[skinster]

A leaked phone conversation of Nuland talking to the US ambassador to Ukraine about who they planned to install as president of Ukraine.

Ah! I think it's in the documentary I mentioned, now that you mention it...

You might like it.

[Sivad]

I haven't seen the docs but I listened to an interview of Martin on it last night at the gym. Martin's right on the money, he knows what he's talking about.

Here are the trailers for the three parts -

[skinster]

His music is good too. His brother of journalist Abby Martin. They do a podcast too, called Media Roots.

[Sivad]

Abby Martin does good work, she's one of the best anti-establishment voices out there. Haven't heard the music but I'll check it out. I haven't followed the podcast either but from what I know of both of them I'm sure it's first rate.

[skinster]

The podcasts are pretty casual, but cover current affairs.

I'm sure they'll be talking about this torture-loving CIA chief soon.

[Atlantis]

where is the arrest warrant for Xi Jinping?

Xi Jinping didn't run any extra-judicial rendition program and secrete CIA detention centers in Europe.

As to the Tiananmen Square massacre, the EU has imposed an arms embargo on China which is still in force. But I don't know if Xi was directly involved.

[Albert]

The EU assumed a common position over export of military equipment and technology in 2008. The European bloc’s system has proved dysfunctional, however, as each member state interprets the relevant rules in a different way.

In this regard, the treatment of China represents a case study. Some European countries systematically circumvent the EU arms embargo on Beijing, which Brussels imposed after the crackdown on Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. Since then, France has sold to China $4.3 billion worth of defense-related items, Britain $820 million and Germany $261 million, SIPRI reports.

Except for French deliveries of transport and multi-role helicopters, the three European heavyweights have transferred in large part components, dual-use platforms and sub-systems, including the relative technology. In particular, Beijing has managed to purchase diesel engines and radars for its frigates and destroyers from European suppliers.

In late June, EU governments agreed to pool resources to buy or jointly build up defense equipment, but the prospect is completely different for arms sales. The political and ethical distance between Swedish and French arms-export policies tell that the European grouping will struggle to elaborate a more effective common legislation on the issue.

http://www.atimes.com/ds-sweden-vs-fran ... ales-asia/
http://www.businessinsider.com/european ... ogy-2014-4

[Sivad]

I'm sure they'll be talking about this torture-loving CIA chief soon.

She tortured some folks

[foxdemon]

Xi Jinping didn't run any extra-judicial rendition program and secrete CIA detention centers in Europe.

As to the Tiananmen Square massacre, the EU has imposed an arms embargo on China which is still in force. But I don't know if Xi was directly involved.

Let’s see...

...a German citizen arrested on Chinese bidding. Looks like China’s anti terrorist activities in Europe have started.

https://www.voanews.com/a/italy-detention-of-exiled-uighur-activist-a-wake-up-call-as-china-flexes-muscles-rights-activists-say/3970690.html


The brief detention of a prominent exiled Uighur leader in Italy last week is raising alarm among human rights groups, who see it as a sign of growing Chinese political influence in Europe.

Feeding that concern is the role played in the arrest by the international police organization Interpol, which since November has been headed by Meng Hongwei, China's deputy minister of public security.

Last Wednesday, Dolkun Isa, the secretary general of the Munich-based World Uighur Congress (WUC), was stopped by police in Rome as he was preparing to address the Italian Senate about restrictions facing his people in China's western Xinjiang province.

Isa, now a German citizen, was taken to a police station where he was photographed, fingerprinted and held for more than three hours before being released.


The detention was described to Isa as an "identity check." However, he said the Italian police also told him that he was picked up because his name appeared on Intepol's list of "red notices," indicating individuals who are wanted by police in any of the group's member countries.

China issued the red notice in 1997 and placed Isa on its most-wanted terrorist list in 2003, though Isa and his supporters maintain the listing was politically motivated.

The arrest "was a big shock for me because I believe that democracy, human rights and the rule of law are the basic values of the Italian democracy, Italian government," Isa told VOA. He expressed frustration over what he sees as a willingness in the West to cave to political pressure from China in exchange for economic benefits.

...

Oh, a Swedish citizen detained in China..and rights activists being abducted from....Thailand!

http://time.com/4193543/swedish-activist-peter-dahlin-released-china-deported/

By SIMON LEWIS January 26, 2016
Swedish human-rights activist Peter Dahlin has been released from detention in China and apparently deported.

Dahlin, 35, boarded a flight from Beijing to Stockholm on Monday, the Guardian reports, one week after appearing on Chinese television giving what supporters said appeared to be a forced confession. It is unprecedented for foreigners to be humiliated on Chinese television in such a manner.

