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:: ONU - XX Assemblea Generale (1965): |
La
XX Assemblea Generale dell’ONU (1965)
dichiara "la legittimità della
lotta da parte dei popoli sotto
oppressione coloniale, per esercitare il
loro diritto all' autodeter-
minazione e
all'indipendenza".
Inoltre, l'Assemblea invita "tutti
gli Stati a fornire assistenza morale e
materiale ai movimenti di liberazione
nazionale nei territori coloniali". |
|
:: ONU
- Risoluzione 1514 |
"L'Assemblea
Generale dichiara che: la soggezione dei
popoli a dominio straniero, conquista e
asservimento costituisce una negazione
dei diritti umani fondamentali, è
contraria alla Carta delle Nazioni Unite
ed è un impedimento alla promozione
della pace e della cooperazione mondiali.
Tutti i popoli hanno diritto
all' autodeter-
minazione; in virtù di
tale diritto essi devono liberamente
determinare il loro status politico e
liberamente perseguire il loro sviluppo
economico, sociale e culturale". |
|
:: Convenzione
di Ginevra, Protocollo Addizionale I
(1977): |
La lotta
armata può essere usata, come ultima
risorsa, come mezzo per esercitare il
diritto all' autodeter-
minazione. |
|
:: Tribunale
penale internazionale |
In
base allo Statuto del Tribunale penale
internazionale, sono definiti “crimini
di guerra”:
(1) attacchi lanciati intenzionalmente
contro popolazione civili in quanto tali
o contro civili che non prendano
direttamente parte alle ostilità;
(4) attacchi lanciati intenzionalmente
nella consapevolezza che gli stessi
avranno come conseguenza la perdita di
vite umane tra la popolazione civile, e
lesioni a civili o danni a proprietà
civili ovvero danni diffusi duraturi e
gravi all’ambiente naturale che siano
manifestamente eccessivi rispetto all’insieme
dei concreti e diretti i vantaggi
militari previsti. |
:: Iraq anthem
(click to listen)
|
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NATO, an instrument for geostrategic interests
A Historical Review and Analysis (1949-2012)
by Ludo De Brabander and Georges Spriet
May 18, 2012 - ...The Libya operation seems now to show something like the beginning of a new strategy. This is how president Barack Obama expressed it in his speech on defence January 5, 2012. "As a global force, our military will never be doing only one thing. It will be responsible for a range of missions and activities across the globe of varying scope, duration, and strategic priority. This will place a premium on flexible and adaptable forces that can respond quickly and effectively to a variety of contingencies and potential adversaries. Again, that's the nature of the world that we are dealing with. In addition to these forces, the United States will emphasize building the capacity of our partners and allies to more effectively defend their own territory, their own interests, through a better use of diplomacy, development, and security force assistance." Although conservative America reacted as if the end of the US as world power was announced, Obama's speech doesn't diminish at all his will to maintain both US hegemonical position and US war capacity. "As we shift the size and composition of our ground, air and naval forces, we must be capable of successfully confronting and defeating any aggressor and respond to the changing nature of warfare. Our strategy review concluded that the United States must have the capability to fight several conflicts at the same time." Defense Secretary Leon Panetta described this new strategy as building more on the air force and on indirect operations through mandated partners, in view of the lowest possible commitment of own American forces. NATO as executor of US strategy, history repeats itself....
continua / continued  [88176] [ 19-may-2012 19:20 ECT ] |
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Aleppo University Carnival
Al-Ayyam
May 18, 2012 - This diary entry was written for Al-Ayyam by a student at Aleppo University who attended the protests on May 17, 2012. The original text is published on Al-Ayyam’s Arabic section.... We chanted all our slogans. We saluted all cities. We chanted our love for our martyrs, our Free Syrian Army, and our heroes at the university. Wherever I looked I couldn’t believe my eyes. What was happening was beyond my wildest dreams. And it was happening for real! I was sure that the march to Saadallah Al-Jabri Square was not going to last long. We will need more time before we will make it there, but it’s not impossible. What happened at the university was once impossible. The students wrote on the street, on the sidewalks, on the billboards, on everything. They climbed trees and traffic lights and hanged independence flags. During all this a rather ironic thing was taking place. The students were ripping the candidates’ posters, writing on them, and using them as banners....
