Un Caudillo

The president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, is no stranger to bombastic rhetoric but watching him insult GW Bush and still hold onto the myth that the US seeks to invade Venezuela is beyond belligerent, its inane. Courtesy of reason.tv



Slate captures the phony romanticism he inspires in some:

In fact, for the malcontents of Hollywood, academia, and the catwalks, Chávez is an ideal ally. Just as the sympathetic foreigners whom Lenin called "useful idiots" once supported Russia abroad, their modern equivalents provide the Venezuelan president with legitimacy, attention, and good photographs. He, in turn, helps them overcome the frustration John Reed once felt—the frustration of living in an annoyingly unrevolutionary country where people have to change things by law.

Venezuela's youth are protesting in the streets against an upcoming referendum:

At issue are 69 constitutional amendments, approved for the Dec. 2 referendum by the overwhelmingly Chavista National Assembly, that would let Chavez run for re-election indefinitely, suspend civil liberties during states of emergency, censor the news media and take complete control over the national bank.

Indeed, some months ago, Andrew Brooks wrote a piece in the International Intelligencer predicting these kinds of authoritarian measures and shrill rhetoric:

Rule by decree and increasing media control allow Chavez to broadcast his message of revolution without the delegitimization of international reprimand. Due to the circumstances, we can expect to see Chavez grow even bolder in his rhetoric, policy, and cooperation with states unfriendly to the United States.

Whats needed is evolution, not revolution.

-AS

Rumsfeld and Universal Jurisdiction

I came across this article recently:

In France, the group is seeking to press charges against Rumsfeld for authorizing torture at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq under the 1984 Convention Against Torture, which France has used in previous torture cases. As part of their complaint, the group submitted 11 pages of written testimony from a former U.S. army brigadier general, Janis Karpinski.

If you recall, Karpinkski was the commander of Abu Ghraib prison during the scandal and has subsequently blamed Major General Geoffrey Miller who was sent to Abu Ghraib from Guantánamo to improve interrogations at Abu Ghraib (nicely done). She has also claimed to have seen a letter signed by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that authorized the use of sleep deprivation, auditory bombardment, and others tortures.

While Rumsfeld is safely out of France, the question remains: is this one of the pitfalls of universal jurisdiction or the consequence of immunity for a role in the authorization of torture?

Jack Balkin of the Balkinization blog writes:

The Congress twice bestowed immunity in the Detainee Treatment Act and the Military Commissions Act. Even if these immunities do not extend to civil lawsuits, such lawsuits are likely barred by a combination of immunities created for government (and military) personnel... The Administration has been quite careful to ensure that its members-- and those obeying its orders-- will never be held to account in any American court of law.

So what happens when suspected war criminals are immune from prosecution in domestic courts? Henry Kissinger has the answer in his classic 2001 piece, "The Pitfalls of Universal Jurisdiction":

...when the government under which the alleged crime occurred is not authentically representative, or where the domestic judicial system is incapable of sitting in judgment on the crime, the Security Council would set up an ad hoc international tribunal on the model of those of the former Yugoslavia or Rwanda.

Yea right. Rumsfeld can rest easy without the fear of prosecution. After all, its only his conscience he has to live with.
-AS

(Courtesy of www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com)