Spiegel Online has posted a fascinating interview with Rafi Eitan, a former Mossad agent who is now a minister in the Israeli cabinet. According to Eitan, Mengele was also in Buenos Aires when Eichmann was captured -- and would have shared Eichmann's fate but for the Mossad's lack of boots on the ground: SPIEGEL: Josef Mengele fled Germany for South America...
I hereby nominate all Kenyans for US citizenship: All 22 countries in a BBC World Service poll would prefer Democratic nominee Barack Obama elected US president instead of his Republican rival John McCain. Obama is preferred by a four to one margin on average across the 22,000 people polled. The margin in favour of Obama ranges from just 9 per cent in...
The legal blogosphere is all abuzz about a new study of faculty productivity at law schools outside the US News top 50. Here, according to the study, are the top 10: San Diego, Cardozo, Florida State, Richmond, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago-Kent, Missouri, UNLV, and Brooklyn. Some bloggers -- see here and here, for example -- think the study is a useful gauge...
More than two years after his acquittal was confirmed by the ICTR Appeals Chamber, Rwanda's former Minister of Education, Andre Rwamakuba, is no longer a virtual prisoner in a UN safehouse in Arusha: Former Rwandan Education Minister Andre Rwamakuba ( 58) has joined his family at Vaud, Switzerland after spending two years in Arusha, seat of the International Criminal Tribunal for...
It's a tiny bit off topic, but it's worth noting that after much bluster about how the ICC was destroying the "peace process" in the Sudan by indicting Bashir, none of the Security Council members put deferring the prosecution under Article 16 of the Rome Statute on the Council's agenda for September. Over at UN Dispatch, our colleague John Boonstra...
Eric Posner has a new post at The Volokh Conspiracy, "Surge of Ignorance," in which he quotes a number of New York Times columnists expressing skepticism toward the surge and then links -- in a different color font, for emphasis -- to a NYT article entitled "U.S. Hands off Pacified Anbar, Once Heart of Iraqi Insurgency." Posner offers no editorial...
I had resolved to say nothing about Sarah Palin -- really I had. But since I was sent home from school in Junior High for eliminating the "under God" part of the Pledge of Allegiance when it was my turn to read it over the school intercom, I just couldn't let this go. Palin was asked in 2006, during her...
My blogging has slowed down the past couple of weeks, because I've been traveling and finishing a book chapter that criticizes Moreno-Ocampo's approach to deciding which situations to investigate. (See my previous post.) But I would be remiss if I did not mention this interesting piece of news -- the Fifth Circuit has reversed the district court's dismissal of the...
The Guardian seems to think so: A coalition of human rights lawyers, academics and leading non-governmental organisations (NGOs) has begun openly to criticise the competence and conduct of the prosecutor of the international criminal court, the Argentinian Luis Moreno-Ocampo. Their concerns follow his announcement last month that it is to seek an arrest warrant for genocide against the Sudanese president, and...
I know politics makes strange bedfellows, but this is ridiculous: Two unlikely allies met for breakfast last month in New York to discuss a possible collaboration: Mia Farrow, actress and passionate activist for Darfur refugees, and Erik Prince, founder and CEO of the government contractor, Blackwater Worldwide. Farrow told ABC News that Blackwater, despite its controversial history and allegations of murdering civilians...
The Language Trainers Group has a great new on-line game: trying to guess what country 16 people with different accents are from. It's called, not surprisingly, Can You Guess Where My Accent Is From? I scored a 28 -- a full 10 points higher than Blake Hounsell, who tipped me off to the game at FP Blog. And yes, I could...
I've missed Eric Muller's blogging at Is That Legal? -- but he has obviously put his free time to good use, because his new article on the Supreme Court's decision in Hirabayashi v. United States is sensational. Here is the abstract: This Article presents newly discovered archival evidence demonstrating that government lawyers told a crucial lie to the United States Supreme...
