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Could International Criminal Court Deploy U.S. as World Law Enforcer?

 

by Glen Ford

The chief prosecutor of the court that purports to bring the rule of law to the planet is actively campaigning to appoint the United States – 'the world's most prolific perpetrator and sponsor of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide' – as chief law enforcement agent. This, despite the fact that the United States is not, and does not intend to become, a member of the International Criminal Court, nor subject to its jurisdiction. But, no matter: thugs rule.

"Washington is quite eager to use the ICC as a tool of its own foreign policy objectives."

The United States, which continues to shun membership in the International Criminal Court (ICC) for fear that it might itself be prosecuted, could wind up acting as the ICC's military muscle on the planet. Having failed to prosecute anyone but Africans since its creation in 2002, the ICC now actively woos the U.S., the world's most prolific perpetrator and sponsor of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, as global enforcer of ICC indictments.

The ICC's 111 member states are gathered in Kampala, Uganda, for a 12-day conference (May 31 - June 11) that is largely focused on defining the international crime of "aggression," the only crime listed under the ICC's mandate that is without agreed upon definition. The next, much more difficult question: will the ICC independently decide who shall be indicted for crimes of aggression, or must the Court defer to the United Nations Security Council, where the permanent members hold veto power? Predictably, the United States is lobbying hard to maintain the Security Council as the sole arbiter of global aggression. Smaller nations and human rights groups contend that filtering indictments through the Security Council would further "politicize" the ICC – a code word for granting the great powers immunity from prosecution.

From the African standpoint, such immunity already exists, as evidenced by the all-African lineup of 14 individuals indicted to date, including the first sitting head of state, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. All have been charged with war crimes, and eleven also face charges of crimes against humanity. ICC prosecutors are currently considering adding the crime of "genocide" to President al-Bashir's indictment. But enforcement is problematic. ICC member states are treaty-bound to arrest indicted persons that enter their territory. However, the African Union collectively opposes Al-Bashir's indictment, officially on grounds that it is an impediment to a peaceful settlement in Sudan's Darfur region, but unofficially because of the ICC's color-coded notions of justice.

"Human rights groups and smaller nations contend that filtering indictments through the Security Council would grant the great powers immunity from prosecution."

The United States cheers the prosecutors on from its position of immunity, since only ICC members fall under the Court's jurisdiction. But that doesn't stop Washington from primping and posturing as a guardian of international legality at the Kampala conference.

"It's hard to emphasize how happy countries are to see us here," said State Department legal affairs official Harold Koh. "They felt very distressed at the period of U.S. hostility to the court. They're very excited about the Obama administration and its renewed commitment to international law and engagement. And they're just thrilled that we're here as an observer country."

No such commitment international law exists, beyond President Obama's rhetorical flourishes. The ridiculously titled U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes, Stephen Rapp, advised the world not to hold its breath waiting on the Americans to join the ICC. "[W]e're nowhere near that point," he told reporters in Kampala. But Washington is quite eager to use the ICC as a tool of its own foreign policy objectives. "What we're here talking about is ways that we can support this court constructively when it works in our interest," said Koh. "And so far in the cases it is taking on, they are in our interests and in the interest of all of human kind."

The U.S. has the ICC's Chief Prosecutor in its pocket. As reported by scholar-activists Samar Al-Bulushi and Adam Branch:

"In June 2009 at a public event in the US, Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo declared the need for 'special forces' with 'rare and expensive capabilities that regional armies don't have,' and said that 'coalitions of the willing,' led by the US, were needed to enforce ICC arrest warrants."

Prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo is volunteering the Court as an instrument of American R2P – "Responsibility to Protect," the Obama administration's substitute for the Bush doctrine that justified American wars to spread "democracy." As defined by Susan Rice, Obama's snarling Ambassador to the UN: "The international community has a responsibility to protect civilian populations from violations of international humanitarian law when states are unwilling or unable to do so."

http://blackagendareport.com/?q=content/could-international-criminal-court-deploy-us-world-law-enforcer

Parental control

Unbelievable Pencil Art by Paul Lung

It's hard to believe but all these beautiful pictures are not photos but pencil drawings. The author of such unbelievable art is 38-year-old graphic artist from Hong Kong Paul Lung. 0.5 mm technical pencil and A2 paper are the only attributes of these masterpieces. He doesn't use eraser and spends up to 60 hours sketching out his pictures. As he often admits people do not believe him and he has to make videos of his work to prove that these art works are not photographs. Check these beautiful artworks by yourself.

 

http://www.beautifullife.info/art-works/unbelievable-pencil-art/

Stop The Music! Artists Demand GOPers Quit Playing Their Hits

by Eric Kleefeld

If stereotypes held true, you would think that the Republicans would be the ones telling folks to turn that blasted music down. But this year -- and indeed in many past election cycles -- it's the GOP that has been attracting cease-and-desist letters for pilfering music against the artists' wishes. So let's take a look at some of the more notable GOP music fails from this cycle, and cycles past.

Senate candidate Chuck DeVore (R-CA) got burned for using for using altered-lyric version of Don Henley's "The Boys of Summer" and "All She Wants To Do Is Dance" for his campaign's Web ads. David Byrne is suing Gov. Charlie Crist (I-FL) for using "Road To Nowhere" in a Web ad during his previous Republican Senate primary fight, and of course, as we reported yesterday, Rush cut to the chase and told Senate nominee Rand Paul (R-KY) to stop playing "Tom Sawyer" and "The Spirit of Radio."

The Orleans song "Still The One" has a special place in politics as it has been used not once without the band's permission, but twice -- and the first instance contributed to its author's entrance into national politics. In 2004, the Bush campaign used the song at a rally. As the song's main author, John Hall, told MSNBC in 2008: "George Bush was busy campaigning on an 'ownership society,' yet never asked me, the band, or the publishers for permission." Hall and other stakeholders in the song quickly sent a cease-and-desist letter, and the Bush campaign dropped the song.

In 2006, Hall went on to be elected to Congress as a Democrat, defeating an incumbent Republican -- an event that was spurred in part by his experience from 2004. "It was one of the things that got him even madder," Hall press secretary Tom Staudter told TPMDC. And then in 2008, the Republicans used the song yet again, this time the ill-fated John McCain campaign. "This is yet another example of John McCain not learning anything from George Bush's mistakes," Hall told MSNBC, also adding: "The only one John McCain is Still the One for is George Bush."

But that was only the tip of the iceberg for the McCain campaign -- which was practically a walking Limewire setup. Jackson Browne also sued it for using his song "Running On Empty" in an ad, for which the two sides later reached an out-of-court settlement. Van Halen objected to McCain's use of their song "Right Now" at a rally. The Wilson sisters from Heart strenuously objected to his campaign's use of "Barracuda" to promote Sarah Palin. And finally, the McCain campaign used "Pink Houses" and "Our Country" by John Mellencamp, who sent a letter demanding that they stop.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/06/stop-the-music-artists-demand-gopers-quit-playing-their-hits.php

Hard Times in Colorado Springs

by Chris Hume

(Image: Chris Hume; Edited: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t)

The city of Colorado Springs has long persisted as an ultra-conservative, anti-tax bastion. When voters rejected the latest proposal to raise taxes to maintain city services, the bottom fell out of the city budget. Now, hundreds of thousands of citizens are struggling to live without basic services. In this exclusive documentary, we delve into the effects of anti-tax policies on the lives of ordinary people.

This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

http://www.truth-out.org/hard-times-colorado-springs60242

Kids With Lesbian Parents Do Just Fine

Study shows they might even be better adjusted than kids from traditional families

By Serena Gordon

When compared to teens of the same age, adolescents raised by lesbian parents are doing just fine socially, psychologically and academically, new research finds.

Not only that, they have fewer social problems, and less aggressive and rule-breaking behaviors than other teens.

