OMNI
US LAWLESSNESS ANTHOLOGY #3
June 15, 2026
COMPILED BY DICK BENNETT FOR A CULTURE OF PEACE, JUSTICE, ECOLOGY
and DEMOCRACY
(#1, 4-24-17; #2, 9-11-22)
#1 http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2017/04/us-lawlessness.html
#2 https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/09/omni-us-lawlessness-anthology-2.html
What’s at Stake: See Caitlin
Johnstone’s list in “If you think our rulers do bad things
in secret, wait ‘til you see what they do out in the open.”
[These
three anthologies offer merely an introduction to the outpouring scholarship
opposing US imperial overreach that taints all aspects of international relations. See my anthologies on each of the major US wars,
on US continental and Pacific expansion, on the Israel-US Gaza genocide, on Soviet/Russophobiae and the Ukraine War, on
NATO, US Vietnam War, US Culture of War, for a larger introduction.]
CONTENTS
The first 7
articles are comprehensive and international.
The remaining articles are comprehensive, regional, and national.
Caitlin Johnstone.
Ben Norton. “Blatant Attacks On International
Law Are Nothing New for The US.” William Astore. “America
has a bellicose, bullying, immature leadership.”
“Pretending not to see brazen lies: the rule of law and nuclear madness.” Etc.
Latin America, International Court of Justice, and the World. Etc.
Roger Kotila,
Ph.D. “UN Needs the Earth Constitution to Deal with World Criminals.”
TEXTS
Comprehensive
Assessments
“If you think our rulers do bad things
in secret, wait til you see what they do out in the open” By Caitlin A. Johnstone (Posted Feb
12, 2026). Originally published: Caitlin A Johnstone Blog on February 8, 2026 (more by Caitlin A Johnstone Blog). InequalityGlobalNewswire. Reading by Tim Foley:
They launched a live-streamed genocide in full view of the entire world.
They’re openly targeting civilian populations with siege warfare in Iran and Cuba in full view of the entire world.
They openly kidnapped the president of a sovereign nation in
full view of the entire world.
They deliberately provoked a horrific and dangerous proxy war in
Ukraine in full view of the entire world.
They spent years actively backing Saudi Arabia’s monstrous genocidal
atrocities in Yemen in full view of the entire world.
They’re plundering and exploiting the resources and labor of the global
south in full view of the entire world.
They’re killing the biosphere we all depend on for their own
enrichment in full view of the entire world.
They’re circling the
globe with hundreds of military bases to secure planetary domination in full
view of the entire world.
They engage in nuclear brinkmanship and wave around armageddon weapons like
pistols in full view of the entire world.
People go homeless and
die of exposure while billionaires buy private islands and choose the next
president in full view of the entire world.
Weapons
manufacturers lobby for wars and then profit from the death and
destruction they cause in full view of the entire world.
The president of the
United States has repeatedly admitted to being bought and owned by the world’s
richest Israeli in full view of the entire world.
The U.S. Treasury
Secretary has been repeatedly admitting that the U.S. deliberately sparked the
violence and unrest in Iran by methodically immiserating the population via
economic warfare, in full view of the entire world.
I keep seeing people
freaking out and asking how it’s possible that the individuals in the Epstein
files haven’t been arrested for their secret nefarious behavior. And I always
want to ask them, mate, have you seen the nefarious behavior they’re engaging
in right out in the open?
Pay attention to the
Epstein files. Pay attention to what little we can learn about how these freaks
conduct themselves behind closed doors. By all means, pay close attention to
these things.
But don’t forget to
also pay attention to the far greater evils they are inflicting in full view of
the entire world.
About Caitlin A.
Johnstone: Caitlin A. Johnstone is a rogue
journalist; bogan socialist; anarcho-psychonaut; guerilla poet; utopia prepper.
You can read Caitlin’s articles on Medium, Steemit and at her website. Caitlin is proudly 100 percent reader-funded
through Patreon and Paypal. Follow her
on Twitter and Facebook, and subscribe to her mailing list.
“Blatant Attacks On International Law Are Nothing New For The
US” By Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. Popular Resistance.org (7-29-25). The Donald Trump administration has
launched many frontal attacks on multilateral organizations and international
law. However, these clear violations of international law are nothing new for
US presidents. Opposition to multilateralism has been a bipartisan
feature of US politics for many decades. In February, Trump withdrew the
United States from the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), repeating an
action he had done back in 2018, during his first term. The Trump
administration also attacked the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine
Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), and.... -more-
William Astore. “The Trillion-Dollar Blob.” ACURA (Dec 06,
2024).
America has a bellicose, bullying, immature
leadership that thinks military might is the answer to everything, as reflected
by U.S. Special Forces in 80+ countries and roughly 800 bases globally. That
global presence is unsustainable. It is also folly. . . .
Read in browser »
“Pretending
not to see brazen lies: the rule of law and nuclear madness.” Newswire
(July 19, 2021).
Editor. Mronline.org
(7-20-21).
The latest brazen lie is the “rule of law” upheld by U.S.
President Joe Biden at the G7 and NATO summits, especially lies about
lawlessness surrounding nuclear weapons. 
Judith Deutsch. “Pretending not to see brazen lies: the rule
of law and nuclear madness.” Originally published: The Bullet – Socialist
Project on July 17, 2021 by
Judith Deutsch (more by The Bullet – Socialist
Project)(Posted Jul 19, 2021). Empire, Inequality, Strategy, WarUnited StatesNewswireNuclear Weapons, President Joe Biden.
