Nearly 100 employees recently released an open letter to Microsoft demanding that the company cancel its nearly $500 million contract with the Army to develop an Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS). I will let the employees explain why: The contract's stated objective is to "rapidly develop, test, and manufacture a single platform that Soldiers can use to Fight, Rehearse, and Train that...
The last time Venezuela faced the plight of war, almost 120 years ago, German and British gunboats deployed outside its ports, blockading them. After turbulent times, Venezuela had run out of money and was unable to pay its debts. In a classic display of pre-UN-Charter jus ad bellum, both the German Empire and the United Kingdom felt fully within their...
Call for Written Submissions The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) has opened a call for written submissions on the misuse of criminal law in the areas of sexuality, reproduction, drug use, and HIV. This is an important opportunity for civil society, academics, law makers, human rights experts, community groups and persons affected by the relevant criminal laws, to provide input, including on...
Earlier this month, I attended the opening ceremony of an exhibit on “Women and War” at a museum in the Philippines. A survivor of war time atrocities, Lola Estelita, spoke about her experiences, moving many in the audience to tears. Many other survivors of wartime sexual slavery and atrocities – called the “Lolas” or grandmothers – are now no longer...
I tweeted a link to the presentation, but I thought I might post it here along with the accompanying slides. Here is the abstract: This presentation will argue that the ICC’s newly-adopted crime of aggression is useless, anachronistic, and yet beautiful. The crime is useless because the jurisdictional regime adopted by the Assembly of States Parties ensures that the Court will...
[Marcos Zunino is a Research Fellow at the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law and the author of Justice Framed: A Genealogy of Transitional Justice (CUP 2019). Twitter: @MarcosZunino.] Argentina is a well-known case of transitional justice. From the pioneering 1984 truth commission and the prosecutions that had to be rolled back due...
Though most of the outrage was manufactured and hypocritical, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) deserved criticism for her ill-expressed tweet about AIPAC. But she has more than redeemed herself with this exchange with Elliott Abrams, Trump's Special Envoy to Venezuela, at a House Foreign Affairs Committee meeting yesterday. It is a delight to watch Elliott Abrams' face as he is asked --...
As I was doing some research into the invasion of Cambodia by South Vietnamese and US forces in 1970, I came across two official government accounts of the invasion -- one by the US, the other by Australia, one of the six countries that sent ground troops to Vietnam. They tell a rather different story...
[Alonso Illueca is a lawyer and adjunct Professor of International Law and Human Rights at Universidad del Istmo.] It is highly unlikely that someone would argue that, currently, Venezuela is not affected by a disaster, i.e. a series of events resulting in widespread loss of life, great human suffering and distress, mass displacement and large-scale material damage, which are thereby disrupting...
Amidst all the faux outrage over a Muslim Congresswoman's (admittedly problematic) tweet -- much of it coming from evangelicals who think all Jews will burn in Hell after the rapture and right-wingers who say nothing about blatantly anti-Semitic attacks on George Soros or Israel's support for the deeply anti-Semitic Prime Minister of Hungary -- here is your daily reminder of the...
[Ralph Janik teaches international law at the University of Vienna, Faculty of Law and Webster Private University Vienna. He specializes in the interplay of international law and international relations. Twitter: @RalphJanik] The crisis in Venezuela could enter a new phase. Juan Guaidó recently flirted with the idea of a US intervention on his behalf when he refrained from ruling out to...