#every war is horrific but not every war can be constituted as genocide

[kelluinox]

This is a prime example of why Hamasniks insist on Holocaust inversion. Why they insist on calling it a genocide, when what it really is is a drawn out, bloody, horrific war caused by a terror attack on a neighboring country, in which civilians suffer while the perpetrators hide in tunnels. They want to be able to throw the Holocaust back in our faces, even when we don't mention it. They want to be able to taunt us with it. They resent that they had to acknowledge the Holocaust in the first place. They would love nothing more than to be able to disregard it: "Oh who cares about the Holocaust? You committed one too."

That is the entire purpose

I hate how this conflict has made me suspicious of watermelon emojis because now whenever I see a user with watermelons I have to think: "OK, do they just really really like watermelons, or do they want to kill 7 million jews"

[probablyasocialecologist]

Mohammed: PYM’s [Palestinian Youth Movement] position, which you can see in our messaging, is that this is a project of genocide. It’s a genocidal campaign being waged on the people of Gaza through a variety of means, including a 16-year-long siege of Gaza. We’ve seen an intensification of that siege in the last two weeks, the denial of fuel, water, electricity, and medical supplies, coupled with an unrelenting bombardment on a densely populated area with nearly half of its population being children — all while the U.S. works to send more bombs. The only way to see it is as genocide, coupled with the statements by the representatives of the Israeli state calling Palestinians “human animals,” talking about how they’re going to transform the Gaza Strip into a city of tents, and various other genocidal claims being made across the spectrum politically and on every level of the political establishment within the Israeli state, calling for a second Nakba. They have self-identified it as a genocidal campaign. We don’t need to read between the lines to understand; they’ve made it explicit. Radhika: Unfortunately, we agree with that, too. The Center for Constitutional Rights is a close partner of Palestine Legal’s. We should take the Israelis at their word. The Israeli minister of defense called Palestinians “human animals;” he said Israel’s military will “eliminate everything” in Gaza, and there have been calls to flatten whole neighborhoods. This is genocidal language, as genocide experts have pointed out, and the horrific military violence against Palestinian civilians should terrify everyone. Knowing the history of how this rhetoric has been used in other mass atrocities is very frightening. We’re very concerned about what Israel will do next. It’s important that the international community urgently stop attempts to commit genocide against Palestinians.

[sethshead]

One of the persistent frustrations I’ve experienced listening to the sloganeering discourse surrounding this war has been the (often intentional) distortion of basic principles of international humanitarian law.

Words like “apartheid”, “ethnic cleansing”, “genocide”, “war crime”, “proportionality”, “casus belli”, and others are being so misused as to leave them utterly meaningless. In the case of war crimes, there is copious evidence that they are Hamas’s very modus operandi, whereas there is none to indicate Israel has violated anything generally construed as governing the law of war.

That might change if, in the aftermath of fighting, it is determined that the legitimate military assets it claims to target are absent: that there are no tunnels or weapons caches, that the air strikes were nothing more than a terror campaign. But at this point, Hamas is fighting tooth and nail outside a hospital where a normal military would withdraw to spare patients and staff from violence, buildings are collapsing into foundations weakened by Hamas tunneling, and Hamas has used every opportunity to take advantage of humanitarian evacuations and pauses to move and supply its fighters.

War is a bloody affair. As I’ve said before, however justifiable and necessary one can be, it can never be just, since the innocent will always suffer. What we are seeing is what war looks like when it is prosecuted legally. Images of areas subject to indiscriminate attack are even more horrific. Estimated civilian casualties are still within my expectations for a campaign conducted cleanly. This is what war is. The key is not to get into them with attacks such as Israel suffered on October 7. Peace is always preferable, and Hamas should have considered the devastation that would befall Ghaza due to its breach of an existing cease-fire. Most perversely, this might be exactly what Hamas expected and intended, the sacrifice of its own people to its religious crusade.

[96thdayofrage]

1. Listen more; talk less. You don’t have to have something to say all of the time. You don’t have to post something on social media that points to how liberal/how aware/how cool/how good you are. You are lovely, human, and amazing. You have also had the microphone for most of the time, for a very long time, and it will be good to give the microphone to someone else who is living a different experience than your own.

2. For one out of every three opinions/insights shared by a person of color in your life, try to resist the need to respond with a better or different insight about something that you read or listened to as it relates to their shared opinion. Try just to listen and sit with someone else’s experience. When you do share in response to what someone has shared with you, it can sometimes (not always) feel like “whitesplaining” — meaning to explain or comment on something in an over-confident or condescending way. This adds to the silencing of the voices of people of color.

3. Being an ally is different than simply wanting not to be racist (thank you for that, by the way). Being an ally requires you to educate yourself about systemic racism in this country. Read Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me and Claudia Rankine’s Citizen and so many other great books and articles that illuminate oppression and structures of white supremacy and white privilege. Use your voice and influence to direct the folks that walk alongside you in real life (or follow you on the internet), toward the voice of someone that is living a marginalized/disenfranchised experience.

BEING AN ALLY REQUIRES YOU TO EDUCATE YOURSELF ABOUT SYSTEMIC RACISM IN THIS COUNTRY.

4. Please try not to, “I can’t believe that something like this would happen in this day and age!” your way into being an ally when atrocities like the events in Charleston, S.C., and Charlottesville, Va., happen. People of color have been aware of this kind of hatred and violence in America for centuries, and it belittles our experience for you to show up 300 years late to the oppression-party suddenly caring about the world. Don’t get me wrong, I welcome you. I want for you to come into a place of awareness. However, your shock and outrage at the existence of racism in America echoes the fact that you have lived an entire life with the luxury of indifference about the lives of marginalized/disenfranchised folks. Please take several seats.

5. Ask when you don’t know — but do the work first. This is nuanced. Some marginalized/disenfranchised folks will tell you not to ask them anything; don’t be offended by that. Folks are tired, and that is understandable because it is exhausting to be a marginalized person in this world. However, there is something special that happens within human connections and relationships. In a nutshell, don’t expect for people to educate you. Do the work to educate yourself. Ask questions within relationships that feel safe, and do so respectfully.

6. And finally, stop talking about colorblindness. It’s not a thing. Colorblindness is totally impossible in a nation whose land was taken from the indigenous inhabitants through an attempt at genocide and horrific colonization. The same nation that enslaved humans and exploited them in every way imaginable built a nation on their backs, hung them, hunted them, and for centuries kept them from their basic inalienable rights and still does. The same nation that exploits and deports immigrants who were promised refuge within the American Constitution. The same nation that incarcerated Japanese Americans during World War II and continues to promote bigotry, exclusion, and violence against LGBTQ/gender non-identifying folks. This nation that allows swastika-wearing, Confederate-flag-toting, anti-Semitic racists to have a platform for their hate. The same nation that promised religious freedom, yet targets those who do not believe in a white, capitalist Jesus.

ASK WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW — BUT DO THE WORK FIRST.

I love Jesus. And promise, Jesus was not white (literally brown, and wonderfully Jewish) and would have never been a capitalist.

It will never be possible for us to be colorblind, and we shouldn’t ever want to be.

I heard a saying once at an Al-Anon meeting that offered me liberation: “We are only as sick as our secrets (and our shame).” Shame can only live in the darkness; it can live within the systems of denial and defensiveness that we use to cover it up. We have to name these things, acknowledge them, and begin to do the deep work of transformation, restoration — and reparation.

