Category: The Presidency

Status Update: Ukraine/Russia War

The Daily Escape:

Pueblo Bonito Great House, Chaco Canyon, NM – May 2024 photo by James C. Wilson

Today we return to the almost invisible war in Ukraine. Since the Oct. 7 start of the Hamas/Israel war, Ukraine has slipped out of the consciousness of Americans, and politicians in particular.

The terrible slowness of the US approval of additional funding for Ukraine also took a toll because the resulting lack of weapons forced Ukraine into a defensive posture, attempting to hold Russia at bay by conceding ground slowly throughout the past six months.

Now, Ukraine is slowly creeping back onto the front pages. There is a nervous tone about reports from Ukraine suggesting that the war has entered a new and dangerous phase. From the NYT:

“In the past three days, Russian troops, backed by fighter jets, artillery and lethal drones, have poured across Ukraine’s northeastern border and seized at least nine villages and settlements, ­and more square miles per day than at almost any other point in the war….In light of the Congressional vote for $61 billion in aid, this may come as a surprise.”

More:

“Thousands of Ukrainian civilians are fleeing to Kharkiv, the nearest big city.”

Kharkiv itself may be threatened. This news brings with it tough questions: How far can Russia go this time? Is this a setback for the Ukrainians, or now that the US has approved new weapons, is it a turning point?

The Ukrainians complained for months about severe shortages of ammunition, which was exacerbated by the intransigence of Republicans in Congress. Their failure to act delayed the delivery of key air defense weapons and ammunition, possibly turning the tide of the war in favor of the Russians.

And the Ukrainian military also must replenish its fighting forces. Russia is a country with about three times Ukraine’s population, and while both have suffered heavy casualties, Ukraine’s personnel needs are becoming critical. The more than two years of fighting off the Russians has left Ukraine desperate for fresh troops. The delay in US arms shipments caused by Congressional Republicans has also been a contributing factor to undermining morale, in addition to undermining the defense of Ukraine.

In 2023 Russia increased its troop mobilization efforts. Since the summer of 2023, difficulties in raising the pace of Ukrainian mobilization and Russia’s efforts on the ground have given a decisive advantage to Putin’s forces. It is hard to see how Ukraine can overcome this difference, given its smaller population and its vastly smaller economy. Adam Tooze says that: (brackets by Wrongo)

“…at the start of the war the ratio [of Russia’s economy to Ukraine’s] was more than 10:1, it is now far worse…the likelihood is that the balance will tip further against Ukraine.”

More from Tooze:

“As Russia developed its aerial attack – with intensified drone waves, showers of ballistic missiles and improvised glide bombs – Ukraine’s air defenses frayed. Crucially, this exposed Ukraine’s power infrastructure to crippling Russian attack. On March 22, March 29, April 11, and April 27 2024 Russia conducted dramatic attacks on Ukraine’s power system.”

At the same time, the US and Europe have been scaling back aid. During the winter of 2022-2023 foreign aid was enough to allow Ukraine to achieve a degree of economic and military stabilization, but since Q1 2023, aid from both the US and Europe has been falling:

On the military recruiting front, El Pais English has an insightful article about the military’s difficulty in recruiting:

“A new mobilization law, passed in April after months of delays due to its unpopularity, will come into force on May 18. The aim is to recruit some 400,000 new soldiers between the ages of 25 and 60. On the streets, military personnel looking for men willing to go to the front lines are experiencing first-hand the reluctance of citizens to be mobilized. Surveys indicate that only about 30% of the population are willing to join in the defense of the country.”

The whole El Pais article is worth your time.

Ukrainian society has been hollowed out by the war, losing 10 million refugees that migrated to Europe and elsewhere. Between the delay in provisioning weapons and the glaring need for new troops, Ukraine is in serious trouble.

It’s not like the US government hasn’t known that this would happen. Late in 2022, General Mark Milley advised the Ukrainians to get to the negotiating table. It’s turned out that this may have been a high water mark for the Ukrainian army. But the Biden administration quickly shut Milley down.

So far, three big things have been shown in this war: 1) Western economic sanctions are not decisive in dealing with Russia; 2) The Russian soldiers and leadership are nowhere near as good as they should be, or as good as we thought they were; and 3) Drones are making all militaries rethink how they can deploy their forces on the battlefield. Building on the last point, from Foreign Affairs: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Ukraine has launched at least 20 strikes on Russian refineries since October….By the end of March, Ukraine had destroyed around 14% of Russia’s oil-refining capacity and forced the Russian government to introduce a six-month ban on gasoline exports. One of the world’s largest oil producers is now importing petrol.”

In a way, Ukraine’s drone campaign is putting exactly the kind of pressure on Moscow that the US-led sanctions regime was designed for but has had limited success in delivering.

This is a war of attrition, and Russia is suffering along with Ukraine. In wars of attrition, the ability to deliver equipment that is fit for purpose and personnel who are trained on that equipment is paramount. That is the West’s challenge now. Otherwise, Ukraine is lost.

It’s impossible to know how things will evolve over the next 6 to 12 months, but there is a real possibility that Russia could now make major territorial gains in eastern Ukraine. If that happens, the US will have again demonstrated how our policy of foreign intervention never leads to successful outcomes.

