{"id":180044,"date":"2017-07-30T18:52:00","date_gmt":"2017-07-30T23:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/07\/30\/but-of-course-3\/"},"modified":"2017-07-30T18:52:00","modified_gmt":"2017-07-30T23:52:00","slug":"but-of-course-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/07\/30\/but-of-course-3\/","title":{"rendered":"But of Course"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>The Secretary of State is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theamericanconservative.com\/articles\/tillerson-mulls-closing-of-war-crimes-office\/\">looking at shutting his office of war crimes down<\/a>.<\/div>\n<p>Of course, the office has been irrelevant for a while, see Iraq-Bush, Libya-Obama, Yemen-House of Saud, etc., but it&#8217;s a bit of a bummer anyway:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is reportedly considering closing the Office of Global Criminal Justice, a tiny agency with a meager budget of $3 million a year, located within the State Department. <\/p>\n<p>According to its website, the office \u201cadvises the Secretary of State . . . on issues related to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.\u201d It \u201calso coordinates U.S. Government positions relating to the international and hybrid courts currently prosecuting persons responsible for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity\u2014not only for such crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Cambodia\u2014but also in Kenya, Libya, C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire, Guatemala, and elsewhere in the world.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, it deploys \u201ca range of diplomatic, legal, economic, military, and intelligence tools to help expose the truth, judge those responsible, protect and assist victims, enable reconciliation, deter atrocities, and build the rule of law.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>The <i>New York Times<\/i> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/07\/18\/world\/americas\/state-department-war-crimes-office-closing.html\">reported that human rights advocates saw the proposal<\/a> as an example of \u201cthe Trump administration\u2019s indifference to human rights outside North Korea, Iran and Cuba.\u201d Human rights activists also said that shutting the Office \u201cwould hamper efforts to publicize atrocities and bring war criminals to justice.\u201d<a href=\"http:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/trump-war-crimes-torture-tillerson-638404\"> <i>Newsweek<\/i><\/a> reported, however, that the Obama administration also reportedly considered downgrading the office and merging it with another agency. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Let&#8217;s be clear:&nbsp; If we consider the House of Saud to be an essential ally, any war crimes office is necessarily a joke.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Secretary of State is looking at shutting his office of war crimes down. Of course, the office has been irrelevant for a while, see Iraq-Bush, Libya-Obama, Yemen-House of Saud, etc., but it&#8217;s a bit of a bummer anyway: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is reportedly considering closing the Office of Global Criminal Justice, a &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[469,370,394],"class_list":["post-180044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-bureaucracy","tag-crimes-against-humanity","tag-foreign-relations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180044"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180044\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}