Following his apprehension last month as he was pitching in with the earthquake relief in his native Sichuan province, web activist Huang Qi was this weekend formally arrested for “illegal possession of state secrets”.
Volunteers at his well-known website 64Tianwang.com (English) have been actively posting all news coverage and details surrounding Huang’s case, but the campaign to have his charges dropped gained a lot more momentum when, following his formal arrest on Friday afternoon, three of China’s better-known social issue bloggers, all from Sichuan, Wang Yi, Ran Yunfei and Linghu Buchong*, joined up with two other intellectual-writers, Liao Yiwu and Li Yadong, to take the brave step of issuing a letter of protest. The letter has been posted not just on their own blogs, but also on the more mainstream My1510, IndyMediaCN, among many others.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
China: Bloggers take stand against web activist’s arrest
A Documentary History of Anarchism in Japan
Call for Proposal Submissions
PM Press, a new publishing venture launched by the founders of AK Press, is inviting proposals for contributions to a documentary history of anarchism in Japan (title to be determined). Proposals for English translations of previously untranslated primary source material (with introductory or explanatory essays) are especially welcome. Because this book will address anarchism in Japan and not "Japanese anarchists" per se, proposals on topics related to Filipina/o and Korean anarchists living in Japan, for example, are also welcome.
Proposals for the following types of contributions are suggested, but proposals not covered by the descriptions below will also be considered.
Rapper Nas Collects 620,127 Signatures Protesting Fox News’ Coverage of Obama
"Fox poisons this country every time they air racist propaganda and try to call it news. This should outrage every American that Fox uses hateful language to talk about the person that may be the first black president."
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
My
We discuss:
What took so long for the story of Baron Pikes January death to break.
What the US Justice Dept. is doing.
The Winnfield Police department violating it's own procedures when it comes to taser use.
Winnfield police chief Johnny Ray Carpenter.
The history of the officer that allegedly killed Baron Pikes.
The fact that Baron Pikes had no drugs in his system.
And much more about this disturbing case. You can listen to my interview by using the link below:
http://www.letstalkhonestly.com/LTHSpecialReport.html
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Newfound genetic clue to HIV rate in blacks
(07-16) 09:04 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- An international team of AIDS scientists has discovered that a gene variant common in blacks protects against certain types of malaria but increases susceptibility to HIV infection by 40 percent.
Researchers, keen to find some biological clues to explain why people of African descent are bearing a disproportionate share of the world's AIDS cases, suspect this subtle genetic trait - found in 60 percent of American blacks and 90 percent of Africans - might partly explain the difference.
Ten percent of the world's population lives in sub-Saharan Africa, but that region accounts for 70 percent of the men, women and children living with HIV infection. In the United States, African Americans make up 12 percent of the population but account for half of newly diagnosed HIV infections.
"The cause of this imbalance is not necessarily driven by behavior," said Phill Wilson, founder of the Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles. "Gay black men do not engage in riskier behavior than gay white men, for example. African people with this gene may have a higher vulnerability."
Based on their analysis, the researchers estimated that this gene variant alone may account for 11 percent of the estimated 25 million HIV infections that have occurred in sub-Saharan Africa - roughly 2.7 million cases.
The gene study was led by Dr. Sunil Ahuja, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, and published Wednesday in the journal Cell Host & Microbe.
Latoya Peterson: The Agony of the Tees
A 25-year-old New York City graduate student is threatening to sue a T-Shirt designer after being assaulted for wearing one of his designs. [Ed Note - The designer of the shirt is pictured above.]
The woman bought a $69 shirt from Apollo Braun’s Manhattan boutique that bore the words, “Obama is my slave.” When she wore the shirt on Tuesday, four teenage girls accosted her - shoving her, pulling out her earphones, and spitting in her face, according to the New York edition of Metro News.
