Wednesday, March 4, 2009

SUDAN'S PRESIDENT INDICTED FOR WAR CRIMES


The International Criminal Court in the Hague indicted Sudanese President Omar Omar al-Bashir for war crimes today annulling the principle of Head of State immunity and extending the court's jurisdiction to those country's that do not recognize it, among them Sudan, Israel, and the United States. Anyone who commits war crimes and crimes against humanity must be held accountable no matter what country they come from and no matter what ideology they serve. It is time to indict Bush it is time to indict Olmert.

13 comments:

Avi said...

To indict Olmert? Are you off your rocker? Bashir has authorized the murder of hundreds of thousands of black Africans in what is pure genocide. Your hatred of Israel knows no bounds in that you are willing to use genocide and mass murder in Sudan to attack the Jews. You should be ashamed of yourself.

BTW When's the last time you protested the genocide in Darfur? Did I hear a peep from you? Or is your indignation reserved for when Jews refuse to die quietly?

Paul said...

Quite so Bar. It is utter nonsense to seek to place Olmert alongside Bashir. For one thing Olmert was acting in self defence. The Israeli actions in Gaza were far more proportionate and necessary then what NATO did to Serbia in 1999.

nina said...

YA didn't attack Jews. He criticized Zionist. And he's not the only one. A British minister publicly stated that there have been serious allegations made against Israeli politicians and army officers,and it would be right to investigate these allegations.
http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1068175.html

Nine Israeli human rights groups also raised the possibility that Israel had violated the laws of war and called for investigation.

"In all the years I’ve followed this conflict, I don’t remember hearing such organizational calls en masse for Israel to be investigated. Walls are being breached right and left." Read that in http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2009/03/04/sudans-bashir-to-the-hague-whos-next/

The majority of people in the world care and will not forget the Israeli atrocities against humanity.

Avi said...

Again, Nindee: which attrocities?

nina said...

Again, BK : too much to mention. Google them yourself.

nina said...

YA, you can find more information about Sudan in here :
http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2009/03/emergency-protest-london-hands-off.html

nina said...

"On January 22 2009, over 400 non-governmental organisations from all over the world, represented by a team of 40 lawyers, registered an official condemnation to the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC), concerning Israel's aggression against the people of Gaza between December 27 2008 and January 18 2009." The report comes from a statement issued by French lawyer, Gilles Devers, representative of the NGOs to the Court in the Hague and who will be in Italy on Monday to present the initiative.

http://www.ansamed.info/en/israel/news/ME01.@AM69530.html

Paul said...

Will someone on here please provide a cogent argument rooted in fact that Israel performed war crimes in Gaza? One that preferably addresses the issue I raised that Israel operated in self defence. Some evidence that Olmert is on a par with Bashir would be nice. Any fool can say that but who can substantiate it?

Avi said...

Nindee, the operation in Gaza was not Israel attacking the people of Gaza but rather Israel responding belatedly to 8 years of aggression and rockets on Southern Israel. The real war criminals are Hamas who have consistently targeted civilians, schools, hospitals, day cares, synagogues and homes in Sderot and the south of Israel.

Provide a real list of "Israeli war crimes". Otherwise, you just expose your pitiful ignorance, hiding behind a smoke-screen of rabid anti-Israel hatred.

Progressive Pinhead said...

