Conversation with a QAnon supporter

 To take his last question first, do I think Qanon is evil? Granted, “Q nevr divulged classified info or spoke abt violence or insurrection” So no, I just think Q and his followers are all completely devoid of any credibility.

Rocco first responded to my takedown of Tom Fitton's continued insistence that the former President Trump had every right to keep all of the documents produced by his administration with

There’s no case It’s just shh itt charges made up by leftist loo sirs in order to interfere in the elections…again The leftists will do whatever they have to in order to ensure Trump doesn’t win his 3rd straight presidential election

Guiterman asked “What if he had just given the documents back?”

To which Zag said

If he had, it would have diminished the executive power of the president to the point it was below NARA. It is the president's job, not NARA's job to determine which records are the president's. We should not elevate our librarian to have more power than the POTUS. POTUS>NARA

To which I responded:

Utterly ridiculous. The president does not have any authority to determine which records are private and personal versus which ones belong to the government. If he did, then the law that was passed after Nixon left office would have no meaning.

Rocco chimed in with

Again, I love it when condescending leftists pretend like they know what they’re talking about regarding the law…like all of a sudden we’re going 2 forget that dems don’t care that the bidens are all serial law breakers Read abt the Clinton Sock Drawer case u giant doo shh bag

I enjoy playing the role of the grown-up in the room, so I responded

I'm quite aware of the Clinton sock drawer case. It established that certain records count as the president's personal and private possession. It does NOT mean that the president can arbitrarily designate any records he pleases as being his. There's a very specific definition.

Later on, I was struck by a comment Rocco made

Don’t b distracted by their flailing They don’t care 1 bit abt the law Pay attention 2 what makes the cabal most desperate They scream the loudest when we expose their assaults on our children It’s always been abt the children

That struck me as something a follower of Qanon might say.

Yes, pedophilia was the favorite accusation of QAnon. Funny how they were completely oblivious to REAL pedos. We respect the law. When Hunter Biden was found guilty, we said "Oh, okay" and carried on. None of us made excuses, the way right-wingers have been doing for Trump.

Rocco asked

Rich, what do you mean Q & the Anons “were completely oblivious to REAL pedos”?

Me

Jeffrey Epstein and Josh Duggar were both discovered to be pedophiles during the time QAnon was well-known for accusing people of pedophilia. Both cases took them completely by surprise.

Then Rocco made it very clear where he was coming from

There’s no such thing as QAnon There’s Q & there r Anons Typical leftist dum bass…arrogant yet ignorant The cabal overlords u worship wud still b abusing, torturing, selling, sacrificing & E ting children on Epstein Island if it weren’t 4 DJT & Q like u care abt pedos

Me

Yeah, I saw a picture of Q after people tracked down who he actually was. Some skinny dweeb with glasses, no one you'd have ever heard of. Problem is, nothing he's "revealed" has ever been backed up by actual facts.

Rocco

            Sure u did Rich

I added

QAnon DID, however, baselessly accuse Wayfair Furniture of having pedos within it. This was not harmless. Real problem with that was that people who believed them clogged up the phone lines where people were trying to report REAL pedophilia.

Rocco

Baselessly? U r so clueless Wayfair was selling items for thousands of $’s that u can get for $20 down the street & the items were named after missing children At the same time secret Twitter accts had catalogs of kids 2 order as sex slaves w/the exact same names

I found a USA Today piece here and reproduced the opening paragraph.

"Last weekend, an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that online furnishings retailer Wayfair is trafficking children through listings of products with inflated prices and human names erupted on social media."

Rocco

U think the CEO of Wayfair gave up millions & resignd in disgrace b/c of these 2 weirdos? I wouldn’t believe anything in the USA Today othr than the date It’s fully ownd/operated by the Clowns In Action Rich U need 2 figure out that almost everything u think u kno is a lie

I figured that the CEO of Wayfair resigning was easy to check and, sure enough, found a Reuters piece.

It takes just a few seconds to check on things like "Did Niraj Shah actually resign?" And the answer of course, is no. Seriously dude, you're deeply embedded in a cult.

“Posts circulated on social media make the claim that Niraj Shah, chief executive officer of Wayfair, resigned from the e-shopping home retailer amid child sex trafficking allegations against the company. This claim, and the trafficking claim, are both false.”

Rocco

Reuters is owned by….wait 4 it….the Rothschilds U hav prolly never seen the adverts in Wayfair, yet u already kno everything abt Q Shah wasn’t only a stooge of the Rothschilds he was a Fed Resrv board member You’re so ignorant & proud I’m sure u r beyond the point of return

Which is interesting, but kinda beside the point. So I went to the Wayfair website, drilled down a bit and within a few minutes

BTW, I checked the Wayfair website and found that the fellow identified as CEO of the company is still the CEO. Meaning your analysis of their motivations may be good, but your conclusion is half-baked. Reuters was correct. He never lost his position.

Rocco

U r a sheep U still believe what u read/see in the cabal controlled media Sad Did u kno Google, FB, twitter & othr soc media platforms were startd by the CIA funded DARPA program? 100’s of thousands of children go missing in the USA each yr Where do u think they go?

So it's pretty clear that a follower of Q can't pass the most basic fact check. They just make up whatever “facts” they think might win the argument.

Parsing J.D. Vance and his defense of Trump

 

Senator J.D. Vance defends Trump.

The question of whether Trump should have kept those documents is fundamentally a political question.

No, it isn’t. The bulk of the 37 charges are “31 counts of willful retention of classified documents.” When off-going presidents depart the White House, the on-coming president routinely grants them top-secret security clearances so that the former president can provide advice to the current president. The clearance is granted “...as a perk granted by the current president (which Biden hasn't done for Trump)."

