Afghanistan Bacha Bazi and the Long Good-bye

 

Six years ago, I read an article about Bacha Bazi, the practice of Afghanistan military officers chaining young boys to their beds and raping them.

I say, "practice' because this is something which was common, widespread and longstanding in the official Afghan army. 

It was just something the Afghan officers liked to do when the moved into a town. 

Why they preferred boys is anyone's guess. I prefer not to think about it. 

Dan Quinn, an American Army officer, and his soldiers could hear the screams from the children drifting down to  his quarters, and  he finally confronted an Afghan officer and beat the daylights out of him, for which Quinn was court marshalled. He had been ordered to allow the Afghans to maintain their local customs and to not interfere with a culture he did not understand.

Dan Quinn could not stomach bacha bazi

Quinn did not understand the United States Army tolerating child rape by the allies we were fighting to keep in power. He was drummed out of the Army.

Bacha Bazi culture

This took me back to college, where anthropology courses spawned discussions about whether it is appropriate to impose on other cultures the values in our own culture. Are there some basic values common to all mankind or are cultures so different as to make all values "relative?"

I don't know: for me, I would have thought raping children chained to beds all night long would qualify as something all cultures would decry, but apparently not. 

Dexter Filkins

This is a problem with "nation building" if we are building a nation in our own image, as we tried to do in Vietnam and again in Afghanistan.

Trump, apparently, for reasons which are not clear, simply told his deputies to "Just get the fuck out" of Afghanistan.

This is the one thing Trump got right in 4 years, not that I give him credit for that--it was just part of the package-- he just was simple minded enough to not overthink anything, as Obama did with Afghanistan.

Dexter Filkins, who has a piece about Afghanistan in this week's New Yorker, spoke  on the New Yorker podcast and he noted that after 20 years there is now an urban part of Afghanistan with people with cell phones, big buildings, women who are lawyers and doctors and judges but once the Americans leave, the only armed people may be the Taliban and whoever the Americans left behind in the military, and it's anyone's guess how they will lean. 

So there is a population which would want to fight the Taliban. 

The only question is whether female lawyers and doctors will be enough to fight off the guys in the black turbans. 

Whatever happens, however, it will not be our problem. We cannot fight in a culture we cannot stomach. 

Fighting for the 1st Amendment in Hampton, NH: Church/State Separation on Life Support

 

"Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of Religion..."

--First sentence of the Bill of Rights, First Amendment, Constitution of the United States

To the Editor:

The Sacred Heart School community would like to extend a sincere thank you to the Hampton voters and Seabrook voters who supported our child benefit service (CBS) funds article. The yes vote from the Hampton voters on the warrant article guarantees Sacred Heart School’s continued support for the Hampton students. The no vote from Seabrook was close and we hope for success from the Seabrook voters in March 2020.

These funds are applied towards non-religious textbooks, school supplies, technology, testing materials and school nurse services and supplies for our SHS students that reside in Hampton.

We’d also like to express our gratitude to the budget committees and school boards of each town for recommending and supporting the CBS funding for the Sacred Heart School students from each respectful [sic] town.

A sincere thank you for your continued support.

Teresa Morin Bailey

Principal

Sacred Heart School

The principal's argument is not different from the general who says, "For those who object to war making, your tax dollars will go only for the gasoline for our tanks, not for the ordinance or bullets."

--Mad Dog 

Before mention even of freedom of speech, the First Amendment begins with admonition to keep church and state separate.

Not lost on those 18th century bewigged founding fathers was the blood soaked history of church and state in Europe, of its effects in the New World where Spanish galleons filled with pilfered silver and gold blessed by the Church, sailed from the conquered civilizations of Mexico and South America. 

Those who oppose the separation of church and state see it as an attack on the Church.

After all, if the Church is a force for good, an expression of God's will on earth, why would you ever want to limit its effects on government?

The problem, of course, is when human beings seek to speak for God, who has  remained resolutely silent throughout human history, then trouble has often, if not always, followed. 

Advocates of the separation of church and state, like Jefferson, were unconvinced that any man, whether pope or Protestant, actually had a special line to the mind of God. 

Even today, Mad Dog questions not the goodness of religion, but the ultimate arrogance of any man who claims God speaks to him and not to Mad Dog.

