Tuesday, July 28, 2015

We're one crucial step closer to seeing Tony Blair at The Hague

Desmond Tutu has helped us see the true nature of what the former prime minister did to Iraq and increased pressure for a prosecution
Blair at Leveson May 2012
Tony Blair arrives at the Royal Courts of Justice in London to give evidence on media ethics to the Leveson inquiry in May 2012. 
For years it seems impregnable, then suddenly the citadel collapses. An ideology, a fact, a regime appears fixed, unshakeable, almost geological. Then an inch of mortar falls, and the stonework begins to slide. Something of this kind happened over the weekend.
When Desmond Tutu wrote that Tony Blair should be treading the path to The Hague, he de-normalised what Blair has done. Tutu broke the protocol of power – the implicit accord between those who flit from one grand meeting to another – and named his crime. I expect that Blair will never recover from it.
The offence is known by two names in international law: the crime of aggression and a crime against peace. It is defined by the Nuremberg principles as the "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression". This means a war fought for a purpose other than self-defence: in other words outwith articles 33 and 51 of the UN Charter.
That the invasion of Iraq falls into this category looks indisputable. Blair's cabinet ministers knew it, and told him so. His attorney general warned that there were just three ways in which it could be legally justified: "self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UN security council authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case." Blair tried and failed to obtain the third.
His foreign secretary, Jack Straw, told Blair that for the war to be legal, "i) there must be an armed attack upon a state or such an attack must be imminent; ii) the use of force must be necessary and other means to reverse/avert the attack must be unavailable; iii) the acts in self-defence must be proportionate and strictly confined to the object of stopping the attack." None of these conditions were met. The Cabinet Office told him: "A legal justification for invasion would be needed. Subject to law officers' advice, none currently exists."
Without legal justification, the attack on Iraq was an act of mass murder. It caused the deaths of between 100,000 and a million people, and ranks among the greatest crimes the world has ever seen. That Blair and his ministers still saunter among us, gathering money wherever they go, is a withering indictment of a one-sided system of international justice: a system whose hypocrisies Tutu has exposed.
Blair's diminishing band of apologists cling to two desperate justifications. The first is that the war was automatically authorised by a prior UN resolution, 1441. But when it was discussed in the security council, both the American and British ambassadors insisted that 1441 did not authorise the use of force. The UK representative stated that "there is no 'automaticity' in this resolution. If there is a further Iraqi breach of its disarmament obligations, the matter will return to the council for discussion as required in paragraph 12." Two months later, in January 2003, the attorney general reminded Blair that "resolution 1441 does not authorise the use of military force without a further determination by the security council".
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Yet when Blair ran out of options, he and his lieutenants began arguing that 1441 authorised their war. They are still at it: on Sunday, Lord Falconer tried it out on Radio 4. Perhaps he had forgotten that it has been thoroughly discredited.
The second justification, attempted again by Blair this weekend, is that there was a moral case for invading Iraq. Yes, there was one. There was also a moral case for not invading Iraq, and this case was stronger.
But a moral case (and who has launched an aggressive war in modern times without claiming to possess one?) does not provide a legal basis. Nor was it the motivation for the attack. In September 2000, before they took office, a project run by future members of the Bush administration – including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz – produced a report which said the following: "While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." Their purpose, they revealed, was "maintaining American military pre-eminence". The motivation for deposing Saddam Hussein was no more moral than the motivation for arming and funding him, two decades before.
But while the case against Blair is strong, the means are weak. Twenty-nine people have been indicted in the international criminal court, and all of them are African. (Suspects in the Balkans have been indicted by a different tribunal). There's a reason for this. Until 2018 at the earliest, the court can prosecute crimes committed during the course of an illegal war, but not the crime of launching that war.
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Should we be surprised? Though the Nuremberg tribunal described aggression as "the supreme international crime", several powerful states guiltily resisted its adoption. At length, in 2010, they agreed that the court would have jurisdiction over aggression, but not until 2018 or thereafter. Though the offence has been recognised in international law for 67 years, the international criminal court (unlike the Rwanda and Yugoslavia tribunals, which hear cases from before they were established) will be able to try only crimes of aggression committed beyond that date.
The other possibility is a prosecution in one of the states (there are at least 25) which have incorporated the crime of aggression into their own laws. Perhaps Blair's lawyers are now working through the list and cancelling a few speaking gigs.
That the prospect of prosecution currently looks remote makes it all the more important that the crime is not forgotten. To this end, in 2010 I set up a bounty fund – www.arrestblair.org – to promote peaceful citizens' arrests of the former prime minister. People contribute to the fund, a quarter of which is paid out to anyone who makes an attempt which meets the rules. With our fourth payment last week, we've now disbursed more than £10,000. Our aim is the same as Tutu's: to de-normalise an act of mass murder, to keep it in the public mind and to maintain the pressure for a prosecution.
That looked, until this weekend, like an almost impossible prospect. But when the masonry begins to crack, impossible hopes can become first plausible, then inexorable. Blair will now find himself shut out of places where he was once welcome. One day he may find himself shut in.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/sep/03/tony-blair-the-hague-iraq-war

NWN: Good ! This bastard Blair ought to get the rope !

