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	For justice to be legitimate, it is essential that it be applied equally by Lydia Polgreen International Herald Tribune & agencies   July 2012   It was exactly the kind of case the International Criminal Court was created to investigate: Yemen’s autocratic leader was clinging to power, turning his security forces’ guns on unarmed protesters. Hundreds were left dead, and many more were maimed.   But when Yemen’s Nobel laureate, Tawakkol Karman, traveled to The Hague to ask prosecutors to investigate, she was told the court would first need the approval of the United Nations Security Council. That never happened, and today the former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, is living comfortably in Yemen’s capital, still wielding influence.   Now, as the world confronts evidence of atrocities on a much vaster scale in Syria as President Bashar al-Assad’s government battles an ongoing rebellion, there are signs that Mr. Assad is likely to evade prosecution, much as Mr. Saleh has.   The men have not been prosecuted because they have powerful allies, underlining what critics say are flaws in the court’s setup. That threatens to undermine the still-fragile international consensus that formed the basis for the court’s creation in 2002: that leaders should be held accountable for crimes against their own people.   Already, the failure to act against some leaders challenged by the Arab Spring has emboldened critics who see the court as just another manifestation of what they perceive undemocratic international order. So-called justice, they say, is reserved for outcast leaders, including an assortment of African officials from weak states with few powerful patrons.   “We have the feeling that international justice is not ruled by law,” said Rami Nakhla, an exiled Syrian activist and member of the Syrian National Council, an opposition group. “It is ruled by politics, it is ruled by circumstances. It depends on the situation, it depends how valuable this person is. That is not real justice.”   Since it was created, the International Criminal Court has signed up 120 member states, including many nations that perpetrated or suffered some of the 20th century’s gravest atrocities: Germany, Japan, Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Argentina and Colombia. The long-held dream of a court with universal jurisdiction that could prosecute crimes against humanity committed anywhere is today closer than ever to being a reality.   Three former heads of state are in custody of international courts, and one, Charles Taylor, has been convicted of war crimes. The International Criminal Court has opened multiple investigations in some of the last decade’s worst conflagrations, and convicted one defendant, a Congolese warlord who turned young boys into killers. The trial of a former Bosnian Serb general, Ratko Mladic, is scheduled to resume Monday at the tribunal created to try accused war criminals from the former Yugoslavia.   The International Criminal Court was meant to replace the ad hoc courts created for a single conflict like Sierra Leone and Yugoslavia with a tribunal with global reach to investigate continuing atrocities. But the court does not have truly universal jurisdiction. It can investigate crimes only in nations that have signed the Rome Statute, which created the court, unless the Security Council refers a case.   In the Middle East, where few nations have signed and many have strong allies on the Security Council, authoritarian leaders can proceed with impunity. That threatens to undermine confidence in the system.   “So many crimes have been committed here,” said Nabeel Rajab, a rights activist in Bahrain, where the royal family, with help from Saudi Arabia and the acquiescence of the United States, has used force to put down a pro-democracy uprising. “But because of the close relationship between Western powers and the government of Bahrain, how can we hope for justice?”   The International Criminal Court began working a decade ago with low expectations and little support from the major world powers. Three of the five veto-holding members of the Security Council — the United States, Russia and China — refused to subject themselves to its jurisdiction. Despite this, it has turned into a touchstone for justice-seekers so powerful that The Hague has become their desired destination for autocrats everywhere. The Security Council allowed the court to investigate Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who ended up being indicted on charges of war crimes and genocide in Darfur, though the court has been unable to apprehend him.   And in February 2011, the Security Council voted unanimously to ask the International Criminal Court to investigate the Libyan government led by Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi. The court handed down indictments against Colonel Qaddafi and several top officials, though he was killed in Libya before he could face prosecution.   But the court has not taken action in any other Arab uprising, in no small part because of the ties between the countries involved and veto-holding members of the Security Council. Bahrain and Yemen are allies of the United States, which is not a signatory to the International Criminal Court. Russia and China, neither of which is a signatory, are close to Syria’s government, and are likely to block any attempt to refer a case to the court.   “Is Syria the kind of situation that should get the court’s attention? Absolutely,” said Kevin Jon Heller, a scholar of international justice and an international defense lawyer who teaches at the University of Melbourne in Australia. “But there is an inherent selectivity. As long as any country has a patron on the P5,” he said, referring to the veto-holding members of the Security Council, “it will never get referred.”   For years African countries have complained that the International Criminal Court has focused exclusively on African conflicts. In some ways this was unintentional: the court can investigate only atrocities committed after its creation in 2002, and in that period many of the bloodiest conflicts in the court’s jurisdiction have taken place in Africa.   