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Paul Merrell

US and Israel try to rewrite history of UN resolution declaring Zionism racism - 0 views

mondoweiss.net/...resolution-declared-zionism

war & peace Zionism SCR-3379 U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination,” reads UN General Assembly Resolution 3379. The measure was adopted 40 years ago, on Nov. 10, 1975, and the majority of the international community backed it. 72 countries voted for the resolution, with just 35 opposed (and 32 abstentions). Although little-known in the US today (it is remarkable how effectively the US and its allies have rewritten history in their favor), UN GA Res. 3379, titled “Elimination of all forms of racial discrimination,” made an indelible imprint on history. The geographic distribution of the vote was telling. The countries that voted against the resolution were primarily colonial powers and/or their allies. The countries that voted for it were overwhelmingly formerly colonized and anti-imperialist nations.
  • The resolution also cited two other little-known measures passed by international organizations in the same year: the Assembly of the Heads of State and Government of the Organization of African Unity’s resolution 77, which ruled “that the racist regime in occupied Palestine and the racist regimes in Zimbabwe and South Africa have a common imperialist origin, forming a whole and having the same racist structure”; and the Political Declaration and Strategy to Strengthen International Peace and Security and to Intensify Solidarity and Mutual Assistance among Non-Aligned Countries, which called Zionism a “racist and imperialist ideology.” When the resolution was passed, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Chaim Herzog — who later became Israel’s sixth president, and the father of Isaac Herzog, the head of Israel’s opposition — famously tore up the text at the podium. Herzog claimed the measure was “based on hatred, falsehood, and arrogance,” insisting it was “devoid of any moral or legal value.” Still today, supporters of Israel argue UN GA Res. 3379 was an anomalous product of anti-Semitism. In reality, however, the resolution was the result of international condemnation of the illegal military occupation to which Palestinians had been subjected since 1967 and the apartheid-like conditions the indigenous Arab population had lived under as second-class citizens of an ethnocratic state since 1948.
  • In 1991, resolution 3379 was repealed for two primary reasons: One, the Soviet bloc, which helped pass the resolution, had collapsed; and two, Israel and the US demanded that it be revoked or they refused to participate in the Madrid Peace Conference. At the UN on Nov. 11, US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power and Secretary of State John Kerry eulogized the late Herzog and forcefully condemned the resolution on its 40th anniversary. In his 2,500-word statement, Kerry mentioned Palestinians just once, and only then as an extension of Israelis. In her remarks, Power did not mention Palestinians at all.
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  • In his speech, Kerry smeared resolution 3379 as “anti-Semitic” and “absurd.” Kerry called it “a bitter irony that this resolution against Zionism was originally a resolution against racism and colonialism” and lamented that “reasonableness was detoured by a willful ignorance of history and truth.” Sec. Kerry insisted “we will do all in our power to prevent the hijacking of this great forum for malicious intent” — a fascinating claim, considering how incredibly often the US itself hijacks the UN against the will of the international community, in the interests of both itself and Israel. Kerry warned about “the global reality of anti-Semitism today” (he made no mention whatsoever of the global reality of rampant, rapidly accelerating, and viciously violent anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, and anti-Black racism), and implied that the “terrorist bigots of Daesh [ISIS], Boko Haram, Al Shabaab, and so many others” are part of this larger anti-Semitic trend. One could argue Sec. Kerry downplayed the severity of the present political situation by characterizing these fascistic groups’ violent extremism as rooted in anti-Semitic bigotry, rather than in radicalization under conditions of intense oppression, bitter poverty, and brutal tyranny.
  • UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon joined Kerry, Power, and Netanyahu in the echo chamber, albeit with a bit more subtlety. “The reputation of the United Nations was badly damaged by the adoption of resolution 3379, in and beyond Israel and the wider Jewish community,” he said. Unlike the others, Ban condemned not just anti-Semitism, but also “wide-ranging anti-Muslim bigotry and attacks [and] discrimination against migrants and refugees.” Although the Israeli government accuses the UN of bias, the evidence demonstrates the opposite. Secret cables released by whistleblowing journalism organization WikiLeaks revealed that the US and Israel worked hand-in-hand with the UN and Sec.-Gen. Ban in order to undermine investigation into and punitive action on Israel’s war crimes in Gaza.
  • In her speech at the UN, Power, like Kerry, conflated the heinous Nazi attacks on Jewish civilians in the Kristallnacht with UN GA Res. 3379. Both speakers cited the abominable horrors of the Holocaust several times as reasons to support Zionism, glossing over the fact that Zionism was created in the late 19th century and that the Balfour Declaration dates back to 1917, decades before World War II. Amb. Power — a serial warmonger and veteran blame-dodger — did what she did best: rewrote history in the favor of US imperialism. She called the resolution “1975 smearing of Jews’ aspirations to have a homeland” and insisted multiple times that resolutions like 3379 “threaten the legitimacy of the UN.” Like Kerry, Power conveniently forgot to mention that, when it comes to the halls of the UN, there is no other rogue state as blunt as the US, which regularly spits in the face of the international community, defying UN resolutions, violating the UN Charter, and breaking international law when it sees fit. Power’s speech exposed the fault lines in the contentious (to put it mildly) relationship between the US and the UN — that is to say, between the US and the international community. Such tensions are not the fault of the UN; the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of Washington, with its doctrinal “American exceptionalism” and the flagrant disregard for international law that so frequently accompanies such imperial hubris.
  • In their speeches, both Kerry and Power also thanked Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon, who was described by an Israeli Labor Party lawmaker as “a right-wing extremist with the diplomatic sensitivity of a pit bull” and who proposed legislation that would, in his own words, have the Israeli government “annex the West Bank and repeal the Oslo Accords.” Amb. Danon insists that God gave the land of historic Palestine to the Jewish people as an “everlasting possession” (while forsaking the US). He also told the Times of Israel that the “international community can say whatever they want, and we can do whatever we want.” Netanyahu addressed the session with a video message. He claimed that Israel, which has for years led the world in violating UN Security Council resolutions, “continues to face systemic discrimination here at the UN.” In a January 2013 statement submitted to the UN Human Rights Council, the Russell Tribunal calculated Israel had defied a bare minimum of 87 Security Council resolutions. The Russel Tribunal also crucially noted “that Israel’s ongoing colonial settlement expansion, its racial separatist policies, as well as its violent militarism would not be possible without the US’s unequivocal support.” The tribunal pointed out that Israel “is the largest recipient of US foreign aid since 1976 and the largest cumulative recipient since World War II” and that, between 1972 and 2012, the US was the lone veto of UN resolutions critical of Israel 43 times.
  • The US secretary of state extolled “Zionism as the expression of a national liberation movement.” The national liberation movements of Vietnam, Korea, China, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Colombia, Congo, South Africa, Burkina Faso, and so many more nations, however, did not get such approval from Washington; au contraire, they were mercilessly crushed under the iron fist of American empire. Traditionally, only right-wing and settler-colonial “national liberation movements” have garnered the US’s official approval. “Why do we Americans care so much about the rights of others being respected?” Kerry asked unprovoked. “Because, in an interconnected world, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” He should tell that to the victims of US-backed dictatorships in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Egypt, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Thailand, Brunei, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Uganda, and, once again, so many more nations. “Times may change, but one thing we do know: America’s support for Israel’s dreaming and Israel’s security, that will never change,” Kerry proclaimed.
  • The real victim of the 40th anniversary event was the truth — and, of course, as it was four decades ago, the Palestinians. Yet, while UN GA Res. 3379 was repealed, the truth cannot be revoked. Zionism was and remains an unequivocally racist movement — just like any other hyper-nationalist and ethnocratic movement. None other than the founding father of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, recognized this elementary fact. In a 1902 letter to Cecil Rhodes — a diamond magnate and white supremacist British colonialist with oceans of African blood on his hands — Herzl, writing of “the idea of Zionism, which is a colonial idea,” requested help colonizing historic Palestine. “It doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor, not Englishmen but Jews… How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial,” Herzl wrote. “I want you to… put the stamp of your authority on the Zionist plan.”
Paul Merrell