Mad Dog has no doubt churches enrich the lives of many of his fellow citizens, and he wishes them the best. 

Churches can be a force for conscience. After all, Martin Luther King, Jr. was first and foremost a minister and he spoke of conscience.

Frederick Douglass, A secular voice

But churches have, since early times, gone beyond theological concerns of saving souls to the practical concerns of feeding the poor, offering care to the sick, founding soup kitchens and hospitals. When church enters the greater sphere of social action, they lose one aspect of their special status and they have to play by the rules established for anyone and everyone who seeks to have an effect in society.

Every year, the citizens of Hampton have ignored the wisdom of the First Amendment and voted to draw a check from the public town treasury and deliver it to the bank account of the Sacred Heart School, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Catholic church, on the grounds of the Miraculous Medal church, on Route 1.

Mad Dog wishes to say immediately and publicly if you look at the rolls of contributors to Sacred Heart, those who have written checks to Sacred Heart, you will find his name (Not signed as "Mad Dog" but under his birth certificate legacy name.) Mad Dog wishes the school well and hopes it thrives. But he insists the school be treated as any other charity, supported not with taxpayer funds, but with private donations written by individual citizens.

You may ask how it would be different if the town of Hampton decided by warrant article every year it would contribute to Catholic Charities.  That would make all the difference to Mad Dog. If the town wrote checks to the Jewish Defense Fund,  the Muslim Anti Defamation League, the ACLU, the Shriners Hospitals, the Sierra Club, the ASPCA, Mad Dog would not object, if that's what the town people vote to do.

But there are certain things you cannot vote on in America and those are spelled out in the Constitution. That is, in one sense, what the Constitution is all about: These things cannot be voted on. You want to change these things, you have to amend the Constitution.

There were laws, local laws, which made slavery, and then segregated schools legal, which provided a legal framework for these. But that's why we amended the Constitution (13th) to end involuntary servitude and that's why the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v Board of Education: it didn't matter whether local laws in Alabama said separate but equal schools were just fine. Alabama could not vote for segregated schools because Alabama's wishes violate the Constitution, which embodies the sense of justice and of right and wrong of the rest of the nation. If you are part of this nation, you have to cleave to certain agreed upon principles.

For the folks of Hampton, New Hampshire, their violation of the 1st amendment has been reaffirmed annually. 

There are reasons for this:

1. It's never been actively or vigorously challenged. In Seabrook, vociferous objections were raised, but Hampton was unmoved. 

2. The mechanisms for challenging this offense have been limited. There is only one day when 20 pages of warrant articles are discussed and if you miss that day, tough luck. And even then, there is no guarantee you can prevail.

3. Sad to say, there is simply not the intellectual substrate in Hampton to form a grounding for the debate. A school teacher from Hampton, when asked his opinion about the funding of a religious school by public funds replied, "Well, the separation of church and state has never been absolute in American history." 

Mad Dog was not given the opportunity to press him on this, but presumably he's talking about the Pledge of Allegiance ("one nation, under God") and "In God We Trust" on the coins and the fact that Congress has a chaplain. But there is no instance where the federal government writes a check to the account of any church for the purpose buying books, or for that matter for plowing the church's parking lot, or painting its classrooms. All expenses of running a school, even if they are the ordinary expenses of upkeep are the responsibility of the church.

Obadiah Yougblood, Water Street Bridge

The principal of Sacred Heart notes that books bought with town money were non religious in nature, which is entirely beside the point.  As is the funding of a school nurse by town money. Just as paying for heating oil, maintaining the plumbing, keeping the flower beds and plowing the parking lot, all are expenses which ought to be born by anyone seeking to run a school. As soon as the taxpayer's dollars go into a church bank account to fund this stuff, the taxpayer is now paying for church activity, just as sure as the townspeople in Henry VIII's England paid to support first the Catholic Church and then the Church of England.

It does not matter how the principal of Sacred Heart School earmarks town funds, whether she is careful to segregate money spent for secular, administrative purposes from money spent on religious topics. The fact is, once the money is provided for costs in the school, the school nurse, for poor student scholarships, that frees up money to continue the religious aspects of the school. 

The principal's argument is not different from the general who says, "For those who object to war making, your tax dollars will go only for the gasoline for our tanks, not for the ordinance or bullets."

