The people of the United States of America should force their government to join the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The ICC is charged with prosecuting people who commit war crimes and crimes against humanity. It is meant to be a global organization, so that no one in the world can get away with these crimes. Currently 123 nations are members.
The United States of America (USA) is not a member. The USA helped plan for the ICC and participated in writing the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. But then the U.S. representative voted against the U.N. sponsored convention in 1998. Our government refused to ratify the statute or participate in the ICC. [Strangely, the U.S. had signed the statute after voting against the actual wording].
Why? Because equality before the law is a fine concept when used to hang Nazi or Japanese leaders or African dictators. But the U.S. Congress and Presidents, political parties and generals don't want the laws against war crimes and crimes against humanity applied to them.
This is true even though the statute only allows for prosecution of crimes committed after the treaty came into effect (after a sufficient number of nations ratified it) on July 1, 2002. The vast sweep of American history, and its vast array of war criminals, living and dead, are safe from prosecution for crimes committed before that date.
It is possible that even if the U.S. (and other renegade nations like Russia, China, and India) were to join the ICC, our leaders would continue to commit crimes. The U.S. could also refuse to accept the judgment of the court after a crime is committed. But it seems likely that the crime rate would go down if criminal masterminds thought there was any possibility that they would be prosecuted.
The only way the U.S. will join the ICC is if there is sufficient pressure from below. Most of the USA's ruling elite have committed or condoned war crimes. They are still bent on committing war crimes and crimes against humanity if that should serve their economic or political purposes.
Pressure from below has been scant because most Americans think all our national actions are justified in some way. If you remind them of what was considered a war crime at the Nuremberg Trials of German leaders in 1945 (or of the Japanese in the Far East Tribunal), they have no problem with it. Try then reminding them of American historic actions that clearly would be considered war crimes under the Nuremberg rules. Watch them weasel out reasons (they are repeating from USA propaganda mills) why the USA is excused in each and every case.
It is hard to say which political party is worse, the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. Republican rhetoric tends to dismiss the ICC and any suggestion that Republicans have ever committed war crimes as internationalist communist U.N. conspiracy theory. Many Democrats give lip service to the ideal of peace, and won't admit that the three worst American war criminals of the 20th century were Democratic Party leaders: Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Lyndon Johnson.
A little-known aspect (in the USA) of the Nuremberg rules is how a political party is designated as a war-crimes organization. The court's guideline was that if one of the leaders was convicted of a major war crime (notably invading another nation), then the entire party was a war crimes organization and was to be outlawed. Thus the Nazi Party was outlawed in Germany after World War II. [See also: War Crimes Organizations and Nuremberg Article 9]
That is the only precedent on the subject. In other words, if it is proven that Lyndon Johnson invaded Vietnam, or Truman ordered unrestricted bombings of cities, or even the invasion of Panama by George H. W. Bush, then their political parties should be banned. According to the one good precedent. Note that the USA set up the Nuremberg trials and made the rules.
The ICC does not seem to be strictly following the precedent of Nuremberg. But since it is not under the absolute control of U.S. war criminals and their organization, there is always the possibility that the current rules could be made more strict.
Each and every citizen of the USA (and the world) should ask: do I understand what actions constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity? Understanding that, should all war criminals be brought to justice, including those of powerful nations like the USA?
Be sure to ask every politician you meet if they support the USA joining the ICC. If one says no, for whatever reason, know you are dealing with a criminal.
Be aware that by registering as a voter in the Democratic Party, or the Republican Party, you have joined a war crimes organization and are condoning war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Showing posts with label crimes against humanity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label crimes against humanity. Show all posts
Saturday, January 31, 2015
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Persecuting the Cannabis Community is a Crime Against Humanity
Rather than reposting here, I'll just give you the link:
Persecution of Cannabis Community is a Crime Against Humanity Which is at Mendoday, my Mendocino County web site.
Of course crimes against humanity come in shades of gray, ugly shades of gray. In Roman Catholic, Francoist Spain (1936-1975) they shot people with no or minimalist trials just for not being a good Catholic supporter of the General. It is not that bad for marijuana users in the U.S., though millions have been put in prisons with serious detrimental effects on their lives. It means they are on record as being criminals, which makes it hard to find employment, and as felons they may lose the right to vote. The black market also means the stakes are high enough in the trade to result in deaths inflicted by fighting over profits.
Persecution of Cannabis Community is a Crime Against Humanity Which is at Mendoday, my Mendocino County web site.
Of course crimes against humanity come in shades of gray, ugly shades of gray. In Roman Catholic, Francoist Spain (1936-1975) they shot people with no or minimalist trials just for not being a good Catholic supporter of the General. It is not that bad for marijuana users in the U.S., though millions have been put in prisons with serious detrimental effects on their lives. It means they are on record as being criminals, which makes it hard to find employment, and as felons they may lose the right to vote. The black market also means the stakes are high enough in the trade to result in deaths inflicted by fighting over profits.
Sunday, April 28, 2013
On Targeting Civilians
Targeting civilians is always a war crime or crime against humanity. The leeway for incidental civilian deaths
The Boston Marathon attack, in addition to being an ordinary crime, was a war crime. It is fair to conclude now that the attackers were motivated by religion and anti-imperialist sentiments. One also seemed to have a personal grudge against America because as a non-citizen he was excluded from the national level of boxing competition, and then was further injured when he had his application for citizenship denied. Had he been made a citizen he would doubtless have gone back to boxing and done only injury to other volunteers for that brutal and uncivilized sport.
We cannot say the same for policies made and conducted by powerful politicians, including our own.
President Barack Obama seems to think that if he minimizes his war crimes, crimes against humanity, and attacks on human rights, he is okay. He is just driving a little over the speed limit because his passengers - capitalists and the corporate security state - want him to get to a preconceived goal a little bit faster than the rules allow for.
So if some women and children get blasted to pieces by a drone or a helicopter gunship or trigger-happy U.S. gunmen on patrol somewhere, Barack figures he has his ass covered. I can hear him at the trial: "I never gave orders to purposefully kill civilians."
I imagine his predecessor Franklin D. Roosevelt would have said the same thing, had anyone been powerful enough to put him on trial. Before World War II, starting with the Japanese invasion of China, President Roosevelt inveighed against any bombing of urban areas. It always involved civilian casualties, and it was a war crime, he pointed out. At least it was a war crime when Japan or Germany or Italy did it. When our ally, the British Empire did it, Roosevelt grew mute. Then he authorized the firebombing of Japanese cities, which was on a far larger scale than had ever been done up until that point. In hypocrisy, at least, the U.S. is Number One.
Or Barack could point to Harry Truman. His team of Democratic Party experts recommended dropping the first two atomic bombs on Japanese cities, after having rejected proposals for demonstration bombings that would have caused minimal casualties, or the destruction of only military targets or personnel. You can almost hear Harry's defense lawyer, "But he did not order the Air Force to bomb civilians. There were some military personnel at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We regret the civilian casualties."
It would take an encyclopedia to cover all of the war crimes and crimes against humanity since the inception of the United States of America.
So don't be surprised in foreigners take American indignation at American civilian casualties with a grain of salt.
Let's get rid of the Democratic and Republican Parties. Let's try George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and other top U.S. decision makers for the War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity they have committed.
Let's put an end to U.S. imperialism. Let's remove all U.S. troops from foreign territories.
Only then can there really be Liberty and Justice for All.
See also: war crimes
The Boston Marathon attack, in addition to being an ordinary crime, was a war crime. It is fair to conclude now that the attackers were motivated by religion and anti-imperialist sentiments. One also seemed to have a personal grudge against America because as a non-citizen he was excluded from the national level of boxing competition, and then was further injured when he had his application for citizenship denied. Had he been made a citizen he would doubtless have gone back to boxing and done only injury to other volunteers for that brutal and uncivilized sport.
We cannot say the same for policies made and conducted by powerful politicians, including our own.
President Barack Obama seems to think that if he minimizes his war crimes, crimes against humanity, and attacks on human rights, he is okay. He is just driving a little over the speed limit because his passengers - capitalists and the corporate security state - want him to get to a preconceived goal a little bit faster than the rules allow for.
So if some women and children get blasted to pieces by a drone or a helicopter gunship or trigger-happy U.S. gunmen on patrol somewhere, Barack figures he has his ass covered. I can hear him at the trial: "I never gave orders to purposefully kill civilians."
I imagine his predecessor Franklin D. Roosevelt would have said the same thing, had anyone been powerful enough to put him on trial. Before World War II, starting with the Japanese invasion of China, President Roosevelt inveighed against any bombing of urban areas. It always involved civilian casualties, and it was a war crime, he pointed out. At least it was a war crime when Japan or Germany or Italy did it. When our ally, the British Empire did it, Roosevelt grew mute. Then he authorized the firebombing of Japanese cities, which was on a far larger scale than had ever been done up until that point. In hypocrisy, at least, the U.S. is Number One.
Or Barack could point to Harry Truman. His team of Democratic Party experts recommended dropping the first two atomic bombs on Japanese cities, after having rejected proposals for demonstration bombings that would have caused minimal casualties, or the destruction of only military targets or personnel. You can almost hear Harry's defense lawyer, "But he did not order the Air Force to bomb civilians. There were some military personnel at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We regret the civilian casualties."
It would take an encyclopedia to cover all of the war crimes and crimes against humanity since the inception of the United States of America.
So don't be surprised in foreigners take American indignation at American civilian casualties with a grain of salt.
Let's get rid of the Democratic and Republican Parties. Let's try George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and other top U.S. decision makers for the War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity they have committed.
Let's put an end to U.S. imperialism. Let's remove all U.S. troops from foreign territories.
Only then can there really be Liberty and Justice for All.
See also: war crimes
Sunday, April 7, 2013
American War Crimes Organizations and Nuremberg Article 9
Are you a member of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party? Then you had better hope that the military of the United State of America keeps the world at bay. Which is not likely to last forever, given that the U.S. government will become bankrupt if interest rates on its debts ever rise above an average of about 5%.
