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:: ONU - XX Assemblea Generale (1965): |
La
XX Assemblea Generale dell’ONU (1965)
dichiara "la legittimità della
lotta da parte dei popoli sotto
oppressione coloniale, per esercitare il
loro diritto all' autodeter-
minazione e
all'indipendenza".
Inoltre, l'Assemblea invita "tutti
gli Stati a fornire assistenza morale e
materiale ai movimenti di liberazione
nazionale nei territori coloniali". |
|
:: ONU
- Risoluzione 1514 |
"L'Assemblea
Generale dichiara che: la soggezione dei
popoli a dominio straniero, conquista e
asservimento costituisce una negazione
dei diritti umani fondamentali, è
contraria alla Carta delle Nazioni Unite
ed è un impedimento alla promozione
della pace e della cooperazione mondiali.
Tutti i popoli hanno diritto
all' autodeter-
minazione; in virtù di
tale diritto essi devono liberamente
determinare il loro status politico e
liberamente perseguire il loro sviluppo
economico, sociale e culturale". |
|
:: Convenzione
di Ginevra, Protocollo Addizionale I
(1977): |
La lotta
armata può essere usata, come ultima
risorsa, come mezzo per esercitare il
diritto all' autodeter-
minazione. |
|
:: Tribunale
penale internazionale |
In
base allo Statuto del Tribunale penale
internazionale, sono definiti “crimini
di guerra”:
(1) attacchi lanciati intenzionalmente
contro popolazione civili in quanto tali
o contro civili che non prendano
direttamente parte alle ostilità;
(4) attacchi lanciati intenzionalmente
nella consapevolezza che gli stessi
avranno come conseguenza la perdita di
vite umane tra la popolazione civile, e
lesioni a civili o danni a proprietà
civili ovvero danni diffusi duraturi e
gravi all’ambiente naturale che siano
manifestamente eccessivi rispetto all’insieme
dei concreti e diretti i vantaggi
militari previsti. |
:: Iraq anthem
(click to listen)
|
|
Syria News - October 27, 2013 (Warning: Graphic Videos)
Local Coordination Committees of Syria + Videos |
October 27, 2013 -
By the end of Sunday the Coordination Committees were able to document 65 martyrs including 5 women, 3 children and 1 martyr under torture: 16 martyrs were reported in Damascus and its Suburbs, 16 in Daraa, 15 in Deir Ezzor, 9 in Homs, 6 in Aleppo and 3 martyrs in Hama. Moreover, the committees have documented 343 points of shelling in Syria : Air strikes by warplanes were recorded in 20 points The fiercest was in the towns and villages of Daraa for the second day in a row, surface-to-surface missiles have targeted Qaboun neighborhood in Damascus, explosive barrels were dropped in Sfeira in Aleppo, cluster bombs have targeted Mhein in Homs, artillery shelling was recorded in 127 points, followed by rocket shelling in 108 points, and mortar shelling was recorded in 85 points across Syria...
continua / continued  [102073] [ 28-oct-2013 10:22 ECT ] |
|
America's Most Beloved War Criminals
By Justin Doolittle, Truthout |
October 27, 2013 - Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is set to be named officially next month as a member of the College Football Playoff selection committee, charged with selecting the four teams that will compete in the first playoffs following the 2014 season. Rice's appointment, which, according to ESPN, brings some "star power" to the committee, was made possible by the generally favorable impression of her among the public and in the media....Despite being at the center of some of the most intensely political dramas of the Bush presidency, Rice has managed to escape from the wreckage of those years virtually unscathed...This is someone who was the highest-ranked security official in the United States at the time of the 9/11 attacks. She later became a vociferous defender of the Bush administration's aggressive war against Iraq. She was responsible one of the most radically dishonest statements ever made to the American people, when she warned that, unless Iraq were attacked, Saddam Hussein might very well launch a nuclear war against the United States, leaving a "mushroom cloud" in some unspecified American city....
