Welcome to a Hump Day (“Den hrbolů” in Czech), May 22, 2024, and it’s the blandest of food days: National Vanilla Pudding Day. But it’s better than no pudding at all:
It’s also Sherlock Holmes Day (Arthur Conan Doyle was born on this day in 1859), Canadian Immigrants Day (honoring immigrants to the U.S. from Canada, who have had to give up poutine and good bagels), Harvey Milk Day, International Day for Biological Diversity, and United States National Maritime Day, and World Goth Day.
Here’s a Wikipedia photo labeled: “A Gothic clothing store in 2010.”
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 22 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The testimony in Trump’s criminal trial for hiding Stormy Daniels’ hush money has wound up, and the Trumpster was advised (I suspect) not to testify. Now, after the defense tried really hard to demolish Michael Cohen (I don’t know how successful they were), it’s going to the jury.
Lawyers defending Donald J. Trump in his Manhattan criminal trial rested their case on Tuesday after calling just two witnesses — neither of them the former president — setting the stage for closing arguments next week. The judge overseeing the case said those summations would take place in a week, and he hoped that the jury of 12 New Yorkers could begin deciding Mr. Trump’s guilt or innocence the day after that.
There is still more legal business after both sides return to court later Tuesday, including hashing out instructions to the jury and a long-shot request by Mr. Trump’s lawyers that the judge decide the case in their favor. That request cited what the defense called bogus testimony by Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s onetime fixer, who made a $130,000 hush-money payment to a porn star on the eve of the 2016 election. His reimbursement by Mr. Trump is at the center of the 34 felony counts.
And part of “what you need to know” (don’t you love that patronizing header?):
The charges: The felony charges against Mr. Trump stem from repayments to Mr. Cohen after he made a hush-money deal with Ms. Daniels, who said she wanted to go public with her account before the 2016 presidential election. Prosecutors used Mr. Cohen’s testimony to bolster the charges against Mr. Trump of falsifying business records to conceal the repayments and to hide the deal. Mr. Trump has said he did not have sex with Ms. Daniels and denied any wrongdoing.
Cohen’s testimony: Mr. Cohen testified for four days, describing for jurors an agreement among himself, Mr. Trump and the longtime publisher of The National Enquirer, David Pecker, to suppress negative stories about Mr. Trump. Regarding Ms. Daniels’s account, he testified that Mr. Trump had instructed him to “just take care of it.” He described making the payment and the arrangement for Mr. Trump to reimburse him — including an Oval Office meeting where he said the plan was confirmed. The defense team portrayed Mr. Cohen as an inveterate liar who was seeking revenge against Mr. Trump. Read the highlights from Mr. Cohen’s testimony.
Trump’s retinue: The entourage accompanying Mr. Trump to court on Tuesday included his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., for the first time since the trial began. On Monday, Chuck Zito, a former leader of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang in New York City who spent years in prison on drug charges, was among Mr. Trump’s supporters. Read more about Mr. Zito.
Have a look at the “read the highlights from Mr. Cohen’s testimony” part. It’s hard to tell whether his testimony helped or hurt The Donald, but it wasn’t as hurtful as I hoped it would be. My prediction: Trump will be found “not guilty” because reasonable doubt remains.
*The Wall Street Journal discusses the problems that the International Criminal Court has brought upon itself by proceeding with an indictment against Netanyahu (Gallant, Sinwar, and two Hamas leaders are also subject to indictment). The issue: the ICC has lost credibility by losing U.S. support:
For more than 25 years, the U.S. relationship with the International Criminal Court has veered between idealistic support to outright hostility, with an arm’s length distance being the norm.
Now, with ICC prosecutor Karim Khan announcing he will seek charges against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the Gaza war a year after obtaining an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin over Ukraine allegations, the ICC has asserted the independence its framers imagined—at the likely cost of practical support and diplomatic legitimacy that only superpower backing can bring.
Just weeks ago, the ICC, which for years had been shunned by Republicans and viewed skeptically by many Democrats, was seen in Washington as part of the international effort to hold Moscow to account over its invasion of Ukraine. Sens. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) and Chris Coons (D., Del.) worked together to secure U.S. funding for the ICC, something that would have been unthinkable as recently as 2020, when the Trump administration imposed sanctions on the ICC’s then prosecutor for reviewing war-crimes allegations against U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
On Monday, Graham and Coons joined President Biden in condemning Khan’s move against Netanyahu and his defense chief, Yoav Gallant, who the prosecutor alleges committed war crimes and crimes against humanity by using starvation as a tactic against civilians in Gaza. The charges don’t include genocide, although South Africa has made that allegation against Israel in a separate proceeding before a United Nations tribunal, the International Court of Justice.