The unnamed woman is reportedly seeking solace by suing Braun - born Doron Braunshtein - for “all he’s got,” the designer claims. He, of course, is shirking any responsibility for the incident and says that the shirt reflects the views of “ordinary WASPs.”
“For a lot of people, when they see Obama, they see a slave. People think America is not ready for a black president,” the Israeli-born designer said.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Let's blame Barack Obama for everything
Wow! Have you heard the new John McCain campaign ad in which it's insinuated that the rising price of gas is somehow Senator Obama's fault? Watch the ad below:
I wish someone had told me that you can just pull something out my !@# and blame Barack Obama a long time ago. Things would have been so much easier.
Well I have made a list of other bad things in recent memory that I intend to blame Senator Obama for. Some you may relate to others you may not but feel free to add your own bad things to the list.
* Hancock ( Hey, Ghost Rider made a lot of money too, bet you ain't dying to see it again are you? )
*Windows Vista ( I would make a comment but I just got a warning message )
*That orange Mountain Dew ( That red one too, yuck! )
*Blade Trinity ( How is Blade going to be a guest star in his own movie ? )
* Reality TV ( Enough said )
* The Pontiac Aztec ( Quite possibly the ugliest vehicle ever made not to serve on a battlefield )
* Black Jelly Beans ( Why do the nasty ones gotta be black ????? )
* The New ECW ( Now ECW stands for Extremely Crappy Wrestling )
*The series ending of the Sorpranos ( WTF )
*Jar Jar Binks ( Let's not and say we did )
*The NY Knicks ( If you can't say anything nice... )
*The Washington Wizards uniforms.( I wonder how many beers the designer had while working? )
*The 4 door Mini Cooper ( blasphemy )
That's it for now but don't worry I'll think of more. See ya....
Friday, July 18, 2008
Let's not forget that our Sisters face their own struggle...with us...
NO. You Do Not Have The Right To Grab My Ass
I am fucking tired of walking through the streets of Oakland and being judged as racist for avoiding groups of black men*. I'm avoiding men of all races throughout the day. Every fucking time I have to walk anywhere, there's always got to be a creepy guy who gives me one of those looks that just forces me to either skip a bus stop or walk on the curb of the street next to the cars whizzing by. I have even taken out of the way detours walking to some of my destinations because I am afraid of being cornered by a man.
So I come out of work today and then I see a group of three black men, at least six feet tall, loitering in a *four foot wide* space between a building and the bus stop bench. If I walk through, I would be forced to squeeze my way through three men. So when I decide instead to make a really obvious detour in front of the bus stop, walking like a damn ballerina on the cub of the street, I hear:
"HEY. Why you walkin' all the way over there?" It was accusatory. It was me being light skinned and supposedly *afraid* of black people. It was obvious by the way he said it, and I get it a lot. I was thinking, fuck, are you kidding me?
Questions of the Month
Do you think that men of Color/White women IRs are progressive? Why? Write an essay explaining what that is so.
Also, why are so few White men marrying Black women? Is there a history behind this? Abagond and Ann already wrote an essay regarding this sordid history behind Black women/White men relationships and its poisonous legacy up to this day.
Steph
The Hate Motivated Murder of Carol Jenkins
R.I.P., Carol.Hat tip from Ann. Thanks!
On Sept. 16, 1968, a young black woman selling encyclopedias was brutally stabbed to death in the town of Martinsville.
For more than 34 years the murder of Carol Marie Jenkins remained unsolved.
But on May 8, 2002, police arrested Kenneth C. Richmond, a 70-year-old career criminal with a history of bizarre behavior and affiliation with groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.
Investigators said Richmond was implicated in the crime by his daughter, Shirley Richmond McQueen, who witnessed the slaying as a child.
State police detectives, working in a “cold crimes” squad, were led to McQueen by an anonymous letter. When questioned, they said, she finally confirmed what the letter alleged — that as a 7-year-old, she had watched from the back seat of a car as her father and another, still-unidentified man killed Jenkins.
