying on it for success “is not the optimal solution, obviously….we have to deal with the world we have, not the world we’d like.” We can’t change reality on the ground.

The report also reveals that some Democrats are losing patience, Rep. Adam Smith (D. WA) saying:

“You’re not going to get to the point where the Taliban are gone and the border is perfectly controlled.” He added that increased pressure on Obama will be applied to end the war, predicting “Democrats in Congress would resist continuing to spend $100 billion annually” on futility. “We’re not going to be hanging out over there fighting these guys like we’re fighting them now for 20 years.”

In an October 27 BBC interview, former Soviet Union leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, agreed, saying victory in Afghanistan is “impossible.” Based on his own 1980s experience, he said America’s only choice is withdrawal “no matter how difficult it will be.”

After over nine years, AfPak is another Vietnam, a quagmire with no conflict end in sight. Frustrated allies announced plans to reduce forces or leave. Some are gone. On December 4, France’s new Defense Minister, Alain Juppe, called the Afghan war a “trap,” saying his government plans withdrawal. Moreover, polls confirm public opposition at all-time highs.

A September New America Foundation report said Obama’s counter-insurgency strategy failed. It can’t succeed. It’s a fool’s errand based on flawed analysis, believing Afghan nation-building can work. The full report can be accessed through the following link:

http://www.afghanistanstudygroup.org/read-the-report/

It called nine years of futility not worth “this level of sacrifice.” Staying the present course “threatens long-term needs and priorities both at home and abroad.” Prospects for success are “dim.” Even Henry Kissinger admitted that “Afghanistan has never been pacified by foreign forces.”

The report added:

“….the war in Afghanistan has reached a critical crossroads. Our current path promises to have a limited impact on the civil war while taking more American lives and contributing to skyrocketing taxpayer debt. We conclude that a fundamentally new direction is needed (short) of a military solution in a region where our interests lie in political stability.”

The alternative is protracted unwinnable war. Tried earlier, bribing Taliban fighters failed. A few hundred at most changed sides. At the same time, NATO estimates their ranks swelled, reaching a 25,000 force level last December. Currently it’s likely much higher and growing.

The longer America’s genocide persists. The greater the civilian casualty count. The deeper human misery becomes in a country already with the world’s gravest, the more determination for liberation will grow. Above all, Pakistanis want cross-border drone attacks stopped and Afghans want war and occupation ended, the Karzai regime ousted, and new governance replacing it. Even Taliban rule improves what’s now ongoing, a nightmarish combination of war, occupation, and human suffering.

A Final Comment

General David Petraeus, Commander, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Commander, US Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A) hopes to parlay an AfPak triumph into a successful 2012 presidential bid, either by portraying defeat as victory or blaming bad Obama policy for lack of it.

The “Vietnamistan” reality, however, should banish him to history’s dustbin after prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Other administration war criminals also as well as Bush era ones who lied the nation into war, waged it in violation of US and international law, and has America bogged down in protracted unwinnable ones.

Law Professor and international law expert Francis Boyle believes:

“Obama is most vulnerable on 3 articles of impeachment:

He like other top past and present officials (including Pentagon ones) committed grievous crimes of war and against humanity, including genocide, mostly recently in Iraq, Afghanistan, and increasingly in Pakistan – the latest confirmation of America’s longstanding tradition, a nation permanently at war. Studying US conflicts since the 1870s, historian Gabriel Kolko called US power:

“violen(t), racis(t), repressi(ve) at home and abroad (as well as) cultural(ly) mendaci(ous).”

It dates from exterminating Native Americans, enslaving Black Africans, persecuting the nation’s poor, disadvantaged, women and people of color, as well as a tradition of waging direct and proxy genocidal wars globally.

Before his death, historian Howard Zinn accused past and current leaders of committing “genocide…brutally and purposefully….in the name of progress (buried) in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth.”

Millions of lives were lost, an endless toll raging out-of-control in AfPak. Ending that atrocity and holding culpable officials accountable would be top priority in any just society. Only America’s victims pay. Its officials, like Richard Holbrooke, are eulogized for services rendered.

