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UNESCO: Prosecute Climate Criminals

If voters elect leaders who reject UN climate treaties, those leaders will be dragged before an international court. 

By Donna Laframboise | Big Picture News | February 24, 2020

UNESCO’s 2019 climate-themed magazine includes an article titled Climate crimes must be brought to justice. It may as well have been called Off With Their Heads!

Writer Catriona McKinnon, a professor of political theory at the University of Exeter, thinks she’s the Queen of Hearts in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Alternative perspectives shall not be tolerated. Non-compliance isn’t an option.

McKinnon wants to criminalize free speech. She wants to strip you and me of the right to determine our own destiny at the ballot box. Specifically, she wants to invent a new crime. The time has come, she says, to prosecute this crime.

Normally, laws get made by politicians. WHO ARE ANSWERABLE TO VOTERS. There’s supposed to be a shared understanding, in the jurisdiction in which a new law applies, that a particular behaviour harms the community, and that punishing it is therefore necessary.

In many countries, adultery isn’t a criminal matter. Elsewhere, it ends in death by stoning. Laws are an expression of a community’s values. We decide what’s a crime – and what isn’t – within our own borders.

From the heights of her ivory tower, however, Queen McKinnon has unilaterally declared that people should be charged, dragged before an international court, and convicted of crimes that aren’t actually crimes in their motherland.

Here’s how her article begins:

A fire has started in the theatre, from which there are no exits… Some people are trying to warn everyone so that the fire can be contained before it spreads out of control. Another group… is trying to shout loudly that there is no fire, or that it is not serious, or that there is plenty of time left to put it out… Many people in the theatre are confused by these… fire deniers… those shouting “no fire” ought to be silenced… [bold added]

In McKinnon’s fevered imagination, climate skeptics are evil villains who occupy “the most expensive seats” in the theatre. Rather than trampling everyone else on their way to the exits, they inhale smoke and perish. But first they take the time to shout in “emotive language” that the fire isn’t real and that the other side “is not to be trusted.” Yeah, that all sounds coherent.

On the basis of such outlandish nonsense, McKinnon argues that:

… international criminal law should be expanded to include a new criminal offence that I call postericide. It is committed by intentional or reckless conduct fit to bring about the extinction of humanity… Just as international criminal law holds military leaders to account for genocide committed by their troops, it should hold political and economic leaders to account for postericide committed under their authority. These leaders should go to trial at the [International Criminal Court]…

It’s clear McKinnon thinks US President Donald Trump is guilty of this crime, due to the fact that he withdrew his country from the Paris Climate Accord.

According to this UK professor, American voters don’t get to decide. They don’t get to elect someone who opposes international climate treaties.

In her universe, there’s only one permissible position. Either the US signs up, or its president gets charged with murdering posterity. Off with his head!

February 24, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | | 1 Comment

‘UK curbing academic free speech on Israel’

Press TV – March 2, 2017

817d5d49-6914-43a6-91a4-0099482086e7The British government is helping universities across the UK suppress the right to criticize Israel over its human rights violations in Palestine, says a Jewish professor, vowing to never give in to the pressure.

“They are trying to stop us talking about Palestinian rights, and about peace and we will just not shut up,” Dr. Haim Bresheeth, a Jewish academic and filmmaker, told Press TV on Wednesday.

“Unfortunately the government has helped the universities that want to shut up free speech by accepting a definition of anti-Semitism that makes anti-Semitism any criticism of Israel,” he added.

The scholar was referring to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)’s definition that was adopted by the government of Prime Minister Theresa May last year.

It was based on IHRA’s definition that the University of Exeter and the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) cancelled an annual pro-Palestinian event on Monday, which was aimed at raising awareness about human rights violations in the occupied territories.

Following the move, some 250 academics at dozens of universities across the UK penned an open letter, condemning the Tory government’s attempts to curb their right to free speech by banning criticism of Israel.

The professors said in their letter that the government’s definition of anti-Semitism is too broad and can include any criticism of Israel with regards to its occupation of Palestinian lands.

“The government has ‘adopted’ the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism, which can be and is being read as extending to criticism of Israel and support for Palestinian rights, an entirely separate issue, as prima facie evidence of anti-Semitism,” read the letter, sent to the Guardian.

“This definition seeks to conflate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism,” the academics charged, accusing universities minister Jo Johnson of asking for the definition to be “disseminated” throughout the higher education system.

In his interview with Press TV, Bersheeth said the definition sought to protect “Zionism and Israel” from criticism.

“You can criticize and you should criticize every political institution that you wish,” he argued. “We are told now that Jews who criticize Israel like me are anti-Semitic. This is nonsense.”

March 2, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Two British universities halt pro-Palestinian events

Press TV – February 28, 2017

Two British universities have been accused of undermining freedom of speech after cancelling an annual pro-Palestinian event aimed at raising awareness about human rights violations in the occupied territories.

The accusation was leveled on Monday after the University of Exeter and the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) announced the cancellation of a pro-Palestinian student-run event called Israel Apartheid Week.

Students at Exeter were barred from giving a street theater performance called Mock Checkpoint, in which some participants were to dress up as Israeli soldiers while others performed the roles of Palestinian victims.

The event had been approved by the student union at the university but was banned for “safety and security reasons” less than 48 hours before commencement. An appeal against the decision was also refused.

Members of Friends of Palestine Society at Exeter accused the university of censoring students, saying, “They are not allowing freedom of speech – by cancelling an event that was in support of Palestinian activism and for Palestinian rights; they are directly censoring us.”

Professors react

The move prompted almost 250 academics, including 100 professors, to sign a letter denouncing attempts by university officials to silence campus discussion about Israel and its treatment of Palestinians.

“These are outrageous interferences with free expression, and are direct attacks on academic freedom,” the letter noted. “As academics with positions at UK universities, we wish to express our dismay at this attempt to silence campus discussion about Israel, including its violation of the rights of Palestinians for over 50 years.

“It is with disbelief that we witness explicit political interference in university affairs in the interests of Israel under the thin disguise of concern about anti-semitism,” it added.

More than half a million Israelis live in over 230 illegal settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem al-Quds.

Much of the international community regards the Israeli settlements as illegal because the territories they are built on were captured by Israel in a war and are hence subject to the Geneva Conventions, which forbid construction on occupied lands.

Nevertheless, the Israeli regime continues to build more settlements and expand the existing ones.

February 28, 2017 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment