The end of the system of international law is near Of dangling wires, substandard products and The Big One: Coincidental or providential?

the Philippine authorities refused to cooperate with the ICC. This is to intimidate the country’s former leader Rodrigo Duterte, who put national issues above the interests of the West, and to teach the country’s leadership a lesson.

Sense

TH e expression “new world order” is in fashion again today. Recently, there has been a situation when Western countries are trying to replace international law with their own “rules” and thus trying to prevent the formation of a polycentric world, to regain their privileged positions, to impose on others standards of behavior based on a narrow Western interpretation of liberalism. In these endeavors, the West is less and less aware of international law and more and more frequently and obsessively talks about order based on rules. But who has seen these rules, what are they about?

The purpose of the concept of such an “order” is obvious: to revise the norms of international law, which no longer suit the West, and to replace it with “rules” adapted to its own selfish schemes, which are formulated depending on political expediency. This leads to the erosion of the central role of the UN and to the sliding of the world community into a state of legal chaos.

Increasingly, instead of equal collective work, closed formats outside legitimate multilateral frameworks are created, and approaches agreed upon by a select few are then declared “multilateral agreements.” A vivid example of this is the Summit for Democracy, which is seen as an alternative to the UN, but unlike the UN, only selected countries are invited to participate.

Recently, it has become evident that many international organizations are being used as repressive instruments of the West that make politically motivated decisions. The International Criminal Court has been most notable in its ambivalent approaches. According to the statute, the ICC has jurisdiction over natural persons and specializes in crimes against humanity and war crimes.

At the same time, the ICC investigates only those cases that are favorable to its handlers. Thus, the ICC does not abandon its attempts to investigate crimes against humanity committed during the socalled “war on drugs” in the Philippines. This decision was made despite the fact that back in 2019,

It is noteworthy that the International Criminal Court is still ignoring the appeals of the inhabitants of Donbas, but has readily launched an investigation into Kyiv’s accusations against Russia because these efforts were supported in the e U and the United States. The scandalous story of the so-called arrest warrant for the Russian president issued by the International Criminal Court is instructive for the entire international community. According to former Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl, “The court came under pressure from Washington and many other e U countries. This only demonstrates how politicized the ICC is.”

In the 20 years of its existence, the pseudo-international court in The Hague has primarily prosecuted African leaders, spending more than a billion dollars for this purpose. Many African Union states, convinced of the ICC’s bias, denounced the Rome Statute. In its current form, the International Criminal Court is nothing but a repressive tool in the hands of the West. The ICC’s only proudest act was in 2020, when it attempted to investigate the US military’s actions in Afghanistan. But after US threats, the ICC refused to investigate US war crimes against humanity.

Therefore, when reading publications “on rule-based order” one should remember that there is no set of “rules.” No one has developed them either by consensus or by voting. It is an absolutely illusory concept invented by the West to cover up its attempts to dominate on the basis of its own exclusivity, which they themselves proclaimed. This is why the concept of a rules-based world order is supported by a minority in our world.

The countries of Asia and the global South are indirectly capable of creating a balance between the warring parties. They do not need to create any structure for this; they do not need to adhere to one ideology. They simply need to be against new wars, and there is no need for new treaties and alliances, which always impose restrictions on their members. It is necessary to unite and join the efforts of States advocating the restoration of universal respect for international law and the strengthening of its role as the foundation of international relations.

Gary Bauzon

Last July 31, my wife Evelyn expressed on a Facebook post her frustration and concern over the dangling wires and cables from the power pylons all over Metro Manila.

She said: “One of the things that perturbs me is: Why is it that in Metro Manila, Philippines nobody is complaining about the crisscrossing, dangerous, disconcerted, dirty-looking, dangling Meralco/PLDT/Cable wires that hover over the streets? Are the people blind or do they deserve this kind of shameful environment?”

Then on August 3, an accident waiting to happen showed how dangerous these dangling wires are when seven power pylons in Binondo, Manila collapsed, injuring three people and damaging a number of vehicles. Coincidental or providential? We can’t tell. Maybe God is telling us to do something about this, as mentioned by my wife, before a repeat of such accident happens, and even worse, on a bigger scale. Authorities are still investigating

Indictment . . .

continued from A10 sending out an e-mail with the sincedeleted document embedded.

“The Grand Jury testimony has not even FINISHeD —but it’s clear the District Attorney has already decided how this case will end,” Trump wrote in the e-mail, which included links to give money to his campaign.

“This is an absolute DISGRACe

Trump’s legal team said it was not a “simple administrative mistake.” Rather it was “emblematic of the pervasive and glaring constitutional violations which have plagued this case from its very inception,” said lawyers Drew Findling, Jennifer Little and Marissa Goldberg.

It was unclear why the list was posted while grand jurors were still hearing from witnesses in the sprawling investigation into actions taken by Trump and others in their efforts to overturn his narrow loss in Georgia to Democrat Joe Biden. It was also unclear whether grand jurors were aware that the filing was posted online. They still would need to vote on charges, so the counts listed in the posting may or may not ultimately be brought against Trump.

