They hung Keitel didn't they? (part 2)

"To say they are rewriting the rulebook implies that there isn't already a rulebook" said Jameel Jaffer, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Center for Democracy. "But what they are already doing is rejecting a rulebook – of international law – that has been in place since [the second world war]."

The Guardian, November 25, 2012 

Common Article 3, Geneva Conventions 1949

Art. 3. In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the followingprovisions: 

(1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.

To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:(a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;(b) taking of hostages;(c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;(d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.

(2) The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for. 
An impartial humanitarian body, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, may offer its services to the Parties to the conflict.
The Parties to the conflict should further endeavour to bring into force, by means of special agreements, all or part of the other provisions of the present Convention.
The application of the preceding provisions shall not affect the legal status of the Parties to the conflict.

Commentary, Common Article 3

Sentences and executions without previous trial are by definition open to error. "Summary justice" may be effective on account of [p.40] the fear it arouses, but it adds too many innocent victims to all the other innocent victims of the conflict. All civilized nations surround the administration of justice with safeguards aimed at eliminating the possibility of judicial errors. The Convention has rightly proclaimed that it is essential to do this even in time of war. We must be very clear about one point; it is only "summary" justice which it is intended to prohibit. No sort of immunity is given to anyone under this provision. There is nothing in it to prevent a person presumed to be guilty from being arrested and so placed in a position where he can do no further harm; and it leaves intact the right of the State to prosecute, sentence and punish according to the law.

World becoming isolated from Canadian reality

New York, November 29, 2012 - Associated Press

"I'm very disappointed," said a disappointed John Baird. "Canada is disappointed."

Despite Baird going out of his way to reveal Canada's position on the Middle East peace process to the UN General Assembly, he felt frustrated that the message didn't seem to be getting through.

"They don't get it," he said.  "The world is in danger of losing touch with Canadian foreign policy."

If that were to happen, a Canadian solution to the Iranian crisis would be even more remote.

John Baird speaks to SRO General Assembly

The only difference between Obama and Morsi...

...is Obama's getting away with it.

Egyptian protesters attend an opposition rally in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2012. More than 100,000 people flocked to Cairo's central Tahrir square on Tuesday, chanting against Egypt's Islamist president in a powerful show of strength by the opposition demanding Mohammed Morsi revoke edicts granting himself near autocratic powers.(AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

.....or maybe not.

1984

April 4, 1984.  Last night to the flicks.  All war films.  One very good one of a ship full of refugees being bombed somewhere in the Mediterranean.  Audience much amused by shots of a great huge fat man trying to swim away with a helicopter after him, first you saw him wallowing along in the water like a porpoise, then you saw him through the helicopters gunsights, then he was full of holes and the sea round him turned pink and he sank as suddenly as though the holes had let in the water. then you saw a lifeboat full of children with a helicopter hovering over it. There was a middleaged woman might have been a jewess sitting up in the bow with a little boy about three years old in her arms.  little boy screaming with fright and hiding his head between her breasts as if he was trying to burrow right into her and the woman putting her arms round him and comforting him although she was blue with fright herself, all the time covering him up as much as possible as if she thought her arms could keep the bullets off him. then the helicopter planted a 20 kilo bomb in among them terrific flash and the boat went all to matchwood. then there was a wonderful shot of a child’s arm going up up up right up into the air a helicopter with a camera in its nose must have followed it up and there was a lot of applause from the party seats but a woman down in the prole part of the house suddenly started kicking up a fuss and shouting they didn’t oughter of showed it not in front of kids they didn’t it aint right not in front of kids it aint until the police turned her turned her out I don’t suppose anything happened to her nobody cares what the proles say typical prole reaction they never -

George Orwell
1984

Middle East mother and child

Susan Rice for Secretary of State

Dogmatix

Yes, of course.  Susan Rice as Secretary of State.  That leaves open the post of Ambassador to the United Nations which will go to - let me guess - Anne-Marie Slaughter!  Perfect.  The one-two punch of R2P, conveniently sabotaging the Security Council when that organization fails to be consistent with American mythology, particularly the American "shining-city-on-the-hill, leader-of-the-free-world" mythology.  

Let's talk about Security Council Resolution 1970 on Libya that was passed by an unprecedented vote of 15-0, authorizing sanctions, and a referral of Libya's leaders to the International Criminal Court, as well as various economic sanctions.  It was unprecedented and would have set the precedent of the ICC being a standard of international justice agreed to by the US, China, and Russia.  Robert H. Jackson would rise up from his grave - Holy Nuremberg!

Robert H. Jackson, a former Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, also said...to the Canadian Bar Association in 1949, in his address entitled Nuremberg In Retrospect: Legal Answer To International Lawlessness: "...I do think that we have forever laid to rest in the minds of statesmen the vicious assumptions that all war must be regarded as legal and just, and that while the law imposes personal responsibility for starting a street riot, it imposes none for inciting and launching a world war." 

Instead of recognizing this precedent, the weasel Susan Rice then promoted Resolution 1973 that authorized a "no-fly zone" that had 5 significant abstentions including Germany, and then went on to a NATO crusader mission to blow the shit out of Libya, and more particularly, Ghadaffi however you want to spell it.  We are living with the result, the most advertised of which is single digit casualties in Benghazi, - but of course American casualties - and the least advertised being disruption of north Africa extending into Mali, as well as the loss of thousands of armaments - a connection that seems to elude almost all of the American and European MSM - not to mention the total anarchy that has followed in Libya that is struggling without the financial support afforded to the NATO military that was blowing the shit out of it. David Cameron is still pimping for BAE in the Middle East.  His shirt was open the other day, perhaps he'd just finished trashing a restaurant.

Now, Susan Rice and her clueless friends - whose shared expertise appears to have been acquired by talking to each other - are wondering why the Security Council is not big on regime change in Syria, while simultaneously fucking up what had been non-violent and courageous resistance in Syria by supplying various "rebel" groups with weapons, thus turning Syria into a civil war that doesn't look to be ending any time soon, and inadvertently arming its own self described "enemies" - Islamists, whatever Americans mean by that term, it's not obvious - and wanting more military involvement as a result, even if it means bypassing the UN.

Then, to add insult to injury, NATO seems in a hurry to "recognize" the rebels, whoever they are including "Islamists", as the legitimate voice of Syria, having denied the same recognition to Palestinians for 60 years.

You'd think somebody would notice all this.  The good news is that many Americans have - Bradley Manning being an obvious example - and my "thoughts and prayers" for their Constitution are in my heart at this time.