. . .Both senators said that Khan had disregarded the ICC’s statutory obligation to act only when a nation can’t or won’t hold high ranking officials accountable, something they said Israel’s legal system had proven capable of doing.
“Prosecutor Khan is drunk with self-importance and has done a lot of damage to the peace process and to the ability to find a way forward,” Graham said on X.
Coons, who has been critical of some Israeli operations in Gaza, said “the ICC is meant to be a court of last resort only” and had stepped beyond that in targeting the Israeli leaders. “I have long supported the ICC, including in its investigation of Russian war crimes in Ukraine, and I hope to continue working with it if it returns to its legitimate role,” he said.
Matthew Waxman, a Columbia University law professor and national-security official in the George W. Bush administration, said the odds of the U.S. eventually joining the ICC have “gone from very low to zero.”
The Court really has lost credibility, at least in my eyes, but even the ICJ’s considering the charge of genocide against Israel is a non-starter, even if the ICJ charges go forward and stick. Hamas is the real practitioner of genocide, and has said so explicitly, but Palestine cannot be charged under the ICJ. But it can, and has, had its inhabitants charged by the ICC, and the Israeli pair are charged with using starvation as a weapon of war. The problem with that is that food was cut off for only 13 days, and since then food delivery has burgeoned: more is coming into Gaza now (and only from the Israeli side) than even before the war. On the other hand, holding hostages from Israel is a war crime, as is firing rockets against civilians, which Hamas and other Gazan terrorists continue to do. But if Netanyahu and Gallant are charged, they’ll be severely limited from now on as to where they can travel, though the U.S. is one place they can go.
Here’s Natasha Hausdorff, an expert in international law and head of UK Lawyers for Israel. She’s smart as hell and quite eloquent. Here she explains the ICC charges:
*Meanwhile, the WaPo enlisted six lawyers to discuss whether the ICC case was sound, ethical, or warranted. Here are three of their diverse responses.
From Avi Mayer, former editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post:
International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan’s announcement that he will seek arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant alongside Hamas leaders Yehiya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh and Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri (better known as Mohammed Deif) has produced a groundswell of anger and indignation that has united the country once again. Netanyahu’s political foes and potential challengers have rallied to his defense, and 106 of the Knesset’s 120 members — including most of the opposition — have signed a statement slamming Khan’s apparent comparison of Israel’s leaders to the mass murderers of Hamas as “scandalous … an indelible historic crime and a clear expression of antisemitism.”
To Israelis, the suggestion of moral equivalence between their democratically elected government — no matter how much they might detest it — and a terrorist group that openly and actively seeks their destruction is repulsive and contemptible. The notion that any comparison could possibly be drawn between the Jewish state, endeavoring to defend itself in the wake of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and the perpetrators of that very massacre — who have promised to repeat it “time and again” until that state is annihilated — is horrifying.
From Kenneth Roth, who was executive director of Human Rights Watch from 1993 to 2022.
The Biden administration’s reasons for condemning the International Criminal Court’s move against Israel and Hamas are confounding. It appears to be grasping for a way to defend senior Israeli officials for their starvation strategy in Gaza — a strategy that senior U.S. officials themselves have repeatedly decried.
President Biden called chief prosecutor Karim Khan’s request for arrest warrants for senior Israeli officials “outrageous,” noting that “there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas.” But Khan did not say there was equivalence; he simply charged both sides for their separate crimes. The dual charges help underscore that war crimes by one side never justify war crimes by the other.
Biden also said the United States “will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.” But the issue is how Israel defends itself. No defense justifies war crimes.
Human Rights was has a long history of being anti-Israel, but whether 13 days of cutting off food is a “war crime” is arguable at best. In fact, Gaza had food for that period, and the “starvation” accusation has about as much merit as does the “Israeli genocide” accusation.
From James A. Goldston, “the executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative.”
As someone who has served within the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, and whose organization has worked closely with the ICC, I welcome Monday’s announcement by the prosecutor.
The court has faced many tests in its first quarter-century. But this is the most important.
It is critical that the panel of judges now reviewing the prosecutor’s request for warrants do so independently, free from any threat or intimidation. And if they ultimately decide to issue one or more warrants, the United States and its allies must support the court, notwithstanding past U.S. objections to its jurisdiction over nationals of nonmember countries. Anything less would be a betrayal of the “international rules-based order” that Washington has proudly defended since Nuremberg.
