The first on-site investigator (before AI) who found no evidence of the mass-rape, particularly not the viagra claim, was the head of a 3 member commission sent to investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity on behalf of the UN Human Rights Commission.
Cherif Bassiouni (former ICC investigator, including for Yugoslavia) collected lots of evidence of war crimes/against humanity.
But no actual evidence of claims of mass, state-directed rape, and certainly not the viagra hype.
He immediately disputed the claims of Moreno-Ocampo when issued, correctly noting that there had been no evidence produced by him, nor an explanation of what verifiable process was used to investigate this locally. (There were claims of a survey of tens of thousands mailed and returned, claims not backed up and ridiculous in terms of imagining so successfully functioning a current postal system.)
But for some, if you don't keep escalating claims of atrocity to whatever degree desired, and insist upon good evidence (including skeptical questioning of the same), then you are objectively pro-Qaddafi and minimizing the crimes of mass rape where they have indeed been thoroughly documented.
In Colombia for the past few years there has been a huge scandal in which the conservative government had its security agency (the DAS in Spanish acronym) exposed by the brave weekly news magazine Semana (given documents by DAS employees) spying on every possible, imaginable person and institution which could be at odds with Alvaro Uribe's government.
From human rights workers and lawyers, to reporters, to business executives, to opposition political party leaders, all levels of politicians, even up to and including Colombia's own Supreme Court.
This was all done with US-provided electronic surveillance equipment. It lasted through at least 5 of the heads of the DAS appointed directly by the President, our close ally in our ineffective 'war on drugs' there (really an anti-insurgency strategy), including his former election campaign director.
This information was even being passed on the narco-paramilitaries (who incidentally have slaughtered thousands more civilians that the murderous FARC narco-rebels) who are right wing, so that figures such as reporters and human rights and civil rights lawyers could get targeted death threats.
So, you have an intelligence agency spying on every area of society other than (presumably) the conservative government and its allies. It does so for years and years. It does so through at least 5 different chiefs, all of whom were arrested and charged. It does so with orders coming directly from the offices of President Alvaro Uribe, but whom himself has never been touched. Plausible deniability, it seems clear to me.
And yet there, crusading periodicals such as the daily El Espectador and the weekly Semana exposing the Colombian Stasi. Note that these aren't multi-billion dollar institutions like US news media conglomerates, either.
In addition, those periodicals took seriously the complaints of the major opposition politician when he presented evidence of spying and harassment against him, rather than dismissing him as a crazy leftist wacko.
When the agency's actions were exposed, the very same day that the first article came out, the Attorney General (more or less) immediately occupied the DAS offices and prevented the destruction of records while beginning to review and confiscate them themselves.
The successive department heads were investigated and found to have acted illegally, and were arrested and indicted. Some already convicted.
International human rights and diplomacy organizations like the OAS and UN agencies and international monitoring non-profits were petitioned by individuals and groups targeted, and they actually responded with demands for investigations.
The agency was planned to be dissolved and replaced, but it hasn't happened, and maybe a real re-organization might be sufficient. I don't know.
I wonder how much of that quick and courageous and law-abiding response we would see here with similar exposures?
Or would we be focused on catching and punishing the people who leaked a newspaper the documents indicating illegal spying -- presuming the news company receiving the documents actually chose to print them and make the documents available before our government gave permission?
As ever the standard of "deliberately" targeting civilians -- that is, by a US ally -- is a ridiculously silly standard.
You can bomb several blocks to bits, but until someone finds a memo that says "deliberately target civilians," then 'it was all a mistake in the fog of war which we have standards which we follow to avoid that,' and so on and so forth.
With the issue of Libya and Western / NATO / somewhat local supported intervention, I think there has been an overwhelming focus on 'yes' or 'no', but not examining what's going on where in Libya, what it's rooted in, and also detailed consideration of those likely developments to occur beyond 'yes' or 'no'.
Seems like most people didn't think much beyond 'Qaddafi slaughters' and 'rebels overthrow him'.
How do people feel about a likely continued civil war, so common in North Africa of the last generation? Or a defacto, or recognized, partition of the country into different control? Which itself could be an unstable situation.
There was so much I've been wondering about the situation beyond the two simple extremes of 'yes' or 'no' and/or the 'Qaddafi slaughters & crushes freedom mvmt' and 'freedom mvmts win'.
It is fair to point out that the people who have spent so many decades in Sudan / Darfur and who with peacekeeping and not quite too military intervention managed to secure functional negotiations with an absolutely dastardly, murderous Sudanese government, would not have been aided by the military intervention they opposed.
There was of course tons and tons of intervention, much of it welcomed by locals; just not of the particularly military type under discussion here. No niceness, lots of death, and a bunch of people who will someday face some sort of trial and justice.