Such access is therefore only granted at the discretion and explicit permission of a sitting president. Beyond that, as the Presidential Records Act states, "Presidential records automatically transfer into the legal custody of the Archivist as soon as the President leaves office."

So yes, Trump has broken the law and it is a legal question.

Vance’s political opponents “...have taken this position: unelected bureaucrats can throw the elected president in prison...”

When a president’s term in office expires, his or her legal status is pretty much just like that of any other citizen. He gets Secret Service protection, but I’m not aware of any other official perks. Interestingly, Vance agrees that Biden is not using the legal system to prevent Trump from running again. The Justice Department is acting independently and not as a tool of the current president.

Maybe you think he should have kept the documents in a safe. Fine.

Heh! If you look at the photos of the boxes and boxes of documents, keeping them secure would have required first moving them all to a, or to multiple, commercial storage unit(s) (At the usual maximum, they come in 10’ x 30’ or 20’ x 20’). After that, had I been an adviser to Trump, I would have recommended that Trump build a separate building, perhaps the size of my one-bedroom apartment, up to SCIF standards, to hold the documents and to allow detailed sorting and indexing.

What Trump said about his legal ability to hold onto documents from his presidency, whether classified or not, is important as it shows “state of mind.” Those statements matter because they show that he was fully aware that he did NOT have the legal right to hold onto ANY of the documents that the National Archives took back.

...if the opposition can use the legal system like this with no consequence…

This contradicts Vance’s earlier statement that “unelected bureaucrats” were picking on the former president.

Number of Russian tanks in Ukraine

 

The Russian army started the war in Ukraine with 3,300 tanks. Oryx counts absolutely certain losses and comes up with about 1,500 losses, 1,000 destroyed and 500 captured and put back into service by Ukraine. The Ukrainian General Staff comes up with 3,458 because their standard is “pretty sure.” There's no indication that Russia has a large number of new models rolling off the assembly lines, so how are there any tanks left on the Russian side?

Popular Mechanics says that Russia has a thriving tank industry that refurbishes old tanks. The T-62, the model was developed in 1961, is getting rebuilt and sent to the battlefield. The British Ministry of Defense estimates 800 T-62s have been refurbished and sent to Ukraine. .

How credible is Seymour Hersh?

 

Okay, had a problem with the reporting of Seymour Hersh. He said that the Navy doesn't have to report covert ops whereas the CIA does. The language from 50 USC 3093 states:

The President may not authorize the conduct of a covert action by departments, agencies, or entities of the United States Government unless the President determines such an action is necessary to support identifiable foreign policy objectives of the United States and is important to the national security of the United States, which determination shall be set forth in a finding that shall meet each of the following conditions:…" (emphasis mine)

In other words, Hersh is wrong on that. At the very least, the "Gang of Eight" would have to be notified. Yes, Congress must be told if ANY branch of the government carries out the kind of operation that Hersh describes.

Hersh tells us what his political view is by suggesting that the war will end when Zelenskyy is tired of causing the deaths of fellow Ukrainians.

Daily Kos has taken a look at Hersh’s claims (the story begins several paragraphs and tweets down). They note that the long-time and highly reliable fact-checking site Snopes has also examined those claims. An OSINT fellow (Open Source INTelligence) pursues Hersh’s claims in detail. Sorry, but I think Hersh has just lost it.

Some budget-cutting recommendations

Senator Scott is trying to show that he and his party are not the only ones proposing dramatic changes to Social Security and Medicare. Someone discovered a clip of the current president Joe Biden arguing for serious changes to Social Security. Bit of a problem with using the clip as any sort of evidence is that people, even politicians, can change their minds. If the GOP could show that Biden continued to call for changes to Social Security, then yes, it would be appropriate to call him a hypocrite.

Representative Gaetz demonstrates in his zeal to cut spending that he hates democracy and opposes Western values.

At least Representative Greene has been spending a bit of her time actually looking through the budget so as to make specific proposals. Her budget proposals are based on going line by line through the budget and finding specific items to cut. This, in my own humble opinion, is the only way to approach this job!

Her first recommended cut is to not find a way to build better latrines. This strikes me as the proposal that only a comfortable, middle class woman who has never been outside the US, or at least has never been outside an area that’s been built to be a tourist destination. In the Navy, I’ve been to some non-tourist-type places and believe me, better latrines are a worthwhile project.

Study the emissions of wood heaters? Seems doubtful, but I’d need to see more detail before I could agree or disagree.

“Taxpayers should never be paying unelected bureaucrats to undermine our democracy.” Yeah, okay, but the budget is there as a result of legislators voting on specific projects. Bureaucrats don’t just arbitrarily come up with projects by themselves.

“Global Disinformation Index.” Is there the slightest doubt that the US and the world are awash in disinformation? There may be questions about this project and there may be a need for more oversight and close-up management, but it’s hardly controversial that something needs to be done about rampant disinformation.

Priority: “stopping ALL evil and cruel animal cruelty experiments that are funded by taxpayer dollars.” Yeah, I’ll go with that. Again, I would take a close and careful look at the projects to make sure that that’s what’s happening. The only way “gain-of-function” studies would be dangerous would be if they were carried out under non-scientifically-approved circumstances. That appears to have been the case in Wuhan, China, as the scientists there were apparently rushing through projects without taking the time or spending the money to make sure everything was being done safely.