Of the other three, two are pro-indictment awhile John Bolton thinks the U.S. should ignore the indictment and do what it can to render the ICC illegitimate.
*This Singapore Airlines flight must have experienced some severe turbulence, as one passenger died (albeit from a heart attack).
One passenger died of a suspected heart attack and 30 injured after a Singapore Airlines (SIAL.SI) flight hit severe turbulence on Tuesday, flinging passengers and crew around the cabin and forcing the plane to land in Bangkok, officials and the airline said.
The flight from London and bound for Singapore fell into an air pocket while cabin crew were serving breakfast before it encountered turbulence, prompting the pilots to request an emergency landing, Bangkok Suvarnabhumi airport general manager Kittipong Kittikachorn told a press conference.
The sudden turbulence occurred over the Irrawaddy Basin in Myanmar about 10 hours into the flight, the airline said. The pilot declared a medical emergency and diverted the aircraft to Bangkok, it said without giving further details.. . . . Photographs from the interior of the plane showed large gashes in the overhead cabin panels, gas masks and panels hanging from the ceiling and items of hand luggage strewn around. A passenger said some people’s heads had slammed into the lights above the seats and punctured the panels.
“I saw things lying everywhere and many air crew injured” with bruising, Kittikachorn said after the most critically injured passengers and crew had been evacuated.
A 73-year-old British man died during the incident, likely due to a heart attack, Kittikachorn said. Seven people were critically injured, some with head injuries. He added people were calm as they were led from the plane.
Some tallies of the injured out of the 211 passengers and 18 crew differed.The airline said 18 were hospitalised and 12 being treated in hospitals. Samitivej Hospital said it was treating 71 passengers, including six who were severely injured.
It was not immediately possible to reconstruct the incident from publicly available tracking data, but a spokesperson for FlightRadar 24 said it was analysing data at around 0749 GMT which showed the plane tilting upwards and return to its cruising altitude over the space of a minute.
A passenger who was on the Boeing 777-300ER plane told Reuters that the incident involved the sensation of rising then falling.
“Suddenly the aircraft starts tilting up and there was shaking so I started bracing for what was happening, and very suddenly there was a very dramatic drop so everyone seated and not wearing a seatbelt was launched immediately into the ceiling,” Dzafran Azmir, a 28-year-old student on board the flight told Reuters.
Fortunately, most of the passengers appeared to be wearing their seatbelts (remember to keep yours buckled!). Singapore Airlines has a good safety record, with no casualties since 2000, so this is what they call an “act of God”—if a god could create a pocket of turbulent air.
*The AP reports that a man trying to photograph two baby moose (meese?) was killed by the mother. Its sad for the man and his family, and, worse, this man was experienced enough to know what could happen when chasing moose babies when their mother is surely around. And moose at the best of times are mercurial. The whole tail:
A 70-year-old Alaska man who was attempting to take photos of two newborn moose calves was attacked and killed by their mother, authorities said Monday.
The man killed Sunday was identified as Dale Chorman of Homer, said Austin McDaniel, a spokesperson for the Alaska Department of Public Safety.
The female moose had recently given birth to the calves in Homer.
“As they were walking through the brush looking for the moose, that’s when the cow moose attacked Dale,” McDaniel said.
The attack happened as the two were running away, he said. The second man, who has not been publicly identified, was uninjured.
That person did not witness the attack, so authorities cannot say if the moose killed Chorman by kicking or stomping him, or a combination.
Medics pronounced Chorman dead at the scene. The cow moose left the area, Alaska State Troopers said in an online post.
In 1995, a moose stomped a 71-year-old man to death when he was trying to enter a building on the campus of the University of Alaska Anchorage. Witnesses said students had been throwing snowballs and harassing the moose and its calf for hours, and the animals were agitated when the man tried to walk past them.
Why can’t people leave animals alone, especially when they’re with their young? According to the WaPo, Chorman wasn’t a tyro, either:
Chorman “was intimately familiar with nature, and had no naivete about its danger,” Nathan added in his statement. “This was not a hapless fool stumbling into danger — this was a person who went out looking for a great photo, knowing the risks, and got caught in a dangerous moment. The moose, obviously, is not at fault … she was just protecting her offspring.”
