Splitting the Sky

[Ed Jewett]

Friday, December 4 2009 - Legal Response to 9/11 Breaking Through a Wall of Police Protection for International Crime

http://www.911truth.org/article.php?stor...4151919219


The Trial of Splitting the Sky as a Trial of the Cheney-Bush-Rumsfeld Cabal of War Profiteers
by Anthony J. Hall,
Professor of Globalization Studies, University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada
December 3rd, 2009
printable version (pdf)
Who and what is on trial ?

When Splitting the Sky broke through police lines in his attempt to conduct a citizen's arrest of former US President, George W. Bush, the Mohawk Freedom Fighter pierced a thick wall of tyranny. He broke through a tight phalanx of state protection for the perpetrators of War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, and Crimes Against the Peace.
With his courageous act, Splitting the Sky announced the unwillingness of millions of global citizens to tolerate any longer the culture of impunity that places a small, interlinked global plutocracy above the law. By breaking police lines, the Attica Brother and American Indian Movement activist scouted a route of liberation for those of us seeking to get out from under the weight of complicity in International Crime committed in our name. We are all deeply implicated in the state terror permeating the 9/11wars because it is our tax dollars that fund these imperial assaults.
Splitting the Sky's action in Calgary highlights the abject failure of law enforcement agencies to do their job. It highlights the unwillingness of police and those who direct them to apply the law equitably and independently.
When he broke through police lines last march, Splitting the Sky built on the message of Muntadarar al-Zaidi, the Baghdad journalist who fired his shoes at the departing US President. Al-Zaidi's symbolic shot was seen and applauded around world. By dramatizing the role of so-called law enforcers as protectors of international crime, Splitting the Sky highlighted that many millions of global citizens have seen more than enough evidence to understand that George W. Bush and his war cabinet are credibly accused war criminals. If we lived in a world where the integrity of law prevailed over the power of money, political corruption and military might, the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Bush Syndicate of War profiteers would have been apprehended long ago to face charges in a properly constituted Court of International Law.
When Splitting the Sky presents himself this coming march to a Provincial Court in Calgary Alberta to face a criminal charge for Obstruction of Justice, who and what is really on trial? Whose sense of justice was really obstructed? I predict that the light of future history will cast the trial of Splitting the Sky as an important point of departure for a process of people's jurisprudence directed at bringing to justice those responsible for the highest order of International Crime.
The trial of Splitting the Sky calls attention to the partnership linking Barack Obama's presidency to the Cheney-Bush-Rumsfeld brand of organized crime headquartered in the military superpower's apparatus of so-called National Security. It highlights the current US President's expansion of his predecessor's policies of aggressive warfare aimed at appropriating natural resources from Indigenous peoples the world over. Conducted in the name of an implausible official interpretation of what transpired on September 11, 2001, the ongoing 9/11 wars widen and accelerate the imperial onslaught that has gathered force ever since Christopher Columbus initiated a new world order in 1492.
The trial of Splitting the Sky places a spotlight on the ruthless of state terror as manifest in torture, genocide, and aggressive warfare. more than six decades ago the judges sentencing the convicted Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg deemed that aggressive warfare constitutes the supreme crime against the entire human family because it encompasses such a broad array of tributary international crimes.
The police lines that Splitting the Sky briefly breached in Calgary Alberta were set up to protect the person whose blood-soaked hands signed the executive orders for an orgy of state-sponsored criminality. Thus the Calgary Police Force, the RCMP and those that direct them chose to make themselves, as well their agencies, accomplices in horrific crimes - crimes that have transformed words like Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Bagram, Dark Sites, Black Sites, Ghost Prisoners and Extraordinary Rendition into household phrases.
As the Nuremberg Principles make clear, the implicated law enforcement officers cannot claim in their defense that they were merely following orders in deciding to arrest Splitting the Sky rather than George W. Bush. Who gave the police their orders? What was the chain of command? What was the content of the directives given the police? The Crown Prosecutors have a responsibility to make public this crucial information in presenting their case against Splitting the Sky.
Why did George W. Bush and his handlers choose Calgary, Alberta as the site of the former Commander in Chief's first major speaking engagement after leaving the us presidency? Calgary is a key colonial capital of the Texas-based oil and gas empire that resides at the very core of the world's most powerful Military-Industrial Complex.
Calgary is the political heartland of the Minority Government of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Harper's ascent to power was as the Canadian franchise holder of the Bush brand of Neocon governance whose machinations regularly subordinate the rule to law to jack-booted displays of law and order. This Neocon approach has seen officers of the Canadian government hand over civilians convicted of nothing to the Afghani puppet regime for certain torture. As illustrated by the treatment of Omar Khadr, the lawlessness of the current Canadian government makes Harper and Bush partners in victimizing child soldiers contrary to many international treaties.
A major sponsor of Bush's talk in Calgary was the Bennett Jones law firm, one of the key agencies engaged in the fire sale of western Canada's natural resources. the foreign colonization of Alberta's resources often takes place in complete defiance of Canada's constitutional affirmation of Aboriginal and Treaty Rights.
Will the Alberta judiciary's handling of Splitting the Sky's trial continue the slide of my home province away from the sovereignty of Canada? Will the court extend Splitting the Sky a fair trial or will the judge railroad the accused at the behest of political masters in Washington, Dallas, Houston, Ottawa and Calgary? Will Splitting the Sky's right to present a full defense be respected? Or will the judge demean his or her court to decide, say, that George Bush's real or imagined "misdeeds" have no place in the proceedings.
Will the Provincial Court of Alberta rise to the responsibilities invested in this instrument of Canadian sovereignty? Or will the trial of Splitting the Sky take place in a kangaroo court putting on full display Calgary's colonial function in the American Empire? Will the court encourage, embrace and even demand a full airing of the real legal issues inherent in the decisions made by Splitting the Sky and those of the police officers that arrested him? Will it illuminate or obfuscate the responsibility of citizens when we see agents of the law unwilling to enforce statutes like Canada's Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act? Is Canada's international reputation to be that of a haven for the most recent crop of credibly accused War Criminals?
The Calgary Principles

Whatever happens with the Crown's trial, Calgary will be the site of a people's process aimed at delivering some measure of justice in a world too often starved of it. Among those who have agreed to take part in both the Crown's and the people's processes are Ramsey Clark and Cynthia McKinney. A former Attorney General of the United States, Ramsey Clark has a long history of representing Splitting the Sky as his lawyer. This history began when prominent figures in the United States intervened to cover up the lies and crimes of the Attica prison debacle of 1971. This event changed Splitting the Sky's life forever.


