Monday, September 28, 2009

Are We All War Criminals?; There Are No Wars Without War Crimes And War Criminals…And All Combatant Nations Are Guilty…Not Just The Vanquished!


Are We All War Criminals?; There Are No Wars Without War Crimes And War Criminals…And All Combatant Nations Are Guilty…Not Just The Vanquished!

“There are no clean hands in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, Palestine, The USA, and soon Iran. War is the darkest of humanities enterprises and it unleashes the darkest impulses of combatants who believe they are shielded by righteous fervor and sanctioned patriotic duty to kill at will.” In this nation we have enacted legislation to justify criminality, protect war criminals and in the name of “A Patriotic War Against Terrorism”; we have allowed a climate of fear, a cultural corrosion that causes us to recoil from criticism and the type of action that characterized our fore fathers and every servant soldier that gave his/her life blood for that which we profess to believe in. We have become enabling cowards and collaborators, manipulated puppets of a corporate dictated government that only demands that any of us that stand on principles, true justice and the hope and dream of what we could be and should be, be silent, or be crushed by blind flock-following police powers that have been amassed by the state. There will come that moment, that moment that Jefferson understood when people can be pushed no further and a nation’s citizenry will resort to the same violence that oppresses them!

The day will come when we will have no choice but to take back our nation and begin anew. The powerful who have corrupted America in the premeditated cultural wars shall not survive and likewise the timid shall not survive. It is a horrid forecast, but we have allowed the deterioration of our personal freedoms and well-being to be force marched to the abyss of extermination. We have permitted both ideological/cultural corruptions to be kneaded into a poisonous loaf of bread with the botulism of corporate/financial corrosion and we have consumed it with the wine of faux patriotism and perverted religion. We have sacrificed ourselves and generations as yet unborn on the altar of flock subjugation and surrender.

If this be true; I want nothing of this “unholy service”! If we are willing to be reduced to the serfdom of the early Industrial Revolution, prepared to have the lives of our children reduced to the toil of our Grand and Great Grandparents; I want nothing of this. If we are prepared to accept that we will finance the resurrection of the rich, refund them all that they have lost in their crazed-failed lust for personal wealth so that we can go begging like dogs for the hopeful morsel of a re-employment hand out; I want nothing of this.

If we/I, am expected to lick the boots of those who consider us expendable and replaceable as mere societal trash; this is not tolerable.

If we are supposed to accept the hypocrisy of : “We are all in this together” while we suffer the most and they lose nothing on their closing balance sheets; this is not acceptable.

When are we going to learn that those who cloak themselves in power, the power of wealth that permits them to buy governments and all elected officials under that rotting umbrella; care not one wit for anyone on this planet lest they serve their precious balance sheets.

We are dust beneath their feet. Their greed, avarice and mouthed hypocrisies so great as to be unimaginable by anyone with an ounce of decency.

They would author wars in the pretense of necessity. They would foment the causes for those conflicts; invite them as collateral damage of their desires, knowing others would die for their ill-fated schemes. The governments and Congress men and women will willingly do their bidding for their own personal and ego driven needs and fashion every spin/sound bite to justify them as necessary, justified, patriotic and demanding of our sacrifice and understanding.

“We are nothing; they are all”; we are being conditioned to accept that premise. We do not have to accept a human condition defined by other.

We do not have to accept war as inevitable component of the human condition. If we accept that in our current state of human development that war will continue to be a legitimate enterprise of nations, leaders and corporate powers as a function of our unwillingness to force change; we are to blame. We, you and I can make that assumption unacceptable. Those lesser species of humanity can be swept from the stage by our numbers and will, not by mere political theatrics, but by mass uprisings that cause their being brought to justice before legitimate benches of justice and accountability.

It may well come to pass that, that moment may cost some of us our lives in actions of civil disobedience, in resistance, rebellion. revolt and revolution. That has been the history of our species on this planet. It will not change until we establish a bed rock foundation of right and wrong and removal from o our midst of those who believe that they can play us, manipulate us through the vulnerabilities of belief and opinion.

The day must come when advance, exiting discovery and development profits not the few but benefits the many. The day must come that the few dictate the poverty and subjugation of the masses must end. The day must come when we are all in this together, and as brothers and sisters in humanity we can march forward in the betterment of the human condition/experience instead of the inhumane artificial polarizations of race, color or creed permits extremists to advantage those differences with the right to kill, maim and exploit a single brother of sister in our common humanity, be it those who would rule, those who would preach from pulpits, or those who would hammer forge the untruths of the news with their own propagandized call to hate and bigotry. I will have none of this, and neither should you! (Ed.)

