November Miscellany: Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors; counting butterflies; pardoning war criminals; U.S. neocolonialism in Bolivia….
I
hope the following links, excerpts, comments, and reflections (in no
particular order) will prove of interest for one reason or another to
our readers.
“CIA-Backed Afghan Paramilitaries Behind Unlawful Killing Surge,” by Patricia Grossman for Just Security (Nov. 8, 2019): “Some U.S. officials have called for preserving the CIA’s parallel operations and these strike forces even after a U.S. troop withdrawal, despite overwhelming evidence of their involvement in gross human rights abuses. But the appalling civilian cost of these operations should be ringing alarm bells for those working to see a genuine settlement to the Afghan conflict. For Afghans who have lost loved ones to these raids, and the lack of redress, it adds to a deep sense of grievance that will undermine efforts toward creating a durable peace.”
* * *
“Fred Krinke, L.A.’s king of the fountain pen, dies at 91,” by Steve Marble for the Los Angeles Times (Nov. 8, 2019): “The Fountain Pen Shop was a museum, repair shop and retail outlet squeezed into one room, its glass cases filled with curiosities that attracted collectors, investors and those who preferred the free flow of ink. With a ballpoint pen, a user could say something. With a fountain pen, they could sing it. Stylophiles seem to agree on that. ‘The fountain pen slows you down, and makes you think,’ said John C. Maloney, a frequent customer at the Fountain Pen Shop.” [which perhaps explains why the President prefers a Sharpie]
* * *
On November 10, 2019, the Los Angeles Times had an insert titled, “Special Report on the Marshall Islands” (most often inserts to the Times are sports-related or advertising supplements or in conjunction with marketing of some sort). The following is the introduction to the Report’s cover page: “Just after the dawn of the Atomic Age and during the height of the Cold War, the United States conducted 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands of the central Pacific. It has since left this island nation with plutonium and other radioactive remnants of those tests buried under a concrete dome on a low-lying atoll. Rising seas now threaten to destroy that dome.”
As one of the previous articles that served as a preface to the series points out, when we “think of the most radioactive landscapes on the planet … the names Chernobyl and Fukushima may come to mind.” Yet recent research (a peer-reviewed study from Columbia University) “suggests that parts of the Marshall Islands in the central Pacific, where the United States conducted 67 nuclear tests during the Cold War, should be added to the list.” What follows is the prefatory material to that article, the second part of which is the abstract:
“From 1946 to 1958, the United States tested 67 nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands, a remote constellation of atolls in the Pacific Ocean that was then a US trust territory. Two atolls, Bikini and Enewetak, were used as ground zero for the tests, which caused unprecedented environmental contamination and, for the indigenous peoples of the islands, long-term adverse health effects. In addition to the populations of Bikini and Enewetak, the people of Rongelap and Utirik were also affected by radioactive fallout from the largest nuclear test the United States has ever conducted, the Bravo test held March 1, 1954. This article presents a picture of current radiological conditions by examining external gamma radiation and soil radionuclide activity concentrations.
We report on measurements of external gamma radiation on 9 islands in 4 atolls in the northern Marshall Islands, all of which were affected by the US nuclear testing program from 1946 to 1958 (Enjebi, Ikuren, and Japtan in Enewetak Atoll; Bikini and Enyu in Bikini Atoll; Naen in Rongelap Atoll; and Aon, Elluk, and Utirik in Utirik Atoll). We also report americium-241, cesium-137, plutonium-238, and plutonium-239,240 activity concentrations in the soil samples for 11 islands in 4 northern atolls (Enewetak, Japtan, Medren, and Runit in Enewetak Atoll; Bikini and Enyu in Bikini Atoll; Naen and Rongelap in Rongelap Atoll; and Aon, Elluk, and Utirik in Utirik Atoll) and from Majuro Island, Majuro Atoll in the southern Marshall Islands. Our results show low external gamma radiation levels on some islands in the Enewetak Atoll and Utirik Atoll, and elevated levels on Enjebi Island in the Enewetak Atoll, on Bikini Atoll, and on Naen Island in the Rongelap Atoll. We perform ordinary kriging on external gamma radiation measurements to provide interpolated maps. We find that radionuclides are absent from all Majuro soil samples, and that they are present at highest activity concentrations in samples from Runit and Enjebi islands (Enewetak Atoll), Bikini Island (Bikini Atoll), and Naen Island (Rongelap Atoll). We contextualize all results by making comparisons between islands and to various standards, as well as to regions of the world affected by nuclear accidents. We also discuss implications for informed decision-making by the Marshallese and local atoll governments and their people on issues pertaining to island resettlement.” Here is the online version of the “Special Report on the Marshall Islands.”
* * *
“Freed Brazilian ex-president Lula speaks to jubilant supporters,” in The Guardian (Nov. 9, 2019).
* * *
The Trump Administration, not unsurprisingly, was actively engaged in undercutting democracy in Bolivia. See Mark Weisbrot’s November 8th article for The Nation. The best analysis of what is occurring in Bolivia is provided by Vijay Prashad’s piece for People’s World, “‘Bolivia does not exist:’ Neocolonial rule reasserted by racist ‘General’s Coup’” (November 15, 2019).
* * *
“Trump’s latest anti-immigrant move: Making it far more costly to apply for citizenship,” by Manuel Pastor for the Los Angeles Times (November 12, 2019). These proposed new rules are consistent with the President’s racism and his implicit (when not explicit) views and policies in support of targeted xenophobia and White nationalism. Moreover, and relatedly, it is directly a result of long-standing Republican efforts to make it harder for anyone not a mindlessly reflexive supporter of their political party to vote, in this case, “harder to naturalize and vote.” In other words, we have here yet another instance of both blatant and insidious anti-democratic “Republican effort[s] to disenfranchise the changing electorate — consider the spate of voter restrictions supported by the GOP.”
* * *
“U.S. Held Nearly 70,000 Migrant Children in Government Custody in 2019,” from AP in HuffPost (November 12, 2019). Apart from the inexcusable moral abomination, this amounts to a violation of human rights as they apply to children as found in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). It is telling that the U.S. was one of but two countries (the other being Somalia) that failed to ratify (after signing) The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, “the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history.” In any case, it does not change the fact that the U.S. is also in clear and systematic violation of several rights specified in the aforementioned human rights instruments as well as those specified in that Convention on the Rights of the Child.
* * *
“Meet the scientist who’s been counting California butterflies for 47 years and has no plans to stop,” by Deborah Netburn for the Los Angeles Times (November 12, 2019). As the late John Ziman* reminds us, “It is popularly supposed that science can be distinguished from other modes of systematic inquiry by a distinctive method. This is not what is observed. The techniques used in scientific research are extraordinarily diverse, from counting sheep and watching birds to detecting quasars and creating quarks. The epistemic methodologies of research are equally varied, from mental introspection to electronic computation, from quantitative measurement to speculative inference.” From Ziman’s indispensable study, Real Science: What it is, and what it means (Cambridge University Press, 2000): 14. Observing (with his own eyes and those of his students who now help him), identifying, counting and collecting are among the methods (later subject to statistical analysis) used by Professor Art Shapiro as mentioned in this article. His findings, alas, are alarming. All the same, we are fortunate to have among us such a dedicated natural scientist (a professor of evolution and ecology) and delightful human being as Professor Shapiro.
