-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Under the Jackboot of the Empire
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2012 04:30:59 +0000
From: Boyle, Francis A <[email protected]>
To: Killeacle <[email protected]>
*The Condition of Human Rights at the International Setting*
by
Professor Francis A. Boyle
before
Puerto Rican Summit Conference on Human Rights
University of the Sacred Heart
San Juan, Puerto Rico
December 7-10, 2012
December 9, 2012
(Check against oral delivery.)
Historically this latest eruption of American militarism at the start of
the 21st Century is akin to that of America opening the 20th Century by
means of the U.S.-instigated Spanish-American War in 1898. Then the
Republican administration of President William McKinley stole their
colonial empire from Spain in Cuba, *Puerto Rico*, Guam, and the
Philippines; inflicted a near genocidal war against the Filipino people;
while at the same time illegally annexing the Kingdom of Hawaii and
subjecting the Native Hawaiian people (who call themselves the Kanaka
Maoli) to near genocidal conditions. Additionally, McKinley's military
and colonial expansion into the Pacific was also designed to secure
America's economic exploitation of China pursuant to the euphemistic
rubric of the "open door" policy. But over the next four decades
America's aggressive presence, policies, and practices in the so-called
"Pacific" Ocean would ineluctably pave the way for Japan's attack at
Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 194l, and thus America's precipitation into the
ongoing Second World War. Today a century later the serial imperial
aggressions launched and menaced by the neoconservative Republican Bush
Junior administration and the neoliberal Democratic Obama administration
are now threatening to set off World War III.
By shamelessly exploiting the terrible tragedy of 11 September 2001, the
Bush Junior administration set forth to steal a hydrocarbon empire from
the Muslim states and peoples living in Central Asia and the Middle East
and Africa under the bogus pretexts of (1) fighting a war against
"international terrorism" or "Islamic fundamentalism"; and/or (2)
eliminating weapons of mass destruction; and/or (3) the promotion of
democracy; and/or (4) self-styled humanitarian
intervention/responsibility to protect (R2P). Only this time the
geopolitical stakes are infinitely greater than they were a century
ago: control and domination of the world's hydrocarbon resources and
thus the very fundaments and energizers of the global economic system -
oil and gas. The Bush Junior/ Obama administrations have already
targeted the remaining hydrocarbon reserves of Africa, *Latin America
(e.g., the Pentagon's reactivization of the U.S. Fourth Fleet in 2008),*
and Southeast Asia for further conquest or domination, together with the
strategic choke-points at sea and on land required for their
transportation. *Today the U.S. Fourth Fleet threatens Cuba, Venezuela,
and Ecuador for sure.*
Toward accomplishing that first objective, in 2007 the neoconservative
Bush Junior administration announced the establishment of the U.S.
Pentagon's Africa Command (AFRICOM) in order to better control,
dominate, steal, and exploit both the natural resources and the
variegated peoples of the continent of Africa, the very cradle of our
human species. In 2011 Libya then proved to be the first victim of
AFRICOM under the neoliberal Obama administration, thus demonstrating
the truly bi-partisan and non-partisan nature of U.S. imperial foreign
policy decision-making. Let us put aside as beyond the scope of this
paper the American conquest, extermination, and ethnic cleansing of the
Indians from off the face of the continent of North America. *Since
America's instigation of the Spanish-American War in 1898, U.S. foreign
policy decision-making has been alternatively conducted by reactionary
imperialists, conservative imperialists, and liberal imperialists for
the past 115 years and counting.*
This world-girdling burst of U.S. imperialism at the start of
humankind's new millennium is what my teacher, mentor, and friend the
late, great Professor Hans Morgenthau denominated "unlimited
imperialism" in his seminal book /Politics Among Nations/ 52-53 (4^th
ed. 1968):
The outstanding historic examples of unlimited imperialism are the
expansionist policies of Alexander the Great, Rome, the Arabs in the
seventh and eighth centuries, Napoleon I, and Hitler. They all have in
common an urge toward expansion which knows no rational limits, feeds on
its own successes and, if not stopped by a superior force, will go on to
the confines of the political world. This urge will not be satisfied so
long as there remains anywhere a possible object of domination-a
politically organized group of men which by its very independence
challenges the conqueror's lust for power. It is, as we shall see,
exactly the lack of moderation, the aspiration to conquer all that lends
itself to conquest, characteristic of unlimited imperialism, which in
the past has been the undoing of the imperialistic policies of this kind....