Yup, now I’m talking about reparations.

Privilege means that you owe a debt. You were born with it. You didn’t ask for it. And you didn’t pay for it either. No one is blaming you for having it. You are lovely, human, and amazing. Being a citizen of a society requires work from everyone within that society. It is up to you whether you choose to acknowledge the work that is yours to do. It is up to you whether you choose to pay this debt and how you choose to do so.

Sometimes living with privilege can disillusion us into thinking that being in community with other humans doesn’t require work. This is a lie; it requires a great deal of work. And all of that work requires being a human and trying to love other humans well.

YOU'RE GOING TO MAKE MISTAKES — EXPECT THIS. BUT KEEP SHOWING UP.

I believe that this is holy work, the work of justice, the pursuit of it. It doesn’t need an audience, and it will not always have one. It will happen most days in ways that are unseen. It might mean providing a meal or shelter, listening, using your particular area of expertise to help someone in need of that expertise who might not have access to it otherwise, bailing a protester out of jail, or paying a family’s rent one month (if you have the resources to do so), or marching at a rally with marginalized folks alongside other allies. There may not always be a practical, tangible way to pursue this work, but I believe you will know it when you meet it face-to-face.

However it looks, it will be something that you do without needing to be thanked or receive praise — you are not a savior. Marginalized/disenfranchised folks can and will survive without you — we are magic. However, I urge you to pursue this work, knowing that a system of white privilege afforded you access to opportunities while denying them to so many others.

Above all, I urge you keep trying. You're going to make mistakes; expect this. But keep showing up. Be compassionate. Lead with empathy, always. Keep learning and growing. If you do this, I truly believe you’ll be doing the work of an ally.

[loveoaths]

on the yuki clan, pt. 1/?

GENERAL

the yuki clan was one of the most dangerous clans involved in Water Country’s civil wars. they were a small clan capable of horrendous devastation, known for ( literally ) turning the tide of battle. the yuki kekkei genkai can manipulate pre-existing water / ice & create more with chakra - the matter produced is extremely chakra-dense, making it difficult for other water / ice users to wrest control of it or walk across it. ice, water, and snow are all under their command.

BATTLE PROWESS

devastating as they were on the battlefield, the yuki kekkei genkai made them horrifically talented assassins: ice mirrors can act as portals through which they can see and travel at will. these portals cannot be made more than a 800 feet from the access point without intimate knowledge of the space & a vast amount of chakra, with most yuki needing to be no more than 100-200 feet from the access point. but once mirrors have manifested both the ice user and their clones can travel through them at breakneck speeds, allowing them to kill multiple targets at once before disappearing silently without a trace.

a rumor once circulated claiming that, on the night of the full moon, a single yuki woman slit the throats of an entire army as they slept, sparing only a single genin to relay the news. stories of their exploits so proliferated the country that they became known as “ the cursed clan,” & seeing a full moon reflected in a mirror considered a bad omen / sign the yuki had their eye on you & were coming to cast their death curse.

eventually these stories made their way into other countries, which is why, upon seeing the reanimated haku’s ice mirror in the Fourth Shinobi War, he is immediately recognized by several shinobi.

PHYSICALITY

constitution wise, a yuki’s natural body temperature runs several degrees lower than average, making them cold to the touch. they are nearly impervious to cold & will not experience numbness, frostbite, or bodily shutdown unless the temperature drop is quite extreme. however, the downside to this is that they positively wither in warmer climates, & if they transition too quickly from a cold environment to a warmer one they run the risk of organ failure and illness. their lower temperature makes it difficult for bacteria & viruses to thrive in their body, which has its benefits & consequences: they are less likely to catch spreadable illnesses, but this also means their immune systems are not as developed as others, so when a particularly impervious bug happens upon them they tend to become very ill very quickly.

like most kg, the ice release is connected to emotional states & triggered by strong emotion. however, it is also triggered on a smaller scale. the more intense/dark the emotion haku experiences, the lower his temperature drops. when he’s angry & not paying attention, his breath begins to cloud; if he’s pissed it crystallizes into tiny, glittering flakes.

MISCELLANEOUS

they were an indigenous people with distinct traditions & language prior to the development of shinobi villages. they were forced to give up their mother tongue after they were marshaled into mist’s ranks.

long hair is common among the yuki regardless of gender. clan mythos claims the yuki to be descended from yuki-onna.

once civil unrest was quelled & the civil wars ended, the yuki were one of the first clans to be hunted down & exterminated. survivors like haku’s mother went into hiding & destroyed every trace of their clan affiliation. consequently, very little written information on clan techniques / customs / etc survived the kekkei genkai genocide. remaining information exists only in stories and rumors, with little of it being verifiable.

even after Water Country’s prejudice against kekkei genkais fades into the past, fear & hatred of the yuki remains. no survivors have ever stepped forward to rebuild the clan as a result of lingering animosity.

yuki can’t get morning breath. their bodies are basically refrigerators which keeps bacteria from breaking food particles down too quickly.

they have high metabolisms, yet slower heartbeats. it’s weird.  digest food really slowly.

hyoton occurs from the combination of the water & wind nature chakra. most yuki possess both, with some developing a third.

[xtruss]

Opinions | Human Rights

Višegrad’s rape camps: Denial and Erasure

In the Bosnian town of Višegrad, the local authorities are trying hard to whitewash genocidal crimes through tourism.

"Out of 14,000 Bosniaks who lived in Višegrad before the war, about 3,000 were killed, often in the public executions on its famous Ottoman bridge." — #AJOpinion, by Ehlimana Memišević.

— By Ehlimana Memišević: She is an assistant professor at the Department of Legal History and Comparative Law, Faculty of Law, University of Sarajevo | October 17, 2020 | Al Jazeera English

Bosnian Muslims toss 3,000 roses into the Drina River, each representing people killed in the 1992-95 war, in the eastern Bosnian town of Višegrad, on May 26, 2012 (File: AP/Amel Emric)

I was born in the 1980s to a Bosniak family in Višegrad, an ethnically diverse town in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. A couple of years later, my hometown turned into one of the worst places on earth to be born a Muslim.

It was a hot day in June 1992. The disappearances and the mass killings of Bosniak civilians at Višegrad’s famous 16th-century Mehmed Paša Sokolović’s bridge, which can be seen from almost every window in town, had intensified. Death and fear were all around me. I was just six years old.

We were sitting at home, my mother holding me in her arms, trying to comfort me. I clearly remember telling her: “I wish they’d kill me first.” Death, however scary it may be to a child, sounded better than watching my mom being killed in front of my eyes.

At the beginning of July, we fled to Goražde, a nearby town which was under the control of Bosnian forces, but many of our neighbours, friends and acquaintances stayed behind and faced genocidal violence.

Today, more than 25 years after the Dayton Accords officially recognised the ethnically cleansed Serb-majority entity Republika Srpska, where Višegrad is now located, the stories of the horrific suffering of its Muslim residents still haunt me.

So it was with anguish and a survivor’s guilt that I opened British journalist Christina Lamb’s recent book Our Bodies, Their Battlefield. It details the use of rape as a weapon of war across the world, including in Bosnia during the war. Lamb’s account of what happened in my hometown reawakened the trauma of the war.

Knowing the extent to which the current authorities in Republika Srpska are going to in order to erase these crimes made reading her book that much more painful.