Here’s a short list: Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and currently, Ukraine and Israel.

Support among the Western democracies for Ukraine’s war may not last, since they all have this weird religious belief that willingness to fight is a measure of a people’s moral worth. Not true. But find Wrongo an American politician that disagrees with that idea.

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Cartoons Of The Week – May 12, 2024

(The Monday Wake Up Call will be published on Tuesday this week)

It probably says something about the nation, since cartoons this week are, well, terrible. They’re mostly iterations of RFK Jr’s brain worm or riffs on Trump’s trial in NYC. Here are the best of a lower quality lot.

Brain disease is on the rise:

MAGA’s selective memory:

Cutting Bibi off from the big bombs sparks outrage:

The media’s lopsided reporting:

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Americans Have No Idea How Deep Our Illiberal Roots Are

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Avon Beach, NC – May 2024 photo by Donna Cartwright Hayden

Discussions about “Illiberalism” are suddenly popping up in Wrongo’s daily feeds from many sources. Several are reviews of a book (“Illiberal America”) by Steven Hahn, an NYU professor of history.

Hahn also wrote an article in Saturday’s NYT that condenses the arguments in his book. In his column, “The Deep, Tangled Roots of American Illiberalism”, Hahn argues that American illiberalism is not a mere reaction to a dominant tradition of freedom and individual rights, but a philosophy that has long competed against liberalism for primacy in American politics.

David Leonhardt in a NYT book review of Hahn’s book says:

“This country’s liberal tradition is certainly strong. It explains the democratic radicalism of the American Revolution, the relative openness of the US immigration system in the early 19th century and the inclusiveness of the nation’s public education system in the early 20th century.”

A short version of Hahn’s thesis is that the US has long been deeply reactionary and it’s amazing we’ve gotten as far as we have without a challenge to American democracy prior to Trump. Here’s a excerpt of Hahn’s view of our history:

“Back in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville, in “Democracy in America,” glimpsed the illiberal currents that already entangled the country’s politics. While he marveled at the “equality of conditions,” the fluidity of social life and the strength of republican institutions, he also worried about the “omnipotence of the majority.”

“What I find most repulsive in America is not the extreme freedom reigning there,” Tocqueville wrote, “but the shortage of guarantees against tyranny.” He pointed to communities “taking justice into their own hands,” and warned that “associations of plain citizens can compose very rich, influential, and powerful bodies, in other words, aristocratic bodies.” Lamenting their intellectual conformity, Tocqueville believed that if Americans ever gave up republican government, “they will pass rapidly on to despotism,” restricting “the sphere of political rights, taking some of them away in order to entrust them to a single man.”

The slide toward despotism that Tocqueville feared may be well underway, whatever the election’s outcome. Even if they try to fool themselves into thinking that Mr. Trump won’t follow through, millions of voters seem ready to entrust their rights to “a single man” who has announced his intent to use autocratic powers for retribution, repression, expulsion and misogyny.

Only by recognizing what we’re up against can we mount an effective campaign to protect our democracy, leaning on the important political struggles — abolitionism, antimonopoly, social democracy, human rights, civil rights, feminism — that have challenged illiberalism in the past and offer the vision and political pathways to guide us in the future.

Our biggest mistake would be to believe that we’re watching an exceptional departure in the country’s history. Because from the first, Mr. Trump has tapped into deep and ever-expanding illiberal roots. Illiberalism’s history is America’s history.”

America remains a self-deluded country since many Americans have no idea just how illiberal they are, or how deep those illiberal roots run. Today’s college students are living through the consequences of illiberalism. Educational institutions with DEI programs and cultural studies majors have no qualms about siccing the police on their students.

It’s no surprise that university administrators don’t observe the liberal tolerance they espouse in their curricula. But what’s less clear is American colleges and universities exist as training grounds for lawyers, physicians, future Wall Street geniuses and other legs in the stool of elitism. These students are supposed to be compliant because those professions require it.

Time to wake up America! In a few months we’re holding a presidential election in which an illiberal ethnonationalist will stoke white fear of replacement while his Party exploits anti-antisemitism to chip away at our tenuous liberal coalition. There’s danger, and we have little time left to get it right.

No matter how much violence a Trump loss unleashes it’ll pale in comparison to the violence that will come under a Trump dictatorship.

To help you wake up, watch and listen to Van Halen’s “Ballot Or The Bullet” from their 1998 album “Van Halen III”.  The song’s title comes from a 1964 speech by Malcolm X who, while speaking about the civil rights struggle, said “We’re going to be forced either to use the ballot or the bullet.”

Van Halen wasn’t a political band, but they appropriated Malcolm X’s speech for this tune:

Also, Eddie Van Halen played slide guitar on this, a rarity.