There is a precedent from the Nuremberg trials that allows Democrats and Republicans to be tried simply for being in those parties. Article 9 clearly states that for Crimes Against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes Against Humanity:
The Crimes Against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes Against Humanity of the United States Government, and hence of her leaders and citizens, loom large in history, and not just in the distant past. It is too big of a topic to begin to compass in a short essay. But to illustrate, we need look no further than the events that provided the context for the Nuremberg trials of German political leaders, the losers of World War II.
First, let's touch on the arguments against the legality of the Nuremberg trials, their sentencing and convictions. The U.S. Constitution (in article 1, section 9) prohibits ex post facto laws, but the entirety of the Nuremberg apparatus was created without the traditional legislation involving statutes with clear punishments for clear crimes. The trial was conducted without a jury and with no appeals apparatus, and the trial judges belonged to the injured parties. Despite war crimes being widespread during the period concerned, the charter of the tribunal specifically limits itself to prosecuting members of the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan). Because the very legal propriety of the Tribunal should have been the main question, Article 3 states: Neither the Tribunal, its members nor their alternates can be challenged by the prosecution, or by the Defendants or their Counsel.
Nevertheless, the way of the Law, and particularly Common Law, is that Nuremberg established a precedent. If other nations can hold a kangaroo court and prosecute (and execute) people for war crimes, then the United States of America can legally be subjected to such a court, should our defensive arsenal ever allow it. Or should we have the wisdom to constitute one ourselves.
After the first round of leading Nazi (National Socialist German Workers' Party) officials and government leaders were convicted and hung until dead, the Nazi Party was declared a criminal organization by the tribunal. 8.5 million German citizens had been members, and many were soon tried in the Denazification Campaign, which was also ex post facto in nature.
The Nuremberg Trials were careful to not look too closely at how World War II actually started, repeating the lack of care of Allied historians for the timeline of events leading up to World War I. The judges refused to allow the defense to bring up that it was France that first declared war on Germany or that the German invasion of Norway at the beginning of of the war only managed to get there ahead of a British invasion by a few days. There was some small success, however, in the defense pointing to certain British and American war tactics, notably unrestricted submarine warfare, to push back against certain of the charges.
But, as is so often the case in the law, some mighty big fish got away because they were doing the prosecuting. The level of German bombing of British Empire targets in England was doubtless criminal, but nothing new, and nothing the British themselves had not done in 400 years of empire building. The unprecedented war crimes of World War II were Allied affairs: the complete destruction of cities by bombing, in particular firebombing, and eventually the atomic war waged against Japan.
Americans are so used to excusing their attacks on Japanese cities that they seldom can think clearly about war crimes. They excuse these attacks as military necessities. "Millions of U.S. soldiers would have died if we had been forced to invade Japan." But the U.S. was not being forced to invade Japan. The diplomatic history of the war is one of nearly continuous peace initiatives by the Japanese before, during, and right up to the end of the war, all spurned by President Franklin Roosevelt and his Secretary of State Cordell Hull. [Before the U.S. officially entered the war Roosevelt frequently decried bombing cities as a crime.]
If killing civilians is excused as a war crime because it saves lives of combatants, then the entire Nuremberg prosecution was flawed. The defense lawyers could have argued that Jews, foreign civilians and and German political prisoners who died in or were murdered in the concentration camps were impediments to military success, and that would have been true. The blitz against London could be interpreted as legally justified because it would have saved German lives in the invasion of England, had it taken place.
The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes plain and simple. President Roosevelt had died, so President Harry Truman made the ultimate decision. His advisors were all members of the Democratic Party. Only General Douglas MacArthur, who was a Republican and no bleeding heart, argued against the use of the atomic bomb on cities filled with civilians. He believed, correctly, that it stained the honor of American soldiers.
I see no reason for there to be a statute of limitations on war crimes organizations. The Democratic Party and Republican Party should be declared criminal organizations based on their past actions. Living leaders, mostly Presidents, who have committed war crimes, crimes of peace, or crimes against humanity should be prosecuted and punished appropriately.
The only real question is: what constitutes membership in these parties? Many more Germans voted for the Nazi Party in elections than actually belonged to the party. Party membership was clear: one paid one's dues and received a membership card. In the U.S. the parties don't keep membership rolls. It is hard to say if registering to vote in the primary of a political party actually constitutes becoming a member of a party. Certainly donating money to a party should be held as the rough equivalent of paying membership dues to the Nazi Party.
I guess we'll have to sort that out when be set up our Peace and Justice Tribunal. I'd like to hold it in Philadelphia, to remind us that crimes against humanity are in the U.S. DNA, and that restitution has never been made for the wars against native American tribes or for slavery, indentured servitude, or the more subtle crimes of the ruling class of this nation.
There is a precedent from the Nuremberg trials that allows Democrats and Republicans to be tried simply for being in those parties. Article 9 clearly states that for Crimes Against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes Against Humanity:
Article 9.Thus it would only take one conviction of a Democratic Party or Republican Party official, living or dead, to turn all party members into criminals. As criminals they would lose their right to vote, which would allow non-war crimes political parties to gain the ascendancy, much as the Republican Party gained dominance after the Civil War by preventing Democratic Party leaders (who mostly had also been Confederate State leaders) from voting and running for office.
At the trial of any individual member of any group or organization the Tribunal may declare (in connection with any act of which the individual may be convicted) that the group or organization of which the individual was a member was a criminal organization.
The Crimes Against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes Against Humanity of the United States Government, and hence of her leaders and citizens, loom large in history, and not just in the distant past. It is too big of a topic to begin to compass in a short essay. But to illustrate, we need look no further than the events that provided the context for the Nuremberg trials of German political leaders, the losers of World War II.
Defendants at Nuremberg Trial, Franz von Papen standing
First, let's touch on the arguments against the legality of the Nuremberg trials, their sentencing and convictions. The U.S. Constitution (in article 1, section 9) prohibits ex post facto laws, but the entirety of the Nuremberg apparatus was created without the traditional legislation involving statutes with clear punishments for clear crimes. The trial was conducted without a jury and with no appeals apparatus, and the trial judges belonged to the injured parties. Despite war crimes being widespread during the period concerned, the charter of the tribunal specifically limits itself to prosecuting members of the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan). Because the very legal propriety of the Tribunal should have been the main question, Article 3 states: Neither the Tribunal, its members nor their alternates can be challenged by the prosecution, or by the Defendants or their Counsel.
Nevertheless, the way of the Law, and particularly Common Law, is that Nuremberg established a precedent. If other nations can hold a kangaroo court and prosecute (and execute) people for war crimes, then the United States of America can legally be subjected to such a court, should our defensive arsenal ever allow it. Or should we have the wisdom to constitute one ourselves.
After the first round of leading Nazi (National Socialist German Workers' Party) officials and government leaders were convicted and hung until dead, the Nazi Party was declared a criminal organization by the tribunal. 8.5 million German citizens had been members, and many were soon tried in the Denazification Campaign, which was also ex post facto in nature.
The Nuremberg Trials were careful to not look too closely at how World War II actually started, repeating the lack of care of Allied historians for the timeline of events leading up to World War I. The judges refused to allow the defense to bring up that it was France that first declared war on Germany or that the German invasion of Norway at the beginning of of the war only managed to get there ahead of a British invasion by a few days. There was some small success, however, in the defense pointing to certain British and American war tactics, notably unrestricted submarine warfare, to push back against certain of the charges.
But, as is so often the case in the law, some mighty big fish got away because they were doing the prosecuting. The level of German bombing of British Empire targets in England was doubtless criminal, but nothing new, and nothing the British themselves had not done in 400 years of empire building. The unprecedented war crimes of World War II were Allied affairs: the complete destruction of cities by bombing, in particular firebombing, and eventually the atomic war waged against Japan.
Americans are so used to excusing their attacks on Japanese cities that they seldom can think clearly about war crimes. They excuse these attacks as military necessities. "Millions of U.S. soldiers would have died if we had been forced to invade Japan." But the U.S. was not being forced to invade Japan. The diplomatic history of the war is one of nearly continuous peace initiatives by the Japanese before, during, and right up to the end of the war, all spurned by President Franklin Roosevelt and his Secretary of State Cordell Hull. [Before the U.S. officially entered the war Roosevelt frequently decried bombing cities as a crime.]
If killing civilians is excused as a war crime because it saves lives of combatants, then the entire Nuremberg prosecution was flawed. The defense lawyers could have argued that Jews, foreign civilians and and German political prisoners who died in or were murdered in the concentration camps were impediments to military success, and that would have been true. The blitz against London could be interpreted as legally justified because it would have saved German lives in the invasion of England, had it taken place.
The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes plain and simple. President Roosevelt had died, so President Harry Truman made the ultimate decision. His advisors were all members of the Democratic Party. Only General Douglas MacArthur, who was a Republican and no bleeding heart, argued against the use of the atomic bomb on cities filled with civilians. He believed, correctly, that it stained the honor of American soldiers.
I see no reason for there to be a statute of limitations on war crimes organizations. The Democratic Party and Republican Party should be declared criminal organizations based on their past actions. Living leaders, mostly Presidents, who have committed war crimes, crimes of peace, or crimes against humanity should be prosecuted and punished appropriately.
The only real question is: what constitutes membership in these parties? Many more Germans voted for the Nazi Party in elections than actually belonged to the party. Party membership was clear: one paid one's dues and received a membership card. In the U.S. the parties don't keep membership rolls. It is hard to say if registering to vote in the primary of a political party actually constitutes becoming a member of a party. Certainly donating money to a party should be held as the rough equivalent of paying membership dues to the Nazi Party.
I guess we'll have to sort that out when be set up our Peace and Justice Tribunal. I'd like to hold it in Philadelphia, to remind us that crimes against humanity are in the U.S. DNA, and that restitution has never been made for the wars against native American tribes or for slavery, indentured servitude, or the more subtle crimes of the ruling class of this nation.
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Is Zionism a Crime Against Humanity?
Newly appointed United States of America Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday chastised the Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for saying Zionism is a crime against humanity.
Actually, Mr. Erdogan was saying that the international community should consider Islamophobia, or prejudice against people who have Islam as a religion, as a crime against humanity "like Zionism or anti-Semitism or fascism."
There are so many problems with both Mr. Erdogan's and Mr. Kerry's statements that it is worth teasing out the many facts and ideas encompassed by them. Is Zionism a crime against humanity? Let's begin by understanding that Erdogan used the term "crime against humanity" in a rather loose manner.
