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Archive for April 28, 2009

Why We Must Prosecute

April 28, 2009 by mike.

Title says it all. From the Washington Post, written by a US Prosecutor of war crimes.

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com

Why We Must Prosecute

By Mark J. McKeon

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Torture Is a Breach Of International Law

On Sept. 11, 2001, when the twin towers were hit, I was sitting in a meeting in The Hague discussing what should be included in an indictment against Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes in Bosnia. I was an American lawyer serving as a prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and there was no doubt that Milosevic should be indicted for his responsibility for the torture and cruel treatment of prisoners. As the head of state at the time those crimes were committed, Milosevic bore ultimate responsibility for what happened under his watch.

While at The Hague, I felt myself standing in a long line of American prosecutors working for a world where international standards restricted what one nation could do to another during war, stretching back to at least Justice Robert Jackson at the Nuremberg trials. Those standards protected our own soldiers and citizens. They were also moral and right. So I didn’t understand why, a few months after the attacks in 2001, the Bush administration withdrew its consent to joining the International Criminal Court. Wasn’t accountability for war crimes one of the things America stood for? Although staying with the court did mean that the United States would be subject to being charged in that court, how likely was that to happen? Surely we would never do these things. And, in any event, the court could only assume jurisdiction over a person whose own government refused to prosecute him; surely, that would never happen in the United States.

And yet, seven years later, here we are debating whether we should hold senior Bush administration officials accountable for things they have done in the “war on terror.”

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Posted in News, War Criminals | Print | 1 Comment »

Flu Pandemic Update

April 28, 2009 by mike.

from Slate, authorJon Cohen.

As the WHO steps up their alert to level 4, the fear factor emerges.  Is the fear justified?   I don’t know, I guess we can only wait and see.  The 1918 flu pandemic is estimated to have killed fifty million people worldwide, that’s a scary thought.   The early indications are that this 2009 flu H1N1 is not as deadly as the 1918 flu strain.

Well, what is there to say.   The number of human beings on the planet today creates a really large ecosystem for pathogens and our extensive travel patterns create a tremendous number of vectors for spread of a contagious pathogen.  Those are the facts on the ground.

Stay home if you are sick.  Wash your hands frequently and use tissues.  The antibacterial hand lotions are reported to be effective.   Face masks?  I guess not.

Be well.

clipped from www.slate.com

Do Surgical Masks Stop Swine Flu?Probably not.
Viruses, including the coronavirus that scientists believe may be the cause of SARS, are so tiny that they can easily pass through such barriers. Several studies even have shown that surgical masks fail to prevent transmission of the much larger mycobacterium tuberculosis, which causes TB. While the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises that people who have SARS wear these masks, they do not even recommend them for people in contact with those patients unless the infected person can’t wear one. Wearing surgical masks outdoors, where virus-laden particles easily disperse, has even less value.

Masked woman
To efficiently protect yourself from coronaviruses, you would need to wear a full-faced mask with a high-efficiency particle air filter. But such HEPA filter masks cause what Grinshpun calls “quite a discomfort” in short order.

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Posted in News, Connect the Dots | Print | 1 Comment »

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