continua / continued [102070] [ 28-oct-2013 02:01 ECT ] |
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Environmental Impacts of the Destruction of Iraq’s Electricity Infrastructure.
by Dr. Souad Al-Azzawi |
October 27, 2013 - Electricity came to Iraq in 1917. According to UNDP, 2008 [2], until 1990, Iraq enjoyed an excellent electricity infrastructure, where generation capacity exceeded the demand of about 6000 mega watts (MW), and additional power generation plants were under construction prior to the Gulf War in 1991. The total installed generating capacity was 9,295 MW, for a population of 22 million at that time. The system supported a peak demand of about 5,100 MW. 87% of population had access to electricity during the eighties. Out of the thirty power plants which were built prior to the American occupation, twenty were installed and commissioned into service within the period of 1970 – 1980 by the national government of the Republic of Iraq.During the multiple attacks, economic sanctions and occupation, the electrical power production network was systematically and intentionally destroyed by American forces. After the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the electrical power production capacity dropped to only 3,300 MW, which was drastically under the national requirements. ...
continua / continued [102061] [ 27-oct-2013 23:50 ECT ] |
|
Settlers Burn Olive Saplings, Trees, South Of Bethlehem
IMEMC & Agencies
October 27, 2013 - A number of extremist Israeli settlers, burnt dozens of Palestinian olive saplings, and trees, that belong to residents of the Al-Khader town, south of the West Bank city of Bethlehem. Local sources have reported that a group of settlers of the Efrat settlement, built on lands illegally confiscated from the villagers, invaded the orchards, burnt approximately 80 olive saplings, in addition to nearly 20 trees (almond, apricot, peach trees). The settlers took most of the uprooted trees and saplings with them back into the settlement, the Radio Bethlehem 2000 has reported. Settlers recently cut 100 olive trees in Qaryouth village, near the northern West Bank city of Nablus...
continua / continued [102060] [ 27-oct-2013 23:48 ECT ] |
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Remember the Grenada Invasion
Glen Ford
October 26, 2013 - Thirty years ago, on October 25, 1983, the United States sent 6,000 elite troops to overwhelm the Caribbean nation of Grenada, an island of less than 100,000 inhabitants that had been governed by the revolutionary New Jewel Movement since 1979. Although the announced pretext for the invasion was a nonexistent threat to American medical students on the island, Operation Urgent Fury had been rehearsed two years earlier, in a 1981 war game against the island nation of "Amber and the Amberdines," a fictional stand-in for Grenada and the Grenadines....
continua / continued [102050] [ 27-oct-2013 13:50 ECT ] |
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U.N. Syria envoy says Iran should join Geneva peace talks
Reuters
October 26, 2013- The United Nations peace envoy for Syria said on Saturday Iran should be invited to planned peace talks in Geneva, Iran's English-language Press TV reported, in comments sure to rile Gulf Arab states...."We believe that the participation of Iran in the Geneva conference is natural and necessary as well as fruitful, so we are hopeful that this invitation is made," Lakhdar Brahimi told a news conference in Tehran, according to Press TV, which translated his live remarks into English. "The secretary-general of the United Nations, I and lots of other people, we are waiting, we want to see Iran take part in the conference," he said.
continua / continued [102046] [ 27-oct-2013 01:33 ECT ] |
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US Spies on Its Allies For Business Intel, Not For National Security
The Real News
October 26, 2013 - ...I want to emphasize one thing about it, which is that the U.S. has justified the spying in large part, and actually almost entirely: this is the way we have to get terrorists. We have to spy on everybody so we can get ahead of the next terrorist attack in the United States. What has happened in the last week as we've looked at what's happened in other countries--I'll go over some of those quickly--is that this is not really--or this spying by the NSA is not really at all about terrorism, criminality, or anything like that. This is about business and politics. This is about the U.S. getting advantages and finding out ways in which it can get advantages in business and in which it can understand what the political situations are in other countries so that it can make moves in the way it wants. In other words, it's about continuation, in a way, of empire, business advantage, and politics...