Crimes against humanity have been defined by international agreement to be serious attacks on humans, possibly including humiliation or degradation, that are a result of government policy. They include, but are not limited to, government-sponsored or enabled murder (particularly mass murder), torture, and physical brutality including rape, as well as denial of human rights for political, racial, gender, or religious reasons. In the context of war they become war crimes. In the worst case they include genocide, the mass murdering of an ethnic or national group, and ethnic cleansing, the murder or expulsion of people from a state for ethnic reasons.
On its face, the general term Zionism is simply the wish of ethnically Jewish people to live in the region near Jerusalem. There is nothing inherently criminal about that, any more than wishing to live in Paris or Nebraska.
Then again, being anti-Semitic is not a crime against humanity, unless it is government policy. Being anti-Islamic is not a crime against humanity, unless it is government policy. Even being fascist is not a crime against humanity; there were fascist states that did not commit such crimes, such as Austria before it was united with Germany in 1938.
However, in practice crimes against humanity have been committed. Fascist crimes against humanity and war crimes are well-documented. Where does Zionism stand in the historic record?
In the 1800s when the modern Zionist movement picked up steam, modern Palestine (including what would become the State of Israel) was part of the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire. Many Jews had long lived peacefully in Palestine, particularly in Jerusalem. Zionists were able to move to Palestine and buy land there, expanding the Jewish population. Perhaps there was some illegal immigration, but for the most part Zionism was characterized by legal immigration into Palestine.
When the British Empire took over Palestine (and most of the Middle East) after World War I, they were obligated to Jews for helping them to win the war. They allowed much more Jewish immigration into Palestine, which created some Arab discontent, but still the immigration was legal and peaceful.
Then came the Holocaust. Many Jewish survivors were angry, militant, and did not feel bound to the old system of ethics or law. Zionism changed. Terrorist Jewish groups appeared in Palestine (they mainly targeted the British at first) and Zionist organizations brought in large numbers of Jewish settlers illegally (by then the British were limiting Jewish immigration to try to placate the increasingly powerful Arab states).
Then the United Nations, which was still largely a military coalition, interfered. The Jewish minority (particularly the newly-arrived European Jews) wanted to create a Jewish State. The native Palestinians wanted to kick out the British Empire and have a democratic state, in which they would be a 65% majority, more if illegal immigrants were expelled. The British and United States pushed the U.N. to favor the Jewish nationalist plan.
U.N. Resolution 181 (November 29, 1947) was also not, in itself, a war crime or crime against humanity, but it acted as an enabler. Rather than calling for elections within a united Palestine, which would have led to peaceful electoral struggle, it called for partition, or racial segregation. It was actually just a recommendation to the British Empire, not a law. While the word independence was used for Arab-Palestinian and Jewish-Palestinian "states," they were to be in an economic union together, with recognized rights for minorities in each.
Another interpretation would be there would be two autonomous regions within the State of Palestine. It should also be noted that the vote was rigged. 13 nations voted against the resolution, including most neutral nations. The 33 votes in favor came mainly from the U.S. and its puppets in Latin America, the Soviet block, and the British imperial block.
There was no declaration of war. Violence escalated. Both Arab and Jewish militias were encouraged by Resolution 181 iteself. Both sides weaponed up and outsiders (more Zionists, including American Jewish organized criminals, and Arab hotheads from several nations) helped promote the situation into a civil war. Both sides had factions that engaged in ethnic cleansing (and both sides had citizens and groups that were appalled by the violence). The better armed, trained, and motivated Jews won. The new State of Israel came into existence on May 14, 1948 when the British quit the scene.
I cannot recount all the wars since that time, or all the crimes against humanity and war crimes on both sides.
Is Zionism a crime against humanity? In the post 1948 setting we find the most troubling evidence that Zionists, now controlling the Israeli government, committed crimes against humanity. There was clearly a great deal of ethnic cleansing. Palestinians driven off by violence were not allowed to return, and so their lands were seized and occupied by Jewish settlers. This was the policy of the State of Israel, and its courts, not just individual Zionists. The process has continued decade by decade since that time, punctuated by attempts by Arab states to obtain a military victory over Israel.
On the other hand, a large number of non-Jewish persons remained within the State of Israel, and they have at least nominal human rights, including the right to vote.
While it is worth examining all the actions that might be construed as crimes against humanity committed in the region, that would take a voluminous study.
I would refrain, and would recommend politicians refrain, from calling Zionism a crime against humanity. The thing to do is to address current injustices by restoring private property that has been stolen from anyone in occupied Palestine since 1948, and by carefully investigating all deaths of unarmed civilians on both sides.
Few nations and ideologies are truly free of the taint of crimes against humanity. The goal of the "law" is to eliminate these practices. In particular, the treatment of African Americans in the officially segregated States of the United States before roughly 1968 appears to amount to a crime against humanity.
Mr. Kerry should help clean up his own house before busying himself with lecturing other national leaders, Israeli, Turkish, or Palestinian. Perhaps, thrust into a prominent role, he is thinking of running for President in his old age. Perhaps he is just prepping to do the traditional campaign shake down of Zionists in the United States.
Resolution 181 is worth a read (see link above). The nation as a whole is called the Economic Union of Palestine.
It is my fond hope that any Palestinian state will be secular and tolerant of all religions, rather than Islamic. Given the definition of crimes against humanity, any state that plays favorites, or promotes segregation of religious or ethnic groups is engaging in crimes against humanity. That should include the United States and the United Nations.
Actually, Mr. Erdogan was saying that the international community should consider Islamophobia, or prejudice against people who have Islam as a religion, as a crime against humanity "like Zionism or anti-Semitism or fascism."
There are so many problems with both Mr. Erdogan's and Mr. Kerry's statements that it is worth teasing out the many facts and ideas encompassed by them. Is Zionism a crime against humanity? Let's begin by understanding that Erdogan used the term "crime against humanity" in a rather loose manner.
Crimes against humanity have been defined by international agreement to be serious attacks on humans, possibly including humiliation or degradation, that are a result of government policy. They include, but are not limited to, government-sponsored or enabled murder (particularly mass murder), torture, and physical brutality including rape, as well as denial of human rights for political, racial, gender, or religious reasons. In the context of war they become war crimes. In the worst case they include genocide, the mass murdering of an ethnic or national group, and ethnic cleansing, the murder or expulsion of people from a state for ethnic reasons.
On its face, the general term Zionism is simply the wish of ethnically Jewish people to live in the region near Jerusalem. There is nothing inherently criminal about that, any more than wishing to live in Paris or Nebraska.
Then again, being anti-Semitic is not a crime against humanity, unless it is government policy. Being anti-Islamic is not a crime against humanity, unless it is government policy. Even being fascist is not a crime against humanity; there were fascist states that did not commit such crimes, such as Austria before it was united with Germany in 1938.
However, in practice crimes against humanity have been committed. Fascist crimes against humanity and war crimes are well-documented. Where does Zionism stand in the historic record?
In the 1800s when the modern Zionist movement picked up steam, modern Palestine (including what would become the State of Israel) was part of the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire. Many Jews had long lived peacefully in Palestine, particularly in Jerusalem. Zionists were able to move to Palestine and buy land there, expanding the Jewish population. Perhaps there was some illegal immigration, but for the most part Zionism was characterized by legal immigration into Palestine.
When the British Empire took over Palestine (and most of the Middle East) after World War I, they were obligated to Jews for helping them to win the war. They allowed much more Jewish immigration into Palestine, which created some Arab discontent, but still the immigration was legal and peaceful.
Then came the Holocaust. Many Jewish survivors were angry, militant, and did not feel bound to the old system of ethics or law. Zionism changed. Terrorist Jewish groups appeared in Palestine (they mainly targeted the British at first) and Zionist organizations brought in large numbers of Jewish settlers illegally (by then the British were limiting Jewish immigration to try to placate the increasingly powerful Arab states).
Then the United Nations, which was still largely a military coalition, interfered. The Jewish minority (particularly the newly-arrived European Jews) wanted to create a Jewish State. The native Palestinians wanted to kick out the British Empire and have a democratic state, in which they would be a 65% majority, more if illegal immigrants were expelled. The British and United States pushed the U.N. to favor the Jewish nationalist plan.
U.N. Resolution 181 (November 29, 1947) was also not, in itself, a war crime or crime against humanity, but it acted as an enabler. Rather than calling for elections within a united Palestine, which would have led to peaceful electoral struggle, it called for partition, or racial segregation. It was actually just a recommendation to the British Empire, not a law. While the word independence was used for Arab-Palestinian and Jewish-Palestinian "states," they were to be in an economic union together, with recognized rights for minorities in each.
Another interpretation would be there would be two autonomous regions within the State of Palestine. It should also be noted that the vote was rigged. 13 nations voted against the resolution, including most neutral nations. The 33 votes in favor came mainly from the U.S. and its puppets in Latin America, the Soviet block, and the British imperial block.
There was no declaration of war. Violence escalated. Both Arab and Jewish militias were encouraged by Resolution 181 iteself. Both sides weaponed up and outsiders (more Zionists, including American Jewish organized criminals, and Arab hotheads from several nations) helped promote the situation into a civil war. Both sides had factions that engaged in ethnic cleansing (and both sides had citizens and groups that were appalled by the violence). The better armed, trained, and motivated Jews won. The new State of Israel came into existence on May 14, 1948 when the British quit the scene.
I cannot recount all the wars since that time, or all the crimes against humanity and war crimes on both sides.
Is Zionism a crime against humanity? In the post 1948 setting we find the most troubling evidence that Zionists, now controlling the Israeli government, committed crimes against humanity. There was clearly a great deal of ethnic cleansing. Palestinians driven off by violence were not allowed to return, and so their lands were seized and occupied by Jewish settlers. This was the policy of the State of Israel, and its courts, not just individual Zionists. The process has continued decade by decade since that time, punctuated by attempts by Arab states to obtain a military victory over Israel.
On the other hand, a large number of non-Jewish persons remained within the State of Israel, and they have at least nominal human rights, including the right to vote.
While it is worth examining all the actions that might be construed as crimes against humanity committed in the region, that would take a voluminous study.
