Why don’t they arrest Dumbya?

Tantrum-meister on tarmacAs we are treated to picture after picture of our president traversing the globe, don’t you wonder why one of those nations doesn’t arrest the little prick? How is it our war-monger emperor doesn’t find himself shaking hands with constables, being informed that he’s being detained for crimes against humanity, most of them already self-confessed?

Diplomatic immunity protects government leaders from politically motivated law enforcement. Technically, a nation has to agree to respect the diplomatic immunity of our officials before we consent to venture overseas. But technically too, the 1968 Conventions on Statutes of Limitations, to which the US is a signatory, prevents any domestic or international law from limiting the reach of war crimes prosecution.

That our little emperor can trot the globe without fear of arrest is an illustration of how virtually the entire planet is our empire. American hegemony insures that while populations certainly oppose our actions, their leaders will not.

The other day I watched a junior high adaptation of hacky-sack. A half-dozen boys take turns trying to keep airborne a beany-orb, that’s hacky-sack. In this adaptation three successive kicks entitle that boy to grab the hacky-sack and fling it as hard as he can at someone, rendering that person out, with a bruise to match. The game goes on until the last man standing. To whom the ball is given each turn is apparently random.

I noticed that one boy was a lot better at keeping the hackysack aloft, and I noticed too that he was given it with much more regularity than the others. I asked later as to why the other boys would keep giving him the ball. Because then, I was told, you’re less likely to be his next victim.

Phosphorous Bombs- US/Israeli Weapon of Torture

The BBC has a news item today saying that Israel has just admitted for the first time today that it used Phosphorous bombs on Lebanon. The evidence kept piling up that they in fact had, and evidently Israel came to the conclusion that their lie, that they had not used this type of chemical weapon, was no longer defensible.
 
A similar process had ocurred earliet where the US originally denied using this chemical weapon on Falluja, but then later admitted that it had. Both countries have argued that phosporous bombs are legitimate military weaponry, though previously they had attacked Saddam Hussein’s use of this chemical weapon against his Kurdish population.

The US/ Israeli defense of their use of this weapon is similar to Bush’s defense of using torture against POWs. They have merely changed the label on what they say constitutes torture, as they have now changed the label of what the phosphorus bombs actually are. They call them incendiary bombs now, instead of chemical weapons, which is what they called them when Hussein was using this weapon.

The use of chemical weapons against civilian populations by the US military is ancient news, as is their juggling of labels for them. Chemical weapons are often called ‘pesticides’, ‘defoliants’, or described as ‘smoke bombs’, as Israel did with phosphorous, which gives off plumes of camoflaging smoke, which just happens to be poisonous. Israel claimed to be merely marking targets with phosphorus bombs’ smoke, rather than using this weapon to burn the insides out of its targets. That’s what phosphorous does as it burns downward and into the blood stream, where it is later carried to organs inside the body while still burning.

The US/ Israeli use of these weapons explains their political policies in the Arab world quite well. These are the weapons of terrorist countries, rogue staters that defy international law that has tried repeatedly to limit weapons of torture like this, not to mention trying to outlaw the cluster bombs also dropped everywhere by the same two states. These are the weapons of terrorist states, and not merely legitimate countries just trying to fight the terrorism of a few rogue individuals. Rogues, one might add, that originally fought on behalf of the US in other terrorist conflicts directed from Washington DC. These are the weapons of imperial governments that illegally occupy territory of other peoples, peoples they consider inferior to their own. These are the weapons of racists.

Legal clarity

President Bush feels the Military Commissions Act of 2006 will provide “clarity” for American interrogation specialists to know they can torture their suspects with impunity. Because America doesn’t torture, in the dictionary sense of the word.

But there’s a clarity that will hit all the Bushmen when they sober up. They will face the Geneva Conventions and the International Convention on Torture. And there are two further legal principles already in force since the last world war. No one is exempt from international law, and no domestic law may abridge or revoke international conventions.

Pass whatever tortured laws you think can protect you, you can run but you can’t hide.

On the issue of providing indemnity to American interrogators, there is one further principle exercised at Nuremburg. Each of us is responsible for refusing immoral commands. There is no such excuse as just following orders.

The US Supreme Court, rigged as it has been to Bush’s favor, may not strike down his permit to torture, but international jurists will. Bush’s vengefull threat aimed at the already-dead 9/11 highjackers will prove true in a manner opposite his intent:

“Those who kill the innocent will be held to account.”

