blog

December 31, 2017

Trump’s “America First” Security Strategy Imperils the US

Last week, with great fanfare, Donald Trump rolled out his new National Security Strategy (NSS). Its guiding theme is “America First.” An analysis of the 55-page document, however, reveals a program that renders the United States more unpopular and vulnerable to external threats.

Trump’s plan takes Barack Obama’s policy of “American exceptionalism” to a new level. In his speech accompanying the NSS’s release, Trump stated, “America has been among the greatest forces for peace and justice in the history of the world.”

Yet Trump has not only continued but also escalated the Bush-Obama wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, dropped Tomahawk missiles on Syria, threatened North Korea and Iran, intensified airstrikes against Muslim countries, and fanned the flames of conflict in the Middle East.Read more

December 21, 2017

Trump Apologists Are Gunning for Mueller

As special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation moves closer to Donald Trump, there is a concerted effort by the president’s apologists to shut it down. Commentators on Fox News and Republican Congress members are attacking Mueller, causing speculation that the special counsel’s days are numbered.

Since his investigation began in May, Mueller has already obtained two indictments and two guilty pleas. Most recently, former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to one count of lying to the FBI. Although he could have been charged with more serious crimes, Flynn secured the deal by promising to cooperate with prosecutors and provide evidence against other, as yet unnamed, individuals. Flynn’s guilty plea brings Mueller’s investigation into the White House.Read more

December 14, 2017

Israel and US Hide Names of Companies Supporting Israeli Settlements

In December 2016 the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution reaffirming that Israel’s Jewish settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) are illegal and calling on Israel to stop settlement activities in the OPT. Resolution 2334 says the settlements have “no legal validity,” calls them “a flagrant violation under international law,” and demands Israel “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities.”

Nine months earlier, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), in Resolution 31/36, had ordered the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights to “produce a database of all business enterprises” that “directly and indirectly, enabled, facilitated and profited from the construction and growth of the settlements.”

The database was scheduled for release in December 2017. Meanwhile, the Israeli and US governments have been trying to prevent that list — which reportedly includes at least 150 local and international companies — from becoming public. “We will do everything we can to ensure that this list does not see the light of day,” Israel’s UN ambassador Danny Danon told The Associated Press. US State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said, “We just view that type of blacklist as counterproductive.”Read more

November 28, 2017

The Duty to Disobey a Nuclear Launch Order

On November 19, Air Force Gen. John Hyten, commander of the US Strategic Command, declared he would refuse to follow an illegal presidential order to launch a nuclear attack. “If you execute an unlawful order, you will go to jail,” the general explained at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia. “You could go to jail for the rest of your life.”

Gen. Hyten is correct. For those in the military, there is a legal duty to obey a lawful order, but also a legal duty to disobey an unlawful order. An order to use nuclear weapons — except possibly in an extreme circumstance of self-defense when the survival of the nation is at stake — would be an unlawful order.Read more

November 18, 2017

US Military and CIA Leaders May Be Investigated for War Crimes

On November 3, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) informed the court’s Pre-Trial Chamber, “[T]here is a reasonable basis to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed in connection with the armed conflict in Afghanistan.”

In what Amnesty International’s Solomon Sacco called a “seminal moment for the ICC,” Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda asked the court for authorization to commence an investigation that would focus on US military and CIA leaders, as well as Taliban and Afghan officials.

Bensouda wrote in a November 14, 2016, report that her preliminary examination revealed “a reasonable basis to believe” the “war crimes of torture and ill-treatment” had been committed “by US military forces deployed to Afghanistan and in secret detention facilities operated by the Central Intelligence Agency, principally in the 2003-2004 period, although allegedly continuing in some cases until 2014.”Read more

November 10, 2017

Robert Mueller Is Moving Toward Donald Trump

 

Last week’s indictments of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his longtime associate Richard Gates, together with the guilty plea by former Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, sent shock waves through the White House.

It turns out that since July, Papadopoulos has been serving as a “proactive cooperator.” Special counsel Robert Mueller filed a document in federal court that says, “Defendant has indicated that he is willing to cooperate with the government in its ongoing investigation into Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.” Papadopoulos was likely wired for sound during conversations with administration officials whom he may implicate in criminal conduct.

But Mueller’s opening salvo was just the tip of the iceberg. As the special counsel moves toward criminally charging Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn and others, even the president could find himself in Mueller’s crosshairs.Read more

November 6, 2017

Mattis, Tillerson Want Blank Check to Wage Illegal War 

 

Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on October 30 that the Trump administration has all the legal authority it needs to kill people anywhere in the world. But just in case Congress wishes to update its old Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), Mattis and Tillerson told them how to do it: Write a blank check to the president.

The October 4 killings of four US soldiers on a “routine training mission” in Niger brought the committee’s hearing into sharper focus. It turns out the presence of these troops in Niger was unlawful.Read more

November 2, 2017

Trump Is Killing Record Numbers of Civilians

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump advocated killing innocent families of suspected terrorists. “When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families,” he declared. Besides the immorality of killing innocents, the targeting of civilians violates the Geneva Conventions.

The George W. Bush administration unlawfully detained and tortured suspected terrorists. Determined not to send more suspects to Guantánamo, Barack Obama’s administration illegally assassinated them with drones and other methods, killing many civilians in the process.

Now the Trump administration is killing record numbers of civilians and weakening the already-flimsy targeted killing rules Obama put in place.Read more

October 24, 2017

Federal Judge Dismisses RICO Lawsuit Against Greenpeace

By Marjorie Cohn and Jonathan Moore

In an audacious attempt to silence Greenpeace’s constitutionally protected criticism of what the environmental protection group calls “Resolute Forest Destroyer,” the logging company, Resolute Forest Products, sued Greenpeace under RICO – the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. In the suit, filed on May 31, 2016, Resolute sought CAD $100 million in economic damages and an injunction against “wrongful activity and disgorgement.” With punitive damages, liability could total $300 million.

On October 16, U.S. District Court Judge Jon S. Tigar dismissed the complaint against Greenpeace and Stand, another environmental protection organization, without prejudice.

“The court’s decision sends a clear message to corporations that attacks on core democratic values like freedom of speech and legitimate advocacy on issues of public interest will not be tolerated,” Greenpeace wrote in a press release.Read more

October 19, 2017

Trump and Netanyahu Walk in Lockstep on Iran

During his presidential campaign and throughout his nine-month presidency, Donald Trump has been fixated on ending the Iran nuclear deal, which he called “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.”

Under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran agreed to curtail its nuclear program and in return, it received billions of dollars of relief from punishing sanctions.Read more