Death and Rape in Višegrad

In 1993, as details of the horrific crimes committed in Bosnia started to surface, the UN Security Council voted to establish the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to prosecute war criminals. The crimes committed in Višegrad particularly stood out.

“These courts have heard many accounts but even the most seasoned judges and prosecutors pause at the mention of crimes perpetrated in Višegrad […] Crimes which reached an unprecedented peak of capricious cruelty not seen anywhere else,” one of the judges quoted in Lamb’s book had said.

Out of 14,000 Bosniaks who lived in Višegrad before the war, about 3,000 were killed, often in the public executions on that famous Ottoman bridge, which served as an inspiration for Yugoslav author Ivo Andrić’s novel The Bridge on the Drina.

The killings on the bridge in June 1992 were on such a mass scale that according to British journalist Ed Vulliamy, Višegrad’s police inspector Milan Josipović received “a macabre complaint from downriver, from the management of Bajina Basta hydro-electric plant across the Serbian border”. The plant’s director requested to “slow the flow of corpses down the Drina”, since “they were clogging up the culverts in his dam at such a rate that he could not assemble sufficient staff to remove them”.

On June 14 and 27, 1992, more than 120 civilians, mostly women and children, including a two-day-old infant, were locked in two houses in Pionirska Street in Višegrad and Bikavac area which were then set ablaze.

Zehra Turjačanin, the only survivor of the Bikavac massacre, recalled in her testimony: “The people inside were burning alive. They were wailing, screaming. It’s just not describable what I heard.” When she got out of the burning house, she saw the armed men “lying in a grassy area nearby, seemingly intoxicated”, “playing music very, very loud so no one could hear the sound of the burning people screaming inside”, before running away.

Rape and sexual violence, which were “deliberately and methodically used as a weapon of ethnic cleansing and genocide”, as Lamb writes, were widespread in Višegrad and other parts of eastern Bosnia. One of the victims told Lamb there were multiple locations used to carry out mass rape: “The police station, the local sports centre, even the Institute for the Protection of Children”.

One of the most infamous rape camps was the hotel Vilina Vlas, located seven kilometres (four miles) from town. It is suspected that at least 200 Bosniak girls and women were held at Vilina Vlas and systematically raped “in order to be inseminated by the Serb seed”.

“They called us Turks. They told us, ‘You are not going to give birth to Turks any more, but Serbs,’” one of the survivors told Lamb. After the repeated rape many of them were murdered, thrown into the Drina river, or burned alive.

A group of people in the village of Slap, located downstream from Višegrad, retrieved about 180 bodies from the water. The female corpses, they said, were always naked and wrapped in blankets that were tied at each end.

Despite these gruesome crimes carried out in Višegrad between 1992 and 1993, there has been only limited justice delivered.

A Bosnian court found a member of the Republika Srpska police force, Željko Lelek, guilty of crimes against humanity in Višegrad, including rape and sentenced him to sixteen years in prison. One of his victims was Jasmina Ahmetspahić, who ended her life by jumping out of a window at the Vilina Vlas hotel, after being raped for four days.

Milan Lukić, the leader of the Bosnian Serb paramilitary group White Eagles, who established his headquarters at the Vilina Vlas in 1992, was not charged with sexual violence even though “there was ample evidence about a large number of rapes, murder and other serious crimes being committed at the Vilina Vlas”, according to Dermot Groome, who led the prosecution of Milan Lukić at the ICTY.

He described the women who were tortured and violated at the Vilina Vlas hotel, as “some of the most traumatised people he had ever encountered in his work as a prosecutor.”

The ICTY sentenced Milan Lukić to life in prison for war crimes including murder, cruelty, persecution, and other crimes against humanity committed in Višegrad in 1992 and 1993, including the Pionirska Street and Bikavac fires.

The Erasure

Despite the Bosnian court judgement that confirmed the Vilina Vlas hotel was used as a rape camp and the extensive testimonies submitted to the tribunal, the government officials, and the majority of Višegrad’s Serb residents continue to deny rape, torture, or murder took place there.

The denial, which in the words of the prominent genocide scholar, Israel W Charny, represents a celebration of destruction, renewed humiliation of survivors, and metaphorical murder of historical truth and collective memory is not only widely accepted, but it has been state-supported.

In June, as survivors marked the 28th anniversary of the Pionirska Street and Bikavac fires, the administration of the Rehabilitation Center Vilina Vlas, as it is officially called now, announced it is offering government-issued vouchers for discounted stays and use of rehabilitation services.

Then in July, the Bosnian media reported that Republika Srpska’s Tourist Board, with the support of the municipality of Višegrad, has started a promotional campaign called “We are waiting for you in Višegrad” and provided gift vouchers as a way to attract tourists. Vilina Vlas was also part of the campaign.

Support and encouragement of the denial go far beyond Bosnia. In 1998, shortly after the hotel reopened and the Serb authorities started encouraging foreigners to stay there and help erase the memory of its horrors, Austrian author and genocide denier Peter Handke booked a room.

He later wrote about his experience in Višegrad, expressing doubt about Lukić’s involvement in the killings and such crimes happening at all. Despite his appalling genocide apologism, the Swedish Academy awarded Handke the Nobel Prize for the Literature in 2019.

And beyond the realm of the written word, the rape and genocide of Muslims in Višegrad and elsewhere in Bosnia are now celebrated and glorified by white supremacist across the world and serve as an inspiration for terrorist acts.

It is now becoming increasingly clear the denial and distortion of truth not only constitute an assault on the history of one particular group but also pose a threat to us all. Denial is one of the most certain indicators that a repeat of such crimes in the future is imminent.

Therefore, it is more urgent than ever to fight denialism in the Balkans and across the world, to preserve the memories of the victims and remember the unimaginable suffering inflicted upon them. Failing to do so would constitute complicity in ethnic cleansing and genocide.

The Serb fighters started that process by killing and then trying to erase any physical evidence of their victims’ existence by burying them in unmarked graves or throwing them in the Drina River. Embracing denial and forgetting the names and lives of these people would complete the process. As Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel wrote, “to forget would be akin to killing them a second time.”

We must fight for the victims’ memory and for the triumph of truth.

— The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

[ehyeh-joshua]

A hypothetical conversation, based loosely on Revelation 13, the needs of an extremely authoritarian oligarchy, and the means of deceiving the people to accept such.

This post has been on my mind for a while, but only got to posting it today.

The premises of this hypothetical dialogue are simple; the plan of history is that in what are commonly -and for that matter, incorrectly- referred to as the end times, a man, specifically a German/Italian apostate Jew, is granted power to rule by an as yet unknown descendant of the Roman Empire->Western/Eastern Roman Empire->Holy Roman Empire->European Union line, the Russian autocratic/oligarchic line and what is today known as the United States of America. This regime is one of the most horrific regimes that has ever scarred the land with it's presence, accomplishing levels of mass murder and genocide that dwarf even abortion, and against which comparisons to the Holocaust, Mao or Stalin are insignificant rounding errors, a regime that takes the likes of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World as instruction manuals. Those seeking to emplace this empire have been in active progress for the past 4 centuries, working across all aspects of humanity. It is utterly futile to attempt to link this group to any "known" group; at most, such groups are mere distractions designed to delude those who believe in them. They will reveal themselves when it suits them to do so.