The nearly 20-year study has followed 78 teens since their lesbian mothers were planning their pregnancies, and concluded that these children "demonstrate healthy psychological adjustment." These findings stand in contrast to what some vocal opponents of gay or lesbian parents might have expected.

"One of the things that opponents of the equalities of gays and lesbians -- in marriage, parenting, adoption and foster care -- often bring up is the so-called gold standard of parenting, which defined by them is the traditional family where children are conceived in traditional ways and not through insemination or surrogates. But, when we compared the adolescents in our study to the so-called gold standard, we found the teens with lesbian mothers were actually doing better," said study author Dr. Nanette Gartrell, the Williams Distinguished Scholar at the University of California Los Angeles School of Law.

As to why these teens are doing better, Gartrell said, "Moms in the lesbian family are very committed, very involved parents."

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/brain-and-behavior/articles/2010/06/07/kids-with-lesbian-parents-do-just-fine.html

Olbermann: ‘Cartoon-like’ Tea Partier’s win really a loss for GOP

By David Edwards and Muriel Kane

Supporters of Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) are reportedly thrilled about the prospect of him running against former state legislator Sharron Angle, since they see her as a weak Tea Party candidate with a history of extremist views that will make it easy to focus the campaign on her record.

The strategy, according to Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent, will be to "use her own words to paint her as, well, a complete whackjob."

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann has already picked up on the emerging anti-Angle narrative. "Conventional wisdom was that Sue Lowden's come-from-ahead defeat to Tea Partier Sharron Angle would hurt Senator Harry Reid," he noted on Wednesday. "Turns out Ms. Lowden was the sensible one."

"Ms. Angle's resume is startling -- or, if you prefer, cartoon-like," Olbermann continued. "She told Liberty Watch magazine that she's opposed to legalizing alcohol. (Las Vegas!) Eleven years ago, she proposed a bill requiring doctors to tell women that research suggested abortions might increase their risk of breast cancer, even though, you know, it doesn't."

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank even suggested on Thursday that Angle's victory "would explain the uncharacteristic smile on Reid's face as he opened Wednesday morning's Senate session.

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0610/olbermann-goes-after-reid-opponent/

Tea Party and FreedomWorks plan demonstration against mandatory trash collection.

By Zaid Jilani

The tea party movement and their corporate-funded astroturf backers at FreedomWorks often claim to be fighting "big government." For instance, FreedomWorks complained that the individual mandate in the new health care law was an "unacceptable, unconscionable, … complete perversion of the liberties our founders fought and died to protect." Now, local chapters of the tea party and FreedomWorks are collaborating to plan a protest in Gwinnet County, Georgia, to voice their latest grievance against government powers — mandatory home trash collection:

Three political activist groups are joining together Saturday to protest Gwinnett County's new trash plan, which begins July 1. The Four Corners Tea Party, FreedomWorks Gwinnett and Gwinnett Citizens for Responsible Government have organized the protest, which will begin at 11 a.m. Saturday at the gazebo next to the Gwinnett Historic Courthouse on the Lawrenceville square. [...]

"It's our way of letting the commissioners know we remember their vote and we're not going to forget it," said Debbie Dooley, a Dacula resident and the Georgia grassroots coordinator for FreedomWorks. "We want to make sure they are held accountable for their vote."

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/06/11/tea-freedomworks-demonstration-trash/

Maker Faire 2010

USA to relinquish vast territories

 

I’m Under Arrest for What? Fifty Bizarre U.S. Laws

By Annie Tucker Morgan

I've never claimed to have extensive knowledge of U.S. legislation throughout history, but it's safe to say that I and most people I associate with are law-abiding citizens … or not. As it turns out, every state in this country has at least one wacky legal stipulation that could land residents in hot water if they don't comply. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Alabama
It's illegal to wear a fake mustache that causes laughter in church.

Alaska
Whispering in someone's ear while he's moose hunting is prohibited.

Arizona
Cutting down a cactus may earn you a twenty-five-year prison term.

Arkansas
It's illegal to mispronounce the name of the state of Arkansas.

California
You may not eat an orange in your bathtub.

