Noam Chomsky - Episcopal Church Convention Address - John Pilger - Christian Lous Lang - Henry Cabot Lodge - Michael Moore 2016 - The Corbett Report -
For ‘internationalism’ read ‘control by the US and its clients’. Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy
As for the rule of law – the guiding principle of the famous New World Order – it requires a certain amount of audacity to take its guardian to be the only head of state in the world that stands condemned before the International Court of Justice for conducting international terrorism – this meaning on a vast scale. Noam Chomsky, lecture Ireland 1993, ‘Creating a New World Order’
There is a basic principle of World Order … the third world … their role is to provide resources, raw materials, cheap labour, markets, investment opportunities … that’s their job. ibid.
That’s one consequence of the globalisation of the economy – the creation of new governing institutions which have the inestimable value that they are not only immune to public pressure … but the public doesn’t even know what’s going on in them. ibid.
The term Internationalism has been popularized in recent years to cover an interlocking financial, political, and economic world force for the purpose of establishing a World Government. Today Internationalism is heralded from pulpit and platform as a ‘League of Nations’ or a ‘Federated Union’ to which the United States must surrender a definite part of its National Sovereignty. The World Government plan is being advocated under such alluring names as the ‘New International Order’, ‘The New World Order’, ‘World Union Now’, ‘World Commonwealth of Nations’, ‘World Community’ etc. All the terms have the same objective; however, the line of approach may be religious or political according to the taste or training of the individual. Excerpt from Memorial address to House of Bishops, House of Clerical & Lay Deputies of Protestant Episcopal Church General Convention October 1940
These are extraordinary times. With the United States and Britain on the verge of bankruptcy and committing to an endless colonial war, pressure is building for their crimes to be prosecuted at a tribunal similar to that which tried the Nazis at Nuremberg. This defined rapacious invasion as ‘the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole’. International law would be mere farce, said the chief US chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson, ‘if, in future, we do not apply its principles to ourselves.’
That is now happening. Spain, Germany, Belgium, France and Britain have long had ‘universal jurisdiction’ statutes, which allow their national courts to pursue and prosecute prima facie war criminals. What has changed is an unspoken rule never to use international law against ‘ourselves’, or ‘our’ allies or clients. In 1998, Spain, supported by France, Switzerland and Belgium, indicted the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, client and executioner of the West, and sought his extradition from Britain, where he happened to be at the time. Had he been sent for trial he almost certainly would have implicated at least one British prime minister and two US presidents in crimes against humanity ...
Like them, Tony Blair may soon be a fugitive. The International Criminal Court, to which Britain is a signatory, has received a record number of petitions related to Blair’s wars. Spain’s celebrated Judge Baltasar Garzon, who indicted Pinochet and the leaders of the Argentinean military junta, has called for George W Bush, Blair and former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar to be prosecuted for the invasion of Iraq – ‘one of the most sordid and unjustifiable episodes in recent human history: a devastating attack on the rule of law’ that had left the UN ‘in tatters’. He said, ‘There is enough of an argument in 650,000 deaths for this investigation to start without delay’ ...
Today, the unreported ‘good news’ is that a worldwide movement is challenging the once sacrosanct notion that imperial politicians can destroy countless lives in the cause of an ancient piracy, often at remove in distance and culture, and retain their respectability and immunity from justice. In his masterly Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, R L Stevenson writes in the character of Jekyll: ‘Men have before hired bravos to transact their crimes, while their own person and reputation sat under shelter ... I could thus plod in the public eye with a load of genial respectability, and, in a moment, like a schoolboy, strip off these lendings and spring headlong into the sea of liberty. But for me, in my impenetrable mantle, the safety was complete’.
