[Peace-discuss] [Peace] "Killer Koh"

[John W.]

I'd also love to know how this guy came by the appellation "Killer" Koh,
which I've seen bandied about quite a bit now.  Was he, like, an axe
murderer before he became an Ivy League law professor and dean?  Not nearly
as evil, I suppose, as my former law school friend who was denied admission
to the Michigan bar for, you know, having declared bankruptcy.....

John Wason again


On Thu, Sep 22, 2016 at 1:33 AM, C. G. Estabrook <carl at newsfromneptune.com>
wrote:

John--
>
> Given the estimate of more than a million ‘excess deaths’ form the US
> invasion of Iraq, that corpse pile will be heard to beat.
>
> But we can’t say Obama isn’t trying: <http://www.commondreams.org/
> news/2015/01/19/noam-chomsky-obamas-drone-program-most-
> extreme-terrorist-campaign-modern-times>.
>
> “‘Turns out I'm really good at killing people,’ Obama said
> quietly. ‘Didn't know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine.’” —from Mark
> Halperin and John Heilemann, "Double Down: Game Change 2012”
>
> —CGE
>
>
> On Sep 22, 2016, at 1:16 AM, John W. via Peace-discuss <
> peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
>
>
> I for one would be interested in the documentation for the statement in
> the article that President Obama is responsible for "greatly" more deaths
> than George W. Bush:
>
> "If Hillary Clinton is elected president, with the advice of Tim Kaine and
> Killer Koh, she may be even more eager to mass-murder than her predecessor:
> the number of casualties would likely exceed that of Obama’s kill list,
> just as his toll today greatly outnumbers G. W. Bush’s."
>
> John Wason
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 21, 2016 at 9:10 AM, Karen Aram via Peace <
> peace at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
>
>> In relation to the U of I , COL bringing Harold “Killer” as he is known,
>> Koh, to campaign for Hillary.
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>> October Surprise: Harold “Killer” Koh to Lecture at UI Law School in
>> Election Week
>> Posted on September 2016
>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__publici.ucimc.org_october-2Dsurprise-2Dharold-2Dkiller-2Dkoh-2Dto-2Dlecture-2Dat-2Dui-2Dlaw-2Dschool-2Din-2Delection-2Dweek_&d=CwMFaQ&c=8hUWFZcy2Z-Za5rBPlktOQ&r=tfHzwZBcTLEveiewRiq0OdhFmfRmlvZjpIBS0AUJ2v0&m=GFyJdA0NouhH8_WHOVEAFjJP6u1kwmpqe4xZ-k_FyRY&s=eZRGF5JYGmOlIhwUeA8rihJ74m8sJPM-4fNhX9eJ3T0&e=>
>>  by Midge O'Brien
>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__publici.ucimc.org_author_mobrien_&d=CwMFaQ&c=8hUWFZcy2Z-Za5rBPlktOQ&r=tfHzwZBcTLEveiewRiq0OdhFmfRmlvZjpIBS0AUJ2v0&m=GFyJdA0NouhH8_WHOVEAFjJP6u1kwmpqe4xZ-k_FyRY&s=lz3C2J5Uc7rM-SQDhi216foCW48KIwr-9gwxuXzoAI4&e=>
>>
>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__filament.io_applications_flare-3Futm-5Fsource-3Dflare-5Fwp-26utm-5Fmedium-3Ddeployment-26utm-5Fcontent-3Dflarebar-26utm-5Fcampaign-3Dfilament&d=CwMFaQ&c=8hUWFZcy2Z-Za5rBPlktOQ&r=tfHzwZBcTLEveiewRiq0OdhFmfRmlvZjpIBS0AUJ2v0&m=GFyJdA0NouhH8_WHOVEAFjJP6u1kwmpqe4xZ-k_FyRY&s=rh8zUYdOfDSE29PUp7WkzPjQmrw_bKMl0E4dSaeY9P0&e=>
>> [image: th]
>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__publici.ucimc.org_wp-2Dcontent_uploads_2016_08_th.jpg&d=CwMFaQ&c=8hUWFZcy2Z-Za5rBPlktOQ&r=tfHzwZBcTLEveiewRiq0OdhFmfRmlvZjpIBS0AUJ2v0&m=GFyJdA0NouhH8_WHOVEAFjJP6u1kwmpqe4xZ-k_FyRY&s=RFDn7slUenb2VHt_F3pSzLqXXX-kh9YD4J4MNRHVZ_U&e=>
>>
>> Harold Hongju Koh
>>
>> Harold Hongju Koh, Hillary Clinton’s former legal advisor at the State
>> Department  has been invited as an ‘endowed speaker’ at the U.I. College of
>> Law, twelve days prior to the November election. Koh, currently a Yale Law
>> School professor and former Dean, is a close friend of Yale Law School
>> graduates Bill and Hillary Clinton. He was appointed by President Bill
>> Clinton as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and
>> Labor; and by President Obama, as senior legal advisor to Secretary of
>> State Hillary Clinton: he provided legal advice to her during the 2009 coup
>> in Honduras, the 2011 US/NATO attack on Libya, and Obama’s ongoing drone
>> assassinations – as well as damage-control in her email controversy. He
>> won’t say what that advice was, claiming “attorney-client privilege” –
>> despite the Supreme Court ruling against attorney-client confidences
>> between government lawyers and government officials.
>>
>> An avid advocate of the targeted killing program, “Killer Koh” supports
>> the legality of what he terms “extrajudicial killing” in Pakistan, Yemen
>> and other Middle Eastern countries in the US “war on terror,” saying it
>> complies “with all applicable law, including the laws of war,” and citing
>> the ‘principle of proportionality’ in “taking great care in planning and
>> execution to ensure that only ‘legitimate’ objectives are targeted and that
>> collateral damage is kept to a minimum.” In a feeble attempt at
>> transparency, the Obama administration recently released a modest admission
>> that some “116 civilians” may have been victims of U. S. drone attacks – a
>> figure that is not reconcilable with the accounts of eyewitnesses,
>> journalists and human rights researchers, who have documented many
>> thousands of casualties. President Obama said – in a revealing moment of
>> self-reflection – “Turns out I’m really good at killing people … Didn’t
>> know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine” (from Mark Halperin & John
