News: Americas
» 2009
July 27, 2010
Iraq inquiry: Former UN inspector Blix says war illegal
The UN's former chief weapons inspector Hans Blix has said it is his "firm view" that the Iraq war was illegal.
Read article on the BBC News website (UK)
July 24, 2010
Toxic legacy of US assault on Fallujah 'worse than Hiroshima'
The shocking rates of infant mortality and cancer in Iraqi city raise new questions about battle
Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study. Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have complained since 2005 of being overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They said they were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the battle for Fallujah between US troops and insurgents. Their claims have been supported by a survey showing a four-fold increase in all cancers and a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s. Infant mortality in the city is more than four times higher than in neighbouring Jordan and eight times higher than in Kuwait.
Read article in The Independent (UK)
June 30, 2010
Iraq inquiry: secret documents showing Tony Blair’s frustration published
Tony Blair’s irritation and frustration at being told that going to war in Iraq would be illegal have been made public with the unprecedented release of top secret Government documents. On one note, written six weeks before the March 2003 invasion, the then-prime minister scrawled “I just do not understand this” alongside a warning from Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, that military force would be illegal without a fresh United Nations resolution.
Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)
June 30, 2010
Diplomat questions Blair's handling of Bush in runup to Iraq war
Lord Jay tells Chilcot inquiry Tony Blair gave commitments to US president about British involvement
Britain's senior diplomat at the time of the Iraq war has questioned how Tony Blair conducted his dealings with the then US president, George W Bush, in the runup to the conflict, during this morning's session at the Chilcot inquiry in central London. Lord Jay of Ewelme, who was head of the Foreign Office as permanent secretary there between 2002 and 2006, told the inquiry that the former prime minister gave commitments about Britain's support for the war in advance that he would not have given himself. His evidence also disclosed that there was internal debate and conflict within the Foreign Office about the legality of the war and that its senior legal advisers were strongly opposed to the conflict without a second UN resolution.
Read article in the Guardian (UK)
June 29, 2010
Britain's Iraq War Inquiry Resumes
Britain's Iraq war inquiry began again on Tuesday after suspending its hearings for the country's general elections. Former U.N. inspector Hans Blix is among those called to appear before the five-member panel in the coming weeks.
Read article on the Voice of America news website (USA)
June 29, 2010
Sir John Chilcot asks lawyers: Was Iraq war legal?
An official verdict on the legality of the Iraq war crept closer today after the Chilcot inquiry called for international lawyers to submit their views on the conflict. Resuming public hearings after a break for the general election, Iraq Inquiry chairman Sir John Chilcot issued an “open invitation” to legal experts to give their judgments on the US-UK invasion in 2003.
Read article in the London Evening Standard (UK)
Comment: Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary-General at the time of the US-UK invasion of Iraq, openly stated in 2004 that it was an illegal act that contravened the UN charter. We share this opinion and continue to call for former U.S. President George W. Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to be held responsible for the deaths of more than one million people in Iraq and put on trial for genocide and other crimes against humanity.
June 10, 2010
Former Nuremberg prosecutor chides U.S., China, Russia
Kampala, Uganda -- One of the attorneys who prosecuted Nazi war criminals at the end of World War II cautioned the United States, Russia and China on Wednesday over their opposition to the final inclusion of "crimes of aggression" in the mandate for the International Criminal Court. "Crimes of aggression" were initially included in the court's Rome Statute of 1998, but unlike the other three crimes put under the tribunal's jurisdiction -- genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes -- crimes of aggression were not defined and jurisdictional conditions were not set. A review conference, which began May 31 in Kampala and continues through Friday, hopes to accept a proposal that will finally give the court what it needs to try cases of crimes against aggression. But the United States, Russia and China have balked. "A country should not commit crimes for its own benefit thinking no one will question it," said Benjamin Ferencz, a former chief prosecutor during the 1946 Nuremberg Tribunal that brought top Nazi war officials to justice. "This is the time all nations in the world should come in full support of the crime of aggression to be part of crimes tried by ICC so that we put to past impunity and open a new chapter to accountability," he said.
