Death to 'sovereignty' - 3 comments

Arab nations 'agree Sudan action', is BBC's upbeat message.

ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has asked the court for a warrant for [Sudan President] Mr Bashir on suspicion of masterminding crimes against humanity in the troubled Darfur region.

Mr Moreno-Ocampo accused Mr Bashir of running a campaign of genocide that killed 35,000 people outright, at least another 100,000 through a "slow death" and forced 2.5 million to flee their homes in Darfur.

But here's the Arab League's response:

In a joint resolution issued at the end of the meeting, foreign ministers of the 22-nation Arab League said the ICC move was not acceptable and undermined Sudan's sovereignty.

"The council decides solidarity with the Republic of Sudan in confronting schemes that undermine its sovereignty, unity and stability and their non-acceptance of the unbalanced, not objective position of the prosecutor general of the Internal Criminal Court," the resolution said.

Screw solidarity, and screw sovereignty. What I look forward to is a world where the level of power one exerts over a population is proportionate to the level of punishment due to that person when the population suffers at their hand, or due to their neglect. A world where politicians (almost literally) live in fear of their people, not vice versa; and where sovereignty is invested in populations, not in greedy, corrupt, murderous, propaganda-wielding regimes.

I'm not condemning patriotism, or suggesting that 'national identity' is on the wane, just that the price people pay for their state operating a distinct set of political values, for politicians who look and sound like them, and for restrictions on their moving from one state to another, varies from the merely expensive at one end to impoverishing and brutalising at the other. State sovereignty is simply too high a price for people to pay, even if they did have a choice.

So I propose powerful international institutions that have precedence and authority over all national governments, that adhere to universal values, offer universal human rights, and which are prepared to use all means at their disposal - those of their member (ex-?) states, and the international corporations present within them - to overwhelm and subsume those states that defend their own rights over their people (a bit 'Things to Come', I know).

Far-fetched, perhaps, but is it any less plausible than the establishment of the alternative economic system that socialists look forward to?

So who's with me? Clearly not the Eurosceptics - that is to say, the bulk of the Conservative Party; not the kind of people who think democratising, say, Cuba is dangerous lest it become 'westernised' / a friend of the USA; and we can probably also exclude those who cite the 'homogeneity' of global capitalism. What would that leave: perhaps a couple of people out of a hundred?

Rating Peace - 1 comment

You could read this, from the Economist: Give peace a rating: An index of pacifism. Nice try, but rather misses the point.

Alternatively, you could read Norm's 2007 Manchester Peace Lecture, a slightly amended version of which was presented at the Euston Manifesto conference:

From what I've said here I think it's clear enough that our world is still a very long way from those conditions of peace spelled out 30 years ago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn: that the limits of state violence be set at the threshold where the need to defend society's members ceases; that we outlaw from the human condition the very idea that some are permitted to use violence regardless of justice, law and mutual agreements.

Where there is state lawlessness there is no peace, and the victims of such lawlessness are entitled to seek what help or escape they may, and others to provide it. That is why the tasks of a global peace movement go beyond the prevention of aggressive war.

Pinochet cheats justice - no comments

Pinochet is dead, via Phil. Luke puts it well:

Part of me wants to celebrate, part of me to regret that he did not live long enough to be brought to justice by the courts in Chile.

... and this from To the Point:

The only thing to lament here is that he has joined the ranks of twentieth century dictators that have died a peaceful death in their own beds, --privilege that he denied to the thousands of Chileans he had murdered

Reminded me of this piece about the death of the Chilean socialist singer/songwriter, Victor Jara.