The factual circumstances surrounding the outbreaks of both the First
World War and the Second World War currently hover like the Sword of
Damocles over the heads of all humanity.
Since September 11, 2001, it is the Unlimited Imperialists /à//la/
Alexander, Napoleon, and Hitler who have been in charge of conducting
American foreign policy decision-making. After S*eptember 11, 2001 the
people of the world have witnessed successive governments in the United
States that have demonstrated little respect for fundamental
considerations of international law, human rights, or the United States
Constitution. Instead, the world has watched a comprehensive and
malicious assault upon the integrity of the international and domestic
legal orders by groups of men and women who are thoroughly Hobbist and
Machiavellian in their perception of international relations and in
their conduct of both foreign affairs and American domestic policy.
Even more seriously, in many instances specific components of the U.S.
government's foreign policies constitute ongoing criminal activity under
well recognized principles of both international law and United States
domestic law, and in particular the Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg
Judgment, and the Nuremberg Principles, as well as the Pentagon's own
U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 on /The Law of Land Warfare, /which applies
to the President himself as Commander-in-Chief of United States Armed
Forces under Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution. ***
*Depending on the substantive issues involved, these international and
domestic crimes typically include but are not limited to the Nuremberg
offences of "crimes against peace"--e.g., Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq,
Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, Syria, and perhaps their longstanding
threatened war of aggression against Iran. Their criminal
responsibility also concerns "crimes against humanity" and war crimes as
well as grave breaches of the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the
1907 Hague Regulations on land warfare: torture, enforced
disappearances, assassinations, murders, kidnappings, extraordinary
renditions, "shock and awe," depleted uranium, white phosphorous,
cluster bombs, drone strikes, etc. Furthermore, various officials of
the United States government have committed numerous inchoate crimes
incidental to these substantive offences that under the Nuremberg
Charter, Judgment, and Principles as well as U.S. Army Field Manual
27-10 (1956) are international crimes in their own right: planning, and
preparation, solicitation, incitement, conspiracy, complicity, attempt,
aiding and abetting. Of course the terrible irony of today's situation
is that over six decades ago at Nuremberg the U.S. government
participated in the prosecution, punishment, and execution of Nazi
government officials for committing some of the same types of heinous
international crimes that these officials of the United States
government currently inflict upon people all over the world. To be
sure, I personally oppose the imposition of capital punishment upon any
human being for any reason no matter how monstrous their crimes, whether
they be Saddam Hussein, Bush Junior, Tony Blair, or Barack Obama.***
*According to basic principles of international criminal law set forth
in paragraph 501 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10, all high level
civilian officials and military officers in the U.S. government who
either knew or should have known that soldiers or civilians under their
control (such as the C.I.A. or mercenary contractors), committed or were
about to commit international crimes and failed to take the measures
necessary to stop them, or to punish them, or both, are likewise
personally responsible for the commission of international crimes. This
category of officialdom who actually knew or should have known of the
commission of these international crimes under their jurisdiction and
failed to do anything about them include at the very top of America's
criminal chain-of-command the President, the Vice-President, the U.S.
Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, Director of National
Intelligence, the C.I.A. Director, National Security Advisor and the
Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff along with the appropriate Regional
Commanders-in-Chiefs, especially for U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM).***
* These U.S. government officials and their immediate subordinates are
responsible for the commission of crimes against peace, crimes against
humanity, and war crimes as specified by the Nuremberg Charter,
Judgment, and Principles as well as by U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 of
1956. Today in international legal terms, the United States government
itself should now be viewed as constituting an ongoing criminal
conspiracy under international criminal law in violation of the
Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg Judgment, and the Nuremberg Principles,
because of its formulation and undertaking of serial wars of aggression,
crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes that are
legally akin to those perpetrated by the former Nazi regime in Germany.
As a consequence, American citizens possess the basic right under
international law and the United States domestic law, including the U.S.
Constitution, to engage in acts of civil resistance designed to prevent,
impede, thwart, or terminate ongoing criminal activities perpetrated by
U.S. government officials in their conduct of foreign affairs policies
and military operations purported to relate to defense and
counter-terrorism.***
*For that very reason, large numbers of American citizens have decided
to act on their own cognizance by means of civil resistance in order to
demand that the U.S. government adhere to basic principles of
international law, of U.S. domestic law, and of the U.S. Constitution in
its conduct of foreign affairs and military operations. Mistakenly,
however, such actions have been defined to constitute classic instances
of "civil disobedience" as historically practiced in the United States.