In the US election of 2008 Cynthia McKinney ran as the Green Party's candidate. She is widely recognized as an inheritor of the quest for domestic and international justice advanced in different ways by both martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Ms. McKinney served for four terms as a us Congresswoman representing a constituency in Georgia. She has stood bravely for the principle that Universal Human Rights extend to the Palestinian people. With her words and actions, Ms. McKinney epitomizes the necessary merger of the global Anti-War Coalition and the international movement of those committed to the quest for the truth of what really happened on September 11, 2001. In order to stop the otherwise never ending 9/11 wars, we must make reason and science prevail over fear mongering, superstition and disinformation in determining who was really responsible for the originating acts of the Global War on Terror.
I propose that the convergence of events and personalities, character and circumstance, on the frontiers of so much contested power offers an important opening to a new era of juridical development. I propose that the trial of Splitting the Sky presents a platform for the elaboration of a new set of juridical rules and protocols to be known as the Calgary Principles.
It has been six decades since the UN General Assembly agreed to a succinct refinement of the principles that emerged from the trial of some of the top Nazis as well as their juridical, medical and industrialist accomplices. During those decades there has been an intensification of the culture of impunity that immunizes those at the top of the hierarchy of wealth and power from any legal accountability for their crimes.
Like the Tokyo Trials of the defeated leadership of imperial Japan, the Nuremberg Trials were a classic example of "victors' justice". The trend that began in the aftermath of the Second World War has never been preempted. Again and again only those on the losing side of international conflicts face legal consequences for their crimes.
Even the International Tribunal dealing with the Rwandan genocide of 1994 restricts its proceedings to dealing with the crimes of only one side in the conflict. Only Hutus are targeted for prosecution. The jurists empowered by the UN security council consistently veer away from any reckoning with the many serious crimes of Paul kagame's Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front.
With Anglo-American backing channelled through Uganda, this Tutsi-dominated military force conquered its externally manipulated foes to become the core unit of the Rwandan armed forces. Kagame's army was built up to become a key pillar of the Central African branch of the American Empire. this empire includes many Canadian mining companies, including Barrick Gold, that operate with warlord and child soldier protection in one of the most war-torn zones on the planet.
The immunity from prosecution of President Kagame's Tutsi-dominated army contributes significantly to the ongoing genocide that plagues the people of the resource-rich Eastern Congo to this day. The inflicted deaths of millions of displaced and brutalized Congolese clears the way for illicit flows of blood diamonds, coltan, gold and soon oil. These operations, that expose the utter ruthlessness of imperial capital's heart of darkness, epitomize the severity of the enforced lawlessness that enriches a few at the lethal expense of the many.
The inequities of victors' justice were on full display last March 17 when the police decided to protect credibly accused war criminal George W. Bush and to arrest and incarcerate Splitting the Sky. Like a disproportionately large proportion of other native Americans and African Americans, Splitting the Sky has spent too much of his life locked up by the state.
On the other side of the ledger is George W. Bush. Bush epitomizes the class that is, with some few exceptions, above the law. In his life's journeys Bush has drawn on the kind of privilege that is rooted in generations of colonization and conquest. The former US President accelerated these trajectories of violence and theft when he and Dick Cheney were at the controls of the most formidable war machine ever assembled.
In Calgary we saw close up the extraordinary protections regularly extended this "credibly accused" war criminal. In my view Bush as well as his patrons and clients will not be brought to trial until humanity finds a way to withdraw the license to kill afforded by the institutionalized inequities of victors' justice.
A core precept of the Calgary Principles, therefore, must deal with the need to move beyond the kind of victors' justice that became institutionalized following the second world war. A central principle of the rule of law is the need to enforce its authority equitably and uniformly. This basic principle must be made to apply to those who commit the highest order of international crime, no matter whether they are on the winning or losing side of international or domestic conflicts.
As long as the power politics of victors' justice continues to protect the likes of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney, the rule of law remains a fraud. Under present conditions the rule of law is a sad hoax designed to disguise the role of law enforcement agencies as protectors of the ill-gotten wealth often stripped from the branches of humanity that Franz Fanon once labelled the wretched of the earth.
The elaboration of the Calgary principles will have to entail the quest for new language and juridical concepts to capture the full extent and complexity of International Crime in the Twenty-first Century. In moving this process forward we could do worse than to look for inspiration to the example set by the great Polish and Jewish jurist, Raphael Lemkin. In 1944 Lemkin coined the term "genocide'' in an attempt to identify the outer extremes of the state terror then underway in Axis occupied Europe.
Lemkin's juridical contribution was not the last word in the process of making International Law reflect the expanding scope of International Crime. In more recent decades the technology of mass destruction has become so much more powerful and many-faceted than it was in Lemkin's day that we need new terms and procedures to deal with the moving frontiers of criminality.
Consider, for instance, the nature of the crime that takes place when whole populations are sentenced to endless futures of disproportionately high rates of genetic deformity through the saturation of their mother lands with depleted uranium. Consider the nature of a crime that would see a drug company covertly introduce a new disease strain in order to market a prepared antidote or vaccine to cure the disease it had disseminated.
What names, what prohibitions and what punishments do we need to respond to and discourage crimes that infect populations, deform populations, and even destroy whole ecosystems making the renewal of all kinds of life, including human life, impossible to sustain?
The makers of the Calgary principles will have to pay particular attention to the role of media conglomerates, public relations firms and public broadcasters in creating the psychological environment that allows international crime to thrive in the Age of Elite Immunity from Prosecution. The sophisticated propaganda of the global war on terror presents a text book example of how mainstream media venues often play major roles in the perceptual dehumanization of population groups whose natural resources are targeted for appropriation in aggressive war.
We saw a small sample of the role of mainstream media as thought police in the censorship that characterized most of the coverage of George W. Bush's visit to Calgary the journalists assigned to cover the event almost uniformly directed attention away from Splitting the Sky's attempt to conduct a citizen's arrest of George w. Bush.
Two Interconnected Trials
The trial of Khalid Sheik Mohamed (KSM) that will take place in New York City in the months ahead will help to establish the geopolitical framework for the formulation of the Calgary principles and the trial of Splitting the Sky. For many months key venues of the mainstream media have been advertising KSM as the so-called "mastermind" of the 9/11 attacks. After having been tortured dozens of times in us custody, the demented KSM apparently agrees with the label given him even as he boasts outlandishly of the role he has imagined for himself in many more alleged terrorist incidents.
For millions of observers who do not accept the official conspiracy theory of 9/11, KSM and those who will be tried with him are obvious patsies. KSM's own history of double, triple and quadruple dealing illustrates that the history of al-Qaeda was internal, and remains internal, to that of the National Security State. The operatives of the National Security State once did their complex business transactions with their pet Islamic theocrats such as CIA asset, Osama bin Laden, through the Lahore-based bank of Credit and Commerce International.
The treatment of KSM is but one small part of the application of torture not to unearth information about future terrorist attacks, but rather to create a false record to support the specious claims on which the 9/11wars are premised. This propensity was put clearly on public display with news of the torture in Egypt of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. The purpose of al-Libi's torture, which Dick Cheney directed, was to produce false testimony subsequently presented at the United Nations in 2003 of a non-existent connection between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.
The purpose of the Anglo-American resort to torture has recently been described by Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan who has become a whistle blower exposing the underlying fraud of the Global War on Terror. Murray was removed from his job when he began to pay attention to what was happening in his posting to prisoners flown in through illegal renditions from many parts of the world.
Here is how Murray describes the patterns of torture in Uzbekistan, a key polity in the region's multi-trillion dollar political boondoggle of oil and gas extraction as well as pipeline construction. Murray asserts,
"the whole point of the intelligence being obtained under torture was to actually exaggerate the terrorist threats and to exaggerate the strength of al-Qaeda that was the whole point of why people were being tortured, to confess that they were members of al-Qaeda when they weren't members of al-Qaeda and to denounce long lists of names of people as members of al-Qaeda who weren't members of al-Qaeda"
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/102409b.html By putting a focus on the lies and crimes of the Cheney-Bush-Rumsfeld Cabal of War Profiteers the trial of Splitting the Sky, together with the formulation of the Calgary Principles, is shaping up as a counterpoint to the upcoming show trial of KSM and others in New York
We invite broad participation in the Calgary proceedings this coming March from jurists, academics, students and concerned citizens from around the world. The convergence of interest in and around Splitting the Sky's trial should be seen as one part of a global upsurge of popular will flowing from the growing recognition that our formal machineries of domestic law and international relations are leading humanity into a blind ally of death and destruction. The ugly imperatives of might is right will prevail over the rule of law until the people and peoples of the world find a way to overcome the inequities of "victors' justice".
The core corporations of the Military-Industrial-Complex have achieved such a lock grip on the executive, legislative and judicial branches of most of the world's governments that humanity's slender achievements in instituting democracy are being quickly negated. What meaning does an "X" on an election ballot have if voters have been duped by disinformation and smear campaigns even as they have been drawn into realms of public mythology that are completely disconnected from the realities of how power is exercised? The citizens of Afghanistan are far from alone in suffering the fate of what I call ballot box colonialism.
Hence, it can be said that these days the most important agencies of the Military-Industrial-Complex and the National Security State are the media conglomerates. These agencies of propaganda for Aggressive War bombard us on a daily basis with mental missiles of Psychological Warfare.
The constant barrage of messages we receive that peace is to be found in war, that freedom is to found in slavery, that wealth is to be found in indebtedness, and that truth is to be found in lies, is pulling humanity away from our fragile inheritance of reason, rationality, and enlightened discourse on the real menaces we face.
Earth's endangered biosphere is the real source of humanity's health, sustainability and security. That is where we must point much of our remedial attention and creativity. To do so we must find a way to pull back from the oblivion of the modern-day Indian Wars that are depriving so many global citizens of both "Life, Liberty and Happiness" and "Peace, Order and Good Government", as we move into the second decade of the New Millennium.
SPLITTING THE SKY IN MONTREAL
Saturday, Dec. 5th, 2009

