Rein in impunity or descend further into barbarism

Expedient wars, human targeting, civilian massacre ─ no nation permitted to operate outside law, human rights convention or we descend into utter lawlessness
Editing, re-reporting, commentary by Carolyn Bennett

The work of the United Nations in reining in U.S. impunity, the check on Washington’s callous recklessness, its disregard for life is welcome indeed.

United Nations

The inquiry into extrajudicial killings, the ordering and deployment of assassination drones is long past due and the investigation must be thorough and effective for the sake of moral order and the rule of law, for the sake of people all over the world ─ not only, but especially the innocents (in a civilized world, people are presumed innocent until proved guilty through judicial process) and civilians of all ages and kinds.  

Leader of killer drone inquiry

Ben Emmerson QC

UN Special Rapporteur on Counter Terrorism and Human Rights

Leading the United Nations investigation of drones is international lawyer Ben Emmerson QC who specializes in cases involving human rights, international humanitarian law, criminal law, and public law.

Nonviolence symbol
UN

A profile of Emmerson says he has conducted more than 30 cases as an advocate appearing before the European Court of Human Rights, acting both for and against the government of the United Kingdom and other Council of Europe Member States.  He has been particularly recognized for his work in developing the law governing the protection of the right to life in Article 2 and the state’s duty to prevent torture and inhuman and degrading treatment under Article 3.

While he has a particular reputation in the application of international standards to criminal law and procedure, Emmerson has extensive experience in all aspects of ECHR litigation and has acted in cases covering a wide range of international law issues including diplomatic and state immunity, parliamentary privilege, judicial independence, and discipline within the armed forces.

E

mmerson is currently the British judge on the Residual Mechanism of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.  He has previously acted as Special Adviser to the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court and Special Adviser to the international judges of the UN backed Khymer Rouge Tribunal in Cambodia.

  

 In June 2011, he was elected by the UN Human Rights Council as UN Special Rapporteur on Counter Terrorism and Human Rights. In this capacity he reports annually to the UN General Assembly, the UN Human Rights Council and relevant entities established by the Security Council. He also conducts country visits and reports, and provides technical and other advice to States.

Killer drones (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles or UAVs)

Echoes of U.S. nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

U.S. President Harry Truman calculated that the atomic bomb “might be used to defeat Japan in a way less costly of U.S. lives than a conventional invasion of the Japanese homeland” so in 1945 he laid waste to hundreds of thousands of innocent people in a distant land.  

The combined heat and blast of the U.S. atomic bomb (the United States is the only nation that has used the nuclear bomb against human beings) on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, pulverized everything in the explosion’s immediate vicinity, generated spontaneous fires that wiped out, burned completely, almost 4.4 square miles, killed between 70,000 and 80,000 people, and injured more than 70,000 others. A second bomb, dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, killed between 35,000 and 40,000 people, injured a like number, and devastated 1.8 square miles. (Britannica note]

F

ifty-one countries possess the technology to use drones but the United States “is responsible for the vast majority of the world’s drone strikes and the practice of targeted killing has become a central component” of the government of U.S. President Barack Obama in its “efforts to combat al-Qaida.”

The UN Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights announced yesterday that he will lead an inquiry that examines the impact of drone strikes on civilian populations in five countries: Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, the Palestinian territories and Somalia.

Pakistanis protest
U.S drone strikes

Ben Emmerson QC told the Guardian that the aim of this inquiry is to “shine the light of truth on competing allegations that there are disproportionate civilian casualties on the one hand and that there are few or no civilian casualties on the other.” The critical deficit in the current UN debate concerning the legality of drone strikes, he said, “is the absence of independent, objective verification of the facts.”

Pakistanis protest
U.S drone strikes

Prompting inquiry into killer drone attacks

Between June 2004 and September 2012, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports, drone strikes killed between 2,562 and 3,325 people in Pakistan of whom between 474 and 881 were civilians ─ including 176 children.

In Pakistan alone, BIJ updated, CIA drone strikes have resulted in as many as 3,461 deaths ─ including up to 891 civilians.

Yemenis protest
U.S. drone strikes

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights have filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration over the deaths of three American citizens killed by U.S. drones in Yemen.

Several nations, including Pakistan and two permanent members of the UN Security Council, called for an inquiry into the use of drones.

Though the UN General Assembly is comprised of 193 member nations, there are only five permanent member states on the UN Security Council: People’s Republic of China, France, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States

I

Drone missiles

n statements prior to the coming investigation, Judge Emmerson has suggested that some drone attacks – particularly those known as ‘double tap’ strikes where rescuers going to the aid of a first blast have become victims of a follow-up strike – could possibly constitute a ‘war crime.’