State media accused Dahlin’s organization, the Chinese Urgent Action Working Group, which works with human-rights lawyers, of being a front for “anti-China forces” and of instigating protests against the government.

Michael Caster, an associate of Dahlin’s, wrote on Twitter on Monday night that both Dahlin and his Chinese girlfriend Pan Jinling had been freed. Both were detained earlier this month.



Caster told the Guardian that he was grateful for Dahlin’s release. “However, that he has been released shouldn’t obscure the fact that many members of the Chinese human-rights community whom Peter sought to support remain in detention for nothing more than working to promote and protect the rights of all Chinese citizens,” he said.

A number of prominent human-rights lawyers remain detained in China, where the government of Xi Jinping has launched a campaign against activists and critics.

The crackdown has extended beyond China’s borders and to the officially autonomous city of Hong Kong, with two men linked to local publishing firm Mighty Current Media in detention and three others connected to the same publisher — which specializes in anti-Chinese works — reported missing but believed to have been arrested while visiting the mainland.

Mighty Current’s British co-owner Lee Bo is in Chinese detention, and suspected of having been spirited out of the territory by Chinese agents, while Gui Minhai, who has Swedish citizenship, disappeared from his condo in Thailand last year only to resurface on Chinese state TV earlier this month making what looked like a scripted confession to a past crime.
.

And those forced confessions. Don’t suppose torture might ha e been involved, do you? Should we talk about the Chinese surveillance state, the organ harvesting as well? Xi Jinping is in charge of all of this. So where’s the warrant? Or is it just Americans you object to @Atlantis ?

[Atlantis]

@foxdemon, don't be silly. A German citizen arrested in the US, China, Turkey, etc., will get the assistance of the local German consulate to be tried according to local law. Unlike the US, Germany doesn't have an empire to impose extraterritorial law on its vassals. In fact, Germany has maintained a "dialogue about the rule of law" with both Russia and China for decades. However, since the empire doesn't give a fuck about the rule of law, there is not much a small country like Germany can do internationally.

The chances that this case will get through aren't very high because there will be massive pressure from Washington; that doesn't mean we should not use the means at our disposal to try to prosecute. At the very least, it'll make her think twice about visiting Europe.

Why are you defending known abusers while blathering about the rule of law?
You again show yourself to be a complete hypocrite. But I'll take note that you know how to use Google, as to thinking ...

[foxdemon]

@foxdemon, don't be silly. A German citizen arrested in the US, China, Turkey, etc., will get the assistance of the local German consulate to be tried according to local law. Unlike the US, Germany doesn't have an empire to impose extraterritorial law on its vassals. In fact, Germany has maintained a "dialogue about the rule of law" with both Russia and China for decades. However, since the empire doesn't give a fuck about the rule of law, there is not much a small country like Germany can do internationally.

The chances that this case will get through aren't very high because there will be massive pressure from Washington; that doesn't mean we should not use the means at our disposal to try to prosecute. At the very least, it'll make her think twice about visiting Europe.

Why are you defending known abusers while blathering about the rule of law?
You again show yourself to be a complete hypocrite. But I'll take note that you know how to use Google, as to thinking ...

So should I take that as a “yes, only Americans”.

You aren’t talking about rule of law because you have no intention of applying it equally. Instead it is political and thus lawfare.

[Negotiator]

So i am begining to think Europe would prefer to speak Russian.

... WTF ?

We dont need any masters at all, we can do our own fate perfectly well alone, thank you very much.

Obama and Clinton are left wing.

All mainstream politics of the USA except Bernie Sanders is right wing to me.

Bernie Sanders is also almost the only important mainstream politician who isnt a millionaire.

[Oxymoron]

... WTF ?

We dont need any masters at all, we can do our own fate perfectly well alone, thank you very much.


e.

Europe is a loser continent, that only remains by the good will of the American goverment and its people. All you guys managed to do was obliderate yourselves, and beg us to rebuild your shit hole continent. So shut the fuck up and embrace your servitude whether its servitude to the US or Russia or Islamists. or combination of the three.

[Lightman]

Double jeopardy doesn't work like that. A sovereign country is not under an obligation to treat another country's criminal proceeding as binding and final. Double jeopardy is an Anglo-American legal concept that the same sovereign can't try the same person twice for the same crime. Even in the United States, you can actually be tried multiple times for the same crime, under the separate sovereigns doctrine. State and federal governments can both have a go at you if you violate both state and federal law. Usually this doesn't happen, as the DoJ has a policy against repeated prosecutions in most instances. But it's constitutionally permissible.

