RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/18/trump-and-bolton

Twenty years ago—the night of July 17-18, 1998 at the United Nations conference in Rome establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC), to be exact—an American amendment to restrict the role of this new supranational global court had just been overwhelmingly defeated. An observer remarked, “the delegates burst into a spontaneous standing ovation which turned into a rhythmic applause that lasted close to 10 minutes.”

From the delegations of the European Union and from human rights organizations including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and a group now called Human Rights First (all of whom were staffed with many American citizens) came wild cheers and applause throughout the night, as the Rome conference rejected a series of amendments proposed by the United States to place checks on the court.

Nineteen years later in November 2017, ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda officially requested permission from the court’s pre-trial chamber to proceed, for the first time, to investigate U.S. soldiers and officials for alleged “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” in Afghanistan. Human Rights Watch praised the ICC move as a “potential, if long-time overdue, path to justice.” Amnesty International lauded the global prosecutor’s request as “a seminal moment for international justice.”

On September 10, at a Federalist Society luncheon, National Security Advisor John Bolton, speaking for President Trump, responded: “This administration will fight back to protect American constitutionalism, our sovereignty, and our citizens.”

Bolton’s speech was both hard-hitting and highly principled. Rich in historical and constitutional detail, the speech examines the actions of the International Criminal Court in the context of the core principles of American constitutional democracy and the principle that the only legitimate government is government by the consent of the governed. The speech was a tour de force that should be used in classrooms as a clear example of our constitutional morality and democratic sovereignty in action.

Shocked, Appalled, and Principle-Free
Critics immediately launched attacks on Bolton’s speech, but they never responded to his principled arguments in defense of democratic self-government. A hysterical headline on the front page of the New York Times declared “On War Crimes Court, U.S. Sides with Despots, Not Allies.” Human Rights First issued a short statement that Bolton’s announcement was “reactionary fear-mongering.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271349/playing-hardball-hungary-bruce-bawer

Criticize the government of Viktor Orban, prime minister of Hungary since 2010, all you like. But the European Union’s despotic and disgraceful attempt to bring him to heel, which came to a head with a vote in the European Parliament on September 12, has nothing whatsoever to do with the purported “erosion of democracy” in his country.

First, let it be said that the vote itself was a result of a report by Judith Sargentini, a Dutch MEP who belongs to her country’s GreenLeft Party. In the report, Sargentini accused Hungary of “a serious breach…of the values on which the Union is founded,” namely “the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights.” She proceeded to reel off dozens of complaints about the way things work in Hungary.

For example: “Patriarchal stereotyped attitudes still prevail in Hungary with respect to the position of women in society.” (Well, yes, compared to the Netherlands.) She accused Hungarian authorities of prejudice against Roma, or gypsies, because an inordinate percentage of gypsy children are placed in special-education classes. (She gave no indication of entertaining the possibility that the children in question might actually require such classes.) Another grievance was the domination of Hungary’s media by pro-government voices. (As if you couldn’t say the same thing about the media in much of Western Europe.)

Sargentini also cited Orban’s supposed interference with academic freedom. In fact, when Orban took power, many of Hungary’s universities were so insular and ill-managed that the government had to step in and appoint competent rectors; meanwhile some of the new colleges that sprung up in post-Communist Hungary were shady, unaccredited foreign rackets that required oversight and regulation. Last month, the Hungarian government proposed a ban on gender studies, arguing that they were valueless on the job market. You may regard this either as an inappropriate violation of ivory-tower autonomy or as a sane and practical response to inane developments in higher education.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/haley-russian-corruption-is-like-a-virus-could-sicken-un-security-council/

UN Ambassador Nikki Haley tore into Russia at the UN Security Council today for blocking a report showing that the Kremlin and Beijing are “actively working” to undermine the sanctions regime against North Korea.

Haley said the U.S. sought the briefing for “the chance to examine the difference between words and deeds” and to see whether the Security Council’s “efforts to eliminate North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs are being honored and enforced and, if not, why.”

Russia voted for sanctions, she noted, and now wants to ease sanctions on the Kim regime as it wants to pursue economic projects in North Korea. “The question one should ask is why? Why, after voting for sanctions eleven different times, is Russia now backing away from them? We know the answer. It is because Russia has been cheating. And now they’ve been caught,” Haley declared.

“Despite its repeated support for UN sanctions, Russia is actively working to undermine the enforcement of the Security Council’s sanctions on North Korea. Its violations are not one-offs. They are systematic,” she added. “Russia has not simply looked the other way as its nationals and entities engage in activities explicitly prohibited by UN sanctions. Russia has engaged in a concerted campaign in the Security Council to cover up violations of sanctions, whether they’re committed by Russia or citizens of other states.”

Haley said the U.S. “has evidence of consistent and wide-ranging Russian violations” that “should offend every current and former member of the Security Council who knows how difficult it was to gain passage of these sanctions.”

“And it should offend every country that has felt the looming threat of North Korean nuclear weapons,” she added.

One example, she said, was a Russian vessel filmed in April conducting a ship-to-ship transfer of oil with a North Korean tanker.