OMNI
US LAWLESSNESS ANTHOLOGY #2
September 11, 2022
COMPILED BY DICK BENNETT FOR A CULTURE OF PEACE, JUSTICE, AND ECOLOGY
(#1, 4-24-17)
LAWLESSNESS ANTHOLOGY #2
CONTENTS
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. "’Suicidal’ war on nature.”
Samuel Totten (Editor). Dirty Hands and Vicious Deeds:The US Government’s Complicity in Crimes against Humanity and Genocide.
World Beyond War. “Enough is Enough. BDS the US.”
Dick. Lawlessness and Lying.
US Presidents
Richard Painter, Peter Golenbock. American Nero:The History of the Destruction of the Rule of Law, and Why Trump Is the Worst Offender.
Dahlia Lithwick. “Defending the Rule of Law in the Trump Era.”
US WARS
Brett Wilkins. “Jimmy Carter. US 'Most Warlike Nation in History of the World'.”
Bob Fantina. Lies, Propaganda, and False Flags: How the U.S. Justifies its Wars.
Vincent Bevins. The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World.
Jordan J. Paust. Beyond the Law – The Bush Administration's Unlawful Responses in the "War" on Terror.
TEXTS
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Samuel Totten (Editor). Dirty Hands and Vicious Deeds: The US Government’s Complicity in Crimes against Humanity and Genocide. Univ. of Toronto P, 2018
Reviews
"How can this happen in our time? These chilling accounts of how a democratically elected government gets away with aiding and abetting the mass murder of foreigners should outrage every decent citizen. What is our duty when our rulers betray the moral basis of the consent we give them to govern us?" (Mukesh Kapila, former United Nations resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for the Sudan and author of Against a Tide of Evil)
"I know of no other work like Dirty Hands and Vicious Deeds. The book includes a series of compelling essays that examine US complicity in the genocide and crimes against humanity perpetrated by other nations' governments. This is a book I shall definitely require in my course on international humanitarianism and human rights." (John Hubbel Weiss, Cornell University)
"Totten and his co-authors confront an issue long present in genocide studies literature but rarely addressed on its own: the role of the US in some of the worst atrocities of the twentieth century. In cogent analytical essays followed by illustrative, sometimes shocking, primary documents, Dirty Hands and Vicious Deeds lays bare the ways in which America's geopolitical and ideological self-interest led the world's superpower to support or simply turn a blind eye to the murderous plans of some of the worst regimes in recent history." (Maureen S. Hiebert, University of Calgary)
Available online at UAF’s Mullins Library
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“Enough is Enough. BDS the US.” World Beyond War, 5-11-18.
Boycott, Divest, and Sanction. BDS. People, organizations, and governments around the world, and people and organizations in the United States, need to stand up at long last and nonviolently resist the lawless behavior of the rogue U.S. government. Learn more, join this new campaign, put your name on the petition.
The recent U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear agreement with Iran is not an aberration. It parallels the U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and numerous other disarmament agreements, the U.S. opposition to the International Criminal Court, its record-setting use of the veto in the United Nations Security Council, and its unique status outside the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Paris Climate Agreement (which it withdrew from) and other fundamental treaties. Of the United Nations' 18 major human rights treaties, the United States is party to 5, fewer than any other nation on earth, except Bhutan (4), and tied with Malaysia, Myanmar, and South Sudan, a country torn by warfare since its creation in 2011.
There is a reason that most countries polled in December 2013 by Gallup called the United States the greatest threat to peace in the world, and why Pew found that viewpoint increased in 2017. Since World War II, the United States military has killed or helped kill some 20 million people, overthrown at least 36 governments, interfered in at least 84 foreign elections, attempted to assassinate over 50 foreign leaders, and dropped bombs on people in over 30 countries.
In military spending (over $1,200 billion per year) and weapons dealing, the U.S. government has no peer. Only 19 other nations on earth spend more than $10 billion per year. Seventeen of them are U.S. allies and weapons customers.
The U.S. government is directly responsible for policies that make the United States, by various measures, the worst destroyer of the world's natural environment.
The United States government is out of control, and the force needed to resist it successfully is not a military one. It is the nonviolent organized support for the rule of law that can be mobilized among the people of the world, including the people of the United States.
I commit to supporting strategic targeted efforts to boycott, divest from, and sanction the U.S. government until it supports the rule of law, peace, and justice on earth. For people, organizations, and governments outside of the United States, this means such actions as seeking to hold the U.S. government and its officials to the rule of law, formally sanctioning the U.S. government and its officials, avoiding travel to the United States, assuring that online purchases made don't originate in the United States, and any other means available to avoid supporting the U.S. government and military, including canceling all purchases of U.S.-made weapons (not to be replaced with any other weapons). For U.S. residents and organizations, this means such actions as purchasing goods from locally owned, small, community businesses, boycotting large corporations and military contractors, choosing goods and services provided by foreign nations that do not promote militarism, and refusing to pay war taxes, as well as seeking the unelection, impeachment, removal, and prosecution of U.S. officials guilty of lawless abuses of power.