That the citizens of Hampton, many of whom were educated in Hampton public schools, cannot recognize the conflict of voting to write a religious institution a check from public funds suggests the citizens have not been provided with a sufficient education. 

Waving about the letters "RSA" or any other letters to justify the expense of public funds on religious institutions ignores the fact that there have always been laws to justify unjust or unconstitutional actions. 

In 1974 a New Hampshire man taped over the "Live Free or Die" motto on his license plate and was arrested. The Supreme Court said he had the right to do that in Wooley v Maynard . Citing a case from 1943, when children refused to say the pledge allegiance in school, Justice Jackson (who later presided at the Nuremberg trials) wrote,  

“If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."

Thus an action by a single, humble Granite Stater pushed a principle to the ultimate test. In doing so, he demonstrated that he ought not be compelled to do something, in this case to display a sentiment, with which he did not agree. Like funding Sacred Heart, there was no poster child for this case. Nobody was harmed by the license plate motto and the citizens of New Hampshire saw no reason to take action to remove it. But it offended this citizen's sense of the Constitution which guarantees freedom of speech and by extension guarantees that you cannot be compelled to speak in a manner you abhor or to display a symbol--symbolic speech--which you reject.

Here was a man, a humble citizen, who understood the importance of the First Amendment, which separates church from state, which forbids government from limiting freedom of speech or imposing speech upon its citizens and which protects a free press and affirms the right of people to assemble and to confront the government with complaints (grievances).  All that is in the First amendment and every citizen of Hampton ought to know why, what the history was, why the founders put all this into the First Amendment. 

And so it is that Mad Dog is deeply offended by the annual payment to the coffers of the Catholic Church in Hampton.  Mad Dog contributes from his own personal account to that very same church, but for the town to do this is an offense to the first amendment and if the townsfolk do not understand why that is, then Mad Dog would suggest they spend that $65,000 (up from $45,000) on a course on the whys and wherefores of the First Amendment to be taught in all the schools, Marston, The Academy and Winnacunnett.

UPDATE:  MARCH 10, 2021

2179 CITIZENS OF HAMPTON VOTED TO AWARD $65,000 FROM THE TOWN BANK ACCOUNT TO THE SACRED HEART SCHOOL OF THE MIRACULOUS MEDAL CATHOLIC CHURCH.

805 CITIZENS VOTED FOR THE FIRST AMENDMENT.

ONCE AGAIN: HAMPTON EMBRACES THEOCRACY.

The Silence of the Lambs: Or, Why Democrats Lose

 

The meeting brought forth no surprises, only the expected behavior from those Mad Dog had come to know pretty well over the years.

The Hampton Democrats gathered 20 odd citizens, the usual suspects, to plow through the nuts and bolts of what passes for organization and planning and thinking of the local Party. 

There were long minutes spent talking about lawn signs, their value, the strategy of planting them on side streets, then moving them to busy intersections where signs can legally be planted as the election on March 9 draws nearer.

Mad Dog did learn something new, something he had always wondered about: when Democrats or Republicans gather to hold sign at the town's main intersection  (a dreary crossroads of Route 1 and Route 27, over arched by a jumble of thick power lines so ugly townspeople no longer even see them)  the sign holders often stand on the corner across from the Old Salt restaurant, but, it turns out, the Hampton police have informed the chairman of the local party, you cannot stand there legally, and have to keep moving, so if you want to stand, you have to move 500 feet down Route 1 toward the town gazebo.

Never knew that. 

The chairman announced that Democrats dominated the letters to the editor to the online edition (or it may have been the print edition--Mad Dog reads neither) of the Hampton Union and similar plans are being hatched to do the same for Seacoast Online. 

A video was played from a current octogenarian town councilor running for re election, a woman who refused to endorse the Hampton Democrat running for finance board,  because while a Democrat, this councilor  has a fondness for old friends who are Republicans or she has a fondness for simply landscaping for the town graveyards, which the town has done by cutting down ten 50 foot pine trees, leaving that part of Rte 27 denuded as a clear cut swath. 

 Out of a sense of  fairness, we listened to this octogenarian tell us that taxpayer money was routinely squandered and that no new buildings ought to be allowed in town ever again because the construction vehicles are noisy, destructive and unsightly, and nobody is offering to build this town councilor a new house any time soon. 

