ICE's Interpol Errors

ICE Wrongly Continues to Use Interpol Red Notices for Targeting, Forbes, December 19, 2018. "Earlier this month, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced it had arrested 105 people in an operation “targeting criminal aliens and public safety threats.” The agency described four of those arrested as having “Interpol warrants.” These arrests are part of a larger, disturbing pattern of ICE reliance on Interpol Red Notices to target individuals for arrest. It’s a practice which runs a serious risk of allowing Vladimir Putin to pick his victims in the United States."

The Palestinians Get Started With Interpol Abuse

The Palestinian Abuse of Interpol Has Begun, Forbes, December 14, 2018. "In “How the United States Should Respond to Palestinian Membership in Interpol,” a lengthy paper published in May, I pointed out that the Palestinian Authority said it wanted to get into Interpol for political reasons, and that it had repeatedly given notice of its intention to abuse Interpol. In other words, the Palestinians want to use Interpol for political purposes. I also pointed out that, while Palestinian membership would pose a risk to Israeli officials and, more seriously, to the friends of Israel around the world, “the most likely targets are in fact Palestinian opponents of the Palestinian Authority.” The risk to Interpol, I predicted, was that it would become part of the Palestinian knife fight for control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and for the succession to the aging Palestinian president for life Mahmoud Abbas. That prediction has come true."

How The U.S. Can Curb Interpol Abuse

10 Ways the U.S. Can Curb Interpol Abuses, Just Security, December 11, 2018. "Interpol is not an international police agency. It’s a bulletin board on which notices are posted, and a communications system by which messages are sent. The board and the system have rules, the most important of which is that — as required by Interpol’s Constitution — they cannot be used for political, racial, religious, or military purposes. Interpol cannot stop its member nations, which are fully sovereign, from creating and prosecuting political offenses. All it can and is required to do by its Constitution is ensure that it is used only in connection with genuinely criminal offenses. Unfortunately, Interpol is falling short on that count. But there are ways to improve its record."

The Great French Illusion

Macron Gas-Tax Retreat Is No Surprise, Newsday, December 9, 2018. "The latest riots in Paris — the most extensive since 1968 — show that while Europeans may pay higher gas taxes than we do, they don’t enjoy it. But the riots aren’t just about the price at the pump. They reflect the irrelevance of Emmanuel Macron, France’s latest man on a horse, to the problems that led to his election — and those problems are not uniquely French."

What We, And They, Are Doing Wrong

A New Approach to Europe: U.S. Interests, Nationalist Movements, and the European Union, Heritage Foundation Lecture #1300, December 4, 2018. "Current European policy combines low growth, low levels of job creation, high levels of unskilled immigration, increasing levels of supranational control, a rejection of the assimilative force of national identity, and lashings of deeply felt guilt. The first error of U.S. policy toward Europe is supporting the errors of its fiscal and monetary systems. The second error the U.S., and Europe, have made is to neglect security. The threats to European security today come from two quarters: Russia and the Mediterranean, the latter due in large part to the effects of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cataclysmically irresponsible open-borders policy."