“The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility. The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated.. We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well. We must summon such detachment and intellectual integrity to our task that this trial will commend itself to posterity as fulfilling humanity…” (Opening address at the first Nuremberg Trial by Justice Robert H. Jackson, Representative and Chief of Counsel for the United States of America)
“Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion… and you allow him to make war at pleasure… If today he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him,–’I see no probability of the British invading us’; but he will say to you, ‘Be silent: I see it, if you don’t.’ “(Abraham Lincoln Letter 1848, see Abraham Lincoln: a Documentary Portrait Through His Speeches and Writings. Don E. Farenbacher, editor. 1996. Stanford University Press, Stanford.)
“Preventive war was an invention of Hitler. Frankly, I would not even listen to anyone seriously that came and talked about such a thing.” (President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Presidential news conference, 11 August 1954)
WHY INTERNATIONAL—OR ANY—LAW?
In a sense, the answer to the question “Why International Law” is partly another question: “Why any kind of law? The answer is both simple and not so simple. Law has always existed of course as an instrument of class rule[1].
It also exists to protect the whole from its parts as well as to protect its parts from the whole and/or the more powerful elements of that whole. Law exists to protect the individual from a collective majority that may be wrong, tyrannical and even in violation even of its own supposed core principles and interests.
Law also exists to protect the collective from narcissists and tyrannical criminals intent on the destruction of the collective. This applies to individual persons as well as individual social formations, nation-states or organizations.
History shows, and this is the basis for the evolution of the content and scopes of Law, that in the real world of competing and often ruthless, predatory, covert and evil forces with no respect for any Law, that either it is the rule of Law or the rule of the most Ruthless that will occur and prevail; there is no in-between.
Any system, of any form, that is made up of contradictory, often hostile and competitive parts or elements, with contradictory and competing interests driving them, is potentially threatened by the forms and effects of competition and contradictory interests prevailing among its parts, processes and players.
And in the context of increasing globalization and interdependence, the same applies with respect to competing and antagonistic national social formations potentially threatening the global community and other interdependent national social formations that make it up.
Wars, genocide and various kinds of “WMDs” (Weapons of Mass Destruction, Distraction, Deception) by their nature, and by virtue of their increasing lethality and sophistication, threaten nations not even directly part of any conflicts between nation-states with spillover effects that ripple and amplify throughout the global community and its parts. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, of the kind Nazis were hanged for at Nuremberg, illustrate that point[2].
And as the WMDs get more sophisticated, lethal, versatile, mobile, adaptive (while not nearly as “precise” and “accurate” as asserted by those who use them) their spillover effects become more not less pervasive and threatening to the whole global collective.
The rule of Law only works when the majority of a group voluntarily obey it; seeing it in their interest to obey the very Law they invoke for their own personal security, without threats of sanctions and costly monitoring for compliance and impositions of sanctions.
This occurs only when—and because—the majority subject to Law see that they gain far more from obeying the rule of Law than trying to circumvent it or game the Law, with word and other games. This leaves critical and scarce resources of law enforcement free to focus on the few who consciously and calculatingly break the Law; often the same Law they hold others to and selectively invoke for their own protection.
But the majority typically obeys Law only when there is transparency and accountability in all phases of Law so they can come to believe that it applies to all without fear or favor. That is why a core requirement of any body of Law to be accepted and obeyed by the majority are some kinds of constitutional clauses for “equal protection, application of and accountability under Law that are actually enforced and are perceived to be being enforced without fear of or favor to anyone.
In the U.S. Constitution for example, are balancing tests between federal and state powers and authorities. Various forms of competition and antagonistic interests between the states, or perhaps between entities within states, may produce corrosive spillover effects that threaten the whole federal union as well as other individual states in particular—as has happened many times in U.S. history.
Basically, under most federal systems, there is a hierarchy of authority and powers: federal law trumps state or provincial law; state or provincial law trumps county law; county law trumps municipal law. And for the same reasons and logic, international law, when accepted and codified in treaties, trumps national law and even the constitutions of nations ratifying treaties under supremacy clauses mandated by the Canons of Treaty Construction and Constitutions.