Here’s a moose, also with two babies, attacking a truck. They weren’t trying to harass the trio, just trying to squeeze by.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s working too hard as editor:
Hili: Should I continue working or rest a little?A: Take a break.
Hili: Pracować dalej, czy odpocząć?Ja: Zrób sobie przerwę.
*******************
From Strange, Stupid, or Silly Signs:
And two from Barry (I trust these are real). First, what are the cultural stereotypes here? Italian?
I can’t remember this dire show well enough to know what the stereotypes are:
From Masih, a protestors whose eye was shot out by the Iranian police. Google translation, and there are English subtitles.
I still hear the sound of the bullet you shot in my eye and the sound of my eye bursting. Yes, it is true, we are very happy that the murderers of the most beautiful children of Iran came to an understanding, we are happy that the butcher of the people, Ebrahim Raisi, came to an understanding. And this is the beginning of our celebration. Congratulations to the dear people of Iran.
هنوز صدای گلولهای که به چشمم شلیک کردید و صدای ترکیدن چشمم در وجودم می پیچد.
بله درست است ما بسی خوشحالیم، ازینکه قاتلان زیباترین فرزندان ایران به درک واصل شدند، خوشحالیم که قصاب مردم ، ابراهیم رئیسی ، به درک واصل شد. و این آغاز جشن ماست.
تبریک به مردم عزیز ایران 🥂❤️ pic.twitter.com/z95EoNLlcm— Kosar Eftekhari 🕊️ (@kosareftekharii) May 21, 2024
From Malgorzata, the intricate tunnels from Rafah to Egypt:
Nearly 700 tunnel shafts have been identified in Rafah, with ~50 tunnels crossing into Egypt, revealed @DrGiladNoam at today’s sham @CIJ_ICJ hearing.
Those tunnels are used to smuggle weapons to Hamas and can be used to smuggle senior terrorists and/or hostages out of Gaza. pic.twitter.com/UAgvyTCoJk
— Israel War Room (@IsraelWarRoom) May 17, 2024
From Jez, who says it’s “like shooting fish in a barrel”:
Hilarious! This chap beautifully exposes how utterly clueless and brainwashed anti-Israel student protestors are.
This is what happens when you don’t teach critical thinking in schools.
Wonderful 🔥😂pic.twitter.com/aqkBLRGtf7
— Lee Harris (@addicted2newz) May 17, 2024
From Simon, a political cartoon:
Cartoon pic.twitter.com/JsICOdmaZo
— Bill Bramhall (@BillBramhall) May 17, 2024
From Malcolm, a wonderful duck rescue:
Thank you.. 🙏 pic.twitter.com/omMr0HdhCA
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) April 21, 2024
From the Auschwitz Memorial, a boy gassed upon arrival at Auschwitz. He was 9.
22 May 1934 | An Italian Jewish boy, Guido Veneziani was born in Rome. He was a son of Piero and Margherita.
He was deported to #Auschwitz from Rome. On 23 October 1943 he was murdered in a gas chamber after selection. pic.twitter.com/blbR0sQJUE
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) May 22, 2024
Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, one that Matthew says is “a few years old but good”. You can read about Kelsey Mitchell here.
Kelsey Mitchell: full-time Olympic champ, part-time comedian 😂
📽️: @_kmmitchellpic.twitter.com/2D2xwIQgAt
— CBC Olympics (@CBCOlympics) August 24, 2021
Matthew loves these old chestnuts:
I don’t care what anybody says, pranks from this era are still undefeated pic.twitter.com/pUVy4tBHCJ
— Historic Vids (@historyinmemes) May 20, 2024
I do remember Gilligans Island and it was one of the most anodyne shows that I can even imagine. All of the characters were white; I do not recall religion ever being mentioned; I assume them all to be hetero but of course such a thing was never even mentioned or alluded to – they were just a bunch of white folks from different walks of life who were stranded on an island by an unexpected storm. Cannot even think of a micro-aggression so I would be interested in somebody pointing out what might be offensive….or maybe the warning is just a joke itself.
Ah, but have you forgotten the inimitable Vito Scotti as “Japanese Soldier”? I knew that was cringeworthy even as a kid.
Hmmmm. Do not recall him, DrB and stand corrected. I DO recall Fuji on McHale’s Navy which also was my only knowledge of New Caledonia…which today I see is a French colony still.
Yes, I was going to bring that up about Gilligan’s Island. The Japanese soldier was an extreme cartoon stereotype. It was very over the top! Racism and incredible misogyny was common for sitcoms in those days.