Warrant Article Tree Massacre at Graveyard

When 85 of the allotted 90 minutes for the meeting had elapsed, the chairman asked Mad Dog to present his thoughts on the warrant article (mentioned in the previous blog post) which allocates $65,000 from town coffers to the Sacred Heart school nestled on the grounds of the Miraculous Medal Catholic church. 

Mad Dog expostulated this payment from public funds to a religious institution violates the First Amendment, prima facia, and the Democrats should rise up in one mighty chorus and condemn it. 

Separation of church and state, don't you know?

Two lawyers present suggested since they are not constitutional scholars they could not offer an opinion about whether spending public governmental funds on a religious institution is in fact, unconstitutional, because, well, there are some laws which allow for it if the funds are for particular purposes. 

Mad Dog suggested you don't need to be a constitutional scholar to know an elision of church and state when you see it in the form of money getting deposited into a church account from a government account. 

The opinion of a town teacher of government was solicited and he opined the separation of church and state has never been absolute in America and the RSA laws which allow for government funds to be spent on private organizations for certain purposes have been endorsed by voters for years, by wide margins. He mentioned "shared bus routes" which Mad Dog took to mean that public school buses have been delivering town children to Sacred Heart for years.

Mad Dog did not have time or space to say that, yes, he understands in America we sometimes violate separation of church and state: we have a pledge which identifies our nation as nation "under God" and we have a chaplain of the United States Congress who often leads the Congress in prayer. And we have "In God We Trust" on our coins, but none of these things should actually be tolerated, and none of them involve spending taxpayer funds on a religious school, a wholly own subsidiary of a church.

Mad Dog was dying to tell the story about the time the Supreme Court directed the state of Texas to remove a nativity scene from the grounds of the state capitol and Anne Richards, then governor remarked, "It's a damn shame: It's the first time there ever were three wise men simultaneously present in Austin."

The purpose of this outlay of Hampton taxpayer funds is for a school nurse, for other non classroom activities Mad Dog was told. To which Mad Dog responded it doesn't matter if the funds provide for maintenance of flower beds, plowing of the parking lot; all that should be paid for by the Church, not the town.

View from Plaice Cove--Obadiah Youngblood

Several Democrats said for them the idea that public funds were handed over to non public schools was the problem, not the religious thing, which, if Democrats objected, would lose an entire Catholic vote. 

There you had it: fear of offending an interest group paralyzed these Democrats.

Do you think for a minute Republicans would shrink from saying what they thought was right for fear of losing votes? Mad Dog asked.

Practical objections were raised: Keeping those kids in Catholic school was cheaper than bringing them into the public schools where it cost $25,000 a year to educate them. To which Mad Dog said: So you would have argued, before school desegregation, it was cheaper to keep colored kids in colored schools and that was right?

Entirely Legal

Mad Dog could see he had a problem convincing this group to fight on principle: If only he had a poster child, a sympathetic face who would be harmed by government money spent on a religious school. He considered asking the group how they would feel if a madrassa opened in town and asked for dollars to educate its Muslim students.

In the end, no vote of support was taken. 

Mad Dog was told by several Democrats they would secretly vote against the warrant article but none would risk public exposure and the "blow back" that might bring. These Democrats would resist, but only if protected by the veil of secrecy, where they would offend no one. 

Only one stalwart said she would join Mad Dog's effort and she was no surprise at all: She is a Catholic, appalled to see town funds sent to Sacred Heart, and she  ever true to principle and never backs down from a fight and persists in all things. She is the heart and soul of the Democratic party in New Hampshire, but sadly, she is the rare exception. 

Unafraid to be Unpopular

But, in the end, the assembled Democrats advised Mad Dog if he was so worked up about it, to go to the ACLU and see if they would help him, but the Hampton Democrats were too fearful and in any case it was too close to the election.

Mad Dog muttered about "the fierce urgency of now" but Martin Luther King is not someone who resonated with this group.

So the group washed its hands of church/state separation, taking a stand on principle and adjourned, having heard all the committee reports about efforts at communication with the public, and Mad Dog wondered: What, exactly, do we, as Democrats have to communicate?"

As the line from Hamilton said: "If you stand for nothing, what do you fall for?"

