Nightslantern Suppressed News // September 24, 2017

10.10.17

Nightslantern Suppressed News 2017 --

U.S.  It isn't suppressed news that President Trump announced to the United Nations, "The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea." It isn't mentioned in the mainstream media that obliteration of North Korea, by nuclear weapons or saturation bombing and missiling would be a war crime and violation of the Convention against Genocide. We have seen what U.S. forces and their allies can do in the bombing of Iraq 'into the stone age'. The President shows intent with no moderation in this threat to destroy a national group. The Convention offers no statutory limitation for this crime. In the unacceptable event President Trump obliterates North Korea all who cooperate with the military action will be complicit in a war crime too terrible for rational minds to consider. All nations of the world could either accept U.S. hegemony and inevitable enslavement, or assure the end of this 'tactic'. The U.S. threat of world rule by nuclear obliteration of civilian populations began with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The U.N.'s Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons outlawing all nuclear weapons opened for signing September 20th and so far is signed by 53 nations with ratifications as well by three. The U.S. threats occasion a genocide warning for the people of North Korea as a national group. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea has stated that it seeks nuclear power as parity with the U.S. but indicated no wish to destroy Americans as a people.     Partial sources online: "Trump has made 'our rockets' visit' to U.S. mainland inevitable, North Korean foreign minister says," Thomson Reuters, Sept. 23, 2017, CBC News; "Trump Threatens a Genocide," David Marks, Sept. 23, 2017, Consortiumnews.com; "Here's what could happen if North Korea detonated a hydrogen bomb," Brandie Weikle, Sept. 23, 2017, CBC News; "Full text: Trump's 2017 U.N. speech transcript," Politico Staff, Sept. 19, 2017, Politico; "Amid Tensions with North Korea, 51 Countries Sign Ban on Nuclear Weapons Despite U.S. Opposition," Amy Goodman, Sept. 22, 2017, Democracy Now.

A note on Article II: in a recent contribution to genocide scholarship James Loeffler writing about the early Zionism of Raphael Lemkin (author of the Convention on Genocide) notes the importance to Lemkin of "national" groups. I would note these are placed before "ethnical, racial or religious" groups in the Convention's text, but ignored in contemporary appraisals of genocide (There has been no successful prosecution under the Convention for the attempts to destroy the people of Yugoslavia as a national group, or of Iraq, or Libya). Loeffler quotes Lemkin to say "but it is a fact that during the Nuremberg trials the Nazi arch criminals defended themselves by saying that the extermination of nations (as opposed to on the basis of race, religion, or language) is not a crime according to international law!" "Becoming Cleopatra: the forgotten Zionism of Raphael Lemkin," James Loeffler, Journal of Genocide Research, vol 19 no 3 September 2017, Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.

-- Nightslantern Suppressed News (2017) 'Concerned with the prevention of genocide' by J. B. gerald