US Fascism: Local Comfort, European Neutrality
Legal Defence now a serious crime in comfortably fascist US:
Stewart in Leg-irons; the latest victory in the war on terror
By Mike Whitney
10/17/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- "She has represented the poor, the disadvantaged and the unpopular ... It is no exaggeration to say that Ms. Stewart performed a public service not only to her clients but her nation." Judge John G. Koeltl; Federal District Court, Manhattan, NY.
So far, Bush's only triumph in his muddled war on terror has been locking up the two Stewart Sisters, Lynne and Martha. (They're not really sisters) Neither posed any threat to national security, but that's beside the point. Their arrest sends a chilling message to "home-decoration mavens" and 67 year old cancer patients that they'd better "watch their step" or they'll find themselves in prison-pinstripes.
Do Americans really see how crazy this is or have we been so subsumed in "terror-hysteria" that we've lost our sense of humor altogether?
Consider this: while attorney Stewart is tottering off to prison for defending a "blind Sheik", a tan and rested Bin Laden is somewhere in the Pakistan-outback working on golf swing and his memoirs?
Does that make any sense?
Only if the real objective is to intimidate lawyers who defend unpopular clients rather than nailing terrorists.
Bush's contempt for leftists far exceeds his dubious desire to rid the world of terrorism. That's why the country's energies are so misdirected and doomed to failure.
Sure, his cohorts, the uber-nationalists, eat-it-up. That's why the right-wing blogs are all atwitter with the news of Bush's "Big Catch" in the GWOT. According to the loonies on the right, "Terrorist Kingpin" Stewart is guilty of everything except steering the planes into the buildings.
Pathetic.
Bilious Bill O'Reilly and his ilk will probably follow up with their typical scathing attack on civil liberties organizations, those pedophile-defending Stalinist pornographers. If we took O'Reilly's advice we'd empty Guantanamo right now to make room for any card-carrying member of the ACLU. The only way to keep America free is by eliminating the people who defend freedom.
How logical is that?
Imagine if we really took terrorism seriously? What if we withdrew the troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, shut down Bush's gulag in Guantanamo, stopped killing Arabs in their own countries, and recognized that "Islamo-fascism" is a clever public-relations buzzword intended to incite hatred of Muslims?
How long would it be before the "global threat of terrorism" would shrivel and die on the vine?
Three weeks ago, the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was leaked to the New York Times. The report laid out the findings of the 16 American intelligence agencies, which "unanimously" agreed that Iraq was producing a new generation of terrorists and making the American people "less safe".
What a surprise.
Lynne Stewart's name was not in the report, but George Bush's featured rather prominently. Bush has incited more terrorism than any person in the grim history of the planet, and now, the 16 preeminent intel-agencies have confirmed that very point.
If we're serious about terrorism, we have to do something about the people who are creating it; Bush and Cheney. 5 years after 9-11, it's not enough to say "At least we got Martha Stewart and her 67-year old namesake off the streets."
Note: Lynne Stewart received a 28-month sentence, but is now free on bail pending appeal.
===================================
Meanwhile, those in neutral-fantazising Europe resisting US-UK terrorism are treated as "common criminals" while delivering suspended pronouncements about their "criminal sentences."
The courts are starting to accept that the war against Iraq is a crime
In Britain and Ireland, protesters who have deliberately damaged military equipment are walking from the dock
George Monbiot
Tuesday October 17, 2006
The Guardian
In the early hours, two days before the attack on Iraq began, two men in their 30s, Phil Pritchard and Toby Olditch, cut through the fence surrounding the air base at Fairford in Gloucestershire and made their way towards the B52 bombers which were stationed there. The planes belonged to the US air force. The trespassers were caught by guards and found to be carrying tools and paint. They confessed that they were seeking to disable the planes, in order to prevent war crimes from being committed. This year they were tried on charges of conspiracy to commit criminal damage, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years. Last week, after long deliberations, the jury failed to reach a verdict.
The same thing happened a month ago. Two other activists, Margaret Jones and Paul Milling, had entered the same RAF base and smashed up more than 20 of the vehicles used to load bombs on to the B52s. The charges were the same, and again the jury failed to agree. In both cases the defendants claimed to be putting the state on trial. If I were in government, I would be starting to feel uneasy.
The defendants had tried to argue in court that the entire war against Iraq was a crime of aggression. But in March this year the law lords ruled that they could not use this defence: while aggression by the state is a crime under international law, it is not a crime under domestic law. But they were allowed to show that they were seeking to prevent specific war crimes from being committed - principally, the release by the B52s of cluster bombs and munitions tipped with depleted uranium.