Sample Lyrics:

Give me liberty or give me death
No truer words have ever been said
Well are you prepared for your very last breath?
Don’t you dare start what you cannot finish
So when we face, face the adversary
No longer are we the minority

When a house is divided, it just will not stand
Once it’s decided, a line drawn in the sand

Ah, the ballot or the bullet
The choice is up to you
The ballot or the bullet
Tell me what you gonna do
The sword or the pen
Can’t be held by the same hand

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Cartoons of the Week – May 5, 2024

We’re at the start of a new week, and the cartoonists remain deeply into the student protests and Gov. Kristi Noem shooting her dog. But let’s start with a chart from the polling organization Civic Science. This is from the weekly newsletter by their CEO, John Dick:

“Last month, America’s attention to politics reached a new low. For the first time in the 9+ years we’ve tracked it, more US adults follow politics “not at all closely” than those who follow it “very closely.” The stat is especially mind-boggling when it’s what many believe to be an existential-level election year.”

The percentage of Americans who say they follow politics very closely has fallen from 50+% in Q4 2020 to 26% today:

Note that the result was based on 1.1 million responses. OTOH, the survey found that “very closely” plus “somewhat closely” totaled 71%. On to cartoons, which this week, aren’t funny.

People were shocked by Trump’s answers in Time Magazine:

Gov. Noem can’t live down shooting her puppy:

Santayana said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. University administrators should take note:

The press thinks Biden should have ended the Hamas/Israel war by now:

The Dems still own the best issue for this November:

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More On The Campus Protests

The Daily Escape:

Japanese Garden, Portland, OR – April 2024 photo via The Oregonian

On Tuesday night, hundreds of NYPD officers entered Columbia University in riot gear, one night after students occupied the University’s Hamilton Hall.

And in a “you can’t make this s__t up” moment, Tuesday was exactly 56 years to the day when police cleared Hamilton Hall of Vietnam War protestors in 1968. The new clear out happened 13 days after students built their encampment and lit the match that started a student movement against the war in Gaza on college campuses nationwide.

The police crackdown at Columbia isn’t an isolated event. There was a round of arrests at City College in Harlem (NY). And police responded to clashes between pro-Palestinian and counter-protesters at UCLA. On Monday, demonstrators at The New School took over Parsons School of Design. Meanwhile, police cleared an encampment at Yale. Nationwide, more than 1,000 students have been taken into police custody since the original encampment began at Columbia on April 18.

From John Dean:

“More than four dozen colleges now have active protests against . . . against what? Signs demand an end to genocide in Gaza, disinvestment from Israel, and an end of US support for Israel. But Jewish students are also being attacked. For some protestors, Palestinians are the people fighting for freedom, and the Jews are the oppressors.”

As the protests continue, the story grows ever more complicated. House Republicans plan a series of hearings into what they are characterizing as antisemitism on college campuses. House Speaker Mike Johnson announced the hearings and also threatened the loss of federal funding:

“Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen absolute lawlessness and chaos on college and university campuses across America. It’s not right, and everybody in this country knows it. If they don’t correct this quickly, you will see Congress respond in time, you’re gonna see funding sources begin to dry up. You’re gonna see every level of accountability that we can muster.”

Columbia’s leadership took the Republicans at their word. They invited the NYPD to campus to remove students from Hamilton Hall with force.

Before the Columbia students occupied Hamilton Hall and got ejected, and before the UCLA demonstrating groups decided to fight each other, these protests seemed familiar in that they were an echo of the Occupy Movement in 2012. Back then, the vast majority of the violence was caused by police, much like it is today, But it isn’t clear that today’s encampments have sufficient size or strength to achieve their goals. They are certainly not of the scale of 2012’s Occupy, let alone the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

If the past tells us anything, we should be skeptical that these protests will actually lead anywhere. The 1968 Vietnam protests eventually fizzled out, particularly when it became clear that  students would be shot and killed by police and the National Guard. Occupy ended with a 17-city crackdown by police that happened just two months after Occupy began. The George Floyd protests fizzled out, but not before significant property damage and police crackdowns.

One thing is very clear: The speed with which campus protestors have embraced Palestine is remarkable. These students have never shown interest in the slaughter of Muslim children in Syria, or women and teenage girls in Iran. To Wrongo’s knowledge, none have protested against genocide in Darfur. Is now what we’re seeing the power of TikTok to feed highly curated information to them?

Some might say that the students are expressing normal human empathy, possibly with a touch of ignorance regarding the history of the Palestinians and the Israelis. And certainly with a definite lack of understanding of the limits of free speech in America. Free speech does not permit extended protests on private property.

The purpose of free speech is the absolute freedom to speak your mind. The First Amendment does not grant the right for a person or group to occupy property that doesn’t belong to them. Freedom of speech does not include resisting arrest. Would any of us say that freedom of speech allows protesters to occupy their home? Free speech doesn’t allow making threats to kill a person or members of a group.

In addition to the desire to draw attention to the Gaza carnage, the campus protests seem to be about the role of the US government and American companies supporting Israel. Doesn’t that make their protests difficult to understand? Israel has been a US ally for more than 70 years. In that time, it hasn’t been able to defend itself without substantial US aid. Most Israeli aircraft bombing Gaza targets today are American-made.

Does our support for Israel make the US complicit in the Israeli military action in Gaza?  Of course, but should the US now end that support? If colleges divest from Israel, would that help Palestinians? Hard to say, but it’s unlikely to cause any meaningful change.

