Archive for the ‘International Law’ Category
Rocking the Boat: A Brief History of Anti-Migrant Hysteria in Canada
by Fathima Cader
"MV Sun Sea" Uncredited Photo at: http://www.edynews.com/top-news/18-almost-500-sri-lankan-migrants-are-in-canadian-custody.html
They’re at it again.
In November, 76 Tamil refugees escaped Sri Lanka on a rusty freighter. They arrived in Victoria, where they were met by Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) officials, who promptly jailed them for three months on allegations of terrorism. It would be fully half a year before the CBSA would admit that it had never had any evidence.
By then, however, it was too late: anti-Tamil and anti-refugee hysteria had spread like wildfire. Now, mere weeks after that most tepid of mea culpas from the CBSA, the hysteria greeting the Tamil MV Sun Sea passengers is worse. As with the Ocean Lady, these migrants will be detained in Maple Ridge jails before their refugee claims are considered. The Conservatives have begun to create new rules to treat refugees who arrive by boat differently from others. Meanwhile, Paul Fromm, the infamous neo-Nazi, has been receiving uncritical coverage in mainstream media with his demands that the migrants be sent back.
As the paranoia grows ever more heightened, it becomes increasingly important that we resist it. The universal rights of safety and mobility must be upheld, not only for the Sun Sea migrants, but for all people fleeing violence.
US Drones and the Politics of Body Count
News organizations need to be careful about their sources. They appear to report as fact claims made by any entity that calls itself an ‘institute’ or a ‘foundation’. This otherwise commendable report from Russia Today on the murderous US drone attacks is no exception. Like many other media outlets (including, oddly, Democracy Now and Al Jazeera) it reports as fact a dubious report produced by the New America Foundation (NAF), a leading cheerleader for the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which has transmuted the drones 98% failure rate into a 67% success rate. None of these media outlets it appears has taken a minute to study the report’s methodology or question the motivations of the organization behind it. The conflicts of interest are serious.
The NAF report is based exclusively on English language media reports, which rely solely on official claims. The officials, both American and Pakistani, for their reasons have an interest in inflating the success rate. Two studies produced by Paksitan’s The News and Dawn (the latter a supporter of the war) show that that the actual success rate is near 2 percent. This estimate has also been endorsed by David Kilcullen, the former senior advisor on counterinsurgency to Gen. David Petraeus. (In response NAF’s ‘Afpak Channel’ published this airy assessment by Christine Fair challenging Kilcullen which relies on yet another ‘institute’, the ‘Aryana Institute’, a sectarian paper organization which actually claims that Pakistanis are thrilled by drone attacks!)
NAF’s ‘Afpak Channel’, which produced the report, discredited itself long ago with its overly rosy assessment of the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And while it has been featuring commentary which is frequently at odds with reality, it has been reluctant to publish anything that might undercut its sanguine support for the war. It sat on a grim assessment of developments in Afghanistan by IPS’s excellent investigative journalist Gareth Porter before informing him that it won’t be published. Its Twitter frequenlty features juvenile commentary, breathlessly sanguine about US successes in Afghanista and Pakistan. Over all, it is a highly questionable source. I’d urge journalists to show more caution.
UPDATE: Don’t miss this important interview with Kathy Kelly who has just returned from Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Jeremy Scahill TKOs former NYC mayor Ed Koch on “Morning Joe”
First it was Glenn Greenwald, now it is independent journalist Jeremy Scahill. Today on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” former New York City mayor Ed Koch tried to defend Israel’s actions for attacking the Mavi Mamara flotilla. Koch uttered complete nonsense and Scahill picked him apart piece by piece a la Greenwald vs. Eliot Spitzer. Here’s the debate they had. Koch couldn’t defend himself, resorted to interrupting, and even used the ridiculous “Hamas Card” on Scahill. Scahill wasn’t buying it.
Later, Scahill had this to say about their off-the-air discussion (if you could call it that).
During the commercial break during my debate with Koch, the former mayor called me a “terrorist supporter.” I told him, “Say it on the air.” He didn’t.
To read Scahill’s account, click here.
Demonstration in Burlington, Vermont, USA
Here is a video of yesterday’s action in Burlington, VT, my home state. The second speaker is Yonatan Shapiro, a former IDF pilot who was in the same squadron that conducted the atrocious raid on the Mavi Mamara.
The activists took their message beyond the streets. They walked into a department store and the Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream store. I’m sure you’re all familiar with Ben & Jerry’s. Given Ben & Jerry’s economic and social justice activism, I’m hoping this will wake them (and all Vermonters) up to the realities of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Another rally will take place tomorrow. I’ll update this post when I get new information.
Israel’s Lobby and Nuclear Diversions
Lyndon Johnson and Abraham Feinberg
Scott Horton interviews Grant F. Smith, director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington, D.C., about the newly declassified 1978 GAO report released by IRmep on May 10, 2010. They cover the diversion of US nuclear material to Israel, marginal investigations and possible cover-ups by the FBI and CIA, prosecutorial immunity for high-profile Americans who commit crimes for Israel’s benefit, and billionaire Haim Saban’s considerable influence on the Democratic Party. They review new information about why LBJ’s political debt to fundraiser Abraham Feinberg (designated by David Ben Gurion as the US funding coordinator for Israel’s nuclear weapons program in 1958) probably explains his disdain for the NUMEC investigation and applying nuclear nonproliferation to Israel.
