Category Law

Entries 68 Total Description

Rules of conduct or procedure established by custom, agreement, or authority.

Wikileaks reveals video showing U.S. air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians

Apr 6, ’10 10:22 AM

Col­lat­eral Murder, another U.S. mas­sacre, this time caught on tape. When you watch the video bare in mind the U.S. mil­it­ary claimed the vic­tims died in a battle that took place between U.S. forces and insurgents:

“There is no ques­tion that coali­tion forces were clearly engaged in com­bat oper­a­tions against a hos­tile force”

—Lieutenant-Colonel Scott Bleichwehl,

spokes­man for U.S. forces in Bagh­dad. (New York Times)

The real­ity is a bunch of cow­ard red­necks fly­ing around in heli­copters com­mit­ting murder from high above.

When the Nurem­berg Tribunal described a war of aggres­sion as the supreme war crime, because it “con­tains within itself the accu­mu­lated evil of the whole,” this is the kind of thing they were talk­ing about. These trig­ger happy red­necks fly­ing around in heli­copters just shouldn’t be in Iraq in the first place.

And this red­neck nation won­ders why people want to fly planes into their buildings.

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Iceland aims to become an offshore haven for journalists and leakers

Feb 13, ’10 12:11 PM

Free­dom of speech is on the offensive.

What an idea, a new busi­ness model for Ice­land:

On Tues­day, the Icelandic par­lia­ment is expec­ted to intro­duce a meas­ure aimed at mak­ing the coun­try an inter­na­tional cen­ter for invest­ig­at­ive journ­al­ism pub­lish­ing, by passing the strongest com­bin­a­tion of source pro­tec­tion, free­dom of speech, and libel-tourism pre­ven­tion laws in the world.

Sup­port­ers of the pro­posal say the move would make Ice­land an “off­shore pub­lish­ing cen­ter” for free speech, ana­log­ous to the off­shore fin­an­cial havens that allow cor­por­a­tions to hide cap­ital from author­it­ies. Could global news organ­iz­a­tions with a home office in Reyk­javík soon be as com­mon as Delaware cor­por­a­tions or Cay­man Islands assets?

“This is a legis­lat­ive pack­age to cre­ate a haven for free­dom of expres­sion,” Icelandic mem­ber of par­lia­ment Birgitta Jóns­dót­tir con­firmed to me, say­ing that a pro­posal for com­pre­hens­ive media law reform will be filed in par­lia­ment on Tues­day, and that whistle-blowing spe­cial­ists Wikileaks has been involved in draft­ing it.

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Do we want brain scanners to read our minds?

Feb 6, ’10 11:51 AM

Pro­fessor Colin Blakemore assesses the intriguing implic­a­tions of advances in neur­os­cience that have made it pos­sible to com­mu­nic­ate with those in a veget­at­ive state:

Astro­nomy, from Coper­ni­cus on, has trans­formed our view of the place of the earth in the heav­ens. Dar­win changed forever our view of the status of human­ity. Neur­os­cience is likely to chal­lenge our very under­stand­ing of what it is to be a person.

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Free Speech for People

Feb 3, ’10 7:40 AM

There’s a cam­paign under way in the U.S. to “restore the First Amend­ment to its ori­ginal pur­pose: to pro­tect people, not cor­por­a­tions.” They need to hurry. The U.S. has long taken the road to corpor­a­to­cracy. The longer this goes on the less likely they’ll ever be able to turn back.

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Help arrest Tony Blair

Feb 2, ’10 1:17 PM

Great piece by George Mon­biot on the cam­paign to arrest Tony Blair:

Already the cam­paign has borne fruit. Out­side the Chil­cot inquiry a woman called Grace McCann, inspired by the web­site, tried to appre­hend Mr Blair, before she was restrained and removed by the police. She qual­i­fies for the first bounty: one quarter of the total pot at the time of her attempt. She has pledged to give the money to rel­ev­ant char­it­ies. The fund will remain open until Blair is offi­cially pro­sec­uted, and we will keep pay­ing out to those who fol­low Grace’s example.