Israel wants to "Settle Israeli Sovereignty over Syrian Golan Heights" | nsnbc internat... - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...gnty-over-syrian-golan-heights

war & peace Israel U.S.-foreign-policy Golan-Heights Syria

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Israel’s Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has publicly called for “settling the Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights within the framework of the Israeli – Palestinian negotiations” adding that “part of this comprehensive bargain has to cover an understanding between Israel, the international community and the USA” and adding that “the Golan is part and parcel with Israel”.
  • The statement prompted a response by the Syrian government to the UN Secretary General and the President of the Security Council. The statement confirms information nsnbc received from a Palestinian intelligence expert in 2011 and 2012, who warned that Israel plans to permanently annex the Golan, parts of southern Lebanon and most of the West Bank, while planning to recognize a Palestinian State in the Gaza Strip plus micro enclaves in the West Bank. The statement also substantiates Christof Lehmann’s warnings about joint Israeli – US plans to that effect, issued in 2011, after the 66th Session of the UN General Assembly. During the 66th Session, US President Obama refused to recognize Palestine as a State, saying that “a solution for Palestine only could be found within the framework of a comprehensive solution for the Middle East“.
  • On Wednesday, the Syrian Foreign and Expatriates Ministry responded by sending two identical letters to the offices of the UN Secretary General and the President of the US Security Council, reports the Syrian news agency SANA. The letters inform the UN Secretary General and the UNSC President, that Lieberman made the statement on 31 January 2014, while visiting the occupied Syrian Golan. In the letters, the Syrian Foreign Ministry stressed that the Israeli Foreign Minister’s statements embody an insolent approach to the events in Syria and recklessness with regard to relevant UN resolutions, such as UNSC resolution 497 (1981) and others, which call on Israel to end the occupation of the Syrian Golan and all Arab lands which Israel has occupied since 1967. The Syrian government quotes Lieberman as claiming that: ” The dangers to security, linked to our capability to defend the North of the country, require a recognition of Isrel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights by the international community”. The Syrian Foreign Ministry stressed that Israel is sponsoring terrorism in Syria and that Israel seems as if it mistakenly believes that it can exploit its sponsorship of the terrorist war on Syria to achieve its expansionist ambitions. The Syrian Foreign Ministry also stressed that 47 years have passed since Israel’s occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights and that Israel has defied hundreds of resolutions and calls on ending the occupation and to stop its inhuman racial policies and its killing of civilians in the Israeli occupied territories.
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  • The ministry added that Lieberman’s statements indicate an escalation of Israel’s recklessness and disregard for the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly and stressed, that Israel must not be allowed to escape from compliance with international law, resolutions, and if necessary punishment. Syria requests that the UN Secretary General and the President of the UN Security Council guarantee that Israel respects the UN resolutions, to oblige Israel to end its occupation of the Syrian Golan, and to withdraw from the Golan according to the red line on 4 June 1967. The Foreign Ministry asserted, that the UN continuously deals with the Israeli occupation of the Syrian Golan “on a routine basis without any serious move to enforce the Security Council’s resolutions” and that this nonchalant posture encourages the illegal situation to continue” thus “undermining the credibility of the UN organization”.
  • It is worth reiterating, that Lehmann, already in 2011, warned that US President Obama’s statement pertaining the recognition of Palestine, and his article based on information from a Palestinian intelligence expert explicitly stated, that the US administration of Barak Obama and Israel are complicit in planning Israel’s permanent annexation of the Israeli occupied Syrian Golan Heights, parts of southern Lebanon and some 97 percent of the Palestinian West Bank, while establishing Palestinian small enclaves, dependent on Jordan, in the remaining 3 percent of the West Bank and a recognized Palestinian State in the Gaza Strip.
  • Paul Merrell on 01 Mar 15
     
    The return of the occupied Golan Heights is absolutely required by the U.N. Charter, Geneva Conventions, and numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions.  Israel's purported security concerns do not create a lawful exception. What is really at stake in the Golan Heights and the occupied territories of Palestine is whether the U.N. Charter did in fact put an end to the right of Conquest. 
Paul Merrell

John Kerry: Obama prepared to use force in Iran - Washington Times - 0 views

www.washingtontimes.com/...-obama-prepared-use-force-iran

war & peace Kerry Obama war-threats Iran Iranian nukes myth

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Secretary of State John F. Kerry defended the Obama administration’s carrot-and-stick approach to nuclear negotiations with Iran, saying Sunday that the conciliatory strategy needs to be given a chance to work — while vowing that the U.S. is prepared to use force if necessary to keep the Islamic republic from developing a nuclear bomb.“We can’t let mythology and politics start to cloud reality,” said Mr. Kerry, who dismissed criticism that the administration has done a poor job leveraging American power in international talks — the latest round of which closed over the weekend without a breakthrough — over Iran’s disputed nuclear program.
  • “The president has been willing and made it clear that he is prepared to use force with respect to Iran’s weapon, and he has deployed the forces and the weapons necessary to achieve that goal if it has to be achieved,” Mr. Kerry said during an interview with NBC.Congressional lawmakers, as well as U.S. allies including France and Israel, have expressed concerns that the Obama administration has veered dangerously close to making too many concessions in its pursuit of a deal for Iran to reconfigure its nuclear program and open it to close international scrutiny in exchange for lifting U.S.-led sanctions.
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Nov 13
     
     By our Constitution's Treaty Clause, the Charter of the United Nations is binding law in the U.S. In Article 2 cl. 4, it provides: "All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state[.]" http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/ Mr. Obama cares nothing about the Rule of Law. He is threatening war against Iran and launching drone strikes into the territory of at least three other nations, all in violation of the U.N. Charter and the Constitution's Treaty Clause. These are impeachable offenses against the People and the Constitution Obama has sworn to defend.  If the President of the United States ignores the law, threatens war, and actually violates the territory of other nations, 
Paul Merrell

Britain has passed the 'most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy' | ZDNet - 0 views

www.zdnet.com/...-new-spying-powers-becomes-law

surveillance state GCHQ UK snoopers'-charter legislation

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • It's 2016 going on 1984. The UK has just passed a massive expansion in surveillance powers, which critics have called "terrifying" and "dangerous".
  • The new law, dubbed the "snoopers' charter", was introduced by then-home secretary Theresa May in 2012, and took two attempts to get passed into law following breakdowns in the previous coalition government. Four years and a general election later -- May is now prime minister -- the bill was finalized and passed on Wednesday by both parliamentary houses. But civil liberties groups have long criticized the bill, with some arguing that the law will let the UK government "document everything we do online". It's no wonder, because it basically does. The law will force internet providers to record every internet customer's top-level web history in real-time for up to a year, which can be accessed by numerous government departments; force companies to decrypt data on demand -- though the government has never been that clear on exactly how it forces foreign firms to do that that; and even disclose any new security features in products before they launch.
  • Not only that, the law also gives the intelligence agencies the power to hack into computers and devices of citizens (known as equipment interference), although some protected professions -- such as journalists and medical staff -- are layered with marginally better protections. In other words, it's the "most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy," according to Jim Killock, director of the Open Rights Group. The bill was opposed by representatives of the United Nations, all major UK and many leading global privacy and rights groups, and a host of Silicon Valley tech companies alike. Even the parliamentary committee tasked with scrutinizing the bill called some of its provisions "vague".
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  • And that doesn't even account for the three-quarters of people who think privacy, which this law almost entirely erodes, is a human right. There are some safeguards, however, such as a "double lock" system so that the secretary of state and an independent judicial commissioner must agree on a decision to carry out search warrants (though one member of the House of Lords disputed that claim). A new investigatory powers commissioner will also oversee the use of the powers. Despite the uproar, the government's opposition failed to scrutinize any significant amendments and abstained from the final vote. Killock said recently that the opposition Labour party spent its time "simply failing to hold the government to account". But the government has downplayed much of the controversy surrounding the bill. The government has consistently argued that the bill isn't drastically new, but instead reworks the old and outdated Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA). This was brought into law in 2000, to "legitimize" new powers that were conducted or ruled on in secret, like collecting data in bulk and hacking into networks, which was revealed during the Edward Snowden affair. Much of those activities were only possible thanks to litigation by one advocacy group, Privacy International, which helped push these secret practices into the public domain while forcing the government to scramble to explain why these practices were legal. The law will be ratified by royal assent in the coming weeks.
Paul Merrell

The UN Congo Offensive: A Continent Betrayed | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...o-offensive-continent-betrayed