Critics have charged that the Obama administration’s targeted killing program is “utterly lacking in transparency and accountability.”

UN Special Rapporteur on
Counter Terrorism and Human Rights
Ben Emmerson

Aim of killer drone inquiry

The UN Special Rapporteur on Counter Terrorism and Human Rights told the Guardian that one of the fundamental questions to be raised in the drone investigation “is whether aerial targeting using drones is an appropriate method of conflict … where the individuals are embedded in a local community.

‘Whether, given the local demography, aerial attacks carry too high a risk of a disproportionate number of civilian casualties.’

Drone

Whether ‘the military dependence on UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) carries an unacceptably high risk of civilian casualties’

Twenty or thirty strikes – selected as representative of different types of attacks – will be studied to assess the extent of any civilian casualties, the identity of militants targeted, and the legality of strikes in countries where the UN has not formally recognized there is a conflict.

 Killer drone inquiry team

Involved in the inquiry into the impact of drone strikes on civilian populations in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, the Palestinian territories and Somalia together with Emmerson’s coordination through his UN office in Geneva will be a team of experts including, according to the Guardian, “the former director of public prosecutions, Lord Macdonald QC, a former prosecutor at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, and Dr Nat Cary, one of the UK’s most experienced pathologists who specializes in the interpretation of injuries caused by explosions.”

 

The inquiry will report this coming fall to the UN General Assembly in New York City. Depending on its findings, the report might recommend further action.

T

he problem as I see it is that those who retain power in Washington ─ the nepotistic, the entrenched, the partisans, the tribal ─ are wedded to a single way, a single model of response. 

They are incapable of evolving to a degree sufficient to forego the baser instinct of barbarism and in its stead embrace a diplomacy of nonviolence as equals in relations among human beings. 

Therefore, these mostly but not only men throwbacks to the dark ages, these obstructionists ─ regardless to their pedigree or position ─ must be reined in, called to account by judicial process. 

Only then has the world a chance to move in concert, to progress as equals for the good of all.  

Sources and notes

Ben Emmerson QC (profile), http://www.matrixlaw.co.uk/Members/49/Ben%20Emmerson.aspx

“UN to examine UK and U.S. drone strikes ─ Strikes will be studied to assess extent of any civilian casualties, identity of militants targeted and legality of actions” (Owen Bowcott, legal affairs correspondent, guardian.co.uk, Wednesday January 23, 2013 19.37 EST ), http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/24/un-examine-uk-afghanistan-drone-strikes?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

“UN inquiry into US drone strikes prompts cautious optimism ─  Critics of Obama's targeted killing program argue it is lacking in transparency but welcome inquiry examining drones’ impact” (Ryan Devereaux, guardian.co.uk, Thursday January 24, 2013 17.14 EST),

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/24/un-announces-drone-inquiry-human-rights

QC

Queen’s (or Kings’) Counsel (in some jurisdictions the name has been replaced by one without monarchical connotations such as ‘Senior Counsel’ or ‘Senior Advocate’) is a status conferred by the Crown, which is recognized by courts. Members have the privilege of sitting within the Bar of court. Appointments to be one of Her [or His] Majesty’s Counsel learned in the law are made from within the legal profession on the basis of merit rather than a particular level of experience but successful applicants tend to be barristers, or (in Scotland) advocates, or solicitor advocates with 15 or more years’ experience.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV)

Deutsche Welle reported January 20, 2013: The unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV, or drone) industry is the fastest growing aeronautics industry. Currently 50 countries use drones, three of them for military strikes.

UN Security Council Membership 2012
Colombia (2012)
Germany (2012)
India (2012)
Portugal (2012)
South Africa (2012)

Azerbaijan (2013)
Guatemala (2013)
Morocco (2013)
Pakistan (2013)
Togo (2013)

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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Foreign relations paradigm unabashedly reverts to barbarism

“The US/UN/NATO race for global full-spectrum dominance” (August 20 and 21, 2012)  by Christopher Black, James Henry Fetzer, Alex Mezyaev, and Christof Lehmann writing at Pravda.ru

Excerpt, editing by
Carolyn Bennett

Under any pretext ─ freedom, democracy, ‘responsibility to protect,’ human rights, ‘war on terrorism’ ─ no act of lawlessness or terrorism is shied away from: assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists, murder of Libyan leader (Col.) Muammar al-Qaddafi Muammar or the President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic, the President of Iraq Saddam Hussein, or President of the Republic of Rwanda Juvenal Habyarimana.