I would refrain, and would recommend politicians refrain, from calling Zionism a crime against humanity. The thing to do is to address current injustices by restoring private property that has been stolen from anyone in occupied Palestine since 1948, and by carefully investigating all deaths of unarmed civilians on both sides.
Few nations and ideologies are truly free of the taint of crimes against humanity. The goal of the "law" is to eliminate these practices. In particular, the treatment of African Americans in the officially segregated States of the United States before roughly 1968 appears to amount to a crime against humanity.
Mr. Kerry should help clean up his own house before busying himself with lecturing other national leaders, Israeli, Turkish, or Palestinian. Perhaps, thrust into a prominent role, he is thinking of running for President in his old age. Perhaps he is just prepping to do the traditional campaign shake down of Zionists in the United States.
Resolution 181 is worth a read (see link above). The nation as a whole is called the Economic Union of Palestine.
It is my fond hope that any Palestinian state will be secular and tolerant of all religions, rather than Islamic. Given the definition of crimes against humanity, any state that plays favorites, or promotes segregation of religious or ethnic groups is engaging in crimes against humanity. That should include the United States and the United Nations.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Settlements, War Crimes, Israel and Palestine
It is a war crime for an aggressor to settle its citizens in a conquered area.
Is it the most serious of war crimes? No, initiating a war is the most serious of war crimes.
Why is it a war crime, when an exactly similar settlement of foreign citizens may be legal in times of peace? Well, a peacetime settlement by foreigners would occur through the invitation of the host country, or through the normal process of paying for land from people who are willing to sell. Settlement during or after a war indicates a plan to retain territory conquered in a criminal manner. It is like the difference between an honest trade and a theft.
Why bring up this topic now? Because today the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights released a preliminary report noting that the most recent Israeli settlement in eastern Palestine violates this war crimes law. The implications are large. [See the Press release, Israeli settlements symbolize the acute lack of justice experience by Palestinian People, which links to the full report.]
Is there a statute of limitations on war crimes? I don't think so, though there probably should be. I know the Israeli and other governments continue to hunt down and prosecute alleged war criminals from the Nazi era, over sixty years ago.
If there is no statute of limitations on war crimes, or if the statute of limitations is 60 years, then the entire state of Israel is in trouble. Most Jews in Palestine had converted (perhaps not voluntarily) to Islam by about 700 A.D. Jewish communities that remained were small until the Zionist movement of the late 19th century. The early Zionists were legal immigrants, and as a result several small areas of Palestine had Jewish majorities by World War II.
Most of the post-war Jewish immigration to Palestine can be characterized as illegal. The war that established the State of Israel in 1948 coincided with the ejection of non-Jewish Palestinians, followed by Jewish settlements on their land. Thus it is not just the remnants of Palestine, the West Bank and Gaza, that are at stake. The creation of the State of Israel can be characterized as a war crime.
It is often said that the United Nations (then newly formed, and basically a war organization for fighting Germany and Japan) created the State of Israel. It appears that all the U.N. did was endorse a Jewish semi-autonomous partition zone within Palestine. But supposing the U.N. did in fact back the creation of Israel by settling Jews on lands taken from Palestinians. Then the U.N. itself should be said to have committed a war crime.
The implications are staggering the further we go back in history. What if, after a war of aggression takes place, there is a peace treaty? Does that make it legal to settle on land occupied in a war of aggression? Peace treaties tend to be imposed by aggressors. They are not really voluntary agreements.
What about the settlement of Europeans in colonial nations? What about the United States, which would not exist except for a constant clamor of wars, occupations, and settlements?
If the purpose of war crimes laws is to stop wars and war crimes, then they must be enforced. American settlements occurred, in the main, before the war crime laws were written. Israel, however, creates a different case. It came into existence after the war crimes laws were on the books.
But the real question is, will anyone enforce the war crimes laws? Conquered nations like Japan and Germany have had their leaders prosecuted for war crimes. But no victorious nation has ever been prosecuted for war crimes.
Like Hitler marching into Russia, it looks like the Israeli occupation of eastern Palestine has gone too far, endangering the entire Israeli project. A sane leadership of Israel would cut their losses to hold onto their gains. A sane leadership would trade forgiveness for their earlier crimes against humanity and war crimes in order to hold onto the lands gained by those crimes. A sane leadership would offer to remove all Jewish settlers to Israel proper, in return for an immediate and permanent peace.
Is it the most serious of war crimes? No, initiating a war is the most serious of war crimes.
Why is it a war crime, when an exactly similar settlement of foreign citizens may be legal in times of peace? Well, a peacetime settlement by foreigners would occur through the invitation of the host country, or through the normal process of paying for land from people who are willing to sell. Settlement during or after a war indicates a plan to retain territory conquered in a criminal manner. It is like the difference between an honest trade and a theft.
Why bring up this topic now? Because today the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights released a preliminary report noting that the most recent Israeli settlement in eastern Palestine violates this war crimes law. The implications are large. [See the Press release, Israeli settlements symbolize the acute lack of justice experience by Palestinian People, which links to the full report.]
Is there a statute of limitations on war crimes? I don't think so, though there probably should be. I know the Israeli and other governments continue to hunt down and prosecute alleged war criminals from the Nazi era, over sixty years ago.
If there is no statute of limitations on war crimes, or if the statute of limitations is 60 years, then the entire state of Israel is in trouble. Most Jews in Palestine had converted (perhaps not voluntarily) to Islam by about 700 A.D. Jewish communities that remained were small until the Zionist movement of the late 19th century. The early Zionists were legal immigrants, and as a result several small areas of Palestine had Jewish majorities by World War II.
Most of the post-war Jewish immigration to Palestine can be characterized as illegal. The war that established the State of Israel in 1948 coincided with the ejection of non-Jewish Palestinians, followed by Jewish settlements on their land. Thus it is not just the remnants of Palestine, the West Bank and Gaza, that are at stake. The creation of the State of Israel can be characterized as a war crime.
It is often said that the United Nations (then newly formed, and basically a war organization for fighting Germany and Japan) created the State of Israel. It appears that all the U.N. did was endorse a Jewish semi-autonomous partition zone within Palestine. But supposing the U.N. did in fact back the creation of Israel by settling Jews on lands taken from Palestinians. Then the U.N. itself should be said to have committed a war crime.
The implications are staggering the further we go back in history. What if, after a war of aggression takes place, there is a peace treaty? Does that make it legal to settle on land occupied in a war of aggression? Peace treaties tend to be imposed by aggressors. They are not really voluntary agreements.
What about the settlement of Europeans in colonial nations? What about the United States, which would not exist except for a constant clamor of wars, occupations, and settlements?
If the purpose of war crimes laws is to stop wars and war crimes, then they must be enforced. American settlements occurred, in the main, before the war crime laws were written. Israel, however, creates a different case. It came into existence after the war crimes laws were on the books.
But the real question is, will anyone enforce the war crimes laws? Conquered nations like Japan and Germany have had their leaders prosecuted for war crimes. But no victorious nation has ever been prosecuted for war crimes.
Like Hitler marching into Russia, it looks like the Israeli occupation of eastern Palestine has gone too far, endangering the entire Israeli project. A sane leadership of Israel would cut their losses to hold onto their gains. A sane leadership would trade forgiveness for their earlier crimes against humanity and war crimes in order to hold onto the lands gained by those crimes. A sane leadership would offer to remove all Jewish settlers to Israel proper, in return for an immediate and permanent peace.
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Week Unreviewed
The number of blog entries I mentally outlined and should have written really piled up this week:
An analysis of Barack Obama's state of the union address, probably compared to those of Democratic Party founder Andrew Jackson.
A victory over U.S. imperialism blog, since the Obama administration essentially admitted this week it can't subjugate Afghanistan forever, and will speed up its withdrawal of combat troops. Obama, the peace candidate, yet again. Mitt Romney making a fool of himself by saying he would stay in Afghanistan until the U.S. is bankrupt, or longer.
Why I am not supporting Norman Solomon in his bid to become a congressman representing the northern California coast.
A proposal to ban the use of drones in war, that is to make the use of drones for anything other than observations a war crime. Not that the U.S. or other imperial powers ever get tried for the innumerable (an exaggeration: obviously the number of war crimes committed by the U.S. could have been enumerated) war crimes they have, do, and will commit.
Why the new rural zones forest fire taxes in California are on a per structure basis. Because if they were on a acreage or potential value of losses basis, the timber corporations would have to pay them. Instead rural homeowners will have to pay them. Thanks, Wes Chesbro, timber company pawn.
How the U.S. government policy (often violated) of non-interference in foreign nations became a policy of constant interference in foreign nations, with a nod to Cordell Hull.
How the Obama administration decision to refuse to allow Somali-Americans to send funds back to relatives in Somalia amounts to a crime against humanity.
Why did I miss such stellar writing opportunities? A combination of work and distractions with the fact that on any given day only about 1000 people read my blog. Eliminate the other analysts and pros (CIA, FBI, homeland security, foreign agencies, comedians, political science guys, etc.) and the number probably falls to more like 500 ordinary citizens. The pros never click, it is against policy. It requires about 100,000 daily readers to make a minimal living as a blogger. If I had that many readers, I would probably write every day, and drop the other work I do.
But actually I had a good week. The Last Days of Christ the Vampire kindle edition is now available. My Biography of Andrew Jackson is starting to sell. David Cobb of MoveToAmend.org visited and spoke to a good sized crowd in Point Arena.
I might even get around to writing up some of the above ideas. Next week.
An analysis of Barack Obama's state of the union address, probably compared to those of Democratic Party founder Andrew Jackson.
A victory over U.S. imperialism blog, since the Obama administration essentially admitted this week it can't subjugate Afghanistan forever, and will speed up its withdrawal of combat troops. Obama, the peace candidate, yet again. Mitt Romney making a fool of himself by saying he would stay in Afghanistan until the U.S. is bankrupt, or longer.
Why I am not supporting Norman Solomon in his bid to become a congressman representing the northern California coast.
A proposal to ban the use of drones in war, that is to make the use of drones for anything other than observations a war crime. Not that the U.S. or other imperial powers ever get tried for the innumerable (an exaggeration: obviously the number of war crimes committed by the U.S. could have been enumerated) war crimes they have, do, and will commit.