>> Heilemann, “Double Down: Game Change 2012”).
>>
>> If Hillary Clinton is elected president, with the advice of Tim Kaine and
>> Killer Koh, she may be even more eager to mass-murder than her predecessor:
>> the number of casualties would likely exceed that of Obama’s kill list,
>> just as his toll today greatly outnumbers G. W. Bush’s.
>>
>> Late on Friday 5 August, the White House grudgingly complied with an
>> Federal Court order (from an ACLU suit) and released a redacted
>> “President’s Policy Guidance” (PPG) on Obama’s program of targeted
>> killings. The PPG stipulates that “nothing in this PPG shall be construed
>> to prevent the President from exercising his Constitutional authority … to
>> authorize lethal force against an individual who poses a continuing,
>> imminent threat to another country’s persons.” (Killing US citizens
>> requires specific approval by the President). Death lists are drawn up
>> weekly by the ‘nominating committee’ and are reviewed by lawyers of the
>> nominating agencies (CIA, Pentagon, NSC, officials of the State Department
>> and “deputies and principals of the nominating committee”).
>>
>> Of the seven Middle Eastern countries where drone assassinations take
>> place, “active war zones” – Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan (it’s not clear if
>> Libya is included) – do not require prior approval. With this protocol in
>> place, the White House and the National Security Council are insulated from
>> outside scrutiny, even by Congress. It assumes that the Commander in Chief
>> can do anything s/he wants; it would provide a President Clinton #2, with
>> the approval of hawks Tim Kaine and Harold Koh, immense power and license
>> to kill.
>>
>> Koh as the (former) State Department lawyer has publicly defended
>> extrajudicial killing as “due process under the Constitution in the age of
>> moral and political degeneration.” In a speech at the Oxford Political
>> Union in 2013 he said, “This Administration has not done enough to be
>> transparent about the legal standards and decision making process …
>> fostering a growing perception that the program [extrajudicial killing] is
>> not lawful and necessary…,” adding that this lack of transparency is
>> counterproductive and has led to the “negative public image” of targeted
>> killing. Does Prof. Koh think the recent exposure of the (heavily redacted)
>> PPG ordered by the Court provides the “transparency” to satisfy critics of
>> the legality of targeted killing?
>>
>> Although Koh has been described as a prominent advocate of human and
>> civil rights (apparently exclusively of US citizens), he has been an “equal
>> opportunist” as a legal advisor to Reagan, Clinton and Obama
>> administrations – all of whom have violated the human rights of foreign
>> nationals. He hardly represented human and civil rights as a member of the
>> Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel to the President in the
>> Reagan administration, when that office justified violations of
>> international law, the Charter of United Nations and the US Constitution,
>> in grievous violation of human rights and attempts to destabilize the
>> countries of Grenada, El Salvador, Nicaragua (attempting to withdraw from
>> the International Court of Justice, which denounced the US for bombing
>> Nicaraguan harbors), Guatemala, Libya, Angola and elsewhere in southern
>> Africa; and when it supported the South African apartheid government
>> against its black population, supported Israel’s invasion and massacres of
>> Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, and supported illegal Israeli
>> settlements in the Palestinian Occupied Territories – for which the US
>> exercised its veto in the U.N. Security Council, in opposition to sanctions
>> against US. In addition, the Reagan administration and its legal advisors
>> refused to support nuclear test ban treaties, instead proliferating
>> first-strike nuclear weapons, SDI (“star wars”) and MX missiles. Not a
>> record to be proud of for someone serving as legal counsel to the president.
>>
>> The opportunity extended Harold Koh to lecture potential scholars of
>> political and international law poses the question, Is the University of
>> Illinois College of Law – with its record of sanctions – qualified to
>> educate future lawyers, when it sponsors a person of Harold H. Koh’s
>> character in these politically charged times?
>>
>> The Nuremberg Military Tribunal in 1947 stated unequivocally that the
>> crimes of the ten civilian Nazi defendants who were convicted of murder and
>> other atrocities, conspiracy to commit war crimes and crimes against
>> humanity of civilians and nationals of occupied territories, were liable to
>> severe penalty whether or not they had engaged in military action. The
>> Nuremberg judgment still stands in  international law.
>>
>> A reception to protest Professor Koh’s appearance is planned at the north
>> courtyard of the College of Law before the lecture on the afternoon of
>> October 28.
>>
>> (Midge O’Brien was an academic professional in U. of I. life science
>> laborotories over twenty years and secretary in the Union of Professional
>> Employees; was an election judge twelve years; a member of Nuclear Freeze,
>> and Prairie Alliance against nuclear power; and an anti-war activist since
>> 1965.  She is a member of the Green Party.)
>>
>>
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>>
>>
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