* “John Michael Ziman (16 May 1925 – 2 January 2005) was a British-born New Zealand physicist and humanist who worked in the area of condensed matter physics. He was a spokesman for science, as well as a teacher and author.”
* * *
“We’re quickly moving toward a world where drone executions are the norm,” by Jennifer Gibson for the Los Angeles Times (November 13, 2019). The erosion, degradation, and outright destruction of democratic principles and practices and corresponding constitutional norms (which extend a bit beyond the law proper) in many capitalist democracies is taking place on the domestic front, but we should not forget how much our foreign policies and military behavior abroad are likewise part of this abandonment of the core values and instruments of Liberal democracy, as we learn below. The deleterious consequences are cumulative and a precipitous tipping point may be reached sooner than we might imagine.
“For more than a decade now, the U.S. and its European allies have pioneered the use of drones to target and kill suspected terrorists far from traditional battlefields. Those drone strikes have killed thousands of innocent civilians far outside combat zones — in places like Yemen and Pakistan where, thanks to the drone program, many people’s first and only engagement with the West is when a missile lands on their doorstep. Sometimes those strikes hit alleged ‘bad’ guys, hundreds of whom are reportedly on a kill list. But nobody outside the U.S. government knows how you get on or off this list. No one on the list is ever charged with a crime or tried in a court of law before they are executed by drone. [….]
Almost two decades into the so-called war on terror, the U.S. and its European allies have abandoned their long-held democratic principles. From torture to rendition to assassinations, fear has driven these governments to bend the rules and their values to the breaking point.”
* * *
“Trump claims Ivanka created 14m jobs. The entire economy only added 6m,” by Luke O’Neil for The Guardian (November 13, 2019). (The following is not from the article.) “Pathological lying, also known as mythomania and pseudologia fantastica, is the chronic behavior of compulsive or habitual lying. [….] A pathological liar is someone who lies compulsively. While there appears to be many possible causes for pathological lying, it’s not yet entirely understood why someone would lie this way. [….] Compulsive lying is also a known trait of some personality disorders, such as antisocial personality disorder. Trauma or head injuries may also play a role in pathological lying, along with an abnormality in hormone-cortisol ratio.” I would argue that in Trump’s case it is directly tied to Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which need not rule out accompanying or complementary causes (in other words, in this instance it may be overdetermined!).
* * *
Trump once again fawns over an authoritarian leader, this time inviting him to the White House to kiss his ass, proclaiming he is a “big fan” of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. And this despite the fact that Erdogan “said he returned a letter sent to him last month by President Trump that had implored him not to be a ‘tough guy’ or a ‘fool’ as he embarked on an offensive in northern Syria.” (An understandable reaction from a head of state receiving a letter of this sort, but Trump fails to discern the meaning of the act.)
We should not be surprised to learn that “Trump’s real estate business has extensive interests in Turkey and ties with the Turkish government.” Yet again, Trump puts his own narcissistic desires and economic interests over and above those of the nation (the latter defined by the Constitution and Liberal Democracy). Erdogan calls Kurdish factions/groups once allied with the U.S. in fighting ISIS in Syria “terrorists.” Trump, having already provided us with abundant and persuasive evidence that he is unmoored from both truth and reality, said yesterday that he believes Erdogan has “a great relationship with the Kurds,” adding that “[m]any Kurds live currently in Turkey, and [are] happy and taken care of.” As the LA Times notes this morning,
“A long list of actions by Turkey — a NATO ally — has troubled Congress and human rights organizations. In Syria, Turkish army units and Turkish-backed militias have been accused of possible war crimes in the killing of Kurds, who led the U.S.-backed fight against Islamic State militants. Erdogan sent his troops into Syria last month when Trump abruptly announced the withdrawal of U.S. forces — a decision that was met with unusually fierce opposition from Republicans as well as Democrats.
In Turkey, Erdogan has imprisoned or fired tens of thousands of dissidents, civil servants, police, professors and military officers after a failed coup against him in 2016. The president has manipulated elections to stay in power, according to pro-democracy organizations in Ankara. Turkey is the world’s leading jailer of journalists. Turkey also has turned increasingly toward Russia, recently buying military equipment — the S-400 surface-to-air missile system — from Moscow, which experts say may not be compatible with equipment the North Atlantic Treaty Organization already uses. [….]
Erdogan, in remarks to the press, complained bitterly about a recent declaration by the U.S. House recognizing the mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in the early 1900s as genocide.”
* * *
A Note for Republicans: The failure to complete an act of extortion remains an “attempt” in criminal law, and is thus punishable, assuming the requisite intent (the mens rea element of criminal law). As a ground-breaking philosophical examination of the inextricably moral and legal wrong inherent in the punishment of “attempts” in criminal law by Gideon Yaffe* notes,
“Attempts are worth punishing only because completions are. We do not devise our criminal law, in the first instance, to fight those who attempt crimes, but instead to fight those who complete them. But, still, the adjudication of criminal attempts makes up a large and important part of the criminal law.” An indispensable element of the legal and moral wrong involved in criminal attempts is the intention to complete the crime (‘an intention that commits one to completion’), thus regardless of whether or not one in fact successfully completes the criminal act. This is substance of the analogical response to those Republicans who argue that Trump was not successful in his attempt at extortion (truth be told, the attempt was successful for a time, at least several months). As for the attempted extortion itself together with the larger context and efforts coordinate with that attempt (which license the inference to satisfaction of the requisite conditions for intent), the following is on point:
“First, the transcripts show how Rudy Giuliani pursued objectives in Ukraine for the benefit of his business partners, as well as the political interests of his client, President Trump. These activities lead to the president being fed bad information over a long period of time and they ultimately result in the meritless dismissal of Yovanovitch, as well as to a concerted attack on Deputy Secretary of State George Kent. Second, against the backdrop of the election of a new president in Ukraine, the transcripts show the development of an irregular channel for achieving Trump’s objectives in that country—a channel that was not always playing by the usual rules of diplomacy or bureaucratic lines of communication. The transcripts show the members of both the regular and irregular channels trying to figure out what was really going on and how to navigate the unprecedented situation of Giuliani’s influence on Trump, in order to help the new Ukrainian president solidify a relationship with the United States—a relationship that is crucial for Ukraine’s continued existence as a fully independent sovereign country.
Third, in this broader context, the transcripts tell a specific story of the development of conditionality regarding a White House meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. What began as a mere hostility on the part of Trump toward Ukraine and an unsubstantiated conviction that the Ukrainians had interfered in the 2016 election, came to involve demands to investigate that theory. And it came as well to involve demands that the Ukrainians investigate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and his connection to the Ukrainian natural gas company, Burisma, on whose board the younger Biden sat. Those demands, over the course of the summer, came to be linked to the desire of the new Ukrainian government for a White House meeting between Zelensky and Trump.
Finally, the transcripts tell a related story of how the provision of military assistance to Ukraine similarly came to be conditioned on U.S. demands—because what Ukraine ultimately needs is U.S. support in an ongoing military conflict with a more powerful neighbor that is occupying its territory. The narrative is ultimately one of how an irregular actor’s behavior circumventing the normal policy process and feeding bad information and conspiracy theories to a president—led to that president demanding political smears of an embattled, struggling democracy as a condition of U.S. support.” From the article, “The Story the Impeachment Depositions Tell,” by Margaret Taylor and Benjamin Witte online at LAWFARE (12 November, 2019).
Gideon Yaffe, Attempts (in the philosophy of action and criminal law) (Oxford University Press, 2010). Yaffe is the Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld Professor of Jurisprudence, Professor of Philosophy, and Professor of Psychology at Yale.
