Sent to WS, Blog, indivs David D
OMNI
Many of OMNI’s
newsletters expose the US
An underlying theme of this
newsletter and of all of the newsletters pertaining to war is the necessity of
the US
Oderint dum metuant –“Let them hate so long as they fear”—was a motto of
the Roman Empire .” “’…some nations are serial aggressors,’
observed The Black Commentator in the
fourth year of the war in Iraq
"To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an
international crime, it is the supreme international crime differing only from
other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the
whole."
- Robert H.Jackson ,
U.S. Prosecutor, Nuremberg
- Robert H.
“I wonder how the foreign
policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national
boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children
everywhere as our own.” Howard Zinn Let us be citizens of the world.
My blog: War Department/Peace Department
My Newsletters:
Index:
See: chemical
warfare, drone warfare, empire of bases, Geneva
conventions, Genocide of Native Americans, US
#1
is at the end.
Contents Lawlessness Newsletter #2
The Present
David Swanson, Daybreak, Yearning
for Democracy and Peace
Pierce on Gregory Johnsen, Authorization for the Use of Military
Force 2001 and the
Adams, McVeigh: Oppose
the Drones, the War Criminals
Herman: Support Our Troops, Wars, War Criminals
Lizza on Barron
and the Kill-List
Hedges, Violent,
Homicidal Culture
The Past
James Lucas,
Deaths Since WWII
Bombing Neutral Laos
Contact your
Representatives
SWANSON, DAYBREAK, GOOGLE SEARCH, MAY 19, 2014
1.
Book Talk: Author David
Swanson's "Daybreak!" - YouTubew.youtube.com/watch?v=17A_fwn...
YouTube
Aug 31, 2009 - Uploaded by Bill Hughes
On Sunday afternoon, Aug. 30, 2009,
activist/author David Swanson discussed his new book:
"Daybreak ...
2.
Reviewing David
Swanson's 'Daybreak' - Rense.com
David Swanson is co-founder of
AfterDowningStreet.org and Washington Director of Democrats.com. He's also a
board member of Progressive Democrats of ...
3.
Daybreak by David
Swanson -
CommonSense2.com
We first encountered David Swanson, co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org,
when he broke the news of the 'Downing Street Memo', a document that
many ...
War Crimes Times
Statement of Purpose (revised 06/2011)
The War Crimes Times provides compelling, ongoing
information on war and the war crimes that invariably accompany war, the many
costs of war, the effects of our war culture on our national character and
international reputation, and the need to hold accountable those who initiate
and conduct illegal wars. Additionally
and importantly, we also report on the efforts of the many people who sacrifice
their time, money, and comfort to work for peace.
When national leaders initiate
hostilities they create the conditions—the extreme use of force coupled with
limited accountability—for the war crimes which invariably follow. War crimes
are therefore an inherent part of war. The suffering caused and the enmity
aroused by war crimes must be regarded as costs of war. Since these and other
costs far exceed any benefits of war, we seek to end war as a tool of international
policy.
Towards this goal, we believe that
holding war criminals accountable will send a strong message to all current and
future heads of state to very carefully weigh all the consequences of the
decision to go to war. While we recognize that United
States has long relied on unlawful military force to
further its foreign policy goals, we are particularly concerned with the
blatant and egregious violations of international law committed by the United States
We endorse any efforts, including
impeachment, which would bring war criminals of any administration to justice.
The War Crimes Times has resolved to see that Bush, Cheney,
Obama, and other government officials and military officers who have committed
war crimes are prosecuted—no matter how long it takes.
There is no
statute of limitations on war crimes.
The latest The War Crimes Times (Spring 2014)
In this
issue p. 1: “By ‘absolving the people
from meaningful involvement’ (Bacevich, p. 6) through elimination of the
military draft, reliance on elite ’special ops’ forces (Turse, p. 1), drones
(pp. 1-11), and a subservient press, the military mentality has won the
ideological battle (Hedges, p.1) But
would it make a difference to the American people if they knew that since World
War II, our military-minded foreign policy was responsible for the equivalent
of three to five Holocausts (Lucas, p. 1) and other violations of international
law (Rosal, p. 12;Ford, p. 18)? Would
knowledge of blatant hypocrisy (Gamage, p. 16) or budget tradeoffs (Gagnon, p.
