Donna Hughes

Cat lover. Garden lover. Trans rights are human rights. ❤ 🐱 She/Her
.twitter.com/Hughes2Donna

[Sangita Myska @SangitaMyska]

The generosity with which Dolly Parton lived, performed and gave to the world is exemplified by this tender note to rapper Eminem. She really was the greatest. #DollyRIP

[Gina Miller @thatginamiller]

This is the model we should be pursuing in the UK - starting with kicking Palentir out of our NHS @uk

@FT

[Meidas_Charise Lee @charise_lee]

Her dad grew up illiterate, and when she started the foundation, she had her dad run it for the rest of his life because they brought him so much joy to provide books to kids‼️ An extraordinary American legend
BE A DOLLY NOT AN ELON‼️

[B.M. @ireallyhateyou]

This amazing woman knows better than every single liberal commentator or politician out there. Listen to Ahed Tamimi.

[Donna Hughes @Hughes2Donna]

I support significant reform of Scotland’s grouse moors. Please sign and share the @ReviveCoalition pledge – It’s time to Revive #OurMoors https://t.co/03AIGk95qj

[Kerry Burgess @KerryBurgess]

What a brilliant idea!

[Master Corporal 🍁 @ThatGuy68289349]

Every Canadian needs to watch this and understand exactly what kind of evil we’re dealing with. #NEVER51 always Strong & Free!!! 🇨🇦

[💧Mary Kostakidis @MaryKostakidis]

Segal's speech code meets the law: Justice Fagan wrecks Canberra's Israel exception - Michael West
From the inimitable Andrew Brown, the first person arrested and punished without trial, for a Fuck Israel t-shirt. How close we come to fascism. https://t.co/VIUxkw063d

[Seyed Mohammad Marandi @s_m_marandi]

Seriously? No way.

[Israel Exposed @xIsraelExposedx]

Americans coming to the realisation that Israel has been deceiving them for decades into senseless wars is a fascinating thing to watch.

[Mukhtar @I_amMukhtar]

The professor who hired Nathan Cofnas, Prof. Bouke de Vries, is also an eugenicist.

There’s a whole eugenics network funding and promoting this.

It traces back to the Pioneer Fund, which was established in 1937 and distributed Nazi eugenics propaganda in the US.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

There's one interesting dimension of the US's sanctions on the ICC 👇 that, as far as I saw, no media caught.

The US has sanctioned many ICC officials over the past few years but Abdoulaye Seye - one of 2 persons sanctioned this time (the other being ICC President Tomoko Akane) - was the first non-elected one.

So there is something quite unique about his case.

Seye's role at the ICC? Senior Trial Lawyer and Head of the Team handling the Situation in the State of Palestine (I know, quite a mouthful): in other words, the guy is the ICC's lead lawyer on the Palestine case.

Already, that alone should make it absolutely obvious that these sanctions have nothing to do, as Marco Rubio wrote, with "protecting Americans" but everything to do with protecting Israel.

But that's not the only thing special about Abdoulaye Seye.

See, ICC judges are elected officials: they serve non-renewable nine-year terms, and these terms are staggered so that one-third of the bench (6 judges out of 18) comes up for replacement every three years. All 124 member countries vote by secret ballot.

And that's where things get interesting: the next election is coming up in December this year and Seye is actually candidate to becoming a judge, proposed by his country of Senegal (https://t.co/z8fNaXMqME).

There are 14 candidates running for the 6 judge seats (https://t.co/6D2AXA7tCF) and Seye is the only one sanctioned by the U.S., which actually puts him at enormous practical disadvantages versus the other candidates.

For one thing, very concretely, the election takes place at the UN in New York, and being on the US sanctions list means being physically barred from entering the United States.

And it's not just about the vote itself. The whole campaign plays out in New York over months: in particular during the UN General Assembly in September, the High-level meetings, the candidate public roundtable interviews on November 4–5, and the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) session in December. That's where candidates meet delegations and lobby for votes.

The other 13 candidates will be freely doing this. Seye cannot do any of it.