“We must stop funding war in Ukraine and push for peace!“ Erm, Ukraine is a liberal democracy, Russia is an oppressive, authoritarian, centralized state. Is Greene suggesting that the US doesn’t have a vested interest in supporting democracies when they’re under attack? Is there any reasonable probability that either side is ready to open up peace negotiations? Ukraine wants to regain all of the territory that was lost since Russia invaded Crimea in 2014, Russia wants to rebuild the old Soviet Union, when Ukraine was a Soviet Socialist Republic under the direct control of Moscow.

“We are on the verge of defaulting our country’s debts…” Only and strictly because Republicans insist on playing dangerous games with the debt ceiling! Not because of anything that unavoidable!

Foreign aid has been an easy target since forever. The great majority of it comes immediately and directly back to the US in terms of purchases of arms, food and other types of national assistance. There may indeed be something that can be cut safely without damaging foreign relations, but I’d take a close, careful and detailed look before cutting anything.

“The past 2 yrs Democrats spent more money in history…” Yes, they did, because there was a need for it! Because Republicans have been holding back needed spending since 2011, when the GOP took control of the House and in subsequent years, when they kept control of at least one of the three branches (House, Senate or Presidency). When Democrats finally took control of all three branches, there was a big backlog of spending that needed to be done. Also, Covid required lots of spending.

“It’s easy to cut spending because for decades our government budgets have been the absurdly stuffed with stupid spending.” Ronald Reagan could make a case fo this back in 1981 because Democrats had indeed gotten fat and lazy and had permitted unnecessary spending to occur, but the days of finding “low-hanging fruit,” spending project that can be easily cut, are long gone. Greene made a good attempt, but she has failed to prove otherwise.

Peace proposals for Ukraine

Was just talking with some buddies about the war in Ukraine. They said that the US Peace Council has advocated peace talks between Ukraine and Russia. I then looked at various peace advocates. Russian diplomat Lavrov says that Russia and Ukraine were close to a deal in April, but Zelenskyy agreed with the US and Britain that the deal should not move forward. Found a very interesting paragraph (press people call this the “nut graph,” the paragraph that sums up the most important point in the piece).

Russia has repeatedly rejected Ukrainian and Western demands that it withdraw completely from Ukraine as a condition for any negotiations. US President Joe Biden has indicated he would be willing to talk with Putin if the Russian leader demonstrated that he seriously wanted to end the invasion.

It’s very difficult to see how any negotiations can even begin with Ukraine ceding any territory to Russia. That’s not a permanent or lasting peace as the war would simply continue once Russia had rebuilt its currently devastated army.

Is the possibility of nuclear war increasing? Actually, it’s decreasing. China has made it quite clear to Russia that they won’t put up with Russia using nuclear weapons. India has said the same. The US has also stated that it would respond to a nuclear launch by Russia with non-nuclear weapons.

Update: So if I were in Putin's position and wanted peace with Ukraine, how would I begin? I'd probably agree, in principle, that Russia must leave the territory of Ukraine. Russia's doing the exact opposite,  

"I think you only have to look at Putin's own words in a recent conversation with President Erdoğan of Türkiye in which he says unless and until Ukraine accepts the new territorial realities, as he put it, there's nothing to negotiate. In other words, unless and until Ukraine acknowledges and accepts the fact that the territory that Russia has seized by force, it's not getting back, there's nothing to negotiate. That of course is in and of itself a nonstarter," [Secretary of State Antony Blinken] added.

Some rather silly stuff

 

Dinesh D’Souza says some pretty silly stuff here.

Key differences between Trump and Biden storage of classified docs: 1. Mar-a-Lago is secure b/c it’s under Secret Service protection; Biden’s think tank is not

We went over this when it was first discovered that Trump had numerous government documents that he wasn’t authorized to have in his possession and when Trump was visited by con artists and politically-embarrassing racists. The Secret Service is responsible for seeing to the personal safety of Trump and his family members, period. They are not there to take on the function of secretaries or staff members. They aren’t there to make Mar-a-Lago secure against anything but threats to the physical safety of the former president and his family members.

2. Biden Center is heavily subsidized with Chinese government money

Hard to see what the relevance of this talking point is.

3. Trump had the power to declassify; Biden did not

Declassification is a lengthy process that involves checking with the originating agency to see whether or not a document can be safely declassified. It involves crossing out classification markings. It involves going into databases to change the status of a document. None of that was done in the case of the document that were taken to Mar-a-Lago.

Also, Trump’s ability to legitimately review classified documents ended when his presidency ended. He hasn’t had a security clearance since his term ended.

Has Trump been careful with handling classified data? Actually, no. In 2019, there was a Iranian attempt to launch a satellite into space. The launch failed. A picture of the damaged launcher was shown to President Trump. He tweeted out the picture.

Some officials worried that Trump’s decision to release the image compromised a key U.S. spy capability, potentially giving Iran a leg up in concealing its nuclear and missile programs.

The rest of the piece makes it very clear that the intelligence community was very upset with Trump for releasing the classified image without getting the approval of the intelligence agencies.

Funny stuff

So this is kind of hilarious. In his first two Twitter Files, Elon Musk put out what he thought were two really dread, awful scandals. In the first, the Biden campaign asked Twitter if the company could take some posts down because they appeared to violate Twitter policies. Twitter agreed that they violated policy and took them down. Musk was absolutely flabbergasted that no one was impressed that two private entities agreed between themselves to, y’know, “violate the First Amendment.” But no such violation had occurred.

The second case was where the Arizona Secretary of State did the same thing. She pointed out to Twitter that some posts that her political opponent had put up violated Twitter policies. Twitter agreed and removed those posts. As there were no threats of any kind, simply a notification to Twitter, again, there was no story, no violation.

