“Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience…Therefore, [individual citizens] have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring,” the Nuremberg War Crime Tribunal, 1950.

If any of my children or erstwhile friends are reading this, they are sighing… oh boy, she is on her soapbox again (by the way, request to friends, however many of them remain, I want a soapbox! A real soapbox that I can stand on, as I seem to be losing inches by the day… )  I found out about my first inch while in jail at the infamous Roundhouse Prison in Philly… when the medical person finally showed up at about 1 in the morning, he measured and weighed me, and said, 4’11”. I disabused him of the notion because I had always been quite proud of the fact that I was FIVE FOOT TALL! Five, not four and something… in my family, the women are petite, my mother being the most petite… but I had actually made the next foot! Five, I beg your pardon! (Lost that battle eventually…)

Our government, not only in the US but in many places in the world (because by and large the ‘governments’ of the world are corporate rather than state, and it is a giant conglomerate of faceless corporations that hide behind this and that, so that they may not be sued, or jailed or put to death…) is engaged and has long been engaged in the commission of crimes against peace and humanity, which occur in our fast-paced global days with greater speed than reason… Although the reason is quite simple… it is to make the dollar, euro, yen, british pound, peso, etc. etc. ad infinitum.

The crimes are also sundry and miscellaneous; from running prisons for profit where ‘lesser’ men and women are jailed for petty reasons and are worked as slaves for the profit of the corporate prison-holder, be it the state or a corporate entity with some euphonious name, lest we offend the corporate donors, to passing laws protecting the corporate criminal, to selling weapons of all sorts to all contenders in an armed conflict (including things such as mustard gas, assault weapons, the list is also ad infinitum…) to all manner of behavior ‘against peace and humanity.’

We, the citizens, are then enjoined by the Nuremberg Tribunal and the Nuremberg Principles, which were adopted unanimously by the United Nations in 1945, and unanimously means by all members, thank you very much, to act as conscience beckons rather than as the law of the land purports to state… And to again  repeat the words of Thoreau:  Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.… where the State places those who are not with her, but against her…

So, I am sorry, friends, that I must once again insist that it is the duty of all right thinking men and women in the world today to protest with their bodies the continued actions against peace and humanity perpetrated in each of our names.

Getting off the soapbox now…