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy UK Belgium U.N. Rwanda Congo Uganda Hutu Burundia RPF FDLR

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • On January 5, 2015 the United Nations announced that offensive operations by its forces, known as MONUSCO, along with Congolese army elements, are being prepared against the Democratic Forces For the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) based in the east of the Republic of Congo (DRC). This follows a Security Council statement of October 3, 2014 calling for the neutralization of the FDLR if they did not surrender, which itself followed a demand by the International Conference of the Great Lakes Region, and the South African Development Community made on July 2nd last year that the FDLR demobilise.
  • The Security Council “rejected any call for political dialogue” and went on to call the FDLR a group of war criminals. This rejection of dialogue based on a false characterization of the FDLR and on a false history of the events in Rwanda and central Africa for the past twenty years is itself a violation of Chapter 1, Article 1 of the UN Charter that states that the purposes of the United Nations are to “maintain peace and security …and to bring about by peaceful means…settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace.” It is also surprising since the UN’s own Mapping Exercise Report of 2010 which examined crimes against humanity and war crimes committed against Hutu refugees in the DRC between 1996 and 2003 described countless mass atrocities and massacres of those refugees by Rwandan, Burundian, Ugandan and allied forces, amounting to genocide against the Hutus. Those massacres have not stopped since 2003 as several proxy forces of the Rwandans and Ugandans, using various names, and claiming to be Congolese rebels, have continued attacks on Hutus in the DRC as well as on Congolese who got in the way of their objective of looting the resources of the region.
  • The FDLR is the only force trying to protect Hutu refugees in the DRC from being totally exterminated by the Rwandan and Ugandan forces, the same forces that attacked and pillaged Rwanda between 1990 and 1994 and that have slaughtered several million more Hutus and Congolese since. Because the FDLR is the only effective armed political opposition to the military dictatorship of Paul Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), it is a clear threat to the countries that have mining and resource interests in the DRC and who have been using Uganda and Rwanda as local enforcers to carry out their effective division of the country that makes it easier to control and exploit those resources. All the countries in the pan-African groups that called for the demobilisation of the FDLR have interests in the resources of the Congo region. All have an interest in continued war in the DRC, its continued division and weakness, and the destruction of any effective opposition to the forces assigned the role of carrying out that policy. This includes the DRC itself whose President, Joseph Kabila, is known to be a partner and agent of Kagame and rules the DRC not in the interests of the Congolese but in the interests of Kagame, Musuveni and their western masters.
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  • But then the UN has a lot to cover up. There was heartrending testimony by Hutu witnesses at the ICTR Military II trial describing the flight of 2 to 3 million Hutu refugees fleeing with the retreating Rwandan Armed forces into Zaire in July 1994, pursued by RPF units intent on exterminating them. The Rwandan government armed forces, disarmed by Congolese forces when they crossed the border, were unable to protect these Hutu refugees when, in 1996, and subsequently, the Rwandans and Ugandans attacked the Hutu refugee camps killing hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilians. The survivors were either forced into the forest or forced to return to Rwanda at gunpoint, on UN planes, only to be thrown into RPF prisons without charge, tortured, or killed en masse. Those who escaped through the forest told of being pursued day and night through thousands of kilometres of jungle and swamps by the RPF and stated that just before being shelled or attacked by those forces they saw spotter planes overhead with either US or UN markings. All the witnesses were consistent on this. Rwandan Army officers testified that they were surprised to see themselves under attack by UN forces in Kigali in support of the RPF in April 1994. A journalist testified that UN officers at Amohoro Stadium, in Kigali, where General Dallaire had his headquarters, stood by and did nothing as RPF soldiers, on a daily basis, selected Hutus seeking protection there, and shot them.
  • The Americans and British have been at the heart of the problem from 1990, when they supported the invasion of Rwanda by units of the Ugandan National Resistance Army (NRA), calling themselves the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), and commanded by a senior ranking intelligence officer of the NRA, Paul Kagame. They supported 4 years of terrorist attacks against Hutus and local Tutsis by the RPF that included the attack on the town of Ruhengeri in February 1993 in which the RPF massacred 40,000 Hutu civilians before the government forces were able to recapture the town.
  • This pattern of UN complicity in the mass crimes committed by the RPF, Ugandan and allied western forces in the Rwandan war, has been followed ever since. The evidence is compelling that the CIA, US military forces, and UN peacekeeping forces in Rwanda in 1993-94, commanded by Canadian General Dallaire, were involved in helping the RPF overthrow the Rwandan interim government and in preparing the RPF’s final offensive launched on the night of April 6th when the Rwandan President’s plane was shot down by RPF missiles, killing two African heads of state, President Habyarimana of Rwanda and President Ntaryamira, of Burundi.
  • The ICTR prosecutor and the UNHCR also had in their possession a copy of a letter from Paul Kagame, written in August 1994, in which Kagame refers to a meeting with President Musuveni of Uganda and that their “plan for Zaire” was going forward, assisted by the Americans, British, and Belgians. The letter stated that the Hutus were in the way and must be removed at any cost. That letter says a lot and yet it was suppressed until 2009 when it was discovered in prosecution files. In fact that letter indicates that the wars in the DRC were planned long ago and the announcement of the new offensive against the FDLR is a continuation of that plan. Now the only force that exists to protect the Hutus, the FDLR, is going to be attacked again, by the UN. Once again, the Hutus are betrayed by the international community. The UN has lots of things to answer for in Rwanda and Congo and elsewhere and has long been used to further the interests of the west in Africa in general. That certain members of the Security Council, who should know better, go along with protecting those really responsible for the tragedy that is central Africa and Africa as a whole, and for the crimes committed there, is an indictment of the entire UN system.
  • It is ironic that on December 11, 2014th the UN general assembly voted to reopen the investigation into the death of the UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold who was killed in then Rhodesia when his plane went down near Ndola. The report of the investigative commission that examined new information stated that there is evidence that the plane was shot down by another aircraft and that the US and British and Belgian governments were likely involved. The death of Hammarskjold is intimately connected with the murder of Patrice Lumumba that led to the installation of Mobutu as President of Congo. We now know that the Rwanda war was the first phase of the greater war for control of the resources of the Congo basin, which was beginning to slip from the west, as Mobutu began to turn towards China. That long and terrible war is not over and it is the UN itself that wants to keep it going.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Jan 15
     
    I've been hitting more and more information on the U.S., U.K. and Belgium's role in the infamous Hutu massacres in Rwanda and vicinity. Still ongoing. U.S. military forces in the area -- part of AFRICOM -- are ostensibly there to assist in fighting the "Christianist" Lord's Resistance Army.  
Paul Merrell

S/RES/487 (1981) of 19 June 1981 - 0 views

domino.un.org/...57312cc8bd93ca852560df00653995

Israel Iranian nukes Iraq UN Security Council Resolution

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • Resolution 487 (1981) Adopted by the Security Council at its 2288th meeting on 19 June 1981 The Security Council, Having considered the agenda contained in document S/Agenda/2280, Having noted the contents of the telegram dated 8 June 1981 from the Foreign Minister of Iraq (S/14509), Having heard the statements made to the Council on the subject at its 2280th through 2288th meetings, Taking note of the statement made by the Director-General of the International Atomic Emergency Agency (IAEA) to the Agency's Board of Governors on the subject on 9 June 1981 and his statement to the Council at its 2288th meeting on 19 June 1981,
  • Further taking note of the resolution adopted by the Board of Governors of the IAEA on 12 June 1981 on the "military attack on the Iraq nuclear research centre and its implications for the Agency" (S/14532), Fully aware of the fact that Iraq has been a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons since it came into force in 1970, that in accordance with that Treaty Iraq has accepted IAEA safeguards on all its nuclear activities, and that the Agency has testified that these safeguards have been satisfactorily applied to date, Noting furthermore that Israel has not adhered to the non-proliferation Treaty, Deeply concerned about the danger to international peace and security created by the premeditated Israeli air attack on Iraqi nuclear installations on 7 June 1981, which could at any time explode the situation in the area, with grave consequences for the vital interests of all States,
  • Considering that, under the terms of Article 2, paragraph 4, of the Charter of the United Nations: "All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations", 1. Strongly condemns the military attack by Israel in clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the norms of international conduct; 2. Calls upon Israel to refrain in the future from any such acts or threats thereof; 3. Further considers that the said attack constitutes a serious threat to the entire IAEA safeguards regime which is the foundation of the non-proliferation Treaty;
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  • 4. Fully recognizes the inalienable sovereign right of Iraq, and all other States, especially the developing countries, to establish programmes of technological and nuclear development to develop their economy and industry for peaceful purposes in accordance with their present and future needs and consistent with the internationally accepted objectives of preventing nuclear-weapons proliferation; 5. Calls upon Israel urgently to place its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards; 6. Considers that Iraq is entitled to appropriate redress for the destruction it has suffered, responsibility for which has been acknowledged by Israel; 7. Requests the Secretary-General to keep the Security Council regularly informed of the implementation of this resolutio
  • Paul Merrell on 07 Aug 12
     
