Human rights and justice

It’s time overdue for the West to make up with Russia. The contretemps over Ukraine, now played out over five years, is too long. As the world goes it doesn’t deserve so much attention. Ukraine in landmass may be a big country but it’s population is only 44 million and its national income per head a quarter of Russia’s. The Ukrainian puppy’s tail has been wagging the West’s dog. It’s part of the West’s human rights commitment to stand up for the little man, but the Ukraine government’s behavior at the time of its great upheavals didn’t deserve the large amount of support it was given. Yes, it was bad that President Vladimir Putin sent his (disguised) troops into western and southern Ukraine. And equally wrong that Putin organized so fast a referendum in the Crimea on withdrawal from Ukraine that broke the norms of international law (the way the...

October 25, 2019 By Craig MurrayHistorian, human rights activist and former ambassador UPDATE I have received scores of requests to republish and/or translate this article. It is absolutely free to use and reproduce and I should be delighted if everybody does; the world should know what is being done to Julian. So far, over 200,000 people have read it on this blogsite alone and it has already been reproduced on myriad other sites, some with much bigger readerships than my own. I have seen translations into German, Spanish and French and at least extracts in Catalan and Turkish. I only ask that you reproduce it complete or, if edits are made, plainly indicate them. Many thanks. I was deeply shaken while witnessing yesterday’s events in Westminster Magistrates Court. Every decision was railroaded through over the scarcely heard arguments and objections of Assange’s legal team, by a magistrate who barely pretended...

By Chas W. Freeman, Jr October 9, 2019 There is currently a good deal of hysteria here in Washington about something called “authoritarianism” allegedly taking the offensive against democratic systems of government.  A century ago, imperialists, colonialists, fascists and communists did indeed articulate theories about their superiority to democracy and seek to impose autocratic systems of government on others.  In World War II and the Cold War, ideology played almost as large a role as geopolitics. Originally posted on Consortium News on October 4, 2019 here Today there are plenty of countries in the grips of autocratic regimes, but there are none propagandizing on behalf of autocracy or “authoritarianism.”  The international appeal of authoritarian systems of government, if any, derives from the extent to which they deliver prosperity and domestic tranquility to their citizens.  In the case of China, this is considerable – vastly superior so far to democratic India,...

You’ve hear a lot about the US withdrawal – never mentioned that it was an international law violation – from the nuclear deal with Iran (JCPOA). But you have probably not seen a couple of those Americans who are most responsible, on a day-to-day basis, for carrying out what is de facto an attempt to strangle Iran, its people and some of its leaders. In short, to undermine and in the long run destroy Iran. The two people are Sigal Mandelker of the US Treasury & Brian Hook, US State Department’s “Iran Action Group”. And the video below offer you insights in how they think – and how they justify what they do. It is a dialogue that took place recently at AIPAC. AIPAC is the acronym for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee which is one of the most influential and well-financed lobby groups in the world whose task...

Video comment The Leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution says Iran has totally lost hope in the European powers as they have failed to fulfill any of their promises under the 2015 nuclear deal. Iran’s PressTV asked me to comment on that which I do below. It is crystal clear that the European Union has not lived up to the spirit and letter of the nuclear deal JCPOA) with Iran of 2015. By not lifting the sanctions and cooperating with Iran – as long as Iran sticks to its commitments – it violates international law. Why? Because the JCPOA is embedded in a UN Security Council resolution and, thus, is a piece of international law. But the EU could have acted otherwise these four years – had it been a bit more ethical, intellectual and independent-minded. But it chose to accept US diktat about the secondary sanctions and, in consequence, has...

The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has long been controversial. Back in the days of the Soviet Union, Moscow protected communist and ultra-socialist dictators around the world from any attack on their human rights abuses. At the same time routine attacks on Israel, even the extravagant ones, were given free reign in the Council. Indeed, this still continues with the protagonists often unable in their minds to separate criticizing Israel, which deserves it, with criticizing the religion of Judaism, so-called anti-Semitism. (One should add that many Jews conflate the two as well.) This month a new controversy has flared. According to the Swiss organisation, UN Watch, the Human Rights Council is censoring a human rights complaint about the mass incarceration of Moslem Uighurs who live in northwest China. More than a hundred NGOs from around the world have co-sponsored the complaint. A letter has also been written by the same...