Unless this regression into global barbarism is opposed by all necessary popular, political, diplomatic, economical, legal, and if necessary, military means, humanity will descend into a state of global barbarism and unspeakable outrages.

Principles, conventions, declarations of law, human rights (breach)

These authors correctly observe that recent decades have witnessed “an unprecedented deterioration, a ‘collapse’ (I have termed it BREAKDOWN) of international law.

“This deterioration is driven by the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and their refusal to abide by long-established legal principles of international law in all its aspects: peaceful coexistence, human rights, military conduct and others, which have been established over hundreds of years. Many of these principles and laws were implemented after unspeakable human suffering.”

Principles in Treaty of Westphalia, National Sovereignty (breach)

The Treaty of Westphalia (Peace of Westphalia) was signed by European powers in 1648 after a religious and political power struggle between European empires had resulted in more than thirty years’ war. “The treaty defines the sovereignty of national states and the principle of non-interference into the internal political affairs of sovereign nations by others.”

The Treaty was one of the international legal principles used in guiding the drafting of the Charter of the United Nations; to many people, it is considered “the most important principle of international law with respect to the regulation of bilateral and multilateral diplomacy and politics.”

Sovereignty (breach)

“The principle of non-interference into domestic affairs and the principle of national sovereignty enshrined in the UN Charter is increasingly being challenged by those (that is, the Americans) who argue that the ‘international community’ (again, the Americans) has a ‘responsibility to protect’ civilians in cases where the government of a sovereign state is unable to protect its citizens, or when the government of a sovereign state is committing severe violations of other principles such as human rights. A resolution that implemented the ‘responsibility to protect’ was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2009 in violation of the UN Charter.

“This false responsibility was first termed ‘humanitarian intervention’ but it appears that this term could only be used in propaganda when a crisis was already in progress. The slogan responsibility to protect was coined in order to give this strategy more flexibility so that ‘intervention’ could be used ─ even before the United States had succeeded in creating a crisis.”

Hague Conventions

Law against mercenaries (breach)

Coining of the term ‘unlawful-combatant’ was designed in the attempt “to evade provisions of The Hague Convention, which clearly specifies that a population has the right to armed resistance against an aggressor’s military forces.

“The use of mercenary forces (e.g., using 20,000 mercenaries of the Al-Qaeda associated Libyan Islamic Fighting Group in the attempted subversion of Syria) erodes the concept of  command responsibility.

“It provides the USA/NATO with a loophole to commit the most serious acts of terrorism, massacre and military barbarism, while NATO’s military leadership and Defense Ministries and NATO member governments enjoy ‘plausible deniability’ for their command decisions.” But it is clear in international law that U.S. officers have the real command responsibility (effective command and control) over these mercenaries and therefore for their war crimes if ever they could be brought before an international tribunal.

The International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries (from December 4, 1989) forbids use of mercenaries; thus the United States’  illegal use of mercenary forces is a systematic circumvention of the Hague Convention.

Nevertheless the United States “reserves for itself the right not to make its citizens ─ including military personnel ─ subject to the International Criminal Court at The Hague.”

It does demand prosecution of citizens of nations opposed to US/NATO hegemony. “Members of militia who legally resist US/NATO occupation are often turned over to authorities of a government installed with US/NATO assistance.” They may then be sentenced to long prison terms or execution because US/NATO has found a way around the guarantee of protection under The Hague Conventions. But U.S.-deployed mercenaries, “private contractors,” soldiers of fortune used repeatedly in relatively recent years (from “the war on Yugoslavia” through the “wars on Afghanistan and Iraq”) to fulfill military tasks routinely and with impunity disobey “the rules or customs of war.

“The use of private military contractors and the use of allied or state-sponsored mercenary forces including Al Qaeda brigades are a breach of  the Hague Conventions.”

Global assassination

CIA drones military operations (breach)

“Extrajudicial executions and assassinations warn of what ‘human rights,’ ‘civil liberties,’ ‘freedom,’ ‘democracy’ and ‘justice’ now mean ─ in practice as opposed to in preaching ─ to the United States of America and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.”

Whether a drone attack is targeting resistance fighters (so-called ‘terrorists’) or Gameboy Killers at Langley, Virginia, blow up a bride and groom at a wedding party in Pakistan or Somalia ─ “any and all of such attacks circumvent The Hague Conventions.” Though the United States increasingly uses “unmanned aerial vehicles for observation and kinetic military actions, the CIA’s Gameboy Killers in Langley operate outside a legal military command structure.”

