NP: CMJ New Music Monthly, Volume 121

I know the eighties are coming back into fashion, but does it really need to extend into propping up dictators and fairly nasty regimes because we have short-term political and military gains? This stuff from Uzbekistan is disturbing. Based on the post-hoc Iraq justification, the Uzbeks could easily be the next target of Bush's military ire, but instead we're keeping the rest of the world from looking into some bad, bad shit that's gone down there.

Speaking of that, the high horse the U.S. mounted with regard to international war crimes is now being exploited to keep the International Criminal Court from investigating genocide in the Sudan. From The Week magazine:

But rules adopted at the request of the U.S. allow any country to reject the court's jurisdiction if it is investigating the crimes itself. Sudan said it is doing so, which means that the ICC will have to prove the Sudanese courts biased or ineffective before it can proceed.

To some extent, I understand that the argument that the White House doesn't exactly think its polices through is overdone and maybe cheapened by left-wing hyperbole, but using U.S. precedence to shield investigations into genocide? That's pretty serious.

It looks like Sudan may not challenge the ICC investigation itself, but they also aren't going to really cooperate with it, either.