The latest brazen lie is the “rule of law”
upheld by U.S. President Joe Biden at the G7 and NATO summits, especially lies
about lawlessness surrounding nuclear weapons. During the presidency of the
Donald Trump years (2017 to 2020), the power of one person to launch nuclear
war was on full display. In 1983, one Soviet individual, Stanislav Petrov,
“the man who saved the world,” was in the position to decide against launching.
This ability of one person to push or not push the button is a nightmare
failure of the rule of law and of governing structures.
There is at this time
much more widespread public knowledge, rage, and political action about racism
and rampant injustices. However, it is hard to know how much the public knows
about nuclear weapons. Laws put in place to control or eliminate these
weapons are officially ignored, abrogated, or signed but not ratified or
enforced: Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Comprehensive
Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), Intermediate-Range
Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), the Open Skies Treaty (cancelled by Biden), and
the Outer Space Treaty. The last remaining arms control agreement, New
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), was reprieved by Biden until 2026.
No nuclear-armed or
NATO nations have signed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW)
that are now in force. The five permanent members (China, France, Russia,
United Kingdom, and United States) of the UN Security Council have nuclear
weapons, have signed but violate the NPT, and are the only nations with a veto.
Meanwhile, Barack Obama committed more than $1-trillion over the next
three decades to modernize nuclear weapons, and Biden announced an additional
$750-billion. As well, in February, Biden increased spending for the
U.S. space force, violating the Outer Space Treaty.
Nuclear Lies
Officials routinely
get away with nuclear lies: through plausible deniability, through concealing
or minimizing nuclear lethality, by focussing on 5G satellites’ benign civilian
uses rather than the satellites’ full spectrum surveillance uses, by conjuring
an external existential threat (Iran, Russia, China), psychologically by
Trump/Netanyahu-style bullying or G.W. Bush’s disarming boyishness, and by
exploiting general fears that any mandatory regulations are undemocratic
infringements of freedom.
There is also over
one-half century evidence that nations get away with murder, that there are
rarely consequences for violating conventions on just war, genocide, or crimes
against humanity. Then there is the recent legalistic principle of the “least
detrimental alternative” used to defend torture and wars if they prevent worse
harms.1
When the White House
Press Corp’s longest-serving member, Helen Thomas, asked newly elected (and
Nobel Peace Prize winner) Barack Obama whether any Middle East country
possessed nuclear weapons, Obama, knowing full well about Israel’s arsenal,
said, “I don’t want to speculate.” Was the press corps pretending not to see
that Obama was pretending not to see? Or was there a knowing wink acknowledging
that transparent lies don’t matter because the old boys’ club does whatever it
wants. Clearly, any law can be ignored, twisted or unenforced.
Women win the Nobel
Peace Prize for their informed, years’ long work on formulating and negotiating
the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), but big men hold the
“nuclear football,” and drop “Little Boy” (Hiroshima) and “Fat Man” (Nagasaki),
and proliferate all they want. Ray Acheson, Director of Reaching Critical Will,
who represented the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in the
International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), just published Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy. [This book and Acheson’s Abolishing State
Violence are in UAF’s Mullins Library.
–D]
Greater Danger Today
Some people should be
obligated to know and to inform. How many elected officials can even locate on
an unmarked map the countries they bomb to smithereens, and what do journalists
and educators know and disseminate about nuclear weapons? It is my impression
that during the Cold War, there was a latent but constant sense of anxiety
about nuclear weapons, but today this seems to have evaporated. We hear very
little about the potential use of nuclear weapons.
Yet authoritative
voices warn of greater danger than during the Cold War. Daniel Ellsberg speaks of the Big Five weapons companies pushing the idea of a $1.7-trillion
modernization, revitalization, as they say, of a doomsday machine that can
destroy not all life on Earth, not even all human life, probably, almost
surely, but 90 percent of it, seven billion people, if we exercised our current
war plans in a war against Russia… And yet there’s hardly any discussion of
this.
The
public needs to know that today’s weapons
are much more lethal than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the
end of WWII. Today’s bombs are in the range of 100-kiloton (over six times the
force of the Hiroshima bomb) to 500-kilotons. “Scientists have calculated that
even a small-scale nuclear war involving one hundred Hiroshima-type nuclear
bombs between two countries, such as India and Pakistan, would have a
devastating effect on Earth’s climate.” The black smoke would rise into the
stratosphere, blocking out sunlight for years, and plunge the planet into
temperatures too cold to support agriculture, leading to mass death and
possible human extinction.
This limited war would
involve only 0.3% of the world’s nuclear explosive power.2
During the Cold War,
one restraint against launching a first strike against the Soviet Union was the
realistic fear of a potent retaliatory nuclear strike. The crucial deterrent
was Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). However, G.W. Bush’s cancellation of
the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2003 permitted the use of missile
defense (offense), a technology for detecting and destroying enemy missiles
within one minute of launch, and hence, the U.S. belief that a nuclear war was
winnable. In 1977, Donald Rumsfeld outlined strategies for a first strike,
and in 2021, these conditions are in operation: precise strategic weapons to
destroy enemy land-based missiles, anti-submarine warfare, missile defense, and
space warfare to eliminate early warning, communications, and navigation
satellites.3
At this time,
Israel contributes significantly to obstructing measures aimed at the
elimination of nuclear weapons. Chomsky, Pappé, and Henry Siegman all provide details about Israel’s successful strategy of
covert provocations leading to reactions justifying Israeli retaliation [p.
