The thing is that in this trial, the pertinent facts were not admitted into
testimony so it was inevitable that these people would be imprisoned. That's
precisely what happened in the court martial of Chelsea Manning, in the trial
of John Kariakou and in the trials of the other whistle blowers. Certain
evidence isn't permitted for various reasons like, "state secrets". We all live
with this pretense of the rule of law and people believe it, and the fact is,
that the law says whatever the people in power, want it to say.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, November 17, 2019 5:26 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Christians vs. Militarists - In Clash of
Religions Over Nuclear War, Militarists Win
This article goes to the old saying, "Might makes right".
When I was in the 7TH grade, the Barnes brothers joined our student body. Jim
was 16 and his brother Bill was 15. They were about two years older than the
other boys in their classes, and about a head taller. It was bad enough that
they would change the rules of a game to suit their own wishes, but mostly they
were disruptive simply for the sake of being disruptive. And they worked like
a two headed monster.
The Barnes brothers took the same path home that wound past my house.
Most afternoons we ran home, with me in the lead, barely able to reach the
safety of our house only steps in front of them. The high point of that school
year was the day the Barnes brothers did not show up for school. That
afternoon I had the pleasure of strolling home at a leisurely pace. The Barnes
brothers never returned to our school.
But of course there were other bullies waiting to replace them.
Carl Jarvis
On 11/16/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Christians vs. Militarists - In Clash of Religions Over Nuclear War,
Militarists Win By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
16 November 19
It is one of the abiding principles of American Exceptionalism that
Americans, no matter what they do, are exempt from the Nuremberg
Principles or most any other aspect of international laws against war
crimes or crimes against humanity. Or as the US recently made clear:
as far as any allegations of US crimes are concerned, the
International Criminal Court can go pound sand.
"EXCEPTIONAL: American Exceptionalism Takes Its Toll," Introduction
One stark example of American exceptionalism is the nation's official
pride in being the first and only country to drop atomic bombs on
civilian targets. There was no Nuremberg tribunal for those 1945 war
crimes. The US has maintained ever since that it has the right to
obliterate civilians with nuclear weapons any time it feels the need.
In 2018, seven American peace activists nonviolently challenged this
right to kill, invading a nuclear missile submarine base and defacing
government property with religious objections. The US responded with
the full force of federal law and charged them with multiple felonies
carrying the threat of decades in jail. Their
2019 trial ended with the predictable affirmation of the US right to
choose global omnicide and the predictable absence of widespread media
coverage.
At the end of a four-day trial, a federal jury in Georgia had a chance
to take a stand in defense of global safety from nuclear weapons.
Instead the jury voted unanimously in favor of all 28 counts against
seven defendants for committing symbolic property crimes in protest
against the US willingness to hold the world hostage to the threat of
nuclear war. The jury verdict against the seven Kings Bay Plowshares
protestors affirms the US government position that no one has any
right to challenge the legality of US freedom to resort to nuclear
annihilation. That's not the legal analysis, that's just what happened
in the US District Court for the Southern District of Georgia in
Brunswick on October 24, 2019, at the end of a trial in which the
government successfully prevented the defendants from presenting the
actual defense of their actions.
The jury took less than two hours to reach all 28 separate verdicts on
counts of conspiracy, destruction of Navy property, depredation of
government property, and trespassing. In other words, the jury didn't
deliberate in any meaningful sense. Taking less than 4 minutes per
count allows just about enough time to read each count, vote on each
defendant, and check the government-approved box on the government
verdict form like good, obedient patriots unwilling to entertain
alternatives to US-approved thought.
The Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay is a 17,000 military facility
surrounded by 26 miles of fencing. The Kings Bay base is home to eight
of the most advanced US missile submarines. Each submarine is armed
with a set of Trident II missiles carrying up to eight nuclear
warheads with the destructive power of as much as 488 kilotons each.
The bomb that destroyed Hiroshima was 14 kilotons, one thirty-fifth as
powerful as one warhead.
Each
missile with eight warheads can carry 3,904 kilotons, enough for the
equivalent of 278 Hiroshimas destroyed by one missile. Each submarine
can carry 20 missiles with the capacity to create more than five
thousand Hiroshimas. The US refers to these submarines as "its most
survivable nuclear strike capability. [that is] vital to deterring a
surprise nuclear attack on the United States of America." The US would
have you believe that these are defensive weapons, which is true. The
US would have you believe that these are not offensive, first-strike
weapons, which is false. All that is needed for them to be offensive
weapons is for the US to use them first.
US nuclear missile submarines are deployed at all times in unknown
numbers around the world. The threat of an American first strike on
any target is a permanent condition of contemporary life.
"Nuclear weapons are a cocked gun at the head of the planet" - that's
how Plowshares member Clare Therese Grady puts it. The US finger on
the trigger is always there.
