International law

There are widespread reports circulating in the media that President Obama had not fully appreciated the political consequences of responding to a question at an August press conference that asked about the consequences of a possible future use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime. Obama replied that such a use, should it occur, would be to cross ‘a red line.’ Such an assertion was widely understood to be a threat by Obama either to launch air strikes or to provide rebel forces with major direct military assistance, including weaponry. There have been sketchy reports that Syria did make some use chemical weapons, as well as allegations that the reported use was ‘a false flag’ operation, designed to call Obama’s bluff. As the New York Times notes in a front page story on May 7th, Obama “finds himself in a geopolitical box, his credibility at stake with frustratingly few good...

Seeing in the Dark with Victoria Brittain As with the best of journalists, Victoria Brittain has spent a lifetime enabling us to see in the dark! Or more accurately, she has shined a bright light on those whose suffering has been hidden by being deliberately situated in one or another shadow land of governmental and societal abuse, whether local, national, or geopolitical in its animus. These patterns of abuse are hidden because whenever their visibility cannot be avoided, the liberal mythologizing of the decency of the modern democratic state suffers a staggering blow. In recent years this unwanted visibility has permanently tarnished the human rights credentials of the United States due to the spectacular exposés of the horrifying pictures of prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq or various reports of grotesque treatment of Guantanomo detainees. As with Bradley Manning and Wikileaks, the U.S. Government should be embarrassed...

“The weapons of choice in (today’s) new conflicts are not big-ticket items like long-range missiles, tanks, and fighter planes, but small and frighteningly accessible weapons ranging from handguns, carbines, and assault rifles on up to machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and shoulder-fired missiles,” explained William Hartung more than a decade ago in an article entitled The New Business of War. “Because they are cheap, accessible, durable, and lightweight, small arms have been a primary factor in the transformation of warfare from a series of relatively well- defined battles between ‘two opposing forces wearing uniforms’ to a much more volatile, anarchic form of violence,” says Hartung, now director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy in Washington DC. “More often than not, today’s wars are multisided affairs in which militias, gangs, and self-anointed “rebels” engage in campaigns of calculated terror, civilian targets are fair game, and the...

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> US presidential candidate Jimmy Carter described arms sales as a “cancer”. But once in office Carter achieved little in controlling them. In President Bill Clinton’s first term Amnesty International questioned the US government about the use of American military helicopters and armoured vehicles involved in human rights abuses in Turkey. Under pressure from Congress the State Department compiled a report on human rights violations by the Turkish armed forces. It concluded there was “highly credible” evidence that US-supplied arms and jet fighters had been used to subdue Kurdish villages. Later, in 1996, the US temporarily suspended the sale of advanced attack helicopters. But two years later there were fresh reports that hundreds more armoured vehicles had been sold. The US Defence Secretary visited Turkey and reportedly lobbied on behalf of American companies wishing to co-produce advanced helicopters there. In that same year an American company sold 10,000 electric shock...

The Prisoners’ Diaries: Palestinian Voices from the Israeli Gulag Edited by Norma Hashim, in close collaboration with the Centre for Political & Development Studies, Gaza, 2013. Download the pdf version of Prison Diaries for USD1.99. The printed book will be available at www.palestinemall.net from 17 April 2013. There are many moving passages that can be found in these excerpts from prison diaries and recollections of 22 Palestinians. What is most compelling is how much the material expresses the shared concerns of these prisoners despite great variations in writing style and background. A few keywords dominate the texts: pain, God or Allah, love, dream, homeland, steadfastness, tears, freedom, dream, prayer. My reading of these diaries exposed me to the distinct personal struggles of each prisoner to survive with as much dignity as possible in a dank and poorly lit circumstances of isolation, humiliation, acute hostility on the part of the prison...

