Why Trump is Afraid of International Law

President Donald Trump and his aides rarely go easy on their perceived enemies. But their attacks on the International Criminal Court — describing it as, among other things, filled with “lunatics” and pledging to destroy it — are hyperbolic enough that you have to wonder:

Are they afraid the court will prosecute them?

That’s the conclusion many former government officials and legal scholars are reaching. They point not only to Trump’s anti-ICC campaign but also his administration’s broader efforts to defund, abandon or otherwise damage a range of global mechanisms that enforce human rights laws, from treaties to United Nations organizations.

Those moves come as the Trump administration is accused of a series of abuses, from killing Iranian schoolchildren to deporting asylum-seekers. At the same time, Trump is going to great lengths to protect his backers from domestic justice, including through his extensive use of pardons.

“They’re doing everything they can to evade accountability as they attack the very institutions and advocates charged with holding rights abusers to account,” said Uzra Zeya, a former Biden administration official who is now president of Human Rights First.

Spokespeople for the White House and the State Department deny such assertions. In statements to me, they reiterated complaints that the ICC threatens U.S. sovereignty and cast their campaign against it as squarely within Trump’s America First agenda.

“All of the administration’s actions are lawful and in line with the agenda that President Trump was elected to implement,” stressed Anna Kelly, a spokesperson for the White House.

But when it comes to the ICC in particular, Shakespeare might say the administration “doth protest too much.” By wildly overstating the court’s power, it is feeding the notion that it is genuinely worried.

Read the rest here.

Nearly Half of House Democrats Vote to End Aid to Israel

Nearly half of House Democrats voted to cut off aid to Israel Wednesday, underscoring a seismic shift in political support for the longtime U.S. ally.

The amendment to a State Department spending bill would have eliminated $3.3 billion in funding, and thanks to strong Republican support for the Jewish state, it failed 314-104. But the vote served as a moment of reckoning for House Democrats who have had to confront years of voter outrage about Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza.

Read the rest here.

Why Is the U.S. Still Pretending We Know Gender-Affirming Care Works?

Imagine a comprehensive review of research on a treatment for children found “remarkably weak evidence” that it was effective. Now imagine the medical establishment shrugged off the conclusions and continued providing the same unproven and life-altering treatment to its young patients.

This is where we are with gender medicine in the United States.

It’s been three months since the release of the Cass Review, an independent assessment of gender treatment for youths commissioned by England’s National Health Service. The four-year review of research, led by Dr. Hilary Cass, one of Britain’s top pediatricians, found no definitive proof that gender dysphoria in children or teenagers was resolved or alleviated by what advocates call gender-affirming care, in which a young person’s declared “gender identity” is affirmed and supported with social transition, puberty blockers and/or cross-sex hormones. Nor, she said, is there clear evidence that transitioning kids decreases the likelihood that gender dysphoric youths will turn to suicide, as adherents of gender-affirming care claim. These findings backed up what critics of this approach have been saying for years.

“The reality is that we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress,” Cass concluded. Instead, she wrote, mental health providers and pediatricians should provide holistic psychological care and psychosocial support for young people without defaulting to gender reassignment treatments until further research is conducted.

After the release of Cass’s findings, the British government issued an emergency ban on puberty blockers for people under 18. Medical societies, government officials and legislative panels in Germany, France, Switzerland, Scotland, the Netherlands and Belgium have proposed moving away from a medical approach to gender issues, in some cases directly acknowledging the Cass Review. Scandinavian countries have been moving away from the gender-affirming model for the past few years. Reem Alsalem, the United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, called the review’s recommendations “seminal” and said that policies on gender treatments have “breached fundamental principles” of children’s human rights, with “devastating consequences.”

But in the United States, federal agencies and professional associations that have staunchly supported the gender-affirming care model greeted the Cass Review with silence or utter disregard.

Read the rest here.

One of Putin's fiercest critics has vanished and the Russian government is not talking

After two weeks without word from Aleksei A. Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition figure, his lawyers and allies, fearing the worst, are running a frantic campaign to find him.

Their efforts have included requesting information from dozens of Russian prisons and taking to social media to raise awareness of Mr. Navalny’s disappearance and to call on the Russian government to reveal his whereabouts.

Many Russians living abroad have gone to their country’s diplomatic missions to protest. Some have held up posters saying “Where is Navalny?”

Dmitri S. Peskov, spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin, told journalists on Friday that the Kremlin had “neither the possibility, nor rights or desire to trace the fate of convicts,” referring to Mr. Navalny.

Here is what we know about Mr. Navalny and his disappearance.

The last time Mr. Navalny’s lawyers heard from him was on Dec. 5. The following day, one of his lawyers waited for seven hours outside the penal colony where Mr. Navalny was being kept but was not allowed to see him, Kira Yarmysh, a spokeswoman for Mr. Navalny, said. Mr. Navalny then failed to appear by video link at a scheduled court hearing the next day, Dec. 7.