So I was commenting on a similar case, where lawyers weren’t quite sure that a First Amendment violation had occurred, but where they wanted to conduct a “fishing expedition” to make sure.

Gotta love it! The guy just pulls these “laws” or “rules” out of thin air and just defends them as though they’re actual rules!

 

 

 

 

Trump's suitability for office

So, on Twitter, I responded that Trump and Putin are, of course, good buddies who completely agree and so that's why World War III didn't happen on Trump's watch. Had Putin said “I'm going to take Ukraine,” Trump would have responded “Why, sure thing, good buddy! Hey, can I wash your car, too?”

Someone responded “Trump and Putin were such good buddies that he told Germany and Europe to get off Russian oil bcs they were too reliant on it ...”

I looked it up, and sure enough, Trump was very critical of Europe for being dependent on Russian oil. “'So we’re supposed to protect you against Russia and you pay billions of dollars to Russia and I think that’s very inappropriate,' Trump said at the residence of the U.S. ambassador in Brussels.”

So okay. Trump had moments when he was thinking clearly and had good insight. Problem is, he never followed up this insight with any policy answer or solution. Clinton, Obama or Biden would have followed up by saying “What can we do to encourage Europe to reject Russian oil? Can the US provide an alternative to Russian oil?” There's no indication Trump ever paid attention to the issue after concluding that Europe was wrong and that he was right.

My solution, of course, would be to encourage Europe to adopt green, alternative energy. The problem with Puerto Rico's energy wasn't that Hurricane Maria had damaged any power plants, but that it tore down miles and miles of heavy cables that carried electricity all over the island. A wind, solar and battery combination is an enormously flexible power solution, It can be scaled from a single household to a small town, without lengthy, heavy cables!

Our dependence on fossil fuels means that we'll always be involved in getting energy from the Middle East and/or Russia. Once we build wind farms off our coasts and set up solar panels over parking lots, we don't have to worry about what Saudi Arabia thinks. We'd be able to, for instance, object to and stop a war on Yemen.

Should we have government control of social media companies?

I haven’t finished reading this interview “Fiona Hill: ‘Elon Musk Is Transmitting a Message for Putin’”, but it answers the objection of the “tankies” quite well. This tanky doesn’t use the Trumpian term “Deep State,” but she means something quite similar. The US is run by people who want to centralize the media under Washington DC’s control. Elon Musk is a brave, brave hero who dares to resist the Deep State that wants everyone united against Russia.

As Fiona Hill makes clear, Musk is just repeating, word for word, the line that Putin wants him to put out there. Seriously, does anyone believe Musk put any time and effort into studying the relationship between Russia and Crimea? Or is Musk simply responding to Putin appealing to Musk’s ego?

A big problem is that Musk doesn’t really appear to understand how social media platforms work. That’s why he wants to cut 75% of Twitter’s work force! He doesn’t have an appreciation as to how society at large versus a social media platform work, how the First Amendment is insufficient to content regulation online. As Regulatory Review puts it:

As they currently stand, social networks are self-regulated. Because of private content moderation, most social media platforms employ a combination of algorithmic and human action to determine what kinds of content to eject from their sites.

This is clearly not a sustainable state of affairs. As social media sites are not simply “The Press,” but are instead sites where abuses need regulation. Content moderation is something Musk just doesn’t appear to understand.

So yes, it’s good that Musk will continue the Starlink service for Ukraine, but yes, the US needs to seriously look at whether large social media platforms like Twitter can remain unregulated. Musk is currently putting up $44 billion to buy Twitter. There appear to be some foreign investors that are contributing to that.

Amnesty Internation & Ukraine

 Reuters:

Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International's secretary general...called on the Ukrainian government to ensure that its forces were located away from populated areas or for all civilians to be evacuated from those areas first.

I dunno, that seems pretty difficult. Recall that Russia attacked Ukraine from several directions in February and that they’ve fired missiles so that they land all over the country. A real problem with the Amnesty report is that Russians hits civilian targets all the time. 

Balloon Juice blog:

Ukraine responds strongly to criticisms by Amnesty International.

Russian abuse of civilian populations (example: Bucha) means many Ukrainian civilians feel more secure being close to their military.

Amnesty deliberately ignored the opinions of their Ukrainian staff.

The Secretary General of Amnesty International gives a very highly defensive reaction to being criticized.

President Zelenskyy takes very strong issue with Amnesty’s claim. 

And also:  

Russians distributing weapons and ammunition among civilians in the city of Kherson, in violation of the laws of war.

 

The BJ piece also looks at: 

Russian spies look for missile targets in Ukraine.

Brittney Griner’s fate.

Thoughts on Supreme Court decision on abortion

 Recently had a lengthy discussion on Twitter about pregnancy choice. The initial entry was all about how much a pregnancy costs. Nothing went particularly wrong with the pregnancy, the baby s fine and the mother is happy. A fellow who claimed to be a neutral centrist but who kept making clearly anti-choice comments, asked a question. I responded. During the course of the conversation, we focused on a particular page taken from Supreme Court Justice Alito's anti-Roe decision. Here are what I regard as the two most critical sentences:

These legitimate interests include respect for and preservation of prenatal life at all stages of development. … The protection of maternal health and safety.

To me, these describe the priorities of the Supreme Court majority in this opinion.

As to the 10-year old girl in Ohio who was raped and found herself very close to the mark of when Ohio did not permit abortions, there's no question that Ohio was seeing to it that they were showing “respect for and preservation of prenatal life”. Would her giving birth have proven fatal or very unhealthy? Doubtful.

The "bodily harm" doesnt even apply because a 10 year old can give birth safely to a child. So the answer to my original question is no there is not an exception that would allow this abortion to take place in Ohio.