114].4 It
has served Israel’s leaders to represent Iran as an existential threat with a
nuclear weapons program and Israel is a prime mover against Iran’s nuclear
weapons agreement (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). Robert Fisk:
Yet we reporters do
not mention that Shimon Peres, as Israeli Prime Minister, said exactly the same
thing in 1996. That was 16 years ago. And we do not recall that the current
Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in 1992 that Iran would have a nuclear bomb
by 1999. That would be 13 years ago. Same old story.
Israel’s recent
provocations against Iran
include the assassination of General Soleimani, its targeted assassination of
four Iranian nuclear scientists, the most recent in November 2020, the Natanz
cyber attack in April 2021, and possible involvement in both the fire on Iran’s largest naval ship in the Gulf of Oman on
June 2, 2021, and the fire on the state-owned oil refinery a few hours later.
In an appalling irony, the UN meetings to establish a nuclear-free zone in the
Middle East do not include the only Middle East country with nuclear
weapons–Israel.
“Lawful” nuclear-armed
powers up-the-ante of nuclear confrontation by provoking Iran, Russia, and
China. On June 23, Al Jazeera reports, [Iran] a “‘Sabotage attack’ on Iranian nuclear
building,” [Russia] suspicion that Britain is firing shots in the Black Sea on
the border of Russia, and [China] on June 15, the USS Reagan entered the South China Sea on “routine
operations.” In an interview, Russian-born York University professor Sergei
Plekhanov commented:
There is enough
evidence that the destroyer’s venture into Russian territorial waters was not
an accidental ‘innocent passage’, but rather a planned move, approved at the
top level of the British government. Sailing a nuclear-capable destroyer into
an adversary state’s territorial waters near that state’s key military base,
and doing it in the runup to a massive NATO naval exercise in the Black Sea was
an extraordinary and exceedingly dangerous provocation. Provocation is a tool
of policy, and every provocation has a political purpose.
What, and whom, does
law rule? Jasmin Zine writes that the “rule of law” is a breeding ground for
violence and hypocrisy: in Canada, this “…rhetoric includes the liberal washing of white nationalism that politically
camouflages xenophobic, Islamophobic and racist ideologies under the guise of
‘protecting democracy,’ ‘freedom’ and the ‘rule of law’ from what are regarded
as illiberal, anti-modern and anti-democratic Muslims.”
This discrepancy
between words, actions, and feelings is frightening: the United Nations
(UN) was set up in 1945, and its first objective was to “end the scourge of
war,” but in 1950, the UN launched the Korean War, a forgotten, hidden
war. The U.S. several times considered using nuclear weapons against this
largely impoverished civilian population. On the ground, “the documented
violence was so extreme, so gratuitous, as to suggest a peculiar pathology” (p.
124). In the north, all cities were “annihilation zones” (p. 150). “Operation
Chastise” destroyed dams, creating tidal waves that inundated towns and
country, and people were reduced to living in caves.5
What is the rule of
law? Because of U.S. pressure, the International Criminal Court does not
have jurisdiction over the supreme crime of starting an illegal war.
Astonishingly, only the five original nuclear-armed nations have veto power in
the UN. The UN Charter states that international disputes must be
settled by peaceful means, and opposing parties must refrain from the threat or
use of force. Instead, the means must include negotiation, enquiry, mediation,
conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, and assistance through regional
agencies or arrangements. As a last resort, the Security Council decides about
the use of armed force, but it can decide on measures not including the use of
armed force such as demonstrations, blockades, or interruptions of economic
relations. Yet, despite all of these “protections,” countries all over the
world have engaged in innumerable wars since 1945.
In
the lawless world, humans are
abstractions represented as numbers and statistics. Experts quibble about the
percentage of people who would die in nuclear war. Meanwhile, our hope today
may lie in the fact that oppressed people globally are rising up to challenge
the proliferation of nuclear weapons and rebuilding anti-war movements to
challenge the militarism.
Judith Deutsch is a member of Independent Jewish
Voices, and former president of Science for Peace. She is a psychoanalyst in
Toronto. She can be reached at judithdeutsch0@gmail.com.
Endnotes
1. Eyal Weizman, The Least of All Possible
Evils: A Short History of Humanitarian Violence, Verso: London,
2011. 2. Dale Dewar and Florian
Oelck, Florian. From Hiroshima to Fukushima to You. Between the Lines:
Toronto (2014). p. 142-150.3. Robert Aldridge, First Strike: The Pentagon’s Strategy for Nuclear War.
South End Press: Boston (1983). p. 36.
4. Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé, Gaza in Crisis:
reflections on Israel’s war against the Palestinians, Haymarket,
Chicago, 2010. See especially p. 114ff.
