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Freethought
Association of West Michigan
Meeting Minutes for October 23, 2002; #126
Reminder:
Our next meeting will be on November 13. Our meetings fall on
the second and fourth Wednesday of each month that meetings are
held; not every other Wednesday. At the November 13 meeting, Joel
Welty of the Great Lakes Humanist Society (a group we have a joint
e-mail discussion list with), will do a one man performance entitled
"Mark Twain Tries (Again) to Become a Christian" where
he plays the author, humorist and religious skeptic. Note also
that we will be taking up a collection to benefit an impoverished
family on this date.
Our Fall Harvest
Party at the Seaver's on the 19th of this month was great fun
for youngsters and the young at heart alike. Don Hansen posted
a display board in our meeting room with photos he took during
the festivities.
A couple of
additions to our calendar of topics are as follows: On February
12, Tim Calahan, the religion editor of Skeptic magazine, will
present "The Secret Origins of the Bible." He is a special
guest speaker being flown in from California. We were reminded
that both special events and the more routine operating costs
(meeting space rental, mailing costs, etc.; all laid out in the
quarterly reports) are entirely supported by the free will donations
of our members; there are no dues taken. In March we will also
be treated to the topic "The Psychology of Religion."
More information to follow in upcoming minutes.
The topic
for this meeting was "Nuclear Disarmament, Iraq & International
Law" presented by professor and civil rights attorney, Kary
Love. Jeff Seaver had first met our speaker when he worked on
a State/ Church separation lawsuit filed by Jeff regarding 1st
Amendment violations by a charter school his children attended.
Love told
us several stories from his long experience in representing federal
employees of sites of weapons of mass destruction and violations
of their basic Constitutionally guaranteed rights. These were
rendered chillingly and amusingly by turns.
One concern
of his during these times is the removal of protection for "whistle-blowers"
and unchecked powers the new Homeland Security office may wield.
Other infringements upon civil rights are creeping in, in these
post 9-11 times as well.
Attorney Love
told how a person he had represented, who had been put in charge
of weapons of mass destruction, was first given to understand
that his targets, if ordered to fire, would be military ones;
enemy missile sites and the order would come only after a specific
threat to the US was made. His orders later changed to targeting
sites to wipe out countless non-combatant citizenry in a pre-emptive
launch. He simply could not be a part of the possibility of visiting
a nuclear holocaust upon a civilian population under these circumstances,
with weapons 10,000 times more powerful than those we dropped
on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. He was deemed "emotionally unstable"
and lost everything as a result of his conscientious objections.
Professor
Love gave us many such examples of other heroic people who did
what they could to try to forestall massive pre-emptive strikes
or other American acts of terrorism and what they endured as a
consequence. The second largest population in penitentiaries,
according to Love, is that of political protestors. The basic
right that is routinely stripped of these whistleblowers and protestors
is the fundamental one of the right to a trial by jury. And when
cases are allowed to go to trial there are severe restrictions
oft-times imposed upon the defense. One incredible example of
this was a case that Love took where he was forbidden to use the
terms and phrases: U.N. Charter, International Law, or even Constitution
in his defense of his client.
The trial
by jury was the original sole right guaranteed by the American
Constitution before others were added. It was considered to be
of paramount importance in keeping other basic human rights untrammeled.
Love also mentioned that the laws of war were developed by soldiers
themselves, who knew first hand how violations of basic rules
in conducting a war can lead to unconscionable acts. The U.N.
Charter includes the law that there can be no use of a weapon
of indiscriminate slaughter, which the U.S. has had incidences
of plans, threats or maneuvers repeatedly. In a hand out sheet
copied from To Win A Nuclear War that goes only to 1980 there
are some 25 such acts starting in 1946. Our threats to annihilate
foreign populations with our immense nuclear capability (estimated
to be sufficient to destroy the entire planet 26 times over) make
a mockery of our resolve to remove the same capabilities for other
countries. These threats coming from a "might makes right"
stance make the American approach as much a terrorist one as those
we label in this fashion.
Professor
Love compared the American strategy to that of the Nazis. There
was no violation of German law in their genocidal agenda but it
was an unacceptable offense in the eyes of the World Court that
sent the guilty in the Nuremburg trials to the gallows. International
law does not permit the use or threats of use of weapons of mass
destruction and those who are in dissent of these acts by the
U.S are routinely stripped of their rights under the Constitution.
