Author: R J Adams

Where are we headed? I wonder just how many people in this world are mulling that over in their heads as I write it? Have we lost our ability to be empathic towards each other? Not a day goes by when the news isn’t highlighting a barbarous act imposed on innocent people by some government in a world infiltrated more and more by psychopathic bureaucrats and politicians.

Only yesterday, in the Guardian we read of Charles (who doesn’t want to be fully identified) a British citizen who has lived nine years in Sweden, arrested, forced from his home and his wife, and onto a plane to the UK with virtually just the clothes he stood up in. He has no-one in the UK, no family, no friends, no home…

^{Charles distraught after recently dumped at Heathrow Airport, London ( Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian)}

…From a settled, homeowning, stable person he has been forced into homelessness, adrift in what is now to him, a foreign country.

So let’s spare a moment to feel some empathy for Charles, but  news never hangs around long, so let’s  move on quickly to pleasanter articles in the Guardian, like for instance, the inquiry by Members of the British Parliament into why the UK always comes last in the Eurovision Song Contest.

I kid you not! The world is poised on the brink of annihilation, and this is what the UK government feels is important.

But wait, arriving unbidden to my desktop, yet another heart-rending tale of uprooted deportation. Nika, a 32 year old Iranian woman who fled Iran to avoid arrest and possible execution for demonstrating against the government’s harsh treatment of women, found safety in the United States, or so she thought.

She’s one of many recently deported to a country she’d never heard of, not knowing until she arrived where they were taking her; where they would quite literally dump her. It proved to be the Central African Republic, A country she does not know, has never visited, and one the US Department of State warns the public not to go to as it’s too dangerous.

This is taken straight out of the Third Reich playbook, except it’s easier for the US Administration to pay some out-of-sight country to take them rather than build gas chambers at ICE concentration camps – which might possibly cause some consternation for the local inhabitants. Of course, what happens to these poor people on arrival at their dubious destinations is no longer a problem for those members of the US Administration charged with ridding the country of their undesirable residents.

^{(Guardian graphic. Source: Forbidden Stories consortium, including research by Human Rights First, Refugees International)}

Make no mistake, the United States is now a fascist-controlled nation hellbent on spreading its poisonous doctrine as far afield as possible. Already Nigel Farage and his Reform Party, backed by the US Administration and financed  by crypto-billionaires, is poised to take power in the UK if the citizens of that nation prove themselves moronic enough to vote for them at the next election.

It’s possible!

In France, Le Pen is another far-right politician prepared to lick Putin’s boots and follow the American President wherever he may choose to lead her. Her party (ex-National Front) are ahead in the polls. There are many others holding power or waiting in the wings to swoop, given opportunity. The AfD in Germany is already well ahead in the polls and threatening to deport all non-German citizens (and possibly a few who are) if they manage to achieve sufficient power in the Bundestag.

As long as we are prepared to vote these creatures into power, we are simply assisting with our own annihilation.

I wonder what awaits us in the news tomorrow?

It took Keir Starmer just a couple of days to fall from grace after publicly taking gifts of football tickets and fancy spectacles, along with other ‘freebies’, shortly after taking up residence in 10, Downing Street as the then new Britirish Prime Minister.

It’s taken Andy Burnham, his successor, a similar length of time to offer his best plan to reverse global heating and the destruction of almost all life on earth, which is to ban the sale of disposable barbecues.

We hear that Burnham is planning a round-Britain-tour in the manner of a conquering king or emperor, presumably to shake a lot of hands and show people what a great guy he is. No doubt he’ll be well informed where not to visit; the wildfires might scorch more than his ego.

Meanwhile, the whole planet is held to ransom by one man and his group of psychopathic egomaniacs hellbent (possibly literally) on hauling more lethal oil and gas out of the ground.  The tecno-nerd multi-billionaires build their energy and water guzzling data centres willy-nilly with bought planning permission from bent local councillors.

This summer has been a nightmare. Yet it is nothing compared to the nightmare to come. Here in northern France there has barely been more than a few days respite between heatwaves. To be out of doors for more than five or ten minutes has become rapidly unbearable. Oh sure, there will always be the young machos lying on the beach in 40 degree heat, allowing their skin to take on the hue of burned chicken. They pass the time on social media slagging off black people, (who, incidentally, don’t have to risk skin cancer to have what lily-white folks crave), while submitting themselves to a not-so-gentle simmering in order to achieve it.

According to the CCPI 2026 (Climate Change Performance Index) not one country on the planet ranks “very high” on it’s implementation of necessary work to combat climate change. In fact, so low is the bar that the top ranking nation in the CCPI report only managed fourth place. No country on earth managed a 1st, 2nd or 3rd.