* * *
“CIA-Backed Afghan Paramilitaries Behind Unlawful Killing Surge,” by Patricia Grossman for Just Security (Nov. 8, 2019): “Some U.S. officials have called for preserving the CIA’s parallel operations and these strike forces even after a U.S. troop withdrawal, despite overwhelming evidence of their involvement in gross human rights abuses. But the appalling civilian cost of these operations should be ringing alarm bells for those working to see a genuine settlement to the Afghan conflict. For Afghans who have lost loved ones to these raids, and the lack of redress, it adds to a deep sense of grievance that will undermine efforts toward creating a durable peace.”
* * *
“Fred Krinke, L.A.’s king of the fountain pen, dies at 91,” by Steve Marble for the Los Angeles Times (Nov. 8, 2019): “The Fountain Pen Shop was a museum, repair shop and retail outlet squeezed into one room, its glass cases filled with curiosities that attracted collectors, investors and those who preferred the free flow of ink. With a ballpoint pen, a user could say something. With a fountain pen, they could sing it. Stylophiles seem to agree on that. ‘The fountain pen slows you down, and makes you think,’ said John C. Maloney, a frequent customer at the Fountain Pen Shop.” [which perhaps explains why the President prefers a Sharpie]
* * *
On November 10, 2019, the Los Angeles Times had an insert titled, “Special Report on the Marshall Islands” (most often inserts to the Times are sports-related or advertising supplements or in conjunction with marketing of some sort). The following is the introduction to the Report’s cover page: “Just after the dawn of the Atomic Age and during the height of the Cold War, the United States conducted 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands of the central Pacific. It has since left this island nation with plutonium and other radioactive remnants of those tests buried under a concrete dome on a low-lying atoll. Rising seas now threaten to destroy that dome.”
As one of the previous articles that served as a preface to the series points out, when we “think of the most radioactive landscapes on the planet … the names Chernobyl and Fukushima may come to mind.” Yet recent research (a peer-reviewed study from Columbia University) “suggests that parts of the Marshall Islands in the central Pacific, where the United States conducted 67 nuclear tests during the Cold War, should be added to the list.” What follows is the prefatory material to that article, the second part of which is the abstract:
“From 1946 to 1958, the United States tested 67 nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands, a remote constellation of atolls in the Pacific Ocean that was then a US trust territory. Two atolls, Bikini and Enewetak, were used as ground zero for the tests, which caused unprecedented environmental contamination and, for the indigenous peoples of the islands, long-term adverse health effects. In addition to the populations of Bikini and Enewetak, the people of Rongelap and Utirik were also affected by radioactive fallout from the largest nuclear test the United States has ever conducted, the Bravo test held March 1, 1954. This article presents a picture of current radiological conditions by examining external gamma radiation and soil radionuclide activity concentrations.
We report on measurements of external gamma radiation on 9 islands in 4 atolls in the northern Marshall Islands, all of which were affected by the US nuclear testing program from 1946 to 1958 (Enjebi, Ikuren, and Japtan in Enewetak Atoll; Bikini and Enyu in Bikini Atoll; Naen in Rongelap Atoll; and Aon, Elluk, and Utirik in Utirik Atoll). We also report americium-241, cesium-137, plutonium-238, and plutonium-239,240 activity concentrations in the soil samples for 11 islands in 4 northern atolls (Enewetak, Japtan, Medren, and Runit in Enewetak Atoll; Bikini and Enyu in Bikini Atoll; Naen and Rongelap in Rongelap Atoll; and Aon, Elluk, and Utirik in Utirik Atoll) and from Majuro Island, Majuro Atoll in the southern Marshall Islands. Our results show low external gamma radiation levels on some islands in the Enewetak Atoll and Utirik Atoll, and elevated levels on Enjebi Island in the Enewetak Atoll, on Bikini Atoll, and on Naen Island in the Rongelap Atoll. We perform ordinary kriging on external gamma radiation measurements to provide interpolated maps. We find that radionuclides are absent from all Majuro soil samples, and that they are present at highest activity concentrations in samples from Runit and Enjebi islands (Enewetak Atoll), Bikini Island (Bikini Atoll), and Naen Island (Rongelap Atoll). We contextualize all results by making comparisons between islands and to various standards, as well as to regions of the world affected by nuclear accidents. We also discuss implications for informed decision-making by the Marshallese and local atoll governments and their people on issues pertaining to island resettlement.” Here is the online version of the “Special Report on the Marshall Islands.”
* * *
“Freed Brazilian ex-president Lula speaks to jubilant supporters,” in The Guardian (Nov. 9, 2019).
* * *
The Trump Administration, not unsurprisingly, was actively engaged in undercutting democracy in Bolivia. See Mark Weisbrot’s November 8th article for The Nation. The best analysis of what is occurring in Bolivia is provided by Vijay Prashad’s piece for People’s World, “‘Bolivia does not exist:’ Neocolonial rule reasserted by racist ‘General’s Coup’” (November 15, 2019).
* * *
“Trump’s latest anti-immigrant move: Making it far more costly to apply for citizenship,” by Manuel Pastor for the Los Angeles Times (November 12, 2019). These proposed new rules are consistent with the President’s racism and his implicit (when not explicit) views and policies in support of targeted xenophobia and White nationalism. Moreover, and relatedly, it is directly a result of long-standing Republican efforts to make it harder for anyone not a mindlessly reflexive supporter of their political party to vote, in this case, “harder to naturalize and vote.” In other words, we have here yet another instance of both blatant and insidious anti-democratic “Republican effort[s] to disenfranchise the changing electorate — consider the spate of voter restrictions supported by the GOP.”
* * *
“U.S. Held Nearly 70,000 Migrant Children in Government Custody in 2019,” from AP in HuffPost (November 12, 2019). Apart from the inexcusable moral abomination, this amounts to a violation of human rights as they apply to children as found in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). It is telling that the U.S. was one of but two countries (the other being Somalia) that failed to ratify (after signing) The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, “the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history.” In any case, it does not change the fact that the U.S. is also in clear and systematic violation of several rights specified in the aforementioned human rights instruments as well as those specified in that Convention on the Rights of the Child.
* * *
“Meet the scientist who’s been counting California butterflies for 47 years and has no plans to stop,” by Deborah Netburn for the Los Angeles Times (November 12, 2019). As the late John Ziman* reminds us, “It is popularly supposed that science can be distinguished from other modes of systematic inquiry by a distinctive method. This is not what is observed. The techniques used in scientific research are extraordinarily diverse, from counting sheep and watching birds to detecting quasars and creating quarks. The epistemic methodologies of research are equally varied, from mental introspection to electronic computation, from quantitative measurement to speculative inference.” From Ziman’s indispensable study, Real Science: What it is, and what it means (Cambridge University Press, 2000): 14. Observing (with his own eyes and those of his students who now help him), identifying, counting and collecting are among the methods (later subject to statistical analysis) used by Professor Art Shapiro as mentioned in this article. His findings, alas, are alarming. All the same, we are fortunate to have among us such a dedicated natural scientist (a professor of evolution and ecology) and delightful human being as Professor Shapiro.
* “John Michael Ziman (16 May 1925 – 2 January 2005) was a British-born New Zealand physicist and humanist who worked in the area of condensed matter physics. He was a spokesman for science, as well as a teacher and author.”
