Genocide warnings for 2012 have focused on nation states resistant to Euro-American corporate expansion. Ancient divisions along racial, religious, ethnic lines are aggravated to their tactical use by foreign interests. An entire national group is placed at risk by de-stabilization and civil war to replace a local historically evolved government (ie. Cote d’Ivoire, Libya, Syria) with one representing Euro-American interests. The same policy directed against national groups continues to cause unnecessary deaths in Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan. Each recurrence of what is an abnormal and military pattern of corporate economic expansion makes it less possible to separate the policy’s effect from genocidal intention.

More easily recognized attempts to commit genocide continue with ongoing persecution of the Tamil in Sri Lanka, the Rohingya in Myanmar, the Roma in Europe, the Oromo, Ogadeni and Anuak in Ethiopia, the Kurdish people in Turkey,

Iraq and Syria, and arguably the Boers of South Africa and Bedouin in Israel. The human rights of these groups have not been sustained by the world community. This has endangered minority groups throughout the world which rely on stable societies and a reliable unbiased norm of international law.

The genocide warning for Palestinians as a national group continues. Generalized policies of oppression by Israel may increase with Palestine’s recognition as a non-member State at the United Nations. By withdrawing from international approval and relying on armed and economic force, Israel as the Euro-American base in the Middle East, places its people at risk.

Patterns of adaptation to corporate resource extraction controls continue to assure the eventual debilitation of native groups, with the full understanding of government policy makers in all countries at the service of corporate interests. A factor of genocide woven into colonialism, this process is currently underway, notably in the Eastern Congo, the Amazon basin of Brazil, Canada. Western governments refuse to accept the primacy of a people’s rights to their land and its resources, and so destroy the people. Chinese resource extraction policies in Africa are ethically more advanced in paying for resources with infra-structure improvements for the people. In India, corporate resource extraction expansion continues to present genocide warnings for Christian communities, tribalists, Maoists, as groups presenting some resistance to the State’s coining of the people’s habitat.

When there is adequate warning and when continuing corporate practices inevitably lead to the destruction of a people, the Convention on Genocide could be applied to threats against an entire people through corporately induced environmental hazards. Under this criterion there is a genocide warning for the people of Japan as a result of Fukushima. There is a genocide warning for all people in the old South of the U.S., particularly Georgia and South Carolina due to a history of nuclear contamination, and to Louisiana and the South’s food chain, as a result of British Petroleum’s oil disaster.

This outline isn’t all inclusive but suggests a pattern of genocide within practices found acceptable to Western corporate expansion. Its military parallel is “collateral damage” which attempts to avoid evidence of “intention” (as stressed by the U.S. interpretation of genocide) in deaths of civilian population. However the intention establishes itself when the same actions re-occur with the same result. The “collateral damage” becomes neither unwitting nor collateral.

Previous genocide warnings are ongoing, until the group’s vulnerability is specifically addressed in the nation of jurisdiction or at the United Nations, by courts, government policies or legislation to counter the victim group’s debilitation.

A summary of 2012 leads to reasonable assumptions about genocide warnings for endangered groups in 2013. To prevent genocide, foreign policies, domestic policies and corporate policies endangering victim groups, could be called to account by court actions where possible. Policies affecting victim groups could be subject to review by a United Nations commission, to assure their primary legality under the Convention on Genocide which supersedes other national and international laws. In an effort to depoliticize the commission, participation should be barred to representatives of national interests.

The following trends are likely to be asserted in the coming year and could be viewed within a perspective of the Convention Genocide:

1. NATO country agendas to assume resource capabilities of Islamic nations, particularly destabilization and overt military attack against Syria and Iran.

2. NATO country agenda to increase control of African resources, particularly through U.S. militarization. This places the military enforcement of Euro-American corporate interests against the national interest of African governments sharing with the people gains from the sale of resources.

3. European deportation of Roma and North American immigration policies denying a threat of genocide against Roma peoples.

4. Increasing oppression of Palestinians, with non-standard means of denying the national / ethnic / religious group’s ability to survive.

5. Rising anti-Semitism in response to Israel’s oppression of Palestine and foreign agendas to secure Israel’s survival.

6. Rising persecution of minority Christian groups; in predominantly Christian countries increasing attacks on all religious groups will increase; religious principles provide resistance to genocide. In Nazi Germany the exception of resistance rose from religious elements, and sporadically within the military. Along with the Jewish population, communists were isolated and destroyed. Communities didn’t resist.

7. Ongoing corporate resource extraction and nuclear industry operations knowingly condemn the peoples in their fields of operation. Environmental, biological and genetic damages are inter-generational. Withholding of information in this area risks complicity with genocide.

The extent to which the prevention of genocide is politicized is apparent in the West’s genocide prevention programs and organizations, particularly in North America where organizations concerned with preventing or punishing genocide select for attention only areas compatible with U.S. foreign policy, or U.S. and Canadian domestic policies. Historically (and the U.N. Convention as law carries no statute of limitations), within these official organizations there is a notable lack of concern for Aboriginals, Muslims, and the imprisonment of Blacks and Hispanics as evidenced by statistical representation in the U.S. prison system. Aside from the domestic inconvenience of applying laws on genocide within North American societies, the selectiveness of concern serves to fragment the common interest of the oppressed groups. The effort, noticeable within the victim groups as well, to avoid the commonality of victim groups, avoids identifying the recurrent common proactive force of the genocides.

No efforts are being made in North America to strengthen application of the Convention on Genocide to policies of the U.S. or Canadian governments. In the

U.S. marked dissociation exists between 1., the effects of foreign policy, expansion, neo-colonialism, the threat of military supremacy, and 2., the destruction of entire peoples, unadversarial civilians, ancient cultures. A nation mourns the tragic massacre of children at a school in Newtown Connecticut which internationally, represents a sliver of the injustice against innocents brought about by an imbalanced U.S. ethic. In Canada, the recently passed Bill C-45 furthers Conservative government’s aggressive disenfranchisement of Aboriginal rights, culture, and future. A dissociation of national policy from common humanity, leads to increased security controls, sacrifice of human rights, selective application of the law, and increasing perception management by establishment media.

See also by John Bart Gerald:

“Night’s Lantern genocide warnings”

“North American game plans and the Convention on Genocide”