War Crimes and Conscience

Yesterday’s UK Daily Mail informs us that RAF doctor Malcolm Kendall-Smith has been sentenced to eight months in jail after being found guilty by a court martial of failing to comply with “lawful orders” after refusing to serve in the Iraq war.

Kendall-Smith is said to have told a pre-trial hearing last month that he refused to go to Iraq because he believed the war was illegal and he did not want to be complicit with an act of aggression contrary to international law. He reportedly said that he had “evidence that the Americans were on a par with Nazi Germany with its actions in the Persian Gulf. I have documents in my possession which support my assertions. This is on the basis that on-going acts of aggression in Iraq and systematically applied war crimes provide a moral equivalent between the US and Nazi Germany.”

Kendall-Smith is absolutely correct. There is ample evidence – growing in volume and quality every day – that the U.S. and its lap-dog, Great Britain, went to war on trumped up charges, lies, and most definitely with illegal intentions. There is, for example, the “Downing Street Memo,” and the more recent evidence that George Bush not only knowingly used “cooked” intelligence, but that he also deliberately attempted to destroy the lives of those individuals who sought to expose this hoax.

So the fundament of the Iraq invasion was based on lies and deception created for the express purpose of initiating an illegal, aggressive war of conquest. This is important because the prosecutor, David Perry, states the UK government’s position as being that the orders were lawful and Kendall-Smith had a duty to obey them as a commissioned officer. Perry then makes the most astounding claim that “the question of the invasion of Iraq was irrelevant because it occurred prior to the charges”! Further, in complete disregard of the facts of the illegal invasion mentioned above, now well known to many,including ordinary citizens, Perry claims that at the time of the charges the presence of coalition forces in Iraq was “unquestionably legal” because “they were there at the request of the country’s democratically-elected government”.

Now, how can there be a “democratically elected government” in a country that has been illegally invaded and its legitimate government overthrown, and every man, woman and child in said country under duress and fear for life and limb by said invaders whoforce this so-called “democratic election” to take place?

This sounds a lot like the “democratically elected” government that was imposed on Poland by Stalin.

Getting back to Kendall-Smith: in court Judge Advocate Jack Bayliss said “Obedience of orders is at the heart of any disciplined force. Disobedience of orders means it is not a disciplined force, it is a disorganised rabble. Those who wear the Queen’s uniform cannot pick and choose which orders they obey and those who do so must face the consequences.” He then added that the sentence would send a message to other members of the armed forces of the importance of obeying orders.

Hmmmm… that’s the same position the Nazis took…

Further, when sentencing Kendall-Smith, Judge Advocate Bayliss told him: “You have, in this court’s view, sought to make a martyr of yourself. You have shown a degree of arrogance that is amazing.”

I have to admit that this one stopped me cold. Conscience is now described as “arrogance”?!

The behavior of a person of conscience, his normal actions and reactions, his ideas and moral criteria, all too often strike abnormal, conscienceless individuals as abnormal. For if a person with some psychological pathology – such as psychopathy – considers himself normal, which is of course significantly easier if he possesses authority, then he would naturally consider a normal person different and therefore abnormal, whether in reality or as a result of conversive thinking. That explains why a pathocratic government always has the tendency to treat dissidents as “mentally abnormal”.

The news reports tell us that Judge Advocate Bayliss also said that Kendall-Smith may have acted out of his moral viewpoint but his “interpretation of the presence of British forces in Iraq as illegal was incorrect.”

It almost sounds as though Judge Advocate Bayliss is aware that there is something wrong with the system, and that normal people will notice, and so he has added this comment as a sort of legal apologia.

A spokesman for the Royal Air Force Prosecuting Authority said: “It is right that Ft Lt Malcolm Kendall Smith was prosecuted for disobeying legal orders. British troops are operating in Iraq under a United Nations mandate and at the invitation of the Iraqi government. The Judge Advocate ruled that the court would not accept his defence that the war was illegal and a panel of his peers have convicted him on that basis.”

Spoken like a true psychopath.

More than anything, in these remarks, this court has proven its moral heritage descends from Nazi Germany.

Make note of that, Jack Bayliss and David Perry.

From Mar. 5, 1947 to Dec. 4, 1947, nine members of the Reich Ministry of Justice and seven members of the People’s and Special Courts, were on trial by the Nuremberg Tribunal, charged with using their power as prosecutors and judges to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Nuremberg trials were conducted under what is referred to as “Control Council Law No. 10, or “CC Law 10”.