Legal experts said it was likely a clerical error listing charges prosecutors were planning to ask the the incident, but many theories on why the incident happened are being proposed. Some people think that the weight of the overhanging wires and cables has become too heavy for the power pylons. Some people blamed the strong winds, while others speculated that the posts have seen better days and should have been replaced a long time ago.

For me, another possibility is that the pylons probably did not meet the required quality standards to be able to carry such loads and stress.

As many people know, substandard products, especially construction materials, have caused accidents on numerous occasions, and are therefore hazardous to life and property.

This is why we at the Federation of Philippine Industries (FPI) have grand jury to vote on. Prosecutors draft indictments and present them to the grand jury, which ultimately decides whether to hand charges down.

“I think this tells us what they are planning to present to the grand jury, and the grand jury could say no,” said Clark Cunningham, a Georgia State University law professor. He said while the error will give Trump’s legal team fodder to complain, “it will not scuttle the case.”

“Will his lawyers make a lot of noise about it? Yes, they will. Will Mr. Trump make a lot of noise about it? Yes, he will. I’m sure there will have to be an explanation for it,” Cunningham said.

One person who said he’d been called to testify to the grand jury suggested on Monday that the process may be moving more quickly than anticipated. George Chidi, an independent journalist, had tweeted previously that he was asked to testify on Tuesday, but later posted he was going to court on Monday, adding: “They’re moving faster than they thought.”

Chidi wrote in The Intercept last month that he barged “into a semiclandestine meeting of Republicans pretending to be Georgia’s official electors in December 2020.” He described being thrown out of the room just after entering, told that it was an “education meeting.” been aggressively fighting for strict enforcement of our national standards on critical products, primarily to safeguard the welfare of the consumers and the public, and secondarily to protect industries and their workers from cheap but substandard products that are flooding the market.

I firmly believe that engaging in the importation, production and peddling of substandard products is the worst form of smuggling. The traders behind these illicit acts are not only cheating the government of rightful revenues by reducing the standard and quality of their products to lower their price. Worse, they are cheating the consumers and endangering the lives and properties of the people. This is also glaringly true in the case of substandard medicines that are relying on the placebo effect; they could easily aggravate the condition of the patients. This is why, just like in the case of dangling cables, all sectors—the government, the private sector, and the people—should work together to end this menace to society.

Climate change continues to strengthen storms and super typhoons are a threat to substandard buildings. We have also seen that when a strong earthquake strikes, many poorly constructed buildings

Former lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan, who over the weekend said he’d also been asked to testify Tuesday, instead appeared before the grand jury Monday. He told reporters outside the courthouse that the 2020 election had been “fair and legal” and said now was the “opportunity to get the real story out.”

The document listing criminal charges filed midday Monday listed more than a dozen felony counts, including Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO. Willis has long been expected to levy that charge against Trump and his associates, accusing them of participating in a wide-ranging conspiracy to overturn the state’s 2020 election results.

Two counts—including solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer—listed the date of offense as January 2, 2021, which was when Trump during a phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said he wanted to “find” enough votes to overturn his loss in the state. Other counts list the date of offense as September 17, 2021, which is the same day Trump sent Raffensperger a message urging him to investigate “large scale voter fraud,” decertify the election and “announce the true winner” if the investigation found the fraud.

Former Democratic state Sen. Jen and structures suffer the “pancake mode” of collapse. That’s the danger of using substandard materials in buildings.

In the Philippines, experts have been warning that The Big One is imminent. I’ve been saying this for years, but still I want to highlight the importance of ensuring quality standards for construction materials amid the many earthquake drills that are being conducted: “Duck, Cover, and Hold. But Will the Building Hold?”

We have seen what happened in Turkey. We have seen what happened to the Ruby Tower. We have seen how a 7.7 magnitude earthquake in 1990 toppled the Baguio Park Hotel. Do we want history to repeat itself when The Big One comes?

We at the FPI and other wellmeaning groups have been doing our work, helping the government’s campaign against sub-standard products to spare lives and property from this impending disaster.

With God’s help, many lives will be saved if we succeed in making sure that we are strictly adhering to the quality standards set by the government with the help of experts from the academe and industries.

After the fact, this should not be a question anymore of: is it coincidental or providential?

Jordan, who had been subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury, said as she left the Fulton County courthouse late Monday morning that she had been questioned for about 40 minutes. Former Democratic state Rep. Bee Nguyen also confirmed that she testified. News outlets reported that Gabriel Sterling, a top official in the secretary of state’s office, was seen arriving at the courthouse earlier Monday.

“No individual is above the law, and I will continue to fully cooperate with any legal proceedings seeking the truth and protecting our democracy,” Nguyen said in a statement. Nguyen and Jordan both attended legislative hearings in December 2020 during which former New York mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and others made false claims of widespread election fraud in Georgia. Trump lawyer John e a stman also appeared during at least one of those hearings and said the election had not been held in compliance with Georgia law and that lawmakers should appoint a new slate of electors.

Sterling and his boss, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger—both Republicans—forcefully pushed back against allegations of widespread problems with Georgia’s election. Associated Press reporter Alanna Durkin Richer in Boston and Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.