Israeli authorities have demolished the homes of about 300 Bedouins in a village in the southern Negev desert.
The entire village of al-Arakib was bulldozed on Tuesday, with many of the former residents’ cattle, trees and belongings lost.

al Jazeera, July 27, 2010

Cambodians upset by genocide sentence

The Khmer Rouge tribunal delivered its first verdict on Monday and sentenced a top leader of the genocidal regime, comrade Duch, to 30 years behind bars, but many victims outside the emotional courtroom were left complaining over this sentence.

Asia Times, July 28, 2010

Group says suing UK over Congo conflict minerals

Lobby group Global Witness said on Monday it was taking the British government to court for failing to refer companies trading in Congo ‘conflict minerals’ to the U.N. sanctions committee.

Reuters Africa, July 27, 2010

Iraq: Extremist Groups Targeting Journalists

The suicide car bombing that destroyed the Baghdad bureau of Al Arabiya News Channel and killed at least six people on July 26, 2010, was an assault on the fundamental principles of freedom of expression and respect for life, Human Rights Watch said today.

Human Rights Watch, July 26, 2010

Egypt Punishes Gaza More

Almost two months since Egypt announced it would reopen its Rafah border terminal with the Gaza Strip, operation of the crossing remains sorely limited.

IPS News, July 26, 2010

This Franco-Belgian bank is a leader in municipal finance in Europe, with the majority of the market in Belgium and almost half in France. Subsidiary Dexia Crediop is a prominent local government finance company in Italy. Dexia Group also offers retail banking through nearly 1,100 branches in Belgium and Luxembourg and provides asset management, insurance and fund administration services.

As noted by the Israeli NGO, Who Profits? ” the bank announced in June 2009 that financing Israeli settlements is contrary to the bank’s code of ethics, and that it would stop providing new loans to West Bank settlements.”

The report notes several key reasons for this decline:

• Most governments appear unwilling to reform laws used to punish journalists.
• In countries experiencing political upheaval, journalists have become targets.
• Continuing impunity for attacks on journalists is encouraging new attacks.
• The Internet is facilitating means for governments to identify and control citizen communication.

The report goes on to identify the 10 worst countries for press freedom and the names should be no surprise to readers: Belarus, Burma (Myanmar), Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

This report can be found at the Freedom House website.

A copy of the report can be downloaded here.

This is a picture of one of my kittens, Beanie. She is cute, lovable and needs your help. She was found in a bush on a busy street here on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, flea bitten and underfed. She is now a healthy cat but is being terrorized by my other cat, Binkley. SAVE BEANIE!

No, not really. Beanie can take care of herself. But I bring this up in response to a recent article about how we as readers psychologically respond to compelling social issues bombarding us every day.

New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof wrote an interesting piece in Outside Online that was published this month. His “Advice for Saving the World” makes the argument that people concerned with humanitarian problems are more likely to respond to compelling stories about individuals, not to larger problems. From a writer’s perspective, this is a particularly interesting insight given that I have always been baffled by readership interest and response to various posts I have published here at Global Investment Watch.

Kristof notes that in the context of altruistic responses to humanitarian problems, we are psychologically tuned to respond where we see a direct impact on our efforts. “Recent research in social psychology offers a couple of central lessons. The first is a bit surprising: We intervene not because of stories of desperate circumstances but when we can be cheered up with positive stories of success and transformation. For example, one experiment found that people are quite willing to pay for a water-treatment facility to save 4,500 lives in a refugee camp with 11,000 people in it, but they are much less willing to pay for the same facility to save 4,500 lives when the refugee camp is said to have 250,000 inhabitants. In effect, what matters is saving a high proportion of people, not just a large number of lives. Paul Slovic, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon who has pioneered this field of research, notes that saving a large proportion of a group is very satisfying, while saving a small proportion seems like a failure—even if it’s a high number.”

From my perspective, it’s interesting to note which of our pieces seem to resonate most with our readers. A piece by one of my colleagues about conservative pitt bull Michelle Bachman has been the most popular article at Global Investment Watch. Similarly, an article about Turkish factory workers and U.S. retail giants, received similar reader attention.

Coming back to my kitten Beanie. Would you care more if Beanie were part of the larger homeless kitten problem in America or are you more concerned about her particular problems with her older and bigger sibling?

The west African nation of Guinea is facing a crisis that is precipitated by its own natural wealth and sustained, in part, by economic interests out for a piece of the action. Whether the people of Guinea can survive the current crisis remains uncertain. In a post on the International Crisis Group blog today, Richard Moncrieff notes that this problem has become acute as events in recent weeks make clear.

On September 28th of this year, the West African country Guinea was the scene of an anti government demonstration dissolved by the government of Captain Mousa Dadis Camara. The demonstrators were protesting the decision of Captain Camara to run for President in the January 2010 elections. NowPublic

Many of the demonstrators also held placards which stated “Army out of power”.The response of the government was to use tear gas, batons, and live ammunition with the result of being a reported 157 people killed in which 50,000 people participated in the demonstration.

