| THE HANDSTAND | FEBRUARY-MARCH2010 |
how about a citizens arrest?
Wanted: Tony Blair For War
Crimes.
Arrest Him And Claim Your Reward
By George Monbiot
26 January, 2010
Guardian.co.uk
The only question that counts is the one that the Chilcot inquiry won't address: was the war with Iraq illegal? If the answer is yes, everything changes. The war is no longer a political matter, but a criminal one, and those who commissioned it should be committed for trial for what the Nuremberg tribunal called "the supreme international crime": the crime of aggression.
But there's a problem with official inquiries in the United Kingdom: the government appoints their members and sets their terms of reference. It's the equivalent of a criminal suspect being allowed to choose what the charges should be, who should judge his case and who should sit on the jury. As a senior judge told the Guardian in November: "Looking into the legality of the war is the last thing the government wants. And actually, it's the last thing the opposition wants either because they voted for the war. There simply is not the political pressure to explore the question of legality – they have not asked because they don't want the answer."
Others have explored it, however. Two weeks ago a Dutch inquiry, led by a former supreme court judge, found that the invasion had "no sound mandate in international law". Last month Lord Steyn, a former law lord, said that "in the absence of a second UN resolution authorising invasion, it was illegal". In November Lord Bingham, the former lord chief justice, stated that, without the blessing of the UN, the Iraq war was "a serious violation of international law and the rule of law".
Under the United Nations charter, two conditions must be met before a war can legally be waged. The parties to a dispute must first "seek a solution by negotiation" (article 33). They can take up arms without an explicit mandate from the UN security council only "if an armed attack occurs against [them]" (article 51). Neither of these conditions applied. The US and UK governments rejected Iraq's attempts to negotiate. At one point the US state department even announced that it would "go into thwart mode" to prevent the Iraqis from resuming talks on weapons inspection (all references are on my website). Iraq had launched no armed attack against either nation.
We also know that the UK government was aware that the war it intended to launch was illegal. In March 2002, the Cabinet Office explained that "a legal justification for invasion would be needed. Subject to law officers' advice, none currently exists." In July 2002, Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, told the prime minister that there were only "three possible legal bases" for launching a war – "self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC [security council] authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case." Bush and Blair later failed to obtain security council authorisation.
As the resignation letter on the eve of the war from Elizabeth Wilmshurst, then deputy legal adviser to the Foreign Office, revealed, her office had "consistently" advised that an invasion would be unlawful without a new UN resolution. She explained that "an unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression". Both Wilmshurst and her former boss, Sir Michael Wood, will testify before the Chilcot inquiry tomorrow. Expect fireworks.
Without legal justification, the war with Iraq was an act of mass murder: those who died were unlawfully killed by the people who commissioned it. Crimes of aggression (also known as crimes against peace) are defined by the Nuremberg principles as "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties". They have been recognised in international law since 1945. The Rome statute, which established the international criminal court (ICC) and which was ratified by Blair's government in 2001, provides for the court to "exercise jurisdiction over the crime of aggression", once it has decided how the crime should be defined and prosecuted.
There are two problems. The first is that neither the government nor the opposition has any interest in pursuing these crimes, for the obvious reason that in doing so they would expose themselves to prosecution. The second is that the required legal mechanisms don't yet exist. The governments that ratified the Rome statute have been filibustering furiously to delay the point at which the crime can be prosecuted by the ICC: after eight years of discussions, the necessary provision still has not been adopted.
Some countries, mostly in eastern Europe and central Asia, have incorporated the crime of aggression into their own laws, though it is not yet clear which of them would be willing to try a foreign national for acts committed abroad. In the UK, where it remains illegal to wear an offensive T-shirt, you cannot yet be prosecuted for mass murder commissioned overseas.
