Imagine a future where Bibi and Biden and Sinwar share cell at International Criminal Court

On a day when our media were preparing to celebrate the demise of “the butcher of Tehran” in a helicopter crash, Lady Luck peed in the punchbowl with the news that the International Criminal Court had applied to the International Court of Justice for arrest warrants for the leaders of Hamas, and, cinch up your seatbelts and don the oxygen masks, the Greatest Leader of the Chosen People since Moses! If granted, that means both Israel and Hamas leaders will be wanted on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. That’s not gone over well with the government of Israel. Any equivalency between a virulently antisemitic terrorist death cult and the democratic government of the only democracy in the middle east etc is nothing but a vile blood libel against the Jewish people blah blah blah… The Cotler-Farber gang will be burning up the phone lines today making sure the CBC, Globe, and the PMO get the correct message out. There is no equivalency between Netanyahu and Sinwar! And they’re absolutely right. Sinwar launched an attack that lasted for many hours and claimed the lives of some 1200 Israelis. Netanyahu’s retaliation is in it’s eighth month and has claimed the lives of at least 35,000 Palestinians. Irwin and Bernie are right; there’s no equivalency whatsoever!

Gbagbo slips shackles, sheds white man's burden

If you read up on the International Criminal Court, you will find that it has since 2002 been in the business of prosecuting the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.

One of the problems critics of the ICC have consistently pointed out is that this "international" court can only ever find genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in Africa. See for instance my very cleverly titled Bwana still wields the whip in Africa.

As I pointed out in 2013, and also in the previous ICC batting .500 in Negro League, this Afrocentric approach to international criminality is a distinct hangover from the colonial era. What good is our ongoing (and forget all that claptrap about post-colonialism - it has never ended) civilizing mission to the Dark Continent without some enforcement mechanism? As we all know, the Nations of (white) Virtue have well-functioning judicial systems and are well-equipped to root out their own war criminals, and the fact they never find any after exhaustively investigating themselves just underscores the efficacy of this system.

The Africans are another story. African elites have a dismal record of investigating themselves, which is why they get so much international assistance in these matters. It was French commandos from the colonial mother ship who whisked Laurent Gbagbo off to The Hague over ten years ago.

After a ten year plus roller-coaster of trial-conviction-appeal-acquittal, Gbagbo is once again a free man and back home in Ivory Coast, preparing a political comeback.

I wish him every success. It is my hope that he and other African leaders will join forces and establish an African Criminal Court, the remit of which would be to abduct non-Africans from Europe and America and bring them to trial for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. 

There are ample suspects to choose from.

Alzheimer Air: America's first black president belatedly takes to the skies, almost missing flight on Air Force One out of Israel

Well, what else could Obama do? Leave the first black president wandering aimlessly about the tarmac?

Bill and Barry had taken Air Force One to Shimon Peres' funeral, where both of them laboured to lard up the deceased mostly fabricated reputation as a "man of peace," an exercise in revisionism that did not go unnoticed even in mainstream news platforms.

But watch this charming interaction between America's first and second black presidents.

Bill! Let's go!

That video clip does a brilliant job in humanising two men who each have more blood on their hands than anybody who has sat in the dock at the ICC thus far.

International Criminal Court nabs another naughty Negro

I think that takes the ICC's record over almost twenty years to four black Africans and... and nobody else.

That's right! While the ICC's mandate is to prosecute genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, the ICC can only find these heinous crimes among black Africans.

Latest heinous war criminal to be exposed is Ahmed al Mahdi. His crime? He ordered the destruction of some historical mausoleums in Timbuktu.

Yup, he's admitted that he is a war criminal. The story got big-time press all over the Nations of Virtue. Even my Globe and Mail had a fawning editorial about how great this breakthrough was for the cause of humanity and civilization.

As well it should be... after all, what could be a worse case of war crimes or genocide or crimes against humanity than ordering the destruction of historical artefacts that Western elites consider "important?"

Which is where this story confuses me.

If ordering the destruction of historical artefacts is a "war crime," what is causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians with a brutal sanctions regime?

