Speaking and Exposing Truth to Power: A Personal Commentary
by Jim Craven/Omahkohkiaaiipooyii
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Thomas
Note President Obama’s response to Helen Thomas/ two questions: Is Pakistan being used as, and even being allowed to be used as, a safe haven and base for terrorist operations? and Do you know of any nations in the Middle East with nuclear weapons.? Perhaps it is only speculation for him, and not something he knows (that would also be problematic) that Israel not only has undeclared secret nuclear, biological, chemical and electromagnetic weapons:
but also has a “Strategic Doctrine” known as “The Samson Option” which is to light off all their nukes and “take down the Temple” taking out the rest of the world if Israel “feels” its existence threatened.
Only one of the nuclear nations has a policy of minimum necessary deterrence and no first-use of nuclear weapons: China. Only one nation that has developed nuclear weapons has repudiated not only the holding of but the capabilities of developing, nuclear weapons, and that is South Africa.
And in the case of South Africa, it was the new South Africa that repudiated the nuclear weapons and capabilities to develop them; developed by the previous Apartheid regime of South Africa in partnership with Israel and other allied nations of Israel. And for the piece de resistance, more naked hypocrisy and desecration of the deaths and sufferings of the Jewish and non-Jewish victims of the Nazi Holocaust, the Apartheid regimes of South Africa during the times of collaboration with Israel, were riddled with former members of the South African Nazi Party interned by the British as Nazi spies and collaborators.
But now we have governments of nations like Israel, the U.S. the U.K. with known and provable nuclear powers and capabilities,, engaged in international state-sponsored assassination and terrorism and serial violations of international law, run by provable serial liars, calling the Government of Iran liars, terrorists and violators of international law. This is far worse than just plain “chutzpah” or naked hypocrisy or “the pot calling the kettle black”. Why? Because when any government of a nation, or a sizable part of the population of that nation actually celebrate, and call for even more suffering by the general population of Iran or any nation, as a result of imposed sanctions, that is terrorism per se.
Terrorism is a set of tactics that does not depend upon by whom and against whom for the term to apply. Otherwise, words mean nothing. Terrorism is simply any form of calculated violence, depraved indifference to violence, highly likely violence, or support of violence by others, against non-combatants (people not in any position to wage war or defend themselves). Those who on the one hand argue that the people of Iran are subjects of some kind of dictatorship, yet also celebrate the misery of the masses from sanctions and even call for more, are simply openly promoting terrorism against innocents and even celebrating it if the word terrorism is to have any concrete meaning.
The Government of Iran has said over and over, and in a formal Fatwa, that they consider nuclear weapons to be un and even anti-Islamic. Any fair reading of the Qu’ran would confirm that view. They also have said formally that they consider even the capability to develop nuclear weapons to be illusory and dangerous; and they have made it clear that any nation that uses or relies on nuclear weapons as any kind of real deterrent, or usable at tactical levels without going massive, is engaging in dangerous and self-destructive thinking and policy. They have asserted only the fact that no nation under law is special or “exceptional” in that it can demand for itself, in terms of the rights, protections, responsibilities, and constraints of law, or the right to develop WMDs or nuclear energy, what it summarily denies or seeks to deny others. They have merely asserted that either “right (law, morality, reason, evidence) makes might” or it will be a world order like the present in such a mess where “might supposedly makes right” which means might also defining right.
Why is it that the Canons of Treaty, Constitution, Contract construction all require both supremacy and equal protection/applications clauses? The supremacy clauses are intended to establish hierarchies of coverage and authority of law: Constitutional trumps federal; federal trumps state; state trumps county, county trumps municipal law.
The reason for a supremacy clause is so that contradictions, adversarial relations and contracts between localized municipal and state entities of a federal whole, do not compromise the existence, survival and “supreme law” of that whole on which those parts depend also for their existence. Generally speaking, the scope of law is defined by the scope of potential causes and effects of any particular tort or crime. Offenses like murder, that are local in origin and impacts are covered by state-level statutes. Offenses like conspiracy of terrorism with cross-state origins, mechanisms and impacts are federal-level.
The reason for equal protection/application of law clauses is that law and legal systems for their continuing development, application, and survival, depend upon the vast majority of those covered and governed by the law, being able to understand and willingly comport themselves according to the law without a lot of threats or resources used from law enforcement. This leaves law enforcement, with limited resources, free to concentrate on the areas and likely persons most involved in crimes or likely to commit crimes. But the vast majority of people will only seek to understand and comport themselves to the law out of fear only so far. Eventually they have to believe that the law is equally applied in their protection as well as in assessing any potential accountability, without fear or favor, without regard to socioeconomic or any other status.
Throughout human history, throughout the various modes of production known in human history (historical ages/systems: primitive communal, slavery, feudalism, capitalism) and throughout the various empires and social formations (whole complex societies made up of interacting modes of production and contexts only one of which is dominant and naming of the whole social formation) of human history, the few have ruled the many under various guises, mechanisms, and algorithms of soft (“hearts and minds”), hard (sanctions, embargos, encirclement) and kenetic (covert and overt wars and terrorism) power. Even the earliest and most barbaric of empires and empire builders employed varying forms and levels of power in response to shifting conditions and contradictions. They all projected supposed metaphysical or divine principles and authorities for their rule and to try to get the ruled to accept their lot and fate as part of the “natural or divine Order” of things.
But all of the principles that govern laws within and between the hierarchies of regions and entities within nations, and the reasons for them, apply as well to those principles that govern international law and relations between nations and other entities of a global system. If a person is not allowed to keep toxic substances that threaten his neighbors and perhaps even much wider areas and populations beyond his neighborhood, no matter what his family name or wealth, then the same applies to nations holding WMDs that by their nature, threaten many outside of any possible arenas of conflict. And each holder of WMDs sets a precedent, either way, for the others. If one sovereign nation cannot develop WMDs, then none can; if one can, then others can. Otherwise any notion of nations or the whole international order being based on rule of law rather than the rule of men and wealth, is complete fraud and worse, very dangerous for the survival of that order, or needed changes of that order, even for those most in favor of and most benefiting from that order.
And between the U.S. and Britain versus Iran, which do we have historical reasons to most fear having WMDs? Which freely and fairly elected U.S. or British regime did the Iranians overthrow as the CIA and MI6 did in the case of Mossadegh in 1953? Which part of America or Britain did Iran invade via proxies as the U.S. and Britain did via Saddam Hussein attacking Iran at the urging of the U.S. and Britain who then gave intelligence to both sides to keep them fighting over 81/2 years with over 1,000,000 casualties? Which brutal puppet tyrants and dictators did the Iranians impose on the U.S. or Britain as they did with the so-called “Shah” of Iran from 1954 to 1979? Which of the intelligence services of the U.S. and Britain were trained in brutal torture by the Iranians as the Iranian SAVAAK was trained and protected by the intelligence services of the U.S. and Britain?
The final lesson from all the empires of history, all the systems where the few ruled the many, is that all empires, like all humans that build them and make them up, are mortal and doomed under the weight of their own internal contradictions and the forms and levels of resistance they generate. All over the world are remnants of past empires, whether in monuments or artifacts of cultures, that thought they would be eternal and had the mandate of the gods to rule. The difference is that then, unlike today, they did not possess WMDs of the levels capable of taking out the whole or a large part of humanity and the planet.
Who will finally point out, in clear and uncompromising language, reasoning and documented truths, the elephants in the room?