Kenneth C. Richmond shown at left in a 1985 booking photo and at right after his arreest in 2002.
Detectives said they were convinced of McQueen’s story in part because she remembered a key detail which had never been made public — that Jenkins was wearing a yellow scarf.
McQueen, by then 40, reportedly gave Indiana State Police detectives the following account: Jenkins began to flee when she saw the two men running at her. The other man held Jenkins while Richmond grabbed a screwdriver from the front seat in their car and stabbed her, McQueen said she still recalls what her father said when he returned to the car: “She got what she deserved.” When they got home, her father gave her $7 — one dollar for each year of her life — to keep quiet about what she had seen.
Residents of Martinsville were relieved that the suspect in the case had not been a Martinsville resident. At the time of the killing, Richmond lived on a Hendricks County farm and was just passing through Martinsville on the night Carol Jenkins died. Martinsville’s racist reputation was largely based on the Jenkins slaying, though there had been other racial incidents.
But Richmond never went to trial for Jenkin’s murder. He was declared incompetent to stand trial and on Aug. 31, 2002 he died of cancer.
______________________
That hateful comment “She got what she deserved” is just a chilling as the comment uttered by the men in S.C. two years ago. The only difference is that the latter are about to face trial, while the animal back in Indiana died six years ago soon after his arrest. Not only was the animal wasn’t tried until after 2000, but the whole city of Martinsville cover up the murder, letting him get away with it. The police never tried to find the suspect at all.
This degradation of Black women, past and present, must be brought up.
Steph
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I have decide to add to her comment with a timeline on Ms. Jenkins’s murder, that she too, may not be forgotten like so many murdered and destroyed black women in America.
***********************************************************************************
POLICE ARREST MAN IN BRUTAL ‘68 SLAYING
Woman accuses dad in case that marked Martinsville as racist.
Accused: Kenneth C. Richmond, who lives in an Indianapolis nursing home, is led into the Morgan County Courthouse for his initial court appearance on a murder charge. His daughter says Richmond stabbed Carol Jenkins with a screwdriver in downtown Martinsville in 1968. Mike Fender / staff photo
By Bruce C. Smith
Published: May 09, 2002
The Indianapolis Star
MARTINSVILLE, Ind. — A long-held childhood secret might have finally solved the mystery that troubled this community for almost 34 years.
Police say they found the man who killed Carol Jenkins living in an Indianapolis nursing home, implicated by a daughter who described seeing the crime as a 7-year-old from the back seat of a car.
Kenneth C. Richmond, now 70, looked frail and said nothing Wednesday afternoon as he was arrested and taken in shackles into the Morgan County Courthouse. A plea of not guilty to one count of first-degree murder was entered on his behalf. He was held without bond.
Leaders of the Morgan County city, haunted for decades by charges of racism and foot-dragging in the investigation of Jenkins’ slaying, saw vindication in Richmond’s arrest.
“I’m so glad that the guy who did this is not from Martinsville,” said Martinsville City Councilman Harold Stanger. “We’ve had kind of a bad reputation with black people. . . . I’m so glad this is over with.”
Investigators say the story began as Richmond — who was living on a Hendricks County farm, according to court documents — drove through Martinsville on the night of Sept. 16, 1968.
His daughter, Shirley Richmond McQueen, said her father and another man were drunk and filled with racial hatred.
After a silence of more than three decades, she told police she saw her father plunge a screwdriver into the 21-year-old woman’s chest and leave her to die on a rainy sidewalk.
Police said they questioned several other suspects in the years since, all of whom were eventually cleared. Recent efforts at DNA comparisons proved nothing.
But continued publicity stirred the memories and conscience of Richmond’s relatives and prompted them to write an anonymous letter to police in November 2001. It named the former factory worker and farmhand as a suspect.
Another participant in the crime hasn’t been identified.