Read article at cnn.com
Comment: CNN reports that a total of 33 African nations now want former U.S. President George W. Bush and his close ally former British Prime Minister Tony Blair prosecuted for their invasion of Iraq in 2002. In particular, attorneys for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir are urging the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, to indict Bush and Blair for lying to the world regarding the existence of weapons of mass destruction to support the invasion.
June 2, 2010
Nuclear Option on Gulf Oil Spill? No Way, U.S. Says
The chatter began weeks ago as armchair engineers brainstormed for ways to stop the torrent of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico: What about nuking the well? Decades ago, the Soviet Union reportedly used nuclear blasts to successfully seal off runaway gas wells, inserting a bomb deep underground and letting its fiery heat melt the surrounding rock to shut off the flow. Why not try it here? The idea has gained fans with each failed attempt to stem the leak and each new setback — on Wednesday, the latest rescue effort stalled when a wire saw being used to slice through the riser pipe got stuck. “Probably the only thing we can do is create a weapon system and send it down 18,000 feet and detonate it, hopefully encasing the oil,” Matt Simmons, a Houston energy expert and investment banker, told Bloomberg News on Friday, attributing the nuclear idea to “all the best scientists.” Or as the CNN reporter John Roberts suggested last week, “Drill a hole, drop a nuke in and seal up the well.” This week, with the failure of the “top kill” attempt, the buzz had grown loud enough that federal officials felt compelled to respond. Stephanie Mueller, a spokeswoman for the Energy Department, said that neither Energy Secretary Steven Chu nor anyone else was thinking about a nuclear blast under the gulf. The nuclear option was not — and never had been — on the table, federal officials said. “It’s crazy,” one senior official said.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
May 27, 2010
Fidel Castro Awarded Highest Decoration of Ecuadorean Parliament
The Ecuadorean Parliament bestowed its highest award —the Gen. Eloy Alfaro Delgado Decoration— on the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro. The distinction was received on behalf of Fidel by Cuban First Vice President Jose Ramon Machado from the hands of the president of the Ecuadorean legislative body, Fernando Cordero Cueva, during a ceremony held at Havana’s Revolution Palace. “The people’s revolution in Ecuador and all the ongoing process of changes and integration that we are experiencing in Latin America could hardly be conceived without Fidel and Cuba,” said Cordero Cueva.
Read article on the website of the Cuban News Agency (Cuba)
May 20, 2010
Cannes hears call for ‘war criminals’ Bush, Blair to face trial
CANNES, France — Director Ken Loach, in Cannes with his Iraq war film, called Thursday for the "war criminals" George W. Bush and Tony Blair to be tried for launching the invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein. "We have to keep pursuing Blair, Bush and the others until we have them in the dock," he said as he arrived for a red carpet premiere of his film "Route Irish" which is in the running for the festival's Palme d'Or top prize. "It's certainly true that the people who started the war, who are war criminals, have not been called to account," said Loach, whose new work probes the murky world of private security contractors in Iraq.
Read article on the Raw Story website (USA)
May 2, 2010
Fears for crops as shock figures from America show scale of bee catastrophe
The world may be on the brink of biological disaster after news that a third of US bee colonies did not survive the winter
Disturbing evidence that honeybees are in terminal decline has emerged from the United States where, for the fourth year in a row, more than a third of colonies have failed to survive the winter. The decline of the country's estimated 2.4 million beehives began in 2006, when a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD) led to the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of colonies. Since then more than three million colonies in the US and billions of honeybees worldwide have died and scientists are no nearer to knowing what is causing the catastrophic fall in numbers.