All those who believe in justice should campaign for their governments to stop messing about and allow the international criminal court to start prosecuting the crime of aggression. We should also press for its adoption into national law. But I believe that the people of this nation, who re-elected a government that had launched an illegal war, have a duty to do more than that. We must show that we have not, as Blair requested, "moved on" from Iraq, that we are not prepared to allow his crime to remain unpunished, or to allow future leaders to believe that they can safely repeat it.
But how? As I found when I
tried to apprehend John Bolton, one of the
architects of the war in George Bush's government, at the
Hay festival in 2008, and as Peter Tatchell found when he
tried to detain Robert Mugabe, nothing focuses attention
on these issues more than an attempted citizen's arrest.
In October I mooted the idea of a bounty to which the
public could contribute, payable to anyone who tried to
arrest Tony Blair if he became president of the European
Union. He didn't of course, but I asked those who had
pledged money whether we should go ahead anyway. The
response was overwhelmingly positive.
So today I am launching a website – www.arrestblair.org – whose purpose is to raise money as a reward for people attempting a peaceful citizen's arrest of the former prime minister. I have put up the first £100, and I encourage you to match it. Anyone meeting the rules I've laid down will be entitled to one quarter of the total pot: the bounties will remain available until Blair faces a court of law. The higher the reward, the greater the number of people who are likely to try.
At this stage the arrests will be largely symbolic, though they are likely to have great political resonance. But I hope that as pressure builds up and the crime of aggression is adopted by the courts, these attempts will help to press governments to prosecute. There must be no hiding place for those who have committed crimes against peace. No civilised country can allow mass murderers to move on.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and
Media Limited 2010
Citizen's Arrest of War
Criminals Tony Blair and George W. Bush
By Prof. Anthony J. Hall
February 02, 2010 "Global Research" -- Professor Boyle's
intervention with the International Criminal Court (ICC)
to prosecute the Bush War Cabinet for international
crimes is welcome news. Professor Boyle's meticulously
documented charges come shortly after news of a reward
being set up in
http://www.arrestblair.org/
All over the world, citizens are mobilizing to take
action to demand accountability from those who have been
committing with impunity the highest order of
international crime. About a year ago I joined this
global movement. At an invited presentation hosted by the
Sociology Department at the
http://www.voltairenet.org/article159233.html#article159233
Professor Boyle's intervention significantly increases
the pressure that some of us have being trying to place
on the ICC to enforce international criminal law against
credibly accused war criminals in not only in
When I first presented these ideas at the
http://www.911blogger.com/node/19897
http://uniter.ca/view/discuss/734/
As important as it is to show support for US and British-based
initiatives to enforce the rule of law on the highest
order of criminality, I humbly suggest that Canadians
might want to get involved in similar initiatives
unfolding in
When it became apparent that police would not adhere to
the Nuremberg Principles by arresting Bush, my friend and
colleague, Splitting The Sky, attempted a citizen's
arrest.
An Attica Brother and Mohawk activist, Splitting The Sky
had come to
Instead of arresting Bush the police arrested Splitting
The Sky. The authorities jailed him and and charged the
Mohawk activist with obstructing justice. STS's trial is
scheduled to take place in
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62a53enMtA0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIj9wGZyWM8
http://www.splittingthesky.net/
http://www.warcriminalsout.com/prof_hall_letter_to_cbc_ombudsman.html
Since the arrest of STS former US Congresswoman, Green
Party presidential candidate and international anti-war
activist, Cynthia McKinney, has been outspoken in calling
attention to the importance of the STS-Bush case. Last
November, for instance, Ms. McKinney addressed an
international conference entitled "Criminalizing War"
at
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/47554
I have continued the agenda that Splitting The Sky and I
started after he telephoned me about one year ago to
inform me that George W.Bush was coming to Calgary in his
first public speaking engagement following his presidency.
http://blip.tv/file/3015093
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16377
Along with Splitting The Sky, I attended the Bush-Clinton
speaking event in
http://www.blogcatalog.com/blog/paul-s-graham/10d849dd7b02445aaec5a...
