Ramsey Clark, "Without Demands For Compensation For Wrongful Deaths/Destruction,
Anti-Imperialist-Wars Journalism Is Hypocritical"
By Jay Janson
12 December, 2014
Countercurrents.org
Note: 'hyp·o·crit·i·cal' - behaving in a way that suggests one has higher standards or more noble beliefs than is the case; of the nature of hypocrisy, or pretense of having virtues, beliefs, principles, etc., that one does not actually possess:
Yours truly confesses to having a suspicion that most anti-imperialist journalists, imagine or assume that the citizens of nations suffering violent death, maiming and destruction from US-NATO bombings, invasions, and occupation wars, have some degree of appreciation and gratitude for the efforts of antiwar journalists and high regard for Americans 'on their side' as it were. But, check out a description of just one of many similar experiences had by this ex-pat American musician, who has worked in some sixty-seven countries, most of them bombed at one time or another by fellow Americans.
You are sitting around with other musicians, professors, students with members of their families, and the conversation touches on a past American war in their country. You make mention that at the time, some Americans were shocked, angry and horrified of what American soldiers, marines and airmen were doing to them, and that there was a strong anti-war movement of protest, which you personally had avidly been part of. Sudden and absolute silence in the room! Embarrassingly, what had been a rather enjoyable chat is on pause. Eye contact with you in this moment, is being avoided. Some are abruptly looking at the wall, or ceiling, others exchanging furtive and knowing glances. You sense a projection of kind indulgence and forgiveness for your naiveté in expecting their interest in how nice some Americans are. Broaching the subject of distinguishing good Americans from bad, had been a conversation stopper. Conversation resumes with everyone graciously pretending to not have heard what I said.
Anyone else notice that even the most important and widely published Anti-imperialist writers do not call for justice for victims and survivors of US-NATO-UN genocide? Could this be because almost all of these excellent historians live among people who have supported wars, many having participated in crimes against humanity. These anti-imperialism journalists must have acquaintances, probably some friends, maybe even family, who would be shocked to read that one of their own is calling for Americans to be held legally responsible and liable for compensation, reparations, indemnification, and restitution under the law. And what might the reaction be of that part of their liberal readership, whose financial support is critical for the dissident publications. I’m relatively sure such predictable reactions would not influence authors I look up to, but it might well inhibit initiating calls for justice for victims of military attacks by Americans?
Ramsey Clark was once heard admonishing activists, "Can't just be against something. Got to be FOR something." So what is anti-imperialist journalism FOR- in favor of? An unlikely ceasing of imperialism and the imperialists wars that capitalists have always depended upon, and a putting aside of past infamy - often alluded to as mistaken policy? Documenting official lies and criminal media deceptions for posterity? One doesn’t usually read any suggestion of how to use the in-depth information on the latest insanity, or a hint on how detailed coverage exposing infantile ‘bad guy’ demonizing used to justify military attack, is going to galvanize a progressive readership into action. On the contrary, for some time now, one finds predictions of doom throughout alternate media journalism - details, analysis and commentary on current abominations that are predicted to lead to further insanity. What happened to believing that life is too uncertain to be a pessimist. Something very basic seems to be missing in ‘left,’ or dissident or socialist-leaning journalism.
Even before reading a dissident journalist's analysis of the latest horror, most readers will have already long had the general idea of what is and has been going on. They have all seen graphically on TV that their fellow Americans are killing people in their own beloved countries, their own homes, all around the world. More precise information to what purpose? Sixty-four years of US military action in four or more dozens of third world nations and presently in a dozen at the same time! What is the news about but a continuation of what is really one single great and continuing genocide compartmentalized?
Anyone else notice that Anti-imperialist journalism is bereft of words that might even SUGGEST justice for the many millions within the neocolonialist tortured world who have been slaughtered, for the tens of millions maimed and for the hundreds of millions who have suffered from what Ramsey Clark calls "the greatest crime against humanity since end of the second world war," namely, "US foreign policy?" [from Ramsey Clark’s The Fire This Time - US War Crimes in the Gulf].
Words like 'justice,' and 'law,' are reserved to apply when alternate media journalists refer to injustice within the United States of America and justice for Americans. Conversely, in articles critical of US-NATO mayhem, even the word ‘crime’ becomes somehow inappropriate. Terms like 'crimes against humanity,' 'crimes against peace,' 'Nuremberg Principles,’‘unconstitutional,' never seem to appear. All this excellent coverage is analyzed as Realpolitik, as unassailable reality, as unchallengeable as the weather.
Ramsey Clark, as Assistant US Attorney General, Deputy US Attorney General, and US Attorney General, participated in the drafting of all three major civil rights acts, of 1964, 1965 and 1968, and since then has been on the move continuously following injustice and violence wherever it breaks out. There are few nations in the world that he has not fought for justice in, at one or more times, and is always involved in many litigations at the same time. Ramsey calls for, and as an attorney works for, justice for the victims and survivors of crimes against humanity meant as Martin Luther King said "to maintain unjust predatory investments."
