US President - A Deadly Criminal ?
S.O.S e - Clarion Of Dalit - Weekly Newspaper On Web
Working For The Rights & Survival Of The Oppressed
Editor: NAGARAJA.M.R… VOL.9 issue.02…… .14/01/2015
JUDGEs or Brokers of Justice ?
JUDGEs POLICE Worst Violators of Human Rights ,
SHAME SHAME Mr. Obama President Government of USA
US President Obama - A Deadly Criminal
AN APPEAL TO THE HONOURABLE CHIEF JUSTICE OF SUPREME COURT OF USA , CHIEF JUSTICE OF INDIA & CHIEF JUSTICE OF PAKISTAN
- By American Citizens
Our country was known as " Heaven On Earth" , "Land of Equality & Equal Oppurtunity" & the "Statue of Liberty" rightly symbolized the spirit of our country. Now USA is known as a "Terror State".
In the last 3 – 4 decades , the persons who occupied the office of President USA ,in their individual capacity took wrong , inhuman decisions , meddled in the internal affairs of other sovereign nations , spent our resources to create terrorist outfits like al-queda , Taliban in those countries.
In turn these terrorist outfits terrorized , murdered millions of innocents & this Frankenstein monster came home to roost on September 9 / 11 . After September 9 / 11 , each terror suspect is severely tortured in hell like Abu Garibh prison , elsewhere by our authorities. For argument sake let us accept
that these terrorists who murder innocents don't deserve kid glove treatment & rightly deserve 3rd degree torture. When a single terrorist deserve such inhuman 3rd degree torture , what quantum of punishment , torture – previous presidents of USA deserve – who created , aided & abetted thousands of such terrorists , terrorist outfits ?
Herby, we appeal to the honourable Supreme Court of USA to order the federal government to to make public :
1. how much US resources were spent from US TREASURY , to finance terrorist outfits , military juntas in other sovereign nations ?
2. is not Al-queda , Taliban creations of USA ?
3. did September 9 / 11 WTC attack truly happened by hijacked airplane or was it planned by US authorities ? see
http://www.neiu.edu/~ayjamess/hmmm.htm#Main
4 . is racial profiling , profiling a particular community & suspecting all the muslims as terror suspects , right?
5. if it is right , the creators of such terrorist outfits – past presidents of USA – who were Christians makes it logical to assume whole of our Christian community as terror suspect ?
6. is not use of 3rd degree torture on all type of suspects in US prisons & in the prisons of US allied countries at the behest of US authorities , right ? is it not violation of human rights & US laws ?
7. did US find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq , which was the main reason for US attacking Iraq ?
8. why not US authorities use scientific interrogation techniques like polygraph , lie detector tests instead of inhuman 3rd degree torture on terror suspects & suspects in other criminal cases ?
9 . what legal right our President of USA have , to illegally spend billions of our dollars on inhuman , illegal acts of terrorism , military coup , creation , aiding & abetting of terrorists , etc , in other sovereign nations ? while we are suffering from loss of jobs ,loss of home due to natural calamities , etc ?
Our country was known as " Heaven On Earth" , "Land of Equality & Equal Oppurtunity" & the "Statue of Liberty" rightly symbolized the spirit of our country. Now USA is known as a "Terror State".
In the last 3 – 4 decades , the persons who occupied the office of President USA ,in their individual capacity took wrong , inhuman decisions , meddled in the internal affairs of other sovereign nations , spent our resources to create terrorist outfits like al-queda , Taliban in those countries.
In turn these terrorist outfits terrorized , murdered millions of innocents & this Frankenstein monster came home to roost on September 9 / 11 . After September 9 / 11 , each terror suspect is severely tortured in hell like Abu Garibh prison , elsewhere by our authorities. For argument sake let us accept
that these terrorists who murder innocents don't deserve kid glove treatment & rightly deserve 3rd degree torture. When a single terrorist deserve such inhuman 3rd degree torture , what quantum of punishment , torture – previous presidents of USA deserve – who created , aided & abetted thousands of such terrorists , terrorist outfits ?
Herby, we appeal to the honourable Supreme Court of USA to order the federal government to to make public :
1. how much US resources were spent from US TREASURY , to finance terrorist outfits , military juntas in other sovereign nations ?
2. is not Al-queda , Taliban creations of USA ?
3. did September 9 / 11 WTC attack truly happened by hijacked airplane or was it planned by US authorities ? see
http://www.neiu.edu/~ayjamess/hmmm.htm#Main
4 . is racial profiling , profiling a particular community & suspecting all the muslims as terror suspects , right?
5. if it is right , the creators of such terrorist outfits – past presidents of USA – who were Christians makes it logical to assume whole of our Christian community as terror suspect ?
6. is not use of 3rd degree torture on all type of suspects in US prisons & in the prisons of US allied countries at the behest of US authorities , right ? is it not violation of human rights & US laws ?
7. did US find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq , which was the main reason for US attacking Iraq ?
8. why not US authorities use scientific interrogation techniques like polygraph , lie detector tests instead of inhuman 3rd degree torture on terror suspects & suspects in other criminal cases ?
9 . what legal right our President of USA have , to illegally spend billions of our dollars on inhuman , illegal acts of terrorism , military coup , creation , aiding & abetting of terrorists , etc , in other sovereign nations ? while we are suffering from loss of jobs ,loss of home due to natural calamities , etc ?
10. Inspite of repeated appeals for justice JUDGES of SUPREME COURT of USA are mum and not taking action against terror presidents. Is it because they owe their elevation to the highest judicial post to the US president or is it a survival act ?
Crux , Foundation of all religions is humanity , kindness & universal brotherhood. It is the preachers who misrepresent it. Terrorism created , aided , abetted by anybody is inhuman & wrong . Terrorism is creation of power hungry , selfish people & they must be legally punished .
Hereby , we appeal to the honorable supreme court of USA to legally prosecute Previous PRESIDENTS OF USA in the last 4 decades , for crimes of terror , as per the present US anti-terror laws.
Recently , in the issue of weekly publication "The Week" , cabinet minister of government of srilanka (previously a deadly terrorist & right hand man of LTTE chief Prabhakaran ) Mr. Karuna , Himself has stated in an interview that LTTE received arms training in Tamilnadu State of India , to wage war against Government of Srilanka. The Justice Jain Commission Of Enquiry , which probed late PM Rajiv Gandhi's assassination case , also stated that Tamil Terrorist outfits in Srilanka Received monetary , financial , arms training support from government of India. GOI has even setup a radio station for tamil terrorists of srilanka , within Indian territory. GOI spent billions of dollars of Indian taxpayer's money for aiding & abetting terrorism , while billions of Indians were half starving & going without a single meal , without proper health care.
Recently , in a media interview the president of Government of Pakistan Mr. Jardari himself has confessed that in the previous years the government of Pakistan has aided & abetted Terrorism for tactical gains of Pakistan , spending billions of dollars of Pakistani taxpayer's money. While ordinary Pakistanis were suffering from starvation , lack of health care , etc.
All the above proves that Previous Presidents of Government of USA , previous Presidents of Government of Pakistan & Previous Prime Ministers of Government of India were the real master minds of TERRORISM , founded , aided , abetted TERRORISM FOR THEIR OWN SELFISH GAINS. In turn Murdering lakhs of innocent human beings. These guilty previous presidents & prime ministers are deadly than OSAMA BIN LADEN.
Hereby , we appeal to the Honorable Chief Justices of supreme courts of USA , INDIA , PAKISTAN , BANGLADESH , SRILANKA & INTERNATIONAL WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL , to legally prosecute the previous Prime Ministers of INDIA , the previous presidents of USA & PAKISTAN , on charges of master minding TERRORISM & murdering innocent people in their respective countries .
Your’s Truly ,
Affected Citizens of USA
Presidents Day! USA Honors 12 Commanders-in Chief Prosecutable For Wrongful Deaths In 26 Nations
By Jay Janson
Eminent historian Prof. Noam Chomsky, has said over and over again, without provoking much negative outcry, "If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged." U S Chief Prosecutor Robert Jackson at the Nuremberg trials of Germans in 1945, felt obliged to point out that "these laws are not meant only for Germans, but for the citizens of all nations." Why do Americans not get it?
Eminent historian Prof. Noam Chomsky of M.I.T., various times voted world's most famous intellectual in international polls, has said over and over again, without provoking much negative outcry, "If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged."
Principle I of Nuremberg Principles under which Nazi leaders were tried and executed, to which all nations are signatories and, by article six of US Constitution became part of the US Constitution and law of the United States of America reads as follows: "Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable to punishment."
Principle III states: "The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law." US Chief Prosecutor Robert Jackson at the Nuremberg trials of Germans in 1945, felt obliged to point out that "these laws are not meant only for Germans, but for the citizens of all nations." The following lists only the greatest and fully documented crimes of each US president Americans are called to honor on Presidents Day.
TRUMAN: -
Harry Truman, even though the Japanese were already defeated, criminally ordered atom bombs dropped on civilians in two Japanese cities, after the US Air Force had criminally fire bombed sixty other Japanese cities The atom bombing was afterward condemned by Generals Eisenhower and MacArthur. - Truman criminally had the US Army invade Korea, well after the Japanese surrender had ended the war, overthrowing the democratically elected Korean government the departing Japanese military governor had permitted to be formed (ending forty years of a US non-recognition of Korea but as territory of Imperial Japan).[1] - Truman criminally cut Korea in two parts and installed in the South a brutal and murderous dictatorship that would massacre nearly 200,000 communists, socialists, unionists, farmers and citizens against the partition of their nation, in the years BEFORE armed forces of the North reunified Korea in five short weeks. - Truman again ordered a second invasion of Korea that with bombing flat the whole peninsula north and south took the lives of nearly three million Korea men, women and children. - Truman after witnessing the founding of an independent Vietnam, betrayed US highly decorated ally Ho Chi Minh, and brought back in the French Colonial Army in US ships and financed what would be an eight year French attempt to reconquer their colony which during the war fascist France had administered under the Japanese. - In Greece Truman betrayed those who fought against the Nazis and aided funded a right wing military takeover that brought subsequent years of deadly dictatorship.
EISENHOWER:
- Dwight Eisenhower had CIA, with bombing, overthrow the first democratically elected and popular president of Guatemala for the benefit of the United Fruit Company which owned or controlled most of the country. (Secretary of State Dulles and his CIA Head brother were both investors in United Fruit.) Massacres went on for decades afterward. - Eisenhower allowed or ordered the CIA to assassinate the popular Patrice Lumumba first president of an independent Congo, used US planes to help Belgium and other European interests initiate a reign of terror and genocidal confusion has taken more than six million lives and still goes on today. [see relevant CIA opened files] - Eisenhower ordered a CIA operation led by agent Kermit Roosevelt that with British M16 overthrew Iran's popular democratic government and installed a dictator Shah, who as a lucrative US ally had CIA trained secret police torture and murder until the Iranian people rose up to face death by the thousands to force him to flee the country. - 'Ike' initiated the bombing of tiny Laos, that would eventually make it the most heavily bombed nation in history. - Eisenhower had CIA plan an invasion of Cuba. - In accusing Dwight Eisenhower of criminally forcing the permanent division of Vietnam, with all the subsequent injury and sorrow it brought, by blocking the all Vietnam elections promised the Vietnamese who had defeated the US backed and funded French Colonial Forces, a court would probably quiet naturally have asked why he did this in spite of his knowing (as he publicly admitted in his memoirs that "had the election taken place Ho Chi Minh would have received more than 80 percent of the vote." (Only on his last day in office did Eisenhower reveal the pressure upon him from the military industrial complex that must have brought him to commit these crimes against humanity and advised Americans to beware of the Military Industrial Complex.
KENNEDY: -
John Kennedy facilitated the ascension to power in Congo of the murderous tyrant Mobutu, whose bloody reign lasted for decades. - Kennedy sent armed advisors into Vietnam and ordered the first bombings of South Vietnam and sent in combat troops. His cabinet and generals okayed the assassination of the no longer useful dictator Diem and replacement by a general. - Kennedy gave the go ahead for the Eisenhower planed invasion of Cuba that include US bombing with unmarked warplanes, killing more than 900 Cuban men and women defenders. - Even after bringing the world to the brink of annihilation to remove Soviet missiles in Cuba, afterward he had brother an Attorney General Robert run a program of sabotage and attempted assassination of Cuba's hero Fidel Castro. [see pertinent opened CIA files]
JOHNSON: -
Lyndon Johnson ordered what can only be seen as a genocide in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, second only in magnitude to the Nazi WW II Holocaust. By the time he left office more than three million innocent men, women and children had been killed by as much as a half-million US soldiers (at highest troop level) with air and naval support. (US Chief Council for the Prosecution at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi criminals, General Telford Taylor, told a CBS interviewer in 19 that he would have be glad to prosecute US fliers shot down while bombing Vietnam.)[2]
- Johnson ordered the invasion and subsequent two year occupation of the Dominican Republic to prevent reinstallation of its overthrown and popular President. Thousands of Dominicans died.
- Johnson sent an aircraft carrier and large naval presence to Brazil to back the overthrow of a popular democratic government by Brazilian military and fascists that held repressive power through 1985, a crime against peace by Nuremberg Principles law. - Under Johnson the CIA has been documented to have been deeply criminally involved in Suharto's massacre of at least a half million Indonesians in the name of anti-communism.
NIXON: -
Richard Nixon continued the genocide in what was French Indochina, heightening the bombing of North Vietnam and secret and horrific high altitude carpet bombing of Cambodia. At a trial of US genocide in Indochina, Nixon would have been charged with overseeing the murder of more than a million innocent citizens in their very own beloved country, as often as not in their own villages and homes. - A jury of judges could have listened to a self-incriminating tape of Nixon explaining his strategy to his White House Chief of Staff: "I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I've reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We'll just slip the word to them that, "for God's sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can't restrain him when he's angry—and he has his hand on the nuclear button " and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace." - Another taped Nixon instructions to his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger incriminated him in a crime against humanity in Chile: "I want you to make the economy of Chile scream." Nixon would easily have been incriminated in an investigation of CIA homicidal crimes in Chile during his presidency. [see CIA opened files on Nixon] - In October 1969, the Nixon administration indicated to the Soviet Union that "the madman was loose" when the United States military was ordered to full global war readiness alert (unbeknownst to the majority of the American population), and bombers armed with thermonuclear weapons flew patterns near the Soviet border for three consecutive days.[3]
FORD: -
FORD: -
Gerald Ford, was guilty of giving deadly criminal orders to American officials in Vietnam advising if not also fighting against so called Viet Cong, even though the US Armed Forces had officially been withdrawn. South Vietnam was a criminally created puppet state dictatorship of Washington kept in power by killing enough of its own people as the French had done.
Ford, ordered a belated show-the-flag, after-the-fact, retaliatory air strike that took many Cambodian lives, though the crew of the captured American merchant ship Mayaquez had already been released after having been well fed by Cambodians, who had terribly little food themselves. He is guilty of causing the death of many of the attacking US Marines and airmen as well.
CARTER: -
Jimmy Carter ordered a secret CIA attack on the US friendly government of Afghanistan, initiating what would be thirty-five years of death and destruction that has not yet ended. He instructed the CIA to train, arm and fund fighters of various war lords who were against their girls and women being educated in schools built by the new women-liberating government in Kabul. Carter had the CIA use fundamentalists in a campaign of terror, often executing teachers. These war lords included one famous for throwing acid in the faces of young women 'improperly' attired. Under Carter the CIA involved the secret services of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in this criminally created from outside beginning of civil war. Carter was insidiously convinced by his advisor, David Rockefeller confident, Zbigniew Brzezinski that this CIA effort and involvement would sucker the Soviets into making the mistake of intervening to aid the attacked Kabul government.[4] - Carter provide large amounts of weapons and ammunition to US backed dictatorship in Nicaragua and El Salvador, knowing it was being used against a persecuted population. Send dictator General Suharto the military equipment including attack bombers that were need for Suharto genocidal invasion of East Timor. - Carter would have been charged a responsible massacres in General Chun's military dictatorship in South Korea crushing the democracy movement in Kwangju. Paratroopers carried out three days of barbarity killing up to thousand people. The US received two requests for assistance: the citizens committee that had called for democracy requested help in negotiations; General Chun requested the release of 20,000 troops under US command to join the storm troopers. Carter honored the latter request and US naval and air units were deployed in a further show of US support for the military dictatorship of a man who South Korea would years later sentence to death. - Carter's heartless statement explaining that there was no need to dispense [Nixon promised] monies to Vietnam to repair damage caused by the U.S. nor to apologize to the Vietnamese people, as “the destruction was mutual,” would have been seen as self-incrimination for the suffering his nation was obliged to relieve. - National Security Advisor to President Carter Zbigniew Brzezinski , "began to look more favorably toward Saddam Hussein as a potential counterweight to the Ayatollah Khomeini and as a force to contain Soviet expansionism in the region." A search for documentation might show Carter giving the green light for an invasion of Iran by Saddam Hussain that took place while Carter was still in office.
REAGAN: -
Ronald Reagan ordered the paratrooper and naval invasion of the tiny island state of Grenada that took the lives 94 people, 18 of whom were killed in the accidental bombing of a Grenadian mental hospital. Nearly eight thousand soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines had participated in Operation Urgent Fury, which even US European Allies denounced. The entire population of Grenada was less than 100,000. - Reagan ordered the bombing of Libya, murdering a hundred Libyans including a daughter of its revolutionary leader Gaddafi, in an attempt to assassinate her father. - The United States under the Reagan administration was found guilty of war crimes against Nicaragua by the International Court of Justice and ordered to pay reparations. Reagan is also liable for not recognizing the conviction. - Reagan had US warships bombard villages on the hills around Beiruit, Lebanon at an unknown cost of life. - Reagan authorized the creation of a so-called Contra army of guerrillas to attack Nicaragua from neighboring bases in Honduras committing atrocity after atrocity against civilians in rural areas. - Presiding Judge reading the conviction of Guatemalan dictator General Rios Montt, [a favorite of Reagan] "he knew about everything that was going on and he did not stop it, despite having the power to stop it from being carried out." US President Ronald Reagan also had the power, greater power, to stop the massacres being perpetrated by dictator General and President Rios Montt, instead, m idway through the eighteen months of horrific massacres, Reagan visited Rios Montt in Guatemala City and praised him as "a man of great personal integrity and commitment. Who was more guilty? There are all kind of documents that implicate Reagan in the genocide Mont was found guilty. - In El Salvador, despite evidence that by 1984, 65,000 civilians had been murdered by the National Guard and right-wing paramilitary forces, President Reagan's national Bipartisan Commission on Central America justified massive military support. - Ronald Reagan in his second year in office removed Iraq from the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism to ease the transfer of dual-use technology to that country in support of Saddam Hussein's horrific war on Iran. Central Intelligence Agency secretly directed armaments and hi-tech components to Iraq through false fronts and friendly third parties such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Kuwait, and they quietly encouraged rogue arms dealers and other private military companies to do the same. The United States actively supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis with billions of dollars of credits, by providing U.S. military intelligence and advice to the Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third country arms sales to Iraq to make sure that Iraq had the military weaponry required. The United States also provided strategic operational advice to the Iraqis to better use their assets in combat... The CIA, including both CIA Director Casey and Deputy Director Gates, knew of, approved of, and assisted in the sale of non-U.S. origin military weapons, ammunition and vehicles to Iraq. Reagan allow the sale of the components to make the gas Saddam used on Iranian troops and civilians.[5]
BUSH I: -
George H. W. Bush I was responsible for 100,000 Iraqis retreating from Kuwait, being shot in the back from the air. Among them were may refugees. - Bush I ordered an invasion of Panama, US forces killing up to a thousand Panamanians . - Bush I ordered the bombing of beautiful and wealthy Baghdad back a century incomprehensively targeting the understructure of the cities utilities. - As previously Vice-President under Reagan, Bush was involved in tightened relations with Saddam Hussain. Did Bush, subsequently deliberately lead Iraq into actions that led to war in the Gulf, with the aim of achieving military pre-eminence in the region, and a New World Order founded on the threat and use of American military force? Former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark, who made a 2,000 mile journey through the war-torn Gulf, provides the most convincing evidence yet that this is the case, in his book The Fire This Time: U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf, a scathing indictment of America's foreign policy leading up to the war, of the war's devastating human and environmental consequences, and of the Allied war crimes committed during the attack on Iraq. - Already as Vice-President then as president, Bush I worked toward a corporate U.S. goal to transform Yugoslavia into a Third World region, a cluster of weak right-wing principalities with the following characteristics beginning in ernest after the death of Tito, to make that republic of six nationalities incapable of charting an independent course of self-development; make its natural resources completely accessible to transnational corporate exploitation, including the enormous mineral wealth in Kosovo; to create a n impoverished but literate and skilled pop working at subsistence wages, a cheap labor pool that would help depress wages in Western Europe and elsewhere; to d ismantle petroleum, engineering, mining, fertilizer, pharmaceutical, construction, automotive, and agricultural industries so they no longer offer competition against Western producers; to abolish Yugoslavia's public sector services and social programs, using the same 'shock therapy" imposed on the former Communist countries of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union; to replace the social wage with a neoliberal global free market; eliminating local banks access to Central Banks and IMF sabotaging local production a process that would deliver still greater wealth and power into the hands the speculative investment banking industry led from Wall Street.[6] - Bush I would have to answer for the crimes committed by CIA while he was Head of the CIA.
CLINTON: -
Bill Clinton can be indicted for firing a missile into the metropolitan home of a one-and-half year-old child as part of his sudden killer air strikes on Baghdad's center killing a total of six, including a well known poet immediately after individuals were arrested and only accused of attempting to assassinate former US President George Walker Bush in Kuwait. Further self-indicting himself, President Clinton announced that he ordered precautions to "minimize loss of innocent lives." Twenty-four missiles were fired into a large crowded city and only eight people were reported killed, so apparently the US military succeeded in following his directive. - Clinton ordered an air strike that destroyed only pharmaceutical factory in all of the Sudan on a CIA report that it also made explosives. - B Bill Clinton ordered Serbia bombed for 78 days, from 8,000 to 9,0000 or more sorties. More than 500 civilians were killed. Nearly everything was struck, causing massive destruction and disruption; besides known or suspected military sites, power plants, factories, transportation, telecommunications facilities, vital infrastructure, including roads, bridges and rail lines, fuel depots, schools, a TV station, China's Belgrade embassy, hospitals, government offices, churches, historic landmarks, and other targets in cities and villages throughout the country.
- Under "acts injurious to citizens of another country" as crimes against humanity would fall the entrapment of Latin Americans and American workers in further impoverishment with NAFTA, subjugating Haitians to famine producing American ‘investments' overseeing the economic and CIA pressure to breakup what had been for nearly a half century a pleasant, easy going, non-alined and only lightly and peacefully communist Yugoslavia.[6]
BUSH II:
- George Walker Bush ordered what would be a genocidal crime against humanity in bombing, invading, occupying, and destroying whole cities in this oldest of civilizations. He did not even bother to get the okay from the colonial powers subservient UN Security Council, not that that would have affected it being a Nuremberg Principles punishable crime. - Bush II ordered or okayed a CIA sponsored invasion of Haiti and the kidnapping of its popular priest president, cause many deaths and a chaos that would cost thousands of lives continuing on even today. - When, within few weeks after the 9/11 attack, the leaders of the two Pakistani Islamist parties negotiated with Mullah Omar and bin Laden for the latter's extradition to Pakistan to stand trial for the 11 September attacks, Bush let it be known that he refuse the offer himself, on his own, and proceeded to bomb, invade and attempt to occupy and govern the whole nation of Afghanistan under the lie that Afghanis had some thing to do with the Saudi Arabians who had trained in American and suicide themselves flying US captured airliners into the Trade Towers in New York. Saudi Arabians in Afghanistan, including the accused Osama bin Laden, had been brought in, armed and funded by the US. All this is beside the point of any possible justification for an attack on any nation. Bush is guilty of the death of tens thousands of entirely innocent Afghanis. - Bush II is prosecutable for the great theft of natural resources by US corporations, the imposing phony elections under occupation and protecting a drug lord invested administration by murdering the fighters of the formally de facto recognized Taliban government that defeated the US funded war lords engaged in a cataclysmic civil war after the final defeat of the Kabul government two years after withdrawal of its Soviet ally.
OBAMA:
- Barack Obama ordered the destruction of the government of Libya's defense forces as he continued to fund a CIA program, which in coordination with its several branches in European and Middle Eastern nations, was running a phony show of rebellion in the prospering citizenry of the 53rd highest quality of life of all nations on Earth using hired known and experienced terrorists. Obama sought to justify his crimes with the most easily disproven statements and absurd lies, e.g. "Libya has been suffering under Gaddafi for forty years," continuing absurd lies right up to the British and French warplane assisted primitive assassination of the Libya's revolutionary hero and Chairman of the African Union. [7] [8] (Obama being so young, it does not seem possible that Obama will escape prosecution and conviction under Nuremberg Principles law.)
- For two bloody years, Obama has mercilessly been having CIA do, with allied secret services in a dozen countries of the Colonial-Neo-colonial powers, the same as it in Syria as it did in Libya, namely funding massacres and even more devastation in Syria. He will soon be unmasked
- If Obama should try to defend record in his Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libyan drone murders of his chosen suspected terrorist besides common law, US laws, the US Constitution and Nuremberg Principle international law the video recording of a presidential candidates debate in which he eagerly was the first to quickly raise his hand in assenting that as President he would not be dismayed from ordering a assassination strike on an important enemy leader even if he knew innocent bystanders would be killed as well. Needless to point out that no one is entitled to murder other, let alone on the pretext that that person might be intending harm to Americans. Obama has fingered for death, even an American religious minister and his son, not even accused of committing a crime.
- Obama's egotistical use of the first person pronoun in crediting himself with ordering crimes will facilitate his being tried for multiple mass murders and murdering collaterally with undeniable foreknowledge.
- It seems redundant to list the crimes against peace each of his treats to nuclear bomb Iran, or bomb Korea or Syria.
In addition, most of these presidents have maintained a criminal and life endangering embargoes and crippling sanctions on North Korea, Cuba and Iran. Principle Six of the Nuremberg Principles in describing crimes against humanity includes: " inhumane acts done against any civilian population." And all it would seem for one directive or another must have been involved in the genocide US foreign policy has brought to Somalia, first during the Cold War and thereafter supporting with constant military intervention various war lord governments.
In addition, most of these presidents have maintained a criminal and life endangering embargoes and crippling sanctions on North Korea, Cuba and Iran. Principle Six of the Nuremberg Principles in describing crimes against humanity includes: " inhumane acts done against any civilian population." And all it would seem for one directive or another must have been involved in the genocide US foreign policy has brought to Somalia, first during the Cold War and thereafter supporting with constant military intervention various war lord governments.
Lastly, it best be noted that there are no war crimes involved, since there has not been a war declared since the Second World War. By definition, you can't have a war crime without a war. As Ron Paul has told the nation over and over again on network news programs, all the illegal use of US military in police actions or humanitarian intervention since and including Korea have been unconstitutional and therefor criminal. Martin Luther King said US atrocity wars and covert genocide on three continents since 1945 were meant to maintain unjust predatory investments. Former US Attorney General under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson calls US foreign policy the greatest crime against humanity since those of the Nazis, Japanese and other fascists during World War II, and that justice must eventually be served, punishments allotted, compensation and reparations paid for massive wrongful death, injury, destruction of property and theft of natural resources. And this will make further investment in wars unprofitable and wars inoperable. [9][10]
So much for honoring war criminals instead of restricting a celebration of Presidents Washington and Lincoln until 1971. As for Americans who carried out the criminal orders of US presidents since 1945, Principle IV states: "The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him". This principle could be paraphrased as follows: "It is not an acceptable excuse to say 'I was just following my superior's orders'". After the prominent, high profile event of the Nuremberg Trials, that excuse is now referred to by many as "Nuremberg Defense"
As to Americans who did not follow any of these presidents orders,
Principle VII states, "Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law."
Yours truly leaves it un to the reader to decide if he has complicity, he, being an American citizen has no doubt of his. End Notes:
1 1945, September 8 — US State Department officials, arrive in Korea with the US Army, disband the government of the Korean People's Republic created September 6, in Seoul, by delegates from local peoples' offices from all provinces throughout the peninsula formed when Japan announced intention to surrender (August 10), proceed without any Korean authorization whatsoever, to immediately cut Korea into two parts to be occupied by US and Soviet troops and establishing a military government, flying in from Washington DC (in General MacArthur's private plane), Singman Rhee, to head it; eventually installing him as president of a separate South Korea Government that will include collaborators, and will outlaw all strikes, declare the KPR and all its activities illegal and begin a deadly terror of persecution of members of the disallowed Korean Peoples Republic, communists, socialists, unionists and anyone against the the partition and demanding an independent Korea. 1946-1949 — The US in effect declares war on the popular movement of Korea south of the 38th Parallel and sets in motion a repressive campaign dismantling the Peoples' Committees and their supporters throughout the south, becoming massively homicidal as Rhee's special forces and secret police take the lives of some 200,000 men, women and children as documented recently by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up by the National Assembly of the Republic of (South) Korea; on the Island of Cheju alone, within a year, as many as 60,000 of its 300,000 residents are murdered, while another 40,000 fled by sea to nearby Japan some two years before the Koreans from the north invade the South. [Wikipedia] 1950, June 28 — The US attacks by, air, sea and land, aiming at the southward invading army of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North), which nevertheless unifies the peninsula in five short weeks (except for the US defended port city of Pusan); with little resistance from South Korea's ROK military as most of its soldiers either defect or go home; over the next three years US will commit dozens of high death toll documented atrocities (some recently apologized for) as American planes level to the ground almost every city and town of any appreciable size in the entire peninsula, north and south, in the end threatening to drop the atomic bomb, and be charged with germ warfare by some not easily dismissed sources.
1 1945, September 8 — US State Department officials, arrive in Korea with the US Army, disband the government of the Korean People's Republic created September 6, in Seoul, by delegates from local peoples' offices from all provinces throughout the peninsula formed when Japan announced intention to surrender (August 10), proceed without any Korean authorization whatsoever, to immediately cut Korea into two parts to be occupied by US and Soviet troops and establishing a military government, flying in from Washington DC (in General MacArthur's private plane), Singman Rhee, to head it; eventually installing him as president of a separate South Korea Government that will include collaborators, and will outlaw all strikes, declare the KPR and all its activities illegal and begin a deadly terror of persecution of members of the disallowed Korean Peoples Republic, communists, socialists, unionists and anyone against the the partition and demanding an independent Korea. 1946-1949 — The US in effect declares war on the popular movement of Korea south of the 38th Parallel and sets in motion a repressive campaign dismantling the Peoples' Committees and their supporters throughout the south, becoming massively homicidal as Rhee's special forces and secret police take the lives of some 200,000 men, women and children as documented recently by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up by the National Assembly of the Republic of (South) Korea; on the Island of Cheju alone, within a year, as many as 60,000 of its 300,000 residents are murdered, while another 40,000 fled by sea to nearby Japan some two years before the Koreans from the north invade the South. [Wikipedia] 1950, June 28 — The US attacks by, air, sea and land, aiming at the southward invading army of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North), which nevertheless unifies the peninsula in five short weeks (except for the US defended port city of Pusan); with little resistance from South Korea's ROK military as most of its soldiers either defect or go home; over the next three years US will commit dozens of high death toll documented atrocities (some recently apologized for) as American planes level to the ground almost every city and town of any appreciable size in the entire peninsula, north and south, in the end threatening to drop the atomic bomb, and be charged with germ warfare by some not easily dismissed sources.
dissidentvoice.org/.../prosecutable-us- crimes - against - humanity-in-k orea/ ? Mar 30, 2013 -
2 U.S. Nuremberg Trials Prosecutor Would Have Proudly Prosecuted McCain as a War Criminal
2 U.S. Nuremberg Trials Prosecutor Would Have Proudly Prosecuted McCain as a War Criminal
Gen. Telford Taylor, a chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials is reported as having said that he would be proud to lead the prosecution of U.S. pilots captured in Vietnam. Robert Richter, an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker, and political director for CBS News from 1965 to 1968 recently wrote in Bomber Pilot McCain: War Heroism or War Crimes? published by Institute for Public Accuracy, October 15, 2008, writes, I will never forget how stunned I was when Gen. Telford Taylor, a chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials after World War Two, told me that he strongly supported the idea of trying the U.S. pilots captured in North Vietnam as war criminals — and that he would be proud to lead in their prosecution. Richter noted that McCain has repeatedly invoked his record in the Vietnam War during the campaign, but that the effect of bomber pilots like McCain and of the Rolling Thunder bombing campaign has not been sufficiently scrutinized. An ardent opponent of the Vietnam conflict, Taylor spoke with me in the fall of 1966 when I was looking into producing a documentary on this controversy for CBS News, where I was their National Political Editor. While he did not mention any pilot's name, then U.S. Navy Lieut. Commander John McCain, who was captured a year later, would have been among the group Taylor wanted to prosecute. … Taylor's argument was that their actions were in violation of the Geneva conventions that specifically forbid indiscriminate bombing that could cause incidental loss of civilian life or damage to civilian objects. Adding to the Geneva code, he noted, was the decision at the Nuremberg trials after World War Two: military personnel cannot defend themselves against such a charge with a claim that they were simply following orders. The charge that U.S. pilots also had bombed hospitals and other civilian targets, turned out to be correct and was confirmed by the New York Times ‘ chief foreign correspondent, Harrison Salisbury. In late 1966 Salisbury described the widespread devastation of civilian neighborhoods around Hanoi by American bombs: ‘Bomb damage … extends over an area of probably a mile or so on both sides of the highway … small villages and hamlets along the route [were] almost obliterated'. … In one of his autobiographies McCain wrote that he was going to bomb a power station in ‘a heavily populated part of Hanoi' when he was shot down. … http://dissidentvoice.org/2008/10/us-nuremberg-trials-prosecutor-would-have-proudly-prosecuted-mccain-as-a-war-criminal/
See also: War Hero or War Criminal?
By Robert Richter
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21028.htm #
3
The Nukes of October: Richard Nixon's Secret Plan to Bring Peace to Vietnam Jeremi Suri,Wired Magazine,2/23/2008
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/16-03/ff_nuclearwar?currentPage=all
4
See also: War Hero or War Criminal?
By Robert Richter
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21028.htm #
3
The Nukes of October: Richard Nixon's Secret Plan to Bring Peace to Vietnam Jeremi Suri,Wired Magazine,2/23/2008
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/16-03/ff_nuclearwar?currentPage=all
4
www.voltairenet.org/article30038.html ? Oct 22, 2004 - When the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur interviewed Brzezinski in 1998, he admitted that the equipping of Bin Laden'
5 Howard Teicher served on the National Security Council as director of Political-Military Affairs. He accompanied Rumsfeld to Baghdad in 1983. [15] According to his 1995 affidavit and separate interviews with former Reagan and Bush administration officials all the above is true.
See also: Lando, Barry Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush , Other Press, 2007. 6 The Dismantling of Yugoslavia A Study in In humanitarian Intervention (and a Western Liberal-Left Intellectual and Moral Collapse) Edward S. Herman and David Peterson http://monthlyreview.org/2007/10/01/the-dismantling-of-yugoslavia
see also: To Kill A Nation - the Attack on Yugoslavia, Michael Parenti, 2000 7
5 Howard Teicher served on the National Security Council as director of Political-Military Affairs. He accompanied Rumsfeld to Baghdad in 1983. [15] According to his 1995 affidavit and separate interviews with former Reagan and Bush administration officials all the above is true.
See also: Lando, Barry Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush , Other Press, 2007. 6 The Dismantling of Yugoslavia A Study in In humanitarian Intervention (and a Western Liberal-Left Intellectual and Moral Collapse) Edward S. Herman and David Peterson http://monthlyreview.org/2007/10/01/the-dismantling-of-yugoslavia
see also: To Kill A Nation - the Attack on Yugoslavia, Michael Parenti, 2000 7
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28376.htm ? Jun 20, 2011 - Just Murderous Gangs and Nic Robertson ... There were no peaceful protests ! 2. ... This was reported by Reuters and BBC, but not CNN.
for more complete documented chronology see Capitalism's Warplanes : CIA AndAl Qaeda Destroy Socialist Libya's ... www.countercurrents.org/janson240411.htm ?
Capitalism's Warplanes : CIA AndAl Qaeda Destroy Socialist Libya's 53rd Highest Living Standard. By Jay Janson. 24 April, 2011. Countercurrents.org
8 Syria : CIA, M16, French, Mossad, Saudi Involvement Unreported In ... www.countercurrents.org/ janson 270611.htm ?
By Jay Janson . 27 June, 2011. Countercurrents.org. What is unfolding in Syria is an armed insurrection supported covertly by foreign powers including the US, ...
Syria! NY Times' Deadly Aim to Fool ALL the People ALL the Time A veil of disinformation by Western business controlled media never possible by any outright State-controlled media has descended on the world. But with technology is racing toward easy electronic access to documented history, those employed in the war-is-profitable business will soon be indicted. There is a rising call for America to prosecute its own war criminals. See: Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now.
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for more complete documented chronology see Capitalism's Warplanes : CIA AndAl Qaeda Destroy Socialist Libya's ... www.countercurrents.org/janson240411.htm ?
