“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”
wow! Ramsey Clark will be speaking in Calgary on June 6th (item #1).
He comes in support of Splitting the Sky (John Boncore).
The judge’s verdict in Splitting the Sky’s trial is due June 7th. Spread the word!
Charlotte Dennett from Vermont is added to the list of people working to get Geo Bush tried for war crimes (item #2).
CONTENTS
- RAMSEY CLARK SPEAKING IN CALGARY ON JUNE 6TH
- CHARLOTTE DENNETT
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(1) RAMSEY CLARK SPEAKING IN CALGARY ON JUNE 6TH
From: RadicalPress [mailto:radical AT radicalpress.com]
Sent: Monday, May 24, 2010 8:39 AM
Subject: Canadian faces two years prison for lawful attempt to arrest U.S. war criminal G.W. Bush
Editor’s Note: This particular trial, absurd as it is considering that it should never have occurred, is likely to set the tone for Canada’s dissidents and their future responses to acts by the Canadian government that fly in the face of issues of justice and peace.
Had our federal government followed its own rulings John Boncore, better known to the Internet world as Splitting the Sky, would not be facing the prospect of possible incarceration for having attempted to make a citizen’s arrest of the psychopathic war criminal George W. Bush back in the fall of 2009 in Calgary, Alberta.
In doing so Splitting the Sky not only risked being shot on the street or murdered while in custody but he also created a judicial conundrum for Canada’s justice system. Following the guidelines laid out in federal legislation for the apprehension of lying, murdering, mentally ill megalomaniacs like George W. Bush, Splitting the Sky set the only real example for a patriotic citizen when he chose to do what the Canadian authorities didn’t have the courage, integrity or moral fortitude to do themselves.
John Boncore needs all the support that can be mustered in order that his trial is known far and wide. You can help by forwarding this article to everyone you can think of. It’s the least that each of us can offer on behalf of all that John has risked.
Arthur Topham
RadicalPress.com
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http://www.radicalpress.com/?p=1222
Former US Attorney-General Ramsey Clark to Speak at the University of Calgary’s Peace Consortium in Defence of Splitting the Sky, The Man Who Attempted a Citizens’ Arrest on George ,W. Bush
Joshua Blakeney
Media Coordinator of Globalization Studies
University of Lethbridge
“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
Ramsey Clark will arrive in the Canadian oil-patch city of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, this coming June 6th and 7th, mounting pressure on 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 has 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.
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, 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”?
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 judge’s decision in the Splitting the Sky case: June 7, 2010 at the Calgary Courts Centre.
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Bibliography:
1Vincent Bugliosi, “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder.” 2008. excerpt quoted: (Link no longer valid http://www.prosecutionofbush.com/excerpt3p1.php)
2Anthony 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?context=va&aid=15733
3Anthony Hall, “Cynthia McKinney Meets Splitting the Sky.” Global Research.ca. March 14, 2010. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&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/2003-03-19/Front_page/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?context=va&aid=18610
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(2) CHARLOTTE DENNETT
Charlotte ran for the Attorney General of Vermont in 2008 on the platform that she would prosecute Bush for murder. Vince Bugliosi campaigned with her. You might want to browse her website. She has now published a book:
Dear Friends and Supporters:
It is with great pleasure that I announce the publication of my forthcoming book, The People v. Bush: One Lawyer’s Campaign to Bring the President to Justice and the Nationwide Grassroots Movement She’s Encountered Along the Way,” to be published by Chelsea Green in January, 2010. (For more about the book, click here)
The book is about my race for Attorney General in Vermont and the accountability movement that sprung up all around me — and continues to grow. What unites my campaign with the movement is the premise that no one is above the law, not even a former President of the United States. Accordingly, we must hold former Bush administration officials accountable for crimes they committed while in office — both for the sake of justice to those they wronged (e.g families of dead soldiers sent to Iraq on a lie, torture victims, dissenters caught up in surveillance sweeps) and to send a message to future occupants of the White House that crime does not pay. Only by holding these top officials accountable will we deter future leaders from acting with impunity. Our democracy, which is built on abiding by the rule of law, is at stake.
Those of you who heard the legendary prosecutor Vince Bugliosi speak about his book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, will enjoy reading about his role in my campaign. Vince and I developed a real friendship during the campaign, beginning when he flew to Vermont in mid-September 2008 to be at my side at a press conference when I announced my candidacy. You will find many anecdotes about Vince and me, which I’m sure will endear him to you even more as he continues his own courageous campaign to bring the former president (and his closest advisors) to justice.
The People v. Bush also ventures beyond Vince’s charge – that of prosecuting Bush for murder – -and considers the war crimes Bush authorized and his lawyers in the Department of Justice (the so-called “torture team”) devised, in part to get false confessions from detainees linking Saddam Hussein to 9/11 in an effort to strengthen a pretext for war in Iraq.
You will read about leaders of the accountability movement in this book and discover that they have kept on protesting (often in orange jump suits and black hoods) even when the mainstream media refused to cover their actions. I honor them in this book, and in the coming days will chronicle their actions on this web page. By highlighting their actions and “bringing them together,” I hope readers will be inspired by their efforts and will join in the movement. It truly represents Americans of all walks of life, people who care deeply about the fate of their country, people who desperately want to restore the democratic freedoms we lost during the past eight years, including people from all over the country who supported my campaign for attorney general in Vermont – doctors, lawyers, librarians, scientists, teachers, union representatives, factory workers, ministers, writers, farmers, the list goes on and on.
Finally, the book shows how the accountability movement has gone truly global. I’m certain that the determination of two courageous Spanish judges to pursue their own separate criminal investigation into the Bush crime syndicate had an influence on Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to appoint a special prosecutor.
Stay tuned, as we will begin to show you more about the depth and breadth of the accountability movement!
With warm thanks, and hopes for a better future.
Charlotte Dennett