Why the new rural zones forest fire taxes in California are on a per structure basis. Because if they were on a acreage or potential value of losses basis, the timber corporations would have to pay them. Instead rural homeowners will have to pay them. Thanks, Wes Chesbro, timber company pawn.
How the U.S. government policy (often violated) of non-interference in foreign nations became a policy of constant interference in foreign nations, with a nod to Cordell Hull.
How the Obama administration decision to refuse to allow Somali-Americans to send funds back to relatives in Somalia amounts to a crime against humanity.
Why did I miss such stellar writing opportunities? A combination of work and distractions with the fact that on any given day only about 1000 people read my blog. Eliminate the other analysts and pros (CIA, FBI, homeland security, foreign agencies, comedians, political science guys, etc.) and the number probably falls to more like 500 ordinary citizens. The pros never click, it is against policy. It requires about 100,000 daily readers to make a minimal living as a blogger. If I had that many readers, I would probably write every day, and drop the other work I do.
But actually I had a good week. The Last Days of Christ the Vampire kindle edition is now available. My Biography of Andrew Jackson is starting to sell. David Cobb of MoveToAmend.org visited and spoke to a good sized crowd in Point Arena.
I might even get around to writing up some of the above ideas. Next week.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Somali Puppet Government Shrinking
The American-created "government of Somalia," today announced that it is shrinking the cabinet from 39 to just 18 ministers. That is about right, because this group headed by Prime Minister Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed has has very few Somali supporters. It takes money from the United States and uses it to pay soldiers, at least in theory. In reality reports are that the money is ripped off by the upper ranks, so the soldiers, many of whom are children, desert at the first opportunity.
This government is sanctioned by the United Nations and African Union as well. It controls, in the vast territory of Somalia, a few square blocks of the city of Mogadishu, in concert with Ugandan troops. By some standards, it is not a bad lot of people. But almost no one in Somalia wants to support a puppet government set up by the United States and other foreigners. Most of the nation's territory is now controlled by fundamentalist militant Islamic groups, notably Al-Shabaab.
There is no better example on earth on why the United States, or any other nation for that matter, should not try to interfere in the internal affairs of other nations. Both under President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama, American interference has consistently made the situation in Somalia worse (if by worse you mean more radically Islamic. If you like fundamentalist Islam, I guess you could say the U.S. has really helped the people of Somalia).
The United States has assassinated politicians, dropped in bundles of money for bribes, and paid Ethiopia and Uganda to invade Somalia. U.S. policy has only served to discredit moderates, like the old Islamic Courts Union that restored some semblance of order to Somalia in 2006. The U.S. has made Somalia an Al Qaeda poster child. The U.S. comes off as brutal and stupid ideological thugs. Which is about right, if you look at our history.
I have to wonder if this is really just an extremely stupid CIA and "Defense" cadre, or if it was done on purpose. By destabilizing Somalia the CIA has created a permanent threat to the U.S. that did not exist in 2006. That guarantees nice fat budgets for the CIA, Pentagon, and Homeland Security apparatcniks.
One could argue, I guess I am starting to argue, that Somalia is a textbook case of creating an enemy where none previously existed. A reasonable conclusion is that someone was following a textbook in this operation. So it was done on purpose. I can't prove it, but I sure would like to get my hands on the archives.
Here's a sound policy: seal the borders of Somalia, withdraw all foreign troops and operatives including aid groups, and let the Somalis work things out among themselves. Recognize any government that seems to have the support or control over, say 50% of the population. Then restore normal trade and diplomatic ties. My guess is that culturally Somalis are moderate people and won't support puritan versions of Islam for long.
Meanwhile, hold tribunals to try George W. Bush and Barack Obama for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Somalia. With those two guys in jail, the rest of the people of the world might feel safer and act friendlier towards Americans.
More Somalia articles by William P. Meyers
This government is sanctioned by the United Nations and African Union as well. It controls, in the vast territory of Somalia, a few square blocks of the city of Mogadishu, in concert with Ugandan troops. By some standards, it is not a bad lot of people. But almost no one in Somalia wants to support a puppet government set up by the United States and other foreigners. Most of the nation's territory is now controlled by fundamentalist militant Islamic groups, notably Al-Shabaab.
There is no better example on earth on why the United States, or any other nation for that matter, should not try to interfere in the internal affairs of other nations. Both under President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama, American interference has consistently made the situation in Somalia worse (if by worse you mean more radically Islamic. If you like fundamentalist Islam, I guess you could say the U.S. has really helped the people of Somalia).
The United States has assassinated politicians, dropped in bundles of money for bribes, and paid Ethiopia and Uganda to invade Somalia. U.S. policy has only served to discredit moderates, like the old Islamic Courts Union that restored some semblance of order to Somalia in 2006. The U.S. has made Somalia an Al Qaeda poster child. The U.S. comes off as brutal and stupid ideological thugs. Which is about right, if you look at our history.
I have to wonder if this is really just an extremely stupid CIA and "Defense" cadre, or if it was done on purpose. By destabilizing Somalia the CIA has created a permanent threat to the U.S. that did not exist in 2006. That guarantees nice fat budgets for the CIA, Pentagon, and Homeland Security apparatcniks.
One could argue, I guess I am starting to argue, that Somalia is a textbook case of creating an enemy where none previously existed. A reasonable conclusion is that someone was following a textbook in this operation. So it was done on purpose. I can't prove it, but I sure would like to get my hands on the archives.
Here's a sound policy: seal the borders of Somalia, withdraw all foreign troops and operatives including aid groups, and let the Somalis work things out among themselves. Recognize any government that seems to have the support or control over, say 50% of the population. Then restore normal trade and diplomatic ties. My guess is that culturally Somalis are moderate people and won't support puritan versions of Islam for long.
Meanwhile, hold tribunals to try George W. Bush and Barack Obama for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Somalia. With those two guys in jail, the rest of the people of the world might feel safer and act friendlier towards Americans.
More Somalia articles by William P. Meyers
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Funerals are Sacred
We have all seen movies where known terrorist groups, American organized crime groups, come together for a funeral. The police or FBI always have a presence, taking pictures or license plate numbers. But you never see the Federals mowing down the attendees with machine guns. Such a scene would be horrifying. Even if only actual members of organized criminal organizations were hit by the bullets. Much less if wives and children were caught in the gun fire.
It is a universal given that funerals are sacred. They are not military or criminal events. Everybody, all the time, worldwide, has a fundamental human right to attend a funeral and feel safe. Even gangs with minimalist codes of ethics do not attack each other's funerals.
Attacks on funerals are crimes against humanity. In a war, they are war crimes. Funerals are usually attended by family members. That means women and children.
But there is a man in this world who does not have the ethics of a Crip, Blood, or Cosa Nostra hoodlum. There is one man whose blood is icy cold. Who kills women and children with a coldness not found even in a crazed suicide bomber who targets civilians.
Even the Hague Conventions, which promotes war by saying what you can and cannot do in a war, seems to rule out attacks on funerals. You are not supposed to use artillery against areas where civilians can be presumed to be present. Of course the Hague Convention was written before the invention of Predator drones, cruise missiles, and even air warfare. But the principle should be clear. For instance, a weapon even more indiscriminating between civilians and military personnel, such as an atomic bomb, should be prohibited from use against an urban area, just like artillery. The fact that the organizations that dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not prosecuted for war crimes has to do with the lack of a more powerful group of people capable of prosecuting them for war crimes, not the failure to mention yet to be invented weapons in the Geneva Convention.
I remind people of all this because today the New York Times carried a report by Pir Zubair Shaw and Salmon Masood saying that the U.S. military used a drone weapon to attack a funeral in Makeen, Pakistan, killing about sixty (60) people.
President of the United States Barack Obama is responsible for this attack. According to standard procedure, he would have to personally okay such an attack.
However much you may like his other policies, however much you may have hated George W. Bush, no honest, ethical, objective person can deny that Barack Obama has been engaging in war crimes. He has supported the Bush Administration war crime that consisted of launching an unprovoked attack on Iraq. He has enlarged the war against the people of Afghanistan. And he has made war on the people of Pakistan.
Certainly the government of Pakistan, which is heavily subsidized by U.S. tax payers, gave permission for the U.S. to attack its opposition in Pakistan. But no one is supposed to give any one permission to commit war crimes, or crimes against humanity.
If you subscribe to the principle of prohibiting war crimes and crimes against humanity, you need to apply that principle to everyone. You can't say, "I don't like that group of people, so if we use methods that would normally be considered a war crime against them, it is not a war crime." Once you say that you excuse all war crimes and crimes against humanity. Hitler, had he won (or even had a draw) in World War II, could have said, "but war crimes and crimes against humanities guidelines don't apply when you are killing Jews."
There is just no getting around the fact that Barack Obama changed nothing. He is a war criminal just like George W. Bush. You can argue about scale. He has not yet hit the scale that Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, or Richard Nixon, a Republican hit. But he does come from the only party on earth, ever, to use atomic weapons against civilians, or even in any war setting, the Democratic Party, then led by Harry Truman.
That is not a good sign. As an analyst, I expect Obama to follow the path of Lyndon Johnson. He will spend taxpayer money on expanding the current wars, and on butter too.
By the end of his first term in office, peaceful nations with peaceful economies, notably China and India, will probably emerge as the new economic leaders of the world. Hopefully they will also become leaders in culture and peace. Perhaps they will even create a system for prosecuting war criminals impartially, without regard to which nation they are ruling.
Funerals are sacred events, for Christians, Moslems, Jews, Buddhists, even atheists. There is never justification for attacking people attending a funeral.
It is a universal given that funerals are sacred. They are not military or criminal events. Everybody, all the time, worldwide, has a fundamental human right to attend a funeral and feel safe. Even gangs with minimalist codes of ethics do not attack each other's funerals.
Attacks on funerals are crimes against humanity. In a war, they are war crimes. Funerals are usually attended by family members. That means women and children.
But there is a man in this world who does not have the ethics of a Crip, Blood, or Cosa Nostra hoodlum. There is one man whose blood is icy cold. Who kills women and children with a coldness not found even in a crazed suicide bomber who targets civilians.
