David Swanson argues that all wars are based on lies in order to get people to support them. I highly recommend watching this interview.
Category Archives: International Law
MI5 Chief told Blair that Iraq posed no threat – evidence for accountability
The Christian Science Monitor recently reported that Britain’s former director of MI5 Eliza Manningham-Buller (from 2002 to 2007), in her testimony to Britain’s Chilcot Inquiry panel, “harshly criticized the 2003 invasion of Iraq” (MI5 is Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, which is similar to the FBI in the United States). According to the article, MI5 “warned that Saddam Hussein had no known links to Al Qaeda, that Iraq posed little threat, and that some in a generation of British Muslims had been radicalized by the action”. This is a serious blow to the Bush administration’s justifications for invading Iraq. Read the rest of this entry »
Good RussiaToday debate about Middle East Peace Process
RussiaToday’s CrossTalk had a good debate between Dan Diker and Robert Fisk about the Middle East Peace Process. For those who are relatively uninformed about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the aggravating “peace process”, I highly recommend watching this debate.
Israel’s attack on the Gaza aid flotilla
It’s been a while since I last posted a blog so I decided to comment on Israel’s attack on the Gaza flotilla. This is an excellent segment by The Real News Network. It shows how Israel planned its May 31st attack on the Gaza humanitarian aid flotilla, which resulted in the deaths of 9 people.
Speech: “Imperialism, racism, and torture”
This is the text of a speech I gave at a panel Stanford Says No to War hosted called “It’s All About U.S.: Questioning U.S. Militarism”. This speech was given on May 26th, 2010 and is the last speech I gave at Stanford.
——————————————————————————————————-
During the Nuremberg Trials, the chief American prosecutor, Robert H. Jackson, famously stated: “To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” America has a long history of war and its accumulated evils. It began as thirteen small colonies that sat along the Atlantic coast. In over a century, the United States expanded all the way to the Pacific Ocean – from sea to shining sea. The process was not pretty. It involved the genocide of the native Americans and the enslavement of millions of black Africans whose free labor was needed to fuel the American capitalist economy. At the dawn of the twentieth century, the United States began to colonize other lands, such as Hawaii, the Philippines and Cuba. Since then, it has occupied and militarily intervened in several parts of the globe, such as in Latin America, Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. And let’s not forget the many democratically-elected leaders America overthrew in places like Chile and Iran. The United States currently occupies two countries – Iraq and Afghanistan – and has a network of over 700 bases across the planet. Thus, the United States is an empire. Read the rest of this entry »
Crimes of war and the need for justice
It is essentially common knowledge that Iraq posed no imminent threat to the United States. Iraq possessed no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and had no connection to al-Qaeda or 9/11, thus, discrediting the Bush administration’s justifications for war. Since the invasion was not authorized by the United Nations Security Council nor waged in self-defense against an imminent threat, the invasion of Iraq was an unlawful use of force (see Art. 39 and 51 of the Charter of the United Nations). In other words, the war in Iraq was a crime against peace and a war of aggression. The Nuremberg Principles (Art. 6) define “crime against peace” as “namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing”. The Judgment of the Nuremberg Tribunal famously stated that “to initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” Upon waging war with another country, the consequences of that initial act of aggression are various forms of human suffering. This includes, but is not limited to, torture, rape, mass murder, and the intentional or unintentional killing of civilians. This has evil has manifested in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Read the rest of this entry »
Blues African 