Blaming policy, politicians, media, corporations, but never holding America, Americans, responsible as MLKjr did, antiwar journalists expose mass-homicide for thievery by Americans in dozens of poor nations beginning with America’s bloody overthrow of democratic governments in Greece, Guatemala, Congo, Korea, Vietnam and Laos thru today’s crimes in Syria Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, Libya, and murderously occupied Afghanistan.
Blaming policy, politicians, media, corporations, but never holding America, Americans, responsible as MLKjr did, Antiwar Journalists have been exposing mass-homicide for the purpose of thievery committed by Americans in dozens of poor nations since immediately following WW II. They detailed America’s bloody overthrow of democratic governments in Greece, Guatemala, Congo, Korea, Iran, Vietnam and Laos, denounced the obvious crimes against humanity easily seen on TV in Lebanon, Dominican Republic, Panama, Cuba, Cambodia, Grenada, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, but as movement, less forthrightly those in Yugoslavia and Libya and those of today crimes in Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, other African nations and in the murderous military occupation of Afghanistan, but with what intention? Also, the tendency of alternative media writers appears to bow to topicality, thus tending to argue on the corporate media agenda the particular genocide that is ongoing, and leave forgotten last year’s successful travesties, even more so, America’s perfidious genocide in Vietnam and Korea, as now distant unrelated history.
Mindbogglingly, these fine investigative journalists of Internet”s alternative media appear to limit their faultfinding to America’s reelected and appointed politicians, the corporate media cartel that backs them and justifies America’s wars on humanity, and much less frequently (if at all) seek to identify as causal, the amoral by nature automaton businessmen operating the usurious commercial, industrial, financial speculative investment banking conspiracy that rules both American society and increasingly, the world.
The puzzlement that prompted this article’s questionnaire is a brutally simple one:
“How would all this exposed truth and detailed information have any meaning for America’s millions of victims, if there is no intention to promote the prosecution of Americans who planned and are planning, who created and go on creating, who propagandized and propagandize today, who participated in and continue to participate in now, and especially those Americans who have reaped and are still reaping enormous financial reward from America’s near seven decades of atrocity wars and covert homicide without any fear, without any concern, of possible punishment and incarceration for their American homicidal crimes?
Your truly is dead sure that the antiwar writers the question in the title is hereby being seriously put to, are more than conversant with the clearly worded Nuremberg Principles, The General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy, and the articles of the US Constitution that makes both of these an integral part of the law of the land.
(Dear readers who are not knowledgeable about the wording of the laws might consider clicking on the link to the purely educational, but stimulating to action, Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now, which provides succinctly the pertinent laws, exhortations by Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King Jr., Noam Chomsky, Ed Herman, former US Att. Gen. Ramsey Clark, Cindy Sheehan, Cornel West and Kim Peterson, editor of Dissident Voice, “Justice is required, otherwise what would serve as a brake on future war crimes?” The website features a color-coded country-by-country history of US crimes in nineteen (and counting) countries.)
Being the most sensitive and highly educated in the nation, America’s progressive and revolutionary writers are also aware that it is happens as often as not that Common Law and the laws within the scriptures of all religions are often quoted in legal pleas.
Questionnaire for All Antiwar Writers and Investigative Journalists:
Given your wide investigations into the deadly criminal nature of US foreign policy and your awareness that candidate for the Republican nomination for President of the United States of America, US Representative from Texas, Ron Paul, MD, has been heard on prime time news for months warning that all US wars, invasions and bombings since end of World War Two have been illegal, unconstitutional and therefore crimes against the people of those nations and against America as well, when, if ever, do you anticipate a Nuremberg Principles trial of Americans for crimes against humanity and crimes against peace?
Choose one:
a. next year
b. in 2015
c. in 2016
d. after wars with Iran and China
e. never
This writer, as the archival research peoples historian for the website: Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now and coordinator of the Martin Luther King Jr. Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign [ http://kingcondemneduswars.blogspot.com/], which is endorsed by every sincere peace organization in America (and a few abroad) and almost every prominent antiwar author-historian-journalist, has over the last six months, personally approached many of these endorsing colleagues and mentors asking if they would consider working the idea of urging a public call for the prosecution of US crimes against humanity into their writing.