Moment of relief: Paul Davis, Carol Jenkins’ stepfather, hugs daughter Pat Howard after a news conference announcing an arrest in the slaying. Mike Fender / staff photo
McQueen, now 40, told Indiana State Police detectives that Jenkins began to flee when she saw the two men running at her. The other man held Jenkins while Richmond grabbed a screwdriver from the front seat in their car and stabbed her, according to an affidavit.
McQueen told police she still recalls what her father said when he returned to the car: “She got what she deserved.”
As the men drove away after the killing, McQueen told police, she saw the victim fall, landing on the grass and sidewalk next to a bush.
McQueen said the woman was carrying a suitcase or box, had a scarf around her neck and wore black-frame glasses.
The details, reported by detectives in reports filed in Morgan Superior Court, match evidence from the crime scene on East Morgan Street.
But court-appointed defense attorney Steve Litz said the prosecutor’s case rests on the memories of a child, without the murder weapon or other physical evidence.
Morgan County Prosecutor Steve Sonnega agreed it would not be easy to rely on the eyewitness account of someone so young at the time.
“Obviously,” he said, “you have to build one brick at a time. Why did it take 30-odd years?
A 7-year-old had to grow up, to mature and to have the guts to come forward.”
Jenkins’ family was relieved by the arrest.
“At least I know that my daughter can rest in peace,” said Paul Davis. “I just felt like she was always saying, ‘Daddy, why couldn’t you find out who did it?’ “
Martinsville Mayor Shannon Buskirk and Indiana State Police Superintendent Melvin Carraway said the killing is now thought to have been a chance encounter between strangers — an Indianapolis-area man with a history of violence and a young woman from Rushville working in Martinsville for the day.
They said the arrest should help clear away the insinuations of racism and sloppy police work that have hung over the community for the three decades that the crime has gone unsolved.
“It was a good day for the city of Martinsville,” Buskirk said. “This has attached itself to the city, and it definitely hurt.”
******************************************************************************************
SUSPECT HAS FACED SIMILAR CHARGES BEFORE
Richmond acquitted of murder, found not guilty of attempted murder due to insanity in ’80s cases.
By Diana Penner
diana.penner@indystar.com
Published: May 09, 2002
For more than three decades, the slaying of 21-year-old Carol Jenkins was a mystery. Now the man accused of killing her is largely an enigma.
Kenneth C. Richmond, now 70, has faced charges of murder and attempted murder.
According to a court document, in 1985, Richmond was acquitted of murder in an Owen County case. In 1987, he was accused of attempted murder and found not guilty by reason of insanity in Florida. He was fixated upon castrating himself and eventually succeeded. He has had mental health and alcohol problems and was involved with the Ku Klux Klan.
Any information about Richmond comes from the court documents; so far, no one who knows him has filled in the gaps by talking about him.
On Sept. 16, 1968, Richmond is accused of being an angry drunk filled with racial hatred who happened to be motoring through Martinsville when he saw a young black woman walking down a street.
That was enough, according to the accusations, to spur Richmond to harass the young woman, spin the car around and, with the help of an unidentified male companion, plunge a screwdriver into her heart.
In the back seat of the car, witnessing the scene, was Richmond’s 7-year-old daughter, Shirley. She said that when they got home, he gave her $7 — one dollar for each year of her life — to keep quiet about what she had seen.
“He said, ‘It was our secret.’ She had not seen her father for 24 years until she visited him three months ago,” according to a court document filed as Richmond was charged.
Not much is known about Richmond and his life for the past 33 years, beyond the few details contained in the probable cause affidavit filed Wednesday. Little was revealed in it about his work history, but a brother told investigators that in September 1968 — the month of Jenkins’ slaying — Richmond worked and lived at the Cash Bottema farming operation in Hendricks County. That’s about 19 miles from Martinsville.
That document also says that from 1954 to 1979, he was married to Ruby Richmond Welch. She declined an interview with The Star but told investigators Richmond abused her and their children and would be violent when he got drunk. Once, she said, he stabbed her.
