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MIGHT[&]TWO WRONGS MAKE A RIGHT?
- Date: Sun, 18 Apr 1999 21:13:55 -0400 (EDT)
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Whatever any and all abuses of and criminal charges for violations
of international law against the President, military and police of
Yugoslavia in Kosovo, we must equally examine and act upon the actions of
NATO, its member states, and its leaders.
Let us therefore examine some of the principles, definitions and
prohibitions of CRIMES AGAINST THE PEACE, AND WAR CRIMES contributed to
international law by the Allied post-WW II Tribunal at Nuremberg,
summarized below, and specifically section [a] [i] & [ii] and the last
prohibitions of section [b]
AND
by the 1948 Geneva Convention against GENOCIDE [finally ratified by the
USA] Article II sections [a],[b],[c].
Then ask and answer whether - unless indeed might makes right out
of countless wrongs - there is or is not sufficient prima facie evidence
in what NATO euphomistically calls its "strikes" [not attacks? agression?
undeclared war?] against Yugoslavia also to indict NATO and its leaders
for the violation of at the very least the 7 sections cited above and
spelled out below of the
- Nuremberg Tribunal and on WAR CRIMES
- Convention on GENOCIDE
not to mention many more sections of
- The UN Charter [in articles 27,41,42,51],
- The Helsinki Agreement,
and even of
- The NATO Charter itself, which reads in part:
Article 1
The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of
the United Nations, to settle any international dispute
in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such
a manner that international peace and security and justice
are not endangered, and to refrain in their international
relations from the threat or use of force in any manner
inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.
NUREMBERG PRINCIPLES
"At Nuremberg, three categories of offenses were regarded as punishable
crimes under international law:
-
(a) CRIMES AGAINST PEACE:
-
(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of war of aggression or a
war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
-
(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment
of any of the acts mentioned under (i).
-
(b) WAR CRIMES:
-
Violation of the laws or customs of war, which include, but are not
limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave-labor or for any other
purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or
ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of
hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of
cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military
necessity.
-
(c) CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY:
-
Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts
done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial or
religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are
carried on in execution of or in connexion with any crime against peace or any war
crime."
----------
The "Nuremberg principles" of international law are quoted from:
Richard A. Falk, A Global Approach to National Policy.
Harvard U P, 1975, p. 149.
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U N GENOCIDE CONVENTION
Article II of the 1948 U.N. Convention on Genocide states the following:
"In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts
committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,
ethnical, racial or religious group as such:
(a) killing members of the group;
(b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated
to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Moreover the Nuremberg Tribunal established clearly that the
responsibility for these crimes is PERSONAL:
"Crimes against international law are committed by men,
not by abstract entities, and only by punishing individuals
who commit such crimes can the provisions of international law
be enforced"
"Hitler could not make aggressive war by himself.
He had to have the cooperation of statesmen, military leaders,
diplomats and businessmen"
"When they, with knowledge of his aims, gave him their
cooperation, they made themselves parties to the plan he had
initiated. They are not to be deemed innocent because Hitler
made use of them, if they knew what they were doing"
XXXXXXXXXX
A REVEALING FOOTNOTE
reported by a member of a Serbian-American delegation meeting
with President Clinton:
But when the Serb delegation suggested that he must first stop the
bombing, Clinton replied that he could not do that, as the very existence
of NATO was at stake.
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