This is in response to the recent comments of both Bar and Paul.
You might have noticed I haven't been commenting on your blogs anymore. Really its because I've gotten tired of it. I started reading your blogs in order to try to understand your viewpoint. I posted to try to understand your reasoning. I have come to understand both. The issues where we disagree are moral issues, not factual ones. Of course there are factual disputes, Paul you appear to know nothing about the Middle East, and you have a habit of dismissing facts that undermine your viewpoint as conspiracy theories even when they are widely acknowledged. Bar, you are better read in the sense that you have read the propaganda, Kahane and his successors I'm imagining based on the similarities in your arguments, but you also appear totally disengaged from reality. In both cases your conception reality is formed around your preconceived fantasy of the way the world is. Your worldviews were conceived before you knew anything of the world. There are different names for it, but it always comes back to tribalism. Your group is always right and superior to others. In your case Bar this means Jews, you are a Jewish supremacist in the same sense that KKK members are white supremacists. You have just said that the people of Gaza are your enemies and that starving them is the appropriate response. It is you who are genocidal, but in your narrow worldview Jews cannot commit genocide, your tribe is inherently right. Its like the Hutus who deny there was a genocide in Rwanda. Paul you call yourself a libertarian, and when at home I am sure this is true. I am sure you oppose racism and supremacist within your own country. You are a nationalist, your country is your immediate tribe and other "western" countries are part of your broader tribe. There is no contradiction between advocating tolerance within your tribe and intolerance without it. An Arab nationalist, for example, might simultaneously promote religious tolerance among Arabs and intolerance towards Iranians. There is little point in debating with you, facts are only relevant if they support your preconceived position. At its core this is a moral issue, and that's not something where anyone's mind will be changed. Some people will always value all human life and some will only value the lives of those who have the same skin color, faith, or citzenship as they do.

I don't mean to sound like I'm attacking you personally, just trying to explain where I'm coming from. I'm sure you have a better, although likely less objective, idea of your thought process so let me know if I'm missing something. I have no tribe, my tribe is humanity. Both the Israelis and the Palestinians are part of my tribe. I am just as troubled by what has happened to Gilad Shalit as I am by what is being done to hundreds of Palestinian children. I see how you could think that I only talk about humanitarian problems created by America or enabled by American support because I have something against these groups as this seems to be what you have done from the opposite side. But I am an American, how could I be anti-American? Unlike you I don't talk about these problems because I don't like the group the people causing them belong to, I talk about them because I would like to change them. I am troubled by what is being done in Tibet, Darfur, and Congo just as much as I am troubled by what is going on in Palestine and Iraq. But I am an American. Atrocities enabled by America are the atrocities I can address.

These are political problems they must be addressed politically. Looking at the political situation in Palestine, one side is powerful the other is powerless, one side is occupied the other is the occupier. "War is the terrorism of the powerful, terrorism is the war of the powerless". Nothing happens in a vacuum. The Palestinian violence (which unlike Israeli violence is not repetitive of the populace, is much less common, and stems from frustration and destitution, not racism) you complain so loudly about is part of a broader cycle of violence in which the initial and ongoing act is the dispossession and occupation of the Palestinian people. Even if you don't care about Arab life, the only way to stop Palestinian violence is to address its root cause. Go look at the peace proposal voted on every year in the U.N General Assembly, Israel withdraws to its internationally recognized borders, Palestinians renounce all claims to those lands, mutual recognition and a just settlement of the refugee issue follow. It always passes the General Assembly by a huge margin. It has been endorsed by the PLO, the PA, Fatah, Hamas, the entire Arab League, the Israeli left, and the entire world with the exception of the U.S, Israel, Australia, and some coral atolls in the south Pacific. It should be very clear who the obstacles to peace are. Anyone who wants to change the status qua needs to look at those who are perpetuating it, in the case Israel backed uncritically by the U.S.

I don't have anything against Israelis like you do against Palestinians. I talk about Israel's atrocities because, from a pragmatic and political perspective, that will be the only way for the issue to be resolved, if America loosens its uncritical support for Israel.

Look up Israel on Amnesty International's website. Look at Btselem's website. And please stop repeating this bullshit about self defense, even Israeli officials (not the spokesmen you parrot, actual officials) openly acknowledge this. Listen to Norman Finkelstein's recent lecture at DePaul on the topic, but don't take his word for it listen to Israel's internal debate. Listen to what Lieberman says, listen to what Barak says, listen to what Olmert says, listen to what the generals say, but listen to what they say in Hebrew for domestic consumption, not what they say to the U.S media. Listen to Tamar Yonah, see what the dialog among Israeli is. Read Ha'aretz. Just get an education, you make yourself look like an idiotic bigot when you parrot the spokesmen. Not even the Israelis take their spokespeople seriously.

Paul said...