    In 1981, an Israeli air strike destroyed a nuclear reactor under construction in Iraq. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osirak The UN Security Council, where the U.S. had and has veto power, promptly issued Resolution 487 condemning Israel for violation of the U.N. Charter provision forbidding the use of force against the territorial integrity of another nation. The resolution also recognized Iraq and all other nations' right to nuclear development for peaceful purposes. Israel was instructed to never do such things in the future. Yet here we stand today with both Israel and the U.S. threatening military strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities.   
  • Paul Merrell on 07 Aug 12
     
    But our Constitution commands in article VI: "This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; *and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land;* and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding,"  Thus, because the U.S. is still a member of the U.N. Treaty, our Constitution commands that we obey that Treaty and its prohibition against unilateral use of force. There is no applicable exception to the Treaty that would permit the U.S. or Israel to mount an attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities. Thus there is no such exception to the Constitution.
Paul Merrell

G-4 - An Asian and European Peace with Enemy States? | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...ropean-peace-with-enemy-states

war & peace Germany Japan Italy U.N. enemy-states sovereignty

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • The UN Charter still designates Italy, Germany and Japan as enemy states to the United Nations. In legal terms this means that any U.N. Member State can launch a “preemptive” military aggression against these nations without a declaration of war. Seldom discussed, this enemy State status is today, arguably, one of the greatest obstacles for a lasting peace in Asia and in Europe.
  • Since the end of WW II none of the G-4, that is China, UK, USA, and the USSR / Russia have taken steps to abolish the Enemy State Clause from the Charter of the United Nations. The UN Charter still designates Italy, Japan and Germany as enemy States to the United Nations. This fact is generally omitted from the public political discourse; that is, both in the G-4 nations as well as in Italy, Japan and Germany. The implications and the lack of the sovereignty (e.g. the jus ad bellum) are, arguably, one of the greatest obstacles with regard to achieving a lasting Asian and European peace. A few examples should amply demonstrate why.
  • The situation of German governments is further complicated by the fact that Germany still has no peace treaty and that Washington and London do all that is in their power to maintain that status quo. No post WW II government in Germany has dared to touch upon this “hot potato”, Red – Green coalitions included. Even The Left (Die Linke) avoids the issue as much as possible. German governments have, generally speaking, used two strategies. 1) To push for a permanent seat at the UN Security Council to force the hands of the G-4. 2) To assert German power within the European Union; at considerable expense for the German economy in form of bail outs etc.
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  • Ultimately, one must ask the question why non of the G-4 has yet taken the initiative Is it a function of mistrust between cold-war and new-cold-war alliances? Or is it a conscious perpetuation of Yalta where the G-4 carved up the world into hegemonies, divided by Iron, Bamboo and Banana curtains?
Paul Merrell

Remarks by President Obama in Address to the United Nations General Assembly | The Whit... - 0 views

www.whitehouse.gov/...nited-nations-general-assembly

Obama UN-Speech

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Remarks by President Obama in Address to the United Nations General Assembly United Nations New York, New York
  • To summarize, the United States has a hard-earned humility when it comes to our ability to determine events inside other countries.  The notion of American empire may be useful propaganda, but it isn’t borne out by America’s current policy or by public opinion.  Indeed, as recent debates within the United States over Syria clearly show, the danger for the world is not an America that is too eager to immerse itself in the affairs of other countries or to take on every problem in the region as its own.  The danger for the world is that the United States, after a decade of war -- rightly concerned about issues back home, aware of the hostility that our engagement in the region has engendered throughout the Muslim world -- may disengage, creating a vacuum of leadership that no other nation is ready to fill. I believe such disengagement would be a mistake.  I believe America must remain engaged for our own security.  But I also believe the world is better for it.  Some may disagree, but I believe America is exceptional -- in part because we have shown a willingness through the sacrifice of blood and treasure to stand up not only for our own narrow self-interests, but for the interests of all. 
  • We live in a world of imperfect choices.  Different nations will not agree on the need for action in every instance, and the principle of sovereignty is at the center of our international order.  But sovereignty cannot be a shield for tyrants to commit wanton murder, or an excuse for the international community to turn a blind eye.  While we need to be modest in our belief that we can remedy every evil, while we need to be mindful that the world is full of unintended consequences, should we really accept the notion that the world is powerless in the face of a Rwanda or Srebrenica?  If that’s the world that people want to live in, they should say so and reckon with the cold logic of mass graves. But I believe we can embrace a different future.  And if we don’t want to choose between inaction and war, we must get better -- all of us -- at the policies that prevent the breakdown of basic order.  Through respect for the responsibilities of nations and the rights of individuals.  Through meaningful sanctions for those who break the rules.  Through dogged diplomacy that resolves the root causes of conflict, not merely its aftermath.  Through development assistance that brings hope to the marginalized.  And yes, sometimes -- although this will not be enough -- there are going to be moments where the international community will need to acknowledge that the multilateral use of military force may be required to prevent the very worst from occurring.
  • Paul Merrell on 25 Sep 13
     
    This just may be the speech in which Barack Obama's speechwriters managed to set a new record in presidential hypocrisy. It's long and a very depressing read for someone who is intimately familiar with the issues he discusses. I've tried to highlight only the tastiest meat of the beast. But it's worth reading the whole thing, from the traitor's pledge of undying allegiance to Israel through the announcement that nothing has changed in America other than a public that is demanding peace but won't get it from Mr. Obama. Mr. Obama's contempt for the U.N. Charter riddles his speech, a treaty that is enshrined in our own law through the Constitution's Treaty Clause, is remarkable. That charter of course forbids wars of aggression (and threats thereof) absent the authorization of all permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.  
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Sep 13
     
    Related: the top 45 lies in Obama's U.N. speech: http://warisacrime.org/content/top-45-lies-obamas-speech-un
Paul Merrell

US And Germany Declare Golan Heights Not Part Of Israel - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...215725

war & peace Syria Israel Golan-Heights

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • U.S. State Department spokesperson John Kirby stressed Monday night that the Obama administration does not consider the Golan Heights to be part of Israel, one day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed they “will forever remain under Israeli sovereignty.” “The U.S. position on the issue is unchanged,” Kirby told reporters during a daily briefing at the State Department in Washington. “This position was maintained by both Democratic and Republican administrations. Those territories are not part of Israel and the status of those territories should be determined through negotiations. The current situation in Syria does not allow this,” Kirby continued.
  • Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz expressed support for Netanyahu’s comments on the Golan, saying that “the government of Israel reiterated the reality that the Golan Heights are part of Israel’s sovereign territory.” Cruz added that it’s “dangerous for the international community to try to pressure Israel to abandon the Golan to the chaos engulfing Syria.”
  • The U.S. is the second country after Germany to respond to Netanyahu’s declaration that the Golan, captured from Syria in the 1967 war and later annexed, “will forever remain under Israeli sovereignty.” “It’s a basic principle of international law and the UN charter that no state can claim the right to annex another state’s territory just like that,” Martin Schaefer, spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry, said Monday. Israel annexed the Golan in 198, in a move unanimously rejected the same year by the United Nations Security Council. Netanyahu’s declaration came as UN-sponsored international efforts are being made to obtain a political accord to end the civil war in Syria. Officials in the Prime Minister’s Office say that Syrian President Assad demanded that one principle upon which the international talks will be based is that the Golan Heights be considered occupied territory that must be returned to Syria. On Thursday, Netanyahu will fly to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Netanyahu’s senior aides say the prime minister plans to bring up this issue at their meeting and to stress the same message to Putin.
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Apr 16
     