* * *
“We’re quickly moving toward a world where drone executions are the norm,” by Jennifer Gibson for the Los Angeles Times (November 13, 2019). The erosion, degradation, and outright destruction of democratic principles and practices and corresponding constitutional norms (which extend a bit beyond the law proper) in many capitalist democracies is taking place on the domestic front, but we should not forget how much our foreign policies and military behavior abroad are likewise part of this abandonment of the core values and instruments of Liberal democracy, as we learn below. The deleterious consequences are cumulative and a precipitous tipping point may be reached sooner than we might imagine.
“For more than a decade now, the U.S. and its European allies have pioneered the use of drones to target and kill suspected terrorists far from traditional battlefields. Those drone strikes have killed thousands of innocent civilians far outside combat zones — in places like Yemen and Pakistan where, thanks to the drone program, many people’s first and only engagement with the West is when a missile lands on their doorstep. Sometimes those strikes hit alleged ‘bad’ guys, hundreds of whom are reportedly on a kill list. But nobody outside the U.S. government knows how you get on or off this list. No one on the list is ever charged with a crime or tried in a court of law before they are executed by drone. [….]
Almost two decades into the so-called war on terror, the U.S. and its European allies have abandoned their long-held democratic principles. From torture to rendition to assassinations, fear has driven these governments to bend the rules and their values to the breaking point.”
* * *
“Trump claims Ivanka created 14m jobs. The entire economy only added 6m,” by Luke O’Neil for The Guardian (November 13, 2019). (The following is not from the article.) “Pathological lying, also known as mythomania and pseudologia fantastica, is the chronic behavior of compulsive or habitual lying. [….] A pathological liar is someone who lies compulsively. While there appears to be many possible causes for pathological lying, it’s not yet entirely understood why someone would lie this way. [….] Compulsive lying is also a known trait of some personality disorders, such as antisocial personality disorder. Trauma or head injuries may also play a role in pathological lying, along with an abnormality in hormone-cortisol ratio.” I would argue that in Trump’s case it is directly tied to Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which need not rule out accompanying or complementary causes (in other words, in this instance it may be overdetermined!).
* * *
Trump once again fawns over an authoritarian leader, this time inviting him to the White House to kiss his ass, proclaiming he is a “big fan” of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. And this despite the fact that Erdogan “said he returned a letter sent to him last month by President Trump that had implored him not to be a ‘tough guy’ or a ‘fool’ as he embarked on an offensive in northern Syria.” (An understandable reaction from a head of state receiving a letter of this sort, but Trump fails to discern the meaning of the act.)
We should not be surprised to learn that “Trump’s real estate business has extensive interests in Turkey and ties with the Turkish government.” Yet again, Trump puts his own narcissistic desires and economic interests over and above those of the nation (the latter defined by the Constitution and Liberal Democracy). Erdogan calls Kurdish factions/groups once allied with the U.S. in fighting ISIS in Syria “terrorists.” Trump, having already provided us with abundant and persuasive evidence that he is unmoored from both truth and reality, said yesterday that he believes Erdogan has “a great relationship with the Kurds,” adding that “[m]any Kurds live currently in Turkey, and [are] happy and taken care of.” As the LA Times notes this morning,
“A long list of actions by Turkey — a NATO ally — has troubled Congress and human rights organizations. In Syria, Turkish army units and Turkish-backed militias have been accused of possible war crimes in the killing of Kurds, who led the U.S.-backed fight against Islamic State militants. Erdogan sent his troops into Syria last month when Trump abruptly announced the withdrawal of U.S. forces — a decision that was met with unusually fierce opposition from Republicans as well as Democrats.
In Turkey, Erdogan has imprisoned or fired tens of thousands of dissidents, civil servants, police, professors and military officers after a failed coup against him in 2016. The president has manipulated elections to stay in power, according to pro-democracy organizations in Ankara. Turkey is the world’s leading jailer of journalists. Turkey also has turned increasingly toward Russia, recently buying military equipment — the S-400 surface-to-air missile system — from Moscow, which experts say may not be compatible with equipment the North Atlantic Treaty Organization already uses. [….]
Erdogan, in remarks to the press, complained bitterly about a recent declaration by the U.S. House recognizing the mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in the early 1900s as genocide.”
* * *
A Note for Republicans: The failure to complete an act of extortion remains an “attempt” in criminal law, and is thus punishable, assuming the requisite intent (the mens rea element of criminal law). As a ground-breaking philosophical examination of the inextricably moral and legal wrong inherent in the punishment of “attempts” in criminal law by Gideon Yaffe* notes,
“Attempts are worth punishing only because completions are. We do not devise our criminal law, in the first instance, to fight those who attempt crimes, but instead to fight those who complete them. But, still, the adjudication of criminal attempts makes up a large and important part of the criminal law.” An indispensable element of the legal and moral wrong involved in criminal attempts is the intention to complete the crime (‘an intention that commits one to completion’), thus regardless of whether or not one in fact successfully completes the criminal act. This is substance of the analogical response to those Republicans who argue that Trump was not successful in his attempt at extortion (truth be told, the attempt was successful for a time, at least several months). As for the attempted extortion itself together with the larger context and efforts coordinate with that attempt (which license the inference to satisfaction of the requisite conditions for intent), the following is on point:
“First, the transcripts show how Rudy Giuliani pursued objectives in Ukraine for the benefit of his business partners, as well as the political interests of his client, President Trump. These activities lead to the president being fed bad information over a long period of time and they ultimately result in the meritless dismissal of Yovanovitch, as well as to a concerted attack on Deputy Secretary of State George Kent. Second, against the backdrop of the election of a new president in Ukraine, the transcripts show the development of an irregular channel for achieving Trump’s objectives in that country—a channel that was not always playing by the usual rules of diplomacy or bureaucratic lines of communication. The transcripts show the members of both the regular and irregular channels trying to figure out what was really going on and how to navigate the unprecedented situation of Giuliani’s influence on Trump, in order to help the new Ukrainian president solidify a relationship with the United States—a relationship that is crucial for Ukraine’s continued existence as a fully independent sovereign country.
Third, in this broader context, the transcripts tell a specific story of the development of conditionality regarding a White House meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. What began as a mere hostility on the part of Trump toward Ukraine and an unsubstantiated conviction that the Ukrainians had interfered in the 2016 election, came to involve demands to investigate that theory. And it came as well to involve demands that the Ukrainians investigate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and his connection to the Ukrainian natural gas company, Burisma, on whose board the younger Biden sat. Those demands, over the course of the summer, came to be linked to the desire of the new Ukrainian government for a White House meeting between Zelensky and Trump.
Finally, the transcripts tell a related story of how the provision of military assistance to Ukraine similarly came to be conditioned on U.S. demands—because what Ukraine ultimately needs is U.S. support in an ongoing military conflict with a more powerful neighbor that is occupying its territory. The narrative is ultimately one of how an irregular actor’s behavior circumventing the normal policy process and feeding bad information and conspiracy theories to a president—led to that president demanding political smears of an embattled, struggling democracy as a condition of U.S. support.” From the article, “The Story the Impeachment Depositions Tell,” by Margaret Taylor and Benjamin Witte online at LAWFARE (12 November, 2019).
Gideon Yaffe, Attempts (in the philosophy of action and criminal law) (Oxford University Press, 2010). Yaffe is the Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld Professor of Jurisprudence, Professor of Philosophy, and Professor of Psychology at Yale.