'This is in response to the recent comments of both Bar and Paul.
You might have noticed I haven't been commenting on your blogs anymore. Really its because I've gotten tired of it.'

Nice try YA but your arrogance as usual lets you down. In debating with me you relied on conspiracy theories for sources and basically lost your arguments. I'll give just two examples in debates we had.

1. You claimed (in a thread on here that has mysteriously been deleted) that Mossad orchestrated violence against Jews in Iraq. You then produced a source that in fact did not say that. Instead it quoted Yehuda Tajar as saying that whilst he would have carried out such bombings he did not in fact do so. Thus your own source did not in fact say what you were claiming it substantiated.

2. You made another claim that the US is backing Salafist terror groups in Iran. Your 'evidence' again contradicted you. You mentioned Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, then forget to mention that he is in fact being held by the US and is due to stand trial for 9/11. Seems a bit strange that someone whom you alleged was in league with the US is now going to be tried by them. You also mentioned the MEK. Mentioning them to back up a claim that, 'the US is backing Salafist groups in Iran' kind of falls flat. You know why? Doh they are not Salafist but a Maoist defunct group that are now facing disbandment by the Iraqi government.

http://amodernlibertarian.blogspot.com/2009/02/nato-general-suggests-member-states.html

YA, unlike you I do not have a problem admitting I'm wrong. I will not for instance delete parts of my blog once I realise I've made a monkey of myself, that is however your prerogative. I will read your comment above in full when I have time and get back to you. You know what? If I can be persuaded that Israel did in fact commit war crimes or Genocide on a par with Bashir, I will duly condemn it and call for indictment on my blog and this. A little less arrogance YA and an acceptance that other people may base their views on experience (how long have you spent in the ME exactly? I was first there whilst you were probably still in diapers) and we could find common ground whilst cordially disagreeing on certain issues. I will get back to you, Paul.

Progressive Pinhead said...

Paul,
I'll wait on you to finish those thought before I respond.

Progressive Pinhead said...

Okay, I've given this three weeks, so I'll respond to this now.



On your first point go back and read the thread. When you asked about this thread earlier I explained why it was down and offered to publish it for you if you were interested. You never responded, but since you seem to have a renewed interest I published it on your blog for you. This dispute came up within the context of a discussion about Jewish migration to Israel from Arab countries, a topic which is not relevant to the suffering of the Palestinian people, but one which I discussed with you anyway.

I brought up the fact that the consensus among Iraqi Jews was that the Mossad had bombed their synagogues to encourage migration. When you claimed this was an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory I offered evidence that it was at least a respectable view, although I drew no conclusions about this saying "Whether they were freelance terrorists or had links to Mossad, we will likely never know, it has been too politicized and the record is too vague." As to what motivated the bombers I pointed to the results of an official Israeli government inquiry that blamed Zionist agents, while you dismissed this too as a conspiracy theory and claiming "cursory glance at the facts available proves nothing although it would appear the Islamic brotherhood were responsible.", which is an interesting allegation to make since it, as you acknowledge not supported by evidence, but more importantly since the Islamic Brotherhood was not organized in Iraq until 1960 as the Iraqi Islamic Party, many years after the bombings.

Here you are rebuffing a claim that I never made, I've posted the thread so you can go back and look over it. I'd hardly describe this as either a conspiracy theory (perhaps the claims about the Islamic Brotherhood would warrant that label), or a lost argument.



On your second point, again go back and read the thread. I never said the MEK was a Salafist group, its ideology is "Islamic Socialism", but this has very little to do with the debate. As to Jundallah, I would hardly describe ABC and the Asian Times as "conspiracy theorists", you have a very peculiar conception of that word. It is not strange at all that the U.S would try someone who they in the past worked with, Saddam Hussein and Manuel Noriega are just two high profile examples, there are many others.



And as far as war crimes go, since when is Bashir's behavior the standard that conduct in war should be measured against? I always judged actions against international law, but apparently you feel that if it is not as bad as what Bashir has done it is perfectly acceptable. By this standard that excuses Israeli abuses both Osama bin Laden and Robert Mugabe are upstanding global citizens. Do you really believe in this standard when it is applied universally?