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

How to insult a "progressive"


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCis1U1nFR0#t=335

Anonymous said...

A Society Of Cowards.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8P90SAROKA

Anonymous said...

Trump’s Got A Trump Card.



http://www.realjewnews.com/?p=1047

Anonymous said...

UK border alert as 10,000 migrants mass in Calais as crisis reaches desperate levels

FERRY services between Dover and Calais have been suspended yet again as up to 10,000 migrants attempting to sneak into Britain have closed down the French port.


http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/593988/Border-alert-10-000-migrants-mass-Calais

Anonymous said...

FAMOUS LORDS.


http://aanirfan.blogspot.co.uk/search?updated-min=2015-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2016-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&max-results=50

Anonymous said...

IT’S OFFICIAL: Greece Joins Africa in IMF Ghetto of ‘Third World’ Nations.



http://21stcenturywire.com/2015/07/27/its-official-greece-joins-africa-in-the-imfs-ghetto-of-third-world-nations/

Anonymous said...

Greece: Tsipras Surrenders to Troika Bandits.


http://www.globalresearch.ca/greece-tsipras-surrenders-to-troika-bandits/5462271

Anonymous said...

Greek State Minister: ‘Resorting to Snap Elections Soon Is a Possibility’



http://greece.greekreporter.com/2015/07/26/greek-state-minister-resorting-to-snap-elections-soon-is-a-possibility/#sthash.WlOBENxw.dpuf

Anonymous said...

Western official confirms Turkey-ISIL secret oil business.



http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/07/27/422063/Turkey-ISIL-Syria-oil-Abu-Sayyaf

Anonymous said...

Time to derail this gravy train: Fury over cost of freeloading peers as size of Lords edges towards a thousand

Baron Sewel has admitted many members of House of Lords do 'f*** all'
Disgraced peer said some are picking up £300 daily allowance for 'no work'
Married father-of-four caught on camera snorting white substance off table
Footage taken during apparent drug-fulled sex session with two prostitutes

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3175460/Time-derail-gravy-train-Fury-cost-freeloading-peers-size-Lords-edges-1-000.html#ixzz3hE8GEGxC

Anonymous said...

(Tom Driberg, 1905-1976)

How did this promiscuous gay, Communist, Jewish, Satanist traitor and spy become a peer, Lord Bradwell, and "High Anglican churchman," Chair of the Labor Party (1957-58) and MP from 1942 to 1974?


http://henrymakow.com/#sthash.p1zqLPLs.dpuf

Anonymous said...

Farage demands Army action to sort Calais crisis as THOUSANDS of migrants storm Eurotunnel

THE British Army should be drafted to Calais to keep peace, Nigel Farage has demanded, after thousands of migrants stormed the Eurotunnel last night.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/594451/Calais-crisis-THOUSANDS-migrants-storm-Eurotunnel-night-anarchy

Anonymous said...

Europe ‘feels like Nazi Germany,’ says Zionist Whore Madonna.


http://www.rt.com/news/236027-madonna-europe-nazi-germany/

Anonymous said...

US Behind Migration Crisis in Europe - Putin



Read more: http://sputniknews.com/europe/20150727/1025109549.html#ixzz3hGilRRHJ

Anonymous said...

The Truth About Golden Dawn & The Crisis in Greece.


http://www.redicecreations.com/radio/2015/07/RIR-150727.php

Anonymous said...

Sir John Elvidge, the Enabling State and Scotland's "Named Person" scheme (U.N. Rights of the Child Convention)

https://youtu.be/Qo8Yc_epQhs
Sir John Elvidge speaking at NESC & Carnegie Enabling State seminar
(Notice how at start he frames the discussion by not going into whether the conceptual premises for his 'outcome' are factually correct or not).

Common Purpose/Carnegie plans for government as "single legal entity" based on "outcomes", that is, "the end justifies the means" (which of course it doesn't and that is why it's a tyrant's favoured modus operandi). Currently translated in Scotland into Named Person scheme which has led to massively increased intervention into families and taking children into care.

Break up the family / have the State take control of children?

http://www.carnegieuktrust.org.uk/getattachment/b90e80a4-a243-4f6b-bfb1-34b15c3cb7b3/The-Enabling-State---A-Discussion-Paper.aspx