more on Sudan

Sudan is a mess. What is happening there is genocide. Poor blacks in Dafur in west Sudan took up arms against the government to protest marginalization of their people in 2003. The government responded by hiring Arab militias, "known as the Janjawid (guns on horseback) who began attacking villages, killing, raping and abducting people, destroying homes and other property, including water sources and looting livestock. At times government troops also attacked villages alongside the Janjawid, and government aircraft have been bombing villages sometimes just before Janjawid attacks, suggesting that these attacks were coordinated. The links between the Sudanese armed forces and the Janjawid are incontrovertible, the Janjawid are now wearing uniforms provided by the army."

Hundreds of thousands of blacks have been removed from their homes in Dafur in west Sudan, and tens of thousands have likely been killed because of their skin colour. An indication of the severity of the circumstances there occurred yesterday when security forces fired on students trying to present a petition to Annan, injuring five.

If these repressive actions do not stop, diplomatic action must be taking against the Sudanese government.

For more information on the crisis and on how to help, see this Amnesty page. See also this page from Human Rights Watch, calling for US and UN action, and the invocation of Chapter 7 of the UN Charter.

Powell and Annan in Sudan

Kofin Annan and Colin Powell are both in Sudan to have a look at what is supposed to be the world's worst humanitarian crisis, and getting worse.

Colin Powell may have other reasons for being there as well.

More later.

The US has dropped the resolution that would allow immunity for US soldiers on a UN peacekeeping force. This is a small victory for international peace and justice.

However, it seems that quite a few hawks are using the occasion to rip into the UN, claiming that the UN has no place talking about the primacy of law in light of the oil-for-food program scandal. For the uninformed, there are accusations that a number of people, including Kofi Annan's own son, and a hand-picked official, were involved in a scandal with money and weapons as the commodities, and the other party was Saddam Hussein. Neocons have taken the opportunity to rip into Annan and the UN.

Kofi Annan set up an independent investigation of the program, approved by the security council, and headed by the former US official Paul Volcker.

The neoconservative Heritage Foundation says that Security Council ought to investigate the overseeing of the program by Annan. Wrong. Not only did the security council oversee the program, but Britain and the United States saw every contract that was approved.

The Global Policy Forum has a link page with a brief introduction, and a number of articles related to this issue.

If you are receiving false information from the neoconservative right on this issue, please educate yourself so we can defeat this tactic that is a political power play intended to distract us from the real abhorrences, which are the US attacks, occupations, and human rights abuses in Iraq.

Stopping the US arrogance, one measure at a time

Well, it looks like the 1 year US exemption from ICC prosecution for US peacekeepers on UN forces won't be extended. No wonder, after what has been revealed in recent weeks.

They should never have been given immunity in the first place. It is a travesty of international protection of human rights that such an exemption was allowed in the first place. It reveals how power politics at its worst and most cynical can play out in international affairs.

China won't vote for it because it sets the wrong example, which is kind of a hypocritical thing for them to say, but the important thing is that it will not pass. Good for Kofi Annan as well, taking a stand against this measure.

Note the US puppets who are voting in favour -- Britan, the Philippines, Russia, and Angola. Pakistan and Algeria are pondering whether to break the bond.

One step, but a small one, toward ending US arrogance and militarism on the world stage.

There you have it

There you have it, folks. The 9/11 commission has said what the rest of us already knew: there is no connection between Saddam and al Qaeda. This, as Bush and Cheney reaffirm such a connection. Are you listening, voters of America?

More incriminating evidence against the US government

The US did have a policy to circumvent international law in order to abuse prisoners at Abu Graib, so says a Human Rights Watch report. Here is the 5 year old report by the US State Department to the UN Committee Against Torture, which justifies the violation of international treaties to that end.

more on Tiananmen

Also, many Tiananmen activists have been harrassed, and some have even "disappeared," which means that they have been kidnapped or maybe worse by the Chinese govnernment, out of fear that they may say something or do something in the name of the anniversary of the massacre. Also see what Human Rights Watch has to say.

Also, go see the Tiananmen Mother's Campaign, and their call for accountability on behalf of the Chines government, and the Human Rights in China organization.

Remember Tiananmen

An estimated 82,000 people, including many from mainland China, gathered in Hong Kong to remember the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing 15 years ago. Small groups of two or three were arrested in the Tiananmen throughout the day. Let us never forget the horrific crushing of a nonviolent pro democracy movement in Beijing on June 4, 1989, and hope that the people of China will very soon have the democracy that those students died for.

don't forget about the others.

I've been talking alot about human rights abuses by the US in the middle east, but don't forget about the many other human rights abuses which take place in various countries around the world. Go visit the Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch websites for more information.

more on Iraqi prisons

Here is a story in USA today, that belies any suggestion that "at least we (the US) don't kill our prisoners." As well, according to the Washington Post, four star generals are now being implicated in the Abu Ghraib prison abuses.