 expectations of $1.89 by 11.3%, coming in at $2.10 and growing 25% year-over-year.
iPhone revenue was up 9.%, Apple Watch and Airpods was up 13%, and Mac revenue was up 25% year-on-year. The only figure that wasn’t positive in the report was iPad revenue, which was down 14% year-over-year. Apple’s Services category, which includes Apple Music, iCloud and the App Store revenue, also beat expectations and was up 24% year-over-year. Apple CEO Tim Cook noted during the earnings call that the company’s supply chain issues were improving, which sent the stock up 7% on Friday.All great books, I already have most of them. Great idea for a blog.  More first time novels are being published every month it seems. Alas, I'm not one of them - YET. Hurry up and get healthy. We've got to get ready for New York in July.
More great titles are on tap for the next three weeks, too. Don't use up all your pennies yet!
In 2003, John Bolton stated that the United States would not subject its actions to the constraints of the ICC. More than a decade later, the US still opposes any ICC sanctions against itself or its allies. In this chapter from The WikiLeaks Files, Linda Pearson explains how "elite immunity" ensures that many of those responsible for human rights abuses remain unreachable under international law.
The WikiLeaks cables reveal evidence of war crimes and human rights abuses carried out at the behest of the US government. They also show the lengths to which the administration of George W. Bush was prepared to go to ensure that those responsible for such crimes would remain unreachable under international law.
The US government has for decades demanded that US military personnel be tried in the US, under US law, for any crimes committed overseas. “Status of forces” agreements between the US and other nations generally include such provisions.
When states are “unwilling or unable” to prosecute individuals alleged to have committed such crimes, the International Criminal Court (ICC) can offer another avenue for justice. The court was established in 2002 by the Rome Statute, an international treaty that has been rati ed by 122 countries. It has jurisdiction to investigate individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of genocide.
During the 1998 conference of 160 nations that formulated the Rome Statute, US negotiators sought to limit the ICC’s juris- diction and its independence. A large number of states wanted the court to have “universal jurisdiction”—that is, the power to prosecute crimes committed anywhere. But US opposition forced a compromise: the ICC only has jurisdiction over crimes com- mitted by an individual of a state, or on the territory of a state, which is a party to the Rome Statute.
The US also wanted the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to have the power to veto prosecutions, effectively giving the US the power to prevent cases proceeding against its citizens. This was rejected by other nations at the Rome confer- ence. Instead, the ICC’s prosecutor, who is elected by the member states, has the final say on which cases will be prosecuted.
In May 2002, Clinton’s successor, George W. Bush, formally “unsigned” the treaty. His under secretary of state for arms control and international security, John Bolton, summed up the Bush administration’s opposition to the court when he said in 2003: “Whether it is removing a rogue Iraqi regime and replacing it, preventing WMD proliferation, or protecting Americans against an unaccountable Court, the United States will... follow its values when measuring the legitimacy of its actions.”6 In other words, the United States will not subject its actions to the constraints of international law, nor the jurisdiction of a court it cannot control through the UNSC.
The effect of Bush’s “unsigning” was to exclude US nationals from the jurisdiction of the ICC unless their alleged crimes were committed on the territory of a state that was a party to the Rome Statute. Even where it has jurisdiction, the chances that the ICC would ever indict a US national are remote, as the court depends on the financial and political support of the West. In its thirteen-year history, the court has indicted only Africans. Moreover, without its own police force, the court depends on the cooperation of governments to detain and extradite individuals who it indicts. It is unthinkable that any US government would surrender one of its nationals to the ICC.
Nevertheless, members of the Bush administration wanted to eliminate any possibility that they might one day nd them- selves at The Hague. In August 2002, Bush enacted the American Service-Members’ Protection Act (ASPA), which authorized the US president to use “all means necessary” to free a US national detained by the ICC. ASPA—or the “Hague Invasion Act,” as it become known—also banned military aid to countries that had ratified the Rome Statute.
