Category Archives: rights

A Two-Edged Sword, and another Thought

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Russia is a, if not the, major exporter of energy to Europe, and that helps hold Germany especially, and Europe generally, back from fully supporting Ukraine against Russia’s invasion of that nation.

The two-edged sword is this.

If Russian gas to Europe stops flowing entirely, “this would do severe damage to Europe’s economy and also undermine global growth,” Mr [EurasiaGroup’s Director, Energy, Climate & Resources, Henning] Gloystein said.

That damage, were it to be inflicted by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, should prod Europe, and especially Germany, decisively away from Russian gas (and oil) altogether, as it would make clear—or should make clear—just how many weapons, including economic, the men and women of Russia’s government are willing to use in order to club Europe into submission.

The disruption from such an assault on Europe would not be felt until the next fall and winter; Europe has reserves enough to finish the present winter. That should be sufficient time for Europe to find more reliable supplies of energy. It might even convince German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to reverse ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel’s panicky cancelation of the nation’s nuclear plant energy production (although, maybe not—Germany has gotten used to tacit subservience to Russia).

The additional thought flows from this remark by President Joe Biden (D) in the context of that Russian invasion, quoted in the article at the link:

I will do everything in my power to limit the pain the American people are feeling at the gas pump. This is critical to me.

This is virtue-signaling dishonesty. Biden’s “everything” consists of begging OPEC and Russia(!) to pump more oil. Biden utterly refuses to open Keystone XL; to get his Cabinet and himself out of the way of exploring, drilling, and pumping lease permits on Federal land and water; to get his Executive Orders and his Cabinet rules and regulations out of the way of our oil and natural gas production and fracking for same; to get his administration out of the way of liquid natural gas production and port development so we can export LNG; to do anything at all to support and expand our domestic oil and gas production.

Biden-Harris’ determined war on our American hydrocarbon energy production industry represents a strong impediment to Europe’s ability to wean itself off Russian energy, and his war supports the Russian invasion effort by contributing heavily to the rapidly increasing price of oil (which underlies those rising “gas pump” prices), which in turn increases revenue for Putin’s Russian economy.

 

[NB: Germany has agreed a limited SWIFT sanction against “selected” Russian banks, and it has authorized shipment of some anti-tank RPGs, stinger anti-aircraft missiles, and 10 metric tons of fuel to the Ukrainian military.]

Mistaken

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Tulsi Gabbard thinks Putin’s invasion of Ukraine could have been avoided had President Joe Biden (D) and European politicians only recognized Russian President Vladimir Putin’s security concerns vis-à-vis Ukraine membership in NATO.

This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine’s becoming a member of NATO, which would mean US/NATO forces right on Russia’s border

Gabbard is badly mistaken in this, for a number of reasons.

  1. The Biden-Harris administration and NATO had already acknowledged Putin’s security concerns here, and rejected them. Ukraine’s membership in NATO is a matter for sovereign Ukraine and the sovereign NATO nations to accept or reject, not for Putin to dictate to them.
  2. Putin’s putative security concerns regarding Ukraine are not his aim, but merely a tool in his drive to reconstitute the 20th century Russian empire—which loss he considered the geopolitical tragedy of the century and which reconstitution he made explicitly his goal in his Monday night speech.
  3. NATO is a defensive alliance with no designs on Russia beyond defending the member nations against a demonstrably aggressively acquisitive Russia.
    1. Georgia, which Putin’s Russia has invaded, partitioned, and occupied those partitions
    2. Ukraine, which Putin’s Russia already has invaded once, partitioned, and occupied those earlier partitions
    3. The Baltic States and Poland, which Russia has already attacked, more than once each, with cyber war break-ins and hacks
    4. Russia’s repeated use of energy extortion against Ukraine, Europe through Ukraine, and lately Germany explicitly
    5. Russia’s shutdown of Colonial Pipeline, in response to which Biden-Harris meekly lifted the sanctions against Russia’s Nordstream 2
  4. Putin’s Russia has no security concerns from the West except in his own fetid imagination. Russia has nothing at all that the West wants that can’t be gotten far more cheaply through freely done and mutually beneficial trade.

Regarding that last point, if there’s a security risk, it comes from People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping, who’s long had designs on Siberia, which generations of PRC governments, and China governments before them, consider Russia to have stolen from China. That risk already is in progress of realization via the economic deal that Putin and Xi signed just a couple of short years ago that enables Siberia’s rich resources to be jointly exploited by Russia and the PRC—with PRC citizens doing the vast bulk of the labor and moving into (functionally colonizing) Siberia in order to do that work.

No, what led Putin to invade Ukraine this time, with his intent to conquer and occupy the nation, was Western—including our own nation—mild acquiescence in those prior aggressions, invasions, and occupations. If Putin isn’t crushed in Ukraine, he won’t stop there. All of eastern Europe, including what used to be the German Democratic Republic will be at risk. And so will be the Republic of China, Japan, Republic of Korea, Australia, and the United States.

Appalling Failure

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And it borders on deliberately done, since the principals—President Joe Biden (D), SecState Antony Blinken, NSA Director Jake Sullivan, SecDef Lloyd Austin, CJSC General Mark Milley, and everyone on those staffs—involved knew from the start that this would be the outcome of their decisions.

The failure is President Joe Biden’s (D) refusal to apply any serious counter—not even petty economic sanctions—to Russian President Vladimir Puten’s threats, now realized, to invade and conquer Ukraine.

(Sanction the Russian Army’s bank? Pssh. All the banks are Putin’s; this represents a minor irritant until the Army gets switched over to another bank. Sanction the VEB (Vnesheconombank, literally, external development bank, Russia’s major bank for foreign economic matters)? Again, Pssh. Russia has lots of foreign partners—right there in central and western Europe, given their response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine—with which to do business. No more buying Russian government bonds or other debt instruments? Meh. Enter Xi Jinping, even if that creates a longer-term risk for Putin.)