But the African focus shows how tricky the jurisdictional questions are. Much of Africa has ratified the Rome Statute, with notable exceptions like Sudan, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe. In some instances, governments in Africa have referred cases involving rebel groups on their own territory, as in Uganda and the Central African Republic. In others, like the postelection violence in Kenya in 2008, the office of the International Criminal Court prosecutor has used its power to open investigations.   But other situations have escaped the court’s reach. At the bloody end of the civil war in Sri Lanka in 2009, 200,000 civilians were trapped on a beach between government forces and the Tamil Tigers. Tens of thousands are believed to have been killed, but the International Criminal Court has never investigated the case. Sri Lanka is a close ally of China. Charges of “crimes” in Gaza will never be investigated, international justice experts say, because of the ties between the United States and Israel.   The United States never agreed to be subject to the International Criminal Court because of constitutional issues and worries that its citizens, especially soldiers and spies, could be brought before the tribunal. This is no idle fear, given the human rights scandals that were revealed in Iraq and Afghanistan involving United States personnel. Other countries have rejected it as an unacceptable infringement on their sovereignty.   International justice is also slow and can be expensive. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was created in 1993, and it is not expected to wrap up its work until 2014. The Special Court for Sierra Leone, which convicted Mr. Taylor, was created in 2002 and has cost millions of dollars, leading some in that impoverished country to wonder whether the money could have been better spent on development.   Debates have raged for years about whether the court, by closing off a graceful exit, makes dictators more likely to fight to the death. Some question whether it is an effective deterrent of war crimes. The court has run into another problem in Libya: the new government seems intent on prosecuting surviving members of the old leadership itself despite deep concerns about the ability to hold fair trials.   Supporters of the court say it has achieved far more than anyone expected when it was created. “The assumption was the court will take years to come into effect,” said Darryl Robinson, a law professor at Queen’s University in Canada who worked as an adviser to the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor. “And once it is in force it is going to be this court with jurisdiction over Canada and Norway, with nothing to investigate.”   Instead, much of the world has signed up, and protesters in Yemen, Bahrain, Libya and Syria have demanded that their leaders be sent to The Hague for trial, testimony to the court’s wide resonance. The deeper question is whether the failure to prosecute the autocrats of the Arab Spring may erode faith in the movement toward a truly universal system of international justice.   “For justice to be legitimate, it is essential that it be applied equally to all,” said Richard Dicker of Human Rights Watch. “Justice has advanced, and in doing so, the flaws that mark it in today’s world become more apparent. The double standard must change for the whole undertaking to retain its legitimacy.” http://global.nytimes.com/   * Despite the ongoing political challenges that confront the realization of international justice, the Universal Rights Network remains a steadfast supporter of the work of the International Criminal Court. Visit the related web page
	The Silence on Global Warming in America by Robert Parry Consortium news   July 2012   Harrowing predictions of climate scientists seem to be coming true, as glaciers melt, forests burn, heat waves proliferate and freakish weather strikes in unexpected places. But the propagandists of global-warming denial have succeeded in silencing most politicians and the mainstream press here in the U.S.   Something called a “derecho” – a fast-moving line of thunderstorms – strikes the Washington area knocking out power for days. Massive forest fires ravage Colorado. A record heat wave covers much of the country. The U.S. press treats these events as major stories, but two words are rarely mentioned: “global warming.”   What has become most striking about the growing evidence that climate change is a clear and present danger – indeed an emerging existential threat – is the simultaneous failure of the U.S. news media to deal seriously with the issue, another sign of how the Right can intimidate the mainstream media into going silent.   We have seen this pattern before, as the Right sets the media agenda by bullying those who threaten its ideological interests. Before the Iraq War, anyone who dared raise questions about the Bush administration’s justifications could expect to be marginalized or worse. Just ask Phil Donahue, Scott Ritter and the Dixie Chicks.   During Ronald Reagan’s presidency, his hard-nosed propagandists dubbed this tactic “controversializing,” that is, anyone who got too much in the way could expect to be subjected to systematic smears and professional deconstruction. With so many right-wing voices willing to say almost anything, it wasn’t hard to intimidate people.   The smart career play was always to retreat when these forces were arrayed against you. Why risk your salary on some issue when there are so many other stories that you can work on without all the grief?   Indeed, those journalists who wouldn’t be scared off could easily be discredited as “causists,” or people “with an agenda,” i.e., they’d be painted as “unprofessional.” So, under this view of “journalism,” it’s much more “professional” to treat the recent weather events arising from this over-heating planet as unfathomable “acts of God.”   