International Developments Today

Lots of international developments today -- election in France goes to Chirac as expected, Nativity standoff seems close to end, US announces we're pulling out of International Criminal Court. I'll try to address all three issues: France, Mideast, and international criminal justice, but no guarantees.

1. French elections -- God bless the French. For about ten minutes today, when the news anchor announced a "dramatic landslide," I respected the French. Then I realized what this means. First, the numbers. 18% of Frenchmen liked this man enough that despite the fact that a strong showing by him would ostracise France and create chaos, they voted for him. Does this scare anyone? Then, I became even more nervous when I realized that now there's Chirac. Chirac would have to torch a few Torahs to get any worse; as it is, he won't unconditionally condemn anti-Semitism and he seems rather nonchalant about the fact that France's most successful and oldest minority is being treated terribly. He's a great friend of the Arab countries, a crook, and anti-Israel. In short, he's French. Sorry for the stereotype, but France is not on my list of "favorite countries" right now.

2. Middle East -- Have you ever thought that the situation in the Mideast is so hopeless and random that it needs some biting political satire to prove a point? All hail the Norwegian blogger Vegard Valberg. Valberg has emerged from the shadows to present his own Modest Proposal, a la the Irish satirist Jonathan Swift. (No cannibalism here.) I'm linking a lot today. For an analysis of the United Hate-ions' policies in regard to Israel (read: bad.), check out this piece from Arnold Beichman in the Washington Times. Beichman puts it simply: the UN just doesn't like Israel.

3. Finally, the Court. -- I had to get on to the International Criminal Court, though I didn't really want to. I think an international criminal court is a great idea, because the international system of justice absolutely sucks, as is evidenced by the fact that murderer-despot Idi Amin is hiding in "US-friendly" Saudi Arabia while Sharon is regularly lambasted as a genocidal maniac. But the ICC is not the way, mainly because it is under the auspices of the same international agencies which are terrible at everything else. Remember the massacre at Srebrenica, when 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed by Serbs, after the UN gave the Muslims over? Or the massacres in Kosovo where the UN was inept, and the Rwanda genocide which prompted the UN to withdraw forces? The case for reform has been made. Besides, who appointed Belgium, which created all these problems in Central Africa which have led to millions of deaths in the last thirty years, to be the international arbiter of war crimes? We definitely need reform so we can punish Sadaam Hussein and Idi Amin and the Sudanese and Rwandan criminals. Not under UN auspices, though. The way I see it, the only countries that can be trusted by everyone (including Israel, which would obviously be the odd man out if the UN were involved) are the English-speaking Western countries and Germany. So let's do it that way. International criminal court in Glasgow, Scotland, under British, American, Canadian, and German supervision. Want to see war criminals punished? Do it my way.