Delivering the Bush/Cheney Gang to a Contemporary Equivalent of Nuremberg...
Lecture with Mohawk activist Dacajeweiah (Splitting the Sky)
On March 17, 2009 Splitting the Sky performed his civic duty, acting with respect of the Law and integrity from the heart - persuing to arrest a credibly suspected war criminal and former US President, George W. Bush. Using the principles of Kaianereh'ko:wa Splitting the Sky proved his loyalty and integrity, upholding the Great Law. He was arrested and charged with Obstruction of Justice to which he will face his day in court on March 8th 2010 in Calgary Alberta.
Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark former Georgia State Representative Cynthia McKinney have accepted to testify in his defence. Leading 9/11 author Dr. David Ray Griffin has provided him with an eighteen page affidavit to be read before the court and former Canadian diplomat,retired professor and political writer Peter Dale Scott has also accepted to testify if requested.
When: Montreal, Saturday, December 5, 2009
Start time: 19h00
Location: Centre St-Pierre, 1212 Rue Panet (corner Rene Levesque east), salle 100, 5mins from Beaudry metro.
Admission: suggested donation of $10.00. The event is to raise awareness and help raise funds for his legal defence after he was arrested and charged with Obstruction of Justice to which he will face his day in court on March 8th 2010 in Calgary Alberta.
Continue reading ... (next post)

[Ed Jewett]

Splitting The Sky in Montreal December 5th

4:47 PM by Patrick.