Colorado
It's unlawful to lend your vacuum cleaner to your next-door neighbor (Denver).

Connecticut
A pickle cannot actually be a pickle unless it bounces.

Delaware
It's illegal to get married on a dare.

Washington, D.C.
It's against the law to post a public notice calling someone a coward for refusing to accept a challenge to duel.

Florida
If you tie an elephant to a parking meter, you must pay the same parking fee as you would for a vehicle.

http://www.divinecaroline.com/22323/99603-i-m-arrest-what-fifty-bizarre

 

Why does Ken Salazar still have a job?

By Michael Collins

That one is easy to answer. Because President Obama hasn't fired him and Salazar refuses to resign in shame. (Image)

The real question is what is so wrong with President Obama that he keeps Ken Salazar on as Secretary of the Interior?

Salazar should have given Obama a strong heads up about the major risks of offshore drilling before any policy change was made. He should have done a thorough review of the Department of the Interior with some serious attention to the problem agency key to exploration and drilling permits. The department's Minerals Management Service (MMS) has a long rap sheet as a problem agency. Salazar knew this.

So why is this guy still around?

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-does-Ken-Salazar-still-by-Michael-Collins-100610-222.html

Keeping Politics Safe for the Rich

In a burst of judicial activism, the Supreme Court on Tuesday upended the gubernatorial race in Arizona, cutting off matching funds to candidates participating in the state's public campaign finance system. Suddenly, three candidates, including Gov. Jan Brewer, can no longer receive public funds they had counted on to run against a free-spending wealthy opponent.

The court's reckless order muscling into the race was terse and did not say whether there were any dissents, though it is hard to imagine there were not. An opinion explaining its reasoning will have to wait until the next term, assuming it takes the case, but by that time the state's general election will be over and its model campaign finance system substantially demolished.

It seems likely that the Roberts court will use this case to continue its destruction of the laws and systems set up in recent decades to reduce the influence of big money in politics. By the time it is finished, millionaires and corporations will have regained an enormous voice in American politics, at the expense of candidates who have to raise money the old-fashioned way and, ultimately, at the expense of voters.

Arizona's clean elections program was established by the state's voters in 1998 after a series of scandals provided clear illustrations of money's corrupting influence. In particular, the program was prompted by the AzScam scandal of 1991, in which many state legislators were recorded accepting contributions and bribes in exchange for approval of gambling legislation.

The system gives qualifying candidates a lump-sum grant for their primary or general election races in exchange for which the candidates agree not to raise large private contributions. If an opposing candidate is not participating in the system and spends more than the lump-sum grant, the participating candidate qualifies for additional matching funds.

It was those matching funds that produced a challenge from well-financed candidates, backed by the Goldwater Institute and other conservative interests. The candidates argued that the matching funds "chilled" their freedom of speech because they were afraid to spend more than the limit that triggered the funds.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/09/opinion/09wed1.html

Why did nearly all life on Earth die 250 million years ago?

Among paleontologists, it's sometimes called the "Great Dying." Roughly a quarter of a billion years ago, 90-95 percent of all life on Earth died out. It took 30 million years for the planet to recover. What happened?
Most people are familiar with the extinction event 65 million years ago that wiped out the dinosaurs. But the Great Dying was much more devastating. It left almost nothing alive.
Welcome to the Permian
Let's start with the lay of the land. The era before the Great Dying - also known as the Permo-Triassic Extinction - is called the Permian, and it was a time of rapid animal evolution, including mammal-reptile hybrids called synapsids that looked sort of like giant lizards - some even had big sails on their backs. These early mammals roamed a massive landmass called Pangaea, while the one, giant ocean called Panthalassa teemed with sea creatures, from tiny single-celled organisms to trilobytes and large fish. On land, vast forests of giant ferns were giving way to trees similar to the ones we have on Earth today, dropping seeds in order to reproduce.

Basically there was an entire ecosystem of plants and animals on sea and land that you would hardly recognize as earthly - it was as if our planet wasn't really our planet at all. And then a series of catastrophic events managed to destroy most of the life that existed.
The extinction event
Looking at the fossil record, it's clear that there was an abrupt, massive decline in animal diversity.

