Recently in International Law Category

LIMA (IPS) - The Peruvian state will repay a longstanding debt to indigenous people in the country’s Amazon region by including them in a national census in a way that pays attention to their particular social, economic and cultural characteristics. But experts say this is only a first step.

On Oct. 21, interviewers from the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (INEI) will arrive in 2,200 indigenous communities in the Amazon region, armed with census forms bearing 37 questions that will put these people back on the country’s data map.

This detailed survey will be carried out in 11 of the 25 administrative regions into which the country is divided: Amazonas, Cusco, Junín, Madre de Dios, Ucayali, Pasco, Huanuco, Loreto, San Martín, Cajamarca and Ayacucho.

Since Peru’s independence in 1821, 10 national censuses have been carried out, but only once, in 1993, was specific information gathered about ethnic and multicultural aspects of the population, even though international guidelines require it. ... Full story

Mischa Shauli sat at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., completely beside himself. It had been years since the first time he heard about the existence of a document said to prove that Stalin, not Hitler, bore the main responsibility for World War II, and for years he had searched for it with all his skills as a professional detective. Shauli's last position was as Commander Shauli, Representative of the Israel Police in Russia. Previous to that he had been head of the police fraud investigation unit for the Southern District.

A few years ago Shauli read "Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War," by Bogdan Rozen. Rozen, who now lives in England, wrote it under the pseudonym of Viktor Suvorov. Shauli, impressed by the book, translated it into Hebrew and saw to its publication here.

From out of the sea of details, a coherent thesis emerges: Stalin dragged Hitler into war to force Europe into chaos and facilitate a communist revolution on the continent. According to Shauli, there is evidence to back up this theory, including a speech by Stalin himself as well as a report obtained by the U.S. Consulate in Prague. The report has been mentioned here and there over the years, but it has never been published, because no one knows where it is today. ... Full story

TOKYO: An Indian judge remembered by fewer and fewer of his own countrymen 40 years after his death is still big in Japan.

In recent weeks alone, NHK, the public broadcaster, has devoted 55 minutes of prime time to his life, and a scholar came out with a 309-page book exploring his thinking and its impact on Japan. Capping it all, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, during a recent visit to India, paid tribute to him in a speech to the Indian Parliament in New Delhi and then traveled to Calcutta to meet the judge's 81-year-old son.

Five years ago, Atlantic Monthly commissioned two academics, John Mearsheimer of Chicago University and Stephen Walt of Harvard, to write a significant article about the influence of the Israeli lobby on American foreign policy. When the piece was at last completed, the magazine declined to publish, deeming it too hot for delicate American palates. It eventually appeared in 2005, in the London Review of Books, provoking one of the most bitter media and academic rows of recent times. The authors were accused of antisemitism, and attacked with stunning venom by some prominent US commentators. Mearsheimer and Walt obviously like a fight, however, for they have now expanded their thesis into a book.

Its argument is readily summarised. The authors support Israel's right to exist. But they are dismayed by America's unconditional support for its governments' policies, including vast sums of cash aid for which there is no plausible accounting process. They reject the view articulated as a mantra by all modern American presidents (and 2008 presidential candidates) that Israel and America share common values, and their national interests march hand in hand.

On the contrary, say the authors, America's backing for Israel does grave damage to its own foreign-policy interests. And many Israeli government actions, including the expansion of West Bank settlements and the invasion of Lebanon, reflect repressive policies that do not deserve Washington's endorsement: "While there is no question that the Jews were victims in Europe, they were often the victimisers, not the victims, in the Middle East, and their main victims were and continue to be the Palestinians." ... Full review

CAIRO (IPS) - Workers in Cairo's vital public transport sector threatened to go on strike earlier this month if the state did not meet their list of demands. The incident was only the latest in a spate of strikes and protests in recent months that local commentators attribute to the steadily rising cost of living.

"These workers' actions are a result of the crushing economic situation," Magdi Hussein, secretary-general of the Labour Party, officially frozen by the government since 2000, told IPS. "But with the current political upheaval in Egypt, workers have begun breaking down the wall of fear by wielding the weapons of the strike and the sit-in."

