![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
What the ... ?
Aug. 24th, 2003 03:18 pmrfmcdpei |
| You're a rosy-cheeked ray of f'ing sunshine 24/7. I bet you smile a lot and little things don't get you down. Must be nice. Fuchsia's definitely your color. |
brought to you by |
Aug. 24th, 2003
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
[ARTICLE] On the US and the ICC
Aug. 24th, 2003 04:04 pmFrom The New Republic:
Fleeing Prosecution
by Robert Lane Greene
It should have been an uncontroversial United Nations vote, uniting the countries that had broken ranks over Iraq. But on August 1, France, Germany, and Mexico abstained on the Security Council resolution to send peacekeepers to war-torn Liberia. And they did so because--just like in the debate over Iraq--they found the demands of the United States unacceptable.
This time around, the point of contention was the International Criminal Court (ICC). Established by treaty in 1998, the court will try cases of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. But although the United States has been a vocal advocate of international justice--from the Nazi trials at Nuremberg to the prosecutions over atrocities in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia--it has fought the new court bitterly. When it came time to vote on Liberia, the U.S. said it wouldn't support a resolution without a provision exempting its peacekeeping troops (and those of other countries who don't support the court) from the court's jurisdiction. Kofi Annan, even though he as a West African has a strong personal commitment to stopping the bloodbath in Liberia, announced that his sympathies were with the abstainers.
In the end, the United States got its way. But why is the U.S. so skittish about the court in the first place? American officials say they fear frivolous or politically motivated cases against the U.S. But the architects of the court designed it specifically to avoid any such thing from happening--largely because the U.S. insisted so at the time.
( Read more... )
Fleeing Prosecution
by Robert Lane Greene
It should have been an uncontroversial United Nations vote, uniting the countries that had broken ranks over Iraq. But on August 1, France, Germany, and Mexico abstained on the Security Council resolution to send peacekeepers to war-torn Liberia. And they did so because--just like in the debate over Iraq--they found the demands of the United States unacceptable.
This time around, the point of contention was the International Criminal Court (ICC). Established by treaty in 1998, the court will try cases of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. But although the United States has been a vocal advocate of international justice--from the Nazi trials at Nuremberg to the prosecutions over atrocities in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia--it has fought the new court bitterly. When it came time to vote on Liberia, the U.S. said it wouldn't support a resolution without a provision exempting its peacekeeping troops (and those of other countries who don't support the court) from the court's jurisdiction. Kofi Annan, even though he as a West African has a strong personal commitment to stopping the bloodbath in Liberia, announced that his sympathies were with the abstainers.
In the end, the United States got its way. But why is the U.S. so skittish about the court in the first place? American officials say they fear frivolous or politically motivated cases against the U.S. But the architects of the court designed it specifically to avoid any such thing from happening--largely because the U.S. insisted so at the time.
( Read more... )
This will be my final post in this series, for the time being at least. My impending move to Kingston and graduate school will make it more difficult to maintain regular posting. Still, where there's life, there's hope.
***
Macrohistorians--students of long-term historical trends and the principles (perhaps even laws)--have often observed that innovations in human systems often don't come from the core of a system, but rather, from the margins. Why did Britain outstrip France when, in 1700, there were four times as many French as Britons and France was just as rich as Britain? Why, in the North America of the 1950s and 1980s, did forms of popular music originally from a small and often maltreated African-American minority (first rock and roll, then rap) end up dominating the popular music scene in a short time? Why did Communism, contrary to Marx's predictions, succeed in Russia, and then make the quickest progress in the poorer countries of the world (not the richest)?
( Read more... )
***
Macrohistorians--students of long-term historical trends and the principles (perhaps even laws)--have often observed that innovations in human systems often don't come from the core of a system, but rather, from the margins. Why did Britain outstrip France when, in 1700, there were four times as many French as Britons and France was just as rich as Britain? Why, in the North America of the 1950s and 1980s, did forms of popular music originally from a small and often maltreated African-American minority (first rock and roll, then rap) end up dominating the popular music scene in a short time? Why did Communism, contrary to Marx's predictions, succeed in Russia, and then make the quickest progress in the poorer countries of the world (not the richest)?
( Read more... )
Good bye for now
Aug. 24th, 2003 07:43 pmI'm backing up my files onto writable CDs now--I've copied over my E-mail achives (all ~640 megabytes worth)--in preparation for the move. The computer, with the bike and perhaps some other stuff, will be shipped over to Kingston via bus tomorrow, leaving me to carry my five bags with me on the train and into Montreal.
It's raining right now, although the sky's only partially clouded. There's a beautiful rainbow stretching from the northern to the southern horizons.
It's raining right now, although the sky's only partially clouded. There's a beautiful rainbow stretching from the northern to the southern horizons.