continua / continued [102043] [ 27-oct-2013 00:04 ECT ] |
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Iraq: No Justice Six Months After 91 Demonstrator Deaths in Hawijah
Alkarama |
October 26, 2013 - Today marks the six-month-anniversary of what is commonly referred to as the Hawijah Massacre, which took place at Hawijah, Kirkuk, Iraq, on 23 April 2013. Information provided to Alkarama and the Iraqi Organization for Human Rights, suggests that the Iraqi Armed Forces, Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) units, and police forces used excessive force to disperse a sit-in in Hawijah, which lead to the deaths of 91 civilians and another 254 injured. Efforts to investigate these events have thus far been frustrated by the Iraqi authorities, and we therefore call on them to promptly and impartially investigate these incidents of extrajudicial killing and to prosecute those believed to be responsible for the killings of protesters. Sit-ins were held in Hawijah, Kirkuk, Iraq, starting from early 2013, following a nation-wide trend. Amongst other demands, the demonstrators were seeking the release of detainees and the cancelation of the fourth article of the Iraqi Anti-Terrorism Law, which allows the death sentence of those charged with terrorism and related activities...
continua / continued [102042] [ 27-oct-2013 00:00 ECT ] |
|
Ratner: US Drone Strikes Are War Crimes, Despite Human Groups Reluctancy to Blast Obama
The Real News
October 25, 2013 - ...My conclusion is, which is a more--I guess, a more hard-hitting or broader conclusion then the AI report or the HRW report, is that these drone attacks are absolutely 100 percent illegal in the fashion they're being used. They should not be used--being used at all, not just because they're illegal, but because they're counterproductive. And the best thing they do is really say to you that the U.S. believes that it is the global cop and can kill at its will anywhere in the world. And that should not be allowed or permitted. And hopefully these two reports and other arguments, from my office and others and from people in the world, are saying, let's stop this, let's get rid of it, it's illegal, it's immoral, and it's counterproductive...
continua / continued [102041] [ 26-oct-2013 22:33 ECT ] |
|
Dr. Mustafa Barghouti: After 20 years of Oslo
By Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi |
October 26, 2013 - From the Palestinian standpoint, many believe the Oslo experience was a failure. It severely damaged the cause of the Palestinian national liberation movement and forfeited the opportunity to capitalise on the results of the first Intifada that had altered balances of power on the ground. They also hold that the most salient manifestations of the failure of the accords were that they served as Israel’s cover for doing whatever it wanted and not doing what it had no intention to do. In fact, Israel effectively cancelled whole sections of the agreement after its incursion into the West Bank in 2002. From the Israeli perspective, the agreement was undoubtedly a great success. In fact, it is no exaggeration to describe it as one of Israel’s greatest strokes of genius. Through Oslo, the Israelis harvested the reversal of the results of the grassroots uprising, the Palestinian recognition of the State of Israel without, moreover, specifying the 1967 borders, a severe rupture in Palestinian national ranks, the effects of which continue to plague the Palestinians, the marginalisation of the Palestinians in the diaspora from their national liberation movement, and the replacement of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) as the leader of the national struggle by the Palestinian Authority (PA) which has been forced to rely increasingly on foreign aid and which is shackled by an endless list of restrictions, from the Paris economic agreement to security cooperation conditions. ...
continua / continued [102036] [ 26-oct-2013 20:42 ECT ] |
|
Will Appeals Court Judges Rule that Force-Feeding at Guantánamo Must Stop?