The Allied Control Council is composed of the authorized representatives of the four Powers: the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. The preamble to Control Council Law No. 10 in part, is as follows:

“In order to give effect to the terms of the Moscow Declaration of 30 October 1943 and the London Agreement of 8 August 1945, and the Charter issued pursuant thereto and in order establish a uniform legal basis in Germany for the prosecution of war criminals and other similar offenders, the Control Council enacts as follows” etc, etc.

Article II of C.C. Law 10 defines acts, each of which “is recognized as a crime,” namely, (a) crimes against peace, (b) war crimes, (c) crimes against humanity, (d) membership in criminal organizations.

The Justice Trial is one of the most interesting of the Nuremberg trials. This trial raised the issue of what responsibility judges might have for enforcing grossly unjust – but arguably binding – laws. The trial was the inspiration for the movie Judgment at Nuremberg, though the movie presented a somewhat fictionalized view of the trial.

Ingo Muller’s book, “Hitler’s Justice: The Courts of the Third Reich”, provides analysis of the evidence suggesting that most German judges were ultraconservative nationalists who were sympathetic to Nazi goals. In other words, the “Nazification” of German law occurred with the willful cooperation of judges. Judge Advocate Jack Bayliss might want to sit up and take notice.

An important point to note, is that many judges appointed before the Nazi rise to power had views that were quite compatible with the Nazi party because of the economic and social circles that judges were drawn from.

No large scale evil ever develops in a vacuum. The genesis of macrosocial evil operates according to the same laws of nature that operate within human relationships and families. Every family, every society, contains a small but active minority of persons with various deviant worldviews which often include a lust for power and control over others. The role of individuals with such psychopathological defects is causatively essential for the genesis and survival of large scale social evil. In the generation of such macrosocial evil, such as Nazi Germany, and now US/British Imperialism, which we call “pathocracy”, a certain hereditary anomaly isolated as “essential psychopathy” is the primary catalyst.

Keep in mind that these psychological anomalies are mostly hereditary. That is to say that a “robber baron” who achieves power and wealth is very likely to be of a psychologically deviant type, and highly likely to produce offspring that are similarly defective.

Such individuals reach for and seize power, and with that power and the fortunes they amass, their families continue to hold power even if they disguise it under the ideological cloak of “democracy” in order to “calm down the restless natives.”

And so, when it is said that “many judges appointed before the Nazi rise to power had views that were quite compatible with the Nazi party because of the economic and social circles that judges were drawn from”, the reader must be aware that this is a significant factor and apply it to the conditions prevailing at the present time in many countries throughout the world.

In any pathocracy, it is necessary first to degrade the science of psychology in order to prevent it from jeopardizing the system itself by pronouncing a diagnosis upon the rulers: that they are abnormal deviants. It can then also be used as an expedient tool in the hands of the authorities exactly as Judge Advocate Bayliss has done above, pronouncing conscience to be “arrogance”.

A pathocracy feels very threatened by the science of psychology, especially when there is any progress in understanding such things as psychopathy. After all, not only can these sciences knock the weapon of psychological conquest right out of the hands of the pathocracy; they can even strike at its very nature, and from inside the empire, at that. That is why the TRUE nature of psychopathy may not, of course, be researched or elucidated accurately. Darkness is cast upon this matter by means of an intentionally devised definition of psychopathy which includes various kinds of character disorders, together with those caused by completely different and known causes. These pseudo-definitions of psychopathy effectively block the ability of observers and researchers to comprehend the phenomena they are witnessing.

In the present day, we most desperately need to understand the nature of macrosocial phenomenon such as pathocracy as well as the basic relationship and controversy between the pathological system of government and those areas of science which describe psychological and psychopathological phenomena accurately. Otherwise, we cannot become fully conscious of the reasons for such a government’s actions and behavior.

The fear that the majority of normal people will see through them and realize that they are pathological deviants drives the pathocrats to be “ideationally alert” about matters of psychology. Anyone who is both too knowledgeable in this area and outside the immediate reach of such authorities will be accused of anything that can be trumped up, including psychological abnormality themselves!

Psychopaths are acutely conscious of being different from normal people. That is why the “political systems” that they create are able to conceal this. They wear a personal mask of sanity and know how to create a macrosocial mask of the same dissimulating nature. When we observe the role of ideology as used by psychopaths, if we maintain a careful awareness of the fact that psychopaths are also aware of what threatens their existence, we can then easily penetrate to the fact that ideology is relegated to a tool-like role by pathocracy: something useful for dealing with “those other” naive people and nations. In other words, it is never about left vs. right, or faith vs. science, or democracy vs. tyranny, or any of those ideologies.

