Friday, January 25th, Iraqis are preparing to return to Baghdad's Tahrir Square and protest. It's another call for change and it will come ahead of the scheduled provincial elections. The announcement notes that Nouri al-Maliki has become more tyrannical, that the Parlaiment is more corrupt, that two years ago, Iraqis took to the streets calling for change and were promised change but there was none.
The excuse outlets will give for ignoring this news is that it's an announcement.
They will say that as they rush to cover the announcment of the arrest of an "al Qaeda leader." They will say one is news but the other isn't. One is about the people, the other is from the government but they will insist that is not the basis.
It won't matter that Sunday's announcement is like all the announcements during the Bully Boy Bush days and can't be verified. It won't matter that, as Mohammed Tawfeeq (CNN) notes this moring that there is "conflicting informaiton" about exactly who was captured.
One will be treated as news and one will be ignored.
And when the protest takes place?
We'll see them ignored if the pattern from last time holds. Network television will tell you nothing. CNN will be alone among the cable stations to cover the protests -- where does the money go? -- oh, right, on the millions paid for each talk show host to deliver tiny audiences. If Nouri's goons attack reporters, the Washington Post will cover it and the New York Times will ignore the attacks on the press (beating, kidnapping by forces, torture) but publish a story about how the attendance was sparse and the protesters were unruly.
The Times will never correct their reporting, by the way. Even when Human Rights Watch and the United Nations both document that the attacks on the press took place.
Bonnie reminds that Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "The Nation Bullpen" went up yesterday. On this week's Law and Disorder Radio, an hour long program that airs Monday mornings at 9:00 a.m. EST on WBAI and around the country throughout the week, hosted by attorneys Heidi Boghosian, Michael S. Smith and Michael Ratner (Center for Constitutional Rights) topics addressed include Bradley Manning, Stop and Frisk, Jeremy Hammoud, a discussion of environmentalist Judi Bari (with guest Darryl Cherney) and a discussion of the new film Lincoln with history professor Bruce Levin.
Legal professor Francis A. Boyle is an international rights expert. November 22, 2012, he spoke before The International Conference on War-affected Children at Kuala Lampur in Malaysia:
During the summer of 1991 I was contacted on
behalf of several Mothers in Iraq whose children were dying at astounding rates
because of the genocidal economic sanctions that had been imposed upon them by
the Security Council in August of 1990 at the behest of the Bush Senior
administration. They requested that I do something in order to save these
innocent children from perishing in agony in front of their mothers’ very own
eyes. Using the format of the Writ for World Habeas Corpus that had been
previously provided to me by my friend and colleague, the late Luis Kutner, Esq.
of Chicago, Illinois, I filed a class-action Complaint on behalf of the
4.5 million children of Iraq against President George Bush Senior and the United
States of America with the United Nations Organization that was dated 18
September 1991.[1] I
submitted the Complaint to the Secretary General of the U.N., member
states of the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council, the Commission
on Human Rights, the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and
Protection of Minorities, UNESCO, and UNICEF. A copy of my Indictment,
Complaint and Petition for Relief from Genocide on behalf of the 4.5 million
children of Iraq is reprinted below.
This Complaint accused the
United States and President Bush Senior (1) of committing the international
crime of genocide against the 4.5 Million Children of Iraq in violation of the
International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide of 1948 and in violation of the municipal legal systems of all
civilized nations in the world; (2) of a gross and consistent pattern of
violations of the most fundamental human rights of the 4.5 Million Children of
Iraq as recognized and guaranteed to them by the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights of 1948; (3) of the complete negation and denial of all the rights
guaranteed to the 4.5 Million Children of Iraq by the 1989 Convention on the
Rights of the Child; and (4) of the systematic violation of the special
protections of international humanitarian law guaranteed to the 4.5 Million
Children of Iraq by the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and Additional Protocol
I thereto of 1977.
My
Complaint demanded (1) the termination of all forms of multilateral and
bilateral economic sanctions against Iraq; (2) the massive provision of
international humanitarian relief supplies to Iraq by all organs of the United
Nations System; (3) that monetary compensation be paid to the children of Iraq
and their families for deaths as well as for all physical and mental injury by
the United States; and (4) that criminal proceedings for genocide be instituted
against President George Bush Senior by the appropriate organs of the United
Nations System as well as by all municipal legal systems in the world, including
by the United States government. My Complaint estimated that since
sanctions were first imposed against Iraq in August of 1990, Iraqi children were
dying as a direct result thereof at the rate of about 500 per day.
Despite my best professional efforts working
on behalf of my Clients pro bono publico, the grossly hypocritical United
Nations Organization adamantly refused to act to terminate these genocidal
sanctions and thus to save the dying children of Iraq. In 1995 the United
Nations’ own Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) Report estimated that
these genocidal economic sanctions against Iraq had by then killed about 560,000
Iraqi children since when they were first imposed in 1990.[2] In
specific regard to these murdered Iraqi children, then U.S. Secretary of State
Madeline Albright, was interviewed on the CBS Television Network on 12 May 1996
by correspondent Leslie Stahl. The transcript of this interview provided by CBS
News itself reads as follows:[3]
Stahl: (Voiceover) If the Iraqi people
place any blame on Saddam Hussein, they’re afraid to say so. And there is no
longer much hope that the sanctions will inspire the people to rise up and
topple the government. Now people are just trying to get by because one of the
side effects of the sanctions has been inflation, which has jumped as high as
3,000 percent. To make ends meet, Iraqis are selling everything they can. Flea
markets have sprung up on the streets, where families can sell their furniture,
clothes, anything they can to make a few extra dinars. Most Iraqis are
suffering.