Boycott Israel? Amitav Ghosh & the Dan David Prize
Dear Amitav Ghosh,
We wish to express our deep disappointment in your decision to accept the Dan David prize, administered by Tel Aviv University and to be awarded by the President of Israel. As a writer whose work has dwelled consistently on histories of colonialism and displacement, your refusal to take stance on the colonial question in the case of Israel and the occupation of Palestine has provoked deep dismay, frustration, and puzzlement among readers and fans of your work around the world. Many admired your principled stand, and respected your decision not to accept the Commonwealth Writers Prize in rejection of the colonialist framework it represented.
Inside the Lawfare Project
Netanyahu’s Attack on Human Rights NGO’s Hits the States
by Max Blumenthal
As the anti-Goldstone, human rights-bashing Lawfare Project’s opening event on March 11 wrapped up, I asked its chairman, Columbia University Law School Dean David Schizer, for an interview. Schizer, who had just attacked the Goldstone Report from the podium, pointedly refused to speak to me and looked for the exit. As Schizer was leaving, he was politely confronted by Columbia Law School Professor Katherine Franke, who heads the school’s Program in Gender and Sexuality Law.
“Why didn’t you invite any speakers with an alternative perspective?” Franke asked Schizer.
His reply was curt. “We invited one or two but they couldn’t make it,” Schizer claimed before hurrying away.
Schizer was understandably nervous about his exposure. After all, he had just presided over a day-long conference during which Israeli human rights workers were labeled as traitors while Judge Richard Goldstone and human rights groups were compared to “anti-Semitic street gangs.” After several speakers had harshly condemned legal efforts against the construction of Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, Schizer appeared beside them to lend his credibility to their views.
Rachel Corrie’s Parents Take Israel to Court
Rachel Corrie, an ISM peace activist, was killed by an Israeli bulldozer while nonviolently protesting against the demolition of a Palestinian home.
According to Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman:
The civil trial, Craig Corrie says, is not about the monetary damages, but to discover information, and “like [South African Archbishop] Desmond Tutu talks about, of mending the tear in society.” The Corries never speak solely about their daughter, but about the plight of the Palestinians and the Israeli siege of Gaza. According to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions‘ latest figures, 24,145 houses have been demolished in the occupied territories since 1967, including the United Nations estimate of 4,247 houses demolished during “Operation Cast Lead,” the name Israel gave for its military assault on Gaza last year.
Of course, more than houses were destroyed there. More than 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed. The Corries also express concern about the psychological toll exacted on Israeli soldiers. Craig Corrie said, “We lost Rachel, and that hurts every day, but that bulldozer driver lost a lot of his humanity when he crushed Rachel.”
The trial begins during the same week that Joe Biden makes his first trip to Israel as vice president. As chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden sought answers on the death of Rachel Corrie during the confirmation of U.S. Ambassador to Israel James Cunningham. Biden knows the pain of losing a daughter. His daughter was killed with his first wife in a car accident in 1972.
Finkelstein in Prague
Last week, Norman Finkelstein delivered a series of lectures in Prague as part of his European speaking tour. Finkelstein was initially invited to speak at the prestigious Czech Academy of Sciences but had his invitation revoked less than 24 hours prior to his scheduled talk, allegedly at the behest of the Prime Minister’s office. A similar fate befell Finkelstein’s appearance in Munich and Berlin, where the Heinrich Boll and Rosa Luxembourg Foundations cancelled the events, following “a concerted campaign by neoconservative and pro-Israeli pressure groups, such as Honestly Concerned and BAK Shalom, known for their unconditional support of Israeli policies and the defamation of critics as anti-Semites.”
Here is Finkelstein’s lecture at Casa Gelmi in Prague, organised by the Czech pro-Palestinian group ‘Friends of Palestine’.
Mossad: Might or myth?
by As`ad AbuKhalil
The Mossad killers on Interpol's wanted list.
The assassination of Mahmoud Mabhouh, a Hamas commander, in Dubai is a watershed moment in the long history of the Mossad.
Israeli officials who ordered the assassination did something that Zionists have always done – underestimate their Arab opponents.
In his first impressions of Arabs, David Ben-Gurion, the first Israeli prime minister, compared them to children.
Ahad Ha’Am, an essayist considered to be the father of cultural Zionism, described the merciless beatings that Arabs were subjected to for no reason by Zionist settlers – the pioneers of the movement – in the late 19th century.
Other Zionists have compared the Arabs of Palestine to animals. All this prejudice would in the 1960s and 1970s benefit the rise of sophisticated Lebanese and Palestinian resistance movements which would plan operations keeping in mind that the Israelis would likely underestimate their chances of success.
Hezbollah, established in the early 1980s, used that understanding when it established a resistance movement that would beat Israel at its own game – on the battlefield and in the war of intelligence.