14) help restore sanity? We can only
hope so and keep trying to inform the people of the truce costs of war and
militarism.”
Guidelines for submissions
to WCT
The ideal article for the
quarterly print version of The
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Third party material will
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Required
Reading [on the
Authorization for the Use of Military Force, AUMF]
f you read nothing else this weekend, read Gregory Johnsen's somewhat epic performance on Buzzfeed about the original Authorization for the Use of Military Force
that came out of the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the permanent state of
war that one 60-word sentence in that document created in the United States, a
phenomenon that the Founders specifically and repeatedly warned against.
(Johnsen is the recipient of first Michael Hastings Fellowship, named for the
renowned journalist who died in an automobile accident last year.) If nothing
else, the piece functions as a very loud warning siren against upending the
rule of law and the separation of powers out of fear and panic. War, Mr.
Madison cautioned, is "the true nurse of executive aggrandizement."
We have traded his wisdom for the undying partisan hackery of apparatchiks like
David Addington and John Yoo. It is not a good trade.
Unbound by time and unlimited by geography, the
sentence has been stretched and expanded over the past decade, sprouting new
meanings and interpretations as two successive administrations have each
attempted to keep pace with an evolving threat while simultaneously maintaining
the security of the homeland. In the process, what was initially thought to authorize
force against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan has now been used to
justify operations in several countries across multiple continents and, at
least theoretically, could allow the president - any president - to strike
anywhere at anytime. What was written in a few days of fear has now come to
govern years of action.
The piece goes on to
illustrate with painful clarity a meek
and timorous Congress, which had allowed so much of its constitutional war
powers to leach into the executive over the previous five decades that most of
its members had forgotten how to exercise them at all, let alone how to
exercise them at a moment of national trauma. (One pissant aide to a
forgettable schlub like Dennis Hastert gets to bulldoze past legitimate constitutional
questions because we...must...do...something, and everybody acclaims him a
hero.) Congress -- in the persons of Joe
Biden and John Kerry, among others -- tries to cover its ass but ends up
taking what everybody knows is a dive. And, after the dive, we see Yoo, who
should have been kept away from the councils of government for the same reason
we keep Charlie Manson out of the cutlery, immediately find a way to renege on
a deal that had been cut with the Congress and expand the president's power
beyond anything remotely conceived of in the Constitution.
Maybe it shouldn't be so surprising that
Congress didn't think about how the war would end when it passed the AUMF on
Sept. 14, 2001, but after more than a dozen years, we are no closer to an
answer. "This is a bizarro war," Jack Goldsmith told me recently. A
tenured law professor at Harvard who worked in the Office of Legal Counsel
under George W. Bush, Goldsmith has written a pair of books on national
security law. "What we don't see, we don't care about."
Read the whole thing and
understand how we got to where we are today, when the president is going to
deliver a speech about the NSA revelations, arguing for "reforms" in
which there is no good reason to believe. Read the whole thing and see in it
the seedbed for unlimited drone warfare and whatever comes after that, which
undoubtedly will be worse. Read the whole thing and understand how Abu Ghraib
happened and why Gitmo is still open. Read the whole thing and watch the
relentless abandonment of self-government over the past 13 years. Read the
whole thing and realize that we are no longer even the nation we pretend to be,
Read the whole thing and realize how
much the late Osama bin Laden actually won.
Authorization for the Use of Military Force and
the permanent state of war
Gregory D. Johnsen wrote, "Maybe it shouldn't be so surprising that Congress didn't think about how the war would end when it passed the AUMF on Sept. 14, 2001, but after more than a dozen years, we are no closer to an answer." (photo: unknown)
See Elliott Adams,
“Protecting the Wrong People at Drone Base.”
