Paul Handley — US threatens to arrest ICC judges who probe war crimes

"We will ban its judges and prosecutors from entering the United States. We will sanction their funds in the US financial system, and we will prosecute them in the US criminal system," Bolton said.

"We will do the same for any company or state that assists an ICC investigation of Americans."

This is the perfect example of a dominance-submission model that is characteristic of the instinctual behavior of brutes contrasted starkly with the rationality characteristic of human beings, especially in those that subscribe to Western liberalism and Western values. 

This is a throw-back in term of evolutionary theory, a type of atavism.

Here John Bolton, the national security advisor who is not elected and not accountable to anyone but the president, is speaking for the United States. This suggests the question, who actually is POTUS now anyway?

Yahoo
US threatens to arrest ICC judges who probe war crimes
Paul Handley, AFP

UPDATE:

The Hague-based court said it was an independent and impartial institution with the backing of 123 countries.
“The ICC, as a court of law, will continue to do its work undeterred, in accordance with those principles and the overarching idea of the rule of law,” it said in a statement.

Reuters

International court says it is undeterred after Bolton threatens U.S. sanctions

"France, with its European partners, supports the International Criminal Court, both in its budgetary contribution and in its cooperation with it," Foreign ministry spokeswoman Agnes von der Muhll said in a statement.

"The court must be able to act and exercise its prerogatives without hindrance, independently and impartially, within the legal framework defined by the Rome Statute," it said....

Business Insider

After Trump threats, France stands by International Criminal Court

Joshua Keating — Why John Bolton Is So Obsessed With the International Criminal Court

The impetus for the current U.S. offensive against the ICC is that its judges are currently considering whether to authorize the prosecutor to investigate alleged war crimes committed in Afghanistan, including by the U.S. military and the CIA. The potential scenario of Americans being prosecuted by an international court for crimes committed abroad is exactly the scenario Bolton and other opponents warned about in the court’s early days.

The US is against anything and anybody it does not control.

While liberalism is based on rationality as the chief characteristic of humans, the US acts based on dominance and submission, which is is an instinctual evolutionary trait characteristic of brutes.

The result is a loss of soft power based on the US being perceived as the beacon of liberty.

Slate
Why John Bolton Is So Obsessed With the International Criminal Court

Joshua Keating

See also

The decision by John Bolton, the national security adviser to US President Donald Trump, to threaten sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Monday highlights the belief that the US is exempt from being punished for its war crimes, Ali Abunimah, the co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, told Sputnik.

Who is POTUS now anyway?

​Abunimah told Radio Sputnik's Loud & Clear on Monday that Bolton's comments are "a continuation of that US tradition of demanding total impunity for itself and, of course, for its vassal, Israel."

Should be "master" instead of "vassal."

Sputnik International
Bolton ‘Demanding Total Impunity' in Remarks on International Criminal Court

Don Quijones — German Judges Pooh-Pooh Obama’s Sacred US-EU Trade Pact

This past week saw the ceremonious signing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in Auckland, an event whose prime purpose was to convince the world that a trade agreement that most people have not even heard of and which has so far been approved by only one (Malaysia) out of 12 elected parliaments is already done and dusted.

Even the Sidney Morning Herald concedes that it was a giant PR exercise:

"It masks the fact that for Australia and most TPP countries, the public debate and parliamentary process to pass implementing legislation, leading to final ratification of the deal, is just the beginning, and it will be a rocky road."

The road will be particularly rocky in the U.S. where the treaty’s safe passage through Congress and the Senate is far from guaranteed. Indeed, the trade agreement has become so toxic with the voting public that not a single presidential contender dares to endorse it. Even the former US Trade Representative, and now Senator, Rob Portman, has come out against TPP, albeit for the wrong reasons, most tellingly the fact that he, too, is up for reelection this autumn.

However, the biggest blow to the global corporatocracy’s bloated designs did not come from the U.S. It came from Germany, where the German Association of Judges (DRB, an association that also includes prosecutors) just issued adamning indictment on the EU’s proposal to establish an “international investment court (ICC)” for the TPP’s sister treaty, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)…

Wolf Street
German Judges Pooh-Pooh Obama’s Sacred US-EU Trade Pact
Don Quijones