Wrongo doesn’t think the students’ problems are with Israel the country or necessarily, with the Israeli people. Most of the heat is reserved for actions by Bibi, his cronies and the IDF. From The Economist:

“Two areas where the IDF has fallen short are its responsibilities as an occupying power and its duty to minimize civilian deaths. Some 1.7m people have been displaced; many lack adequate food, water or medicine.”

More: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“…many armies would find Israel’s rules of engagement disproportionate and hence illegal. The IDF is reported to have set the threshold of civilian deaths in justifying decisions to strike a junior Hamas fighter at 20:1 and a senior leader at 100:1. For Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s dictator, America set a threshold of 30:1.”

The IDF appears to be failing in its goal of destroying Hamas. After six months, Hama’s most senior leaders are still alive, and over 100 hostages remain in captivity. Most important, Israel appears to have no strategy to prevent Hamas from rising from the rubble. Without meeting their goal of destroying Hamas, Israel will remain subject to insurgency.

Israel is paying a high price both economically and diplomatically for its Hamas war. There has been a very real shift in support for Israel’s methods of conducting its war with Hamas. If the student protests were to energize America voters to reject supporting an unending conflict, a significant number of American politicians would eventually follow.

Today, Israel is in a doom loop where the operations designed to reduce the number of terrorists will likely attract recruits to replace them. Without a plan for peace, Israel will end up as an occupier or as in the past, repeatedly striking Gaza to tamp down the insurrectionists.

The story of the 2024 campus protests is still being written. The outcome remains difficult to predict. With the end of the academic year approaching, could the calendar be the deciding factor?

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Should Dems Worry About Students Disrupting Their Convention?

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Iron Duff, NC – April 2024 photo by Rhiannon Medford. Hard to believe those colors aren’t enhanced.

The clashes between Hamas/Israel war protesters and police on college campuses nationwide is spreading alarm among Senate Democrats. They’re worrying that this type of anger will make the Party’s Chicago-based presidential nominating convention a spectacle that will hurt Biden’s chances of re-election. Does that mean we’re looking at Chicago 1968 version 2.0?

From The Wrongologist:

“In 1968, Tom Hayden helped plan the antiwar protests in Chicago that targeted the Democratic National Convention. Police officers clashed with thousands of demonstrators, injuring hundreds in a televised spectacle that a national commission later called a police riot. Yet, Hayden and others were charged by federal officials with inciting riot and conspiracy.”

Those demonstration led to the Chicago Police riot. We remember it for Mayor Richard Daly saying these immortal words:

“Gentlemen, let’s get this straight. The policeman isn’t there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder.”

Those of us who have reached a certain age remember too well what happened in Chicago at the 1968 convention. From The Hill:

“A number of Democratic senators are old enough to remember the violent clashes between police and anti-Vietnam War protesters at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, where the nomination of Vice President Hubert Humphrey as the party’s presidential candidate was marred by images of police tear-gassing protesters and beating them with clubs.”

The Atlantic’s David Frum explains why the disruptions in Chicago in 1968 are unlikely to happen again. His point is that 2024 isn’t 1968. Protesters presuming to replicate 1968 will find the US government is much better prepared, Frum says: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“…responsibility for protecting political conventions has shifted from cities and states to the federal government. This…was formalized in a directive signed by…Clinton in 1998. The order created a category of “National Special Security Events,” for which planning would be led by the Secret Service.

National Security Special Events draw on all the resources of the federal government, including, if need be, those of the Defense Department. In 2016, the federal government spent $50 million on security for each of the two major-party conventions.

Those funds enabled Cleveland, the host of the 2016 Republican convention, to deploy thousands of law-enforcement personnel….Federal funds paid for police to be trained in understanding the difference between lawful and unlawful protest, and to equip them with body cameras to record interactions with the public. The city also used federal funds to buy 300 bicycles to field a force that could move quickly into places where cars might not be able to go, and that could patrol public spaces in a way that was more approachable and friendly.”

This wasn’t an issue in 2020 when the conventions were mostly virtual due to the Covid pandemic.

Right now, the media are making the campus demonstrations seem like a big deal, and they are, in the sense that university campuses are lightly controlled and lightly policed. Frum adds:

“Pro-Palestinian protesters have proved considerably more circumspect when they march in places where laws of public order are upheld.”

The Feds have also gone to school on the Jan. 6 insurrection that has informed their planning. While the subsequent J6 prosecutions make it much less likely that people hoping to disrupt the DNC convention will ever get much beyond being hopeful. It’s important to point out that the scale of today’s protests are nowhere near the same as the Vietnam protests in 1968.

More on the current thinking of students from Simon Rosenberg:

“…there is not broad support for these protests in America or on American college campuses. Most young people are far more concerned with making a living, their health after a pandemic, loss of reproductive freedom and our democracy, climate change, gun safety and a host of other issues.”

Rosenberg includes an interesting chart from the Harvard IOP Youth Poll:

The only issue where inflation did not win its individual match-up was when it was paired with women’s reproductive rights. Women’s reproductive rights was considered the more important issue, 57% to 43%. Israel/Palestine ranked next to last among the 16 issues.

