Category: Crimes Against Humanity

I Hope That This Is False, but I Fear That It Is True

No Comments

Well, the word is out on the street, or at least the WSJ has heard, that Bush and His Evil Minions™ don’t need to pardon themselves, because the Democrats will sweep this all under the rug for him.

Read the article carefully. It doesn’t say it straight out, but with lines like:

While Vice President-elect Joseph Biden suggested interest during the campaign in pursuing a criminal probe, Brooke Anderson, spokeswoman for the Obama transition office issued a statement Monday saying, “No decisions about interrogation issues will be made before the full national security and legal teams are in place.”

It leaves very little to the imagination. They are soft pedaling this.

No Secretaries, no Under-Secretaries, no Generals, probably not even any Colonels. Maybe a Major or 2 prosecuted, but mostly enlisted men and NCOs being prosecuted for things that they were told to do by superiors.

A continuation of the Bush policy.

It’s just too icky that the previous administration are, you know, a bunch of f$ck&ng war criminals who launched the most brazen assault on the Constitution since Jefferson Davis became a bitch for slavery.

Hamdan to Be Repatriated to Yemen

No Comments

We capture him, we torture him for 7 years, we put him in front of what was intended to be a Kangaroo court, which promptly rules that Salim Ahmed Hamdan was not a terrorist mastermind, he was just a driver, and he should be sentenced to time served plus enough extra time to make sure that Bush and His Evil Minions&trade are out of office.

Well, it looks like Bush has given up on having his trophy, because Hamdan is to be shipped back to Yemen in the next few days.

Good for him, but this exercise that could best be described as Kafkaesque has harmed the United States and its interest at every step in the process, all because authorizing torture is the only way that Dick Cheney can get a hard on.

Zimbabwe Update

No Comments

Well, Annan and Carter are calling for the SADC to get off their tuchases and do something, which is unlikely to happen, since they’ve already tried to fob off a phony deal on the MDC.

Thabo Mbeki and most of the leadership of the Southern African Development Community do not want just resolution, because it’s a gun pointed to most of their heads, since much of their opposition comes from the trade union movement too, so a victory will embolden them, which is why they suggested a fictitious “joint ministry” for interior, which is one the primary tools used by Mugabe to maintain control through harassment, violence, and intimidation.

In the meantime, the MDC says that any deal it signs must involve real and profound power, which is not surprising.

ZANU-PF is so blatantly corrupt that they changed an agreed upon document out before signing. (link)

They also note that the illegal detention of MDC activists by agents of the ZANU-PF do not give them cause to believe that talks would be worthwhile.

On the brighter side, if there can be said to be a brighter side in Zimbabwe, it appears taht the general populace has gotten so desperate that they are fighting back against Zimbabwean troops:

Hundreds of angry Zimbabweans attacked soldiers carrying out a crackdown on illegal foreign currency trading in the capital Harare on Monday in a further sign of the country’s collapse.

The crowd hurled stones at the troops and chanted “beat the soldiers,” accusing them of hitting and robbing people during the currency operation.

On the darker side, there has been an outbreak of cholera, killing at least 500, and the response of Mugabe and his associates has been to shut down the municipal water supply, which is more like trying to put a fire out with gasoline than anything I could possibly imagine.

Seriously, while Gordon Brown is calling Iceland a terrorist state, the ZANU-PF government of Zimbabwe is a terrorist government, and a declaration by the US and UK, with the associated freezing of assets held by high level government officials might do something.

These folks are engaging in a terror campaign to maintain power.

5 Gitmo Detainees Ordered Released

No Comments

This ruling is significant for a number of reasons, not the least of which that the judge used very strong language to express his displeasure with the government:

Ruling from the bench, Judge Richard Leon of U.S. District Court in Washington said that the information gathered on the men had been sufficient to hold them for intelligence purposes, but was not strong enough in court.

“To rest on so thin a reed would be inconsistent with this court’s obligation,” he said. He directed that the five men be released “forthwith” and urged the government not to appeal.

Also note that Judge Leon is a major wingnut, so this is not some wild eyed liberal “legislating from the bench.”

News Flash: When You Torture Someone for a Few Years, They Frequently Go Nuts

No Comments

A judge has determined that Aafia Siddiqui is mentally unfit for trial.