Read article in the Guardian (UK)
Comment: Colony collapse disorder is now a serious worldwide problem. Significantly, therefore, evidence in the United States and Europe has linked pesticides produced by Bayer CropScience to the deaths of bees. In recognition of this, in the UK, a group of members of the British Bee Keepers Association has recently split from the organization and criticized the sponsorship deals it has with companies such as Bayer CropScience and Syngenta, from whom it receives around £17,500 pounds-a-year in funding.
April 22, 2010
European big business admits to lobbying Washington, but not Brussels
Many of Europe's biggest corporations are avoiding registering their lobbying activities in Brussels even as they admit to the scale of their operations in Washington where registration of lobbyists is required by law, according to a new study. As a result of the different registry frameworks between the two legislative capitals - in Brussels, the European Commission's lobby registry is a voluntary affair - European big business on the whole is able to make it appear that it is engaged in much more lobbying in Washington than in Brussels. This is the conclusion of a new study by lobbying watchdogs that analyses what the EU's 50 biggest corporations say they are spending on influencing policy.
Read article at euobserver.com
Comment: The ‘Brussels EU’ is controlled by corporate interests and it is now a matter of public record that multinational corporations have engaged in successful long-term lobbying strategies to shape European Union policy making in their favour. As a result of these activities, the EU’s risk assessment process has been rigged to benefit multi-trillion dollar business interests – especially those of the chemical, petrochemical and pharmaceutical industries – at the expense of public health.
April 21, 2010
Google releases list of government censorship requests
Internet search giant Google has revealed that Brazil's government has made the most requests for information or censorship. However figures for China, which censors great swathes of online information, have not been revealed. Google could not include requests made by Beijing because the information is regarded as a state secret. Instead, Brazil tops the list, with 3,663 data requests between 1 July and 31 December 2009. The US made 3,580 and the UK came third with 1,166.
Read article in the Daily Telegraph (UK)
Comment: To see Google’s list of government censorship requests, click here.
April 8, 2010
US and Russian leaders hail nuclear arms treaty
US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, have signed a landmark nuclear arms treaty in the Czech capital, Prague. The treaty commits the former Cold War enemies to each reduce the number of deployed strategic warheads to 1,550 - 30% lower than the previous ceiling. Mr Obama said it was a key milestone, but only the "first step on a longer journey" of nuclear disarmament. Mr Medvedev said the deal would create safer conditions throughout the world. If ratified by lawmakers in both countries, the treaty will replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start) of 1991, which expired in December.
Read article on the BBC News website (UK)
April 7, 2010
U.S. Court Curbs F.C.C. Authority on Web Traffic
WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that regulators had limited power over Web traffic under current law. The decision will allow Internet service companies to block or slow specific sites and charge video sites like YouTube to deliver their content faster to users. The court decision was a setback to efforts by the Federal Communications Commission to require companies to give Web users equal access to all content, even if some of that content is clogging the network.
Read article in the New York Times (USA)
Comment: The world’s largest telephone and cable companies want to be the Internet’s gatekeepers and to be able to decide which Web sites load quickly, which load slowly and which won't load at all. As such, without legal requirements to prevent them from doing so, Internet service providers will eventually be able to discriminate against content and services they don't like – thus putting their own vested interests before the public good. Amongst other things, this could result in cutting-edge natural health research and the exposure of the Nazi roots of the Brussels EU effectively being censored. To learn more about the ongoing battle to prevent Internet service providers from discriminating between different kinds of content and applications online, click here.
March 4, 2010
Falluja doctors report rise in birth defects
Doctors in the Iraqi city of Falluja are reporting a high level of birth defects, with some blaming weapons used by the US after the Iraq invasion.