Unlike the
Moreover all of those police officers who failed to
arrest George Bush when they were presented with the
possibility of doing so became complicit in violations of
international law, including the Nuremberg Principles.
Following orders does not provide a legitimate defense
for officials who fail to uphold the rule of law when it
comes to the responsibility of dealing with the highest
order of international crime. Again and again we see
evidence that the rule of law does not apply to those at
the top of military, corporate, political and financial
chains of command. Under these circumstances the idea
that we live in societies governed by the rule of law has
become a sad hoax.
The severity of the dangers that surround us as the 9/11
Wars continue kill and maim millions and on the frontiers
of empire and to subvert our governments and societies
here in the imperial heartlands of North America, Europe,
Japan and Australasia has been well explained by
Professor Boyle as well as by Canadian professors Peter
Dale Scott, John McMurtry, Graeme MacQueen, Michael
Keefer, and Michel Chossudovsky among others. Yesterday
Professor Scott's most recent observations on the
lawlessness that permeates the highest levels of our
governments was published at
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17300
Founder of the Peace Studies Centre and the Peace Studies
program at McMaster University, Professor MacQueen, has
added his voice to the mix. He has emphasized the
importance for the peace movement of understanding "fraudulent
trigger incidents." Prof. MacQueen argues that key
elements of the peace movement have gone astray. He
accuses some of his fellow activists of refusing to
research the case being developed of one of the world's
most vital and determined movements of civil society and
falling back on uncritical acceptance of what he calls
the "government explanation" of the 9/11 Wars.
See
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUISz8Uwh6A
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY9IlDDpvzc
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3Bte5ULPD8
Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCzHeCCDp74&feature=related
Anthony J. Hall is
Professor of Globalization Studies at University of
Lethbridge
© Copyright Anthony J. Hall, Global Research, 2010
Matthew Norman: Irrespective of Chilcot, Blair will always remain a pariah
The former PM will never escape the verdict of the court of public opinion
Wednesday, 27 January 2010 Independent UK
NEIL WEBB
Two days from now, the spirit of the newly deceased Erich Segal will hover over the Queen Elizabeth Centre when Mr Tony Blair makes his feverishly awaited appearance before the Chilcot inquiry. A love story between a cocky, preppy Frat Boy with Roman numerals after his name and his feisty yet adoring social climbing inamorata will again be dissected. And for the latter, self-love will still mean never having to say you're sorry.
What fresh revelatory nuggets Sir John and the gang tease from Mr Blair will be conflated into front-page headlines, but expect no serious blunders from him. As adept at legalistic flim-flam as his great mate Bill Clinton, he has been staying up until 3am to prepare for this ordeal, we're assured, anticipating every imaginable line of enquiry and rehearsing every possible reply in finest detail.
Recalling that he had to be woken soon after midnight to be told that the invasion of Iraq had begun, you may detect a vicious little irony here. That he could sleep peacefully as his troops went into harm's way then, but dare not sleep when poised to explain why now, is an indecently cute vignette of a warped morality.
That war continues to be fought by proxy, of course, its battle lines so rigidly drawn that you can confidently predict the reaction to his testimony without having heard him take 10,000 words to repeat that everything's peachy because he sincerely believed whatever he said he sincerely believed at the time.
From my side of the argument, and probably yours, cries of "delusional maniac", "bare-faced liar" and "taxi to The Hague" will ring out. On the opposing side, that elite corps of commentators who cleave to his and Alastair Campbell's version will stick to their guns. These heroic armchair warriors, whose refusal to admit they were wrong so touchingly mirrors Mr Blair's, will reiterate their belief in his bona fides and that "democratic" Iraq is a much nicer place to live than under Saddam.
It's not one I'd feel secure making to the relatives of the perhaps half a million civilians who died as a result, or even to the millions denied food, water, electricity, education, medicine and other staples of civil society they lost in the war, but it's an argument. It's the identical argument Mr Blair and his cabal of staunch loyalists have been making for six years. And our counter-argument hasn't changed one iota in essence either.