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> Dateline: Doha, Qatar. It has always been one of the mysteries of history why it is that the Muslim world of the Middle East was once so far ahead of Europe in science, medicine, astronomy and mathematics yet by the 16th century started to fall behind. Not only did most of it never industrialize, if it hadn’t been for nearly all its countries having oil in abundance they would still be living in the poverty and torpor that was their lot at the beginning of the twentieth century. Even today as modernism takes over and cities are built like this one and its neighbours, reaching for the sky, the foundations are industries of the newer kind – tourism and banking. According to the UN’s annual Human Development Report most of them, Abu Dhabi apart, compared with countries of equal income per head, are low down in the world rankings...

It was master-crafted as an ingratiating speech by the world’s most important leader and the government that has most consistently championed Israel’s cause over the decades. Enthusiastically received by the audience of Israeli youth, and especially by liberal Jews around the world. Despite the venue, President Obama’s words in Jerusalem on March 21st seemed primarily intended to clear the air somewhat in Washington. Obama may now have a slightly better chance to succeed in his second legacy-building presidential term despite a deeply polarized U.S. Congress, and a struggling American economy if assessed from the perspective of workers’ distress rather than on the basis of robust corporate profits.

The Democrats who voted to support the war and rationalized that vote by making false claims about Iraq’s WMD programs – a minority of Democrats, but much over-represented in Democratic leadership councils – were responsible for allowing the Bush administration to get away with lying about Iraq’s alleged threat. Here on the tenth anniversary of the Iraq War, it is important to remember that it was not just those in the Bush White House who were responsible for the tragedy, but leading members of Congress as well, some of whom are now in senior positions in the Obama administration. Continue reading at truthout

This March 19 marks the 10th anniversary of the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The U.S. war and occupation has resulted in the deaths of up to half a million Iraqis, the vast majority of whom are civilians, leaving over 600,000 orphans. More than 1.3 million Iraqis have been internally displaced and nearly twice that many have fled into exile. Almost 4,500 Americans were killed and thousands more have received serious physical and emotional injuries which will plague them for the rest of their lives.

After a decade of combat, casualties, massive displacement, persisting violence, enhanced sectarian tension and violence between Shi’ias and Sunnis, periodic suicide bombings, and autocratic governance, a negative assessment of the Iraq War as a strategic move by the United States, United Kingdom, and a few of their secondary allies, including Japan, seems near universal. Not only the regionally destabilizing outcome, including the blowback effect of perversely adding weight to Iran’s overall diplomatic influence, but the reputational costs in the Middle East associated with an imprudent, destructive, and failed military intervention make the Iraq War the worst American foreign policy disaster since its defeat in Vietnam in the 1970s, and undertaken with an even less persuasive legal, moral, and political rationale. Most geopolitical accounting assessments do not bother to consider the damage to the United Nations and international law arising from an aggressive use of force in flagrant violation of the...

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> Dateline: Phnom Penh, Cambodia, March 5th 2013 Cambodia has lain for too long under the black umbrella of its past. But Cambodia is waking up, has looked the evil one in its eye and, re-born, found its strength. Cambodia has been to hell and back – 2 million of its people killed out of population of 8 million, with 500,000 of them executed, the consequence of a fanatical communist movement, the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot and a group of henchmen now being tried in the UN War Crimes Court. (Pol Pot himself is dead.) The Khmer Rouge violently took power in 1975 and fell in 1979. They wanted a classless society. They abolished money, property and religious practices. Family relationships were criticised and people were forbidden from even showing the slightest affection. The work day in the fields was 12 hours long without pause. Torture and the...

Iran and the P5-plus-1, which includes the United States, will meet again on 26 February in Kazakhstan. This is the first time that the two sides will meet in an atmosphere of continuing mutual suspicion since the third round of talks held in Moscow on 18-19 June 2012 ended in stalemate. Iran believes that the West, particularly the United States, is using the talks as a pretext to increase the sanctions until Tehran bends to its will; whereas Washington holds that Iran is prolonging the talks in order to continue its uranium enrichment with the aim of producing a nuclear weapon. The fact of the matter is that neither side is sincere in their remarks and both sides are engaged in a cat and mouse game trying to use the talks for domestic purposes and for pursuing other goals, rather than finding a mutually acceptable solution to Iran’s nuclear program.