Not surprising, considering that she was apprehended by the Pakistani ISI, and, along with three children were handed over to American authorities about 5 years ago, and held with recourse to…anything. (JFGI)

I have no knowledge of what was done to her, but it is unquestionably clear that she was held by Pakistani and/or US authorities over that period, and I’m sure that it was not a tea party.

The War Nerd on Eastern Congo

No Comments

His only posts every few weeks typically, and when he covers conflict, there is a glee that is a bit unsettling (he admits it himself), but he knows and understands conflict, both on the tactical level and the social level, to a degree I have not seen elsewhere.

Case in point, his latest post on the ongoing conflict in eastern congo:

Every word, every disgusting damn word, of these BBC and Guardian stories is bullsh@#. actually makes me sick, listening to these stupid lies over and over. The reason Nkunda’s little army (estimates range from 5000 to 10000 men) advanced into Eastern Congo this week is that the Hutu gangs were getting a little too aggressive about jumping ethnic-Tutsi villages in eastern Congo, killing the men and kidnapping women and girls as sex slaves. Nkunda knows very well nobody else will protect the Tutsi, for the simple reason nobody ever has. So he went in to do it himself.

(expletives expurged mine)

Read the whole thing, because it’s a wonderful background on the whole region, Rwanda included, and it makes it clear that the continued operation of Refugee camps by the UN and NGOs long after it was clear that almost all of these people could return home without any major retribution is the real problem here, and not Nkunda.

Quoting again:

The rest fled into the forests of Eastern Congo. They’re the “refugees” that [BBC Reporter] Orla Guerin feels so sorry for: the frickin’ monsters who did their best to kill the whole Tutsi population of Rwanda in ninety days, like they were on one of those timed shopping sprees.

As I’ve said before, I lost most of my respect for the NGO’s, and much in the way of the UN’s refugee apparatus, when they signed off on running concentration camps for the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

If there were no refugees, they would not have a job, so they do their best to make sure that there are refugees.

Go read the whole thing.

Blame the NGOs for the Dead

No Comments

Well, right now, there is something very close to a full blown war in the Congo going on, and the proximate cause is the presence of Hutu militias, largely led by the same men who directed the Rwandan Genocide, which is the Causus Belli for Gen. Laurent Nkunda, and his militia.

This problem has two sources, the original Rwandan Genocide, and the actions of NGOs like Oxfam, the World Food Program, CARE, the International Rescue Committee, Caritas Internalis, etc.

They NGOs provided food and support to camps on an indefinite basis, even when it was clear that they were run internally as military bases, so long as no one wore a uniform or carried a gun when in line for food.

While it was understandable in the context of the immediate crisis, it is less so on a continuing basis, particularly when it was clear that the militias in the camp were preventing refugees from returning home.

In so doing they took the tragedy of the Rwandan Genocide, and multiplied it by many times, creating death and warfare across Zaire, later the Democratic Republic of Congo.

As callous as it sounds, if they had had a firm end date in the 6 month range after the refugee flow, everyone but the perpetrators of the Genocide would have benefited, but that’s not the organizational imperative of the NGOs.

It was short sighted, and destructive, just as was their signing off on supporting Serbian concentration camps in Kosovo before the NATO invasion, but without refugees, these organizations have no purpose.

Think about that the next time you are contacted for a donation.

Benedict May Freeze Pius XII Cannonization

No Comments

We have a report that Benedict implied in an informal chat with Rabbi David Rosen.

Seeing as how there is a lot of dispute about Pius XII and what he did, and did not do regarding the Holocaust, and the Vatican has refused to released records, this is a refreshing change.

That being said, this is probably more about John Paul II than it is about Pius XII.

It appears (from the Wiki) that somewhere around half of all saints ever made were made by JPII, and my guess is that Benedict is looking at shutting down the pipeline that was left him, because he finds it excessive.

HRW Alleges Georgian War Crimes in South Ossetia

No Comments

It’s a BBC radio broadcast (at link), but the money quote is:

Research by the organisation Human Rights Watch [HRW] ints to indiscriminate use of force by the Georgian military and the possible deliberate targeting of civilians.

Indiscriminate use of force is a violation of the Geneva Convention and serious violations are considered to be war crimes.

No big surprise here, this was obvious in the first few hours of the war, before, you know, the Russians eradicated the Georgian military.

It marks a turn around for HRW though. In the early days following the war, they accused the Russians of using cluster bombs….Until it was revealed that the physical evidence that they had was all ofS weapons.