Andy Worthington |
October 26, 2013 - Last week, a panel of three appeals court judges in Washington D.C. (in the D.C. Circuit Court) heard an appeal from three Guantánamo prisoners — including the last British resident, Shaker Aamer — asking them to order the government to end the force-feeding of prisoners, and two of the three judges "asked sceptical questions of a government lawyer who argued that the courts have no jurisdiction" over conditions at Guantánamo, as Reuters described it. At the height of the prison-wide hunger strike at Guantánamo this year, at least 106 of the remaining 164 prisoners were on a hunger strike, and 46 of those men were being force-fed. That total has now fallen to 15, but twice a day those 15 men are tied into restraint chairs, while liquid nutrient is pumped into their stomachs via a tube inserted through their nose, a painful and abusive process denounced by the World Medical Association and the United Nations...
continua / continued [102033] [ 26-oct-2013 18:14 ECT ] |
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Mustafa Barghouti Garners Support Among West Bank Youth
By: Shlomi Eldar
October 25, 2013 - .... We can understand why Barghouti’s messages are so captivating. The corruption that fanned out in the Palestinian Authority from the moment of its inception destroyed everything good. Any political movement within the Palestinian Authority became synonymous with corruption and filth. The ones who remained frustrated and hurting were those who were not able to get close enough to put their hands in the till and plunder the Palestinian cash register, as did all the other associates of the regime. In Fatah they now realize that the power garnered by the doctor, whom they never viewed as a threat before, now presents a big problem to them. Hamas wasn’t exactly to Fatah’s liking either. Hamas won the 2006 elections, mainly because the rank and file wanted to punish Fatah and because they believed that the people on the Hamas list, headed by Ismail Haniyeh, would be more attentive to the nation’s needs. But this movement also disappointed the Palestinian public, despite all its welfare institutions...Barghouti, by contrast, is a longstanding and experienced activist. Support for him increased after he was wounded a number of times in confrontations with Israel Defense Forces in the popular demonstrations that have been held in various places in the West Bank over the past year....
continua / continued [102030] [ 26-oct-2013 16:40 ECT ] |
|
Power Outages Send Gaza Children To Study on Streets
By: Rasha Abou Jalal |
October 25, 2013 — The only refuge Asaad Jabouri, 12, found for doing his homework is under a light post on Market Street in the al-Nuseirat Camp in central Gaza Strip. He came here fleeing the electricity cuts in his neighborhood, about 200 meters from the street. Jabouri, a sixth-grade student, spread out his books on the sidewalk while vehicles rushed by. He was hurrying to finish his homework and avoid getting home late. After finishing his work, Jabouri took a deep breath and raised his head while still stretched out on the ground. "I’m finished, now we can talk," said Jabouri. He sat down on the side of the road to catch his breath. "I come here day after day to do my homework. Sometimes, I choose to sit under a light post, while other times I sit in front of a well-lit shop," he explained....
continua / continued [102025] [ 26-oct-2013 15:14 ECT ] |
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Activists arrested in Hebron: 'Segregation isn't our Judaism'
Text by Michael Omer-Man - Photos by Oren Ziv/Activestills.org |
October 25, 2013 - Israeli police arrested seven Jewish activists from Israel and the Diaspora in the segregated city of Hebron on Friday for holding signs that read, "Segregation is not our Judaism." The activists, from a group called All That’s Left, went to Hebron on the eve of Shabbat Chayei Sarah, which is when the Torah portion of the same name is read. Religious-nationalist Jews descend on Hebron over the weekend, to mark the text they believe to be proof that Jews own Hebron. Even more than the rest of the year, during the Chayei Sarah weekend, the Israeli army restricts Palestinian movement in Hebron due to the influx of Jewish worshipers. This year, like years past, the army prevented Palestinians from holding Friday prayers at the Ibrahimi Mosque...
continua / continued [102023] [ 26-oct-2013 14:54 ECT ] |
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New Film Highlights the Human Cost of Drone Warfare
George Zornick
October 26, 2013- Though the debate over drone warfare is certainly more active than it was, say, one year ago, there is little doubt it is basically taking place only at the elite level—policy makers, journalists and a decidedly small handful of lawmakers have debated the issue hotly in recent months, but it is not one that consumes the American public at large.This is certainly true relative to many other parts of the world, where massive street protests have roiled cities from Islamabad to Johannesburg. We see images of these emotional protests in Robert Greenwald’s latest film, Unmanned: America’s Drone Wars, and the contrast to American indifference is striking.... It begins with the story of Tariq Aziz, a 16-year-old soccer fan who attended an anti-drone conference in Islamabad in 2011 because he was concerned about the deaths in his area. Seventy-two hours later, he was killed by a Hellfire missile fired from a US drone as he drove to pick up his aunt from a wedding. No explanation has been given for his death, other than an unproven assertion that he was a "terrorist." Greenwald and his crew traveled to Pakistan to film this movie, and present searing interviews with people who knew Tariq and mourn his loss. They also found Rafiq ur Rehman, who lost his 67-year-old mother in a drone strike one year ago...