* * *
My
regular work is suffering a bit today (November 15, 2019) because my
attention is not undivided, as I have the impeachment hearings on TV
(although I can’t see it unless I get up from the table and walk closer
to the set). Perhaps the most astonishing (although hardly improbable)
thing that happened today was to learn of Trump’s tweet during the
hearings continuing the coordinated smear campaign and defamation of
character against Marie Yovanovitch: “Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went
turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go? Then fast
forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably
about her in my second phone call with him.” Apparently it was not
enough that she unceremoniously and unfairly lost her post (described by
some as political kneecapping) due to the collaborative actions of a
cast of shady if not criminal characters.
Alas, it is doubtful that today’s hearing or any future hearings, or more depositions, or evidence of any sort yet to appear will change the armored and closed minds of Trump loyalists and sycophants, who have become incredibly adept and shameless in their public addiction to denial, self-deception, and wishful thinking, in brief, willful ignorance. Obstruction of justice persists when relevant individuals are told not to testify, when relevant documents and transcripts, etc. are not being released owing to White House directives. The only plausible reason for this is fear of what will be revealed as a result. The Republicans continue to call, however, for revealing the identity of the whistle-blower. Meanwhile, Roger Stone is found guilty of all charges, another reminder that the locus of corruption in this country begins and stops at the White House generally and the President in particular: as of yet only those caught somewhere between those two points are being held accountable.
* * *
In the Los Angeles Review of Books, Ebrahim Moosa reviews Jack Miles’ latest book, God in the Qur’an (Alfred A. Knopf, 2018): “A Journey with the God of the Qur’an.”
* * *
“Senate Confirms Wildly Problematic Trump Court Pick Steven Menashi,” by Jennifer Bendery for HuffPost (November 14, 2019). “Wildly problematic” is neither descriptively adequate nor morally sufficient in this instance. Tell me the Republican Party has not completely transformed itself into an extremist right-wing political party (the tipping-point being the election of Donald Trump as President) that flirts with (when it cannot openly embrace) white nationalism and neo-fascism (what has been termed post-fascism in Europe and Eurasia, given the 20th-century geo-political history of fascism) the U.S., having hollowed out the core meanings of Liberal democracy, strategically manipulating our legal and democratic institutions as but mere means to their frightening ideological ends, including the social and economic reign of plutocratic and kleptocratic capitalism.
* * *
In The New York Review of Books, David Graeber reviews Robert Skidelsky’s latest book, Money and Government: The Past and Future of Economics (Yale University Press, 2018). I suggest—perhaps a result of audacity, impertinence, or feeble eccentricity—that in addition to Robert Skidelsky’s latest book, we look afresh at Marxian/Marxist political economy, especially that form of which involves a sustained and sophisticated appreciation of the natural world (or ecological and environmental phenomena) as evidenced in recent literature, as well as more avowedly or unabashedly unorthodox “economics” perspectives, in other words, works which subsume economic behavior within our larger social and cultural world and worldviews (the latter both religious and non-religious or ethical), such as that well-explored by B.N. Ghosh in Beyond Gandhian Economics: Toward Creative Deconstruction (Sage Publications, 2012) or intimated or even presaged in the writings of Christian Arnsperger. Arnsperger is professor of sustainability and economic anthropology at the Institute for Geography and Sustainability (IGD) of the Faculty of Geoscience and Environmental Studies (FGSE). He holds a PhD in economics from the University of Louvain (Belgium) and has been teaching and researching for many years at the interface between economic analysis, human sciences, and existential philosophy.
* * *
From The Atlantic, “Trump Sides With War Criminals,” by Kori Schake (November 16, 2019). This speaks further to the constitutionally malformed mind and character of Donald Trump, his egregious faults, vices, and sins immeasurably worsened of course by the fact that he holds the highest political office in the U.S.
“President Donald Trump has exercised his authority to intervene in three cases involving war crimes, on the side of the alleged war criminals. He pardoned one serviceman who was convicted of heinous crimes, and another awaiting trial for heinous crimes. He also reversed the demotion of a Navy SEAL convicted of taking trophy pictures with an enemy corpse. All were brought to justice by their fellow servicemen and women; each prosecution relied on testimony from servicemen in the same units who witnessed the war crimes and reported them to military superiors.
This makes Trump the first commander in chief in memory to pardon American servicemen for violent crimes committed in uniform. The justification can be found in a statement Trump made to NBC News in 2016: ‘You have to play the game the way they are playing the game.’ That is, the U.S. should operate the way terrorists operate. [….]
… [B]oth the civilian and military leadership of the Department of Defense opposed the pardons. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy, and senior military leaders advised against the pardons, worrying they would ‘damage the integrity of the military judicial system, the ability of military leaders to ensure good order and discipline, and the confidence of U.S. allies and partners who host U.S. troops.’ The secretary of defense described ‘a robust discussion’ with the president, wanting to clearly convey the department’s and his own personal disapproval of the pardons.”
* * *
“Barr Rips ‘War Of Resistance Against’ Trump In Partisan Rant,” by Amy Russo for HuffPost (November 16, 2019). Our nation’s Attorney General, William Barr, here demonstrates feckless and despicable submission to the rabid right-wing ideological and conspiratorial phantasies of the President, joining the nefarious circle of sycophants who are systematically and unabashedly destroying the constitutional and legal structures of our country’s already fragile Liberal democracy by way of absolute fealty and thus unethical loyalty to their pathologically narcissistic Leader (It is tempting to infer from his thinly veiled rant that Barr has little understanding of what the ‘rule of law’ in fact means, although I think he is just rhetorically echoing words and phrases intended to curry favor with the President). Barr has at the same time politicized his office in the crassest or worse sense.
See too in HuffPost: “William Barr’s Partisan ‘Authoritarian’ Trump Defense Triggers Calls For His Impeachment.”
* * *
At Just Security, “Turkey’s Syria Invasion: German Research Report Says Illegal on All Counts” (November 15, 2019). “Overall, the report is clear and candid, leaving no doubt that Turkey’s latest Syria invasion is unlawful. While this is of little help to those who have been suffering the humanitarian consequences of Ankara’s decision, it does offer a crucial counterbalance to some of the reckless post-9/11 interpretations of Article 51 put forward by Turkey and others. It also serves as an important reminder that evidence and proportionality matter, and that exceptions to the prohibition of the use of force should remain tightly defined rather than broadly construed.”
* * *
“Worried about how facial recognition technology is being used? You should be,” by Amos Toh for the Los Angeles Times (November 18, 2019). Owing to the way in which these “high-technologies” are developed and marketed (capital-intensive; prior elaborate infrastructure; direct government support or collaboration; little or no regulation; little or no attempt to think deeply about the probable and possible social, political, and environmental consequences; sans any meaningful democratic participation, deliberation and discussion, etc.) in a capitalist democracy (which, we are finally beginning to realize, is more capitalist than democratic), we end up expressing our reasonable and rational concerns about their myriad consequences after the fact, that is, after they’ve been more or less fully developed and gain a social and cultural foothold and footprint. This is just but one more example of this phenomenon. Of course we can never fully envision or anticipate all of the possible effects of any new technology (social science was constructed in large measure from the notion and reality of unintended consequences), but that does not mean we cannot develop technologies in a more democratically responsible manner (involving parties beyond the firm, including those who are not just self-interested investors, stockholders, or stakeholders), demand more planning and foresight, and so forth and so on.