Martin Luther King during the last year of his life, sought to make Americans aware of an abdominal disjoint in the focus of Americans on justice for Americans at home to the exclusion and disregard for the civil rights of men, women and children bombed, shot at, militarily occupied, maimed and murdered by America’s military. American indifference, week after week, month after month, year after year to mass murder of innocent men, women and children in their very own beloved countries, often as not in very their homes, is terrifying, incomprehensible, freaky. King tried to stop this inhumanity of Americans toward the rest of the world with stern words, “It is not possible to be in favor of justice for some people and not be in favor of justice for all people.” But Americans in general and their ‘left’ journalism in particular by omission have helped imperialist media bury King’s agonizing admonishment, and proven that it is possible for citizens of an murderously aggressive nation to NOT be in favor of justice for their victims.
For years, Ramsey Clark, a dear friend, has been encouraging progressive journalists to call for justice and promote confidence in a soon approaching use of humanity's dormant laws, always very much alive in the hearts of victims of genocidal neocolonialism, to rescue the human race and its planet home. During the last few years, I have personally spoken to or corresponded by email with some hundred or so activist writers, but amazingly to no avail. Reactions have ranged from complete agreement and even praise, to mild approval, but disagreement as to effect, to disinterest, to refusal, to insistence that 'everyone knows where they stand,' and persistence on my part causing exasperation, loss of temper and my getting cussed out. Colleagues responding in the negative to a plea to call for the law to come down on the genocide, made similar comments, “No, no point in calling for justice if justice is impossible” and “would make myself look foolish,” and “No, it would be like whistling in the dark” and “Since the criminals own all the courts and judiciary, what’s the point in calling for what is impossible.” What happened to their power of positive thinking.
Throughout history deeply sensitive people have realized that it was their destiny to have come to accept personal responsibility for genocide, for crimes against humanity, for mass destruction of precious human lives. Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Hugo Chavez, Muammar Gaddafi, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Thomas Sankara, Eugene Debs, Helen Keller, Thomas Paine, are a few that come immediately to mind. They took personal responsibility for stopping one or more deadly cases of mass injustice. But there are hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, who did not become well know, but who quietly took, or are taking, personal responsibility for a continuing mass injustice somewhere.
And it is not megalomania that brings someone to taking personal responsibility for genocide and to feel oneself more responsible than anyone else that the genocide is not being stopped; to feel more responsible than the kids dutifully pulling triggers and pushing buttons on fellow homo sapiens in ignorance; more responsible than generals, politicians and clergy, who have sold both soul and conscience for money and prominence; more responsible than well paid self-promoting careerist media celebrities willing to lie, falsify and deceive without feeling pangs of conscience; more responsible than the unjustly wealthy become cold-blooded automatons trapped into planing death and destruction for money; to feel more responsible for the genocide continuing because history has proven all the aforementioned to be incapable of even stopping themselves from participating, and because only people who know the genocide can be stopped, will stop it.
What about anti-imperialist journalists, learned professors, historians of the 'left'? Does their being fully informed not mean they should hold themselves more responsible than those participating in genocide out of ignorance or criminal insanity? No, guess not. One can’t hold oneself responsible for stopping something one doesn't believe can be stopped. So, it seems these devoted war journalists must be leaving it up to people like Ramsey Clark and others who intend to stop the genocide not just denounce it. And it will be stopped by the justice that will come with the global shift of economic power, all the sooner because talk of rightful compensation will become a topic of conversation, on street corners, in cafes, homes, workplaces, and schools throughout the world. When enough people in the world want justice, a way will be found.
Though we still live in an age of blind obedience to the criminally insane, not much different from the centuries of outright racist colonialism and thieving military occupations, a new era is fast evolving as economic power in the world shifts to the emerging economies of former victim nations. The Economist Magazine predicts that in thirty years the power of the economies of the Colonial-Neocolonial Powers will be surpassed by the economies of the nations they now still exploit. The economies of BRIC nations of Brazil, Russia, India and China alone represent the labor of more than half the world's inhabitants, while the European nations and their spin offs USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand is little more than 12% of the world population and is diminishing rapidly. In twenty, twenty-five years, it is inconceivable that the United Nations will remain controlled by the erstwhile US superpower and Europeans that for centuries profited from genocide. And when Americans are no longer be able to threaten smaller nations with frightfully crippling and deadly illegal sanctions these nations will be free to sue the US and NATO nations over what was done to them. Why not? There is no statue of limitations on murder and genocide. A reconstituted UN would have every reason to create a Nuremberg Principles court to adjudicate lawsuits claiming compensation for millions of wrongful deaths and compensation for tens of millions of injuries and thousands upon thousands deformed babies, reparations for mega destruction of property and indemnification for ultra massive theft of natural resources and to try citizens of the US and NATO nations for genocide. The wisdom of the orient, so to speak, along with wisdom of communities in Africa and of Native Americans will soon be making itself felt. Nobel Laureate in Economics, Joe Stiglitz writes in Vanity Fair's January issue, "China enters 2015 as the worlds largest economic power, a position it has held throughout most of human history."