So this was not a case of unintended consequences or of things going sideways into unforeseen circumstances. Alito and the rest of the Supreme Court majority had only seen ft to account for the girl's “health and safety.” Once that was satisfied, they had no problem with seeing to it that she would be required to give birth. In fact, the National Right to Life organization made it quite clear that:

“She would have had the baby, and as many women who have had babies as a result of rape, we would hope that she would understand the reason and ultimately the benefit of having the child,” Bopp said in a phone interview on Thursday.

Is Alito himself troubled at all by the obvious problems with the decision as it's currently formulated? Not so you'd know it. He appeared for a speech and didn't appear to be even slightly troubled by problems with the decision.

So when anti-choicers ask you “Why do people hate us?” Well, there's a good reason for that.

Update: The Biden Administration has put out an instruction that women who are suffering complications and might die without an abortion, must receive abortions, regardless of what local and state laws may say. Texas Republicans object to this. They argue that saving the life of a woman via an abortion might put her at risk of being found guilty under Texas law. 

Motivations for the Ukraine war

 

A buddy of mine sent me a lengthy talk radio piece of almost an hour and a half. I took a pass on that as I can listen to clips of a few minutes, but not to something that lengthy and visually boring.

So I looked around and saw the CPUSA had published a piece on Ukraine. Very typically for the really hard-core peaceniks today, NATO is accused of aggressively expanding over the past three decades. What the piece doesn't look at is how the situation appears from the point of view of countries that have joined NATO and of countries like Finland and Georgia that are favorably inclined towards joining it. As I pointed out here, there are strong reasons not to want to be allied to Russia (and Good Heavens, you do NOT want to be in their army!) and there are positive incentives to join the EU. The journalist Julia Ioffe talks about this phenomenon working in real time, right now, as Finland, Sweden and Bosnia have all suddenly developed a interest in joining NATO.

1, “Therefore, we also call on Russia to withdraw troops.”

There is absolutely zero prospect of that happening. The only way that serious peace talks can happen is if Russia feels they’re losing.

2. “ All sanctions must be ended and borders secured and respected.”

Which would make peace talks even LESS likely!

3. “Agreements reached in 2014…”

Were signed at the point of a gun. They were forced onto Ukraine in the wake of the occupation of Crimea. The Ukrainian army was far too weak and riven with corruption to resist.

The reason Biden has been cited as having worked to push out a Ukrainian prosecutor is that Viktor Shokin, the prosecutor, was highly corrupt.

Why was Ukraine corrupt in 2014? Same reason many African countries were run by dictators in the 70s and 80s. It takes time to move from a dictatorial regime to a fully inclusive and democratic one. It takes time for internal checks and balances to begin to work.

From The Black Agenda report:

To secure the interests of the Russian and Ukrainian people, there must be good faith negotiations between the Russian Federation, representatives of the peoples of Donbas, the Ukrainian state, and the U.S.  The EU and the U.S. must end their continuous shipments of arms and other “lethal aid” to Ukraine.

Again, how is this going to happen without serious Russian reversals on the battlefield? This looks like just serious wishful thinking.

Difference between Ukraine and Palestine

 

A woman named Lizzy Savetsky complains that a fashion model in Vogue drew a parallel between Ukrainians and Palestinians. Her reasons for objecting to the comparison are 1. Russia did not invade Ukraine because Ukraine pose a security threat to Russia. True, Ukraine and Russia were engaged in active, if low-level hostilities since 2014, but the fighting was confined to the far Eastern edge of Ukraine. On the other hand, Palestinians have undertaken many types of attacks on Israel, using all manner of tactics and methods.

2. Ukrainians use very limited forms of violence. Again, true. Fighting in the Donbas has been through standard infantry, air and tank assaults.

3. Israelis have offered peace to Palestinians many times, all of which Palestinians have rejected. True. Palestinians don’t want to live in a “bantustan,” they want a fully independent state with borders they control. Israel feels that their security needs outweigh the need of Palestinians to have such a state.

What is the primary difference in the relationships between Russia and Ukraine versus that of Israel and Palestine? I think Russia-Ukraine had more of a Roman-type model of colonialism. When Rome acquired a colony, it would take over all of the government functions, would draft a portion of the men for its army and would collect taxes.

With “settler colonialism,” on the other hand, like what was practiced in South Africa, the colonists would take over individual parcels of land, pushing the indigenous population into bantustans or over into other countries. There are individual tribes or groups of Palestinians that are administered Roman-style, but others were pushed into Gaza or the West Bank and still others were pushed into neighboring countries, starting with what Palestinians call the “Nakba.”

Palestinians do not, at this time, have anything close to a viable state of their own. Gaza, ruled by Hamas, has been under siege conditions since 2007. Their every entrance and exit for travel and commerce is controlled by Israeli checkpoints. The West Bank isn’t in much better shape, split up into dozens of parcels, each one separated by walls and checkpoints.

It’s difficult to see how Palestinians could form a viable state out of these two parcels. Negotiations would have to produce serious changes in how Palestinian land is configured.

From Wikipedia: “There are also various economic and political restrictions placed on Palestinian people, activities, and institutions which have had a detrimental effect on the Palestinian economy and quality of life. Israel has said repeatedly that these restrictions are necessary due to security concerns ... The key obstacle therefore remains the Israeli demand for security versus Palestinian claims for rights and statehood."

Alternative demo

In addition to the demo being held by the Granny Peace Brigade, Code Pink is sponsoring anti-war demos at Dilworth Park at 1:00pm and at Independence Plaza at 4:00pm.