Blair, too, is safe – but for how long? He and his collaborators face a new determination on the part of tenacious non-government bodies that are amassing ‘an impressive documentary record as to criminal charges’, according to international law authority Richard Falk, who cites the World Tribunal on Iraq, held in Istanbul in 2005, which heard evidence from 54 witnesses and published rigorous indictments against Blair, Bush and others. Currently, the Brussels War Crimes Tribunal and the newly established Blair War Crimes Foundation are building a case for Blair’s prosecution under the Nuremberg Principle and the 1949 Geneva Convention. In a separate indictment, former Judge of the New Zealand Supreme Court E W Thomas wrote: ‘My pre-disposition was to believe that Mr Blair was deluded, but sincere in his belief. After considerable reading and much reflection, however, my final conclusion is that Mr Blair deliberately and repeatedly misled Cabinet, the British Labour Party and the people in a number of respects. It is not possible to hold that he was simply deluded but sincere: a victim of his own self-deception. His deception was deliberate’ ...
These are extraordinary times. Blair, a perpetrator of the epic crime of the 21st century, shares a ‘prayer breakfast’ with President Obama, the yes-we-can-man now launching more war. ‘We pray,’ said Blair, ‘that in acting we do God’s work and follow God’s will.’ To decent people such pronouncements about Blair’s ‘faith’ represent a contortion of morality and intellect that is a profanation on the basic teachings of Christianity. Those who aided and abetted his great crime and now wish the rest of us to forget their part – or, like Alistair Campbell, his ‘communications director’, offer their bloody notoriety for the vicarious pleasure of some – might read the first indictment proposed by the Blair War Crimes Foundation: ‘Deceit and conspiracy for war, and providing false news to incite passions for war, causing in the order of one million deaths, four million refugees, countless maiming and traumas’.
These are indeed extraordinary times. John Pilger, article New Statesman, ‘Fake Faith and Epic Crimes’; viz also website
January: Tony Blair is arrested at Heathrow Airport as he returns from yet another foreign speaking engagement (receipts since leaving office: £12m). He is flown to The Hague to stand trial for war crimes for his part in the illegal, unprovoked attack on a defenceless country, Iraq, justified by proven lies, and for the subsequent physical, social and cultural destruction of that country, causing the death of up to a million people. According to the Nuremberg Tribunal, this is the ‘paramount war crime’. The prosecution tells Blair’s defence team it will not accept a plea of ‘sincerely believing’. Cherie Blair, a close collaborator who has compared her husband with Winston Churchill, is cautioned.
February: Following the inauguration of Barack Obama as president of the United States, his predecessor, George W Bush, is arrested leaving the Church of the Holy Crusader in his home town of Crawford, Texas. He is flown to The Hague in War Criminal One. (See above for prosecution details.) Laura Bush, after a plea bargain, agrees to give evidence against the former president, ‘for God’s sake’.
March: Former vice-president Dick Cheney shoots himself in the foot hunting squirrels following a prayer breakfast in Hope, Florida. John Pilger, article New Statesman, ‘The Good News For 2009, A Seasonal Wish List’
Internationalism is a social and political theory, a certain concept of how human society ought to be organized, and in particular a concept of how the nations ought to organize their mutual relations. Christian Lous Lange
Internationalism on the other hand admits that spiritual achievements have their roots deep in national life; from this national consciousness art and literature derive their character and strength and on it even many of the humanistic sciences are firmly based. Christian Lous Lange
Internationalism, illustrated by the Bolshevik and by the men to whom all countries are alike provided they can make money out of them, is to me repulsive. Henry Cabot Lodge
On January 2nd I was quietly summoned to the Pentagon to meet with the Joint Chiefs of Staff … ‘Michael,’ they said to me, ‘we don’t know what the fuck we’re doing.’ Michael Moore, Where to Invade Next, 2016
There are to be no more invasions … My advice, Send in me. ibid.
Italy: a nice relaxing two-hour lunch … numerous weeks of paid vacation … and a strong union. ibid.
There was something else we could steal from France. As usual the French offered little resistance. ibid.
Finland: they do better by going to school less. ibid.
Slovenia is one of dozens of countries where it is essentially free to go to university. ibid.
Portugal: Don’t arrest people for using drugs any more. ibid.
Welcome to the Norwegian prison system based on the principle of rehabilitation. ibid.
Tunisia: free government-funded women’s health clinics and government-funded abortion. ibid.
Iceland: 1975 women’s strike … The first country to democratically elect a woman president. ibid.