5. Bruce Cumings, The Korean War: a History, Modern Library, New York, 2010.
Katha Pollitt. “‘America
Doesn’t Torture’—It Kills. Even if we like President Obama,
do we want him to be a one-man death panel?” The Nation (Feb. 13, 2013). March 4, 2013 issue, https://www.thenation.com/issue/march-4-2013/
If the president can order the killing of
American citizens abroad should he decide they are
involved with Al Qaeda, can he assassinate suspected Al Qaeda–connected US
citizens in London or Berlin? What about a suspect’s teenage son, a junior in a
Canadian boarding school? If he can drop hellfire missiles on a house in
northwestern Pakistan because he believes a terrorist cell is meeting inside,
could he blow up a motel in Florida where supposed terrorists are staying and
chalk up any dead vacationers as “collateral damage”? Of course not. Pakistan
is completely different. Anwar al-Awlaki may have been a US citizen, but he was
in Yemen, which is different too. As for his 16-year-old son, killed in Yemen
in a drone attack some weeks later along with several other people, former
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs put it well, if ungrammatically: “I
would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are
truly concerned about the well-being of their children.” Unlike in the United
States, in Yemen kids choose their parents.
Whatever
happened to arresting people, extraditing them, giving them lawyers, putting
them on trial—all that? Even in the
hottest days of the Cold War, when millions believed communism
threatened our very existence as a nation, Americans accused of spying for the Soviets
had their day in court. No one suggested that President Eisenhower should skip
the tiresome procedural stuff and just bomb the Rosenbergs’ apartment.
The
president and his choice to head the CIA, John Brennan, assure us that
they are extremely careful, and the kill list is “legal, ethical and wise”
(although they won’t tell us anything more about it). Brennan asserted in 2011
that no civilians have been killed by drones. Maybe he even believes this,
although the Bureau of Investigative Journalism documented more than 500
civilian casualties in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia, with a high estimate of
many more. When President Obama appointed Harold Koh legal adviser to the State
Department in 2009, it looked like he was sending a message: the bad old days
are over. Koh, who once referred to President Bush as the “torturer in chief,”
was an outspoken critic of that administration’s legal rationales for torture, Guantánamo
and “targeted killings.” Fast-forward to today, and Koh provides legal
rationales for those same “targeted killings” and gives critics the kind of
snide brushoff the Bushites were famous for: justice for enemies “can be
delivered through trials. Drones also deliver.”
“The
president is a thoughtful, analytical guy,” a national security adviser tells a
group of CIA officers including Maya, the Osama-obsessed heroine of Kathryn
Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty. Before he
orders the assault on Osama’s compound, “he needs proof.” In another scene, a
TV in the background shows Obama telling Steve Croft, “America doesn’t
torture.” Even giving Obama the benefit of every doubt, do we want the
president to be a one-man death panel? And what about the next president, and
the one after that? Precedents are being set that concentrate far too much
power in the executive branch and rely far too much on the moral capabilities
of one man. The buck not only stops with Obama; it starts with him, too.
Polls
suggest that most Americans are fine with drones—including most
liberals: 78 percent of viewers of Ed Shultz’s MSNBC talk show. Apparently, we
are not persuaded by what seems to me obvious: law and morality aside, dropping
bombs is no way to win friends and influence people. Last year a Pew poll
found that
74
percent of Pakistanis consider the United States an enemy. Sherry Rehman,
Pakistan’s US ambassador, told reporters that the drone campaign “creates more
potential terrorists on the ground and militants on the ground instead of
taking them out.” September 11 enraged Americans so profoundly we started two
wars, one against a nation that had nothing to do with it. Why do we assume
that the people we attack are any different?. . . .
How
did we end up here? Surely one fatal turning point was Obama’s decision
not to prosecute anyone connected with the Bush administration’s brutal
policies, especially torture. Not only did this breed cynicism and
callousness; it tacitly allowed that maybe Abu Ghraib and black sites and
Baghram and Guantánamo were justifiable, given the fiendish and shape-shifting
nature of terrorism.
The
only person in the CIA who will see a day in prison for anything that
happened during all this is James Kiriakou, the anti-torture
whistleblower recently sentenced to thirty months for revealing the name of a
covert CIA officer to a reporter. Don’t hold your breath for a Hollywood movie
about him.
David Cole writes that the White House evidently believes it can kill us in secret and
never own up to the fact.
“The
United States is the greatest Scofflaw” by Vijay Prashad. Mronline.org (9-7-21).
But
the United States government is not alone here. It has several close allies,
such as Canada, which is the home to 60 per cent of the world’s mining
companies. But it is the USA that most
undermines the rule of law throughout the hemisphere and the world.
Originally published: Peoples Democracy on September 5, 2021 (more by Peoples Democracy).
Agriculture, Empire, Inequality, StrategyAmericas, Canada, United StatesNewswirethe Organisation of American States (OAS), U.S. coup, United
Nations (UN).
“UK, U.S. hit record lows in global corruption index.”
Editor. mronline.org
(2-12-26).
Experts warn that wealthy political donors
and cash-for-access scandals are eroding democratic institutions and public
trust in the U.S. and UK.
Originally published: Al Mayadeen on February 10, 2026 by News websites (more by Al Mayadeen) | (Posted Feb
12, 2026). Empire, Imperialism, Inequality, State RepressionAmericas, Europe, United Kingdom, United StatesNewswire
The UK and
U.S. have dropped to their lowest-ever positions in a global corruption index,
reflecting a dramatic erosion of democratic institutions through political
donations, cash-for-access schemes, and state targeting of campaigners and
journalists.
The Corruption
Perceptions Index, compiled by Transparency International, ranks 182 countries
based on expert and business assessments of public sector corruption. Denmark
topped the 2025 rankings with the lowest corruption levels, while South Sudan
ranked last alongside Somalia.