That reality - and the unacceptability - of the perpetual threat of a
nuclear doomsday is what prompted the three women and four men of the
Kings Bay Plowshares, all devout Catholics, to plan their symbolic
action at the Kings Bay submarine base. At trial, the essential facts
were not in dispute.
On the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King
Jr., April 4-5, 2018, the Plowshares 7 had cut their way through the
fence and entered three separate sections of the base, where they
wrote scriptural graffiti, poured their own blood, and damaged a
display of retired missiles that they considered a shrine to
militarism. They also decorated the area with crime scene tape (the
government insisted on calling it "caution
tape")
and they used two cameras to record their peaceful actions. And they
prayed.
They were arrested without incident and base officials acknowledged
that at no time did the protestors pose a threat to anyone.
In earlier legal proceedings a year before trial, the Plowshares had
invoked the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act in justification of
their actions taken as acts of religious conscience. The law states
that it "ensures that interests in religious freedom are protected,"
based on the Constitution's guarantee of the free exercise of
religion. In 2014, the US Supreme Court noted that the law covers "any
exercise of religion, whether or not compelled by, or central to, a
system of religious belief." In the Hobby Lobby case, in which the
court upheld the right of Christian retailers not to sell birth
control, the court ruled that the law "prohibits the Federal
Government from taking any action that substantially burdens the
exercise of religion unless that action constitutes the least
restrictive means of serving a compelling government interest."
Federal judge Lisa Goodbey Wood did not rule on the defendants' motion
to dismiss under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act until October
18, 2019, a Friday three days before the trial started. Judge Wood
also ruled that the Plowshares defendants could not use various
defenses: justification, necessity, religious freedom, freedom of
speech, or the illegality of nuclear weapons under international law
or domestic law. Judge Wood does not offer a serious analysis of the
questions but rather makes ex cathedra pronouncements without further
support:
Defendants' individual religious and moral beliefs concerning nuclear
weapons and their beliefs about the illegality of nuclear weapons are
not relevant to any of the essential elements of the offenses charged
or any apparent affirmative defense that Defendants can assert at trial..
Defendants' subjective beliefs about the illegality of nuclear weapons
may be relevant background information, whether nuclear weapons are
actually illegal under international or domestic law (a doubtful
proposition) is not relevant or an appropriate issue to litigate in
this case.. Defendants are precluded from asserting a defense based on
the illegality of nuclear weapons.. Even if true, the Defendants'
belief that nuclear weapons are illegal is not a defense to the charges here.
That is not an ordinary judicial ruling. Judge Wood makes no legal
argument ("a doubtful proposition" is not a legal argument, it's just
barely an off-the-cuff opinion). Judge Wood's ruling is a political
ruling. She is a US federal judge. The US government is absolutely
opposed to any discussion, never mind litigation, of the question of
the legality of nuclear weapons.
By ruling out the defendants' motives and context, Judge Wood rigs the
trial from the start.
In an apparent effort to create the illusion of fairness, Judge Wood
also
rules:
Defendants' subjective beliefs about religion and the immorality and
illegality of nuclear weapons are relevant background information..
However,
testimony and argument on these topics will be limited.. While there
is some probative value to such background information, the probative
value is low.
To the extent testimony and argument on these topics creates the
danger of unfair prejudice, confusing the issues, misleading the jury,
undue delay, wasting time, or needlessly presenting cumulative
evidence, and that danger outweighs the relatively low probative value
of the background information, the Court will exclude such testimony
or argument.. Therefore, Defendants should limit their testimony and
argument about their subjective beliefs about religion and the
immorality and illegality of nuclear weapons to only that which explains to
the jury the context of Defendants' actions.
This is hopelessly self-contradictory and meaningless as guidance. In
fact, the judge kept a tight rein on the defendants during the trial
and constantly reminded the jury that the defendants' testimony was
not factual and not relevant. The judge reinforced the jury's
evidentiary vacuum by also barring the three expert witnesses
defendants had planned to call.
As a result, the jury had no opportunity to hear Professor Jeannine
Hill Fletcher explain the Catholic tradition of conscience that
informed the action of all of the defendants (Judge Wood having
dismissed that tradition as "subjective beliefs"). In the Religious
Freedom Restoration Act proceeding before a different judge, Professor
Fletcher had testified at length in explaining the defendants'
religious motivation, explaining that each of the acts for which they were
standing trial:
. trespassing onto military property, cutting a lock, cutting a fence,
and spreading blood and paint on symbols of nuclear weapons - are in
accordance with Catholic practice and Catholic faith..