Then earlier this month, Captain Camara was flown to Morocco for treatment after he was shot by his top aide, fuelling worries of a power vacuum. General Sekouba Konate, Guinea’s vice-president and defence minister, became the country’s de facto leader after returning from Lebanon early on Saturday.

Whatever the immediate aftermath of the shooting of junta leader Moussa Dadis Camara, this latest spate of violence clearly demonstrates the dangers of military rule for Guinea, and the sub-region. ICG

Part of what happened is clear enough. Certain members of the presidential guard, who were involved in the massacres of 28 September, obviously felt threatened by the United Nations commission of inquiry, which was wrapping up its first field investigation into those killings. Toumba Diakite, the leading red beret who shot Dadis Camara, probably feared being made to carry the can.

The core members of the military junta are violent and volatile thugs, who drink to excess and roam the streets of the capital, Conakry, armed to the teeth. And it is not the first incident of this sort. In early October, another argument about responsibility for the 28 September events ended with shots being fired in the main military camp.

Guinea has had a history of authoritarian rule since gaining its independence from France in 1958. Lansana Conte came to power in 1984 when the military seized the government after the death of the first president, Sekou Toure. Guinea did not hold democratic elections until 1993 when Gen. Conte was elected president of the civilian government. He was reelected in 1998 and again in 2003, though all the polls were marred by irregularities. History repeated itself in December 2008 when following President Conte’s death, Capt. Moussa Dadis Camara led a military coup, seizing power and suspending the constitution as well as political and union activity. Guinea has maintained some semblance of internal stability despite spillover effects from conflict in Sierra Leone and Liberia. As those countries have rebuilt, however, Guinea’s own vulnerability to political and economic crisis has increased. Declining economic conditions and popular dissatisfaction with corruption and bad governance prompted two massive strikes in 2006, and a third nationwide strike in early 2007. CIA World Factbook

Guinea possesses major mineral, hydropower, and agricultural resources, yet remains an underdeveloped nation. The country has almost half of the world’s bauxite reserves. The mining sector accounts for more than 70% of exports. However, long-run improvements in government fiscal arrangements, literacy, and the legal framework are needed if the country is to move out of poverty.

Investor confidence has been sapped by rampant corruption, a lack of electricity and other infrastructure, a lack of skilled workers, and the political uncertainty because of the death of President Conte in December 2008.

Guinea is trying to reengage with the IMF and World Bank, which cut off most assistance in 2003, and is working closely with technical advisers from the U.S. Treasury Department, the World Bank and IMF, seeking to return to a fully funded program. Growth rose slightly in 2006-08, primarily due to increases in global demand and commodity prices on world markets, but the standard of living fell. The Guinea franc depreciated sharply as the prices for basic necessities like food and fuel rose beyond the reach of most Guineans. Dissatisfaction with economic conditions prompted nationwide strikes in February and June 2006.

There are two likely outcomes to the situation in the short term, and neither looks good. If Dadis Camara pulls through and retains control of the situation, he could become more paranoid and his clampdown on civil society and human rights activists could harden. On the other hand, if he loses control there are four or five strong men ready to take over, and each will probably be prepared to fight for power.

John Richardson

It strikes me that the problem lies, in part, with the way many investors view voting and investing in general: They are in it for the money. Okay, some investors have a conscience, want to make sure that their companies “do the right thing” and so on, but at the end of the day, most investors just want a return on their investment. Herein lies the problem: There is a real disconnect between investing and proxy voting. To my knowledge, nobody has made a compelling case to individual investors to vote their proxies as part of the investment process.

This problem is demonstrated in the numbers. Voting by individual shareholders, always a low figure (in the low double digits, I believe) has plummeted in recent years as more companies deliver proxy materials to their shareholders via the Web. I recently heard a number bandied about suggesting that individual voter turnout at American corporations hovers around 5%.

Am I wrong here? Can anybody make the case for why proxy voting provides value for individual investors? The tired, “corporate governance is good” arguments are fine but they don’t motivate shareholders to act. What’s in it for Joe Hubcap to open the blue plastic package and read and understand a torpid proxy statement then make a decision about the issues when dinner is getting cold and American Idol is about to start?Why Should I Vote My Proxies?W

First, Ms. Cooper does a nice job laying out the current processes for bringing war criminals to trial in the world today. The debate about international tribunals versus national trials versus hybrid proceedings is summarized nicely. Second, and more importantly, she raises a brief point about the importance of justice and our collective need for the rule of law – something that is often ignored when the collective conscience calls for vengeance against the likes of a 9/11 perpetrator. Give this a read or go to the original article at WashingtonPost.com.

In Germany last week, 89-year-old John Demjanjuk, a former Ohio autoworker who came to the United States in 1952, lay on a stretcher and listened to the accusation against him: that he was an accomplice in the murder of at least 27,900 people who died at the Sobibor concentration camp while he worked there in 1943. The trial, now on hold because of Demjanjuk’s ill health, is the latest example of holding individuals accountable for the crimes of the murderous regimes they served.

