[GPSCC-chat] REGARDING -Continental Congress 2.0

[Carol Brouillet]

I received some good feedback from Gerry Gras and 
Jules. Thank-you both! Jules said that they 
shouldn't be called "grievances" because of their 
syntax and the way they are written more as 
proposals.  Following a conference on Deep 
Politics in Santa Cruz in 2010, we did come up 
with another Declaration and list of grievances 
which I believe are still quite valid today, 
although the group that came up with them was 
"international" and so they are not specific to 
the United States, but obviously inspired by our 
own Declaration of Independence and entitled a 
Declaration of Accountability... (It is posted 
at 
<http://declarationofaccountability.com/>http://declarationofaccountability.com/ 
and you can sign it, if you find it 
useful/inspiring....  I will be taking a copy of it with me to Philadelphia...)


Declaration of Accountability

When governments cease to serve the will of the 
people and instead serve the interests of 
powerful elites, unaccountable to the rule of 
law, it is incumbent upon citizens of the world 
to withdraw support from these institutions and 
replace them with legitimate governments of, by, and for the people.

Presented in this Declaration of Accountability 
is a Bill of Grievances detailing the unlawful 
acts of some of the most powerful governments in 
the world. This is a call to the people of these 
countries and citizens of the world to hold 
accountable those responsible for their criminal 
acts. It is also a call for the restoration of 
the rule of law through all legal means and, if 
necessary, for an independent internationally 
comprised tribunal. As so eloquently expressed by 
U.S. Supreme Court Justice 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_H._Jackson>Robert 
Jackson, the chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg 
War Crimes Trials following World War II:

If certain acts and violations of treaties are 
crimes, they are crimes whether the United States 
does them or whether Germany does them. We are 
not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal 
conduct against others which we would not be 
willing to have invoked against us.

In short, all nations, vanquished or victors, and 
all persons, powerful or humble, are subject to 
the rule of law without exception.


Bill of Grievances

Governments have perpetrated the following 
willful and unconscionable acts on behalf of the 
special interests of the few at the expense of 
the people they are beholden to represent:

•They have turned over control of sovereign 
monetary systems to private banks that critically 
imperil the people’s welfare and the world economy;

•They have used the International Monetary Fund, 
the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and 
the Bank for International Settlements to impose 
their economic and political agendas on nations 
worldwide, effectively subjecting them to 
economic warfare and relegating them to the status of modern-day colonies;

•They have engaged in resource wars in Iraq, 
Afghanistan, and elsewhere under false pretenses 
(“weapons of mass destruction,” etc.), resulting 
in massive loss of life and the wholesale 
destruction of lands and local economies;

•They have caused the displacement of millions of 
individuals and families from their native lands 
due to imperial wars, exploitation, and trade 
agreements (such as NAFTA), which has resulted in 
the continuation of victimization of these 
political, economic, and environmental refugees 
in the countries to which they fled;

•They have eliminated job opportunities, social 
services, and labor protections for the people 
while enhancing the fortunes of banks and corporations;

•They have purposefully undermined free and fair 
elections through voter registration 
irregularities, rigged voting machines, and in 
the U.S., high-court decisions that overrule the 
electorate and endorse unlimited corporate 
campaign financing and electoral control;

•They have passed laws inimical to the health and 
welfare of the planet, subjecting all living 
beings to oil spills, chemical poisoning and 
pollution, deadly radiation, genetic manipulation 
and other threats, as well as promoting wars for 
profit, the single greatest cause of 
environmental degradation and human illness;

•They have put the planet and its people at 
further risk by permitting strip-mining of the 
land, gouging of the ocean floor, emission of 
greenhouse gases, privatization of drinking water 
resources for profit, and the destruction of indigenous lands;

•They have perpetrated “false flag events”­acts 
of violence and criminal negligence (including 
many connected with 9/11), which are then blamed 
on targeted groups or countries­to mobilize 
support for wars (e.g., Iraq, Afghanistan) and 
restrict liberties (e.g., the U.S. Patriot Act);

•They have routinely used torture­a criminal act 
under the Geneva Convention, UN Convention 
against Torture, and the U.S. War Crimes Act­to 
extract false confessions from prisoners for the 
purpose of linking them to alleged terrorist 
plans and to create further pretexts for war;

•They have engaged in extraordinary renditions 
(kidnapping) of citizens from various sovereign 
countries and delivered them to CIA “black sites” 
for torture­all in the name of the so-called “War on Terror”;

•They have enacted laws in secrecy that later 
have been revealed to concentrate power in the 
hands of a few, abridging constitutional checks and balances;

•They have engaged in secret, illegal spying on 
innocent people, domestic and foreign, using 
private telecommunication companies later 
shielded from complicity in warrantless 
wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping; and

•They have collaborated with corporate media to 
mislead and misinform the people and to suppress 
informed debate, thereby crippling democracy.

To redress the grievances in this Bill, we the 
undersigned world citizens affirm the Universal 
Declaration of Human Rights, adopted unanimously 
in 1948 by the United Nations General Assembly, 
which declares that “it is essential, if man is 
not to be compelled to have recourse as a last 
resort to rebellion against tyranny and 
oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.”

Therefore, we call upon organizations and peoples 
of all nations to join us in signing this 
declaration and in taking all possible legal 
actions to resolve the crimes described herein, 
including an international tribunal and 
initiatives suitable to each country. (An 
elaboration of these grievances, their 
documentation, and suggested remedies can be 
found at 
<http://declarationofaccountability.com/problems-and-solutions>Problems 
and Proposed Solutions.)

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.cagreens.org/pipermail/sosfbay-discuss_lists.cagreens.org/attachments/20120622/52c655d5/attachment.html>