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support our work for a culture of peace.
World BEYOND War PO Box 1484 Charlottesville, VA 22902 USA
A major connection of lawlessness, corporations, US presidents, Trump, US wars, and climate change is massive lying. Before the decade-long disinformation campaign by the fossil fuel industry, our nation had begun planning an energy future based upon nuclear and sustainable energy. The chief officers and stockholders of the fossil fuel companies, like those of the tobacco companies regarding smoking’s lethality, by systematic deception prevented the public from facing the causes of the climate catastrophe. They knew the truth but covered it up and kept the public from acknowledging it. But gig and dark money closed that alternative down, and thirty years later we are faced not with mere climate change but with a climate emergency. OMNI: Fossil Fuels Crimes and Criminals https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2020/08/fossil-fuels-crimes-and-criminals.html -D
US Presidents
Richard Painter, Peter Golenbock. American Nero: The History of the Destruction of the Rule of Law, and Why Trump Is the Worst Offender. BenBella Books, 2020. Senate candidate Richard Painter examines Trump's policies through an historical lens in American Nero, showcasing how he is eroding the rule of law.Outlook
Review
“Defending the rule of law in the Trump era.”
By Dahlia Lithwick. Washington Post.
Dahlia Lithwick is senior legal correspondent at Slate and host of its Amicus podcast.
March 20, 2020 at 7:00 a.m. CDT
There are, to vastly overgeneralize, two basic types of books written by critics of the Trump presidency: One class of books tells us things we never knew, such as how tyrannies arise or how Deutsche Bank operates outside meaningful scrutiny or control. The other tells us what we already know and seem to have forgotten. “American Nero,” by Richard W. Painter and Peter Golenbock, is very much in that latter category and serves to remind us, in icy, granular detail, of what has happened to constitutional democracy in three short years, and all that we have absorbed, integrated and somehow moved beyond. In some sense, then, it stands less as a unified argument than as a scrapbook of things that no longer horrify us.
The fact that it went to press just before the Senate impeachment trial, and thus cannot account for the near-collapse of an independent Justice Department, the capitulation of Senate Republicans who believed that President Trump had inappropriately sought Ukrainian election interference but who felt somehow helpless to hold him to account, and recent lawsuits against opinion journalists in major newspapers, actually only highlights the fact that even when one believes the situation cannot get worse, it always gets worse, and often in the span of mere weeks. MORE
Biden’s Assassination Of al-Qaeda Leader Ayman al-Zawahiri Was IllegalBy Marjorie Cohn, Truthout.Popular Resistance.org (8-8-22). President Joe Biden’s assassination of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Afghanistan was illegal under both U.S. and international law. After the CIA drone strike killed Zawahiri on August 2, Biden declared, “People around the world no longer need to fear the vicious and determined killer.” What we should fear instead is the dangerous precedent set by Biden’s unlawful extrajudicial execution. In addition to being illegal, the killing of Zawahiri also occurred in a moment when the United Nations had already determined that people in the U.S. had little to fear from him. -more-
US WARS
Brett Wilkins. “Jimmy Carter. US 'Most Warlike Nation in History of the World'.” Common Dreams. Thursday, April 18, 2019.
Most countries surveyed in a 2013 WIN/Gallup poll identified the United States as the greatest threat to world peace. (Photo: CD/CC BY 2.0)
Carter, who normalized diplomatic relations between Washington and Beijing in 1979, said he told Trump that much of China’s success was due to its peaceful foreign policy. Carter then referred to the US as “the most warlike nation in the history of the world,” a result, he said, of the US forcing other countries to “adopt our American principles.”
Bob Fantina. Lies, Propaganda, and False Flags: How the U.S. Justifies its Wars.
Exposing US Propaganda And Lies about Its Never-ending ...
https://crescent.icit-digital.org › articles › exposing-us-p...
Robert Fantina meticulously documents the long-list of US crimes ...
“Don't Fall for the Lies, Propaganda, and False Flags of Empire.”
Cindy Sheehan’s The Soapbox. Lies, Propaganda, and False Flags: How the U.S. Justifies its Wars. Guest Bob Fantina.
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ANTICOMMUNIST CRUSADE
Vincent Bevins. "How 'Jakarta' Became the Codeword for US-Backed Mass Killing." NYR [New York Review of Books] Daily, posted May 18, 2020.
A long article on the US-encouraged mass murders of up to a million Indonesians in 1965-66, excerpted from the author's book, The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World (Public Affairs Press).H-PAD Notes 5/27/20: Jim O'Brien via H-PAD <h-pad@lists.historiansforpeace.org>
Jordan J. Paust, Beyond the Law – The Bush Administration's Unlawful Responses in the "War" on Terror. Cambridge University Press, 2007, xiv+311 pp. Also Published by De Gruyter ,February 8, 2017.