Even the Hague Conventions, which promotes war by saying what you can and cannot do in a war, seems to rule out attacks on funerals. You are not supposed to use artillery against areas where civilians can be presumed to be present. Of course the Hague Convention was written before the invention of Predator drones, cruise missiles, and even air warfare. But the principle should be clear. For instance, a weapon even more indiscriminating between civilians and military personnel, such as an atomic bomb, should be prohibited from use against an urban area, just like artillery. The fact that the organizations that dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not prosecuted for war crimes has to do with the lack of a more powerful group of people capable of prosecuting them for war crimes, not the failure to mention yet to be invented weapons in the Geneva Convention.
I remind people of all this because today the New York Times carried a report by Pir Zubair Shaw and Salmon Masood saying that the U.S. military used a drone weapon to attack a funeral in Makeen, Pakistan, killing about sixty (60) people.
President of the United States Barack Obama is responsible for this attack. According to standard procedure, he would have to personally okay such an attack.
However much you may like his other policies, however much you may have hated George W. Bush, no honest, ethical, objective person can deny that Barack Obama has been engaging in war crimes. He has supported the Bush Administration war crime that consisted of launching an unprovoked attack on Iraq. He has enlarged the war against the people of Afghanistan. And he has made war on the people of Pakistan.
Certainly the government of Pakistan, which is heavily subsidized by U.S. tax payers, gave permission for the U.S. to attack its opposition in Pakistan. But no one is supposed to give any one permission to commit war crimes, or crimes against humanity.
If you subscribe to the principle of prohibiting war crimes and crimes against humanity, you need to apply that principle to everyone. You can't say, "I don't like that group of people, so if we use methods that would normally be considered a war crime against them, it is not a war crime." Once you say that you excuse all war crimes and crimes against humanity. Hitler, had he won (or even had a draw) in World War II, could have said, "but war crimes and crimes against humanities guidelines don't apply when you are killing Jews."
There is just no getting around the fact that Barack Obama changed nothing. He is a war criminal just like George W. Bush. You can argue about scale. He has not yet hit the scale that Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, or Richard Nixon, a Republican hit. But he does come from the only party on earth, ever, to use atomic weapons against civilians, or even in any war setting, the Democratic Party, then led by Harry Truman.
That is not a good sign. As an analyst, I expect Obama to follow the path of Lyndon Johnson. He will spend taxpayer money on expanding the current wars, and on butter too.
By the end of his first term in office, peaceful nations with peaceful economies, notably China and India, will probably emerge as the new economic leaders of the world. Hopefully they will also become leaders in culture and peace. Perhaps they will even create a system for prosecuting war criminals impartially, without regard to which nation they are ruling.
Funerals are sacred events, for Christians, Moslems, Jews, Buddhists, even atheists. There is never justification for attacking people attending a funeral.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
James Madison, Slavery, and the Constitution
James Madison was born in the British colony of Virginia on March 16, 1751. Today we tend to think of 1751 as a primitive time in U.S. history, when leather-clad pioneers were constantly at war with Native American Indians. In fact coastal Virginia had been settled for over a century and was about as civilized as much of rural England.
His father, also James Madison, owned a tobacco plantation. That is a polite way of saying that he made his living by overseeing slaves of African extraction. He was a reasonably important guy. During the American Revolution he was a colonel in the Virginia militia. He had a total of twelve children, with James being the eldest.
In 1769 the younger James Madison enrolled at Princeton University (then still called the College of New Jersey). After returning to Virginia he practiced law, then started working his way up the policital machine. He was too young to be among the Virginia slave-owners and lawyers who decided to engineer a rebellion against Britain rather than risk that their slaves would be freed by litigation, using the Somersett ruling of 1772 as a precedent. In 1776 he was elected to the Virginia legislature. Madison, with Thomas Jefferson and others, shook up the world by successfully separating Church from State in Virginia [See Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom].
But James Madison was the beneficiary of a political and economic system based on slavery for African Americans and the denial of the right to vote to most European Americans (who at that time were largely descendents of white slaves, aka indentured servants). He and his friends were not happy that the under classes were demanding the vote and other human rights. He was worried that the system of using government to tax the poor for the benefit of the rich might be turned on its head as poorer groups of men gained the vote, as was happening after the American Revolution in Pennsylvania and other states.
Studying the era between the end of the Revolutionary War and the creation of the Federal Government under the Constitution is considered so risky that even today our modern vocabulary is designed to erase the tape on that period. There were several Congresses under the articles of Confederation. The last approved that a committee would meet at the Annapolis Convention to draft amendments to the Articles to promote commerce between the states. Madison and other conservative slave owners and businessmen at Annapolis, not having a quorum present, decided to call a meeting in Philadelphia and broaden the agenda for amendments.
At Philadelphia some of the nations' richest and most powerful men decided to write a Constitution to their own liking. While it shaped a Republican form of government with Democratic elements [See also America: Republic or Democracy?], it was mainly designed to create a strong central government to protect the institution of slavery and the concentration of private property and political power in the hands of a few men. The Senate would not be chosen by the voters (that changed with the Seventeenth Amendment) and the Supreme Court would be the ultimate bastion agains the rabble.
Madison flip-flopped on the strong central government point, favoring it when it helped his friends and opposing it when it helped their rivals.
In the end, things did not all work out the way James Madison planned. Slavery was abolished after the Civil War, but only by giving almost all power to the national government at the expense of the states and people. Later the people were given the right to directly elect their Senator.
Madison's career marched from election to the House of Representatives right on up to President in 1809. His "War of 1812" is always blamed on the British in the U.S., but they gave the United States no real cause for war. Instead, Madison and others wanted to add Canada to the union. They thought that since Britain was busy fighting France, grabbing Canada would be a piece of cake.
Possibly more important, slavery was an issue in the War of 1812, a fact not mentioned in most U.S. history books. After Somersett and the resulting American Revolution, the British courts had backed off the idea of outlawing slavery. But the anti-slavery movement in England kept pushing. In 1806 the Foreign Slave Trade Act "banned British subjects, shipyards, outfitters and insureres from participating in the slave trade... A well-concealed secret was that many, possibly the majority, of supposedly neutral "American" slave ships were in fact owned by Britons, manned by British crews, and outfitted in Liverpool." [Hochschild, Adam. Bury the Chains page 302-303]. Then in 1807 the British slave trade was abolished in its entirety.
The harrassing of American shipping by the British, and impressing of former British seamen, is usually stated as the cause of the War of 1812. But that harassment was mainly about stopping the slave trade.
The War of 1812 was a war of aggression by the United States. Its underlying purpose was to continue committing crimes against humanity, which slavery is. James Madison, by my standards, is a War Criminal and Crimes Against Humanity criminal.
Yet I appreciate his working to separate Church and State, and his work on the Bill of Rights. Probably if he had not been raised with slaves and surrounded himself with other slavers, he would have realised how criminal that practice was.
And so each of us might think: how was I raised, and how might that prevent me from seeing what is good and just?
His father, also James Madison, owned a tobacco plantation. That is a polite way of saying that he made his living by overseeing slaves of African extraction. He was a reasonably important guy. During the American Revolution he was a colonel in the Virginia militia. He had a total of twelve children, with James being the eldest.
In 1769 the younger James Madison enrolled at Princeton University (then still called the College of New Jersey). After returning to Virginia he practiced law, then started working his way up the policital machine. He was too young to be among the Virginia slave-owners and lawyers who decided to engineer a rebellion against Britain rather than risk that their slaves would be freed by litigation, using the Somersett ruling of 1772 as a precedent. In 1776 he was elected to the Virginia legislature. Madison, with Thomas Jefferson and others, shook up the world by successfully separating Church from State in Virginia [See Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom].
But James Madison was the beneficiary of a political and economic system based on slavery for African Americans and the denial of the right to vote to most European Americans (who at that time were largely descendents of white slaves, aka indentured servants). He and his friends were not happy that the under classes were demanding the vote and other human rights. He was worried that the system of using government to tax the poor for the benefit of the rich might be turned on its head as poorer groups of men gained the vote, as was happening after the American Revolution in Pennsylvania and other states.
Studying the era between the end of the Revolutionary War and the creation of the Federal Government under the Constitution is considered so risky that even today our modern vocabulary is designed to erase the tape on that period. There were several Congresses under the articles of Confederation. The last approved that a committee would meet at the Annapolis Convention to draft amendments to the Articles to promote commerce between the states. Madison and other conservative slave owners and businessmen at Annapolis, not having a quorum present, decided to call a meeting in Philadelphia and broaden the agenda for amendments.
At Philadelphia some of the nations' richest and most powerful men decided to write a Constitution to their own liking. While it shaped a Republican form of government with Democratic elements [See also America: Republic or Democracy?], it was mainly designed to create a strong central government to protect the institution of slavery and the concentration of private property and political power in the hands of a few men. The Senate would not be chosen by the voters (that changed with the Seventeenth Amendment) and the Supreme Court would be the ultimate bastion agains the rabble.
Madison flip-flopped on the strong central government point, favoring it when it helped his friends and opposing it when it helped their rivals.
In the end, things did not all work out the way James Madison planned. Slavery was abolished after the Civil War, but only by giving almost all power to the national government at the expense of the states and people. Later the people were given the right to directly elect their Senator.
Madison's career marched from election to the House of Representatives right on up to President in 1809. His "War of 1812" is always blamed on the British in the U.S., but they gave the United States no real cause for war. Instead, Madison and others wanted to add Canada to the union. They thought that since Britain was busy fighting France, grabbing Canada would be a piece of cake.
Possibly more important, slavery was an issue in the War of 1812, a fact not mentioned in most U.S. history books. After Somersett and the resulting American Revolution, the British courts had backed off the idea of outlawing slavery. But the anti-slavery movement in England kept pushing. In 1806 the Foreign Slave Trade Act "banned British subjects, shipyards, outfitters and insureres from participating in the slave trade... A well-concealed secret was that many, possibly the majority, of supposedly neutral "American" slave ships were in fact owned by Britons, manned by British crews, and outfitted in Liverpool." [Hochschild, Adam. Bury the Chains page 302-303]. Then in 1807 the British slave trade was abolished in its entirety.
The harrassing of American shipping by the British, and impressing of former British seamen, is usually stated as the cause of the War of 1812. But that harassment was mainly about stopping the slave trade.