Why is this so? Why are there “supremacy clauses” in all valid treaties and constitutions?
Because otherwise nations could sign and ratify treaties, and gain consideration from others for having signed and being held to all the terms of them, while only selectively adhering to the parts of the treaties they favor and gain from while refusing to recognize and adhere to the parts they do not like; typically under the banners or covers of “conflicts” with “national sovereignty”, “nation-state law” (then do not sign the treaty if parts of it are seen as problematic).
A perfect example is the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This treaty came out of the Nuremberg trials at which the U.S. was a prime mover and force (even as some 380 U.S. corporations continued to trade with the Nazis and Japanese and Italian fascists throughout Word War II).
The likes of the Prescott Bush, George Herbert Walker, Henry Ford and other leading American financiers and industrialists were principal financiers of Hitler and the Nazis from 1924 onward[3]; and even part owners, in the case of the Bushes along with Fritz Thyssen, of a plant at Auschwitz using slave labor.
Yet the U.S. did not sign and “ratify” the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide until 1988, 40 years later; and even today, the U.S. is not considered a signatory to it by its major allies due to the Helms, Lugar and Hatch “Sovereignty Amendment” that says that anything in the UN Convention that contradicts the U.S. Constitution or any laws of the U.S., as interpreted only by the U.S. is thus null and void[4].
This of course directly contradicts Article VI Section 2, the “Supremacy Clause” of the U.S. Constitution itself:
“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”
Law is about principles and their evolution and application to the conduct, behavior, interactions and agreements of entities covered by Law whether individuals, organizations, corporations or nation-states. Law is not only about rights and core values; it is also about responsibilities, limits, accountability, redress in the event of breaches of Law and more.
The real content, scopes, depths, angles and degrees of equality of application and protection of Law say a lot about the true nature, character and intentions not only of Law, but of the types and natures of the societies, systems and rulers who develop and administer Law.
Because Law is supposed to be about principles not personalities, connections, status or power, Law does not recognize or formally allow for any inequalities between individuals, organizations or nation-states as relevant to the application of or accountability to it.
Under the Doctrine of “Rule of Law” there are no derivative or supporting “doctrines” of “Exclusivism”, “Exceptionalism”, “Preordination” [e.g. Calvinism for wealth, to rule, or for special “exception”] or “Superpower Triumphalism” that are consistent with and that do not undermine, the “Rule of Law”.
A quick scan of human history shows that those empires that self-asserted and imposed their own “doctrines” of “Exceptionalism”, “Pre-emption”, etc., often to the very same Law to which they purported to hold others, not only eventually resorted to claims of protection under the very same international law they had serially and unapologetically breached and even helped to evolve through customary usage; those empires also all went the way of all hegemonic empires imploding under the weight of their internal contradictions, hubris and very costly (in blood, treasure and credibility) imperial overreach.
In International Law, which applies to conduct and interactions of nations and nation-states, not to individuals or groups of individuals within nation states (except in some cases of genocide and “R2P”, as in the case of evolving domestic and international Law of multi-nation nation-states), there is no recognition of or for differences between superpowers versus small nation-states in terms of coverage and application of Law.
In International Law there is a presumption of equality of nation states in terms of applicability and accountability of Law. This is for the same reasons that domestic Law does not recognize, formally at least, exemptions from coverage of Law due to celebrity, wealth, connections or the like as that would nakedly undermine the general application of and obedience to Law.
Inequality in the application, coverage, rights, responsibilities. duties and penalties of Law undermines all of Law even for those who personally and selectively benefit from disparate treatment and coverage of Law as a long list of revolutions in the past can attest: hubris and power of the rich individuals and nation have their limits as well as dates with history awaiting them.
All the nation-states that have evolved International Law from the times of the “Peace of Westphalia” recognized that no nation-states, even the most bellicose and unapologetic for their brutality and hubris went to war openly without pretexts, masks or cover stories for their aggression; they all had some kind of narrative and justifications for the most barbarous of their wars and aggressive intentions.