The report identified
an overall global decline, with 50 countries recording worse scores compared to
31 that improved. Established democracies showed particularly troubling
backsliding, with the organization warning that developments during Donald Trump’s presidency and
revelations from the Epstein files could accelerate further deterioration. . .
.
LATIN AMERICA
“U.S.
legally owes Nicaragua reparations, but still refuses to honor 1986 Int’l Court
of Justice ruling.” Editor.
Mronline.org (6-30-23).
37 years after a 1986 International Court of
Justice ruling, the United States still refuses to pay Nicaragua the
reparations it legally owes. Today, the Nicaraguan government is demanding that
the United Nations take action.
Originally published: Geopolitical Economy
Report on June 28, 2023 (more by Geopolitical Economy
Report). Financialization, Political Economy, State Repression, StrategyAmericas, Nicaragua, United StatesNewswire
The International
Court of Justice in the Hague ruled in 1986 that the U.S. government had
violated international law in its attacks on Nicaragua and that it owed the
Central American nation reparations.
June 27, 2023 was the
37th anniversary of this ruling, and Washington still to this day refuses to
pay Nicaragua the money that it legally owes it.
The International
Court of Justice (ICJ) is the judicial arm of the United Nations. (It is
not to be confused with the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is
independent of the UN. The ICJ was founded in 1945, in order to settle disputes
between states; whereas the ICC was only formed in 2002, in order to prosecute
individuals.)
In 1986, the ICJ determined that the U.S. repeatedly violated
international law by:
·
training, arming,
equipping, financing, and supplying the Contra paramilitaries in Nicaragua;
·
attacking Nicaraguan
infrastructure;
·
putting mines in
Nicaragua’s ports;
·
imposing an embargo on
Nicaragua; and
·
encouraging the
Contras to commit atrocities that violate international humanitarian law.
Nicaragua’s current
government has publicly called on the U.S. to meet its obligations under
international law. . . .
[VFP-all] “Act Now -
End Trump & Hegseth’s murder campaign in the waters off of South America.” Forwarded by Gerry Condon via uark.onmicrosoft.com Jun 13, 2026.
Even those involved in the operations are
asking questions. Steve Woolford, a resource counselor with the GI Rights
Hotline, has spoken to four servicemembers who were seeking legal and ethical
guidance over their roles in the strikes. "I think this is exactly what
was described as a war crime," he recalled being told.
From: Endless War
Watch @ Win Without War <info@winwithoutwar.org>
Sent: Saturday, June 13, 2026 7:39:02 AM
Trump and Defense Secretary Hegseth’s illegal
boat strikes have now killed more than 200 people off the coasts of South
America, Gerry, but we haven’t forgotten — and we refuse to stay silent. 200 deaths mark a grim milestone in an
illegal campaign that has slipped under the radar while the Administration
distracts by proliferating more violence elsewhere. The campaign has been shrouded in secrecy
from the start, and the administration has done little to explain who it is
targeting in these indiscriminate attacks. One human rights expert recently
told The Intercept, “my guess is that the U.S. military has no idea
who these people actually are before moving to kill them.”[1] In one particularly concerning case, Rear
Adm. Brian H. Bennett, a military officer who’s overseen Special Operations for
the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, admitted the eleven casualties of one September
2025 strike “could be” victims of human trafficking.
Lawmakers have the power to act and stop these strikes. But
they’re unlikely to if they think people like you and groups like ours aren’t
paying attention, or worse, that we don’t care. That’s why we
need to get loud today. Tell Congress: Stop Trump and
Hegseth’s illegal boat strikes! No more taxpayer dollars for extrajudicial
killings. . . .
“U.S. Southern Command resumes extrajudicial killings as piracy
spreads to Indian Ocean.” Editor.
mronline.org (2-12-26). U.S. Southern Command
reported a new extrajudicial execution against a small vessel in the Eastern
Pacific on Monday, February 9.
MIDDLE
EAST
US/ISRAEL
AT THE COURT OF JUSTICE
Vijay
Prashad. “The No-Rules International Order.”
Consortium News (6-7-24).
Israel’s
massacre on the tent camp in Rafah is just the latest. For decades now, Tel
Aviv – like Washington – has defied any attempt to apply international
humanitarian law to its actions. Read here...
AmericanEmpire, Argentina, Biden Administration, Commentary, Israel, Legal, Palestine, Trump
Administration.
The skin is the largest
organ of the human body. It covers our entire surface, at some points only as
thin as a piece of paper and at other points about half as thick as a credit
card. The skin, which protects us from
all manner of germs and other harmful elements, is fragile and unable to defend
humans from the dangerous weapons we have made over time. The ancient blunt axe
will break the skin with a heavy blow, while a 2,000-pound MK-84 “dumb bomb”
made by General Dynamics will not only obliterate the skin, but the entire
human body.
Despite a May 24 order from
the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the Israeli military continues
to bomb the southern part of Gaza, particularly the city of Rafah. In
blatant disregard of the ICJ’s order, on May 27 Israel struck a
tent city in Rafah and murdered 45 civilians.
U.S. President Joe Biden said on March 9 that
an Israeli attack on Rafah would be his “red line,” but – even after the tent
massacre – the Biden administration has insisted that
no such line has been violated.