 

Hampton NH Votes on Spending Public Funds on a Religious Institution

 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

--First Amendment, Constitution of the United States of America

A week from today the good people of Hampton, New Hampshire, a seacoast town of 20,000 will go to the polls to vote for their representatives on the zoning board, the school boards, for selectmen and on twenty pages of "warrant articles."

One of these warrant articles authorizes $40,000 to the Sacred Heart academy, a wholly owned subsidiary of a religious institution.

Whether that religious institution were the Catholic Church, a madrassa or a Jewish school, it would not matter. It is a religious school where religion is taught. 

If this were a private school, say Phillips Exeter Academy, there would be no problem.

But this is a school owned by a religious institution on grounds which are not taxed because this is  church property and in this country we separate church from state.

Every year for many years, this warrant article has passed with hardly a murmur of dissent. This expenditure of public money in a town which zealously guards every dime spent from its treasury is remarkable and the reasons why Hampton citizens are willing to spent money in this equanimous  manner is largely a mystery to Mad Dog.

When pressed, Mad Dog's fellow Democrats, who clearly see the separation of church and state problem, justify the expenditure on practical grounds:

1. It is popular and usually passes by wide margins.

2. The money is said to be for the purpose of paying for transportation of students to the school, for nursing services and for special needs students at the school, so it's not really spent on the school so much as on support services for the school, as if the town were paying for landscaping or plowing of the parking lots at the church connected to it.

3. If Hampton did not support the Catholic school, those students, 100 or more would be sent to the local public school where the cost of educating each is $20,000 a year. So the Catholic school is education on the cheap, a bargain for the taxpayer. It is often said this is why the voters have voted the funds every year. 

When a member of the "Hampton Dems"--a motley collection of citizens who range from left of Lenin radicals to homespun Hampton Democrats who attend monthly meetings, stand with signs on Route One in election years and go to Toni Trotzer's annual barbecue--several objections were made:

1. For the Dems to take a position on this issue a week before the election would result in "blowback" from unhappy citizens who may not think much about politics but would be roused from their sleep over this issue.

2. Such blow back may jeopardize the candidacies of Democrats running for various town positions. 

Mad Dog, who brought this issue to the agenda, argues:

1. Taking a position officially, by vote to express the opinion of the group is one thing; what to do about that is another.

2. The candidates do not have to endorse this policy and still be supported by the Hampton Dems.

3. The issue as a matter of principle is pretty simple:

The first amendment forbids Congress (and by extension local government) from acting to establish a state religion. 

Warrant Article Tree Massacre

One might argue Hampton is a town, not Congress, but as Brown v Board of Education demonstrated, that distinction is null and void as all governments from small towns to state legislators are bound by the Constitution.

Hampton Civil War Dead

One might argue for Hampton to pay for school buses to Sacred Heart is not "establishing religion" in Hampton. It's just school buses.  But if Hampton were asked to pay for new windows at the school, for repaving the parking lot or for other upkeep, would we not then begin to question how much paying the Church's cost in running the school becomes a government participating in establishing a church in town? After all, in Henry VIII's England, the church abbeys were supported by taxes on the people and much of that had nothing to do with what was preached from the pulpits.

We do not tax church property because we know that taxes become a vehicle of control of state over church; so if a church uses taxes for its benefit how is that not a vehicle of church control over state?

Let's assume, for sake of argument, the vote tonight at the Hampton Dems meeting is overwhelmingly in favor of a statement of opposition to the warrant article granting town funds to Sacred Heart: What would we do with that?

1. Establish a committee to study what action we might take for the 2022 warrant article.

2. Pat ourselves on the back for taking a stand for the 1st Amendment and eat cookies.

3. Write a letter to the editor of Seacoast news stating our opposition and the reasons why.

4. Engage the ACLU to bring a 1st amendment case (their favorite) on our behalf and sue the town of Hampton to stop this clearly illegal practice.

Why should we fight over a principle which has no poster child? 

Are the students at Sacred Heart injured? No. Are their parents injured? No. Are we as taxpayers injured? Not really: it's chump change, really.

You may say the separation of church and state is not absolute: Congress opens its sessions with a prayer; we pledge allegiance to the flag of one nation "under God" and our coins have "In God We Trust."  Mad Dog would argue each of these violates the 1st amendment and is open to challenge, which a suitably constructed Supreme Court would reject, but in none of these does money change hands from the state to the church.