With few exceptions, this polite request has provoked responses like “Everyone knows that I stand against the wars,” or “I have always called for the arrest of President Bush (and or Obama) (as if my humbly-put request had not made it clear that calling for the prosecution of one or more “fall guys,’ was not only misleading but would leave investors and facilitators and profiteers of the wars free to continue, as was the case in the intentionally incomplete Nuremberg prosecution of Nazi Germany.] [see footnote *]
About a third of my attempts have been met with arguments such as, “The courts are controlled and will not prosecute.’ “It would be like whistling in the dark.’ “A waste of time, they control media.’ “Cannot be done, why uselessly try.’ “Work instead to educate, further, influence Congress.’ (As if Congress was not “owned’ by wall street along with the other two branches of government as FDR wrote to his friend Colonel House in 1932.)
Usually, when it is pointed out that Martin Luther King Jr. had no court that would overturn racist “laws’ and violence against minorities, but prosecuted them in the court of public opinion in the street and media; that Gandhi had no court to evict the British military, so prosecuted the British in the hearts and minds of the Indian people and gave the English no option but to leave; that in 1979, Iranians had no court to prosecute the murderous Shah, my correspondents usually discontinue the exchange, or in cases where I have argued too insistently, “Please remove me from your mailing list,” and in one case, profanity from a revered fellow historian whose monthly reports I am a fan of and never miss reading.
What keeps astounding me is that intellectuals of the West, well informed in history and current events, seem to be sure that the white colonial speculative banking sponsored centuries of genocide against a now six billion strong non-white majority humanity is just going to continue on into the future ad finitum. Do they believe homo sapiens be doomed as a specie, that neither we nor the next generations will ever see logic, sanity, and natural and common law will come to govern in social and political life as they continue to govern in the arts and sciences and in all the marvelous natural phenomena of other aspects of life on earth?
Most all of my antiwar colleagues strike me as discounting J.S. Bach, Chopin, Einstein, Helen Keller, Eugene Debs, Che Guevara, Jesus, Siddartha Gautama, Lao Tsu, Zeno, Hugo, Zola, Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Rosa Luxembourg and the thousands of genial stars in the firmament of the, as yet, short history of Mankind along with the billions of beautiful ordinary (read miraculous in nature) human beings, as just not demonstrative of the specie’s level of intelligence, but rather quirky exceptions to a dismally hapless in character specie homo sapiens (read saps?).
In spite of the ever exciting and changing world of science, too many accept, as permanent, a world rule by the descendents of the primitive savage Picts, Scotts, Germanic tribes of Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Teutones, Cimbri, Goths, Vandals, Lombards, Suebi, Frisii and Franks that overran the Roman Empire and the ancient advanced civilizations of the Mediterranean, North Africa and the Middle East, and the Viking Norse, Angles, Saxons, and Normans who turned much of Europe into a slaughter house during most of what later came to be called The Dark Ages, and finally with the deadly use of Chinese gunpowder and musket, cannon, and machine gun at the service of a usurious and genocidal commercial, industrial, financial speculative investment banking conspiracy, brutally enslaved and plundered the entire non-white-race population of the planet.
How long can logic, honesty, sanity and intelligence if not wisdom be excluded from the political affairs of the specie through simple-minded tales of deception like ‘World War Two and Holocaust was made by one maniac Adolph Hitler.’