continua / continued [88174] [ 19-may-2012 18:43 ECT ] |
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Iraq snapshot - May 18, 2012
The Common Ills
May 18, 2018 - ...Like the violence, the political crisis continues...Alsumaria reports that State of Law is invoking Saddam Hussein, likening him to Iraqiya. Mp Mohammed Chihod insists that Allawi is an exile (as is Nouri, as are most the US allowed into leadership) and that he doesn't care about anything but authority, that he leaves the country to this day (as do most Iraqis in Parliament) and he leaves to plot with Iraq's enemies... At any rate, State of Law's character smear on Allawi is quite lengthy, almost as lengthy as the political crisis itself. March 7, 2010, Iraq held parliamentary elections. Iraqiya, led by Ayad Allawi, came in first, State of Law, led by Nouri, came in second. Nouri did not want to give up the post of prime minister and, with support from the White House and Tehran....
continua / continued [88168] [ 19-may-2012 17:31 ECT ] |
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Amidst Fragmentation and Dispossession: Which Palestine?
By Fida Jiryis
May 18, 2012 - Throughout contemporary history, movement of people outside their own countries for long or short intervals has occurred for various reasons: education, work, marriage, family ties, fleeing hardships, and so on. Foreigners exist in every country in the world, forming their own sub-societies and clinging with varying degrees to their own cultures as they integrate into the new ones. Sometimes, the second or third generations that arise after this movement experience the drive to return to their home countries, find their roots and re-integrate into their societies of origin...
continua / continued [88152] [ 18-may-2012 23:19 ECT ] |
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Syria News - May 17, 2012 (Warning: Graphic Videos)
Local Coordination Committees of Syria + Videos |
May 17, 2012 -The number of martyrs shot by the regime's security forces and army has reach 34 by the end of Thursday. Among them are 4 children,2 females, 2 defected soldiers. 10 martyrs were in Homs, 7 in Douma in Damascus Suburbs, 5 in Daraya in Damascus Suburbs, 4 in Daraa, 3 in Idlib, and 2 in the Aleppo (Atarb and Katad) and 1 in each of Raqa, Swaida and Dier Ezzor... Damascus Suburbs: Douma: Kahled Al-Shanwany, Basel Al-Shanwany, Kamal A;-Shanwany, Saad Edden Al-Shanwany, and Saleem Al-Shanwany were martyred and several wounded fell after a mortar fell between Thablath houses in Al-A'ab area.
continua / continued [88151] [ 18-may-2012 22:29 ECT ] |
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Palestinian Prisoners are Still on Hunger Strike
Palestine News Network |
May 17, 2012 - On Thursday, 17th May, a report issued by Palestinian Prisoners' society revealed that three Palestinians still continue with their hunger strike since 17th April, despite the signed agreement between the Israeli prisons' administration and Palestinian prisoners. The striking-prisoners are: Mahmoud Sarsak, Akram al-Rekhawi and Mohammad Abdul Aziz, who are now in the hospital of al-Ramlah Israeli prison... Prisoners told the prisoners' centre for studies that yesterday, 16th May, Israeli prisons' administration had beaten Mohammed Taj, a Palestinian detainee, and immediately put him in the solitary confinement in al-Jalameh to pressure him to end his hunger strike, as he had spent 65 days on hunger strike protesting against the Prison Service for not treating him as a Prisoner of War...