You will say the town votes on this money to the temple: But that is in fact what the Constitution is all about: There are some things you cannot vote on. The Constitution defines these things. You cannot vote to allow involuntary servitude in Hampton, N.H. because that violates the 14th Amendment.

Who specifically is hurt by this expenditure of town funds?

The answer is we are all hurt when we look at our own town violating the law, the most essential law--the US Constitution--for practical reasons. The Constitution is there to ensure that principle is not sacrificed for expediency. 

It was practical to have segregated schools when I was growing up. Nobody complained about it. It was cheaper to send the few colored kids in Arlington, Virginia to their own school, which, underfunded as it was, was a lot cheaper than it would be to educate these kids in the pricier white schools.

It was only a matter of principle.

Everyone seemed happy with it at the time. 

Our parents decried the practice, but nobody made too big a fuss.

Smartmatics & the Limits of the 1st Amendment

 

One of the virtues of absolutism is the power to be consistent: If you say there should be no limits to free speech, then anytime you have a case, no matter how complicated it is easy to know the answer. 

If  Mr. Giuliani appears on your show and you know what he says it is a lie, and you agree with him, "Wow!" you say, "That's awful!"  He can say it and you can broadcast it,  because speech, even false speech is protected by the First Amendment-- if you are an absolutist, like the ACLU. 

There are some problems with this:

1/ Here is the first amendment: 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

So, if the judicial branch of the government finds a defendant guilty of defamation for lying on public airwaves, that is abridging the right of freedom of speech, his right to say wrong, stupid or knowingly untrue and hurtful things. And if that lie is put forward by the press, then it's doubly protected.

Right? Well, not absolutely.

Famously, as Justice Holmes said, "The first amendment does not give you the right to falsely shout 'Fire' in a crowded theater."

Why?  Because there can be consequences to those words, which are an act in themselves and people can be directly and immediately harmed, physically or financially, by that act.

Laws against inciting a riot come down to the Brandenberg decision, in which the test for incitement is proximity to violence, or "imminent lawless action." So someone who says, "Go lynch that darkie!" if that is followed by a lynching, then he is guilty of incitement. 

But if he says, "Hang those people who don't look like us, or maybe not. You might want to. I don't know. But I'm with you. If you want to save the country and your wives and daughters, and if you want to be heroes and do the right thing, you have to use force. I'm right behind you," well then, you've got some ambiguity. 

He really said "you might want to" not "you really ought to" or "you have to."

But if 10 minutes later a person of color is lynched, most juries would find Brandenberg instructs them. 

In other democracies, like Germany, you cannot deny the Holocaust. They decided, after Hitler,  an abridgment of free speech was a fair price to pay for squelching the big lie, and yet their democracy thrives.

So some abridgment of free speech can be seen to be necessary.

We need some rules to guide when speech can be abridged.

These rules usually start with something called "the truth." 

In America "truth is an absolute defense against a charge of defamation or slander."

But what is a "fact"? and What is "truth"?

2/ To prove something is a lie, you often have to establish the truth.

 And how do you prove there are no lasers from outer space causing wild fires or that Democrats do not drink the blood of white Christian children in Satanic rituals or that Hillary Clinton is not even today running a child pornography ring out of the basement of a pizza pallor which has no basement, in Northwest Washington, D.C?

 To appreciate what Fox News did in the case of Smartmatic you really have to hear the clips from Fox and that's where the podcast, "The Daily," is so useful.

Listen to this podcast and then come back to this blog post.

(Preview of coming attractions: Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell claimed Smartmatics software for elections machines turned elections in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Arizona from Trump to Biden; but the truth is, no Smartmatic software was even in voting machines or used in any way in any of those states. 

In fact, Smartmatic was used only in LA county. 

That is one of those things you can investigate, document as a "fact." 

That Smarmatic was created and is still owned by Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is also easy enough to disprove, and yet Fox apparently never sent a cub reporter to investigate, simply reported what Giuliani and Powell said as true and reacted with, "Wow! We are so eager to hear the rest of your investigation!" )

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/05/podcasts/the-daily/smartmatic-fox-news.html

The common tests for defamation and slander are:

1/ The claim is false.

2/ The speaker knew it was false when he made it.