Capitalism's Warplanes : CIA AndAl Qaeda Destroy Socialist Libya's 53rd Highest Living Standard. By Jay Janson. 24 April, 2011. Countercurrents.org
8 Syria : CIA, M16, French, Mossad, Saudi Involvement Unreported In ... www.countercurrents.org/ janson 270611.htm ?
By Jay Janson . 27 June, 2011. Countercurrents.org. What is unfolding in Syria is an armed insurrection supported covertly by foreign powers including the US, ...
Syria! NY Times' Deadly Aim to Fool ALL the People ALL the Time A veil of disinformation by Western business controlled media never possible by any outright State-controlled media has descended on the world. But with technology is racing toward easy electronic access to documented history, those employed in the war-is-profitable business will soon be indicted. There is a rising call for America to prosecute its own war criminals. See: Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now.
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kingcondemneduswars .blogspot.com/ ? Jul 13, 2011 - International Campaign for Awareness of King's Condemnation of U.S. Wars and the "unjust overseas predatory investments they are meant to ...
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prosecuteuscrimesagainsthumanity now.blogspot.com/ ? Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now Campaign. First goal is to frighten with prosecution anyone calling for or fomenting war or military attack on an …
Principle V of the Nuremberg Principles states, "Any person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law."
Principle VI states, "The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law: (a) Crimes against peace: (i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a 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: [NOT APPLICABLE SINCE NO WAR WAS DECLARED IN ALL THE ABOVE CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY]) © Crimes against humanity: Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane 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 connection with any crime against peace or any war crime."
Jay Janson is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer; has lived and worked on all continents in 67 countries; articles on media published in China, Italy, UK, India and the US; now resides in NYC; First effort was a series of articles on deadly cultural pollution endangering seven areas of life emanating from Western corporate owned commercial media published in Hong Kong's Window Magazine 1993; Howard Zinn lent his name to various projects of his; Global Research; Information Clearing House; Counter Currents, Kerala, India; Minority Perspective, UK; Dissident Voice, Uruknet; Voice of Detroit; Ethiopian Review; Palestine Chronicle; India Times; Ta Kung Bao; China Daily; South China Morning Post; Come Home America; OpEdNews; HistoryNews Network; Vermont Citizen News have published his articles; 300 of which are available at: click http://www.opednews.com/author/author1723.html ; Weekly column, South China Morning Post, 1986-87; reviews for Ta Kung Bao; article China Daily, 1989. Is coordinator of the King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign : (King Condemned US Wars) http://kingcondemneduswars.blogspot.com/ and website historian of Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now Campaign http://prosecuteuscrimesagainsthumanitynow.blogspot.com/ featuring a country by country history of US crimes and laws pertaining.
VICTIMS OF US TERRORISM
Income Inequality In The US And Its Shameful Impact
By Fazal M. Kamal
For a country that's now producing the almost inconceivable quantum computer---the so-called Infinity Machine---and which has the world's largest economy, and in brief is the richest nation in the known universe, it isn't merely a crying shame but downright unjust that hundreds of thousands of its citizens should be in such an economic state that they simply cannot afford to have health insurance.
According to findings of a survey, for instance, in which nearly 10,000 people age 20 and up participated and reported having one or more chronic illnesses like cancer, asthma, emphysema or a psychiatric illness “23 percent took their medication less often than prescribed because of the cost, 19 percent reported difficulty affording food and 11 percent said they were having trouble paying for both food and medications. In the end, about one in three had trouble affording food, medication or both.”
Additionally, conflicting local, state and national laws have created fissures in the system which have left many outside medical coverage even if one set of rules permits one person to receive government assistance, in a large number of cases, because of the contradictions, s/he would be denied coverage and hence would be in a vulnerable situation.
This, however, is only one small part of the problem. The major issue is income inequality which has assumed such potentials that even President Obama has had to address it on a national scale. Mainly due to demographic changes over the decades, with farming losing its earlier importance in economic indexes, and with rapid burgeoning urbanization, the luster of rugged individualism and the lack of awareness of inequities have been vanishing fast.
Consequently, in recent years there has been a flood of commentaries, articles, reports and surveys (not overlooking Wall Street Occupiers who helped to bring attention to the problem) highlighting income inequality in terms that have rarely been used in earlier decades. Given that fact, it's quite understandable why Barack Obama has been talking of tackling this problem with some urgency. Obviously, the sentiment now is that this has to be addressed, not only for ethical reasons (which may or may not be a factor for many) but also for the sake of sheer practical reasons, like the health of the economy.
In a recent article June Carbone wrote in the New Economic Perspectives, “The winner-take-all system turns the rest of us into losers…It is no longer whether greater inequality exists (it indisputably does) or whether it is a good thing….Instead the big issue is whether the rise of top one-tenth of one percent with their extraordinary concentration of wealth has anything to do with the rise of inequality between the middle and the bottom. The answer is, of course it does, in ways that are both simple and complex.”
To put in some perspective, inequality on a global scale has also been growing though in many countries the gap isn't as yawning as in a few countries including specifically the United States . As Paul Buchheit noted, “ America 's middle class is further from the top than in all other developed countries.” And he also proves, as many others, that it is not difficult to rectify at least some of the more egregious issues. In a commentary in AlterNet he notes, “Extreme inequality means people without homes are freezing to death in America .”
“On a winter day,” elaborates Buchheit, “in 2012 over 633,000 were homeless in the United States . Based on an annual single room occupancy cost of $558 per month, a little over $4 billion would provide shelter for every homeless person for the entire year. The stock market grew by $4.7 trillion in 2013. A wealth tax of just a one-tenth of 1 percent (one dollar out of every thousand) would have provided the $4 billion needed to shelter every homeless American for 365 days.” He concludes by lamenting, “But we have no wealth tax. And the wealth just keeps growing for the wealthiest Americans.”
Naturally, as in other cases too, there are many who are unable to see their feet because of their noses, even though income inequality is obvious, is hurting the economy and for many different reasons ought to be reduced. And they aren't only people in small towns or in the Republican Party; they are also present in the Democratic Party as well as in some of the so-called progressive segments of the media. One of the ruses they're utilizing to deflect from the core issues is that equal opportunity should be the goal rather than attacking income inequality.
Former Clinton administration secretary and political economist Robert Reich has been consistently attempting to spotlight the consequences of income inequality and the impediments that have been holding back measures to diminish the varied impacts. Very recently he underscored the unpleasant fact that “ America 's savage inequality is the main reason equal opportunity is fading and poverty is growing.”
In this context he noted, “… America 's rich are accumulating not just more of the country's total income and wealth,” (and this following fact is of enormous significance) “but also the political power that accompanies money. And they're using that power to reduce their own taxes, and get corporate welfare (subsidies, bailouts, tax cuts) for their businesses…All this means less equality of opportunity in America.”
In spite of the clear imperative of initiating steps to address the issue of income inequality, it has become evident by now that the Republicans in the US Congress as well as outside of it aren't going to be willing partners with the administration's proposals in this regard. Which---if one takes into account practical politics---is somewhat mystifying since opinion surveys have demonstrated that a majority of citizens is not satisfied with the existing level of wealth distribution.
For instance a Gallup poll has revealed that 67 percent of those asked about wealth and income distribution in the US replied that they were dissatisfied and 39 percent said they were very dissatisfied. Equally significantly, 45 percent of those polled by Gallup in its annual Mood of the Nation survey expressed pessimism about their ability to get ahead by working hard. This belief, in earlier times, was a universally accepted bedrock of being an American.
Against this backdrop the US government has been announcing its determination to confront this debilitating problem head on. How far the administration's plans will progress has yet to be seen, but in recent declarations President Obama has said he will launch programs to attack this issue “with or without Congress.” Recently in a radio address he observed that “those at the top are doing better than ever” while “too many Americans are working harder than ever just to get by.”
Know And Punish US War Crimes
By Robert Barsocchini
After Iran overthrew the US-installed terrorist king in 1979, the USA quickly formed an Axis of Evil with some European allies and Saddam Hussein, and waged a war of aggression against Iran, which murdered 1 million Iranian citizens, mainly young people, and 150 thousand Kurds of all ages (tens of thousands of both Iranians and Kurds with horrific chemical weapons), and killed 500 thousand, mainly young, Iraqis, many simply conscripted by Hussein and used as meat targets for the war of aggression.
For this war, the USA and Europe supplied the proxy force, led by Hussein, with chemical weapons including mustard and sarin gas. The USA also supplied Hussein with blueprints for chemical weapons-making plants, and technology for building missiles, warheads and detonators for the chemical weapons. Once Hussein had made them, the USA used its satellite and spying capabilities to provide Hussein with locations of Iranians so Hussein could gas them, as well as Kurds. During this, the USA also provided diplomatic cover for the Axis of Evil (itself, Europe, and Hussein) at the United Nations, shifting the focus away from the perpetrators of the crimes.
In 2007, one Dutch businessman, Frans Van Anraat, was sentenced to 17 year in prison for providing some of the chemicals to Hussein. He was charged only with complicity in war crimes, not with genocide, because it could not be shown that he knew exactly what Hussein would do with the chemicals.
This illustrates:
- All the US business pe ople (including from Kennametal, Latrobe, PA; Scientific Atlanta, Atlanta, GA; Tektronix, Wilsonville, OR) wh o provided Hussein with chemicals, technology, equipment, etc., are guilty of war crimes, and also genocide if it can be shown that they knew what the materials would be used for.
- All the US government officials involved, which included the Reagan administration, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and members of congress and the CIA, etc., are guilty of both war crimes and genocide, since they approved all 771 shipments to Hussein, and helped him to use the weapons, as the widely publicized declassified documents show , with wide governmental knowledge and complicity.
Zero US officials and business-people have been charged. This is due to the US's power, physical and economic.
Since crimes like these - war crimes and genocide - go unpunished for the USA, they have continued (see below, and " Rogue State ", by William Blum, for details).
Immediately after complicity in war crimes and genocide against Iran and the Kurds, the USA used chemical weaponry against Iraq in the Gulf War - bombs and bullets made with radioactive nuclear waste, or "depleted uranium". This resulted in spikes in cancer rates for Iraqis and US soldiers. This became known as Gulf War Syndrome, and the US government has done everything it can to deny the effects and accept responsibility for them.
Soon after that, Bill Clinton used radioactive nuclear waste munitions against Yugoslavia, also devastating the people and environment there.
Soon after that, George W. Bush used radioactive nuclear waste munitions against Afghanistan, devastating people and the environment.
Soon after that, George W. Bush used radioactive nuclear waste , white phosphorus, and sarin gas against Iraq again (see "Rogue State"), devastating the people and environment, and bringing rates of cancer and birth defects up to levels higher than those of Hiroshima after the USA nuclear bombed it.
Soon after that, Obama expanded the war of aggression against Afghanistan from 40,000 US troops to over 100,000, and said nothing of the use of radioactive nuclear waste weapons .
At the same time, in 2009, Israel used US-provided white phosphorus chemical-weapon bombs against civilians in Gaza (see "Rain of Fire", by Human Rights Watch), after which Obama and Congress increased US tax money flowing to Israel by almost three quarters of a billion dollars per year. Israel had already been the biggest recipient of US tax money (as well as weapons, etc.). The current level of aid going to Israel is over 3 billion dollars a year, or about 10 million dollars per day. All aid to Israel is illegal under US and international law.
The pattern is clear. When there is no punishment for crimes, when people know they can do pretty much anything and get away with it, they will do just that.
We need a mass movement in the USA to arrest and prosecute war criminals, so that US politicians and officials have something to be afraid of (namely jail) when they make their decisions. War crimes, genocide, and the like, would then have definite consequences and be sharply reduced.
We know theft and murder rates would be much higher if we had no punishments for those crimes. Crimes committed by the most ambitious/evil people (corporate-backed politicians, government officials) are the same - with no punishment, they continue, often committed repeatedly by the same people, as in the cases of Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Obama, Hillary Clinton, and others. If Ted Bundy hadn't been apprehended, he would have kept going, too, albeit on a scale minuscule by comparison to these and other US terrorists and mass murderers.
For the USA to stop killing and mutating people around the world, there must be consequences for crimes. Otherwise they go on, as seen.
The above list of crimes is incomplete, even for the time period it covers. Before the US/Euro/Iraqi Axis of Evil war of aggression against Iran, the USA used and experimented with chemical weapons and other agents hundreds of times on its own citizens and around the world, without consent.
The US government will not submit to such measures willingly. The USA has been found guilty of state terrorism before, for example against Nicaragua, and ordered to pay massive reparations. The USA simply said no. For another example, the USA has legislation known as "The Hague Invasion Act", which says that the US must use force to invade the Netherlands and retrieve any US official, and possibly official from an allied foreign government such as Israel, who is brought to the International Criminal Court for trial.
But a mass, non-violent movement could accomplish the goal of charging war criminals. Everyone knows war crimes and genocide are wrong. That's not the issue. The issue is that many people are unaware that these events, such as the US/Euro/Iraqi war of aggression against Iran, even took place. If they are aware of them, they are likely unaware of US involvement, and if they are aware of that, they are unaware that such acts are serious crimes against humanity. This is due to the US corporate media's central role in the profitable US agenda of expanding the empire through force.
It may well be true what US war criminals such as Obama , John Kerry, Hillary Clinton , and Zbigniew Brzezinski have expressed: that the internet is dealing a fatal blow to the empire, because now people can quickly spread information and easily learn that crimes are crimes. Many are unhappy that the USA is committing heinous acts repeatedly, without consequences, and destroying millions upon millions of lives.
Let us awaken and go back to our previous war-criminals such as Henry Kissinger, the Bushes, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney, arrest them, and arrest our current war criminals, some of whom are listed here, and give them fair trials and prison sentences if they are found guilty by an impartial jury of their peers.
"All options", as these people say, are not "on the table": the death penalty - premeditated pack murder - is an abomination, which is why virtually every country in the world (about 90%), aside from the US, several of its allies, and a few others, do not use it.
SHAME SHAME Mr. President Government of USA
We admire ordinary American citizens . However we despise American officials for their inhuman attiudes , double standards & false ego of superiority. They don’t respect the laws of other sovereign nations , but expect other countrymen to respect US laws. Whenever US officials serving in other countries as US diplomats were caught red handed for crimes ranging from drunken driving , vandalism , terrorism , etc , the US government didn’t let the host countries to legally prosecute them instead airlifted them back to US. Now deceased Mr.Warren Anderson former head of Union Carbide responsible for Bhopal Gas Tragedy was not sent back to India for legal prosecution. Mr. David Headley master mind of 26 / 11 Mumbai Terrorist attack is not yet handed over to India for legal prosecution , why ?
If US thinks it can prosecute it’s own citizens , India too can legally prosecute it’s own citizen Ms. Devyani Khobragade. Immediately drop charges against her. That too charges against her are not as grave as against warren Anderson & david headley remember that. How much money , salary US Embassy officials are paying to their maid servants ? Are they paying as per US Labor laws ?
You have strip searched H.E.Honourable President of India Mr.Abdul Kalam & Honourable Defense Minister of India Mr.George Fernandez when on official US visit. You don’t practice diplomacy . If US officials , dignitaries are strip searched when on visit to India , how it will be ? Sad part is our Indian Leaders & officials have selfish motives , lack self esteem & respect for motherland and have not addressed these shameful acts of US when It happened.
US government has a guilty feeling and suffers from a syndrome of terrorist attack always because , it is the father , mother , origin of terrorism world over since decades. It’s own actions will boomerang , it’s own illegitimate terrorist babies like osama bin laden will take care of USA. In time , USA will pay for it’s own crimes.
Mr.President of USA We admire you as an individual , but as head of US government you must mend your ways. We hope saner sense will prevail.
EDITORIAL : 9/11 , 26/11 - SIGN TO LEGALLY PROSECUTE SPONSORERS OF TERRORISM USA , PAKISTAN & INDIA
Visit , read the petition & support by signing the petition demanding
LEGAL PROSECUTION OF SPONSORERS OF TERRORISM
LEGAL PROSECUTION OF SPONSORERS OF TERRORISM
Visit , read the petition & support by signing the petition demanding
ACCOUNTABILITY OF INDIAN JUDGES & POLICE.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/4/accountability-of-indian-judges#signatures ,
ACCOUNTABILITY OF INDIAN JUDGES & POLICE.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/4/accountability-of-indian-judges#signatures ,
India, U.S.A , U.K , Pakistan and various other countries
have given birth to & supported various terror outfits, all with the
objective of widening their area of influence, to get hold of
governance of other countries, to loot resources of other countries.
At no time they were bothered about the welfare of innocent people
in those victim countries.
Now, when the Frankenstein monster they fathered TERRORISM
is haunting them , came home to roost in their own backyards , all
these countries are crying foul.
Take for instance Pakistan , it has got enough problems on hand , poverty , unemployment , malnutrition , hunger , illiteracy is rampant in Pakistan. Ordinary Pakistanis are suffering, ordinary Pakistanis does not need neither war nor jihad , what they need is food , healthcare , education for their children.
Take for instance india, it has lot of problems on hand
like starvation, lack of education , health care, etc. The GOI says
it doesn't have enough funds to solve these problems. These problems
are of pre-independece vintage, increasing multifold after
independence of india. Still the government of india spent crores of
rupees on training , arming of tamil terrorists in srilanka ,
unnecessarily poked it's nose in east pakistan creating bangladesh,
created terrorist outfits in punjab & northeast to counter the
influence of other terrorist outfits. ALL THE WHILE PREACHING
PANCHASHEEL PRINCIPLES – peaceful co-existance , respect for
neighbour's boundaries, etc, in the same breath. What ordinary Indians , commonfolk need is food , shelter , healthcare & education.
Take the case of USA , from the beginning since decades , it is the habit of US administrators, britishers to sow the seeds of discontent between two countries , make them to go to war with each other ( simultaneously selling military hardware worth billions of dollars to those same countries by the way making profit in billions ) & to finally play the role of a truce maker thereby getting a foothold in the newly formed government plus getting reconstruction projects worth billions of dollars leading to profit of billions. Just remember the USinvasion of iraq , citing presence of WMDs, finally nothing was found. However USA made billions of profit by business.
The common folk of whichever country , whichever religion you take , does not want war , everybody wants peace. The common folk need food , shelter , healthcare & education. It is the scheming politicians who go on the path of violence. POOJYA BAPUJI's , MAHATMA GANDHIJI's principles of non violence , non interference in the affairs of other individuals / other countries , love / compassion for fellow human beings is much relevant today.
Hereby, e-Voice urges the international war crimes tribunal , to
order the respective governments who aided terrorism ,to pay damages
to victim countries. Jai hind. Vande mataram
Your's sincerely,
Nagaraj.m.r.
CRIMES OF U.S PRESIDENT
From the day one the government of USA is selfish & violating the rights of other countrymen. During cold war days , to expand it's influence & to give more business for u.s arms manufacturers , the u.s.a sowed the seeds of terrorism in various countries & nurtured them through arms & finance supply , training. The AL-QUEDA & TALIBAN are it's own babies.
The president bush of U.S.A was sufferring from low image ratings , the domestic economy was facing a slump , so to improve his own rating & bring more business to u.s industries , he schemed an inhuman ruthless plan. He wanted to take control of afghanisthan & iraq. He needed a ruse to invade them & concocted one murdering his very own countrymen.
From the day one the government of USA is selfish & violating the rights of other countrymen. During cold war days , to expand it's influence & to give more business for u.s arms manufacturers , the u.s.a sowed the seeds of terrorism in various countries & nurtured them through arms & finance supply , training. The AL-QUEDA & TALIBAN are it's own babies.
The president bush of U.S.A was sufferring from low image ratings , the domestic economy was facing a slump , so to improve his own rating & bring more business to u.s industries , he schemed an inhuman ruthless plan. He wanted to take control of afghanisthan & iraq. He needed a ruse to invade them & concocted one murdering his very own countrymen.
human rights watch has doubted the authenticity of 9/11 in it's articles months ago. it is just a ploy of the bush to divert attention of public from his dipping ratings , domestic problems like unemployment , economic lows and more importantly to find rather fabricate a reason for attacking the arab world , iraq. finally , to help it's MNCs mint millions in reconstuction , oil contracts, etc. it is a savage act of bush for green bucks.
SEPTEMBER 9/11 WAS PLANNED !!!! VISIT : http://www.neiu.edu/~ayjamess/hmmm.htm#Main
The government of U.S.A thrown all international conventions into wind , lied about weapons of destruction in iraq & invaded a sovereign countryiraq. Still , it was unabale to find any weapons of mass destruction in iraq. In it's greed for power , green bucks , it inhumanly tortured prisoners , took them to 3rd countries for torture , bugged phones of u.s citizens & violated human rights of u.s citizens. In his ego , greed mr.bush has violated all human rights of not only u.s citizens but also human rights of innocent iraqis , afghans , etc & thrown all international laws into winds.
Now, the president himself has acknowledged the intelligence failure in iraq but defended his iraqi invasion. Mr. Bush will be remebered in the history books as a GREATEST LIAR , INHUMAN SCHEMING MEGALAMONIAC & GREEDY OLDMAN.
AN APPEAL TO THE HONOURABLE CHIEF JUSTICE OF SUPREME COURT OF USA , CHIEF JUSTICE OF INDIA & CHIEF JUSTICE OF PAKISTAN
- By American Citizens
Our country was known as " Heaven On Earth" , "Land of Equality & Equal Oppurtunity" & the "Statue of Liberty" rightly symbolized the spirit of our country. Now USA is known as a "Terror State".
In the last 3 – 4 decades , the persons who occupied the office of President USA ,in their individual capacity took wrong , inhuman decisions , meddled in the internal affairs of other sovereign nations , spent our resources to create terrorist outfits like al-queda , Taliban in those countries.
In turn these terrorist outfits terrorized , murdered millions of innocents & this Frankenstein monster came home to roost on September 9 / 11 . After September 9 / 11 , each terror suspect is severely tortured in hell like Abu Garibh prison , elsewhere by our authorities. For argument sake let us accept
that these terrorists who murder innocents don't deserve kid glove treatment & rightly deserve 3rd degree torture. When a single terrorist deserve such inhuman 3rd degree torture , what quantum of punishment , torture – previous presidents of USA deserve – who created , aided & abetted thousands of such terrorists , terrorist outfits ?
Herby, we appeal to the honourable Supreme Court of USA to order the federal government to to make public :
1. how much US resources were spent from US TREASURY , to finance terrorist outfits , military juntas in other sovereign nations ?
2. is not Al-queda , Taliban creations of USA ?
3. did September 9 / 11 WTC attack truly happened by hijacked airplane or was it planned by US authorities ? see
http://www.neiu.edu/~ayjamess/hmmm.htm#Main
4 . is racial profiling , profiling a particular community & suspecting all the muslims as terror suspects , right?
5. if it is right , the cretors of such terrorist outfits – past presidents of USA – who were Christians makes it logical to assume whole of our Christian community as terror suspect ?
6. is not use of 3rd degree torture on all type of suspects in US prisons & in the prisons of US allied countries at the behest of US authorities , right ? is it not violation of human rights & US laws ?
7. did US find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq , which was the main reason for US attacking Iraq ?
8. why not US authorities use scientific interrogation techniques like polygraph , lie detector tests instead of inhuman 3rd degree torture on terror suspects & suspects in other criminal cases ?
9 . what legal right our President of USA have , to illegally spend billions of our dollars on inhuman , llegal acts of terrorism , military coup , creation , aiding & abetting of terrorists , etc , in other sovereign nations ? while we are suffering from loss of jobs ,loss of home due to natural calamities , etc ?
Crux , Foundation of all religions is humanity , kindness & universal brotherhood. It is the preachers who misrepresent it. Terrorism created , aided , abetted by anybody is inhuman & wrong . Terrorism is creation of power hungry , selfish people & they must be legally punished .
Hereby , we appeal to the honorable supreme court of USA to legally prosecute Previous PRESIDENTS OF USA in the last 4 decades , for crimes of terror , as per the present US anti-terror laws.
Recently , in the issue of weekly publication "The Week" , cabinet minister of government of srilanka (previously a deadly terrorist & right hand man of LTTE chief Prabhakaran ) Mr. Karuna , Himself has stated in an interview that LTTE received arms training in Tamilnadu State of India , to wage war against Government of Srilanka. The Justice Jain Commission Of Enquiry , which probed late PM Rajiv Gandhi's assassination case , also stated that Tamil Terrorist outfits in Srilanka Received monetary , financial , arms training support from government of India. GOI has even setup a radio station for tamil terrorists of srilanka , within Indian territory. GOI spent billions of dollars of Indian taxpayer's money for aiding & abetting terrorism , while billions of Indians were half starving & going without a single meal , without proper health care.
Recently , in a media interview the president of Government of Pakistan Mr. Jardari himself has confessed that in the previous years the government of Pakistan has aided & abetted Terrorism for tactical gains of Pakistan , spending billions of dollars of Pakistani taxpayer's money. While ordinary Pakistanis were suffering from starvation , lack of health care , etc.
All the above proves that Previous Presidents of Government of USA , previous Presidents of Government of Pakistan & Previous Prime Ministers of Government of India were the real master minds of TERRORISM , founded , aided , abetted TERRORISM FOR THEIR OWN SELFISH GAINS. In turn Murdering lakhs of innocent human beings. These guilty previous presidents & prime ministers are deadly than OSAMA BIN LADEN.
Hereby , we appeal to the Honorable Chief Justices of supreme courts of USA , INDIA , PAKISTAN , BANGLADESH , SRILANKA & INTERNATIONAL WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL , to legally prosecute the previous Prime Ministers of INDIA , the previous presidents of USA & PAKISTAN , on charges of master minding TERRORISM & murdering innocent people in their respective countries .
- By American Citizens
Our country was known as " Heaven On Earth" , "Land of Equality & Equal Oppurtunity" & the "Statue of Liberty" rightly symbolized the spirit of our country. Now USA is known as a "Terror State".
In the last 3 – 4 decades , the persons who occupied the office of President USA ,in their individual capacity took wrong , inhuman decisions , meddled in the internal affairs of other sovereign nations , spent our resources to create terrorist outfits like al-queda , Taliban in those countries.
In turn these terrorist outfits terrorized , murdered millions of innocents & this Frankenstein monster came home to roost on September 9 / 11 . After September 9 / 11 , each terror suspect is severely tortured in hell like Abu Garibh prison , elsewhere by our authorities. For argument sake let us accept
that these terrorists who murder innocents don't deserve kid glove treatment & rightly deserve 3rd degree torture. When a single terrorist deserve such inhuman 3rd degree torture , what quantum of punishment , torture – previous presidents of USA deserve – who created , aided & abetted thousands of such terrorists , terrorist outfits ?
Herby, we appeal to the honourable Supreme Court of USA to order the federal government to to make public :
1. how much US resources were spent from US TREASURY , to finance terrorist outfits , military juntas in other sovereign nations ?
2. is not Al-queda , Taliban creations of USA ?
3. did September 9 / 11 WTC attack truly happened by hijacked airplane or was it planned by US authorities ? see
http://www.neiu.edu/~ayjamess/hmmm.htm#Main
4 . is racial profiling , profiling a particular community & suspecting all the muslims as terror suspects , right?
5. if it is right , the cretors of such terrorist outfits – past presidents of USA – who were Christians makes it logical to assume whole of our Christian community as terror suspect ?
6. is not use of 3rd degree torture on all type of suspects in US prisons & in the prisons of US allied countries at the behest of US authorities , right ? is it not violation of human rights & US laws ?
7. did US find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq , which was the main reason for US attacking Iraq ?
8. why not US authorities use scientific interrogation techniques like polygraph , lie detector tests instead of inhuman 3rd degree torture on terror suspects & suspects in other criminal cases ?
9 . what legal right our President of USA have , to illegally spend billions of our dollars on inhuman , llegal acts of terrorism , military coup , creation , aiding & abetting of terrorists , etc , in other sovereign nations ? while we are suffering from loss of jobs ,loss of home due to natural calamities , etc ?
Crux , Foundation of all religions is humanity , kindness & universal brotherhood. It is the preachers who misrepresent it. Terrorism created , aided , abetted by anybody is inhuman & wrong . Terrorism is creation of power hungry , selfish people & they must be legally punished .
Hereby , we appeal to the honorable supreme court of USA to legally prosecute Previous PRESIDENTS OF USA in the last 4 decades , for crimes of terror , as per the present US anti-terror laws.
Recently , in the issue of weekly publication "The Week" , cabinet minister of government of srilanka (previously a deadly terrorist & right hand man of LTTE chief Prabhakaran ) Mr. Karuna , Himself has stated in an interview that LTTE received arms training in Tamilnadu State of India , to wage war against Government of Srilanka. The Justice Jain Commission Of Enquiry , which probed late PM Rajiv Gandhi's assassination case , also stated that Tamil Terrorist outfits in Srilanka Received monetary , financial , arms training support from government of India. GOI has even setup a radio station for tamil terrorists of srilanka , within Indian territory. GOI spent billions of dollars of Indian taxpayer's money for aiding & abetting terrorism , while billions of Indians were half starving & going without a single meal , without proper health care.
Recently , in a media interview the president of Government of Pakistan Mr. Jardari himself has confessed that in the previous years the government of Pakistan has aided & abetted Terrorism for tactical gains of Pakistan , spending billions of dollars of Pakistani taxpayer's money. While ordinary Pakistanis were suffering from starvation , lack of health care , etc.
All the above proves that Previous Presidents of Government of USA , previous Presidents of Government of Pakistan & Previous Prime Ministers of Government of India were the real master minds of TERRORISM , founded , aided , abetted TERRORISM FOR THEIR OWN SELFISH GAINS. In turn Murdering lakhs of innocent human beings. These guilty previous presidents & prime ministers are deadly than OSAMA BIN LADEN.
Hereby , we appeal to the Honorable Chief Justices of supreme courts of USA , INDIA , PAKISTAN , BANGLADESH , SRILANKA & INTERNATIONAL WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL , to legally prosecute the previous Prime Ministers of INDIA , the previous presidents of USA & PAKISTAN , on charges of master minding TERRORISM & murdering innocent people in their respective countries .
Crimes of President of USA
The Bhopal Gas Tragedy Continues
An American court absolving UCC of its liabilities for environmental contamination in Bhopal is a travesty of justice
IN YET another blow to the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy survivors, an American court has ruled that it was Union Carbide India Ltd (UCIL) and not its parent company, Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), which was responsible for the generation and disposal of the hazardous waste that has contaminated the city’s soil and groundwater.
While delivering his judgment on 26 June, Judge John F Keenan found “no evidence indicating that UCIL manufactured pesticides on UCC’s behalf, entered into contracts or other business dealings on UCC’s behalf, or otherwise acted in UCC’s name”. According to him, UCC and UCIL were separate entities at “arm’s length” from each other and UCC exerted no control over UCIL.
Significantly, it was the same court that in May 1986 sent the case for compensation to the Indian courts. At that time, the Indian government, on behalf of the victims, had filed a suit for $3.3 billion as compensation arguing that since the disaster was a consequence of decisions taken by the parent corporation, an American court was the appropriate forum.
Aware of the massive compensation awarded in cases of corporate malfeasance by US courts, UCC argued that the case be sent to India. The US court presided over by Judge Keenan ruled in favour of UCC and sent the case to India. “The court is firmly convinced that the Indian legal system is in a far better position than the American courts to determine the cause of the tragic event and thereby fix liability,” he had said.
In the context of the judgment delivered on 26 June, it would be interesting to see how it matches up with the pronouncements of the “far better” placed Indian judiciary on the specific issue of liability of UCC vis-à-vis that of its Indian subsidiary.
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Following Judge Keenan’s 1986 order, the case for compensation was presented before the Bhopal District Court where Chief Judicial Magistrate MW Deo directed that “UCC will deposit in this court Rs 350 crore for payment of substantial interim compensation and welfare measures for the gas victims”. Significantly, he did not make any pronouncement against UCIL.
UCC appealed against this order before the Madhya Pradesh High Court where Justice SK Seth upheld Judge Deo’s directions to UCC but brought down the compensation amount to Rs 250 crore. Judge Seth justified his direction on the grounds that, “UCC owned more than half the stock of UCIL as well as controlled its board of directors and as such was a parent and holding company of UCIL under Indian law. Thus, it was in fact the defendant UCC that designed, constructed, owned, operated, managed and controlled the Bhopal plant through its Indian subsidiary.”
In response to UCC’s contention that it had no control over the running of the Bhopal plant, Judge Seth observed, “During 1978-84, certain vital decisions regarding the fate of the Bhopal plant, including those relating to its sale, lease or dismantling and shipment to a foreign country, were taken at different stages by the UCC management, sometimes even without reference to the Indian company, indicating complete control of the defendant UCC over the affairs of the Indian company.”
UCC appealed against Justice Seth’s order in the Supreme Court and it eventually led to a collusive settlement in February 1989 for $470 million. The court directed that the bulk of the amount — $425 million — was to come from UCC and the rest from its Indian subsidiary. In October 1991, the order was modified and criminal charges against UCC and its officials and subsidiaries were reinstated. When UCC continued to abscond from Indian courts, in April 1992, Chief Judicial Magistrate Gulab Sharma directed that “movable and immovable properties of UCC located in India be attached”.
In June 2010, Chief Judicial Magistrate Mohan P Tiwari, in his judgment in the criminal case against UCIL and its officials, remarked, “The tragedy was caused by the synergy of the very worst of American and Indian cultures. An American corporation cynically used a third world country to escape from the increasingly strict safety standards imposed at home.”
Reportedly, Union Law Minister Salman Khurshid has refused to comment on Judge Keenan’s verdict absolving UCC of its liabilities. The least he could do is point out that between the 1986 and 2012 judgments, only one could be right.
Judgement Fixing in Courts of USA
Corruption is the abuse of power by a public official for private gain or any organized, interdependent system in which part of the system is either not performing duties it was originally intended to, or performing them in an improper way, to the detriment of the system's original purpose. The abuse of public offices for private gain is paradigmatic of corruption.
A common belief is that corruption is a judge taking bribes. The definition exceeds this theory. Corruption describes any organized, interdependent system in which part of the system is either not performing duties it was originally intended to, or performing them in an improper way, to the detriment of the system's original purpose.
Corrupt judicial systems not only violate the basic right to equality before the law but deny procedural rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution.
A common belief is that corruption is a judge taking bribes. The definition exceeds this theory. Corruption describes any organized, interdependent system in which part of the system is either not performing duties it was originally intended to, or performing them in an improper way, to the detriment of the system's original purpose.
Corrupt judicial systems not only violate the basic right to equality before the law but deny procedural rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution.
While corruption may facilitate criminal enterprise such as drug trafficking, money laundering, and mail fraud.; it is not restricted to these activities. In this country, corruption is so common that it is expected when ordinary businesses or citizens interact with government officials. The end-point of political corruption is a kleptocracy, literally "rule by thieves".
The Final Verdict is out in Bhopal Gas Tragedy . This kind of Injustice can only happen in banana republics , where rich crooks are protected by authorities & courts. SHAME SHAME to supreme court of India , supreme court of USA & Government of USA , for practicing double standards in enforcement of law & justice.
Double Standard : BP And Bhopal
By Bill Quigley & Alex Tuscano
When President Barak Obama went after BP and demanded a $20 billion dollar fund be set up for victims of the Gulf oil spill, the people of India were furious. They saw a US double standard. The US demonstrated it values human life within the US more than the lives of the people of India.
BP should pay $20 billion in compensation, probably even more. The people of India agree with that.
But people are angry because the US is treating the oil spill, called the worst environmental disaster in US history, in a radically different way than the US treated the explosion of a US-owned pesticide plant in Bhopal India, which some call the worst industrial disaster in history.
The 1984 Bhopal explosion released tons of toxic chemicals into the air, claimed the lives of between 15,000 and 20,000 people within two weeks, and disabled hundreds of thousands of others – many still suffering from physical damage and genetic defects.
The plant that exploded was operated by Union Carbide India Limited, a corporation owned by Union Carbide of the United States.
The disaster occurred in a thickly populated area close to the central railway station in Bhopal, an urban area of 1.5 million in the heart of India. Most people in the area lived in shanty huts.
Thousands of dead humans and animals filled the streets of Bhopal. Survivors complain of genetic damage which has caused widespread birth defects in children and even grandchildren of those exposed.
The soil and water of Bhopal remain toxic with heavy pesticide residue and toxic metals like lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium and chromium.
While President Obama displayed outrage at BP officials over the 11 deaths from the US oil spill, the US has refused to extradite Warren Anderson, the chair of Union Carbide, to face charges for his role in the Bhopal disaster.
Recall too that Obama advisor Larry Summers, then chief economist at the World Bank, stated in an infamous 1971 memo. “Just between you and me, shouldn’t the world Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the Less Developed Countries?... I’ve always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted…”
Obsolete and hazardous industries have been systematically transferred to the third world countries to not only exploit the cheap labor but also to avoid disastrous impact of these industries on the advanced countries.
Union Carbide put profit for the corporation above the lives and health of millions of people. Dow Chemical, which took over Union Carbide, is attempting to distance itself from all responsibility.
In India there were two Bhopal developments this month. The Indian government announced a compensation package of $280 million for Bhopal victims, about $22,000 for each of the families of the deceased according to the BBC, and seven former Indian managers of the Bhopal plant were given two year jail sentences for their part in the explosion. These legal developments are a mockery of justice for one of the world’s greatest disasters.