In this chart, you can see that there were actually three die-offs during the Permian, but the one at the end of the Permian and the beginning of the Triassic, 250 million years ago, was extreme. Writing in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Earth scientists Sarda Sahney and Michael J Benton call it "the most devastating ecological event of all time." They explain the chart above, which looks at die-offs of tetrapods (four-legged creatures):

Global diversity (dashed line) and mean alpha diversity (solid line) of Permo-Triassic tetrapod families. Extinctions are labelled as 1, Olson's extinction; 2, end-Guadalupian extinction; and 3, end-Permian extinction.

The seas were hit as hard as the land. Sahney and Benton continue:

The impact of the end-Permian event was devastating. In the sea, the level of species loss was 80–96%, and blastoid echinoderms, tabulate and rugose corals, graptolites, trilobites, eurypterids, acanthodians and placoderms disappeared entirely. On land, the dominant Glossopteris flora was replaced, eight orders of insects became extinct and two-thirds of tetrapod families were lost. The only tetrapod lineages to survive were procolophonoids, dicynodonts, and presumably therocephalians, cynodonts, and archosauromorphs, and their Triassic recovery was slow.

Put another way: It's likely that 9 out of 10 marine species and 7 out of 10 land species went extinct. Moreover, this was the only extinction event on Earth that destroyed many species of insects as well as animals.
When you look at the geologic record, there is simply nothing there at the hinge between Permian and Triassic.

http://io9.com/5558871/why-did-nearly-all-life-on-earth-die-250-million-years-ago

Rafah border indefinitely open: Cairo

 

Egypt says it will indefinitely keep open its long-closed border crossing with the Gaza Strip, distancing itself from the Israeli siege of the impoverished enclave.

The populated coastal sliver, home to some 1.5 million Palestinians, remains under a crippling blockade tightened since 2007 with Israel sealing all its border terminals.

The Rafah border crossing in the south of the territory — the only one not in the hands of Israel — has been closed by Egyptian authorities, making the Cairo government Tel Aviv's siege partner.

But Egyptian officials opened the crossing immediately after Israel's May 31 attack on an aid convoy that killed 20 international activists onboard the six-ship fleet.

Egyptian foreign ministry on Monday said the border with Gaza would remain open "until further notice," dismissing Israeli claims that it was Cairo that encouraged Tel Aviv to step up the blockade to press the Gaza-based Hamas government.

"Egypt is the one that broke the blockade," Associated Press on Tuesday quoted the ministry's spokesman Hossam Zaki as saying. "We are not going to let the occupying power escape from its responsibilities," he stressed.

 

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=129660&sectionid=351020202

Ideas for ‘reverse flotillas’ gain steam

 

Israeli groups mull sailing toward Turkey to "remind the world of Turkish hypocrisy."

By ABE SELIG

 

Although most of the recent talk regarding flotillas has revolved around ships sailing toward Gaza, at least two plans have emerged for "reverse flotillas" – from Israel toward Turkey – to highlight what organizers have labeled the Turks' "shameless hypocrisy" in their criticisms of the Jewish state.

The most ambitious of the two plans has been devised by members of Israel's National Student Union, who this week announced their intention to set sail toward Turkey, in an effort to bring humanitarian aid to the "oppressed people of Turkish Kurdistan" and to members of the "Turkish Armenian minority."

Student Union chairman Boaz Torporovsky, who has been leading the reverse flotilla charge, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday, "Hundreds of people have volunteered for the flotilla, and many more are contacting us all the time for ways they can help.

"Our plan is to deliver much-needed humanitarian assistance to the Kurds of Turkey, who by the way outnumber Israelis and Palestinians combined," he said.

 

http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=177789

What if Helen Thomas had said...

The Real Threat Aboard the Freedom Flotilla

The Freedom Flotilla defied Israel's policy of blocking solutions to the Arab-Israeli conflict based on international decisions, and so it had to be crushed.