And the conventional status quo admonition by the U.S. power elite and
its sycophantic news media for those who knowingly engage in "civil
disobedience" has always been that they must meekly accept their
punishment for having performed a prima facie breach of the positive
laws as a demonstration of their good faith and moral commitment.
Nothing could be further from the truth! Today's civil resisters are
the sheriffs! The U.S. government officials are the outlaws!***
*Here I would like to suggest a different way of thinking about civil
resistance activities that are specifically designed to thwart, prevent,
or impede ongoing criminal activity by officials of the U.S. government
under well-recognized principles of international and U.S. domestic law.
Such civil resistance activities represent the last constitutional
avenue open to the American people to preserve their democratic form of
government with its historical commitment to the rule of law and human
rights. Civil resistance is the last hope America has to prevent the
U.S. government from moving even farther down the path of lawless
violence in Africa, the Middle East, Southwest Asia, military
interventionism into Latin America, and nuclear confrontation with Iran,
Pakistan, North Korea, Russia, and China. ***
*Such measures of "civil resistance" must not be confused with, and
indeed must be carefully distinguished from, acts of "civil
disobedience" as traditionally defined. In today's civil resistance
cases, what we witness are American citizens attempting to prevent the
ongoing commission of international and domestic crimes under
well-recognized principles of international law and U.S. domestic law.
This is a phenomenon essentially different from the classic civil
disobedience cases of the 1950s and 1960s where incredibly courageous
African Americans and their supporters were conscientiously violating
domestic laws for the express purpose of changing them. By contrast,
today's civil resisters are acting for the express purpose of upholding
the rule of law, the U.S. Constitution, human rights, and international
law. Applying the term "civil disobedience" to such civil resistors
mistakenly presumes their guilt and thus perversely exonerates the U.S.
government criminals.***
*Civil resistors disobeyed nothing, but to the contrary obeyed
international law and the United States Constitution. By contrast, U.S.
government officials disobeyed fundamental principles of international
law as well as U.S. criminal law and thus committed international crimes
and U.S. domestic crimes as well as impeachable violations of the United
States Constitution. The civil resistors are the sheriffs enforcing
international law, U.S. criminal law and the U.S. Constitution against
the criminals working for the U.S. government! ***
*Today the American people must reaffirm their commitment to the
Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles by holding their government
officials fully accountable under international law and U.S. domestic
law for the commission of such grievous international and domestic
crimes. They must not permit any aspect of their foreign affairs and
defense policies to be conducted by acknowledged "war criminals"
according to the U.S. government's own official definition of that term
as set forth in U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956), the U.S. War Crimes
Act, and the Geneva Conventions. The American people must insist upon
the impeachment, dismissal, resignation, indictment, conviction, and
long-term incarceration of all U.S. government officials guilty of such
heinous international and domestic crimes. That is precisely what
American civil resisters are doing today!***
*This same right of civil resistance extends /pari passu/ to all
citizens of the world community of states. Everyone around the world
has both the right and the duty under international law to resist
ongoing criminal activities perpetrated by the U.S. government and its
nefarious foreign accomplices in allied governments such as Britain, the
other NATO states, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Georgia, Puerto Rico,
etc. If not so restrained, the U.S. government could very well
precipitate a Third World War. Here in Puerto Rico we saw the stunning
example of the most courageous civil resistors against Yankee
Imperialism on Vieques.***
*The future of American foreign policy and the peace of the world lie in
the hands of American citizens and the peoples of the world--not the
bureaucrats, legislators, judges, lobbyist, think-tanks, professors, and
self-styled experts who inhibit Washington, D.C., New York City, and
Cambridge, Massachusetts. Civil resistance is the way to go! This is
/our/ Nuremberg Moment now!*
*Thank you.*****
*/Francis A. Boyle/*
*/Law Building/*
*/504 E. Pennsylvania Ave./*
*/Champaign, IL 61820 USA/*
*/217-333-7954 (phone)/*
*/217-244-1478 (fax)/*
*/(personal comments only)/*
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