RE: You’ve mistaken Arthur….

Idealpolitik? what an oxymoron …

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U.N. Representative: So, Mr. Evil –
Dr. Evil: It’s Dr. Evil, I didn’t spend six years in Evil Medical School to be called “mister,” thank you very much.

RE: There is no such thing as war on terrorism

Really JJ, you’re not looking into the core of the issue. Bin Laden was obviously traumatized by the evil Americans, it’s not his fault, he was desperate, he had no other choice, terrorism is the only weapon he’s got! I suggest we all rally our respective nations to set up an economic delegation to go and give him some better hope for the future. Hunting him will not solve the problem, we would fare much better by trying to appease, oops, I mean “engage in meaningfull dialogue”, with the man.

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U.N. Representative: So, Mr. Evil –
Dr. Evil: It’s Dr. Evil, I didn’t spend six years in Evil Medical School to be called “mister,” thank you very much.

RE: You’ve mistaken Arthur….

“European countries or the EU don’t boast continuously about being the the good guys, fighting off evil and saving democracy”

It does not look that way from where I’m standing. Europe constantly boasts of its supposed morals and ethics, so much so that one of the EU member states has decided that it knows what morality is and has declared itself the judge of nations, with the authority to judge whomever it sees fit. How arrogant is that?

Yet unlike the US, Europe does not actually back up it big words with actual deeds. On the contrary, it sometimes seems that “Human Rights” is the fig leaf behind which European nations hide their own self interests. It is highly symbolic that on the same day that 19 Israelis are killed by a Hamas suicide bomber, a European trade delegation arrives in Iran, the principal funder of Hamas. European nations talk of “engagement” and “reaproachment”, hollow words that mask their solely economic interests. Europe sets up a symbolic human rights dialogue alongside its economic dealings with Iran, yet hardly links one to the other. So what if Iran is only years away from a nuclear bomb or that it is still the world’s largest exporter of international terrorism? Europe doesn’t care – it’s not Europeans dying.

The EU nations deliberated for years without taking the necessary steps in former Yugoslavia. Europe, left to its own devices, would have done nothing for occupied Kuwait either (we’d probably see a trade delgation going to Iraq and ‘bringing up’ the issue of Kuwait at one time or another. then they’d forget about it as to not aggravate their Iraqi hosts). There is a time for talk and there is a time for deeds, and the US has shown that it is capable of that. One would have hoped that Europe would have learned from its past. But no, the war on terrorism is America’s war. Europe is immune from terrorism, isn’t it?

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U.N. Representative: So, Mr. Evil –
Dr. Evil: It’s Dr. Evil, I didn’t spend six years in Evil Medical School to be called “mister,” thank you very much.

RE: Humor

Some confusion at the gate …

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U.N. Representative: So, Mr. Evil –
Dr. Evil: It’s Dr. Evil, I didn’t spend six years in Evil Medical School to be called “mister,” thank you very much.

Attachments:

RE: Star Wars Episode II

I do wish I could be as cool as you, Geforce, but putting my dreams aside:

Next ‘Star Wars’ to have a dark ending?
Coming soon: Destruction of the Jedi
May 23, 2002 Posted: 1442 GMT

SAN RAFAEL, California (AP) — Fate has a major role in the “Star Wars” saga. And, at least from outward appearances, “Episode III” appears fated to end bleakly.

The original “Star Wars” (1977) ended with a happy tableau, our heroes smiling and triumphant. “Return of the Jedi” (1983) ended even more cheerily, with Jedi specters Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda beaming at their victorious progeny from the great beyond.

“The Empire Strikes Back” and the new film, “Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones,” share ominous conclusions, but nothing calamitous.

Next up is “Episode III,” a galactic train wreck in the offing. The last film in George Lucas’ six-part saga of the Skywalker family inevitably ends in tragedy, the final prequel leading into the dark times of dictatorship that prevail at the opening of the original “Star Wars.”

Figure that young Jedi Anakin has completed his transition to the dark side as villain Darth Vader, destroying the Jedi order and paving the way for the evil emperor to dash the democratic Republic. Jedi masters Obi-Wan and Yoda somehow wind up on the road to exile. Since she doesn’t turn up in the original trilogy, Padme Amidala, Anakin’s beloved, may end up a corpse.

Padme and Anakin’s children, Luke and Leia — who will appear as infants in “Episode III,” Lucas says — are separated to be raised unaware of each other’s existence, the galaxy’s two hopes for salvation when the original trilogy begins.