REVIEW
Tobias T. Molander. From the ICL Journal
https://doi.org/10.1515/icl-2009-0109
www.icl-journal.com Vol 3 1/2009, 59 BOOK REVIEW Tobias T. Molander ,Jordan J. Paust, Beyond the Law – The Bush Administration's Unlawful Responses in the "War" on Terror, Cambridge University Press, 2007, xiv+311 pp. Jordan J. Paust, a former Fulbright Professor at the University of Salzburg, takes a closer look at the Bush administration's so-dubbed "war on terrorism" in which the United States embarked after 9-11 and tries to expose violations of international and domestic law that occurred in this conduct. Not only does he intend to highlight alleged violations of law, but he also provides ample pieces of evidence to prove the authorization and acknowledgement of this "dirty war" by the President and his staff (166 out of 299 pages are dedicated to footnotes!). After a short introduction dealing with the general appreciation of the Bush administration concerning international law, Paust focuses on particular problematic areas, such as treatment and detention of prisoners, enemy status, judicial power concerning detainees, constraints on presidential power by the rule of law and the role of military commissions. Summarizing his deeply critical judgement of Mr. Bush's legacy, Paust counters the currently prevailing "unconstitutional and autocratic commander-above-the-law theory" unprecedented in US history by providing a basis of lawful responses to terrorism and highlighting the role of the judiciary in times of peril. According to the author, a common plan to circumvent international law (especially customary humanitarian law as reflected in the 1949 Geneva Conventions) and deny protection to certain enemies captured – especially members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban – emerged early in the Afghan war against the Taliban regime in 2002. This concept, which in Paust's view stems from the idea that the President should stand above the law, forms a formidable contrast to the international and constitutional legal order. Regardless of the legal categorization of the conflict and the status of the enemy, customary laws of war provide a nonderogable minimum degree of protection to every person that is to be applied in every situation of conflict (especially Common Art 3 of the Geneva Conventions). In addition, human rights law continues to be applicable during times of conflict; many of those rights being peremptory and nonderogable even during times of emergency. All these provisions intend to ensure "humane treatment" of all persons at all times. Despite the warnings of many people within and without the administration who pointed to the absolute applicability of the relevant norms, the US President and his staff intentionally embarked on their plan to circumvent the Geneva Conventions, the violation of which leads to criminal responsibility under domestic and international law.
Lawlessness Anthology #1
http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2017/04/us-lawlessness.html
Contents of US Lawlessness Anthology #1: Books
9 Books
Harms (vs. Democracy and Liberty) of the Two-Tiered System of Justice, Massive Unprosecuted Economic Crimes, US National Security State, Empire, Surveillance, Secrecy, Homeland Security, War on Terrorists
Domestic
These four books discuss the assault on democracy by elites immune from prosecution.
Glenn Greenwald. With Liberty and Justice for Some: How Law is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful
Summary and Excerpt
Ramirez and Ramirez, Restoring Law and Order on Wall Street (subtitle)
on the Economic Crisis of 2007-09, Massive, Unprosecuted Wall Street
Crimes
Noam Chomsky, Requiem for the American Dream:The Ten Principles of Concentration of Wealth and Power. 7 Stories P, 2017.
David Swanson, Review (11 Principles)
Dick, Principle #6: Deregulation, Repealing Glass-Steagall, Lobbying,
Revolving Door
Charles Ferguson, Inside Job. Film about the global financial meltdown of the economic crisis of 2008, at a cost of over $20 trillion.
Selected related OMNI newsletters: Capitalism, Climate Change, Corporations, Inequality, Mainstream Media, Nuclear Weapons, Wall Street
International(listed in chronological order of each book’s subject)
Empire’s Workshop: Latin America. . . . By Greg Grandin. 200 years of aggression. (Related: Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America
by Juan Gonzalez. 2012).
Bacevich, America’s War for the Greater Middle East (1980 to present)
Glass, Rev. “Andrew Bacevich and America’s Long Misguided War to Control the Greater Middle East”
Dick, Summary of Chapter One on Jimmy Carter
Gordon, American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial
for Post- 9/11 War Crimes (2001 to present): US War Against/Of
“Terrorism”
Davies, Nicholas. Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and
Destruction of Iraq.
Rev. by David Swanson
No Place to Hide by Glenn Greenwald (Snowden’s revelations of massive spying by NSA)
Review by Michiko Kakutani in the NYT
Selected related OMNI newsletters: Anti-War, Bullying, Exceptionalism, Imperialism, Militarism, Torture, Violence, War and Environment, War Crimes, Vietnam War
END LAWLESSNESS ANTHOLOGY #2