Barbarism veiled, plausibly denied, the authors conclude, consists of systemic acts of lawlessness. 

Circumvention of international law
Circumvention of legal responsibility for illegal acts of war
Circumvention of human rights, civil liberties
Implementation of torture

NATO family photo

Institutionalization of terrorism, massacre of civilians, members of militaries, combatants, non-combatants

Barbarism in war ● Return to endless wars of aggression

Crimes against the peace, unrestrained in ferocity and cruelty

Establishment of illegal international courts, politicized trials, pseudo-legalistic political witch hunts, victors’ justice ─ dangerous acts disguised as legitimate justice, more dangerous than outright violation of international laws and conventions

Sources and notes

Two-part article August 20 and 21, 2012,

Part I

“The US/UN/NATO Race for Global Full Spectrum Dominance” (Christopher Black., James Henry Fetzer, Alex Mezyaev, Christof Lehmann), August 20, 2012, http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/20-08-2012/121926-race_global_dominance-0/

Part II

“The US/UN/NATO Race for Global Full Spectrum Dominance Part II” (Christopher Black., James Henry Fetzer, Alex Mezyaev, Christof Lehmann), August 21, 2012, http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/21-08-2012/121938-race_global_dominance-0/

Copyright © 1999-2012, «PRAVDA.Ru». When reproducing our materials in whole or in part, hyperlink to PRAVDA.Ru should be made. The opinions and views of the authors do not always coincide with the point of view of PRAVDA.Ru's editors.

Peace of Westphalia: European settlements of 1648, which brought to an end the Eighty Years’ War between Spain and the Dutch and the German phase of the Thirty Years’ War.

The peace was negotiated, from 1644, in the Westphalian towns of Münster and Osnabrück. The Spanish-Dutch treaty was signed on January 30, 1648. (Westphalia (German Westfalen) is a historic region of northwestern Germany, comprising (with the former state of Lippe) the present federal Land (state) of North Rhine–Westphalia and parts of the Länder (states) of Lower Saxony and Hesse.)

Under the terms of the peace settlement, a number of countries received territories or were confirmed in their sovereignty over territories. The territorial clauses all favored Sweden, France, and their allies. Constitutional changes made by the treaty ended the century-long struggle between the monarchical tendencies of the Holy Roman emperors and the federalist aspirations of the empire’s German princes.

The Peace of Westphalia recognized the full territorial sovereignty of the member states of the empire. They were empowered to contract treaties with one another and with foreign powers, provided that the emperor and the empire suffered no prejudice. By this and other changes, the princes of the empire became absolute sovereigns in their own dominions. The Holy Roman emperor and the Diet were left with a mere shadow of their former power.

Sweden and France as guarantors of the peace acquired the right of interference in the affairs of the empire. For many years, Germany became the principal theatre of European diplomacy and war, and the natural development of German national unity was delayed.

Though pronouncing the dissolution of the old order in the empire, the Treaty of Westphalia also facilitated the growth of new powers in its component parts, especially Austria, Bavaria, and Brandenburg. The treaty was recognized as a fundamental law of the German constitution and formed the basis of all subsequent treaties until the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806.

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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U.S. commits, conceals high crime

Lectures Libya

Compiled and edited, re-reporting with brief comment by Carolyn Bennett

Notes from week’s wars and impunity

U.S.-led

WAR DEAD

Casualty sites reporting July 16, 2011

(Accurate totals unknown)

Anti-war dot com Casualties in Iraq since March 19, 2003

[U.S. war dead since the Obama inauguration January 20,

2009: 245] Information out of date

•

Wounded 33,105-100,000

U.S. veterans with brain injuries 320,000

Suicides estimated: 18 a day

Latest update on this site: July 15, 2011

http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/

•

Iraq Body Count

The worldwide update on civilians killed in the Iraq war and occupation

Documented civilian deaths from violence

101, 837 – 111,294

Full analysis of the WikiLeaks’ Iraq War Logs may add 15,000 civilian deaths.  http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

•

ICasualties figures:

AFGHANISTAN:

1,665 United States

2,592 Coalition

IRAQ: 4,473 United States

4,791 Coalition

http://icasualties.org/

Human Rights Watch wants the world to remember what Washington wants the world to forget. In a 107-page report ‘Getting Away with Torture: The Bush Administration and Mistreatment of Detainees,’ released this week, the rights group found “substantial information warranting criminal investigations of [George W.] Bush and senior administration officials, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and CIA Director George Tenet, for ordering practices such as ‘waterboarding,’ the use of secret CIA prisons, and the transfer of detainees to countries where they were tortured.”