As any student of history knows, the use of force can achieve the goal of domination - however, all such regimes either fail, or are in the process of failing. The problem is finite resource in such a system must be devoted to suppression measures and enforcing morale; the alternative, but vastly more complex and near prohibitive in terms of more time required approach of manipulation, coercion, education and use of language, achieves the same result without the costs that mean no such regime survives otherwise.

A crucial part of such a regime's survival is presenting the requirements of the dictatorship in a way acceptable to the populace. This dialogue considers one such avenue, that of persuading the people to not just accept, but desire the device known as the mark of the beast.

What this mark is is not yet known; speculation has been done for well in excess of a thousand years, and until this device (this word, in all uses here, is used in the broadest possible sense; the most hyper-literal interpretation is some kind of tattoo skin marking, but I don't believe the hyper-literal is correct here) is known, it is illogical to speculate. Nevertheless, the author assumes that references and comparisons to known technology are valid - my anticipation is it uses two incredibly tiny quantum-state computers that interface with the body, and the brain especially.

The needs of an extreme-authoritarian state (references to what are accepted right/left wing distinctions are irrelevant, and serve only to enable the division and conquest; the overriding goal of state is a bigger state) from the subject are numerous, and the mark of the beast ensures the most important; to use a translation of Cicero, the sinews of war are infinite money. However, every detail given by the salesman below has value to the state described, and could be synthesised into the device as I theorise it to be. This is an example; I am by no means a salesman, and well, I’m not in an imaginitive mood right now... When the time comes for voluntary uptake of this device, far better trained salesmen will be dealing with people even more inclined to the easily manipulated groupthink. But, fundamental premises will be the same. When it reaches the state of forced uptake, well, then there is no need to persuade...

The sharp-suited salesman stands beside his machine; he used to sell cars, before they all became driverless* and he was made redundant now that people just dialled up Omega Technologies Inc. for a carpod, with no need to buy cars anymore - thankfully, he had been given this job, persuading people to take up the government's free at point of use offer of the very latest in human-electronic interaction systems. So spectacularly advanced... Fortunately, a family walked over to him. Time to work.

"Hello sir and madam, how may I help you?"

The man answered. "I've heard a bit about what you sell, and I'd like to know more."

"Well, you see sir, I don't actually sell these - they are completely free, fully subsidised under the Personal Communications Implants Act. But, these devices function in many ways, particularly in how they are a complete replacement for all your financial services, no need to remember PIN numbers, carry cards or cash, or use apps on your phone; all you need is to wave your wrist in front of the scanners, and everything is taken care of without any fuss. And it isn't just paying for goods and services - this same system means all you need to do at work is wave your hands past the scanner, no more timesheets, and you can get paid to the exact seconds you start and finish work."

"That sounds interesting, how does it work?"

"Good question sir, how this works is by the fact the devices are uniquely linked directly to you based on an encryption of your personal DNA, and your government account. It is totally secure, the only way to compromise it is if someone hacks off your arm - and even then, the primary device in your forehead** enables you to block any transactions someone attempts via the neural infonet system."

"The neural infonet system?"

"Yes - the forehead injected device interfaces directly between your brain, your senses and the wireless communication systems that have existed for many years now - it is like having a mobile phone in your head, any phonecall you might want to make is just a thought away, and you are constantly able to update yourself with the latest social media and news media updates, as well as any new state announcements, even games can be done. In short, everything a computer can do, your brain can now do."

The woman speaks. "Wow - but what about our children?"

"Oh don't worry, the devices work exactly the same, with parental restrictions as necessary - there is no worry about where your children are as the devices are fully tracked, no worry about what they are learning and listening to, and because the system dials into the human body directly, it can track their health and development, even offer advice on how to help. Of course, this also goes for you, as it analyses you and can create a healthplan specifically to suit you and enable you to get the most from your body, as well as telling you of any developing health conditions."

"That would be so helpful, I worry about my kids a lot..."

"I can do it right now if you like, the injections are quick and painless, and best of all, free!"

* This is very close; in ten to twenty years, you will not be able to use a occupant controlled vehicle anymore. Commercial transport and haulage will be driverless before that. Uber, the inspiration for the hypothetical company, is just a prototype for what is coming, and they will almost certainly go bust before this point as their model demands domination of the market to function, and they don't have that. But, the principle would be viable when private cars and taxis are abolished and all vehicle companies merge driverless systems in response to the future legislative pressure and consumer demand - all a consumer will do is use the app, a carpod will appear, take them to their destination, while paying a monthly amount vastly reduced compared to running costs currently experienced.

** The wrist/forehead link has origins to violate the Torah as much as the sheer practicality; it is a command of the Torah that we bind the words He commands us on our hands and our foreheads, and so, by setting this human/satanic device in the hand and forehead, it constitutes idolatry and rebellion against GOD, which is why Revelation is so fierce in the words it uses on this subject, and focuses on Who's mark should be sealed on our hands and foreheads.

[arizonagirldiary]

LET’S GIVE DRUG DEALERS THE DEATH PENALTY

Well, let’s not. Because actually we can’t.

I am not outspoken about all things Trump. Everything is so ridiculous to me that my only thoughts are about guessing when the nightmare will end. All of you people who have ever made fun of government policy wonks—don’t you wish they were in charge again?

A few thoughts on this very blustery statement.

Case law, through years of cases related to capital punishment argued before The Supreme Court (48 as of 2016), has narrowed and specifically defined when and how capital punishment can be applied. Capital punishment, or the death penalty, may only be sentenced for capital crimes. These crimes are defined as espionage, treason, and death resulting from aircraft hijacking.

HOWEVER. Capital crimes consist of the offense of murder. such as murder committed during a drug-related drive-by shooting, murder during a kidnapping, murder for hire, and genocide.

Simply stated, capital punishment is primarily sentenced for murder.

Not drug dealers. The misguided, speak-before-thinking, President does not understand, nor seek legal counsel, on the rule of law, case law, or the Constitution. Trump’s thinking is that drug dealers kill people therefore they should get the death penalty (paraphrased).

Flawed logic.

If this logic was true, then DUI manslaughter offenders should get the death penalty because they kill people. If a surgeon made a fatal error during a procedure, the surgeon killed someone and the death penalty would apply. If a domestic violence victim kills his or her’s abuser, they should be sentenced with capital punishment.

State and Federal courts are so backlogged with cases now, can you imagine the log-jam when courts are tasked with redefining how capital punishment is applied?

It’s absurd.

And so is the notion of sentencing drug dealers with capital punishment.

More Americans died of drug overdoses in 2016 than died in the entirety of the Vietnam War—the result of the U.S.’s opioid epidemic, according to Vox.com. I do not profess to know the answer to the very complex and horrific opioid addiction epidemic, although I imagine that the answer lies somewhere within a partnership of physicians, rehabilitation programs vs. incarceration, Big Pharma, and every other stakeholder in this uphill battle.

But this I do know. Empty threats made by the President of the United States, made in public or on Twitter, made specifically for the purpose of attention-grabbing attempts to change the news cycle away from him and an adult film star, well...

...talk to your lawyers. Being his own counsel and firing everyone in his way worked so well for President Nixon. History will tell how well it works for you.

Sources:

Wikipedia List of United States Supreme Court decisions on capital punishment.