In the days after Mr. Navalny’s disappearance, his allies grew more alarmed as letters sent to him went undelivered and the authorities declined to reveal his location to his lawyers. On Dec. 11, officials in the prison colony that had been holding Mr. Navalny — in Melekhovo, a town about 160 miles east of Moscow — told his lawyers that he was no longer listed among its inmates, Ms. Yarmysh said.

Read the rest here.

Thousands of Armenian Christians flee Azerbaijan rule

Thousands of Armenian Christians have fled their ancestral homeland in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh over the weekend and more are expected, the government of Armenia confirmed Monday.

“The mass exodus has begun,” Siobhan Nash-Marshall, a U.S.-based human rights advocate who has been speaking to witnesses on the ground, told CNA.

Nash-Marshall founded the Christians in Need Foundation (CINF) in 2011 to help Armenian Christians in the region, and in 2020 she started a school for children and adults in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Now, Nash-Marshall has received word from her school in Nagorno-Karabakh that “all is over” and that “people from all regions, all villages, are homeless” and without shelter, food, and water. 

Hundreds of ethnic Armenians are sleeping in the streets and cannot even drink water because they claim it has been “poisoned by Azeris,” according to Nash-Marshall’s contacts. 

Nash-Marshall was told that there are lines of “2,000 in front of the only bakery” near her school and that “all are hungry, frightened, and hopeless.” 

According to the government of Armenia, 6,650 “forcibly displaced persons” entered Armenia from Nagorno-Karabakh since last week.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Sunday that he expects most of the 120,000 ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh to flee the region due to “the danger of ethnic cleansing,” Middle Eastern news source Al Jazeera reported.

Read the rest here.

HT: Dr. Tighe

Black Ribbon Day

August 23 is the International Day of Commemoration for the Victims of Totalitarian Regimes.

Concentration Camps

It's time to call China's vast network of ethnic/religious detention facilities by their proper name.

It's time to boycott China and Chinese goods.

UN Panel accuses N. Korea of crimes against humanity

SEOUL — A year-long investigation by the United Nations is set to conclude that North Korea has committed crimes against humanity, according to a leaked outline of the report, in the most authoritative indictment to date of abuses carried out by Pyongyang’s leaders.

The U.N. panel will also recommend that the North’s crimes be referred to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, according to the Associated Press, which obtained the outline of the findings. The report of the three-member Commission of Inquiry will be released Monday.

Read the rest here.

Congress holds hearings on the plight of Egypt's Copts

Video here.

Breaking up is never easy

Kim Jong-un's ex-girlfriend was among a dozen well-known North Korean performers who were executed by firing squad nine days ago, according to South Korean reports.

Hyon Song-wol, a singer, rumoured to be a former lover of the North Korean leader, is said to have been arrested on Aug 17 with 11 others for violating laws against pornography.

The reports in South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper indicate that Hyon, a singer with the Unhasu Orchestra, was among those arrested on August 17 for violating domestic laws on pornography.

All 12 were machine-gunned three days later, with other members of North Korea's most famous pop groups and their immediate families forced to watch. The onlookers were then sent to prison camps, victims of the regime's assumption of guilt by association, the reports stated.

Read the rest here.

I am going to take an educated guess that no "red lines" have been crossed here and that we won't be bombing North Korea anytime soon.

News from Mt. Athos

Two stories, both of which are disturbing.

First schismatic monks (radical old calendarists) violently attacked police who were sent to evict them. And secondly, European leftists are continuing to press (with some success) court cases against the monks for their thousand year tradition of excluding women from the Holy Mountain.

British Court: OK for Roman Catholic Child to be Forcibly Converted to Islam

In SS (Malaysia) v. Secretary of State, (EWCA, July 18, 2013), Britain's Court of Appeal, upheld the denial of asylum to a Roman Catholic woman from Malaysia visiting England and to her 6 year old son. The woman, whose husband (still in Malaysia) had recently converted to Islam, objected to the fact that if she returned her husband would insist their son be raised as a Muslim and circumcised. The court concluded that returning the mother and her son to Malaysia would not violate their rights under the European Convention on Human Rights.

Read the rest here.

P.S. Fixed the link.

By the Millions Egyptians Demand End to Islamist Rule

CAIRO — Millions of protesters filled streets across Egypt on Sunday, loudly calling for Mohamed Morsy to resign on the one-year anniversary of his presidency.

The turnout in the capital far exceeded the large demonstrations of the 2011 revolution that ousted Morsy's predecessor, Hosni Mubarak.

People filled Tahrir Square, epicenter of the 2011 uprising, and jammed Nile River bridges leading into it. They converged from all areas of Cairo — from poor to upper-class — chanting and waving Egyptian flags.

Column after column of marchers passed the presidential palace with a deafening roar of “Leave!”

Many waved red cards, symbolizing those used by soccer referees to eject players from a game. They blew horns, banged drums and honked car horns to chants of “The people want the downfall of the regime!”