With this awareness, it’s easy to see that the pathocracy that ruled Russia under the ideological name of “Communism” was, in no way, guided by the principles of that ideology. It was, rather, State Corporatism. In the same way, it is easy to see that the proclaimed desire to “spread democracy” by the current U.S. administration is merely a mask to hide rampant Imperialism. I should add that a growing number of Americans are waking up to the fact that the “protections of their freedoms” by George W. Bush are exactly the opposite.

Pathocrats know that their real ideology – totalitariansm – is derived from their deviant natures, and they often treat the “other” – the masking ideology – with barely concealed contempt. It can be noted that this “proclaimed” ideology has been twisted and distorted in such a way that even though the same words are used, they no longer seem to mean the same things. The names and official contents are kept, but another, completely different content has been insinuated underneath, thus giving rise to the well known double talk phenomenon where the same words have two meanings: one for insiders of the pathocracy, and another meaning for everyone else.

This doubletalk – such as referring to a totalitarian imperialism as “neo-conservatism” – is only one of many symptoms of pathocracy. Other symptoms include a facility for producing new names which have suggestive effects and are accepted virtually uncritically. And example here is “Extraordinary Rendition” which simply means illegal transfer of individuals for the purposes of torturing them. Andrzej Lobaczewski warns us that we must take note of the paramoralistic character and paranoidal qualities the frequently infuse these names with “emotional content”. Examples: “Homeland Security,” “War Against Terror,” “Dangerous Cults”, and so on. The fact is that these words represent those elements that are threatening to expose the pathocracy for what it is. The first rule of pathological deviants who have seized control of a government is: Anything which threatens pathocratic rule becomes deeply immoral. “You are either with us, or against us.”

This privileged class of genetic deviants – ruling families descended from psychopathological “robber baron” types – feels permanently threatened by the majority of normal people and they know full well what will happen to them should the people seize back their power and restore a system of government more in keeping with true democracy.

If laws formulated by the normal majority were to be reinstated, they and theirs will be threatened by not merely a loss of position and privilege, but also loss of freedom and life. And so, the survival of the system they have created, one where they can achieve absolute rule over others, becomes a moral imperative. The threat of the uprising of the masses of normal people must be battled by any and all means utilizing psychological and political cunning implemented with a lack of scruples and conscience that is shocking. Never forget that they think of the masses of humanity – the people they govern and pretend to care about – as “those other “inferior- quality people”. And so, their actions toward them can be shocking in their depravity.

In short, a pathocracy survives only because it feels constantly threatened by the masses of normal people and by other countries where governments still run by a majority of normal man persist. For the pathocratic rulers, staying on the top is the classic problem of “to be or not to be”.

And so it is that the biological, psychological, moral, and economic destruction of the masses of normal people becomes, for the pathocrats, a “biological” necessity. Many means serve this end, including starting wars with an obstinate, well-armed foe who will help the pathocracy by killing off the very thing that threatens it: its masses of normal people, the sons of normal men sent out to fight for an illusionary “noble cause.” Once safely dead, the soldiers will then be decreed revered heroes, which is a useful psychological ploy for raising a new generation of faithful slaves to the pathocracy, ever willing to go to their deaths to protect it.

The threats at home, inside the system, can be easily met with repression through intimidation by widely published acts of violence against selected individuals. And example is the shooting of the innocent Brazilian in UK last year. Order is being kept in the U.S. by the fear of Guantanamo Bay, the exposure of the torture at Abu Ghraib, (not an accident), and a number of widely circulated stories about the terrors of stun guns in the hands of the police. For the more recalcitrant objectors, there will be concentration camps.

A pathocracy has other internal reasons for pursuing imperialist expansion. As long as that “other” world of normal human beings running normal, (even if imperfect) governments, exists, it stands as an example to the non-pathological majority of the pathocracy’s unhappy people. They will see that the government they are living under is not the “only way to live,” and they will continue to agitate for the reinstatement of a government by normal people. This majority will never stop observing other countries, comparing, and waiting for the opportune moment to make a move against the pathocracy. The attention and power of the masses must therefore be distracted from this purpose; they must be “educated” and channeled in the direction of the pathocracy’s imperialist goals under various ideologies, such as “The War on Terror” and including all manner of psychological scare tactics. The goal of “Homeland Security” must be pursued doggedly, the reasons repeated often so that no one can forget what is being fought for and in whose name harsh discipline and poverty must be endured. Yes, poverty: the fact is that creating conditions of poverty and hardship quite effectively limits the possibility of “subversive” activities on the part of the masses of normal people. If they have no money, nor the ways and means of connecting with other like-minded people, they will be effectively controlled.