continua / continued [102022] [ 26-oct-2013 14:47 ECT ] |
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Syria News - October 25, 2013 (Warning: Graphic Videos)
Local Coordination Committees of Syria + Videos |
October 25, 2013 - By the end of Friday the Coordination Committees were able to document 257 martyrs including 7 women, 11 children and 1 martyr under torture: 174 martyrs were reported in Damascus and its Suburbs including 150 martyrs in Wadi Barada by a car bomb explosion, 34 in Daraa, 11 in Deir Ezzor, 11 in Hama, 9 in Aleppo, 7 in Idlib, 5 in Lattakia, 4 in Homs and 2 martyrs in Hasakeh. Moreover, the committees have documented 439 points of shelling in Syria : Air strikes by warplanes were recorded in 23 points, explosive barrels were dropped in Kourein in Idlib, Halab Jdeida and Mseaf Salma in Lattakia, rocket shelling was recorded in 120 points, followed by artillery shelling in 108 points, and mortar shelling was recorded in 95 points across Syria...
continua / continued [102020] [ 26-oct-2013 13:58 ECT ] |
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Aung San Suu Kyi: falling from grace
Channel 4 News |
October 25, 2013 -Ethnic violence erupted last year in Sittwe, the capital of Burma’s Rakhine state. Rohingya Muslims bore the brunt of the violence with an estimated 142,000 now living in a series of squalid camps. In April, Human Rights Watch accused government and military officials, as well as local extremist groups, of ethnic cleansing. When asked about HRW’s findings by the BBC, Ms Suu Kyi dismissed them out of hand. "It’s not ethnic cleansing," she said. "What the world needs to understand (is) that the fear is not just on the side of the Muslims, but on the side of the Buddhists as well." This is her standard response to questions about the violence. Nobody bears responsibility. Instead, "fear" is blamed. Everyone suffers "equally". In Ms Suu Kyi’s world, victims and offenders are the same.Unfortunately, it’s not true. The vast majority of Muslim Rohingya residents in Sittwe have been cleared out while Buddhists (for the most part) remain in their homes. Furthermore, Muslims are politically powerless. They are denied citizenship in Burma and face a wide range of draconian restrictions on healthcare, schooling, travel – even their ability to have children. The Buddhist population on the other hand face no comparable restrictions – and why would they? They control the local and state government...
continua / continued [102017] [ 26-oct-2013 12:36 ECT ] |
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Converging Trends of Totalitarianism
Eavesdropping, Drones, an Integrated Posture
by NORMAN POLLACK
October 25, 2013 - We are taught to pick-and-choose, but defining the nature of society, its propensity to democracy or fascism, is not like entering the ice cream parlor and selecting chocolate or strawberry. Policies are not discrete. When POTUS personally selects candidates for assassination, his record on bank regulation, gun control, protection of the environment, climate change, surveillance, the countless things that come before him, must be examined critically, each and every one, for evidence of common underlying assumptions and/or consequences for the structure of power, degree of wealth concentration, and class structure. Obama’s policy framework is unitary, internally consistent, and, I believe, leaning dangerously toward fascism, if not already there...
