*** From [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Tomasz Iwanowski) URL for this article: http://emperors-clothes.com/letters/schmitz.htm
Join our email list at http://emperors-clothes.com/f.htm Receive articles posted on Emperor's Clothes. Please feel free to re-post articles but please quote rather than paraphrasing. Please credit the author(s) if you use our work. And please give the article's Web address so people can check the documentation. www.tenc.net * [Emperor's Clothes] ====================================== A Reader Asks: "WHICH INTERNATIONAL 'COURT' IS TRYING MILOSEVIC?" ====================================== Regarding Ian Johnson's report, "The Judge As Prosecutor: Two Days At The "Trial" Of Slobodan Milosevic,' at http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/ian/day.htm a reader wrote in, asking us to sort out which "international court" is which. Here is her letter and a quick reply. Dear Friends, I found this a very shocking report to read. It also brought me up short against my own ignorance. I knew nothing about how the court in the Hague was founded, funded etc. Is this the International court to which the US was brought by Nicaragua for mining its harbors at Corinto? Or is that another institution? Also what is the International Criminal Court that was in the process of being established and which the US repudiated. Who was doing that and who was funding it? I'm not sure you have the time to help unconfuse me, but if it could be done easily, I'd surely appreciate it. Gladys Schmitz, Minnesota * * * Dear Gladys, Thanks for your note. Here is a brief and not-complete answer. I encourage others to write in as well. The court in which the US was charged by Nicaragua is the ICJ - the International Court of Justice. It makes no pretense of overriding sovereignty. Therefore all parties to a dispute must agree to grant the Court the authority to rule. (1) The ICTY or Hague 'tribunal' is quite a different matter. It was formed illegally by the UN Security Council in 1993. Why illegally? Because the UN charter does not grant the Security Council the right to form judicial bodies or even to make judicial rulings. Therefore it cannot impart that right to its creation. Moreover though the SC does have the right to intervene militarily to stop one nation from invading another, the UN has no other authority to override sovereignty. Thus when the SC gave the ICTY the rights to override sovereignty and make judicial rulings, it imparted two rights it does not possess onto a 'tribunal' it had no right to create. Other than that, no problem. For two good articles on the illegality of the 'tribunal' see FURTHER READING at the end. (2) In addition, the ICTY and its equally illegal sister, the Rwanda 'tribunal' or ICTR, have given themselves rules that violate all accepted legal standards. These rules are reminiscent of the Inquisition. (3) An example of these amazing rules: as Ian Johnson notes, the Judge and Prosecutor are part of the same team. And this team is directly controlled by the leading Western powers, the US, England, Germany and France, with "don't-forget-me" status for Holland, the Scandinavian countries, Italy, and so on. (4) The ICC - International Criminal Court - overcomes the basic illegality of the ICTY and the ICTR by getting states to vote in their parliaments to accept its jurisdiction. Thus these states voluntarily (or supposedly voluntarily) cede sovereignty to this "court." While that makes the ICC harder to attack, it does not necessarily make it better than the Hague and Rwanda 'tribunals'. The function of the Hague 'tribunal,' for example, is to a) punish Yugoslav leaders who have resisted the New World Empire's efforts to break up Yugoslavia and to b) provide a compliant media with sound bites, images, and judicial-sounding statements to indoctrinate tens of millions of people with the false the impression that the Yugoslav resistance is racist, anti-humanitarian, etc. But with the ICC, just as with the Hague 'tribunal,' the prosecutors will in fact represent the great powers. How can it be otherwise? Just as, since the demise of the USSR, the UN has come largely under the domination of the New World Empire, so the staff of the ICC will be dominated by the covert apparatus of the Empire, including NGOs funded directly or indirectly by the Empire, and supposed humanitarian groups, like Human Rights Watch which, if you examine their directors, you will find are dominated by the US foreign policy elite. This Imperial-dominated court will have the media's ear, whereas target countries will be much weaker, perhaps already demonized in the Western media, attacked by pro-Imperial forces from within, lacking the resources and media connections to counter campaigns of accusation and innuendo aimed at proving they are the "latest Nazis led by the latest Hitler." Thus a legally constituted body such as the ICC will, I am afraid, be used for precisely the same purposes as the Hague 'tribunal.' The main difference: instead of being limited to Yugoslavia, the ICC will be able to single out any country that dares to resist Imperial plans. For example, should the Empire use some group - with grievances real, or imagined, or both - as a wedge to destroy some nation, covertly encouraging terrorist actions, while publicly calling for 'dialogue,' and should that nation's leaders think of resisting, the threat of indictment can be employed to make them think twice. And once some leaders or soldiers or whomever are indicted and perhaps destroyed by the ICC, the threat won't have to be actually made in order to be effective. Thus we have judicial terror effecting Imperial goals. In response to an earlier criticism I made of the ICC, a reader wrote, asking, "Then what is your solution to the problem of humanitarian abuses?" Well, I have no grand solution. My answer is to inform and mobilize ordinary people to fight injustice. Relying on super-national bodies in a world dominated by a handful of big powers - who are organized in an Empire - is no solution. It merely compounds the problem. This may sound bitter but that doesn't mean it's untrue. Best regards, Jared Israel Join our email list at http://emperors-clothes.com/f.htm Receive articles posted on Emperor's Clothes. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? 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