Reply #20: Hang our heads in shame!!! [View All]

[Tinoire]

These nuns nonviolently exposed ongoing U.S. attempts and threats to commit war crimes and genocide with the Minuteman III, N-8; they are heroes!


The Minuteman III in silo N-8 is a weapon that is illegal under international law. Its use would kill combatants and noncombatants indiscriminately. It would poison the Earth for generations. The nuns believe disarmament is essential, and that even the threat to use nuclear weapons is illegal. They acted to try to stop an ongoing crime. http://www.rmpjc.org/2003/ActOfPeace.html

threat or use of such a weapon is grossly immoral and politically, economically and environmentally suicidal.



Let's keep our eyes closed and pretend they are not there.

WMDs... right here in River City!!!!

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If acquittal is not granted, a new trial or mistrial must occur.

1. Our Constitution requires presumption of innocence of defendants not presumption of innocence of the threat or use of the Minuteman III, N-8. Yet, the Court prohibited any defense argument and thus made crimes which require proof beyond a reasonable doubt of specific criminal intent into strict liability crimes.

2. While the Court prohibited political arguments in his court of law, the Prosecutor argued his political conclusion that our nuclear weapons are good and necessary based on evidence not brought. Then the Court instructed the jury to ignore any of the Nuns' evidence that any threat or use of the Minuteman III, N-8 is illegal and criminal under binding US and international law.

3. Under our Constitution, the Courts say what the law is, but they cannot ignore or misconstrue directly relevant and binding law, the laws prohibiting attempts, threats and conspiracy to commit war crimes and genocide.

4. Undisputed facts of the Minuteman III, N-8, that the jury was not permitted to consider, clearly show that the heat, blast and radiation is 20 times the Hiroshima bomb, any threat or use is, ipso facto, a war crime or genocide as defined in the U.S. criminal code. Further facts show that the US now intends and is prepared to use this weapon in pre-emptive attack against a range of "rogue states" in violation of numerous treaties of the United States. Obligations for nuclear disarmament and prohibitions against threat or commission of war crimes and genocide are not as the prosecutor claims "rejected philosophy of self-proclaimed international law gurus" or as the court claims of "principal mavens." If our courts no longer have to take cognizance of the United States criminal code, the Constitution, the United Nations Charter and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the rules and principles of humanitarian law, the peremptory and well defined laws of war, then we are no longer a nation of laws.

5. The Prosecutor and Court relied on their hidden experts' conclusions regarding the content and application of the laws of war in this case but Defendants were deprived of their Sixth Amendment right to be confronted with the witnesses against them.

6. The Nuns exposed a weapon of mass destruction whose use or threat blatantly ignores both international and US law. Then the Nuns, messengers of bad tidings, were arrested for felonies whose property element is a weapon of mass destruction. The Prosecutor brings criminal charges and then the court agrees that the Defendants have no standing to raise the directly relevant law? Come on folks, you really can't believe that the US can do no wrong and that we as free citizens may or can do nothing about it anyway?


7. The Nuns intended to point out and expose in a highly measured and non-violent way, clear violations of our own binding law by the US. This may be shocking to some people but in our democracy it is most certainly not a felony. The law is what we the people have agreed it is and at least on October 6, 2002, we did not agree that US and international law permitted anyone, including us, any threat or use of a hideous and indiscriminate weapon like the Minuteman III, N-8.
http://www.grdominicans.org/SocialJustice/PromoterJustice/SESP/AnabelDwyer.asp