Space Alert! (Dec. 2012), for
a strong indictment of US war crimes, and the urgent responsibility of us all
to resist now. –Dick
Support Our Troops, Our
War, and Our War Criminals
by Edward S. Herman / April 1st, 2013
The call to “support our troops,” or “our boys,” is really an
appeal to support the war in which the troops are engaged. Critics of the war
would say that if the war is unjustified, possibly even a criminal enterprise
in violation of international law at several levels, as was so clearly true of
the Iraq
Naturally, this critical view of supporting our troops gets little
play in the propaganda system, and the propaganda design of the formula
“support our troops” is probably effective in the environment of
patriotic fervor that wars engender. But the hypocrisy here runs deep. Many
of the threads of hypocrisy woven into this propaganda fabric stem from
the fact that the political and military establishments care very little about
the welfare of our boys. The really bad thing about their deaths, injuries and
suffering is the resultant negative publicity and possible increased
financial costs of greater attention to their needs that might limit military
budget size and flexibility. There has been a notorious struggle over the
damage our boys have suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan from economies in the
protective equipment provided to them; from the damaging psychological effects
of multiple tours of duty; from the reluctance to recognize the symptoms of
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the seriousness of traumatic brain
injury (TBI); and the scandals reflecting lagged and poor care of personnel
back home and in need of medical care.
In earlier years, also, it was a long struggle to get recognition
of the damage suffered by U.S. troops in Vietnam from the massive
chemical warfare used there, where, of course, the damage to U.S. personnel was
only a small fraction of that suffered by the Vietnamese people, still
unacknowledged and unrectified by the responsible criminal state. The
ironical usage of “MIA” to mean “missing in America,” referring to war veterans
in a sad state of indigence and homelessness at home, also goes back at least
to the Vietnam and post-Vietnam war days. There are many MIAs in the United
States today, and a dramatic figure that did get some publicity was
that more military personnel committed suicide than were killed in combat
in Afghanistan in 2012 (349 versus 295).
It is enlightening also that there is an inverse correlation
between aggressively supporting U.S.
Of course, along with “support our troops” there is an implicit
“support our torturers and higher level war criminals.” This flows from the
overwhelming and increasingly centralized power in the hands of the dominant
elite, including the military-industrial complex (MIC) and leading politicians,
and an associated remarkable level of self-righteousness. Anything we do is
tolerable because we are not only strong and the global policeman, but also
good and always well-intentioned, and are therefore not to be questioned when
we do abroad precisely what we condemn in target states. We can support Saddam
Hussein and even provide him with “weapons of mass destruction”, when he is
doing us a service in attacking Iran, even when he is using chemical
weapons there; and with no seeming sense of shame or guilt we can quickly turn
him into “another Hitler” when he disobeys orders. We can help the Shah of Iran
The really high level war criminals like Bush, Blair, and Obama
can get away with anything, not only because they are at the pinnacle of
power and can set their own rules, but also because they dominate the
external institutions that supposedly make the rule of law international, but
fail to do so. One of the prettiest cases is, of course, the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, an act matching Hitler’s
1939 invasion of Poland
But the sick comedy of “international law” rode on, with the UN,
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and International Criminal Court
(ICC) playing their assigned role by applying it whenever the Big Aggressor
or one of his leading allies felt the application of legal principles to
be useful. The Big A and his Little Aggressor client Israel wanted a
legal input for Darfur, but not for the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
invaded by Rwanda and Uganda, whose leaders were Big Aggressor clients, and so
it was—Sudan’s al-Bashir was indicted by the ICC, Rwandan and Ugandan leaders
were exempt. Big A and allies wanted legal authority for attacking Libya , but not Bahrain ,
so the ICC and United Nations Security Council (UNSC) obliged with indictments
for Gaddafi and sons, silence on Bahrain Libya ,
in collaboration with the ICC, greasing the skids for a NATO military attack on
Libya
The role of the “international community” (in the sense of
the leadership of the Western great powers and their clients, not
the underlying populations) was dramatically exhibited in giving the newly
elected U.S. President Barack Obama the Nobel Peace prize in 2009. He hadn’t
done anything whatsoever for peace at that time, but gave the appearance
of a leader more moderate than Bush and Cheney. A silly award, but once
again a giveaway on the supportive-groveling qualities of Western
political/cultural institutions. (Can you imagine the Nobel Committee giving
the award to Amira Hass, Malalai Joya, Kathy Kelly, or Richard Falk, people
actually making genuine personal sacrifices in the interest of peace?) Honest
analysis and morality would have recognized that Obama was going to be a major
war criminal by structural necessity, embedded as he was in a permanent war
political economy where political survival, let alone success, required the
commission of war crimes. Obama soon found that political success demanded
killing foreigners; that budget enlargement for killing was easy, but spending
for progressive civilian needs was difficult and would anger powerful people.