In media interviews, Human Rights Watch recounts, “Bush has sought to justify his authorization of waterboarding on the ground that Justice Department lawyers said it was legal. While Bush should have recognized that waterboarding constituted torture without consulting a lawyer, there is also substantial information that senior administration officials, including Cheney, sought to influence the lawyers’ judgment.” The report highlights these facts in evidence. 

President George W. Bush publicly admitted that in two cases he approved the use of waterboarding, a form of mock execution involving near drowning that the United States has long prosecuted as a type of torture. [Then-President George W.] Bush also authorized the illegal CIA secret detention and renditions programs under which detainees were held incommunicado and frequently transferred to countries such as Egypt and Syria where they were likely to be tortured;

Vice President [Richard] Cheney was the driving force behind the establishment of illegal detention and interrogation policies, chairing key meetings at which specific CIA operations were discussed, including the waterboarding of one detainee Abu Zubaydah in 2002;

Defense Secretary [Donald] Rumsfeld approved illegal interrogation methods and closely followed the interrogation of Mohamed al-Qahtani, who was subjected to a six-week regime of coercive interrogation at Guantanamo that cumulatively appears to have amounted to torture;

CIA Director [George] Tenet authorized and oversaw the CIA’s use of waterboarding, stress positions, light and noise bombardment, sleep deprivation, and other abusive interrogation methods, as well as the CIA rendition program.

Executive Director Kenneth Roth concludes, “The U.S. has a legal obligation to investigate these crimes [and] if the U.S. does not act on them [then] other countries should.”

U.S. officials continued to ignore the rule of law. The were busy lecturing, punishing, overthrowing and planning the overthrow of foreign governments and cleansing indigenous peoples.

While meeting in Turkey this week, the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton threatened of “contradictory signals” from Libyan President Muammar “Qaddafi’s camp” and that Libya’s head of state “has yet to meet the red lines that are set by the international community to cease violence against his people, withdraw his forces, and step down from power.” She went on to bully that “neither of us can predict … the exact day or hour that [Libya’s president] will leave power, we do understand and agree that his days are numbered.”

An article this week in Global Research citing Human Rights Investigations (HRI) asked, “Is NATO actually ‘protecting civilians’ — or is it rather supporting rebels, some of whom intend to harm dark-skinned Libyans and ethnically cleanse areas over which they take control?”

Evidence “has emerged,” the article said, “that there is a strong racist element within the rebel forces [this week recognized by the U.S. administration as the legitimate government of Libya] including at command level, and it is the stated intention of these forces to ethnically cleanse areas they capture of their dark-skinned inhabitants.”

Referencing a recent Wall Street Journal, “journalist Sam Dagher pointed out the obvious fact that the Libyan war is aggravating ethnic tensions in that country.” An example is “the fate of Tawergha, a small town 25 miles to the south of Misrata, inhabited mostly by black Libyans, a legacy of its 19th-century origins as a transit town in the slave trade.” Rebel leaders have reportedly “[called] for drastic measures like banning Tawergha natives from ever working, living or sending their children to schools in Misrata.” There is also “evidence of massacres of black people, including incidents of lynching and murder of black soldiers of the Libyan army.”

Dispatches from the ground this week said, “Since the beginning [March 31, 2011] of the [U.S.-led] NATO operation against Libya, a total of 15,061 sorties, including 5,673 strike sorties have been conducted.” July 13 alone saw 130 sorties and 50 strike sorties.

Michel Chossudovsky wrote this week, “The size of this military operation under a UN sponsored ‘humanitarian mandate’ is mind boggling.… In bitter irony, Western public opinion broadly supports this humanitarian endeavor carried out under the principle ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P); yet each of the strike sorties results in countless deaths and injuries of civilians; and the media have largely obfuscated the causes and consequences of this war.”

Fifteen thousand sixty-one sorties including 5,673 strike sorties since March 31

NATO's ‘war crimes’

Libya’s prosecutor general, Mohamed Zekri Mahjubi, on Wednesday reportedly made the charge that “NATO airstrikes have killed more than 1,100 civilians and injured thousands of others since March 31.” Mahjubi told foreign reporters “he intends to prosecute NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen in Libyan courts for ‘war crimes.’”