Anthem for Dissent by Splitting The Sky

Splitting The Sky on McGill’s CKUT Radio Dec 1st
David Ray Griffin’s Affidavit for STS
Open Letter to President Hugo Chavez
Delivering the Bush/Cheney Gang to a Contemporary Equivalent of Nuremberg…
December 5, 2009
Lecture with Mohawk activist Dacajeweiah (Splitting the Sky)
On March 17, 2009 Splitting the Sky performed his civic duty, acting with respect of the Law and integrity from the heart - persuing to arrest a credibly suspected war criminal and former US President, George W. Bush. Using the principles of Kaianereh’ko:wa Splitting the Sky proved his loyalty and integrity, upholding the Great Law. He was arrested and charged with Obstruction of Justice to which he will face his day in court on March 8th 2010 in Calgary Alberta.
Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark former Georgia State Representative Cynthia McKinney have accepted to testify in his defence. Leading 9/11 author Dr. David Ray Griffin has provided him with an eighteen page affidavit to be read before the court and former Canadian diplomat,retired professor and political writer Peter Dale Scott has also accepted to testify if requested.
When: Saturday, December 5, 2009
Start time: 19h00
Location: Centre St-Pierre, 1212 Rue Panet(corner Rene Levesque east), salle 100,5mins from Beaudry metro
Admission: suggested donation of $10.00. The event is to raise awareness and help raise funds for his legal defence
after he was arrested and charged with Obstruction of Justice to which he will face his day in court on March 8th 2010 in Calgary Alberta.



He is an activist, struggling for justice for the indigenous peoples of the Americas. His Mohawk name, Dacajeweiah, translated into English, is “Splitting the Sky”. He was born in Buffalo, New York, colonized as “John Boncore”, and also became known as “John Hill”. From the age of seven, Splitting the Sky survived many years in New York foster homes and youth detention centers which sought to brutalise him with numerous depredations.
The Attica Rebellion: 1971 - Splitting the Sky was 19 years old when he was arrested for stealing a sandwich and sent to Attica Correctional Facility, 16 days before the infamous “rebellion”. The riot was based in part upon prisoners’ demands for better living conditions. At the time, inmates were given one shower per week and one roll of toilet paper per month. On September 9, 1971, responding to the death of prisoner George Jackson, a black radical prisoner who had been shot to death by corrections officers in California’s San Quentin Prison on August 21 while armed and attempting to escape, about 1,000 of the prison’s approximately 2,200 prisoners rioted and seized control of the prison, taking thirty-three correction officers hostage. The State began negotiating with the prisoners.
During the following four days of negotiations, authorities agreed to 28 of the prisoners’ demands, but would not agree to demands for complete amnesty from criminal prosecution for the prison takeover, or for the removal of Attica’s superintendent. Under order of then Governor Nelson Rockefeller, state police took back control of the prison. When the uprising was over at least 39 people were dead, including ten correction officers and civilian employees. Splitting the Sky was the only prisoner indicted for murdering a Police Officer.
Gustafsen Lake Standoff: 1995 - In June 1995, Indigenous people from the Secwepemc (Shuswap) and other nations began an occupation of sacred Sun Dance lands at TsPeten (pronounced “che-peten”), known as Gustafsen Lake in English, near 100 Mile House, British Columbia. The occupation at TsPeten followed a long history of attempts to gain recognition of Secwepemc sovereignty by the Canadian Government, and indigenous rights to unceded lands in British Columbia.
The standoff began when a previous arrangement from 1989 to hold sun dances on Crown Land under the jurisdiction of BC rancher Lyall James broke down. Some Natives chose to remain at Gustafsen Lake and continue to hold annual sun dances in defiance of threats of eviction by Lyall James, and to assert indigenous rights to the land. As one of the largest police operations in Canadian history, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police launched the deployment of four hundred tactical assault team members, five helicopters, two surveillance planes and nine Armoured Personnel Carriers. By the end of the 31-day standoff, police had fired over 77,000 rounds of ammunition, one woman had been shot, and a dog had been killed. The British Columbia Attorney General Ujjal Dosanjh, branded the occupation as strictly a criminal matter, refusing to consider political negotiations. Splitting the Sky was fortunate to live to talk about the experience.
Citizens Arrest: George W. Bush - On March 17, 2009 Splitting the Sky On March 17, 2009 Splitting the Sky performed his civic duty, acting with respect of the Law and integrity from the heart - persuing to arrest a credibly suspected war criminal and former US President, George W. Bush. Using the principles of Kaianereh’ko:wa Splitting the Sky proved his loyalty and integrity, upholding the Great Law. He was arrested and charged with Obstruction of Justice to which he will face his day in court on March 8th 2010 in Calgary Alberta.
Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark former Georgia State Representative Cynthia McKinney have accepted to testify in his defence. Leading 9/11 author Dr. David Ray Griffin has provided him with an eighteen page affidavit to be read before the court and former Canadian diplomat,retired professor and political writer Peter Dale Scott has also accepted to testify if requested.
Splitting the Sky needs your help! He has unbreakable integrity and will not give up the fight against the oppressive “criminal class of this world”. Will you join in his efforts? You can help him!
visit,
www.splittingthesky.net
or email direct, splittingthesky@yahoo.com
or
www.warcriminalsout.com
to find out more information about his court case, as well as future dates of visits from other credibly suspected war criminals.