‘All the bad guys win in the end’
“It’s dark for ‘Star Wars,’ ” Lucas said of the next film during an interview at his headquarters, Skywalker Ranch. “Let’s face it, all the bad guys win in the end, all the good guys are dead except for a couple. So it doesn’t have a happy ending. I’m not sure how people are going to take it. It does have some fun in it. It’s not completely bleak. But it’s not an upper.”

“Episode III” begins shooting next summer and will be released in 2005.

Lucas is secretive about the details on how “Star Wars” arrives at its darkest hour. Even his principal cast — Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen and Samuel L. Jackson — do not know the specifics.

What has Lucas shared with them?

“Not a lot, other than I die,” said Jackson, who plays Jedi elder Mace Windu. “And my only request is I don’t get shot in the back by some ‘droid. Hopefully, there’ll be somebody standing there in front of me that’s worthy of killing me. Either Darth Vader or him and a combination of Siths” — masters of the dark side of the Force.

Portman, who plays Padme, expects there to be some ray of hope amid the chaos and calamity of “Episode III” to set the stage for Anakin’s later redemption.

“I still think George has a really optimistic line in the thread of all of them,” said Portman. “I don’t necessarily think he has this dark outlook for the end of things, not like some apocalyptic vision. There’s always this balance of hope. … His movies are the antithesis of cynicism.”

Christensen: ‘Incredibly dark and destructive’
Christensen, who joined the cast as Anakin in “Episode II,” figures the final installment will end so darkly the film might have trouble getting a PG rating like its five predecessors (though shrewd businessman Lucas likely will design the film to avoid a PG-13 so pre-teens can see it without an adult chaperone).

“I think he will end almost on an apocalyptic note,” Christensen said. “I just can’t imagine it not being an incredibly dark and destructive film.”

“You’ve got a war, and what we know from the previous trilogy, what my character does in wiping out the entire Jedi race, and the falling apart of my relationship with Obi-Wan.”

“Episode III” will take place a few years after the action of “Attack of the Clones,” Lucas said. After that, there is a 20-year gap before the events of the first “Star Wars,” when young farm boy Luke meets Obi-Wan, Leia and Han Solo and is hurled into the rebellion against the Empire.

After it became a box-office phenomenon, the 1977 original was retitled “Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope” to set up the two sequels and eventual three-part prequel.

In keeping with that title, Lucas said, there will be some sense of hope as the dark curtain falls on “Episode III.”

The director said he already filmed one of the last images of “Episode III” during production of “Attack of the Clones.”

“It’s not the exact closing image, but it’s one of the final images,” Lucas said. Laughing, he added: “I won’t say what it is.”

http://europe.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Movies/05/23/ca.s02.starwars.darkend…

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U.N. Representative: So, Mr. Evil –
Dr. Evil: It’s Dr. Evil, I didn’t spend six years in Evil Medical School to be called “mister,” thank you very much.

RE: Star Wars Episode II

not quite, everyone knows there were SUPPOSED to be 9 films, but if I remember correctly they decide to scrap the last 3 films.

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U.N. Representative: So, Mr. Evil –
Dr. Evil: It’s Dr. Evil, I didn’t spend six years in Evil Medical School to be called “mister,” thank you very much.

RE: International criminal court.US do not any par

The concept of the ICC is very noble and couragous, but the reality of the matter is that this institution would be just another political forum for the nations of the world to slug it out. Does anyone actually think that world governments would really treat the ICC with benign altrusim, seeking nothing but justice? Governments do not do that, they act on their own interests alone. The ICC would turn into just another UN, where governments use what power they have to pass the resolutions they wish to see, for their own selfish ends. Justice would hardly be served by this place.

well, this is an article explainig US objections to the court : http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/rbartley/?id=110001701

World Law or Institutionalized Hypocrisy?
The International Criminal Court won’t give us justice.

BY ROBERT L. BARTLEY
Monday, May 13, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT

After the carnage at Srebrenica and in Rwanda, the goal of putting the world’s butchers on trial surely strikes sympathetic chords. But in rejecting the new International Criminal Court last week, the Bush administration struck an important blow for the cause of justice in the world.

The court’s charter establishes a prosecutor who is literally irresponsible, not accountable to any democratic authority or even the United Nations Security Council. The prosecutor will be “elected by secret ballot by an absolute majority” of the ratifying nations. He would serve a nine-year term, and have the authority on his own initiative to launch investigations into “a. The crime of genocide; b. Crimes against humanity; c. War crimes; d. The crime of aggression.”

