Tag: War Crimes

The conviction of Radovan Karadzic

The “Butcher Of Bosnia” has finally received his just desserts.

With all the death that this man brought only illustrates the things that coukld happen in Syria as well as Bosnia……

Thursday saw the closure of a long and drawn out story for the victims of Bosnia’s bloody civil war as the guilty verdict was finally delivered in the trial of Radovan Karadzic. The former leader of the Bosnian Serbs presided over some of the worst atrocities committed during the four years of violence that tore apart the multi-ethnic Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

“His judgement is symbolically powerful – above all for the victims of the crimes committed during the wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina and across the former Yugoslavia, but also for victims across the world,” UN Human Rights chief Zeid Raad al-Hussein said in a statement, following the conviction and announcement of a 40-year jail sentence for Karadzic for genocide and war crimes.

Source: The conviction of Radovan Karadzic has lessons for Syria’s war | Middle East Eye

Time to take the TRASH out!

As always there are lessons to be learned from history….that is if one takes the time to see what is happening and why.  These days….that is a tall order.

Iraq: Situation Whose Time Has Come

For some time now there has been a call for those people in the Bush admin to stand for their decisions to invade Iraq…..to answer for the lies and misinformation……

There is a situation brewing in the UK that could be a template for any such investigation…..

Tony Blair should stand trial on charges of war crimes if the evidence suggests he broke international law over the “illegal” Iraq war in 2003, the Labour leadership frontrunner Jeremy Corbyn has said.

Corbyn called on the former prime minister to “confess” the understandings he reached with George W Bush in the run up to the invasion.

Asked on BBC Newsnight whether Blair should stand trial on war crimes charges, Corbyn said: “If he has committed a war crime, yes. Everybody who has committed a war crime should be.”

The veteran MP for Islington North was a high-profile opponent of the war and became a leading member of the Stop the War coalition. He said: “It was an illegal war. I am confident about that. Indeed Kofi Annan [UN secretary general at the time of the war] confirmed it was an illegal war and therefore [Tony Blair] has to explain to that. Is he going to be tried for it? I don’t know. Could he be tried for it? Possibly.”

Corbyn said he expects the eventual publication of the Chilcot report will force Blair to explain his discussions with President Bush in the runup to the war.

He said: “The Chilcot report is going to come out sometime. I hope it comes out soon. I think there are some decisions Tony Blair has got to confess or tell us what actually happened. What happened in Crawford, Texas, in 2002 in his private meetings with George [W] Bush. Why has the Chilcot report still not come out because – apparently there is still debate about the release of information on one side or the other of the Atlantic. At that point Tony Blair and the others that have made the decisions are then going to have to deal with the consequences of it.”

Read More…

Please weigh in…….should those that lied us into war be held accountable?

Israel’s 2014 Gaza bombardment deemed war crime, Amnesty says | McClatchy DC

This is not a story that you will see in the MSM!

About a year ago Israel decided that it needed to eliminate the people of Gaza who they, Israelis, say were killing them……I have a problem with their story because if it were true then they would have taken out the Command and control of Hamas first……not 3 weeks into the conflict…..

Of course the lie is that Hamas would hide among civilians and that explains why there were so many civilian causalities…..first of all if you have ever been to Gaza then you would know that it is so small that it would be hard not to be around civilians……..

The ICC has been hearing a case for war crimes against Israel and of course the US is doing all it can to see that that never happens….regardless of how many Palestinians died…….Israel is always on the side of right…….BS from the start…..

 

Israel’s 2014 Gaza bombardment deemed war crime, Amnesty says | McClatchy DC.

Former International Court of Justice judge: Dick Cheney should face prosecution

For years now there has been a call for some in the Bush admin to face charges, criminal charges, for their actions leading up and during the most recent war being fought in the Middle East….

Most of what these people did to lead the US into another war in Iraq was criminal…..I know I am just an old radical that dislikes people that are conservative……not completely accurate but close enough for government work……

If the American people were conned into supporting a war that has cost too many American lives with NO foreseeable outcome….then those that were part of the con need to face justice……and soon!

 

Former International Court of Justice judge: Dick Cheney should face prosecution.

Hide In Plain Sight

If you watch the Hitler Channel…..my bad…..the History Channel then you would have seen the atrocities that were committed by the Nazis…..but at the end of the war many of those that committed these crimes escaped to live here in the US and other countries….some of them were here with the knowledge of the US government……people like scientists and any one else that could have benefited the country in some way…….and then there were those that came here changed the names and went about hiding in plain sight.