3/ The speaker had "malice aforethought" which is to say, meant to cause harm to the party he slandered.

Listening to this podcast, without doing any more googling, the Smartmatic suit seems to meet all these requirements. 

One of few memorable classes I attended in college in which the professor  confounded the class by asking us to define what is an incontestable "fact." 

We went through all the mathematical arguments: 2+4=4. 

But no, that's a definition, not a fact. We agree on that one as a convention. 

"We are both sitting in this room together." 

"Ah, but how do you know this?"

And on like that--spinning right on to metaphysics, Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell and onward. 

But real life is not metaphysics. 

There are "facts" which are clear enough "real" enough and necessary so we can live life and not be harmed by wrong facts: If you are bleeding, we have to stop that so you can not die.

If you do not believe in exsanguination and tourniquets as "facts" then you are not going to survive long enough to exercise no friggin' First Amendment. 

If you have been wounded, and your billion dollar company rendered worthless by Fox News in pursuit of a story it wants to be true but should know is not true, then you ought to be able to be made whole by Fox News. 

Part of this discussion is tied up in the concept of "platform." 

 If someone posts a lie on Facebook, is Mark Zuckerberg responsible for the consequences of that lie? So far there is a law, 230c, which says, no, Facebook and Twitter cannot screen or "vet" millions of comments daily and users have to know that.

But not true for news organizations which present themselves as "journalists"  or news outlets, whose job, it is commonly understood, involves challenging the assertions made by those they quote and interview, and to investigate the substance of those claims and then, if they report these claims they are responsible for reporting the denials by those affected.

Anyway, those were the rules when newspapers did not have to compete with News "shows" and social media. 

FOX News may well argue it is and has not been for years a news organization: It's simply entertainment with blond, leggy young women crossing their gams on white leather couches while flashing white teeth and wearing hot pink dresses cut mid thigh. 

But words have consequences, and in this case a multi-billion dollar company, Smartmatics, was executed. And it was a company which did a lot of social good in counting votes quickly and accurately in elections, mostly in countries outside the US. 

And it was a company which was not even on the scene when the crimes occurred as alleged by Giuliani, Power and, more indirectly, by FOX.  This unholy triumvirate claimed Smartmatics did illegal, nasty, election-stealing things in Pennsylvania and Georgia and Arizona, when, in fact, no Smartmatic software was running in any of those states and was only running in LA county. It's like blaming Mexico for Pearl Harbor. 

The motivations of Giuliani and Powell were so clearly manifest, their need to find a dastardly villain capable and eager to steal the election was so visible, there is little doubt about motive, and the motive was clearly not truth seeking.

So we can only hope the courts, and ultimately the Supreme Court (Trump's Court) will do the right thing. 

But this is America.

America's Guarded Gate: 2021

 

Listening to the New Yorker's podcast February 5, "Trump Closed the U.S. to Asylum Seekers. Will Biden Reopen it?" I was struck by how the law functions in individual cases.

Medical journals typically only publish papers which give you the big picture, studies which are "sufficiently powered" to draw general conclusions: This vaccine works to protect from disease or it does not. Double blind, prospective, controlled studies.

But sometimes they publish a case report of a single well studied case, and the axiom has been, "A single, well studied case sometimes tells you more than a big study."

So it was with this podcast. Looking at how general rules set down by Trump play out for a single case, you see the larger picture more clearly.

Once we look at what happened to one woman from Honduras, we can back away from the close up to see the larger picture.

In this case a woman appears, without a lawyer but with a translator before a newly Trump  appointed immigration judge who clearly is faced with a body of law she is not comfortable with and the federal prosecutor, who is seeking to deny this woman entry on the basis of arguments with which she clearly is accomplished in using.

https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/how-trump-closed-the-us-to-asylum-seekers

The woman has walked from Honduras, through the jungles of Guatemala and Mexico to reach the southern border of the US, where she asked for asylum. She testifies she was a political party functionary in Honduras and her husband was a store owner and between the two of them they apparently offended both drug traffickers and government officials friendly to the drug lords. Her husband stepped out his door one morning and was shot to death. One of her three daughters was kidnapped, raped in the presence of a police officer, who stood in a corner of the room while she was raped on the bed,  and later the daughter was shown a picture of the whole family and told, "We are coming to get your m other and sisters."