And that’s exactly what we’ve seen. Though there are exceptions here and there, generally these heat-related weather anomalies have been handled like earthquakes, something that couldn’t be expected or stopped. There have been loads of human-interest stories about people coping or suffering but almost no larger context.   Phenomenon of Silence   This phenomenon of silence – both in the political and journalistic realms – has not gone completely unnoticed. It’s just that those who make the point are ignored, too.   For instance, Sen. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, gave a major speech on the Senate floor on June 19 lamenting the failure of the U.S. political system to address the global-warming crisis but the speech got little play.   Kerry said, “As a matter of conscience and common sense, we should be compelled to fight today’s insidious conspiracy of silence on climate change — a silence that empowers misinformation and mythology to grow where science and truth should prevail. It is a conspiracy that has not just stalled, but demonized any constructive effort to put America in a position to lead the world on this issue. …   “In the United States, a calculated campaign of disinformation has steadily beaten back the consensus momentum for action on climate change and replaced it with timidity by proponents in the face of millions of dollars of phony, contrived ‘talking points,’ illogical and wholly unscientific propositions and a general scorn for the truth wrapped in false threats about job loss and taxes.   “Yet today, the naysayers escape all accountability to the truth. The media hardly murmurs when a candidate for President of the United States in 2012 [a reference to Mitt Romney] can walk away from previously held positions to announce that the evidence is not yet there about the impact of greenhouse gases on climate.   “The truth is, scientists have known since the 1800s that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases trap heat in our atmosphere. With the right amount of these gases, the Earth is a hospitable place for us to live. But if you add too much, which is what we’re doing right now, at a record pace, temperatures inevitably rise to record-setting levels. It’s not rocket science.   “Every major national science academy in the world has reported that global warming is real. … Facts that beg for an unprecedented public response are met with unsubstantiated, even totally contradicted denial. And those who deny have never, ever met their de minimus responsibility to provide some scientific answer to what, if not human behavior, is causing the increase in greenhouse gas particulates and how, if not by curbing greenhouse gases, we will address this crisis.”   Kerry continued, “The level of dissembling — of outright falsifying of information, of greedy appeal to fear tactics that has stalled meaningful action now for 20 years — is hard to wrap one’s mind around. It is so far removed from legitimate analysis that it confounds for its devilishly simple appeal to the lowest common denominator of disinformation.   “In the face of a massive and growing body of scientific evidence that says catastrophic climate change is knocking at our door, the naysayers just happily tell us climate change doesn’t exist. In the face of melting glaciers and ice caps in the Arctic, Greenland and Antarctica, they say we need to ‘warm up to the truth.’ And in the face of animals disappearing at alarming rates, they would have us adopt an ‘ostrich’ policy and simply bury our heads in the sand. …   “Al Gore spoke of the ‘assault on reason.’ Well, Exhibit A is staring us in the face: Coalitions of politicians and special interests that peddle science fiction over science fact. A paid-for, multi-million dollar effort that twists and turns the evidence until it’s gnarled beyond recognition.   “And tidal waves of cash that back a status quo of recklessness and inaction over responsibility and change. In short, it’s a story of disgraceful denial, back-pedaling and delay that has brought us perilously close to a climate change catastrophe. …   “What’s worse, we’ve stood by and let it all happen — we’ve treated falsehood with complacence and allowed a conspiracy of silence on climate change to infiltrate our politics. …   “The conspiracy of silence that now characterizes Washington’s handling of the climate issue is dangerous. Climate change is one of two or three of the most serious threats our country now faces, if not the most serious, and the silence that has enveloped a once robust debate is staggering for its irresponsibility.   “The costs of inaction get more and more expensive the longer we wait—and the longer we wait, the less likely we are to avoid the worst and leave future generations with a sustainable planet.”   So what was the reaction to Kerry’s address? It got some notice on blogs, especially those dedicated to climate-change issues, but received almost no attention from the mainstream news media.   Ten days after Kerry’s speech, the Washington area was struck by a “derecho,” a weather event virtually unknown to the people of the region. This straight line of fierce thunderstorms uprooted trees and knocked down power lines leaving much of the sweltering capital area in the dark and without air conditioning.   The devastation – along with forest fires in Colorado and 100-degree heat over much of the country – got lots of attention from the news media. But there was almost no discussion of the why.   Granted, no specific weather event can be traced directly to global warming, but climate scientists have been saying for years that the gradual increase in temperatures will be accompanied by more and more extreme weather patterns, exactly what the United States and much of the world are experiencing.   Yet, just as the U.S. news media failed the country in 2003 by caving to the Right’s pressure on the Iraq invasion, American journalism is now failing future generations by cowering in front of the loud voices of powerful climate-change deniers.
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