* * *
From The New York Times, “In Shift, U.S. Says Israeli Settlements in West Bank Do Not Violate International Law” (November 18, 2019). This of course is absolutely false, and I can recommend any number of books that persuasively argue to the contrary. Yet this does have the perverse result of making foreign policy beliefs with regard to Israel and the self-determination of Palestinians consistent with actual U.S. foreign policy behavior (by design, neglect, and default).
See too the Los Angeles Times article on this: “The announcement drew immediate criticism from Palestinians and Israeli organizations that advocate for a peaceful, two-state solution [the possibility of a two-state solution has long passed] to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — a Palestinian state alongside Israel. ‘This is not at all constructive or a legitimate peaceful solution,’ said David Halperin, executive director of the Israel Policy Forum, a pro-Israel U.S. organization that advocates for a two-state solution. ‘It will continue to breathe life into the Israeli right’ and give a green light to eventual annexation of the West Bank, depriving the Palestinians of an independent homeland once and for all, he said in a telephone interview.
Israel’s settlement construction has skyrocketed over the last few decades, and the settlements now house more than 400,000 Israelis. Palestinians say the scattered Jewish communities already make it difficult to create a single, contiguous Palestinian state. In past peace talks, Palestinians have demanded that Israeli settlement construction be halted and existing settlements be removed. ‘Israeli settlements steal Palestinian land, seize and exploit Palestinian natural resources, and divide, displace and restrict the movement of the people of Palestine,’ said Saeb Erekat, a veteran Palestinian official. ‘In sum, Israel’s colonial-settlement enterprise perpetuates the negation of the Palestinian right to self-determination.’”
* * *
From HuffPost, “Trump Hails New Farm Aid Billions As Report Reveals Money Helps Wealthy, Southerners,” by Mary Papenfuss (November 19, 2019). More lies, deception … all by way of attempting to enhance Trump’s electoral prospects. Democrats should explain to the country the true details of this “farm aid” (which largely benefits the largest agribusiness farming interests), needed solely because of Trump’s trade war with China!
* * *
A very informative and helpful piece by Ben Benwick and Justin Florence in Lawfare, “The Bad Arguments That Trump Didn’t Commit Bribery.” As I endeavored to explain in a link above, “attempts” to complete a crime, even if not completed, are still punishable, a point that needs to be made again and again (a recently analogy I heard on TV used the case of a bank-robber stopped before he could get out the door with his loot, his attempt failed, but it was no less a kind of crime; of course less dramatic and mundane examples can make the same point). From our article:
“’At the time the Constitution was drafted, when people thought of bribery, they thought in broad terms of the corrupt use of an official’s public power to achieve private ends.’ For these purposes, there is no difference whether or not the bribe was consummated. As the Illinois Supreme Court explained in an 1872 case, Walsh v. People, 65 Ill. 58, 60, a ‘mere unsuccessful attempt to bribe’ is unlawful because it ‘tends to corrupt, and, as the law abhors the least tendency to corruption, it punishes the act which is calculated to debase, and which may affect prejudicially the morals of the community.’ The ‘tendency to corruption’ is even greater when it is the public official seeking to obtain a bribe. The Founders were rightly concerned about an official wielding power in this way (especially when susceptible to foreign influence), and so provided in the Impeachment Clause a mechanism for such an official’s removal.”
* * *
From the Los Angeles Times, “California’s San Onofre nuclear plant is a Chernobyl waiting to happen,” by Kate Brown (November 19, 2019). The introductory remarks I made on the previous LA Times op-ed piece about facial recognition technology are again apropos (with this exception: while there is more apparent regulation in this instance, the NRC has more or less aligned itself with the nuclear industry and its interests and has historically exemplified the definition of ‘regulatory capture’). See too: (i) “Internal reports contradict regulators’ public findings over spent fuel at San Onofre;”(ii) “The San Onofre nuclear plant is a ‘Fukushima waiting to happen;’” and (iii) “Activists push for relocation of San Onofre nuclear waste.”
* * *
“How a Native American Resistance Held Alcatraz for 18 Months,” by David Treuer for The New York Times (November 20, 2019). There are at least four or five good books about this occupation, the latest being Kent Blansett, A Journey to Freedom: Richard Oakes, Alcatraz, and the Red Power Movement (Yale University Press, 2018). The latest version of my bibliography for North American Indians is here.
* * *
“We need the full truth about the CIA’s torture program,” by Hina Shamsi for the Los Angeles Times. My bibliography for torture is here.
* * *
By Kevin Jon Heller at Opinio Juris, “Poor Yorick: Talmon on Trump and International Law.” “If I have any criticism of the article, it’s that Talmon finished it just a bit too soon. The past couple of weeks have witnessed two particularly striking examples of grave-digging. The first, of course, is the Trump administration’s announcement on Tuesday that it no longer considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank to be per se illegal under international law. Marty Lederman does an excellent job at Just Security demonstrating that the announcement is inconsistent with decades of US policy and has been rejected again and again by the Security Council, the ICJ, and nearly every state in the world. (And indeed, in the past couple of days alone the US position has been condemned by the UN, the EU, Germany, and even BoJo’s United Kingdom.)
The second example is the Trump administration’s decision to use combat troops to guard oilfields in eastern Syria. The idea that the US would seize oil belonging to Syria has rightfully been condemned as the war crime of pillage, with Gen. Barry McCaffrey almost breaking the internet by tweeting, ‘WHAT ARE WE BECOMING … PIRATES?’ It’s worth noting, though, that Trump’s decision also makes a (further) mockery of the jus ad bellum. The idea that American troops can indefinitely occupy Syria in “self-defense” against ISIS has always been unpersuasive. But not even that strained justification applies to seizing Syria’s oil supply. Revealingly, the Pentagon can’t seem to settle on an explanation, one day claiming that taking the oil is necessary to prevent ISIS from using the oil to fund its operations, the next contending that the US wants to ensure oil revenue goes to Syrian rebel forces. The latter is per se illegal (kind of like Israel’s settlements), and the former has two problems. The first is that Trump regularly insists that ISIS has been completely destroyed, so it’s difficult to see why the US needs to defend itself against a non-existent entity. The second is that even if ISIS still exists (hint: it does), seizing Syria’s oil is not a proper act of self-defense under even the most capacious interpretation of armed attack, necessity, and proportionality.
Both the settlement announcement and recent US activities in Syria simply reinforce Talmon’s central point, which is that the Trump administration is doing everything it can to bury international law once and for all. Read Talmon’s article and pass it along to everyone you know.”
* * *
Finally, “Mister Rogers was a Thanksgiving heretic” by Michael K. Long for the Los Angeles Times (November 22, 2019). Before this article, I was already inclined to view Rogers informally speaking, as a saint … or a bodhisattva. Now I’m convinced!
“In the early 1970s, Rogers stopped eating turkey — and meat, fish and other fowl — altogether. It was right around the time that Frances Moore Lappé penned Diet for a Small Planet, a vigorous argument for vegetarianism. But unlike Lappé, Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister who used spiritual language to explain his commitment to a plant-based diet. ‘I want to be a vehicle for God, to spread his message of love and peace,’ Rogers said in a 1983 interview with Vegetarian Times. For Rogers, that could never mean beheading turkeys, breaking their wishbones or biting their legs. At the very least, it meant treating turkeys and all God’s creatures as worthy of care and compassion. ‘I don’t want to eat anything that has a mother,’ Rogers often said.
