So the financial crisis has definitively moved from being a Wall Street phenomenon featuring a certain amount of European schadenfreude to a global crisis in which European banks are just as involved as American ones. That it is a global crisis and not merely an American one means two things. First, early on in this financial mess, the sense that...
Two interesting trials involving very old defendants began last week. The first, in Poland, involves General Wojciech Jaruzelski, who orchestrated the Polish government's brutal repression of Solidarity in 1981: The 85-year-old man, who was once the very symbol of communist repression, faces a possible ten-year jail sentence for “directing a criminal organisation” – a reference to the Military Council that imposed...
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 have blogged in the past about the growing phenomenon of 'libel tourism' and its chilling effects upon free expression, as well as some (really, considering the free expression issues under threat, quite modest) New York state and US federal legislative efforts to deal with it. It amounts to using English courts and their views on libel, together with the...
I wrote a couple of weeks ago about my experiences in Georgia in the early 1990s, monitoring the various conflicts - Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and the then-Georgian civil war in Tbilisi. I noted that those secessionist conflicts were marked on each side by ethnic cleansing as extreme as anything I saw in the Yugloslav wars (a country which I also...
Take a look at this commentary about Russia invading Georgia: In order to be able to deny the invasion of Russian troops, it was first stated that some villages on the Georgian frontier had revolted, embittered by the tyranny of the, Georgians...
I have this gnawing suspicion that the only two law professors deeply interested in battlefield robotics are Glenn Reynolds and me. Nonetheless, when it comes to battlefield bots and the law, you can take satisfaction that you will have Heard It Here First, unless, of course, you read Instapundit. As I've said in earlier posts on this subject (and here and...
For anyone following the situation in Georgia and US/ Russian relations, there was a very interesting statement and Q&A today from Secretary of State Rice, who is in Brussels for meetings at NATO. Among other things, she announced the creation of a new NATO-Georgia cooperative framework and also discussed the concerns about isolating Russia. Among other topics, she also answered questions about...
Following is a statement that Secretary of State Rice made today in Tbilisi regarding the sirtuation in Georgia, the cease-fire agreement, and next steps. I have also included an excerpt from her Q&A with reporters and highlighted throughout a few parts that I thought were particularly interesting. SECRETARY RICE: Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, as President Bush noted in his statement a couple...
Our friend John Boonstra at UN Dispatch calls attention to a little-used provision of the UN Charter that requires members of the Security Council to abstain from voting on substantive matters when they are a party to a dispute. Here is the text of Article 27(3): Decisions of the Security Council on all other matters shall be made by an affirmative...
The New York Times has posted online the (possibly fraying) cease-fire agreement concerning the conflict in Georgia. At the time of its signing, President Sarkozy had said something to the effect that this is not a document for a lasting peace, but rather just to stop the shooting. Looking at the text, I can see why he wanted to make that clear. ...
According to Interfax, Russia is considering referring the situation in South Ossetia to the ICC. It quotes Russia's Prosecutor General, Yury Chaika, as saying that he "doesn't think setting up a special [international] court is necessary. Complaints and applications from our citizens which will be referred to the International Criminal Court would suffice." That's an interesting statement, given that Russia...