continua / continued [88145] [ 18-may-2012 20:10 ECT ] |
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Nakba Anger Points to Third Intifadah
By Mel Frykberg
May 16, 2011 - Israeli confidence that Nakba day, marked by The Great March on May 15 in the occupied Palestinian territories, Israel and neighbouring Arab countries, would remain under control, has backfired badly.Nakba, or catastrophe day on May 15 commemorates the establishment of the State of Israel, during which hundreds of thousands of indigenous Palestinians either fled or were driven out of their homes by Israel Defence Forces (IDF) to make way for the fledgling state. Three days of mourning, marked by protests, demonstrations, marches and rioting culminated in a "The Great March Day" on Sunday...
continua / continued [88143] [ 18-may-2012 20:02 ECT ] |
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Syria: Deported Palestinian journalist speaks out about torture in custody
Amnesty International |
May 17, 2012 - A prominent journalist has told Amnesty International how Syrian government forces tortured and detained him in deplorable conditions before deporting him to Jordan on Monday. Salameh Kaileh, a 57-year-old Jordanian national of Palestinian descent, has lived and worked in the Syrian capital Damascus since 1981. On 24 April, plain clothes officials from Syria’s Air Force Intelligence arrested him during a raid on his flat in Barzah, a Damascus suburb. Amnesty International considered him to be a prisoner of conscience, held solely for exercising his right to freedom of expression. "The main reason for my arrest, from what I understood, is a conversation I had on Facebook with a friend outside Syria about my position on the revolution and my opinion about the Muslim Brotherhood and so on," Kaileh told Amnesty International.Following his arrest, Kaileh was held at a Syrian Air Force Intelligence branch in Damascus, where he was insulted and beaten for days...
continua / continued [88133] [ 18-may-2012 01:49 ECT ] |
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Hanging by a thread: Babylon World Wonder at risk from oil
RussiaToday |
May 17, 2012 - The site of the legendary hanging gardens of Babylon is in danger of being wrecked by an oil pipe. The historic area in modern-day Iraq has seen many invasions over the years, from Roman to American, but now faces a domestic threat. The magnificent gardens allegedly built for a king’s homesick wife in the 6th century BC were one of the Ancient World’s seven wonders...Iraq’s Oil Ministry plans to extend a strategic route to export oil through six provinces at the center and south of the country...US troops turned ancient Babylon into a military base, damaging the historical site by "digging, cutting, scraping and leveling", according to a 2009 UNESCO report. The world-famous Ishtar Gate and Processional Way were among key structures damaged, while contents of the Nebuchadnezzar and Hammurabi museums and of the Babylon Library and Archive were stolen and destroyed during the war. Now, Babil Fortress that has withstood Assyrian, Roman, Islamic and American invasions, is under threat from the new Iraqi government’s desire for cheap oil exports...
continua / continued [88130] [ 18-may-2012 01:14 ECT ] |
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US DEA Kills Innocent Civilians in Honduras -- US Media Silent
Dan Kovalik
May 17, 2012 - According to the Honduran newspaper, Tiempo, as well as the Honduran human rights group, COFADEH, the agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), dressed in military uniforms, killed at least four and possibly six civilians in a raid which took place on Friday, May 11. The victims included two pregnant women and two children. The newspaper Tiempo did not pull any punches, writing that those killed "were humble and honest citizens." Apparently, the DEA agents fired from helicopter gunships upon a boat carrying civilians on the Patuca back to their community of Ahuas which itself is located in the Mosquito coast of Honduras. According to Tiempo, the DEA mistakenly fired upon the civilian boat because it was well-lit while the intended target -- a boat carrying drug traffickers -- was floating down the river without its lights on...
