Arrest That Man!

Could it happen? Picture this if you will: Today, George W. Bush makes his first trip across an international border as a private citizen, the plane touches down, he disembarks, but wait, what's this? There waiting for him are representatives of the International Criminal Court to arrest him for war crimes and crimes against humanity. And then we woke up. Not gonna happen, why? Cause he doesn't deserve it? No. Because he's landing in Calgary, Alberta, Canada - proof that he still has people around him doing his thinking for him as he couldn't pick a more conservative, oil loving, cowboy mentality, business friendly place on Earth. A place where instead of arrest, he'll find people lining up to pay $4,000 a table to hear him speak.

Here's the thing: it should happen. The evidence is there. The precedent is there. Now we just need someone with the balls to do it. My bet is that it won't be the Canadians. Legal experts have said that with the issue of a warrant for the arrest of present Sudanese President al-Bashir for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, the same principles of law could be extended to officials from the Bush Administration for the coercive interrogation techniques used on terror suspects. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) leaked a report claiming these techniques "constituted torture". Or perhaps they could get him for the illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. If that weren't enough, there is also the argument that Bush is inadmissible to Canada under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. Section 35(1) (a) states that a foreign national is inadmissible on grounds of violating human or international rights or for committing an act outside Canada that constitutes an offence referred to in sections 4 to 7 of the Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes Act. Also inadmissible (s.35 (1)(b)) are persons who are, or were, senior officials “in the service of a government that, in the opinion of the Minister, engages or has engaged in gross human rights violations…”. Of particular interest are articles 5, 7 and 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

"The test isn't whether the person's been convicted, but whether there's reasonable grounds to think that they have been involved," says Gail Davidson, who's with Lawyers Against the War (LAW), a group that has been pressuring the Canadian government to act. "...It's now a matter of public record that Bush was in charge of setting up a regime of torture that spanned several parts of the globe and resulted in horrendous injuries and even death. Canada has a duty."

Today being St. Patrick's Day, we'll see green beer, green rivers and green outfits. Unfortunately, it's the green of US wealth that flows into Alberta's oil rich province that will most likely prevent the Canadian authorities from acting on their moral and possibly legal obligations to arrest Dubya as he enters Canadian soil. I'm sure we'll see plenty of protesters but no arrest. At least I'll have my beer to drown my sorrow tonight.

When Football Really is War

Football, the European kind, can be a confusing area for a North American on the old continent. From individual national leagues with their myriad of titles to pan-European tournaments including the UEFA cup and Champion's League, the club season can go on forever. Then there is the World Cup with it's long and winding qualification stages which remind me of the American presidential primary process. This summer, kicking off today in Austria and Switzerland, the football world's focus switches to the European Championship, Euro2008. Like the World Cup, the Euro Cup is a once every four year competition featuring national squads. With very few breaks, the whole system seems to have been devised to keep fans attention focused on football throughout the year. Unlike many of the other tournaments, the World Cup and Euro Cup have the additional emotional impact of national pride. Sometimes this can rise to the boiling point and turn ugly.

As luck would have it Germany and Poland both drew into the same group, along with Croatia and co-host Austria, from which only two teams will advance to the quarter finals. Of course a tabloid war is to be expected in the run up to such a confrontation, but this one has taken a nasty turn. First, the Polish paper Fakt ran a story imploring the team: “Leo, repeat Grunwald!”. The reference is to the 15th century Battle of Grunwald where the Poles defeated the Germans. The picture accompanying the story had the German captain Michael Ballack kneeling before the Polish coach Leo Beenhakker who was brandishing a sword. The Germans were disgusted and hit back, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the newspaper is German owned. Not to be outdone by their rival, another Polish tabloid, The Super Express, ran a story which has drawn the most attention. The story's picture (top of post) features the Polish manager once again, this time holding the severed heads of the above-mentioned Ballack along with his manager. Diplomatic lines have been buzzing with Peter Danckert, chairman of the German parliament's sports commission, calling for an "appropriate reaction" from the Polish government. Poland's ambassador to Germany Marek Prawda was quoted as saying, "This shows an idiotic lack of taste. I wish them the worst" and continued, "I think it is particularly bad that this is published at a time when fans are coming into contact. It's completely unnecessary an really should be ignored." Oooh, ignored, bad taste. Maybe we should be more careful. Will the animosity build to the point that it did between Honduras and El Salvador before the outbreak of the so-called “Football War”?

On July 14, 1969, with the attention of the rest of the world focused on the impending moon landing a week later, El Salvador launched an air strike on their Honduran neighbours, starting the Football War. Coincidentally or not, the two nations had just played a tie-breaking qualification match for the 1970 World Cup that featured an inordinate amount of nationalism. The build-up to the game was intense with the two sides having met a week earlier. After the first game an 18-year-old El Salvadoran girl committed suicide after seeing the Honduran side score the lone goal. The rampant nationalism on both sides of the border due to economic and land disputes combined with martyrdom of the girl to create an atmosphere that was ready to explode and did just a few hours after the final whistle. The cost of the 100-hour war was about 6,000 deaths and 15,000 wounded.

There are some who point to another football match as the true beginning of the Balkan conflict of the 90's. The match was to feature the Croatian side of Dinamo Zagreb up against the Serbian side, Red Star Belgrade in Zagreb. Instead of a football match, the stadium played host to a pitched battle between supporters of both sides. Some of the fighters included future war-crime indictees, players themselves delivering flying kicks, police and of course fans of both teams. In an effort to avoid such a spark to war, football's world governing body, FIFA, suspended a match between Sudan and Chad just last week. As in the German and Polish situation, both nations had drawn into the same group, this time in the African Cup which will determine African representation in the 2010 World Cup. The suspension came after Sudanese authorities had blamed Chad for a rebel attack near the Sudanese capital of Khartoum earlier in May. Chad had also sealed it's border with Sudan and cut-off economic ties with it's neighbour.

So what will happen after Sunday night's game? Well, I'm certain enough that war can be avoided, but with the number of flags I can see fluttering around my adopted home town of Poznań here in Poland, you'd think it was Independence Day. Let's hope the nationalism doesn't result in the outbreak of war, especially seeing as I'm only about 133km from the German border. However, if the Poles do manage to break their 14-game drought against their rivals, maybe the party could get too loud for the neighbours...