A December 14 Wall Street Journal editorial called him “a diplomat who never doubted America is a force for good in the world.” A same day New York Times one concurred, saying he was “an iconic American diplomat (who) never lost his fierce belief in America’s goodness or in its responsibility to make the world a more just place,” no matter how much death and destruction it took to achieve it.

An honest assessment would call him a destructive force for imperial gain, responsible for genocidal wars, wanton destruction and massive human misery. It

continues unabated in AfPak, no matter its lawlessness and futility.

By Stephen Lendman

16 December, 2010

Countercurrents.org

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening

The missing persons of Iraq.

“Iraq has the most disappeared persons in the world”

Forced disappearances and missing persons.

A forced disappearance (or enforced disappearance) is defined in Article 2 of the Convention for the

Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, adopted by the United Nations General

Assembly On 20 December 2006, as the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation

of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization,

support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty

or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which place such a person

outside the protection of the law. Often forced disappearance implies murder. The victim in such a

case is first abducted, then illegally detained, and often tortured; the victim is then killed, and the

body is then hidden. Typically, a murder will be surreptitious, with the corpse disposed of in such a

way as to prevent it ever being found, so that the person apparently vanishes. The party committing

the murder has deniability, as there is no body to prove that the victim has actually died.¹

Article 1 of the Convention further states that No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a

state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be

invoked as a justification for enforced disappearance.² Neither Iraq, nor the USA have signed or

ratified this convention.³ The United States refused to sign, saying that the text “did not meet our

expectations“, without giving an explanation.⁴ Once again the United States placed itself outside the

provisions of International Humanitarian law.a

According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which came into force on 1 July

2002, when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed at any civilian

population, a “forced disappearance” qualifies as a crime against humanity, and thus is not subject to

a statute of limitations.⁵

The Human Rights Council Advisory Committee on 3 August 2010 took up, on requests of the Human

 

1 http://wapedia.mobi/en/Forced_disappearances

2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Convention_for_the_Protection_of_All_Persons_from_Enforced_Disappearance

3 http://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=IV-16&chapter=4&lang=en

4 http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2007/02/200852513385877874.html

5 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Forced-Disappearance-International-Criminal-limitations/dp/6130247583

Leaked cable suggests US diplomats were briefed by the Red Cross of continued torture in Indian-administered Kashmir

Torture has been routinely used in prisons in Indian-administered Kashmir, a US cable released by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks has suggested.

The cable, released on Thursday, says that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had briefed US diplomats on widespread torture in 2005.

The memo, titled “ICRC frustrated with the Indian government”dates back to April 6, 2005, and outlines a confidential meeting in which the ICRC told diplomats of “torture methods and relatively stable trends of prisoner abuses by Indian security forces”, based on data derived from 1,491 interviews with detainees from 2002-2004.

ICRC was quoted as saying their staff made 177 visits to detention centres in Jammu and Kashmir and conducted 1,296 private interviews, but reported that “they had not been allowed access to all detainees”.

Techniques included electric shock treatment, sexual and water torture and nearly 300 cases of “roller” abuse in which a round metal object is placed on the thighs of a sitting detainee and then sat on by guards to crush the muscles, according to the cable.

The memo added that since torture and ill-treatment continues unbated, “the ICRC is forced to conclude that the Government of India (GOI) condones torture”.

Prerna Suri, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in New Delhi, said though shocking, the allegations were not new.

“Human rights groups and activists have been bringing out all these allegations in the last few years at various public fora,” she said.

“The spokesperson of the government of India said that this is an internal assessment of American diplomats, and for them isn’t something that would warrant a response to.”

Suri added that India has consistently denied human rights abuses in Kashmir, and that it is alleged that the root problem comes from a special dispensation that governs Indian troops in Kashmir.

“The Armed Forces special Powers Act gives the army sweeping immunity … They can pick up civilians who they think are perpetrators, and in some cases they can also get away with killings and torture with any prosecution … and some say that this is where the rot actually stems from”

Growing anger

Suri said the cable was likely to create more restlessness in the region.

“We have seen this year, some of the worst protests on the streets of Srinagar … Hundreds of thousands of people came out on to the streets protesting [against] army rule.”

The cable said the ICRC revealed to US diplomats that in 852 cases, detainees reported cases of ill-treatment, including various forms of torture. As many as 681 detainees were said to be subjected to more than one form of ill-treatment.

The memo added that the ICRC reported that ill-treatment and torture “is regular and widespread” and “always takes place in the presence of officers” and that the ICRC “has raised these issues with the government of India for more than 10 years”.

The cable added that while the ICRC reported that security forces were rougher on detainees in the past, “detainees were rarely militants [they are routinely killed], but persons connected to or believed to have information about the insurgency”.

Violence linked to insurgents in Indian Kashmir has eased since nuclear-armed India and Pakistan launched a peace process in 2004 over the disputed Himalayan region.

But popular pro-independence protests since June have left more than 110 protesters and bystanders — many of them teenagers – dead.

India and Pakistan each hold part of Kashmir but claim it in full

By Aljazeera

 

BUSH AND ASSOCIATES FOUND GUILTY OF TORTURE

KUALA LUMPUR, 11 May 2012 – The five-panel tribunal unanimously delivered a guilty verdict against former United States President George W. Bush and his associates at the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal hearing that had started on Monday.

On the charge of Crime of Torture and War Crimes, the tribunal finds the accused persons former U.S. President George W. Bush and his associates namely Richard Cheney, former U.S. Vice President, Donald Rumsfeld, former Defence Secretary, Alberto Gonzales, then Counsel to President Bush, David Addington, then General Counsel to the Vice-President, William Haynes II, then General Counsel to Secretary of Defence, Jay Bybee, then Assistant Attorney General, and John Choon Yoo, former Deputy Assistant Attorney-General guilty as charged and convicted as war criminals for Torture and Cruel, Inhumane and Degrading Treatment of the Complainant War Crime Victims.

Earlier in the week, the tribunal heard the testimonies of three witnesses namely Abbas Abid, Moazzam Begg and Jameelah Hameedi. They related the horrific tortures they had faced during their incarceration. The tribunal also heard two other Statutory Declarations of Iraqi citizen Ali Shalal and Rhuhel Ahmed, a British citizen.

Testimony showed that Abbas Abid, a 48-year-old chief engineer in the Science and Technology Ministry had his fingernails removed by pliers. Ali Shalal was attached with bare electrical wires and electrocuted and hung from the wall. Moazzam Begg was beaten and put in solitary confinement. Jameelah was almost nude and humiliated, used as a human shield whilst being transported by helicopter. All these witnesses have residual injuries till today.

These witnesses were taken prisoners and held in prisons in Afghanistan (Bagram), in Iraq (Abu Gharib, Baghdad International Airport) and two of them namely Moazzam Begg and Rhuhel Ahmed were transported to Guantanamo Bay.

In a submission that lasted a day, the prosecution showed in an in depth submission how the decision-makers at the highest level President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld, aided and abetted by the lawyers and the other commanders and CIA officials – all acted in concert. Torture was systematically applied and became an accepted norm.

According to the prosecution, the testimony of all the witnesses shows a sustained perpetration of brutal, barbaric, cruel and dehumanizing course of conduct against them. These acts of crimes were applied cumulatively to inflict the worst possible pain and suffering.

After hearing the defence of the Amicus Curiae and the subsequent rebuttal the prosecution, the tribunal ruled unanimously that there was a prima facie case made out by the prosecution.

After hours of deliberation, the tribunal, in the verdict that was read out by the president of the tribunal Tan Sri Dato Lamin bin Haji Mohd Yunus Lamin, found that the prosecution had established beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused persons, former President George Bush and his co-conspirators engaged in a web of instructions, memos, directives, legal advice and action that established a common plan and purpose, joint enterprise and/or conspiracy to commit the crimes of Torture and War Crimes, including and not limited to a common plan and purpose to commit the following crimes in relation to the “War on Terror” and the wars launched by the U.S. and others in Afghanistan and Iraq:

(a) Torture;

(b) Creating, authorizing and implementing a regime of Cruel, Inhumane, and

Degrading Treatment;

(c) Violating Customary International Law;

(d) Violating the Convention Against Torture 1984;

(e) Violating the Geneva Convention III and IV 1949;

(f) Violating the Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention of 1949.

(g) Violating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Charter.