The belief of the Defendants that nuclear weapons are immoral is, in
fact, the teaching of the [Catholic] Church - not just when [those
weapons] have been used in the past, not just the threat of their
being used now, but the very possession of these weapons of mass
destruction is immoral. The bases for this conclusion are the
teachings of Pope John XXIII. and of Pope Francis ("The threat of
their use as well as their very possession is to be firmly condemned")..
In the history of the Catholic and the Christian tradition the
prophetic role is one that often necessarily violates unjust laws in
order to see those laws transformed..
The actions that the Defendants undertook were actions that were
attempting to reveal our own idolatry in protecting that warhead. They
cut the fence to break that symbolic hold of Trident over those of us
who are kind of just going along our day and not even aware that that
idol is so clearly in place.. Their prophetic call in that action was
at the heart of the Christian Gospel.. The reality that the prophetic
action reveals is a reality that some among us as human beings have
made the claim that we can decide the future of the planet.. Nuclear
weapons could destroy humanity as we know it, the earth as we know it.
Professor Fletcher had more to say, much more, none of it about
"subjective beliefs," all of it about the historical reality of
centuries of Christian tradition. Judge Wood's denial prevented the
jury from hearing any of it from an authoritative source.
The judge also barred the jury from hearing expert testimony on the
illegality of nuclear weapons under international or domestic law ("a
doubtful proposition," she wrote dismissively, without offering
factual or legal support). Professor Francis A. Boyle teaches law at
the University of Illinois in Champaign. He is an expert in
international law and foreign policy and has qualified as an expert
witness in courts in the US and abroad. He filed a draft declaration
in the Plowshares case in July 2018 in which he argues in part:
. the current Administration at the Kings Bay Naval Station continues
to plan, prepare and conspire for threat or use of many W-76 and
W-76-1 nuclear warheads weapons, each capable of unleashing 100
kilotons of heat, blast, and radiation, and many of the W88/MK5
warheads which carry 455 kilotons of nuclear weapons. Any planning,
preparation, conspiracy for threat or use of even one of these nuclear
warheads was and is unlawful, that is illegal and criminal..
The London Charter (1945) establishing the Nuremberg Tribunal and the
Nuremberg Judgment (1946) made it clear that those rules and
principles preempt contrary domestic law.. The United States is bound
as a party to each of these treaties. Because of the known and
intended effects of the explosion of the nuclear warheads, each of
these rules prohibits their planning, preparation, threat or use. In
addition, any use of the warhead would also violate the international
law of armed conflict by causing widespread, long-term and severe
damage to our common environment and contaminating neutral states and
violate the right to life and other non-derogable human rights..
Professor Boyle continues at length. He inveighs against the breakdown
of US constitutional checks and balances that allows the president and
the Pentagon to flout US responsibility to abide by the Laws of War.
He underlines the failure of the Congress or the courts (this is
another
example) to force the executive branch to act within the laws that
limit the methods and means of the threat or use of military force. He
concludes
that:
The US government flouts its responsibility to abide by the Laws of
War, laws to which we are fundamentally bound. Under these
circumstances, where redress within traditional channels is refused
and ineffective, domestic criminal law coincides with the "Nuremberg
Privilege". to afford a justification for seeming violations of
domestic criminal laws in an effort to prevent the war crimes outlined above.
. the charges brought against these Defendants in these circumstances
must be dismissed.
The charges were not dismissed. Judge Wood prevented the jury from
hearing any serious argument for any of the defendants' legitimate
defenses. The judge ran a very efficient kangaroo court. The jury, in
its bubble of enforced ignorance, performed as the government
intended, exercising no thought or independence in finding the defendants
guilty as charged.
"Our country has a nuclear regime occupying us and most citizens don't
know about that," said defendant Martha Hennessy after the trial.
Hennessy is the granddaughter of Dorothy Day (1897-1980), the
legendary activist who founded the Catholic Worker who is now under
consideration for canonization as a saint. When Hennessy testified,
she started to read Dorothy Day's 1945 article about Hiroshima. Judge
Wood would not allow it. Even though the prosecution was allowed to
call it an "outrage" that the Plowshares protestors would deface the
Kings Bay nuclear shrine, Judge Wood prohibited Hennessy from showing
pictures of the dead at Hiroshima. As Hennessy has experienced it, the
court decided its job was to protect nuclear weapons above all: "If
nuclear weapons are beyond the reach of our courts then what purpose
do our courts have?"
Hennessy and most of the other Plowshares 7 are currently released
from prison. Father Steven Kelly remains locked up in protest. A
sentencing hearing is expected in early 2020. The good news is that
there's no evidence of any kangaroos being hurt in this continuing
miscarriage of justice. The only immediate victims are seven
principled persons with the courage of their convictions and a belief
in the rule of law. The rest of us are merely collateral damage.
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio,
TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the
Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of
America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine,
and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and
Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work.
Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
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