We
have heard that a half a million children have died. I mean, that’s more
children than died when-wh-in-in Hiroshima. And-and, you know, is the price
worth it?
Ambassador Albright: I think this is
a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth
it.
This shocking and revolting statement
made by the U.S. Secretary of State provided proof positive of the genocidal
intent by the United States Government against Iraq and its children and its
people as defined by and in violation of Genocide Convention Article II: “In the
present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with
intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or
religious group, as such. . . .” Certainly a half-million dead Iraqi children
that the U.S. Secretary of State specifically intended to destroy as such, and
did indeed destroy as such, constituted a very important “part” of the Iraqi
people. These half-million dead children were the very future of the people and
state of Iraq.
This Albright statement is what
criminal lawyers call a classic “Admission Against Interest.” This Statement by
the then sitting U.S. Secretary of State, acting within the scope of her
official duties and speaking in the name of the United States government, could
be taken to the International Court of Justice in The Hague and filed to prove
that the United States of America possessed the required mens rea
(criminal intent) necessary to commit the international crime of genocide.
Under both international law and U.S. domestic law, to be guilty of a crime a
person or a state must possess the requisite mens rea at the same time
that he or she or it commits the criminal act (actus reus).
With respect to these genocidal
economic sanctions against Iraq, the actus reus for the U.S. government
and its officials committing the international crime of genocide is set forth in
Genocide Convention Article II (c): “Deliberately inflicting on the group
conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole
or in part.” The 500,000 dead Iraqi children, as conceded and approved by U.S.
Secretary of State Albright, constituted a “substantial part” of the people of
Iraq, which is the threshold numerical test for genocide recognized by the
International Court of Justice itself that I had successfully argued there for
Bosnia and Herzegovina against Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) in 1993.
Albright incriminated
both herself and the United States of America at the same time, apparently
without thought or concern as to any future international legal determination of
their culpability. Such is the arrogance of the powerful—which is usually the
source of their downfall.
The United States and the United
Kingdom obstinately insisted that the genocidal economic sanctions imposed
against Iraq remain in place until after the conclusion of the internationally
illegal Gulf War II of aggression perpetrated by the Bush Junior administration
and the Tony Blair government against Iraq in March of 2003. Then, on 22 May
2003 the United States and the United Kingdom procured U.N. Security Council
Resolution 1483 lifting these genocidal economic sanctions; yet not with a view
to easing the over decade-long suffering of the Iraqi people and children. But
rather so as to better facilitate the U.S./U.K. unsupervised looting and
plundering of the Iraqi economy and oil fields in violation of the international
laws of war as well as to the grave detriment of the Iraqi people and their
children.
Once I had gotten this class-action
Complaint filed with the United Nations Organization and had worked out
the basic legal theory for U.S. genocide against the children of Iraq, starting
in the Fall of 1991 I did everything humanly possible to convince the then
President of Iraq to give me the legal authority to sue the United States and
the United Kingdom at the International Court of Justice in The Hague on the
basis of the 1948 Genocide Convention: First, in order to break the genocidal
economic embargo against the people of Iraq, and especially their children. And
second, in order to prevent what I perceived to be further impending military
attacks by the United States and Britain upon Iraq that would culminate someday
in stealing all their oil. I most strenuously pursued these efforts
systematically and continuously until the very eve of the war of aggression
against Iraq by the Bush Junior administration and the Tony Blair government in
mid-March of 2003. These efforts also included two meetings with the then
Foreign Minister of Iraq and their top international lawyer to review, consider,
and discuss papers I had drafted to be filed by Iraq in the World Court against
the United States and the United Kingdom in order to accomplish these
objectives.[4] In
addition, at the very last minute available I also attempted to convince the
Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq to give me the legal authority to file these World
Court lawsuits against the U.S. and the U.K. literally right up until the
outbreak of hostilities in mid-March of 2003. All to no avail.
Despite my best efforts,
I failed. This shall always be one of the great disappointments of my life.
Approximately 1.7 million Iraqis died as a direct result of these genocidal
economic sanctions, including within that number about 750,000 Iraqi children.
In addition, another 1.4 million Iraqis died as a result of the Bush Junior/Tony
Blair genocidal war of aggression against Iraq. To this appalling genocidal
death toll must be added the 200,000 Iraqis President Bush Senior slaughtered in
his 1991 Gulf War I. In other words, approximately 3.3 million Iraqis were
exterminated by the United States and the United Kingdom from August of 1990
until the end of 2011 when President Obama had ordered the purported “final”
withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Iraq. And these are very conservative
figures that I believe could be proven to the satisfaction of the International
Court of Justice.
These World Court papers
that I drew up for Iraq to sue the United States and the United Kingdom at the
International Court of Justice on the basis of the 1948 Genocide Convention that
were twice considered and reviewed by the Foreign Minister of Iraq and their top
international lawyer still sit in my office today. They could be revised and
updated by the current government of Iraq in order to sue the United States and
the United Kingdom at the International Court of Justice for genocide today. Of
course this is for the current government of Iraq to decide. Towards
facilitating that objective, I will be more than happy to make these World Court
papers available to the current government of Iraq free of charge if they so
desire. For Iraq to file my proposed World Court lawsuits for genocide against
the United States and the United Kingdom would produce some small degree of
justice for the 750,000 murdered children of Iraq and at least 3.3 million
exterminated Iraqis. Thank you.
Francis A. Boyle
Law Building
504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.
Champaign, IL 61820 USA
217-333-7954 (phone)
217-244-1478 (fax)
(personal comments only)
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
iraq kitabat cnn mohammed tawfeeq francis a. boyle
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law and disorder radio
michael s. smith
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michael ratner
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