It was the largest display of public anger against Morsy and his ruling Muslim Brotherhood, which seized parliamentary control after Mubarak's fall.

Read the rest here.

Group calls criminalizing drug use "Human Rights violation"

On the eve of a major conference on drug problems in the Western Hemisphere, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday that jailing people for personal drug use constitutes a human rights violation and called for abolishing criminal penalties.

“To deter harmful drug use, governments should rely instead on non-penal regulatory and public health policies,” the organization said in a statement released at a news conference in Guatemala, where the annual general assembly of the Organization of American States this week will focus on the drug policies of member governments. “Subjecting people to criminal sanctions for the personal use of drugs, or for possession of drugs for personal use, infringes on their autonomy and right to privacy.”

Read the rest here.

Prohibition...

Unbelievably stupid? Yes.
Human Rights violation? Not even close. These people are trivializing a very weighty legal concept.

South Korea faces quandary over potential human rights probe of North

SEOUL — The United Nations’ human rights chief declared recently that the time had come for a “long overdue” investigation into what she called unparalleled rights abuses in North Korea. The probe, unprecedented in scope, could help establish whether the North’s leaders are committing crimes against humanity.

Navi Pillay’s January proposal has already drawn support from the United States. But the decision has proved sensitive in South Korea, where leaders remain divided over whether to confront the North or try to somehow reduce tensions with it, even after Pyongyang last week detonated an underground nuclear device. 

Read the rest here.

Israeli Colonists Brace For Obama Visit

...At the heart of the dispute is Israel’s policy of building homes for Jewish settlers building communities built on land that the Palestinians feel is vital to a future state.

“We are a force to be reckoned with,” said Yigal Dilmony, deputy general manager of the Yesha Council which represents 360,000 Jews who have settled in East Jerusalem and the West Bank (what they call Judea and Samaria). “The reality on this territory is that we can’t be ignored.”

Late last year, the Israeli government announced it would speed up the start of construction of around 3,500 homes for settlers, connecting Ma’aleh Adumim to Jerusalem in an area known as E1 on the planners’ maps.

The settlers’ progress appeared unstoppable. But in 2013, the political landscape at home and abroad shifted.

In December, in a rare public show of unity, every member of the United Nations Security Council except the United States condemned the expansion plans. In January, U.N, human rights investigators said Israel must stop settlement expansion and remove all Jewish settlers from the occupied West Bank, saying that its practices could be subject to prosecution as possible war crimes.

Read the rest here.

Muslim Brotherhood calls on Egyptian Jews to come home

A high-ranking Muslim Brotherhood official called on Jews who immigrated to the Jewish state from Egypt to return to their native country and leave Israel to the Palestinians, Egyptian daily Al-Masry Al-Youm reported on Friday.

Senior Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood official Essam el-Erian said in an interview to television station Dream TV that every Egyptian has the right to live in Egypt, and Egyptian Jews living in Israel were contributing to the occupation of Arab lands, according to the newspaper.

Read the rest here.

My still slightly feverish brain reels.

A rising tide of Tibetan self-immolations

As China’s Communist Party prepares for its leadership transition, a wave of self-immolations has spread and accelerated across Tibet, in the most sustained protests against Beijing’s rule there in five decades.

Most of those who have set themselves afire are in their late teens or early 20s, activists said. Exiled Tibetan political leaders and scholars described the actions as an emphatic rejection of the economic development and material gains that China is offering the Tibetan people and an anguished call for independence and the return of the region’s religious leader, the Dalai Lama.

Read the rest here.

Taliban guns down teen girl for advocating education

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A 14-year-old Pakistani student who won international acclaim for speaking out for girls barred from school by the Taliban was critically wounded Tuesday by a gunman who boarded her school bus, asked for her by name, aimed his pistol at her head and fired, officials said.

The Pakistani Taliban asserted responsibility for the attack on ninth-grader Malala Yousafzai, who gained notice in early 2009 when she wrote a diary about Taliban atrocities under a pen name for the BBC’s Urdu service. Yousafzai lives in Mingora, a city in the scenic northwestern Swat valley, where Taliban insurgents imposed harsh Islamic law for two years before being routed by a major military operation in May 2009.

Read the rest here.

These people are barbarians. That said what goes on in Pakistan is not our government's business.

Syrian diplomats are expelled as outrage over massacre grows

The United States and a string of other nations expelled Syrian diplomats Tuesday, in response to a United Nations announcement that most of the 108 victims of the Houla violence had been executed.

The State Department said it had decided to expel Charge d'Affaires Zuheir Jabbour from the U.S., an action mirrored by Australia, Canada, Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy, France, and Germany. 

"We hold the Syrian government responsible for this slaughter of innocent lives," a spokesman for the department said.

Images of bloodied, young bodies laid out in a shallow grave after Friday's onslaught triggered shock around the world and underlined the failure of a six-week-old U.N. cease-fire plan to stop the violence.

Read the rest here.