    There's nothing to negotiate. The Golan is Syrian territory and Israel just needs to leave. Someone needs to give Sen. Cruz a clue that since the U.N. Charter was adopted and ratified by the U.S. it has been "the law of this land" (in the words of the Constitution) that nations cannot gain territory through invasion. The Age of Conquest is over. Israel has been ignoring a long series of U.N. Security Council Resolutions ordering it to get out of the Golan Heights (and Palestine). 
Paul Merrell

Interview With Iran Foreign Minister: "The President of the US is Being Pushed into a T... - 0 views

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36231.htm

war & peace syria Iran U.S. war crimes crimes against humanity

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Video and Transcript Press TV has conducted an exclusive interview with Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif
  • The use of chemical weapons is a crime, we believe it is a crime against humanity, but we believe that also the use of force, the threat of use of force, is also a criminal offense in international law. Unfortunately it seems to me that the United States seems to be living in the 19th century when the use of force was a prerogative of states, it is not. I believe the United States, the president of the United States, who seems to be a very fine constitutional lawyer, has to look into his law books, his international law books, which he has not, I think, reviewed recently, and consider the fact, that when he concedes, as he did last night before the American people, that there is no imminent or direct threat against the United States, then the United States doesn’t have any standing under any provision of international law, to take law in its own hands.
  • There is a need for the United States to come to the realization, and I believe this is an important realization for the United States, that not only the use of force is illegal, that not only the threat of force is against a preemptory international norm of law, but also and more importantly the use of force is ineffective. Force has lost its utility in international relations and it lost its utility long time ago. In 1928, civilized countries decided to reject the use of force as an instrument of national policy, before then, force or war was an instrument of national policy, they thought that war was diplomacy by another means. But since then, the international community has come to its senses, believing that the use of force doesn’t provide the necessary outcome that those who started it wanted to provide and wanted to produce and that is why they have outlawed the use of force. It is not a bunch of idealistic lawyers who sat down and banned the use of force, but in fact because of the reality that it has lost the utility that. Let me just tell you that in the 20th century, 85 percent of the cases, where a country resorted to force, have resulted in that country either being annihilated or not achieving the intended consequences of the war, so that shows to you empirically that force is no longer effective. I hope that the United States, which is the mightiest country on the face of the earth, would come to this realization that it is important to use other means of influence; force is no longer effective
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • I believe the statement “all options are on the table” is an outdated statement because all options are not on the table, at least for the countries that claim to be law-abiding, for countries that claim to be following the UN charter, for countries which push others to live to their international obligations under the UN charter, push others, who want to punish others for violating internationals law, they have to know that all options are not on the table. The threat or the use of force have been removed from the table long time ago by countries, including the United States when they gathered in San Francisco and decided to save the succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in their generation caused untold misery. So this comes from the charter of the United Nations adopted under the US hospitality in San Francisco in 1945. So, they have to understand that all options are not on the table.
  • Unfortunately a great deal of foreign intervention, a great deal of arms shipment to the various rebel groups, extremist groups, groups that have caused havoc in the region and beyond the region is continuing for very shortsighted interests. They should know that those who help, create and breed extremism in the region [will] fall victim to that extremism. Whether that extremism was that of al-Qaeda, whether it was that of Taliban or that of Saddam Hussein. Those who sponsor them will be their final victims.
  • We have indications and we had shared those indications in the past with the United States and with others that unfortunately, and this is extremely dangerous, the chemical weapons were being smuggled into Syria to groups, armed groups that are fighting the Syrian people and the Syrian government. This was information that we had for some time. A number of arrests have been made earlier this year in the neighboring countries, indicating the fact that this was actually taking place.
  • We alerted them, we told them that this was taking place, we told them and we still tell them that this is a continuing nightmare, chemical weapons in the hands of non-state actors, particularly extremist non-state actors is a threat to everybody. It recognizes no borders, it will become a menace for the entire region and those who help these groups have access to chemical weapons will need to address the question how they are going to deal with that? The addresses are unknown. The possibilities for the use of these chemical weapons are unknown. I am not in the business of fear mongering, I am not in that business but this is a real concern. We need to be able to address this issue and to find a way. Now we are very happy that the Syrians are dealing with some sort of an international arrangement to deal with their chemical weapons, but it is important also at the same time to deal with the weapons that are in the hands of the extremists.
Paul Merrell

Abadi Instructs FM to File Complaint at UN over Turkish Troops Deployment - 0 views

www.almanar.com.lb/...adetails.php

war & peace Syria Turkey invasion UN

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi on Friday instructed the Foreign Ministry to lodge an official complaint to the UN Security Council over the deployment of Turkish troops in northern Iraq.A statement by Abadi's office said the incursion by Turkish troops "is blatant violation of the provisions and principles of the UN Charter and a violation to the sovereignty of the Iraqi state, which happened without the knowledge and consent of the Iraqi authorities."Iraq demands the UN Security Council "to shoulder its responsibilities and orders Turkey to withdraw its troops immediately, and to ensure unconditionally withdrawal to the internationally recognized border between the two countries," the statement said.
  • On Thursday, an Iraqi foreign ministry spokesman said that Iraq has contacted the five permanent member states of the UN Security Council for condemning Turkey's deployment of troops on Iraqi soil.He also said that Iraq demanded an Arab League extraordinary session to "discuss the consequences of the Turkish breach (to Iraqi sovereignty) and adopt an Arab stance against it."Iraq's latest move came a day after the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that withdrawing Turkish troops from Iraq is out of the question and that the Turkish soldiers are in Iraq as part of a training mission."Turkish troops in Mosul are not there as combatants; they are trainers. Their numbers may vary depending on the size of Kurdish Peshmerga troops. It is out of the question, for now, to pull them out," he said.The crisis between the two countries sparked last Friday when reports said a Turkish training battalion equipped with armored vehicles was deployed near the city of Mosul to train Iraqi paramilitary groups in fighting the ISIL terrorist group.Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province, has been under ISIL control since June 2014.
  • Baghdad has insisted that the Turkish troops had no authorization from the Iraqi government and thus demanded their withdrawal, while Ankara called the troops only a routine rotation of the trainers.
Paul Merrell

Obama, Biden are war criminals under UN Charter: Analyst - 0 views

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33348.htm

war & peace war crimes U.S. International Criminal Court

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • Most Americans, their minds focused at the moment on the tragic slaughter of 20 young children aged 5 and 6, along with five teachers and a school principal in Connecticut by a heavily-armed psychotic 21-year-old, are blissfully unaware that their previous president, George W. Bush, along with five key members of his administration, were recently convicted in absentia of war crimes at a tribunal in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. They are unaware because the US corporate media have ignored the story, just as that same corporate media have failed to note that the crimes of which Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and five White House lawyers, were convicted all could apply equally well to current President Barack Obama and his administration. Bush, Cheney, White House counsel (and later Attorney General) Alberto Gonzalez and others were found guilty earlier this month of war crimes and crimes against humanity relating to the executive orders that launched the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as of authorizing and failing to punish torture and other war crimes by US forces, including the military and the CIA.
  • But as international law expert Francis Boyle, a professor of law at the University of Illinois, notes, under the Geneva Convention, failing to take action to prosecute those guilty of war crimes such as the “Crime against Peace” (invading a country that does not pose an imminent threat to the attacker), and torture, are war crimes in and of themselves. Speaking last week at a Summit Conference on Human Rights held at the University of the Sacred Heart in the US island colony of Puerto Rico, Boyle said US authorities, including President Obama, are engaged in an “ongoing criminal conspiracy under international law” both to cover up and protect criminals like Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, and to continue the commission of war crimes by the US government.
  • Obama, when initially campaigning in 2008 for the presidency, vowed that he wanted to restore the respect for the law and the Constitution, once elected President, he and his attorney general Eric Holder quickly made it clear that they were “looking forward, not backward,” and that there would be no prosecutions or indictments for war crimes of any Bush administration people.   The thing is, at that moment, both President Obama and AG Holder became war criminals themselves under the UN Charter and the Nuremberg Principles, which declare that covering up war crimes by prior government and military leaders, and failure to prosecute such war crimes, are in themselves war crimes.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • But as Boyle noted in his address in San Juan, P.R., Obama, Vice President Joseph Biden, and the various secretaries of defense and state, the head of the CIA and the Pentagon Chiefs of Staff, as well as other Obama administration personnel, are also guilty of perpetrating ongoing war crimes themselves. Boyle accuses the Obama administration of continuing to conduct a “bogus” war on “international terrorism” including the ever escalating campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen and other jurisdictions. He termed the president’s program of “targeted killings,” in which President Obama himself draws up the “kill list,” to be simply a case of “pure murder” under both traditional British common law and international law, and says these attacks constitute a “Crime against Humanity under Article 7(1)(a) of the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court.”
  • Paul Merrell on 18 Dec 12
     