The Libyan prosecutor charges that, as “NATO secretary general, Rasmussen is responsible for the actions of this organization, which has attacked an unarmed people, killing 1,108 civilians and wounding 4,537 others in bombardment of Tripoli and other cities and villages.” In addition, the prosecutor general has pressed murder charges against Rasmussen, saying, “the NATO chief sought to murder Libyan [President] Muammar Qaddafi.”

RULE OF LAWLESSNESS

Is it that only “some” people are subject to law?

 “Some” in the United States and elsewhere are put to death

“Some” in foreign lands are hunted down, murdered in cold blood at the whim of Western power

“Some” are herded before international criminal courts

If only some are subject to law, can we continue to say in truth or in fact that we the peoples of the world live under the rule of law? Is it not accurate to say we live under the rule of lawlessness?

If that is so, is it not time to end the lawlessness in high places?

Who will seat and who will sit on that tribunal of international law?

Even in the forest laws are understood and obeyed by wildlife in order to subsist in forest society.  

We must ponder these critical questions. If at this moment we do not have answers, we had better find some answers, the right answers very soon indeed before we self-destruct.

AFRICA

U.S. war on LIBYA

“Very close to Brega (oil) —

“Most of the casualties were now caused by landmines rather than Qaddafi’s heavy artillery, as earlier on in the offensive,” said a doctor today at a hospital in nearby Ajdabiya. “We have had five more injuries this morning, all of them from mine explosions.”

Africa’s Horn in perpetual misery — the camels are dying

SOMALIA/HORN OF AFRICA

 “Six months of strict rule by the Islamists in 2006 brought relative peace to the Somalia of Mogadishu,”  AlertNet reports.

“That rule ended when troops from key U.S. ally Ethiopia helped restore the transitional government.

“Foreign involvement fuelled opposition locally and internationally and appeared to boost support for the Islamists, with some analysts saying U.S. accusations of al Qaeda involvement became a self-fulfilling prophesy.”

Today Somalia and the Horn of Africa are experiencing unspeakably unbearable suffering and the land and peoples are still under U.S. and Western aggression, occupation and repression.

“The drought situation in the horn of Africa has reached crisis levels — the worst in 60 years.

Alertnet reports the UN OCHA Eastern Africa saying “more than 9 million people are in need of humanitarian aid: 3.2 million in Ethiopia, 117,000 in Djibouti, 2.6 million in Somalia and 3.2 million in Kenya”

The impact of the drought is seen everywhere. The price of food and maize grain skyrockets. Livestock are dying in large numbers. Massive numbers of people arrive daily in Dadaab camp on the Kenya/Somalia border.  By September, famine is being predicted for some of the worst drought affected local areas of the Horn.

An insurgency that has been raging since the start of 2007 has forced large numbers of Somalis out of their homes. Much of the fighting now is between government forces and gunmen loyal to hard-line Islamist group al Shabaab. Conflict combined with frequent drought and rampant inflation has turned Somalia into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

More than 2.8 million need aid

More than 2.2 million displaced

Infrastructure in tatters

Hundreds of thousands of people have fled Mogadishu since the end of 2006. Aid agencies say the 15 km (10 mile) stretch of road between the capital and the town of Afgoye is probably the largest concentration of displaced people on the planet. Conflict, high inflation and frequent drought cause food shortages. Somalia has the highest malnutrition rates in the world.

AFGHANISTAN/PAKISTAN

AFGHANISTAN
New Great Game evolving

“Afghanistan and Central Asia are abundant with natural resources worth billions,” this week’s Deutsche Welle news recalls. These resources so far “are largely untapped, but the battle is raging for who will be able to exploit them in the 21st century….

“While the United States and China want an especially large slice…, neighboring states Iran, Pakistan, India and Russia have their eyes on [the game]. Most experts agree that a battle for natural resources is underway, alongside the war against terrorism.”

Quoting Jürgen Stetten, head of Asia at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the article says, “It is difficult to predict the outcome of the new Great Game in Afghanistan.” However, “Stetten believes it could very likely be catastrophic for Afghanistan — ‘A return of the Taliban, or proxy wars between the region’s big rivals, China or India, or the U.S. could land the country in a conflict that it will not get out of for some time.’”

Violence grows

Civilian and foreign casualties are at record levels despite the presence of around 150,000 US-led foreign troops in Afghanistan.

Since the U.S.-led invasion of the country in 2001, violence in Afghanistan has been at its worst, Al Jazeera and other news sources report. “The security situation remains fragile.”

Today “an individual wearing an Afghan National Army uniform turned his weapon against International Security Assistance Force service members in southern Afghanistan.” One of the foreign troops died. So far this year, violence in Afghanistan has claimed the lives of at least 311 foreign soldiers. Most of them have been U.S. forces.  More than 2,591 U.S.-led soldiers have died  in Afghanistan since the US-led invasion of  the country in 2001.