Personally, I think Code Pink offers a “BothSides” platform “We oppose the Russian invasion and call for the immediate withdrawal of all Russian troops. We recognize that the expansion of NATO and the aggressive approach of Western states have helped cause the crisis and we demand an end to NATO expansion.“ I've addressed the charge of aggressive NATO expansion here.

Fundamental to the Code Pink recommendation is the idea that we and the Russians should open negotiations immediately. Problem with that is that successful negotiations are dependent on what's happening on the battlefield.

When the North Vietnamese attacked South Vietnam in 1975, they made a breakthrough very quickly and after a few weeks, it was clear they were going to roll over what was left of the South Vietnamese army. The US offered to negotiate. The North Vietnamese figured, yeah, they could do that, but as the South was going to soon fall into their laps anyway, why bother?

TFG (The Former Guy) or the former President Trump, offered to begin re-opening negotiations with Iran over the nuclear deal of 2015. Iran didn't see any point in that as Trump wasn't offering any positive incentives. TFG was simply offering a way for them to make unilateral concessions and to get nothing in return. They passed on that.

Is there any reason to think that negotiation with the Russian President Putin will produce positive results?

Tweet by Natasha Bertrand - “Putin told Emmanuel Macron that he will continue military operations in Ukraine during a 90-minute call initiated by Putin, an Élysée Palace source told reporters today.   Putin told Macron he will 'continue military interventions and go all the way,' the source said. “

And from Kevin Rothrock - “Russian lawmakers have introduced legislation that would conscript into the military anyone arrested for protesting against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. These people would be forced to fight in the invasion itself. What the fuck is happening to Russia. This is absolute madness. “

Putin thinks he's on a roll. He has absolutely no reason to seek to negotiate. The Granny Peace Brigade has a better idea. Putin's at fault. Period.

My evolution in thinking about peace

 

Yes, back in 2003, I joined with peaceniks to protest the Iraq War. I concluded from the very start that the younger George Bush was untrustworthy, that he was lying about WMDs in Iraq and that he was exaggerating the human rights abuses that Saddam Hussein was engaged in. But when I was a tween/young teen, nonfiction paperbacks on World War II were popular and I read a number of them.

One of the big lessons I learned was “Don’t think that this war is going to be just like the last one.” The British and French thought that the 1940 battlefield would be just like the 1914-1918 one, with slow, cumbersome infantry divisions doing most of the fighting. Nope, it was dominated by fast, flexible panzer divisions that quickly drove the allies into the sea at Dunkirk. The Soviets figured out by the Battle of Kursk in 1943 how to defeat the German Blitzkrieg tactic, but they suffered some serious setbacks and incurred serious casualties long before that.

Further readings in the 80s showed me that the Vietnam War was essentially a political war and not, as US leaders had assumed, a matter of applying enough soldiers and guns and planes and tanks.

So no, this war between Russia and Ukraine is not necessarily a replay of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. I don’t assume that Joe Biden is just like G.W. Bush and that it’s the US leadership that needs to be lobbied and convinced here.

One of the major issues that my fellow peace supporters regularly bring up is the expansion of NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Let’s think in terms of I’m a Ukraine bureaucrat and my president has asked me to draw up a list of reasons for and against joining Russia versus joining the West.

I’d point out that Ukraine was under the authority of Moscow in 1932-1933. Ukraine suffered a man-made famine, the “Holodomo,” a famine that began with the attempted “collectivization” of agriculture and ended with 3.9 million Ukrainian dead.

In Hungary in 1956, Hungarians demanded democracy. “Thousands were killed and wounded and nearly a quarter-million Hungarians fled the country.”

Czechoslovakia in 1968, the “Prague Spring” was ended by Warsaw Pact forces led by Moscow, crushing that revolution.

In 1980, the Polish trade union movement Solidarnosc was successful for awhile, but “The government imposed martial law, a state that continued until 1983, and dramatically restricted civil liberties. Some 10,000 dissidents were detained, and dozens were killed. Solidarnosc had to go underground and was not allowed to register again until 1989.”

In 1994, Moscow fought its first post-communist war against Chechnya. About a million Chechens (Out of a Russian population of some 150 million), tried to carve an independent state out of a landlocked province. The freedoms granted by Russian leader Boris Yeltsin were withdrawn and two wars later, Chechnya was brought under control by Vladimir Putin.

This is not an exhaustive list, but the fact is that Western Europe and NATO simply don’t have this sort of history of having to use armed force to keep their alliance together.

What about Putin’s energy policies? In 2019, Russia produced roughly twice as much in energy resources as it consumed, which means that it exported the rest. Of that total, coal, dry natural gas, petroleum and other fossil fuels made up the vast majority. Nuclear and renewables made up a small fraction. Specifically, the OECD counts hydro, biofuels plus waste burning and geothermal, solar and wind power as constituting less than 4% of Russia’s energy resources. The rest is made up of various fossil fuels. Clearly, Russia is not leading the way to renewable energy!

The American Heritage Foundation uses an “Economic Freedom” index that liberals generally ignore as it makes lots of value judgments that we don’t necessarily share, but it dings Russia on many areas. Property Rights, Judicial Effectiveness, Government Integrity, Business Freedom and Trade Freedom are all given poor marks.

So if I, as a Ukrainian bureaucrat, had to produce a report on whether or not to move more closely to Russia and away from Europe, I think I’d run screaming away from the chance to recommend a closer relationship with Russia! To me, there simply isn’t any mystery as to why NATO has expanded into Eastern Europe over the past 30 years. Nations like to align themselves with successful countries that enjoy a high degree of prosperity, that respect human rights and that are working hard to move away from fossil fuels and towards renewables.

