The following is the opening section of an article by Lyndon LaRouche, published in the July 19, 2002 issue of EIR magazine, identifying the deadly nature of the International Criminal Court which just sought the indictment of Sudan's President Bashir.

by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

In refusing to confirm the establishment of an imperial form of International Criminal Court (ICC), the U.S. government recently made the right choice, even though it had acted out of the wrong motive. It was an error by former President William Clinton, not to have blocked the ICC before his leaving office. Unfortunately, many other nations supported that Court, on obviously different, but dangerously mistaken premises. The thing to be feared more than either war or crimes against humanity, is the establishment of an imperial form of ``world rule of law,'' a form of law which, in practice, would condemn all mankind to the kind of horrors suffered under the Roman Empire and the ensuing Dark Age which that Empire brought down upon Europe and neighboring regions. The antics of "Transparency International,'' are only typical of the imperial impulse permeating the current use of all such proposals for a "world rule of law.'' It is to be emphasized, that without the existence of the proposed International Criminal Court, there already exists the recognized right and obligation of nations to establish courts, under the same authority of natural law as the law of justified warfare--courts which do not breach the principle of national sovereignty. The Nuremberg court was convened to address Nazi war crimes and other capital crimes against humanity. Such courts are convened ad hoc under the same type of authority as a justified declaration of an act of war. Thus, a court such as the ICC is arguably unnecessary, in addition to being judged even an odious venture on other premises. There are two principal grounds for refusing the establishment of a court such as the ICC, at this time. The first, overriding consideration, is a matter of several interconnected issues of principles of practice of natural law. The creation of such an international court returns civilization to the ancient and feudal state of affairs, in which a head of state of a participating nation, or several such nations, is subject to the overreaching control of an ultramontane, hence imperial authority.

That state of affairs would, in and of itself, constitute a monstrous crime against humanity, since it would deprive humanity of that institution of the sovereign nation-state, on which the liberation of subjects from the de facto status of human cattle was accomplished by Europe's Fifteenth-Century Renaissance and subsequent development of the promotion of the general welfare through the institution of the sovereign nation-state. The second, practical consideration, is the fact that no court such as the ICC, were likely to carry out its implied obligation, were one or more leading powers, such as today's English-speaking powers, determined to obstruct honest application of the ICC statute for that case. This would degrade the court axiomatically to the role of a mere agent of an overreaching particular, imperial power. I address the latter objections first. Notably, at this time, major crimes against humanity are being perpetrated, in fact, against the Palestinian population of a territory being occupied by the Ariel Sharon government of Israel. Were the proposed new ICC in operation currently, that ICC would be implicitly obliged to act promptly, now, against that Israeli government's relevant officials. Would such an ICC be likely to act promptly in this case? If not, then the proposal for establishing an ICC were a piece of hypocrisy which would define such a court as a corrupt one from its outset.

Typical is a relevant case of a travesty of law currently in progress in Arusha, Tanzania. The hoax currently being perpetrated by an international ad hoc tribunal, in that proceeding so far, is typical of the kind of monstrous abuses likely to be expected from the actual constitution of an International Criminal Court established under the proposed provisions of the Nov. 10, 1998 and July 12, 1999 re-draftings of the relevant Roman Statute for such a court. In this case, the court has arbitrarily adopted a ruling, contrary to the essential facts of the case, exempting the culpable external} powers from their responsibility for the state of civil warfare forcefully introduced, from outside, to the nation whose affairs are being scrutinized. We can not assume that an ICC would be better than that self-tainted ad hoc court in Arusha. Those two cases are merely typical of the systemic hypocrisy, which is to be seen in both experienced precedents, and in types likely to occur under an international tribunal such as the ICC, on similar or analogous accounts. It were better that there be no judge, and no court, except ad hoc courts created by sovereign states for cases of war or kindred overriding issues, rather than one which supplies the imperial cloak of legality to a continuing practice of the type shown in such exemplary cases. There is an escalating pattern of actions, involving relevant non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as cats-paws, to destroy the remaining vestiges of the existence of the sovereign nation-state, by creating and expanding upon novel, and dubious precedents to outlaw all forms of credible resistance to an imperial "world rule of law'' controlled by utopian influential circles of the English-speaking powers. Typical of the included intent behind these so-called "environmentalist'' and kindred initiatives by NGOs and others are the pro-genocidal provisions of U.S. National Security Advisor Henry A. Kissinger's 1974 National Security Study Memorandum 200, and the pro-genocidal Global Futures and Global 2000 introduced under U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. The presently overreaching practice of power of such policies, already constitutes, in and of itself, a class of crime against humanity.

Whatever the naive enthusiasts for the proposed ICC imagine, that imperial "world rule of law'' is the actual intention behind the push for the ICC at this time. Those who care for the general welfare of humanity, must move now, to prevent that evil intent from being realized. Any contrary estimate is no better than an abominable sophistry in law.