The Tribunal finds that the prosecution has established beyond a reasonable doubt that the Accused persons are individually and jointly liable for all crimes committed in pursuit of their common plan and purpose under principles established by Article 6 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal (the Nuremberg Charter), which states, inter alia, “Leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit war crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any person in execution of such plan.”

The Principles of the Nuremberg Charter and the Nuremberg Decision have been adopted as customary international law by the United Nations.  The government of the United States is subject to customary international law and to the Principles of the Nuremburg Charter and the Nuremburg Decision.

The Tribunal finds that the prosecution has proven beyond reasonable doubt that the accused lawyers, gave ‘advice’ that “the Geneva Conventions did not apply (to suspected al Qaeda and Taliban detainees); that there was no torture occurring within the meaning of the Torture Convention, and that enhanced interrogations techniques, (constituting cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment,) were permissible.”

The prosecution has also established beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused lawyers “knew full well their advice was being sought to be acted upon, and in fact was acted upon, and such advice paved the way for violations of international law, the Geneva Conventions and the Torture Convention.”

The accused lawyers’ advice was binding on the accused Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney, each of whom relied on the accused lawyers’ advice.  Others, such as CIA Director George Tenet and Diane Beaver, officer in charge at Guantanamo, relied on the accused lawyers’ advice. The prosecution had established beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused lawyers are criminally liable for their acts, and for participating in a joint criminal enterprise.

The president read that the Tribunal orders that reparations commensurate with the irreparable harm and injury, pain and suffering undergone by the Complainant War Crime Victims be paid to the Complainant War Crime Victims. While it is constantly mindful of its stature as merely a tribunal of conscience with no real power of enforcement, the Tribunal finds that the witnesses in this case are entitled ex justitia to the payment of reparations by the 8 convicted persons and their government.

It is the Tribunal’s hope that armed with the findings of this Tribunal, the witnesses will, in the near future, find a state or an international judicial entity able and willing to exercise jurisdiction and to enforce the verdict of this Tribunal against the 8 convicted persons and their government. The Tribunal’s award of reparations shall be submitted to the War Crimes Commission to facilitate the determination and collection of reparations by the Complainant War Crime Victims.

President Lamin read, “As a tribunal of conscience, the Tribunal is fully aware that its verdict is merely declaratory in nature. The tribunal has no power of enforcement, no power to impose any custodial sentence on any one or more of the 8 convicted persons. What we can do, under Article 31 of Chapter VI of Part 2 of the Charter is to recommend to the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission to submit this finding of conviction by the Tribunal, together with a record of these proceedings, to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, as well as the United Nations and the Security Council.

The Tribunal also recommends to the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission that the names of all the 8 convicted persons be entered and included in the Commission’s Register of War Criminals and be publicized accordingly.

The Tribunal recommends to the War Crimes Commission to give the widest international publicity to this conviction and grant of reparations, as these are universal crimes for which there is a responsibility upon nations to institute prosecutions if any of these Accused persons may enter their jurisdictions.

ends

For further information, please contact

Dato’ Dr Yaacob Merican

Secretary General of the KLWCC Secretariat

Tel: +6012-227 8680

 

Ms Malkeet Kaur

Media Representative of KLWCC

malkeet@dbook.com.my

Tel: +6012-3737 886

 

The Tribunal Members

Tan Sri Dato Lamin bin Haji Mohd Yunus,

Mr Alfred Lambremont Webre

Tunku Sofiah Jewa

Prof Salleh Buang

Mr Alfred Lambremont Webre

Datuk Mohd Sa’ari Yusof.

 

The Prosecution

Prof Gurdial S Nijar

Prof Francis Boyle

Mr Avtaran Singh

Ms Gan Pei Fern

 

Amicus Curiae (appointed Defence team)

Mr Jason Kay

Dr Mohd Hisham

Dr Abbas Hardani

Ms Galoh Nursafinas

The Charge

Crime of Torture and War Crimes against former U.S. President George W. Bush and his associates namely Richard Cheney, former U.S. Vice President, Donald Rumsfeld, former Defence Secretary, Alberto Gonzales, then Counsel to President Bush, David Addington, then General Counsel to the Vice-President, William Haynes II, then General Counsel to Secretary of Defence, Jay Bybee, then Assistant Attorney General, and John Choon Yoo, former Deputy Assistant Attorney-General.