[Peter Lemkin]

A brave man; a moral man; a man who doesn't let evil pass unresponded to. Sadly, I fear he will be 'screwed' royally in court. But he sets a moral tone for others to follow....

[Magda Hassan]

A brave man; a moral man; a man who doesn't let evil pass unresponded to. Sadly, I fear he will be 'screwed' royally in court. But he sets a moral tone for others to follows....

Agreed on all counts Peter. Thanks for posting about this Ed.

[Magda Hassan]

Citizen's Arrest of War Criminals Tony Blair and George W. Bush

By Prof. Anthony J. Hall

February 02, 2010 "Global Research" -- Professor Boyle's intervention with the International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute the Bush War Cabinet for international crimes is welcome news. Professor Boyle's meticulously documented charges come shortly after news of a reward being set up in Great Britain for those who attempt citizens' arrests of crebibly accused war criminal, Tony Blair.

http://www.arrestblair.org/

All over the world, citizens are mobilizing to take action to demand accountability from those who have been committing with impunity the highest order of international crime. About a year ago I joined this global movement. At an invited presentation hosted by the Sociology Department at the University of Winnipeg in March of 2009, I proposed that George W. Bush should be arrested during his forthcoming speaking engagement in Calgary Alberta. I began the paper by criticizing the ICC for focusing all its attention on prosecuting African war lords while ignoring the blatent criminality being displayed at the highest levels of the feeding chain of military, political and economic power. The presentation went more of less viral on the Internet.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article159233...icle159233

Professor Boyle's intervention significantly increases the pressure that some of us have being trying to place on the ICC to enforce international criminal law against credibly accused war criminals in not only in Africa, but also in North America, Europe and Israel.

When I first presented these ideas at the University of Winnipeg, my host, Professor Heidi Rimke, and I were confronted by an organized group who surrounded us after my presentation and tried to associate my words with Nazi symbols. This surprising tactic spoke to me of the desperation and intellectual bankruptcy of the lobby seeking to prevent a real discussion of these vital matters strictly on their merits. Fortunately, there was a fairly strong reaction in Winnipeg and beyond that drew attention to the inappropriateness, to say the least, of such tactics to divert attention away from the need to address the culture of impunity that is permitting state-sponsored terror to proliferate in the name of the fraudulent Global War on Terror. As Professor Boyle indicates, this pattern of war crimes at the top is continuing and even accelerating during the presidency of Barack Obama.

http://www.911blogger.com/node/19897
http://uniter.ca/view/discuss/734/

As important as it is to show support for US and British-based initiatives to enforce the rule of law on the highest order of criminality, I humbly suggest that Canadians might want to get involved in similar initiatives unfolding in Canada. When George W. Bush came to Calgary, law enforcement officials ignored my efforts along with those of Lawyers Against War to provide them with evidence that the former US president had violated international law as well as the Canadian Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act.

When it became apparent that police would not adhere to the Nuremberg Principles by arresting Bush, my friend and colleague, Splitting The Sky, attempted a citizen's arrest.

An Attica Brother and Mohawk activist, Splitting The Sky had come to Calgary carrying a letter from his lawyer, the former US Attorney-General Ramsay Clark, outlining the case why the former US president should be arrested. We held a press conference the day before Bush's visit to inform the media of the existence of that letter.

Instead of arresting Bush the police arrested Splitting The Sky. The authorities jailed him and and charged the Mohawk activist with obstructing justice. STS's trial is scheduled to take place in Calgary Alberta in early March of 2010, which as I write these words is only about five weeks away. The local media, including the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, has covered up the arrest and the circumstances behind it right up to this day. I lodged a formal complaint with the Ombudsman of the CBC, Vince Carlin, complaining about the public broadcaster's biased and unprofessional coverage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62a53enMtA0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIj9wGZyWM8
http://www.splittingthesky.net/
http://www.warcriminalsout.com/prof_hall...dsman.html

Since the arrest of STS former US Congresswoman, Green Party presidential candidate and international anti-war activist, Cynthia McKinney, has been outspoken in calling attention to the importance of the STS-Bush case. Last November, for instance, Ms. McKinney addressed an international conference entitled "Criminalizing War" at Kuala Lumpur. Standing on the podium beside British MP, George Galloway, Ms. McKinney drew attention to the Canadian proceedings that she placed in the context of the history of COINTELPRO dirty tricks aimed at destroying the American Indian Movement

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/47554

I have continued the agenda that Splitting The Sky and I started after he telephoned me about one year ago to inform me that George W.Bush was coming to Calgary in his first public speaking engagement following his presidency.

http://blip.tv/file/3015093
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?c...&aid=16377

Along with Splitting The Sky, I attended the Bush-Clinton speaking event in Toronto. I wrote about that episode in a widely disseminated article that appeared on many web sites, including that of Paul S. Graham of the Winnipeg Peace Alliance.

http://www.blogcatalog.com/blog/paul-s-graham/10d849dd7b02445aaec5a...

Unlike the United States, Canada is a member of the International Criminal Court. If the government of Canada truly respected the jurisdiction and mission of this new and still untested court, it would have made sure that credibly accused war criminals George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and other members of the Bush War Cabinet were arrested when they have touched down on Canadian soil during previous months. But given the present composition of the Canadian government, there is no chance that it will respect international criminal laws that some of its own members, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper, could and should be accused of violating.

Moreover all of those police officers who failed to arrest George Bush when they were presented with the possibility of doing so became complicit in violations of international law, including the Nuremberg Principles. Following orders does not provide a legitimate defense for officials who fail to uphold the rule of law when it comes to the responsibility of dealing with the highest order of international crime. Again and again we see evidence that the rule of law does not apply to those at the top of military, corporate, political and financial chains of command. Under these circumstances the idea that we live in societies governed by the rule of law has become a sad hoax.