THE EVOLUTON OF INTERNATIONAL LAW
International law has evolved from the time of the first emergent Spanish and Portuguese nation-states in the 14th and 15th centuries, basically to ratify and legitimate their conquests and property acquisitions.
This was the period of “primitive accumulation” of capital with the rise of capitalism. Property acquired, and whole nation-states formed through theft, conquest, fraud, genocide, terrorism, slavery, colonialism, as in the case of the United States, needs to be “legitimated” with evolving “property tights” otherwise that acquired through plunder may be taken away by others through the same methods it was originally acquired with as much legitimacy as in the case of the original primitive accumulations.
Thus, under capitalism, property has to be titled in some way as not to legitimate others taking and holding the property through the same methods it was originally acquired. That is why the French anarchist Proudhon claimed that “All property is theft.”
The same applies to international law governing nations and changes in nations, their boundaries and governments. Nation-states, colonies and empires that developed out of conquest, colonialism, imperialism, war and the like risk themselves being changed, overthrown or eliminated through the same means by which they were formed or extended.
International law, along with the legal constructs of nations and nation-states were developed further during the period of the so-called “Peace of Westphalia” after a long period of new nation-states savaging each other in protracted and brutal wars that sabotaged their rise and prosperity.
Groups of people are recognized or not recognized as de-facto nations and nation-states on the basis of facts on the ground and applicable law; not by recognition or non-recognition by any powers, superpowers[5]. Were it not so, small nations or any nations could be isolated and extinguished, and many have suffered this fate in history, with simple non-recognition of them as nations or nation states.
Thus the fundamental right of nations and nation-states not to be exterminated by foreign aggression and intrigue, along with the necessary derivative rights of self-determination, independence, non-interference in internal affairs and sovereignty necessary to prevent their fundamental right against extermination as nations and nation-states is simply denied by fiat.
There was the recognition even before the so-called period of the Peace of Westphalia in the early 1600s, that in the case of any nation or nation-state holding others to the same Law that it routinely violates itself, that rule of the Ruthless, instead of Law, will likely prevail and will, threaten the whole global community in general as well as various nations and nation-states in the particular—including those serially violating the same Law they hold others to.
International Law evolved with the recognition that no nation-state openly and nakedly conspires to launch and wage wars of aggression, crimes against the peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, regime change and destabilization campaigns except under pretexts. Not even the Nazis in Europe and elsewhere or the Japanese fascists in China and elsewhere launched aggressive wars without pretexts, lies, cherry picked intelligence and the lot.
This was partly the basis for Nazis charged with Conspiracy at Nuremberg as the creation of pretexts, lies, cherry picked intelligence and other fabrications to try to justify war shows mens rea and intent, as well as consciousness of guilt as there is no need for lies and pretexts to justify an inherently defensive, proportional, last-resort, no-alternative and thus “Just War”.
The same applies to the U.S. wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and in the many brush and proxy wars of the U.S. since 1945. The so-called “Pentagon Papers” leaked by Daniel Ellsberg who had helped to write them and thus knew what was in them were so dangerous as they showed clearly that the U.S. Government not only consciously and carefully lied to the American People (The Vietnamese knew the truth they suffered it every day) but they never believed their own lies.
When Johnson and prior-presidents were declaring steady progress on the ground in Vietnam, their own internal reports showed steady losses and a war that could not be won. The Pentagon Papers also showed they were well aware they were in violation of the same international law that was invoked to hang Nazis at Nuremberg and Japanese war criminals in Tokyo.
IMPERIAL HUBRIS, TERRORISM AND EXCEPTIONALISM
Today the U.S. stands as not only a superpower or even hyper-power, but as the main example of self-declared and self-asserted constructs such as “Exceptionalism”. The Government of the U.S. openly and brazenly declares itself exempt from its own stated founding and Constitutional principles.
