Okay, it's official. We have lost the Iraq war: In an unannounced move, the House cafeteria has removed the terms "freedom fries" and "freedom toast" from its offerings, and has reverted to using the dishes' more common names, "french fries" and "french toast." Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH), who had implemented the change in 2003 in a fit of hollow...
Today will be Peter Spiro's final day guest-blogging. On behalf of all of us, I want to thank him for his stint -- which was, by any account, a smashing success. We wish him well in his new position at Temple! ...
An Old Bailey judge involved in the Official Secrets Act prosecution of Leo O'Connor and David Keogh ruled on July 18th that the public cannot learn the contents of the infamous leaked document detailing a conversation between Bush and Blair in which Bush allegedly expressed his desire to bomb al-Jazeera's headquarters in Iraq: Any discussion of an already partially leaked...
For those who are interested, Steve Clemons of The Washington Note is actively covering John Bolton's confirmation hearings. If Clemons' first few posts are any indication, things aren't going very well for the nominee, whose disastrous interim stint at the UN seems to be rightfully coming back to haunt him:1. Senator Hagel is now undecided on whether to support...
The NYT recently ran an interesting article discussing how the Bush administration's policy of cutting military aid to countries that refuse to sign Article 98 agreements with the U.S. has undermined the war against terror in Africa: Last year, the United States cut off $13 million for training and equipping troops in Kenya, where operatives of Al Qaeda killed 224...
I followed the recent discussion about proportionality jus in bello with great interest — and reluctantly agree with Professor Anderson that Louise Arbour’s position is inconsistent with Article 51 of Protocol I. It is also worth noting that her position is even less defensible in terms of the Rome Statute, because there are two critical differences between Article...
The U.S. appeared before the UN Human Rights Committee on Monday — its first appearance since 1995 — to report on its implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Notably, Matthew Waxman, Principal Deputy Director for Policy Planning at the State Department reiterated the U.S. view that the ICCPR does not apply extraterritorially and thus...
The Bush administration plans on asking Congress for another $110 billion to finance its Iraq fiasco, which would bring the total spent on Iraq to more than $400 billion. But don't expect it to help Americans get out of Lebanon. What, you think the U.S. is made of money?Lebanon Situation Update - July 15, 2006 July 15, 2006 This information is current...
After two years of pre-trial activity, nearly all of the 1,545 gacaca courts in Rwanda formally began trials on Saturday. Only 118 such courts had previously conducted trials, a kind of "pilot" program for the gacaca system. Gacaca courts were introduced in 1999 as a way of dealing with the hundreds of thousands of Rwandans accused of involvement in the...
According to a little-noticed Office of the Prosecutor press release two weeks ago, the ICTR has held that the occurrence of genocide in Rwanda is a matter of "common knowledge" and will no longer have to be proven at trial: The Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda on 16 June 2006 ruled that the Trial Chambers must take...
Number of Employees in the Ministry of Fisheries: 401 Number of Employees in the Ministry of Defence: 64 ...
When I first interviewed for my present position at the University of Auckland, I was also invited to interview at the University of Western Australia, in Perth. Not having been to the Southern Hemisphere, I did what all good geographically challenged Americans do — I looked at the map and estimated that it would take two or three hours...
