by Sherwood Ross
December 20, 2012
from
GlobalResearch Website
Civil resistance “is the last constitutional
hope” the American people have to stop the US government’s foreign
aggression, a distinguished international legal authority says.
Unlike the civil rights activists of the 1950s and 60s who,
“conscientiously violated domestic laws for
the express purpose of changing them,” says Francis Boyle, “today’s
civil resistors are acting for the express purpose of upholding the rule
of law, the US Constitution, human rights, and international law.”
As such, they cannot be arrested by authorities
or sentenced by the courts for their actions.
Boyle, of the University of Illinois, Champaign, said under US and
international law, American citizens have the basic right to engage in acts
of civil resistance,
“designed to prevent, impede, thwart, or
terminate ongoing criminal activities perpetrated by US government
officials in their conduct of foreign affairs policies and military
operations purported to relate to defense and counter-terrorism.”
Mistakenly, however,
“such actions have been defined to
constitute classic instances of ‘civil disobedience’” as historically
practiced in the United States. However, “nothing could be further from
the truth,” Boyle says. “Today’s civil resisters are the sheriffs” and
“the US government officials are the outlaws!”
Boyle made his remarks in a speech December 9
before the Puerto Rican Summit Conference on Human Rights, in San Juan.
His topic was “The Condition of Human Rights at
the International Setting.”
“Civil resistance,” Boyle said, “is the last
hope America has to prevent the US government from moving even farther
down the path of lawless violence in Africa, the Middle East, Southwest
Asia, military interventionism into Latin America, and nuclear
confrontation with Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, Russia, and China.”
Today’s civil resistors,
“disobeyed nothing, but to the contrary
obeyed international law and the US Constitution.
By contrast, US government officials
disobeyed fundamental principles of international law as well as US
criminal law and thus committed international crimes and US domestic
crimes as well as impeachable violations of the US Constitution.”
Boyle warned the public not to permit any aspect
of their foreign affairs and defense policies to be conducted by
acknowledged “war criminals” according to the US government’s own official
definition of that term as set forth in,
He said Americans must insist upon the
impeachment, dismissal, resignation, indictment and convictions of the
guilty and that taking such actions is the “right and the duty” of everyone
around the world.
People everywhere could act against nations allied with the US such as
Britain and the other NATO states, as well as,
-
Australia
-
Japan
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South Korea
-
Georgia
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Puerto Rico