 

By Noam Chomsky

 

Israel's violent attack on the Freedom Flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza shocked the world.

Hijacking boats in international waters and killing passengers is, of course, a serious crime.

But the crime is nothing new. For decades, Israel has been hijacking boats between Cyprus and Lebanon and killing or kidnapping passengers, sometimes holding them hostage in Israeli prisons.

Israel assumes that it can commit such crimes with impunity because the United States tolerates them and Europe generally follows the U.S.'s lead.

As the editors of The Guardian rightly observed on June 1, "If an armed group of Somali pirates had yesterday boarded six vessels on the high seas, killing at least 10 passengers and injuring many more, a NATO task force would today be heading for the Somali coast." In this case, the NATO treaty obligates its members to come to the aid of a fellow NATO country—Turkey—attacked on the high seas.

Israel's pretext for the attack was that the Freedom Flotilla was bringing materials that Hamas could use for bunkers to fire rockets into Israel.

The pretext isn't credible. Israel can easily end the threat of rockets by peaceful means.

The background is important. Hamas was designated a major terrorist threat when it won a free election in January 2006. The U.S. and Israel sharply escalated their punishment of Palestinians, now for the crime of voting the wrong way.

The siege of Gaza, including a naval blockade, was a result. The siege intensified sharply in June 2007 after a civil war left Hamas in control of the territory.

What is commonly described as a Hamas military coup was in fact incited by the U.S. and Israel, in a crude attempt to overturn the elections that had brought Hamas to power.

That has been public knowledge at least since April 2008, when David Rose reported in Vanity Fair that George W. Bush, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Elliott Abrams, "backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever."

Hamas terror included launching rockets into nearby Israeli towns—criminal, without a doubt, though only a minute fraction of routine U.S.-Israeli crimes in Gaza.

http://inthesetimes.com/article/6064/the_real_threat_aboard_the_freedom_flotilla/

We’re Nuanced Here in the States

by John Cole

Well, it took about an hour and a half, but one of the back benchers in the WH Press Corpse finally asked Gibbs if it mattered to the WH that an American was among one of the flotilla dead. The previous hour and a half was dedicated to questions from the beltway pretty boys dealing with perceptions of whether the President is engaged enough in the oil spill and tough enough on BP, whether or not Gibbs had watched Jon Stewart last night, and the usual important stuff. The response from Gibbs when finally asked was so evasive and noncommittal that I can't remember anything other than his mentioning that Obama had a good talk with Erdogan two days ago.

It must be really odd to be a foreigner watching the reaction of the American government. You look at Turkey, and they seem to be just furious that Israeli soldiers stormed onto a non-Military vessel on the high seas and shot up some of their citizens, but the United States seems to be wholly indifferent. What people don't realize is just how nuanced America has become about citizenship.

When we decide if someone is a real American, worthy of all aspects of citizenship and defense by the government, we look at the totality of the situation. We look at what kind of citizen you are, what you believed in, what you were doing at the time you were shot four times in the head at close range by a foreign army as they stormed a ship in international waters, and a variety of other factors. For example, as the Powerline points out, this guy wasn't a "real American" anyway:

The facts are not entirely clear, but it appears that Dogan was born in the United States to Turkish parents who returned to Turkey not long thereafter. (The ABC story says he was two years old.) Apparently Dogan had lived in Turkey with his family since that time. He apparently was, in other words, a "birthright citizen," solely by virtue of the fact that his parents were residing in the U.S. when he was born.

If that is the case—and, again, the facts are not yet entirely clear—it is silly to call him an "American of Turkish descent." He, like the other members of his family, was a Turk. The idea that his presence among the dead raises a special diplomatic problem is absurd; if it does, it shouldn't.

Not only was he not an American, but we should tinker with the Constitution so this never happens again. Now had his parents emigrated to a more American country when he was two, like, for example, Israel, then this story would be a lot different. But as it was, it is clear that he was not sufficiently American for our government to get upset about his death.

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2010/06/03/were-nuanced-here-in-the-states/