Repeal telecom immunity and roll back PATRIOT ACT abuses

Irish4Palestine: ISRAEL MAKES THREATS OVER WAR CRIMES
By Irish4Palestine

ISRAEL MAKES THREATS OVER WAR CRIMES. Someone needs to put these arrogant murdering criminals in their place. Israel tells the PA they better "hop to it" and inform the International Criminal Court to drop all charges against Israel, ...Irish4Palestine - http://irish4palestine.blogspot.com/

Goldstone: Holocaust Shaped View On War Crimes


Judge Richard Goldstone, the head of a United Nations commission that this week charged Israel with committing war crimes in the Gaza Strip during its offensive there last winter, believes bringing war criminals to justice stems from the lessons of the Holocaust, according to a lecture he delivered in Israel in 2000.

Goldstone spoke about the subject at Jerusalem's Yakar: Center for Tradition and Creativity, at a lecture attended by former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak. The Israeli jurist introduced Goldstone as "a dear friend" with "very deep ties to Israel." Goldstone, in turn, said Barak was his hero and inspiration.

In the lecture, concerning international efforts to bring war criminals to justice, Goldstone said the Holocaust has shaped legal protocol on war, adding that it was "the worst war crime in the world."

He also said the perception of war crimes against humanity should resonate differently to Jewish ears, in light of how the Holocaust shaped conventions relevant to the subject.

Goldstone added that as a jurist, he viewed the Holocaust as a unique occurrence because of how it affected judicial protocol on war, as well as international and humanitarian judicial approaches.

The laws that had been in place before the Holocaust were not equipped to deal with crimes of the Holocaust's scale and therefore sought to define a new crime, which they labeled a crime against humanity, he said.

These crimes were so great, he explained, they went beyond their direct victims or the countries in which they were perpetrated, to harm humanity as a whole. This definition, he said, meant that perpetrators were to be prosecuted anywhere, by any country.

This rational, he went on to say, constituted the basis for the concept of universal jurisdiction, which is being applied by some countries where Israel Defense Forces officers are charged for alleged violations during their command in the West Bank and Gaza.

The formative event of the universal jurisdiction concept, Goldstone told listeners, was the trial that Israel gave the high-ranking Nazi officer Adolf Eichman in 1961.

The international tribunals that judged Serbian war criminals for their actions in Bosnia, and the establishment of tribunals to review the actions of perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide - in which South Africa-born Goldstone served as chief prosecutor - also relied on lessons drawn from the Holocaust, he said at the lecture.

He noted that no similar courts were set up to look into the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia in the '70s or Saddam Hussein's acts against Iraqi Kurds.

The first time such tribunals were set up were for Bosnia, Goldtone said, because this was the first time after the Holocaust that such occurrences happened in "Europe's backyard." The war in Bosnia led to the formation of tribunals on crimes against humanity, he said, because European men with "blue eyes and light skin" again carried out actions similar to those observed in the Holocaust.

Israel, he added, was one of the first countries to support the formation of permanent court of law for crimes against humanity - a proposal that came up following the successful performance of the special tribunals on Bosnia.

However, that changed, he said, after Egypt insisted at the Rome conference that the mandate of this permanent court include occupied territories. This prompted Israel to join the six other countries that voted against the formation of the International Court of Justice, including the United States, China and Libya.

BREAKING NEWS: Israel Demands PA Drop War Crimes Suit At The Hague
By Editor

Tensions are mounting between Israel and the Palestinian Authority following Ramallah's call on the International Court at The Hague to examine claims of “war crimes” that the IDF allegedly committed during Operation Cast Lead in the ...
Australians for Palestine - http://australiansforpalestine.com/

Britain's Top Officer Secretly Visited Israeli War Criminal ...

Picture: Sir David Richards Britsh Army MPACUK Comment: Our armed forces should be judged by the company they keep. The Israeli military are amongst the most immoral in the world. MPACUK - Empowerment through... - http://www.mpacuk.org/

http://waronyou.com/topics/bush-administration-officials-should-be-prosecuted-for-war-crimes-soldiers-should-disobey-wrongful-orders/

Are We All War Criminals?

I am amazed. Our government has tortured in our names, and the streets are empty, the campuses are calm. Our President wants only "torture-plus" investigated for possible prosecution. Arguably, not to investigate credible allegations of torture is itself a war crime. But hardly a peep.