Fast forward now to the 90’s and the wars in the Balkans……during this conflict there were many “crimes against humanity” committed by all sides….basically a lot of genocidal thinking.  I bring this up because there is a new report that says we may have people who committed these crimes right here….hiding in plain sight……

A Virginia soccer coach, Vegas casino workers, a dozen Phoenix residents: Hundreds of Bosnians living in the US may be guilty of war crimes, say American officials, and authorities are working to deport at least 150 of them, the New York Times reports. That number could climb past 600, officials tell the Times: “The more we dig, the more documents we find.” The effort was spawned by the 2004 arrest of a construction worker in Boston who was eventually convicted of crimes against humanity; that prompted officials to recognize that many with ties to war crimes during the 1990s were living in the US and doing little to hide themselves, the Times reports.

During that decade, some 120,000 Bosnian refugees sought US visas. Their applications required them to divulge their military histories—but officials didn’t do much to investigate the claims. This month, the US asked members of the global Bosnian community to offer up anything they knew about war crimes, the Times reports. Now, there are about 300 suspects, about half of whom may have been involved in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, which saw Bosnian Serbs execute thousands of unarmed Muslims. Click for the Times‘ full report.

It seems that the US is a prime place for criminals to come and do what they do best…..survive…..or to hide in plain sight.

 

Another One Bites The Dust

After so many years since the end of WW2 you would think that most of the “bad guys’ were dead and gone…..well most are but there are still a few that few still at large waiting their demons to catch up with them…..and another bites the dust…..Alois Brunner is dead, dead, dead………

The world’s most-wanted Nazi is dead, and he died without regrets about his role in the murder of thousands of Jews. That’s according to Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff, who says a German secret service agent recently revealed that Alois Brunner, Adolf Eichmann’s “best man,” died in Syria four years ago at the age of 98, the Times of Israel reports. Brunner handled the deportation of more than 128,000 Jews to Nazi death camps, but he evaded capture and landed in Syria, where he’s said to have advised President Hafez al-Assad on torture methods he honed during his SS tenure, the Daily Express reports. “He was involved in the harsh treatment of the Jewish community of Syria and was an expert in terror and torture,” Zuroff, head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Israeli office, tells the Express. “He said himself his one regret was he did not kill more Jews. He was unrepentant.”

Brunner was able to flee because authorities mistakenly hanged SS member Anton Brunner for crimes Alois committed. He then claimed he got paperwork from “American authorities” under an assumed name and served as a US Army driver, Arutz Sheva reports. In 1954, he used a fake Red Cross passport to travel to Rome, then Egypt (where the New York Times reported he rented a room from a Jewish family he described as being “quite nice people, really”) before heading to Syria. Per the Times of Israel, the late Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal wrote in his memoirs, “In my eyes, he was the worst [Third Reich criminal] ever. While Adolf Eichmann drew up the general staff plan for the extermination of the Jews, Alois Brunner implemented it.” Zuroff says the center will now take Brunner’s name off the “wanted” list to concentrate on nabbing other surviving Nazis. (The US hired “at least a thousand” Nazis after WWII, per a new book.)

Personally…..good riddance!  The world is a better place without this son-of-a-bitch!

Something Rotten In Palestine

It is NO secret that I am a supporter of the Palestinian people and their struggle for a homeland to call their own…..my support comes from personal experience and I also worked in the region for a time in my younger days…..

I try to give my readers a look into what being Palestinian means…..sometimes it does not come off so well…..but I will continue to try and help the world see the injustice the people have to deal with every day…..

I have written about the last 3 wars in Gaza and other happenings around the Occupied territories but I recently read one that took my aback……

This article was written in Al-Bawaba News………

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has blocked an attempt to push for the prosecution of Israel for war crimes in Gaza at the International Criminal Court, the second-deputy speaker of the Palestinian parliament said on Friday.

Hasan Khreisha told Ma’an that the Palestinian Authority’s decision to join the ICC and thus press charges against Israel for its offensive that killed more than 2,100 and devastated the Gaza Strip was halted by Abbas in order to push forward a new peace talks bid.

“President Abbas decided not to sue Israel at the ICC unless his new initiative fails to resume peace talks with Israel,” Khreisha said, adding that the PA was waiting for the United States to officially reply to a message from Abbas asking for the resumption of talks.
Khreisha told Ma’an that even though all major Palestinian parties had given president Abbas a document in which they voiced their support for Palestinian accession to the ICC, “so far no practical steps have been taken in that direction.”

okay I understand that the president of the Palestine National Authority, Abbas, would be concerned about finding a lasting peace with Israel…..but to decide NOT to support the actions by Israel just flies in the face of justice.

I use to think that abbas was the best person for the job…..but with this action he has lost my support.

Survivor Makes A Point

We allo have made our opinions on the Gaza War known…….some are solidly in the Israeli camp and cannot see where they are doing anything wrong but “defending themselves”…..and there are those like myself that see it as an abuse of authority….the killing of civilians, in my opinion,, is unacceptable…..the treating of a country’s minority as 2nd class citizens is unacceptable….

I have gone so far (a later post today) to accuse Israel of committing crimes that we have condemned others for committing……and that is where this article caught my eye…….