He quickly adapted to being a warrior president, his seemingly most proud
accomplishment being the killing of bin-Laden.
Obama has played all the war cards. He has lauded the Vietnam War
as a noble enterprise and is pleased to participate in and laud a memorial that
celebrates it. Like Bush he loves to speak to military cadres where he can draw
resounding applause with patriotic and war rhetoric, although increasing
numbers of liberal Democrats have gotten on board his war-oriented ship of
state and also find his warrior image and actions agreeable. He has gone
somewhat beyond Bush in institutionalizing government rights to invade privacy,
closing down information access, and criminalizing whistle-blowing. His drone
war policy and claimed right to assassinate even U.S. U.S.
• Article first appeared in Z Magazine April 2013
|
| |
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The Lawyer and the Kill-List Memo
By Ryan Lizza, The New Yorker, Reader Supported News, May 25, 2014 Lizza writes: "David J. Barron, a lawyer at the Department of Justice, sent Eric Holder, the Attorney General, a lengthy memorandum. Barron, who had celebrated his forty-third birthday earlier that month, was a professor at READ MORE
American
Unlimited Imperialism: Now
by Francis A. Boyle
Historically, this latest eruption
of American militarism at the start of the 21st Century is akin to that of
But over the next four decades
America’s aggressive presence, policies, and practices in the “Pacific”
would ineluctably pave the way for Japan’s attack at Pearl Harbor on Dec.
7, 194l, and thus America’s precipitation into the ongoing Second World
War. Today, a century later, the serial imperial aggressions launched and
menaced by the Republican Bush Jr. administration and now the Democratic
Obama administration are threatening to set off World War III.
By shamelessly exploiting the
terrible tragedy of 11 September 2001, the Bush Jr. administration set
forth to steal a hydrocarbon empire from the Muslim states and peoples
living in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf and Africa under the bogus
pretexts of (1) fighting a war against international terrorism; and/or (2)
eliminating weapons of mass destruction; and/or (3) the promotion of
democracy; and/or (4) self-styled “humanitarian
intervention”/responsibility to protect.
Only this time the geopolitical
stakes are infinitely greater than they were a century ago: control and
domination of two-thirds of the world’s hydrocarbon resources and thus the
very fundament and energizer of the global economic system—oil and gas.
The Bush Jr./ Obama administrations
have already targeted the remaining hydrocarbon reserves of Africa, Latin
America, and
This current bout of
“The outstanding historic examples
of unlimited imperialism are the expansionist policies of Alexander the
Great,
It is the Unlimited
Imperialists along the lines of Alexander,
Francis Anthony
Boyle is a
professor of international law at the
Newer PostsOlder PostsHome Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)
ND OUT MORE
 Chris Hedges, Truthdig Op-Ed: Murder is our national sport. We murder tens of
thousands with our industrial killing machines in |
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THE
PAST
SPRING ISSUE 2014 : Available now
The War Crimes Times spring issue has been printed. Order copies now while supplies last.
Donate to the project. Links to all past print issues below right.
Sunday, March 23,
2014
The American public probably is not aware
Deaths In Other Nations Since WW II Due To
by James A. Lucas [This gives only a small part of the original. –Dick] Editor’s note: An edited version of this article appears in the Spring 2014 WCT print edition. The link below is to the original unedited version complete with source notes. The numbers in this article were compiled in 2007. Since then, the U.S. has added to its total through attacks on other nations including Libya, Yemen, and Somalia; with its drone program; with the residual political instability from past actions in Afghanistan and Iraq; and likely from secret special operations. "After the catastrophic attacks of September 11, 2001, monumental sorrow and a feeling of desperate and understandable anger began to permeate the American psyche. A few people at that time attempted to promote a balanced perspective by pointing out that the United States had also been responsible for causing those same feelings in people in other nations... "The overall conclusion is that the United States most likely has been responsible, since WWII, for the deaths of between 20 and 30 million people in wars and conflicts scattered over the world." Read the details about the 37 victim nations in the full article here.