They cited section 5 of the 1971 Criminal Damage Act, which provides lawful excuse for damaging property if that action prevents property belonging to other people from being damaged, and section 3 of the 1967 Criminal Law Act, which states that "a person may use such force as is reasonable in the prevention of a crime". In summing up, the judge told the jurors that using weapons "with an adverse effect on civilian populations which is disproportionate to the need to achieve the military objective" is a war crime. The defendants are likely to be tried again next year.
While these non-verdicts are as far as the defence of lawful excuse for impeding the Iraq war has progressed in the UK, in Ireland and Germany the courts have made decisions - scarcely reported over here - whose implications are momentous. Last year, five peace campaigners were acquitted after using an axe and hammers to cause $2.5m worth of damage to a plane belonging to the US navy. When they attacked it, in February 2003, it had been refuelling at Shannon airport on its way to Kuwait, where it would deliver supplies to be used in the impending war. The jury decided that the five saboteurs were acting lawfully.
This summer, the German federal administrative court threw out the charge of insubordination against a major in the German army. He had refused to obey an order which, he believed, would implicate him in the invasion of Iraq. The judges determined that the UN charter permits a state to go to war in only two circumstances: in self-defence, and when it has been authorised to do so by the UN security council. The states attacking Iraq, they ruled, had no such licence. Resolution 1441, which was used by the British and US governments to justify the invasion, contained no authorisation. The war could be considered an act of aggression.
There is no prospect that the British prime minister could be put on trial for war crimes in this country (although, as the international lawyer Philippe Sands points out, there is a chance that he could be arrested and tried elsewhere). Even so, the government appears to find these legal processes profoundly threatening.
When the Fairford protesters took their request to challenge the legality of the war to the court of appeal, Sir Michael Jay, permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office, submitted a witness statement which seems to contain a note of official panic.
"It would be prejudicial to the national interest and to the conduct of the government's foreign policy if the English courts were to express opinions on questions of international law concerning the use of force ... which might differ from those expressed by the government," he wrote. Such an opinion "would inevitably weaken the government's hand in its negotiations with other states. Allied states, which have agreed with and supported the United Kingdom's views on the legality of the use of force, could regard such a step as tending to undermine their own position."
It doesn't seem to matter how many journalists, protesters or even lawyers point out that the British government had no legal case for attacking Iraq, that the attorney general's official justification was risible and that Blair's arguments were mendacious. As long as the government has a majority in parliament, the support of much of the press and an army of spin doctors constantly weaving and reweaving its story, it can shrug off these attacks. It can insist, with some success, that we "move on" from Iraq. But an official verdict, handed down by a court, is another matter. If a ruling like that of the German federal administrative court were made over here, it could be devastating for Blair and his ministers.
The prosecutors have lost before. In 1999, a sheriff (a junior Scottish judge) at the court in Greenock instructed the jury to acquit three women who had boarded a Trident submarine testing station on Loch Goil and thrown its computers into the sea. They had argued that the deployment of the nuclear weapons carried by the submarines contravened international law. The sheriff said she could not "conclude definitively" whether or not this was true, but that she had "heard nothing which would make it seem to me that the accused acted with criminal intent". The court of session in Edinburgh later overturned her ruling. Now campaigners against nuclear weapons will be mounting further legal challenges, as they try to sustain a continuous peaceful blockade of the Trident base at Faslane for a year (see www.faslane365.org).
In 1996, four women were acquitted of conspiracy and criminal damage after disabling a Hawk jet which was due to be sold by BAE to the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia. They argued that they were using reasonable force to prevent crimes of genocide that the Indonesian government was committing in East Timor. Their acquittal might have helped persuade Robin Cook to seek to introduce an "ethical dimension" to foreign policy in 1997 (he was, as we now know, thwarted by Blair).
It is true that such verdicts (or non-verdicts) impose no legal obligations on the government. They do not in themselves demonstrate that its ministers are guilty of war crimes. But every time the prosecution fails to secure a conviction, the state's authority to take decisions which contravene international law is weakened.
These cases cannot reverse the hideous consequences of the crime of aggression (the "supreme international crime", according to the Nuremberg tribunals) that Blair and Bush committed in Iraq. But they do make it harder to repeat.
posted by Padraig at 3:39 AM
0 Comments