Perhaps I’m wrong to slag off Andy Burnham. He’s not really the one to blame for not working furiously to resolve the climate crisis. After all, politicians in a democratic society are supposed to support the majority. Surely, after this summer of hell the majority of folk must support more political effort towards greener energy and banning fossil fuel production?

Wrong.

Here’s why:

In a nutshell, apathy! No, not political apathy, people apathy. Not one major nation on earth has a majority population that believes climate change is the most important issue for them.

Only 23% in the UK; 25% in France. Even Vietnam is well off the 51% necessary for a majority.

So what are politicians supposed to do? The answer would seem simple. Tell the US to bugger off and mind it’s own business. Take a stand against that Mafia-style administration and to hell with the consequences. If necessary, the world can manage without them. Press forward with solid green policies and if necessary privatise the fossil fuel companies and commandeer their assets. They are traitors to the planet. They’ve known what the results of their fossil fuel extraction would be since the pre-1970s and they kept it hidden.

While in the process the governments can tax the data centre billionaires at 95 cents in the euro (95 pence in the pound) to help pay for the new green economy. Britain did exactly that to the Beatles and others in the 1960s.

Oh, but wait! If a few brave, enterprising politicians set about that they’d be voted out of office in the blink of an eye. Why? Because things would get rough for a time. You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs and there would be a lot of eggs to break: lost jobs, price rises, more wildfires, food scarcities, and who knows what damage the US administration might throw out? Sky high tariffs, certainly. Possible withdrawal of military hardware and personnel. I’m sure the madman could find lots to avenge when a nation stops licking his boots, or wherever. There’d be no immediate positive results for having a greener country. The planet would keep on heating for quite a while. Mister & Missus Homo sapiens don’t like to struggle, especially when it’s too hot in Spain for the annual summer holiday and the wildfires  are burning ever nearer.

Perhaps Burnham is a bit more canny than I give him credit for. Better to wait and let those figures creep up over fifty percent.

It may yet take a while.

It may yet prove too late.

The headline in today’s Guardian doesn’t quite say it all.

For, “Marco Rubio launches campaign to dismantle international criminal court,” read:

“Marco Rubio launches campaign to dismantle International Law.”

It’s another of those moments, (of which there’s been many since the present administration gained power in the United States) when the long-term aim of its authoritarian government makes itself blazingly obvious.

The international criminal court was set up in July 2002 following ratification of the Rome Statute in 1998. It had been under discussion for nearly half a century before finally coming to fruition.

“In the prospect of an international criminal court lies the promise of universal justice. That is the simple and soaring hope of this vision. We are close to its realization. We will do our part to see it through till the end. We ask you . . . to do yours in our struggle to ensure that no ruler, no State, no junta and no army anywhere can abuse human rights with impunity. Only then will the innocents of distant wars and conflicts know that they, too, may sleep under the cover of justice; that they, too, have rights, and that those who violate those rights will be punished.

“For nearly half a century — almost as long as the United Nations has been in existence — the General Assembly has recognized the need to establish such a court to prosecute and punish persons responsible for crimes such as genocide. Many thought . . . that the horrors of the Second World War — the camps, the cruelty, the exterminations, the Holocaust — could never happen again. And yet they have. In Cambodia, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Rwanda. Our time — this decade even — has shown us that man’s capacity for evil knows no limits. Genocide . . . is now a word of our time, too, a heinous reality that calls for a historic response.”  — Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary-General .

Out of 195 nation states in the world, 125 are members of the ICC. Of those that are not, the most obvious are China, India, Israel, Russia, and the United States. China, India and Russia are controlled by authoritarian dictators. Israel has put itself outside of International Law by it’s continuing genocide in Gaza and the West Bank,

The United States, by calling for the disbandment of the ICC, which it has never recognised for obvious reasons, if successful would result in International Law becoming meaningless. It would allow for rogue nations to run riot against their own people and those of other countries with impunity.

The idea for an international court arose from the success of the Nuremburg trials of war criminals following World War Two. It was an attempt to prevent the horrors of that conflict ever happening again.

There are those that say the ICC has failed to achieve its raison d’être. Look, they say, at Myanmar, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, ongoing genocidal conflicts. There are other conflicts around the world afflicted by acts construed as international war crimes.

But this is not the fault of the ICC. The fault is often with lily-livered politicians who allow wanted war criminals into their nations and abscond from their duty to have them arrested and transferred to the ICC at the Hague. One of the most publicized of these occurred when Omar al-Bashir, the ex-president of Sudan, visited South Africa (a member state of the ICC) in 2015 and was never arrested. Jacob Zuma was the president of South Africa at that time until deposed in 2018. He treated al-Bashir as his personal guest.

Marco Rubio’s campaign to disband the ICC can only have one purpose. It is even more evidence that the United States is set to become yet another rogue state at odds with the rest of the civilized world.