“She stated that he hated black people in the 1960s,” the affidavit says. “Furthermore, he was always fixated about castrating himself.”
He asked his wife to castrate him, telling her the act would “tame him.” In the mid-1970s, Richmond managed a partial castration; he completed the procedure in 1982.
His half sister, Linnie Shields, told investigators Richmond sent her threatening letters with razor blades in them before she testified against him in the 1985 Owen County murder case. She also declined to speak to a reporter Wednesday.
Richmond was admitted at various times for “self-mutilation and intoxication, including one incident in August 2000, where he attacked a police officer with a knife,” the court document says. There was no information about where that incident took place.
Wednesday, Monrovia attorney Steve Litz was appointed to represent Richmond. Until then, Litz said, he knew about as much about the case as anyone else who might have read newspaper accounts.
Litz said he had had about an hour to speak with his client and didn’t yet know much about his life, such as where he had worked over the years. For about the past year, Richmond has lived at a health care facility, apparently because of mental health problems, Litz said.
He has advised Richmond not to talk to anyone about the case, he said.
So far, Richmond appears to be coping, Litz said.
“I think he’s scared and concerned, which I would imagine are fairly common feelings for anybody who’s been charged with murder, much less anybody who’s 70 years old,” he said.
************************************************************************************************
VICTIM KNEW DOOR-TO-DOOR JOB CARRIED POTENTIAL DANGER
By Diana Penner
Published: May 09, 2002
The Indianapolis Star
As a teen-ager, Carol Jenkins wanted to move to Chicago and become a fashion model.
The woman’s life, and her dreams, were cut short when she was stabbed to death in Martinsville in 1968.
Instead of a life filled with glamour and beauty, Jenkins’ death became a symbol of violence and ugliness.
Racism, many believed, was the only logical motive. The 21-year-old black woman, pretty and shy, wasn’t robbed or sexually assaulted.
Investigators say racial hatred was indeed the motive. But the man accused of the crime was apparently just passing through, an interloper who solidified the Morgan County city’s reputation as a place where black people were not welcome.
Jenkins was knocking on doors in Martinsville on Sept. 16, 1968, as she and three co-workers — two white men and a 19-year-old black woman — tried to sell encyclopedias. The women were aware of the potential dangers; they had considered buying tear gas guns, according to a newspaper article days after the slaying.
The encyclopedia gig was a fill-in job for Jenkins; she worked full time at the Philco Division of Ford Motor Co., but the plant was idled by a strike.
A 1965 graduate of Rushville High School, Jenkins grew up calling her stepfather “Daddy.”
She was a toddler when Paul Davis married her mother, and she grew up with five half siblings in a close-knit family.
She was shy and polite, Davis has said.
The night she was slain, some men in a car began harassing her. She sought help at the home of Norma and Don Neal, and Norma Neal tried to help Jenkins by driving her around to find her co-workers. When they couldn’t locate them, Jenkins ended up back at the home, and the woman offered to drive Jenkins to her rendezvous spot.
But Jenkins declined, saying she had been a bother long enough.
“That sounds like her,” Davis told The New Yorker magazine in its Jan. 7 issue. “I always felt like she was a very sweet, sort of naive girl. She had a smile for everybody.
“Carol didn’t like imposing on anybody.”
****************************************************************************************
KEY CLUE LED TO ARREST IN MARTINSVILLE CASE
Carol Jenkins, known as a neat dresser, was wearing a yellow scarf when she was killed.
By Bruce C. Smith
Published: May 12, 2002
The Indianapolis Star
MARTINSVILLE, Ind. — It was Shirley Richmond McQueen’s secret that led detectives to the long-awaited arrest of a suspect in this city’s most notorious killing.
But the Indiana State Police had a secret of their own, and it was key to persuading them that they finally had found the man who stabbed Carol Marie Jenkins on a Martinsville street in September 1968.
