Following on his visit to the U.S., President Hu Jintao of China is visiting Africa this week—his second state visit there in three years. As is the case with many such high-profile visits, they are only the tip of the iceberg, Chinese trade and energy officials have recently put a great amount of effort into building up relations throughout Africa....
The Pentagon is in the throes of developing an new and more aggressive plan for military operations in the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). According to the Washington Post, the new (classified) plans cover [A] wide range of overt and clandestine military activities — such as man-hunting and intelligence gathering on terrorist networks; attacks on terrorist training camps and recruiting...
The U.N. and Lebanon are close to a final agreement on the establishment of a what would be a very unique international criminal tribunal to prosecute those responsible for the assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri, AFP reports. In fact, it is Lebanon that is pressing the U.N. to act quickly (rather than the other way around). As the...
I just finished reading Larry Solum's article on Blogging and the Transformation of Legal Scholarship available here. Solum wrote the piece for the Harvard Law School conference on blogging, and without a doubt it is the best piece I have ever read anywhere on the subject of blogging and legal scholarship. Solum argues that blogs can function in two...
From the Daily Telegraph: POLISH authorities have withdrawn permission for the musical Jesus Christ Superstar to be performed at Majdanek, the former Nazi concentration camp, after protests by Jewish groups. The Culture Ministry and the camp's management today said the performance by a local Polish theatre group could not go ahead. "The play was to break down barriers between people, but it turns...
Clive Thompson has a detailed and enlightening story in The New York Times Magazine this weekend on Chinese censorship of the Internet. It definitely is worth a read. There are plenty of juicy tidbits that are fascinating (e.g., China has its own version of "American Idol" known as, I kid you not, "Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Super Girl Contest."). But...
In another blow to international dispute resolution in East Asia, South Korea has partially withdrawn from the compulsory dispute settlement procedures of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which includes resort to the International Court of Justice, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, or a special arbitration tribunal. The S. Korean withdrawal is not...
U.S. Senate majority leader Bill Frist has started his proto-campaign for the U.S. presidency in 2008 by targeting the U.N. In addition to demanding the U.S. stay out of the new Human Rights Council, he is circulating a petition on his blog demanding Iran be removed from the U.N.'s Disarmament Commission. Frist obviously has a point here. The...
The International Monetary Fund released its semiannual World Economic Outlook report yesterday projecting a very rosy world economy. "It would be fair to say to the world, 'You have never had it so good,' " Raghuram Rajan, the IMF's Chief Economist said. "But challenges are building in the background." Still, the most interesting news may be the projected $300 million shortfall...
Here's what's been happening in the world of the ICC: The UN Mission in the Congo, the ICC, and the governments of Germany and the DRC are working to transfer Ignace Murwanashyaka — the FDLR leader whose situation I discussed last week — to the ICC to stand trial. Their efforts are bound to further antagonize the Rwandan government, which...
Andrew Kent has posted on SSRN an important article entitled A Textual and Historical Case Against a Global Constitution, forthcoming in the Georgetown Law Journal. You can read the abstract and download the article here. The broad issue addressed is whether the U.S. Constitution applies to aliens abroad. Kent "challenges the textual and historical grounds advanced to support the...
Tomorrow, China’s President Hu Jintao has a summit scheduled with President Bush that will cover a variety of important topics, ranging from the Iranian nuclear crisis, China’s human rights record, the U.S. trade deficit with China, and China’s undervalued currency. But, its political importance aside, this will simply be one among many meetings Bush will have this year with foreign...