Update (18 May): Piece that essentially agrees with the above, with the idea that people and countries have "agency." The countries of Eastern Europe didn't remain attached to Russia because they didn't think it was in their interest to do so. 

Letter to Philadelphia Inquirer

 Piece by Marc Thiessen

“The 10 worst things Biden did in 2021” Jan 3

“[Biden] showed weakness in the face of Russian aggression against Ukraine.”

When an America president (or any national leader, for that matter) considers military options, he has to “game it out” as far as possible and to consider the likely consequences. To make threats that we can't fulfill would be to invite a far worse catastrophe than to give up land that we're not prepared to go all-out to defend.

How many Americas are willing to give their lives for a free Ukraine? Could we really sustain a military supply line? Overconfidence and underestimating the difficulty of the job could lead to a far woes disaster than just looking weak. I suspect Biden and his team looked at those questions and decided the US simply wasn't ready for a war there. Biden's doing pretty well on this issue, keeping temperatures low and being open to discussions.

“His withdrawal from Afghanistan was the most shameful foreign policy calamity in my lifetime”.

Casualties among Afghan civilians were steadily rising from year to year during both the Obama and Trump Administrations. Sure, the US military was in shape to continue to fight a war there, but the country of Afghanistan was suffering more and more damage all the time.

Former President Donald Trump reached an agreement with the Taliban (The official government of Afghanistan played no role in this agreement) a year before he left office, to reduce the number of US troops in the country to fewer than 9,000. The resulting force may have been enough to hold onto a small portion of Kabul, but any determined effort by the Taliban would have been sufficient to wipe out that modest contingent.

As South Vietnam suffered an abrupt collapse after years of American occupation and training and equipping , so too did Afghanistan. It was only due to Biden's better diplomacy that we were able to continue to get Americans and Afghan allies out of the country after the Taliban had taken all of the rest of Kabul.

Yes, a splinter group of ISIS attacked and killed some American troops, but had we not been actively talking with and working with the Taliban, our situation there could have ended up much worse.

“Let’s go, Brandon!”

 

President Biden was on the line at the NORAD Santa Tracker call and spoke with children who had called in to find out where Santa was. He and the First Lady were having short chats with them. One fellow was Jared Schmeck of Oregon, a fan of the former President Trump, who ended his time with the President by saying “Let’s Go, Brandon.”

Schmeck claims “’he didn’t intend his parting message to be vulgar.” But “The phrase ‘Let’s Go, Brandon’ has become a conservative dig at the Democratic president, a code for ‘F--- Joe Biden,’” so it’s hard to see how Schmeck could have been confused into thinking he was NOT delivering a vulgar insult to the President. Schmeck’s wife admitted online that her husband had indeed used a vulgarity against the President.

Schmeck called his remark a “joke,” and listed a series of policy disagreements with the President, but what he actually said was an insult and no one understands where the humor in his statement is. Schmeck also, of course, claims the election was “stolen” from The Former Guy.

Schmeck claims he was “utilizing my freedom of speech,” which is fine, but freedom cuts both ways. You’re free to use a vulgarity with anyone you choose, but others are free to disparage you for doing so.

I of course liked Joy-Ann Reid’s response tweet, but was very impressed with this one:

"Confession: I find it in poor taste to tell the President of the United States 'Let's go Brandon' when the man just wanted to wish you Merry Christmas. Good manners should still matter," conservative blogger and radio host Erick Erickson wrote in a series of tweets.

Fox News had a defensive-sounding headline for the angry liberal response, but appropriately stuck to reporting what liberals said.

Mehdi Hasan said:

“Encouraged by senior elected Republicans who pretend to otherwise care about ‘civility’ and who are never asked by the press to justify their indulgence of this childish and offensive slogan.”

Problem is, it’s one thing when you’re explicitly stating a political position like “Free the Hanoi 5!” or somesuch. Then people can recognize your earnestness and people can take your politics seriously. But when you use a vulgar slur, you’re just a vulgar jackass.

Update: Fox News does damage control.

Fox News called out their C-Team to run interference for the son of a Navy SEAL who thought it would be cute to insult the president so he could get a viral Instagram post. It was pathetic and so is Jared Schmeck.

Two examples that the Fox crew used. Yes, Robert DeNiro got up in front of an audience and said "Fuck Trump." He knew he was being transgressive and improper and his audience knew it too. No, Kathy Griffin did NOT meet with any approval for posting a picture of herself with Trump's "severed head." Her career as a stand-up comedian was dead for several years as a direct result.  

And again, I'm completely and utterly baffled by the assertion that Schmeck was attempting to make some sort of joke. There is simply nothing funny about his attempt. 

Answer to a piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

This was published in the Inky on 12 November:

Dems lie if they say that critical race theory not taught in schools

Let's parse a paragraph of Thiessen's commentary of this last Friday ("Dems lie if they say that critical race theory not taught in schools"):

For the Marxists, the bourgeoisie were the oppressors. For the Nazis, the Jews were the oppressors. And today, in 21st century America, critical race theory teaches that Whites are the oppressors.

In Marx's day, the "bourgeoisie," the businessmen who ran the factories and sold commercial goods were in complete control of the state. The politicians all represented the businessmen. Is that true today? Not so much. Many other groups have gained quite a bit of political power.

In Germany before World War II, Jewish people were certainly prominent in the government and the culture at large, but by no means did they hold a commanding position. 

White people in opposition to Black people certainly had a regional advantage. In the South, they completely controlled the politics of the region. In the North, the political power of the abolitionists grew and grew until the Civil War broke out. Today, the descendants of the abolitionists hold a grip on the levers of political power, but yes, the racists have made great gains. 