Oh, a few people -- Bill Egnor on Firedoglake, Jonathon Turley on MSNBC, for example -- have not given up. But interest in the issue waxes and wanes. When new reports come out, there is a flurry of posts on sites such as this one. But we hardly keep the pressure on full throttle.

I know there are other issues. I know that tens of thousands die needlessly every year because of our morally bankrupt health care system. I know hundreds of millions are imperiled by our head-in-the-sand approach to global warming. But when our government officials proudly proclaim we have committed war crimes, and the current administration refuses to investigate, something is fundamentally wrong. We have crossed a line that cannot be crossed. Civilization itself is imperiled. Maybe Hippocrates should have said, "First do no torture."

I was there when President Obama came to my city to deliver a rousing address on health care. I have high hopes for him. It never occurred to me that I should have attempted to make a citizen's arrest of the President for war crimes. Instead I stood up and dutifully applauded loudly when he mentioned "public option."

Are we all war criminals?

Vidiot Speak: People sometimes ask me what the differences are twixt…
By Bill Arnett
Iraq, a
war of aggression ordered by war criminals seeking revenge for w's daddy and control of that nations resources. Again the people there beg us to just go and leave them to make their own choices. But in Vietnam, another war we ...
Vidiot Speak - http://vidiotspeak.blogspot.com/

None So Blind – And None So Deaf = The American People ...By jcortina
Isn't it so predictable – that American citizens will never see or hear mega murdering
war criminalmonsters like Netanyahoo have their feet put to the fire with HONEST QUESTIONS about their heinous genocidal crimes! ...
mynameisjoecortina - http://mynameisjoecortina.wordpress.com/

Nethanyhu's speech: a quick summary
Christian Science Monitor
... in the Goldstone report, is based on a dangerous moral equivalency that would have turned Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt into war criminals. ...See all stories on this topic

Think Again: Palestine
Foreign Policy
Yes: generals Eisenhower, Patton, mcarthur, Sherman, Montgomery, et al would all be
war criminals by today's rules/standards for conducting battle; ...See all stories on this topic

MI6: Saudis Will Let Israel Bomb Iran Nuclear Site

Citing a meeting between MI6 chief Sir John Scarlett and Mossad chief Meir Dagan, British newspaper The Daily Express is claiming that Saudi Arabia is “ready to allow Israel to bomb Iran’s new nuclear site.” http://antiwar.com/ (more…)

Can you imagine what would happen if Chavez did NOT arm Venezuela?

PR-Inside.com (Pressemitteilung) - The Henry Morgenthau Plan was implemented and over a million perished... We are constantly reminded of the Holocaust and the six ...

New Cheney Taking Stage For The G.O.P.

NASHVILLE — Liz Cheney looks nothing like her father, but it is clear who he is. She was introduced as “our favorite vice president’s daughter” at a recent gathering of conservative women here. She kept invoking him in her speech, conveying his best regards, and likes to share cute stories about Dad trying to master his new BlackBerry.

Like her father, Ms. Cheney speaks in understated, almost academic cadences, head veering down into her notes. She also shares his willingness to pummel President Obama in stark, disdainful tones, not so much criticizing as taunting him.

“Mr. President, in a ticking time-bomb scenario, with American lives at stake,” she said, “are you really unwilling to subject a terrorist to enhanced interrogation to get information that would prevent an attack?”

By speech’s end, the crowd was standing, and the former vice president’s daughter was being mobbed for photos and hounded to run for office.

Liz Cheney is “a red state rock star,” declared Rebecca Wales, one of the organizers of this event, the “Smart Girls Summit.”

“The future of the Cheney message,” added a conservative blogger who goes by the name of Fingers Malloy (a rare man in this crowd, and even rarer, one with a Mohawk). He also called her “one of the fresh faces of our movement.”

It is a source of debate whether “Cheney” is an asset or a liability for this 43-year-old lawyer and former State Department official who keeps turning up on TV, at lecterns and in discussions about future Republican candidates. There is also the question of whether the “Cheney message” on national security — which essentially translates to an aggressive and interventionist approach — is something the Republican Party should be trumpeting, or burying.

What is clear is that Ms. Cheney, at a minimum, has become a rallying point for conservative views on national security. In a broader sense, she is being promoted as a rising star of the Republican Party, one who is hardly shying from the Cheney brand. (She is married to the lawyer Phillip Perry, but uses her maiden name.)

Ms. Cheney’s resolute national security positions seem to differ not at all from those of her favorite vice president. “I think you’d be hard-pressed to find any daylight at all between Liz’s and my father’s views,” said her younger sister, Mary Cheney. “It’s not because she’s been indoctrinated. It’s because he’s right.” Mary Cheney was prominent in her father’s vice-presidential campaigns but has drawn fire from some conservatives for having a child as part of a same-sex couple.