continua / continued [88128] [ 18-may-2012 00:59 ECT ] |
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Syria News - May 16, 2012 (Warning: Graphic Videos)
Local Coordination Committees of Syria + Videos |
May 16, 2012 - The number of martyrs in Syria has gone up to 40 thus far, including a child and 21 martyrs during the Shammas Massacre in Homs last night. In addition, 26 martyrs were reported in Homs,5 in the Damascus Suburbs, 4 in Daraa, 3 in Idib,1 in Hama and 1 in Deir Ezzor...Daraa: The number of wounded and martyrs has risen after an ambulance was targeted by the security forces gunfire and other ambulance cars and doctors were prevented from aiding them....Damascus Suburbs: Kesweh: The UN Observers came to the city for a brief period, no longer than 5 minutes, to visit one street. They did not leave their vehicles, nor speak with any residents...
continua / continued [88123] [ 17-may-2012 23:22 ECT ] |
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Victim of Torture and CIA Rendition Gets His First Day in Court — in Europe
By Jamil Dakwar, ACLU
May 16, 2012 - Tomorrow, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), Europe's top human rights court based in Strasbourg, France, will hear arguments in El-Masri v. "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia." Tomorrow's hearing marks the first case to come before the court against a European nation for complicity in the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program. The case was brought against Macedonia by the Open Society Justice Initiative on behalf of Khaled El-Masri. El-Masri, a German citizen, who was abducted by Macedonian authorities at a border crossing in December 2003 and held incommunicado for 23 days. He was then handed over to CIA operatives who drugged, hooded, and strip-searched him before putting him on a secret flight to Afghanistan where he was secretly held, tortured and abused for about four months, only for the U.S. government to realize that they had the wrong person...
continua / continued [88117] [ 17-may-2012 21:16 ECT ] |
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Lower Courts to Hear Iraqi Civilians’ Claims of Beatings, Forced Nudity, Broken Bones, and Rape at Hands of Corporate Defendants
Center for Constitutional Rights
May 16, 2012 - Today, a federal appellate court dismissed the appeals of two private military contractors who had argued they were immune from litigation when they engage in torture. The corporate defendants, CACI and L-3, have argued that they should receive the same protections as the United States government and that, therefore, any of their wartime activities – including torture – are similarly beyond review of the courts. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, sitting en banc, remanded the cases to the district courts that had previously rejected the corporations’ novel claims of immunity, in order to allow fact-finding to proceed. The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) is co-counsel on the cases, which were filed in 2008. "Today’s ruling provides an opportunity for victims of torture at Abu Ghraib to tell their stories to an American court and to obtain justice from the private military contractors who played such a prominent role in one of the most shocking episodes of abuse in recent American history," said CCR Legal Director, Baher Azmy, who co-argued the case...
continua / continued [88116] [ 17-may-2012 21:08 ECT ] |
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Gaza- Occupied Lives: Not knowing what your son looks like
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) |
May 16, 2012 - Abu Hosni Sarfiti (61), who lives in Sheik Radwan, Gaza City, is very familiar with the issue of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails: "I have three sons and four daughters. Two of my sons were killed by the Israeli army: my oldest son, Hosni, was 23 years and Mohammed was 7 years old when he was killed. My only living son, Ali Nidal al Sarfiti, has been in prison since 7 July 2002, when he was arrested at the Erez crossing. He had been given a permit by the Israeli authorities to travel through the crossing, but when he arrived there that day, he was taken to jail. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison for participating in resistance activities during an army incursion in Jabaliya. Ali is now 32 years old. He was engaged when he was arrested, but that has ended."...
continua / continued [88118] [ 17-may-2012 21:29 ECT ] |
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In Yemen, eating is a luxury millions struggle to afford
by Lara Sukhtian
May 16, 2012 - For almost half of Yemen's 22 million people, eating has become a luxury they can't always afford. On a bad day, Umm Ahmad and her family of five, who live in Sanaa's shanty-town district of Al-Sunaina, go without any food at all. On a better day, Umm Ahmad's husband, who works as a vendor, selling baby clothes in the market, comes home with "500 Yemeni riyals (about $2.30/1.79 euros) and we eat." "Have pity on us," she says, breaking into tears as she clutches her sick and hungry daughter Amira and describes her family’s daily struggle to survive....