And Yiddish-speaking indigenous people, especially chiefs.
You mean Mel Brooks in a war bonnet referring in the back story to the black sheriff’s pioneer parents as shvartzers, (pronounced with a Brooklyn accent: “shvahts-uhz”) in Blazing Saddles? But Brooks and Richard Pryor were even then mocking political correctness, not mocking Jews, Indians, or black gunslingers as such. Modern fastidiousness is not an advance.
Or am I forgetting the Hekawi spoke Yiddish in F Troop?
A several times natives in blackface. Loved it, though.
I haven’t watched reruns of Gilligan (despite having had a soft spot for Bob Denver), but I recently saw some eps of The Lone Ranger. They were prefixed by an M 16 notice, meaning suitable only for those 16 or older. In those eps there was almost no gun violence, no blood, no torture, no swearing, and no mob violence. There was some casual racism regarding indians, but IMO nothing nearly worth an M rating.
Has the world gone mad, or have I just become much more cranky?
That duckling rescue was above and beyond and the rescuers deserve an award of some kind to recognise their outstanding effort in what appears to be very difficult circumstances.
The mother duck was pleased to put it mildly to be released onto open water with what looked like all her ducklings intact.
At time like these it restores my faith in people.
From what I’ve seen Cohen’s testimony was a mess. A convicted perjurer admitted that he had said he would lie on the stand to protect himself and was caught in several lies by the defense. Frankly, the only way a prosecutor could have put a witness like that on the stand was if he was sure that all his lies would go one direction.
Cohen was presented to the jury as a liar and a crook by the prosecution. The prosecutor made sure the jury was totally aware that he lied under oath to Congress to protect Trump. Because criminals and liars are the types of people Trump hires and choses to associate with, this is the kind of witness the prosecutor had. Cohen was there specifically to corroborate the documents, which is what the other witnesses who are not as tainted as Cohen did as well. Witnesses like David Pecker (who has an immunity deal with the Federal government and testified against Cohen, helping to send him to jail about this very same matter), Hope Hicks, Ms. Westerhouse and Stormy Daniels. They all backed up the documentation as well as what Cohen had to say.
The cross examination by the defense was the mess. It meandered and was confusing. Blanche rarely made a point and from all accounts, bored the jury. The so-called “gotcha” moment was a very minor point about a phone call. The prosecutor cleared it up pretty quickly. Pretty much everyone agrees on this. I listen to commentary from lawyers who attend the trial. They report for various media sites– from independants to main stream media. The only media sites suggesting that Cohen was a poor witness were Fox “News”, Newsmax and similar ilk. As usual, they are lying and twisting what is happening in the courtroom. If you have any doubts about what is happening, the transcripts are available to you.
Cohen admitting he stole from Trump felt significant.
Cohen admitting he hates Trump felt significant.
Cohen lying about a phone call felt significant.
More confusing is: What’s the actual crime being prosecuted here?
Attempting to influence an election isn’t illegal.
Spending your own money on an election campaign isn’t illegal.
Paying someone to not disclose private information is not illegal.
Recording payment of an invoice for legal services as payment for legal services is not illegal.
The defence attempt to get the case thrown out will not succeed, but it should. The prosecution haven’t managed to demonstrate that any crime actually happened.
Yes, none of those things are illegal. What Trump did that *was* illegal was falsified business records in an effort to conceal the payment to Stormy Daniels. Breaking campaign finance laws are in there as well. Part of the reason Cohen went to jail was because of that. The information about the laws that were broken is easily accessible online if you bother to look at an objective source. Pretending it’s only about paying off a porn star for keeping quiet about a sexual encounter is being deliberately disingenuous.
Which campaign finance laws were broken? Did the prosecution provide any evidence of this? How can there an intent to break them, required for falsification of business records, by an act that occurred after the campaign was complete (i.e. the creation of the business records)?
How were the business records falsified? How did Trump, unable to access the records himself, with no evidence submitted of him instructing how to create them, break the law even if they were falsified?
Ironic that the same day the ICC created charges against Israeli leaders for using food as weapon of war, the UN announces they are stopping the distribution of food aid to the Palestinians. Should we expect charges against the UN next?
I hope I’m allowed to ask the following semantic question:
I just listened to Billie Holiday’s classic I Cover the Waterfront.
“I cover the waterfront
I’m watching the sea
Will the one I love be coming back to me?
