Items in the News

Oct. 2, 2001 UK Commentary Argues Legality of US Attempt to Unseat Taliban Regime

January 24, 2001 Far Cry From Seattle: Tiny Qatar Is Picked as WTO Meeting Site

2/27/01 US Human Rights Record in 2000 Report Report from PRC in response to US commentary on Chinese human rights

5/24/01 "What matters most in life?" A global Gallup survey of 56 nations

April 29, 2001 IMF'S FOUR STEPS TO DAMNATION How crises, failures, and suffering finally drove a Presidential adviser to the wrong side of the barricades, Gregory Palast The Observer

UK Commentary Argues Legality of US Attempt to Unseat Taliban Regime

EUP20010926000285 London The Independent (Internet Version-WWW) in English 26 Sep 01

[Commentary by Geoffrey Robertson QC, author of 'Crimes Against Humanity: the Struggle for Global Justice': "America is Wrong to Shoot First, then Ask Questions About Guilt Later; 'The $64,000 Question is Whether America is Entitled to Bring Down the Taliban Government'"]

"Infinite justice" made no sense as a brand name for an operation to attack Afghanistan because human justice is both finite and fallible. More importantly, it begged the question, which our leaders must urgently address, of exactly what "justice" they propose to afford their prime suspect. The saloon-bar poster ("Wanted: dead or alive") invites lynch law: righteous anger requires that Usama Bin Ladin be treated according to international law. That law, it must be acknowledged, justifies breaching "state sovereignty" - the refuge of scoundrels like Pinochet and Milosevic - when force is necessary in self-defence or to punish a crime against humanity.

The International Court of Justice declared in 1949, in a ruling sought by Britain when its ships in the Corfu Channel were attacked from Albania, that every state has a duty to prevent its territory being used for unlawful attacks on other states. In 1980, after the hostage taking at the US embassy, the same court ruled that Iran was responsible for a failure in "vigilance" and a toleration of terrorism. It follows that the right of self-defence (preserved in Article 51 of the UN Charter) permits the US to resort to force for the limited purpose of doing Afghanistan's duty, once that state refuses to prosecute or extradite Mr Bin Ladin, and to close down his camps.

But America's legal right is severely qualified: the military exercise must have justice as its sole objective - by arresting terrorist suspects, gathering evidence and destroying weapons and training camps. On no account must it target civilians. The precedent which places the severest legal limit on the US attack was established by its own protest against Britain's sinking in 1837 of a US steamboat which was aiding rebels in Canada: both governments agreed self defence must be based on a necessity which is "instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation".

A more modern and more permissive legal justification for an armed response is provided by the emerging human rights rule that requires international action to prevent and to punish "crimes against humanity". The black Tuesday atrocities precisely fit the definition, which covers not only genocide and torture but "multiple acts of murder committed as part of a systematic attack against a civilian population". It was to punish such crimes in Kosovo that Nato breached Serbian sovereignty, and the same principles should apply (this time, with Security Council backing) to any intervention in Afghanistan. But this means the US must acknowledge that organised terrorist groups (including those it has supported, like the Contras) as well as states, are capable of committing such crimes.

Whatever basis America and its allies advance for their "war", the $64,000 question is whether they are entitled not only to hunt for Mr Bin Ladin but to bring down the Taliban government. This wider purpose, signalled yesterday by Tony Blair, only becomes lawful if Taliban forces attack a Security Council approved mission to arrest Mr Bin Ladin. So long as that US-led force confines itself to doing what the local government ought to do, any attack upon it directed by that government entitles the allies to strike back - to declare a "just war" and to overthrow the Taliban.

But this all depends upon whether, at this initial stage, the US and its allies are preparing to breach Afghanistan's sovereignty with the legitimate objective of bringing Mr Bin Ladin to trial in a court that can guarantee him justice. It is this dimension which must now be honestly addressed, because the plain fact is that a jury trial in New York, with a death sentence upon conviction, will not provide a forum where justice can be seen to be done. It may be doubted whether any American jury could put aside the prejudice against the "prime suspect" created by its media and by its leader's demands for his "head on a plate". The only "guilty" verdict which can persuade the world of Mr Bin Ladin's guilt will be closely and carefully reasoned, delivered by distinguished jurists, some from Muslim countries.

There is such a criminal court in session at The Hague, dealing fairly and effectively with crimes against humanity committed in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The Security Council would undoubtedly agree to any US request to extend its remit to try Mr Bin Ladin. The Hague Tribunal affords all basic rights to defendants, in trials before three international judges and appeals to a further five. It has developed reasonably fair procedures for evaluating the kind of hearsay evidence which may be necessary to prove terrorist conspiracies, and has protocols which protect the security of electronic intercepts and other fruits of secret intelligence gathering.