Though she was selling encyclopedias door-to-door on a rainy night, the 21-year-old was impeccably dressed. Accounts of the crime routinely mentioned the white cotton turtleneck, olive green wool slacks and brown jacket with a mandarin collar that buttoned in front.
But the yellow scarf found around Jenkins’ neck was something never divulged by the federal, state and local authorities who investigated her death over three decades.
“She was always a neat dresser,” said Jenkins’ stepfather, Paul Davis. “And she wore a lot of scarves.”
The arrest of Kenneth C. Richmond, a 70-year-old resident of an Indianapolis nursing home, brought consolation to Davis and other relatives seeking justice for the cruelty of Jenkins’ slaying.
Martinsville leaders also hoped for vindication in Richmond’s arrest on Wednesday, saying it finally might put to an end the charges of racism and foot-dragging in the local police investigation of the killing.
But for the Indiana State Police, it showed that even the coldest of trails might lead to an arrest.
“Let’s not lose sight that this young lady was murdered 33 years ago, and her family has experienced a lot of pain in not knowing what happened to her,” Indiana State Police Superintendent Melvin Carraway said.
Two years ago, Davis had doubts that his stepdaughter’s killer would find justice. In frustration, he hired a former State Police detective working as a private detective.
About the same time, Carraway assigned the Jenkins case to veteran detectives Maurice “Bud” Allcron and Alan McElroy, part of a cold-case unit formed to renew investigations that have lost momentum.
“I read the summaries of these murders that can be lost in the files,” Carraway said, “and I think what the families must be going through.
“Sometimes I get calls from those families, asking for help. So we have to commit the resources or publicity to find the answers.”
About a year after the renewed investigation, one answer came in an anonymous letter, urging investigators toward Richmond, a career criminal with a history of bizarre behavior and affiliation with groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.
It eventually led Allcron and McElroy to Shirley McQueen, a 40-year-old woman who finally confirmed what the letter alleged — that as a 7-year-old, she had watched from the back seat of a car as her father and another, still-unidentified man killed Jenkins.
She offered key details of what she saw — including the scarf.
That made the crucial difference between McQueen’s story and all the others that Jenkins’ family and the police investigating her death had heard.
Her surviving relatives sometimes received anonymous claims of “witnesses” to the killing, or knowledge of the killers’ identity.
Detectives found one woman who had called Davis only to determine that her information was secondhand.
Another tipster told the family that the murder weapon had been dropped into a buried gasoline tank not far from where Jenkins’ body was found on East Morgan Street.
The fuel tank was excavated, and authorities found a chisel inside. Police immediately said it was not the murder weapon.
Allcron and McElroy interviewed about 150 people, painstakingly eliminating various suspects identified in calls to Davis and other relatives. By last summer, speculation had begun to center again on a former suspect now living in Florida.
Upon learning that, a woman named Connie McQueen sent the letter implicating Richmond.
In December, when detectives finally tracked down the anonymous writer, she said her former sister-in-law, Shirley McQueen, had told family members that she saw her father kill a black woman — an account that Shirley McQueen eventually confirmed.
She remembered, according to police reports, that “the lady was carrying an item that resembled a suitcase or box. She was wearing a scarf around her neck and had black framed glasses.”
Shirley McQueen told investigators that when she and her father got home that night in September 1968, he gave her $7 not to say anything about what had happened.
His admonition: “It was our secret.”
Prosecution of George W. Bush by the International Criminal Court
Information and Evidence Unit
Office of the Prosecutor
Post Office Box 19519
2500 CM The Hague
The Netherlands
Fax: +31 70 515 8555
July 15, 2008
Dear Chief Prosecutor,
Congratulations on your request for an arrest warrant for the president of Sudan. When the rule of law cannot be justly enforced within a nation, it must be enforced internationally. In that regard, I would like to recommend that you seek an arrest warrant for the president of my nation, the United States of America. I have read your letter of February 9, 2006, in which you decline to seek prosecution of George W. Bush, and I believe new evidence compels another review.