[Sivad]

All mainstream politics of the USA except Bernie Sanders is right wing to me.

Wouldn't he be center-right by European standards?

[foxdemon]

Double jeopardy doesn't work like that. A sovereign country is not under an obligation to treat another country's criminal proceeding as binding and final. Double jeopardy is an Anglo-American legal concept that the same sovereign can't try the same person twice for the same crime. Even in the United States, you can actually be tried multiple times for the same crime, under the separate sovereigns doctrine. State and federal governments can both have a go at you if you violate both state and federal law. Usually this doesn't happen, as the DoJ has a policy against repeated prosecutions in most instances. But it's constitutionally permissible.

Here’s a list of fair trial guarantees. Seems to be enough support for the idea.

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v2_rul_rule100_sectionn


Allowing international courts to overrule nation courts and retry cases they didn’t like the result of would be violating sovereignty. Furthermore it would set up a situation where a person could be sent to court after court until the desired conviction was obtained.

Of course if there were new evidence or different charges, then the ECCHR could proceed.

[Lightman]

Your link does not prove what you claim it does.

Article 14(7) of the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights:

No one shall be liable to be tried or punished again for an offence for which he has already been finally convicted or acquitted in accordance with the law and penal procedure of each country.

Article 75(4)(h) of the 1977 Additional Protocol I of the American Convention on Human Rights

“No one shall be prosecuted or punished by the same Party for an offence in respect of which a final judgment acquitting or convicting that person has been previously pronounced under the same law and judicial procedure.”

Article 4 of the 1984 Protocol 7 to the European Convention on Human Rights:

1. No one shall be liable to be tried or punished again in criminal proceedings under the jurisdiction of the same State for an offence for which he has already been finally acquitted or convicted in accordance with the law and penal procedure of that State.

etc. etc.

If I murder a British citizen while in the United States, I can be tried for murder in both the United States and the UK. The United States has subject matter jurisdiction over me on the nationality principle (I am American) and the territorial principle (the criminal act occurred within the United States). The United Kingdom has subject matter jurisdiction over me under the protective principle (its right to protect its own citizens). I would be tried not under the same law, but for the same act (my act of murder would violate both US and UK law separately). The UK could seek my extradition if it desired.

The second nation's court is not overruling the first nation's court. They are separate legal proceedings under separate laws.

[foxdemon]

It is not as clear cut as you suggest.

American Convention on Human Rights
Article 8(4) of the 1969 American Convention on Human Rights provides: “An accused person acquitted by a nonappealable judgment shall not be subjected to a new trial for the same cause.”

Quite clearly there is a consistent concern for double jeopardy and a fair trial.


Do you support the idea that a person can be tried repeated for the same offence?


This is a matter of discussion in relation to international law.

https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1127&context=law_lawreview

Should a US offical be tried under American law, then the ECCHR attempts to try them again for the same crime, this will push the international legal community to resolve these ambiguities. Certainly it will make the matter much more problematic, I and sure you would agree.

[Lightman]

The law review article you posted is proposing a different way of approaching double jeopardy; it acknowledges that current legal practice mostly allows successive prosecutions from different sovereigns.

Human rights and humanitarian law instruments
guarantee a right against double jeopardy, but only from successive
prosecutions by a single state.8
Extradition treaties guarantee protection
from successive prosecutions between states, but only in certain
circumstances.9
State practice is literally all over the map, with some states
providing near absolute double jeopardy protection based on a foreign
prosecution, and others none at all.10 At the same time, a clear and uniform
international trend appears to be taking hold that would preclude
prosecutions based on universal jurisdiction if the defendant has been (or
in many cases will be) prosecuted by a state where the crime took place or
whose nationals were directly involved.11 Added to the mix are the statutes
of international criminal tribunals, which protect against successive
prosecutions as between states and tribunals in some cases but not in
others.12 Perhaps because of this doctrinal disarray, commentary has
tended to concentrate on discrete double jeopardy issues,13 with no work
tackling head-on the larger question of whether this apparently discordant
body of law and practice might be explicable through a unifying,
explanatory theory.14

As to the ACHR, I'm unsure if, in practice, the treaty is read to preclude successive prosecution by different sovereigns (bear in mind that most human rights treaties don't really create significant enforcement mechanisms). Even if it is read that way, the United States is not a party to the treaty.

Look, maybe international law norms should change here, but international law as it stands allow for successive prosecutions by different sovereigns in most cases.

(There's actually a better argument that the United States' internal separate sovereign doctrine violates international double jeopardy norms, in that states are not international sovereigns).