cryptogon.com

In a written ruling, the three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals ruled 2 to 1 that corporations are not liable in US courts for violations of international human rights law.

“Looking to international law, we find a jurisprudence, first set forth in Nuremberg and repeated by every international tribunal of which we are aware, that offences [for] violations of human rights can be charged against states and against individual men and women but not against juridical persons such as corporations,” circuit judge José Cabranes said in his ruling.

The case was brought by the families of seven Nigerians executed by the former Nigeria government. They alleged that Shell provided transportation to Nigerian forces, allowed its property to be used as a staging ground for attacks, and provided food and compensation for soldiers who carried out the attacks. They said this aided the government to torture and kill locals protesting oil exploration in the Ogani region of Nigeria.

Shell has denied the accusations.

The dissenting circuit judge Pierre Leval wrote: “The majority opinion deals a substantial blow to international law and its undertaking to protect fundamental human rights. According to the rule my colleagues have created, one who earns profits by commercial exploitation of abuse of fundamental human rights can successfully shield those profits from victims’ claims for compensation simply by taking the precaution of conducting the heinous operation in the corporate form.”

The four are employees of Fujita Corp., Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku said today in Tokyo. They were visiting Hebei, China on company business unrelated to military issues, Fujita spokesman Yoshiaki Onodera said.

The detention comes as China ratchets up pressure on Japan to release a fishing boat captain who collided with Japanese Coast Guard vessels near islets claimed by both countries. The islands, known as Diaoyu in Chinese and Senkaku in Japanese, are in the East China Sea near natural gas fields. The two countries signed an agreement in 2008 to jointly develop the fields that has yet to be implemented.

Royal aides were told that the £60m worth of energy-saving grants were aimed at families on low incomes and if the money was given to Buckingham Palace instead of housing associations or hospitals it could lead to “adverse publicity” for the Queen and the Government.

Aides complained to ministers in 2004 that the Queen’s gas and electricity bills, which had increased by 50 per cent that year, stood at more than £1m a year and had become “untenable”.

The police identified the dead man as César Mercado, 34, a senior consulate officer who had been working in New York for eight years and had been performing the duties of consul general.

Mr. Mercado’s body was discovered at 10:35 a.m. by his driver, who, detectives said, had arrived to pick him up.

He was lying just inside the entrance to his sixth-floor apartment, at 2070 Grand Concourse, near East 180th Street, in the Mount Hope neighborhood, said Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman.

“The door was unlocked” but was shut when the driver arrived, Mr. Browne said.

The driver, who was not identified, left the apartment and called the police, Mr. Browne said.

Detectives from the 46th Precinct found several knives in the apartment, he said. A 12-inch kitchen knife and a paring knife were found in the bathroom sink, along with a lot of blood, possibly indicating that the stabbing happened there and that Mr. Mercado collapsed as he approached his door.

The body had deep cuts to the neck and stab wounds in the abdomen, Mr. Browne said.

The police, along with agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, were seeking a motive for the killing, and no suspects had been identified.

Mr. Browne said that the apartment did not appear to have been ransacked, and that Mr. Mercado’s body was clothed.

Mr. Browne said Mr. Mercado had been seen by neighbors on Wednesday.

Some neighbors in the six-story tan-brick building, known as August Arms, said they recalled Mr. Mercado as being a nice person. No one, however, seemed familiar with his job.

One woman, Daisy Valle, 40, who has lived on the fifth floor for 16 years, said she was surprised that someone of Mr. Mercado’s stature was living there.

All of a sudden, the news of the attack on the twin towers was broadcast using numerous footages of the incident.

Almost all governments and known figures strongly condemned this incident.

But then a propaganda machine came into full force; it was implied that the whole world was exposed to a huge danger, namely terrorism, and that the only way to save the world would be to deploy forces into Afghanistan.

Eventually Afghanistan, and shortly thereafter Iraq were occupied.

Please take note:

It was said that some three thousands people were killed on the II September for which we are all very saddened. Yet, up until now, in Afghanistan and Iraq hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, millions wounded and displaced and the conflict is still going on and expanding.

In identifying those responsible for the attack, there were three viewpoints.

1- That a very powerful and complex terrorist group, able to successfully cross all layers of the American intelligence and security, carried out the attack. This is the main viewpoint advocated by American statesmen.

2- That some segments within the U.S. government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order also to save the Zionist regime.
The majority of the American people as well as other nations and politicians agree with this view.

3- It was carried out by a terrorist group but the American government supported and took advantage of the situation. Apparently, this viewpoint has fewer proponents.

The main evidence linking the incident was a few passports found in the huge volume of rubble and a video of an individual whose place of domicile was unknown but it was announced that he had been involved in oil deals with some American officials. It was also covered up and said that due to the explosion and fire no trace of the suicide attackers was found.

There remain, however, a few questions to be answered:

1- Would it not have been sensible that first a thorough investigation should have been conducted by independent groups to conclusively identify the elements involved in the attack and then map out a rational plan to take measures against them?

2- Assuming the viewpoint of the American government, is it rational to launch a classic war through widespread deployment of troops that led to the death of hundreds of thousands of people to counter a terrorist group?

3- Was it not possible to act the way Iran countered the Riggi terrorist group who killed and wounded 400 innocent people in Iran. In the Iranian operation no innocent person was hurt.

It is proposed that the United Nations set up an independent fact-finding group for the event of the II September so that in the future expressing views about it is not forbidden.

Although the CIA has long been known to run clandestine militias in Afghanistan, including one from a base it rents from the Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s half-brother in the southern province of Kandahar, the sheer number of militiamen directly under its control have never been publicly revealed.

The report, which was sourced to unnamed industry experts, said an initial trade embargo on all exports of rare earth minerals would last through the end of this month.

“China has not issued any measures intended to restrict rare earth exports to Japan. There is no foundation for that,” said Chen Rongkai, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Commerce.

Chinese customs officials are halting all shipments to Japan of so-called rare earth elements, industry officials said on Thursday morning.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao personally called for Japan’s release of the captain, who was detained after his vessel collided with two Japanese coast guard vessels about 40 minutes apart as he tried to fish in waters controlled by Japan but long claimed by China. Mr. Wen threatened unspecified further actions if Japan did not comply.

A Chinese commerce ministry official declined on Thursday to discuss the country’s trade policy on rare earths, saying only that Mr. Wen’s comments remained the Chinese government’s position.