So unflinchingly true to the form is this debate that it qualifies as postwar introspection's answer to the haiku. It also reminds me of a coach ride through the Atacama. After six hours, the predictability of the desert terrain becomes oddly entrancing, and every tiny change to the vista a visceral thrill. But Christ, you're thankful when the journey ends.
For Mr Blair, the journey will not end on Friday, or when the inquiry publishes its findings. However damning these appear, however transparent the intent to cast him as a deceitful warmonger, they will be written in the language of euphemism, thus allowing each side to claim a victory of sorts. For Mr Blair, in fact, the trek can never end. Even if he is as canny in his choice of foreign destinations as he is with his answers on Friday, and avoids any Pinochet-type indignity, much less a war crimes trial, he is must trudge through his remaining days as a pariah.
This, it seems to me, is justice. It isn't a modern form of quick-fix justice, as would be evidenced by front-page pictures of him being led into a Dutch courthouse, and then led out of it to a cell. Erich Segal, who moonlighted as a professor of classics, might confirm that this is justice ancient Greece style, in which the offence of Olympian arrogance – of confusing one's puny self with a deity – was punished by something even more agonising than global humiliation or a lengthy spell in jug. The penalty from which death alone can free Mr Blair is soul-crushing futility. For the rest of his life, he must push the boulder of his self-proclaimed innocence and self-protested good intent up the hill, aware that he cannot reach the summit but powerless to evade the pointlessness of trying.
On the surface, he couldn't care less. The only rational purpose to his interview with Fern Britton, when he pretty much admitted that regime change motivated him all along, and that he'd have been just as happy dreaming up justifications for that if required, was to trumpet his insouciant unconcern. He was giving the finger to the notion of legality itself. I wanted Saddam removed because I judged it right, ran the subtext. Petit bourgeois notions such as international law are for the little people, where I was a Titan. But then so was Prometheus. Mr Blair also played with fire, and so there will forever be eagles pecking at his liver.
Yesterday's revelation that he will earn a reported £200,000 a day for making geopolitical speeches to a hedge fund best known until now for the money it made betting on the failure of Northern Rock needlessly confirmed this staggeringly defiant attitude. The timing of the announcement was as crude as the symbolism of its content. Whatever impertinences these Chilcot jokers subject me to, his message must be: "I'll be coining it in more than ever. So yaboo sucks to the whole stinkin' lot of ya."
You cannot fault his consistency. What proportion of the income received for his memoirs and after-dinner speeches in America devolves directly from his status as junior war leader is impossible to quantify, but it must be many millions. If he earns a few million more from a firm that benefited from the economic catastrophe overseen by Labour, he is loyal to his own avarice in profiting from his own mismanagement.
If all that money offers him solace, acting as his comfort blanket as he tosses and turns in the desolate small hours tweaking his answers to the questions he expects on Friday, so be it. For all the braggadocio, the sunken eyes and haunted expression betray his fear of arrest, and even more so his awareness of the loathing felt for him here and around the world. He may or may not be tortured on Friday by the Furies, as represented by the parents of troops killed in Iraq, but he will be tormented until the only Judgment Day he tells us means anything to a demigod whose stature far transcends the insolent judgments of mankind. If he leaves for a well-guarded gated community in the United States or Australia, he will be an exile. If he stays to flit between his many homes in England, he will be an outcast in his own land. Robert Harris brilliantly portrayed him as The Ghost in his excellent novel of that name. Now he looks more like one of The Undead.
Intriguing and electrifying as Friday's cross-examination will probably prove, it will be no more relevant to the future of Tony Blair than to the dead of Iraq. He can never escape the verdict of what Harriet Harman called the court of public opinion. That was returned long before other erstwhile colleagues, like Jack Straw and all those dry old mandarins, plunged in their stilettos. Nothing unearthed or concluded by this enquiry, those yet to come, or any other power on earth can change that.