Law was first used to deal with such crimes in the post-World War II tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, where Allied judges tried 22 Nazi leaders for the Third Reich’s atrocities. Demjanjuk was allegedly a relatively low-level perpetrator, but today’s defendants include once-powerful figures and even sitting heads of state. The international tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has finally gotten its hands on Radovan Karadzic, the man believed responsible for the Srebrenica massacre, 14 years after his original indictment, and the International Criminal Court in the Hague is going after Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.

Few today question whether a country’s leaders should be held personally responsible for state crimes committed on their watch. Still, the methods remain controversial. The United States deported Demjanjuk to Germany and supports the Yugoslavia tribunal, but it is unwilling to join the ICC, fearing that American soldiers — or leaders — might one day find themselves in the dock.

1. War-crimes trials mainly happen in international courts.

International trials are only a small subset of the many prosecutions going on today. True, the courts for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda have convicted dozens of top perpetrators, and the ICC is tackling cases from four African countries. But their resources are limited. Most trials take place in domestic courts, or in “hybrid courts” that combine local and international lawyers and judges, bolstering weak judicial systems and adding a measure of impartiality. In Cambodia, a hybrid court known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, assisted by the United Nations, is completing its first trial of those responsible for the “killing fields” 30 years ago. Similar courts have been employed in Sierra Leone, Bosnia, Iraq and East Timor. More controversially, some national judges and prosecutors, such as Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon, have used the idea of “universal jurisdiction” — that some crimes are so heinous any country has a right to prosecute them — to investigate foreign leaders for crimes committed abroad, particularly if they might otherwise escape accountability.

2. No need for trials. It’s obvious these guys are guilty.

Winston Churchill agreed with Joseph Stalin that the best way to deal with Nazi leaders was to shoot a few of them. A trial implies the possibility of acquittal. Do we really want to risk letting mass murderers go free? The same argument has been raised in the case of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, who may soon stand trial in New York. Yet our legal system is predicated on the belief that even bad guys get their day in court. Law is fundamental to functioning societies. After nations have been torn apart by conflict, legal proceedings help reestablish the rule of law. Revenge tends to breed further violence, but transparent trials of key individuals help to prevent entire groups from feeling blamed. And courts establish factual records, such as Nuremberg’s 22-volume trial transcript, that counter the denials of those who would rather believe the unthinkable didn’t happen in their own backyards.

3. It’s never too late.

This is a tough one. It’s one thing to see former leaders — Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia, say, or Hermann Goering in 1946 — stripped of their arrogance and trappings of power at a time when many of their victims are alive to witness justice. But it’s harder — even for me, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor — to gain much satisfaction from the possible conviction, 60 years after the fact, of a frail 89-year-old. In Demjanjuk’s case, perhaps too much time has passed. But context also matters. The aged defendants in the Cambodia trials, for example, were key actors in that nation’s horrors and are the first to be tried for their country’s crimes; their prosecution marks the beginning of justice, not, as in Demjanjuk’s case, its last gasp. Yet even a delayed trial such as Demjanjuk’s can serve to educate a new generation. Justice and deterrence, too, argue for prosecution: For crimes as heinous as genocide, no one should be able to escape accountability, ever, and future perpetrators should know their guilt will never expire.

4. Trials help foster reconciliation at home but don’t matter much elsewhere.

In the case of international tribunals, at least, the reverse is more likely the case. It wasn’t the Nuremberg tribunal that led Germans to face their history; at the time, the trial wasn’t very popular in Germany. It took education, social change and time before a new generation of Germans was able to look more honestly at the past. The tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, too, is widely resented at home. Mass crimes require popular support — be it active involvement or passive complicity, such as accepting a government’s racist agenda — and those views don’t change overnight. Victimized groups will be pleased at the verdicts of international tribunals, which are often less biased than those of domestic courts, but at least in the short run, such trials are unlikely to cause major changes of heart in the countries for which they’re created.

Trials may have a broader deterrent effect, however. Though international justice is too new for definite conclusions, leaders and foot soldiers are starting to be concerned about international courts. Human Rights Watch has reported that an Afghan warlord specifically warned his troops against committing war crimes because of the danger of international prosecution. The trial of a Congolese rebel leader accused of recruiting child soldiers has reportedly affected the behavior of local fighters. Even the indignant response to Bashir’s indictment among some African and Arab League leaders suggests they take the ICC’s actions seriously. The more consistently international prosecutions happen, the more meaningful their deterrence effect is likely to become.

5. You can’t get a fair trial in an international court.

It’s true that international courts don’t adhere to the procedural standards applied by U.S. courts. But neither do European courts. Jury trials are not the norm in Europe; nor are the hearsay rules we’re accustomed to seeing on “Law and Order.” Yet Americans can be tried in foreign courts if they commit crimes overseas. In fact, international tribunals have developed extensive rules of procedure based on a combination of many countries’ legal practices. Fear of a malicious prosecutor is equally misplaced; prosecutors and judges in international tribunals tend to be respected jurists, and the ICC statute includes limits on the court’s power to initiate prosecutions — limits drafted in part by the United States, which was active, 11 years ago, in creating the court it has yet to join.