FW: marxmail, international law,etc

["Craven, Jim" <jcraven@xxxxxxxxx>]

Re an inquiry about "coverage"--versus "standing"--in international law, of
course clans, tribes/bands of peoples are "covered" under the 1948 Genocide
Convention but lack the "standing" to bring charges in the Hague--only
nation "States" can bring and prosecute charges; that is the Catch-22 among
others used to keep the victims of genocide (often from nation states) from
bringing charges against their victimizers.

What I mean by that is that only nations or representatives of nations have
"standing" to bring suits or charges under international law; this does not
mean that clans or "Tribes/Bands" are not covered under international law.
Right now, for example, with the new so-called International Court covering
war crimes, crimes against the peace, launching wars of aggression, genocide
etc, as it is with the ICJ in the Hague, only nation "States" have
"standing" to bring charges. Indigenous nations are indeed recognized as
nations but not as nation states and therefore lacking standing to bring
suits or charges; this has been used to keep Indigenous nations out of the
ICJ in the Hague as only the nation "states" doing the genocide against
Indigenous Peoples had the "standing" to bring charges against themselves.
Further, the new International Criminal Court will not bring charges for
crimes previous to its recent existence and as usual the U.S. is trying to
get exempt and has refused to sign on to its creation (Canada did).

This is why our upcoming case in Alberta is important. Under the Canadian
Constitution, unlike that of the U.S., we have a right to go to the Canadian
Supreme Court and, if either denied a hearing or not satisfied with the
result, we have the right to go to the ICJ in the Hague and Canada must
present and answer our charges as a nation "state" with the standing to go
to the Hague. So we are making the defense that Bella's so-called
"obligations" under the Indian Act amount to demanding that she aid and abet
her own extermination and that of her people, that the Indian Act is
genocidal per se (forces assimilation and nationalization) and that the
Indian Act has left First Nations Peoples in conditions of life calculated
to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part (Article 2C),
cause serious Bodily and Mental Harm (Article 2B), forcibly transfer
children (and adults) from one group to another (Article 2e), predictably
lead to early and horrible deaths of members of the group (Article 2a of the
Genocide Convention to which Canada is a signatory and is therefore part of
the "Supreme Law" of Canada).

Finally, I guess it is hard to explain sometimes, but as a Blackfoot, one of
about 35,000 left, living under a whole system of laws and regulations
designed to exterminate Blackfoot as a whole People and nation, it is
generic aggregating and denial of the nation status of Blackfoot and other
nations--and therefore denial of those nations' fundamental and derivative
rights to soverignty, self-determination, independence, existence and
freedom from extermination--that is a major instrument of genocide. Only
nations make treaties (fraudulent ones or otherwise) and in making treaties,
each party recognizes--or at least does not call into question--the
nationhood, sovereignty and systems of government of the other party; that
is why the U.S. stopped referring to agreements with Indigenous Nations as
"Treaties" in 1871.

I hope that explains some of it. In our case, we are Blackfoot, and that is
more than a language group or even cultural group; we have had and still
retain all the core elements of a sovereign nation and People despite the
past and present-day genocidal attempts at our elimination as a People.

Jim C