Leaving the Libyan case aside, it's not sensible to assume that any generic horrible humanitarian and oppressive catastrophe could be eased by military intervention. Agree or disagree, in the Sudan quite a lot has been achieved by combinations of lots of strategies and resources other than Western military intervention. No matter how appealing the urging was to make. There's a Southern Sudan, now, for instance.
Plenty of cases worldwide currently suggest support for the common generalization that yes, one can make horrible situations worse. It's not the case that military attack o counter-attack always will make those suffering even worse off -- but it certainly can happen. And not every situation, no matter how horrid, fits into that category in which people really are saved, and saved over a long term, by outside military intervention.
On the other hand, yet another Latin American nation has recognized Palestine as an independent sovereign state.
_______________________________________________
(Reuters) - Chile said on Friday it had recognized a Palestinian state, joining an endorsement by Latin American peers the United States has called premature and Israel has warned is harmful to the Middle East peace process.
Brazil became the first of several South American countries in recent weeks to recognize a Palestine state along pre-1967 borders. Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia and Ecuador have done the same and Mexico, Peru and Nicaragua are reported to be considering recognition.
"The Chilean government has adopted a resolution to recognize the state of Palestine as free, independent and sovereign," Chilean Foreign Minister Alfredo Moreno told reporters, saying he hoped the recognition would help give fresh impetus to negotiations.
________________________________________________
Of course, both Israel and the United States will publicly dismiss this, though the US might find some ways to retaliate upon the declaring nations.
It should be born in mind that both Chile and Mexico are under right wing governments, and Peru is under a government much supported by the US over its electoral leftist rival.
FWIW, President Sebastián Piñera at least declared that there would be no impunity for mine owners, and that the judicial system (judges & prosecutors, both of which can order investigations & charges) would investigate and assign legal responsibility for the collapse, and that those responsible would pay the consequences.
La justicia y el gobierno trabajan, cada uno en lo suyo, por establecer responsabilidades en el derrumbe que mantuvo atrapados a 33 mineros por más de dos meses, en las profundidades de la mina San José, en Atacama.
__
Así lo manifestó el Presidente Sebastián Piñera, luego de reunirse con los trabajadores en el Hospital de Copiapó, enfatizando que “no habrá impunidad” en este caso y que se trabajará por hacer que asuman las responsabilidades quienes correspondan.
__
“No va a haber impunidad. Ya está trabajando la justicia en un juicio y también está trabajando el gobierno en los procedimientos administrativos. Estamos usando todos los mecanismos para que las responsabilidades queden claramente establecidas y los responsables asuman las consecuencias”, indicó.
I'm not predicting the outcome of such declarations, just noting them.
The first on-site investigator (before AI) who found no evidence of the mass-rape, particularly not the viagra claim, was the head of a 3 member commission sent to investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity on behalf of the UN Human Rights Commission.
Cherif Bassiouni (former ICC investigator, including for Yugoslavia) collected lots of evidence of war crimes/against humanity.
But no actual evidence of claims of mass, state-directed rape, and certainly not the viagra hype.
He immediately disputed the claims of Moreno-Ocampo when issued, correctly noting that there had been no evidence produced by him, nor an explanation of what verifiable process was used to investigate this locally. (There were claims of a survey of tens of thousands mailed and returned, claims not backed up and ridiculous in terms of imagining so successfully functioning a current postal system.)
But for some, if you don't keep escalating claims of atrocity to whatever degree desired, and insist upon good evidence (including skeptical questioning of the same), then you are objectively pro-Qaddafi and minimizing the crimes of mass rape where they have indeed been thoroughly documented.
http://www.thenational.ae/news/worldwide/africa/qaddafi-regime-denies-war-crimes-in-libya-says-rebels-are-cannibals
In Colombia for the past few years there has been a huge scandal in which the conservative government had its security agency (the DAS in Spanish acronym) exposed by the brave weekly news magazine Semana (given documents by DAS employees) spying on every possible, imaginable person and institution which could be at odds with Alvaro Uribe's government.
From human rights workers and lawyers, to reporters, to business executives, to opposition political party leaders, all levels of politicians, even up to and including Colombia's own Supreme Court.
This was all done with US-provided electronic surveillance equipment. It lasted through at least 5 of the heads of the DAS appointed directly by the President, our close ally in our ineffective 'war on drugs' there (really an anti-insurgency strategy), including his former election campaign director.
This information was even being passed on the narco-paramilitaries (who incidentally have slaughtered thousands more civilians that the murderous FARC narco-rebels) who are right wing, so that figures such as reporters and human rights and civil rights lawyers could get targeted death threats.