Hussein’s Kangeroo Court Time- days when law is littered

In the last couple of decades, the US Empire has developed a fondness for using show trials following its own violations of international law. The cardinal foundation of international law is that one nation does not have the right to militarily attack another. And of course we know, that the US has violated this maxim time after time. In fact, no other nation can even come close to the US’s sorry record on this account. I believe that even the Hungarians would certainly agree with this statement.

Our citizenry has become so numbed to the sheer number of times that our government continually violates this Principal Number One of international law, that the overwhelming majority of the US feels that it is not incongruent for our leaders to preach constantly about democracy, human rights, and basic humanity to others. In reality, violating the law, while preaching it, is the the central tenet of the advocation of a constant world war that both parties now are in total agreement on. American elites think by giving their constant world war a fancy name, the so-called ‘war on terrorism’, that that somehow absolves them from obeying the central tenets of international law itself. International law is seen as a nuisance,that needs to be buried in a grave somewhere along with those POWs murdered by US troops. If we recall right, the Germans at the height of their Third Reich did away entirely with courts and law, and just loaded their supposed enemies into cattle cars headed for concentration camps to be exterminated. Death penalty, no law. Period.

So one can see easily that elites in general, have little or no respect for the law they often preach to others. Law is seen merely as a codification of their own power, and outside of that, law is simply discarded when inconvenient to the powerful. Which leads to an most cogent recent example of that. I refer to the dismissal of the head judge of the kangeroo court ‘trying’ Saddam Hussein. He was seen as too polite to the guy the Pentagon is getting ready to execute, so they just said “you are terminated.” Our servile corporate press basically just treated the incident as if it was entirely normal and legal! This, much as they had already done with the unusual news of how Milosevic conveniently died, right smack in dab of when he was becoming an indelicate nuisance to American elites. Heck, who cared? Clinton and Wesley Clark maybe? They were going to execute him anyway, so why bother with completiing the trial. But Milosevic thought he was being poisoned. And I don’t find that a bizarre paranoia on his part at all.

So let’s ask another question on our minds right now. Is Osama alive or not? Does anybody really think that it has already been anything other than shoot now, and try him later? But even that seems to be too much for the top dogs to do in obeying some structure of law! How inconvenient a ‘trial’ in a kangeroo court would be for Rumsfield, say. So, Osama’s dead already, IMO. His body buried away in rubble. Only the illusion that he is still alive has lived. The Pentagon finds that illusion necessary to justify themselves for sure, but a show trial? No way. Osama was killed quite some time back it appears. He is dead, and only Pentagon prop-op resusrrects him from time to time. The US is judge, jury, and executioner, and then lies about the whole thing.

Our political bosses now state, over and over, that our government is beyond all legalities, and I think that is something we poltiical Americans need to thoroughly understand. After all, where is the legality of calling for a ‘constant war’ as they do? It’s time that Americans see their elites for what they really are, and not just follow them along as far as the Germans and Japanese once did with their elite misleadership gone wild. Of course most Americans will say that ‘our’ government is not anywhere near as barbarous as our WW2 opponents were. Oh yeah? Well I’m still thinking about how the US suffocated to death in metal containers, POWs ‘our’ troops captured as they successfully invaded Afghanistan. How is that different from the actions of the Nazis with sending their opponents away to the ovens? It’s time to quite dillydallying around thinking that we are dealing with ‘decent folk’ like ourselves when we deal with our elites. They are not like that at all. They hardly even consider their own poor folk human, let alone the rest of the world.

Something we should contemplate, as our government moves toward the possible use of nuclear weaponry against Iran in the coming days, is that they no longer feel the need to obey ANY laws even as they demand that we obey them all. They have legalized for themselves, murder, mayhem, and torture. Before they just did it to The Others in the shadows. Our elites have no plans to turn back from the road they have chosen to move upon. They are just making too damn much money for them to do otherwise. Hussein, long time servant of the US in his war upon Iran, did not understand where our US elites were heading. His fate for his misunderstanding will be? Well, it will most likely be death by Kangeroo Court ala Milosevic. And that is what passes for legality these days. International law has been trashed, and can be found only as litter in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Haiti.

Justice delayed, denied, for now

Not to worry, not to worry. The Bush and GOP plan to indemnify themselves from responsibility for their war crimes will be to scant avail. Let them pass whatever bill they want.