The panic over Critical Race Theory is easy to understand. If you're not guilty of harboring racial animus, then you have no problem with CRT being taught.   

Latest on Palestinians

 Generally, we've heard about military-grade attacks on the Palestinian civilians of Gaza (Gaza has been run by Hamas since 2005) as various cutely-named “Operations.” Operation "Summer Rains" in 2006, Operation "Autumn Clouds" that same year, Operation "Hot Winter" in 2008, etc. But the conflict in May 2021 has never received a name. The
difference was that Israel didn’t expect Gaza to decide to join the conflicts going on around Jerusalem.

Sheikh Jarrah had six Palestinian families living in it. According to an Israeli law that we have seen many variations on over the decades since 1948, those families had to pay rent or otherwise acknowledge that Jewish Israelis were entitled to live there owing to the neighborhood having been previously occupied by Jewish families. This would be a
reasonably fair rule, but it's an entirely one-sided rule. Palestinians can't make any similar claims. The Palestinians of Sheikh Jarrah refused to make even symbolic concessions. despite the Israeli Supreme Court ruling against them.

In a struggle that was going on at the same time and very close by, Israel was also trying to prevent Palestinians from 1948-occupied areas of Israel to attend a ceremony in the old city of Jerusalem at the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Hamas of Gaza decided to ally themselves with the residents of Sheikh Jarrah by demanding Israel withdraw from there and from the Temple Mount complex. They launched a barrage of rockets after Israel refused to budge. The one-sided battle (May 10 to 17) resulted in enormous damage to Gaza. Hamas launched 4,360 rockets towards Israel. As the rockets were small and unaimed, 12 Israeli civilians, including two children died.

The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which provide direct relief and works programs for Palestinian refugees, discovered after Israeli bombs hit one of its schools, that Hamas had dug a tunnel underneath the school. The tunnel did not begin or end on the school grounds, but apparently just traveled underneath it. The tunnel was unknown to
civilians, meaning it was dug for military purposes. 

The war cost Gaza over 260 people, including 66 children and 41 women, and exacerbated previous traumas in particular among children. The World Bank estimated that up to US$380 million in physical damage and US$190 million in economic losses were caused.Recovery needs have been estimated up to US$485 million during the first 24 months. They also estimated that Gaza's GDP would contract by 0.3% in 2021 compared to an estimated 2.5% annual growth before the conflict.

Four high-rise building in Gaza City were also destroyed. Israel warned inhabitants just before the strikes, so they had the chance to escape. Allegedly, the buildings were being used for military purposes, but there were several news agencies housed in one of them. One would think that reporters would have kept an eye out for people whose very presence
would be a danger to them. A quick search showed no updates, no Israeli defense of the attacks, meaning no one has provided evidence that any of the buildings contained any legitimate military targets.

A term that has been used for the political post-war time has been “habbet Ayyar” (May outburst). Palestinians inside Israel and Israel-occupied territory since 1948, with residents closing roads, throwing Molotov cocktails and putting up Palestinian flags in place of Israeli
ones. On May 12, Israel declared a state of emergency in Lydd for the first time since 1966 and imposed a curfew on the city as the war on Gaza began to unfold. Over 2,000 Palestinians had been arrested from then until early June. Palestinians were led by regular people within their own communities.

A very serious result of the May conflict was that Congress wanted to send Israel $1 billion for the Iron Dome missile defense system that defends against Palestinian short-range rockets. For the first time ever, members of Congress refused to vote for a shipment of military goods to Israel The vote was very small, but was an ominous first. Currently, the
appropriation isn’t passed yet, Senator Bernie Sanders Is insisting that the Iron Dome appropriation be coupled with humanitarian aid for Palestinians. 

Senator Robert Menendez, chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, usually a strong supporter of Israel, says he’s “troubled” by reports of “innocent civilians” suffering at the hands of Israeli forces this past May. He assured Israel that he still supports them, but his statement is unusual and worth noting.

Turning to the question of Israel’s laws that permit Israel to seize properties that used to
belong to Jewish people, but do not permit Palestinians to seize properties that used to belong to Palestinians, we need to ask: “Is it antisemitic to protest such laws?” By protesting such an imbalanced judicial system, are we being insensitive to the Israeli need to survive as a Jewish state that’s surrounded by Arab states?

The NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) B'Tselem says Israel is practicing Apartheid. Human Rights Watch agrees. Both the Jewish Israeli population and the Palestinians who live within the boundaries of both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories number 6.8 million each. If we insist that Israel must give equal right to Palestinians, then
isn’t that asking that Israel no longer be a Jewish state? Would such a demand be antisemitic as we’d be asking Israelis to give up something very precious to them or would it simply be asking for justice? After all, living under Apartheid is something no people would voluntarily do.

The Jewish comedian Sarah Silverman recently noted that progressives hardly ever mention Hamas. She identifies Hamas as a “terrorist” group and had some harsh words for them.

My own view on that is that I don’t think Israel draws any real distinction between Hamas, which runs Gaza, and Fatah, the Palestinian group that runs the West Bank. Both are under tight blockade by Israel, nothing and no one gets in or out without going through an Israeli
military checkpoint. Israel feels no obligation to let anything in that they have not approved. One could make the argument that since we’d like to see Palestinians have more unrestricted commerce with the outside world, that we’d “really” like to see the destruction of Israel and thereby, maybe we’re really just antisemitic. 

Our idea is that we need to draw a distinction between wanting to annihilate the Jewish race, y’know “Drive them into the sea” (that is, being antisemitic) and between being critical of the policies of the state of Israel, that is, criticizing Israel as though it were a regular country.