So, you have an intelligence agency spying on every area of society other than (presumably) the conservative government and its allies. It does so for years and years. It does so through at least 5 different chiefs, all of whom were arrested and charged. It does so with orders coming directly from the offices of President Alvaro Uribe, but whom himself has never been touched. Plausible deniability, it seems clear to me.
And yet there, crusading periodicals such as the daily El Espectador and the weekly Semana exposing the Colombian Stasi. Note that these aren't multi-billion dollar institutions like US news media conglomerates, either.
In addition, those periodicals took seriously the complaints of the major opposition politician when he presented evidence of spying and harassment against him, rather than dismissing him as a crazy leftist wacko.
When the agency's actions were exposed, the very same day that the first article came out, the Attorney General (more or less) immediately occupied the DAS offices and prevented the destruction of records while beginning to review and confiscate them themselves.
The successive department heads were investigated and found to have acted illegally, and were arrested and indicted. Some already convicted.
International human rights and diplomacy organizations like the OAS and UN agencies and international monitoring non-profits were petitioned by individuals and groups targeted, and they actually responded with demands for investigations.
The agency was planned to be dissolved and replaced, but it hasn't happened, and maybe a real re-organization might be sufficient. I don't know.
I wonder how much of that quick and courageous and law-abiding response we would see here with similar exposures?
Or would we be focused on catching and punishing the people who leaked a newspaper the documents indicating illegal spying -- presuming the news company receiving the documents actually chose to print them and make the documents available before our government gave permission?
As ever the standard of "deliberately" targeting civilians -- that is, by a US ally -- is a ridiculously silly standard.
You can bomb several blocks to bits, but until someone finds a memo that says "deliberately target civilians," then 'it was all a mistake in the fog of war which we have standards which we follow to avoid that,' and so on and so forth.
With the issue of Libya and Western / NATO / somewhat local supported intervention, I think there has been an overwhelming focus on 'yes' or 'no', but not examining what's going on where in Libya, what it's rooted in, and also detailed consideration of those likely developments to occur beyond 'yes' or 'no'.
Seems like most people didn't think much beyond 'Qaddafi slaughters' and 'rebels overthrow him'.
How do people feel about a likely continued civil war, so common in North Africa of the last generation? Or a defacto, or recognized, partition of the country into different control? Which itself could be an unstable situation.
There was so much I've been wondering about the situation beyond the two simple extremes of 'yes' or 'no' and/or the 'Qaddafi slaughters & crushes freedom mvmt' and 'freedom mvmts win'.
It is fair to point out that the people who have spent so many decades in Sudan / Darfur and who with peacekeeping and not quite too military intervention managed to secure functional negotiations with an absolutely dastardly, murderous Sudanese government, would not have been aided by the military intervention they opposed.
There was of course tons and tons of intervention, much of it welcomed by locals; just not of the particularly military type under discussion here. No niceness, lots of death, and a bunch of people who will someday face some sort of trial and justice.
Leaving the Libyan case aside, it's not sensible to assume that any generic horrible humanitarian and oppressive catastrophe could be eased by military intervention. Agree or disagree, in the Sudan quite a lot has been achieved by combinations of lots of strategies and resources other than Western military intervention. No matter how appealing the urging was to make. There's a Southern Sudan, now, for instance.
Plenty of cases worldwide currently suggest support for the common generalization that yes, one can make horrible situations worse. It's not the case that military attack o counter-attack always will make those suffering even worse off -- but it certainly can happen. And not every situation, no matter how horrid, fits into that category in which people really are saved, and saved over a long term, by outside military intervention.
On the other hand, yet another Latin American nation has recognized Palestine as an independent sovereign state.
_______________________________________________
(Reuters) - Chile said on Friday it had recognized a Palestinian state, joining an endorsement by Latin American peers the United States has called premature and Israel has warned is harmful to the Middle East peace process.
Brazil became the first of several South American countries in recent weeks to recognize a Palestine state along pre-1967 borders. Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia and Ecuador have done the same and Mexico, Peru and Nicaragua are reported to be considering recognition.
"The Chilean government has adopted a resolution to recognize the state of Palestine as free, independent and sovereign," Chilean Foreign Minister Alfredo Moreno told reporters, saying he hoped the recognition would help give fresh impetus to negotiations.
________________________________________________
Of course, both Israel and the United States will publicly dismiss this, though the US might find some ways to retaliate upon the declaring nations.
It should be born in mind that both Chile and Mexico are under right wing governments, and Peru is under a government much supported by the US over its electoral leftist rival.
FWIW, President Sebastián Piñera at least declared that there would be no impunity for mine owners, and that the judicial system (judges & prosecutors, both of which can order investigations & charges) would investigate and assign legal responsibility for the collapse, and that those responsible would pay the consequences.
I'm not predicting the outcome of such declarations, just noting them.