We call on the people of the US and the people of India to join together to demand our governments respect the human rights of all people, no matter where they live.
Together we must bring about change in corporate development. We have to emphasize social production for the needs of people and improved social relations.
If we continue to value some lives more than others, and to allow corporations to spoil some areas with impunity, our world will not last.
Unless we respect the human rights of all people and demand corporations do that as well, we will be damned to live out the Cree Indian prophecy “Only when the last tree from this earth has been cut down, only when the last river has been poisoned, only when the last fish has been caught, only then will humankind learn that money cannot be eaten.”
By Bill Quigley & Alex Tuscano
When President Barak Obama went after BP and demanded a $20 billion dollar fund be set up for victims of the Gulf oil spill, the people of India were furious. They saw a US double standard. The US demonstrated it values human life within the US more than the lives of the people of India.
BP should pay $20 billion in compensation, probably even more. The people of India agree with that.
But people are angry because the US is treating the oil spill, called the worst environmental disaster in US history, in a radically different way than the US treated the explosion of a US-owned pesticide plant in Bhopal India, which some call the worst industrial disaster in history.
The 1984 Bhopal explosion released tons of toxic chemicals into the air, claimed the lives of between 15,000 and 20,000 people within two weeks, and disabled hundreds of thousands of others – many still suffering from physical damage and genetic defects.
The plant that exploded was operated by Union Carbide India Limited, a corporation owned by Union Carbide of the United States.
The disaster occurred in a thickly populated area close to the central railway station in Bhopal, an urban area of 1.5 million in the heart of India. Most people in the area lived in shanty huts.
Thousands of dead humans and animals filled the streets of Bhopal. Survivors complain of genetic damage which has caused widespread birth defects in children and even grandchildren of those exposed.
The soil and water of Bhopal remain toxic with heavy pesticide residue and toxic metals like lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium and chromium.
While President Obama displayed outrage at BP officials over the 11 deaths from the US oil spill, the US has refused to extradite Warren Anderson, the chair of Union Carbide, to face charges for his role in the Bhopal disaster.
Recall too that Obama advisor Larry Summers, then chief economist at the World Bank, stated in an infamous 1971 memo. “Just between you and me, shouldn’t the world Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the Less Developed Countries?... I’ve always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted…”
Obsolete and hazardous industries have been systematically transferred to the third world countries to not only exploit the cheap labor but also to avoid disastrous impact of these industries on the advanced countries.
Union Carbide put profit for the corporation above the lives and health of millions of people. Dow Chemical, which took over Union Carbide, is attempting to distance itself from all responsibility.
In India there were two Bhopal developments this month. The Indian government announced a compensation package of $280 million for Bhopal victims, about $22,000 for each of the families of the deceased according to the BBC, and seven former Indian managers of the Bhopal plant were given two year jail sentences for their part in the explosion. These legal developments are a mockery of justice for one of the world’s greatest disasters.
We call on the people of the US and the people of India to join together to demand our governments respect the human rights of all people, no matter where they live.
Together we must bring about change in corporate development. We have to emphasize social production for the needs of people and improved social relations.
If we continue to value some lives more than others, and to allow corporations to spoil some areas with impunity, our world will not last.
Unless we respect the human rights of all people and demand corporations do that as well, we will be damned to live out the Cree Indian prophecy “Only when the last tree from this earth has been cut down, only when the last river has been poisoned, only when the last fish has been caught, only then will humankind learn that money cannot be eaten.”
Bhopal gas tragedy: US court absolves Union Carbide of liability
In a setback to 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy victims, a US court has held that neither Union Carbide nor its former chairman Warren Anderson were liable for environmental remediation or pollution-related claims at the firm's former chemical plant in Bhopal.
US district judge John Keena in Manhattan dismissed a lawsuit accusing the company of causing soil and water pollution around the Bhopal plant due to the disaster, and ruled that Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) and Anderson were not liable for remediation or pollution-related claims.
The court ruled that it was Union Carbide India Ltd, and not its parent company UCC that was responsible for the generation and disposal of the waste that polluted drinking water, and the liability rests with the state government.
Plaintiffs Janki Bai Sahu and others had alleged that "toxic substances seeped into a ground aquifer, polluting the soil and drinking water supply in residential communities surrounding the former Bhopal Plant site".
They alleged that exposure to soil and drinking water polluted by hazardous waste produced Union Carbine India Ltd caused injuries.
"The summary judgement record certainly indicates that UCIL consulted with UCC about its waste disposal plans and on non-environmental business matter like its strategic plan. However, nothing in the evidence suggests the necessity of UCC's approval for the actions about which plaintiffs complain," the court said in its order.
"Moreover, there is no evidence in this extensive record indicating that UCIL manufactured pesticides on UCC's behalf, entered into contracts or other business dealings on UCC's behalf, or otherwise acted in UCC's name," it said.
The industrial accident, the worst in Indian history, led to the leak of poisonous methyl isocyanate, claiming thousands of lives in the Madhya Pradesh capital.
US district judge John Keena in Manhattan dismissed a lawsuit accusing the company of causing soil and water pollution around the Bhopal plant due to the disaster, and ruled that Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) and Anderson were not liable for remediation or pollution-related claims.
The court ruled that it was Union Carbide India Ltd, and not its parent company UCC that was responsible for the generation and disposal of the waste that polluted drinking water, and the liability rests with the state government.
Plaintiffs Janki Bai Sahu and others had alleged that "toxic substances seeped into a ground aquifer, polluting the soil and drinking water supply in residential communities surrounding the former Bhopal Plant site".
They alleged that exposure to soil and drinking water polluted by hazardous waste produced Union Carbine India Ltd caused injuries.
"The summary judgement record certainly indicates that UCIL consulted with UCC about its waste disposal plans and on non-environmental business matter like its strategic plan. However, nothing in the evidence suggests the necessity of UCC's approval for the actions about which plaintiffs complain," the court said in its order.
"Moreover, there is no evidence in this extensive record indicating that UCIL manufactured pesticides on UCC's behalf, entered into contracts or other business dealings on UCC's behalf, or otherwise acted in UCC's name," it said.
The industrial accident, the worst in Indian history, led to the leak of poisonous methyl isocyanate, claiming thousands of lives in the Madhya Pradesh capital.
Editorial : BHOPAL GAS VERDICT FIXED - Shame Shame to Supreme Court of India & Supreme Court of USA
Now it is a known fact that Bhopal Gas Leak Case Verdict was FIXED years before , MATCH FIXED by then MP Government Chief Minister , Indian Prime Minister and most shame fully Chief Justice of India.
Now The Final Verdict is out in Bhopal Gas Tragedy . This kind of Injustice can only happen in banana republics , where rich crooks are protected by authorities & courts. SHAME SHAME to supreme court of India , supreme court of USA & Government of USA , for practicing double standards in enforcement of law & justice.
Double standards of supreme court of India
http://sites.google.com/site/sosevoiceforjustice/is-the-supreme-court-of-india-deaf-dumb-blind
PIL Appeal & Show Cause Notice to Supreme Court of India
http://sites.google.com/site/eclarionofdalit/pil-appeal-show-cause-notice-to-supreme-court-of-india
In India, Favorable treatment is given by police & courts of law for rich crooks where as poor innocents are harassed , tortured by the very same police & judges . In india Some MP , MLAs even take money for asking questions in parliament / legislature , Favourable laws are enacted to legalize crimes of rich crooks for example : Illegal land encroachments by rich crooks. The same MPs , MLAs are not aware about problems of poor public , they don’t even open their mouth for asking questions on welfare of poor , let alone enact laws for welfare of poor. No government law , no decisions of judges , no orders of public servants are sacrosanct . Hereby , e-voice urges the supreme court of india ,
Now it is a known fact that Bhopal Gas Leak Case Verdict was FIXED years before , MATCH FIXED by then MP Government Chief Minister , Indian Prime Minister and most shame fully Chief Justice of India.
Now The Final Verdict is out in Bhopal Gas Tragedy . This kind of Injustice can only happen in banana republics , where rich crooks are protected by authorities & courts. SHAME SHAME to supreme court of India , supreme court of USA & Government of USA , for practicing double standards in enforcement of law & justice.
Double standards of supreme court of India
http://sites.google.com/site/sosevoiceforjustice/is-the-supreme-court-of-india-deaf-dumb-blind
PIL Appeal & Show Cause Notice to Supreme Court of India
http://sites.google.com/site/eclarionofdalit/pil-appeal-show-cause-notice-to-supreme-court-of-india
In India, Favorable treatment is given by police & courts of law for rich crooks where as poor innocents are harassed , tortured by the very same police & judges . In india Some MP , MLAs even take money for asking questions in parliament / legislature , Favourable laws are enacted to legalize crimes of rich crooks for example : Illegal land encroachments by rich crooks. The same MPs , MLAs are not aware about problems of poor public , they don’t even open their mouth for asking questions on welfare of poor , let alone enact laws for welfare of poor. No government law , no decisions of judges , no orders of public servants are sacrosanct . Hereby , e-voice urges the supreme court of india ,
1. To legally prosecute the jurisdictional police who changed the charge sheet , who let out Main criminal Anderson illegally without orders from the court.
2. To legally prosecute the SSP , DC of the district , Then Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh & Then Prime Minister of GOI , who fully aided the main accussed , criminal Anderson to escape , to jump law.
3. To legally prosecute Indian Public Servants , who were responsible for withdrawing the case from US Courts of Justice.
4. To legally prosecute Then Chief Justice of India Justice Ahmadi & His bench colleagues , who diluted the case by changing the clause under which Anderson & others were charged.
The Public servants – Mps , MLAs , Judges , IAS / IPS officers , Police take thousands of rupees monthly salary , cars , bungalows , 5-star hotel stay together with 5-star meal complete with alchoholic drinks , 5-star health care at premium hospitals , business class air travel , foreign tours , etc all at tax payer’s expense. After enjoying to the hilt at taxpayer’s expense , these same public servants don’t serve the public , they serve the rich crooks , anti nationals in their greed for more money.
All the while the same poor tax payer suffers without justice . In India more than 50 Crore people are barely surviving on a single piece meal .Let the corrupt public servants eat their 5-star meals by the side of the graves of Bhopal Gas Victims. Atleast this will open the eyes of honest few in public service – police , judiciary & parliament , it is a fond hope. Jai Hind. Vande Mataram.
Your’s sincerely,
Nagaraj.M.R.
An appeal to honourable supreme court of USA & HE Honourable president
of USA Mr.Obama
Your government protects all Americans, all American companies both
inside America & abroad. If an American tourist is murdered in a third
country , American investigators fly over to that country to conduct
investigation in total disregard to local laws. In the same way , if
the interests of an American company is threatened in a third country
American government goes to it's rescue.
However , when an American company butchers , causes mass man
slaughter in a third country , as an American company did in Bhopal
India , no action by American government. Still the said American
company has not removed , cleared the accident site of poisonous
debris at Bhopal India since decades and still causing mass man
slaughter , no action by American government why ?
Some US based companies are selling soft drinks , food products ,
medicines , drugs in third world countries , which are causing grave
health damages to the public. The quality standards of these products
are fit cases of rejections by US FDA. Some US companies are selling
drugs ( which are banned in the USA ) to third world countries , still
us companies are exporting such dangerous medicines , foods to third
countries . no action by US government , why ? is it because you think
that the lives of non Americans are cheaper than Americans ?
Hereby, I do request your kindself ,
1 . to initiate criminal prosecution against US based key management
personnel responsible for Bhopal gas tragedy .
2 . to make either the respective company management or US government
to pay compensation to victims of Bhopal gas tragedy on par with
American lives , as if the same tragedy happened in the USA itself.
3 . to order the management of the said company to clean up Bhopal off
poisonous debris , from the accident site at their own expense.
4 . To legally prosecute US exporters & US based companies selling
products ( which violates US FDA regulations or banned in the USA for
domestic consumption ) to third countries.
Shame! India sold its dead cheap
Shobhan Saxena,
Around 22,000 dead. More than 1,20,000 injured. Rs 1 lakh for each body. Rs 25,000 for every poisoned lung and damaged heart and blinded eyes. 26 years of long wait. And just 2 years in jail for the men who committed the worst crime against the people of this country. And this mockery of justice after such a long wait. Twenty six years after 40 tonnes of lethal gas seeped into the lungs of Bhopal, families of some 17,000 men, women and children are still waiting for the so-called compensation. Thousands more are still waiting to be accepted as victims. People of Bhopal are still drinking toxic water poisoned by Union Carbide in December 1984. And the main culprit is living life kingsize in a mansion in New York.
No country sells its people so cheap.
No country sells its poor so cheap.
No country sells its dead so cheap.
Today – on the day of Bhopal disaster judgment -- if there is a failed state in the world, it’s India. It’s not Iraq. It’s not Somalia. It’s not Sudan. It’s India.
India – its government, judiciary and corporates – accepted the ridiculous amount of $450 million dollars for the people killed and maimed by methyl isocyanate leaked from the Union Carbide factory in the heart of Bhopal three decades ago. In all these years, the poor victims have done everything they could to get justice and compensation. They have cried and died on streets, sat hungry and faced police lathis on roads and filed court cases in the hope that one day they will get justice.
Today, they were denied justice. Today, they were told that they should be happy with the peanuts thrown at them by Union Carbide. Today, India proved once again that it doesn’t care for its poor. Today, it was proved all over again that those who do politics in the name of poor in this country, always rule for the rich.
What justification does CBI have for not being able to produce Warren Anderson in court. The chairman of UC at the time of the gas attack (it was not an accident, the gas leak was caused because of cost-cutting steps taken by him) on the people of Bhopal, Anderson was arrested and later released on bail. He ran off to US in 1986 and we have not been able to find him or ask the US to extradite Anderson to India. Why? The government says it doesn’t know where Anderson is. What a lie. What a shame.
Last year, on a balmy July day, a bunch of victims danced on the streets after hearing news that the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Bhopal had ordered the CBI to arrest Anderson and produce him before the court without delay. The court also asked the CBI to explain what steps it had taken since 2002 to enforce the warrant and extradition of Anderson, who was declared an absconder in 1992. Though the CBI and US government failed to track Anderson, supporters of Bhopal victims traced him to the elite New York neighbourhood of the Hamptons. In 2003, Greenpeace activists paid Anderson a visit at his home and handed him an arrest warrant.
Today’s ridiculous judgment in Bhopal didn’t say anything on Anderson as he is a “proclaimed offender”. This status suits him fine because he doesn’t have to bother about coming to India and answer some very crucial questions:
*Why did Union Carbide not apply the same safety standards at its plant in India as it operated at a sister plant in West Virginia, US?
*On the night of the disaster, why did the six safety measures designed to prevent a gas leak fail to function?
*Why was the safety siren, intended to alert the people living close to the factory, turned off?
The victims have always alleged that Bhopal happened because of negligence by the Union Carbide and that was caused by cost-cutting measures taken by Anderson. Is it because of this reason that Anderson has been 'hiding' in the US?
A criminal has a reason to hide, but what reason does our government have to let a mass murderer like Anderson go scot-free. Is it because he is an American? Can an American come to India kill people in this country and run away with no consequences? That seems to be the case. We are still struggling to get a chance to question David Headley Coleman, an American citizen responsible for the worst terror attack on an Indian city in 2008. Will we succeed in getting Headley extradited to India? No way. Never.
Today, India proved that it doesn’t really care for its people, particularly if they have been slaughtered by powerful people from the most powerful nation in the world. Instead of taking on America and fighting for justice for its poor, India is more than happy to sell its dead cheap.
Rs 1 lakh for every body. Rs 25,000 for every blinded eye. This is the cost of poor life in a failed state.
Shobhan Saxena,
Around 22,000 dead. More than 1,20,000 injured. Rs 1 lakh for each body. Rs 25,000 for every poisoned lung and damaged heart and blinded eyes. 26 years of long wait. And just 2 years in jail for the men who committed the worst crime against the people of this country. And this mockery of justice after such a long wait. Twenty six years after 40 tonnes of lethal gas seeped into the lungs of Bhopal, families of some 17,000 men, women and children are still waiting for the so-called compensation. Thousands more are still waiting to be accepted as victims. People of Bhopal are still drinking toxic water poisoned by Union Carbide in December 1984. And the main culprit is living life kingsize in a mansion in New York.
No country sells its people so cheap.
No country sells its poor so cheap.
No country sells its dead so cheap.
Today – on the day of Bhopal disaster judgment -- if there is a failed state in the world, it’s India. It’s not Iraq. It’s not Somalia. It’s not Sudan. It’s India.
India – its government, judiciary and corporates – accepted the ridiculous amount of $450 million dollars for the people killed and maimed by methyl isocyanate leaked from the Union Carbide factory in the heart of Bhopal three decades ago. In all these years, the poor victims have done everything they could to get justice and compensation. They have cried and died on streets, sat hungry and faced police lathis on roads and filed court cases in the hope that one day they will get justice.
Today, they were denied justice. Today, they were told that they should be happy with the peanuts thrown at them by Union Carbide. Today, India proved once again that it doesn’t care for its poor. Today, it was proved all over again that those who do politics in the name of poor in this country, always rule for the rich.
What justification does CBI have for not being able to produce Warren Anderson in court. The chairman of UC at the time of the gas attack (it was not an accident, the gas leak was caused because of cost-cutting steps taken by him) on the people of Bhopal, Anderson was arrested and later released on bail. He ran off to US in 1986 and we have not been able to find him or ask the US to extradite Anderson to India. Why? The government says it doesn’t know where Anderson is. What a lie. What a shame.
Last year, on a balmy July day, a bunch of victims danced on the streets after hearing news that the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Bhopal had ordered the CBI to arrest Anderson and produce him before the court without delay. The court also asked the CBI to explain what steps it had taken since 2002 to enforce the warrant and extradition of Anderson, who was declared an absconder in 1992. Though the CBI and US government failed to track Anderson, supporters of Bhopal victims traced him to the elite New York neighbourhood of the Hamptons. In 2003, Greenpeace activists paid Anderson a visit at his home and handed him an arrest warrant.
Today’s ridiculous judgment in Bhopal didn’t say anything on Anderson as he is a “proclaimed offender”. This status suits him fine because he doesn’t have to bother about coming to India and answer some very crucial questions:
*Why did Union Carbide not apply the same safety standards at its plant in India as it operated at a sister plant in West Virginia, US?
*On the night of the disaster, why did the six safety measures designed to prevent a gas leak fail to function?
*Why was the safety siren, intended to alert the people living close to the factory, turned off?
The victims have always alleged that Bhopal happened because of negligence by the Union Carbide and that was caused by cost-cutting measures taken by Anderson. Is it because of this reason that Anderson has been 'hiding' in the US?
A criminal has a reason to hide, but what reason does our government have to let a mass murderer like Anderson go scot-free. Is it because he is an American? Can an American come to India kill people in this country and run away with no consequences? That seems to be the case. We are still struggling to get a chance to question David Headley Coleman, an American citizen responsible for the worst terror attack on an Indian city in 2008. Will we succeed in getting Headley extradited to India? No way. Never.
Today, India proved that it doesn’t really care for its people, particularly if they have been slaughtered by powerful people from the most powerful nation in the world. Instead of taking on America and fighting for justice for its poor, India is more than happy to sell its dead cheap.
Rs 1 lakh for every body. Rs 25,000 for every blinded eye. This is the cost of poor life in a failed state.
Bhopal gas tragedy: 8 found guilty, get bail
BHOPAL: The seven Indian Union Carbide India Ltd (UCIL) officials convicted in the 26-year-old Bhopal gas tragedy case have been granted bail and released on submission of a surety of Rs 25,000 by a trial court in Bhopal, according to a Times Now report.
Earlier on Monday, eight accused, one of whom is deceased, were sentenced to two years in prison for causing death due to negligence.
Reacting to the development, representatives of the tragedy's victims and their families who have been protesting outside the court, said they would approach the Madhya Pradesh High Court to allow the slapping of more stringent charges against all those accused in the case.
The Magistrate court in Bhopal on Monday convicted all eight Indians accused in the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy case. A Rs 500,000 fine has been imposed on UCIL.
Toxic gas leak from a Union Carbide pesticide factory in 1984 killed thousands and left an unspecified number battered with diseases and deformity - the toll of victims is still rising.
Despite Monday's conviction, there is little closure for victims. Legal experts have alleged that there was an attempt to cover up the case. It took the CBI three long years to file a chargesheet that many believed was weak. Then in 1996 the charges were watered down making all sections carry the maximum punishment of 2 years.
The charges were also all bailable and with the prime accused in the case - former Union Carbide (USA) chairman Warren Anderson still on the run and unlikely to present himself in Indian court, there is little hope that justice will be served.
Anderson: The man who got away in Bhopal gas case
Chidanand Rajgahtta,
Long before British Petroleum, there was Union Carbide; long before David Headley aka Daood Gilani, there was Warren Anderson.
As legal proceedings in the Bhopal gas tragedy meanders on, its torturous path over 26 years a travesty of justice to many, two principals associated with the disaster have faded from sight even as newer culprits in most recent outrages (BP oil spill and Mumbai's 26/11 massacre) are in the spotlight.
Union Carbide, the American chemical company that became notorious for the world's worst industrial disaster, is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Dow Chemical Company. And Warren Anderson, Union Carbide CEO, at the time of the disaster and until his retirement in 1986, declared an absconder and a fugitive from justice by an Indian court, lives in relative anonymity and seclusion in Long Island, New York.
Both have washed their hands off the Bhopal disaster. Union Carbide says its officials were not part of this case since the charges were divided long ago into a separate case. "Furthermore, Union Carbide and its officials are not subject to the jurisdiction of the Indian court since they did not have any involvement in the operation of the plant, which was owned and operated by Union Carbide India Ltd, (UCIL)" a spokesman for the company told Wall Street Journal.
The company maintains that the Bhopal plant was designed, owned, operated and managed on a day-to-day basis by UCIL and its employees and all those convicted are the "appropriate people from UCIL — officers and those who actually ran the plant on a daily basis have appeared to face charges."
"I want you to know that Union Carbide continues to have the utmost respect and sympathy for the victims of the tragedy and their families. Union Carbide did all it could to help the victims and their families from Day 1 right up through the settlement with the Indian government," the spokesman added.
Anderson isn't talking. He hasn't spoken on record on the subject for nearly two decades. Now nearing 90, he lives with his wife Lillian in a million-dollar home in the swish Long Island neighbourhood of Bridgehampton, avoiding social contact and hiding from the media and activists who have struggled long to bring him to justice.
When Casey Harrell, a Greenpeace activist, visited his home in 2002 to serve him a warrant, he refused to identify himself and pretended to be someone else.
A neighbour also tried to throw Harrell off-track saying he was someone else and blurting out that he had nothing to do with the Bhopal disaster (even though Harrell hadn't mentioned anything about the disaster).
Bhopal gas case: SC shot down move to slap tough charges
Dhananjay Mahapatra ,
NEW DELHI: It will be unkind to blame the trial court for handing out mild punishments to the Bhopal gas leak accused whose collective negligence caused an industrial catastrophe. For, the court's decision to frame charges against them under Section 304-II of IPC — that attracts a maximum jail term of 10 years — was set aside by the Supreme Court itself on September 13, 1996.
Appearing for CBI, then additional solicitor general Altaf Ahmed had argued before the SC that the accused knew about the potential danger of the lethal gas escaping and hence should be tried under the stringent provision.
"There was ample material produced by the prosecution in support of the chargesheet which indicated that all the accused shared common criminal knowledge about potential danger of escape of the lethal gas — MIC — both on account of the defective plant which was operated under their control and supervision at Bhopal and also on account of the operational shortcomings detected by the Varadarajan expert committee," Ahmed had said in court.
However, a bench comprising then Chief Justice A M Ahmedi and Justice S B Majmudar disagreed. "On our finding that the material pressed in service by the prosecution does not indicate even prima facie that the accused were guilty of an offence of culpable homicide and, therefore, Section 304-II was out of the picture, Section 304-A on this very finding can straightaway get attracted at least prima facie," the bench said. It then quashed the charge framed against the accused under Section 304-II.
As legal experts decried Monday's verdict and activists involved in rehabilitation of the victims termed it a mockery of justice, TOI tracked down Altaf Ahmed in Dubai. Ahmed expressed disappointment, not with the trial court verdict but with the SC's 1996 judgment.
"The dilution of the charges against the accused persons in 1996 by the Supreme Court was very sad and in my perception not justified," he said.
And why did he feel so, when the SC had gone through the evidence and CBI's chargesheet in detail while giving its 40-page judgment? Ahmed felt the apex court had erred by converting the charges from Section 304-II to Section 304A (death caused by a rash and negligent act, under which the BMW hit-and-run accused was tried). "The management of Union Carbide knew that necessary safety measures were not in place and a leak of the kind that resulted in the tragedy was a distinct possibility," he said.
END 25 YEARS OF INJUSTICE TO PEOPLE OF BHOPAL
Shortly before midnight on 2 December 1984, thousands of tonnes of
deadly chemicals leaked from Union Carbide’s pesticide plant in Bhopal, central India. Around half a million people were exposed.
Between 7,000 and 10,000 people died in the immediate aftermath and a
further 15,000 over the next 20 years.
Nearly 25 years later, the factory site has not been cleaned up. More
than 100,000 people continue to suffer from ongoing health problems.
Efforts to provide rehabilitation – both medical care and measures to
address the socio-economic effects of the leak – have fallen way short
of what is needed.
Many of those affected are still waiting for adequate compensation and
the full facts of the leak and its impact have never been properly
investigated. No one has ever been held to account for what happened
at Bhopal and efforts by survivors’ organizations to use the Indian
and US court systems to see justice done and gain adequate redress
have so far been unsuccessful.
Bhopal is not just a human rights tragedy from the last century – it
is a human rights travesty today. The legacy of Bhopal persists
because the people of Bhopal have never been able to claim their
rights. Moreover, the negative impacts of the leak are affecting new
generations. Studies have shown how the exposure to the toxic gas
causes long-term effects, which can continue in children born in gas-
exposed families.
For 25 years the Indian government has failed the people of Bhopal.
Promises have been repeatedly broken and no adequate action has ever
been taken to address the impacts of the gas leak.
No company can be allowed to evade responsibility for the impacts of
its operations. Union Carbide must be held to account for what
happened at Bhopal. Dow Chemicals, which now owns Union Carbide, must
cooperate fully with the Indian government and the courts in India to
ensure justice is done and the site is fully cleaned up.
BHOPAL GAS TRAGEDY 1984 -Bhopal, India
At the first instance the Government of India failed to ensure that
Union carbide India Limited (U.C.I.L) has installed proper safety
measures and fully implemented it in practice, at it's plant in Bhopal. The Government of Madhyapradesh through it's labour
department, factory inspectorate & pollution control board failed to
enforce safety practices & environmental protection. In turn, the
U.C.I.L didn't install in full, the safety measures being followed by
it's parent company union carbide corporation (U.C.C) at it's
Various plants in the U.S.A. The U.C.I.L. didn't give community
training to residents of nearby localities, to cope up with
emergencies ie. Industrial accidents. U.C.I.L gave a go - by to safety
practices, as it treated Indian lives as cheap. The government of
Madhya pradesh instead of shifting slum dwellers around U.C.I.L, to
other safe place, gave them legal title deeds just months before the tragedy in 1984.
Now, refer the following:-
1. After the accident at it's U.C.I.L. plant at Bhopal, India in 1984,
when the U.C.C. Chairman/C.E.O. came over to Bhopal from U.S.A to
visit the accident site, local police arrested him on the charges of
manslaughter. However, the Government of India got him released.
2. In 1985, Government of India enacted "Bhopal claims Act" took- away
the right of appeal of all the Gas tragedy victims & declared itself
as the sole representative of all victims. This said act itself is
violative of victim's fundamental & human rights. The
victims didn't choose Government of India as it's representative under
will, agreement, trust or pleasure.
3. The paradox of this "Bhopal claims Act" is that, Government of
India which is also a party to the crime, tragedy, itself is the
appellant. The appellant (Petitioner),defendant are Government of
India, Prosecution by Government of India & Judged by Government of
India.
4. In 1989, when an appeal about interim compensation to be paid by
the U.C.I.L to all the victims was being heard in the apex court, the
supreme court of India without giving a chance to the victims to make
their point, without consulting them, without making a proper
assessment of damages/losses, gave an arbitrary figure as verdict &
dropped all civil, criminal proceedings against U.C.C.&U.C.I.L
5. In the same year 1989, the Government of India without consulting
the victims of disaster, without making proper assessment of damages/
losses, negotiated a settlement with the U.C.C. and in turn gave full
legal immunity to U.C.C.& U.C.I.L from civil &
Criminal proceedings
6. Even the Government of India didn't present the case of victim's- gas tragedy victims, properly before the U.S.courts, where the U.C.C
is based. All these premeditated acts only benefited the criminals-
U.C.C&UCIL. Are not the supreme court of India & Government of India,
here to safeguard Indians and to safeguard Justice?
After all these crimes, the Government of India failed to distribute
compensation in time to victims. It has failed even to provide safe
drinking water to the residents near the accident site, It has failed
to provide comprehensive medical care to the victims, till
date . It has even failed to get the accident site cleared off toxic
wastes either by the culprit management or by it self, that too after
20 years. The very presence of these toxic wastes since 20 years is
further contaminating, polluting the environment and taking toll of
more victims.
Particularly in the case of "Bhopal Gas Tragedy" the supreme court of
India & Government of India are deadlier criminals than U.C.I.L&U.C.C.
Just consider a case here, Just a few years back an U.S.based M.N.C
ENRON set-up a power project in Maharashtra, India through it's
subsidiary. When Maharashtra state Electricity Board failed to lift
power from Enron& pay them monthly guaranteed revenue, Enron
threatened to invoke, open the "Eschrew Clause" with the Government
of India & to approach international arbiter U.K. Government of India
has stood as conter-guarantee in this case. Finally the Government
paid, of course subsequently the parent ENRON collapsed due to other
reasons. If in this case if Government of India failed to pay-up as a
counter guarantee & refused to comply with the award of International
arbiter, definitely Government of U.S.A. would have stepped into the
scene to protect it's MNC. Hypothetically, In the same vein if Enron
has caused damages to Indians either through negligence of safe
practices or industrial accidents or bank frauds
amounting over and above it's Capital base & insurance cover, then it
would have been the duty of parent Enron & Government of U.S.A. to
step in & pay-up.
In the same way, the U.C.I.L has caused massive damages to Indians &
refusing to pay commensurate to damages. Dow chemicals which took-
over U.C.C. is also refusing to pay. DOW chemicals which is the new
owner of U.C.C. naturally inherits both profits, credits lent &
liabilities to pay of U.C.C. Still it is refusing to pay. Now it is
the turn of Government of U.S.A. to cough-up the sum.
Nowadays, it has become routine for central & State ministers to go-
on foreign jaunts, to globe -trott inviting F.D.I/ M.N.Cs to India.
They do sign numerous agreements, only favouring MNC. When tragedies
occur or when they cheat Indian banks/ investors, it is Indians who
suffer. The ministers & bureaucrats thinks themselves as wizards and
enters into agreements with MNCs, industrialists in a hush-hush
manner, with vast scope for possible corruption. Is it not the duty of
government to be transparent ?
BHOPAL: The seven Indian Union Carbide India Ltd (UCIL) officials convicted in the 26-year-old Bhopal gas tragedy case have been granted bail and released on submission of a surety of Rs 25,000 by a trial court in Bhopal, according to a Times Now report.
Earlier on Monday, eight accused, one of whom is deceased, were sentenced to two years in prison for causing death due to negligence.
Reacting to the development, representatives of the tragedy's victims and their families who have been protesting outside the court, said they would approach the Madhya Pradesh High Court to allow the slapping of more stringent charges against all those accused in the case.
The Magistrate court in Bhopal on Monday convicted all eight Indians accused in the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy case. A Rs 500,000 fine has been imposed on UCIL.
Toxic gas leak from a Union Carbide pesticide factory in 1984 killed thousands and left an unspecified number battered with diseases and deformity - the toll of victims is still rising.
Despite Monday's conviction, there is little closure for victims. Legal experts have alleged that there was an attempt to cover up the case. It took the CBI three long years to file a chargesheet that many believed was weak. Then in 1996 the charges were watered down making all sections carry the maximum punishment of 2 years.
The charges were also all bailable and with the prime accused in the case - former Union Carbide (USA) chairman Warren Anderson still on the run and unlikely to present himself in Indian court, there is little hope that justice will be served.
Anderson: The man who got away in Bhopal gas case
Chidanand Rajgahtta,
Long before British Petroleum, there was Union Carbide; long before David Headley aka Daood Gilani, there was Warren Anderson.
As legal proceedings in the Bhopal gas tragedy meanders on, its torturous path over 26 years a travesty of justice to many, two principals associated with the disaster have faded from sight even as newer culprits in most recent outrages (BP oil spill and Mumbai's 26/11 massacre) are in the spotlight.
Union Carbide, the American chemical company that became notorious for the world's worst industrial disaster, is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Dow Chemical Company. And Warren Anderson, Union Carbide CEO, at the time of the disaster and until his retirement in 1986, declared an absconder and a fugitive from justice by an Indian court, lives in relative anonymity and seclusion in Long Island, New York.
Both have washed their hands off the Bhopal disaster. Union Carbide says its officials were not part of this case since the charges were divided long ago into a separate case. "Furthermore, Union Carbide and its officials are not subject to the jurisdiction of the Indian court since they did not have any involvement in the operation of the plant, which was owned and operated by Union Carbide India Ltd, (UCIL)" a spokesman for the company told Wall Street Journal.
The company maintains that the Bhopal plant was designed, owned, operated and managed on a day-to-day basis by UCIL and its employees and all those convicted are the "appropriate people from UCIL — officers and those who actually ran the plant on a daily basis have appeared to face charges."
"I want you to know that Union Carbide continues to have the utmost respect and sympathy for the victims of the tragedy and their families. Union Carbide did all it could to help the victims and their families from Day 1 right up through the settlement with the Indian government," the spokesman added.
Anderson isn't talking. He hasn't spoken on record on the subject for nearly two decades. Now nearing 90, he lives with his wife Lillian in a million-dollar home in the swish Long Island neighbourhood of Bridgehampton, avoiding social contact and hiding from the media and activists who have struggled long to bring him to justice.
When Casey Harrell, a Greenpeace activist, visited his home in 2002 to serve him a warrant, he refused to identify himself and pretended to be someone else.
A neighbour also tried to throw Harrell off-track saying he was someone else and blurting out that he had nothing to do with the Bhopal disaster (even though Harrell hadn't mentioned anything about the disaster).
Bhopal gas case: SC shot down move to slap tough charges
Dhananjay Mahapatra ,
NEW DELHI: It will be unkind to blame the trial court for handing out mild punishments to the Bhopal gas leak accused whose collective negligence caused an industrial catastrophe. For, the court's decision to frame charges against them under Section 304-II of IPC — that attracts a maximum jail term of 10 years — was set aside by the Supreme Court itself on September 13, 1996.
Appearing for CBI, then additional solicitor general Altaf Ahmed had argued before the SC that the accused knew about the potential danger of the lethal gas escaping and hence should be tried under the stringent provision.
"There was ample material produced by the prosecution in support of the chargesheet which indicated that all the accused shared common criminal knowledge about potential danger of escape of the lethal gas — MIC — both on account of the defective plant which was operated under their control and supervision at Bhopal and also on account of the operational shortcomings detected by the Varadarajan expert committee," Ahmed had said in court.
However, a bench comprising then Chief Justice A M Ahmedi and Justice S B Majmudar disagreed. "On our finding that the material pressed in service by the prosecution does not indicate even prima facie that the accused were guilty of an offence of culpable homicide and, therefore, Section 304-II was out of the picture, Section 304-A on this very finding can straightaway get attracted at least prima facie," the bench said. It then quashed the charge framed against the accused under Section 304-II.
As legal experts decried Monday's verdict and activists involved in rehabilitation of the victims termed it a mockery of justice, TOI tracked down Altaf Ahmed in Dubai. Ahmed expressed disappointment, not with the trial court verdict but with the SC's 1996 judgment.
"The dilution of the charges against the accused persons in 1996 by the Supreme Court was very sad and in my perception not justified," he said.
And why did he feel so, when the SC had gone through the evidence and CBI's chargesheet in detail while giving its 40-page judgment? Ahmed felt the apex court had erred by converting the charges from Section 304-II to Section 304A (death caused by a rash and negligent act, under which the BMW hit-and-run accused was tried). "The management of Union Carbide knew that necessary safety measures were not in place and a leak of the kind that resulted in the tragedy was a distinct possibility," he said.
END 25 YEARS OF INJUSTICE TO PEOPLE OF BHOPAL
Shortly before midnight on 2 December 1984, thousands of tonnes of
deadly chemicals leaked from Union Carbide’s pesticide plant in Bhopal, central India. Around half a million people were exposed.
Between 7,000 and 10,000 people died in the immediate aftermath and a
further 15,000 over the next 20 years.
Nearly 25 years later, the factory site has not been cleaned up. More
than 100,000 people continue to suffer from ongoing health problems.
Efforts to provide rehabilitation – both medical care and measures to
address the socio-economic effects of the leak – have fallen way short
of what is needed.
Many of those affected are still waiting for adequate compensation and
the full facts of the leak and its impact have never been properly
investigated. No one has ever been held to account for what happened
at Bhopal and efforts by survivors’ organizations to use the Indian
and US court systems to see justice done and gain adequate redress
have so far been unsuccessful.