American citizens can now be summarily declared “enemy combatants” and summarily executed from the air by drone strikes along with any other family members near them; with no indictment, no trial, no formal charges, no due process and for no other reason than drone strikes are less costly in blood and treasure, involve less imperial overreach, are less costly and protracted counter-insurgency campaigns that result in body bags of American troops coming home and undermining mass support and “manufactured consent” for the wars (only in the short-run not when long-run “Blowback” effects are considered.
Due process becomes not a right for all Americans and those living in America, or a basic human right, but a “luxury” contingent on and only when it is not being costly to formally respect. The Drone strikes also are done not only covertly but as clandestine operations (covert means secret but not deniable if discovered; clandestine means secret and “plausibly deniable”) and thus no accountability for or record of the real costs, casualties, “collateral damage” etc. of these drone strikes.
The same applies to the existence, development and testing of nuclear and other weapons. Under international law, which develops out of customary usage and applications becoming precedents, any nation-state that is allowed to hold and develop nuclear or any kind of weapons with impunity, gives sanction, precedent and authority for the same for all other nation-states.
There is no notion of supposed “virtuous” nation-states over “non-virtuous” nation-states in terms of supposed “democratic” or “virtuous” nation-states like the U.S., Britain, Israel, Apartheid South Africa, Pakistan, India, being “allowed” to hold, develop and test WMDS while supposed “non-virtuous” nation-states like China, the DPRK, former USSR now Russia or other former republics of the USSR not having the same sovereign rights and reasons for their own WMDs.
If WMDs threaten all of humanity collectively due to their lethality and destructive forces, then it does not matter who holds them as they constitute a “Sword of Damocles” hanging over all of humanity. The notion of Israel not only developing and holding nuclear weapons, but with a stated policy of “The Samson Option”[6], while threatening Iran and the U.S. threatening the DPRK is hypocrisy and superpower hubris of the first order.
The same principles and logic apply with respect to all forms [what they call “Doctrines”] of Preemption, Unilateralism and Exceptionalism in the conduct of war, breaches of resolutions and sanctions, or any military actions allowed for any nation; they give license—and licence—along with authority and precedent, for other nation-states to undertake the same kinds of actions using the same rationales and pretexts when and if they also acquire the power and status to do so.
International law is supposed to apply to all nation-states without fear or favor; and when it does not, and then we have a recipe for world wars, proxy wars, regional wars, insurgencies and counter-insurgencies, social systems engineering campaigns, genocide and other ills that have threatened humanity collectively since even before the legal construct or recognition of the nation-state.
Strict and consistent adherence to international law is also in the interest of all nation-states in the long-run. Those nations engaging in naked hypocrisy and selective obedience to and invocations of international law, they admit, in doing so, their own weakness and impotence.
Just as insurgent groups admit weakness and impotence when they move from protracted insurgencies to desperate and alienating (of the hearts and minds of the people they seek to recruit) forms of terrorism, so it is the same with counter-insurgency (COIN) campaigns that lapse into high-tech-intensive forms of counter-terrorism such as drone strikes, carpet bombings, special-operations raids and extraordinary renditions.
Just as terrorism winds up recruiting more hearts and minds against those engaging in it, so it is that high-tech “counter-terrorism” (CT) campaigns do the same with their inexorable, callous and rationalized “collateral damage”. The same applies with respect to other forms of serial violations of international law such as launching and waging wars of aggression and war crimes under pretexts of COIN or CT.
KARMA TIME FOR IMPERIAL BULLYING AND HYPOCRISY
Literature from many diverse cultures deal with the theme of the ultimate Karma of the bully; whether an individual, a government or a whole system such as imperialism. The bully is a predator but picks his fights carefully never to lose because a bully relies on fear to rule and a notion of omnipotence. Deep down, however, the bully does not have the confidence he projects and that is partly why he is a bully who rules or influences through bullying rather than reason or even cooptation.
But the bully inevitably makes more enemies than friends. Even his toadies and sycophants who fear him and stay near him for illusory protection, secretly hate him for exposing their own cowardice, lack of independence and self-respect, and even and their own impotence embodied in their sycophancy. And the bully will eventually meet his match; like some 6 foot 6 inch 270 lb thug running into Jet Li.
