Energy Efficiency

When I was in my teens, the song War (“What is it good for? Absolutely nothing! Say it again.”) was sung by Motown singer Edwin Starr. Of course for the blacks of America (used as cannon fodder like the Aussies were by the British), there was no pay-off, but war has never been anything more than based in greed: greed for another’s assets and the other, resisting the takeover.

Arable land, spices, salt, silver, gold, oil and water have long been the resources humans have fought over. As a loose management structure was finally formed, shared between religion, corporations and government (including token royalty) formed the League of Nations (which was taken over) and became the United Nations, the world was split up into segments that ‘super powers’ decided, just like say pirates splitting up the spoils.

Various forms of conscription evolved into standing armed forces to ‘keep the peace’ but of course, first strike options were long exercised as a way of stopping neighbouring powers from possibly threatening the attacker’s people.  America has long practised the art of waging war, but after Vietnam (that kick-started the song ‘war, what is it good for’) its went from under the guise of a ‘cold war’ of democracy versus communism to what it had always been, taking the very thing that funds any army, money; not money in its established world wide accepted currency but resources converted into a given currency.

Controlling one’s populace had always been a problem, so the powers to be decided that an asset rich, comfortable and better educated people would supress internal unhappines – and of course religion long used to project the mantras ‘turn the other cheek’, ‘the meek shall inherit the earth’ and ‘being good will see you sitting at the side of your chosen god’.  However, with assets and education, there are always those who are the ‘haves’ and those who ‘have not’s'; statistically the 80/20 Rule.

[The 80/20 Rule basically translates into 80% being well off to real well off and the remaining 20% is poor to homeless / living on or below the bread-line. This Rule and its figures are regulalry fudged by government to hoodwink the sometimes less than observant public, thats why unemployment rates never reflect the true figure of unemployed (if you work only 2 hours a week, the system is so worded that you are employed; the fact that you can live of the 2 hours is of little importance]

First if was higher numbers employed in federal, state and local governments, then there is the Public works that took up the slack, filled in seasonal flucuations and now the various stimulius packages that try to engender a sense of business as usual. People have tightened their belt and they are waiting for mooted grwoth to filter down to them, problem is, that governments and corporations – lets call them what they really are – Corporate Government have been pushing the people to buy to such a degree and themselves borrowed from the future to improve our standard of living today (thereby proving what good fiscal managers they are) that we Australians have the highest debt per head of anywhere in the world; we can no longer borrow from the future.

So why is this so ? Its very simple really, the value of anything is driven by demand, growth of demand (read more buying public) pushes the value up; but what happens when we – the people – have no more borrowing capacity; when we want to take stock because we feel exposed to the financial reality ?  Well Corporate Government’s answer is simple, bring in more competition (AKA Immigration); problem is, there isn’t as much quality land available and despite all of mankinds ‘ingenuity’ we can’s make more water and most importantly, as we dig up and sell of our resources and energy, we bring closer our eventual destruction.

Well governments are reluctant to rule their population with too heavy an iron rod, so they get us to focus on others; misfits in our community, they incite racial tension to keep our eye off the ball and they point overseas to possible threats, causing us to put aside our differences to join together to face the ‘common threat’.

But as we know, truth will out and eventually we ask questions and oft, receive answers that bemuse and then annoy us; which brings me to the ‘war, what is it good for’ part of the story.

War is about distraction and justifying stealing; the following article is by Monbiot and is about making the thieves pay (for using his population’s money to support another Thief); hopefully John Howard will likwise be held to account.

Bounty for Blair’s Arrest

Today I am launching a new fund – www.arrestblair.org – to reward people who attempt to arrest the former prime minister. By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 26th January 2010

The only question that counts is the one that the Chilcot inquiry won’t address: was the war with Iraq illegal? If the answer is yes, everything changes. The war is no longer a political matter, but a criminal one, and those who commissioned it should be committed for trial for what the Nuremberg Tribunal called “the supreme international crime”(1): the crime of aggression.

But there’s a problem with official inquiries in the United Kingdom: the government appoints their members and sets their terms of reference. It’s the equivalent of a criminal suspect being allowed to choose what the charges should be, who should judge his case and who should sit on the jury. As a senior judge told the Guardian in November, “Looking into the legality of the war is the last thing the government wants. And actually, it’s the last thing the opposition wants either because they voted for the war. There simply is not the political pressure to explore the question of legality – they have not asked because they don’t want the answer.”(2)

Others have explored it, however. Two weeks ago a Dutch inquiry, led by a former supreme court judge, found that the invasion had “no sound mandate in international law”(3). Last month the former law lord, Lord Steyn, said that “in the absence of a second UN resolution authorising invasion, it was illegal.”(4) In November Lord Bingham, the former lord chief justice, stated that, without the blessing of the UN, the Iraq war was “a serious violation of international law and the rule of law.”(5)

Under the UN Charter, two conditions must be met before a war can legally be waged(6). The parties to a dispute must first “seek a solution by negotiation” (Article 33). They can take up arms without an explicit mandate from the UN Security Council only “if an armed attack occurs against [them]” (Article 51). Neither of these conditions applied. The US and UK governments rejected Iraq’s attempts to negotiate(7). At one point the US State Department even announced that it would “go into thwart mode” to prevent the Iraqis from resuming talks on weapons inspection(8). Iraq had launched no armed attack against either nation.

We also know that the UK government was aware that the war it intended to launch was illegal. In March 2002, the Cabinet Office explained that “a legal justification for invasion would be needed. Subject to Law Officers’ advice, none currently exists.”(9) In July 2002, Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, told the prime minister that there were only “three possible legal bases” for launching a war: “self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC [Security Council] authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case.”(10) Bush and Blair later failed to obtain Security Council authorisation.

As the resignation letter on the eve of the war from Elizabeth Wilmshurst, then deputy legal advisor to the Foreign Office, revealed, her office had “consistently” advised that an invasion would be unlawful without a new UN resolution. She explained that “an unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression”(11). Both Wilmshurst and her former boss, Sir Michael Wood, will testify before the Chilcot Inquiry today (Tuesday). Expect fireworks.

Without legal justification, the war with Iraq was an act of mass murder: those who died were unlawfully killed by the people who commissioned it. Crimes of aggression (also known as crimes against peace) are defined by the Nuremberg Principles as “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties”(12). They have been recognised in international law since 1945. The Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court (ICC) and which was ratified by Blair’s government in 2001(13), provides for the Court to “exercise jurisdiction over the crime of aggression”, once it has decided how the crime should be defined and prosecuted(14).

There are two problems. The first is that neither the government nor the opposition has any interest in pursuing these crimes, for the obvious reason that in doing so they would expose themselves to prosecution. The second is that the required legal mechanisms don’t yet exist. The governments which ratified the Rome Statute have been filibustering furiously to delay the point at which the crime can be prosecuted by the ICC: after eight years of discussions, the necessary provision still hasn’t been adopted.

Some countries, mostly in eastern Europe and central Asia, have incorporated the crime of aggression into their own laws(15), though it is not yet clear which of them would be willing to try a foreign national for acts committed abroad. In the UK, where it remains illegal to wear an offensive T-shirt, you cannot yet be prosecuted for mass murder commissioned overseas.

All those who believe in justice should campaign for their governments to stop messing about and allow the International Criminal Court to start prosecuting the crime of aggression. We should also press for its adoption into national law. But I believe that the people of this nation, who re-elected a government which had launched an illegal war, have a duty to do more than that. We must show that we have not, as Blair requested, “moved on” from Iraq, that we are not prepared to allow his crime to remain unpunished, or to allow future leaders to believe that they can safely repeat it.

But how? As I found when I tried to apprehend John Bolton, one of the architects of the war in George Bush’s government, at the Hay festival in 2008(16), and as Peter Tatchell found when he tried to detain Robert Mugabe(17), nothing focuses attention on these issues more than an attempted citizen’s arrest. In October I mooted the idea of a bounty to which the public could contribute, payable to anyone who tried to arrest Tony Blair if he became president of the EU(18). He didn’t of course, but I asked those who had pledged money whether we should go ahead anyway. The response was overwhelmingly positive.

So today I am launching a website, www.arrestblair.org, whose purpose is to raise money as a reward for people attempting a peaceful citizen’s arrest of the former prime minister. I have put up the first £100, and I encourage you to match it. Anyone meeting the rules I’ve laid down will be entitled to one quarter of the total pot: the bounties will remain available for as long as Blair lives. The higher the reward, the greater the number of people who are likely to try.

At this stage the arrests will be largely symbolic, though they are likely to have great political resonance. But I hope that as pressure builds up and the crime of aggression is adopted by the courts, these attempts will help to press governments to prosecute. There must be no hiding place for those who have committed crimes against peace. No civilised country can allow mass murderers to move on.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. http://books.google.com/books?id=-Ni6Qy2E9KwC&pg=PA46&lpg=PA46&dq=essentially+an+evil+thing…to+initiate+a+war+of+aggression…is+not+only+an+international+crime%3B+it+is+the+supreme+international+crime,+differing+only+from+other+war+crimes+in+that+it+contains+within+itself+the+accumulated+evil+of+the+whole.&source=bl&ots=vi_FtNzs0T&sig=D8sYeDqbnueaLmJvomG3Og2YBHw&hl=en&ei=Is5ESpOwMpTCML2A3bAC&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10#v=onepage&q=&f=false

2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/nov/23/chilcot-inquiry-iraq-war

3. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/12/iraq-invasion-violated-interational-law-dutch-inquiry-finds

4. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/dec/01/iraq-inquiry-interim-finding-illegal-law-lord

5. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/18/iraq-us-foreign-policy

6. http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/index.shtml

7. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2003/11/11/dreamers-and-idiots/

8. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2002/10/08/thwart-mode/

9. http://downingstreetmemo.com/iraqoptions.html

10. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article387374.ece

11. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4377605.stm

12. http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/full/390

13. http://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=XVIII-10&chapter=18&lang=en

14. Article 5.2, http://www.icc-cpi.int/NR/rdonlyres/EA9AEFF7-5752-4F84-BE94-0A655EB30E16/0/Rome_Statute_English.pdf

15. Astrid Reisinger Coracini, 2010. National Legislation on Individual Responsibility for Conduct Amounting to Aggression, in: Roberto Bellelli (ed.), International Criminal Justice. Lessons Learned and the Challenges Ahead (forthcoming).

16. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/06/03/justice-undone/

17. http://www.petertatchell.net/direct%20action/mugabe.htm

18. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/10/26/arresting-blair/

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/01/25/a-bounty-for-blairs-arrest/