The ideology must, of course, provide a compelling justification for the pathocrats alleged right to conquer the world. 9/11 and the War on Terror, Homeland Security, Family Values, Peak Oil, – such “needs” – must be properly elaborated and widely broadcast so that no one has any doubts about what they are fighting for. Imperialist expansionism derives from the very nature of pathocracy and its needs – to exist, to rule and control all others – not from the ideology they use as a tool, but this fact must be carefully masked from the masses of normal people.

And so we understand better what Judge Advocate Bayliss meant when he pronounced an act of conscience as “arrogance.” It was a small, but telling clue.

Coming back now to the Justice trial at Nuremberg, American prosecutors argued that there was a pattern of judicial and prosecutorial support for Nazi programs that consisted of gross violations of human rights. In order to convict, it was only necessary to prove that the defendant consciously furthered these human rights abuses; that is, that they had been notified, at some point, that there were those who considered the acts such abuses.

For example, jurist Franz Schlegelberger served in the Ministry of Justice from 1931-1942. For the last period of his service, Schlegelberger was Director of the Ministry of Justice. He wrote legal books and was honored as a great jurist. Schlegelberger’s defense was that he was bound to follow the orders of Hitler, the “Supreme Judge” of Germany, but that he did so reluctantly. Schlegelberger argued that he did not join the Nazis until 1938, and then only because he was ordered to do so by Hitler. Schlegelberger argued that he had “sympathy for the Jews” and that he “resisted” certain legal measures against them. He also argued that he continued to serve as long as he did in order to prevent the appointment of a less sympathetic judge.

Sounds perfectly heartbreaking, eh? Like being stuck between a rock and a hard place?

His arguments may have saved him from death, but they didn’t mitigate his responsibility. In its decision, the Justice trial tribunal pointed out that the decision of a man of his stature to remain in office lent credibilty to the Nazi regime. More than that, Schegelberger did sign his name to orders that, in the tribunal’s judgment, constituted crimes.

Another example is that of Oswald Rothaug, pronounced by the Nuremberg Tribunal to be a “sadistic and evil man.” Rothaug enthusiastically supported the Nazi human rights abuses. He was very creative in his construction and interpretation of those laws that could be construed to “to take advantage of the war effort.” In one case, Rothaug sent an innocent Jew to his death by arguing that death was the appropriate punishment for exploiting the air-raid black-outs to pursue a romance with a young German girl.

Jack Bayliss and David Perry, are you taking notes?

It has been said by expert analysts that most German judges over-identified with the Nazi regime. They came to see themselves as fighters on the internal battlefront, with the responsibility to punish “the enemy within,” people such as Malcolm Kendall-Smith. The defendants in the Justice Trial claimed protection under the principle nullum crimen sine lege. This maxim states that there can be no crime committed, and no punishment meted out, without a violation of penal law as it existed at the time of the act. This basic legal principle has been incorporated into international criminal law for just such situations as the trial of Malcolm Kendall-Smith.

What this is going to ultimately mean for Jack Bayliss and David Perry is that, even if they are arguing that British troops are in Iraq at the “invitation” of the “democratically elected government,” once it has been established by an international court that the invasion was illegal to begin with, and all acts that followed from the invasion were then, also illegal, which then means that the so-called “democratically elected government is also illegal, then there will be no limitation upon the power or right of an International Tribunal to punish acts which can properly be held to have been violations of international law when committed.

In short, Jack Bayliss and David Perry have both demonstrated their overt support of the Nazification of Great Britain in exactly the same way that Oswald Rothaug did because, the ex post facto rule cannot apply in the international field as it does under constitutional mandate in the domestic field.

As a principle of justice and fair play, in War Crimes tribunals, the rule in question will undoubtedly be given full effect. Applied in the field of international law, the principle requires only proof before conviction that the accused knew or should have known that in matters of international concern he was guilty of participation in a nationally organized system of injustice and persecution shocking to the moral sense of mankind, and that he knew or should have known that he would be subject to punishment if caught.

The fact is, no person who knowingly commits the acts made punishable by C.C. Law 10 can assert that he did not know that he would be brought to account for his acts because notice of intent to punish is being repeatedly given by the only means available in international affairs, namely, the solemn warning of the people.

This is what Malcolm Kendall-Smith has done: as a man of conscience, he has officially notified the British Court System – and the World – that, one day, in the not-too-distant future, the people of this Earth will take back control of their lives; they will reject utterly the rule of conscienceless Pathocrats, and there will be Justice for humanity.

Originally Published 2006_04_14