The alternative is to construct a special Lockerbie-style tribunal, or even to bring the International Criminal Court hurriedly into existence with a retrospective mandate to deal with terrorist crimes against humanity. The existence of such a court would obviate the problem President Bush now faces from demands to produce the proof of Mr Bin Ladin's guilt: this is the function of a prosecutor, who obtains his indictment - the warrant for arrest and trial - after presenting prima facie evidence to a judge.

But the creation of the international criminal court has been opposed by the Pentagon and right-wing Republicans, fearing it might one day indict an American soldier. This self-indulgent isolationism may no longer prevail if their nation comes to realise that punishing its enemies requires international co-operation. After all, we owe the idea of international criminal justice to President Truman, who insisted on the Nuremberg trials against the opposition of Churchill (who wanted the Nazi leaders shot on sight). He did so because "undiscriminating executions or punishments without definite findings of guilt, fairly arrived at, would not sit easily on the American conscience or be remembered by our children with pride".

It needs Mr Blair to remind the President of how "the American conscience" once cooled the British desire for revenge and created a court whose judgment stands as a landmark in civilisation's fight against racially motivated terror. Its legacy requires the Taliban government to extradite Mr Bin Ladin - for the crimes of 1998 as much as 2001 - but only permits the use of force if those who deploy it can promise him a fair trial. Without that guarantee, "operation infinite justice" becomes the cry of the Red Queen in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: "sentence first - trial [posthumously] later".

January 24, 2001 Far Cry From Seattle: Tiny Qatar Is Picked as WTO Meeting Site

By HELENE COOPER Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The World Trade Organization finally has found a country willing to host its next big meeting: Qatar. The WTO formally accepted Qatar's offer to host the follow-up to the 1999 Seattle meeting. WTO Director-General Michael Moore said the event, which may launch a round of trade talks, will be held in Doha, Qatar's capital, Nov. 5-9. "I am very pleased about this," Mr. Moore said. "They were the first to make an offer."

Last time, the WTO's big meeting blew up in spectacular fashion, as Seattle police in riot gear fired rubber bullets and canisters of tear gas at protesters. Some 30,000 free-trade foes closed down the meetings for a day, forcing the mayor to declare martial law for almost a week. Altogether, property damage topped $3 million, and the gathering left a permanent scar on Seattle's laid-back reputation. After that experience, other countries haven't been lining up to host the next meeting. Indeed, WTO officials at first spurned Qatar's offer, saying the tiny Persian Gulf emirate didn't have enough hotel rooms. But with no other viable alternatives, trade officials worked out a compromise: Delegates will stay on cruise ships in the harbor. Trade officials say Qatar has promised to allow all WTO critics who so desire to attend.

The free-trade foes who disrupted the Seattle meeting were openly skeptical, however, pointing to Qatar's less-than-democratic record. Its people don't vote, and the same family has ruled the emirate since World War I. "The WTO would have a much easier time if they just bought a remote island and fortified its coastline to keep the pesky public away," said John Sellers, head of the Ruckus Society, which helped spearhead the Seattle protests. Mr. Sellers said he nonetheless will look into perhaps conducting a desert training camp for activists seeking to disrupt the Qatar meeting. "I'm calling around now looking for desert camouflage."

IMF'S FOUR STEPS TO DAMNATION --------------------------------------------- How crises, failures, and suffering finally drove a Presidential adviser to the wrong side of the barricades

Gregory Palast Sunday April 29, 2001 The Observer

It was like a scene out of Le Carré: the brilliant agent comes in from the cold and, in hours of debriefing, empties his memory of horrors committed in the name of an ideology gone rotten.

But this was a far bigger catch than some used-up Cold War spy. The former apparatchik was Joseph Stiglitz, ex-chief economist of the World Bank. The new world economic order was his theory come to life.

He was in Washington for the big confab of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. But instead of chairing meetings of ministers and central bankers, he was outside the police cordons. The World Bank fired Stiglitz two years ago. He was not allowed a quiet retirement: he was excommunicated purely for expressing mild dissent from globalisation World Bank-style.

Here in Washington we conducted exclusive interviews with Stiglitz, for The Observer and Newsnight, about the inside workings of the IMF, the World Bank, and the bank's 51% owner, the US Treasury.

And here, from sources unnamable (not Stiglitz), we obtained a cache of documents marked, 'confidential' and 'restricted'.

Stiglitz helped translate one, a 'country assistance strategy'. There's an assistance strategy for every poorer nation, designed, says the World Bank, after careful in-country investigation.