At a press conference on May 28, communications adviser to the
U.S. National Security Agency, John Kirby, was asked how the U.S. would respond
if a strike by the U.S. armed forces killed 45 civilians and injured 200
others. Kirby responded: We have conducted airstrikes in places like
Iraq and Afghanistan, where tragically we caused civilian casualties. We did
the same thing.”
To defend Israel’s latest massacre, Washington has chosen to make
a startling admission. Given that the ICJ has ruled that it is “plausible” that
Israel is conducting a genocide in Gaza, could it be said that the U.S. is
guilty of the same in Iraq and Afghanistan?
In 2006, the International Criminal Court (ICC) began to assess
the possibility of war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then,
in 2014 and 2017,
respectively, opened formal investigations into crimes committed in both
countries.
Neither Israel nor the United States are signatories to the 2002
Rome Statute, which established the ICC. Rather than sign the statute, the
U.S. Congress passed the American
Service-Members’ Protection Act — known informally as the
“Hague Invasion Act” — which legally authorises the U.S. government to “use
all means necessary” to protect its troops from ICC prosecutors. Since Article 98 of
the Rome Statute does not require states to turn over wanted personnel to a
third party if they have signed an immunity agreement with that party, the U.S.
government has encouraged states to sign “Article 98 agreements” to give its
troops immunity from prosecution. . . .
Connor
Echols. “What Ever Happened to the
‘Rules-based International Order’”? WRMEA (October 2022, Other Voices-13). The assassination of Ayman
al-Zawahiri in Kabul.
Kelley B. Vlahos.
“U.S. Bombs Somalia for the Third Time This Summer.” WRMEA (October
2022, Other Voices-15). “It’s
been a long time since the United States was not bombing Somalia.”
LAWLESS US AIDS LAWLESS
SAUDI ARABIA in WAR OF TERROR
“Senator Bob Graham Helped Expose Saudi
Arabia’s Ties to 9/11” By Michael Steven Smith on Sep 11, 2022.
September 11 will mark the 21st
anniversary of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon by 19 hijackers. They
provided a pretext for the U.S.’s 20-year war in Afghanistan and its subsequent
invasion of Iraq, an illegal U.S. war of aggression which was based on a lie
that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. That war killed more than 1
million people.
My radio show Law And Disorder interviewed retired Florida
Senator, the courageous Bob Graham. Graham did more than anyone to expose the
connection between the horrific criminal attacks and the complicity of the
Saudi government.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been a U.S. ally in the Middle
East for decades. Twenty-one years ago, Saudi officials gave financial,
logistical, and other support to the alleged 9/11 hijackers. Fifteen of the 19
men were Saudis.
This explosive history was documented in 2002 in the 28-page
final section of the report of The Joint Commission of Inquiry of the Senate
and the House, which Senator Graham chaired.
These 28 pages were hidden and not declassified and released
until July 15, 2016. They were released because of the efforts of Senator
Graham and the families of the 9/11 victims.
By blocking the release of these pages, Senator Graham states,
the U.S. government sent a message to the Saudi government that “they can do
anything.” […]
The post Senator Bob Graham Helped Expose Saudi
Arabia’s Ties to 9/11 appeared first on CovertAction Magazine.
Kathy Kelly. “We Are
All Complicit.” The Catholic Worker
(May, 2024). A
succinct history of US attacks on “enemy” hospitals (Gaza 2009 and today,
Afghanistan). If the US continues to
supply weapons for the destruction of Gaza and its hospitals, “we may find we have created a world in which no one can
count on upholding basic human rights.”
[--Dick]
“Trump charges: why ‘unprecedented’?” By Ben Hillier.
(Posted Jun 19, 2023). Originally published: Red Flag on June 17, 2023 (more by Red Flag). Empire, Ideology, Imperialism, IncarcerationAmericas, United StatesNewswireBarack Obama, Donald Trump, George W. Bush.
Following a suite of
charges in connection to business fraud and campaign finance violations brought by the New York state
district attorney in April, a federal grand jury in early June issued former
U.S. President Donald Trump a second indictment relating to the
mishandling of classified documents and obstruction of justice, among
other things.
“It is hard to
overstate the gravity of the criminal indictment”, the New York Times editorial
board wrote on 9 June,
noting Trump’s “contempt for the rule of law”. It is a test of this the rule of
law, we are told, that no-one, not even a former commander in chief, is above
scrutiny or beyond accountability. That is partly what is at stake in the case, whether Trump
is found guilty or exonerated. We are also informed, again and again, that the
situation is “unprecedented”—no previous president, sitting or former, has ever
been indicted. . . .
Accusing
Others of Crimes to Divert from Our Own
Walter
Hixson. “The ICC, [Russia], and U.S.
Hypocrisy.” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.” June-July 2023. “There has been no shortage of hypocrisy in U.S./foreign policy
positions over the years, but U.S. demands for Russia to be investigated and
prosecuted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) ranks near the top. The United States is not a state party to the
ICC [to avoid prosecution] and has persistently undermined the international
court throughout its history.”
UKRAINE
WAR
Evan
Reif. “The Atrocity
Mill: How the West Conjures Up Atrocities Overseas to Cover for its Own.” CovertAction Magazine (4-21-23).
Recently, American doctor and ex-Marine Pete Reed was killed
near the city of Bakhmut in Ukraine. The reaction to Reed’s life and
death is illuminating.