The associated article by Srdja Trifkovic, "Eurabian Nights: A Horror Travelogue," shows that significant portions of various Muslim communities in Europe are abusing and exploiting their host countries. Rather than treat their hosts with gratitude or at least make efforts to be good citizens and integrate, in some places they struggle to create separate enclaves and have increased the degree of serious crime. Slavish European elites in turn tend to blame the members of their own societies for everything that goes wrong and counsel them to accept an "inevitable" change to a Euro-Islamic civilization. Many things can be written about curing the sickness of contemporary European immigration politics, but we would like to focus on five elements.

Thousands of young Muslims, armed with clubs and sticks and shouting, "Allahu akbar!" riot and force the police to retreat. Windows are smashed; stores are looted; cars are torched. Europeans unlucky or careless enough to be trapped by the mob are viciously attacked, and some are killed.

The scene could be Mogadishu in the aftermath of Pope Benedict's Regensburg address; or Tripoli during the Danish-cartoons fury; or Karachi, Kabul, Gaza, and countless other cities in Dar al-Islam's heartland, on any number of occasions. Yet a year ago, such scenes were unfolding, for weeks on end, in places with such names as Clichy-sous-Bois, Argenteuil, and La Courneuve.

On the roots of "neoconservativism" and the ascendence to power in U.S. foreign policy of those with the psychology of primitive brutes and belief that force solves all problems

"In repudiating the "rational humanism" of the liberal internationalists she gave voice to what may be called the Hobbesian impulse in US foreign policy an insistence that brute power and not human reason establishes political legitimacy."

Jeane Kirkpatrick, Ronald Reagan's envoy to the UN, died [recently] at 80. She picked a graceful moment to exit, the day after the Iraqi Study Group announced its recommendations, signaling, we are told, the return of realist reason to the Republican Party. In the coming days, expect eulogies that will compare Kirkpatrick's diplomatic philosophy favorably to the neocon delusion that convinced Bush to believe he could lead a global crusade to "rid the world of evil." Kirkpatrick did after all lambaste Democrats in the early 1980s for believing the US could be "world's mid-wife" to democracy. "No idea," she complained, "holds greater sway in the mind of educated Americans than the belief that it is possible to democratize governments, anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances." But don't believe the hype, for the righteousness that underwrote Kirkpatrick-style realism easily bleeds into the kind of blinkered moralism that so excites the neocons.

Germany has paid enough for implementing the Holocaust, and Israel has been given enough special treatment by that country in reparation, say 25 German academics.

In a petition published Wednesday in the Frankfurter Rundschau, the academics - described as highly influential professors on the payroll of the German government - said it was time their country embraced the Palestinian Arabs as much as it has embraced the Jews.

The ramifications of the Holocaust had resulted in much suffering among the "Palestinians" and Germany was therefore also bound to stand with them and not just with Israel.

Failure to do so, the petitioners warned, could lead to unrest among the German people. (Source: http://www.jnewswire.com/article/1383)

"Globally, the race to the bottom is gathering momentum. U.S. corporations export jobs to Mexico to cash in on cheap labor. In no time at all, though, tens of thousands of Mexicans lose their jobs to Asians who will sweat for less."

So who is surprised construction workers are treated worse than dogs in the United Arab Emirates?

Who is surprised to find migrant workers from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh building skyscrapers for just 10% of the average UAE wage of $2,106 per month?

Who is surprised to read a Human Rights Watch(HRW) report showing employers' illegally holding back wages for months, withholding passports as "security" so workers can't quit, and allowing recruiters charge shyster fees?

Who is surprised a 1980 UAE minimum wage law has never been enforced?

Who is surprised HRW found "there is no public record of a single case where it (the government) has penalized an employer with fines or imprisonment for failing to pay wages, or any other breaches of the labor law?"

Who is surprised the bodies of 880 construction workers from the Indian sub-continent nations cited above were shipped home in caskets in 2004 alone? (That's a death rate comparable to annual U.S. troop losses in Iraq.)