Date: Tue, 6 Apr 1999 14:29:53 -0400 (EDT) From: Gunder Frank <agfrank at chass.utoronto.ca> To: agf <agfrank at chass.utoronto.ca> Subject: kosovo/nato web-sites and agf articles
The following web-sites have wide-ranging daily updated news and analyse opposing the NATO war and Kosovo crisis, and the second one also has links to many other - including conservative - sites.
http://www.zmag.org/ZNETTOPnoanimation.html
Both above sites, as well as WSN and other e-mail discussion-nets, also carry the following essays of mine:
WAR IS PEACE, BIG BROTHER ASSURES US,
WHILE NATO BOMBING IS DANGEROUSLY CRIMINAL AND CRIMINALLY DANGEROUS
by
Andre Gunder Frank
[March 26, 1999] 4,300 words --------------------------------------------------------------------
NATO's WILD WEST/ERN VIGILANTES:
AGAINST THE LAW AND YUGOSLAVIA
by
Andre Gunder Frank 1,500 words
[Easter Sunday April 4, 1999]
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US/NATOS'S HYPOCRITIC OATH
by
Andre Gunder Frank
[April 4, 1999] 1,500 words --------------------------------------------------------------------
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This is not a UN war. It's a US war
UN Gen. Sec. Perez de Cuellar 1991
-he should have resigned
NATO member states should have consulted
the Security Council
UN Gen.Sec. Kofi Amann March 25,1999
- So should he resign?
A CALL TO A C T I O N
- Security Council to be called into Emergency Session by a one or more Member States [Yugoslavia, Russia, China, India, Sweden?] - to consider NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, wihthout even declaration of war - and a resolution charging violation of the UN Charter etc. - and demanding immediate cessation of NATO bombing,etc. - and to charge before Ad Hoc Hague Court - ALL in positions of responsibility - and especially the heads of state or government - for violation of human rights, the comission of war crimes and agression against Yugoslavia in violation of the Charter and the international law of the United Nations and the relevant Geneva Conventions as well as the of the jurisprudence elaborated at and the precedent set by the Nuremberg Tribunal against war crimes [for a UN definition of agression see below]
FURTHER A C T I O N
If there is any resort to veto of any of the abover by any NATO and permanent Security Council member - The Secretary General of the UN himself is to convene an Emergency Session of the Security Council and of the General Assembly - With the same agenda as above - PLUS his objection to the deliberate obstruction of the UN mechanism and of his own excsercise of his principal peace keeping duties by those and perhaps other members
And if the Secretary General continues to be so impeded in the excercise of his duties that continues
- The Secretary General of the United Nations should of his own accord [and/or he should be advised to] resign in protest for nmot being permitted to carry out his principal duties and functions of keeping the peace
- The General Assembly also be called into Emergency session for the same reasons above and resolve to move UN headquaters out of the USA
PURPOSES
These measures would dramatize the total illegality of this war and the seriousness of having not only violated but altogether set aside the United Nations and its organization and mechanism for the preservation of peace.
Moreover, as long as the UN and the Security Council are now literally useless in this major emergency for whose managements they were created, little or nothing would be lost in decapitating and perhaps paralyzing it for now. On the contrary, doing so might become the necesary 'emergency' catalyst for the long overdue United Nations and especially Security Council reform itself.
Furthermore, people in the NATO countries themselves would be made aware of the fact that their elected heads of government, senior ministers, and the commanders of their military forces are equally liable to indictment for gross violation of international law as anybody else and have in this war already violated possibly far more international conventions and legal statutes [including perhaps also some of their respective national states] than their opponent/s. And those responsible would be given something to think about themselves!
For let us recall that the Nürnberg Tribunal clearly recognized the reality of the role of States and individuals in stating that: "Crimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities and only by punishing individuals who commit such crimes can the provisions of international law be enforced"
LEGAL APPENDIX [added her for illustrative purposes only. The laws themselves are to be found elsewhere]
The following is a paraphrase of writings international law Professor L.C.Green. He was writing about the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Here "NATO" is substituted for "Iraq".:
NATO's attack on Yugoslavia is a violation of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the Pact of Paris, of 1928. The signatories to the pact (including what were to become the the NATO countries) "condemned recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounced it as an instrument of national policy." NATO is thus guilty not merely of a breach of treaty, but of the crime of aggression as defined by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg and by the General Assembly in its Resolution affirming the principles of International Law recognized by the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal. NATO countries had voted in favour of this, and the 1975 Resolution defining aggression as a crime against international peace giving rise to international responsibility. Aggression is defined in this Resolution as "the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations ... [and] the first use of armed force by a State in contravention of the Charter shall constitute prima facie evidence of an act of aggression."
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The Nuremberg Tribunal established legal precedent to hold individuals in positions of responsibility personally accountable for their actions in violation of international law relating to war crimes,aggression, crimes against humanity and others. So do the statutes of the recently approved, but not yet ratified or existing, International Criminal Court. Following in part these and other precedlegal precedents, the Law Lords in the UK just voted 6 to 1 that being a head of state can not convey immunity to indictment and prosecution for grave crimes against humanity. The International Law Commission [ILC]drafted a code - submitted tobut not [yet?] accepted by the United Nations - defining such crimes and who can be held personally legally responsible for commiting them. Yet surely there is also existing law to that effect, or there would be no legal basis for the threats to so charge the President of Yugoslavia.
Some sections from the ILC code follow:
Article 16 Crime of aggression An individual who, as leader or organizer, actively participates in or orders the planning, preparation, initiation or waging of aggression committed by a State shall be responsible for a crime of aggression.... [The phases of aggression listed in article 16 are] the order to commit aggression, and, subsequently, the planning, preparation, initiation and waging of the resulting operations....Participation in a single phase of aggression is enough to give rise to criminal responsibility.
[From the Draft Code of Crimes Against the Peace and Security of Mankind, 1996 (Text adopted by the International Law Commission at its forty-eighth session, in 1996, and submitted to the General Assembly as a part of the Commission's report covering the work of that session. The report (A/48/10), which also contains commentaries on the draft articles, published in Yearbook of the International Law Commission, 1996, vol. II(2).)
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ANDRE GUNDER FRANK 250 Kensington Ave - Apt 608 Tel: 1-514-933 2539 Westmount/Montreal PQ/QC Fax: 1-514-933 6445 or 1478 Canada H3Z 2G8 e-mail:agfrank at chass.utoronto.ca
My Home Page is at: http://www.whc.neu.edu/gunder.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~