The War of 1812 was a war of aggression by the United States. Its underlying purpose was to continue committing crimes against humanity, which slavery is. James Madison, by my standards, is a War Criminal and Crimes Against Humanity criminal.
Yet I appreciate his working to separate Church and State, and his work on the Bill of Rights. Probably if he had not been raised with slaves and surrounded himself with other slavers, he would have realised how criminal that practice was.
And so each of us might think: how was I raised, and how might that prevent me from seeing what is good and just?
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Madame Butterfly, Nagasaki and Empire
I don't know much about opera, but I have been intending to see if I can add it to the kinds of music I like (Rock, Folk, Classical, Jazz, World Beat ...). The community theater in Point Arena, California has been one of the theaters showing simulcasts from the New York Metropolitan Opera. Saturday I went and watched Madame Butterfly (aka Madama Butterfly).
Madame Butterfly, as with many operas, it is about love and infidelity. The protagonist is a young Japanese girl who has a marriage arranged with an American Navy Lieutenant, some time in the second half of the 19th century. He never intends it to be a real wedding; it is a method for cheap whoring. But Madame Butterfly falls deeply in love with him. He sails away; she remains true, and gives birth to a son he does not know about. She desperately maintains the fantasy that B. F. Pinkerton really loves her. When he returns to Japan three years later he is married to an American woman, and they take the son. Butterfly kills herself at the ripe old age of 18. The audience cries. I liked it. I might see another opera some day.
What struck me was that Giacomo Puccini chose to set his opera in Nagasaki. Madame Butterfly was first performed in 1904. There was no way Puccini could know that Nagasaki would be one of only two cities on earth, so far, to be vaporized with atomic weapons. He did probably know a lot more than Americans do now about how the U.S. Navy forced itself upon Japan. Since his Japanese characters are not at all westernized, and since the Lieutenant's ship is the Abraham Lincoln, once could conclude that the opera is set around 1870. But that is just artistic license, as it is supposed to be based on an actual event of the 1890s. After 1870 Japan westernized very rapidly. They put together a modern economy, education system, army and navy in less than two decades. In the 1890's they won a war with China, which surprised everyone. A few days before the first production of Madame Butterfly, the Russian-Japanese war began, which Japan won in 1905. This frightened European imperialists almost as much as Anarchism and Marxism. Some powerful Americans began wondering if it had been a good idea, forcing foreign trade upon Japan.
You could see Madame Butterfly as an Italian metaphor for the tragedy of Japan embracing American ways. The Italians, Americans, Russians and Japanese would all be allies the task of dismembering Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire during World War I, but the United States saw Japan as a rival, not a partner, after that.
After the opera ended some of my friends were outside chatting. They are all Democrats. They think they agree with me on most political issues. They say they are for the environment, peace, and social justice. I like to remind them of the differences, but not too often, or we could not be friends.
"What a metaphor. It's like Puccini was a prophet who knew the Democratic Party would drop an atomic bomb on the civilian population of Nagasaki."
A couple of groans, but before they can warn the novices, one asks the automatic I-am-a-brain-dead-liberal question: "What do you mean the Democratic Party dropped the bomb on Nagasaki?"
"The Democratic Party ruled the U.S. at the time. It controlled both branches of Congress and the Supreme Court. The final decision to drop atomic weapons on two civilian urban areas was made by the head of the Democratic Party, President Truman."
"Well, it ended the war early. And the Republicans would have done the same."
"So you think that if mass killings of civilians will further your war aims, like giving you an earlier victory, then killing them is not a war crime?"
Silence. Veins bursting. I was hoping for a "Yes," so I could compare Truman to Hitler and Bush, but failing that I went on.
"According to the record, the only advisor to Truman to oppose the use of atomic weapons against civilians was a Republican. Dwight Eisenhower. He believed soldiers should fight soldiers. He was against committing war crimes to achieve strategic objectives."
"That was then. The Democratic Party is different now."
"That must be why President Obama is sending more troops to Afghanistan. That's why the Democrats continued to vote funds for the wars after they gained a majority in the House in 2006."
"You can't achieve anything by being in the Green Party!" This, though said by a woman, was said in a tone that spat venom.
"You can make it perfectly clear that you are not a war criminal. That you are not part of a war crimes organization."
"The Democratic Party is not a war crimes organization!" She yelled this loud enough that pretty much everyone within 50 yards could hear it. Most of the original group of Democrats have already backed away from our circle.
"I would say that any organization that repeatedly commits war crimes is a war crimes organization."
"The Democratic Party has not repeatedly committed war crimes!"
"If you judge the Democratic Party impartially, by the standards that were used to judge the Japanese and Nazis after World War II, then Vietnam offers multiple instances of war crimes. If you have the afternoon to spare and are too lazy to read a history book, I can outline other Democratic Party crimes against humanity and war crimes for you."
"It's a different party now!"
"No, it isn't. Its filled with people like you who will rationalize and apologize for any American military adventure, as long as it is led by a President who is a Democrat."
At that point this peace-loving, Bush-hating, female Democrat, said "I love Obama! I will never, ever vote for a Green Party candidate. Never ever." And stomped off to her own personal hell.
But hopefully she will feel better by the next time I see her at a community event. Living in the heart of the Democratic Party Empire, I do try to get along people.
Madame Butterfly, as with many operas, it is about love and infidelity. The protagonist is a young Japanese girl who has a marriage arranged with an American Navy Lieutenant, some time in the second half of the 19th century. He never intends it to be a real wedding; it is a method for cheap whoring. But Madame Butterfly falls deeply in love with him. He sails away; she remains true, and gives birth to a son he does not know about. She desperately maintains the fantasy that B. F. Pinkerton really loves her. When he returns to Japan three years later he is married to an American woman, and they take the son. Butterfly kills herself at the ripe old age of 18. The audience cries. I liked it. I might see another opera some day.
What struck me was that Giacomo Puccini chose to set his opera in Nagasaki. Madame Butterfly was first performed in 1904. There was no way Puccini could know that Nagasaki would be one of only two cities on earth, so far, to be vaporized with atomic weapons. He did probably know a lot more than Americans do now about how the U.S. Navy forced itself upon Japan. Since his Japanese characters are not at all westernized, and since the Lieutenant's ship is the Abraham Lincoln, once could conclude that the opera is set around 1870. But that is just artistic license, as it is supposed to be based on an actual event of the 1890s. After 1870 Japan westernized very rapidly. They put together a modern economy, education system, army and navy in less than two decades. In the 1890's they won a war with China, which surprised everyone. A few days before the first production of Madame Butterfly, the Russian-Japanese war began, which Japan won in 1905. This frightened European imperialists almost as much as Anarchism and Marxism. Some powerful Americans began wondering if it had been a good idea, forcing foreign trade upon Japan.
You could see Madame Butterfly as an Italian metaphor for the tragedy of Japan embracing American ways. The Italians, Americans, Russians and Japanese would all be allies the task of dismembering Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire during World War I, but the United States saw Japan as a rival, not a partner, after that.
After the opera ended some of my friends were outside chatting. They are all Democrats. They think they agree with me on most political issues. They say they are for the environment, peace, and social justice. I like to remind them of the differences, but not too often, or we could not be friends.
"What a metaphor. It's like Puccini was a prophet who knew the Democratic Party would drop an atomic bomb on the civilian population of Nagasaki."
A couple of groans, but before they can warn the novices, one asks the automatic I-am-a-brain-dead-liberal question: "What do you mean the Democratic Party dropped the bomb on Nagasaki?"
"The Democratic Party ruled the U.S. at the time. It controlled both branches of Congress and the Supreme Court. The final decision to drop atomic weapons on two civilian urban areas was made by the head of the Democratic Party, President Truman."
"Well, it ended the war early. And the Republicans would have done the same."
"So you think that if mass killings of civilians will further your war aims, like giving you an earlier victory, then killing them is not a war crime?"
Silence. Veins bursting. I was hoping for a "Yes," so I could compare Truman to Hitler and Bush, but failing that I went on.
"According to the record, the only advisor to Truman to oppose the use of atomic weapons against civilians was a Republican. Dwight Eisenhower. He believed soldiers should fight soldiers. He was against committing war crimes to achieve strategic objectives."
"That was then. The Democratic Party is different now."
"That must be why President Obama is sending more troops to Afghanistan. That's why the Democrats continued to vote funds for the wars after they gained a majority in the House in 2006."
"You can't achieve anything by being in the Green Party!" This, though said by a woman, was said in a tone that spat venom.
"You can make it perfectly clear that you are not a war criminal. That you are not part of a war crimes organization."
"The Democratic Party is not a war crimes organization!" She yelled this loud enough that pretty much everyone within 50 yards could hear it. Most of the original group of Democrats have already backed away from our circle.
"I would say that any organization that repeatedly commits war crimes is a war crimes organization."
"The Democratic Party has not repeatedly committed war crimes!"
"If you judge the Democratic Party impartially, by the standards that were used to judge the Japanese and Nazis after World War II, then Vietnam offers multiple instances of war crimes. If you have the afternoon to spare and are too lazy to read a history book, I can outline other Democratic Party crimes against humanity and war crimes for you."
"It's a different party now!"
"No, it isn't. Its filled with people like you who will rationalize and apologize for any American military adventure, as long as it is led by a President who is a Democrat."
At that point this peace-loving, Bush-hating, female Democrat, said "I love Obama! I will never, ever vote for a Green Party candidate. Never ever." And stomped off to her own personal hell.
But hopefully she will feel better by the next time I see her at a community event. Living in the heart of the Democratic Party Empire, I do try to get along people.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Cynthia McKinney Rallies Greens in Fort Bragg, California
On Saturday I drove up to Fort Bragg see Cynthia McKinney, who is seeking the nomination of the Green Party to run for President of the United States of America. Cynthia McKinney, a former Democrat, served in the Georgia state legislature and then four terms as Georgia's 11th district Congresswomen. Saturday night she was scheduled to speak in Ukiah, California, where she would be joined by another former Democratic Party congress person, Dan Hamburg, who is also now in the Green Party. Here I am with Cynthia:
Local singer/songwriter Chris Skyhawk started off with some political folk songs, and Cynthia pulled shakers out of her purse and got with the rhythm: 
Cynthia gave an excellent speech touching on many of America's problems and their solutions. She pointed out how racism can still be a problem in the United States. She recounted how she was attacked by the press and both the Republican Party and Democratic Party when she stood up on the floor of Congress and asked the obvious question after the 911 attacks on the World Trade Centers: "What did the administration know and when did they know it?"