The bodyguard who assassinated Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s half-brother “had worked closely with U.S. Special Forces and the CIA before being recruited by the Taliban.” The shooter of the president’s brother also reportedly “attended regular meetings with British officials” and “had two brothers-in-law serving in a CIA-run paramilitary unit in Kandahar.”

The U.S. invaded Afghanistan on the pretext of curbing militancy and bringing peace and stability to the region; however, after nine years the region remains unstable and militancy has expanded into Pakistan.

PAKISTAN

Several NATO fighter jets have violated Pakistani airspace, making low flights into the country’s troubled tribal northwestern regions, Press TV reports. “Local sources say the aircraft crossed over into Pakistan’s Kurram Agency through the Afghan border and flew up to five-kilometers across the border.

Pakistan strongly condemned the violation of its airspace by US-led forces stationed in Afghanistan. Washington claims the airstrikes target militants but most of the attacks kill civilians.

Thousands of Pakistanis have staged a protest sit-in this weekend to condemn what they call increasing U.S. interference in the affairs of the Muslim world.

Supporters of Pakistan’s Jamaat-e-Islami religious party held a sit-in Friday in Pakistan’s Gujranwala city, northwest of Punjab’s provincial capital of Lahore, to demand that the government review its relations with Washington.

Press TV reports Jamaat-e-Islami leader Syed Wasim Akhter saying that before 9/11 and before the presence of American forces in the region, the area was quite peaceful. “There were no blasts, no bombers. As Americans came into this region, the whole region turned into such a mess.”

 PERSIA

IRAQ

Annual Karbala pilgrimage bombed

A sticky bomb attached to a police officer’s car exploded today near a checkpoint. Three people died, 15 suffered wounds in eastern Karbala, 80km southwest of Baghdad.

Several bombs have gone off in Iraqi cities, including Baghdad, killing at least five people and wounding several. Last year, car bombs killed and wounded scores of people during the Imam Mahdi observance

The incident today in Karbala was the third attack in the past two days on the holy city, as Shia pilgrims were going to visit the Imam al-Hussein shrine to commemorate the birth of Imam Mohammed al-Mahdi.

A car bomb had also exploded on Friday in a garage near a hospital west of Karbala. In that explosion, four people died and 20 sustained wounds. In northern Karbala, three people died and 23 sustained injuries when a bomb placed under a parked car exploded.

 GULF

YEMEN

This country’s head of state, President Ali Abdullah Saleh, has been in power since 1978. Since January of this year, protesters have been calling for Saleh to leave office. On June 3, the president suffered wounds in a bomb attack on his palace in Sana’a. After the attack, he went to Saudi Arabia for treatment. He remains in U.S.–allied Saudi Arabia.

This week a coalition of protest groups announced the formation of a transitional presidential council comprised of 17 Yemeni figures of different political affiliations, from inside Yemen and abroad, to “prepare to run the country when President Ali Abdullah Saleh is fully and finally toppled.”

A leader of the anti-Saleh movement told the press today that “the council ‘is charged with leading the country during a transition period not to exceed nine months and with forming a government of technocrats.’ The council will also announce a 501-member ‘national assembly’ that will draft a new constitution.’” This council will work “to ‘protect the unity of the country.’”

Sources and notes

U.S. global war on terror

Human Rights Watch report “Getting Away with Torture: The Bush Administration and Mistreatment of Detainees”

“United States: Investigate Bush, Other Top Officials for Torture Inquiry Into 2 Deaths in CIA Custody Insufficient,” July 11, 2011, http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2011/07/11/united-states-investigate-bush-other-top-officials-torture

“A Debate on Human Rights Watch’s Call for Bush Administration Officials to be Tried for Torture,” July 12, 2011, http://www.democracynow.org/2011/7/12/a_debate_on_human_rights_watchs

Kenneth Roth is U.S. attorney who has been executive director of Human Rights Watch since 1993.