Bhopal is not just a human rights tragedy from the last century – it
is a human rights travesty today. The legacy of Bhopal persists
because the people of Bhopal have never been able to claim their
rights. Moreover, the negative impacts of the leak are affecting new
generations. Studies have shown how the exposure to the toxic gas
causes long-term effects, which can continue in children born in gas-
exposed families.
For 25 years the Indian government has failed the people of Bhopal.
Promises have been repeatedly broken and no adequate action has ever
been taken to address the impacts of the gas leak.
No company can be allowed to evade responsibility for the impacts of
its operations. Union Carbide must be held to account for what
happened at Bhopal. Dow Chemicals, which now owns Union Carbide, must
cooperate fully with the Indian government and the courts in India to
ensure justice is done and the site is fully cleaned up.
BHOPAL GAS TRAGEDY 1984 -Bhopal, India
At the first instance the Government of India failed to ensure that
Union carbide India Limited (U.C.I.L) has installed proper safety
measures and fully implemented it in practice, at it's plant in Bhopal. The Government of Madhyapradesh through it's labour
department, factory inspectorate & pollution control board failed to
enforce safety practices & environmental protection. In turn, the
U.C.I.L didn't install in full, the safety measures being followed by
it's parent company union carbide corporation (U.C.C) at it's
Various plants in the U.S.A. The U.C.I.L. didn't give community
training to residents of nearby localities, to cope up with
emergencies ie. Industrial accidents. U.C.I.L gave a go - by to safety
practices, as it treated Indian lives as cheap. The government of
Madhya pradesh instead of shifting slum dwellers around U.C.I.L, to
other safe place, gave them legal title deeds just months before the tragedy in 1984.
Now, refer the following:-
1. After the accident at it's U.C.I.L. plant at Bhopal, India in 1984,
when the U.C.C. Chairman/C.E.O. came over to Bhopal from U.S.A to
visit the accident site, local police arrested him on the charges of
manslaughter. However, the Government of India got him released.
2. In 1985, Government of India enacted "Bhopal claims Act" took- away
the right of appeal of all the Gas tragedy victims & declared itself
as the sole representative of all victims. This said act itself is
violative of victim's fundamental & human rights. The
victims didn't choose Government of India as it's representative under
will, agreement, trust or pleasure.
3. The paradox of this "Bhopal claims Act" is that, Government of
India which is also a party to the crime, tragedy, itself is the
appellant. The appellant (Petitioner),defendant are Government of
India, Prosecution by Government of India & Judged by Government of
India.
4. In 1989, when an appeal about interim compensation to be paid by
the U.C.I.L to all the victims was being heard in the apex court, the
supreme court of India without giving a chance to the victims to make
their point, without consulting them, without making a proper
assessment of damages/losses, gave an arbitrary figure as verdict &
dropped all civil, criminal proceedings against U.C.C.&U.C.I.L
5. In the same year 1989, the Government of India without consulting
the victims of disaster, without making proper assessment of damages/
losses, negotiated a settlement with the U.C.C. and in turn gave full
legal immunity to U.C.C.& U.C.I.L from civil &
Criminal proceedings
6. Even the Government of India didn't present the case of victim's- gas tragedy victims, properly before the U.S.courts, where the U.C.C
is based. All these premeditated acts only benefited the criminals-
U.C.C&UCIL. Are not the supreme court of India & Government of India,
here to safeguard Indians and to safeguard Justice?
After all these crimes, the Government of India failed to distribute
compensation in time to victims. It has failed even to provide safe
drinking water to the residents near the accident site, It has failed
to provide comprehensive medical care to the victims, till
date . It has even failed to get the accident site cleared off toxic
wastes either by the culprit management or by it self, that too after
20 years. The very presence of these toxic wastes since 20 years is
further contaminating, polluting the environment and taking toll of
more victims.
Particularly in the case of "Bhopal Gas Tragedy" the supreme court of
India & Government of India are deadlier criminals than U.C.I.L&U.C.C.
Just consider a case here, Just a few years back an U.S.based M.N.C
ENRON set-up a power project in Maharashtra, India through it's
subsidiary. When Maharashtra state Electricity Board failed to lift
power from Enron& pay them monthly guaranteed revenue, Enron
threatened to invoke, open the "Eschrew Clause" with the Government
of India & to approach international arbiter U.K. Government of India
has stood as conter-guarantee in this case. Finally the Government
paid, of course subsequently the parent ENRON collapsed due to other
reasons. If in this case if Government of India failed to pay-up as a
counter guarantee & refused to comply with the award of International
arbiter, definitely Government of U.S.A. would have stepped into the
scene to protect it's MNC. Hypothetically, In the same vein if Enron
has caused damages to Indians either through negligence of safe
practices or industrial accidents or bank frauds
amounting over and above it's Capital base & insurance cover, then it
would have been the duty of parent Enron & Government of U.S.A. to
step in & pay-up.
In the same way, the U.C.I.L has caused massive damages to Indians &
refusing to pay commensurate to damages. Dow chemicals which took-
over U.C.C. is also refusing to pay. DOW chemicals which is the new
owner of U.C.C. naturally inherits both profits, credits lent &
liabilities to pay of U.C.C. Still it is refusing to pay. Now it is
the turn of Government of U.S.A. to cough-up the sum.
Nowadays, it has become routine for central & State ministers to go-
on foreign jaunts, to globe -trott inviting F.D.I/ M.N.Cs to India.
They do sign numerous agreements, only favouring MNC. When tragedies
occur or when they cheat Indian banks/ investors, it is Indians who
suffer. The ministers & bureaucrats thinks themselves as wizards and
enters into agreements with MNCs, industrialists in a hush-hush
manner, with vast scope for possible corruption. Is it not the duty of
government to be transparent ?
Bhopal gas case: ex-CBI men, Moily fight verbal war as Warren Anderson goes scot-free
New Delhi: Bhopal gas tragedy prime accused Warren Anderson’s failed extradition has kicked off a war of words between former CBI investigators and the law minister.
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Officers who probed the case but have now retired claim their hands were tied by government missives directing CBI not to pursue Anderson’s extradition.
In fact, the government had committed to the US that Anderson would not be arrested during his visit to Bhopal in the aftermath of the tragedy. Accordingly, he was allowed to return.
Former CBI joint director BR Lall, who briefly investigated the case, recalls receiving a letter from the ministry of external affairs to not pursue Anderson’s extradition.
“I distinctly remember receiving a routine letter which said Warren Anderson’s extradition may not be pursued. Normally, directions are not received through letters. It was a rare case,” he told DNA, making a case for greater autonomy to CBI.
“We [CBI] had responded to the letter that investigations required [Anderson’s] extradition,” Lall said.
His boss, former CBI jointdirector Joginder Singh, said there was little the agency could have done.
His boss, former CBI jointdirector Joginder Singh, said there was little the agency could have done.
“CBI did its best to investigate the case fairly and push for Anderson’s extradition. But our hands were tied. In 1996, we got a major blow when the Supreme Court deleted criminal sections from the case.”
The CBI charge sheet mentioned section 304 IPC (culpable homicide with a maximum punishment of 10 years). However, the charges were watered down to 304 (a) (death due to negligence), usually used in cases of road accidents.
“With such a mild section, it is impossible to get an extradition anywhere. The moment 304 was quashed, half the case was lost,” Singh said.
Law minister Veerappa Moily refuted the allegations. Reacting sharply to Lall’s claims, he said, “After retirement people can give many statements. It is an irresponsible statement. This is not done at all. I think we need to do something to deal with such people who fail to discharge their duty and after retirement, try to become heroes or martyrs of the situation.”
New Delhi: A former senior CBI official, involved in the Bhopal gas leak case investigations, today claimed that the probe was "influenced", generating a strong reaction from law minister M Veerappa Moily who termed the remarks as "irresponsible."
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The officer, BR Lall, former joint director of the agency and in-charge of the probe also said he was forced by the ministry of external affairs officials not to follow extradition of Warren Anderson, the CEO of Union Carbide Corporation when the gas leak took place 26 years ago.
"CBI investigation was influenced and commanded by some officials, as a result the justice in the Bhopal Gas leakage case got delayed, hence, denied," said Lall, the CBI officer in charge of the investigation from April 1994 to July 1995.
However, Moily, while reacting to Lall's claim said, "After retirement, people can give many statement. It is an irresponsible statement. This is not done at all. After retirement, people become martyrs by making such statements."
Claiming that CBI was an "under command" organisation, Lall said, "We need to make it free from government control to
ensure transparency and fair probe. In other countries, all chief investigating agencies have been given autonomy by keeping it out of the control of the judiciary, bureaucracy and executive powers."
ensure transparency and fair probe. In other countries, all chief investigating agencies have been given autonomy by keeping it out of the control of the judiciary, bureaucracy and executive powers."
The charges by Lall came hours after a local court in Bhopal yesterday convicted former Union Carbide, India, chairman Keshub Mahindra and seven others for the world's worst industrial disaster, that left more than 15,000 dead on the intervening night of December 2-3 in 1984.
"I was told by the ministry of external affairs officials not to follow the extradition of Warren Anderson, which affected the CBI probe," Lall, who is now retired, further claimed.
After registering a case, CBI had filed its chargesheet under Section 304 IPC, which amounts to culpable homicide with maximum punishment of 10 years. However, the charges were later watered down to 304 (a), usually used in road accidents.
"I do not know what circumstances and evidences forced CBI or others involved in the proceedings to lower the section," he said.
However, MEA sources maintained that "in 2003, a request for extradition of Anderson was made to the US side under India-US bilateral extradition treaty. This request has already been reiterated on more than one occasion."
Anderson, 89, the then chairman of Union Carbide Corporation of USA, who lives in the United States, appeared to have gone scot-free for the present as he is still an absconder and did not subject himself to trial. There was no word about him in the judgement of the Bhopal court.
Anderson flew in, out of Bhopal in state govt's plane: Capt SH Ali
New Delhi: Claims that Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson had flown in and out of Bhopal in a state government plane was today strengthened by the aircraft's pilot.
''We got flight information from the then Director of Aviation R S Sodhi for a flight from Bhopal to Delhi and were told to keep the aircraft, a state government plane, ready,'' Captain Syed Hasan Ali claimed in an interview to a news channel.
He added that Anderson's identity was kept a secret from him. ''We did not know who he was,'' he said.
Capt Ali further claimed that Anderson was alone in the aircraft and looked upset and tired. ''As we waited for him, he came with the then SP and the District Magistrate of Bhopal. When we landed in Delhi, an ambassador picked him up from next to the plane and I left him with the airport manager,'' he claimed.
Capt Sodhi, seconding the pilot's claims, said it was on orders of Arjun Singh government that Anderson was allowed to fly.
''I had received a call from the office of the then Chief Minister, Arjun Singh, ordering to arrange Anderson's departure on December 7, 1984,'' Captain R S Sodhi claimed in an interview to a news channel today.
He alleged Anderson, a few hours after he came to know about his charges with culpable homicide, reached the airport where the Chief Minister's official plane stood waiting for him, along with senior bureaucrats and police officers.
The city's Superintendent of Police and the district magistrate, Moti Singh, waved to Anderson as he boarded Singh's plane, he said. Earlier, Moti Singh had also alleged that the then Chief Secretary of the state had called him to his room and told him to arrange for the flight of Anderson out of Bhopal.
''The then chairman Keshub Mahindra and UCIL's then managing director Vijay Gokhale after landing in Bhopal were taken into custody at the airport itself but soon after that, he and the district police chief were told by the Chief Secretary to get the US citizen released on bail and send him to Delhi by plane,'' he said.
Bhopal gas tragedy : 'Rajiv Gandhi' helped Warren Anderson escape?
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Bhopal gas tragedy : Warren Anderson released after deleting a 'charge'
Three days after the Bhopal gas tragedy, the police here had released the then Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson and two others on bail by "deleting" in the complaint a stringent charge under the IPC against them, trial court sources said today.
A perusal of court documents shows that the in-charge of the Hanuman Ganj Police Station, Surender Singh, had initially arrested Anderson, then UCIL chairman Keshub Mahindra and senior company official Vijay Prakash Gokhale at 10.10 AM on December 7,1984 in the presence of one Rakesh Kumar under various sections of IPC including 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder).
They were also charged with sections 304 A (causing death by negligence), 278 (making atmosphere noxious to health), 284 (negligent conduct with respect to poisonous substance), 426 (mischief) and 429 (mischief by killing or maiming cattle, other animals).
Later, the police released the three, "deleting" the charge against them under Section 304, they said.
The sources said that police had no right to delete such a charge and in doing so they had exceeded their brief.
"If the charge had not been deleted, Anderson may not have been able to leave India," they said.
The CBI had later booked Mahindra and Gokhale under Section 304 which provides for prison term of 10 years. However, the Supreme Court had dropped the stringent section in the case.
Over 15,000 people were killed and thousands of others maimed when the deadly methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas leaked from the Union Carbide plant on the intervening night of December 2-3, 1984.
Date : June 11th, 2010. News by Newsofap.com
A perusal of court documents shows that the in-charge of the Hanuman Ganj Police Station, Surender Singh, had initially arrested Anderson, then UCIL chairman Keshub Mahindra and senior company official Vijay Prakash Gokhale at 10.10 AM on December 7,1984 in the presence of one Rakesh Kumar under various sections of IPC including 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder).
They were also charged with sections 304 A (causing death by negligence), 278 (making atmosphere noxious to health), 284 (negligent conduct with respect to poisonous substance), 426 (mischief) and 429 (mischief by killing or maiming cattle, other animals).
Later, the police released the three, "deleting" the charge against them under Section 304, they said.
The sources said that police had no right to delete such a charge and in doing so they had exceeded their brief.
"If the charge had not been deleted, Anderson may not have been able to leave India," they said.
The CBI had later booked Mahindra and Gokhale under Section 304 which provides for prison term of 10 years. However, the Supreme Court had dropped the stringent section in the case.
Over 15,000 people were killed and thousands of others maimed when the deadly methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas leaked from the Union Carbide plant on the intervening night of December 2-3, 1984.
Date : June 11th, 2010. News by Newsofap.com
Bhopal gas tragedy: Justice Ahmadi offers resignation
Bhopal: Former Supreme Court Chief Justice AH Ahmadi, facing flak for the 1996 verdict in the Bhopal gas tragedy case, has offered to resign from the post of Bhopal Memorial Hospital Trust chairman.
Speaking to a daily, the former CJI said, “I will send a fresh application to the new Chief Justice of India asking to be relieved of the responsibility, though my previous application was pending with former CJI KG Balakrishnan.”
Justifying his stand, Ahmadi said that he had not committed any impropriety by agreeing to head a multi-million dollar trust set up by the Union Carbide after the gas leak.
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Speaking to a daily, the former CJI said, “I will send a fresh application to the new Chief Justice of India asking to be relieved of the responsibility, though my previous application was pending with former CJI KG Balakrishnan.”
Justifying his stand, Ahmadi said that he had not committed any impropriety by agreeing to head a multi-million dollar trust set up by the Union Carbide after the gas leak.
Justice Ahmadi, who headed the bench in 1996 that converted the CBI charge under the stringent provisions of 304-II that provided for maximum of 10-year imprisonment to Section with two-year maximum imprisonment, said it was easy for people to talk and make allegations but judges have to work as per the system.
A two-judge bench headed by then CJI Ahmadi reduced the charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder to causing death by negligence.
Giving his clarifications on the judgment, Justice Ahmadi rejected criticism of dilution of charge against Union Carbide executives in Bhopal gas tragedy case, saying in criminal law there was no concept of vicarious liability.
He also lamented the lack of a law to deal with disasters of Bhopal kind and said law can be amended to provide for adequate punishment.
Few days back, an organisation of Bhopal gas victims disputed Justice Ahmadi's claim that no one had filed a review petition after the Supreme Court dropped charges of culpable homicide against the accused in the case.
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A two-judge bench headed by then CJI Ahmadi reduced the charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder to causing death by negligence.
Giving his clarifications on the judgment, Justice Ahmadi rejected criticism of dilution of charge against Union Carbide executives in Bhopal gas tragedy case, saying in criminal law there was no concept of vicarious liability.
He also lamented the lack of a law to deal with disasters of Bhopal kind and said law can be amended to provide for adequate punishment.
Few days back, an organisation of Bhopal gas victims disputed Justice Ahmadi's claim that no one had filed a review petition after the Supreme Court dropped charges of culpable homicide against the accused in the case.
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"Our organisation had filed a review petition but that was dismissed in 1996 by the Supreme Court, which was then headed by Ahmadi himself," the convenor of Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog Sangthan, Abdul Jabbar had said.
As the guilty had not been charged under Section 304 of IPC (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), they were let off with imprisonment of only two years each, Jabbar claimed.
Justice Ahmadi, who had delivered the Bhopal gas tragedy case verdict in on June 09 1996, said he could not recollect whether a review petition was filed. However, he had earlier stated in a television interview that no review petition was filed.
Since retirement, Ahmadi has been presiding over Bhopal Memorial Hospital Trust that runs a 350-bed superspeciality hospital. The trust was set up by Union Carbide.
A total of Rs 600 crore has gone into the trust, but its accounts are not in the public domain. The trust deed mandates that an SC judge should be its chairman and Ahmadi has been at its helm since retirement.
As the guilty had not been charged under Section 304 of IPC (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), they were let off with imprisonment of only two years each, Jabbar claimed.
Justice Ahmadi, who had delivered the Bhopal gas tragedy case verdict in on June 09 1996, said he could not recollect whether a review petition was filed. However, he had earlier stated in a television interview that no review petition was filed.
Since retirement, Ahmadi has been presiding over Bhopal Memorial Hospital Trust that runs a 350-bed superspeciality hospital. The trust was set up by Union Carbide.
A total of Rs 600 crore has gone into the trust, but its accounts are not in the public domain. The trust deed mandates that an SC judge should be its chairman and Ahmadi has been at its helm since retirement.
Man Who Warned of Bhopal Gas Leak
Congress spokesman Satyvrat Chaturvedi has defended former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi [Images ] whose role in letting the guilty in the Bhopal gas tragedy get off lightly is under the scanner due to the public outcry over the recent judgment in the case -- 26 years after the event. On the night of 2/3 December, 1984, when deadly gas leaked from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, Arjun Singh [ Images ] was chief minister of Madhya Pradesh [ Images ] and Gandhi was the prime minister of India [ Images ].
In the first few years after the tragedy, tremendous pressure was put up by the American corporate lobby and the government on India to save the US-based Union Carbide, the parent company, from civil and criminal liability.
As a result, at every little step, the law could not provide justice to the over 15,000 who died due to the gas leak. More than five lakh victims who suffered chronic diseases are struggling and pleading for help, even now.
The June 7 judgment of a local court in Bhopal, sentencing the convicted officials of the Indian arm of Union Carbide to a mere two-year sentence, has made the entire nation feel small and impotent before the might of the multinational corporations, the sluggish Indian justice system and its spineless political establishment.
The entire Bhopal saga was witnessed from close quarters by Rajkumar Keswani, an outstanding journalist, who had in fact foreseen this catastrophe. His work proves that the tragedy of Bhopal started much before December 3, 1984.
Two years before the Union Carbide factory leaked killer gas, he wrote in a weekly magazine called Rapat (news): 'Bhopal jwalamukhi ki kagaar par (Bhopal on the edge of a volcano)'.
Keswani has witnessed the entire saga of deception of the victims of Bhopal by the Indian and American governments and multinational corporations. He shares his agony in a telephonic interview with rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt.
You have been following the Bhopal gas leak case for 25 years. What was your first reaction on hearing the verdict on June 7?
I had no expectations on that day. The seed of this judgment was sown when a Supreme Court bench headed by then Chief Justice of India, A H Ahmadi, passed a judgment in 1996 that converted section 304 (II) (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) of the Indian penal code to 304-A (causing death by negligence) to try the case. In 1996 we knew the fate of the Bhopal gas case. He diluted the charges filed against Union Carbide. What happened was the culmination of injustice that started with that judgment.
Was there a design behind this?
I can't say how it was done. But surely there was some design. Eventually, after retirement, Justice Ahmadi became the lifetime chairman of the Bhopal Memorial Hospital Trust and Research Centre which has funds worth millions of rupees. Those millions, paid by Union Carbide for the poor victims, are under his control even now.
The dilution of charges helped (UCC chairman) Warren Anderson and Union Carbide in a big way, right?
When we talk about Union Carbide and Anderson, we must remember that they have never ever been subject to Indian laws. They have never appeared before an Indian court, nor have they lost anything due to Bhopal or benefited by the June 7 judgment. Our country's system gave them eternal protection from any legal proceedings. There was no serious attempt at all to bring Anderson to this country in the last 25 years.
Can you tell us what kind of evidence you had against the US-based Union Carbide Corporation, parent company of Union Carbide India?
I started working on this story in 1981. That was the time when my friend Mohammad Asharaf was working in Union Carbide India Limited. He died due to exposure to phosgene gas. I had an idea that some hazardous chemicals are being used in the Bhopal factory. I reported on his death and then worked for nine months on knowing about the factory. I reported my first story in September 1982. In October that year I ran a series and wrote weekly reports against Union Carbide and the possibility of risk to human lives due to the chemicals in the plant. People treated me like a crazy man. They used to tell me, 'Arre aisa kabhi hota hai kya? Aisa kabhi hua hai kya is duniya mein?' (Do things like this happen? Have such things happened anywhere in the world?)
People in government, who were in the know of things, were hand in glove with the management of Union Carbide. They would trust Union Carbide more than anything else. Union Carbide was the only multinational at that time in a small city like Bhopal. Their reputation was such that it was difficult for anyone to believe that they could be negligent. It was very disappointing for me.
But what kind of evidence did you have against UCC of the US?
In 1982, an audit team had visited Union Carbide in Bhopal. They had inspected the plant and said that certain safety measures must be taken, otherwise there could be a gas leak. I printed the report of the visit of the audit team and their observations in Jansatta before the 1984 gas leak.
At 15 places in that report, they had written that safety measures are not proper and it could have a 'runaway' reaction. So the plant had problems before the leak in 1984. There is enough proof. Second, UCC, USA said they were not involved in the day to day running of the plant so they could not be made responsible. There are telex messages as proof which shows that the company in USA was totally involved in all the decisions of the company in Bhopal. They were sending instructions to Bhopal.
UCC India had a works manager named J Mukund (one of the accused who was convicted on June 7). He had sent a message asking for advice about coating the pipes. The US-based parent company sent him a message saying that the best material for piping would be too expensive and too difficult to acquire. How can UCC, USA escape their responsibility when they were advising Bhopal to economise on safety measures? They were telling Bhopal to use cheaper material. They were advising it to compromise on safety. Mukund's message was sent on August 27, 1984. Just a few weeks before the fateful leak.
Do you have the copies of those telex exchanges?
Yes.
Justice Ahmadi, when he diluted the charges against the company, didn't see these telex messages?
He saw what he wanted to see. Actually, there was a review petition of his order but he rejected it. We had sent messages to all the members of Parliament at that time to press for a review of the dilution of charges against the company. There are hundreds of documents that suggest that the parent company was involved in the running of the Bhopal company and they were aware of the problems in the plant. I submitted all of it in a US court too.
In 1982, I had documents to prove that safety measures in the plant were faulty. I managed to raise the Union Carbide plant issue in the MP assembly. The government denied any such threat, it is on record. The government denied my report and said there is a fool-proof system in the factory and there is nothing to worry about. The government said all these things in defence of Union Carbide in December 1982! I wrote to the Chief Justice of India in 1982 to intervene in the Bhopal factory. Nobody cared. I got no response.
Who played the bigger game in the Bhopal 'cover-up'?
Union Carbide Corporation, USA, played the game with the help of the Government of India and the government of Madhya Pradesh. If you find out how the settlement of 1989 was reached, you will know what I am saying is correct. The settlement was done with the Supreme Court's sanction. Carbide agreed to pay Rs 705 crore and the Government of India agreed to drop all civil and criminal cases against Union Carbide, which was later challenged in the court. Who did this? It was Rajiv Gandhi who made this settlement possible. It was the ultimate shame that the Government of India accepted money for the victims to quash criminal proceedings against UCC.
I challenged it in the court with the help of Indira Jaising, my lawyer. Only after that petition was the criminal case revived in June 1989. Anyone can understand what the role of the Government of India has been in helping victims.
It's very intriguing to see that after the Bhopal tragedy innumerable NGOs, from stalwarts like Indira Jaising to hundreds of local community leaders, fought for the victims but nothing came out of it. Why such a total failure?
This is a very serious question. I am also worried about it. I don't know if I should say anything on it.
But so much has been done by the foot soldiers of civil society. All over the world the victims have sympathisers. Still justice was not done. Why?
These are voices only. In society today only a loud bang is heard. That can be done by the television media. If the people would have reacted in a similar manner in 1996 to Justice Ahmadi's decision, the Bhopal verdict would have been different.
How do you look at the Bhopal judgment?
I think the judge in his wisdom has not spoken much on (UC India chairman) Keshub Mahindra's role. We have a grouse against it. It should be challenged. The Indian managers were equally responsible.
In Bhopal, during these 26 years, has Keshub Mahindra ever said sorry?
No. Rather, they have been manipulating the case. I have evidence to say so.
Who are the guilty men of Bhopal?
There is Union Carbide Company who compromised safety for profit. There was the Indian government who could not withstand the might of the multinationals. The cause of the tragedy was Union Carbide, but the injustice was due to the slow process of the judiciary and the Central Bureau of Investigation. The investigating agency became a partner in crime.
Who helped Anderson? Who executed the operation to get him out of India on December 7, 1984?
The American government and the US embassy put pressure on the Indian government. They put pressure on the Prime Minister's Office. Rajiv Gandhi, reportedly, asked Arun Singh to ensure Anderson's release. Chief Minister Arjun Singh didn't convey to New Delhi [ Images ] the popular sentiments on the ground in Bhopal.
We reported these things then. We have no recordings of it now but we reported though our sources.
You are fighting since 26 years but now you see all around that people are reacting sensitively. There is a feeling of anguish and frustration. How do you see the new-found interest in the Bhopal case?
This is due to the new media and the images on television. Yeh TV ka kamal hai. These days, we are dictated by images on TV. They make us cry and they make us laugh. It is good, and even bad sometimes. In the case of Bhopal tragedy it is good that TV is shaking our memories.
Police released Anderson after 'deleting' stringent charge
Three days after the Bhopal gas tragedy, the police here had released the then Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson and two others on bail by "deleting" in the complaint a stringent charge under the IPC against them, trial court sources said today.
A perusal of court documents shows that the in-charge of the Hanuman Ganj Police Station, Surender Singh, had initially arrested Anderson, then UCIL chairman Keshub Mahindra and senior company official Vijay Prakash Gokhale at 10.10 AM on December 7,1984 in the presence of one Rakesh Kumar under various sections of IPC including 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder).
They were also charged with sections 304 A (causing death by negligence), 278 (making atmosphere noxious to health), 284 (negligent conduct with respect to poisonous substance), 426 (mischief) and 429 (mischief by killing or maiming cattle, other animals).
Later, the police released the three, "deleting" the charge against them under Section 304, they said.
The sources said that police had no right to delete such a charge and in doing so they had exceeded their brief.
"If the charge had not been deleted, Anderson may not have been able to leave India," they said.
The CBI had later booked Mahindra and Gokhale under Section 304 which provides for prison term of 10 years. However, the Supreme Court had dropped the stringent section in the case.
Over 15,000 people were killed and thousands of others maimed when the deadly methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas leaked from the Union Carbide plant on the intervening night of December 2-3, 1984.
MP CM seeks explanation from Arjun Singh on how Anderson fled
New Delhi: Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Friday said that his government will go to any extent to get justice for Bhopal gas victims and demanded an explanation from then Chief Minister Arjun Singh on how former Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson fled the country.
"We will go to any extent to get justice for the victims...This is not an issue of Bhopal or the state. It should act as an example of how to give punishment in such cases," he told reporters here.
Noting that the people of the state felt "let down" following the gas tragedy verdict, Chouhan said he has written to Arjun Singh and asked for a reply on the circumstances that led to Anderson's escape.
"Let Arjun Singh explain it. Whether he did it (gave permission for providing state aircraft) himself or anybody told him to do so. We want a reply from him if a wrong direction was given. And after all, why such a direction was given.
"There are lot many questions like why the CBI filed no appeal when the charges in the case were diluted in 1997. If he gives a statement, things would be clear. The state and the country want to know these circumstances," he said.
Chouhan said a five-member team of legal experts has been set up by the state government to look into the issue and examine what could be done legally to get Bhopal gas victims justice. The interim report of the team would be out in the next ten days, he said.
Asked about the conflicting statements of Congress leaders like Digvijay Singh and Satyavrat Chaturvedi on Anderson fleeing the country, Chouhan said he did not want to politicise the issue but added that this was only leading to confusion.
"Somebody is saying the Centre is responsible while somebody else says the issues comes under the state. Different people are speaking in different voices...One wants to protect somebody while the other wants to trap someone else.
"This is leading to confusion... Arjun Singh should speak the truth. What other Congress leaders are speaking is only bringing out the contradictions within the Congress party," he said.
He said that his government is open to all options and will decide after the committee report on whether to constitute a probe commission go into the lapses or take up the issue with US courts.
A perusal of court documents shows that the in-charge of the Hanuman Ganj Police Station, Surender Singh, had initially arrested Anderson, then UCIL chairman Keshub Mahindra and senior company official Vijay Prakash Gokhale at 10.10 AM on December 7,1984 in the presence of one Rakesh Kumar under various sections of IPC including 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder).
They were also charged with sections 304 A (causing death by negligence), 278 (making atmosphere noxious to health), 284 (negligent conduct with respect to poisonous substance), 426 (mischief) and 429 (mischief by killing or maiming cattle, other animals).
Later, the police released the three, "deleting" the charge against them under Section 304, they said.
The sources said that police had no right to delete such a charge and in doing so they had exceeded their brief.
"If the charge had not been deleted, Anderson may not have been able to leave India," they said.
The CBI had later booked Mahindra and Gokhale under Section 304 which provides for prison term of 10 years. However, the Supreme Court had dropped the stringent section in the case.
Over 15,000 people were killed and thousands of others maimed when the deadly methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas leaked from the Union Carbide plant on the intervening night of December 2-3, 1984.
MP CM seeks explanation from Arjun Singh on how Anderson fled
New Delhi: Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Friday said that his government will go to any extent to get justice for Bhopal gas victims and demanded an explanation from then Chief Minister Arjun Singh on how former Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson fled the country.
"We will go to any extent to get justice for the victims...This is not an issue of Bhopal or the state. It should act as an example of how to give punishment in such cases," he told reporters here.
Noting that the people of the state felt "let down" following the gas tragedy verdict, Chouhan said he has written to Arjun Singh and asked for a reply on the circumstances that led to Anderson's escape.
"Let Arjun Singh explain it. Whether he did it (gave permission for providing state aircraft) himself or anybody told him to do so. We want a reply from him if a wrong direction was given. And after all, why such a direction was given.
"There are lot many questions like why the CBI filed no appeal when the charges in the case were diluted in 1997. If he gives a statement, things would be clear. The state and the country want to know these circumstances," he said.
Chouhan said a five-member team of legal experts has been set up by the state government to look into the issue and examine what could be done legally to get Bhopal gas victims justice. The interim report of the team would be out in the next ten days, he said.
Asked about the conflicting statements of Congress leaders like Digvijay Singh and Satyavrat Chaturvedi on Anderson fleeing the country, Chouhan said he did not want to politicise the issue but added that this was only leading to confusion.
"Somebody is saying the Centre is responsible while somebody else says the issues comes under the state. Different people are speaking in different voices...One wants to protect somebody while the other wants to trap someone else.
"This is leading to confusion... Arjun Singh should speak the truth. What other Congress leaders are speaking is only bringing out the contradictions within the Congress party," he said.
He said that his government is open to all options and will decide after the committee report on whether to constitute a probe commission go into the lapses or take up the issue with US courts.
CBI failed to act on warrant against Anderson last year
Bhopal: The trial court in the Bhopal gas tragedy case had issued an arrest warrant against former Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson last year but the CBI had failed to give any written response to it, according to court sources.
They said the warrant, the second against Anderson, was issued by Chief Judicial Magistrate Mohan P Tiwari on July 2, 2009 but the CBI did not give any written response to it.
Anderson was the chairman of the Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) at the time of the disaster in December 1984 which left over 15,000 people dead.
Instead, they said, a CBI official met Tiwari and orally conveyed to him that for the agency, Anderson's case had been closed.
The first court warrant against Anderson was issued in 1992.
Direction to release Anderson must have come from CM: Ex HS
New Delhi: Former Madhya Pradesh Home Secretary K S Sharma on Friday said that the then Chief Minister Arjun Singh may have given directions to officials to release former Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson.
Sharma, who was the Home Secretary when the Bhopal gas tragedy took place, said the pressure to release Anderson must have come from the Chief Minister as "no officer would take such a step without direct instructions from the government".
"Right from the beginning there had been some soft approach towards the whole thing otherwise he (Anderson) would have not been kept in a guest house when he was in custody. Releasing an accused of such a heinous crime on the same day means there was a tremendous pressure," he said.
"...It is difficult to say from where this pressure came but certainly the pressure from Chief Minister on officials must have been there because no officer would take such a step without direct instructions from government."
Sharma claimed despite being the Home Secretary he was not kept in the loop and "not informed about Anderson's release."
To a question whether there was pressure on Arjun Singh, he said: "This is not known to me whether there was some pressure on Arjun Singh or not...I did not discuss with Chief Minister Arjun Singh. I really do not know.
"But he certainly gave (some) instructions because the Collector had said the Chief Secretary told him. The Chief Secretary should not have told him. The Chief Secretary should not have passed on these instructions without very strong instructions from the Chief Minister," he said.
He also questioned the Government's decision to keep Anderson in a guest house after his arrest and termed the grant of bail to him as illegal.
"It is certainly unusual. Although in a few cases it does happen but it is when the offence is not heinous and the person is respectable. But so far as this case is concerned, 15,000 persons have died and keeping accused in rest house was certainly, I would say, very unfortunate and shouldn't have been done," Sharma said.
"When the case, which was registered under Section 304 which is a non-bailable cognisable offence in which the bail can only be granted by Sessions court after the discussions and arguments by both sides. Therefore the grant of bail in my view was illegal," the former bureaucrat said.
"In a high profile case, in which so many persons died and somebody who had come from the US has been arrested and if he has been released same day on bail, not informing me or not keeping me in the loop, not consulting me was certainly not normal. In such cases the Home Secretary is always consulted."
Sharma said the then Bhopal Superintendent of Police had informed him about Anderson's arrest and he was not aware that he was released on bail.
"Whether there was pressure or not, I am not aware because till his release I was not in the loop. I was not consulted at all. So I have absolutely no information whether there was pressure to release," Sharma said.
Congress denies Rajiv had a role in Anderson escape
New Delhi: The Congress party on Friday strongly rejected a former prime ministerial aide P.C. Alexander's indication that the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi had helped Warren Anderson, the CEO of Union Carbide Corp in 1984, escape from the country within days of Bhopal gas tragedy.
Alexander reportedly stated that Gandhi and then Madhya Pradesh chief minister Arjun Singh were directly in touch with each other over the escape of Anderson from the country barely days after the world's biggest industrial disaster in Bhopal Dec 2-3, 1984.
Congress spokesperson Jayanti Natarajan said there "is nothing unusual" in a prime minister and a chief minister being in constant touch with each other.
She said the Group of Ministers for Bhopal gas tragedy would "gather all information and put it before the people".
Saving Democracy From The Corporate Veil
By Gopal Krishna
Five things the US should do to quell the global outrage after the recent verdict in the Bhopal gas leak case and provide some justice to the victims
The labour pains for giving birth to an understanding of a trans-national corporation, the scope of its civil and criminal liability, its corporate veil and the chemical disaster of Bhopal is still far from over. By now it is clear that unless US government decides to act no one else can get to the bottom of the most complex industrial catastrophe known to mankind in the 20th century. Without the helpful intervention by the US President Barack Obama, the litigation process will never be able to provide justice to the victims and penalise the natural and artificial culprits.
As democracies, like Indian government, is it time for US government too to act as parens patriae (guardian) for the past, present and future victims of Bhopal in particular and for justice seeking people of the world. The parens patriae doctrine which was deemed as a pioneering innovation in jurisprudence was invoked for the protection of all victims of disaster but was sabotaged.
While government of India enacted itself as parens patriae, Dow Chemicals Company (after Union Carbide's merger in 2001) and its agent in the government have enacted for themselves a similar role for the global community of the trans-national corporations against justice seeking victims.
The global outrage against such sabotage stage-managed under the guidance of US government that has become evident in the aftermath of the June 7 verdict merits President Obama's intervention to set matters right. Taking recourse to judicial escapism instead of acting to evolve a jurisprudence of liability for corporations gravely endangers people's trust in democracy everywhere.
The deafening silence of the US president and legislature to ensure justice to the victims of corporation engineered mass disaster if not broken would constitute "yet another instance of American imperialism" in the words of US Judge Keenan who heard the Bhopal case in New York district court.