It is obvious the guardians of imperialist power intend to postpone the inevitable loss of economic hegemony by using America’s current world overkill military dominance in a third world war. Criminal media has long been promoting fear of designated enemies Russia and China. For decades there has been massive investing in new weapons of mass destruction and nuclear weapons for ‘surgical’ strikes. Antiwar journalism ‘exposing’ the self-evident lie of ‘self-defense’ will not stop anything. Investors in a new world conflict know what they are doing. They knew what they were doing when they massively invested in, and joint ventured with, the Nazis to rapidly build Hitler’s armed forces up to the world’s number one military force.
But rather than lament the strategic preparations for an ultimate cataclysmic conflict going on in plain sight and hearing, let us realize our strength, understand that truth and sanity will prevail as we take action and bring the love of justice that exist our hearts out into the open. Against us is a relatively small number of wealth empowered desperate psychopaths of a ‘kill-everything-that-moves’ mind without compunction when 'necessary.'
The way to sabotage the capacity of the wealthy to make war is to not let them escape the long arm of the law for past genocides in Vietnam, Iraq and elsewhere, now legally indefensible because the justifications and excuses for past genocides have long been thoroughly documented as lies and falsehoods many of which are in themselves prosecutable crimes against peace.
When writers leave out historical context including past genocides, in reporting today's genocide, they are by this omission of documented historical context reenforcing the credibility of criminal media to make, even victims, forget the past and stay confused about today’s far-fetched but well propagated false justifications for war, justifications not yet well documented as lies.
Instead of only 'protesting' ongoing wars futilely, when will professional Antiwar 'leftists' do as Martin Luther King did, and speak directly to Americans and tell them to hold themselves responsible for the crimes against humanity supervised by their many times over reelected government officials, officials controlled by the speculative investment banksters of that wealthy one percent? Antiwar commentators could say to Americans, 'before we go on with the next war, we must first pay compensation for the millions of wrongful deaths and reparations for destruction during admittedly mistaken past wars in Vietnam and Iraq. There is morally no reason not to call for the justice for victims of past genocide that will bankrupt the imperialists and make criminal investment in war unprofitable, for the earlier the bankrupting compensation is forced the more lives that will be saved.
One day thereafter, a new United States of North America will be born, and its re-birth celebrated with new flag expressing the beauty, peace and brotherhood heard in a new national anthem, the lovely old song, "America," made popular in Ramsey Clark’s time by Ray Charles.
In the meantime, since it is hard to get people in the First and plundering World to call for their own prosecution, Ramsey has us looking around the Third and plundered World for voices to support, and focusing on journalism in seven nations in Latin America, which have socialist presidents (three of whom suffered prison and torture directly connected to the genocidal US foreign policy).
Yours truly, however, has faith in the eminent and most widely read independent alternate media dissident historians who are presently advising everyone to take seriously the military preparations, diplomatic threats and propaganda for war. These scholars, are keeping keep activists informed, activist, who are on the lookout for clues that would bring tactics to mind that might serve to cripple criminal corporate media seeking to postpone indefinitely the arrival of lawsuits for compensation, reparations, indemnification and other forms of restitution to victims and survivors of US-NATO genocidal crimes against humanity.
These excellent journalists have helped millions stay informed and are listed in gratitude as mentors:
Tony Carlucci of Land Destroyer
Paul Craig Roberts
Christof Lehmann of nsnbc
Michel Chossudovsky of Global Research
Pepe Escobar of Asian Times.
Finian Cunningham of Strategic Culture Foundation
Thierry Meyssan of VoltaireNet
Bruce Gagnon of Global Net Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
In conclusion, authors of seminal history books from which tens of millions have learned which side is up:
Arundhati Roy, Capitalism - A Ghost Story
Ramsey Clark - The Fire This Time - US war crimes in the Gulf
Noam Chomsky - The Year 501 - the Conquest Continues, The Responsibility of Intellectuals
Ed Herman - Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media - highly documented articles
Michael Parenti - To Kill a Nation - the Attack on Yugoslavia
Joel Kovel - The Enemy of Nature:The End of Capitalism or the End of the World?
Mahmood Mamdani - Imperialism and Fascism in Uganda, and articles on Africa
Bill Blum - statistics on history of military interventions and covert activities
Michael Moore - film Bowling at Columbine and others
Jay Janson is a regular contributor to Counter Currents, Kerala, India, and Minority Perspective Birmingham, UK; is coordinator of the Howard Zinn and Ramsey Clark founded, King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign and historian of the Ramsey Clark co-founded Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now, an educational and stimulus website featuring the laws pertaining and a country by country history of US crimes in nineteen countries.
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