Stiff Right Jab: Subtle Support for the ICC

Steve Farrell
June 13, 2002

Half measures are rarely enough. What more do they produce than useless, weak, deceptive, and self-serving results? What more do they reflect, than zero resolve, cowardice, masked support for the opponent's position, or proof that the proponent is but a politician?

Take the very visible, very necessary move by the United States to withdraw its signature of support from the International Criminal Court (ICC). One can sympathize with the symbolism. The UN is a pro-Communist, pro-fascist, pro-terrorist Trojan Horse that deserves no thanks for being "a gift to mankind," and no place in Manhattan, or any other US city; while the ICC, the UN's latest holy weapon, is ready to take legal aim at the US Constitution, its citizens, its corporations, its capitalism, its Christianity, and its state and local governments - so yes, get out of the ICC! If only this was what the US signature withdrawal symbolized. It didn't, and it doesn't.

As far back as February of 1994, Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) warned his colleagues in the US Senate of the ICC, that such a court would eventually be used to "try individuals, including Americans, for such vague crimes as 'colonialism' or 'environmental crimes.' These crimes and these cases would be tried before judges who could be from North Korea, Cuba, or other unfriendly places."

In April of the same year, Helms' prediction received partial vindication. The UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice met in Vienna to discuss the crisis of "environmental crime" and to urge the "international harmonization of existing legislation" regarding the environment -- and the creation of an international court with jurisdiction over eco-offenses.

And so herein lies a fundamental flaw in the administration's and the Republican Party's opposition to the ICC, for aside from its supposed withdrawal from all support for the ICC, it has focused its opposition on the fear of US servicemen being pulled into foreign courts on spurious offenses, and an attendant need for specific protections, but has remained silent about the ICC's broader mandate, and the ICC's intent to eventually claim jurisdiction over every American, on every imaginable issue.

The ICC's present jurisdiction is over the vaguely defined, open ended: crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.

Consider genocide, which has its roots in the internationally ratified Genocide Treaty. The crime has never been narrowly defined. Legal scholar Dr. Robert A. Friedlander -- formerly of Ohio Northern University -- has testified, "The designation of genocide in the convention is vague and overbroad, arbitrary and capricious, and unreasonable in construction and composition. Genocide, as defined by the convention, can apply to just about anyone, doing almost any act, posing almost any threat to virtually any type of victim."

But that's the way the UN likes its laws: vague, overbroad, arbitrary and capricious.

Grover Rees of the Center for Judicial Studies points out: "[the scope of genocide could include] policies deemed to have adverse effects on the birth rates, death rates, or distinct racial identity of indigenous minority groups; the United States' support for birth control programs in the Third World; police campaigns against the Black Panthers; the conduct of the United States in the war in Indochina; and [US support for] Israeli policies toward the Palestinians on the West Bank and in Lebanon."

Senator Steve Symms (R-ID) warned in 1985 that the then proposed "Genocide Treaty" was riddled with flaws. "The ambiguous wording -- just one of the many "quicksand" items in the treaty, with genocide described as vaguely as "mental harm" to a "group" (and a group could constitute one individual) -- is a legal nightmare."

Further, hate crimes, similar to the above premise, will fit right in to genocide's expansive definition. And, Article 3, Genocide Treaty demands, that the law prosecute those who "publicly incite" this wide open crime of genocide - offer a golden opportunity to place free speech and religious freedom under the ax of its ambiguity.

On the other hand, Senator Symms noted, the Genocide Treaty did nothing to outlaw or condemn genocidal acts and atrocities committed by Communist nations. Here's why: The United States had originally insisted that the term "political" as well as "national, ethnical, racial and religious groups" be included in the definition of potential victims of genocide. The Soviet Union, however, lobbied successfully to exclude from the treaty any language that would condemn the destruction of a "political" faction as genocide. Thus, Communist, and "ex" communist governments are permitted by the treaty to wage genocide against "political" groups.

Finally, said Symms, the real intent of UN laws against genocide will "endorse a newspeak definition of genocide for domestic political reasons, and in the process, actually condone genocide."

The potential for foul play by the ICC in the crime of genocide, alone, is endless. In 1993, Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) introduced a resolution calling for the establishment of the ICC to combat “unlawful acts such as war crimes, genocide, aggression, terrorism, drug trafficking, money laundering, and other crimes of an international character.”

Expect the list to expand, and sovereignty to erode. "Ex" Communist, Mikhail Gorbachev, seeing the need to expand ICC jurisdiction to "the field of ecology . . . to avert catastrophe," noted in the 1990 Global Forum in Moscow, "such a policy poses unconventional and difficult problems that will affect the sovereignty of states,” but so be it.

In response to Gorbachev's proposal, New York Times columnist and fellow one-worlder Flora Lewis (CFR), praised Gorbachev for going “beyond accepted notions of the limits of national sovereignty and rules of behavior . . . by providing a “plan for a global code of environmental conduct,” which “would have an aspect of world government, because it would provide for the World Court to judge states.” This, she gushed, “is a breathtaking idea, beyond the current dreams of ecology militants.... And it is fitting that the environment be the topic for what amounts to global policing.... Even starting the effort would be a giant step for international law.”

In the end, like the UN, rest assured, the ICC will be all about supporting socialism, communism, fascism, and terrorism; and about prosecuting: Americanism, Constitutionalism, Capitalism, Christianity, and Judaism. You can't join hands with international criminals and call it law; you can't give the gavel to communists and terrorists and call it justice. It's all nonsense.

That's what's so peculiar about the "withdrawal" of the US signature on the ICC Treaty. The US pulled its signature, a great idea, but still supports the ICC, and the UN that spawned it, suggesting an eyewash concession to conservative Republicans who are less than happy with the present administration's devout liberalism.

All too typical of this administration: it withdraws its signature rather publicly, and then comes the Devil in the details:

· The US does not reject the ICC's right to jurisdiction over all the other nations of the earth, 130 of whom did not sign on.

· The US does not reject participation in UN tribunals in a case-by-case basis. (If the administration rejects the ICC use against the military, which cases will be acceptable? Those against US civilians, corporations, churches, or anti-communists like Pinochet?)

· The US still believes "a properly created [ICC] could be a useful tool in promoting human rights and holding the perpetrators of the worst violations accountable before the world."

· The US objects that the Security Council, which includes such thug states as Russia and China, doesn't have veto power over the court's decisions, when history testifies that these nations have long used their veto power against US interests, and that such US requests for "reform" demonstrate allegiance to a UN Charter which concentrates power in the hands of a tyrannical few.

Cicero said: "To know is to be responsible." It is the responsibility of those who know the truth about the UN, the ICC, and the continuing support the Eastern Liberal Establishment lends to these enemy institutions: to say enough is enough, and insist that their party, their congressmen and their President steer clear from half hearted measures, but rather Get US out of the ICC, and out of the UN!

Contact Steve at cyours76@yahoo.com

Action Corner

1. Visit , and join a well-organized, in-it-for-the-distance effort to kick the UN out of the US. 2. Support Ron Paul's American Sovereignty Restoration Act, H.R. 1146.