Wikipedia defines a war of aggression as a military conflict waged absent the justification of self-defense. Waging such a war of aggression is a crime under the customary international law. It is generally agreed by scholars in international law that the military actions of the Nazi regime in World War II in its search for so-called “Lebensraum” are characteristic of a war of aggression.

San Diego’s Thomas Jefferson School of Law Professor and president of the National Lawyers Guild Marjorie Cohn in a 2004 Truthout article contextualized a little more bluntly with:

Following the Holocaust, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg called the waging of aggressive war “essentially an evil thing . . . 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.”

Former UK diplomat Carne Ross, who was Britain’s leading expert on Iraq at the United Nations for four years before the war,  and who had quit his job after giving secret evidence to the  UK’s 2004 Butler inquiry into the use of intelligence, and is now urging a full inquiry into the legality  of the 2003 US led invasion according to UK newspapers yesterday and this morning.

From BBC News Thursday:

A full public inquiry into the decision to invade Iraq is needed because “a lot of facts still have to come to light”, a former diplomat has told MPs.

Carne Ross said it was “disgraceful” of ministers to “pretend” the Butler and Hutton inquiries told the full story.

…

“A lot of decision-making, a lot of facts have still to come to light in the run up to this war, which should come to light, which the public deserves to know.”

Asked what this information was, he said he was “happy” to let his evidence to the Butler inquiry “stand as my view”.

The Guardian corroborates the story Friday morning with:

A former diplomat at the centre of events in the run-up to the Iraq war revealed yesterday that the government has a “paper trail” that could reveal new information about the legality of the invasion.

Carne Ross, who was a first secretary at the United Nations in New York for the Foreign Office until 2004, told MPs: “A lot of facts about the run-up to this war have yet to come to light which should come to light and which the public deserves to know.” There were also assessments by the joint intelligence committee which had not been disclosed, Ross told the Commons public administration select committee.

He told the inquiry that the intelligence made it “very clear” that Saddam Hussein did not pose a significant threat to the UK, as was being claimed at the time by ministers, and that tougher enforcement of sanctions could have brought his regime down.

If you’re anything like me and I suspect like most of us, you know about the scandal surrounding AIG’s bonus payouts to the same company employees in their London operation that were at the center of the Credit Default Swap scheming that triggered the current global financial meltdown, but also like me you’re probably no economist nor expert in financial matters and are having a difficult time wrapping your head around what, exactly is going on, how we got here, and why our economy seems to be collapsing.

Sharona Coutts is a law graduate and an honors graduate from Columbia Journalism School’s investigative seminar and now writes for ProPublica, an independent, non-profit newsroom in Manhattan that produces investigative journalism and describes themslves as “producing journalism that shines a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them”.

Sharona has put together a very good Q&A piece that helps in understanding what exactly is going on with AIG. She has also produced a very good related piece: Timeline: AIG and Their Bonuses that she quotes in the Q&A article reproduced here.

AIG’s Bonus Blow-Up: The Essential Q&A

by Sharona Coutts, ProPublica – March 18, 2009 5:12 pm EDT

Monday marked six months to the day since AIG’s first bailout, but it wasn’t until news of executive bonuses over the weekend that public fury truly focused on the hemorrhaging insurer.

President Obama told Americans he was “choked up with anger” over bonus payments to executives at AIG’s Financial Products office whose bad bets pushed the company to the brink of collapse. The administration is worried about public anger turning against it, not just the company.

In some respects, the sudden anger is mystifying. After all, there’s nothing new about the bonuses except that a portion of them – $165 million – were actually paid on Friday. Contracts instigating the bonuses were made a year ago, and they’ve regularly been in the news in recent months.

And the amount involved is dwarfed by the tens of billions that flowed to banks and hedge funds.

AIG’s plan to pay bonuses have been public knowledge for more than a year. Why is this blowing up now?

Crossposted from Antemedius

Phyllis Bennis is a Senior Analyst at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC, and the author of Before and After: US Foreign Policy and the September 11 Crisis, Challenging Empire: How People, Governments, and the UN Defy US Power,  and Understanding the US-Iran Crisis: A Primer.

In an interview with Real News CEO Paul Jay, Bennis talks about the impact of US presence and the eventual departure from Iraq, and notes that although at some point US Troops will have to be withdrawn from Iraq and Iraqis are going to have a right to determine their own future, after years of occupation and the destruction and damage inflicted on Iraq and the country’s peoples the US owes reparations and more, but this can only be acted on after military occupation is ended.

Is there any amount of reparation that can make up for what has been done to Iraqis? Has anyone thought to ask Iraqis that question? Would reparations equaling the more than a trillion dollars spent to kill them and destroy their country be enough?

Web-savvy Obama ‘rarely’ reads blogs, says they’re misleading

Jeremy Gantz, RawStory, Sunday March 8, 2009

Although he owes his current job in part to the Internet’s unique networking and communications tools – and his campaign’s unprecedented ability to raise money online – President Obama “rarely” reads blogs because he considers some of them misleading and simplistic.

The comment, made during a wide-ranging New York Times interview aboard Air Force One, may surprise those who follow  WhiteHouse.gov’s own blog or those who followed his transition team’s blog.

Asked about his news consumption habits at the end of the interview, during which he acknowledged that the United States is not winning the war in Afghanistan, Obama said he “rarely reads blogs,” but reads newspapers – in their paper form – and weekly news magazines.