Newser) – In World War II, a Dutch man risked his life and saved a Jewish boy from the Nazis—a feat that earned Henk Zanoli Israel’s prestigious Righteous Among the Nations medal after the war. This week, the 91-year-old gave it back, reports Haaretz. The reason? An Israeli airstrike killed relatives of his in the Gaza Strip last month. After learning the news, Zanoli went to the Israeli embassy in The Hague and returned the medal, issuing a statement detailing the sacrifices his family made resisting the Nazis during the occupation of Holland. “Against this background, it is particularly shocking and tragic that today, four generations on, our family is faced with the murder of our kin in Gaza,” he wrote. “Murder carried out by the State of Israel.”

In an interview with the New York Times, Zanoli made clear that his problem is with the government of Israel, not the Israeli people. “I gave back my medal because I didn’t agree with what the state of Israel is doing to my family and to the Palestinians on the whole,” he said. Zanoli’s grand-niece is a Dutch diplomat who is married to a Palestinian economist, and an Israeli bomb killed three of the economist’s brothers, along with other relatives. Zanoli said he felt that keeping the medal would be an “insult” to his family.

You may scoff if you will…..but this person knows exactly what genocide and crimes against humanity are all about…….his opinion is the only opinion that should be considered on the crimes that Israel is being accused of from their latest attacks on Palestinians.

Sorry…..but this person’s opinion is the only opinion that carries any weight.

As I have said in the past….it is time for Israel to start acting like a responsible citizen of a civilized world….if they cannot do that then time for them to pay the price as any other depotic regime would have to pay.

Israel NEVER Takes Responsibility

We all have seen the pics of what the Israeli war machine has done to Gaza….some of us have seen more than others and that is a shame that there are people that will not care enough to see if their preconceived notions are accurate………Americans especially those on the Right have always harped about people need to take responsibility for their actions and their lives…..unfortunately that does not apply to Israel….there are too many that look the other way and pretend that Israel is justified…..and that is really sad.

I bring that up because since the last ceasefire that did not last Israel has been playing all cards to avoid any responsibility for the deaths and destruction of Gaza.  You see that social media has made Israeli actions very public and the world sees instantly what Israel is doing….they are losing the PR war and that put their “denial machine” into full throttle…..

Fearful of the growing international demand that Israeli officers be tried for war crimes committed during this last offensive against the Gaza Strip, the military has ordered a comprehensive internal probe of the army’s actions during Operation Protective Edge.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has also appealed to American legislators to help Israel stave off future accusations against military and political leaders of war crimes committed during the last israeli offensive against Gaza.
“The prime minister asked us to work together to ensure that this strategy of going to the ICC does not succeed,” said Rep. Steve Israel (D – NY), to the Post.

Netanyahu “wants the US to use all the tools that we have at our disposal to, number one, make sure the world knows that war crimes were not committed by Israel, they were committed by Hamas. And that Israel should not be held to a double standard,” he added.

In other words Israel wants the US to lie and cover their guilty worthless asses yet again.

And then they are trying to make it so that they do not have to pay and damages for the destruction that they have caused in Gaza….and how will they do that?

The cabinet is expected to declare the Gaza Strip as enemy territory. A senior Israeli official said the decision would mean that Israel would not be liable for damage incurred to residents of the Strip as a result of Israeli actions during Operation Protective Edge.

The resolution on the decision was posted to the website of the Prime Minister’s Office Thursday afternoon, but a few hours later it was decided that it would not be brought for a vote at the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday.

In 2007, three months after Hamas came to power in the Gaza Strip, the cabinet declared the area hostile territory, instituting restrictions on movement by its inhabitants and of merchandise and fuel into the area.

The proposal states that the decision is intended “to give additional legal expression to the status of the Gaza Strip in keeping with the law on civil damages.”

The Defense Ministry’s legal advisor, Ahaz Ben-Ari, wrote in an opinion appended to the proposal that “a difficulty exists on the international level in that the declaration will be perceived mistakenly as an attempt by the State of Israel to evade its responsibility to examine claims of breaching of the rules of armed conflict.” Ben-Ari said the preamble of the draft law would resolve this difficulty.

The preamble states that the declaration “will not affect the obligation of the State of Israel to investigate claims of ostensible breaches of the rules of armed conflict. The decision detracts not at all from this obligation.”

According to the Defense Ministry, such a decision would greatly reduce the resources needed to deal with suits that might be brought by Palestinians because of damage done by the Israel Defense Forces as well as by future IDF action. Ben-Ari wrote that “most of these suits are in any case rejected as they are the outcome of actions of war.”

Ben-Ari also wrote that the damage by the IDF “stemmed from the actions of Hamas which places its command posts, weapons stores and rocket-launching sites in built up areas in the Gaza Strip, hiding behind innocent civilians and preventing them from leaving their homes.”

These are the beginnings of the attempt to make themselves guiltless in the destruction and deaths that they caused……my question is just how far will the US politicians go to protect Israel?