READ MORE →
[The following
is from the last half of a long article, which blames Ukrainians and US for a
number of atrocities in the Ukraine War, and absolves the Russians of
atrocities of which they are accused. –D]
Regardless of what happened to Pete Reed in
Bakhmut or the unnamed Russians in Donetsk, it is unlikely that anyone involved
will ever be so much as investigated, let alone prosecuted, for their deaths.
The simple fact is that the laws of war are at best a thin façade that
evaporates on contact with the enemy and at worst nothing more than a
comforting fantasy. While they were well-intentioned, these laws are toothless,
contradictory and intentionally full of loopholes and exceptions to allow the
guilty party to escape any consequences.
We see no clearer
demonstration of this than from Pete’s previous engagements as part of
America’s disastrous, illegal and utterly unjustifiable interventions in the
Middle East. As part of the so-called Global War on Terror, the United States
and its allies invaded, massacred and terrorized millions in the region with
almost no repercussions.
The invasions were followed with endless proxy
wars which America and its NATO allies have orchestrated in countries such as Syria
and Libya. Estimates of the dead in Syria alone range
from 320,000 to 500,000, and the decade-long war has displaced millions more,
causing a worldwide refugee crisis. As the Syrian people were forced to flee
their homes, American bandits moved
in to seize Syrian oil production, robbing the country and its people to help
satisfy America’s insatiable thirst for oil.
The “civilized” NATO countries which
use their alleged tolerance and solidarity as a rhetorical weapon against
Russia have responded to millions of innocent people fleeing the devastation
the alliance has wrought on their countries in much the same way as their
grandfathers did in the 1940s. Refugees face widespread exploitation, sexual assault and
violence; they are often shot and killed by border patrols or drown in
makeshift boats crossing the sea. Those who survive are put in concentration
camps in the poorer border states where conditions are so dire
that suicide is rampant. Countries like Denmark rob
Middle Eastern refugees and then deport them
to a certain death in their shattered homelands, all while opening their arms
to Ukrainian refugees.
These race-based laws have been compared to those of Nazi Germany,
once again showing us the true face of the “rules-based international order.”
The United States and NATO have provided weapons, training and
even fire support to
a multitude of terrorist groups in Syria, including al-Qaeda, through the CIA’s
“Timber Sycamore” program. Many of these weapons found their way to the black
market, where they were re-sold to ISIS or
simply stolen by
Jordanian and Saudi Arabian intelligence. Joe Biden was
one of the primary supporters of this program; he personally made visits to the
arms bazaars of Jordan to ensure America was getting its money’s worth. We will
never know just how much death and destruction these seeds will sow throughout
the world.
Libya was a stable country with a standard of
living on par with the Baltics before NATO’s intervention. Now,
after the Obama regime’s Wahhabi thugs
“liberated” the nation in 2011, open-air slave markets work in the streets
of Tripoli.
The “moderate rebels” have even absconded with
Libya’s stocks of uranium,
leading to concerns of nuclear proliferation. Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of
State at the time, responded to the immiseration, murder and enslavement of the
nation and its people with laughter,
quipping “We came. We saw. He [Qaddafi] died.”
The people responsible for these crimes have,
with very few exceptions, walked away scot-free and are now undergoing the
process of rehabilitation among
the press and political class, most of whom are looking to whitewash their
complicity in these same crimes. Many of them have now moved on to Ukraine,
emboldened by a complete lack of consequence for their murderous misadventures. [US atrocities in Afghanistan, Kuwait, and
Iraq. . . .]
The war that followed was an absolute
slaughter. After the quick destruction of the now badly depleted and
demoralized Iraqi armed forces, the U.S. and its allies set about the bloody
task of subjugating the Iraqi people. In the resulting eight-year war, at least 400,000 civilians
died from violence, but violence is not the only killer in war.
America and its allies systematically
dismantled critical infrastructure in Iraq. The Iraqi people were deprived
of electricity,
clean water and sewers, resulting in epidemic
outbreaks of infectious disease. Communications lines were
intentionally destroyed, and towers knocked out, depriving Iraqi first
responders of their ability to communicate with the victims. Warehouses of
vital goods were bombed and with them went the food and medicine necessary to
respond to these humanitarian crises. The Iraqis who died from these more
mundane atrocities have never been included in the official tallies.
A peer-reviewed 2006 study in the renowned
medical journal The Lancet attempted
to count the lives extinguished as “collateral damage” by America’s illegal
full-scale invasion of Iraq and came up with a number exceeding 600,000. The
response from a cowed, servile media and government-affiliated think tanks and
academia was so negative that the authors were effectively blackballed, cut off
from the necessary funding to conduct such a study ever again. We can only say
with certainty that the butcher’s bill has increased significantly since then.
American troops bombed hospitals and schools, shot
up weddings and markets and
massacred thousands at roadblocks throughout
the country. The U.S. bombarded Iraq with cluster bombs and white phosphorus, and
poisoned the water and land through use of depleted uranium and other toxic
chemicals, causing a rate of unprecedented birth defects vastly
more than that of the United States, along with massively increased rates of
cancer, renal disease and other serious ailments.
The Iraqis who have died from this and will
continue to die for generations are once again not included in official figures
of the dead. The countless Iraqi children who survive and must suffer with
these terrible defects may pity those dead, as they have little hope of their
poisoners ever being brought to justice.