Liz Cheney’s appeal in conservative settings like the one in Nashville was evident within seconds of her arrival. She strolled in without entourage to a Sheraton ballroom, unrecognized at first, past a cluster of women getting their pictures taken with Joe the Plumber.

“God bless you, I pray for your abundance,” a woman from Scottsdale, Ariz., Lori Frantzve, said upon realizing who Ms. Cheney was.

“Oh, I have five kids; I have plenty of abundance,” Ms. Cheney replied.

“Hey sister!” the conservative columnist Michelle Malkin greeted Ms. Cheney. They posed for pictures and air-kissed. Ms. Malkin proclaimed herself a “fan girl” and told Ms. Cheney she was “doing a great job out there.”

Working with only a Yahoo account, Ms. Cheney has been fielding dozens of speaking and interview requests a month, accepting many. (She declined to be interviewed for this article, saying she was uncomfortable with a story focused on her rather than her policy beliefs.) She is scheduled to appear at fund-raisers for Republican candidates through the rest of the year, and is a co-founder of a Web site, KeepAmericaSafe.com, that is scheduled to go online next month as a forum, resource and publication devoted to hawkish conservative views.

She argues her father’s positions with a cable-ready ferocity reminiscent of her mother, Lynne (a former regular on CNN’s “Crossfire”).

Mr. Obama is “an American president who seems to be afraid to defend America,” she toldLarry King on his CNN program in an appearance that drew notice when Ms. Cheney appeared not to contest a suggestion that the president had not been born in the United States.

Clips of Ms. Cheney’s on-air smack-downs with liberal adversaries have become viral sensations among conservative bloggers — most recently, an interruption-fest with Sam Donaldson over the C.I.A.’s interrogation methods on ABC’s “This Week.”

When Mr. Donaldson said that everyone he knows thinks torture and waterboarding are wrong, Ms. Cheney shot back: “Waterboarding isn’t torture, and we can go down that path. The lack of seriousness here is important.”

Dan Senor, a Republican foreign policy adviser who was the Bush administrations’ chief spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, said: “There are a lot of quote-unquote Republican strategists who think Dick Cheney should be lying low. The truth is, he has given voice to a hawkish critique of the current administration that is important. And I think Liz is ably representing the next wave of voices.”

Ms. Cheney conveys a much sunnier disposition than her father ever has.

“If you’re going to a boring meeting, she’s a fun person to sit next to,” said Elliott Abrams, who worked in the Bush administration and knew Ms. Cheney, who worked on the promotion of global democracy at the State Department. “She’s someone who would not hesitate to whisper something like, ‘Can you believe how terrible this speech is?’ ”

Ms. Cheney is fiercely loyal to and protective of her father and devotes great energy to matters that relate — directly or indirectly — to the preservation (or repair) of his legacy. She persuaded him to write his memoirs, is collaborating closely with him on it, and said in Nashville that she would be occupied with the project through 2011.

When asked by a member of the audience if she would run for office, Ms. Cheney said, “We’ll see.” She said her main focus now, beside the memoir, was shuttling her children among school, play-dates and soccer practices.

Ms. Cheney is described — not in an admiring way — as a “true believer” and a “chip off the old block” by Lawrence B. Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel who was chief of staff toColin L. Powell, who has been an avid critic of Mr. Cheney, when Mr. Powell was secretary of state.

By all accounts, the Cheneys are a tight-knit and at times insular unit steeped in the family business. The extended brood all live within about 15 minutes of one another in northern Virginia. They gather for Sunday night dinners, usually at Liz’s house, and travel to family homes in Jackson Hole, Wyo., and the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

Ms. Cheney began her Nashville speech by saying that she had asked her father for advice on what she should say. “That’s a really important room full of people,” she said he told her. “So don’t screw it up.” Laughter ensued.

She concluded by saying conservatism was resurgent and urged activists to stay involved.

“We can’t win if we don’t fight,” Ms. Cheney said, noting that she was taught that lesson years before “by a great American, my dad, Dick Cheney.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fldR5NdSG9U

By Daniel Vojir
Dear God! It's Finally Happened: The Dueling Prayer Groups Converge on Washington!
Islamaphobia has hit a new high with the likes of Family Research Council's Tony Perkins and Shirley Dobson calling for all-out prayer war. It would be funny if Christofascists weren't so serious about wiping Islam off the face of the earth! Rod Parsley is probably as happy as a pig in...

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