Friday, March 21,
2014
The forgotten coup - and how the godfather rules from
Canberra to Kiev
“
Edward Gough
Whitlam, Prime Minister of Australia from 1972 to 1975, was a “maverick
social democrat of principle, pride, propriety and extraordinary political
imagination. He believed that a foreign power should not control his
country's resources and dictate its economic and foreign policies.” His
attitudes and policies ran counter to
He was sacked by Governor-General
Sir John Kerr (who the CIA referred to as “our man Kerr”).
See John Pilger’s surprising account of the CIA’s role in overthrowing
a democratically elected leader in
Friday, March 7,
2014
History repeats
Secret
War in
 
From 1964 to 1973, the
Up to a third of the
bombs dropped did not explode, leaving
Regions in
Here are some other
startling facts about the
o
Over
270 million cluster bombs were dropped on
o
Nearly
40 years on, less than 1% of these munitions have been destroyed.More than
half of all confirmed cluster munitions casualties in the world have
occurred in
o
Each
year there continue to be over 100 new casualties in
o
Between
1996 and 2012, the
o
The
Legacies of War
travels across the
|
Recent Related
Newsletters
5-25 Snowden
5-23
Grassroots Militarism
5-15
Conscientious Objection
5-6
Capitalism
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Kent State
Contact Arkansas
|
SENATORS
Sen. John Boozman
Republican, first term 320 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510 Phone: (202) 224-4843 Fax: (202) 228-1371 Arkansas offices: FORT SMITH: (479) 573-0189 JONESBORO: (870) 268-6925 LITTLE ROCK: (501) 372-7153 LOWELL: (479) 725-0400 MOUNTAIN HOME: (870) 424-0129 STUTTGART: (870) 672-6941 EL DORADO: (870) 863-4641 Website: www.boozman.senate.gov
Sen. Mark Pryor
Democrat, second term 255 Dirksen Office Building Constitution Avenue and First Street NE Washington, D.C. 20510 Phone: (202) 224-2353 Fax: (202) 228-0908 Little Rock office: (501) 324-6336 Website: www.pryor.senate.gov
Rep. Tom Cotton
4TH DISTRICT Republican, first term 415 Phone: (202) 225-43772 HOT SPRINGS: (501) 520-5892 PINE BLUFF: (870) 536-3376 Website: www.cotton.house.gov |
REPRESENTATIVES
Rep. Rick Crawford
1ST DISTRICT Republican, second term 1771 Independence Avenues SE Washington, D.C. 20515 Phone: (202) 225-4076 Fax: (202) 225-5602 CABOT: (501) 843-3043 MOUNTAIN HOME: (870) 424-2075 Website: www.crawford.house.gov
Rep. Tim Griffin
2ND DISTRICT Republican, second term 1232 Independence Avenues SE Washington, D.C. 20515 Phone: (202) 225-2506 Fax: (202) 225-5903 LITTLE ROCK: (501) 324-5491 Website: www.griffin.house.gov
Rep. Steve Womack
3RD DISTRICT Republican, second term 1119 Longworth Office Building New Jersey and Independence Avenues SE Washington 20515 Phone: (202) 225-4301 Fax: (202) 225-5713 Arkansas offices: ROGERS: (479) 464-0446 HARRISON: (870) 741-7741 FORT SMITH: (479) 424-1146 Website: www.womack.house.gov
Con
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Contents US Lawlessness Newsletter #1
US Imperial
History
Grandin,
Preparation in Latin America , Documents
Myths Feeding
US Imperialism
Lawlessness
Rise of
Imperial Presidency
US War Crimes
John Yoo
Abusing Intellect, Justifying Crime for President Bush
Greenwald, With Liberty
Monbiot: Obama
and Drones
END
US
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