The Tribunal will adjudicate and evaluate the evidence presented on facts and law as in any court of law. The judges of the Tribunal must be satisfied that the charge is proven beyond reasonable doubt and deliver a reasoned judgement. The verdict and the names of the persons found guilty will be entered in the Commission’s Register of War Criminals and publicised worldwide.

About Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (KLWCC)

The KLFCW established the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (The Commission), to investigate cases of war crimes that have been neglected by established institutions such as the International Criminal Court. The Commission seeks to influence world opinion on the illegality of wars and occupation undertaken by major Western powers.

The aim of The Commission is thereby to hold perpetrators of war crimes accountable for their actions especially when relevant international judicial organs fail to do so.

The Commission

The commission’s function is to:

i) receive complaints from any victim(s) of any conflict on:

(a) Crimes against peace

(b) Crimes against humanity

(c) Crimes of genocide

(d) War crimes

 

ii) investigate the same and prepare a report of its findings. To further call for more evidence or where The Commission is satisfied to recommend prosecution

The Legal Team

The legal team’s aim is to present the complaints of victim(s) of any conflict and to act on the recommendation of The Commission’s report and to frame charges and prosecute accused person(s).

The Tribunal

The Tribunal shall adjudicate on the charges filed against the accused person(s) The applicable standard of proof shall be beyond reasonable doubt.

About the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War (KLFCW)

Malaysia’s fourth Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad founded the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War (KLFCW), a non-governmental organisation established under the laws of Malaysia on 12 March 2007.

The main objectives of the Foundation, as stated in its Statutes are, inter alia:

1.    To undertake all necessary measures and initiatives to criminalise war and energise peace;

2.    To provide relief, assistance and support to individuals and communities who are    suffering from the effects of war and armed conflict wherever occurring and without discrimination on the grounds of nationality, racial origin, religion, belief, age, gender or other forms of impermissible differentiations;

3.    To promote the education of individuals and communities suffering from the effects of war or armed conflict;

4.    To foster schemes for the relief of human suffering occasioned by war or armed conflict;

5.    To provide for mechanisms or procedures in attainment of the above purposes.

“WHY is it that the murder of one man is considered a criminal act whereas the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent people committed in wars, is not considered so? -Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad

 

 

So monumentally arrogant is India’s nuclear establishment that it brazenly brands its critics insane and in need of psychiatric treatment. It has asked the state-run National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences (NIMHANS) to “counsel” the tens of thousands protesting against the Koodankulam nuclear power station in Tamil Nadu that it’s perfectly safe.

This marks a new offensive to impose nuclear power upon people who have resisted Koodankulam’s Russian-made reactors since 1988. After Fukushima, the presumption that fears about nuclear hazards are irrational betrays delusional insensitivity.

The police have filed 107 first information reports against an incredible 55,795 people in Koodankulam, charging 6,800 of them with “sedition” and “waging war”. This sets a new record in harassment of popular protests anywhere. Leave alone sedition, there hasn’t been one violent incident during the seven-months-long Koodankulam protests.

NIMHANS psychiatrists, to their shame, are striving to help people “understand the importance of the nuclear power plant”. They treat opposition to nuclear power as a disorder like schizophrenia, paranoia, or craving for victimhood.

By their criteria, more than 80 per cent of the population of Japan, Germany, France and Russia, which opposes new nuclear plants, must be considered insane. As an academic research institution, NIMHANS shouldn’t act as a nuclear propaganda agency.

Role of Foreign Hand

NIMHANS seems to have taken its cue from the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, who attributed the protests to the “foreign hand”. But the real “foreign hand” is Dr Singh himself, who is hitching India’s energy trajectory to imported reactors, including French reactors at Jaitapur (Maharashtra), and American reactors at Mithi Virdi (Gujarat) and Kovvada (Andhra).

After Fukushima, nuclear safety can no longer be analysed from the usual “expert” probabilistic perspective. As the official German Ethics Commission on safe energy says, Fukushima has decisively changed nuclear risk perceptions: “More people have come to realise…that major accidents can indeed occur.” As physicist Mr Alvin Weinberg said: “A nuclear accident anywhere is a nuclear accident everywhere”.