Love, who believes that those who threaten the use of weapons
of mass destruction are as culpable as those who perpetrate the
acts, said that either we all have Constitutional rights or none
of us do. His clients had played by the rules in being part of
peaceful demonstrations and non-violent resistance in opposition
to a nuclear holocaust. In a further comparison with the events
of WWII, Love noted that Hitler deemed other countries as representing
a threat and so invaded as a pre-emptive strike without actual
provocation by those countries. The same is seen in U.S. plans
of pre-emptive strikes against a potential but far from certain
threat of other nations. Love stated that the U.S policies on
Civil Rights were the model for the world but that we have since
lost credibility in our cavalier disregard of the laws and rules
we expect other peoples to uphold.
Specifically
as to Iraq, Kary spoke on how this is a land ruled by a dictator
where most of the population has no say whatsoever on its own
destiny. There is no democracy where the will of the people can
be expressed. Our plans to go to war with Iraq are therefore ones
that will cause the people to suffer for the perceived sins of
Hussein. Love gave a brief history lesson as to the former U.S.
and British control over the oil reserves of Iraq and how we were
effectively removed from that control but remain very interested
in those reserves. He rhetorically asked why we are not rattling
our sabers at places like North Korea, as one example, answering
his own question by noting that these other lands are not oil
rich. He also mentioned that the general rule of thumb in the
Conservative mind is that war is good for the economy but that
even they, and even in a time of a flagging U.S. economy, believe
there can be no economic good to come out of a war with Iraq.
Putting the human death toll aside, Hussein can implement the
use of scud missiles that can destroy large swaths of oil rich
areas making a take-over attempt futile for accessing this resource.
He also talked
about the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty that the U.S. is a
signatory on but that we still have some 15,000 weapons of mass
destruction in the ready. Others are stored and only have about
an hour and a half's worth of time between being off-line and
in readiness to launch. Saddam Hussein, it was noted, is not even
a signatory to this treaty that we are in violation of, yet are
about to punish the Iraqi population for the same suspected acts
when under no such treaty obligation.
We next explored
the purposeful propagation of misinformation to the American people
to engender a response in keeping with corporate interests for
certain policies to be supported. Attorney Love talked about predictions
made for attacks on the U.S. of a very similar nature to those
of September 11, '01 but that this was not investigated and prepared
for better simply because there was no money to be made in such
preparation.
We touched
upon the criteria we make for defining the "good guys"
and "bad guys" in the world. Those who are guilty of
human rights violations or lend support to such places can be
allies if there is no special interest to us in fighting them.
Hypocritically, we gird our loins for attack of other lands that
have potential for U.S. gain and promote ourselves as going to
war with them as being in keeping with our defense of freedom
and justice in the world. Iraq was a sophisticated, educated land
before being bombed to its present state; a condition that provides
little possibility of extricating itself from its status as part
of the "Axis of Evil." Instead of promoting democratic
freedoms and self determination of the populace, we threaten to
attack that which we have helped create.
We next talked
about the role of religion in war mongering. Love saw very little
difference between the Fundamentalism of the Islamic religion
and that of the Christian version. When one believes he has access
to a divine pipeline to the Truth, and with religion's inherent
divisiveness even among sects of the same umbrella religion, this
promotes clashes. It was easy to see the Soviets as part of an
Evil Empire when portrayed as godless Communists. Declassified
information, Love said, showed that Truman used the bombings of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in part, as a message sent to the Soviets.
Religious differences create a straw man to fuel the flames of
intolerance and certitude in the righteousness of attacking another
population. Superstition and fear are part and parcel to religious
indoctrination and are easily used by those in control, be they
kings, clergy or presidents and dictators.
Lastly, our
presenter spoke of his belief that eventually, if we don't destroy
ourselves beforehand, we will go to a World Government and that
this would take away the boundaries and the animosity toward other
nations and therefore reasons to go to war. He thinks that the
one true way for us to get to that point will be after a terrorist
group uses a weapon of mass destruction. In the aftermath of such
utter horrific devastation those remaining will be filled with
such revulsion for this act that there will be a resolute mandate
against the use, plan of use, or threat of use of such weapons
ever again. "The greatest lessons are learned from the greatest
pain," Love stated.
Secretary:
Charles LaRue.
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