While the events on Oct 7th were horrific and undoubtedly deserved eliminating Hamas, Israel has collectively punished the civilian population of Gaza in the extreme (as they have been doing for years)
Let’s grant the worse case scenario argument against Israel’s actions. Their point still stands: neither Israel nor the USA recognize the authority of the ICC; they have not signed on to the treaty to be governed by it, and hence the ICC does not have the authority to look into either of ther actions.
Crimes against humanity are subject to universal jurisdiction. A state need not be a member of the ICC to be subject to its (or any other entity’s) jurisdiction in investigating, prosecuting, and adjudicating such crimes.
The US does not recognize such an argument. If that is the argument being made, then no wonder the US issued sanctions; it would perceive such a precedent as a threat to its sovereignty.
Not quite: The US helped invent that argument, and has used it extensively to pursue its foreign policy goals since World War II.
What the US has argued historically is that American people and institutions are not subject to it because the US has a functioning civilian and military justice system, and so prosecution for such crimes can be handled within it, even by foreign nations and NGOs.
Obviously that’s a load of bullshit, especially (but not only) these days, but “sovereignty for me but not for thee” has long been the rule and with its weakening international position the US may come to find that to be less achievable in the future.
When has the US used the argument that a judicial system has universal jurisdiction? In the US, foreign policy is the domain of the executive, to the point where court cases involving foreign sovereigns are usually dismissed.
Compared to how much of a mess most of the world's powers are on matters on sovereignty, the US is actually one of the more conservative ones here (e.g., see OFCOM in the UK).
Let me restate: The US position is that the US justice system “works” and thus *US persons and institutions* must be pursued *within the US system* even by foreign entities.
In other words, the US position is not that if (say) North Korea commits a crime against humanity they must be pursued in US courts; the US is fine with the ICC in that case. The US position is that if the US commits a crime against humanity that must be pursued in US courts, not the ICC.
It’s an obvious (and bullshit) double standard, but it’s also not a denial of the legitimacy of universal jurisdiction. It’s just the US, as usual, trying to have its cake and eat it too.
Why is that a double standard? The US position is that recognized nations have sovereignty, and are the supreme law within their jurisdiction. If there is no recognized legitimate sovereign power, then the US is fine with an international body substituting.
That this standard is complicated, and different from those that argue that international law should be the supreme law, doesn't make it a double standard. It's also not what is meant by universal jurisdiction, as it does not depend on overriding sovereignty.
Edit: Seeing your other comment, it's also worth noting this was a large reason why the US didn't sign the Rome statute, since as you note, the US isn't inherently opposed to the idea of international courts, only the supremacy of their jurisdiction.
The US doesn’t believe universal jurisdiction applies to it or its vassal states and proxies, which includes Israel.
On the other hand, the US didn’t try to prevent Slobodan Milošević from being tried at The Hague for war crimes and genocide, as Serbia wasn’t a vassal state or proxy.
They don't want the precedent established. Same reason why uninvolved parties in US courts submit "amicus briefs" - the precedent from a case may affect them down the line.
4 State immunity evolved in close connection to the development of the concept of sovereignty
and the territorial State. It can be traced back to the principle of par in parem non habet
imperium which was mentioned as early as 1354 by Bartolus de Saxoferrato in his Tractatus de
regimine civitatis. It stipulates that a sovereign should not have jurisdiction over another
sovereign.
[...]
22 State immunity entails that a State itself or its property is not subjected to the
proceedings of the court of another State. It does foreclose any proceedings or judgment on the
merits, but does not hinder the service of process and a court decision about the admissibility.
Likewise, it protects the property of a State against any measure taken in relation to the
proceedings.
>Their point still stands: neither Israel nor the USA recognize the authority of the ICC
Many others have already pointed out the fact here - that Palestine is under ICC jurisdiction.
Instead what I want to focus on is WHY YOU DID NOT KNOW THIS, despite the fact that the ICC literally ruled on this matter quite a while ago, specifically. The court itself approached this question, evaluated the evidence, and made a ruling. You missed all that?
"Palestine is under ICC jurisdiction" is the court's claim; that doesn't make it a legal reality. It relies on the theory that PA is the government of Gaza, despite never having controlled it.
ICC also failed to charge Palestinian authority officials for the money they give war criminals who are in prison because of their actions. Palestinian authority joined the ICC in 2015, 10 years ago plenty of time to act.
You can believe in a kind of political "butterfly effect" where every little action you take has a meaningful effect on the world, but I don't think it's useful.
Downloading a browser may well put a thousandth of a smile on the face of someone you think is a bad dude, but if you give a shit about bad things happening in the world this is miles away from a good use of your time and energy.
Uk energy costs are high because the highest cost marginal producer sets the rate i.e. gas powered stations
Many of the new wind farms get a fixed price for energy and when the wholesale price is about that the excess gets channeled into a fund that is used to reduce consumer prices
> SpaceX said it experienced an anomaly with one if its Starlink satellites that was likely caused by a small explosion. "The anomaly led to venting of the propulsion tank, a rapid decay in semi-major axis by about 4 km [2.5 miles] and the release of a small number of trackable low relatively velocity objects,"
Anyone know what relatively low velocity means… I presume it’s still pretty fast otherwise the objects would fall out of orbit immediately
I suppose I should publish this, but a WASM module, in Rust, which just binds [ciborium] into JS only took me ~100 LoC. (And by this I mean that it effectively provides a "cbor_load" function to JS, which returns JS objects; I mention this just b/c I think some people have the impression that WASM can't interact with JS except by serializing stuff to/from bytestrings and/or JSON, which isn't really the whole story now with refs.)
But yes, a native implementation would save me the trouble!
the man who did untold damage to Britain by advocating to Brexit and then left for Singapore
the man who bought up thousands of acres of farmland to avoid inheritance tax
the man who needs go heal himself…
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