The severity of the dangers that surround us as the 9/11 Wars continue kill and maim millions and on the frontiers of empire and to subvert our governments and societies here in the imperial heartlands of North America, Europe, Japan and Australasia has been well explained by Professor Boyle as well as by Canadian professors Peter Dale Scott, John McMurtry, Graeme MacQueen, Michael Keefer, and Michel Chossudovsky among others. Yesterday Professor Scott's most recent observations on the lawlessness that permeates the highest levels of our governments was published at

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?c...&aid=17300

Founder of the Peace Studies Centre and the Peace Studies program at McMaster University, Professor MacQueen, has added his voice to the mix. He has emphasized the importance for the peace movement of understanding "fraudulent trigger incidents." Prof. MacQueen argues that key elements of the peace movement have gone astray. He accuses some of his fellow activists of refusing to research the case being developed of one of the world's most vital and determined movements of civil society and falling back on uncritical acceptance of what he calls the "government explanation" of the 9/11 Wars. See

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUISz8Uwh6A
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY9IlDDpvzc
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3Bte5ULPD8
Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCzHeCCDp...re=related


Anthony J. Hall is Professor of Globalization Studies at University of Lethbridge

[Ed Jewett]

Citizen's Arrest of Alleged War Criminal George W. Bush in Canada
SPS versus "W" in Court Hearings in Calgary

by Carol Brouillet

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?c...&aid=18005



Splitting the Sky, indigenous activist, seized by security forces in Canada last year when he attempted to make a citizen's arrest of George W. Bush will have his day in court on Monday, March 8th. According to Professor Anthony J. Hall, this case will demonstrate whether Canada is ruled by law or fear and highlight the need for new principles, the Calgary Principles to amend the victor's justice of the Nuremberg Principles, in light of the new impunities for high level crimes against humanity and the Earth in this era, and the need to protect and honor civil resistance to those high crimes.

Dacajaweiah, John Boncore, or Splitting the Sky, is not a man of few words. If you read his hefty 653-page autobiography, it is very clear that he has lived an extraordinary life and has survived more than his share of violence, to find deep within himself a well of energy and spirit enabling him to not only endure hardships, but to serve his people and the land in the timeless struggle against oppression and tyranny. From the Attica Rebellion to Gustafen Lake to Calgary in 2009, when he attempted a citizen’s arrest of George W. Bush, “Dac” has consciously taken a leadership role to politically challenge the powerful forces that dominate the North American continent. Brutally arrested for his action, he earned his “day in court” to voice not only his defense, but “to highlight the hypocrisy and criminality of the Canadian government for allowing Bush into Canada, and to firmly establish the legal defense of ‘civil resistance’, the duty of citizens to act when our governments and their agents are derelict in their duty. This will be very useful in the future to rein these criminals in.”

Prior to Bush’s visit, the Canadian group Lawyers Against the War asked Canadian officials to bar entry or try Bush for his suspected crimes since Canadian Law prohibits “people suspected of any involvement in torture or other war crimes and crimes against humanity from entering Canada for any period and for any purpose. The most recent report of the War Crimes Program affirms the necessity of barring war crimes suspects from Canada: ‘The most effective way to deny safe haven to people involved or complicit in war crimes or crimes against humanity is to prevent them from coming to Canada.’”

Lawyers Against the War and protestors implored the government to do their duty and arrest Bush. “Dac” was carrying papers detailing the evidence against George W. Bush, which he had planned to serve him with on behalf of the victims and the people of the world, and he raised his hands to show that he was “non-violent.” Dac was then thrown down, stomped on, kicked, handcuffed and led off to be brutalized in a Calgary jail.

Monday, March 8, 2010, he will have his opportunity to put forward his case and present evidence, with support, testimony and affidavits on his behalf from respected scholars, including David Ray Griffin, Peter Dale Scott, and Michel Chossudovsky, as well as from former US Congresswoman, outspoken human rights advocate, and former Green Party Presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney. Professor Anthony J. Hall, author of The American Empire and the Fourth World and founding coordinator of Globalization Studies at the University of Lethbridge, stated last December:

“Splitting the Sky’s action in Calgary highlights the abject failure of law enforcement agencies to do their job. It highlights the unwillingness of police and those who direct them to apply the law equitably and independently…

“As the Nuremberg principles make clear, the implicated law enforcement officers cannot claim in their defense that they were merely following orders in deciding to arrest Splitting the Sky rather than George W. Bush.

“I propose that the trial of Splitting the Sky presents a platform for the elaboration of a new set of juridical rules and protocols to be known as The Calgary Principles.

“It has been six decades since the UN general assembly agreed to a succinct refinement of the principles that emerged from the trial of some of the top Nazis, as well as their juridical, medical, and industrialist accomplices. During those decades, there has been an intensification of the culture of impunity that immunizes those at the top of the hierarchy of wealth and power from any legal accountability for their crimes.

“Like the Tokyo trials of the defeated leadership of imperial Japan, the Nuremberg Trials were a classic example of victors’ justice.

“As long as the power politics of victors’ justice continues to protect the likes of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, the rule of law remains a fraud. Under present conditions, the rule of law is a sad hoax designed to disguise the role of law enforcement agencies as protectors of the ill-gotten wealth often stripped from the branches of humanity that Frantz Fanon once labeled ‘the wretched of the earth.’

“The elaboration of the Calgary Principles will have to entail the quest for new language and juridical concepts to capture the full extent and complexity of international crime in the twenty-first century...

“Consider, for instance, the nature of the crime that takes place when whole populations are sentenced to endless futures of disproportionately high rates of genetic deformity through the saturation of their mother lands with depleted uranium. Consider the nature of a crime that would see a drug company covertly introduce a new disease strain in order to market a prepared antidote of vaccine to cure the disease it had disseminated.

