Tag Archives: culture

The Gulag

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…is back and in full force in Russian-occupied Crimea.  Russian dissidents—Tatars, this time—are being “diagnosed” as insane and locked away in “psychiatric” hospitals.

Since the annexation of the region three years ago many ethnic Tatar activists who oppose the occupation have been arrested and subjected to abuse and imprisonment in outdated mental institutions, said Robert van Voren, a Dutch human rights activist and political scientist.

“The number of cases has increased considerably over the past few years, in particular against Crimean Tatars and Ukrainian activists who oppose Russia’s annexation,” he added.

Just as in the Soviet Russian gulag, conditions are appalling and along with Russian treatment of the “inmates” are intended to retrain them to ways of which Russia approves.  Emil Kurbedinov, a Crimean civil rights lawyer focusing on Tatar civil rights and himself locked up for 10 days, had this:

Some are placed in isolation and are denied their basic needs, such as access to a toilet. Others are housed with multiple people suffering from severe mental health conditions.

The activists are interrogated about their alleged involvement in “extremism” and their views of the government. They are also deprived of the right to speak with their family, or meet their lawyer on a one-to-one basis without a guard being present.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Confusion

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There is some concerning Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ moves at DoJ concerning local police forces and local policing.  An example is provided in the lede to a recent Wall Street Journal article:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision this week to review concessions by local police departments accused of misconduct is part of a seismic shift at the Justice Department, which has quickly changed its emphasis under the Trump administration from protecting civil rights to promoting law and order.

Of course, there is no dichotomy between protecting civil rights and promoting law and order.  Indeed, the two are inseparable: it isn’t possible to protect civil rights without promoting law and order: it’s those laws and the order they engender that are at the foundation of civil rights—which themselves are matters of those laws and that order.

The confusion extends to the Federal government’s role in overseeing local police institutions, including particularly “consent” decrees concluded or in progress involving Federal demands for police department reforms satisfactory to the Federal government.  Sessions has ordered a review of these and has taken steps to begin rescission of some.  However,

Officials in Baltimore and Chicago say they remain committed to overhauling police forces….

These officials say they’ll proceed within the parameters of existing consent decrees, but the illustration remains: local officials are fully capable both legally and morally to overhaul, to reform, without Federal involvement, and that’s as it should be.  Each locale is different, and each local police force will need its unique and locally oriented reform.  Federal involvement might be needed to clear away impediments to reform, but it is not needed to mandate the nature or structure of reform.

In the end, reasonable men can debate the methods of law and order, and reasonable men can argue whether current law is sufficient for civil rights (beyond that, the question of current law’s adequacy in implementing inalienable rights has been debated since the Federalist Papers, the Anti-Federalist Papers, and before).  The immutable fact remains, though, that there are no civil rights, no matter what laws might assert, without laws being enforced—law and order.  And that is, of necessity, a local matter.

YGTBSM

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This episode is from Newark Mayor Ras Baraka (D).  He claimed last Sunday, with a straight face that

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is “targeting” mayors like himself, and intimidating them into being “fugitive slave catchers that run around and do their bidding in our cities.”

Milwaukee County, WI, Sheriff David Clarke was more polite than I:

I’ve heard a lot of stupid things [but] comparing fugitive slaves to illegal immigrants is the gold standard of stupidity[.]

I say, rather, that Baraka’s TDS has turned him into an irrational election-denier.

Republican Gadflies

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Karl Rove talked about health care coverage prospects in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, and that triggered a thought in my pea brain.

Senator Tom Cotton (R, AR) has announced that the House plan on offer, a plan designed to be passable through reconciliation, with later phases of repeal and replace for completing the task, is dead on arrival, and the House shoe start over and produce a more comprehensive plan in this first phase.  But Cotton has chosen to not offer a plan of his own, or outline what a plan acceptable to him would look like other than to address taxes and to more fully repeal right damn now Obamacare, or even to offer the tactics he’d use to get the new plan—which could not be done through reconciliation—past a Progressive-Democrat filibuster.

Congressman Jim Jordan (R, OH) similarly demands a broader bill right damn now, but he, too, has chosen to offer no tactics for getting his bill past a Senate Progressive-Democrat filibuster.  He’s just using the copout excuse that that’s the Senate’s problem.  Oh, and Jordan also declines to identify the value of a bill that can’t be passed.

Senator Rand Paul (R, KY) at least has offered an actual plan, but he, too, has declined to identify how he expects to get his plan past a Progressive-Democrat filibuster.

These gadflies keep demanding that everyone else put up (these three’s demands) or shut up.  It’s time these three put up; otherwise, they’re just porch dogs, yapping from the safety of their stoops.

Appalling

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Students at an Iowa high school have apologized to a neighboring school for wearing red, white and blue to a recent basketball game.

The Valley High School students’ USA-themed attire was seen as offensive because some of the rival school’s players were from refugee families.

Because we shouldn’t celebrate the nation that gives these refugees succor.

No.  The administration members of West Des Moines’ Valley High are behaving in a despicably offensive manner, and they should apologize to our great nation at large, and then they should be terminated for cause.  Calling national colors racist is itself stinkingly racist.

Full stop.