“Who would be constant in happiness or wisdom must often change.” Confucius
Jay Janson (Henry Julius Nowak-Jankowski) is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer; has lived and worked on all continents; articles on media published in China, Italy, UK, India and the US; now resides in NYC; First effort was a series of articles on deadly cultural pollution endangering seven areas of life emanating from Western corporate owned commercial media published in Hong Kong’s Window Magazine 1993; Howard Zinn lent his name to various projects of his; Global Research; Information Clearing House; Counter Currents, Kerala, India; Minority Perspective, UK; Dissident Voice, Uruknet; Voice of Detroit; Ethiopian Review; Palestine Chronicle; India Times; Ta Kung Bao; China Daily; South China Morning Post; Come Home America; OpEdNews; HistoryNews Network; Vermont Citizen News have published his articles; 300 of which are available at: click http://www.opednews.com/author/author1723.html ; Weekly column, South China Morning Post, 1986-87; reviews for Ta Kung Bao; article China Daily, 1989. Is coordinator of the King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign : and website historian of Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now Campaign featuring a country by country history of US crimes and laws pertaining. Studied history at CCNY, Columbia U., U. Puerto Rico, Dolmetscher Institut München, Germany. (Musician grassroots activist dedicated firstly to ending colonial power “genocide in maintenance of unjust predatory investments,” [Martin Luther King Jr.]) Ramsey Clark, Noam Chomsky, Ed Herman and Gustavo Esteva would be glad to vouch for his sincerity and integrity and familiarity with history and current events.
Jay,
I believe that to overthrow the political, financial and military forces who causes the conflicts in this world over resources is going to take more than Martin Luther King’s or Gandhi’s peaceful protests in public, and I disagree that these two individuals overthrew the status quo, what they actually did in my view was force the controlling elite to temporarily compromise.
After all, MLK did not end racism but merely racial segregation. No a single American politician was convicted of racist crimes either.
The same argument could be used in the case of Gandhi. While he forced the British Empire to compromise at a time when financially the empire was becoming burdensome to the ruling British elite, he did not end imeprialism outright, it was merely a compromise. Not s single member of the British ruling elite was prosecuted.
Both men were assassinated in the end, and this is the bloody, brutal truth of revolution Jay, blood will be shed. The controling elite will not forsake the centuries of wealth accumulation just because citizens rise up, they wil fight back with the means at their disposal, the media, the military, the banking structure, the courts etc.
Millions marched against the war in Iraq and it achieved nothing. If these millions decided to forcibly remove Tony Blair and George Bush Jnr., do you actually think the state police and military would not intervene to ‘restore law and order’?
Jay, as much as we would like to believe that we can change the world, the real change will only occur when most of us decide enough is enough and are willing to actually sacrifice our lives for this purpose.
Until then expect more wars for resources.
Publisher Mark
Writes the best and most difficult to answer criticism this author can remember ever receiving.
Yes, it is of immense importance to remember that Gandhi’s is honored for making it to uncomfortable for the British Military and Colonial Gov to remain, but could not free India from England and the Colonial Powers predatory investment banking homicidal criminals.
That King leading others in obstinacy and life risk brought about public awareness then support causing more to go into the street caused those local racist laws to be to much trouble to keep. But did not dent racism.
Sagacity on Mark’s part his provoked some deep contemplation of
1.Why people react to what I am urging by logic, logic versus illogic, natural versus unnatural, happiness versus unhappiness, honesty versus dishonesty, desirability versus undesirability, normal versus absurd, to be AWARE of: Yet answer me with “impossible, cannot be done, would cause bloodshed, people too afraid revolt, take any action or even speak up our of fear????
Even though, I NEVER write of need for any of the above, not even confrontation!
Mark, pointing this out as my ally, has made the difference to make me understand why I am getting a reaction AS IF ……… I were asking people to revolt, cause or risk bloodshed, endanger themselves by speaking out in a violent reaction causing way, or to expect the impossible to happen. Since I am not, am assuming that there reaction is an automatic and conditioned reflex. I unfortunately have assumed that this would not be READ INTO my endeavors.
I believe Mark has awoken me to the pure necessity of either prefacing each piece or clarifying within the opening sentences of each writing THAT (as a student of intellectual teaching of Siddhartha) it is AWARENESS that both makes a man free and occasions bloodless correction of the illogical, and by extension, perfidious, iniquitous, circumstances and procedures gone awry and producing (again, illogical) human suffering.