You can donate here.

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Iraq to sue U.S., Britain over depleted uranium bombs

Feb 2, ’10 8:24 AM

Press TV:

Iraq’s Min­istry for Human Rights will file a law­suit against Bri­tain and the US over their use of depleted uranium bombs in Iraq, an Iraqi min­is­ter says.

Accord­ing to Iraqi experts, the U.S. and Bri­tain, being the lov­ers of free­dom and demo­cracy that they are:

… bombed the coun­try with nearly 2,000 tons of depleted uranium bombs dur­ing the early years of the Iraq war. Atomic radi­ation has increased the num­ber of babies born with defects in the south­ern provinces of Iraq.

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Plans for war crimes prosecution against Blair

Feb 2, ’10 8:13 AM

Finally. Let’s hope this guy is good.

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Blair used Kosovo War to justify invading Iraq

Jan 26, ’10 1:00 PM

Here’s another reason why I opposed the Nato bomb­ing of Yugoslavia in 1999. Give war crim­in­als like Blair an inch and they’ll take the rope and go on to invade the rest of the world:

Wood told the inquiry that some min­is­ters and even the then prime min­is­ter, Tony Blair, used to privately claim that the Nato bomb­ing of Kosovo in 1999 provided a use­ful pre­ced­ent for going to war in Iraq.

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Supreme Court puts final nail in coffin of U.S. democracy

Jan 24, ’10 11:15 AM

In 1886 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cor­por­a­tions had the same con­sti­tu­tional rights as a per­son. This was the begin­ning of the end of any mean­ing­ful form of demo­cracy in the U.S.

David Korten alludes to the reason:

The private-benefit cor­por­a­tion is an insti­tu­tion gran­ted a leg­ally pro­tec­ted right — some would claim oblig­a­tion — to pur­sue a nar­row private interest without regard to broader social and envir­on­mental con­sequences. If it were a real per­son, it would fit the clin­ical pro­file of a sociopath.

The basic design of the private-benefit cor­por­a­tion was cre­ated in 1600 when the Brit­ish crown chartered the Brit­ish East India Com­pany as what is best described as a leg­al­ized crim­inal syn­dic­ate to col­on­ize the resources and eco­nom­ies of dis­tant lands to bene­fit wealthy investors far removed from the social and envir­on­mental con­sequences. That design has ever since proven highly effect­ive in advan­cing the private interests of the world’s wealth­i­est people at enorm­ous cost to the rest.

The private-benefit cor­por­a­tion uses its eco­nomic power to privat­ize (intern­al­ize) gains and social­ize (extern­al­ize) cost.

The power afforded to cor­por­a­tions in the U.S. has, until now, been slightly cur­tailed by lim­its imposed on cor­por­ate spend­ing in polit­ical cam­paigns. In a sweep­ing decision a right-wing major­ity U.S. Supreme Court has ruled to lift these limits.

Cor­por­a­tions, and the rich behind them, finally own Amer­ica. Demo­cracy for the rich.

The 20th cen­tury has been char­ac­ter­ised by three devel­op­ments of great polit­ical import­ance: the growth of demo­cracy; the growth of cor­por­ate power; and the growth of cor­por­ate pro­pa­ganda as a means of pro­tect­ing cor­por­ate power against demo­cracy.
—Alex Carey, Tak­ing the Risk out of Democracy

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War criminals looking after their own

Dec 16, ’09 11:32 PM

Soli­citor Daniel Machover, after politi­cians — includ­ing Gor­don Brown — hatch a plan to insu­late fel­low politi­cians from uni­ver­sal jur­is­dic­tion:

I feel hon­est revul­sion at the idea of a case where a judge has gran­ted an arrest war­rant and a politi­cian gets on the phone and apo­lo­gises. They have got to stay out of indi­vidual cases and legal decisions.

Of course Gor­don Brown and the gov­ern­ment he is a part of played an integ­ral role in the inva­sions of Iraq and Afgh­anistan. He’s just look­ing out for his own kind.

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