The mother thought it prudent to flee her home town, and when it became evident she was safe nowhere in Honduras, she headed north to the USA.

She now appears before the judge and her testimony is her only evidence. There is no document from her hometown chief of police. There is no witness to deny what she says and none to confirm it.

The judge asks her if she herself was tortured, or was it only her daughter?

The law requires the person seeking asylum has been directly personally threatened, not by rumor or not by association.

 The judge asks the prosecutor about the presence of the police officer. If the policeman was carrying out an official policy of the Honduran government then the woman may have a case under an exception called the CAT rule, having to do with protecting asylum seekers if they have credible evidence they will be tortured because of their race, religion or political beliefs. 

Since the policeman was of her race and presumably also Catholic, then those cannot be used, but maybe political belief. The prosecutor points out it's not known if the man dressed as a policeman was actually a real policeman or at what level, local, state, federal or whether he was just a rogue cop or acting out a Honduran policy. In fact, the prosecutor points out the entire case is based on what this asylum seeker says: there are no supporting documents, no proof her daughter was raped or even that she has a daughter. 

The judge asks the woman if she has the badge number or name of the policeman who stood in a corner while her daughter was raped. Oddly enough, the woman cannot provide these.

In the end the judge says her heart goes out to the woman but the law requires she send the woman back to Honduras because she does not meet criteria for admission. And, the judge notes, this woman was naughty:  she crossed over two other countries on her way to America and did not seek asylum in those countries. 

It's fascinating to hear the judge try to get herself off the hook of her own conscience, how emphatically the judge wants to say what a nice person she is but she is helpless before the requirements of the law to help this naughty, law breaking mother who walked through two countries to reach the American border.

MS St Louis

Of course, this is not a new story: When Cordell Hull, Franklin Roosevelt's Secretary of State, refused to allow the M.S. St. Louis entry to any American port in 1939 because its load of Jews fleeing Hitler did not qualify for asylum, because they did not have a letter attesting to their good character from their local police, who were the Gestapo, he literally wrapped himself in the American Flag by his desk saying he would be betraying his duty to American law by admitting these people, and the ship returned its people to die in the concentration camps. Hitler later laughed about the American posture of being the savior of the downtrodden Jews, pointing to America's rejection of the St. Louis and sending them back to France and Germany where they were exterminated by men who  at least had the spine to own what they were doing. 

Rejected and sent home to die

Of course, as Daniel  Okrent details in his amazing book, "The Guarded Gate," American immigration policy has always instilled barriers based on race and class disparagement. First it was the Chinese. Later the dark races from Southern Europe (Italy, the Balkans) then the Jews, and along the way even the Irish, who while still white, were often Catholic and always poor. 

Immigrant from Slovenia, a "shit hole: country

Why, asked Donald Trump in amazement, were immigrants always trying to get into America from "shithole countries?"  Why weren't more Norwegians applying for membership in the American Dream Machine?

Of course, in some ways the barriers to immigration find support from people who do not mind the idea of seeing communities spring up which are dark skinned. There are other objections:

1. What if new immigrants take away jobs from those already here?

Immigrants 

2. What if new immigrants who cannot find jobs turn to crime?

What Trump sees when he sees immigrants

3. What do we do with new immigrants who reject the basic idea of tolerance? The UK is beset by problems of Imans in London who preach that the UK is an infidel nation and the immigrants arriving there should not tolerate the British women who walk around half naked, enticing good Muslim boys to impure thoughts, Imans who activity reject the nation and its values into which they have moved. A graft vs host reaction.

4. And what about numbers and rates: Suppose tomorrow America threw open its borders and 10% of Indians and 10% of Chinese moved here in 2022? That would be 150 million Indians and 150 million Chinese and in that case English would not be the language of the majority of people living here.

But for now, we are dealing with immigrants from Central America mainly, people who can walk here. The same forces of instability driving immigration into Europe from the Middle East and Africa: poverty, political instability, crime and violence drive people to vote with their feet and flee.

International law says, Mad Dog is told, that no nation can reject a boatload of Jews or any other similar group who would be returned to a country with laws which would send them to extermination camps, and having passed that law, the nations of the world sat back feeling very virtuous.

But what about that lady whose daughter was raped, or so she says, and what about all those folks, the wretched refuge of the teaming shore?