Typically when the bully loses, he tries to regain some face by infantile yet destructive and deadly acts of “payback” to try to regain what has been lost and can never be regained—respect coming out of a created fear that he could never be beaten by picking his fights never to lose.
His attempts to give or restore the illusions of omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence become increasingly futile, inviting more new opposition forces, sources and forms that then trigger even more impotent, infantile and revealing tit-for-tat “positive-feedback” loops.
The examples in history are notorious. Think of the U.S. Government in Lebanon after the losses of 241 Marines to a bombing of their barracks in 1983.
They had been sent there with no mission, no objectives, no exit strategy and no support; and the response to the bombing and losses of lives was the immediate withdrawal of remaining U.S. military forces, the shelling of villages from offshore and departing U.S. Navy ships, followed by a pretext-supported invasion of tiny Grenada (also a mess as it unfolded) that itself also revealed more about the impotence rather than any omnipotence, omniscience or omnipresence of U.S. Imperialism.
All of these tit-for-tat machinations were and are then justified under summarily asserted “Doctrines” [they love that word it dresses up naked arrogance and summary assertions as some kind of “grand and self-evident “Principle”] of “Clear and Present Danger” [that needs to be seen and defined only by them], “Exceptionalism”, “Leadership Role” or “Exigent Circumstances”.
But the bully is caught in a trap. The more he bullies, the more he increases the odds of running into a Jet Li. And the more likely he runs into and from a Jet Li, the more he increases the odds of running into even more Jet Li types and thus the more his empty posturing and macho bravado is exposed for the impotence and insecurities it really reflects.
Just like the tales of the “Old West” in American culture of the “fastest gun in the West” having an appointment with destiny: to run into an even faster gun and/or townspeople that finally get fed up with the bullying.
PSYCHOPATHS AND SOCIOPATHS: AS INDIVIDUALS, GOVERNMENTS AND WHOLE SYSTEMS
Psychopaths and sociopaths have the same basic proclivities and differ only in that psychopaths have no allegiance to any transcendent values whereas sociopaths may have some allegiance to the value systems of a small cult or gang of criminals but not to those of society in general or held by most people in society.
In a certain sense, systems such as imperialism and capitalism are often run by psychopaths and sociopaths and the values they push and promote, and utilize are typical of psychopathy and sociopathy: malignant narcissism; predation; ultra-individualism; Exceptionalism; grandiosity; situational ethics; megalomania; serial and calculated deception; shallow affect; lack of compassion and empathy; masked ruthlessness.
These types do not ask questions like “Is this the right thing to do?” “Is this moral or legal?” They do not even ask if a given action or policy is “efficient” or “inefficient” given their own definitions. They only ask “What do I want and what does it take to get it with minimum costs and risks?” “What is in my way and what does it take to get it out of my way?”
The basic constructs and features of psychopathy and sociopathy may apply also to whole Governments of whole Systems[7]. What is Obama’s argument for drones and the like?
It is not an argument of legality as he has asked for “legal architecture” to be developed to justify drone strikes, extraordinary renditions, assassinations of American citizens without trial or formal charges, and many other patently illegal acts in American law that are going on and have gone on without this mythical “legal architecture” having been developed yet.
His argument is that the U.S. Government cannot reach alleged terrorists with the present law so his answer is not to develop new methods and approaches for extraditing and taking to trial accused terrorists within the present laws, but to eliminate any barriers or inconveniences at present by simply and summarily going around them and then cooking up some kind of legal rationale to try to justify it all.
That is what the psychopath and sociopath argues: “What is in my way needs to get out of my way; law, morality, or even my own stated principles be damned when in the way of my getting my way.”
But then again, what one superpower arrogates for itself will be used by the next superpower and rising empire as law, precedent and principle for itself. And the former superpower, destined to decline and decay as are all imperial empires and hegemons, is laying the foundations for its own fall and plunder by other superpowers and hegemons on the horizon with the same systems, impulses and imperial hubris as the present ones.