She said history has shown a nation can't have both Guns and Butter without crippling its economy. Joining the Green Party was her own declaration of independence from participation in war crimes and crimes against humanity. She also talked about how hard it is to take on the political establishment. Her father had begun protesting against racism in Georgia (an all Democratic Party state back then) when he returned from serving in World War II. Supporting the Green Party now is difficult, but it is creating a path to a United States that is at peace with the world and where there is true democracy, social justice, and an environmentally sustainable economy.
Cynthia McKinney with Carol Wolman while taking questions from the audience:
The audience of about 50 people gave over $500 to Ms. McKinney's campaign. Run Cynthia Run!
More data:
Cynthia McKinney's campaign web site: www.runcynthiarun.org
Carol Wolman's campaign web site: http://www.carolwolmanforcongress.com/
Saturday, August 4, 2007
Barack H. Obama's True Colors
The Democratic Party's long history of war crimes and crimes against humanity is nowhere near complete, not if the junior Senator from Illinois and Presidential (okay, vice-presidential) nomination seeker Barack Hussein Obama gets his way. This week Barack proved his national security credentials by threatening to bomb Pakistan if elected.
How much do you want to bet that the left wing of the Democratic Party, the people who style themselves "progressive," and "for peace," abandon Barack and seek a new candidate. I am betting against it. Because every Democrat I have ever met has been willing to rationalize Democratic Party war crimes and crimes against humanity. Otherwise they would not be Democrats.
Barack is seeking to become the first black, or sort-of black, President of the United States. Most African-American politicians are Democrats, and most African-Americans vote for Democratic Party most of the time. If you know anything about history that might seem strange. Boiled down, it comes to this: the Democratic Party was the party of slavery. The Republican Party was the party that ended slavery. (For details see my Brief History of the Democratic Party and my Brief History of the Republican Party). Most African-Americans are descended from slaves.
Before analysing Mr. Obama's war on Pakistan, which would become part of the ongoing U.S. War Against Asia, and which fits perfectly with long-standing ruling class policies, I want to state why I think African Americans are mostly Democrats. Most were Republicans in 1930; at that time they could not even vote in states dominated by the Democratic Party. But in 1932 the Democrats swept into power and set up the New Deal. African-Americans were allowed to receive welfare benefits under the New Deal (denying them that would have hurt white Democratic Party businessmen in the South). Politics is mainly about gravy-trains, and the Democrats controlled the gravy trains. So in the north, where blacks could vote, most black politicians became Democrats. In the South, well, anyone wanting to be a black politician was lynched by the Democrats, so most politically active blacks remained Republicans or were non-partisan or joined a socialist or black nationalist group.
In the 1950's the Republicans aided the fight for civil rights for African Americans in the South; Vice-President Richard Nixon deserves a great deal of credit for this. But the Republican Party had voting base in the South (hence it could afford to support civil rights and alienate white southern voters).
In 1961 Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court. Yet civil rights for southern African Americans were not high on their agenda. True, John F. Kennedy and others realized the tremendous propaganda value that Communists derived from advertising the practice of segregation in the Democratic Party-controlled southern states. But he knew that the segregationists in Congress had enough votes to derail any and all of his programs (a situation President-for-Life Franklin Delano Roosevelt had shared). So he did what self-serving politicians always do: he talked about civil rights without doing anything much about civil rights.
After Kennedy's death President Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, did push for black civil rights; despite being a war criminal of epic proportions, this was a good and brave thing he did. But I don't think that is why blacks in the South joined the Democratic party. They joined it because their leaders joined it, and their leaders joined in because that was where the gravy was. There was no Republican Party in the South at that time worth joining. In addition the southern Democrats knew a flood was about to hit them; black political leaders were needed to keep the flood in acceptable channels.
Given the economic conditions of black Americans at the time, the choice becomes more understandable. Convert the charge of "tax and spend" Democrats to "tax and buy votes" Democrats, and you have boiled down reality pretty well. I like Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program, but effectively it taxed the middle class to buy the votes of poor (not just black) Americans with various forms of welfare. And in the long run we have learned it was not the best solution. But neither was the Republican attitude that once you removed legal barriers blacks would just start little businesses and soon be millionaires. There were tens of millions of poor whites living in the U.S. back then, as now; poverty has other causes besides legal barriers.
So most black Americans are Democrats today, and most of them, so far, are supporting Hillary Clinton. It is a simple equation: bet on the most likely winner. That is where the gravy is.
How removed is Mr. Obama's threat to bomb Pakistan from George W. Bush's threat to bomb Iran? To me they are one and the same, a combination of lunacy and criminal intent. But to the left wing of the Democratic Party they are very different, because one was proposed by a Republican, and the other by a Democrat.
Who, exactly, would we bomb in Pakistan? Doesn't anyone remember that the Taliban soldiers were all, to a man, orphans brought up in religious orphanages? Is creating more orphans and more people pissed off at the U.S. going to solve this problem? It's like bombing Pendleton, New York because that is where Timothy McVeigh grew up. In Afghanistan we learned that many of our bombing targets were proposed by confidential informants who were simply settling old tribal scores. Do we have no learning curve?
How often to you get to test the moral character of the left wing of Democratic Party by seeing if they will withdraw their support from candidates who premeditate war crimes and crimes against humanity (because that is what aerial bombing amounts to)?
I think the left-wing of the Democratic Party is as morally bankrupt as its "centrist" leadership, and in many ways more bankrupt than the Republicans. Just registering Democrat is an act of self-corruption because you are becoming an apologist for its past war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Don't like my political views? Get really mad by reading my Politics section.
How much do you want to bet that the left wing of the Democratic Party, the people who style themselves "progressive," and "for peace," abandon Barack and seek a new candidate. I am betting against it. Because every Democrat I have ever met has been willing to rationalize Democratic Party war crimes and crimes against humanity. Otherwise they would not be Democrats.
Barack is seeking to become the first black, or sort-of black, President of the United States. Most African-American politicians are Democrats, and most African-Americans vote for Democratic Party most of the time. If you know anything about history that might seem strange. Boiled down, it comes to this: the Democratic Party was the party of slavery. The Republican Party was the party that ended slavery. (For details see my Brief History of the Democratic Party and my Brief History of the Republican Party). Most African-Americans are descended from slaves.
Before analysing Mr. Obama's war on Pakistan, which would become part of the ongoing U.S. War Against Asia, and which fits perfectly with long-standing ruling class policies, I want to state why I think African Americans are mostly Democrats. Most were Republicans in 1930; at that time they could not even vote in states dominated by the Democratic Party. But in 1932 the Democrats swept into power and set up the New Deal. African-Americans were allowed to receive welfare benefits under the New Deal (denying them that would have hurt white Democratic Party businessmen in the South). Politics is mainly about gravy-trains, and the Democrats controlled the gravy trains. So in the north, where blacks could vote, most black politicians became Democrats. In the South, well, anyone wanting to be a black politician was lynched by the Democrats, so most politically active blacks remained Republicans or were non-partisan or joined a socialist or black nationalist group.
In the 1950's the Republicans aided the fight for civil rights for African Americans in the South; Vice-President Richard Nixon deserves a great deal of credit for this. But the Republican Party had voting base in the South (hence it could afford to support civil rights and alienate white southern voters).
In 1961 Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court. Yet civil rights for southern African Americans were not high on their agenda. True, John F. Kennedy and others realized the tremendous propaganda value that Communists derived from advertising the practice of segregation in the Democratic Party-controlled southern states. But he knew that the segregationists in Congress had enough votes to derail any and all of his programs (a situation President-for-Life Franklin Delano Roosevelt had shared). So he did what self-serving politicians always do: he talked about civil rights without doing anything much about civil rights.
After Kennedy's death President Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, did push for black civil rights; despite being a war criminal of epic proportions, this was a good and brave thing he did. But I don't think that is why blacks in the South joined the Democratic party. They joined it because their leaders joined it, and their leaders joined in because that was where the gravy was. There was no Republican Party in the South at that time worth joining. In addition the southern Democrats knew a flood was about to hit them; black political leaders were needed to keep the flood in acceptable channels.
Given the economic conditions of black Americans at the time, the choice becomes more understandable. Convert the charge of "tax and spend" Democrats to "tax and buy votes" Democrats, and you have boiled down reality pretty well. I like Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program, but effectively it taxed the middle class to buy the votes of poor (not just black) Americans with various forms of welfare. And in the long run we have learned it was not the best solution. But neither was the Republican attitude that once you removed legal barriers blacks would just start little businesses and soon be millionaires. There were tens of millions of poor whites living in the U.S. back then, as now; poverty has other causes besides legal barriers.
So most black Americans are Democrats today, and most of them, so far, are supporting Hillary Clinton. It is a simple equation: bet on the most likely winner. That is where the gravy is.
How removed is Mr. Obama's threat to bomb Pakistan from George W. Bush's threat to bomb Iran? To me they are one and the same, a combination of lunacy and criminal intent. But to the left wing of the Democratic Party they are very different, because one was proposed by a Republican, and the other by a Democrat.
Who, exactly, would we bomb in Pakistan? Doesn't anyone remember that the Taliban soldiers were all, to a man, orphans brought up in religious orphanages? Is creating more orphans and more people pissed off at the U.S. going to solve this problem? It's like bombing Pendleton, New York because that is where Timothy McVeigh grew up. In Afghanistan we learned that many of our bombing targets were proposed by confidential informants who were simply settling old tribal scores. Do we have no learning curve?
How often to you get to test the moral character of the left wing of Democratic Party by seeing if they will withdraw their support from candidates who premeditate war crimes and crimes against humanity (because that is what aerial bombing amounts to)?
I think the left-wing of the Democratic Party is as morally bankrupt as its "centrist" leadership, and in many ways more bankrupt than the Republicans. Just registering Democrat is an act of self-corruption because you are becoming an apologist for its past war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Don't like my political views? Get really mad by reading my Politics section.
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