Since 1955 NORAD (and its predecessor CONAD) has tracked Santa’s each Christmas Eve and has answered questions for boys and girls about his progress. NORAD’s Santa tracking service uses interactive maps updated every few minutes at http://www.noradsanta.org. As Santa stops in each location, you can click an icon to learn more about that part of the world. There are also...
Great interview in Newsweek by Rod Nordland of Somali pirate Shamun Indhabur. My favorite quote is the pirate's plea for good government: Why has there been such an increase Somali piracy? In Somalia all the young men are desperate. There is wide unemployment in the country, there are no sources of income. One of the only sources we have had...
Medecins Sans Frontieres has published their list and report of the top-ten humanitarian disasters of 2008. Africa suffers its disproportionate share: Massive forced civilian displacements, violence, and unmet medical needs in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Iraq, Sudan, and Pakistan, along with neglected medical emergencies in Myanmar and Zimbabwe, are some of the worst humanitarian and medical emergencies in the world,...
The Third Circuit recently had to determine whether a "joint statement" between Germany and the United States regarding Holocaust settlement created a private right of action for alleged violations of Germany to pay interest on the $10 billion DM settlement fund. It presents an interesting question of whether the document should be interpreted to create a private right of...
Two interesting articles today about countries that want the ICC to get involved in their internal problems. First, the Indian government apparently wants the Court to prosecute Pakistanis who are responsible for masterminding terrorist attacks, including the recent attack in Mumbai: "[h]ighly placed government sources have told TIMES NOW that decks are being cleared by New Delhi to get the...
Scott Horton has a typically excellent post today at Harpers.org discussing the perversity of right-wing commentators who defend the use of torture. But I was troubled by the following comment about the ICC, which he offers in agreement with an old editorial by David Rivkin and Lee Casey: Rivkin’s history is much like that of Reynolds and Goldberg. Back when the...
We interrupt the regularly scheduled Sundays with Stendhal to raise an issue of crucial importance, at least for OJ readers in the northern hemisphere above a certain latitude ...
Having finally resolved the disclosure issue, the Lubanga trial is set to begin on January 26, a little more than one month from today. Unfortunately, the problems with the case continue: The senior trial lawyer in charge of the first case to be tried at the International Criminal Court has been taken off the case little more than...
The great Irish intellectual, scholar, and diplomat Conor Cruise O'Brien has died. Although for many OJ readers, he is remembered most as a diplomat - at the center of the United Nations and the Congo Crisis of 1961 - his greatest influence on me was through his massive study of Edmund Burke, The Great Melody. One passage that O'Brien cited...
No, I don't mean Obama's foreign policy. The Foreign Relations of the United States is the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity; and these days it's in trouble. The tip of the iceberg is the fracas described here and here between the Historian of the Department of State Marc Susser and the Advisory Committee on...
It turns out that all is not lost for the Lisbon Treaty (aka the EU Reform Treaty). It had all the markings of an unperfected treaty after Ireland gave it a "no" vote this past summer via a referendum. (Interestingly, Ireland was the only state to hold one, since negotiators had designed the Reform Treaty to avoid such reviews given what they did to the...
A lawyer and human-rights activist with whom I spent some time while I was in Sarajevo, Adnan Kadribasic, has given me permission to turn his comment to my Karadzic post into a post of its own. I think it's remarkable, and I want everyone to see it. Here it is, edited only for typos: Dear Kevin, I support all of your...