Prof. Jim Craven/Omahkohkiaaiipooyii is one of the frequent contributors for The 4th Media.
FOOTNOTES:
1. There is an old saying that “The problem is not that the rich break the laws; rather that they write the laws so they do not need to break and/or cannot be found guilty of breaking, the very laws they hold others to.”
2. Craven, James “‘Just War’ and the Interrelated Predicates and Principles of Nuremberg” The 4th Media (Beijing) http://www.4thmedia.org/2012/11/02/%e2%80%9cjust-war%e2%80%9d-and-the-interrelated-predicates-and-precedents-of-nuremberg/
3. Higham, Charles Trading with the Enemy: The Expose of the Nazi-American Money Plot 1933-49 Dell Publishers, NY 1984; Loftus John and Aarons, Mark The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People, St. Martin’s, N.Y. 1994
4. Churchill, Ward Indians ‘R’ Us: Culture and Genocide in Native North America, Between the Lines Pub. N.Y. 1993 and A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present City Lights, San Francisco, CA, 2001
5. The People’s Republic of China was not “recognized” as a de-facto nation-state and sole legitimate representative of the People of China by the U.S. and many other allies of it until October 25, 1971 while a client regime in Taiwan, an historical and integral part of China, was given the UN seat as the supposed “sole-representative” for all of China from October 24, 1945 to 1971 and until 1991 the Taiwan regimes actively claimed to the sole legitimate representative of China. The same applies to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea now recognized as a separate and de-facto nation-state by the U.S. from the “Republic of Korea” or “South Korea” also considered a separate and de-facto nation-state. But their objective existence and de-facto statuses did not logically depend upon recognition or non-recognition of other nation-states. The same applies to Indigenous nations that still qualify as nations within broader nation-states that were and are summarily declared in the U.S. Supreme Court “Marshall Cherokee Decisions” to be “Dependent and Captive” nations or “quasi” nations. Under the old “Constitutive Theory” recognition of a nation-state is a function of recognition by other nation-states but under the “Declarative Theory” recognition is a function of declaration and meeting uniform standards and criteria of a nation-state with a right to be recognized and treated as such once objectively established to be such.
6. Hersh, Seymour The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy, Random House, N.Y. 1991; The Samson Option refers to a policy of lighting off all an estimated 200 some nuclear weapons in a massive nuclear strike; as Wikipedia puts it: “ The “Samson Option” of the book’s title refers to the nuclear strategy whereby Israel would launch a massive nuclear retaliatory strike if the state itself was being overrun, just as the Biblical figure Samson is said to have pushed apart the pillars of a Philistine temple, bringing down the roof and killing himself and thousands of Philistines who had gathered to see him humiliated.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Samson_Option:_Israel’s_Nuclear_Arsenal_and_American_Foreign_Policy Thse nuclear weapons were developed with French, British and American help and were developed in partnership with Apartheid South Africa (eliminated by the new Government of South Africa under Nelson Mandela) that included individuals who had been interned by the British as members of the South African Nazi Party and as Nazi agents. So much for sensitivity to the Nazi Holocaust.
7. Craven, James “Review of Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths go to Work” by Paul Babiak and Robert Hare http://jimcraven10.wordpress.com/2008/07/15/review-of-snakes-in-suits-when-psychopaths-go-to-work-by-paul-babiak-and-robert-hare/ ; “Tricks of the Psychopath’s, Sociopath’s and Politician’s Trade”, 4th Media (Beijing) http://www.4thmedia.org/2012/11/18/tricks-of-the-psychopath%E2%80%99s-sociopath%E2%80%99s-and-politician%E2%80%99s-trade/ ; “Ayn Rand and Ayn Randists: Psychopaths and Sociopath’s Incarnate” http://jimcraven10.wordpress.com/2012/10/07/ayn-rand-and-ayn-randists-psychopaths-and-sociopaths-incarnate/ ; “I Want it All and I Want it Now: The Real National Anthem of America and Capitalism” http://jimcraven10.wordpress.com/2012/09/05/i-want-it-all-and-i-want-it-now-the-real-national-anthem-of-america-and-capitalism/
[1] There is an old saying that “The problem is not that the rich break the laws; rather that they write the laws so they do not need to break an/or cannot be found guilty of breaking, the very laws they hold others to.”
