US Trashes ICC, But Wants It to Charge Russians

Marjorie Cohn delves into the U.S. double standard in using an international court to prosecute war crimes.

Although the United States has tried mightily to undermine the International Criminal Court since it became operational in 2002, the U.S. government is now pushing for the ICC to prosecute Russian leaders for war crimes in Ukraine. Apparently, Washington thinks the ICC is reliable enough to try Russians but not to bring U.S. or Israeli officials to justice.

[consortiumnews.com]

The above statement is almost as deflective as the reality. The date might suggest a purposeful deceptive use. For all intensive purpose of the article though I get it. But anyone with a critical thought process can correlate the actions of western governments as being types of various crimes against humanity this court should be convicting them of. Erasure of these crimes before the Internet became widely available for the publics ability to find informative information was fairly manageable. We've become societies to lazy to actually do the work to properly inform ourselves of our governments actions to a point we seemingly don't care what they do in our names. Many simply don't know or seemingly care, just take their medias managed perception as ultimate fact. By 2002 the public had become vastly managed into compliance and accepting of the hypocrisy. If you know the history, the start of the 21st century was planned well ahead of becoming one of exacerbated perpetual warring. Creating this delusional ICC can easily be argued as a deceptive tool towards combating any sense of dissent. We've seen correlations with it within journalism, laws to create terrorist combatants out of protesters, social media, and the mirrored effect of distorted actions of the capturing of the OPCW ----- [thegrayzone.com] Tools to create fear mongering while burying reality.

{The Bush administration effectively blackmailed 100 countries that were States Parties by forcing them to sign bilateral immunity agreements in which they promised not to turn over U.S. persons to the ICC or the United States would withhold foreign aid from them.

In 2020, after the ICC launched an investigation into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity by U.S. as well as Taliban leaders in Afghanistan, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on ICC officials but President Joe Biden reversed them.

When Khan became chief prosecutor of the ICC, he narrowed the scope of the investigation in Afghanistan by limiting suspects to Taliban and ISIS leaders. He cited “the limited resources available to my Office relative to the scale and nature of crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court that are being or have been committed in various parts of the world.”

“This was clearly a political decision — there’s really no other way it can be interpreted,” human rights lawyer Jennifer Gibson told Al Jazeera.}

Basically the same tactics used against the OPCW to erase initial findings within the chemical weapons accusations against the Syrian government. Where threats were made against the directors family and forceful removing him. Incoming director erases and edits findings. Then creating false narratives on the initial on ground specialist to diminish their findings.

{The Biden administration continues to oppose the pending ICC investigation into Israeli war crimes in Gaza. It has expressed “serious concerns about the ICC’s attempts to exercise its jurisdiction over Israeli personnel.”

Following a five-year preliminary examination, former ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda found a reasonable basis to mount an investigation of “the situation in Palestine.” She was “satisfied that war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip . . . (ii) potential cases arising from the situation would be admissible; and (iii) there are no substantial reasons to believe that an investigation would not serve the interests of justice.”}

{U.S. hypocrisy is no more apparent than in the first “Whereas” clause of the Senate’s unanimous resolution condemning Russia. It says, “Whereas the United States of America is a beacon for the values of freedom, democracy, and human rights across the globe

Donbass Under Fire-----Life in the Donetsk Republic during war

Newest documentary release.

After the Donetsk People’s Republic was proclaimed, war ravaged Donbass. Ukrainian artillery has been shelling towns and villages. Some people were lucky to get evacuated. Others stayed at their own peril and lost connection with their families. Either way, they did their best to survive in the ruins of their own houses and hope for a better future.

Andrey Lysenko and his son Vladislav are volunteers who drive across the devastated Donbass and distribute humanitarian aid to locals bought with subscribers’ money. Sometimes they travel with projectiles flying and bombs exploding around, but they are used to it. Their main goal is to help the people of Donbass to hold on and have all they need to survive.

The locals tell stories about Ukrainian nationalist and armed forces coming into their towns and villages, hiding among the civilian population, with tanks firing in the middle of residential neighbourhoods.

DNR residents who were separated from their relatives and loved ones by the front line venture out to the once Ukrainian city of Volnovakha, which now belongs to the DNR, to look for them and possibly reunite. But not everybody is willing to leave the houses they’ve been living in for years and abandon their pets.

How do people find the courage to remain strong and compassionate during shelling?

[rtd.rt.com]