U.S. against Libya

Human Rights Watch: Libyan Rebels Attacking Gaddafi Supporters Libyan rebels are facing calls to halt alleged abuses in a number of seized towns. In a statement, Human Rights Watch cited allegations of attacks on Gaddafi supporters, as well as looting and arson. Meeting with Russia’s Foreign Minister in Washington, D.C., U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addressed reports of Gaddafi’s talks with France in a bid to end the violence. Democracy Now Headlines, July 14, 2011, http://www.democracynow.org/2011/7/14/headlines

NATO enabling Human Rights Abuses: Libyan Rebel Ethnic Cleansing and Lynching of Black People (Human Rights Investigations, HRI), Global Research, July 14, 2011, humanrightsinvestigations.org 

Copyright Human Rights Investigations (HRI), humanrightsinvestigations.org, 2011, www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=25622 

Allied Joint Force Command NAPLES, SHAPE, NATO HQ  July 14, 2011, (more information: www.jfcnaples.nato.int

“NATO’s ‘Operation Unified Protector’: More than 15,000 sorties directed against the Libyan People” (Michel Chossudovsky), Global Research, July 14, 2011, 

NATO took control of all military operations for Libya under United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1970 and 1973 on March 2011 with the purported “aim of ‘Operation UNIFIED PROTECTOR’ to protect civilians and civilian-populated areas under attack or threat of attack. The mission consists of three elements: an arms embargo, a no-fly-zone and actions to protect civilians from attack or the threat of attack.”

“1,108 Libyans killed in NATO attacks— Tripoli to prosecute NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen for ‘war crimes’ (Global Research, Press TV), July 14, 2011, www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=25625 

SORTIE

[sor·tie \'sȯr-tē, sȯr-'tē\ n [F, fr. MF, fr. sortir to go out, leave] (1778)
1 : a sudden issuing of troops from a defensive position against the enemy
2 : one mission or attack by a single plane
3 a : foray raid b : excursion expedition ‹diving ~s›
— sortie vi ] Britannica note

LIBYA

“Libya rebels killed trying to retake Brega — Opposition forces are poised to regain control of eastern oil town that has switched hands multiple times since March,” July 16, 2011, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/07/201171610179115527.html

“The final statement by the so-called Contact Group on Libya, meeting in the Turkish city of Istanbul, said the ‘Qaddafi regime no longer has any legitimate authority in Libya", and Gaddafi and certain members of his family must go.’

“Gaddafi rejected the Contact Group’s decision on Libyan television— In an audio speech, he told thousands of supporters in the town of Zlitan: ‘Trample on those recognitions, trample on them under your feet ... They are worthless.’

“U.S. recognizes Libyan opposition group  — Decision by 32-nation Contact Group expected to free up money for fighters seeking to end Muammar Gaddafi’s rule,” July 15, 2011, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/07/20117151507338126.html

“Western, Arab and African countries, plus international organizations, meeting in Istanbul on Friday, have agreed to formally recognize Libyan rebels fighting to topple Muammar Qaddafi, designating them the country's legitimate rulers.”

‘Libya Contact Group recognizes rebel council,” July 15, 2011, http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15238302,00.html

HORN OF AFRICA

“Somalia in turmoil — delivering aid in a lawless state,” http://www.trust.org/alertnet/crisis-centre/crisis/somalia-in-turmoil

“ACT Alert: Horn of Africa hit by worst drought in 60 years” (Source: member // Elisabeth Gouel), July 6. 2011, Somalia: The LWF/DWS Programme Coordinator for the Somali Refugee Program who was in Dadaab refugee camp yesterday communicated that ‘Here, things are changing by the hour and the situation has never been this bad,’ AlertNet: http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/act-alert-horn-of-africa-hit-by-worst-drought-in-60-years/

AFGHANISTAN and PAKISTAN

A new Great Game is evolving in Afghanistan,” July 15, 2011, http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,6573071,00.html

“Afghan soldier kills U.S.-led soldier,” July 16, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/189375.html

“Karzai brother assassin ‘close U.S. ally’” [source The Washington Post, Sardar Mohammad] July 16, 2011,  http://www.presstv.ir/detail/189378.html

“NATO jets violate Pakistani airspace,” July 16, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/189222.html

“Pakistanis protest US ‘meddling’ July 16, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/189303.html

“Clash in Pakistan leaves seven dead — Militant attacks in Pakistan are on the rise as pro-Taliban elements in the country have vowed to avenge the death of former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who the U.S. claims to have killed in an unauthorized military operation in Pakistan in early May,” July 15, 2011, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/189193.html

IRAQ

“Deadly blasts target Iraqi cities — Explosion during Shia pilgrimage in Karbala kills three, while another blast wounds six in Baghdad,” July 16, 2011, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/07/2011716728707355.html

YEMEN

“Yemen protesters form council to run country — Coalition of anti-government protesters says presidential council to run affairs until Saleh’s government is toppled,” July 16, 2011, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/07/2011716134720701985.html

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