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War criminals must fear punishment.
That's why I went for John Bolton
George Monbiot
London
Guardian
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
I realise now that I didn't have a hope. I had almost reached
the stage when two of the biggest gorillas I have ever seen swept
me up and carried me out of the tent. It was humiliating, but
it could have been worse. The guard on the other side of the stage,
half hidden in the curtains, had spent the lecture touching something
under his left armpit. Perhaps he had bubos.
I had no intention of arresting John Bolton, the former under-secretary
of state at the US state department, when I arrived at the Hay
festival. But during a panel discussion about the Iraq war, I
remarked that the greatest crime of the 21st century had become
so normalised that one of its authors was due to visit the festival
to promote his book. I proposed that someone should attempt a
citizens' arrest, in the hope of instilling a fear of punishment
among those who plan illegal wars. After the session I realised
that I couldn't call on other people to do something I wasn't
prepared to do myself.
I knew that I was more likely to be arrested and charged than
Mr Bolton. I had no intention of harming him, or of acting in
any way that could be interpreted as aggressive, but had I sought
only to steer him gently towards the police I might have faced
a range of exotic charges, from false imprisonment to aggravated
assault. I was prepared to take this risk. It is not enough to
demand that other people act, knowing that they will not. If the
police, the courts and the state fail to prosecute what the Nuremberg
tribunal described as "the supreme international crime",
I believe we have a duty to seek to advance the process.
(Article continues below)
The Nuremberg principles, which arose from the prosecution of
Nazi war criminals, define as an international crime the "planning,
preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a
war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances".
Bolton appears to have "participated in a common plan"
to prepare for the war (also defined by the principles as a crime)
by inserting the false claim that Iraq was seeking to procure
uranium from Niger into a state department factsheet. He also
organised the sacking of José Bustani, the head of the
Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, accusing
him of bad management. Bustani had tried to broker a peaceful
resolution of the dispute over Iraq's alleged weapons of mass
destruction.
Full
article here.
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INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
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