Unaccountable and ungovernable corporations are a threat to all the democracies. If democracy in US and India is indeed non-negotiable, it merits global efforts to Dow Chemicals and Warren Anderson accountable. This is required to fix the liability of a trans-national corporation. In a historic and touching "extraordinary act a foreign sovereign government seeking justice in an American court", India had appealed to the democratic judicial system of US for relief in the matter of industrial disaster of Bhopal caused by a US multinational corporation. How democratic governments of US and India respond to provide legal remedy sets a precedent that either legitimises or delegitamises its very existence.
The government of India filed a suit on September 5, 1986 for damages in the court of district judge, Bhopal (Regular Civil Suit N. 113/86) against the US company, Union Carbide Corporation, Connecticut, USA on behalf of all the persons, who have suffered damages due to Bhopal gas leak disaster praying for "a decree for punitive damages in an amount sufficient to deter the defendant Union Carbide and other multinational corporations involved in similar business activities from willful, malicious and wanton disregard of the rights and safety of citizens of India." The Indian government noted in its reply in the court that Union Carbide's management policies, states that "it is the general policy of the corporation to secure and maintain effective management control of an affiliate."
If the US is indeed a democratic state, its constitution is still alive then it must make corporations like Dow Chemicals and British Petroleum liable and accountable for their acts of omission and commission. The following steps are required in US towards that end:
1. The US government should accept the above submission of the government of India that "the corporation and its subsidiaries are treated as a unit, without regard to the location of responsibility within that unit". Consequently, an illegal act by it be deemed as the act of the corporation, without consideration to its location of responsibility. The customary alibi of corporations like Dow Chemicals is an act in sophistry designed to conceal fact of crime and criminals of the upper-world. The US government should disclose all the trade secrets of the Union Carbide Corporation and its research and development centre that Union Carbide operated in Bhopal since 1976 that was suspected to be experimenting with wartime use of chemicals. This suspicion regarding the disaster being a consequence of experimenting with war time chemicals is yet to be probed. US government should undertake and facilitate such probe.
2. The US government must take note of the verdict by the chief judicial magistrate, Bhopal, wherein it is stated, "Warren Anderson, UCC USA and UCC Kowlnn Hong Kong are still absconding and therefore, every part of this case (criminal file) is kept intact along with the exhibited and un-exhibited documents and the property related to this case, in safe custody, till their appearance". In the interest of justice for the Bhopal victims, the US government should expedite the process of extraditing Anderson at the earliest.
3. Dow Chemicals Company has set aside $2.2 billion to address future asbestos-related liabilities arising out of the Union Carbide acquisition. How is that Dow Chemicals can take the asbestos liability of Union Carbide and not the liability for the industrial catastrophe in Bhopal? The US government should volunteer its assistance in ascertaining the Bhopal disaster's inherited liability of Dow Chemicals Company.
4. The US government should promote acceptance of the resolution of UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights that approved the 'UN norms on the responsibilities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises with regard to human rights' as a step towards ensuring corporate accountability. Article 18 of the norms called on trans-national corporations and other business enterprises to make reparations for damage done through their failure to meet the standards spelled out: "Transnational corporations and other business enterprises shall provide prompt, effective and adequate reparation to those persons, entities and communities that have been adversely affected by failures to comply with these norms through, inter alia, reparations, restitution, compensation and rehabilitation for any damage done or property taken. In connection with determining damages, in regard to criminal sanctions, and in all other respects, these norms shall be applied by national courts and/or international tribunals, pursuant to national and international law."
5. In memory of victims of Bhopal, the US and Indian governments should call for a mandatory regime for regulating trans-national corporations unlike UN's voluntary global compact and reject the report of the United Nations Secretary-General's Special Representative for Business and Human Rights wherein it underlined the need for voluntary regulation and self compliance by the companies saying, "While corporations may be considered organs of society, they are specialised economic organs, not democratic public interest institutions.
If there is one lesson that democracies across the world have clearly not learnt from industrial disasters, it is to ascertain the nature of all the genocidal acts of corporations and the very legal design of the corporation so as to make it genuinely governable by democratic legislatures. A befitting tribute to victims of Bhopal lies in learning this lesson in order to prevent future industrial warfare that irreparably undermines intergenerational equity.
INDIA: Obama administration official supports corporate interests over victims of world's worst industrial disaster
Deputy National Security Advisor Froman reveals administration’s double standards on corporate accountability for victims of Bhopal Gas Disaster
At a time when the world is focused on corporate accountability in the wake of the BP's Gulf Oil Spill, a leaked email from the Obama administration shows that it values profit over people, when the profit benefits American corporations. The victims of the world’s worst industrial disaster were disappointed to see today that the White House is not pursuing the same levels of accountability from American Dow Chemical as it has from BP. When Dow purchased Union Carbide in 2001, the corporation acquired outstanding liability for the ongoing disaster in Bhopal, which has led to the deaths of an estimated 25,000 people in Bhopal, India following the 1984 Gas Disaster.
Today, Mumbai-based Times Now published an email chain between White House Deputy National Security Advisor Michael Froman, and Indian Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia. In response to an Ahluwalia’s email requesting assistance as India faces a sharp restriction in the World Bank’s lending, Froman replied:
"We are aware of this issue and we will look into it. We are hearing a lot of noise about the Dow Chemical issue. I trust that you are monitoring it carefully. I am not familiar with all the details, but I think we want to avoid developments which put a chilling effect on our investment relationship."
Here Obama’s Deputy NSA apparently tied potential development aid to India with Dow Chemical’s liability in Bhopal. The White House denies any linkage between the IBRD lending and Dow’s ongoing lack of responsibility. Forman’s statement shows callous disregard for ongoing injustice and lack of accountability 26 years after the disaster. The survivor organizations in India, 5 of which have been protesting in Delhi this past month, have faced infringements on their basic rights, especially through discriminatory police abuse. A threatening statement from the Obama office could further repressive action from Indian Central Government of India.
Following months of safety cuts, on Dec 3, 1984 the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal leaked deadly gas containing Methyl isocyanate (MIC) over the city ofBhopal. In the immediate aftermath 8-12,000 people died. Currently the death toll has risen to approximately 25,000 people. Over 100,000 people are still too sick to work because of long-term health disability.
The Indian Government has been forced to address the Bhopal issue in the recent months following a June 7 verdict convicting the officials of Union Carbide's former Indian subsidiary on charges of criminal negligence. The charges and sentence, equivalent to a traffic violation, enraged the Indian public, as did the fact the Union Carbide and its former CEO Warren Anderson have refused to appear in court to face charges of culpable homicide. Bhopal survivors say that Dow Chemical should not be allowed to continue doing business in India until its subsidiary appears in court and cleans up the site of the disaster.
The International Campaign for Justice for Bhopal (ICJB) is a coalition led by four survivor organizations along with environmental, social justice, progressive Indian, and human rights groups around the world. ICJB works to hold the Indian Government and Dow Chemical Corporation (the current owner of Union Carbide) accountable for the ongoing chemical disaster in Bhopal, India. It was set up to address the grave injustices suffered by the half million Bhopal Gas Disaster survivors.
Deputy National Security Advisor Froman reveals administration’s double standards on corporate accountability for victims of Bhopal Gas Disaster
At a time when the world is focused on corporate accountability in the wake of the BP's Gulf Oil Spill, a leaked email from the Obama administration shows that it values profit over people, when the profit benefits American corporations. The victims of the world’s worst industrial disaster were disappointed to see today that the White House is not pursuing the same levels of accountability from American Dow Chemical as it has from BP. When Dow purchased Union Carbide in 2001, the corporation acquired outstanding liability for the ongoing disaster in Bhopal, which has led to the deaths of an estimated 25,000 people in Bhopal, India following the 1984 Gas Disaster.
Today, Mumbai-based Times Now published an email chain between White House Deputy National Security Advisor Michael Froman, and Indian Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia. In response to an Ahluwalia’s email requesting assistance as India faces a sharp restriction in the World Bank’s lending, Froman replied:
"We are aware of this issue and we will look into it. We are hearing a lot of noise about the Dow Chemical issue. I trust that you are monitoring it carefully. I am not familiar with all the details, but I think we want to avoid developments which put a chilling effect on our investment relationship."
Here Obama’s Deputy NSA apparently tied potential development aid to India with Dow Chemical’s liability in Bhopal. The White House denies any linkage between the IBRD lending and Dow’s ongoing lack of responsibility. Forman’s statement shows callous disregard for ongoing injustice and lack of accountability 26 years after the disaster. The survivor organizations in India, 5 of which have been protesting in Delhi this past month, have faced infringements on their basic rights, especially through discriminatory police abuse. A threatening statement from the Obama office could further repressive action from Indian Central Government of India.
Following months of safety cuts, on Dec 3, 1984 the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal leaked deadly gas containing Methyl isocyanate (MIC) over the city ofBhopal. In the immediate aftermath 8-12,000 people died. Currently the death toll has risen to approximately 25,000 people. Over 100,000 people are still too sick to work because of long-term health disability.
The Indian Government has been forced to address the Bhopal issue in the recent months following a June 7 verdict convicting the officials of Union Carbide's former Indian subsidiary on charges of criminal negligence. The charges and sentence, equivalent to a traffic violation, enraged the Indian public, as did the fact the Union Carbide and its former CEO Warren Anderson have refused to appear in court to face charges of culpable homicide. Bhopal survivors say that Dow Chemical should not be allowed to continue doing business in India until its subsidiary appears in court and cleans up the site of the disaster.
The International Campaign for Justice for Bhopal (ICJB) is a coalition led by four survivor organizations along with environmental, social justice, progressive Indian, and human rights groups around the world. ICJB works to hold the Indian Government and Dow Chemical Corporation (the current owner of Union Carbide) accountable for the ongoing chemical disaster in Bhopal, India. It was set up to address the grave injustices suffered by the half million Bhopal Gas Disaster survivors.
By Madhur Singh
As BP struggles to contain the damage the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has caused to the Gulf of Mexico and to the people whose livelihoods depend on its waters, a legal judgment in the worst industrial catastrophe in history highlights how wrong the aftermath of such disasters can go — not just in terms of a cleanup but in the matter of justice. It is a terrifying lesson in how a corporation can evade full responsibility for one of the most heinous accidents in human history.
On Monday, more than 25 years after 40 tons of highly toxic methyl isocyanate (MIC) was released from a Union Carbide plant in the central Indian city of Bhopal — killing thousands in a matter of hours and over years, rendering hundreds of thousands seriously ill and causing genetic defects in yet-to-be-born generations — a local court announced its verdict. It held eight former employees of Union Carbide India Ltd guilty of criminal negligence and sentenced seven of them to two years in prison and a fine of $2,100. (The eighth defendant died during the course of the 23-year trial.) The convicted former employees were out on bail — of just $500 each — in less than two hours. Union Carbide India, which no longer exists, was fined less than $11,000. (See the legacy of the Bhopal disaster.)
The judgments are likely to be appealed. Given the speed of the wheels of justice in India, the case is likely to outlast most of the Bhopal survivors and the accused. The most prominent name in the latter category is Warren Anderson, the American CEO of Union Carbide, the U.S. parent company. He is now 89 years old. Arrested by Indian police when he visited the disaster site, he was released on bail and flew out of the country. He continues to be a fugitive from Indian law and hence has not been tried. (He is believed to be living somewhere in New York state.) At the same time, no one has been assigned responsibility for cleaning upBhopal's ground zero, which researchers and activists say continues to leach toxic chemicals into the groundwater, used by thousands of families. (See TIME's 1984 cover story on the Bhopal disaster.)
The outcome of the case has ignited outrage and disbelief across India. No less than the Law Minister and a former Chief Justice have said justice has been delayed and denied. The Economic Times newspaper led its front page with the headline "After 25 Years, Another Tragedy Strikes Bhopal." "We are used to being let down," says Rachna Dhingra of the Bhopal Group for Information and Action, her voice catching as she spoke to TIME by phone, "by our government ... now even the judiciary."
The letdowns have been serious and repeated — and apparently preordained because of decisions that facilitated the disaster itself. Investigations over the years have shown that the Bhopal plant design was faulty and that there was next to no emergency preparedness — issues that the parent company in the U.S.apparently knew about, according to the groups that conducted the studies. The company was operating in India with standards unacceptable in the U.S. (See pictures of the Gulf oil spill.)
The Indian government seemed to go out of its way to cushion the experience for Union Carbide. After first suing the company for $3.3 billion in 1985, New Delhiannounced an out-of-court settlement of $470 million in February 1989. Then a 1996 ruling by another Supreme Court judge watered down the charges against the accused from culpable homicide (with maximum punishment of 10 years' jail term) to criminal negligence (maximum sentence two years).
The various governments that have ruled India in the meantime have not taken on Union Carbide, which is now owned by Dow Chemical. Meanwhile, Keshub Mahindra, chairman of Union Carbide India Ltd at the time of the Bhopal disaster and now chairman of India's automobile giant Mahindra & Mahindra, was nominated for a civilian honor, the Padma Bhushan, in 2002. He had to decline in the face of widespread protests.
Although environmental legislation was ramped up in the wake of the Bhopal disaster, companies continue to operate in India in ways that severely — if not as dramatically — pollute the environment and impact people's health and livelihoods. Britain-based mining major Vedanta, for instance, has faced censure from Amnesty International for violating the human rights of communities in Orissa, where it operates bauxite mines. India continues to be the world's e-waste dump. Of late, the government, keen to attract foreign investment to its nascent nuclear energy market, has been pushing a bill to limit the liability of a nuclear-plant operator to $111 million. "We've learned nothing from Bhopal," says Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan. "There is a drive to attract foreign investment overwhelming all other considerations." Opposition parties have already demanded a rethink of the proposed legislation in the face of the Bhopal outcome. (See pictures of people protesting BP.)
There is still outrage that the U.S. refuses to extradite Warren Anderson to face criminal charges in India. New Delhi made the request in 2003, and it was refused the year after. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Robert Blake, reacting to Monday's Bhopal verdict, said, "I don't expect this verdict to reopen any new inquiries or anything like that. On the contrary, we hope that this is going to help to bring closure." The Bhopal activists now plan to file a writ petition in the higher court to admit more charges against Union Carbide and Anderson, seeking an as-yet-unspecified figure for personal and property damages, health monitoring and cleanup of the site, which is likely to run into billions of dollars.
Indians point at the way the U.S. government is now confronting BP — holding it squarely responsible for the oil spill and accountable for all cleanup costs — as a stark contrast to the way their own government has dealt with Union Carbide. The hope in India is that U.S. courts will be more amenable to the requests of Bhopal's victims now that America has a huge environmental disaster in its own backyard. The Bhopal activists say the Indian government must join the case in the U.S. as a plaintiff (indeed, it owns the land on which the Union Carbide factory was located). "Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should be inspired by President Obama's recent commitment toward making BP pay every cent for its oil spill," says Satinath Sarangi of the Bhopal Group for Information and Action. "And the U.S. government must follow the same standards on corporate liability for U.S. corporations operating in India as it expects for corporations operating in the U.S."
See the world's top 10 environmental disasters.
See pictures of critters caught in the Gulf oil spill.
As BP struggles to contain the damage the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has caused to the Gulf of Mexico and to the people whose livelihoods depend on its waters, a legal judgment in the worst industrial catastrophe in history highlights how wrong the aftermath of such disasters can go — not just in terms of a cleanup but in the matter of justice. It is a terrifying lesson in how a corporation can evade full responsibility for one of the most heinous accidents in human history.
On Monday, more than 25 years after 40 tons of highly toxic methyl isocyanate (MIC) was released from a Union Carbide plant in the central Indian city of Bhopal — killing thousands in a matter of hours and over years, rendering hundreds of thousands seriously ill and causing genetic defects in yet-to-be-born generations — a local court announced its verdict. It held eight former employees of Union Carbide India Ltd guilty of criminal negligence and sentenced seven of them to two years in prison and a fine of $2,100. (The eighth defendant died during the course of the 23-year trial.) The convicted former employees were out on bail — of just $500 each — in less than two hours. Union Carbide India, which no longer exists, was fined less than $11,000. (See the legacy of the Bhopal disaster.)
The judgments are likely to be appealed. Given the speed of the wheels of justice in India, the case is likely to outlast most of the Bhopal survivors and the accused. The most prominent name in the latter category is Warren Anderson, the American CEO of Union Carbide, the U.S. parent company. He is now 89 years old. Arrested by Indian police when he visited the disaster site, he was released on bail and flew out of the country. He continues to be a fugitive from Indian law and hence has not been tried. (He is believed to be living somewhere in New York state.) At the same time, no one has been assigned responsibility for cleaning upBhopal's ground zero, which researchers and activists say continues to leach toxic chemicals into the groundwater, used by thousands of families. (See TIME's 1984 cover story on the Bhopal disaster.)
The outcome of the case has ignited outrage and disbelief across India. No less than the Law Minister and a former Chief Justice have said justice has been delayed and denied. The Economic Times newspaper led its front page with the headline "After 25 Years, Another Tragedy Strikes Bhopal." "We are used to being let down," says Rachna Dhingra of the Bhopal Group for Information and Action, her voice catching as she spoke to TIME by phone, "by our government ... now even the judiciary."
The letdowns have been serious and repeated — and apparently preordained because of decisions that facilitated the disaster itself. Investigations over the years have shown that the Bhopal plant design was faulty and that there was next to no emergency preparedness — issues that the parent company in the U.S.apparently knew about, according to the groups that conducted the studies. The company was operating in India with standards unacceptable in the U.S. (See pictures of the Gulf oil spill.)
The Indian government seemed to go out of its way to cushion the experience for Union Carbide. After first suing the company for $3.3 billion in 1985, New Delhiannounced an out-of-court settlement of $470 million in February 1989. Then a 1996 ruling by another Supreme Court judge watered down the charges against the accused from culpable homicide (with maximum punishment of 10 years' jail term) to criminal negligence (maximum sentence two years).
The various governments that have ruled India in the meantime have not taken on Union Carbide, which is now owned by Dow Chemical. Meanwhile, Keshub Mahindra, chairman of Union Carbide India Ltd at the time of the Bhopal disaster and now chairman of India's automobile giant Mahindra & Mahindra, was nominated for a civilian honor, the Padma Bhushan, in 2002. He had to decline in the face of widespread protests.
Although environmental legislation was ramped up in the wake of the Bhopal disaster, companies continue to operate in India in ways that severely — if not as dramatically — pollute the environment and impact people's health and livelihoods. Britain-based mining major Vedanta, for instance, has faced censure from Amnesty International for violating the human rights of communities in Orissa, where it operates bauxite mines. India continues to be the world's e-waste dump. Of late, the government, keen to attract foreign investment to its nascent nuclear energy market, has been pushing a bill to limit the liability of a nuclear-plant operator to $111 million. "We've learned nothing from Bhopal," says Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan. "There is a drive to attract foreign investment overwhelming all other considerations." Opposition parties have already demanded a rethink of the proposed legislation in the face of the Bhopal outcome. (See pictures of people protesting BP.)
There is still outrage that the U.S. refuses to extradite Warren Anderson to face criminal charges in India. New Delhi made the request in 2003, and it was refused the year after. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Robert Blake, reacting to Monday's Bhopal verdict, said, "I don't expect this verdict to reopen any new inquiries or anything like that. On the contrary, we hope that this is going to help to bring closure." The Bhopal activists now plan to file a writ petition in the higher court to admit more charges against Union Carbide and Anderson, seeking an as-yet-unspecified figure for personal and property damages, health monitoring and cleanup of the site, which is likely to run into billions of dollars.
Indians point at the way the U.S. government is now confronting BP — holding it squarely responsible for the oil spill and accountable for all cleanup costs — as a stark contrast to the way their own government has dealt with Union Carbide. The hope in India is that U.S. courts will be more amenable to the requests of Bhopal's victims now that America has a huge environmental disaster in its own backyard. The Bhopal activists say the Indian government must join the case in the U.S. as a plaintiff (indeed, it owns the land on which the Union Carbide factory was located). "Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should be inspired by President Obama's recent commitment toward making BP pay every cent for its oil spill," says Satinath Sarangi of the Bhopal Group for Information and Action. "And the U.S. government must follow the same standards on corporate liability for U.S. corporations operating in India as it expects for corporations operating in the U.S."
See the world's top 10 environmental disasters.
See pictures of critters caught in the Gulf oil spill.
BP and Union Carbide:
Corporate Responsibility or Corporate Liability
by Mukesh Williams
Two momentous events separate in time and location have seared our consciousness—the British (Beyond) Petroleum Gulf Coast oil spill on April 20, 2010 and the American Union Carbide Bhopal Gas Tragedy in December 3, 1984. Twenty five years separate these two environmental and human disasters but the greed of big multinational corporations in connivance with state and central agencies still remains insatiable. With a keen eye on profit, big companies compromise safety standards, falsify data, overstate their strength, underestimate their drawbacks, bribe officials, lobby for protection and misinform the public. It is rather difficult to fuse ethical economic standards with ravenous profit-making schemes. Though oil and gas stink most multinational corporations love it.
The neo-classical model of economics has reduced our land and environment to a mere abstraction that can be exploited in terms of supply and demand without compunction. Big companies continue to wreck havoc on our human and natural systems devastating our lives in the name of human progress and development. At such moments we often wonder where is the fashionable concept called social corporate responsibility that is often taught as a philanthropic and ethical tool in business management departments to unsuspecting students. Corporate greed like all other forms of human greed need to be kept under strict check by international pay czars or up-to-date legislation based on global standards with teeth for swift punishment. Also the rhetoric of corporate companies must be separated from what they actually do, how long they do what they do, and what they hide. A constant monitoring system both on the part of governments and private groups must be effectively installed in collaboration with the media to thwart their nefarious activities and ulterior motives.
Union Carbide Bhopal Gas Tragedy 1984
Early this month the Indian Supreme Court passed a verdict indicting the American CEO of Union Carbide Warren Anderson who was allowed to escape to the United States twenty five years ago possibly with the connivance of either the state or central agencies in India. Now both the Congress government and state ministries are trying to escape their involvement in the murky plot. Who wanted the truth then? And who wants the truth now? The declassified CIA report of December 8, 1984 and recent revelations by the principal secretary of Rajiv Gandhi, P. C. Alexander, point to political intrigue involving both state and center in releasing Anderson. Now some leaders claim that the worsening law and order situation in Bhopal in the wake of the accident forced Chief Minister Arjun Singh to provide a safe corridor to Anderson out of the country. Some like Rajinder Puri even see the direct hand of Rajeev Gandhi himself. It seems that US President Ronald Reagan phoned Rajeev Gandhi to release Anderson. The media would like us to believe that even P. Chidambaram and Kamal Nath were campaigning for Dow Chemical to get special concessions so it could invest in India. The chief minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi criticized Sonia Gandhi for the complicity of the Congress Party in the murky affair but it has come to light that he had signed an MOU between state public sector company Gujarat Alkalies and Chemicals Ltd and Dow Chemicals in April 2008. This is the case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Seemingly neither the American nor the Indian establishments saw the industrial disaster as the responsibility of the MNC Union Carbide. The company was bought by Dow Chemical Company in 1999 further camouflaging accountability. Dow Chemical was the second biggest Texas polluting company in 2009 and paid 1.14 million USD on eight counts of pollution. Now it is investing again in India with the syrupy connivance of people in power.
Even after 25 years the public would like to know if it was Arjun Singh the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh or influential persons in Rajiv Gandhi’s government at the center or the prime minister himself responsible for giving a free passage to Anderson to fly back to the U.S. India has an extradition treaty with the United States and under changed circumstances today when America itself is suffering from another MNC BP, there might be possibility of bringing the fugitive CEO back to justice if India can put together enough evidence. Greenpeace believes that in the 1982 safety audit of the Bhopal factory in the US addressed thirty safety hazards. Anderson knew about them and compromised safety standards causing the death of 20,000 people and affecting 578,000 to date. To make the tragedy reprehensible the out of court settlement made Union Carbide pay a sum of 470 million USD instead of 3.5 billion initially demanded, with each victim getting a measly sum of 550 USD in 1989. In the same year Exxon oil spill in Prince William Sound Alaska forced the company to pay 5 billion USD of which it paid half. Even today there is 425 tons of hazardous waste in Bhopal left by Union Carbide that needs to be cleaned. Who will do it—Dow Chemical or the Indian state government?
Anderson now 90 years lives in a luxury home worth 900,000 USD at 929 Ocean Road, Bridgehampton, Long Island, New York. He is now less of a fugitive and more of a monarch (Sonnenfeld, 1991). It is obvious that in many cases justice delayed is justice denied. Should we stop big companies from doing business? Should we impose heavy penalty on erring foreign companies? Or should we reform the slow and cumbrous judicial system? Jeremy Kahn writing in The Faster Times calls for judicial reform rather than protectionism (Kahn, 2010). The Indian Parliament is debating a law capping liability for foreign nuclear power companies involved in disasters to pay 100 million USD a pittance when compared to the US demand of 100 billion USD from BP. Then Indian law capping liability lacks teeth and may not cover non-nuclear companies. So they can pollute as of before.
British or Beyond Petroleum
The British are desperate to save BP from going down by bringing silly arguments like BP has been a part of America since it merged with American energy Amoco in 1998 and acquired the Gulf of Mexico drilling rights (The Independent, “Cameron Warns Obama over Criticizing BP” 13 June 2010). The new British Prime Minister David Cameron has also chipped in underscoring the sustained “economic importance” of BP to both Britain and America. American President Barrack Obama however is needled by US senators, whose states have been ravaged by oil spills, to push for 100 billion USD compensation, which if realized would force BP to go bankrupt. The British media believes that Obama’s anti-British rhetoric is testing Anglo-American relations. Obama claims that American relation with Britain has not been affected. The environmental disaster caused by a British multinational company should have nothing to do with national identity but corporate liability. Obama has called BP the Swedish Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, who earns a fat cat salary of 3.8 million USD, to the White House for consultations.
The British are cut up with Obama’s off the cuff remark that he would have fired BP’s chief executive Tony Hayward if the latter had worked for him. With US pressure rising BP may not pay its quarterly dividends which are essential to maintain equilibrium for UK pension funds. The 6.7% shares lunge in the FTSE has adversely affected pension funds in the UK. If the status quo is not altered by American pressure groups BP might only have to pay 20 to 37 billion USD provided it can be proved that BP failed to meet safety regulations in the deep sea oil drilling.
Now BP is using two kinds of dispersants manufactured by Nalco—Corexit 9500 and Corexit EC 9527A. Corexit (deodorized kerosene) is banned in the United Kingdom as even 2.61 ppm can kill 50% of fish in 96 hours. The dispersants turn the oil slick into small particulates which settle on the sea bed and make things look clean on the surface, but they destroy marine life below. Corexit however is on the approved list of dispersants by the US Environmental Protection Agency though the EPA has advised BP to use less toxic dispersants. BP however refused citing lack of availability. The toxicity of the present dispersants increase when they get mixed with oil. BP has links with Nalco. BPs has poured 1,621,000 gallons of dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico to contain the oil spill and has ordered for an additional 805,000 gallons. The ill effects of the dispersant on humans can result in various diseases, reduced growth, kidney failure and death.
The British rely on BP as the national icon and savior of British deficit. Last year BP paid 1.4 billion dollars in taxes on its profits. The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is too far away for the ordinary Britons but the pension funds and BP dividends are closer home.
It stands to logic that a “large, wealthy company” which is eager to pay 1.8 billion quarterly dividends to its shareholders and whose last year’s sales and operating revenues were 239 billion USD, should pay 100 billion USD in damages. Since the oil spill began on April 22, 2010 till June 15, 2010, 55 days have gone by. And if we estimate the oil spill at 50,000 barrels a day it comes to 27500000 gallons. If each gallon spill is fined 4300 USD as the US is suggesting the actual fine would come to 118,250,000,000 that is about 118 billion USD. These figures may not be exact and are vigorously contested by BP which would like to work with half the numbers. However the end is not in sight. According to BP officials it would not be before August that the spill can be contained. If this is true then the figure could be doubled and BP would have to pay damages amounting to all the revenue it earned through sales last year.
Both the American government and public are hopeful that since earlier erring companies like Texaco was forced into bankruptcy in 1987 after paying 10.53 billion USD claim, BP too would have to cough up huge sums. And BP’s reputation does not help a wee bit whatever they claim to the contrary in those daily briefings on the Internet. BP is known as one of the “ten worst corporations” in the world when evaluated on their environmental pollution and infringement of their human rights record. It also has the dubious distinction of being the most polluting company in the United States vis-à-vis EPA toxic release data of 1991. It has been fined 1.7 million USD for burning polluted gases at its Ohio refinery. It also paid 10 million USD fine to the EPA in July 2000 for mismanaging the US oil refineries. The US Public Interest Research Group or PIRG claims that between Jan 1997 and March 1998, BP was involved in 104 oil spills. Obviously a lot of wealthy shareholders, 37% on the British and 31 % on the American side do not want this to happen.
BP’s propaganda regarding its CSR is highly effective as it tries to highlight only the positive aspects of what it has done. In the past BP has invested some money in alternate fuel and green technologies but it has been criticized for proving private funds to public universities of the California Bay Area and closing down its green technology office in London. Its critics call its green technology projects as green washing projects. BP is also a leading producer of solar panels and holds 20% of the global market in this area and it uses this fact to great advantage for image building. It operates the ampm convenience store chain in the US and other countries and is the leading producer of wind power. It is also involved in funding local and international politics. It gave 5 million USD to democrats and republicans in 1990 and spent 16 million USD in lobbing at the US Congress. The moral of the story is that it is not as clean as it claims, nor concerned with the lives of common people unless it serves its purpose or national interest.
BP in its regional spill plan for the Gulf of Mexico and site plan for the Deepwater Horizon rig understated the dangers and overstated its preparedness in the eventuality of a leak. Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal criticized BP for being ‘reactive’ and not ‘proactive’ from the very beginning. Now BP’s report is examined quite critically and it has been discovered that an expert professor listed in its 2009 response plan died in 2005. It lists walruses, sea otters, sea lions and seals as “sensitive biological resources” when none inhabit the Gulf of Mexico. Also names and phone numbers of marine specialists and marine network officers in Louisiana and Florida are not correct. The Justice Department has to find evidence that BP destroyed key documents or lied to the government (The Daily Yomiuri, June 11, 2010).
Corporate Social Responsibility
Corporate social responsibility is one of the modern movements like environmental or tribal movements that have become the buzz word in both business and academic circles. Both businessmen and academics are cashing upon the divine benefits of CSR making more money for their companies and jobs for their departments. Middle level managers and professors have extolled about the virtues of CSR with other buzz words such as people friendly, eco friendly and sustainable. We have come to hear about the unselfishly egalitarian aspects of CSR. It is really a wondrous transformation of the greed-driven capitalist economy of which the corporate system is a byproduct.
Most critics of CSR are not against it per se but against the recent hype associated with it as a panacea of all corporate evils. It is hard to believe that companies are out there not to make profit. We are not talking of basket cases but any company worth its salt aggressively markets itself to make real profit. And what’s wrong in it. Companies are floated for this very purpose both by the shareholders and managers. But in a changed climate of political advocacy of human rights against corporate greed, CSR seems to a new combative tool for companies to be both politically correct and make money as usual. The problem however is that if business corporations give an inch they take a mile.
Definitions and Objections to CSR
In the United States CSR is seen as philanthropy while others see it as improving society, workforce and government. There are arguments in favor of CSR where it is believed that it can support the social fabric of society and promote responsible business practices. But CSR is usually presented as a marketing strategy that articulates business performance rather than encompass social and ethical standards. The recent collapse of American business and manufacturing sectors has revealed the gap between CSR and actual self-regulation. Some CSR models take the company beyond the law into providing public benefits, increase sales, market shares, brand position, retain employees, reduce operating costs and increase investments (Baron, 2001 7-45). There are models of CSR that take into account competitive advantage, positioning, commitment, organizational integration, shareholder’s cooperation and self-correction. CSR helps to create a positive image of a company and brings it rich dividends. Though there are many definitions of CSR we must see CSR as the way business companies conduct their core business not the sops they give to society.
A common objection leveled against CSR comes from the advocates of the laissez faire system who complain that CSR infringes upon the human rights of company shareholders as company managers unilaterally divert company resources to society in the name of better management (Sternberg, 1999). Detractors of CSR complain that there should be a stakeholder claim in CSR as to how it is done. A business corporation should be fair and honest to both the shareholders and customers. CSR therefore depends on the model a company chooses and the reasons for its choice. If a company uses CSR for image building through philanthropy it leads to both ethical and human rights problems. You cannot give away money which ultimately belongs to someone else. On the flipside it also follows that if stakeholders possess sole rights they also should bear full responsibility when there are environmental or social disasters. However if a CSR model seeks a consensus of both stakeholders and company managers then it must become more open to the public. CSR must concentrate upon building customer relationships, attracting talented people, conducting risk management and building the company’s reputation.
Corporate Reputation and CSR
Corporate business companies such as BP or Coca Cola cannot ignore their reputation as about 90 to 95 percent of their assets are intangibles and the remainder immovable property. Big companies such as General Electric, IBM or Motorola use the rhetoric of CSR to show public responsibility and environmental concerns but while conducting hard-nosed bullying business practices are not so transparent in their dealings. A few years ago Sir John Browne of BP was praised for his aggressive promotion of BP while providing environmental leadership but now we come to know that all along BP compromised on safety costs in oil drilling. This is happening in a powerful country like the United States where both politics and laws are strong. Had it happened in a developing or a poor country, things would have been quite different. BP would have gotten away cheaply and Union Carbide once did.
CSR invariably works for companies and countries with resources and political clout. It is not for companies which are small and weak. Small companies fight for survival, cut costs to make ends meet and do not possess precious resources to waste on CSR. Nor can they follow up on legal battles if they come under the scanner. They function in a world of poverty, deprivation and loss.
Conclusion
It is no longer tenable to follow neo-classical economics of Smith, Mill and Bacon that the world is made for us and for us alone. We must eschew the economic theories of Pareto and Hayek as we can no longer treat nature as a mere variable and commodity. Depreciation of ecological assets has taken place at an increasing fast rate. Economics should no longer be about inflation, economic value of goods or maximization of income. It should take into account our natural world as property that belongs to every one of us (McNeill, Padua, Rangarajan, 2010 1-3). We must learn new lessons from ecological economics and environmental history and change the way we do business. We must rein in corporate greed by modifying corporate social responsibility (CSR) to corporate legal liability (CLL) and connect it to governmental deterrence, legal action and international treaties to scare the hell out of the merchants of greed and death who have many supporters in different parts of the world.
Corporate Responsibility or Corporate Liability
by Mukesh Williams
Two momentous events separate in time and location have seared our consciousness—the British (Beyond) Petroleum Gulf Coast oil spill on April 20, 2010 and the American Union Carbide Bhopal Gas Tragedy in December 3, 1984. Twenty five years separate these two environmental and human disasters but the greed of big multinational corporations in connivance with state and central agencies still remains insatiable. With a keen eye on profit, big companies compromise safety standards, falsify data, overstate their strength, underestimate their drawbacks, bribe officials, lobby for protection and misinform the public. It is rather difficult to fuse ethical economic standards with ravenous profit-making schemes. Though oil and gas stink most multinational corporations love it.
The neo-classical model of economics has reduced our land and environment to a mere abstraction that can be exploited in terms of supply and demand without compunction. Big companies continue to wreck havoc on our human and natural systems devastating our lives in the name of human progress and development. At such moments we often wonder where is the fashionable concept called social corporate responsibility that is often taught as a philanthropic and ethical tool in business management departments to unsuspecting students. Corporate greed like all other forms of human greed need to be kept under strict check by international pay czars or up-to-date legislation based on global standards with teeth for swift punishment. Also the rhetoric of corporate companies must be separated from what they actually do, how long they do what they do, and what they hide. A constant monitoring system both on the part of governments and private groups must be effectively installed in collaboration with the media to thwart their nefarious activities and ulterior motives.
Union Carbide Bhopal Gas Tragedy 1984
Early this month the Indian Supreme Court passed a verdict indicting the American CEO of Union Carbide Warren Anderson who was allowed to escape to the United States twenty five years ago possibly with the connivance of either the state or central agencies in India. Now both the Congress government and state ministries are trying to escape their involvement in the murky plot. Who wanted the truth then? And who wants the truth now? The declassified CIA report of December 8, 1984 and recent revelations by the principal secretary of Rajiv Gandhi, P. C. Alexander, point to political intrigue involving both state and center in releasing Anderson. Now some leaders claim that the worsening law and order situation in Bhopal in the wake of the accident forced Chief Minister Arjun Singh to provide a safe corridor to Anderson out of the country. Some like Rajinder Puri even see the direct hand of Rajeev Gandhi himself. It seems that US President Ronald Reagan phoned Rajeev Gandhi to release Anderson. The media would like us to believe that even P. Chidambaram and Kamal Nath were campaigning for Dow Chemical to get special concessions so it could invest in India. The chief minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi criticized Sonia Gandhi for the complicity of the Congress Party in the murky affair but it has come to light that he had signed an MOU between state public sector company Gujarat Alkalies and Chemicals Ltd and Dow Chemicals in April 2008. This is the case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Seemingly neither the American nor the Indian establishments saw the industrial disaster as the responsibility of the MNC Union Carbide. The company was bought by Dow Chemical Company in 1999 further camouflaging accountability. Dow Chemical was the second biggest Texas polluting company in 2009 and paid 1.14 million USD on eight counts of pollution. Now it is investing again in India with the syrupy connivance of people in power.