[2] Craven, James “ ‘Just War’ and the Interrelated Predicates and Principles of Nuremberg” The 4th Media (Beijing) http://www.4thmedia.org/2012/11/02/%e2%80%9cjust-war%e2%80%9d-and-the-interrelated-predicates-and-precedents-of-nuremberg/
[3] Higham, Charles Trading with the Enemy: The Expose of the Nazi-American Money Plot 1933-49 Dell Publishers, NY 1984; Loftus John and Aarons, Mark The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People, St. Martin’s, N.Y. 1994
[4] Churchill, Ward Indians ‘R’ Us: Culture and Genocide in Native North America, Between the Lines Pub. N.Y. 1993 and A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present City Lights, San Francisco, CA, 2001
[5] The People’s Republic of China was not “recognized” as a de-facto nation-state and sole legitimate representative of the People of China by the U.S. and many other allies of it until October 25, 1971 while a client regime in Taiwan, an historical and integral part of China, was given the UN seat as the supposed “sole-representative” for all of China from October 24, 1945 to 1971 and until 1991 the Taiwan regimes actively claimed to the sole legitimate representative of China. The same applies to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea now recognized as a separate and de-facto nation-state by the U.S. from the “Republic of Korea” or “South Korea” also considered a separate and de-facto nation-state. But their objective existence and de-facto statuses did not logically depend upon recognition or non-recognition of other nation-states. The same applies to Indigenous nations that still qualify as nations within broader nation-states that were and are summarily declared in the U.S. Supreme Court “Marshall Cherokee Decisions” to be “Dependent and Captive” nations or “quasi” nations. Under the old “Constitutive Theory” recognition of a nation-state is a function of recognition by other nation-states but under the “Declarative Theory” recognition is a function of declaration and meeting uniform standards and criteria of a nation-state with a right to be recognized and treated as such once objectively established to be such.
[6] Hersh, Seymour The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy, Random House, N.Y. 1991; The Samson Option refers to a policy of lighting off all an estimated 200 some nuclear weapons in a massive nuclear strike; as Wikipedia puts it: “ The “Samson Option” of the book’s title refers to the nuclear strategy whereby Israel would launch a massive nuclear retaliatory strike if the state itself was being overrun, just as the Biblical figure Samson is said to have pushed apart the pillars of a Philistine temple, bringing down the roof and killing himself and thousands of Philistines who had gathered to see him humiliated.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Samson_Option:_Israel’s_Nuclear_Arsenal_and_American_Foreign_Policy Thse nuclear weapons were developed with French, British and American help and were developed in partnership with Apartheid South Africa (eliminated by the new Government of South Africa under Nelson Mandela) that included individuals who had been interned by the British as members of the South African Nazi Party and as Nazi agents. So much for sensitivity to the Nazi Holocaust.
[7] Craven, James “Review of Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths go to Work” by Paul Barbkiak and Robert Hare http://jimcraven10.wordpress.com/2008/07/15/review-of-snakes-in-suits-when-psychopaths-go-to-work-by-paul-babiak-and-robert-hare/ ; “Tricks of the Psychopath’s, Sociopath’s and Politician’s Trade”, 4th Media (Beijing) http://www.4thmedia.org/2012/11/18/tricks-of-the-psychopath%E2%80%99s-sociopath%E2%80%99s-and-politician%E2%80%99s-trade/ ; “Ayn Rand and Ayn Randists: Psychopaths and Sociopath’s Incarnate” http://jimcraven10.wordpress.com/2012/10/07/ayn-rand-and-ayn-randists-psychopaths-and-sociopaths-incarnate/ ; “I Want it All and I Want it Now: The Real National Anthem of America and Capitalism” http://jimcraven10.wordpress.com/2012/09/05/i-want-it-all-and-i-want-it-now-the-real-national-anthem-of-america-and-capitalism/