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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