Of course, America did not do all this for no
reason. American capitalists turned the death and suffering of a nation into
record profits through lucrative government contracts; five arms
dealers posted revenues in the billions as their weapons were
used to massacre Iraqi people like animals in the street. Open corruption
became commonplace and, before long, contractors were
even rewarded with massive bonuses after killing American troops due to
negligence and greed. Corporations affiliated with the Bush regime
were allowed to loot and pillage the country at will, sucking it dry of
resources that could have benefited the Iraqi people. The bandits in uniform
even stole Iraq’s gold reserves, further impoverishing the Iraqi people for the
benefit of the American economy.
Once again, Joe Biden was
one of the primary backers of this nightmare: In the run-up to the war, he was
a nearly omnipresent figure in the media, eagerly selling the Bush
administration’s deadly lies about Saddam’s WMDs and links to al-Qaeda. Biden
clashed with his own party to such an extent that he once bragged the war might
not have happened without his support.
After the deed was done and the war dragged on
into his Vice Presidency, Biden then backed the disastrous government of Nouri
al-Maliki against the advice of all his advisers, further accelerating the
disintegration of Iraq. By his own admission, Biden backed al-Maliki due to his
support of a law which gave U.S. forces immunity from prosecution in Iraq,
allowing the orgy of looting and
But the crime most relevant to the story of
Pete Reed is the widespread campaign of illegal detention and torture carried
out by the American military and intelligence.
We will never know exactly how many people
were kidnapped, held without charges, and tortured by the U.S. and its allies
during their illegal war. The lowest possible number is still more than 100,000, although the existence of what are
known as “ghost detainees”,
prisoners who do not exist on official records, makes ascertaining the exact
number impossible. While the United States is assigned most of the blame for
this “Extraordinary Rendition” program, its allies, both NATO and otherwise,
were directly involved in every step of the process. . . .
|
On Monday, September 26, 2022, a series of
underwater explosions blew huge holes into the Nord Stream 1 and 2, two pairs
of pipelines, constructed to carry Russian natural gas to Germany under the
Baltic Sea. These four pipelines, steel-reinforced concrete cables built to
withstand the direct impact of the anchor of an aircraft carrier, were
destroyed in a clandestine act of sabotage, according to an investigation by
Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh. The pair of Nord Stream 1
pipelines carried Russian gas to Germany until Moscow cut off supplies at the
end of August 2022. The pair of Nord Stream 2 pipelines, which would have
doubled the amount of gas that would be available to Germany and Western
Europe, were never operational as Germany suspended its certification process
shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.
White House spokesperson Adrienne Watson
called Hersh’s report “false and complete fiction.” CIA spokesperson Tammy
Thorp said: “This claim is completely and utterly false. . . .”
These explosions are not insignificant
acts. They are acts of war. They expose not only the collapse of the rule
of law, but the lack of oversight by Congress. I covered the mining of
Nicaragua’s harbors in 1983 by the Reagan administration as a reporter in
Central America. The mining was designed cripple the economy in Nicaragua and
boost the fortunes of the US-backed contra rebels seeking to overthrow the
Sandinista government. The mining backfired. It sparked outrage around the
globe and saw Congress cut off funding for the Contras a year later. The
International Court of Justice in 1986 ruled against the United States over its
mining of the harbors.
Hersh’s revelations should have led to a
similar condemnation by Congress and an internal investigation into illegal
activities by the CIA and Pentagon. It should have prompted news organizations
to dig deeper into a scandal, a flagrant violation of the U.N. Charter and
international treaties. It should have prompted a national debate about the war
in Ukraine and the steady escalation of our involvement, one that could lead to
a direct confrontation with Russia and nuclear war. Joining me to discuss his
latest investigative piece is Seymour Hersh, one of our most important and
fearless investigative reporters who, among many ground-breaking stories,
exposed the U.S. Army’s 1969 My Lai massacre and cover-up, the Watergate
scandal, the secret bombing of Cambodia, the torture by U.S. soldiers at Abu
Ghraib of Iraqi prisoners and the false narrative told by the U.S. government
about the events surrounding the killing of Osama bin Laden. [Transcript follows. –D]
WE NEED INTERNATIONAL LAW
Roger Kotila,
Ph.D. “UN Needs the Earth Constitution to Deal with World Criminals.”
Earth Federation
News & Views . Via TRANSCEND
Media Service. 25 Jul 2024 – As we
watch helplessly, violators of international law go free, unable to be arrested
by the UN, the ICJ (World Court), or the ICC. Leaders of Bully nations
break the Law with impunity. There is no world federal enforcement to protect
the citizenry.
Roger Kotila, Ph.D. is a peace activist and a psychologist
(ret.). . . . President of Democratic World Federalists he is co-editor
of DWF
NEWS, and editor of Earth Federation News & Views. He
supports a “new UN” under the Earth Constitution. www.earthfederation.info Email: earthstarradio@aol.com
Tags: Democratic World
Federalists-DWF, Earth, Gaza, Genocide, International Court of Justice
ICJ, International Criminal Court
ICC, Israel, Netanyahu, USA, United Nations, War crimes, World.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 29 Jul
2024.
More articles on UNITED NATIONS: Judge Blocks Trump Sanctions on Francesca Albanese;
UN Chief Says US Unpaid Dues Worth Billions Are
'Non-Negotiable'.
TRANSCEND – A Network for Peace Development
Environment founded by Johan Galtung.
END US LAWLESSNESS ANTHOLOGY #3
