Saturday, 3 May, 2003... Europe?The "Old/New Europe" phrase is still being used a fair bit, and I have to admit it irks me. When Rumsfeld coined the term, "Old Europe" was supposedly France and Germany, long the agricultural and industrial powerhouses of the EEC/EU, along with Belgium and Luxembourg, while "New Europe" is supposedly the emerging economies of Eastern (excuse me, "Central") Europe. So what I really want to know is: where does this leave the rest of Europe, for instance the Nordic countries and—of specific interest to me—the Netherlands? I don't see how we're "Old Europe," but we're not "New Europe" either, so then what? "Second-generation Europe"? "Last year's model Europe"? "Vintage Europe"? "The bits that Rumsfeld can't find on the map Europe"? posted 2054 Z-8 [link] Thoughts on freedom of speech My local paper, the Olympian ran an AP article the other day, "Holocaust Museum Marks 10th Anniversary" (I couldn't readily find the article in the online version, hence the WaPo link). The article kicked off with the following passage: The Holocaust Museum is marking its 10th year with a display on book burning that includes images from a New Mexico town where Harry Potter books were torched by people who said they teach children to become witches.(The WaPo also ran a follow-up, "History That Defied the Flames") My initial reaction was approval; book-burning does carry the taint of Nazi "cultural purification" in my opinion, and it's a negative association I'm all in favour of seeing promoted. Then my beloved wife, Carolyn, commented "So how come you didn't get particularly worked up over those folks destroying Dixie Chicks CDs?" Which was a really good point. So I stopped and thought about it. posted 0438 Z-8 [more..] Friday, 2 May, 2003The ICC: the point I forgot to makeReading this entry on The Everlasting Phelps, it occurred to me that I had forgotten to explicitly make the vital point regarding the ICC (in this post and this one). The point about the (ostensibly planned) CCR/PIL/CSER submission to the ICC, as well as the complaint to the Belgian courts, is this: they are accusations levelled by private legal entities. Neither the Prosecutor of the ICC nor the public prosecutor in Belgium have actually taken up these cases. There is not a legal system in the world in which people are not, on occasion, falsely accused of even the most heinous crimes, and even prosecuted and tried on the basis of those false accusations. But the test of what makes a good legal system must surely be not that no-one is ever falsely accused, but that that person is not falsely convicted as a result. This is a test that the ICC has not, to date, been subjected to, and as a result it is precipitate to condemn the Court for such a reason. Given that the various justice systems of the United States have patchy record on passing that particular test themselves (witness the fact that over 100 people convicted and sentenced to death since 1973 have been exonerated—one can only wonder how many of those wrongly convicted were sent to their deaths), Americans who criticise the ICC on these rather spurious grounds might be well advised to review Matthew 7:3-5. posted 1751 Z-8 [link] Thursday, 1 May, 2003Tangled webs: drugs and international relationsWhat with the war in Iraq (and its aftermath), SARS, North Korea, etc. it was easy to miss the special ministerial session of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs, which took place in Vienna two weeks ago. This is a pity, because the dynamics of the Commission, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (ODC) and the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) reflect a very different picture than that which one generally associates with the UN. Global drug policy is set out in three conventions (the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961, the Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971 and Convention against the Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988), which oblige the signatories to outlaw production, trade, possession and use for non-medical purposes of plant-based and synthetic drugs (except alcohol and tobacco); these are actually very far-reaching as international treaties go, since they actively regulate national legislation of sovereign states. posted 0437 Z-8 [more..] This country will self-destruct in five seconds... Yesterday, I picked up Kanan Makiya's Republic of Fear at the Borders in Tukwila (they have an impressive selection - I also picked up A History of Warfare by John Keegan, and The Fall of Berlin 1945 by Anthony Beevor); just the introduction to the 1998 edition was enough to astound me. Makiya refers to the document "Charter 91", written by some four hundred Iraqis (among them writers, artists, professionals and businessmen) in exile, which starts: Civil Society in Iraq has been continuously violated by the state in the name of ideology. As a consequence the networks through which civility is normally produced and reproduced have been destroyed. A collapse of values in Iraq has therefore coincided with the destruction of the public realm for uncoerced human association. In these conditions, the first task of a new politics is to reject barbarism and reconstitute civility.Makiya also quotes a report by Youssef Ibrahim in the New York Times from 1994: "People are terrified of what they see," said one Iraqi intellectual residing in Baghdad, who insisted on remaining anonymous. "If the regime falls, you can imagine the chaos that will result, with the poor attacking the less poor. Nearly everyone here has arms, and the country is slipping into chaos. Sometimes I think the regime encourages the idea of a breakdown. It's like saying, 'See what could happen?' if they were no longer around.Between these two quotes, I think a clearer understanding of the looting and rioting in the wake of the overthrow of the Ba'athist regime can be gained. posted 0010 Z-8 [more..] Monday, 28 April, 2003Belgium, the ICC and the neo-conservative worldviewAccording this article in the Washington Times (your source for objective journalism, uh-huh), a group of Iraqi citizens has enlisted the services of Jan Fermon, a Belgian lawyer to get General Tommy Franks indicted in a Belgian court for war crimes. This is not dissimilar to a case lodged earlier this year in Belgian courts against the US president Bush père, General Colin Powell and General Norman Schwartzkopf, on the allegation that the three were to blame for the deaths of Iraqi schoolchildren during the 1991 Gulf War. Basing itself on several provisions of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (though arguably ignoring a couple of others), Belgium adopted a law in 1993 declaring that any alleged case of genocide, including those not involving Belgian nationals or having taken place on Belgian soil, could be tried in Belgian courts. As a result, four Rwandan génocidaires were tried, and convicted in 2001, but complaints have been also lodged against Ariel Sharon (recently quashed on the basis that Belgian law grants immunity to a head of government while he is in office), Yasser Arafat, Fidel Castro and former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. posted 2312 Z-8 [more..] Sunday, 27 April, 2003Fantasy and fabricationA couple of neat finds via Jason "The Horrors of an Easily Distracted Mind" Tamez at Druidic.net: First is a transcript of an audio commentary by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn which was not included in the Fellowship of the Ring DVD set. Chomsky: We should examine carefully what's being established here in the prologue. For one, the point is clearly made that the "master ring," the so-called "one ring to rule them all," is actually a rather elaborate justification for preemptive war on Mordor.Great stuff. Second is David Wong's "Fraud", a breathtaking exposure of the fictions perpetrated by the American military-industrial complex regarding Iraq, a country which does not actually exist. One paragraph in particular summed up the whole "no-win situation" of US foreign policy: We wandered the streets and open markets of Kabul, speaking to the townspeople milling about. "Indeed," said Abdulla Matif, a cafe owner in downtown Kabul. "The destruction of the Taliban has been the most horrific crime ever perpetrated against the Afghani people."Kind of reminiscent of the cries of "No Saddam! No US!" currently heard in parts of Iraq, innit? This appears to predate that particular unintended irony. Both well worth a few spare minutes of your time. posted 2345 Z-8 [link] Guilt will not defeat terror Jackie D links to an essay by John Lloyd, until recently of the New Statesman, titled "The times demand we face up to terror, can the left answer?" An excellent find on Jackie's part, and well worth reading for lefties, especially European lefties like myself, who supported the war in Iraq and as a result found—and still find—themselves the targets of gross generalisations from both sides of the barbed wire. posted 2122 Z-8 [link] ICC correspondence II Another exchange between Brett Cashman of Tabula Rasa and myself regarding the ICC. posted 0306 Z-8 [more..] |
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