What is it when you cause tens of thousands of Iraqis to die in an illegal invasion?

What is it when you destroy entire societies like Libya and Syria?

Apparently, whatever it is when you do those things, it doesn't rise to the level of "war crime" or "crime against humanity."

No, because if it did, we'd have to ask why Tony Blair and George W. Bush and Barack Obama aren't being prosecuted for their crimes against humanity.

The ICC; easing the White Man's Burden one African leader at a time

That was the title of a blog post I wrote three years ago.

What's changed?

Well, other than a few more Black dudes doing prison time, and a couple more having had close calls, escaping their fate only because of their perceived value to the Nations of Virtue (Kenyatta?), nothing. The ICC still can't find a White war criminal anywhere in the world!

That a supposed "international" court based in a country with a rich history of slave-trading and colonial exploitation should spend its energies exclusively on ferreting out criminality among its former victims is a grotesquerie beyond belief.

Phoney Tony claims he's not in it for the money

"It" being the web of consultancy contracts he nurtures through his Tony Blair Associates which have made him a millionaire many times over since he left politics.

He also remains in denial about his role in the destruction of Iraq. Tony was the highest profile international leader to back up W in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. According to Tony, there is no connection whatsoever between the non-stop death spiral that country has been in since then, and that invasion. Blair's backing was by far the single most important bit of foreign support that allowed Bush to pass off the invasion as some sort of international joint action, instead of just another adventure in American imperialism.

Yes, Bush could have and perhaps would have done it without him, but Blair's contribution to the devastation of Iraq, the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, the displacement of millions, remains his legacy.

And if the ICC were ever to consider establishing some credibility by broadening its mandate beyond black African war criminals, Tony Blair would be a good place to start.

"First World" already meddling in 2015 Ivory Coast election

The national newspaper of record (no, that is not ever going to be the National Post) today had a story for me penned by none other than former Canadian PM Joe Clark.

Follow Mandela's example in Ivory Coast.

Jolly Joe scored a trip to Ivory Coast courtesy of the National Democratic Institute. His mission is to check the temperature on the ground to see if those black folks are ready for democracy.

Throw Mandela's name at me and I'll read anything, at least for awhile.

I was doing OK till I happened upon this manure pile;

The NDI was invited by President Alassane Ouattara to send a neutral international panel to speak and listen to the leaders of parties, religious groups, civil society...

Excuse me?

The National Democratic Institute is a neutral international panel?

No, Joe, the NDI is 100% a creation of the US government! How far would your head have to be up your ass to call that "neutral?"

And by the way, Joe, Ouattara is an IMF bumboy installed at the pleasure of the USA, while the guy who should be president of the Cote d'Ivoire is languishing among the naughty niggers in the holding cells at ICC HQ in The Hague.

Have you noticed yet that the ICC can only find BLACK criminals?

The fact that two years out we get anti-Gbagbo propaganda delivered via mainstream media platforms tells you who has been anointed to win the next election.

That's democracy?

Butt Naked finds Jesus

I remember reading about this guy twenty years ago. Milton Blahyi, aka General Butt Naked, was a war-lord marauding across the Liberian countryside with his band of child soldiers. He was truly one of the baddest of the bad. Ritualized rape, human sacrifices, cannibalism; there literally were no limits.

By his own account Blahyi killed at least 20,000 with his own hands.

So where is he now?

Why, still right there in Liberia. But now he is a soldier in God's army, ministering to a thriving Christian congregation in Monrovia. He's on Facebook.

General Butt Naked is truly a man of faith. For the first half of his life his faith in nativist voodoo protected him from bullets.

Now his faith in Jesus protects him from the ICC.

Truly a heart-warming tale of redemption!

The rehabilitation of Uruhu Kenyatta

Kenyatta has gone from international pariah to president of Kenya to esteemed chappie having secret meetings with John Kerry in remarkably short order.

This is bound to frost the do-gooders at Amnesty and HRW, who have been braying for the crucifiction of Kenyatta since 2007.

And it serves to underline what's really important to the Big Dogs of the West; we are quite prepared to overlook a man's crimes against humanity if he can be of use to us.

