ICC weaponised? Putinbot poppycock!

18 Mar
“The safest, most redundant, least courageous thing anyone can do right now is condemn Vladimir Putin” – Caitlin Johnstone

The Guardian yesterday, March 17, 2023.

Sarcasm alert: how perverse of the Kremlin and its Putinbot pals! What on earth could put such an idea in their paranoid heads? Don’t they know the ICC is fiercely independent?  End sarcasm.

It’s true of course that America, like Russia, does not recognise the ICC. It’s also true that Sleepy Joe has voiced his approval of this warrant. For all that Uncle Sam is not a signatory, whenever did the ICC show a scintilla of indifference to his will?

Still, every cloud and all that. At least I got me a masthead quote from so surreal a moment …

More seriously, even the Putin-critical – too much so, I say – anti-imperialists at WSWS have rightly called this out for what it so patently is:

The move is transparently political. It takes place as the US and NATO powers are orchestrating a massive escalation of the war against Russia over Ukraine, and amidst ever more open statements from government officials that the aim of the war is regime change in Moscow.

The specific allegations filed against Putin and Lvova-Belova are listed under Article 8 of the Rome Statute, adopted in 1998, which includes “grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions” and “other serious violations” of international law. The arrest warrants specifically allege “the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”

The official filing of warrants were approved by judges in the ICC and announced by Karim A. A. Khan, a British lawyer and the ICC’s chief prosecutor. It follows months of propaganda, spearheaded by the Biden administration, alleging “crimes against humanity” and “genocide” on the part of the Russian government.

While the existence of the warrants was made public, the supposed evidence underlying them was not. The specific claims of the “unlawful deportation” of children have been promoted in the US media, including the New York Times, based on unsubstantiated allegations by the Biden administration and the Ukrainian government.

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17 Replies to “ICC weaponised? Putinbot poppycock!

  1. Whenever I see anyone or any organisation asserting they’re “fiercely independent” the reality is always the polar opposite. BBC “journalists” are the first that come to mind.
    The ICC is about as fiercely independent as the BBC.
    Maybe the “evidence” against Putin will be “Joe Biden said so”.
    If it wasn’t so corrupt it would be farcical.
    Listened to Seymour Hersh on TRNN earlier, talking about Nord Stream. He knows a lot of stuff! His extensive inside knowledge on Nord Stream is impressive.
    Anyway he made the obvious point that every army at war commits war crimes. It’s just a fact. It’s one of the many reasons why war is the worst thing in the world.
    I hope there is an actual hell where all warmongers are headed.

    • … every army at war commits war crimes …

      Yes, and just two months into this one I quoted Caitlin Johnstone as I so often do.

      The hyperbolic language westerners use to describe fairly normal modern warfare in Ukraine suggests they’ve invested exactly zero thought in what their own governments have been doing in the middle east for the last two decades.

      It’s like, yes, killing, violence and destruction is what war looks like. You’re describing the thing that war is. It’s creepy that you’re only just discovering this now. What did you think your government has been using to conduct its wars this whole time? Dank memes?

      Before the Ukraine war I would’ve told you it’s impossible for me to despise liberalism more than I already do and impossible for me to have less respect for its foam-brained worldview. But I would have been wrong. Very, very wrong.

      If your understanding of world events doesn’t account for the easily quantifiable fact that the US is the most tyrannical regime on earth by a massive margin, nothing else in your understanding of world events will be fact-based.

      There’s only one government that is circling the planet with hundreds of military bases, continually working to destroy any nation who disobeys it, and has spent the 21st century killing people by the millions. It isn’t Russia. It isn’t China. One must account for this reality.

      • Yes you quote Caitlin regularly with good reason. She’s unbeatable for insight, while stating undeniable plain truths with such moral clarity.

  2. It’s now very obvious that the UN(WEF & WHO included) are not fit for purpose and serve the interests of those with the loudest voice and the biggest, deepest pockets and given the censorship of real information and who is commanding that censorship along with the most corrupt and and most war orientated regime in the world currently ringing the planet with 800 military bases of one type or another, there can be little doubt as to who is co-ordinating the UN spectator sport of pin the tail on the donkey – once a child’s game and still is.
    If the ROTW allows this further demonstration of just how worthless the UN is and remain silent then they can reap the consequences and despair.

    Susan 🙂

    • Agree with your first paragraph of course, Susan. But you left me in the dust of acronymicity with your second. ROTW?

      Reptiles of the World? Me, I say cut ’em some slack.

      • Beautiful constrictor but no, not reptiles, they are cold blooded. I was referring to the mostly non aligned countries/states and they are referred to on many of the blogs I read collectively as the “Rest Of The World”

        Susan 🙂

        • Ah! My search on ‘ROTW’ did not return this. You’re obviously a mover and shaker, Susan. I’ve now added this to my dictionary of urban street-speak.