Even after 25 years the public would like to know if it was Arjun Singh the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh or influential persons in Rajiv Gandhi’s government at the center or the prime minister himself responsible for giving a free passage to Anderson to fly back to the U.S. India has an extradition treaty with the United States and under changed circumstances today when America itself is suffering from another MNC BP, there might be possibility of bringing the fugitive CEO back to justice if India can put together enough evidence. Greenpeace believes that in the 1982 safety audit of the Bhopal factory in the US addressed thirty safety hazards. Anderson knew about them and compromised safety standards causing the death of 20,000 people and affecting 578,000 to date. To make the tragedy reprehensible the out of court settlement made Union Carbide pay a sum of 470 million USD instead of 3.5 billion initially demanded, with each victim getting a measly sum of 550 USD in 1989. In the same year Exxon oil spill in Prince William Sound Alaska forced the company to pay 5 billion USD of which it paid half. Even today there is 425 tons of hazardous waste in Bhopal left by Union Carbide that needs to be cleaned. Who will do it—Dow Chemical or the Indian state government?
Anderson now 90 years lives in a luxury home worth 900,000 USD at 929 Ocean Road, Bridgehampton, Long Island, New York. He is now less of a fugitive and more of a monarch (Sonnenfeld, 1991). It is obvious that in many cases justice delayed is justice denied. Should we stop big companies from doing business? Should we impose heavy penalty on erring foreign companies? Or should we reform the slow and cumbrous judicial system? Jeremy Kahn writing in The Faster Times calls for judicial reform rather than protectionism (Kahn, 2010). The Indian Parliament is debating a law capping liability for foreign nuclear power companies involved in disasters to pay 100 million USD a pittance when compared to the US demand of 100 billion USD from BP. Then Indian law capping liability lacks teeth and may not cover non-nuclear companies. So they can pollute as of before.
British or Beyond Petroleum
The British are desperate to save BP from going down by bringing silly arguments like BP has been a part of America since it merged with American energy Amoco in 1998 and acquired the Gulf of Mexico drilling rights (The Independent, “Cameron Warns Obama over Criticizing BP” 13 June 2010). The new British Prime Minister David Cameron has also chipped in underscoring the sustained “economic importance” of BP to both Britain and America. American President Barrack Obama however is needled by US senators, whose states have been ravaged by oil spills, to push for 100 billion USD compensation, which if realized would force BP to go bankrupt. The British media believes that Obama’s anti-British rhetoric is testing Anglo-American relations. Obama claims that American relation with Britain has not been affected. The environmental disaster caused by a British multinational company should have nothing to do with national identity but corporate liability. Obama has called BP the Swedish Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, who earns a fat cat salary of 3.8 million USD, to the White House for consultations.
The British are cut up with Obama’s off the cuff remark that he would have fired BP’s chief executive Tony Hayward if the latter had worked for him. With US pressure rising BP may not pay its quarterly dividends which are essential to maintain equilibrium for UK pension funds. The 6.7% shares lunge in the FTSE has adversely affected pension funds in the UK. If the status quo is not altered by American pressure groups BP might only have to pay 20 to 37 billion USD provided it can be proved that BP failed to meet safety regulations in the deep sea oil drilling.
Now BP is using two kinds of dispersants manufactured by Nalco—Corexit 9500 and Corexit EC 9527A. Corexit (deodorized kerosene) is banned in the United Kingdom as even 2.61 ppm can kill 50% of fish in 96 hours. The dispersants turn the oil slick into small particulates which settle on the sea bed and make things look clean on the surface, but they destroy marine life below. Corexit however is on the approved list of dispersants by the US Environmental Protection Agency though the EPA has advised BP to use less toxic dispersants. BP however refused citing lack of availability. The toxicity of the present dispersants increase when they get mixed with oil. BP has links with Nalco. BPs has poured 1,621,000 gallons of dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico to contain the oil spill and has ordered for an additional 805,000 gallons. The ill effects of the dispersant on humans can result in various diseases, reduced growth, kidney failure and death.
The British rely on BP as the national icon and savior of British deficit. Last year BP paid 1.4 billion dollars in taxes on its profits. The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is too far away for the ordinary Britons but the pension funds and BP dividends are closer home.
It stands to logic that a “large, wealthy company” which is eager to pay 1.8 billion quarterly dividends to its shareholders and whose last year’s sales and operating revenues were 239 billion USD, should pay 100 billion USD in damages. Since the oil spill began on April 22, 2010 till June 15, 2010, 55 days have gone by. And if we estimate the oil spill at 50,000 barrels a day it comes to 27500000 gallons. If each gallon spill is fined 4300 USD as the US is suggesting the actual fine would come to 118,250,000,000 that is about 118 billion USD. These figures may not be exact and are vigorously contested by BP which would like to work with half the numbers. However the end is not in sight. According to BP officials it would not be before August that the spill can be contained. If this is true then the figure could be doubled and BP would have to pay damages amounting to all the revenue it earned through sales last year.
Both the American government and public are hopeful that since earlier erring companies like Texaco was forced into bankruptcy in 1987 after paying 10.53 billion USD claim, BP too would have to cough up huge sums. And BP’s reputation does not help a wee bit whatever they claim to the contrary in those daily briefings on the Internet. BP is known as one of the “ten worst corporations” in the world when evaluated on their environmental pollution and infringement of their human rights record. It also has the dubious distinction of being the most polluting company in the United States vis-à-vis EPA toxic release data of 1991. It has been fined 1.7 million USD for burning polluted gases at its Ohio refinery. It also paid 10 million USD fine to the EPA in July 2000 for mismanaging the US oil refineries. The US Public Interest Research Group or PIRG claims that between Jan 1997 and March 1998, BP was involved in 104 oil spills. Obviously a lot of wealthy shareholders, 37% on the British and 31 % on the American side do not want this to happen.
BP’s propaganda regarding its CSR is highly effective as it tries to highlight only the positive aspects of what it has done. In the past BP has invested some money in alternate fuel and green technologies but it has been criticized for proving private funds to public universities of the California Bay Area and closing down its green technology office in London. Its critics call its green technology projects as green washing projects. BP is also a leading producer of solar panels and holds 20% of the global market in this area and it uses this fact to great advantage for image building. It operates the ampm convenience store chain in the US and other countries and is the leading producer of wind power. It is also involved in funding local and international politics. It gave 5 million USD to democrats and republicans in 1990 and spent 16 million USD in lobbing at the US Congress. The moral of the story is that it is not as clean as it claims, nor concerned with the lives of common people unless it serves its purpose or national interest.
BP in its regional spill plan for the Gulf of Mexico and site plan for the Deepwater Horizon rig understated the dangers and overstated its preparedness in the eventuality of a leak. Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal criticized BP for being ‘reactive’ and not ‘proactive’ from the very beginning. Now BP’s report is examined quite critically and it has been discovered that an expert professor listed in its 2009 response plan died in 2005. It lists walruses, sea otters, sea lions and seals as “sensitive biological resources” when none inhabit the Gulf of Mexico. Also names and phone numbers of marine specialists and marine network officers in Louisiana and Florida are not correct. The Justice Department has to find evidence that BP destroyed key documents or lied to the government (The Daily Yomiuri, June 11, 2010).
Corporate Social Responsibility
Corporate social responsibility is one of the modern movements like environmental or tribal movements that have become the buzz word in both business and academic circles. Both businessmen and academics are cashing upon the divine benefits of CSR making more money for their companies and jobs for their departments. Middle level managers and professors have extolled about the virtues of CSR with other buzz words such as people friendly, eco friendly and sustainable. We have come to hear about the unselfishly egalitarian aspects of CSR. It is really a wondrous transformation of the greed-driven capitalist economy of which the corporate system is a byproduct.
Most critics of CSR are not against it per se but against the recent hype associated with it as a panacea of all corporate evils. It is hard to believe that companies are out there not to make profit. We are not talking of basket cases but any company worth its salt aggressively markets itself to make real profit. And what’s wrong in it. Companies are floated for this very purpose both by the shareholders and managers. But in a changed climate of political advocacy of human rights against corporate greed, CSR seems to a new combative tool for companies to be both politically correct and make money as usual. The problem however is that if business corporations give an inch they take a mile.
Definitions and Objections to CSR
In the United States CSR is seen as philanthropy while others see it as improving society, workforce and government. There are arguments in favor of CSR where it is believed that it can support the social fabric of society and promote responsible business practices. But CSR is usually presented as a marketing strategy that articulates business performance rather than encompass social and ethical standards. The recent collapse of American business and manufacturing sectors has revealed the gap between CSR and actual self-regulation. Some CSR models take the company beyond the law into providing public benefits, increase sales, market shares, brand position, retain employees, reduce operating costs and increase investments (Baron, 2001 7-45). There are models of CSR that take into account competitive advantage, positioning, commitment, organizational integration, shareholder’s cooperation and self-correction. CSR helps to create a positive image of a company and brings it rich dividends. Though there are many definitions of CSR we must see CSR as the way business companies conduct their core business not the sops they give to society.
A common objection leveled against CSR comes from the advocates of the laissez faire system who complain that CSR infringes upon the human rights of company shareholders as company managers unilaterally divert company resources to society in the name of better management (Sternberg, 1999). Detractors of CSR complain that there should be a stakeholder claim in CSR as to how it is done. A business corporation should be fair and honest to both the shareholders and customers. CSR therefore depends on the model a company chooses and the reasons for its choice. If a company uses CSR for image building through philanthropy it leads to both ethical and human rights problems. You cannot give away money which ultimately belongs to someone else. On the flipside it also follows that if stakeholders possess sole rights they also should bear full responsibility when there are environmental or social disasters. However if a CSR model seeks a consensus of both stakeholders and company managers then it must become more open to the public. CSR must concentrate upon building customer relationships, attracting talented people, conducting risk management and building the company’s reputation.
Corporate Reputation and CSR
Corporate business companies such as BP or Coca Cola cannot ignore their reputation as about 90 to 95 percent of their assets are intangibles and the remainder immovable property. Big companies such as General Electric, IBM or Motorola use the rhetoric of CSR to show public responsibility and environmental concerns but while conducting hard-nosed bullying business practices are not so transparent in their dealings. A few years ago Sir John Browne of BP was praised for his aggressive promotion of BP while providing environmental leadership but now we come to know that all along BP compromised on safety costs in oil drilling. This is happening in a powerful country like the United States where both politics and laws are strong. Had it happened in a developing or a poor country, things would have been quite different. BP would have gotten away cheaply and Union Carbide once did.
CSR invariably works for companies and countries with resources and political clout. It is not for companies which are small and weak. Small companies fight for survival, cut costs to make ends meet and do not possess precious resources to waste on CSR. Nor can they follow up on legal battles if they come under the scanner. They function in a world of poverty, deprivation and loss.
Conclusion
It is no longer tenable to follow neo-classical economics of Smith, Mill and Bacon that the world is made for us and for us alone. We must eschew the economic theories of Pareto and Hayek as we can no longer treat nature as a mere variable and commodity. Depreciation of ecological assets has taken place at an increasing fast rate. Economics should no longer be about inflation, economic value of goods or maximization of income. It should take into account our natural world as property that belongs to every one of us (McNeill, Padua, Rangarajan, 2010 1-3). We must learn new lessons from ecological economics and environmental history and change the way we do business. We must rein in corporate greed by modifying corporate social responsibility (CSR) to corporate legal liability (CLL) and connect it to governmental deterrence, legal action and international treaties to scare the hell out of the merchants of greed and death who have many supporters in different parts of the world.
America's Corrupt Legal System - A Danger to All
by Dr Les Sachs
The tragic reality of the world's biggest corrupt legal system -America's rigged courts, bribed judges, fake and phony trials, extortion by lawyers, and over 2 million prisoners in the USA gulag. Why USA "justice" is not like in Hollywood movies, and why YOU could be the next victim on USA territory - innocent and sent to prison, or strapped to a table and put to death; or robbed of your life savings by American lawyers. Why YOU can be tortured, have your freedom and rights taken away, and why people in America are afraid to help you, or even tell what happened to you. The recent pattern of American violations of international law are ultimately based in the corruption of the USA domestic legal system. Phony USA courts are very dangerous even for travellers and visitors to America, who can easily wind up among the USA's more than 2 million prisoners, or lose all their family's possessions to corrupt American lawyers. All world citizens should know how the corrupt USA legal system, is a danger to every traveller, visitor, and guest worker from overseas, and to every individual who takes the risky step of entering upon American territory. Just ask the overseas families of prisoners who were put to death inside the USA, with their embassies never even being informed that they were arrested - or the many foreign people serving hugely long prison terms in America, after they were jailed on flimsy tainted "evidence" from criminal snitches. The reality is that the United States of America, which proclaims itself the "land of freedom", has the most dishonest, dangerous and crooked legal system of any developed nation. Legal corruption is covering America like a blanket. The corruption of the USA legal system is well-known, but also well-hidden, by the news services of America's corporate-owned media. The US media companies are afraid both of reprisal, and of the social revolution that would come from exposing the truth. Here is what the US media companies know, but are afraid to tell you about American "justice".
Concentration camps with concrete walls
America has the largest prison gulag in the entire world - yes, right there in the USA, the self-proclaimed "land of freedom". The starting point for understanding anything about the USA, is to digest the fact that just this one country, the United States of America, has twenty-five percent of ALL of the prisoners in the entire world.
More than 2 million prisoners - more than 1 out of every 150 people in America - are behind bars in the American gulag. This is now the world's biggest system of what are effectively concentration camps, though most of these prisoners are behind masonry walls and inside prison buildings.
For minorities, the statistics are even more brutal. For example, the USA is now imprisoning about 1 out of every 36 people in its black population. American "justice" is especially focused on jailing young black males.
Quite amazingly, Americans and the American government, continually criticize the legal systems and so-called "political" legal proceedings in other countries such as China, Russia, and even Belgium among many other places. Yet, for example, the proportion of prisoners is 30 times higher in the USA than in China, even though China is a country regularly criticized and denounced by the USA government.
No one imprisons people as readily, or casually, as does America. As you learn more about America's horrifying legal system, you find out how easily and carelessly America arrests people, and tosses innocent people into prison. It is estimated that America has at least 100,000 completely innocent people in jail, but the statistics of innocence may well run far higher. The number of people known to be innocent, and yet who were actually sentenced to death in recent years in America, is already running into the hundreds.
The USA jailing of more than 2 million people is also, quite literally, a revival of slavery and slave labor, on a scale not seen since the days of the Nazis. USA business corporations are using these prisoners as a giant slave labor pool. Prisoners are forced to produce goods and products while earning mere pennies per hour, which they sometimes have to pay back to the prison for their own upkeep. The expanding system of USA prison slave labor is not only a major source of business profit, but also a wedge to drive down the wages of workers outside the prison walls.
This USA policy, of using mass casual imprisonment as a way to revive slavery, is targeted particularly at minorities, but ends up affecting all working people. Supervised by malicious judges and corrupt lawyers, this culture of mass prisons and slave labor is sold to the citizens by creating a psychology of fear among USA residents. This climate of fear is nourished in the USA by both the media and the government, who work together with the judges and lawyers to maintain the whole crooked game.
Of America's more than 2 million prisoners, about 50,000 are known to be foreign citizens. This proportion might seem small, but remember that 50,000 prisoners is more than the entire prison population of many other countries. It only appears as a small percentage, because of America's obsession with jailing its own people, who have had more time to get caught in America's web of legal horror.
The USA is extremely casual about the jailing of foreigners, and not honouring their rights under international law or treaties and agreements. Often, foreign citizens have been sentenced to death, while the USA didn't even bother to notify the foreign government that their citizens were arrested. Several other governments are working hard just to try and obtain even the most primitive judicial rights for their own nationals, who have been seized and held in abusive conditions by the USA empire. And yet, the United States of America somehow still brags about its own legal system, while criticizing other countries. Understanding that America has such a huge percentage of even its own people in prison, is to start to understand the subconscious fear behind much of American life. Before you set foot in America, you should have a clear picture of the terror of America's legal system - the judges and lawyers and money and bribery, that have made this system of fear so pervasive. There is not yet enough public media information about America's domestic legal horrors, horrors which have been rapidly increasing. And the American public, even the victims of its legal system, have a hard time realizing why it is so hard to fight legal corruption there. The situation is so bad, that a social explosion is beginning inside America. You can read some news stories - about people murdering judges, or attacking the families of judges, or people setting fire to courthouses in the USA - and see the pattern that is emerging, even though the news media are afraid to connect the dots and suggest what might be behind all these events. America is trying to maintain its myths about its legal system, even while the desperate reality of life inside the USA is starting to blow back into escalating social upheaval.
USA torture and illegal jailing overseas, starts with USA domestic torture and illegal jailing at home
The world press has documented clear violations of human and legal rights by America in its overseas jails, such as the infamous situations in Guantanamo and occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, and the even more secret network of prisons in places like Diego Garcia or on board American ships.
But the problem is much bigger, than America's legal abuses under its military invasions and "war on terrorism". These USA violations of international law, are consistent with the corruption in America's home legal system within its own borders, and have partly evolved from America's legal abuses against its own citizens and residents.
American prisons are often horrible, with lots of torment of prisoners, like you would expect in some petty dictatorship. Conditions are brutal in USA jails; rape and beatings are common, and there is little help for abused inmates. In addition to the many official USA executions, numerous people are also illegally killed in jail cells, "mysteriously" said to have hanged themselves or "found stabbed to death".
Scandals of overseas prison abuse, as in the USA-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, have arisen from sources much deeper than America's foreign policy. These scandals are in part replications of inmate abuse inside of America's domestic prison gulag. Without diminishing the brutality of the crimes committed by Americans in Iraqi prisons, it is also true that such crimes are consistent with the brutality of prisons inside America.
In the regular functioning of the USA courts, America's domestic lawyers and judges, threaten people with illegal jailing, and rape, torture and murder in jail, just like the threats used by Americans against Iraqi subjects of the American occupation. America will play the song about "just a few bad apples in the barrel" whenever an abuse scandal gets exposed, either domestically or abroad, but the cover-up of such abuse is more the routine response.
Theoretically, torture and abuse is totally outlawed by America's Constitution, but some of the nice words in America's Constitution hold little power anymore, despite how often people quote them. The Americans who still believe the Constitution protects them, are mostly those people who haven't yet dealt with the judges and lawyers of America's corrupt legal system.
America's Constitution and Bill of Rights are nearly dead, not just because the judges will no longer enforce them, but even more because America's lawyers will not even fight for them. The two American "political parties" are not fighting for them, either, and America's news media are also very passive. If you look at America in depth, you can see there has been a widespread moral collapse in America's legal and political structures. This means that America's legal system has become largely a tool of government terror, and of bribery for the rich and the powerful. The average person is just fodder for the meat-grinder of America's courts.
America's lies and sleazy arguments to make excuses for torture, or to deny people the rights of the Geneva convention, or holding people for many years without charges, are also just an extension of the deviousness in America's domestic legal system. Inside America, neither its laws nor its Constitution nor the facts nor evidence nor anything else, no longer have real authority inside the American courts.
All that's left is what American lawyers and judges call "the game". As part of playing this game, USA lawyers and judges just twist words around, in order to produce any excuse, however flimsy, to achieve their objective, whether that be to jail an innocent person, or give the verdict that was sought by the big company that paid the big bribe through its law firm.
It is an endlessly devious manipulation of words and phrases to get the desired result, just devious falsehood and lies backed by the naked power of the judges. The only "real" part is the power that the judges and lawyers hold in America, to jail you and take away your property. The words of the law don't protect you in the USA, because American judges and lawyers have no scruples about bending them to mean the opposite of what they say.
America's lawyers are controlled by the judges, and don't really work for you - that's why they sell you out to the government, or to the big companies that pay bribes
There's some very special aspects about the way American lawyers are controlled by American judges, which is central to why America's legal corruption is so much worse than any other advanced nation. Even if you are paying an American lawyer huge amounts of money, he or she doesn't really work for you, and in fact may sell you down the river to the jailhouse.
American lawyers are directly under the thumb of the judges and the government, and must submit to the culture of bribery and perversion of justice, or else face terrifying revenge. Lawyers, just like you, can be instantly jailed by an American judge on flimsy pretexts, and American lawyers can be quickly stripped of their right to practice law, and personally and financially destroyed, if they dare to criticize legal corruption. Lawyers who try to fight the system can find themselves not only dis-barred, but also criminally charged and jailed, and no other lawyer will help them. It is a horribly crooked system in America.
This is different from other advanced countries, where lawyers are usually a professional guild, whose status and right to practice law, is under the control of only their fellow lawyers. This means that, in other countries, the judges and the government cannot easily ruin or attack the lawyers for purely political reasons. This is also part of why, in other developed countries, outside of America, you really do see brave lawyers fighting for un-popular clients, or challenging the government, and asking for justice.
But in America, it's different. Over the past century, the American lawyers lost the right to regulate themselves, and instead fell under the power of the judges. So American lawyers are afraid to do things in court, that the judges don't want them to do. America's army of nearly 1 million lawyers, is almost totally under the control of a few thousand judges, with their entrenched culture of bribery and fraud and miscarriage of justice.
Some USA lawyers don't like this, but they are helpless and can't fight it. Most lawyers in America have, to one degree or another, signed up with the devil, to do things the way the devil wants them done.
That means that any time you hire an American lawyer, he already is in a conflict of interest. He has to make the judge happy first. And if the judge wants to make the government happy, or make somebody else happy who is paying a big bribe, then guess what? You are destroyed. It doesn't matter what you paid the lawyer. He works for the judge, first and foremost. So a totally unique factor in USA legal corruption is the amazingly dishonest profession of American lawyers, these lawyers who "play the game" with America’s judges and politicians and police. It is a savage culture of legal fraud, where lawyers work with judges to rob and terrify people, especially minorities, but also foreigners, and above all those who dare to question the system. People accused of serious crimes have the "right" to a lawyer, but this may mean only a crooked lawyer who is stage-managing the victim to help the government and prosecutors. If the lawyer does not help the government, he can be put out of work and not "assigned" to any more cases, or treated badly the next time he is in a courtroom. This legal fraud is the core of the danger to those who visit America. A lawyer who is "representing" you in the USA, whether the government is paying him, or even if you are paying him yourself, may just be a stooge who is helping the prosecutors to put you in jail, even though you are innocent. The judges of America gave every accused criminal the "right" to a lawyer, not because they cared about the rights of the accused, but because it helps stage-manage the victim, with a lawyer who has to do things the judge's way. In America, such government-appointed lawyers are the means by which hundreds of thousands of poor people are railroaded into prison. Some of these people were just foreign tourists, in the wrong place at the wrong time, and wound up rotting in an American prison. Some lawyers are fairly subtle about it, and their victims never realize the lawyer has sold them out to the judge and the government. Most American court cases never go to trial, never see a jury; it is the job of the victim's lawyer to "sell the deal" that the judge has decided will happen, or else. This is how people accept a "plea bargain" so they accept going to jail for 3 years even though they are innocent, instead of going to trial before a jury. Because of the corruption of lawyers under the thumb of the judges, there's a very fake and phony aspect of court proceedings in America. They are really fake "show trials" in many cases, sometimes very obviously so, where both purported "sides" of lawyers are actually working together for the government, or for the big corporation or rich person that is bribing the judge.
You will also find, in the American legal system, that you essentially have no recourse whatsoever against wrongdoing by your own lawyer. A lawyer can sell you out, betray you, steal your money, engage in malpractice, help out the other side, hide the evidence that proved you were right, or commit felony crime against you, and there is nothing you can do about it, so long as the lawyer made the judge happy, and the judge got his cut of any money the lawyer stole from you.
Innocent and being arrested - they don't like to admit a mistake in America
Yes, lots of people live their whole lives in America and never get arrested. And yet, some poor foreign visitor comes to America for a short holiday, gets arrested by mistake, and gets sentenced to death by lethal injection even though he is totally innocent. Well, that's the lottery of life for those who visit or live in America. The police and prosecutors in America have no concern at all whether they have arrested someone who is innocent. They just don't care. When a crime is committed, they try to arrest somebody, anybody, just to say they got the bad guy. And they never like to admit they made a mistake. Once they arrest you, they will try to make up and plant false evidence, to help try and convict you. A common trick is to take other criminals they know, who are facing jail on other charges, and get those criminals to be false witnesses against you. The cops justify this kind of thing by saying to themselves, "Well, if you didn't commit this crime, you probably committed some other crime we don't know about." If they do arrest you in America, they like to pile on all sorts of criminal charges. The idea is to charge you with 10 crimes, because it makes you sound bad, and maybe convict you on 3 of them or you will accept a plea bargain on 1 or 2 of them. Any kind of guilty plea, and they call it a success, even though you were totally innocent.
For the police and prosecutors, it's all a kind of sporting game, so they can bring about their "high conviction rate". Perhaps part of the reason America has so much crime, even with more than 2 million people in prison, is because the people who actually committed the crimes were never arrested. Also, some poor people may feel that the odds are high they will be arrested someday anyway, so they may as well be criminals and enjoy life in the meantime.
The system is extremely racist, of course, and white people are arrested less than many minorities. But no one is safe. Any innocent person can get railroaded to death in America.
Multi-millionaires and big corporations, vs. everybody else
The only people who really can get expect some fairness in American courts are multi-millionaires and big corporations. Nobody else really matters to American judges and lawyers.
There is a huge amount of bribery in America, perhaps even more than in the courts of any other country in the world. Even some American ex-judges have admitted the near-universality of bribery there. Nearly all bribes are given to the judges by lawyers; this is considered the safe way to bribe a judge. Bribery is rarely spoken about, just understood. Rich people pay huge amounts of money to law firms with connections, the lawyers walk around with a certain amount of cash in their jacket, and they pass it to the judges in their quiet moments together. It is mostly all cash of course. Sometimes the bribery is blatantly obvious, because of the other crimes that lawyers and judges commit in broad daylight together. In the courtrooms you can see the judges being extremely friendly to their rich lawyer friends who pay big bribes.
As an average person, there's no real way to out-bribe a big corporation, regardless of what your lawyer promised you. That's why the big companies win so often.
American judges are very devious, and use all sorts of techniques to prevent a victim from getting justice. Lots of judges issue gag orders, and bans on freedom of speech, to help prevent other people from finding out what is going on. Judges set up a trial in all sorts of ways, giving orders that all sorts of evidence be hidden from a jury, for example. The judge may declare, for example, that the evidence that proves you are innocent or right, will not be allowed at the trial.
Jury trials are actually very rare in America, unlike what you see in the movies. Most cases are settled through some deal or extortion or intimidation, before there is an actual trial. If there is a jury trial, they tend to stack the jury with un-educated idiots who will tend to believe whatever lies they are told by the judge and the government. If you are trying to fight a rich person in court, the judge might let the fancy lawyers for the rich person say anything they want, while he tells you to shut up as soon as you start talking. The judges have a thousand ways to rig a legal proceeding, to benefit rich people or the government.
It's no wonder so many innocent people go to prison. With the fundamental brutality and harshness of life in America, American citizens are confused and fearful, and gullible to propaganda. So, a jury in a courtroom, these people who tend to be poorly educated, will tend to go along with any lies presented by government prosecutors. In this environment of fear, the feeling of safety for the jury, comes from following the "strong" government in sending various "suspected criminals" to jail.
Yes, there are appeals courts, but these are just more judges, who are often friends with the lower court judge who originally sold you out. The appeals judges tend to go along with the lower court judge, unless you have suddenly acquired some politically powerful backing on your side.
Americans love to talk about "taking it all the way to the Supreme Court!", but this is a nearly empty hope. The U.S. Supreme Court simply refuses to consider most cases that are presented to it.
If you are a little helpless nobody, the appeals judges often barely reply to you, and sometimes don't reply at all. Sometimes people have been strapped to a table and given the lethal poison and put to death in America, with the victim's appeal never even answered by the judges.
What about when people win millions of dollars in a lawsuit against the big company?
Every now and then, there is worldwide news of how some average person in America has won a lawsuit for $25 million or some other huge sum of money, from some company or other. What's going on here - if the American legal system is so crooked, how can people be winning such big money?
Such cases are indeed real, but they are actually somewhat rare, numerically - rather like winning the lottery - and it's important to see why they take place, and how they fit into the big pattern. Such cases are typically after someone has been seriously injured or died due to some defective product or prescription drug or hospital treatment or accident.
These cases have a certain "place" in the American legal framework, accepted by the judges. They are also very important for maintaining the bribery culture. A lot of the money won in such cases goes into the lawyer's pockets, and is a major source of bribery money for the judges. As regards big companies and the judges, such cases are viewed as a kind of "tax" on the big corporations, part of the cost of doing business in America, part of the price of being able to otherwise make huge profits.
Such cases, as well, have the same function as in a gambling casino, when the casino proudly announces that one customer has just won a huge jackpot. The hype about the one jackpot winner, hides the fact that most everyone else is losing money. The person whose husband died from the defective prescription drug, and won millions of dollars (one-third of that to the lawyer, of course), is the person who is shoved forward to prove that "the legal system works - it's the greatest legal system in the world!"
The small handful of such personal-injury cases, are intended to distract the public from all the innocent people sentenced to prison, from all the families destroyed by bribed judges in divorce cases, and from all the people whose lives are destroyed by big companies, companies who cheerfully pay bribes to win their routine cases in court.
Big companies know that some big "injury" cases will be lost, in order to supply money for the lawyers and judges who otherwise take good care of the big company's interests. When you are making hundreds of millions of dollars, the loss of a few million here and there is just another expense of business. In the end, the companies just raise their prices to cover the costs of lawyers and lawsuits. The whole world pays for the millions earned by American lawyers, they are the ultimate parasites.
There are other casualties here, too. America's health care system has been destroyed from the inside by the legal culture of constant lawsuits against doctors and hospitals, with huge amounts of money being given to the lawyers in these cases, driving up the cost of medical care and putting it out of reach of many people. America is the only economically advanced nation without a national health plan, with tens of millions of Americans having no health coverage. USA lawyers joke openly about how, when the courts make big money awards to pay a lawyer, the lawyer often gives the judge a bribe by way of gratitude. Some lawyers grow rich, and doctors are afraid to continue practicing medicine in the US, and many Americans die from lack of health care.
But while America's lawyers will very casually file legal charges against doctors, hospitals, or ordinary people, for any flimsy reason, to try and squeeze some money from the situation, they are extremely afraid to take any legal action against another lawyer or judge engaged in misconduct. That's where fear takes over, and lawyers are suddenly too timid to file any lawsuits.
The Hollywood image, versus the grim reality
Once you have digested the fact that America has the world's largest prison gulag, another major thing to digest is the USA government, and much of America, is primarily a sales organization, whose chief tool is hype and propaganda and outright lies. America is a culture built on sales and advertising; it focuses on portraying an image, not the reality beneath it.
This is why America was so casual about inventing and selling the lies about "weapons of mass destruction" to help start the Iraq invasion. It was just a question of whatever lies needed to be told, in order to sell the product; there was no concern about afterwards, when the lies were exposed. America just figures it can later send out more salespeople with more lies, in an endless cycle. Tomorrow is just another day, when America will try to sell another product, the "war on terror", the "spread of freedom", or whatever.
The selling never stops, in Washington or Hollywood. America sells political lies like Hollywood sells movies. When the USA President talks about "advancing the cause of freedom", he basically means freedom for big corporations to do business. He's not really talking about actual personal freedom for real people. But he grins when he talks about "freedom" because it's a good word of salesmanship, people hear him and some of them can be duped into believing that America cares about personal or political freedom. Hollywood movies and American television are a major element of political myth-making. Around the world, people derive an image of America, and its legal system, from these fictional creations on film. America's propaganda about having "the greatest legal system in the world" is one of those phony stories that Hollywood is helping to sell.
It is also a myth sustained by the few trials about which there is a lot of publicity, like with the celebrity trials of Martha Stewart or Michael Jackson. Judges behave very differently when the cameras are rolling, or the media is reporting everything that goes on, and millions of dollars are being spent on lawyers. But in the 98 percent of court activity that does not have big media coverage, the judges of America provide a bizarre sideshow of horror.
In the Hollywood version, the judges in American courts are like kind uncles, smiling and being wise and calmly dispensing justice. But in reality, American judges sometimes scream at people like disturbed perverts, and show off their bribed corruption right there in the courtroom. Sometimes judges engage in flagrant extortion, where you have to agree to pay money to the judge's lawyer friends as the price to stay out of jail. It is really that bad. You can find no end of documented horror about American judges behaving like criminal lunatics, and it is getting worse all the time.
In the Hollywood version, there are brave lawyers who will fight for your rights, to win justice for you in the American courts. In reality, you can't find an American lawyer brave enough to fight judicial corruption, even if you are innocent and the judge's friends have threatened to murder you, or to send you to jail for the rest of your life. The lawyers who used to be brave, were destroyed or intimidated, and nearly all American lawyers now submit themselves to the culture of corruption and bribery, and betraying and abandoning the people who need legal help.
In the sad reality, American lawyers line up by the dozen to help the government or the big corporations, and regularly betray the average person, even if they are supposedly representing you. Even the lawyers who don't want to be wicked themselves, are too timid to really fight the system. At a certain point, nearly all American lawyers will hold back and abandon their clients, because they are trying to survive themselves and avoid revenge by the judges. In the Hollywood version, the average person is also helped by the "brave investigative reporter" at some newspaper or television station, who shows great courage in exposing the truth, and bringing powerful wrongdoing to face justice. However, the brave "investigative reporter" in America is now as fictional and non-existent as the "brave lawyer" who will fight for your rights. This is especially true on any topic pertaining to corruption by judges and lawyers.
In America today, reporters are little timid people who are afraid of getting fired, and who almost never write a story on government corruption, unless some other part of the government is officially investigating or prosecuting. That goes triple when judges or lawyers are involved. The owners of the newspapers and television stations are afraid of revenge by the judges if they have to go to court, and the nervous little reporters who work for them understand the rules of the game. If you look closely at a modern newspaper or news magazine in the USA, you will see how almost all stories originate with the government itself. When the media "investigates", they are usually just adding more details on a situation already being targeted by the government. Every news media and television station in America is swamped with people begging them to report on stories, that they totally refuse to cover. The reporters are too scared, and they know the stories wouldn't get printed or broadcast even if they were written. America is the land of fear, as regards the legal system and the culture of corruption. Everyone involved with the USA legal system is afraid, very afraid, of stepping on the wrong toes. Even American judges themselves get driven out of office, if they don't participate in the bribery culture.
No recourse against crime and fraud by judges and lawyers in America
In reality, there is almost nothing you can do against misconduct, and even open felony crime, committed against you by American judges and lawyers. All of the official complaint procedures you find on the internet, or at the courthouse or in the law books, turn out to be a joke, a farce and a fraud.
Complaints about lawyers in America, usually go to the "Bar", which is itself run by the judges who are involved in bribery with the lawyers. And complaints about judges go to other judges, their friends. Nearly all the complaints about lawyers and judges - tens of thousands of them - are kept secret. Nearly all are dismissed or ignored. They are generally only used if the judges or politicians want to specially destroy someone - some radical minority lawyer, someone who is not playing the bribery game, somebody who has dared to expose wrongdoing. Otherwise, even criminal acts by lawyers and judges get a smiling cover-up.
You will almost certainly not find any lawyers to help you sue another lawyer for wrongdoing. They are too scared of revenge by the judges. Even the lawyers who are broke and unemployed and desperate for work, are too scared to sue another lawyer. (Special caution: Lawyers may make false promises to you about suing another lawyer, cash your checks and steal your money, and then refuse to help you. And then you will have another lawyer who wronged you.) The police and FBI almost certainly will not help you, either. They all know the bribery game, and they rely on the same crooked judges to help send innocent people to prison after they have been arrested. The more crooked the judge, the more eager the judge will be, to help the police or FBI do a dirty deal and convict an innocent person. And, of course, the newspapers and television and media won't help you. They hear stories like yours all the time. If they publish or broadcast your story, then they will have problems the next time they get sued in court. Or they might find themselves arrested on false charges, and end up in an even worse situation than you.
The newspapers are so tied into the establishment of judges and lawyers, that the newspapers sometimes help the judges and lawyers to commit their crimes, and to unfairly smear and attack their victims. The big media newspapers have even helped to plant false "evidence" in court cases, and help the legal establishment to destroy innocent people. But even if not harming you, the USA media is afraid to help you, afraid of revenge if they expose judicial corruption. These fears are just as big, if not bigger, with America's radical and alternative media, and bloggers and internet sites. Such people will criticize American foreign policy and so on, but everybody is scared of talking about specific cases of corruption by lawyers and judges. The independent media has even more reason to be afraid, because they are even more vulnerable if the lawyers start to file false charges against them in the courts.
Of course, America's politicians will not help you, either. Many politicians are themselves lawyers, very used to the whole game of bribery with judges and other lawyers. The politicians accept the crooked courts as the way that America is run, and as helping the two big parties to monopolize the political scene and prevent alternative political movements. America's two big political parties, the Democrats and Republicans, can be seen as another phony game like America's courts. The two parties actually get their hundreds of millions of dollars in money from the same people at the same big corporations who own the rest of America. These two American parties pretend to argue with each other over emotional issues like gun control and abortion rights, but in the end both of these parties serve the big corporations. Half of Americans are still fooled into thinking that these parties represent them, the other half sense it is phony but feel helpless and don't know what to do. This is why people don't vote very much in America; they feel it is hopeless and useless.