It’s true, justice delayed is justice denied. And it is depressingly ungratifying to see criminals legislate themselves legitimacy. But the representatives at the United Nations have settled for this delay before.

Not long ago our nation was at war with the people of Vietnam. Our imperialist interventions eventually turned toward the people of Cambodia and Laos in illegal acts of aggression. There was absolutely no other nation powerful enough to bring us to account, and because of our veto power on the Security Council, any number of Nations United could not condemn us or stop us.

The U.N. delegates settled for delayed justice. They said, in effect, we may not stop you now, but that doesn’t make what you are doing right or legal. They agreed that there would be no statute of limitations for breaches of international law, neither should any nation be able to exclude itself from the law’s jurisdiction.

In 1968 the U.N. General Assembly made explicit the universal jurisdiction of the war crimes conventions. The Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity ensured that nobody could consider themselves beyond the reach of international rule of law.

Article 1, part (b) defines the universal illegality of war crimes, “even if such acts do not constitute a violation of the domestic law of the country in which they were committed.”

Article 4 reads that no nation’s laws can redefine what are understood to be war crimes, that “statutory or other limitations shall not apply to the prosecution and punishment of the crimes referred to in articles 1 and 2 of this Convention and that, where they exist, such limitations shall be abolished.”

The torturers and warmongers can delay their appointment with the hangman, but the scurryng around to jerrymander the law is a good sign. Bush and co are showing the discomfort of knowing that justice awaits.

Shit hits fan writ in Hebrew

US bombs to replenish IsraelIsrael is delivering a lot of shit into the fan, and the US is shoveling to resupply them as fast as we can. The world wants an immediate cease-fire but the US objects because we say Hizb’Allah [Hezbollah] will not honor a cease-fire. In reality Israel says it won’t stop until it has meted out at least another week of punishing air strikes. Secretary Rice objected that to stop Israel now would be to accept the status quo.

The US not only supports Israel’s offensive goals, we acknowledge that her incursions into Palestine and Lebanon are part of our plan for the transformation of the Middle East, of which the democratically elected Hamas and Hizb’Allah parties are to play no part.

Imagine if Cuba started shelling Miami under the pretext of trying to assassinate the anti-cuban terrorists which we harbor there.

Israel is committing the war crimes of disproportionate use of force, collective punishment, destroying civilian infrastructure, and of course, genocide. The UN is calling these clear violations of humanitarian law. Our media is playing this down by quoting only Lebanese officials as protesting these crimes as breaches of international law.

That’s like reporting “bank robbery may have been crime.” “Man on street says money not theirs.”

The US is using its veto to keep the UN from condemning Israel. Our country is a party to Israel’s war crimes and expansionist aims.

The cat’s out of this bag. Americans are in the Middle East for Israel.

Maybe there is no al-Qaeda?

Try this on for size: the war on terror is being used to justify all forms of restrictive government controls, from surveillance to union-busting to torture. Lacking any terrorist acts of late, how do we know there are even terrorists? Except that our government keeps scooping them up, putting them in Guantanamo, but it won’t let us see them.

Is Guantanamo really about keeping certain Islamic “illegal combatants” from doing harm? As the overwelming number of detainees are released without charges, it’s hard to believe the authorities cared who they had detained. Perhaps Guantanamo has been serving to perpetuate the myth that such terrorists exist at all.

Arbitrary interments function to terrorize a populace (a reason why they’re violations of international law), but perhaps the US has an additional purpose. What if there is no major league AL Qaeda except for the fictional assemblage at Guantanamo? Perhaps we’ve not been allowed a close look at the captives at Guantanamo lest we detect that there is no rhyme or reason to those detained.

There has been most certainly a group of Islamic Fundamentalists who orchestrated the 1990 attack the WTC, the bombing of the USS Cole, the bombing of the US embassy buildings in Nairobi, and other bombing in Southeast Asia. And on 9/11/2001 a group of Saudi Arabians flew two airplanes into the WTC, although likely with assistance.

But that’s probably about it. With a dozen or so hijackers dying on 9/11, another dozen usual suspects rounded up in Pakistan and Indoneasia, and poster boy Osama traipsing about Afghanistan, there might not have been any more.

A “war on terror” requires enemy terrorists. If there are no further acts of terrorism, how are you going to assert that there are still terrorists out there? Why not incarcerate a bunch of guys who dress like terrorists and take credit for intervening with their dastardly plans? Plus you’ll be asserting that if you have some, there must be more.