Don’t apply any sanctions now, Blinken kept bleating—deterrence doesn’t deter unless it’s applied after the behavior being deterred has occurred, he kept spouting. Never mind that deterrence, even applied with proper timing, doesn’t deter when it’s only empty chit chat, idle threats of a second-grader on the recess playground of “boy, oh boy, when I get you.”

Ukraine’s President Volodymr Zelensky was spot on:

We don’t need your sanctions after the bombardment will happen and after our country will be fired at, or after we will have no borders and after we will have no economy or part of our country will be occupied. Why would we need those sanctions then?

Europe—the EU and NATO—are crumbling in the face of Putin’s actions? Sure. But why should the US hold ourselves hostage to the timidity of an ally that’s been reneging on its military commitments and economic agreements for decades? Where is it written that our nation cannot act on our own initiative, on our own recognizance, in service to our own security interests?

And that’s just the sanctions, which take a long time to begin to have effect, and which effects are spotty, anyway, as nations and businesses seek to operate around, or outright violate, them. There’s also the deliberate withholding from Ukraine of modern arms and training in their use—that would only provoke Putin, Biden-Harris and his weak-kneed European counterparts wept. Arms did begin to trickle in—”hundreds of millions of dollars” of ammunition from the US, for instance, will last a few days at most in an actual fight—in the last month. But even here, Germany has been a deliberate roadblock, preventing British air shipments from traversing German airspace, and blocking arms shipments from Baltic nations when those arms were of German origin.

Here are the most likely sequelae from Biden-Harris’ timorous weakness in the face of Putin’s aggressiveness and now his invasion of Ukraine.

Biden-Harris has handed the Republic of China to People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping. This will be followed by Xi acting on his control of the South China Sea to further intimidate and suborn the other nations rimming the Sea. From that, Xi’s government will actively govern the sea lines of commerce that flow through the Sea.

From that, Japan and the Republic of Korea will be increasingly economically isolated from their Western trade partners and allies, and in an echo of the years leading into WWII, Japan and today the RoK will be vulnerable to Xi’s naked economic blockade—and so have their political independence at risk. The same control puts Australia’s economy—and so political autonomy—at risk.

Some 30%-40% of our own nation’s foreign trade passes through the South China Sea to our West Coast. Xi to Biden-Harris: “Nice economy you got there…..”

The fall of Ukraine to Putin, and Biden-Harris’ and EU mild acceptance of that, puts Europe in Putin’s crosshairs, beginning with Poland, the Baltic States, and the Balkans. He’s already been attacking, through cyber war, Poland and the Baltics. Putin’s avowed goal is to reconstitute the old Russian empire of the USSR and its client states.

One of those client states is East Germany, but never mind here—he’s getting the whole of Germany, this time, with his energy extortion. Yes, yes, Germany is talking about beginning to act on delaying Nordstream 2 certification. They’ll wind up proceeding. Putin will require it.

From all of that, economic relations between Europe and the US will weaken drastically. And the isolation of our nation will proceed apace.

What hath Biden-Harris wrought?

Gun Control

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In the matter of Bianchi v Frosh, a Maryland gun control case in which the State has

designated specified firearms as assault weapons and prohibited them from being transported into the state or from being possessed, sold, transferred, or purchased in the state[]

Mountain States Legal Foundation has filed an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to take up the case. The article itself is worth the read, but what drew my eye is this position of the Fourth Circuit in its appellate ruling in Kolbe v Hogan, Jr. referenced in passing by JtN.

Are the banned assault weapons and large-capacity magazines “like” “M-16 rifles,” i.e., “weapons that are most useful in military service,” and thus outside the ambit of the Second Amendment?  The answer to that dispositive and relatively easy inquiry is plainly in the affirmative.

This test manufactured by the Fourth Circuit deliberately ignores our history and the actual text of our Second Amendment.

A significant fraction of the artillery—cannons—our Continental Army used in our Revolutionary War were privately owned, as were the powder and shot privately manufactured and provided. A significant fraction of our combat ships—privateering ships—in our nation’s Revolutionary War were privately owned, as were the powder and shot privately manufactured and provided.

The Fourth Circuit’s test also deliberately ignores another bit of our history: our Second Amendment was written as defense against an overreaching, abusive government like the one we fought that war to be free of. And our Declaration of Independence outlines the duty of all Americans: [W]hen a long train of abuses and usurpations…it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government…. which requires suitable weaponry.

The Fourth Circuit’s test also deliberately ignores the text of our Second Amendment: the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. There’s not a jot or a tittle in there of “except if a government official, including a judge, thinks otherwise.” Nor is there a single minim about government being authorized to specify the purpose for which an American citizen might choose to arm himself and to bear those arms.

The Fourth Circuit’s opinion can be read here.

Slander

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Former Alaska Governor and Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin lost her slander suit against The New York Times (after the presiding judge telegraphed to the jury, while it was deliberating, that he’d set aside the jury verdict, but that’s for a story about judicial malfeasance). The Wall Street Journal‘s article centered its reporting on the premise that Palin had failed to pass the high bar reserved for celebrities and other public figures: she had to show actual malice in order to have a case, and she didn’t succeed in the judge’s opinion.

But case brings up a larger matter regarding the malice standard itself.

There’s no reason at all why some Americans should be prevented by that high bar from defending themselves against slander, while other Americans are not so prevented. The 14th Amendment to our Constitution is quite clear on this: No State shall…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The courts’ and the Court’s differential treatment of groups of Americans based solely on their social or political standing plainly violates that equal treatment clause.