You can also forget about America's human rights and civil liberties groups, even though it looks, at first, like there are many such groups on the internet. Many such groups are just money-raising groups which don't help victims, or are tied to the two main political parties or some narrow agenda. They are all scared of the legal system, too, and there is no one with any significant funding or money, who is out there helping the victims of legal corruption. They can't find lawyers to help them, either. There are some overwhelmed and struggling projects here and there, doing worthy work for a few of the innocent people in prison, but they function in an environment of timidity and fear, and without the resources or clout or media access to expose or change what is happening. It's getting worse and worse in America all the time. As the judges and lawyers can get away with committing crimes, they are getting more open and blatant, committing felony crimes in broad daylight, because they know no one will stop them or bring them to account. It is also important to know, that once you have started complaining about, or exposing, judicial and legal corruption in America, you become a kind of outlaw there. You are in a very dangerous situation, and you are considered fair game to be either arrested and jailed on false charges, or to be totally robbed and betrayed by America's lawyers. Once you have spoken out about legal corruption, you may find that no other lawyer will then help you for any reason, even if it is un-related to your complaint about judicial wrongdoing. You may be trapped in a nightmare from which there is no escape unless you can leave America altogether.
Dealing with American lawyers, if you have no other choice
Perhaps the statistical chance of getting arrested in America as an innocent person, and then being sent to prison or put to death, is relatively small. But think of how you will feel if you end up as one of those 2 million American prisoners, including 50,000 foreign citizens. Or perhaps even one of those several thousand people on Death Row, waiting for the lethal poison to be injected into your arm.
Visiting America now, is probably similar to visiting or doing business in 1936 with Hitler's Reich, or Mussolini's fascist empire. If you did such a thing in 1936, you might have visited and had a wonderful time, maybe even have done some business with companies in those countries. You might have seen some beautiful sights, and met some very friendly individual people, perhaps drunk a beer or two, or a nice glass of wine, maybe attended the 1936 Olympics. Very likely, you wouldn't have seen any concentration camps, in the places where you travelled. You might have had a very pleasant trip.
But nonetheless, you were in a dangerous place, where horrible things were going on. That's true of the United States of America today, the land of 2 million prisoners in a giant gulag. With America's corrupt legal system, it's certainly not the wisest place to keep money or assets, which can be easily grabbed by American lawyers in legal proceedings. Many smart Americans have opened overseas bank accounts, and it is wise to not keep too much money where American lawyers can seize it. There is no bigger group of thieves in the world, than American lawyers.
If you are in a lawsuit situation in America, get all your money out of the country, fast, before the USA lawyers can put any kind of hold or freeze on it. But you shouldn't keep substantial assets in the USA in the first place. Sell any USA real estate and rent instead, get that money out where it is safe. Certainly, don't ever expect any justice from American courts. Expect the judges and both sides of lawyers to tilt toward the government, or toward the big company that can pay bribes on a regular basis. All that most people get out of American courts, is grief, and lawyers stealing their money. Best not to approach American courts unless absolutely necessary. Despite the commonplace fraud and dishonesty of American lawyers, it's still important to have one if you must be in an American court. The reason is that American judges absolutely hate people who come to court without lawyers, especially if they have any money at all. The judge takes it as a personal insult if you are not giving some money to one of his lawyer friends, and will tend to take revenge on you unless you hire a lawyer, even a very stupid one, to stand by your side.
What American lawyers love to do, is to steal all your money, tell you a bunch of false promises and lies, and then do nothing for you, while they sell you out to the other side. That is a perfect scenario for an American lawyer. A lawyer's goal is to squeeze as much money from you, while at the same time doing as little as possible to rock the judge's political boat. Some lawyers even make money by the "research and review" scam, where they don't even agree to represent you, but just steal your money to "research" your case.
Accept in advance that an American lawyer will rob you and betray you, and everything will go more smoothly if you quietly understand this. Never actually trust an American lawyer, but don't let on that you know he's a crook. Don't tell the lawyer how much money you really have, he will try to get all of it. Try to pay a lawyer very slowly, in small chunks, that will keep him more interested, and prevent some of the bigger robberies and betrayals, and will leave you some money to try another lawyer if things get too awful. Remember, once you give a USA lawyer any money, it's almost impossible to get it back. Lawyers will almost never sue another lawyer, and if you go to court, the judge will almost certainly protect the lawyer who defrauded you (and get a share of the money, of course). Lawyers and judges in America like people to appear to be submissive and stupid and easily manipulated. They like to feel superior to you. By letting them think that you are weak and falling for their lies, you may give yourself some breathing room. This tactic has even enabled some people to stay alive and not get murdered, and to escape from America back to safety.
The growing American nightmare
It is just getting worse and worse in America's legal system. For some years now, the USA judges and lawyers have gotten used to denying people justice, to the great flow of bribery money, and even to committing felony crimes in broad daylight and getting away with it. It just keeps on escalating. Though a social explosion is lurking beneath the surface - with judges starting to get murdered, and people lighting courthouses ablaze - the people who run America are letting the current system chug along as it is, justice be damned, and to hell with the people who seem to have no way to fight back.
It can't go on like this forever, but it may get a lot worse first, despite the fair internet visibility on documented American legal corruption. One should note a brave and promising grass-roots attempt at judicial reform in the USA called (Jail 4 Judges - www.jail4judges.org), which attempts to place onto American ballots, a referendum for a new procedure to give citizens a real right of redress against corrupt judges. It is a wonderful and beautiful idea that deserves success, and will help transform America if it moves forward. Regrettably, though, for all the usual reasons of fear, there is no one with any big money or media clout, yet making a foray against the real-life nightmare of America's courts and prisons. It remains a taboo subject for the American media, and the media silence feeds and encourages the whole machine of bribery and repression.
Perhaps, though, it will not be until after America has had a major economic or social cataclysm, that the big American machine of legal corruption finally comes to be reformed. Sociologically speaking, it's astonishing how disgraceful American lawyers have become - they are now both the mafia and the gestapo of American life. America's lawyers, as a whole, have had little to say about America’s recent international crimes of prisoner abuse, and violation of international human rights agreements. American lawyers, as always nowadays, are "playing the game" with America's government and its judges. America, indeed, does not have the rule of law at all. Instead, it is just the rule of lawyers, lawyers who crave money and power. And, in America, it can be jail or worse for anyone who tries to fight these lawyers. The reality of the United States of America is that Americans, despite their overall wealth as a nation, are now a people living in a society of great fear. Their fears are complicated, and many Americans cannot even put their fears into words. They are afraid of lawyers and the prison system, afraid of losing their jobs in a brutal society with no social safety net, afraid of needing health care in a disastrous system with no health plan. And Americans are afraid of what will happen if they try to question the system and the way things work. They often feel helpless and powerless against the great forces dominating their country. American citizens are confused and fearful, and gullible to propaganda. Because Americans have difficulty in sorting out their many fears, they have become ripe candidates for racial and religious hatreds, and for following their government into war. The issues of "terrorism" and war distract the emotions of Americans from the terrible problems in their own society at home. The foreign "enemy" gives Americans a face on which to project their fear and their anger. The result is the horrifying misconduct of some Americans in these wars; while back inside the USA, there is increasing corruption and repression in the legal system. Americans desperately would like to believe that they still live in a "free" country, as it is so horrifying to them to face the ugly truth, that their freedom is already largely lost. Americans can imagine they are "free" because they can still choose among different products to buy, or quit their job, or buy a gun at the store. And the Americans most likely to imagine they are still "free" are the ones who have not yet been trapped in the halls of America’s legal system. They have not yet seen the lawyers and judges who smirk and laugh as they deny victims the most basic human rights. The truth is that, inside America, a nightmare has begun. The lawyers and judges and courts, "playing the game", regularly trample upon the freedoms that Americans thought they had. It is people like myself, escaped from the USA, living in kinder and gentler places, who are now the lucky ones. No one should ever again be fooled by USA propaganda about being the "land of freedom". Those who are thinking of travelling to, visiting, or working in America, should think again. It might not be worth the risk of being in a country that has one of the most crooked legal systems in the world.
America has the largest prison gulag in the entire world - yes, right there in the USA, the self-proclaimed "land of freedom". The starting point for understanding anything about the USA, is to digest the fact that just this one country, the United States of America, has twenty-five percent of ALL of the prisoners in the entire world.
More than 2 million prisoners - more than 1 out of every 150 people in America - are behind bars in the American gulag. This is now the world's biggest system of what are effectively concentration camps, though most of these prisoners are behind masonry walls and inside prison buildings.
For minorities, the statistics are even more brutal. For example, the USA is now imprisoning about 1 out of every 36 people in its black population. American "justice" is especially focused on jailing young black males.
Quite amazingly, Americans and the American government, continually criticize the legal systems and so-called "political" legal proceedings in other countries such as China, Russia, and even Belgium among many other places. Yet, for example, the proportion of prisoners is 30 times higher in the USA than in China, even though China is a country regularly criticized and denounced by the USA government.
No one imprisons people as readily, or casually, as does America. As you learn more about America's horrifying legal system, you find out how easily and carelessly America arrests people, and tosses innocent people into prison. It is estimated that America has at least 100,000 completely innocent people in jail, but the statistics of innocence may well run far higher. The number of people known to be innocent, and yet who were actually sentenced to death in recent years in America, is already running into the hundreds.
The USA jailing of more than 2 million people is also, quite literally, a revival of slavery and slave labor, on a scale not seen since the days of the Nazis. USA business corporations are using these prisoners as a giant slave labor pool. Prisoners are forced to produce goods and products while earning mere pennies per hour, which they sometimes have to pay back to the prison for their own upkeep. The expanding system of USA prison slave labor is not only a major source of business profit, but also a wedge to drive down the wages of workers outside the prison walls.
This USA policy, of using mass casual imprisonment as a way to revive slavery, is targeted particularly at minorities, but ends up affecting all working people. Supervised by malicious judges and corrupt lawyers, this culture of mass prisons and slave labor is sold to the citizens by creating a psychology of fear among USA residents. This climate of fear is nourished in the USA by both the media and the government, who work together with the judges and lawyers to maintain the whole crooked game.
Of America's more than 2 million prisoners, about 50,000 are known to be foreign citizens. This proportion might seem small, but remember that 50,000 prisoners is more than the entire prison population of many other countries. It only appears as a small percentage, because of America's obsession with jailing its own people, who have had more time to get caught in America's web of legal horror.
The USA is extremely casual about the jailing of foreigners, and not honouring their rights under international law or treaties and agreements. Often, foreign citizens have been sentenced to death, while the USA didn't even bother to notify the foreign government that their citizens were arrested. Several other governments are working hard just to try and obtain even the most primitive judicial rights for their own nationals, who have been seized and held in abusive conditions by the USA empire. And yet, the United States of America somehow still brags about its own legal system, while criticizing other countries. Understanding that America has such a huge percentage of even its own people in prison, is to start to understand the subconscious fear behind much of American life. Before you set foot in America, you should have a clear picture of the terror of America's legal system - the judges and lawyers and money and bribery, that have made this system of fear so pervasive. There is not yet enough public media information about America's domestic legal horrors, horrors which have been rapidly increasing. And the American public, even the victims of its legal system, have a hard time realizing why it is so hard to fight legal corruption there. The situation is so bad, that a social explosion is beginning inside America. You can read some news stories - about people murdering judges, or attacking the families of judges, or people setting fire to courthouses in the USA - and see the pattern that is emerging, even though the news media are afraid to connect the dots and suggest what might be behind all these events. America is trying to maintain its myths about its legal system, even while the desperate reality of life inside the USA is starting to blow back into escalating social upheaval.
USA torture and illegal jailing overseas, starts with USA domestic torture and illegal jailing at home
The world press has documented clear violations of human and legal rights by America in its overseas jails, such as the infamous situations in Guantanamo and occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, and the even more secret network of prisons in places like Diego Garcia or on board American ships.
But the problem is much bigger, than America's legal abuses under its military invasions and "war on terrorism". These USA violations of international law, are consistent with the corruption in America's home legal system within its own borders, and have partly evolved from America's legal abuses against its own citizens and residents.
American prisons are often horrible, with lots of torment of prisoners, like you would expect in some petty dictatorship. Conditions are brutal in USA jails; rape and beatings are common, and there is little help for abused inmates. In addition to the many official USA executions, numerous people are also illegally killed in jail cells, "mysteriously" said to have hanged themselves or "found stabbed to death".
Scandals of overseas prison abuse, as in the USA-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, have arisen from sources much deeper than America's foreign policy. These scandals are in part replications of inmate abuse inside of America's domestic prison gulag. Without diminishing the brutality of the crimes committed by Americans in Iraqi prisons, it is also true that such crimes are consistent with the brutality of prisons inside America.
In the regular functioning of the USA courts, America's domestic lawyers and judges, threaten people with illegal jailing, and rape, torture and murder in jail, just like the threats used by Americans against Iraqi subjects of the American occupation. America will play the song about "just a few bad apples in the barrel" whenever an abuse scandal gets exposed, either domestically or abroad, but the cover-up of such abuse is more the routine response.
Theoretically, torture and abuse is totally outlawed by America's Constitution, but some of the nice words in America's Constitution hold little power anymore, despite how often people quote them. The Americans who still believe the Constitution protects them, are mostly those people who haven't yet dealt with the judges and lawyers of America's corrupt legal system.
America's Constitution and Bill of Rights are nearly dead, not just because the judges will no longer enforce them, but even more because America's lawyers will not even fight for them. The two American "political parties" are not fighting for them, either, and America's news media are also very passive. If you look at America in depth, you can see there has been a widespread moral collapse in America's legal and political structures. This means that America's legal system has become largely a tool of government terror, and of bribery for the rich and the powerful. The average person is just fodder for the meat-grinder of America's courts.
America's lies and sleazy arguments to make excuses for torture, or to deny people the rights of the Geneva convention, or holding people for many years without charges, are also just an extension of the deviousness in America's domestic legal system. Inside America, neither its laws nor its Constitution nor the facts nor evidence nor anything else, no longer have real authority inside the American courts.
All that's left is what American lawyers and judges call "the game". As part of playing this game, USA lawyers and judges just twist words around, in order to produce any excuse, however flimsy, to achieve their objective, whether that be to jail an innocent person, or give the verdict that was sought by the big company that paid the big bribe through its law firm.
It is an endlessly devious manipulation of words and phrases to get the desired result, just devious falsehood and lies backed by the naked power of the judges. The only "real" part is the power that the judges and lawyers hold in America, to jail you and take away your property. The words of the law don't protect you in the USA, because American judges and lawyers have no scruples about bending them to mean the opposite of what they say.
America's lawyers are controlled by the judges, and don't really work for you - that's why they sell you out to the government, or to the big companies that pay bribes
There's some very special aspects about the way American lawyers are controlled by American judges, which is central to why America's legal corruption is so much worse than any other advanced nation. Even if you are paying an American lawyer huge amounts of money, he or she doesn't really work for you, and in fact may sell you down the river to the jailhouse.
American lawyers are directly under the thumb of the judges and the government, and must submit to the culture of bribery and perversion of justice, or else face terrifying revenge. Lawyers, just like you, can be instantly jailed by an American judge on flimsy pretexts, and American lawyers can be quickly stripped of their right to practice law, and personally and financially destroyed, if they dare to criticize legal corruption. Lawyers who try to fight the system can find themselves not only dis-barred, but also criminally charged and jailed, and no other lawyer will help them. It is a horribly crooked system in America.
This is different from other advanced countries, where lawyers are usually a professional guild, whose status and right to practice law, is under the control of only their fellow lawyers. This means that, in other countries, the judges and the government cannot easily ruin or attack the lawyers for purely political reasons. This is also part of why, in other developed countries, outside of America, you really do see brave lawyers fighting for un-popular clients, or challenging the government, and asking for justice.
But in America, it's different. Over the past century, the American lawyers lost the right to regulate themselves, and instead fell under the power of the judges. So American lawyers are afraid to do things in court, that the judges don't want them to do. America's army of nearly 1 million lawyers, is almost totally under the control of a few thousand judges, with their entrenched culture of bribery and fraud and miscarriage of justice.
Some USA lawyers don't like this, but they are helpless and can't fight it. Most lawyers in America have, to one degree or another, signed up with the devil, to do things the way the devil wants them done.
That means that any time you hire an American lawyer, he already is in a conflict of interest. He has to make the judge happy first. And if the judge wants to make the government happy, or make somebody else happy who is paying a big bribe, then guess what? You are destroyed. It doesn't matter what you paid the lawyer. He works for the judge, first and foremost. So a totally unique factor in USA legal corruption is the amazingly dishonest profession of American lawyers, these lawyers who "play the game" with America’s judges and politicians and police. It is a savage culture of legal fraud, where lawyers work with judges to rob and terrify people, especially minorities, but also foreigners, and above all those who dare to question the system. People accused of serious crimes have the "right" to a lawyer, but this may mean only a crooked lawyer who is stage-managing the victim to help the government and prosecutors. If the lawyer does not help the government, he can be put out of work and not "assigned" to any more cases, or treated badly the next time he is in a courtroom. This legal fraud is the core of the danger to those who visit America. A lawyer who is "representing" you in the USA, whether the government is paying him, or even if you are paying him yourself, may just be a stooge who is helping the prosecutors to put you in jail, even though you are innocent. The judges of America gave every accused criminal the "right" to a lawyer, not because they cared about the rights of the accused, but because it helps stage-manage the victim, with a lawyer who has to do things the judge's way. In America, such government-appointed lawyers are the means by which hundreds of thousands of poor people are railroaded into prison. Some of these people were just foreign tourists, in the wrong place at the wrong time, and wound up rotting in an American prison. Some lawyers are fairly subtle about it, and their victims never realize the lawyer has sold them out to the judge and the government. Most American court cases never go to trial, never see a jury; it is the job of the victim's lawyer to "sell the deal" that the judge has decided will happen, or else. This is how people accept a "plea bargain" so they accept going to jail for 3 years even though they are innocent, instead of going to trial before a jury. Because of the corruption of lawyers under the thumb of the judges, there's a very fake and phony aspect of court proceedings in America. They are really fake "show trials" in many cases, sometimes very obviously so, where both purported "sides" of lawyers are actually working together for the government, or for the big corporation or rich person that is bribing the judge.
You will also find, in the American legal system, that you essentially have no recourse whatsoever against wrongdoing by your own lawyer. A lawyer can sell you out, betray you, steal your money, engage in malpractice, help out the other side, hide the evidence that proved you were right, or commit felony crime against you, and there is nothing you can do about it, so long as the lawyer made the judge happy, and the judge got his cut of any money the lawyer stole from you.
Innocent and being arrested - they don't like to admit a mistake in America
Yes, lots of people live their whole lives in America and never get arrested. And yet, some poor foreign visitor comes to America for a short holiday, gets arrested by mistake, and gets sentenced to death by lethal injection even though he is totally innocent. Well, that's the lottery of life for those who visit or live in America. The police and prosecutors in America have no concern at all whether they have arrested someone who is innocent. They just don't care. When a crime is committed, they try to arrest somebody, anybody, just to say they got the bad guy. And they never like to admit they made a mistake. Once they arrest you, they will try to make up and plant false evidence, to help try and convict you. A common trick is to take other criminals they know, who are facing jail on other charges, and get those criminals to be false witnesses against you. The cops justify this kind of thing by saying to themselves, "Well, if you didn't commit this crime, you probably committed some other crime we don't know about." If they do arrest you in America, they like to pile on all sorts of criminal charges. The idea is to charge you with 10 crimes, because it makes you sound bad, and maybe convict you on 3 of them or you will accept a plea bargain on 1 or 2 of them. Any kind of guilty plea, and they call it a success, even though you were totally innocent.
For the police and prosecutors, it's all a kind of sporting game, so they can bring about their "high conviction rate". Perhaps part of the reason America has so much crime, even with more than 2 million people in prison, is because the people who actually committed the crimes were never arrested. Also, some poor people may feel that the odds are high they will be arrested someday anyway, so they may as well be criminals and enjoy life in the meantime.
The system is extremely racist, of course, and white people are arrested less than many minorities. But no one is safe. Any innocent person can get railroaded to death in America.
Multi-millionaires and big corporations, vs. everybody else
The only people who really can get expect some fairness in American courts are multi-millionaires and big corporations. Nobody else really matters to American judges and lawyers.
There is a huge amount of bribery in America, perhaps even more than in the courts of any other country in the world. Even some American ex-judges have admitted the near-universality of bribery there. Nearly all bribes are given to the judges by lawyers; this is considered the safe way to bribe a judge. Bribery is rarely spoken about, just understood. Rich people pay huge amounts of money to law firms with connections, the lawyers walk around with a certain amount of cash in their jacket, and they pass it to the judges in their quiet moments together. It is mostly all cash of course. Sometimes the bribery is blatantly obvious, because of the other crimes that lawyers and judges commit in broad daylight together. In the courtrooms you can see the judges being extremely friendly to their rich lawyer friends who pay big bribes.
As an average person, there's no real way to out-bribe a big corporation, regardless of what your lawyer promised you. That's why the big companies win so often.
American judges are very devious, and use all sorts of techniques to prevent a victim from getting justice. Lots of judges issue gag orders, and bans on freedom of speech, to help prevent other people from finding out what is going on. Judges set up a trial in all sorts of ways, giving orders that all sorts of evidence be hidden from a jury, for example. The judge may declare, for example, that the evidence that proves you are innocent or right, will not be allowed at the trial.
Jury trials are actually very rare in America, unlike what you see in the movies. Most cases are settled through some deal or extortion or intimidation, before there is an actual trial. If there is a jury trial, they tend to stack the jury with un-educated idiots who will tend to believe whatever lies they are told by the judge and the government. If you are trying to fight a rich person in court, the judge might let the fancy lawyers for the rich person say anything they want, while he tells you to shut up as soon as you start talking. The judges have a thousand ways to rig a legal proceeding, to benefit rich people or the government.
It's no wonder so many innocent people go to prison. With the fundamental brutality and harshness of life in America, American citizens are confused and fearful, and gullible to propaganda. So, a jury in a courtroom, these people who tend to be poorly educated, will tend to go along with any lies presented by government prosecutors. In this environment of fear, the feeling of safety for the jury, comes from following the "strong" government in sending various "suspected criminals" to jail.
Yes, there are appeals courts, but these are just more judges, who are often friends with the lower court judge who originally sold you out. The appeals judges tend to go along with the lower court judge, unless you have suddenly acquired some politically powerful backing on your side.
Americans love to talk about "taking it all the way to the Supreme Court!", but this is a nearly empty hope. The U.S. Supreme Court simply refuses to consider most cases that are presented to it.
If you are a little helpless nobody, the appeals judges often barely reply to you, and sometimes don't reply at all. Sometimes people have been strapped to a table and given the lethal poison and put to death in America, with the victim's appeal never even answered by the judges.
What about when people win millions of dollars in a lawsuit against the big company?
Every now and then, there is worldwide news of how some average person in America has won a lawsuit for $25 million or some other huge sum of money, from some company or other. What's going on here - if the American legal system is so crooked, how can people be winning such big money?
Such cases are indeed real, but they are actually somewhat rare, numerically - rather like winning the lottery - and it's important to see why they take place, and how they fit into the big pattern. Such cases are typically after someone has been seriously injured or died due to some defective product or prescription drug or hospital treatment or accident.
These cases have a certain "place" in the American legal framework, accepted by the judges. They are also very important for maintaining the bribery culture. A lot of the money won in such cases goes into the lawyer's pockets, and is a major source of bribery money for the judges. As regards big companies and the judges, such cases are viewed as a kind of "tax" on the big corporations, part of the cost of doing business in America, part of the price of being able to otherwise make huge profits.
Such cases, as well, have the same function as in a gambling casino, when the casino proudly announces that one customer has just won a huge jackpot. The hype about the one jackpot winner, hides the fact that most everyone else is losing money. The person whose husband died from the defective prescription drug, and won millions of dollars (one-third of that to the lawyer, of course), is the person who is shoved forward to prove that "the legal system works - it's the greatest legal system in the world!"
The small handful of such personal-injury cases, are intended to distract the public from all the innocent people sentenced to prison, from all the families destroyed by bribed judges in divorce cases, and from all the people whose lives are destroyed by big companies, companies who cheerfully pay bribes to win their routine cases in court.
Big companies know that some big "injury" cases will be lost, in order to supply money for the lawyers and judges who otherwise take good care of the big company's interests. When you are making hundreds of millions of dollars, the loss of a few million here and there is just another expense of business. In the end, the companies just raise their prices to cover the costs of lawyers and lawsuits. The whole world pays for the millions earned by American lawyers, they are the ultimate parasites.
There are other casualties here, too. America's health care system has been destroyed from the inside by the legal culture of constant lawsuits against doctors and hospitals, with huge amounts of money being given to the lawyers in these cases, driving up the cost of medical care and putting it out of reach of many people. America is the only economically advanced nation without a national health plan, with tens of millions of Americans having no health coverage. USA lawyers joke openly about how, when the courts make big money awards to pay a lawyer, the lawyer often gives the judge a bribe by way of gratitude. Some lawyers grow rich, and doctors are afraid to continue practicing medicine in the US, and many Americans die from lack of health care.
But while America's lawyers will very casually file legal charges against doctors, hospitals, or ordinary people, for any flimsy reason, to try and squeeze some money from the situation, they are extremely afraid to take any legal action against another lawyer or judge engaged in misconduct. That's where fear takes over, and lawyers are suddenly too timid to file any lawsuits.
The Hollywood image, versus the grim reality
Once you have digested the fact that America has the world's largest prison gulag, another major thing to digest is the USA government, and much of America, is primarily a sales organization, whose chief tool is hype and propaganda and outright lies. America is a culture built on sales and advertising; it focuses on portraying an image, not the reality beneath it.
This is why America was so casual about inventing and selling the lies about "weapons of mass destruction" to help start the Iraq invasion. It was just a question of whatever lies needed to be told, in order to sell the product; there was no concern about afterwards, when the lies were exposed. America just figures it can later send out more salespeople with more lies, in an endless cycle. Tomorrow is just another day, when America will try to sell another product, the "war on terror", the "spread of freedom", or whatever.
The selling never stops, in Washington or Hollywood. America sells political lies like Hollywood sells movies. When the USA President talks about "advancing the cause of freedom", he basically means freedom for big corporations to do business. He's not really talking about actual personal freedom for real people. But he grins when he talks about "freedom" because it's a good word of salesmanship, people hear him and some of them can be duped into believing that America cares about personal or political freedom. Hollywood movies and American television are a major element of political myth-making. Around the world, people derive an image of America, and its legal system, from these fictional creations on film. America's propaganda about having "the greatest legal system in the world" is one of those phony stories that Hollywood is helping to sell.
It is also a myth sustained by the few trials about which there is a lot of publicity, like with the celebrity trials of Martha Stewart or Michael Jackson. Judges behave very differently when the cameras are rolling, or the media is reporting everything that goes on, and millions of dollars are being spent on lawyers. But in the 98 percent of court activity that does not have big media coverage, the judges of America provide a bizarre sideshow of horror.
In the Hollywood version, the judges in American courts are like kind uncles, smiling and being wise and calmly dispensing justice. But in reality, American judges sometimes scream at people like disturbed perverts, and show off their bribed corruption right there in the courtroom. Sometimes judges engage in flagrant extortion, where you have to agree to pay money to the judge's lawyer friends as the price to stay out of jail. It is really that bad. You can find no end of documented horror about American judges behaving like criminal lunatics, and it is getting worse all the time.
In the Hollywood version, there are brave lawyers who will fight for your rights, to win justice for you in the American courts. In reality, you can't find an American lawyer brave enough to fight judicial corruption, even if you are innocent and the judge's friends have threatened to murder you, or to send you to jail for the rest of your life. The lawyers who used to be brave, were destroyed or intimidated, and nearly all American lawyers now submit themselves to the culture of corruption and bribery, and betraying and abandoning the people who need legal help.
In the sad reality, American lawyers line up by the dozen to help the government or the big corporations, and regularly betray the average person, even if they are supposedly representing you. Even the lawyers who don't want to be wicked themselves, are too timid to really fight the system. At a certain point, nearly all American lawyers will hold back and abandon their clients, because they are trying to survive themselves and avoid revenge by the judges. In the Hollywood version, the average person is also helped by the "brave investigative reporter" at some newspaper or television station, who shows great courage in exposing the truth, and bringing powerful wrongdoing to face justice. However, the brave "investigative reporter" in America is now as fictional and non-existent as the "brave lawyer" who will fight for your rights. This is especially true on any topic pertaining to corruption by judges and lawyers.
In America today, reporters are little timid people who are afraid of getting fired, and who almost never write a story on government corruption, unless some other part of the government is officially investigating or prosecuting. That goes triple when judges or lawyers are involved. The owners of the newspapers and television stations are afraid of revenge by the judges if they have to go to court, and the nervous little reporters who work for them understand the rules of the game. If you look closely at a modern newspaper or news magazine in the USA, you will see how almost all stories originate with the government itself. When the media "investigates", they are usually just adding more details on a situation already being targeted by the government. Every news media and television station in America is swamped with people begging them to report on stories, that they totally refuse to cover. The reporters are too scared, and they know the stories wouldn't get printed or broadcast even if they were written. America is the land of fear, as regards the legal system and the culture of corruption. Everyone involved with the USA legal system is afraid, very afraid, of stepping on the wrong toes. Even American judges themselves get driven out of office, if they don't participate in the bribery culture.
No recourse against crime and fraud by judges and lawyers in America
In reality, there is almost nothing you can do against misconduct, and even open felony crime, committed against you by American judges and lawyers. All of the official complaint procedures you find on the internet, or at the courthouse or in the law books, turn out to be a joke, a farce and a fraud.
Complaints about lawyers in America, usually go to the "Bar", which is itself run by the judges who are involved in bribery with the lawyers. And complaints about judges go to other judges, their friends. Nearly all the complaints about lawyers and judges - tens of thousands of them - are kept secret. Nearly all are dismissed or ignored. They are generally only used if the judges or politicians want to specially destroy someone - some radical minority lawyer, someone who is not playing the bribery game, somebody who has dared to expose wrongdoing. Otherwise, even criminal acts by lawyers and judges get a smiling cover-up.
You will almost certainly not find any lawyers to help you sue another lawyer for wrongdoing. They are too scared of revenge by the judges. Even the lawyers who are broke and unemployed and desperate for work, are too scared to sue another lawyer. (Special caution: Lawyers may make false promises to you about suing another lawyer, cash your checks and steal your money, and then refuse to help you. And then you will have another lawyer who wronged you.) The police and FBI almost certainly will not help you, either. They all know the bribery game, and they rely on the same crooked judges to help send innocent people to prison after they have been arrested. The more crooked the judge, the more eager the judge will be, to help the police or FBI do a dirty deal and convict an innocent person. And, of course, the newspapers and television and media won't help you. They hear stories like yours all the time. If they publish or broadcast your story, then they will have problems the next time they get sued in court. Or they might find themselves arrested on false charges, and end up in an even worse situation than you.
The newspapers are so tied into the establishment of judges and lawyers, that the newspapers sometimes help the judges and lawyers to commit their crimes, and to unfairly smear and attack their victims. The big media newspapers have even helped to plant false "evidence" in court cases, and help the legal establishment to destroy innocent people. But even if not harming you, the USA media is afraid to help you, afraid of revenge if they expose judicial corruption. These fears are just as big, if not bigger, with America's radical and alternative media, and bloggers and internet sites. Such people will criticize American foreign policy and so on, but everybody is scared of talking about specific cases of corruption by lawyers and judges. The independent media has even more reason to be afraid, because they are even more vulnerable if the lawyers start to file false charges against them in the courts.
Of course, America's politicians will not help you, either. Many politicians are themselves lawyers, very used to the whole game of bribery with judges and other lawyers. The politicians accept the crooked courts as the way that America is run, and as helping the two big parties to monopolize the political scene and prevent alternative political movements. America's two big political parties, the Democrats and Republicans, can be seen as another phony game like America's courts. The two parties actually get their hundreds of millions of dollars in money from the same people at the same big corporations who own the rest of America. These two American parties pretend to argue with each other over emotional issues like gun control and abortion rights, but in the end both of these parties serve the big corporations. Half of Americans are still fooled into thinking that these parties represent them, the other half sense it is phony but feel helpless and don't know what to do. This is why people don't vote very much in America; they feel it is hopeless and useless.
You can also forget about America's human rights and civil liberties groups, even though it looks, at first, like there are many such groups on the internet. Many such groups are just money-raising groups which don't help victims, or are tied to the two main political parties or some narrow agenda. They are all scared of the legal system, too, and there is no one with any significant funding or money, who is out there helping the victims of legal corruption. They can't find lawyers to help them, either. There are some overwhelmed and struggling projects here and there, doing worthy work for a few of the innocent people in prison, but they function in an environment of timidity and fear, and without the resources or clout or media access to expose or change what is happening. It's getting worse and worse in America all the time. As the judges and lawyers can get away with committing crimes, they are getting more open and blatant, committing felony crimes in broad daylight, because they know no one will stop them or bring them to account. It is also important to know, that once you have started complaining about, or exposing, judicial and legal corruption in America, you become a kind of outlaw there. You are in a very dangerous situation, and you are considered fair game to be either arrested and jailed on false charges, or to be totally robbed and betrayed by America's lawyers. Once you have spoken out about legal corruption, you may find that no other lawyer will then help you for any reason, even if it is un-related to your complaint about judicial wrongdoing. You may be trapped in a nightmare from which there is no escape unless you can leave America altogether.
Dealing with American lawyers, if you have no other choice
Perhaps the statistical chance of getting arrested in America as an innocent person, and then being sent to prison or put to death, is relatively small. But think of how you will feel if you end up as one of those 2 million American prisoners, including 50,000 foreign citizens. Or perhaps even one of those several thousand people on Death Row, waiting for the lethal poison to be injected into your arm.
Visiting America now, is probably similar to visiting or doing business in 1936 with Hitler's Reich, or Mussolini's fascist empire. If you did such a thing in 1936, you might have visited and had a wonderful time, maybe even have done some business with companies in those countries. You might have seen some beautiful sights, and met some very friendly individual people, perhaps drunk a beer or two, or a nice glass of wine, maybe attended the 1936 Olympics. Very likely, you wouldn't have seen any concentration camps, in the places where you travelled. You might have had a very pleasant trip.
But nonetheless, you were in a dangerous place, where horrible things were going on. That's true of the United States of America today, the land of 2 million prisoners in a giant gulag. With America's corrupt legal system, it's certainly not the wisest place to keep money or assets, which can be easily grabbed by American lawyers in legal proceedings. Many smart Americans have opened overseas bank accounts, and it is wise to not keep too much money where American lawyers can seize it. There is no bigger group of thieves in the world, than American lawyers.
If you are in a lawsuit situation in America, get all your money out of the country, fast, before the USA lawyers can put any kind of hold or freeze on it. But you shouldn't keep substantial assets in the USA in the first place. Sell any USA real estate and rent instead, get that money out where it is safe. Certainly, don't ever expect any justice from American courts. Expect the judges and both sides of lawyers to tilt toward the government, or toward the big company that can pay bribes on a regular basis. All that most people get out of American courts, is grief, and lawyers stealing their money. Best not to approach American courts unless absolutely necessary. Despite the commonplace fraud and dishonesty of American lawyers, it's still important to have one if you must be in an American court. The reason is that American judges absolutely hate people who come to court without lawyers, especially if they have any money at all. The judge takes it as a personal insult if you are not giving some money to one of his lawyer friends, and will tend to take revenge on you unless you hire a lawyer, even a very stupid one, to stand by your side.
What American lawyers love to do, is to steal all your money, tell you a bunch of false promises and lies, and then do nothing for you, while they sell you out to the other side. That is a perfect scenario for an American lawyer. A lawyer's goal is to squeeze as much money from you, while at the same time doing as little as possible to rock the judge's political boat. Some lawyers even make money by the "research and review" scam, where they don't even agree to represent you, but just steal your money to "research" your case.
Accept in advance that an American lawyer will rob you and betray you, and everything will go more smoothly if you quietly understand this. Never actually trust an American lawyer, but don't let on that you know he's a crook. Don't tell the lawyer how much money you really have, he will try to get all of it. Try to pay a lawyer very slowly, in small chunks, that will keep him more interested, and prevent some of the bigger robberies and betrayals, and will leave you some money to try another lawyer if things get too awful. Remember, once you give a USA lawyer any money, it's almost impossible to get it back. Lawyers will almost never sue another lawyer, and if you go to court, the judge will almost certainly protect the lawyer who defrauded you (and get a share of the money, of course). Lawyers and judges in America like people to appear to be submissive and stupid and easily manipulated. They like to feel superior to you. By letting them think that you are weak and falling for their lies, you may give yourself some breathing room. This tactic has even enabled some people to stay alive and not get murdered, and to escape from America back to safety.
The growing American nightmare
It is just getting worse and worse in America's legal system. For some years now, the USA judges and lawyers have gotten used to denying people justice, to the great flow of bribery money, and even to committing felony crimes in broad daylight and getting away with it. It just keeps on escalating. Though a social explosion is lurking beneath the surface - with judges starting to get murdered, and people lighting courthouses ablaze - the people who run America are letting the current system chug along as it is, justice be damned, and to hell with the people who seem to have no way to fight back.