“What names, what prohibitions, and what punishments do we need to respond to and discourage crimes that infect populations, deform populations, and even destroy whole ecosystems, making the renewal of all kinds of life, including human life, impossible to sustain?

“Hence it can be said that these days the most important agencies of the military-industrial complex and the national security state are the media conglomerates. These agencies of propaganda for an aggressive war bombard us on a daily basis with mental missiles of psychological warfare.

“The constant barrage of messages we receive that peace is to be found in war, that freedom is to be found in slavery, that wealth is to be found in indebtedness, and that truth is to be found in lies, is pulling humanity away from our fragile inheritance of reason, rationality, and enlightened discourse on the real menaces we face…”

Splitting the Sky’s action mirrors the actions of countless people in countless demonstrations that are taking place across the world where lives, land, forests, lakes, jobs, homes, species, and communities are threatened by powerful forces, making decisions in luxury and comfort, protected by men with guns from citizens trying to make their voices heard to protect that which they love and care deeply about. The trial will illustrate whether or not Canada is ruled by laws or by fear. Whatever happens, the struggle for truth, justice, and peace will continue.


For Anthony J. Hall's entire article and speech, see http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?c...&aid=16377 .
More details about Splitting the Sky are posted at http://www.splittingthesky.net/

Splitting the Sky and Anthony J. Hall will be on the new weekly radio show, Community Currency, hosted by local activist, Carol Brouillet Thursday, March 11, 2010, 2 pm - 3 pm PST, on the Progressive Radio Network (http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com)
http://dailycensored.com/2010/03/07/the-tr...

Carol Brouillet is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Carol Brouillet

[David Guyatt]

As nice a one para summation as I've ever heard:

“As long as the power politics of victors’ justice continues to protect the likes of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, the rule of law remains a fraud. Under present conditions, the rule of law is a sad hoax designed to disguise the role of law enforcement agencies as protectors of the ill-gotten wealth often stripped from the branches of humanity that Frantz Fanon once labeled ‘the wretched of the earth.’

[Ed Jewett]

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Splitting-the-Sky case shut down; interview with STS, Cynthia McKinney, and Anthony Hall


Catch my live interview with Splitting-the-Sky, Cynthia McKinney, and Anthony Hall coming up at 2 pm Central! http://www.noliesradio.org (It should be archived there shortly after.)

Bush League Justice in Judge Manfred Delong's Calgary Court

Anthony J. Hall
Professor of GlobalizationStudies
University of Lethbridge
10 Marc, 2010

Judge Manfred Delong shut down the trial of Splitting The Sky versus George W. Bush on the second day of proceedings. The court denied STS his frequently emphasized request to have two witnesses give evidence in his defense. Those witnesses were myself and Cynthia McKinney. The trial came to an end just as Ms. McKinney arrived in Calgary from London. The US-based oil conglomerates active throughout Alberta form the core business constituency of the Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who represents a Calgary riding in Parliament.

The court accepted two documents as evidence for the defense. On is Gail Davidson's widely disseminated legal opinion for Lawyer's Against the War. STS and I studied this document closely in the days leading up to my friend being arrested for his arrest attempt. LAW's legal opinion highlighted some of the evidence, statutes and treaties to brand Bush as a "credibly accused war criminal" that should not be allowed into Canada. Prior to Bush's touching down in Calgary to address an audience of oil executives, Davidson's documemtation was distributed widely to officials of the Harper government and Canada's Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The other exhibit for the defense was my own paper that I originally presented at an invited academic venue at the University of Winnipeg. It has been published under a variety of titles on the Internet, including at Global Research.ca, 911 Blogger.com, 9/11 Truth.org and Voltairenet in both French and English. My initial title for it is "Bush League Justice: Should George W. Bush Be Arrested in Calgary Alberta and Tried for International Crimes."

Delong will deliver his ruling on June 7. The case for the prosecution both revealed and obscured much about the new police strategies being employed throughout North America to monitor, manage, divide and spin doctor demonstrators seeking to call attention to their political dissent. In my opinion the Crown's chief agent of prosecution, Tracy Davis, acted more as an advocate and defender of the police rather than as a representative of the Canadian people through Her Majesty as she is required to do according the constitutional tradition of the British Commonwealth.
Posted by Kevin Barrett at 10:29 AM




7 comments:

[Ed Jewett]

Is an Attempted Citizen's Arrest of War Criminal George W. Bush "a Criminal Act"?
Man of Courage Could be Sentenced to Two Years in Jail for Implementing the Law

by Joshua Blakeney

Former US Attorney-General Ramsey Clark to Speak at the University of Calgary's Peace Consortium on June 6, in Defence of Splitting the Sky, The Man Who Attempted a Citizens' Arrest on George W. Bush

“George Bush hasn't suffered at all over the monumental suffering, death, and horror he has caused...no matter how many American soldiers have died on a given day in Iraq (averaging well over two every day), he is always seen with a big smile on his face that same or next day” Vincent Bugliosi, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, 2008[1]

Ramsey Clark will arrive in the Canadian oil-patch city of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, this coming June 6th and 7th, mounting pressure on Judge Manfred Delong, who is presiding over the sentencing process in an epochal trial which some have dubbed: “The trial of Splitting the Sky versus George W. Bush.” Splitting the Sky (STS) on the advice of legal experts Ramsey Clark, Gale Davidson and Anthony J. Hall attempted a citizen’s arrest on George W. Bush on March 17, 2009 when the former US president was addressing an audience of business people at the TELUS Convention Centre in the downtown of Calgary.[2] In his March 2010 trial STS invoked the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes legislation, which was enacted by the Canadian parliament in 2000, to submit to the court that he was implementing the law by seeking to apprehend Bush, and was unjustly arrested by police who were in effect “aiding and abetting a credibly accused war criminal.” Former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney came to Calgary to attempt to testify in the March trial but was prevented from doing so as the judge shut down the trial earlier than anticipated. Instead McKinney spoke at the University of Calgary in support of Splitting the Sky.[3] It is hoped by supporters of justice that the arrival of Ramsey Clark in Calgary will help to publicize this unprecedented case in Canadian legal history, the knowledge of which the state and their media accomplices have made a concerted effort to suppress and censor from the public domain.

