New Zealand is a remarkably progressive country when it comes to immigration issues. Exhibit A: the government has recently offered permanent residence to Zimbabweans living in New Zealand who fled the Mugabe regime, even those who are HIV+: Yesterday the Government urged hundreds of Zimbabweans who fled the Mugabe regime to come forward and apply for permanent residency under a...
Professor Bell's latest post is extremely unfortunate. Instead of addressing his failure to quote HRW's sentence in its entirety, he not only spins the sentence to somehow support his criticism of the organization, he does so by subtly imputing that criticism to me: If Professor Heller believes that HRW is capable of having seen plausible signs of Hezbollah presence in...
Once again Professor Bell misstates the August 16 New York Times article on which his argument about Hezbollah fighters depends. The article makes it excruciatingly clear that "43 people" refers not to the total number of casualties in Sreifa during the war, but to the number of casualties in the August 13 attack alone: Just days ago, Israeli warplanes pounded...
Professor Bell may stand by his critique of Human Rights Watch, but that doesn't make it any more accurate. Quite simply, he has offered almost no evidence that contradicts Ms. Whitson's claim that although Hezbollah fighters might have been in Sreifa during Israel's attack on August 13, there were no Hezbollah fighters there on July 13 and July 19,...
I have no idea whether this report is true, but I really hope it is:FORMER Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is being made to watch his appearance in cult cartoon South Park while he is behind bars, it emerged yesterday. Speaking at the Edinburgh International Television Festival, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone said US Marines guarding the former dictator...
I read with great interest Professor Bell's analysis of whether the ICC would have jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute President Ahmadinejad for direct and public incitement to genocide. I just want to to point out that the jurisdictional question he discusses is actually more complicated than he suggests. The critical Article is Article 12, "Preconditions to the Exercise of Jurisdiction,"...
Given how interesting the discussion about Roger's post about Ann Althouse and Judge Taylor's decision in the NSA case have been, I think it's worth opening up the discussion to readers who don't necessarily read beyond the comments. The basic question is this: When is a judicial decision an abuse of power? At a minimum, I think, a judicial decision...
For those that are interested, my short essay on whether Saddam is likely to be executed before a verdict is reached in the current Anfal trial is now available at The Grotian Moment. ...
In what is being billed as the first agreement of its kind, the LRA has pledged to protect rare wildlife in a remote park it occupies in eastern Congo, including rare pygmy giraffe and what are thought to be the last four northern white rhinos in the wild: In an apparent bid to burnish their brutal reputation, the Lord's Resistance Army...
This is a landmark month in the history of international law: with the accession of the Republic of Montenegro on August 2, the 1949 Geneva Conventions have become the first international treaty in modern history to achieve universal acceptance. Montenegro also acceded to the two 1977 Additional Protocols, bringing the number of States party to Additional Protocol I to...
According to an unnamed U.S. official, the Iraqi High Tribunal may try Saddam Hussein posthumously if he is executed before a verdict is reached in the Anfal case, which is about to begin: The Anfal trial is to begin on Monday, but a verdict in the other case is expected on October 16, when Iraqi judges will rule on whether...
I know that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of former Nazis still roaming the earth -- but I never thought that their ranks would include a Nobel laureate and anti-war icon. So this certainly came as a suprise: Gunter Grass, Germany's greatest living author and doyen of the left, has confessed that he was a teenage member of...
