Obama’s Inheritance

Salam bro.

The KL Forum for the Criminalization of War and War Crimes Tribunal finished about 2 hours ago. The last two days (the Tribunal part) took the form of a legal submission to 7 Judges taking evidence from Comission who the day before heard testimony from torture victims of Abu Graib, Bagram and Guantanamo.

The specific submission was for the Tribunal to act in an advisory role as to the question of whether a head of state has the right to abandon International law/treaties/conventions without first abrogating those said treaties etc (I’m paraphrasing)

Internnational law after internation law was presented to the Tribunal and the string of memo’s from the Bush administration from Colon Powell, John Yoo and Donald Rumsfeld’s commissioned report and much more besides, such as the US military field manual and, the defenses of the Nazi’s lawyers etc etc…

The Tribunal unanamously ageed that a head of state cannot do this. As a consequence the ALL govenments and head of states are liable to prosecution for the crimes they have committed.
There is no immunity. They cannot wrangle their way out of international law.

There is too much that was said to have enabled remembering it all (or write it down), but the breaches of the International law (which cannot be trumped by domestic law) are very clear indeed and numerous.

One noteworthy aspect of the Tribunals deliberations, was the ussie of why the Tribunal was necessary. It was said that the international institutions were failing, established courts were operating via expediency, even the UN was said to have “failed in upholding it’s charger” by Hans Von Sponnek to the Trubinal. Von Sponnek really struggled when asked if the UN was guilty of breaches of International law, w.r.t. Iraq, he suggested France, Russia and China should be face that accusation as it was the US and IK that were repsonsible. So virtually ALL the established institutions had ‘lost the plot’ (my words) and were failing to carry out their responsibilites, hence the Commission and the Tribunal.

And if I understood correctly, there is scope in international law for a body of competitant and qualified personnel such as the tribunal to have their findings carry some legal weight.

It was a great 4 days. I networked a lot and met and spoke briefly to some great internationally renound people doing what they can to pull us from the precipice. Infact it was mentioned (Michel Chussodovsky and Judge F. Boyle) that we were at a most dangerous time in human history in reference (but not in its totality) to the reclassification of nuclear weaponary with yields equivalent ot about 3 times greater than that of the Hiroshima bomb – as being conventional munitions and the allowance of field Generals to authorise their use.

I feel like I’ve witnessed history in the making towards a much better world. If everyone had the chance to see and hear the things I have over the last 4 days I would like to hope the global movement to criminalize war and bring those responsible for it to justice would overcome what we have today (however I cannot let that hope go unquantified,.. and sadly my eschatological studies quantifies that hope to nearly zero levels, but here again I hape hope, hope that the latter is wrong!)

I had a chat with one of the Tipton three yesterday, Asif Iqbal, He came across as a very nice and honest guy.As a result of the chat I had to reassess my view on a couple of things.

OK Bro.
Salam.

Obama is far better as compare to Bush.