Tag War crimes

Entries 34 Total

Blair loses, audible sigh of relief heard around world

Nov 20, ’09 8:16 AM

For those of you sub­jec­ted to the unfor­tu­nate idea of hav­ing Tony Blair as first pres­id­ent of the EU you’ll pleased to know the war crim­inal never came close.

No Right Turn:

The European Union has its first per­man­ent coun­cil pres­id­ent — and its not Tony Blair. Instead, EU lead­ers have chosen Bel­gian Prime Min­is­ter Her­man van Rompuy for the top job. His chief vir­tues? He’s from a small state actu­ally com­mit­ted to the European pro­ject (unlike the UK), and he’s a con­sensus politi­cian, rather than a divis­ive auto­crat (unlike Blair). Plus of course he’s not a war crim­inal — always a bonus when you’re try­ing to run a state com­mit­ted to peace and inter­na­tional law.

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Jacqui Janes is wrong about why her son is dead

Nov 10, ’09 8:37 PM

Jac­qui Janes believes her son is dead because the war in Afgh­anistan is under-resourced.

He’s not. He’s dead because he was fight­ing an unjust war.

The stated aim of the inva­sion of Afgh­anistan was to find Osama bin Laden and other high-ranking Al-Qaeda mem­bers. On 14 Octo­ber, 2001, the Taliban pub­licly offered to hand over Osama bin Laden to a third coun­try, provided the U.S. hal­ted the illegal bomb­ing of Afgh­anistan and pro­duced the neces­sary evid­ence about involve­ment of bin Laden or any of his asso­ci­ates in the 11 Septem­ber attacks.

George Bush junior dis­missed this offer and con­tin­ued with the offens­ive, put­ting an end to any pos­sib­il­ity of a poten­tially peace­ful, legal res­ol­u­tion to the events of 11 Septem­ber 2001.

The United Nations Secur­ity Coun­cil never author­ised the inva­sion of Afgh­anistan and it cer­tainly wasn’t an act of self-defence. It was an act of aggres­sion, the supreme inter­na­tional crime.

Neither George Bush nor Gor­don Brown had to go off to war, but Jac­qui Janes’ son did, and now he’s dead.

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‘We invaded Iraq and all we get is this lousy t-shirt’

Oct 24, ’09 11:40 AM

They invade and lay waste another coun­try, des­troy the lives of mil­lions of Iraqis for gen­er­a­tions to come, all on some trumped up drivel about “weapons of mass destruction.”

Now they’re arguing over the real reason. Oil. It’s not enough that con­trol of Iraq’s crude is being div­vied up amongst the cap­it­al­ists of the world. Thomas Pick­ens — an oil tycoon and polit­ical act­iv­ist who hasn’t served a day in the army him­self — has been arguing a line, and accord­ing to Reu­ters, recently told U.S. con­gress that he thinks U.S. cap­it­al­ists alone are “entitled” to Iraqi crude because “we” spent bil­lions of U.S. taxes and the lives of 5000 U.S. army pawns invad­ing and occupy­ing the country.

Classy.

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NZ National/ACT government wants option to commit war crimes

Sep 9, ’09 7:13 AM

No Right Turn on the NZ National/ACT government’s oppos­i­tion to a new bill that would make it a national crim­inal offence for any New Zea­l­and polit­ical leader to “plan, pre­pare, ini­ti­ate or execute an act of aggres­sion” in viol­a­tion of the UN Charter.

… when Wayne Mapp says he doesn’t want our for­eign policy to be sub­ject to a UN veto, what he is really say­ing is that he wants to wage war in con­tra­ven­tion of inter­na­tional law and the UN charter — in other words, he wants us to be a rogue nation, just like the US…

Which seems to me to be a per­fect example of why we must pass the bill.

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Cheney: an evil person for evil times

Aug 14, ’09 7:19 AM

The Guard­ian: ‘Mem­oirs to reveal Dick Cheney thought Bush had gone soft on war on terror.’

Who knows what dark place we’d all be in if this man had become U.S. President.

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Colonel Julian didn’t get the memo

Jul 20, ’09 8:09 AM

Ahh, yes, there’s noth­ing like a little Amer­ican excep­tion­al­ism to get one going in the morning.

Accord­ing to Reu­ters, Col­onel Greg Julian, a U.S. mil­it­ary spokes­man in Kabul, has been com­plain­ing that the Taliban is viol­at­ing inter­na­tional law by parad­ing a cap­tured U.S. sol­dier on camera.

It seems Col­onel Julian didn’t get the memo: the U.S. tore up inter­na­tional law a long time ago.

Not only did the U.S. com­mit the supreme war crime when it invaded Afgh­anistan and Iraq — supreme because of all that ensues from start­ing a war, includ­ing the crimes of your oppon­ents — but this is the same coun­try, of course, to have declared by pres­id­en­tial order that the Geneva Con­ven­tions did not apply to cap­tured Taliban sol­diers and has since been detain­ing Afghan pris­on­ers without trial, sneak­ing them off to Guantanamo and its secret pris­ons and tor­tur­ing them.

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You’ve gotta be kidding me…

Jul 15, ’09 1:59 PM

“Blair in frame to become first EU pres­id­ent, says Glenys Kin­nock.”

A war crim­inal as pres­id­ent of Europe? I think the accom­pa­ny­ing com­ments tell the real story.

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Blair’s scared he’ll end up in the dock for war crimes

Jun 21, ’09 10:00 AM

Looks like Blair is run­ning scared he’ll end up in the dock for war crimes. Not sur­pris­ing con­sid­er­ing the lengths he went to to help bring about the war of aggres­sion against Iraq.

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Free Ezra Nawi

Jun 19, ’09 7:30 PM

Sign and send a mesage: freeezra.org

Join Naomi Klein, Neve Gor­don, Noam Chom­sky and thou­sands of oth­ers and tell Israel not to jail Ezra Nawi, one of Israel’s most cour­ageous human rights activists.

His crime? He tried to stop a mil­it­ary bull­dozer from des­troy­ing the homes of Palestinian Bedouins in the South Hebron region.

Nawi, a Jew­ish Israeli of Iraqi des­cent, is a threat to the set­tlers and the Israeli gov­ern­ment because he has brought inter­na­tional atten­tion to efforts to illeg­ally remove Palestini­ans from the Hebron region. He will be sen­tenced in July.

Watch these young Israeli sol­diers demol­ish the home, arrest Nawi and then laugh about the deprav­ity. Truly lost in the darkness.

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Another whitewash hardly surprising

Jun 16, ’09 8:12 AM

If Gor­don Brown were to open the way for a truly inde­pend­ent and open inquiry into the inva­sion and occu­pa­tion of Iraq he would quite likely find him­self in the dock for war crimes.

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