Wrongo has no idea if the campus demonstrations will morph into something huge, or become a nothingburger, but he agrees with this from Caroline Orr Bueno:

“The stories you hear in the media will be the most extreme examples that can be found, and nearly all of them will be fundamentally misrepresented based on the biases of the person telling the story. This will fuel a cycle of escalation that few people on either side want.”

She makes the point that university administrators are not prepared to handle the demonstrations while at the same time, facing donor anger. From the London FT:

“Donors are withdrawing millions of dollars in planned funding to punish US universities for their responses to Hamas’s attack on Israel, in a stand-off over free speech, higher education funding and academic leaders’ public responsibilities.”

The FT also reports that:

“Such actions have highlighted the influence of donors, who last year contributed $60bn to US universities…”

Time to wake up, America! Let’s not get twisted up by the potential for demonstrations in Chicago by students protesting the Hamas/Israel war. How about focusing instead on the antidemocratic extremists who speak at the Republican convention to renominate Trump? We shouldn’t fear this debate. We should welcome it.

To help you wake up on a warm Tuesday, watch and listen to the late Peter Green, former guitarist of Fleetwood Mac, play “Albatross”, originally from FM’s 1969 album “The Pious Bird of Good Omen”. Here Green plays it with the Peter Green Splinter Group in England in 2003:

The late, great BB King said of Peter Green: “He’s the only white guy to ever make me sweat.”

 

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The Supreme Court Is Officially Corrupt

The Daily Escape:

Moonrise, Boston, MA – April 2024 photo by Kristen Wilkinson. The Jenga-style building is Boston University’s Data Science Center.

Wrongo spent part of Thursday morning listening live to the oral arguments at the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) over Trump v. United States, which concerns former president Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from criminal charges for “official acts”: In this case, whether Trump can claim immunity as a defense in the Jan. 6 case brought by Jack Smith, the DOJ’s special prosecutor.

While the decision in this case is unclear at this point, the questions the Conservative justices asked of both sides were very disheartening.

A short walk through the history of this case: The Conservative majority granted Trump a victory before the hearing began by refusing Jack Smith’s request to skip the intermediate step of an appeal to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. Then the Court improved on that by refusing to hear the matter on an expedited schedule. Finally it appears that the Court probably won’t issue what pundits think will be a fractured opinion until the last possible  day (June 30). It’s possible that the Court will order the DC trial court to engage in pre-trial fact-finding about the difference between “private” and “official” acts. Meaning further delays, possibly until after the November presidential election.

And if Trump were to win, the Jan. 6 case will be quashed by the incoming DOJ.

So even if the Supremes don’t grant Trump a total victory, they have already granted Trump what he most wanted: a lengthy delay. Their lackadaisical approach to resolving the question of immunity smells of the current politicization of the Court. From Jamele Bouie:

“Rather than grapple with the situation at hand — a defeated president worked with his allies to try to overturn the results of an election he lost, eventually summoning a mob to try to subvert the peaceful transfer of power — the Republican-appointed majority worried about hypothetical prosecutions against hypothetical presidents who might try to stay in office against the will of the people if they aren’t placed above the law.

It was a farce befitting the absurdity of the situation. Trump has asked the Supreme Court if he is, in effect, a king. And at least four members of the court, among them the so-called originalists, have said, in essence, that they’ll have to think about it. “

Chris Hayes reminded us when Republicans aggressively took the other side of the immunity argument:

Taking a wide view, Alito is 74. Thomas is 75. Roberts and Sotomayor are 69. The next president could be in a position to nominate four replacements for these justices if Trump wins, or if Biden wins a second term. If it’s Trump, say goodbye to the SCOTUS for at least 30 years, and say goodbye to your Constitutional rights. That would also mean that Trump can commit crimes with impunity, including a complete dissolution of the Voting Rights Act, implementing legalized voter suppression, and much more.

Is it totally lost on the American people that the very same Supreme Court who ruled that 172 million women should no longer have the freedom to decide their own pregnancy choices, is now, suddenly, struggling with the idea whether ONLY ONE MAN in America should have the freedom to commit crimes without punishment?

Watergate and Nixon doesn’t come close to the stench surrounding today’s Supreme Court and its propping up of Trump. Josh Marshall had this to say:

“The Roberts Court is a corrupt institution which operates in concert with and on behalf of the Republican Party . . . That’s the challenge in front of us. . . . But things become more clear-cut once we take the plunge and accept that fact.”

But, there’s really nothing you can do about it individually. So relax and cruise into our Saturday Soother, where we turn off all political news for a few minutes and try to find the will to rejoin the fight next week.

Here on the Fields of Wrong, we had a hard frost on Friday morning, and expect 80° on Monday. It’s weather like this that keeps us from planting the vegetable garden until early May. To help you get into a proper frame of mind, grab a seat by a south-facing window. Now watch and listen to “Suite Opus 34 for flute, harp, violin, viola and cello” by Marcel Tournier. Tournier is among the relatively few important composers who were also virtuoso harpists. He composed several dozen solos for harp, and a few chamber works that feature the harp. Tournier wrote this Suite in 1928. He died in 1951.

