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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (86594)	11/16/2004 10:03:46 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 793725

And the left wonders why we refuse to join the International Criminal Court. Should Canada indict Bush? THOMAS WALKOM - TORONTO STAR thestar.com When U.S. President George W. Bush arrives in Ottawa — probably later this year — should he be welcomed? Or should he be charged with war crimes? It's an interesting question. On the face of it, Bush seems a perfect candidate for prosecution under Canada's Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes Act. This act was passed in 2000 to bring Canada's ineffectual laws in line with the rules of the new International Criminal Court. While never tested, it lays out sweeping categories under which a foreign leader like Bush could face arrest. In particular, it holds that anyone who commits a war crime, even outside Canada, may be prosecuted by our courts. What is a war crime? According to the statute, it is any conduct defined as such by "customary international law" or by conventions that Canada has adopted. War crimes also specifically include any breach of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, such as torture, degradation, wilfully depriving prisoners of war of their rights "to a fair and regular trial," launching attacks "in the knowledge that such attacks will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians" and deportation of persons from an area under occupation. Outside of one well-publicized (and quickly squelched) attempt in Belgium, no one has tried to formally indict Bush. But both Oxfam International and the U.S. group Human Rights Watch have warned that some of the actions undertaken by the U.S. and its allies, particularly in Iraq, may fall under the war crime rubric. The case for the prosecution looks quite promising. First, there is the fact of the Iraq war itself. After 1945, Allied tribunals in Nuremberg and Tokyo — in an astonishing precedent — ruled that states no longer had the unfettered right to invade other countries and that leaders who started such conflicts could be tried for waging illegal war. Concurrently, the new United Nations outlawed all aggressive wars except those authorized by its Security Council. Today, a strong case could be made that Bush violated the Nuremberg principles by invading Iraq. Indeed, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has already labelled that war illegal in terms of the U.N. Charter. Second, there is the manner in which the U.S. conducted this war. The mistreatment of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison is a clear contravention of the Geneva Accord. The U.S. is also deporting selected prisoners to camps outside of Iraq (another contravention). U.S. press reports also talk of shadowy prisons in Jordan run by the CIA, where suspects are routinely tortured. And the estimated civilian death toll of 100,000 may well contravene the Geneva Accords prohibition against the use of excessive force. Canada's war crimes law specifically permits prosecution not only of those who carry out such crimes but of the military and political superiors who allow them to happen. What has emerged since Abu Ghraib shows that officials at the highest levels of the Bush administration permitted and even encouraged the use of torture. Given that Bush, as he likes to remind everyone, is the U.S. military's commander-in-chief, it is hard to argue he bears no responsibility. Then there is Guantanamo Bay. The U.S. says detainees there do not fall under the Geneva accords. That's an old argument. In 1946, Japanese defendants explained their mistreatment of prisoners of war by noting that their country had never signed any of the Geneva Conventions. The Japanese were convicted anyway. Oddly enough, Canada may be one of the few places where someone like Bush could be brought to justice. Impeachment in the U.S. is most unlikely. And, at Bush's insistence, the new international criminal court has no jurisdiction over any American. But a Canadian war crimes charge, too, would face many hurdles. Bush was furious last year when Belgians launched a war crimes suit in their country against him — so furious that Belgium not only backed down under U.S. threats but changed its law to prevent further recurrences. As well, according to a foreign affairs spokesperson, visiting heads of state are immune from prosecution when in Canada on official business. If Ottawa wanted to act, it would have to wait until Bush was out of office — or hope to catch him when he comes up here to fish. And, of course, Canada's government would have to want to act. War crimes prosecutions are political decisions that must be authorized by the federal attorney-general. Still, Prime Minister Paul Martin has staked out his strong opposition to war crimes. This was his focus in a September address to the U.N. General Assembly. There, Martin was talking specifically about war crimes committed by militiamen in far-off Sudan. But as my friends on the Star's editorial board noted in one of their strong defences of concerted international action against war crimes, the rule must be, "One law for all."

To: LindyBill who wrote (86594)	11/17/2004 12:21:56 AM
From: mistermj	Respond to of 793725

Tumbleweeds good for uranium clean-up scienceblog.com The lowly, ill-regarded tumbleweed might be good for something after all. A preliminary study reveals that tumbleweeds, a.k.a. Russian thistle, and some other weeds common to dry Western lands have a knack for soaking up depleted uranium from contaminated soils at weapons testing grounds and battlefields. "There is some use to what we consider noxious weeds," said geologist Dana Ulmer-Scholle of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro. Depleted uranium (DU) is used in armor-piercing munitions. Although it produces only a low level of radiation, the metal poses a hazard in soils because it – like some other heavy metals – is toxic if ingested. Other plants have been known to draw out DU from soils in wetter climes "but no one wanted to try doing it in arid regions," said Ulmer-Scholle. Ulmer-Scholle's work is underwritten by the US Department of Defense, which is looking for innovative, cost-effective, and efficient ways of cleaning up soils at weapons testing areas and battlefields where DU has been used. Ulmer-Scholle will be presenting the promising results of tumbleweeds and other weeds in arid lands on 10 November at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver. In her study, Ulmer-Scholle and her colleagues Bonnie Frey, Terry Thomas, and Michael Blaylock first sought out DU contaminated soils at an inactive munitions testing ground in New Mexico. Then they planted selected native and non-native plants in a test garden and in pots to see how much DU the plants absorbed from the soil. Among the plants that sucked up lots of DU was Indian mustard (Brassica juncea), she reports. But that plant it is not well suited to deserts and needed irrigation. Better adapted to the dry environs, she said, were Russian thistle (Salsola tragus), the grain crop quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa) and purple amaranth (Amaranthus blitum). "Our goal is to use plants with the least amount of water and the minimum amount of care," said Ulmer-Scholle. They also found that sprinkling the ground with citric acid enhanced the plants' ability to absorb DU. Russian thistle is a non-native plant to North America and is considered a nuisance in most parts of the western US. It springs up almost anywhere soils have been disturbed and each plant scatters its hundreds of seeds by detaching from its roots and tumbling along the ground in the wind. Using tumbleweeds and other unpopular plants for DU clean-up needn't spread noxious weeds either, Ulmer-Scholle explained. It turns out that the plants tested do their best DU absorbing before they flower and long before they set seeds. So part of the trick to using weeds to clean up DU is to harvest the plants before they flower, she said. The fact that plants absorb uranium is not news, since old uranium prospectors used to use Geiger counters on junipers to find buried uranium lodes. But finding a plant that grows fast on little water and can be easily harvested to carry away the depleted uranium – that's another story. "We tried it here (in Southern New Mexico) and also in a natural uranium mine site in northern New Mexico," she said. The weeds picked up even more uranium in more contaminated soils. "So we got more where there was more in the soils." As for why some plants absorb uranium, that's still a mystery, says Ulmer-Scholle. It could be that the plants use the metal to create pigments. One way she hopes to test that possibility is to grow native plants used for dyes, she said. Phytoremediation of Depleted Uranium in an Arid Environment Environmental Geosciences, Poster Session II Wednesday, 10 November, 1:30 -5:30 p.m., CCC Exhibit Hall