Bush Goes to Jail

No Comments

Or more accurately, he would in any system that has the real possibility for justice and honesty, so notes Dan Froomkin, who makes the point that it is now clear that Bush specifically authorized torture in a memo to the CIA.

Here is hoping that Obama goes after Bush and his Evil Minions ™, because healing by allowing the evil to skate, as was done by Gerald Ford with Richard Nixon, only encourages further evil.

To Be Placed in the Hold for Future War Crimes Trials File

No Comments

Newly released documents make it clear that members of the Bush administration held specific discussion to specifically authorize torture by the CIA, and Condoleeza Rice has admitted to this in a written statement to the Senate.

I do not believe that we will be able to hold a fair trial in the US, so send them to the Hague, even though the death penalty is off the table there.

Hamdan Trial at Guantanamo

No Comments

The prosecution wanted the instructions to the jury changed, but withdrew the request when it was clear that this would result in a mistrial. Furthermore, the judge said that they had waited too long.

The judge instructed the jury that, in order to find him guilty on the charge of transporting the missiles, “they must find the missiles were intended for use against protected people — civilians not involved in hostilities, soldiers removed from combat by illness or capture, or religious or medical personnel.”

Since at the time of his capture, the only aircraft flying in Afghanistan were US and coalition aircraft, it seems to me that this is innocent.

The prosecution objected to this instruction, they wanted the judge to, “Tell jurors that any attempt by an ‘unlawful enemy combatant’ to kill a U.S. soldier in combat is a war crime,” which is a novel definition of a war crime, and, as the defense put it, “Then the United States committed a war crime by providing missiles to mujahideen forces who used them against the Soviet military in Afghanistan in the 1990s.” (date wrong in the article. It was the 1980s.)

These really are Kangaroo courts, and I think that the prosecutors may very well be committing a war crime, or a crime against humanity, by working under these rules.

Finally, the military managed to create this homage to Kafka:

Hamdan was allowed an hour-long phone call with his wife in Yemen on Monday evening, a Guantanamo official said. Defense attorneys said they tried to get permission for her to attend the trial but were refused on grounds that she is married to a terrorism suspect.

(emphasis mine)

We really need to prosecute the entire chain of war crimes from top to bottom when Bush and His Evil Minions™ are out of power, from the lowliest officer (the enlisted men have been prosecuted) to the very highest authority.

Karadzic: Holbrooke Promised No War Crimes Trial

No Comments

Between a Karadzic and Holbrooke, I won’t venture a guess on who to trust, as I’ve never believed that Holbrooke’s casual slip about Valerie Plame was unintentional.

Holbrook could have promised this, or he could have not promised this, or he could have said it in a private moment with no intention of following through with his promise.

I don’t know, but I do not trust Richard Holbrooke.

Thabo Mbeki Can Kiss My Shiny Metal Ass

No Comments

Well, it appears that Thabo Mbeki, the friend of brutal genocidal rulers everywhere, is “concerned” about the possibility of crimes against humanity indictments against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, because it might make negotiations more difficult.

Once again, we see that there is no tyrant, no mater how homicidal, that Mbeki does not feel compelled to embrace.

He spent years claiming that HIV does not cause AIDS, and when public pressure required a reversal on that, he decided to create his own, “save the tyrants,” charity.

African Union Pimps for Sudanese War Criminals

No Comments

They are asking for the Security Council to delay any investigation for 12 months.

The official reason is because they believe that an indictment would “harm peace efforts”, but I think that it’s because there are other regimes out there, and I’m not limiting myself to Mugabe, who would be subject to possible prosecution from the International Criminal Court.

It appears that the Darfur rebels understand this too:

Djibril Bassole, the joint U.N.-AU Darfur mediator made his first visit to Sudan on Sunday to try to revive a stalled peace process. But Khalil Ibrahim, head of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), said his rebel group would no longer recognise AU efforts to mediate a peace process.

“The African Union is a biased organisation and is protecting dictators and neglecting the African people,” Ibrahim, head of JEM, the most militarily powerful rebel group, told Reuters from Darfur.

Sherif Harir, a senior member of the Sudan Liberation Army Unity faction, also told Reuters that for any AU mediation to succeed, it would have to answer why it had taken such a stance.

“The AU by so doing has indicated to the people of Darfur that they can die and it’s not as important as protecting a president who has taken power by military coup,” he said.

Of course, it’s not like the African Union had much credibility left anyway.