Death penalty offenses. ProCon.org.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON FEMININECOLLECTIVE.COM

[ruminativerabbi]

Teshuvah on the National Level

As anyone who has ever attended a Rosh Hashanah service at Shelter Rock (or anywhere at all) knows, the core principle of the High Holiday season is the notion that, although done deeds cannot be undone (which would be something akin to unringing a bell or unsinging a song), they can be addressed purposefully and meaningfully through the process called t’shuvah in Hebrew and, slightly misleadingly, “repentance” in English. The Hebrew word derives from the verb meaning “to turn” and implies that one not only regrets a past act, but that one has specifically turned away from it and resolved, even should the opportunity present itself to repeat the deed, not to do that specific thing again. So that sounds simple enough, but the laws that govern the process are, to say the least, challenging. If you have wronged another, you have to ask that individual for forgiveness. But even if there is no specific other person from whom to ask forgiveness, you still have to exert yourself to right the wrong for which you are responsible nonetheless, thus addressing your own wrongdoing not merely internally or emotionally but practically and meaningfully. There can’t be too many of us who have actually read all 700+ pages of the Book of Repentance of Rabbi Menachem ben Shlomo Meiri of Perpignan, my favorite thirteenth-century Provençal scholar. But even without having the time or energy to undertake a reading project like that, the underlying principles that govern the process of seeking and attaining t’shuvah are available for all to contemplate in dozens of shorter works, including English-language ones like Louis E. Newman’s excellent 2011 book, Repentance: The Meaning and Practice of Teshuvah. (I read the Meiri’s book as my Elul reading project over the course of four years starting in 2013. Newman’s book will take considerably less time to get through.) But neither author asks the question that I’d like to write about today: can nations do t’shuvah or solely individuals?

I was surprised, but also moved, by the news that the German government has finally agreed to acknowledge that the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocents, including children, undertaken by its armed forces in the country in southwestern Africa now known as Namibia was not just an overblown and unnecessarily harsh military action, but an actual act of genocide. But, just as the Meiri (and countless others) have noted with respect to individuals, the acknowledgement of wrongdoing is nowhere near enough and has to be followed by concrete action. Can an offer of something like $1.3 billion to the victims’ descendants count? I think probably so.

The backstory matters. The big colonial powers in occupied Africa were France, Britain, and Belgium. But the Germans were there as well and, starting in 1884, claimed as German territory four colonies: German East Africa (comprising today’s Burundi, Rwanda, and part of Tanzania), German Cameroon (comprising today’s Cameroon and parts of Nigeria, Chad, Gabon, Congo, and the Central African Republic), Togoland (comprising today’s Togo and part of Ghana), and German South-West Africa (today’s Namibia). All became League of Nations mandates following Germany’s defeat in World War I. But by then the newly-acknowledged genocide was more than a decade in the past.

The basic principle was that Germany itself was overcrowded and in need for room to expand—and how more simply to expand then by seizing other peoples’ countries and unilaterally declaring them part of a new German empire? Of course, the Germans were not alone in this approach to the non-white world. But the problem in German South-West Africa was that the natives were not willing to go along with having their land seized and their native culture obliterated and, as a result, two specific tribes, the Herero and the Nama, rose up in rebellion against their despised foreign overlords. It didn’t end well. Armed German soldiers killed tens of thousands, then pushed survivors into concentration camps where most died of starvation or sickness and in which at least some were subjected to ghoulish medical experiments. (Is this starting to sound at all familiar?) Hundreds of human skulls were shipped back to Germany for further experimentation. Some have been returned. The rest somehow disappeared, but the chances that they were respectfully buried appear to be zero.

No Jewish people can consider this without reference to the Shoah, of course. There are plenty of differences, also of course, between the plight of the Jews of Nazi Europe and the fate of the Herero and Nama in German South-West Africa. But the notion of a nation unleashing its army against civilians with the specific purpose of killing as many as possible is one detail they both have in common. (And, yes, there actually is a verified command by Lothar von Trotha, the German military commander in today’s Namibia, unambiguously instructing his men to kill every Herero tribesperson regardless of whether that individual is armed or constitutes some sort of threat.)

The dead, of course, stay in their graves; nothing can bring them back to life. But the willingness of a nation to confront its past is stirring to me—and I can assure my readers that I am more than aware of the irony in me saying that about Germany, the perpetrator nation per excellence. Our tradition teaches that the gates of t’shuvah are always open. It’s heartening to see a nation take a first step through those gates and begin the process of reconciliation and healing that can surely follow. And what’s happened between Germany and Namibia has echoes in other news I read about this last week too.

Just last week, for example,  French president Emmanuel Macron publicly acknowledged his nation’s role in the horrific events in Rwanda in 1994 in the course of which more than 800,000 innocents, mostly belonging to the Tutsi tribe, were slaughtered mercilessly by their fellow countrymen who belonged to the other large tribal group in the country, the Hutu. No one accuses the French of themselves having killed those poor people. Nor was Rwanda part of the French colonial empire in the nineteenth century. (See above; it was part of German East Africa.) But the French cultivated a strong, friendly relationship with the Hutu-led government and failed to step in vigorously in a way that they surely could have averted the slaughter. They were therefore bystanders rather than actual perpetrators—but they were bystanders who could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives had they not chosen to do and say nothing while the killing went on. And it was that specific silence that President Macron was addressing in his remarks last week.

Also last week came the shocking revelation that a mass grave of hundreds of children had been found—not in formerly-Nazi-occupied Europe or in formerly German Africa, but in Canada…and not that far from where Joan and I lived in British Columbia. The remains of 215 children were found on the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, where they had all died of some lethal combination of neglect, disease, and mistreatment. The Kamloops School, just about 200 miles northeast of Vancouver, was part of a large network of schools, mostly operated by various churches including the Roman Catholic Church, that indigenous children were forced to attend by their white overlords. These schools were apparently mini-gulags in all of which some combination of physical violence and brainwashing was brought to bear to make the pupils into “regular” Canadians, which is to say, citizens with no knowledge of or affinity for their own native culture. Nor is this an ancient story for Canadians—the last such school only closed in 1996. Shocked by its own history, the government set up a National Truth and Reconciliation Commission, one based on the similar commission set up in South Africa after the end of apartheid. And the Commission determined that at least 4,100 children died in these schools, almost all of them avoidable deaths, and that the children’s parents were never told anything close to the truth about what had happened to their own sons and daughters. As a father and grandfather, the suffering of those poor people feels incalculable to me. In 2018, Pope Francis declined to issue an apology for the Church’s role in this nightmarish story. But two different Prime Ministers of Canada, Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau, have formally begun the process of national t’shuvah by formally acknowledging their nation’s responsibility in failing to act swiftly and decisively once it was known what these schools were really like. One quote by P.M. Trudeau struck me especially: “For far too many students,” he said, “profound cultural loss led to poverty, family violence, substance abuse and community breakdown. It led to mental and physical health issues that have impeded their happiness and that of their family. Far too many continue to face adversity today as a result of time spent in residential schools, and for that we are sorry.”

Such simple words: “we are sorry.” Yes, easy to wave away as too little, too late. But something, a beginning, a start. When I hear my own countrymen debating the specific ways our nation could or should begin to confront the legacy of slavery in these United States, I find myself looking to the leaders of Germany, France, and Canada, as I wonder what shape that kind of honest engagement with the past could take. And last week I also read with great interest the story about the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria beginning to make after-the-fact payments to the descendants of men and women forced to work there either for no wages at all (i.e., as slaves before the Civil War) or for minimal wages far below what they deserved to earn in the years that followed. Also easy to wave away as a mere gesture. But, it strikes me that we Americans could just as reasonably consider the school’s gesture a beginning, a start, a step forward towards both truth and reconciliation.