I cover the waterfront
In search of my love
And I’m covered by a starlit sky above…”
I’m not a native speaker of English, and I’m not sure what “to cover” means in “I cover the waterfront”. One OED meaning is “to pass over (ground); to get over, complete, or traverse (a given distance)”. Does the sentence mean something like “I walk along the waterfront”? Thanks in advance for any help!
In this context “to cover” means to watch, as in, for someone to arrive or something to happen.
Makes sense. However, the OED doesn’t mention “to watch” as one of the meanings of “to cover”.
I just learned that the title is taken from a book by Max Miller with the following plot:
“San Diego Standard reporter H. Joseph Miller (Ben Lyon) has been covering the city’s seedy waterfront for the past five years and is fed up with the work. Dogged by the lack of progress of his current assignment investigating the smuggling of Chinese into the country by a fisherman named Eli Kirk (Ernest Torrence), he longs to escape his grim life and land a newspaper job back East so he can marry his Vermont sweetheart.”
(Source: Wikipedia)
Here, “to cover” means “to report (an event, meeting, etc.) for a newspaper, broadcast, or the like; to attend, investigate, etc., as a reporter” (OED); but this doesn’t seem to be the meaning in Billie Holiday’s song.
It’s a song, so, probably some poetic license is involved.
I’m not familiar with “cover” meaning “watch” either and I’m a native speaker. It used by reporters to indicate that an area is the area that they usually report on. “I cover the waterfront” sounds like a reporter who deals with ships.
Regarding Trump’s trial: While I’m not a fan of him, I respectfully disagree with the comment, “it wasn’t as hurtful as I hoped it would be”. I’m hoping that the truth will win out and that justice is appropriately served, regardless of which way it goes.
Jordan Peterson had an interesting take on X about the Pro-Jew-Killing protests:
“The proHamas protestors: a rundown:
1. Delusional naively-compassionate childless women
2. Men who hope to prey on them by pretending to be allies
3. Resentful leftists, pushing a self-serving victim/victimizer narrative and willing to be useful idiots for
4. A psyops spearheaded by Iran, terrified of the Abraham Accords, supported by
5. The Russians and Chinese”
https://x.com/jordanbpeterson/status/1793165699612831904?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
I expect that the ICC matter will blow over. The U.S. will reject it and Israel will ignore it. Even if there is an actual warrant issued, it will take months for anything to happen and, by then, it will be history. It’s a small matter within the big picture of the conflict.
But surely they will uphold the warrant against the Hamas leaders.
Why not put up a serious legal defense and prevent the ICC from actually issuing the warrants? If the legal defense fails, the US and Israel can still call foul play and ignore the ruling. So why delegitimize the court?
I am a legal layman, so maybe I am overly naive.
De-legitimizing the tools of your enemies is always a good strategy, especially when they play into your hands and give you the necessary justification. Seize the opportunity to be ruthless. The only reason to preserve these international institutions is when they can occasionally be turned toward your own ends. But if they prove stubbornly indocile, off with their heads..
Interesting, that you see an international rules based order as your enemy.
The international rules-based order is fine for trade disputes and other technocratic issues. But the United States refuses to let a supra-sovereign Court have jurisdiction over an act alleged to have been committed by an American citizen on American soil. Such a Court, which the ICC is, is indeed an enemy of American sovereignty. Accepting its jurisdiction would be a dereliction of the American State’s first duty to protect its citizens from hostile foreigners. America’s attempt to de-legitimize the Court in respect of Prime Minister Netanyahu is just what you expect one ally to do for another.
Your proposal to go along with the ICC process and then cry foul if you don’t like the verdict seems ill-advised and foolish. What if the world listens only to your acquiescence and not to your protest?
Others may disagree, but is sure seemed to me those guys in the truck were harassing that cow and her calves. She repeatedly warned them to back off and they still tried to go by. They should have put the truck in park and waited.
I would have waited. Moose are big! Fortunately no harm done.
I say back up, park, turn off rumbling engine & wait. Lower her anxiety level and she’ll probably head off into the brush and you may well get past sooner. One of my dogs used to be very upset by the UPS truck which I think he believed was something growling and threatening him. He loved the guy who came to the door.
I’d say a major part of the comedy of Gilligan’s Island was that all the characters were extreme stereotypes.
Love Gaza graduation!
I’d agree wrt Gilligan’s Island. It played up the stereotypes… as comedy often does. Duh!
Hili looks so very fluffy and bright today. Either she’s been rolling in dewy grass or has just had a bath.
Re the Goth clothing store, in my day Goths were younger….