Order and law
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was indicted for fraud and bribery and faces up to ten years in prison if convicted. This is why Trump prefers heads of state who, like him, can't be indicted until they leave office (according to the Justice Department, if not the Constitution). The allegations against the Israeli prime minister -- pink champagne and cigars, really? -- don't amount to a hill of beans compared to the activities of Trump's other nation-wrecking buddies Putin, Kim, Duterte, Erdogan and Bolsonaro, not to mention Prince Mohammed of the Bone Saws, who runs Saudi Arabia for his senescent father. But for all its problems and imperfections, Israel is a democracy where the rule of law is still taken seriously.
Bad things happen to those deemed criminals in China, where a third Opium War appears to be ramping up. Purdue Pharma a/k/a the Sackler family has filed for bankruptcy protection from the thousands of lawsuits occasioned by its deceptive promotion of OxyContin in the US. Its affiliate Mundipharma, however, is pushing the little pills in China and has already broken their laws concerning confidentiality, fake doctors, and outrageous lies about the drug's safety. Maybe the Sacklers thought 400,000 dead (the US figure) wouldn't be noticed in a country of 1.3 billion. Maybe they just don't care. There's a long tradition of Americans companies dumping drugs on the rest of the world that can't be sold here anymore, not to mention pesticides and other chemicals, but this is so outrageous I'm actually rooting for the Chinese government. Stop them before they zero in on India.
Most people looking at ten years, like Bibi, would be happy with a simple "not guilty." One member of Scott Warren's jury said, "I think we all agreed that what he and these people do is fantastic." Warren was indicted for providing food, water and shelter to two refugees who crossed into Arizona last year, under the federal "we don't care if we look like monsters" law. He was also cleared of the misdemeanor charge of leaving water on public land (the Border Patrol delights in dumping the bottles if they get there first because they really are monsters). So let me get this straight -- in Arizona the federal government couldn't find twelve people who think migrants should die like animals in the desert? Interesting. It speaks well of another American tradition, of challenging bad laws through non-violent action.
As the impeachment grinds on, Trump has decided the Senate is the place "where he can expect fairness and receive due process," i.e., it's controlled by Republicans. He wants Hunter Biden, Adam Schiff, The Whistleblower, and probably Hillary Clinton to face the withering questions of Lindsey Graham and other great legal minds before the foregone conclusion of COMPLETE EXONERATION! NO QUID PRO QUO! NO COLLUSION! GREATEST PRESIDENT OF ALL TIME! Also NO JURY TAMPERING in spite of today's festive lunch with Susan Collins and Mitt Romney. Mittens isn't up for re-election until 2024, but he could always threaten to go to Maine and do for Collins what he did for Matt Bevin and Joe Rispone. She's not his type anyway.
On a personal note, I've been reading about the Civil War and listening to David Blight's superb course "The Civil War and Reconstruction Era 1845-1877," astonishingly available free at the Yale University server. We think the first civil war was a matter of geographical divide because the shorthand designations are North and South, but really, it was a moral impasse between slavery and abolition. This was quite deliberately muddied by Southern historians and "Lost Cause" proponents and further obscured by the fog of racism, but after all this time nothing could be more plain. And as Paul Krugman makes clear today, we are just as hopelessly divided. One side simply does not see the other side as having a legitimate right to govern, democracy be damned. I wish I could say with confidence that this doesn't end at another Fort Sumter. We should probably stop looking for parallels in the Third Reich and examine our own national scars.
Bad things happen to those deemed criminals in China, where a third Opium War appears to be ramping up. Purdue Pharma a/k/a the Sackler family has filed for bankruptcy protection from the thousands of lawsuits occasioned by its deceptive promotion of OxyContin in the US. Its affiliate Mundipharma, however, is pushing the little pills in China and has already broken their laws concerning confidentiality, fake doctors, and outrageous lies about the drug's safety. Maybe the Sacklers thought 400,000 dead (the US figure) wouldn't be noticed in a country of 1.3 billion. Maybe they just don't care. There's a long tradition of Americans companies dumping drugs on the rest of the world that can't be sold here anymore, not to mention pesticides and other chemicals, but this is so outrageous I'm actually rooting for the Chinese government. Stop them before they zero in on India.
Most people looking at ten years, like Bibi, would be happy with a simple "not guilty." One member of Scott Warren's jury said, "I think we all agreed that what he and these people do is fantastic." Warren was indicted for providing food, water and shelter to two refugees who crossed into Arizona last year, under the federal "we don't care if we look like monsters" law. He was also cleared of the misdemeanor charge of leaving water on public land (the Border Patrol delights in dumping the bottles if they get there first because they really are monsters). So let me get this straight -- in Arizona the federal government couldn't find twelve people who think migrants should die like animals in the desert? Interesting. It speaks well of another American tradition, of challenging bad laws through non-violent action.
As the impeachment grinds on, Trump has decided the Senate is the place "where he can expect fairness and receive due process," i.e., it's controlled by Republicans. He wants Hunter Biden, Adam Schiff, The Whistleblower, and probably Hillary Clinton to face the withering questions of Lindsey Graham and other great legal minds before the foregone conclusion of COMPLETE EXONERATION! NO QUID PRO QUO! NO COLLUSION! GREATEST PRESIDENT OF ALL TIME! Also NO JURY TAMPERING in spite of today's festive lunch with Susan Collins and Mitt Romney. Mittens isn't up for re-election until 2024, but he could always threaten to go to Maine and do for Collins what he did for Matt Bevin and Joe Rispone. She's not his type anyway.
On a personal note, I've been reading about the Civil War and listening to David Blight's superb course "The Civil War and Reconstruction Era 1845-1877," astonishingly available free at the Yale University server. We think the first civil war was a matter of geographical divide because the shorthand designations are North and South, but really, it was a moral impasse between slavery and abolition. This was quite deliberately muddied by Southern historians and "Lost Cause" proponents and further obscured by the fog of racism, but after all this time nothing could be more plain. And as Paul Krugman makes clear today, we are just as hopelessly divided. One side simply does not see the other side as having a legitimate right to govern, democracy be damned. I wish I could say with confidence that this doesn't end at another Fort Sumter. We should probably stop looking for parallels in the Third Reich and examine our own national scars.
posted by Buttermilk Sky at 12:32 PM
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