continua / continued [88112] [ 17-may-2012 18:49 ECT ] |
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Arrested development: The criminalization of America’s schoolchildren
By John W. Whitehead
May 16, 2012 - For those hoping to better understand how and why we arrived at this dismal point in our nation’s history, where individual freedoms, privacy and human dignity have been sacrificed to the gods of security, expediency and corpocracy, look no farther than America’s public schools. Once looked to as the starting place for imparting principles of freedom and democracy to future generations, America’s classrooms are becoming little more than breeding grounds for compliant citizens of the police state. In fact, as director Cevin Soling documents in his insightful, award-winning documentary The War on Kids, which recently aired on the Documentary Channel, the moment young people walk into school, they increasingly find themselves under constant surveillance: they are photographed, fingerprinted, scanned, X-rayed, sniffed and snooped on...
continua / continued [88109] [ 17-may-2012 17:45 ECT ] |
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A Bombed Libyan Village Where NATO's "Collateral Damage" Has A Name And A Face
Benjamin Barthe, LE MONDE |
May 16, 2012 - Nine months have passed but the rubble has yet to be removed. Bombed by NATO last August, the house of the Gafez family in Majer, a town about 150 kilometers east of Tripoli, still looks like a shriveled soufflé. Fourteen people died in the explosion. Twenty others died a few minutes later when bombs struck the farm of the neighbors, the Jaroods. Men, women and children, struck dead in the middle of a Ramadan evening. What about clearing away the debris? Rebuilding? Haj Ali, the patriarch of the Gafez family never considered it. There are questions of money and of health, but also of honor, says the friendly mustachioed man. That’s because NATO doesn’t want to hear about the martyrs of Majer. The military alliance continues to insist that the bombs dropped on Aug. 8 were aimed at "legitimate military targets."...
continua / continued [88111] [ 17-may-2012 18:06 ECT ] |
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Iraq snapshot - May 16, 2012
The Common Ills
May 16, 2012. Chaos and violence continue, Nouri wants his 'accomplishments' acknowledged (if only there was one to point to), State of Law insists a conspiracy is a foot!, a US House Veterans Affairs Subcommittee hears that a change VA wants to make will actually hurt disabled veterans, and more...UPI notes, "A prison that Iraq's government said it closed a year ago is still open and being used for torture and unlawful detentions, a human rights group said Tuesday." Al Mada notes Human Rights Watch published their report yesterday and that the secret prisons are in the Green Zone, one of which is Camp Honor which the government insists was closed. Mohammed Tawfeeq and CNN quote Human Rights Watch's Joe Stork stating "It's a matter of grave concern that Iraqis in so many walks of life, officials included, are afraid for their own well-being and fear great harm if they discuss allegations of serious human rights abuses." Al Arabiya adds, "The rights group called for Baghdad to start an independent investigation into allegations of torture and mistreatment, as well as other issues, at Camp Honor and other jails."...
continua / continued [88107] [ 17-may-2012 16:48 ECT ] |
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Israel’s Tireless Efforts to Conceal the Historical Events Leading to Its Creation
Erasing the Nakba
by NEVE GORDON
May 16, 2012 - I first heard about the Nakba in the late 1980s, while I was an undergraduate student of philosophy at Hebrew University. This, I believe, is a revealing fact, particularly since, as a teenager, I was a member of Peace Now and was raised in a liberal home. I grew up in the southern city of Be’er-Sheva, which is just a few kilometres from several unrecognised Bedouin villages that, today, are home to thousands of residents who were displaced in 1948. I now know that the vast majority of the Negev’s Bedouin population was not as lucky, and that, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, most Bedouin either fled or were expelled from their ancestral lands to Jordan or Gaza....