Ramsey Clark has a long history of being a thorn in the side of those political elites who would seek to apply the law expediently rather than unanimously. Born in Dallas, Texas, the son of prominent jurist Tom C. Clark, Ramsey Clark witnessed as a young man the Nuremberg trials following World War II. Clark would go on to graduate from the University of Chicago law school and become Attorney General of the United States under the administration of Lyndon Johnson. Clark worked tirelessly throughout his career as an outspoken Civil Rights attorney advocating for many prominent activists and political dissidents. After the 1971 Attica Prison debacle Clark replaced William Kunstler as Splitting the Sky's legal advocate. STS's charges were acquitted as a result of Clark's relentless advocacy.

Clark took his human rights advocacy from the domestic realm to the international arena when he made a provocative visit to North Vietnam in 1972 as a protest against the illegal bombing of Hanoi by the US military. Clark's pro-human rights and anti-war stances led him to become the attorney for a number of political nemeses of the military-industrial-complex. Clark's clients included American Indian prisoner Leonard Peltier, members of the PLO, Camilo Mejia the US soldier who deserted his post in March 2004 in protest against the illegal invasion of Iraq, Slobodan Milosevic former president of Serbia, and Saddam Hussein former president of Iraq, to name a few. Clark has been particularly critical of those seeking to impose “victors justice” upon the vanquished opponents of Anglo-American expansionism. Of the “trial” of Saddam Hussein he stated: “it failed to respect basic human rights and was illegal because it was formed as a consequence of the United States' illegal invasion,” going on to call for an “absolutely fair” trial for the deposed Iraqi leader.[4]

In recent history, Clark was unflinching in his attempts to have George W. Bush impeached. In 2002, Clark founded “VoteToImpeach” an organization whose ostensible goal was to see members of the Bush administration brought before a court of law for their misdeeds. The Independent reported: “Clark said there is a website, www.votetoimpeach.org, dedicated to collecting signatures of U.S. Citizens who want President George W. Bush impeached, and that approximately 150,000 have signed to impeach.”[5] Clark also helped found the protest organization A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism).

On April 3, 2010 Clark was elected at a meeting of over 150 lawyers, legal scholars and human rights campaigners, to be the chairperson of a new international campaign to investigate the alleged crimes against humanity committed by the Bush regime. Global Research reported: “Ramsey Clark emphasized that it is the imperative responsibility of the American people to relentlessly pursue this investigation, and to seek prosecution and indictment inside of the United States...Ramsey Clark made the point that all the war crimes and crimes against humanity flow from the commission of the most supreme crimes which he identified as the Crimes against Peace. This was the finding at the Nuremberg trial, and it is enshrined in the Nuremberg Principles.”[6] Clark's reference to precedents set at Nuremberg, a German city once infamous for its right-wing extremism, encourages those of us who would like to see Calgary's image in the world evolve from one of Harperite cowboys and vulture-capitalists into a city where law enforcement agencies set precedents in human rights jurisprudence and international law with the support of the polity's residents. Perhaps such a paradigm shift would ignite a necessary atonement for the state-endorsed despoliation of the Indigenous Peoples of the region's ancestral resources, lands and waters which has been unpardonably gifted to mainly Texas-based oil and gas conglomerates.

How Judge Manfred Delong will be influenced by Clark's arrival in Calgary is yet to be seen. Will Judge Delong compound the Culture of Impunity afforded to credibly accused war criminals emanating from Anglo-America - which the Harper-minority government and their equivalents around the world have supported - by “setting an example” and sentencing STS to spend two-more years of his life behind bars and burdening him with a fine of up to $5000? Or will he realize the broader implications of this trial and dismiss the case before the court that STS “obstructed a police officer”?

Certainly it will be important that citizens of Calgary who are able to attend Clark’s upcoming lecture at the University of Calgary to show solidarity with this Peoples’ Process and attend. The more citizens who mobilize in solidarity with STS the less able the state and their media accomplices will be to sweep the profound juridical questions being raised by STS, Clark and others, under the carpet. The proceedings are as follows:

Ramsey Clark arrives in Calgary, June 6, 2010. He will speak at the University of Calgary Murray Fraser Hall Room 164, 4pm – 6.30pm.

The sentencing of Splitting the Sky commences on June 7, 2010 at the Calgary Courts Centre.


Joshua Blakeney is Media Coordinator of Globalization Studies at the University of Lethbridge



Notes

[1] Vincent Bugliosi, “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder.” 2008. excerpt quoted: http://www.prosecutionofbush.com/excerpt3p1.php

[2] Anthony Hall, “Bush League Justice: Should George W. Bush Be Arrested in Calgary Alberta to be Tried for International Crimes?” Voltairenet. March 9, 2009. http://www.voltairenet.org/article159233.html and Gail Davidson, “Barring Bush From Canada: Time for the Law to Step in.” Global Research.ca http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?c...&aid=15733

[3] Anthony Hall, “Cynthia McKinney Meets Splitting the Sky.” Global Research.ca. March 14, 2010. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?c...&aid=18115

[4] “Chaos Mars Saddam Court Hearing.” BBC News. Monday, 5 December 2005. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4498102.stm

[5] Josh Davidson, “Ramsey Clark Speaks Out Against War at College.” The Independent. March 19, 2003. http://independent.gmnews.com/news/2003-...e/013.html

[6] “Ramsey Clark Chosen to Head Commission to Investigate Bush Crimes.” Global Research.ca. April 14, 2010. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?c...&aid=18610

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?c...&aid=19231