It can't go on like this forever, but it may get a lot worse first, despite the fair internet visibility on documented American legal corruption. One should note a brave and promising grass-roots attempt at judicial reform in the USA called (Jail 4 Judges - www.jail4judges.org), which attempts to place onto American ballots, a referendum for a new procedure to give citizens a real right of redress against corrupt judges. It is a wonderful and beautiful idea that deserves success, and will help transform America if it moves forward. Regrettably, though, for all the usual reasons of fear, there is no one with any big money or media clout, yet making a foray against the real-life nightmare of America's courts and prisons. It remains a taboo subject for the American media, and the media silence feeds and encourages the whole machine of bribery and repression.
Perhaps, though, it will not be until after America has had a major economic or social cataclysm, that the big American machine of legal corruption finally comes to be reformed. Sociologically speaking, it's astonishing how disgraceful American lawyers have become - they are now both the mafia and the gestapo of American life. America's lawyers, as a whole, have had little to say about America’s recent international crimes of prisoner abuse, and violation of international human rights agreements. American lawyers, as always nowadays, are "playing the game" with America's government and its judges. America, indeed, does not have the rule of law at all. Instead, it is just the rule of lawyers, lawyers who crave money and power. And, in America, it can be jail or worse for anyone who tries to fight these lawyers. The reality of the United States of America is that Americans, despite their overall wealth as a nation, are now a people living in a society of great fear. Their fears are complicated, and many Americans cannot even put their fears into words. They are afraid of lawyers and the prison system, afraid of losing their jobs in a brutal society with no social safety net, afraid of needing health care in a disastrous system with no health plan. And Americans are afraid of what will happen if they try to question the system and the way things work. They often feel helpless and powerless against the great forces dominating their country. American citizens are confused and fearful, and gullible to propaganda. Because Americans have difficulty in sorting out their many fears, they have become ripe candidates for racial and religious hatreds, and for following their government into war. The issues of "terrorism" and war distract the emotions of Americans from the terrible problems in their own society at home. The foreign "enemy" gives Americans a face on which to project their fear and their anger. The result is the horrifying misconduct of some Americans in these wars; while back inside the USA, there is increasing corruption and repression in the legal system. Americans desperately would like to believe that they still live in a "free" country, as it is so horrifying to them to face the ugly truth, that their freedom is already largely lost. Americans can imagine they are "free" because they can still choose among different products to buy, or quit their job, or buy a gun at the store. And the Americans most likely to imagine they are still "free" are the ones who have not yet been trapped in the halls of America’s legal system. They have not yet seen the lawyers and judges who smirk and laugh as they deny victims the most basic human rights. The truth is that, inside America, a nightmare has begun. The lawyers and judges and courts, "playing the game", regularly trample upon the freedoms that Americans thought they had. It is people like myself, escaped from the USA, living in kinder and gentler places, who are now the lucky ones. No one should ever again be fooled by USA propaganda about being the "land of freedom". Those who are thinking of travelling to, visiting, or working in America, should think again. It might not be worth the risk of being in a country that has one of the most crooked legal systems in the world.
Prosecute The Tortureres!
By Chandra Muzaffar
Two top United Nations human rights officials have demanded that the United States government prosecute all high-level government officials involved in the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) torture programmes.
The UN’s special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights Ben Emmerson stated on December 10 2014 that the systematic torture revealed in the US Senate Report released on December 9th, was a massive violation of the 1994 UN Convention Against Torture. He called upon the US Attorney-General to “bring criminal charges against those responsible.” He further emphasized that the US is legally obliged to do so under international law. Another UN official, the UN high commissioner for human rights, ZeidRaad al-Hussein, made a similar call.
An American law professor from the University of California’s Irvine School of Law has pointed out that torture is also a violation of domestic law since it is afederal crime and those “who authorized it and engaged in it must be criminally prosecuted.” Civil society groups from all over the world should endorse these calls wholeheartedly. They should ask that not only those officials directly responsible for the tortures but also those at the very apex who authorized it should be put on trial. Since the CIA’ S “Rendition, Detention and Interrogation”programme was authorized by President George Bush in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks, he should be prosecuted, together with his Vice-President, Dick Chenney, his Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfield, and the Deputy Secretary of Defence, Paul Wolfowitz, all of whom may have had a bigger role in the planning and execution of this vile plan.
It follows from this that President Obama’s decision not to prosecute officials from the Bush Administration is wrong and unjust. It is unjust not only because it undermines both US and international law; it is unjust because the forms of torture employed were callous and cruel. Detainees at various centres were subjected to waterboarding, deprivation of sleep for long hours, sexual threats and death threats. It is significant that the Report admits that in spite of all the coercion used, the interrogators did not obtain critical information about imminent terrorist attacks.
Though the Senate Report was focused upon the US, there is some evidence from other sources that seem to suggest that certain other countries were also involved in the CIA’s programme. In July 2014, the European court of human rights for instance ruled that the government of Poland had facilitated the CIA’s secret prison programme in Europe. Other inquiries have revealed that Sweden, Italy, Macedonia and Rumania have also participated in the CIA’s programme for interrogating and detaining terror suspects. Human rights groups in Britain allege that Britain’s MI 5 and MI 6 have colluded with the CIA in torturing British residents detained in Guantanamo Bay. Civil society groups should campaign for full accountability and transparency on the question of torture from these and other governments.
Returning to the situation in the US, there is an even more powerful reason why top US leaders should be put in the dock. US leaders have always projected themselves as the greatest champions of democracy and human rights on earth. How can champions of democracy torture --- torture in such a debased and depraved manner?
Of course, even without the recent revelations, or the revelations in the last few years from Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram, many of us have never seen US elites as genuine defenders of human rights. How can you be a defender of human rights when you conquer foreign lands and kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people, from Vietnam to Afghanistan to Iraq, in pursuit of your own hegemonic economic and political agenda? What rights are you protecting when you overthrow democratically elected governments in Iran and Chile? How can you claim to be a paragon of democratic values when you have helped to keep in power some of the most autocratic regimes in Latin America, Africa and Asia?
Indeed, the US government should desist from playing the role of an upholder of democracy and human rights, given the history of the US as a nation. The barbaric annihilation of the indigenous people of America renders the white settler community in that land a violent suppressor of human rights and human dignity. Similarly, the enslavement of the African population of the US for many decades by a white elite means that it did not have an iota of respect for the honour and integrity of its victims. Perhaps what happened in Ferguson and New York in recent months serve as grim reminders of a racist past that continues to haunt 21st century peddlers of human rights.
There are apologists for the US who argue that whatever its shortcomings, the US leadership was willing to admit through the Senate Report that it had tortured people, that it had done wrong. After all, many other countries also torture detainees and prisoners.
True, the US elite did the right thing by revealing the dark side of its torture programme, unlike most other governments. But we must remember that the US is different from others in two respects. It commands enormous global power, especially global military power. With massive power comes huge responsibilities. It is in the realm of the responsibilities that it shoulders that it has failed miserably. And its torture program is just one of the many examples of its failure to act responsibly. Besides, the US, as we have seen, often claims the high moral ground when it comes to democracy and human rights. Most other states do not make such claims. Judged by its own moral barometer, the US should hang down its head in shame.
It is a pity that many so-called liberal human rights groups in the Global South who are quick to condemn their own governments for their human rights transgressions are deafeningly silent in the face of the US leadership’s gross violations of human dignity.
STOP TORTURE: ACCOUNTABILITY: YES – IMPUNITY: NO
TO: US GOVERNMENT - INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT - PRESIDENT OF THE UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY - PRESIDENT OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL - EUROPEAN COURT OF JUSTICE
Petition initiated by two former UN Assistant Secretaries-General, UN Humanitarian Coordinators for Iraq: Hans von Sponeck and Denis Halliday.
On 9 December 2014, the US Senate released its CIA torture report. The investigation confirmed what globally has been known for many years: the US Central Intelligence Agency and US-outsourced national authorities in Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere have been involved in an extensive range of torture applications.
Compelling evidence has become available, especially since 2001, the beginning of the Afghanistan war, through investigations by the European Parliament and national judicial authorities, as well as two major reports presented by Swiss Senator Dick Marty in 2006 and 2007 to the Council of Europe, on secret CIA detention centres in Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere.
The US Senate report makes it clear that cruel, degrading and inhumane treatment of captives by the CIA and its collaborators have been carried out on a continuous basis. Such treatment can not be justified in any manner, even if the US Government reservations with which it signed the UN torture convention in 1994 were to be taken into account.
CIA personnel and others wilfully participated in following executive orders and directives thereby violating the UN torture convention and the Geneva Convention III. In this way they have committed serious crimes for which they must be held accountable.
The UN Special Representative on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights, Ben Emmerson QC has reminded us that “torture is a crime of universal jurisdiction”.
The U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Raad al-Hussein, said it is "crystal clear" under international law that the United States, which ratified the U.N. Convention Against Torture in 1994, now has an obligation to ensure accountability. He further added: “If they order, enable or commit torture, recognized as a serious international crime, they cannot simply be granted impunity because of political expediency”.
US President Obama must be aware that not holding the perpetrators accountable is a victory for impunity and will have far-reaching implications for global security.
We, signatories from all parts of the world, therefore urge the US Government and its Attorney General, to start a judicial process with a sense of urgency in compliance with principles of equality before the law. If they fail to do so, other international bodies, such as the International Criminal Court, will have the obligation under international law to assure that justice is done.
Why is this important?
It is now time to take action. The individuals responsible for the criminal conspiracy revealed in the torture report must be brought to justice, and must face criminal penalties commensurate with the gravity of their crimes.
It is critical that we hold accountable those who authorized, those who legally sanctioned and those who implemented the torture policies.
American Torture -- Past, Present, And… Future? Beyond The Senate Torture Report
By Rebecca Gordon
It's the political story of the week in Washington. At long last, after the endless stalling and foot-shuffling, the arguments about redaction and CIA computer hacking, the claims that its release might stoke others out there in the Muslim world to violence and “throw the C.I.A. to the wolves,” the report -- you know which one -- is out. Or at least, the redacted executive summary of it is available to be read and, as Senator Mark Udall said before its release, “When this report is declassified, people will abhor what they read. They're gonna be disgusted. They're gonna be appalled. They're gonna be shocked at what we did.”
So now we can finally consider the partial release of the long-awaited report from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence about the gruesome CIA interrogation methods used during the Bush administration's “Global War on Terror.” But here's one important thing to keep in mind: this report addresses only the past practices of a single agency. Its narrow focus encourages us to believe that, whatever the CIA may have once done, that whole sorry torture chapter is now behind us.
In other words, the moment we get to read it, it's already time to turn the page. So be shocked, be disgusted, be appalled, but don't be fooled. The Senate torture report, so many years and obstacles in the making, should only be the starting point for a discussion, not the final word on U.S. torture. Here's why.
Mainstream coverage of U.S. torture in general, and of this new report in particular, rests on three false assumptions:
1. The most important question is whether torture “worked.”
2. U.S. torture ended when George W. Bush left office.
3. The only kind of torture that really “counts” happens in foreign war zones.
Let's look at each of these in order.
False Assumption #1: The only question is “Did it work?”
Maybe torture “worked” on occasion. Probably it didn't. But it doesn't matter because torture is illegal under U.S. and international law, and it's a moral abomination.
The Senate report's first finding -- and the one that much of a highly predictable debate will focus on -- is that the CIA's “enhanced interrogation techniques” were “ineffective” in identifying the perpetrators of 9/11, producing actionable intelligence, or preventing terrorist attacks. In response, the rhetoric is already flying. The Republicans (except for Senator John McCain) are jumping up and downshouting “It did work! It did!” The president's own CIA director, John Brennan, has issued his denunciation of the report. Whileacknowledging that “the Agency made mistakes,” he, too, insisted that torture “worked.” (A couple of days later, he backtracked, suggesting instead that the answer to this question was actually "unknowable.") Other former officials of the Agency are chiming in big time.
In the end, it doesn't matter whether the CIA's methods -- including waterboarding (which McCain calls “mock execution” and “an exquisite form of torture”); inflicting week-long sleep deprivation; repeated beatings; hanging people by their wrists for days, bombarding them with unbearable sound and light or keeping them in total darkness; threatening to sexually abuse their mothers or harm their children; or, in possibly five cases, shoving a tube up someone's rectum and filling it with water (supposedly for “rectal rehydration”) -- were effective. It doesn't matter whether these methods led the Navy Seals to Osama bin Laden. It doesn't matter whether these methodsprevented an al-Qaeda attack on the Library Tower in Los Angeles. It doesn't matter whether they saved American (and only American!) lives. In fact, for those who read the report, the Senate committee is remarkably convincing on a subject about which we already have much information: torture notoriously does not produce useful information. It produces a tangled mess of truths, half-truths, lies, wild invention and confabulation, psychotic ravings, and desperate attempts to say whatever the victim thinks the torturers want to hear.
But none of this matters. Nor does it matter how frightened we are. The situation isn't complicated. We are not allowed to torture people, because we have passed laws against it and signed treaties saying we won't do it. The U.N. Convention Against Torture, which the U.S. signed in 1994, makes it very clear that being afraid of an attack is no excuse for torture. In Article 2, the Convention states, “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability, or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.” People will always make excuses, but there is no legitimate excuse for torture.
What's at stake here is the kind of country we want to be: Are we a courageous nation ruled by laws or a nation of cowards?
False Assumption #2: Torture ended when George W. Bush left office.
In his statement on the day the report was released, President Obama tried once again to shove U.S. torture into a box labeled Bad Things We Used to Do. “Rather than another reason to refight old arguments,” he said, “I hope that today's report can help us leave these techniques where they belong: in the past.”
In fact, institutionalized state torture is not a thing of the past. It has continued under President Obama. Here are some examples:
*Twice a day in the U.S. prison at Guantánamo, guards forcibly remove hunger strikers from their cells, strap them to a chair, and “feed” them through a tube jammed up the nose and down into the stomach. Here's how one victim remembered that experience:
"I will never forget the first time they passed the feeding tube up my nose. I can't describe how painful it is to be force-fed this way. As it was thrust in, it made me feel like throwing up. I wanted to vomit, but I couldn't. There was agony in my chest, throat, and stomach. I had never experienced such pain before. I would not wish this cruel punishment upon anyone."
Force-feeding is no humanitarian act; it is a punishment for nonviolent resistance. It often begins with what officials call “cell extraction” -- as if prisoners were teeth to be pulled out of a jaw. Here's what happens,according to Yemini prisoner Moath al-Alwi, who has been at Guantánamo since 2002:
"When I choose to remain in my cell in an act of peaceful protest against the force-feeding, the prison authorities send in a Forced Cell Extraction team: six guards in full riot gear. Those guards are deliberately brutal to punish me for my protest. They pile up on top of me to the point that I feel like my back is about to break. They then carry me out and strap me into the restraint chair, which we hunger strikers call the torture chair."
Guards use the “torture chair” to restrain the prisoner, says al-Alwi, but also to make the procedure even more painful:
"A new twist to this routine involves the guards restraining me to the chair with my arms cuffed behind my back. The chest strap is then tightened, trapping my arms between my torso and the chair's backrest. This is done despite the fact that the torture chair features built-in arm restraints. It is extremely painful to remain in this position."
At present, a Navy nurse faces possible dishonorable discharge for refusing to participate in these force feedings, because he believes they are a form of torture.
Why are detainees on hunger strike in the first place? They are using the only nonviolent means available to them to protest their indefinite and illegal detention, which the U.N. Committee Against Torture says is in itself a violation of U.S. duties under the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment.
* It wasn't until this December 10th that the U.S. military finally released its last detainees from the notorious Detention Facility in Parwan on Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. In September 2014, the United States “quietly released” 14 Pakistanis it had held there for some years -- none of whom was ever accused of any crime. We know nothing about the treatment of those who remained at Bagram, but we do know that, like the detainees at Guantánamo, the men being held there used hunger strikes as their only nonviolent means of resisting their indefinite detention and solitary confinement.
* In what appears to be a direct contravention of a 2009 presidential executive order to the CIA to shut down all its “black sites,” or secret interrogation centers around the world, the Agency seems still to be operating at least one of them. Or at least it was two years later when journalist Jeremy Scahill reported on a secret underground prison in Mogadishu, Somalia, run by the CIA, ostensibly in cooperation with the Somali government's National Security Agency. There, according to Scahill, “U.S. intelligence personnel pay the salaries of intelligence agents and also directly interrogate prisoners.”
Have these intelligence agents used “enhanced interrogation techniques”? We don't know. What we do know, however, was that the place was dark, filthy, and infested with bedbugs and mosquitoes. We know that prisoners held there had been kidnapped, hooded, and transported by plane in a style familiar to anyone who has followed the CIA's methods over the last dozen years.
If that site is still open, either the CIA is operating it with the Obama administration's knowledge and consent or it is defying the president of the United States. In either case, there was and possibly still is a serious breach of executive power going on.
* During his confirmation hearings, Obama's first CIA director, Leon Panetta, told members of Congress that “if the approved techniques were ‘not sufficient' to get a detainee to divulge details he was suspected of knowing about an imminent attack, he would ask for ‘additional authority' to use other methods.”
* President Obama's 2009 executive order ending CIA torture still left open a little-discussed torture window. It continued to allow for “extraordinary rendition,” the capture of terror suspects abroad and their shipping to other countries for detention and interrogation. The U.S. record on this practicesince 9/11 has been a grim history of torture at one remove. True, the order says that no one should be sent to a country in which he or she is likely to be tortured, but the U.S. definition of “likely” differs significantly from that of the U.N. Convention Against Torture. Article 3 of the Convention says no one may be sent to another country if there are “substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.” The United States insists on a more lenient standard: prohibiting rendition if it is “more likely than not” that torture will take place. In practice, this means relying on the word of the receiving country that no harm will be done (wink, wink).
* The U.S. Army Field Manual on Human Intelligence Collector Operationsprohibits many forms of torture. However, a classified “annex” still permits sleep deprivation and sensory deprivation. The U.N. Committee Against Torture flagged this -- among many other concerns -- in its recent report on U.S. compliance with the Convention Against Torture.
* No high civilian officials or military commanders and other personnel were ever prosecuted for the torture they ordered or oversaw, nor of course were the actual CIA torturers. Instead they're writing their memoirs and painting pictures of themselves bathing. If their political power makes it impossible to try them here, perhaps the outrage of the international community can at least make Dick Cheney and George W. Bush outcasts like other discredited former rulers along the lines of Serbia's Slobodan Milosovic or Tunisia'sZein el-Abidine Ben Ali.
Or maybe the United States could actually follow the U.N. Committee Against Torture's recommendation and finally sign up for the International Criminal Court.
False Assumption #3: Torture only counts when it happens in foreign wars.
This is not true either. Sometimes, torture happens right here in the United States in police stations, immigrant detention centers, and the American jails and prisons that hold 2.3 million people.
When the United Nations Committee Against Torture released its report in November on U.S. compliance with the U.N. Convention against Torture,among the failures the Committee noted were torture and abuse practices in U.S. prisons and immigrant detention facilities. The frequent brutality of U.S. police forces and their rapid militarization also alarmed the Committee.
Specifically, the Committee pointed to the extensive use of solitary confinement for periods of time longer than two weeks -- the point at which many people start exhibiting signs of psychosis, including having hallucinations, hearing voices, and experiencing paranoia. In my state, California, there are people who have been kept from all human contact formore than 15 years. We are beginning to recognize that the 50,000 to 80,000 people being held in solitary confinement in this country are actually being tortured every day. Furthermore, as the U.N. report emphasizes, some of these people haven't even been convicted of a crime; they're either being held in pre-trial detention or in immigrant detention centers.
U.S. prisoners also experience high levels of institutionally sanctioned rape and sexual violence. In fact, prison rape is so common, it's a regular plot device on television police procedurals. Want to keep a “perp” from asking for a lawyer? Threaten to send him to Rikers Island, where who knows what can happen to a pretty guy like him.
The Report Is Out. Now What?
Make no mistake. Getting even this partial and redacted report into public view is a real victory for everyone who hopes to end state torture. But it's just the beginning, not the end of the fight. There's still much work to do.
As a start, someone needs to rein in a CIA whose leadership, past and present,seems remarkably committed to the effectiveness of torture practices. We need reports like the one the Senate produced about the whole alphabet soup of agencies involved in the “war on terror.” We need a full accounting, and full accountability, including prosecutions of those responsible, or perhaps even official pardons that would at least establish that crimes were committed. We need to end torture in our own jails and prisons.
The Senate torture report could be the opening we need to really make U.S. torture a thing of the past. Let's not waste it!
Rebecca Gordon is the author of Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States. She teaches in the philosophy department at the University of San Francisco. She is a member of the War Times/Tiempo de Guerras collective. You can contact her through the Mainstreaming Torture website.
Copyright 2014 Rebecca Gordon
SEPTEMBER 9/11 WAS PLANNED !!!! VISIT : http://www.neiu.edu/~ayjamess/hmmm.htm#Main
9/11 , 26/11 - SIGN TO LEGALLY PROSECUTE SPONSORERS OF TERRORISM USA , PAKISTAN & INDIA
Visit , read the petition & support by signing the petition demanding
LEGAL PROSECUTION OF SPONSORERS OF TERRORISM
LEGAL PROSECUTION OF SPONSORERS OF TERRORISM
Visit , read the petition & support by signing the petition demanding
ACCOUNTABILITY OF INDIAN JUDGES & POLICE.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/4/accountability-of-indian-judges#signatures ,
ACCOUNTABILITY OF INDIAN JUDGES & POLICE.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/4/accountability-of-indian-judges#signatures ,
India, U.S.A , U.K , Pakistan and various other countries
have given birth to & supported various terror outfits, all with the
objective of widening their area of influence, to get hold of
governance of other countries, to loot resources of other countries.
At no time they were bothered about the welfare of innocent people
in those victim countries.
Now, when the Frankenstein monster they fathered TERRORISM
is haunting them , came home to roost in their own backyards , all
these countries are crying foul.
Take for instance Pakistan , it has got enough problems on hand , poverty , unemployment , malnutrition , hunger , illiteracy is rampant in Pakistan. Ordinary Pakistanis are suffering, ordinary Pakistanis does not need neither war nor jihad , what they need is food , healthcare , education for their children.
Take for instance india, it has lot of problems on hand
like starvation, lack of education , health care, etc. The GOI says
it doesn't have enough funds to solve these problems. These problems
are of pre-independece vintage, increasing multifold after
independence of india. Still the government of india spent crores of
rupees on training , arming of tamil terrorists in srilanka ,
unnecessarily poked it's nose in east pakistan creating bangladesh,
created terrorist outfits in punjab & northeast to counter the
influence of other terrorist outfits. ALL THE WHILE PREACHING
PANCHASHEEL PRINCIPLES – peaceful co-existance , respect for
neighbour's boundaries, etc, in the same breath. What ordinary Indians , commonfolk need is food , shelter , healthcare & education.
Take the case of USA , from the beginning since decades , it is the habit of US administrators, britishers to sow the seeds of discontent between two countries , make them to go to war with each other ( simultaneously selling military hardware worth billions of dollars to those same countries by the way making profit in billions ) & to finally play the role of a truce maker thereby getting a foothold in the newly formed government plus getting reconstruction projects worth billions of dollars leading to profit of billions. Just remember the US invasion of iraq , citing presence of WMDs, finally nothing was found. However USA made billions of profit by business.
The common folk of whichever country , whichever religion you take , does not want war , everybody wants peace. The common folk need food , shelter , healthcare & education. It is the scheming politicians who go on the path of violence. POOJYA BAPUJI's , MAHATMA GANDHIJI's principles of non violence , non interference in the affairs of other individuals / other countries , love / compassion for fellow human beings is much relevant today.
Hereby, e-Voice urges the international war crimes tribunal , to
order the respective governments who aided terrorism ,to pay damages
to victim countries. Jai hind. Vande mataram
Your's sincerely,
Nagaraj.m.r.
CRIMES OF U.S PRESIDENT
From the day one the government of USA is selfish & violating the rights of other countrymen. During cold war days , to expand it's influence & to give more business for u.s arms manufacturers , the u.s.a sowed the seeds of terrorism in various countries & nurtured them through arms & finance supply , training. The AL-QUEDA & TALIBAN are it's own babies.
The president bush of U.S.A was sufferring from low image ratings , the domestic economy was facing a slump , so to improve his own rating & bring more business to u.s industries , he schemed an inhuman ruthless plan. He wanted to take control of afghanisthan & iraq. He needed a ruse to invade them & concocted one murdering his very own countrymen.
From the day one the government of USA is selfish & violating the rights of other countrymen. During cold war days , to expand it's influence & to give more business for u.s arms manufacturers , the u.s.a sowed the seeds of terrorism in various countries & nurtured them through arms & finance supply , training. The AL-QUEDA & TALIBAN are it's own babies.
The president bush of U.S.A was sufferring from low image ratings , the domestic economy was facing a slump , so to improve his own rating & bring more business to u.s industries , he schemed an inhuman ruthless plan. He wanted to take control of afghanisthan & iraq. He needed a ruse to invade them & concocted one murdering his very own countrymen.
human rights watch has doubted the authenticity of 9/11 in it's articles months ago. it is just a ploy of the bush to divert attention of public from his dipping ratings , domestic problems like unemployment , economic lows and more importantly to find rather fabricate a reason for attacking the arab world , iraq. finally , to help it's MNCs mint millions in reconstuction , oil contracts, etc. it is a savage act of bush for green bucks.
SEPTEMBER 9/11 WAS PLANNED !!!! VISIT : http://www.neiu.edu/~ayjamess/hmmm.htm#Main
The government of U.S.A thrown all international conventions into wind , lied about weapons of destruction in iraq & invaded a sovereign country iraq. Still , it was unabale to find any weapons of mass destruction in iraq. In it's greed for power , green bucks , it inhumanly tortured prisoners , took them to 3rd countries for torture , bugged phones of u.s citizens & violated human rights of u.s citizens. In his ego , greed mr.bush has violated all human rights of not only u.s citizens but also human rights of innocent iraqis , afghans , etc & thrown all international laws into winds.
Now, the president himself has acknowledged the intelligence failure in iraq but defended his iraqi invasion. Mr. Bush will be remebered in the history books as a GREATEST LIAR , INHUMAN SCHEMING MEGALAMONIAC & GREEDY OLDMAN.
AN APPEAL TO THE HONOURABLE CHIEF JUSTICE OF SUPREME COURT OF USA , CHIEF JUSTICE OF INDIA & CHIEF JUSTICE OF PAKISTAN
- By American Citizens
Our country was known as " Heaven On Earth" , "Land of Equality & Equal Oppurtunity" & the "Statue of Liberty" rightly symbolized the spirit of our country. Now USA is known as a "Terror State".
In the last 3 – 4 decades , the persons who occupied the office of President USA ,in their individual capacity took wrong , inhuman decisions , meddled in the internal affairs of other sovereign nations , spent our resources to create terrorist outfits like al-queda , Taliban in those countries.
In turn these terrorist outfits terrorized , murdered millions of innocents & this Frankenstein monster came home to roost on September 9 / 11 . After September 9 / 11 , each terror suspect is severely tortured in hell like Abu Garibh prison , elsewhere by our authorities. For argument sake let us accept
that these terrorists who murder innocents don't deserve kid glove treatment & rightly deserve 3rd degree torture. When a single terrorist deserve such inhuman 3rd degree torture , what quantum of punishment , torture – previous presidents of USA deserve – who created , aided & abetted thousands of such terrorists , terrorist outfits ?
Herby, we appeal to the honourable Supreme Court of USA to order the federal government to to make public :
1. how much US resources were spent from US TREASURY , to finance terrorist outfits , military juntas in other sovereign nations ?
2. is not Al-queda , Taliban creations of USA ?
3. did September 9 / 11 WTC attack truly happened by hijacked airplane or was it planned by US authorities ? see
http://www.neiu.edu/~ayjamess/hmmm.htm#Main
4 . is racial profiling , profiling a particular community & suspecting all the muslims as terror suspects , right?
5. if it is right , the cretors of such terrorist outfits – past presidents of USA – who were Christians makes it logical to assume whole of our Christian community as terror suspect ?
6. is not use of 3rd degree torture on all type of suspects in US prisons & in the prisons of US allied countries at the behest of US authorities , right ? is it not violation of human rights & US laws ?
7. did US find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq , which was the main reason for US attacking Iraq ?
8. why not US authorities use scientific interrogation techniques like polygraph , lie detector tests instead of inhuman 3rd degree torture on terror suspects & suspects in other criminal cases ?
9 . what legal right our President of USA have , to illegally spend billions of our dollars on inhuman , llegal acts of terrorism , military coup , creation , aiding & abetting of terrorists , etc , in other sovereign nations ? while we are suffering from loss of jobs ,loss of home due to natural calamities , etc ?
Crux , Foundation of all religions is humanity , kindness & universal brotherhood. It is the preachers who misrepresent it. Terrorism created , aided , abetted by anybody is inhuman & wrong . Terrorism is creation of power hungry , selfish people & they must be legally punished .
Hereby , we appeal to the honorable supreme court of USA to legally prosecute Previous PRESIDENTS OF USA in the last 4 decades , for crimes of terror , as per the present US anti-terror laws.
Recently , in the issue of weekly publication "The Week" , cabinet minister of government of srilanka (previously a deadly terrorist & right hand man of LTTE chief Prabhakaran ) Mr. Karuna , Himself has stated in an interview that LTTE received arms training in Tamilnadu State of India , to wage war against Government of Srilanka. The Justice Jain Commission Of Enquiry , which probed late PM Rajiv Gandhi's assassination case , also stated that Tamil Terrorist outfits in Srilanka Received monetary , financial , arms training support from government of India. GOI has even setup a radio station for tamil terrorists of srilanka , within Indian territory. GOI spent billions of dollars of Indian taxpayer's money for aiding & abetting terrorism , while billions of Indians were half starving & going without a single meal , without proper health care.
Recently , in a media interview the president of Government of Pakistan Mr. Jardari himself has confessed that in the previous years the government of Pakistan has aided & abetted Terrorism for tactical gains of Pakistan , spending billions of dollars of Pakistani taxpayer's money. While ordinary Pakistanis were suffering from starvation , lack of health care , etc.
All the above proves that Previous Presidents of Government of USA , previous Presidents of Government of Pakistan & Previous Prime Ministers of Government of India were the real master minds of TERRORISM , founded , aided , abetted TERRORISM FOR THEIR OWN SELFISH GAINS. In turn Murdering lakhs of innocent human beings. These guilty previous presidents & prime ministers are deadly than OSAMA BIN LADEN.
Hereby , we appeal to the Honorable Chief Justices of supreme courts of USA , INDIA , PAKISTAN , BANGLADESH , SRILANKA & INTERNATIONAL WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL , to legally prosecute the previous Prime Ministers of INDIA , the previous presidents of USA & PAKISTAN , on charges of master minding TERRORISM & murdering innocent people in their respective countries .
- By American Citizens
Our country was known as " Heaven On Earth" , "Land of Equality & Equal Oppurtunity" & the "Statue of Liberty" rightly symbolized the spirit of our country. Now USA is known as a "Terror State".
In the last 3 – 4 decades , the persons who occupied the office of President USA ,in their individual capacity took wrong , inhuman decisions , meddled in the internal affairs of other sovereign nations , spent our resources to create terrorist outfits like al-queda , Taliban in those countries.
In turn these terrorist outfits terrorized , murdered millions of innocents & this Frankenstein monster came home to roost on September 9 / 11 . After September 9 / 11 , each terror suspect is severely tortured in hell like Abu Garibh prison , elsewhere by our authorities. For argument sake let us accept
that these terrorists who murder innocents don't deserve kid glove treatment & rightly deserve 3rd degree torture. When a single terrorist deserve such inhuman 3rd degree torture , what quantum of punishment , torture – previous presidents of USA deserve – who created , aided & abetted thousands of such terrorists , terrorist outfits ?
Herby, we appeal to the honourable Supreme Court of USA to order the federal government to to make public :
1. how much US resources were spent from US TREASURY , to finance terrorist outfits , military juntas in other sovereign nations ?
2. is not Al-queda , Taliban creations of USA ?
3. did September 9 / 11 WTC attack truly happened by hijacked airplane or was it planned by US authorities ? see
http://www.neiu.edu/~ayjamess/hmmm.htm#Main
4 . is racial profiling , profiling a particular community & suspecting all the muslims as terror suspects , right?
5. if it is right , the cretors of such terrorist outfits – past presidents of USA – who were Christians makes it logical to assume whole of our Christian community as terror suspect ?
6. is not use of 3rd degree torture on all type of suspects in US prisons & in the prisons of US allied countries at the behest of US authorities , right ? is it not violation of human rights & US laws ?
7. did US find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq , which was the main reason for US attacking Iraq ?
8. why not US authorities use scientific interrogation techniques like polygraph , lie detector tests instead of inhuman 3rd degree torture on terror suspects & suspects in other criminal cases ?
9 . what legal right our President of USA have , to illegally spend billions of our dollars on inhuman , llegal acts of terrorism , military coup , creation , aiding & abetting of terrorists , etc , in other sovereign nations ? while we are suffering from loss of jobs ,loss of home due to natural calamities , etc ?
Crux , Foundation of all religions is humanity , kindness & universal brotherhood. It is the preachers who misrepresent it. Terrorism created , aided , abetted by anybody is inhuman & wrong . Terrorism is creation of power hungry , selfish people & they must be legally punished .
Hereby , we appeal to the honorable supreme court of USA to legally prosecute Previous PRESIDENTS OF USA in the last 4 decades , for crimes of terror , as per the present US anti-terror laws.
Recently , in the issue of weekly publication "The Week" , cabinet minister of government of srilanka (previously a deadly terrorist & right hand man of LTTE chief Prabhakaran ) Mr. Karuna , Himself has stated in an interview that LTTE received arms training in Tamilnadu State of India , to wage war against Government of Srilanka. The Justice Jain Commission Of Enquiry , which probed late PM Rajiv Gandhi's assassination case , also stated that Tamil Terrorist outfits in Srilanka Received monetary , financial , arms training support from government of India. GOI has even setup a radio station for tamil terrorists of srilanka , within Indian territory. GOI spent billions of dollars of Indian taxpayer's money for aiding & abetting terrorism , while billions of Indians were half starving & going without a single meal , without proper health care.
Recently , in a media interview the president of Government of Pakistan Mr. Jardari himself has confessed that in the previous years the government of Pakistan has aided & abetted Terrorism for tactical gains of Pakistan , spending billions of dollars of Pakistani taxpayer's money. While ordinary Pakistanis were suffering from starvation , lack of health care , etc.
All the above proves that Previous Presidents of Government of USA , previous Presidents of Government of Pakistan & Previous Prime Ministers of Government of India were the real master minds of TERRORISM , founded , aided , abetted TERRORISM FOR THEIR OWN SELFISH GAINS. In turn Murdering lakhs of innocent human beings. These guilty previous presidents & prime ministers are deadly than OSAMA BIN LADEN.
Hereby , we appeal to the Honorable Chief Justices of supreme courts of USA , INDIA , PAKISTAN , BANGLADESH , SRILANKA & INTERNATIONAL WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL , to legally prosecute the previous Prime Ministers of INDIA , the previous presidents of USA & PAKISTAN , on charges of master minding TERRORISM & murdering innocent people in their respective countries .
An appeal to honourable supreme court of USA & HE Honourable president of USA Mr.Obama
Your government protects all Americans, all American companies both inside America & abroad. If an American tourist is murdered in a third country , American investigators fly over to that country to conduct investigation in total disregard to local laws. In the same way , if the interests of an American company is threatened in a third country American government goes to it's rescue.
However , when an American company butchers , causes mass man slaughter in a third country , as an American company did in Bhopal India , no action by American government. Still the said American company has not removed , cleared the accident site of poisonous debris at Bhopal India since decades and still causing mass man slaughter , no action by American government why ?
Some US based companies are selling soft drinks , food products , medicines , drugs in third world countries , which are causing grave health damages to the public. The quality standards of these products are fit cases of rejections by US FDA. Some US companies are selling drugs ( which are banned in the USA ) to third world countries , still us companies are exporting such dangerous medicines , foods to third countries . no action by US government , why ? is it because you think that the lives of non Americans are cheaper than Americans ?
Hereby, I do request your kindself ,
1 . to initiate criminal prosecution against US based key management personnel responsible for Bhopal gas tragedy .
2 . to make either the respective company management or US government to pay compensation to victims of Bhopal gas tragedy on par with American lives , as if the same tragedy happened in the USA itself.
3 . to order the management of the said company to clean up Bhopal off poisonous debris , from the accident site at their own expense.
4 . To legally prosecute US exporters & US based companies selling products ( which violates US FDA regulations or banned in the USA for domestic consumption ) to third countries.
SEPTEMBER 9/11 WAS PLANNED !!!! VISIT : http://www.neiu.edu/~ayjamess/hmmm.htm#Main
edited , printed , published & owned by NAGARAJA.M.R. @ : LIG-2 / 761 , HUDCO FIRST STAGE , OPP WATER WORKS OFFICE , LAKSHMIKANTANAGAR ,HEBBAL ,MYSORE -570017 INDIA
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posted by DALIT online @ 6:20 AM
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