[hellofastestnewsfan]

When the two strangers accosted Chelsea Clinton, she was attending an NYU vigil for the Muslims murdered by a terrorist in Christchurch, New Zealand. “This right here is the result of a massacre stoked by people like you and the words that you put out into the world,” one declared as the other recorded the encounter. “I want you to know that, and I want you to feel that deep down inside. Forty-nine people died because of the rhetoric you put out there.”

The accuser’s blend of callous indignation and extravagant nonsense brought to mind charges that Chelsea’s parents murdered Vince Foster or that her mother committed treason when the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was attacked. But these critics weren’t right-wingers parroting talk radio. They were leftist NYU students.

It would be absurd to blame any anti-racist New York City cosmopolitan for an ethno-fascist’s decision to murder Muslims in a gambit to start a race war. The choice to blame Chelsea Clinton is particularly silly. Her recent activism includes attending a 2017 Muslim solidarity rally, protesting Donald Trump’s attempts to prevent Muslim immigration, extolling the response of Muslims to a hate crime in Portland, Oregon, and lamenting a horrific crime against a young Muslim.

Despite the glaring unfairness of the very serious charge, however, BuzzFeed published a column by the two NYU students, who doubled down on their attempted public shaming. Meanwhile, CNN, Time, The Washington Post, the Daily Mail, ABC News, The Jerusalem Post, Jezebel, USA Today, The New Zealand Herald, People, and many other mass-media outlets covered the altercation. In a world rife with dangerous anti-Muslim bigotry, why did student activists, Twitter users, and the media focus public debate on an outlandishly frivolous accusation?

[Read: The evolution of shaming]

One instructive place to begin: Last month, Representative Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader in the House, told reporters that punitive action should be taken against two Democratic House members for their statements on Israel. “It’s not clear what McCarthy particularly found offensive,” Haaretz reported, “but both lawmakers embrace the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel, and both have been accused of tweets that cross the line.”

On Twitter, the journalist Glenn Greenwald flagged that article for his followers. “It’s stunning how much time US political leaders spend defending a foreign nation even if it means attacking free speech rights of Americans,” he declared.

Representative Ilhan Omar responded, “It’s all about the Benjamins baby.”

Some saw her tweet as a standard leftist claim that donor money was corrupting politics, others as an unwitting or intentional echo of an anti-Semitic trope.

“Please learn how to talk about Jews in a non-anti-Semitic way,” the journalist Batya Ungar-Sargon tweeted. “Sincerely, American Jews.” Chelsea Clinton quoted those words, adding, “Co-signed as an American. We should expect all elected officials, regardless of party, and all public figures to not traffic in anti-Semitism.”

That callout upset the NYU students. They felt that casting Omar’s comments as beyond the pale was itself beyond the pale—that it made Chelsea Clinton an anti-Muslim bigot. Fast-forward to the vigil, where they called out Chelsea Clinton in turn. Though it happened face-to-face, it was, in essence, an IRL quote-tweet. The “likes” were provided by classmates who snapped in solidarity.

[Read: The destructiveness of callout culture on campus]

In all those callouts, different readers will take different sides.

Just notice that at every link in that chain of events, public discourse was dominated not by efforts to persuade or debate anything on the merits, but by attempts to cast, locate, or portray the target of one’s opprobrium as out of bounds.

The lesson isn’t that stigma is never appropriate. If someone incites violence against Jews or Muslims, for example, the words ought to be summarily condemned, not considered fodder for debate about whether violent attacks are, in fact, desirable. Still, this episode illustrates that when the constant focus is on the boundaries of legitimate speech, little time or attention is left for substance. And what’s said to constitute bigotry keeps expanding without any apparent limit.

Nowadays, the journalist Damon Linker observed in The Week, “the point is less to convince your opponent that she has made an error of reasoning or is wrong on the facts as to convince your own side, as well as the dwindling crowd of neutral observers … that they are excused from having to take your opponent seriously because she has crossed a line beyond which people shouldn’t be granted a hearing.”

The NYU students’ expansive notion of bigotry now encompasses Chelsea Clinton’s effort to call out what she regarded (whether rightly or wrongly) as anti-Semitic bigotry. Meanwhile, a Washington Examiner headline now declares, “BuzzFeed Platforms the Genocidal Bigots Who Harassed Chelsea Clinton.” Once callout culture takes hold, its perverse incentives generate inanity without end.

[Read: The excesses of callout culture]

The BuzzFeed article by the NYU students is most noteworthy for the way it elides substantive disagreements. Core to this dispute is whether or not the tweet that Chelsea Clinton published was, in fact, bigoted toward Muslims. Clinton herself obviously doesn’t think so. Yet here’s what the NYU students wrote:

We did a double take when we first noticed Chelsea Clinton was at the vigil. Just weeks before … we bore witness to a bigoted, anti-Muslim mob coming after Rep. Ilhan Omar for speaking the truth about the massive influence of the Israel lobby … we were profoundly disappointed when Chelsea Clinton used her platform to fan those flames.

We believe that Ilhan Omar did nothing wrong except challenge the status quo, but the way many people chose to criticize Omar made her vulnerable to anti-Muslim hatred and death threats. We were shocked when Clinton arrived at the vigil, given that she had not yet apologized to Rep. Omar for the public vilification against her. We thought it was inappropriate for her to show up to a vigil for a community she had so recently stoked hatred against. We were not alone in feeling uncomfortable—many students were dismayed to see her there.

The students are so short on empathetic discernment that they presumed Chelsea Clinton would perceive her own actions just as her harshest critics perceive them. They still don’t seem to recognize that she does not believe her tweet “stoked hatred against” the Muslim community, or fanned the flames of a bigoted mob, or undermined anyone’s physical safety, whether she is right or wrong in those judgments. Needless to say, the students never consider that it might be more constructive to argue with Clinton than to call her out and wish her anguish.

The article continues: “So when we saw Chelsea, we saw an opportunity to have her ear and confront her on her false charge of anti-Semitism against our only Black, Muslim, Somali, and refugee member of Congress. We took our chance to speak truth to power.” But asserting “Forty-nine people died because of the rhetoric you put out there” was neither the truth nor a confrontation on the merits of the anti-Semitism charge. The NYU students were not engaged in an attempt to “speak truth to power.” They were engaged in public shaming.

They later write: “Many have said it was unfair to connect Chelsea’s words to the massacre in Christchurch. To them, we say that anti-Muslim bigotry must be addressed wherever it exists.” Except that they’ve tried to publicly shame Chelsea Clinton while saying nothing about countless examples of clear, virulent bigotry. And they’re still begging the question. Those who believe the students behaved unfairly do not agree that Clinton’s words constituted anti-Muslim bigotry. It is easy for many to imagine her tweeting exactly the same critique, rightly or wrongly, at a non-Muslim who said the same thing about Israel policy.

The authors come closest to valid claims when they write, “Hatred and vilification against Muslims created this killer,” and “Spurred on by professional bigots, anti-Muslim hate now permeates our culture and politics …” It’s perfectly true that anti-Muslim bigotry is pervasive and dangerous. But the (currently too-soft) taboo against anti-Muslim bigotry is weakened, not strengthened, if callouts extend so promiscuously that Chelsea Clinton, of all people, is deemed an anti-Muslim bigot, let alone complicit in 49 murders.