continua / continued [88103] [ 17-may-2012 16:03 ECT ] |
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Peace-making without Mediators
By Nicola Nasser
May 16, 2012 - The International Crisis Group, in an executive summary on May 7, 2012, concluded that the U.S.-led mediation efforts have "become a collective addiction, … And so the illusion continues," adding: "All actors are now engaged in a game of make-believe: that a resumption of talks in the current context can lead to success; that an agreement can be reached within a short timeframe; that the Quartet is an effective mediator, …" On April 26, the American Jewish newspaper "Algemeiner" described the "Middle East Quartet" as "An Institutionalized Failure." Israel, U.S. and the Quartet mediators are all winners in this "make-believe" non-delivering mediation; the Palestinian people are the only losers. Palestinians have had enough and now saying enough is enough: Peace is a mirage, peace-making is a failure, peace process is a sham, peace mediators are a fake, and if all the parties involved can enjoy the luxury of "addiction" to the status quo, Palestinians cannot; their survival is at stake...
continua / continued [88100] [ 17-may-2012 12:56 ECT ] |
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Our Olympic Hell: A Militarised, Corporate, Jingoistic Disgrace
Andy Worthington |
May 16, 2012 - Last month, when it was revealed that the MoD was siting surface-to-air missiles on the roofs of residential buildings as part of the bloated security measures for the Olympics — estimated to cost at least £1.4 billion, to be paid for by taxpayers — there was a brief flurry of outrage, although not enough to bring the plans to an end. Two weeks ago, during a week-long "military exercise" in London, Simon Jenkins, in the Guardian, captured something of the surreal excesses involved when a pliant government comes up against the extraordinary demands of the International Olympic Committee: RAF Typhoon jets are to scream back and forth over the Thames. Starstreak surface-to-air missile batteries are being set up in East End parks and on flats in Bow, with 10 soldiers manning each one. Army and navy helicopters will clatter back and forth, with snipers hanging from their doors "to shoot down pilots of terrorist planes"...
continua / continued [88094] [ 17-may-2012 10:57 ECT ] |
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A Global Crime Spree
What’s NATO Ever Done?
by JOHN LaFORGE |
May 15, 2012 - Wondering why anyone would confront NATO’s summit in Chicago this month? A look at some of its more well-known crimes might spark some indignation. Desecration of corpses, indiscriminate attacks, bombing of allied troops, torture of prisoners and unaccountable drone war are a few of NATO’s outrages in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen and elsewhere. On March 20, 2012 Pakistani lawmakers demanded an end to all NATO/CIA drone strikes against their territory...While bombing Libya last March, NATO refused to aid a group of 72 migrants adrift in the Mediterranean. Only nine people on board survived. The refusal was condemned as criminal by the Council of Europe, a human rights watchdog. NATO jets bombed and rocketed a Pakistani military base for two hours Nov. 26, 2011—the Salala Incident— killing 26 Pakistani soldiers and wounding dozens more. NATO refuses to apologize, so the Pakistani regime has kept military supply routes into Afghanistan closed since November....
continua / continued [88081] [ 16-may-2012 02:31 ECT ] |
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Iraq: Mass Arrests, Incommunicado Detentions
Notorious Prison in Use a Year After Government Said It Was Shut Down
Human Rights Watch
May 15, 2012 - Iraq’s government has been carrying out mass arrests and unlawfully detaining people in the notorious Camp Honor prison facility in Baghdad’s Green Zone, based on numerous interviews with victims, witnesses, family members, and government officials. The government had claimed a year ago that it had closed the prison, where Human Rights Watch had documented rampant torture. Since October 2011 Iraqi authorities have conducted several waves of detentions, one of which arresting officers and officials termed "precautionary." Numerous witnesses told Human Rights Watch that security forces have typically surrounded neighborhoods in Baghdad and other provinces and gone door-to-door with long lists of names of people they wanted to detain. The government has held hundreds of detainees for months, refusing to disclose the number of those detained, their identities, any charges against them, and where they are being held...
continua / continued [88077] [ 16-may-2012 01:15 ECT ] |
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