Here is his “Opus 34” performed by the Cracow Harp Quintet:

Wrongo and Ms. Right first learned about Tournier and saw this live last summer as part of a local concert series by the Washington Friends of Music.

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Thoughts On The Student Protests

The Daily Escape:

Orca #T99C Barakat breaching very near shore, Point No Point Beach, WA – April 2024 photo by Hongming Zheng. Yes, the Orca was really that close. The photographer says it was about 10’ from shore.

The US media is giving front-page treatment to the wave of pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses across America. From the NYT:

“University administrators from Texas to California moved to clear protesters and prevent encampments from taking hold on their own campuses as they have at Columbia University, deploying police in tense new confrontations that already have led to dozens of arrests.”

More:

“At the same time, new protests continued erupting in places like Pittsburgh and San Antonio. Students expressed solidarity with their fellow students at Columbia, and with a pro-Palestinian movement that appeared to be galvanized by the pushback on other campuses and the looming end of the academic year.”

Protesters are saying that their demands include divestment by their universities from companies connected to the Israeli military campaign in Gaza, disclosure of those and other investments and a recognition of the continuing right to protest without punishment.

There are many questions raised by these protests. Does protesting by students against what Israel is doing in Gaza equate to antisemitism? Are the protesting students’ free speech rights being violated by the several universities when they are arrested for peaceably protesting?

Wrongo hates writing about Israel and Gaza. It’s very emotional on both sides, maybe more than for any other topic. It’s possible to be accused of being complicit in a genocide and/or accused of being insensitive to the killing of Jews or of being antisemitic.

From Margret Sullivan:

“Can we be clear about a few things? Protesting this slaughter is not expressing antisemitism. It is not engaging in hate speech. It is not endangering Jewish students. It is doing what should be done on a college campus — taking a stand against a perceived wrong, at least provoking discussion and debate.”

Wrongo thinks students have a right to protest. As Robert Reich says:

“The most important thing I teach my students is to seek out people who disagree with them. That’s because the essence of learning is testing one’s ideas, assumptions, and values. And what better place to test ideas, assumptions, and values than at a university?”

Non-violent student activism is a great way to learn and to participate in our democracy. While activism shouldn’t violate school rules, if you are a student and your school makes rules about student protests like: “you can’t protest on this lawn or at this time,” and you break that rule, you should be prepared to get suspended or arrested.

The schools are responsible for not making rules that effectively restrict or end student activism. And students are responsible for following all reasonable rules.

But there’s another big question: Why are the media and politicians treating these protests as very important problems? It’s true that the Israel/Gaza war is very important. It could plausibly lead to a regional war or even to a wider war. But what’s happening on college campuses in the US is relatively minor, particularly if they’re compared to the student protests during the Civil Rights era or during the Vietnam era.

Yet, the Israel/Hamas war and the campus protests about it are receiving nearly the same amount of media coverage. We never see headlines that read “Another Peaceful Day On 99% Of US College Campuses” even though that headline could run on any day of the year. This is the shape of the media today, and it’s difficult to understand why so many reporters and politicians are  so deeply concerned with a relatively minor story. More from Robert Reich:

“Education is all about provocation. Without being provoked — stirred, unsettled, goaded — even young minds can remain stuck in old tracks.”

Protests that call for boycott, divestment and sanctions are perfectly rational ways to protest Israel’s war against Hamas. However, getting Columbia (or other universities) to sell an investment in a US defense contractor, or in an Israeli company isn’t going to change anything.

Also, it’s a stretch for protesters to say that any university, its professors or anyone on its faculty are “complicit” in anything Israel decides to do in Gaza. But, non-violent forms of protest offer important objections to policy. And when the university criminalizes or stifles non-violent protests, that often leads to violent protests instead.

In the Columbia University case, its president called in the police (against the vote of the University council) telling the NYPD that the students had been suspended and thus were trespassing. But at that point, the students had not yet actually been suspended, although they WERE arrested. Then Columbia suspended them because they had been arrested:

“The suspension notices that the students received now cite the arrests themselves as part of the cause for suspension. In other words, the logic was circular. They called in the New York Police Department on the premise that the students were trespassing, when they hadn’t yet been suspended…”

Perfectly circular logic. If campus authorities need to act to protect the safety of any of their students, then they should. But when a university is facing pressure from pro-Israel donors and elected officials to shut down the protests, because the powerful find the protesters and their demands offensive, the university goes too far.

If that isn’t bad enough, consider Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR): (emphasis by Wrongo)

“On Monday, the Arkansas senator demanded that President Joe Biden send in the National Guard to clear out the student protests at Columbia University against the Israel-Hamas war, which he described as “the nascent pogroms at Columbia.”

Nascent Pogroms? What is Cotton seeing at Columbia that the rest of us aren’t seeing? Apparently every Republican Senator knows that the military must be called in to end left-wing insurrections, but never for right-wing ones! We should understand that there’s a possibility that any military response might lead to Kent State 2.0.