The NYU students did not invent this doomed mode.

They learned it through peer acculturation, perverse incentives, and adults who indulge in question-begging arguments, irresponsible accusations, and careless callouts, all of which are epidemic on the social-justice left and the Republican right. Opportunists such as Representative McCarthy recognize that callout culture is a boon to his political coalition: He can call out the left, exploiting the hypersensitivity that causes leftists to constantly eat their own, confident that he’ll never suffer if and when he is inconsistent, as most of his fellow Republicans won’t call him on the hypocrisy of supporting a serial bigot such as President Trump.

Yet every day is a chance for adults to set a better example.

Representative Omar has succeeded this week with a Washington Post op-ed that sets forth a foreign-policy philosophy and makes a substantive case for it on the merits.

Whereas McCarthy claimed in another recent callout that Representative Adam Schiff is “a modern-day Joe McCarthy,” and President Trump continues to label the entire news media “enemies of the people.” If only that inane public shaming were the work of student activists rather than the most powerful GOP officials.

Public discourse will always include moral limits. Bigotry of the sort expressed by people who favor murdering Muslims or Jews does cross them, as should some words falling short of that. Drawing exact lines will always be hard and controversial. And occasional debates about edge cases are necessary exercises. But none of that comes close to justifying the state of our public discourse today.

Imagine an alternative civic culture in which Republicans applied their purported disdain for callout culture to their own, and where the left worked toward a public discourse with better incentives, lauding participants not for zero-sum callouts but for substantively engaging ideas, people, and policies on the merits. Everyone would be better off. As I write, I see that a critic of the NYU students has resurfaced bigoted tweets that one of them published in high school, extending the chain yet again. There is no one other than all of us to make it stop.

from The Atlantic https://ift.tt/2TPGpqZ

[clubofinfo]

Expert: The Nuremberg Principles not only prohibit such crimes but oblige those of us aware of the crime to act against it. “Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity … is a crime under International Law.” […] The ongoing building and maintenance of Trident submarines and ballistic missile systems constitute war crimes that can and should be investigated and prosecuted by judicial authorities at all levels. As citizens, we are required by International Law to denounce and resist known crimes. — Kings Bay Plowshares Indictment of US for war crimes, April 4, 2018 On April 4, 2018, seven Catholics, three women and four men calling themselves the Kings Bay Plowshares, carried out their faith-based, nonviolent, symbolic action, pouring blood on the world’s largest nuclear submarine base and indicting the US for its perpetual crime of holding the world hostage to the terrorist threat of using nuclear weapons. The US crime that began in 1945 has reached new intensity with Donald Trump’s years of casual rhetoric threatening nuclear holocaust on targets from ISIS to North Korea. Every other nuclear-armed state engages in the same criminal threatening every day, but the US has been at it longer and is still the only state to have perpetrated the actual war crimes of not one but two nuclear terror attacks against mostly civilian targets in Japan in 1945. The target of the Plowshares Seven’s radical direct action was the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base, home to eight Trident nuclear submarines, each capable of launching nuclear missile strikes anywhere in the world. Each 560-foot-long Trident ballistic missile submarine carries sufficient firepower to attack some 600 cities with more destructive force than destroyed Hiroshima. The “small” warheads on Trident missiles have a 100-kiloton payload, roughly seven times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. The Kings Bay base covers some 17,000 acres, making it roughly 30 times larger than the principality of Monaco. The base was developed in 1978-79 under President Jimmy Carter, a former nuclear submarine engineer. A prominent Christian protestant all his career, Carter has long made peace with war-making, unlike the radical Catholics in the Plowshares movement since they hammered and poured blood on nuclear nosecones in 1980 (the first of more than 100 Plowshares actions since then). On April 4, 2018, the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Liz McAlister, 78, Stephen Kelly S.J., 70, Martha Hennessy, 62, Clare Grady, 58, Patrick O’Neill, 62, Mark Colville, 55, and Carmen Trotta, 55, entered the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base. Carrying hammers and bottles of their own blood, the seven sought to enact and embody the prophet Isaiah’s command to: “Beat swords into plowshares.” In so doing, they were upholding the US Constitution through its requirement to respect treaties, international law through the UN Charter and Nuremberg principles, and higher moral law regarding the sacredness of all creation. They hoped to draw attention to and begin to dismantle what Dr. King called “the triple evils” of racism, militarism, and extreme materialism. — Kings Bay Plowshares press release, May 4, 2018 As darkness fell on April 4, the Plowshares Seven were setting out to commit a classic act of civil disobedience, breaking laws that they saw as unjust in light of a higher law. The description of events that follows here is based on the government indictment (signed by five lawyers), the Kings Bay Plowshares account, and a conversation with one of the Plowshares Seven, Martha Hennessy, a retired occupational therapist, at her home in Vermont, where she is confined with an ankle bracelet while awaiting trial. After penetrating the perimeter fence as a group, the seven split up into three groups, headed for three different destinations on the base, and arrived unchallenged. The nuclear weapons storage bunkers are in a shoot-to-kill zone. McAlister, Kelly, and Trotta managed to unfurl a banner without getting shot, but were quickly arrested. The banner read: “Nuclear weapons: illegal/immoral.” The second group, Grady and Hennessy, went to the Strategic Weapons Facility Atlantic Administration, two large, one-story office buildings out of sight and hearing range from the weapons storage bunkers. Here the scene was more surreal: lights were on in the building, people were working inside, but it was very quiet. Grady and Hennessy were alone in the dark outside for almost an hour. That gave them time to post the Plowshares indictment on the door and rope off the area with yellow crime scene tape. They poured blood on the door and the sidewalk. They spray-painted the sidewalk with “Love One Another” and “Repent” and “May Love Disarm Us All.” When they were done, they joined the third group, Colville and O’Neill, at the Trident D5 Monuments, a sculptural, phallic celebration of nuclear weapons delivery systems. There the Plowshares splashed blood on the base logo and the Navy seal. They draped the monument in yellow crime scene tape. They pried brass letters off the monument. They hung a banner paraphrasing Martin Luther King’s admonition that “the ultimate logic of racism is genocide.” The banner read: “The Ultimate Logic of Trident is Omnicide.” People drove by as they worked, but no one stopped. After about an hour, security officers arrived and very politely, full of Southern good manners, handcuffed the four and took them into custody at a base facility sometime after midnight. In days to come, the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest mountain and raised about the hills. All nations shall stream toward it….  He shall judge between the nations, and impose terms on many peoples. They shall beat their swords into plowshares; and their spears into pruning hooks; One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again.” — Book of Isaiah, 2:2-4 According to Kings Bay Base spokesman Scott Bassett, the Plowshares Seven were quickly transferred to the civilian county jail. Bassett said there were no injuries and that no military personnel or “assets” were in danger. He said the incident was still under investigation, but “At no time was anybody threatened.” Mainstream media seem to have treated the blooding of the submarine missiles as a one-day story of little import, or ignored it entirely. The Navy was treating it as a trivial case of trespass and vandalism. Georgia officials filed charges along the same lines. But by the time the Plowshares Seven had been in county jail for a month, someone had decided to make a federal case of it. The federal indictment of May 2 is a squalid bit of legalism at its most dishonest. The seven-page charge tries to have it both ways, making out a trespass/vandalism case while suppressing what makes it actually worthy of federal prosecution (albeit not of these defendants). No wonder it took five lawyers to conjure up a redundantly iterated charge of conspiracy to trespass and “willfully and maliciously destroy and injure real and personal property” of the US Navy. The charge is naked of any hint of a motive, and for good, sordid, corrupt prosecutorial reason. The motive calls into question the legality of the base, the submarines, the nuclear weapons, and the right of the US to keep the rest of the world under perpetual threat of annihilation. The feds have a long history of keeping that argument out of court by any means necessary. Prosecutorial deceit is further illustrated by the indictment’s corrupt selection of the alleged overt acts by the defendants. The indictment charges all seven with acts some of them could not possibly have committed. And for all their wordy whining about property being damaged or defaced, the lawyers conspire not to mention any yellow crime tape, or banners, or – most importantly – the defendants’ blood. “A True Bill” the document is called on the page where five federal lawyers signed, if not in contempt of court, surely in contempt of truth and justice. But that’s where this case is headed, down the rabbit hole of police state justice, if the government has its way. The Plowshares Seven, all presently proceeding without attorneys of their own, will attempt to argue a necessity defense – that whatever illegal actions they have taken were necessary to prevent a greater harm, in this case nuclear destruction. That case is so patently obvious, the government has never dared to let it be argued (in other countries it has led to some acquittals). Mostly miscarriages of justice like this go on in the shadows, without media attention, without regard to who is president or which party is in power. Anyone who looks carefully soon realizes this is true. In late 2008, Martha Hennessy wrote from Ireland: I can’t write about my journey coming here to participate in the Catholic Worker Farm community without considering the context of our current world situation. The global financial markets teeter on the brink of chaos, and the US presidential race nears Election Day. It feels as though those who are aware of what is happening are holding their collective breath while others toil on in pain and oblivion. I completed early voting before leaving the States but I am always left with a feeling of having blood on my hands, trying to be a “responsible” citizen in a so-called democracy. The recent American bailout of the corporate criminals is a theft from the people who need housing, healthcare, and education. The horrific war that has been visited on the Iraqi people has turned on its perpetrators. And now people of faith who mount nonviolent protest to these atrocities are being branded as “terrorists” by the domestic security apparatus. How to maintain faith, hope and love with such dark times ahead? Hennessy and two others are out on bail, but electronically shackled. The other four remain in federal prison in the usually appalling conditions the US justice system deems appropriate, or at least profitable. The prosecutors opposed any bail for any of them. A motions hearing is scheduled for early August, when all seven will seek release to allow them to prepare for trial, representing themselves. No trial date has yet been set. The defendants face potential sentences of 5 to 20 years each. They used their own blood to symbolize redemption and repentance in the shadow of nuclear holocaust. For that, these seven nonviolent Catholics have put themselves at the mercy of a “Christian” nation whose deepest belief is in its own exceptionalism, immersed in a permanent war economy heading toward omnicide, which can’t come soon enough for apocalyptic dominionoids who figure their souls are saved so let’s get it on. In a sane world, wouldn’t that be enough for jury exclusion? http://clubof.info/