    While the charge that Obama and other administration officials committed crimes under the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court might seem odd because the U.S. never acceded to that treaty or to the jurisdiction of the ICC, the statute applies to those who commit war crimes within the jurisdictions of nations that have acceded to the treaty and to their superiors who either knew of should have known that such crimes would be committed and did not act to prevent them.  Pakistan  and Yemen have acceded to the treaty. The Rome treaty requires the arrest of those classified as war criminals under that treaty if they set foot in any nation that has acceded to the treaty. So just as Bush administration figures have done, Obama and crew will need to restrict where they travel after he leaves office.
  • Paul Merrell on 18 Dec 12
     
    The linked article should have mentioned that it was a mock tribunal, without legal authority or powers.
Gary Edwards

Peter Beinart: How Ron Paul Will Change the GOP in 2012 - The Daily Beast - 2 views

www.thedailybeast.com/...ll-change-the-gop-in-2012.html

Banksters Ron-Paul Libertarians Peter-Beinart

shared by Gary Edwards on 30 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 30 Dec 11
     
    Not a big Peter Beinhart fan, but this article explains a large part of the Ron Paul phenom. After a life time as a big C Goldwater-Reagan Constitutional Conservative, this summer i made a full transition to big C Constitutional Libertarian. The tipping point for me was the GAO audit of the Federal Reserve, where they discovered $16.1 Trillion of taxpayer dollars missing from the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel management books. It went to a who's who of international Bankster Cartel members. None of the taxpayer funded "financial collapse of 2008" bailout dollars went to the purposes chartered by their legislation. That includees the TARP $850 Billion, the Obama Stimulous $1 Trillion, and the mega FRBC $16.1 Trillion. No bad debts were purchased and retired. No rotting mortgage securities were swept up and restructured. No shovel ready jobs either. And no one in government or banksterism having caused the financial collapse went to jail. Instead, the perps feasted on the bailout dollars. The debt remains on the books of international Banksters, collecting interest, thirsting for foreclosure. The Bankster Cartel members are flush with cash, but not lending. By law (The Federal Reserve Act of December 23rd, 1913), FRBC members must keep a significant amount of their assets on "reserve" at the Federal Reserve, at 6% interest. In exchange for managing this process and the exploding money supply, the taxpayers of the USA are obligated by law to pay the FRBC 1% per year of (assets under management" (the money supply). Take note: the FRBC takes the 1% per year payment for their services in the form of GOLD!! They will not take payment in the form of paper notes labeled legal tender "Federal Reserve Notes". They only take GOLD. My transition to Constitutional Libertarian begins with a strct reading of the Constitution (the How), the Declaration of Independence, (the Why), and belief in the Rule of Law, not man. The concept of achievi
Paul Merrell

Secret pre-Iraq War talks between Blair and Bush to be published - RT News - 0 views

rt.com/...iraq-communication-release-977

war & peace Blair Bush-II Chilcot-Inquiry government secrecy war crimes wars of aggression

shared by Paul Merrell on 31 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Tony Blair and George Bush exchanged voluminous correspondence prior to the start of military operations in Iraq. Now, the UK is moving to declassify details of the talks for an inquiry into Britain’s involvement in the conflict, British media reported. The release, set for the upcoming year, is expected to include more than 100 documents, described as a collection of notes, records of 200 minutes of ministerial level talks, telephone conversations and private meetings between the British prime minister and American president, The Independent reported. This will give the green light for the Chilcot Iraq Inquiry to publish an account of the conflict, where much attention will be given to decisions made by then Prime Minister Tony Blair. Indeed, the files could play a major part in determining Blair’s historical legacy, which critics say has been stained by the Iraq War. Blair has been criticized for failing to challenge then-US President George W. Bush on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, specifically chemical and biological weapons, which a Joint Intelligence Committee report said in September 2002 “could be ready for firing in 45 minutes.”
  • A senior government official predicted the results of the inquiry will not do Blair any favors: "In the new year it seems the Chilcot inquiry is going to be published. Everyone will be assuming: bad hair day for Tony Blair and Jack Straw." Straw served as Blair’s secretary of state.
  • There has been some speculation, however, as to how effective the Iraq Inquiry can hope to be in determining the British government’s - not to mention Tony Blair’s - position on jumping on board George W. Bush’s Iraq war bandwagon. UK officials said their “intention is to be as open as possible,” yet the final decision on what will be released will be made by cabinet secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, the same individual who fought against publication of the Blair-Bush correspondence in the first place.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • In September 2004, Kofi Annan, then UN Secretary General, expressed his views on the invasion, saying, "I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN Charter. From our point of view, from the Charter point of view, it was illegal." The Chilcot Inquiry, named after its chairman, Sir John Chilcot, who pushed for the release of the classified documents, is expected to be released by the end of 2014.
  • Paul Merrell on 31 Dec 13
     
    Declassification of these documents has been a years-long battle. It would not surprise me to see them released so heavily redacted that little sense can be made of them. 
Paul Merrell

Crimea vs. Quebec: The Legal Right to a Referendum on Self-Determination | Global Research - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5373029

war & peace U.S. foreign policy Russia Ukraine Crimea UN-Charter secession

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • There has been a great hue and cry by the USA, Ukraine and other countries about the supposed illegality of the proposed referendum by Crimea on its future political status. They indignantly proclaim that this is a violation of international law. Amazingly, have Obama and the leaders of these other countries never heard of the situation in Canada with regard to Quebec? Quebec, as a province of Canada, has held two referenda (1980 and 1995) on the matter of independence from Canada . . . and a third referendum may be in the works in the near future. Quebec never had to get permission from Canada’s federal government to hold a referendum, and no one ever questioned the legality of Quebec’s referendum.
  • Crimea is an autonomous region within Ukraine and seems to have the same rights as a Canadian province. So if it is perfectly legal for a province such as Quebec to hold a referendum on independence, why would it not be legal for Crimea to do the same? At no time did the USA object to Quebec holding a referendum on independence, so why the big brouhaha over Crimea? Moreover, what business would it be for the USA to have such objections – for Quebec or Crimea? The UN charter gives people the right to self-determination and by virtue of that right they are free to determine their political status. Quebec in Canada has exercised that right, and there should be no reason why Crimea could not do the same.
Joseph Skues

Yes, Islam condones wife beatings - 0 views

www.calgaryherald.com/...story.html

islam condones yes

shared by Joseph Skues on 23 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • Joseph Skues on 23 Jan 11
     
    "Recently, Marvin Levant (Dec. 28), Steve Harris (Dec. 30), Syed Soharwardy (Jan. 2), and Riazuddin Ahmed (Jan. 5) debated Islam through the forum of the Herald's letters to the editor. The issue of wife beating and gender inequality in Islam has become convoluted and highly controversial as many Muslims try to sugar-coat the ugly truths and others try to shed some light on the issue. Soharwardy's statement that "Beating one's wife is not only wrong, it is criminal and completely un-Islamic" is incorrect. The Qur'an says that "men are in charge of women because Allah has made one of them (men) to excel the other (women), thus man's superiority over women . . . good women are the obedient ones . . . admonish the rebellious women and banish them, and scourge them (whip them severely to inflict pain) (4:34) . . . smote them (hit or strike with the hand or with a weapon causing pain, beat them . . . (4:62)". Islam does not recognize gender equality. For example, polygamy is accepted in Islam, but polyandry is not. A woman's testimony is considered half as worthy as a man's in court; a son inherits twice as much as a daughter does. Muslim men may marry Muslim, Jewish or Christian women, but Muslim women can marry only Muslim men. In short, sharia law leads to the inhuman treatment of Muslim women by their husbands and others, especially in South Asia and the Middle East. Higher education is emphasized more for sons than for daughters; in cultural honour killings, almost always women are the target for murder. Under sharia, divorced Muslim women get custody of their sons under eight years of age and daughters until puberty, and then the fathers take the children away. Sharia enabled one of the worst fundamentalists, the vile and ruthless military dictator, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, to put more than 15,000 rape victims in jail because they could not comply with the absurd Islamic condition requiring them to have numerous male witnesses of their victimization. They were char
Paul Merrell