Of course, Rogers’ love for children also played a role in his choice to adopt a vegetarian diet. In the 1983 interview, he explained that when boys and girls ‘discover the connection between meat and animals, many children get very concerned about it.’ With this in mind, he made sure his program didn’t include any images of people eating anything other than a vegetarian meal.”
Alas, it is doubtful that today’s hearing or any future hearings, or more depositions, or evidence of any sort yet to appear will change the armored and closed minds of Trump loyalists and sycophants, who have become incredibly adept and shameless in their public addiction to denial, self-deception, and wishful thinking, in brief, willful ignorance. Obstruction of justice persists when relevant individuals are told not to testify, when relevant documents and transcripts, etc. are not being released owing to White House directives. The only plausible reason for this is fear of what will be revealed as a result. The Republicans continue to call, however, for revealing the identity of the whistle-blower. Meanwhile, Roger Stone is found guilty of all charges, another reminder that the locus of corruption in this country begins and stops at the White House generally and the President in particular: as of yet only those caught somewhere between those two points are being held accountable.
* * *
In the Los Angeles Review of Books, Ebrahim Moosa reviews Jack Miles’ latest book, God in the Qur’an (Alfred A. Knopf, 2018): “A Journey with the God of the Qur’an.”
* * *
“Senate Confirms Wildly Problematic Trump Court Pick Steven Menashi,” by Jennifer Bendery for HuffPost (November 14, 2019). “Wildly problematic” is neither descriptively adequate nor morally sufficient in this instance. Tell me the Republican Party has not completely transformed itself into an extremist right-wing political party (the tipping-point being the election of Donald Trump as President) that flirts with (when it cannot openly embrace) white nationalism and neo-fascism (what has been termed post-fascism in Europe and Eurasia, given the 20th-century geo-political history of fascism) the U.S., having hollowed out the core meanings of Liberal democracy, strategically manipulating our legal and democratic institutions as but mere means to their frightening ideological ends, including the social and economic reign of plutocratic and kleptocratic capitalism.
* * *
In The New York Review of Books, David Graeber reviews Robert Skidelsky’s latest book, Money and Government: The Past and Future of Economics (Yale University Press, 2018). I suggest—perhaps a result of audacity, impertinence, or feeble eccentricity—that in addition to Robert Skidelsky’s latest book, we look afresh at Marxian/Marxist political economy, especially that form of which involves a sustained and sophisticated appreciation of the natural world (or ecological and environmental phenomena) as evidenced in recent literature, as well as more avowedly or unabashedly unorthodox “economics” perspectives, in other words, works which subsume economic behavior within our larger social and cultural world and worldviews (the latter both religious and non-religious or ethical), such as that well-explored by B.N. Ghosh in Beyond Gandhian Economics: Toward Creative Deconstruction (Sage Publications, 2012) or intimated or even presaged in the writings of Christian Arnsperger. Arnsperger is professor of sustainability and economic anthropology at the Institute for Geography and Sustainability (IGD) of the Faculty of Geoscience and Environmental Studies (FGSE). He holds a PhD in economics from the University of Louvain (Belgium) and has been teaching and researching for many years at the interface between economic analysis, human sciences, and existential philosophy.
* * *
From The Atlantic, “Trump Sides With War Criminals,” by Kori Schake (November 16, 2019). This speaks further to the constitutionally malformed mind and character of Donald Trump, his egregious faults, vices, and sins immeasurably worsened of course by the fact that he holds the highest political office in the U.S.
“President Donald Trump has exercised his authority to intervene in three cases involving war crimes, on the side of the alleged war criminals. He pardoned one serviceman who was convicted of heinous crimes, and another awaiting trial for heinous crimes. He also reversed the demotion of a Navy SEAL convicted of taking trophy pictures with an enemy corpse. All were brought to justice by their fellow servicemen and women; each prosecution relied on testimony from servicemen in the same units who witnessed the war crimes and reported them to military superiors.
This makes Trump the first commander in chief in memory to pardon American servicemen for violent crimes committed in uniform. The justification can be found in a statement Trump made to NBC News in 2016: ‘You have to play the game the way they are playing the game.’ That is, the U.S. should operate the way terrorists operate. [….]
… [B]oth the civilian and military leadership of the Department of Defense opposed the pardons. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy, and senior military leaders advised against the pardons, worrying they would ‘damage the integrity of the military judicial system, the ability of military leaders to ensure good order and discipline, and the confidence of U.S. allies and partners who host U.S. troops.’ The secretary of defense described ‘a robust discussion’ with the president, wanting to clearly convey the department’s and his own personal disapproval of the pardons.”
* * *
“Barr Rips ‘War Of Resistance Against’ Trump In Partisan Rant,” by Amy Russo for HuffPost (November 16, 2019). Our nation’s Attorney General, William Barr, here demonstrates feckless and despicable submission to the rabid right-wing ideological and conspiratorial phantasies of the President, joining the nefarious circle of sycophants who are systematically and unabashedly destroying the constitutional and legal structures of our country’s already fragile Liberal democracy by way of absolute fealty and thus unethical loyalty to their pathologically narcissistic Leader (It is tempting to infer from his thinly veiled rant that Barr has little understanding of what the ‘rule of law’ in fact means, although I think he is just rhetorically echoing words and phrases intended to curry favor with the President). Barr has at the same time politicized his office in the crassest or worse sense.
See too in HuffPost: “William Barr’s Partisan ‘Authoritarian’ Trump Defense Triggers Calls For His Impeachment.”
* * *
At Just Security, “Turkey’s Syria Invasion: German Research Report Says Illegal on All Counts” (November 15, 2019). “Overall, the report is clear and candid, leaving no doubt that Turkey’s latest Syria invasion is unlawful. While this is of little help to those who have been suffering the humanitarian consequences of Ankara’s decision, it does offer a crucial counterbalance to some of the reckless post-9/11 interpretations of Article 51 put forward by Turkey and others. It also serves as an important reminder that evidence and proportionality matter, and that exceptions to the prohibition of the use of force should remain tightly defined rather than broadly construed.”
* * *
“Worried about how facial recognition technology is being used? You should be,” by Amos Toh for the Los Angeles Times (November 18, 2019). Owing to the way in which these “high-technologies” are developed and marketed (capital-intensive; prior elaborate infrastructure; direct government support or collaboration; little or no regulation; little or no attempt to think deeply about the probable and possible social, political, and environmental consequences; sans any meaningful democratic participation, deliberation and discussion, etc.) in a capitalist democracy (which, we are finally beginning to realize, is more capitalist than democratic), we end up expressing our reasonable and rational concerns about their myriad consequences after the fact, that is, after they’ve been more or less fully developed and gain a social and cultural foothold and footprint. This is just but one more example of this phenomenon. Of course we can never fully envision or anticipate all of the possible effects of any new technology (social science was constructed in large measure from the notion and reality of unintended consequences), but that does not mean we cannot develop technologies in a more democratically responsible manner (involving parties beyond the firm, including those who are not just self-interested investors, stockholders, or stakeholders), demand more planning and foresight, and so forth and so on.
* * *
From The New York Times, “In Shift, U.S. Says Israeli Settlements in West Bank Do Not Violate International Law” (November 18, 2019). This of course is absolutely false, and I can recommend any number of books that persuasively argue to the contrary. Yet this does have the perverse result of making foreign policy beliefs with regard to Israel and the self-determination of Palestinians consistent with actual U.S. foreign policy behavior (by design, neglect, and default).