[itsnelkabelka]

Speech: "Justice for Daesh’s crimes not only empowers survivors, but can also unite communities and build a sustainable peace for all."

At this event we are displaying the unity and diversity that Daesh seeks to destroy. We’re going to hear from a survivor, an advocate, and government and UN representatives; from men and women from different walks of life, from different faiths, all speaking out against Daesh’s doctrine of hate – and calling out for accountability for Daesh crimes.

And it’s a call, let’s face it, that needs to get louder. Only last week it was reported that, hundreds, if not thousands, of corpses had been found in a sink hole near Mosul, each and every one a victim of Daesh. And yet it wasn’t an isolated discovery. It’s been reported that over 70 mass graves have been found across Iraq and Syria, containing the remains of up to 15,000 men, women and children. Away from the mass graves, the stories of survivors, survivors like Nadia, who we are delighted to welcome here today, they tell of rape, of torture, of abductions and trafficking.

Such wanton killing, such senseless violence clearly could amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and in the case of the systematic targeting of minorities, even genocide. And yet, those responsible - to this day - remain free, unpunished and unabashed.

Six months on from the launch of this campaign by British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, and his Iraqi and Belgian counterparts, we’re here today to take stock on our efforts so far to end that impunity.

Since September, as part of this campaign the United Kingdom has been working closely with the Government of Iraq on a proposal to establish an investigative mechanism for Daesh’s crimes in Iraq through the Security Council.

Any international effort against Daesh should work alongside, and in support of, national efforts. Just as Iraqi forces fighting Daesh can count on our support to help win the war, so we offer our support to the Government of Iraq so that they can win the peace. Because justice for Daesh’s crimes not only empowers survivors, but can also unite communities and build a sustainable peace for all.

That’s why the United Kingdom sees the Government of Iraq as a key partner in this campaign and I’m glad that you Mohamed could join us today. We’re committed to working with you to take this campaign forward in a way that enhances, and supports, Iraq’s efforts to ensure accountability.

And we will continue to work with you on this proposal for the UN to assist you with the difficult but crucial challenge of preserving the huge amount of evidence of Daesh crimes committed on Iraqi territory. This is not a straightforward task. The proposal should support Iraq’s national efforts and fully respect it national laws and sovereignty. But it is also an urgent task. And we look forward to finalising that proposal with you very, very soon.

Preserving evidence in Syria is equally vital. The UK has funded NGOs who have collected evidence in Syria; evidence that we hope will soon be transferred to the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism the General Assembly recently established to investigate international crimes in Syria - including those committed by Daesh.

Because as the horrific hospital attack in Kabul yesterday reminds us, this campaign to bring Daesh to justice isn’t just about Iraq. Or the Middle East. It’s a global challenge. Daesh doesn’t see nationalities, it doesn’t see borders. It just sees targets. Our pursuit of justice must be on behalf of all Daesh’s victims.

So we need to work together, gathering the evidence, securing the convictions for victims and survivors all over the world, from South Asia to Europe, from America to the Middle East. And, crucially, we must work together for the group that constitutes the vast majority of Daesh’s victims - Sunni Muslims. We cannot allow Daesh’s efforts to sow sectarian division.

As we reflect on progress made today, we should recognise the convictions achieved so far in Europe, the US, the Middle East and around the world. Most have been under a counter-terrorism framework and for acts such as membership of the organisation, financing, or travelling to join Daesh. But they are simply not enough.

In contrast, there have been very few prosecutions of Daesh for international crimes: namely war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide. These are very same crimes that were prosecuted at Nuremberg, the very same committed in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, the former Yugoslavia. These are crimes that offend the very conscience of humanity.

And so we all need to do our bit. Just as Daesh terrorises people all over the world, so it fills its ranks with citizens of all our countries. These foreign terrorist fighters are a shared problem and a shared responsibility. We must utilise all the tools at our disposal to source the vital evidence needed to build cases against those who choose to fight for Daesh.

The testimony of survivors is a crucial part of that effort. And I’d like to pay tribute again to you Nadia for your bravery in sharing your story with the world. And make no mistake, it’s voices like Nadia’s which one day will be heard in court thanks to people like you, Amal.

We must do all do what we can to support that effort, both at home and in the United Nations. Six months on, it’s clear that there is still so much more to do, but I’m confident that together we can make accountability a reality.

Thank you.

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