No, Israel Does Not Have the Right to Self-Defense In International Law Against Occupie... - 0 views

www.jadaliyya.com/...ave-the-right-to-self-defense-

war & peace Israel Palestine occupation-law

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • On the fourth day of Israel's most recent onslaught against Gaza's Palestinian population, President Barack Obama declared, “No country on Earth would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders.” In an echo of Israeli officials, he sought to frame Israel's aerial missile strikes against the 360-square kilometer Strip as the just use of armed force against a foreign country. Israel's ability to frame its assault against territory it occupies as a right of self-defense turns international law on its head.  A state cannot simultaneously exercise control over territory it occupies and militarily attack that territory on the claim that it is “foreign” and poses an exogenous national security threat. In doing precisely that, Israel is asserting rights that may be consistent with colonial domination but simply do not exist under international law. 
  • Admittedly, the enforceability of international law largely depends on voluntary state consent and compliance. Absent the political will to make state behavior comport with the law, violations are the norm rather than the exception. Nevertheless, examining what international law says with regard to an occupant’s right to use force is worthwhile in light of Israel's deliberate attempts since 1967 to reinterpret and transform the laws applicable to occupied territory. These efforts have expanded significantly since the eruption of the Palestinian uprising in 2000, and if successful, Israel’s reinterpretation would cast the law as an instrument that protects colonial authority at the expense of the rights of civilian non-combatants.  
  • International Law places the responsibility upon the commanding general of preserving order, punishing crime, and protecting lives and property within the occupied territory. His power in accomplishing these ends is as great as his responsibility.  The extent and breadth of force constitutes the distinction between the right to self-defense and the right to police. Police authority is restricted to the least amount of force necessary to restore order and subdue violence. In such a context, the use of lethal force is legitimate only as a measure of last resort. Even where military force is considered necessary to maintain law and order, such force is circumscribed by concern for the civilian non-combatant population. The law of self-defense, invoked by states against other states, however, affords a broader spectrum of military force. Both are legitimate pursuant to the law of armed conflict and therefore distinguished from the peacetime legal regime regulated by human rights law. 
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Military occupation is a recognized status under international law and since 1967, the international community has designated the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as militarily occupied. As long as the occupation continues, Israel has the right to protect itself and its citizens from attacks by Palestinians who reside in the occupied territories. However, Israel also has a duty to maintain law and order, also known as “normal life,” within territory it occupies. This obligation includes not only ensuring but prioritizing the security and well-being of the occupied population. That responsibility and those duties are enumerated in Occupation Law.  Occupation Law is part of the laws of armed conflict; it contemplates military occupation as an outcome of war and enumerates the duties of an occupying power until the peace is restored and the occupation ends. To fulfill its duties, the occupying power is afforded the right to use police powers, or the force permissible for law enforcement purposes. As put by the U.S. Military Tribunal during the Hostages Trial (The United States of America vs. Wilhelm List, et al.)
  • To equate the two is simply to confuse the legal with the linguistic denotation of the term ”defense.“ Just as ”negligence,“ in law, does not mean ”carelessness” but, rather, refers to an elaborate doctrinal structure, so ”self-defense” refers to a complex doctrine that has a much more restricted scope than ordinary notions of ”defense.“  To argue that Israel is employing legitimate “self-defense” when it militarily attacks Gaza affords the occupying power the right to use both police and military force in occupied territory. An occupying power cannot justify military force as self-defense in territory for which it is responsible as the occupant. The problem is that Israel has never regulated its own behavior in the West Bank and Gaza as in accordance with Occupation Law. 
  • Once armed conflict is initiated, and irrespective of the reason or legitimacy of such conflict, the jus in bello legal framework is triggered. Therefore, where an occupation already is in place, the right to initiate militarized force in response to an armed attack, as opposed to police force to restore order, is not a remedy available to the occupying state. The beginning of a military occupation marks the triumph of one belligerent over another. In the case of Israel, its occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai in 1967 marked a military victory against Arab belligerents.  Occupation Law prohibits an occupying power from initiating armed force against its occupied territory. By mere virtue of the existence of military occupation, an armed attack, including one consistent with the UN Charter, has already occurred and been concluded. Therefore the right of self-defense in international law is, by definition since 1967, not available to Israel with respect to its dealings with real or perceived threats emanating from the West Bank and Gaza Strip population. To achieve its security goals, Israel can resort to no more than the police powers, or the exceptional use of militarized force, vested in it by IHL. This is not to say that Israel cannot defend itself—but those defensive measures can neither take the form of warfare nor be justified as self-defense in international law. As explained by Ian Scobbie:  
  • When It Is Just to Begin to Fight  The laws of armed conflict are found primarily in the Hague Regulations of 1907, the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, and their Additional Protocols I and II of 1977. This body of law is based on a crude balance between humanitarian concerns on the one hand and military advantage and necessity on the other. The post-World War II Nuremberg trials defined military exigency as permission to expend “any amount and kind of force to compel the complete submission of the enemy…” so long as the destruction of life and property is not done for revenge or a lust to kill. Thus, the permissible use of force during war, while expansive, is not unlimited.  In international law, self-defense is the legal justification for a state to initiate the use of armed force and to declare war. This is referred to as jus ad bellum—meaning “when it is just to begin to fight.” The right to fight in self-defense is distinguished from jus in bello, the principles and laws regulating the means and methods of warfare itself. Jus ad bellum aims to limit the initiation of the use of armed force in accordance with United Nations Charter Article 2(4); its sole justification, found in Article 51, is in response to an armed attack (or an imminent threat of one in accordance with customary law on the matter). The only other lawful way to begin a war, according to Article 51, is with Security Council sanction, an option reserved—in principle, at least—for the defense or restoration of international peace and security.
  • Noura Erakat
Paul Merrell