“[P]art of the reason we don’t spend a lot of time looking at blogs is because if you haven’t looked at it very carefully then you may be under the impression that somehow there’s a clean answer one way or another – well, you just nationalize all the banks, or you just leave them alone and they’ll be fine, or this or that or the other,” Obama said. “The truth is this is a very complex set of problems and bad decisions can result in huge taxpayer expenditures and poor results.”

Although bloggers at prominent progressive websites such as Daily Kos and Talking Points Memo are likely annoyed by his remarks, Obama may have a good excuse as to why he isn’t keeping tabs on their posts: He’s busy reading government briefings.

A full transcript of the interview can be found here.

Despite the Obama campaign’s web-savvy skills, WhiteHouse.gov – which also has its own YouTube channel – has run into a few snags since January’s inauguration. The website “has been overwhelmed by challenges that staffers did not foresee and technological problems they have yet to solve,” the Washington Post reported Monday. Obama would like to send out mass updates via email and text messages, but the White House does not have the technology in place to do so, according to the newspaper.

Since his election in November, it’s become a near cliche to note that Obama has harnessed the Internet to speak directly to Americans just as Franklin D. Roosevelt used radio and John F. Kennedy utilized television. Clearly, Obama – famously addicted to his web-enabled BlackBerry – has used and will continue to use the Internet to reach an increasingly wired nation.

What’s less clear, however, is how the Internet is influencing Obama’s governing decisions. If his lack of respect for blogs is any indication, the president’s use of the Internet would appear to be more about transmitting his own messages than receiving others’. He may have been the first president to ask an online reporter a question when he called on the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein in early February, but that doesn’t mean he’s visiting the web-only news and opinion site to read what Stein wrote.

Web-savvy Obama ‘rarely’ reads blogs, says they’re misleading

Jeremy Gantz, RawStory, Sunday March 8, 2009

Although he owes his current job in part to the Internet’s unique networking and communications tools – and his campaign’s unprecedented ability to raise money online – President Obama “rarely” reads blogs because he considers some of them misleading and simplistic.

The comment, made during a wide-ranging New York Times interview aboard Air Force One, may surprise those who follow  WhiteHouse.gov’s own blog or those who followed his transition team’s blog.

Asked about his news consumption habits at the end of the interview, during which he acknowledged that the United States is not winning the war in Afghanistan, Obama said he “rarely reads blogs,” but reads newspapers – in their paper form – and weekly news magazines.

“[P]art of the reason we don’t spend a lot of time looking at blogs is because if you haven’t looked at it very carefully then you may be under the impression that somehow there’s a clean answer one way or another – well, you just nationalize all the banks, or you just leave them alone and they’ll be fine, or this or that or the other,” Obama said. “The truth is this is a very complex set of problems and bad decisions can result in huge taxpayer expenditures and poor results.”

Although bloggers at prominent progressive websites such as Daily Kos and Talking Points Memo are likely annoyed by his remarks, Obama may have a good excuse as to why he isn’t keeping tabs on their posts: He’s busy reading government briefings.

A full transcript of the interview can be found here.

Despite the Obama campaign’s web-savvy skills, WhiteHouse.gov – which also has its own YouTube channel – has run into a few snags since January’s inauguration. The website “has been overwhelmed by challenges that staffers did not foresee and technological problems they have yet to solve,” the Washington Post reported Monday. Obama would like to send out mass updates via email and text messages, but the White House does not have the technology in place to do so, according to the newspaper.

Since his election in November, it’s become a near cliche to note that Obama has harnessed the Internet to speak directly to Americans just as Franklin D. Roosevelt used radio and John F. Kennedy utilized television. Clearly, Obama – famously addicted to his web-enabled BlackBerry – has used and will continue to use the Internet to reach an increasingly wired nation.

What’s less clear, however, is how the Internet is influencing Obama’s governing decisions. If his lack of respect for blogs is any indication, the president’s use of the Internet would appear to be more about transmitting his own messages than receiving others’. He may have been the first president to ask an online reporter a question when he called on the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein in early February, but that doesn’t mean he’s visiting the web-only news and opinion site to read what Stein wrote.

Crossposted from Antemedius

(four months after their debut album was released)

March 6, 2009

(forty years later)

General Motors yesterday warned it would go bust within 30 days unless the US treasury swiftly gives it a further multibillion-dollar loan. The dramatic warning from America’s biggest car group came after its auditors, Deloitte & Touche, raised substantial doubts about its ability to continue as a “going concern”.

It coincided with an admission that GM paid Rick Wagoner, its chief executive, $15m last year – mainly in now-worthless stock options – despite losing almost $31bn. This year he will be paid only $1.

[snip]

The White House said it was “working round the clock” to produce “the most thoughtful approach possible to the situation”.

It’s getting tough out there.

(four months after their debut album was released)

March 6, 2009

(forty years later)

General Motors yesterday warned it would go bust within 30 days unless the US treasury swiftly gives it a further multibillion-dollar loan. The dramatic warning from America’s biggest car group came after its auditors, Deloitte & Touche, raised substantial doubts about its ability to continue as a “going concern”.

It coincided with an admission that GM paid Rick Wagoner, its chief executive, $15m last year – mainly in now-worthless stock options – despite losing almost $31bn. This year he will be paid only $1.

[snip]

The White House said it was “working round the clock” to produce “the most thoughtful approach possible to the situation”.

It’s getting tough out there.