      • Something I would like some help on. It’s not really relevant I suppose and I won’t mind if you are not interested, even though I’m sure you will have an opinion.

        It is concerning the ROTW and an expansion on Sergei Glazyev’s somewhat cryptic solution on how the SCO(Shanghai Co-operative Organisation) can move forward on alternative banking methods.

        Knowing that bitcoin is susceptible to interference & manipulation esp. from the Fed and that gold can be transient I’m not too sure how to approach what is for me a conundrum.

        Moveable Multipolarity in Moscow: Ridin’ the ‘Newcoin’ Train Pepe Escobar. March 10, 2023

        https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/03/10/moveable-multipolarity-in-moscow-ridin-the-newcoin-train/

        I don’t know if the above link will work so it might require a cut & paste.

        As stated, I understand if you don’t have any interest (or time) to avail yourself of this and I won’t take umbrage if you are not interested.

        Best, Susan 🙂

        • I’m struggling to get up to speed myself on these matters.

          The link works fine. FWIW I always find Pepe well worth a read, and look forward to digesting this later today. But I also factor in the man’s propensity to excitability of expression, and the attendant danger of his overstating the case.

          Meanwhile this four way discussion, with the unfailingly informed and level-headed Brian Berletica in the chair, is well worth watching as it adds context to the themes you introduce.

          https://youtube.com/live/NEZBXkuRwqE?feature=shares

  3. There was a significant article in the Guardian today, by “Randeep Ramesh . . . chief leader writer for the Guardian” entitled ‘The US was prepared to bomb the Middle East into shape. In Ukraine, it seems no less self-serving’, wherein what would have been unprintable heresy a couple of weeks ago is now fit for the ‘chief leader writer’.

    He doesn’t of course come completely clean, as Putins wages an ‘illegal war’ while Iraq was just a bit of headstrong foolishness, but he has laid down one of the first small steps to declaring the war lost. There were faint cracks in the facade before now, but they are rapidly getting wider and deeper. More will inevitably follow. Russia must be on the verge of victory. As others have said, it will be interesting to see how the west deals publicly with such a major defeat, but deal they will have to.

    • The propaganda war waged by the Guardian has been every bit as targeted on declaring “Russia’s imminent defeat” as it has on “Russian aggression”. Even academics who could lecture night and day on how truth is the first casualty buy it. Take Olga Chyzh, assistant professor in political science at Toronto, who periodically hacks out opinion pieces for the Guardian. An essential component of shamelessness is surely selective memory loss …

      • Another one today from Monbiot. A few weeks ago this sort of article would have been almost literally unthinkable at the Guardian – the public is being prepared for the bad news.

        • Here’s the piece you mean.

          It’s my sense that George is acutely sensitive to criticism from his left. And while I dare say the whole piece houses de rigeur abhorrence of Mr Putin, its opener is on the nail:

          It goes beyond hypocrisy. It’s an assault on memory.

          • And another one from ‘Jonathan Steele’ – whoever he may be. There is a positive flood of articles on the Graun, which while not getting over the basic Neo-con assumptions, are hinting that US power is on the decline. This is not happening by accident – the Guardian is very very keen to stop up any comment which is non U – whatever ‘U’ happens to be at the time.

            I imagine that within maybe a couple of months or so there will be “It’s Over – NATO faces defeat!” sort of things appearing.

  4. The view from India does not seem to pull any punches:

    https://www.indianpunchline.com/us-paranoid-about-russia-china-summit/

    The mud-throwing at Putin is yet another display of President Biden’s visceral hatred towards the Russian leader that goes back to a joust in Moscow well over a decade ago when Putin told him off brusquely, and is timed to distract attention from the state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Moscow on Monday, an event that not only has spectacular optics but is sure to intensify the “no limit” partnership between the two superpowers.

    The Anglo-Saxon clique is watching with dismay the talks in Moscow tomorrow. To be sure, Moscow and Beijing have decided to stand together to bury the US hegemony.

    Today, China exceeds the combined manufacturing capacity of the US and its European allies, and, equally, Russia has emerged as the world’s largest nuclear weapon state superior to the US both in the quantity and quality of weaponry.

    It has dawned on the American mind that Russia cannot be defeated in Ukraine. There is a chicken-and-egg situation facing NATO, according to a report in Politico. Massive investments are needed to catch up with Russia’s defence industry but Europe’s ailing economies have other critical priorities of survival and battling mounting social unrest.

    The notions of defeating Russia in a proxy war in conditions of “sanctions from hell” have turned out to be delusional. It is the US banks that are collapsing, it is European economies that are threatened by stagnation.

  5. Should have thanked you for this link to Indian Punchline. for some reason I don’t get articles from there automatically, same with MoB (although I used to). I needless to say went straight over to IP after I’d gotten through all my other links.
    I like M K Bhadrakumar, he’s been quoted by several decent blogs.

    🙂 Susan

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