Goldberg Sees Crisis in US-Israel Ties, Blames Bibi « LobeLog - 0 views

www.lobelog.com/-in-us-israel-ties-blames-bibi

U.S.-foreign-policy Mideast Israel-divorce

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • While everyone ritually insists that the bonds between Israel and the United States are “unbreakable,” yesterday’s analysis by Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations Is Officially Here,” argues that they’re currently under unprecedented strain and that the fault lies mainly with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. The analysis argues further that, post-November, the Obama administration may no longer be inclined to protect Israel (at least to the same pathetic extent) at the UN Security Council and may even be willing to go a step further by presenting “a public full lay-down of the administration’s vision for a two-state solution, including maps delineating Israel’s borders. These borders, to Netanyahu’s horror, would based on 1967 lines, with significant West Bank settlement blocs attached to Israel in exchange for swapped land elsewhere. Such a lay-down would make explicit to Israel what the U.S. expects of it.” I’m not a big fan of Goldberg, but this analysis is definitely worth a read if for no other reason than his voice is a very important one in the US Jewish community, including among the right-wing leadership of its major national organizations. And he essentially gives over most of the article—in a way that suggests he shares their views—to anonymous administration officials who have clearly grown entirely contemptuous of the Israeli leader, calling him, among other names, “chickenshit.” Goldberg himself describes the Netanyahu government’s policy toward Palestinians as being “disconnected from reality” and stresses what he calls the “unease felt by mainstream American Jewish leaders about recent Israeli government behavior.” It seems that his chief envoy and confidante here, Ron Dermer, is not doing a good job.
  • Of particular interest to readers of this blog, however, are Goldberg’s observations about how the administration views Bibi’s bluster about Iran: The official said the Obama administration no longer believes that Netanyahu would launch a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in order to keep the regime in Tehran from building an atomic arsenal. “It’s too late for him to do anything. Two, three years ago, this was a possibility. But ultimately he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. It was a combination of our pressure and his own unwillingness to do anything dramatic. Now it’s too late.” This assessment represents a momentous shift in the way the Obama administration sees Netanyahu. In 2010, and again in 2012, administration officials were convinced that Netanyahu and his then-defense minister, the cowboyish ex-commando Ehud Barak, were readying a strike on Iran. To be sure, the Obama administration used the threat of an Israeli strike in a calculated way to convince its allies (and some of its adversaries) to line up behind what turned out to be an effective sanctions regime. But the fear inside the White House of a preemptive attack (or preventative attack, to put it more accurately) was real and palpable—as was the fear of dissenters inside Netanyahu’s Cabinet, and at Israel Defense Forces headquarters. At U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa, analysts kept careful track of weather patterns and of the waxing and waning moon over Iran, trying to predict the exact night of the coming Israeli attack.
  • Today, there are few such fears. “The feeling now is that Bibi’s bluffing,” this second official said. “He’s not Begin at Osirak,” the official added, referring to the successful 1981 Israeli Air Force raid ordered by the ex-prime minister on Iraq’s nuclear reactor. The belief that Netanyahu’s threat to strike is now an empty one has given U.S. officials room to breathe in their ongoing negotiations with Iran. This is a significant passage. It suggests that the administration has decided to essentially ignore Netanyahu and his threats to take unilateral action, including when they are conveyed by members of Congress close to the Israel lobby. It also suggests strongly that the administration will not back up Israel if it should indeed undertake a strike of its own in hopes that Washington would be dragged into to finishing the job.
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  • Goldberg’s analysis about the state of the relationship is, in some ways, mirrored by Bret Stephens’s weekly “Global View” column in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, “Bibi and Barack on the Rocks,” although he, entirely predictably given his pro-settler worldview, sees Bibi as the wronged party. And, unlike Goldberg, he doesn’t see the US as the more powerful. Noting how Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon was snubbed by senior administration officials with whom he requested to meet, Stephens, a former editor of the Jerusalem Post, writes: The administration also seems to have forgotten that two can play the game. Two days after the Yaalon snub, the Israeli government announced the construction of 1,000 new housing units in so-called East Jerusalem, including 600 new units in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood that was the subject of a 2010 row with Joe Biden. Happy now, Mr. Vice President? Stephens calls for a “trial separation” by the two countries in which Israel will give up its $3 billion dollar/year US aid package to free itself from US interference
  • The administration likes to make much of the $3 billion a year it provides Israel (or, at least, U.S. defense contractors) in military aid, but that’s now less than 1% of Israeli GDP. Like some boorish husband of yore fond of boasting that he brings home the bacon, the administration thinks it’s the senior partner in the marriage. Except this wife can now pay her own bills. And she never ate bacon to begin with. It’s time for some time away. Israel needs to look after its own immediate interests without the incessant interventions of an overbearing partner. The administration needs to learn that it had better act like a friend if it wants to keep a friend. It isn’t as if it has many friends left. This is precisely where Goldberg believes current Israeli policy is leading it.
  • Netanyahu, and the even more hawkish ministers around him, seem to have decided that their short-term political futures rest on a platform that can be boiled down to this formula: “The whole world is against us. Only we can protect Israel from what’s coming.” …But for Israel’s future as an ally of the United States, this formula is a disaster.”
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Oct 14
     
    If Goldberg and Stephens have it right, a U.S./Israel divorce might just spell the end of the appartheid state of Israel. It is only the U.S. veto on the U.N. Security Council that has enabled Israel to continue to treat Palestinians with impunity and to retain control of and colonize the territory it seized in the 1967 war that it launched. (The right to acquire territory by conquest was abolished by the U.N. Charter and the Fourth Geneva Convention in the late 1940s.)  Israel is now a pariah state internationally, with only the U.S., Canada, and a few minor island nations dependent on the U.S. still voting for Israel even in the U.N. General Council. Moreover, the U.S. public is fed up with the foreign wars the U.S. has been waging in the Mideast in aid of Israel's empirical goal of destabilizing and Balkanizing Israel's Arab neighbors. A U.S./Israel divorce would almost certainly bring down Netanyahu's government. On the other hand, the Obama Administration's relationship with Israel has been a departure from the historical norm in the U.S. and Obama's likely successor, Hillary Clinton, has long been much more friendly with the Israel Lobby than Obama.  Many close observers believe that Netanyahu's strategy with Obama has been to wait until Obama is out of office, betting that his successor will be much more amenable to Bibi's desires. But with Bernie Sanders hat in the ring for Auction 2016 and possibly Elizabeth Warren as well, it's conceivable that issues they raise might push Hillary to adopt a less Israel-friendly stance. But on yet another hand, Obama's stance on ISIL is entirely consistent with Israel's longstanding goal of regime change in Syria and Balkanization of Iraq into three nations along ethnic/religious lines, an independent  Kurdistan in the north, a Shia-stan in the South, and a Sunni state in the middle. Note in this regard Obama's strategy of arming "moderate" Syrians only to defend territory ISIL has not yet seized, then to bring down t
Paul Merrell

Syria slams US-led coalition deadly strike against troops as 'act of aggression' - RT News - 0 views

www.rt.com/...0-syrian-army-coalition-strike

war & peace Syria U.S.-foreign-policy SAA attacks

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • US-led coalition warplanes have inflicted a missile strike on a camp of Syrian regular troops in the Deir ez Zor province, killing three soldiers. Damascus has slammed the incident as an “act of aggression.” This is the first time coalition planes have hit Syrian troops.
  • The Syrian government has confirmed that there are three casualties and 13 personnel injured, as well as a number of military vehicles destroyed. The coalition jets fired nine missiles at an army camp in the Deir ez Zor province, which remains mostly under the control of Islamic State. The incident is the first of its kind since the coalition started to bomb Syrian territory more than a year ago.
  • The Syrian Foreign Ministry has filed an official protest with the UN Security Council regarding the US-led coalition’s airstrikes on Syrian troops, Syria’s SANA official news agency reported Monday.“Syria strongly condemns the act of aggression by the US-led coalition that contradicts the UN Charter on goals and principles. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has sent letters to the UN Secretary General and the UN Security Council,” SANA quoted the foreign ministry as saying.The US-led coalition denies its planes carried out the airstrike on the Saeqa military camp, claiming the only airstrikes in the area were delivered some 55km away from the place.“We’ve seen those Syrian reports but we did not conduct any strikes in that part of Deir Ezzor yesterday. So we see no evidence,” coalition spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said.
Paul Merrell

Drone strikes illegal, a war crime: Pakistani high court - Times Of India - 0 views

articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...waziristan-agency-tribal-areas

war & peace Pakistan drones Obama foreign policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 May 13 - No Cached
  • ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani high court on Thursday declared the US drone strikes in the country's tribal regions illegal and directed the government to use force to "protect the right to life" of its citizens. Stating that the United States strikes must be declared war crime as these kill innocent people, it also called the government to move a UN resolution against such attacks. The high court in Pakistan's north-western city of Peshawar announced the verdict against the CIA-driven drone strikes on four writ petitions, stating that these attacks kill innocent civilians and cause collateral damage. Time and again, Washington has said that drone attacks target al-Qaida and Taliban safe havens in Pakistan's tribal areas, from where they carry out cross-border attacks in Afghanistan. According to a report submitted by political authorities of North Waziristan Agency, 896 Pakistani civilians living there were killed in the last five years until December 2012 while 209 were seriously injured. "In these drone attacks only 47 foreigners were killed and six injured. Many houses and vehicles and cattle heads worth millions of dollars were destroyed in these attacks. Similarly, in South Waziristan Agency, 70 drone strikes were carried out in the last five years until June 2012 in which 553 people were killed and 126 injured," the report said.
  • "In view of the established facts, undeniable in nature, under the UN Charter & Conventions, the people of Pakistan have every right to ask the security forces either to prevent such strikes by force or to shoot down intruding drones," the court verdict said. "The government of Pakistan must ensure that no drone strike takes place in the future," it added and also asked the ministry of foreign affairs to table a resolution in the UN against the US attacks. In a detailed judgment, the court ordered the government to forthwith assert its sovereignty and convey forcefully to the US that no further drone strikes will be tolerated. It directed the government "to protect the 'right to life' of its citizen and use force if need be to stop extrajudicial killings with drones".
  • Paul Merrell on 25 May 13
     
    I meant to post this link earlier in the month but I am working through a backlog. This ruling by a Pakistan court likely has a lot to do with Obama's announcement earlier this week that the use of drone strikes is being curtailed and the responsibility is being moved to DoD, getting the CIA out of that line of business. 
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