This brainstorm is popular in all of the usual high-minded quarters. The treaty negotiated in Rome in 1998 has been ratified by 66 nations, including France, the United Kingdom, Sweden, etc. It will open its doors in the Hague next year, with jurisdiction over crimes committed after next July 1.

The American representative to the Rome conference testified to Congress that the U.S. continued to object not only to the “self-initiating prosecutor” and the sweeping inclusion of the crime of aggression, but to the court’s jurisdiction over American peacekeepers on the territory of a state that had ratified the treaty. President Clinton signed the treaty on his last New Year’s eve in office, in the same last-minute rush that three weeks later produced the Marc Rich pardon.

Last week the Bush administration dialed up the United Nations and told them to forget it. Or rather, John Bolton, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, sent a letter to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan stating that the U.S. “does not intend to become a party” and has no obligations arising from President Clinton’s signature. The administration is preparing a diplomatic offensive against the court.

Henry Kissinger’s recent experiences show that the problems with the brand of jurisprudence the court represents are anything but theoretical. A year ago the Paris police stopped by the concierge desk at the Ritz Hotel and dropped off a summons for the visiting former Secretary of State. A French judge had decided he wanted to question him about U.S. policy in Chile some 30 years ago.
The judge was entertaining a case professing to be about the disappearance of five French citizens during Augusto Pinochet’s military regime in Chile. Baltasar Garzon, the Spanish magistrate who succeeded in having Gen. Pinochet detained in London, also requested that British authorities allow him to question the former secretary during a recent visit. In what rapidly became an international movement, judges in Chile and Argentina have issued similar writs.

The cases charge or suggest that the U.S. was complicit in “Operation Condor,” torturing and killing South American leftists. In the original French case, the State Department told the court that the questions should be directed to the U.S. government, and it’s expected to issue detailed answers denying any American involvement.

Even if that closes the matter, the episode demonstrates that prosecutorial investigations have an in terrorem effect, especially considering that Secretary Kissinger is 78 and General Pinochet was 82 when he was seized and held for 16 months. Similarly, a Belgian court has entertained a case charging Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with crimes against humanity in the 1982 massacres at Sabra and Chatilla in Lebanon.

The “independence” of many European magistrates already sanctions freewheeling grandstanding, perhaps for the better in Italian Mafia prosecutions but for the worse in anti-American campaigns dressed up as judicial grievances. With this already coming from magistrates in European democracies under an established rule of law, American officials have every reason to worry about a new prosecutor reflecting the “world opinion” enshrined in multinational bureaucracies.

The U.N., for example, recently proposed a war crimes investigation of the Israeli seizure of Jenin, where tales of massacres turned out to be Arab propaganda lies. It proposed no investigation of sending suicide bombers to attack civilians in markets or banquet halls, or of desecrating Christian shrines.

In recent years the U.S. was railroaded off the U.N. Human Rights Commission, with the help of the Swedes and European Union. The U.S. felt it had no alternative but to withdraw from the U.N. Durban conference on racism, as earlier it withdrew from a politicized UNESCO.

Curiously but predictably, American support for an unrooted world prosecutor comes from many of the same voices who recently changed their minds on the U.S. independent counsel law, first championing it and later complaining that Kenneth Starr and company were too independent. Some, including this newspaper and Mr. Starr himself, warned early on that prosecutors need to be anchored in the executive branch accountable at elections.
The Bolton letter to the U.N. resolves the status of a signed but unratified treaty. The 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties provides that a state that has signed a treaty subject to ratification is obliged not to undercut it “until it shall have made its intention clear not to become a party to the treaty.” The Kyoto environmental accord and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty are also signed but unratified; indeed the Senate has already rejected the CTBT. If the Senate’s Constitutional power to ratify means anything, unratifiable treaties should be dispatched by the procedure just established with the ICC rejection.

This would of course produce further howls about the U.S. refusing to follow enlightened opinion. But the world also looks to America for such things as bailing out failed peacekeeping efforts in the Balkans. If world opinion wants the U.S. to go along with the likes of the new court, it’s time for world opinion to grow up and get serious.

Mr. Bartley is editor of The Wall Street Journal. His column appears Mondays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.

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U.N. Representative: So, Mr. Evil –
Dr. Evil: It’s Dr. Evil, I didn’t spend six years in Evil Medical School to be called “mister,” thank you very much.