Complicity and _GR_ (was Re: IBM, Disney, Bush: Nazis?)

[davemarc]

From: jbor <jbor at bigpond.com>

Is the U.S. government liable to prosecution in your civil courts?

**

Prosecution only takes place in criminal court, but here are just a few
random examples of the US government being sued (suing is what takes place
in civil courts):

Japanese Residents Sue U.S. Government For Noise Pollution At U.S. Air Base
http://www.wenet.net/~hpb/dec-8.html

AGRICULTURE: US Government Sued Over Genetic Crops
http://www.oneworld.org/ips2/feb99/20_02_083.html

Salmon Advocates Sue Government Over Low Flows in Snake/Columbia Rivers and
Tributaries
http://www.bluefish.org/sueflows.htm

Timothy McVeigh Sues Secretary of Defense and Secretary of the Navy
http://gaylesissues.about.com/newsissues/gaylesissues/library/content/blprti
m012098.htm

There are scads of suits against state and local governments, too.

And there are many (but surely not enough) examples of impeachments and
prosecution
of government officials.

As pointed out on this list, President Clinton also apologized for the
Tuskegee Experiment and on the same occasion announced government bioethics
fellowships for minority students funded by the Department of Health and
Human Services, and proposed a $200,000 planning grant for a bioethics
center at Tuskegee University.  Prior to his apology, an attorney associated
with civil rights leaders filed a class action suit in the case that
resulted in a $10 million settlement for the victims and their families,
that I believe was to be paid by the federal government.

The US government has also apologized for placing citizens in internment
camps during World War II.  The internment occurred after President
Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which allowed the forced exclusion of
all
persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast solely on the basis of
race.  In 1988, President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, which
provided for a formal apology by the government and redress of $20,000 to
each survivor of incarceration under Executive Order 9066.

I imagine that everyone on this mailing list agrees that the United States
still has a lot of apologizing (and redressing) to do for its conduct over
the centuries.  But the US and Nazi Germany are hardly unique entities in
this respect.  Just look at Australia.  Besides Vegemite, there's the
equally distasteful,
centuries-old issue of land rights for the indigenous populations.

d.

PS:  Just to follow up on some other posts....George Washington might
have spoken about neutrality back in the 18th Century, but by 1823 there was
the Monroe Doctrine and by the beginning
of the 20th century, interventionism had become a significant platform of US
foreign policy as championed by Theodore Roosevelt among other power
brokers.  In the late 1930s and early 1940s there was an extremely heated
debate in the United States over isolationism versus internationalism with
FDR spearheading the shift towards internationalism.  A-and if "All the talk
about the judicial system and morality and civil rights is really just a
smokescreen" (for what???), then I'd rather have the current US smokescreen,
with all its faults, than the Nazi smokescreen.  I mean, rilly!  I'd imagine
that only a Nazi or a Nazi fellow-traveler would prefer the Nazi
smokescreen!)