By Kevin Cashman and Cavin Kharrazian Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif recently visited the Group of Seven (G7) at the invitation of French president Emmanuel Macron, in what was seen as an overture to the Trump administration to negotiate over sanctions that have plagued the Iranian economy. Back in 2018, after months of increasingly hostile rhetoric, the US government withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or “Iran Deal,” and imposed a “maximum pressure” campaign that included unilateral, economy-wide sanctions. The Iran Deal was an agreement that provided Iran relief from existing sanctions in exchange for limits on its enrichment of uranium, among other concessions. These sanctions hampered trade between the European Union, whose leaders have sought to salvage the Iran Deal. Originally posted on September 1, 2019, on the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) here When President Trump reimposed sanctions in November 2018, it cut off...

Iran’s Foreign Minister Dr Mohammad Javad Zarif gave a speech at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). SIPRI is a highly respected research institute with a special place in the hearts of peace-lovers throughout the world. In a world where there are so many think thanks and organisations advocating war and conflict, the few peace institutes have a big role to play to fill the void and provide an alternative voice to the dominant clamour of corporate media that represent the establishment and its reliance upon conflict and the military-industrial complex. The sanctions on Iran violate international law The latest series of American extraterritorial sanctions on Iran have given rise to enormous hardships and food and medical shortages experienced by ordinary Iranians. The dispatch of military forces and warships to the Persian Gulf have brought the world to the verge of another devastating war in the Middle East that...

The essay below is a modified version of the 2018 Annual Lecture of the International State Crime Initiative (ISCI) of Queen Mary’s University London, given on March 22 of that year. Its original title was “Geopolitical Crimes: A Preliminary Jurisprudential Proposal.” The text of the lecture has been further revised since publication in the Spring 2019 issue of the Journal of State Crime.  Its major premise is that international criminal law has developed a framework for judging the criminal conduct of states with respect to armed conflict and in the relations of state/society relations, but is silent about even the most severe crimes of diplomacy. It is these ‘geopolitical crimes’ that are more responsible for inflicting mass suffering on civilian populations than are most of the forms of international behavior currently criminalized. I am aware that criminalizing acts of diplomacy is a revolutionary idea, but no less for that, deserving of commentary and debate....

Somebody once said that courage is when you do something today you wouldn’t dare doing yesterday. That is why I decided to express my opinion whereas normally I would choose – wisely – to restrain my lips. Have you ever had an opportunity to speak with your friends about migrants and mass immigration? Especially with your international friends living in different parts of the world and changing their residence like migrating birds? How do you explain your views if they differ from the usual, dominating or politically correct one? Or, how do you actually explain that you are against immigration without risking being categorized as a racist? During my latest visit to Switzerland, while conversing with a friend about many topics including politics, somehow we started discussing immigration. My friend’s opinion was that Swiss people may seem cold and distant, but in reality they are very open-minded and friendly to...

By Jonathan Cook June 3, 2019 By any reckoning, the claim made this week by al-Qaeda-linked fighters that they were targeted with chemical weapons by the Syrian government in Idlib province - their final holdout in Syria - should have been treated by the western media with a high degree of scepticism. That the US and other western governments enthusiastically picked up those claims should not have made them any more credible. Originally published on Counter Punch.org on May 29th, 2019 here Scepticism was all the more warranted from the media given that no physical evidence has yet been produced to corroborate the jihadists’ claims. And the media should have been warier still given that the Syrian government was already poised to defeat these al-Qaeda groups without resort to chemical weapons — and without provoking the predictable ire (yet again) of the west. But most of all scepticism was required because these latest claims arrive just as we...

Islamophobia can be said to refer to the way Islam is being alienated in society by other cultures through fear and distrust against people belonging to the Islamic faith. Muslims are often portrayed in an increasingly negative context as witnessed in media, legislation and public debates. By Idriss Jazairy June 1, 2019 Islam is often presented as an ‘isolated culture’ with its own distinct features, which are allegedly incompatible with certain values upheld in Western societies. It is the rise of such a polarizing context that results in growing fear against Muslims, prejudice of other cultures and the ‘us versus them’ paradigm. Originally published human-wrongs-watch.net Although Arabs are a Semitic people like the Jews themselves, the media know that anti-Semitism is banned for the latter but tolerated for the former in the name of freedom of expression. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US by individuals – who were...