OFF
THE RESERVATION
What
was curious about this announcement were the reservations
attached to it, coupled with the strange news that, although
he was signing it, Clinton was recommending against Dubya
submitting the treaty to the Senate for ratification. In
a statement,
our soon-to-be-ex- President confessed that
"In
signing, however, we are not abandoning our concerns about
significant flaws in the Treaty. In particular, we are concerned
that when the Court comes into existence, it will not only
exercise authority over personnel of states that have ratified
the Treaty, but also claim jurisdiction over personnel of
states that have not. . . .Court jurisdictions over U.S.
personnel should come only with US ratification of the Treaty.
The United States should have the chance to observe and
assess the functioning of the Court, over time, before choosing
to become subject to its jurisdiction. Given these concerns,
I will not, and do not recommend that my successor, submit
the Treaty to the Senate for advice and consent until our
fundamental concerns are satisfied."
BLUEPRINT
FOR GLOBALISM
What
exactly are we signing on to? A look at the Rome
Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), ratified
by a conference of UN bureaucrats on July 17, 1998, reveals
a blueprint for what is nothing less than the judicial arm
of an evolving World State – an international kangaroo
court that neither recognizes nor honors the Western principles
of jurisprudence. The Rome Statute sets out the rules and
regulations governing the ICC, and from the outset it is
made quite clear that the Western liberal (in the classical
sense) concept of justice has little to do with the model
proffered by the architects of the ICC: Part 4, Article
36, section 8 of the Rome Statute sets out the terms of
the mandatory multiculturalism that must dictate the composition
of the Court:
"The
States Parties shall, in the selection of judges, take into
account the need, within the membership of the Court, for:
- The
representation of the principal legal systems of the world;
- Equitable
geographical representation; and
- A
fair representation of female and male judges"
THE
LAW OF MULTI-CULTI
The
"principal legal systems of the world," if we take the measure
of the populations that chafe under their weight, include
Islamic
law, or Sharia, which provides the legal rationale
for a strict theocracy, and the system
of gulags and one-party rule imposed on the Chinese
people by Mao's heirs. These are to be put on a par with
the US
Constitution and the Magna
Carta, along with the Albanian Code
of Lek and, presumably, the prehistoric tribal customs
of Australian aborigines. The result is an authoritarian
structure decorated with "democratic" pediments and egalitarian
flourishes, the perfect product of the nonsense enunciated
in the first words of the Preamble:
"The
States Parties to this Statute, conscious that all peoples
are united by common bonds, their cultures pieced together
in a shared heritage, and concerned that this delicate mosaic
may be shattered at any time . . ."
THE
END OF NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY
But
there is no "shared heritage." Liberty cannot be "pieced
together" out of the Koran,
the Constitution, and the Communist
Manifesto (or the Collected
Works of Deng Xiaoping): it can only be diluted
out of existence altogether, melted into a multicultural
hodgepodge. This nutty universalism
is sticky with sickly-sweet bromides, and sinister in its
simplicity. This "we-are-the-world" "it takes a global village"-ism
disguises a super-centralist profoundly alien regime,
one that arrogates all power to itself. Part 5, Articles
58 and 59 of the Rome Statute authorize the ICC to seize
anyone, anywhere, for any reason: they don't even have to
be accused of war crimes – the ICC prosecutor is authorized
to put out an arrest warrant "to ensure that the person
does not obstruct or endanger the investigation or the court
proceedings." Article 59 disposes of the outmoded concept
of national sovereignty in its description of the conditions
under which those arrested by the authority of the ICC might
secure an interim release pending trial:
"In
reaching a decision on any such application, the competent
authority in the custodial State shall consider whether,
given the gravity of the alleged crimes, there are urgent
and exceptional circumstances to justify interim release
and whether necessary safeguards exist to ensure that the
custodial State can fulfill its duty to surrender the person
to the Court. It shall not be open to the competent authority
of the custodial State to consider whether the warrant of
arrest was properly issued in accordance with article 58,
paragraph 1 (a) and (b)" [i.e., that there are reasonable
grounds to believe that the person has committed a crime
within the jurisdiction of the Court; and that the arrest
of the person appears necessary according to the criteria
set down by the Rome Statute.]