With all due respect for the difficulty of your work, the case you have brought against the president of Sudan has followed quite different standards than those applied in your refusal to prosecute the president of the United States. In fact, you have refused to consider prosecution of George W. Bush because the United States is not a member of the International Criminal Court. But Sudan is also not a member of the International Criminal Court. Were you to consider the evidence of international crimes in Iraq as it exists today, and to consider the crimes committed on behalf of the president of the United States by members of the United States military and mercenaries employed by the United States, I believe you would find a case for prosecution that met the standards you applied, and applied well and admirably, to the president of Sudan.
While there is good reason to expect multiple prosecutions of George W. Bush and of his Vice President and top advisors by individual nations, the rule of law would benefit were the International Criminal Court to take the lead. Should it fail to do so, the entire idea of international law will suffer seriously. In the time since your 2006 letter, Judge Baltasar Garzón of Spain, on March 20, 2008, has written these words in El Pais:
"Breaking every international law, and under the pretext of the war against terror, there has taken place since 2003 a devastating attack on the rule of law and against the very essence of the international community. In its path, institutions such as the United Nations were left in tatters, from which it has not yet recovered....We should look more deeply into the possible criminal responsibility of the people who are, or were, responsible for this war and see whether there is sufficient evidence to make them answer for it....There is enough of an argument in 650,000 deaths for this investigation and inquiry to start without more delay."
You wrote in your 2006 letter that you cannot prosecute the crime of aggressive war but only the commission of war crimes that take place during a war, and that in 2009 it may become possible for you to prosecute the crime of aggression. While we must all strive to make that prosecution possible in 2009, it is not needed in order to prosecute George W. Bush, and his prosecution should not wait. As the Nuremberg Tribunal stated so well, "To initiate a war of aggression…is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." This has proven to be true in Iraq, and in Bush's global "war on terrorism", and there is no reason to delay prosecution for each separate element of the accumulated evil.
In order to prosecute crimes against humanity, you write that you need to identify "widespread or systemic attack directed against any civilian population." The civilian population of Iraq has suffered as a result of the US-led invasion and occupation in numbers and proportion that can only be called widespread and systemic. Iraqi deaths as a result of the invasion and occupation, measured above the high death rate under international sanctions preceding the attack, are estimated at 1.2 million by two independent sources (Just Foreign Policy's updated figure based on the Johns Hopkins / Lancet report, and the British polling company Opinion Research Business's estimate as of August 2007). According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the number of Iraqis who have fled their homes has reached 4.7 million. If these estimates are accurate, a total of nearly 6 million human beings have been displaced from their homes or killed. Many times that many have certainly been injured, traumatized, impoverished, and deprived of clean water and other basic needs.
In examining attacks on civilian populations, some specific incidents can be highlighted, not all of them occurring between March and May 2003, the period of time you referred to in your 2006 letter, and not all of them involving soldiers of the United Kingdom. It is necessary to examine the entire length of the US-led occupation, and to examine the crimes of US troops and mercenaries. Since May of 2005 I have collected evidence of these crimes on a website at http://afterdowningstreet.org[2] A thoroughly documented October 2006 report posted there and prepared by Consumers for Peace ( www.consumersforpeace.org [3]) with the advice of Karen Parker, President of the Association of Humanitarian Lawyers ( www.humanlaw.org [4]) and Chief Delegate to the United Nations for the International Educational Development/Humanitarian Law Project (IED/AHL), will provide you with much useful evidence of crimes during the sieges of Fallujah, Samara, Tal Afar, and other cities, as well as systemic violations of the basic duties of an occupying power, and widespread illegal use of a variety of weapons. See: http://afterdowningstreet.org/warcrimesreport [5]
The above report, as many others, also makes the case that the killing of civilians in thousands of isolated incidents has been standard operating procedure for occupying forces in Iraq:
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