International Criminal Court bags another Bad Black African War Criminal

It's game over for Congolese warlord Bosco Ntaganda. He'll be enjoying the hospitality of the Nations of Virtue at The Hague within days. Apparently he is culpable in the deaths of "at least 800" civilians in the Democratic Republic of Congo from 2002 to 2003.

If the ICC were ever to expand it's mandate to include Bad White War Criminals, here's a brief list just to get them started:

Tony Blair, suspected of causing the deaths of "at least 800" Afghan civilians from 2001 till he stepped down, and "at least 800" Iraqi civilians from 2003 on.

George W. Bush, see above.

Donald Rumsfeld, see above.

General David Petraeus, see above.

These famous white faces have avoided the long arm of the ICC forever, but since they have far more blood on their hands than the parade of petty African despots who have appeared before the Court I'm sure it's only a matter of time...

Bwana still wields the whip in Africa

Seems more than a little untoward that we are once again seeing Africans being dragged off to Europe in chains to be judged before a tribunal of white men.

That was the spectacle at the International Criminal Court at The Hague today as judicial hearings began that will determine whether former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo should be tried for crimes against humanity.

Gbagbo was removed from office and from Ivory Coast by French forces after a disputed election in 2010. That paved the way for France's and the West's pick for the Presidency, Alassane Ouattara, to take the reins. Ouattara is a former IMF functionary and knows how the game is to be played.

What would be gratifying is to see African commandos swoop down on Paris or London or Lisbon and spirit some of their former colonial masters back to Africa to account for their crimes.

Does "statehood" allow Palestinians to take Israel to International Criminal Court?

Maybe and maybe not.

This op-ed in the Jerusalem Post seems to hedge its bets.

Looking on the bright side, they figure it would take a good ten years to have a case at the ICC get to a place where any senior IDF types or politicos would have to make travel plans.

A lot can happen in ten years.

Why all war criminals are black and African

The LA Times wrestles with this question today. Unfortunately they're a little circumspect with their answers.

There are plenty of folks who'd like to see the Bush gang face war crime charges for what they've wrought in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past ten years or so. Rumsfeld, Cheney, maybe even W himself.

But guess what!? The US doesn't recognize the International Criminal Court! Besides, these guys are white Americans.

There are plenty of folks in the occupied territories and Gaza who'd like to see a number of IDF brass and senior Israeli politicians charged with war crimes. Guess what? Israel doesn't recognize the ICC either! Besides, those guys are white Israelis.

Ditto Putin in Chechnya or Blair and Cameron over Iraq and Afghanistan. There are certainly people willing to make the case that these leaders should be held accountable.

But they won't be.

There are three conditions that have to be met before the ICC will pursue a case.

The war criminal is never a war criminal until he is on the losing side.

The war criminal needs to have lost the support of his sponsors in the so-called developed world.

And finally, the war criminal needs to be expendable. We in the enlightened West can countenance the most egregious human rights violations so long as the perpetrators are seen to be furthering our interests. Failing that, they're toast.

And that pretty much leaves the black Africans.

Massa's back; the ICC rolls back post-colonialism

Laurent Gbagbo began his trial before the ICC today.

Looking a little forlorn, Gbagbo assured the court on the first day of the proceedings that he was being treated well, that the food was good if not great, and that he had enough blankets to keep warm in the often blustery Netherlands autumn.

When you read the dossier compiled against Gbagbo, what strikes you is the pedestrian nature of his so-called crimes. Was he a tyrant? Maybe, but certainly no worse than many tyrants the West continues to support today.

When he refused to slink willingly into the dustbin of history after the recent Ivory Coast elections, he wasn't doing anything that many who have come out on the short end of the democratic process have done.

Does Honduras ring a bell?

Unfortunately, his opponent had the support of the former colonial power.

And this is the problem with the ICC.

When you look at who is deemed prosecution-worthy and who isn't, it becomes obvious that the ICC is a tool of the colonial masters.

Its mission is nothing less than rolling back the last fifty years of history in the former colonies.

Gbagbo's real crime was annoying the former colonial masters, the same crime that cost President Zelaya his job in Honduras.