So there is actually a huge election meddling angle to this: with these sanctions, the US is effectively rigging the race by banning one candidate from the entire campaign trail.

Perhaps more importantly, it also re-raises the question of whether the US is a fit place to host international institutions at all.

It's painfully obvious that a host country that weaponizes its territory to influence elections at international institutions (which, in the case of the ICC, it doesn't even belong to) is not an appropriate ground: for their own survival, these institutions should be as far away and as insulated from the US as possible.

It also raises the crucial question of how the rest of the world should respond.

The insanity here is that almost no other country globally - be in the West or the Global South - stands with the US on this, save for a handful of exceptions (like Israel). Yet they all behave like deer in the headlights (or, as we say in French, like "ostriches burying their head in sand") and do absolutely nothing concrete about it besides meaningless "we're preoccupied" statements.

The EU's behavior is particularly egregious in this regard. They too host a number of international institutions, such as... the ICC! ICC bench elections may be occurring in NYC but it's in The Hague, Netherlands, that the institution is physically located (I visited the place last year with my daughters: https://t.co/WyUgXUylj8).

So, given that they oppose these sanctions and literally host the court, you'd expect the EU to take some measures to protect the institution and the officials targeted by the sanctions.

All the more because they have a tool designed EXACTLY for this purpose: the so-called "blocking statute", a regulation that prohibits EU entities from complying with extraterritorial US sanctions.

On its own website the EU describes it as "an important achievement of unified EU action to protect EU operators, whether individuals or companies, from the extra-territorial application of third country laws" (https://t.co/W3IbD6Ummg)

It's perfect: activate the blocking statutes, and European banks can no longer close ICC officials' accounts, cancel their credit cards, or freeze their transactions just because Washington says so.

It's exactly what China did (they have their own "blocking statute") when the US started sanctioning Chinese refineries to prevent them from buying Iranian oil (see ): they activated their blocking statutes, making it illegal for Chinese companies to comply with these US sanctions and there is jack shit the US can do about it. It's a very powerful legal tool.

Yet, incomprehensively, the EU refuses to activate it. The blocking statute sits there, purpose-built but completely unused, while European companies have no choice but to enforce America's sanctions.

It's insane: the EU literally standing by while Washington destroys the lives of people on European soil - they oppose it, have the perfect tool to fight it, but they stand by. Again: incomprehensible.

All the more incomprehensible because it's actually a golden geopolitical opportunity for Europe: if Europe wants to be taken seriously as an independent actor on the world stage - as it keeps saying it does - there is literally no easier win than this. Activate a tool you already have, protect an institution you already host, defend a principle you already claim to believe in.

The fact that even this is too much unfortunately tells the rest of the world everything it needs to know about what European "sovereignty" actually means in practice.

[ARTIST TAXI DRIVER @chunkymark]

Came up on my Facebook memories thing, it's from over 10 years ago and I was never invited back

[Zack Polanski @ZackPolanski]

🤣🤣🤣

[Canary @TheCanaryUK]

Now the Greenstein trial has concluded, the Canary can reveal the extent to which the judge interfered — but the jury weren't swayed

Via @financialeyes
https://t.co/HK9MLXYXO3

[JewishVoiceForLiberation @JVoiceLiberatio]

Tony Greenstein was acquitted today on his trumped up terrorism charge
This is the text of his brilliant speech to the jury which explains in clear prose how the state tried to twist words to secure a conviction.
Had they succeeded, as Tony describes, every user of social media, every blogger, every journalist would have been in danger of imprisonment for one phrase the state took exception to.
Our criminal justice system is overloaded to the state of collapse. Someone must be forced to explain why scarce resources were used for such an abuse. Those responsible must hang their heads in shame.
https://t.co/jSrdmwbReP
@libertyhq @AmnestyUK @andyburnham

[Michael Rosen 💙💙🎓🎓 NICE 爷爷 @MichaelRosenYes]

Looks like some really fierce tutting might be going on.

[Claire #JusticeForNoah @ClaireMadMax]

@jk_rowling What attracted you to compare yourself to convicted rapist Mike Tyson?