A final thought. We need to differentiate between protestors who show up and do terrible things and the idea that the current rules of discourse focus mainly on the complainant’s subjective state of mind (“I felt unsafe!”). Without turning this into a rant, once a member of any so-called victim class makes that accusation, the burden of proof falls on the accused to prove they didn’t do something wrong. They have to prove a negative. That’s a game that the accused can rarely win.

That isn’t to say that some students aren’t doing objectively awful things during protests.

The vast majority of student protesters probably are good kids who are horrified by the things they see happening in Gaza. They log onto social media and see heartbreaking videos and feel compelled to do something, even though as individuals they are powerless. That’s a normal human, empathetic reaction to war. War is horrific.

Having that reaction doesn’t automatically make them Jew-hating terrorist-lovers.

What’s past is prologue. Remember how protests morphed into killings at Kent State and elsewhere in 1970? Today’s demonstrators aren’t trying to avoid getting drafted for the Vietnam War; they’re protesting what they see as a genocide in the Middle East.

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Is This What The Final Straw Looks Like?

The Daily Escape:

Atlantic Ocean, St. Augustine FL – 2019 photo by Wrongo. (Wrongo and Ms. Right are on their annual trip to visit siblings who moved from the Northeast to Southern climes. Columns will be light and variable until April 22.)

With Israel’s killing of the seven humanitarian aid workers from World Central Kitchen (WCK), did Netanyahu deliver the final straw to the US and the Biden administration’s unconditionally having Israel’s back in their war with Hamas? From Axios:

“Israel’s killing of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers has the makings of a watershed moment — rapidly accelerating a decline in U.S. support for the war in Gaza, Axios’ Zachary Basu writes.

The big picture: Frustration with the Israeli government has been building inside the White House for months as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has worsened. It’s now boiling over.”

It’s difficult to say what is actually policy and what is political theater when parsing the words of Biden and Blinken about what Israel needs to do next in order to keep the US supplying armaments. You may vote for theater when learning that CNN has two stories that seem to indicate it will be business as usual with Netanyahu and the Israeli government. First Natasha Bertrand reported:

“…the Biden administration is close to approving the sale of as many as 50 American-made F-15 fighter jets to Israel, in a deal expected to be worth more than $18 billion…”

Second, CNN’s Bertrand also reported that:

“The Biden administration recently authorized the transfer of over 1,000 500-pound bombs and over 1,000 small-diameter bombs to Israel….adding to its arsenal despite US concerns over the country’s conduct in the war in Gaza. The transfer authorization of the MK82 bombs and small-diameter bombs, more than 2,000 munitions in total, occurred on Monday…”

These aren’t the biggest bombs, but a 500-pound bomb will destroy your apartment building. Monday was the same day that Israel killed the seven WCK staff. Chef José Andrés took to the NYT to express his view:

“We know Israelis. Israelis, in their heart of hearts, know that food is not a weapon of war.

Israel is better than the way this war is being waged. It is better than blocking food and medicine to civilians. It is better than killing aid workers who had coordinated their movements with the Israel Defense Forces….The Israeli government needs to open more land routes for food and medicine today. It needs to stop killing civilians and aid workers today. It needs to start the long journey to peace today.”

Chef Andrés’s words have resonated deeply with many Americans. In some ways it reminds us of the late Gen. Colin Powell’s famous Pottery Barn rule that he cited in the summer of 2002, warning President GW Bush of the consequences of the planned invasion of Iraq:

“You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people,….You will own all their hopes, aspirations, and problems. You’ll own it all.”

Israel must be shown how they “own” the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. They’ve pulverized the buildings. They’ve killed most of the now-dead civilians. They’ve prevented food and medical assistance from reaching the sick and the starving. Therefore, they should own the humanitarian solution starting immediately.

BTW, think of all the suffering we’ve heard about in Gaza. Now recall just how little of it you have actually seen via western media. Many of the same videos run day after day on US media. Why? Because Israel has made it a priority to conduct the war largely beyond the sight of Western cameras, beyond the scrutiny of the press.

If we knew more and saw more, we might be even more horrified.

The Israeli military has dismissed two officers and reprimanded three others for their role in the WCK strikes, saying they had mishandled critical information and breached the army’s Rules of Engagement (ROE). The Guardian reports that the IDF’s ROE are classified, but reporting by the Israeli media and human rights organizations suggests an exceptionally high tolerance level for civilian casualties.

In the current war, observers suggest, ROE rules that were already permissive in previous conflicts in Gaza have been loosened further, as evidenced by the number of civilian casualties in high-profile strikes. America faces a serious moral dilemma and Wrongo has been feeling it for a while. Wrongo still thinks it’s possible to be committed to Israel and to its right to defend itself. But at the same time we need to be highly critical of the Israeli response in Gaza.

There are times when a friend, a family member or a neighbor asks you to help them solve a problem. You go along, thinking that you’ll be able to help out, only to find you’re deeply involved in something that has become either a reputation killer or possibly, something life-threatening.

And this is where America sits with Israel in their war with Hamas. Our friend has caused us to get badly stuck in something awful. And it’s become very difficult to see how to get our partner to stop the bombing, killing and starving.