IN
THE COURT OF THE SUN KING
In
the very first Article the architects of the ICC openly
proclaim their hegemonic ambition: "The Court," they declare,
"shall have international legal personality" – an interesting
turn of phrase – and "It shall also have such legal
capacity as may be necessary for the exercise of its functions
and the fulfillment of its purposes." The French Sun King
said it well, and more succinctly: "L'etat,
c'est moi." Article 8, section 2(f) brazenly extends
the authority of the Court to include civil wars, as well
as alleged crimes committed in the course of an international
conflict. Aside from this infringement on the very idea
of sovereignty, however, what is truly frightening is the
specter of a system slated to replace our own legal tradition
of constitutionally limited State power: if and when the
ICC becomes a reality, the American revolution is repealed.
STAR
CHAMBER
Article
64, section 7 of the Rome Statute specifically authorizes
secret trials in "special circumstances," which include
protecting the "right" of "victims" not to undergo "mental
harm" as well as the "national security" concerns of member
states. Article 68, sections 1-6, also deal with the circumstances
in which closed sessions of the Court may be held, evidence
may be withheld from the defense, and the world may be kept
in the dark as to what exactly is going on in The Hague's
International Kangaroo Kourt. Article 72 provides the criteria
by which member States may withhold information from being
introduced in evidence, but gives the Court the final say
– another unsubtle assault on the independence of member
nations. Article 81, section 3[c], avers that the accused
may be held in detention even if acquitted! In the
same spirit, Article 92 introduces a whole new concept of
law to Americans unfamiliar with police state methods: the
idea of the "provisional arrest"! In other words: arrest
them first, and think up some charges later. The only "shared
heritage" that the authors of this abominable document have
the right to invoke is the legacy of absolutism, the long
dark night of Oriental despotism and the divine
right of kings, which was overthrown by the great liberal
revolutions of the seventeenth
and eighteenth
centuries – or so we thought.
WILLFUL
IGNORANCE
The
idea that the ICC is or can be a legitimate means to brings
States to heel and punish the perpetrators of war crimes
is a liberal illusion that hides a sinister purpose: the
overthrow of our Constitution and the substitution of a
globalist oligarchy,
whose windy edicts will have the force of law. A subsidiary
but more immediately useful purpose will be as an organ
of propaganda in the endless wars waged by the Big Powers
against the "rogue states" of the future. Article 53, Section
1 [c] makes it clear that some war crimes are more equal
than others. Even if the prosecutor determines that a war
crime or a "crime against humanity" has indeed been committed,
there could well be "substantial reasons to believe an investigation
would not serve the interests of justice." In that case,
forget it – just as the International
Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the precursor
to the ICC, ignored all evidence of crimes against Serbs
in the recent Balkan wars. In the Rome Statute such willful
ignorance is rationalized and codified.
APPEAL
TO LUCIFER
The
great fear among the American military, and many conservatives,
is that the ICC will indict American soldiers acting under
orders as "war criminals" – and, if Seymour
Hersh's account of the Gulf War is to be believed, then
there is undoubtedly ample basis for this fear. The Rome
Statute forbids the use of "starvation" tactics to defeat
an enemy, and surely this section applies to the embargo
on basic goods to Iraq, which has so far killed hundreds
of thousands of Iraqis, mostly the aged and the very young.
By any measure, the relentless US assault on the virtually
defenseless people of Iraq amounts to a war crime –
but asking the ICC, an agency of the United Nations, which
authorized the sanctions to begin with, to condemn that
crime is like asking Lucifer
to denounce sin. It cannot and will not happen. The real
targets of the ICC will be the political pariahs of the
moment – whatever local chieftain has the effrontery
to defy the will of the globalists and is currently being
portrayed
as the latest incarnation of Hitler.