But the stories coming out of those released from Guantanamo indicate that US security agencies are simply playing a cruel games with individual world citizens. Why have such detainees been denied access to the world? Isn’t it more appropriate to say that the world is being denied access to the detainees? Maybe it’s the outside world that the US is trying to keep out of Guantanamo. Otherwise people of reason could unravel the fiction of Al Qaeda.

News notes April 2006

Who’s paying the bill, who’s tendering the bill?
U. S. gas prices have hit over three dollars per gallon. Let’s see: we have oil men in charge of the country, they conduct secret meetings with energy companies, they convince us to invade Iraq with the world’s second largest oil reserves, the oil companies post record breaking profits, and we’re paying twice as much as we used to for gasoline. Who’s the patsy? Though that word might be a little insulting if you’re the parent of someone killed in this charade.
 
Whose conscience was not bothered by secret prisons?
If CIA officer Mary McCarthy was not the source of the leak about the network of secret prisons to which America is abducting people, the question that comes to mind is not who was, but rather, who else was not? Who among the CIA, government and military administrators knew about the illegal un-American activities and didn’t blow the whistle?
 
Diplomatic immunity for beachheads?
On the subject of flouting international law, it has been revealed that plans for the American embassy in Baghdad include facilities for mounting military operations. Since when has it been permissible to treat embassies as military beachheads? When Iranians stormed the U. S. embassy in Tehran, they claimed that the diplomats held hostage were in reality CIA operatives. Our country vehemently denied these charges, but history has shown the Iranian accusations to have been true.
 
Air quote, Zaqawi, end quote.
A recent Al Zarqawi videotape issues new warnings to Iraq’s occupiers. It renews the defiant posturing and reiterates the link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. When the BBC reported the latest story, they used quotations when refering to “Zarqawi.” Whose quotes might those be? Of what footnote to the Zarqawi story is the BBC reminding us?

The Colorado Springs 2005 bid committe

The Colorado Springs 2005 hosting bid to host the upcoming U.S. war crimes trials has been officially accepted by INTERNATIONAL WAR CRIME TRIALS .US! We now approach phase II. We must continue to raise awareness for the trials and widen the circle of Colorado Springs citizens who support the calls for reconcilliation to international law.

1.
How can we bring the International War Crimes Trials to Colorado Springs? The advent of hosting war crime trials will be a reality if John Kerry wins the US elections in November 2004.

Kerry has already expressed his intention to make the United States a signatory to the International Criminal Court, at which point the indictments can begin.
President Bush has stated that his objections to ratifying the ICC were to protect American soldiers from facing charges in international courts. But this reason is disingeneous because the prosecution of common soldiers is not the purpose of the ICC.
It is not the intent of the ICC to prosecute regular crimes of war in those cases which already fall under the jurisdiction of military tribunals or domestic courts. As we can see from the ABU GHRAIB cases, the US government has every intention to prosecute the common soldiers it holds responsible for those abuses.

The unique capability of the International Criminal Court is to indict heads of state and otherwise unassailable diplomats, functionaries, administrators and conspirators.
Preparations have already begun with the IWCT to document the charges, gather the evidence, and prepare the briefs. Efforts are well underway in Japan, Greece, Turkey and Belgium to organize the extra-judicial tribunals to supplement the ICC staffs.

Colorado Springs must act as early as possible to offer our city as a potential US host to the trials!

2.
The first objective of the COS2005 bid project is to make the concept of international law more tangible in American minds. Today when someone hears a protester denounce President Bush as a war criminal, it sounds like so much rhetoric.

But the charge is more than an opinion or an academic argument. The war of aggression which the U. S. pursued against Iraq is a war crime by any number of international laws. As a result there is an inevitable legal action coming against the U. S. for waging an illegal war. International law is not hyperbole.
Criticisms between presidential candidates might be political, but charges of war crimes are out of everyone’s hands. No one is exempt from prosecution for war crimes, and there are no statutes of limitation.

The concept of impending war crime trials thus become an election issue. Can we consider re-electing leaders who are guilty of war crimes, chiefly, the war crime of “crimes against the peace?”
An American voter might hesitate to endorse someone who they can imagine will go down in history as having been the bad guy in the black hat. We believe most people aspire to be law-abiding god-fearing citizens, of America, and of the world community as well.

Reprinted from ColoradoSprings2005.com