David Model
The primary thesis of State of Darkness is that the United States is either guilty of or complicit in eight genocides since 1945. Two different levels of guilt were defined in the Genocide Convention, one depending on whether a country is directly responsible for genocide and the other, complicity, on whether it contributed in some significant way to the commission of genocide.
DAVID MODEL
BIOGRAPHY
David Model graduated from the University of Toronto and went on to obtain a Masters Degree from the University of Waterloo. Since 1974, David has been on faculty at Ontario’s Seneca College, where he has developed and taught numerous courses in the area of political science, mass media, and global issues.
David has had three books published over the past decade, including 2005’s Lying for Empire: How to Commit War Crimes with a Straight Face, published by Common Courage Press. His previous books are People before Profits: Reversing the Corporate Agenda, published by Captus Press, 1997, and Corporate Rule: Understanding and Challenging the New World Order, published by Black Rose Books, 2002.
David is an experienced lecturer who has delivered papers at many academic conferences, including “The Effectiveness of the International Judicial System” at an international criminology conference in April, 2003. He has presented a number of papers at York University including War Crimes in Iraq (April 2004), War Crimes in Serbia (April 2005) and The Applicability of Hermann’s and Chomsky’s Propaganda Model Today (June 2005). He will be presenting a paper based on the manuscript at the University of Glasgow in February 2008.
David’s local newspaper column, “The Global Perspective” ran from 1984 to 1988 and covered such diverse topics as disarmament, arms buildup by the superpowers, and American interventions. His work has been also featured in CounterPunch, Z Magazine, and Dissident Voice.
David’s unique perspective on politics has been informed by his academic, political and activist experience, as well as by his extensive travels to many hotspots such as Nicaragua, Vietnam, Guatemala and Cambodia. Touring these countries and seeing firsthand the impact of war on the people and the land inspired David to continue the journey to peace through his work and through his books.
Most adults in North America remember Christopher Columbus as the explorer who discovered the New World in 1492. However, few are aware of the fact that Columbus returned to the New World in 1493 to conquer the local inhabitants and steal their wealth. When Columbus first arrived in the Caribbean, there were approximately eight million native inhabitants but when he departed in 1500, his savagery and brutality had reduced their numbers to 100,000. “Columbus Day” is a celebration of a mass murderer.
When colonists arrived at Plymouth colony in 1620, they were rescued by the local inhabitants who shared their food and taught them how to farm. The reward for their generosity was extermination. How ironic that the celebration of Thanksgiving is tantamount to giving thanks to the generosity of the natives for sharing their food and their subsequent extermination.
Plymouth Rock was only one case of extermination in a plethora of massacres, the result of which was the reduction of the American native population by 97.5 percent as of 1890. Thus, Americans committed genocide against their native population.
The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide had its roots in the Turkish massacre of the Armenian population which inspired a Polish Jew and international lawyer, Raphael Lemkin, to launch a crusade to create an international law to prevent massacres on this scale from ever happening again. His crusade reached a crossroads when atrocities committed by the Third Reich were uncovered. Before presenting his case to the international community, he needed a new name for a crime in which a whole population was destroyed. Lemkin realized that he needed a word that was truly unique and decided to combine the Greek derivative geno meaning “race” or “tribe” with the Latin derivative cide meaning “killing” resulting in the word “genocide”.
Lemkin’s dedication and unflagging efforts resulted in the passage of the Genocide Convention by the General Assembly on December 9, 1948. However, it was not until January 12, 1951, that the law came into force after ratification by 20 nations excluding the United States.
Fearful of attention focusing on the genocide of Native Americans and treatment of Blacks in the South, the United States did not ratify the Convention for another 38 years. A Senator, William Proxmire, embraced the cause and his dedication resulted in ratification.
There are a number of ambiguities and controversies in the Convention which required resolution including whether or not to include political parties, despite the fact that they are not explicitly mentioned in the Convention. By considering the works of scholars in the field and judgments of the International Criminal Court, a set of rigid criteria are established in this book to determine the guilt or innocence of the U.S. in the examples set out in the following chapters.
Truman committed genocide when he ordered the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atom weapons. When Eisenhower orchestrated the overthrow of democratically-elected Jacobo Arbenz in