Fukushima occurred in an industrially advanced country, still hasn’t been brought under control, and exposes flaws in the global nuclear industry’s technological risk-assessment methods. Says the Ethics Commission: Fukushima “has shaken people’s confidence … [They] are no longer prepared to leave it to … experts to decide how to deal with… the possibility of an uncontrollable… accident.”

This applies to India too. Its Department of Atomic Energy has a poor safety culture and record. DAE parrots clichés about the Russian reactors’ safety. But it doesn’t even have full access to their design.

It’s the DAE and Nuclear Power Corporation, not the protesters, who are delusion-prone. When the Fukushima crisis decisively turned for the worse with hydrogen explosions, the DAE secretary, Mr Sreekumar Banerjee said these were “purely a chemical reaction and not a nuclear emergency …”.

Of course, the explosions were chemical reactions. But the hydrogen indicated severe nuclear fuel damage. The explosions ruptured plant structures, aggravating the nuclear emergency with three reactor-core meltdowns.

Last September, the government suspended work on Koodankulam until people’s safety concerns are fully allayed by a 15-member ‘expert group’. This failed to convince anyone or furnish any documents, including the environmental impact assessment report. It refused even to meet the independent scientists nominated by the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy.

Koodankulam raises two sets of safety issues: specific to the reactors and site, and generic to nuclear power. The reactors haven’t been certified safe by an independent international or Indian agency. A recent report by nuclear safety experts on Russian rectors shockingly reveals that they are grievously under-prepared for natural or man-made disasters.

Russian reactors are marked by 31 “serious flaws”, including: absence of regulations to deal with contingencies; inadequate protective shelters; lack of records of previous accidents, which would enable learning from past mistakes; and poor attention to safety-significant systems.

The report questions the reactors’ ability to remain safe long enough if cooling systems fail. These systems are vulnerable to metal fatigue and welding flaws. Worse, the earthquake hazard isn’t considered in designing Russian reactors. Many lack earthquake-triggered automatic shutdown mechanisms.

There are serious site-specific issues too, including impact on people and fisheries, and inadequacy of safety systems and waste storage. The site could be vulnerable to tsunamis caused by “slumps” (massive agglomerations of loosely-bound seabed sediments), small-volume volcanic eruptions, and geological and hydrological instability.

Koodankulam is probably the world’s sole nuclear plant without independent freshwater supply. The desalination plant, on which it will fully depend, could fail.

Safety Procedures Bypassed

These issues were highlighted in an impressive 84-page report by PMANE. The official committee hasn’t answered them.

NPC is now bypassing Atomic Energy Regulatory Board safety procedures. It’s rushing into starting the first reactor, which gathered rust for five months. Prior to nuclear-fuel loading, it should be put through another “hot run”, similar to last year’s, says former AERB chairman, Mr A Gopalakrishnan.

In this operation, the core is loaded with dummy fuel and hot water is circulated through it at the same temperature as its operating level to check its vessels, piping, valves, etc. The AERB also mandates an emergency evacuation drill in the emergency planning zone covering a 16-km radius, before fuel loading. Nothing suggests this will happen.

Koodankulam violates the stipulation that there must be zero population within a 1.5-km radius, and only a sparse population within a 5-km radius. Several thousands live in the 1.5-km radius. At least 40,000 people live within a 5-km radius, and 100,000 in the EPZ.

The generic hazards of nuclear power include radiation at each stage, from uranium mining, fuel fabrication, reactor operation and maintenance, to waste storage. Cancer-causing radiation is harmful in all doses. Routine emissions from reactors also pose grave hazards.

Even graver is the problem of nuclear wastes, which remain hazardous for thousands of years. Science knows no safe way of storing, let alone neutralising, them.

Nuclear power is the only form of energy production with a potential for catastrophic accidents like Fukushima. These problems make nuclear power uniquely, irredeemably, hazardous.

Koodankulam concentrates these hazards, dangerously. It must be scrapped.

By Praful Bidwai

15 June, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Praful Bidwai is a senior Indian journalist, political analyst, and activist.