Just yesterday, I read that the belief "that we could have utopian prosperity if we got rid of private businesses and had the government run everything" should be marked down to "stubborn stupidity." Fair enough. As hyperbolic and Straw Manned-up as that statement is, thwarting all independent economic activity would be a bit delusional, given ( Read more... )

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Is GB about to toss out the Vienna Convention over Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy flap?

... returned to the UK today to be astonished by private confirmation from within the FCO that the UK government has indeed decided - after immense pressure from the Obama administration - to enter the Ecuadorean Embassy and seize Julian Assange.

This will be, ( Read more... )

http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/26/world/meast/israel-human-rights/index.html

Israel has severed ties with the UN Human Rights Council on grounds of butthurt about being called out on breaking particular statues of international law it shamelessly breaks, but a particular subset of international law that can never seriously be enforced. Otherwise, to use ( Read more... )

That is to say a good-news story which has every reason for grounds for optimism:

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/ICC-Finds-Congolese-Warlord-Guilty-142613986.html

The International Criminal Court, in trying one of the war criminals from the forgotten continental wars in the Congo, has found one of these men guilty. This is the first such verdict ( Read more... )

Zdravo, dragi drugari! Hello, dear fellows. I'm sure everyone has heard about the arrest of Gen. Ratko Mladic (actually we already discussed it here, once). Similarly to Osama bin Laden, Mladic was arrested in the most obvious place where he could be hiding. It was so obvious that it's even incredible. While Terrorist #1 was hiding in a big ( Read more... )

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Apologies for not separating the cited article from the initial post. Second try now. The international Convention on the use of cluster munitions was signed earlier this month, and more than 100 countries have joined in. The document bans the use of cluster bombs, one of the deadliest weapons in modern times, and most damaging in the long term. ( Read more... )

MILAN - An Italian judge found 23 Americans and two Italians guilty Wednesday in the kidnapping of an Egyptian terror suspect, delivering the first legal convictions anywhere in the world against people involved in the CIA's extraordinary renditions program ( Read more... )

One of the secret powers of the American presidency is the capacity to suspend international law. This may come as a surprise to people who have been deluded into thinking that America is anything but a despotic nation. When a single country possesses technical sophistication adequate to the task of global domination, it can dispense with the ( Read more... )