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War and Terror: Global Eye: Gut Check
Friday, April 22 @ 20:57:00 UTC |  by Chris Floyd, themoscowtimes.com
With fresh indictments last week, the UN oil-for-food scandal took an unexpected turn into the Labyrinth -- the tangled skein of war profiteering and state terrorism that has seen the Bush Family's lust for blood money emerge in three of the darkest criminal episodes in modern American history: Iran-Contra, Iraqgate and the BCCI affair.
Texas oil baron David Chalmers of Bayoil and his partners were hit with criminal charges for allegedly cutting deals with Saddam Hussein in the notorious skim operation that outflanked UN sanctions and diverted funds intended for humanitarian relief. Prosecutors were shocked -- shocked! -- to find such collusion and corruption in the oil business.
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World Focus: U.S. Threatens to Cut Aid over International Criminal Court
Saturday, November 27 @ 08:50:12 UTC | Colum Lynch, Washington Post
November 26, 2004, sfgate.com
UNITED NATIONS -- The Republican-controlled Congress has stepped up its campaign to curtail the power of the International Criminal Court, threatening to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in economic aid to governments that refuse to sign immunity accords shielding U.S. personnel from being surrendered to the tribunal.
The move marks an escalation in U.S. efforts to ensure that the first world criminal court can never judge American citizens for crimes committed overseas. More than two years ago, Congress passed the American Servicemembers' Protection Act, which cut millions of dollars in military assistance to many countries that would not sign the Article 98 agreements, as they are known, that vow not to transfer to the court U.S. nationals accused of committing war crimes abroad.
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World Focus: The Milosevic Trial
Wednesday, September 22 @ 17:00:58 UTC | Up Against These Laws, International Law (And Milosevic) Haven't A Chance
By Stephen Gowans
It would be naïve to expect there can be anything other than a guilty verdict in the Milosevic case, if only because the trial – its wheels set in motion by the same parties whose interest in dismembering Yugoslavia eventually led to a Democratic President's drive to war in the spring of 1999 -- has served a patently political purpose from day one.
Everything about the tribunal, from its genesis to its legal status to the prosecution's failure to adduce evidence or testimony that Milosevic ordered war crimes, much less a genocide – stinks.
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War and Terror: Pre-Emptive Killing
Friday, November 21 @ 17:19:05 UTC | by Charley Reese
November 17, 2003
Former Secretary of State George Shultz talked with Charlie Rose a few weeks ago and said this, or words to this effect, in defense of pre-emptive war.
"Well, if you knew someone intended to kill you and had the means to do so, you wouldn't wait until they attacked. That would be silly," said the grand pooh-bah of the Eastern Establishment.
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Africa Focus: UN says war in Congo is fuelled by foreign firms
Friday, October 31 @ 07:50:09 UTC | By David Usborne in New York
31 October 2003, Independent.co.uk
A panel of experts renewed its warning to the United Nations yesterday that the illegal exploitation of precious minerals in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is continuing to fuel conflict in the country.
The Security Council was due last night to discuss a fourth and possibly final report from the panel that has been investigating the parts played by scores of foreign and African-based companies in helping, wittingly or otherwise, to perpetuate the war that has already cost the lives of more than 2.5 million people.
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Invasion of Iraq: A Tribute To Weapons Inspectors
Tuesday, October 07 @ 22:10:35 UTC | The UN knew full well that no WMD would be found in Iraq
by Isabel Hilton, The Guardian
Even before Robin Cook's revelations that Tony Blair went to war without believing in the threat from Saddam's phantom arsenal, the air had been leaking out of the inflated official claims. No longer was he a dictator with concealed WMD. Instead he had morphed into someone with weapons programmes, and his lethal strategic arsenal was downgraded to the unquantified potential of unidentified battlefield munitions that "military planning" determined could be ready for use in a 45-minute time frame.
But this new formulation still allows for retrograde elasticity: "Military planning" could imply plans that are current, future or obsolete, and we still do not know which battlefield weapons it refers to. But seven months on from the attack on Iraq, it is time to stop and pay tribute to the system that the US administration so energetically derided, determined as it was to apply military solutions to a political problem: the UN weapons inspections process.
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War and Terror: Who Benefits from Lifting the Sanctions on Iraq?
Sunday, May 25 @ 02:06:17 UTC | By STANDARD SCHAEFER
U.S. Ambassador John D. Negroponte called the lifting of sanctions "the turning point of a historical page that should brighten the future of a people and a region." It simply will not do so. Thirteen years of sanctions has drastically altered the fundamental nature of Iraq's economy; history has shown repeatedly that the infrastructure of economic warfare always outlives the war itself. To distract attention from this fact, representatives to the UN from the United States continued to chastise Saddam Hussein for diverting money from the "oil for food program" to his personal bank accounts.
No doubt Hussein is guilty, but this is really beside the point. The United States, with its long history of love-hate relationships with dictators, should know by now that dictators welcome sanctions and embargos.