The first great anarchist philosopher William Godwin taught that with awareness one is a free man. WITH AWARENESS ONE IS ALREADY A FREE MAN. Awareness is a prerequisite to imagination and imagination is said to be the strongest force in the world.
Mark, what I have been assuming, wrongly, apparently, is that readers would (by the succinctness of my presentation) relax, kind of laugh to themselves in awakened self-confidence, that everything is going to soon be alright or at least immensely improved and on the way to the intelligent progress of Mankind that is inherent in the nature of inexpressibly miraculous specie Homo Sapiens within and even more general phenomenon of life on Earth within a super-overwhelming unanswerable and only to be be wondered mystery of cosmic existence itself. I would like to give an example of how I have come to understand the function or result or power of ‘awareness.’
Notwithstanding of course that ‘awareness’ arises in time, space and circumstance with universal interlacing and inalterable ex-post facto cause and effect, hypothetically, with increased awareness among the protagonists and participants of the Paris Commune, the outcome would have been less disastrous. I only picked the Paris Commune as example from all events anywhere and anyplace for it involves the confrontation, bloodshed, fear, predicable impossibility of success that seems to be awakened by my emphasizing the expectancy that the illogic of the long ongoing genocide arranged by our speculative investment banking rules to continue except by the unawareness or semi-unawareness of society.
In effect, I am in writing instead of performing the turning phases in music all day, am simply rather uncontrollably reacting to my awareness of what I write about as being so naturally calling for my attention.
(Of course deepest and fundamental awareness is contingent on enlightenment as in the case of Siddhartha Buddha, escaping from the ignorance inculcated in one by primitive society’s belief in ego in fear of the surrounding dangers with Nature as being directed at them rather than simply awesome but innocent displays of natural forces within the laws of physics without intention to hurt any creature.)
Jay,
Once citizens are made aware of the corruption, the war crimes, the deception meted out by the coporate media, and the actors involved who create wars for power, greed and profit, what is the next step?
Peaceful protests and enlightenment can only go so far if your enemy is committed to violence to achieve their ends and you are committed to non violence.
Those who pull the strings in this world are ruthless psychopaths. They will bomb entire countries, kill children and infants and perpetrate the most vile crimes that humans can do against each other to achieve their ends without remorse; and you seriously expect no bloodshed to overthrow these psychopaths?
How would you bring a dangerous killer to justice Jay? Would you make a citizens arrest? And what if that killer had connections to the police, courts and political system, what then?
The powerful are like a criminal cartel. a mafia family even, and whether the entire community rise up against them they would not go down without a fight.
In my view whether activists like it or not, peaceful protests are useless in a system structured to protect the powerful.
Knowledge may be power and even enlightenment, but if you do not apply that knowledge effectively to revolutionise your thinking and actions as well as your environment it will count for little in the overall scheme of things.
Many people know war crimes are being committed, they know who the criminals are, but what they do not know is how to stop these criminals who control the media, the courts, the banks, the political system and every area of life.
In my view, it leads inevitably to a conflict. Hence why I ask, how many activists are willing to sacrifice their lives for a better world.
Thank you for your excellent blog, it is always an essential read.I have just read your article on the Genocide Convention, which was very interesting. I have just a few thoughts though. I agree that the process of defining genocide was not arbitrary, since, the exclusion of economic, political and social groups did produce a great deal of debate during the drafting process. However, I thought that the decision to exclude these groups was, in part, a political concession to protect certain leaders from liability?Also, my problem with the logic of the definition of genocide in the Convention is that different people murdered in the same atrocity are not treated in the same way. For example, a trade unionist killed in a concentration camp alongside a Jewish person would not be considered a victim of genocide, even though the wrong done to them is equally horrific. To take a more recent example, like the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge, a large number of victims do not fall under the definition of the Convention as they were intellectuals or members of political groups. This would have caused a great deal of confusion if DK leaders had been prosecuted for genocide, as the court would have overlooked the murder of people from these groups, so denying their families justice. Thanks once again.