Wrongo suspects there have been more than a few final straws among Israel’s friends in recent months, since Israel seems oblivious to the damage they’re doing. It has been gut wrenching to watch America go from responsible support for Israel on 10/7 to becoming likely complicit in Israel’s crimes against humanity in Gaza. We must change course now.

Biden needs to follow through on his message to Netanyahu.

It’s Saturday, so it’s now time for our Saturday Soother, where we attempt to pull back from the fire hose of news and opinion and grab a few minutes of calm. On the Fields of Wrong this weekend, we’ve seen snow, an earthquake and on Monday, we’ll witness a solar eclipse. We’re certainly operating in interesting times.

As the Wrong family takes off for a few days, let’s listen to a road song of sorts, “The Drinking Gourd”, a song of the open road. It was originally used by Underground Railroad operatives to encode escape instructions. In the1950s and 1960s, it played a role in the Civil Rights and folk revival movements. Here is the folk singer Eric Bibb performing the song for the television series, “God’s Greatest Hits”, airing in Canada on VisionTV:

We’ll see you down the road!

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Updates On Baltimore Bridge And Trump’s Stolen Documents Case

The Daily Escape:

Japanese Garden, Portland, OR – April 2024 photo via The Oregonian

Here are two stories that we’re following that need updating. First, the Baltimore Key Bridge collapse. Many Republican House members have questioned why the US government (and the taxpayers) should have any financial responsibility for cleaning up the mess and rebuilding the bridge. From The Hill:

“…the idea has sparked an immediate backlash from conservative spending hawks, who are already up in arms over Congress’s recent approval of a massive 2024 spending package….Key Bridge, they argue, is a regional matter to be tackled by regional governments.”

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) told The Hill:

“The very thought of having the Federal Government pay for the Baltimore bridge is TOTALLY ABSURD!!”. “This exemplifies the old slogan ‘ROBBING PETER TO PAY PAUL!!’”

From The Lever:

“The company that owns the ship that crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge…is trying to use a 173-year-old law to cap the damages it may have to pay, including potential compensation to families of the six workers killed in the disaster.”

This is because big oil and shipping interests successfully lobbied in 2010 to block reforms to the so-called “Titanic Law”, or the Limitation of Liability Act from 1851. The Singapore-based Grace Ocean, owner of the container ship Dali wants to argue that the damages it owes for the crash should be capped at $43 million — the remaining value of the ship and its cargo.

This is crazy, given the fact that it’s likely to cost hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild the bridge. Still, on Monday, Grace Ocean filed an action in federal court using the Titanic Law.

More from The Lever:

“For decades, advocates have called for reform of the Limitation of Liability Act, arguing that the law is outdated and shields powerful companies from facing accountability for devastating accidents… Those calls were renewed after the company behind the deadly 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill tried to use the Limitation of Liability Act to severely limit the damages they were forced to pay.”

Congress introduced a bill that would have ended the use of the law to limit damages in the case of serious injury or death and strengthened laws used to hold oil companies accountable. But Big Oil and the shipping industry successfully lobbied to kill these reforms. The bill to reform the Titanic Law never made it out of committee.

It’s early days for the blizzard of claims that are coming in the aftermath of the Key Bridge collapse. In addition to the shipowner’s insurance, it’s certain that the bridge owner had insurance that would call for payment unless the owner intentionally caused the damage, which isn’t the case. There will be uninsured costs that the US taxpayer will have to foot. More to follow.

Second, let’s talk about Trump’s pending case in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida, to decide his fate in the stolen documents case. There are some new developments. After Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s filing on Tuesday, former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissman offered:

“DOJ calls out Judge Cannon and her improper rulings, and signals it is ready and willing to take her up to the 11th Circuit.”

That means Smith may try to have Judge Cannon removed from the classified documents case. Smith asked her to rule now to give government opportunity to appeal and seek mandamus. From the Cornell Law School:

“In federal courts, these orders most frequently appear when a party to a suit wants to appeal a judge’s decision but is blocked by rules…Instead of appealing directly, the party simply sues the judge, seeking a mandamus compelling the judge to correct their earlier mistake.”

Remember that this is the case that the DOJ accuses Trump of illegally removing classified documents from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago residence and obstructing the government’s attempts to reclaim them, citing violations of the Espionage Act. Back in 2022, Wrongo said that the stolen documents case would be the easiest of the Trump cases to win, and therefore should go forward first. It was originally scheduled to go to trial in May 2024. That looks impossible now.

Cannon is a representative of the legal system that chased Daniel Ellsberg for years, and threw Reality Winner in prison. She can’t seriously believe that the storage of classified government documents in a Florida bathroom in defiance of requests and demands from the proper authorities is a lesser offense because the bathroom’s owner used to be president.

It’s likely that Cannon will not respond kindly to Smith’s use of 20+ pages to call her out. It’s the kind of thing that has elicited miffed responses from her in the past. At this point, Aileen Cannon is the most effective member of Trump’s legal team.

It also seems Smith is laying a record for a challenge to the 11th Circuit Court. Cannon may yet postpone the start of the trial scheduled for May 20 to after the November election. We have to hope she won’t have control of this case for that long.

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