continua / continued [102013] [ 26-oct-2013 03:42 ECT ] |
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Obama and Drone Warfare
Serialization of Political Murder
by NORMAN POLLACK
October 25, 2013 - At the last moment, checking Webster’s on serialization, I was struck by its application to music—"based on a series of tones in an arbitrary but fixed pattern without regard for traditional tonality"—which, transposed to political reality, says it all: US policy of armed drones for political assassination is wholly arbitrary, here, a conscious decision, Obama, taking from his predecessor the practice, and, with Brennan, escalating and intensifying it, making it his signature weapon in so-called counterterrorism, now a fixed pattern, not only maintained in complete secrecy, stretching the CIA charter mission of intelligence into an operational capacity, but also seeking to bind future administrations through the constantly revised hit list poured over with national-security advisers on Terror Tuesdays, and, as for traditional tonality, assassination, especially personally authorized by POTUS, is way out of line—can you imagine Jefferson doing this?—and in flagrant violation of international law. In sum, Obama the war criminal, beyond doubt. I would have preferred leaving serialization to Schoenberg and Webern, where human beings were not vaporized, leaving only blood spats, than to our more modern (political-military) composers of death and destruction....
continua / continued [102009] [ 26-oct-2013 00:02 ECT ] |
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The “Hizballah Execution Video”: Confirmation of Shia Militia Involvement
Phillip Smyth
On October 8, 2013, the news website, NewLebanon.info released a video claiming to show members of Lebanon’s Iranian-backed Shia Islamist Hizballah, executing what appeared to be wounded men they pulled from the back of a van. The slain men were reported to be Syrians, possibly captured rebels. The video caused controversy with the public and activists alike in Lebanon, Syria, the broader Middle East, and the West. Hizballah has been silent on the issue, but one spokesman said the organization would address the issue. Despite accusations Hizballah had pulled-off the killings, along with audio recordings demonstrating the executioners with Lebanese accents talking about Iranian Revolutionary religious concepts (an important underpinning for Hizballah’s ideology), there was still enough plausible deniability available for Hizballah and other Shia militia groups to argue they had no part in the killings. Nevertheless, after analyzing Shia militia social media pages, I did come across the proverbial, "Picture worth a thousand words" in relation to the execution video: A photo featuring the same men who had been killed in the grainy execution video, were in fact the dead men in another photograph....
continua / continued [102006] [ 25-oct-2013 23:43 ECT ] |
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Mounting Protests Against Remote-Control Killings
European Drone War
by CHRIS COLE
October 25, 2013 -While there is rightly much media attention on the US drone war in Pakistan and Yemen, there is a very different but over-looked "drone war" taking place in Europe right now. In parliamentary committee rooms, in company boardrooms, and in packed public meetings, arguments rage about whether Europe should embrace or reject the use of armed drones.Many European armed forces already have unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, in their armories for reconnaissance, intelligence and surveillance purposes. Increasingly, however, European countries are under pressure to follow in the footsteps of the US and embrace the use of armed drones.The UK has been a long-time partner with the US in using armed drones, with British military forces using US Predator drones in Iraq starting in 2004 before acquiring their own Reaper drones for use in Afghanistan in 2007...
continua / continued [102005] [ 25-oct-2013 23:39 ECT ] |
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Please tell me, Mr President, why a US drone assassinated my mother
Rafiq ur Rehman |
October 25, 2013 - The last time I saw my mother, Momina Bibi, was the evening before Eid al-Adha. She was preparing my children's clothing and showing them how to make sewaiyaan, a traditional sweet made of milk. She always used to say: the joy of Eid is the excitement it brings to the children. Last year, she never had that experience. The next day, 24 October 2012, she was dead, killed by a US drone that rained fire down upon her as she tended her garden.Nobody has ever told me why my mother was targeted that day. The media reported that the attack was on a car, but there is no road alongside my mother's house. Several reported the attack was on a house. But the missiles hit a nearby field, not a house. All reported that five militants were killed. Only one person was killed – a 67-year-old grandmother of nine.My three children – 13-year-old Zubair, nine-year-old Nabila and five-year-old Asma – were playing nearby when their grandmother was killed. All of them were injured and rushed to hospitals. Were these children the "militants" the news reports spoke of?....
continua / continued [102000] [ 25-oct-2013 22:38 ECT ] |
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