For other states that had signed the Rome Statute, the only way to avoid the sanctions was to sign an “Article 98,” or bilat- eral immunity agreement with the US, by which they agreed not to surrender Americans to the ICC without the consent of the US government.
Other governments told the US that, while they were willing to sign, they would not be able to secure parliamentary approval for an Article 98 agreement because of the ongoing war in Iraq— particularly after the 2004 publication of photographs of US soldiers abusing Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison.
As cables from Bahrain and Paraguay illustrate, the relentless push for Article 98 agreements threatened to undermine the broader strategic objectives of the United States, leading some diplomats to advise that Washington reconsider the policy.
The government of Bahrain had signed a secret Article 98 agreement with the United States in February 2003. In May 2004, a cable from the US embassy in Manama reported that only five officials at the Bahraini Foreign Ministry knew of the agreement’s existence.18 Both the US embassy and the Bahraini government judged that the agreement would be rejected by Bahrain’s parliament if submitted for ratification. The Bahraini government was facing increasing opposition to its pro-US policies—and the publication of the Abu Ghraib pictures made news of a secret immunity agreement all the more incendiary.
The May 2004 cable reported that a Bahraini government official had told the US: “Given the Abu Ghraib revelations in Iraq... the [government of Bahrain] has no desire whatsoever to notify parliament or the public of the existence of the article 98 agreement.” A cable from June 2004 said the king of Bahrain had promised to bring the agreement into force, but that Bahrain’s foreign minister was “struggling to nd a way to carry this out without causing a political explosion.”19 The United States there- fore pushed for the agreement to be brought into force “through a secret exchange of notes”—an executive agreement that would not seek parliamentary approval.
This was something neither the repressive Bahraini regime nor its powerful US backer wanted to see. Neumann expressed concern that “all of this focus on the security relationship would tempt political opponents to try to expand the debate to other ‘surrenders’ of Bahrain rights, in such matters as the Defense Cooperation Agreement.” This agreement, signed by the United States and Bahrain in 1991, gives the US military access to Bahrain’s military bases. The US Navy’s Fifth Fleet has been stationed in Bahrain since 1995, and Bahrain is home to the US Naval Forces Central Command. In 2002, the Defense Cooperation Agreement was secretly extended by the Bush administration until 2016.24 The risk, from the ambassador’s point of view, was that news of the secret Article 98 agreement could bring unwelcome attention to the secretly extended Defense Cooperation Agreement.
The experience of other US allies in the region showed that Article 98 agreements would not pass easily. When Kuwait’s agreement was submitted for ratification in April 2007, a cable reported that “parliamentarians objected strongly.”25 The cable reported that opponents of the agreement had said it was in violation of Kuwait’s ICC obligations, and would place the United States “above the law.” Others compared the treatment of US nationals under the agreement to the detention and alleged torture of Kuwaiti citizens held at Guantánamo prison, and argued that Kuwait should not bow to US bullying.
US diplomats faced a similar dilemma in Paraguay. They believed the pursuit of an Article 98 agreement threatened the “permissive environment” that Paraguay offered for US military exercises. Like Bahrain, Paraguay’s government told the United States that its congress would not pass an Article 98 agreement.
Paraguay was subject to sanctions for failing to sign an Article 98 agreement, but in 2006 President Bush waived the restrictions on the grounds that it was “important to the national interest of the United States” to do so.
The CRS report noted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s March 2006 comment that implementing ASPA sanctions against US allies in the “war on terror” and the “war on drugs” was “sort of the same as shooting ourselves in the foot,” also noting the concern of some US policy-makers that the sanctions were reducing US influence in the region, as affected states looked to other countries—such as China and Russia—for military training and assistance. This conflict of interests is further detailed in US diplomatic cables.
In Brazil, the US embassy was concerned that IMET restrictions had meant that the country’s Ministry of Defence was “shifting to other countries for training and exchanges previously done with the US.” A March 2004 cable reported: “While France and the United Kingdom have picked up much of the slack, Brazilian officers, according