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War and Terror: The U.N. Is Irrelevant
Monday, March 17 @ 11:49:48 UTC | by Charley Reese
It's typical of the Bush team's polemical tactics to try to dismiss the United Nations as irrelevant if it doesn't buckle to President Bush's demands for an instant war against Iraq. It's also nonsense.
As for the hoopla about vetoes, the United States is second only to the Soviet Union in exercising the U.N. veto. The score card, compiled by the BBC News, is: the Soviet Union/Russia, 120 vetoes (only two of those since the Soviet Union collapsed); the United States, 76 vetoes — 35 used to block criticism of Israel (that old double standard has the United States in its grip); the United Kingdom, 32 vetoes, of which 23 were votes cast with the United States; France, 18 vetoes, 13 of which were in support of the United States' position; and China, 5 vetoes.
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War and Terror: Inspectors should not flee Iraq for US to attack
Friday, March 14 @ 10:38:45 UTC | A Decent Proposal Hans Blix Conscience Should Now Allow Him To Refuse
by Ben Roberts
In this climate of impending war in Iraq everyone is offering proposals that range
from the ridiculous to the sublime. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Dossier
for Dummies guy, is offering a proposal demanding more interviews with Iraqi
scientists outside of Iraq. Non compliance with his proposal would give clearance
for military action. The United States is offering a proposal to delay an attack
deadline to March 17 when Hans Blix submits a report, but insists that a month
delay is, in Ari Fleischer's words, 'a non starter.' Various leaders of Gulf states,
who preside over repressive and non democratic monarchies are proposing that
Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, abandon Iraq and seek refuge in another country.
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World Focus: It's about time the UNHQ be relocated
Sunday, March 09 @ 17:47:18 UTC | By Davy de Verteuil
The UNHQ (United Nations Headquarters) should be relocated to another country including its functionaries and responsibilities.
The UN is too heavily dependant on/in the United States and as such has lost its appeal as a serious just and protective broker and a guarantor for the function and obligations towards its member states and officials.
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War and Terror: Is The UN Setting Up Iraq For a Bloodbath By American Forces?
Tuesday, March 04 @ 01:38:37 UTC | by Ben Roberts
In Persian Gulf War l, daddy Bush had the United Nations demand that Iraq end
it's invasion of Kuwait, lay down their weapons, and leave. They did, and were
promptly attacked and slaughtered on what was called the Highway of Death, by
US forces. In case you don't recall, there were vehicles and bodies littering that
major transportation highway out of Kuwait. Dogs were seen scavenging bodies
many days after. Daddy Bush came out smiling and enthusiastic announcing,
'Finally we've got the monkey of Vietnam off our back?' General Swarzhkoff was
rosy cheeked and just as elated as he described pinpoint bombing and surgical
strikes. One is left wondering how many Iraqis died, and how many children
became orphans. When asked about this, Swarzkoff's smile promptly vanished
as he told America and the world, 'We'll never know.' Really. The bodies on that
highway, the cars blasted by American F-16 fighter jets while fleeing Iraq on the
road to Aqaba in Jordan, and the destruction of the Rashid Hotel in Baghdad
crammed with Iraqi civilians, tell a different gruesome story. Now we face the
prospect of Gulf War ll, and it seems that the UN is once again unwittingly or
deliberately setting up Iraqis for a bloodbath by US forces. Here's what I mean:
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War and Terror: The old and the ancient world confront Powell with new realities
Saturday, February 15 @ 20:08:33 UTC | Gary Younge in New York, The Guardian
The Russians smiled, the Chinese nodded, the French relaxed, the British froze in solemn contemplation and the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, stared sourly into the empty space where his now discredited case for war had shone only last week.
The answer to the question of whether the world was moving towards war or peace was written on the faces of the permanent members of the UN security council yesterday, following the report of Hans Blix.
The body language around him was precisely the opposite to the last time he spoke, two weeks ago, when his report had been far more critical of Iraq than most had expected. Yesterday, as he suggested that, while problems remained, improvements had been made and solutions may yet emerge, the doves cooed and the hawks delayed their swoop.
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War and Terror: A UN mandate does not make war on Iraq right!
Saturday, December 28 @ 19:17:11 UTC | www.transnational.org
By Jorgen Johansen, TFF Associate, Director of the Centre for Peace Studies at Tromsø, University, Norway, and Jan Oberg, TFF director
A UN mandate does not turn war into peace
Governments, editors, commentators and even supporters of the United Nations currently express the view that a war against Iraq is, or will be, acceptable if the United States and others "go back" to the Security Council and obtain a "UN mandate" before they attack.
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World Focus: World Body Dogged By Double Standards, U.N. Chief Admits
Thursday, September 26 @ 07:38:59 UTC | By Thalif Deen, IPS
UNITED NATIONS - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Monday that the world body has far too long been "dogged" by charges it has two different political yardsticks to measure violations of Security Council resolutions.
Asked pointedly about the "double-standard" in punishing Iraq for violating resolutions while ignoring Israel's transgressions, Annan told reporters: "I don't think I have given a single press conference in the Middle East or an interview with a Middle East journalist where the question of double standards has not come up."
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