See too the Los Angeles Times article on this: “The announcement drew immediate criticism from Palestinians and Israeli organizations that advocate for a peaceful, two-state solution [the possibility of a two-state solution has long passed] to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — a Palestinian state alongside Israel. ‘This is not at all constructive or a legitimate peaceful solution,’ said David Halperin, executive director of the Israel Policy Forum, a pro-Israel U.S. organization that advocates for a two-state solution. ‘It will continue to breathe life into the Israeli right’ and give a green light to eventual annexation of the West Bank, depriving the Palestinians of an independent homeland once and for all, he said in a telephone interview.
Israel’s settlement construction has skyrocketed over the last few decades, and the settlements now house more than 400,000 Israelis. Palestinians say the scattered Jewish communities already make it difficult to create a single, contiguous Palestinian state. In past peace talks, Palestinians have demanded that Israeli settlement construction be halted and existing settlements be removed. ‘Israeli settlements steal Palestinian land, seize and exploit Palestinian natural resources, and divide, displace and restrict the movement of the people of Palestine,’ said Saeb Erekat, a veteran Palestinian official. ‘In sum, Israel’s colonial-settlement enterprise perpetuates the negation of the Palestinian right to self-determination.’”
* * *
From HuffPost, “Trump Hails New Farm Aid Billions As Report Reveals Money Helps Wealthy, Southerners,” by Mary Papenfuss (November 19, 2019). More lies, deception … all by way of attempting to enhance Trump’s electoral prospects. Democrats should explain to the country the true details of this “farm aid” (which largely benefits the largest agribusiness farming interests), needed solely because of Trump’s trade war with China!
* * *
A very informative and helpful piece by Ben Benwick and Justin Florence in Lawfare, “The Bad Arguments That Trump Didn’t Commit Bribery.” As I endeavored to explain in a link above, “attempts” to complete a crime, even if not completed, are still punishable, a point that needs to be made again and again (a recently analogy I heard on TV used the case of a bank-robber stopped before he could get out the door with his loot, his attempt failed, but it was no less a kind of crime; of course less dramatic and mundane examples can make the same point). From our article:
“’At the time the Constitution was drafted, when people thought of bribery, they thought in broad terms of the corrupt use of an official’s public power to achieve private ends.’ For these purposes, there is no difference whether or not the bribe was consummated. As the Illinois Supreme Court explained in an 1872 case, Walsh v. People, 65 Ill. 58, 60, a ‘mere unsuccessful attempt to bribe’ is unlawful because it ‘tends to corrupt, and, as the law abhors the least tendency to corruption, it punishes the act which is calculated to debase, and which may affect prejudicially the morals of the community.’ The ‘tendency to corruption’ is even greater when it is the public official seeking to obtain a bribe. The Founders were rightly concerned about an official wielding power in this way (especially when susceptible to foreign influence), and so provided in the Impeachment Clause a mechanism for such an official’s removal.”
* * *
From the Los Angeles Times, “California’s San Onofre nuclear plant is a Chernobyl waiting to happen,” by Kate Brown (November 19, 2019). The introductory remarks I made on the previous LA Times op-ed piece about facial recognition technology are again apropos (with this exception: while there is more apparent regulation in this instance, the NRC has more or less aligned itself with the nuclear industry and its interests and has historically exemplified the definition of ‘regulatory capture’). See too: (i) “Internal reports contradict regulators’ public findings over spent fuel at San Onofre;”(ii) “The San Onofre nuclear plant is a ‘Fukushima waiting to happen;’” and (iii) “Activists push for relocation of San Onofre nuclear waste.”
* * *
“How a Native American Resistance Held Alcatraz for 18 Months,” by David Treuer for The New York Times (November 20, 2019). There are at least four or five good books about this occupation, the latest being Kent Blansett, A Journey to Freedom: Richard Oakes, Alcatraz, and the Red Power Movement (Yale University Press, 2018). The latest version of my bibliography for North American Indians is here.
* * *
“We need the full truth about the CIA’s torture program,” by Hina Shamsi for the Los Angeles Times. My bibliography for torture is here.
* * *
By Kevin Jon Heller at Opinio Juris, “Poor Yorick: Talmon on Trump and International Law.” “If I have any criticism of the article, it’s that Talmon finished it just a bit too soon. The past couple of weeks have witnessed two particularly striking examples of grave-digging. The first, of course, is the Trump administration’s announcement on Tuesday that it no longer considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank to be per se illegal under international law. Marty Lederman does an excellent job at Just Security demonstrating that the announcement is inconsistent with decades of US policy and has been rejected again and again by the Security Council, the ICJ, and nearly every state in the world. (And indeed, in the past couple of days alone the US position has been condemned by the UN, the EU, Germany, and even BoJo’s United Kingdom.)
The second example is the Trump administration’s decision to use combat troops to guard oilfields in eastern Syria. The idea that the US would seize oil belonging to Syria has rightfully been condemned as the war crime of pillage, with Gen. Barry McCaffrey almost breaking the internet by tweeting, ‘WHAT ARE WE BECOMING … PIRATES?’ It’s worth noting, though, that Trump’s decision also makes a (further) mockery of the jus ad bellum. The idea that American troops can indefinitely occupy Syria in “self-defense” against ISIS has always been unpersuasive. But not even that strained justification applies to seizing Syria’s oil supply. Revealingly, the Pentagon can’t seem to settle on an explanation, one day claiming that taking the oil is necessary to prevent ISIS from using the oil to fund its operations, the next contending that the US wants to ensure oil revenue goes to Syrian rebel forces. The latter is per se illegal (kind of like Israel’s settlements), and the former has two problems. The first is that Trump regularly insists that ISIS has been completely destroyed, so it’s difficult to see why the US needs to defend itself against a non-existent entity. The second is that even if ISIS still exists (hint: it does), seizing Syria’s oil is not a proper act of self-defense under even the most capacious interpretation of armed attack, necessity, and proportionality.
Both the settlement announcement and recent US activities in Syria simply reinforce Talmon’s central point, which is that the Trump administration is doing everything it can to bury international law once and for all. Read Talmon’s article and pass it along to everyone you know.”
* * *
Finally, “Mister Rogers was a Thanksgiving heretic” by Michael K. Long for the Los Angeles Times (November 22, 2019). Before this article, I was already inclined to view Rogers informally speaking, as a saint … or a bodhisattva. Now I’m convinced!
“In the early 1970s, Rogers stopped eating turkey — and meat, fish and other fowl — altogether. It was right around the time that Frances Moore Lappé penned Diet for a Small Planet, a vigorous argument for vegetarianism. But unlike Lappé, Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister who used spiritual language to explain his commitment to a plant-based diet. ‘I want to be a vehicle for God, to spread his message of love and peace,’ Rogers said in a 1983 interview with Vegetarian Times. For Rogers, that could never mean beheading turkeys, breaking their wishbones or biting their legs. At the very least, it meant treating turkeys and all God’s creatures as worthy of care and compassion. ‘I don’t want to eat anything that has a mother,’ Rogers often said.
Of course, Rogers’ love for children also played a role in his choice to adopt a vegetarian diet. In the 1983 interview, he explained that when boys and girls ‘discover the connection between meat and animals, many children get very concerned about it.’ With this in mind, he made sure his program didn’t include any images of people eating anything other than a vegetarian meal.”
posted by Patrick S. O'Donnell at 4:35 PM
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