But according to insider Stiglitz, the Bank's 'investigation' involves little more than close inspection of five-star hotels. It concludes with a meeting with a begging finance minister, who is handed a 'restructuring agreement' pre-drafted for 'voluntary' signature.

Each nation's economy is analysed, says Stiglitz, then the Bank hands every minister the same four-step programme.

Step One is privatisation. Stiglitz said that rather than objecting to the sell-offs of state industries, some politicians - using the World Bank's demands to silence local critics - happily flogged their electricity and water companies. 'You could see their eyes widen' at the possibility of commissions for shaving a few billion off the sale price.

And the US government knew it, charges Stiglitz, at least in the case of the biggest privatisation of all, the 1995 Russian sell-off. 'The US Treasury view was: "This was great, as we wanted Yeltsin re-elected. We DON'T CARE if corrupt election." '

Stiglitz cannot simply be dismissed as a conspiracy nutter. The man was inside the game - a member of Bill Clinton's cabinet, chairman of the President's council of economic advisers.

Most sick-making for Stiglitz is that the US-backed oligarchs stripped Russia's industrial assets, with the effect that national output was cut nearly in half.

After privatisation, Step Two is capital market liberalisation. In theory this allows investment capital to flow in and out. Unfortunately, as in Indonesia and Brazil, the money often simply flows out.

Stiglitz calls this the 'hot money' cycle. Cash comes in for speculation in real estate and currency, then flees at the first whiff of trouble. A nation's reserves can drain in days.

And when that happens, to seduce speculators into returning a nation's own capital funds, the IMF demands these nations raise interest rates to 30%, 50% and 80%.

'The result was predictable,' said Stiglitz. Higher interest rates demolish property values, savage industrial production and drain national treasuries.

At this point, according to Stiglitz, the IMF drags the gasping nation to Step Three: market-based pricing - a fancy term for raising prices on food, water and cooking gas. This leads, predictably, to Step-Three-and-a-Half: what Stiglitz calls 'the IMF riot'.

The IMF riot is painfully predictable. When a nation is, 'down and out, [the IMF] squeezes the last drop of blood out of them. They turn up the heat until, finally, the whole cauldron blows up,' - as when the IMF eliminated food and fuel subsidies for the poor in Indonesia in 1998. Indonesia exploded into riots.

There are other examples - the Bolivian riots over water prices last year and, this February, the riots in Ecuador over the rise in cooking gas prices imposed by the World Bank. You'd almost believe the riot was expected.

And it is. What Stiglitz did not know is that Newsnight obtained several documents from inside the World Bank. In one, last year's Interim Country Assistance Strategy for Ecuador, the Bank several times suggests - with cold accuracy - that the plans could be expected to spark 'social unrest'.

That's not surprising. The secret report notes that the plan to make the US dollar Ecuador's currency has pushed 51% of the population below the poverty line.

The IMF riots (and by riots I mean peaceful demonstrations dispersed by bullets, tanks and tear gas) cause new flights of capital and government bankruptcies This economic arson has its bright side - for foreigners, who can then pick off remaining assets at fire sale prices.

A pattern emerges. There are lots of losers but the clear winners seem to be the western banks and US Treasury.

Now we arrive at Step Four: free trade. This is free trade by the rules of the World Trade Organisation and the World Bank, which Stiglitz likens to the Opium Wars. 'That too was about "opening markets",' he said. As in the nineteenth century, Europeans and Americans today are kicking down barriers to sales in Asia, Latin American and Africa while barricading our own markets against the Third World 's agriculture.

In the Opium Wars, the West used military blockades. Today, the World Bank can order a financial blockade, which is just as effective and sometimes just as deadly.

Stiglitz has two concerns about the IMF/World Bank plans. First, he says, because the plans are devised in secrecy and driven by an absolutist ideology, never open for discourse or dissent, they 'undermine democracy'. Second, they don't work. Under the guiding hand of IMF structural 'assistance' Africa's income dropped by 23%.

Did any nation avoid this fate? Yes, said Stiglitz, Botswana. Their trick? 'They told the IMF to go packing.' Stiglitz proposes radical land reform: an attack on the 50% crop rents charged by the propertied oligarchies worldwide.

Why didn't the World Bank and IMF follow his advice?

'If you challenge [land ownership], that would be a change in the power of the elites. That's not high on their agenda.'

Ultimately, what drove him to put his job on the line was the failure of the banks and US Treasury to change course when confronted with the crises, failures, and suffering perpetrated by their four-step monetarist mambo.

'It's a little like the Middle Ages,' says the economist, 'When the patient died they would say well, we stopped the bloodletting too soon, he still had a little blood in him.'

Maybe it's time to remove the bloodsuckers.

gregory.palast@observer.co.uk