Read article on the BBC News website (UK)
February 3, 2010
US blames Lisbon Treaty for EU summit fiasco
The US State Department has said that President Barack Obama's decision not to come to an EU summit in Madrid in May is partly due to confusion arising from the Lisbon Treaty. State department spokesman Philip J. Crowley told press in Washington on Tuesday (2 February) that the treaty has made it unclear who the US leader should meet and when. "Up until recently, they [summits] would occur on six-month intervals, as I recall, with one meeting in Europe and one meeting here. And that was part of – the foundation of that was the rotating presidency within the EU. Now you have a new structure regarding not only the rotating EU presidency, you've got an EU Council president, you've got a European Commission president," he said.
Read article at euobserver.com
Comment: As a result of the Lisbon Treaty, the ‘Brussels EU’ now has a total of four presidents: the rotating EU presidency (currently held by Spain); the EU Council president (Herman Van Rompuy); the European Commission president (José Manuel Barroso); and the European Parliament president (Jerzy Buzek). So who’s really in charge? To learn the facts about the ‘Brussels EU’, click here.
February 2, 2010
Iraq to sue U.S., Britain over depleted uranium bombs
Iraq's Ministry for Human Rights will file a lawsuit against Britain and the U.S. over their use of depleted uranium bombs in Iraq, an Iraqi minister says. Iraq's Minister of Human Rights, Wijdan Mikhail Salim, told Assabah newspaper that the lawsuit will be launched based on reports from the Iraqi ministries of science and the environment. According to the reports, during the first year of the U.S. and British invasion of Iraq, both countries had repeatedly used bombs containing depleted uranium. According to Iraqi military experts, the U.S. and Britain bombed the country with nearly 2,000 tons of depleted uranium bombs during the early years of the Iraq war. Atomic radiation has increased the number of babies born with defects in the southern provinces of Iraq. Iraqi doctors say they' have been struggling to cope with the rise in the number of cancer cases -- especially in cities subjected to heavy U.S. and British bombardment.
Read article in the Tehran Times (Iran)
January 29, 2010
Bush decided UN backing not necessary, says Blair
United Nations backing for the Iraq war would have made "life a lot easier", Tony Blair said today. But the former prime minister said US President George Bush decided the UN Security Council's support "wasn't necessary".
Read article in the Independent (UK)
January 12, 2010
A sign of empire pathology
Here is a shocking statistic that you won't hear in most western news media: over the past nine years, more US military personnel have taken their own lives than have died in action in either the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. These are official figures from the US Department of Defence, yet somehow they have not been deemed newsworthy to report. Last year alone, more than 330 serving members of the US armed forces committed suicide - more than the 320 killed in Afghanistan and the 150 who fell in Iraq (see wsws.org).
Read article at gulf-daily-news.com (Bahrain)
January 12, 2009
Dutch inquiry says Iraq war had no mandate
An inquiry into the Netherlands' support for the invasion of Iraq says it was not justified by UN resolutions. The Dutch Committee of Inquiry on Iraq said UN Security Council resolutions did not "constitute a mandate for... intervention in 2003". The inquiry was launched after foreign ministry memos were leaked that cast doubt on the legal basis for the war. The Netherlands gave political support to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but has denied having any military role. The report demolishes the Dutch case for supporting the invasion, says the BBC's Europe correspondent Jonny Dymond. It could also be taken to reinforce the international case against the Iraq war, he says.
Read article on the BBC News website (UK)
January 4, 2010
Use of potentially harmful chemicals kept secret under law
Of the 84,000 chemicals in commercial use in the United States -- from flame retardants in furniture to household cleaners -- nearly 20 percent are secret, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, their names and physical properties guarded from consumers and virtually all public officials under a little-known federal provision. The policy was designed 33 years ago to protect trade secrets in a highly competitive industry. But critics -- including the Obama administration -- say the secrecy has grown out of control, making it impossible for regulators to control potential dangers or for consumers to know which toxic substances they might be exposed to. At a time of increasing public demand for more information about chemical exposure, pressure is building on lawmakers to make it more difficult for manufacturers to cloak their products in secrecy. Congress is set to rewrite chemical regulations this year for the first time in a generation.
Read article in the Washington Post (USA)