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Right Again
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| T.A.C.O. |
In response to a follower of Jackspotpourri’s concern over the danger to the world of Trump’s ultimatum discussed below, I replied on Tuesday afternoon that although most of my next blog posting (which you now are reading) had already been prepared, I might have to modify it a little, but I fully expected the President to 'T.A.C.O.' (Trump Always Chickens Out) on this threat as he has done on so many others.
He is backed into a corner and flailing around seeking an exit ramp, where there is no believable one available.
I was correct, but how many times can he get away with this without paying the price of some way being evicted from the White House?
JL
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He Has ‘Lost It’
Take note of what our legally elected president posted on Sunday. (See below. It follows in purple lettering.) I think it is suffiecient evidence for the members of his cabinet, the leaders of both major parties in Congress, and the entire Supreme Court to drag him out of the White House, feet first if necessary, and deposit him in the mental illness section of Walter Reed Hospital. This is the purpose of the 25th Amendment to our Constitution. Heads of State with all of their marbles do not talk or act this way!
The first thing his replacement should do is get rid of the non-diplomat businessmen (golfing buddy Witkoff and son-in-law Kushner) he has negotiating an end to this war and turn that task over to professional diplomats, if any remain in the employ of our government. These two are just interested in ultimately making a buck out of this war.
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Among the many media sources, in print or online, reporting the President’s foul-mouthed threat was Professor Heather Cox Richardson’s April 5 ‘Letters from an American’ posting. Find it there or almost anywhere else. It read:
“At 8:03 this morning, Easter Sunday, President Donald J. Trump’s social media account posted: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F*ckin’ Strait, you crazy b*stards, or you’ll be living in Hell—JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP”
And then Professor Richardson added that “In The Guardian last Monday, Sidney Blumenthal noted that Trump “has declared ‘victory’ more than eight times,” says he has “won” more than ten times, and said Iranian forces have been “obliterated” or suffered “obliteration” more than six times. Blumenthal noted Trump is now threatening to “obliterate” Iran’s power grid and has used the words “decimate” or “decimation” at least six times.” Please add ‘redundancy’ to the President’s galaxy of shortcomings.
A few days earlier, Trump posted this on his social media platform: “With a little more time, we can easily OPEN THE HORMUZ STRAIT, TAKE THE OIL, & MAKE A FORTUNE. IT WOULD BE A ‘GUSHER’ FOR THE WORLD??? President DONALD J. TRUMP.” Note his odd use of ‘question marks’ in a statement that is not a question, enabling him to claim he never actually advocated this but it was just something he was thinking about. (Trump never paid any attention in school and was unaware of the existence of a ‘conditional’ tense. He could have replaced ‘can easily’ with ‘might easily’ or ‘could easily’ but he must have cut school the day they taught that.)
Anyway, this thought might have been a good idea to his investor-negotiators, Witkoff and Kushner, who have significant dealings with Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman.
Does Trump expect anyone, including the Iranians, to take him seriously any longer? Well, yes!
Professor Timothy Snyder does! His ‘Thinking About …’ column dated April 7, dealing with the President's threat of genocide, follows.
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“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
These are not the words of Hitler, or Stalin, or Mao, or Pol Pot, or Assad, or Putin. These are the words of the president of the United States, today.
Do not be distracted by circumstances. Of course there are emotions, personalities, politics, a war. None of this excuses that sentence. The reason we have a notion of genocide, and a convention on genocide, is to define certain actions as always and definitively wrong.
Are these “only words”? No, they cannot be “only words.” As any historian of mass atrocity knows, there is no such thing as “only words.” The notion of killing a whole civilization, once spoken, remains. It enables others to say similar things, as when another elected representative compared the entire country of Iran to a cancer that had to be removed.
Whatever happens tonight, the president, by saying such things, has already changed the world for the worse, and made acts of mass violence more likely. If we are Americans, he has also changed our country. He has changed us, because he represents us; we voted for him, or we didn’t vote and allowed him to come to power, or we didn’t do enough to stop him. These words are America’s words, until and unless Americans reject them.
Yes, there have been other genocides, and there are other politicians who endorse genocide. That makes the words of the president worse, not better. Yes, the United States has undertaken atrocities before. That makes it all the more important, all the more urgent, that we catch ourselves now. Neither the evil nor the good in our history determines who we are. It is what we do now.
If we do not say something ourselves about this horror, we allow ourselves to be changed.
Around the president there will be people, sadly, who work deliberately to normalize the language of genocide. There will be other politicians who find the right words to reject it. One can hope that there will be politicians who find the courage to remove the man who speaks genocide from office. And these words should lead to resignations by everyone who works closely with the president.
But we cannot count on politicians. This is ultimately up to us, the citizens: for our own sake, for the sake of the future of the country, for the sake of a possibility of new beginnings, we need to say something, to someone else, to ourselves: this is simply wrong.
Whatever happens tonight, or any other night in this war, is now legally defined by the president’s statement. In the practical application of the law of genocide, the Genocide Convention of 1948, the difficulty is usually in proving “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Henceforth the intent is on the record, in the published words of the president of the United States and the commander-in-chief of the armed forces about the death of “a whole civilization.”
Article III of the Genocide Convention makes it clear that not only the person who issues the genocidal order is guilty. Genocide itself is of course a crime, where genocide means the intent that Trump expressed, and actions such as killing members of a group, causing members of a group serious harm, or “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” -- which would of course include actions such as destroying access to energy or water. But also defined as a crime are conspiracy to commit genocide, incitement to commit genocide, attempts to commit genocide, and complicity in genocide.
We all have good ethical and political reasons to reject the president’s words. But those who serve in government, and in the armed forces, have been placed under the legal shadow of genocide by what Trump wrote. To bomb a bridge or a dam or a power plant or a desalinization facility, very likely a war crime in any event, could very well have a different legal significance, a genocidal one, if it takes place after the expression of genocidal intent by the commander and head of state.
The concept of genocide was created by a survivor and an observer of atrocities, Rafał Lemkin, so that we could see ourselves, judge ourselves, stop ourselves. But genocide is not only a concept. It is also a crime under international law, signed by the United States in 1948 as a convention, ratified by the United States as a treaty in 1988. That makes the words I have quoted here the law of the land.
The president speaks genocide. And so we too must speak. Not only about crimes, but about their legal punishment..
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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri
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More on the Sources of Information in Jackspotpourri: The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered local daily ‘printed’ newspaper (now the South Florida Sun Sentinel) and what appears in my daily email; that includes the views of many contributors, including the New York Times and other respected journals.
Be aware that when I open that email, I first quickly glance at and screen out those sent to my very old former email address and those considered ‘promotional’ by Gmail’s system as no more than advertisements or requests for donations.
Besides these sources, I also utilize the Google search engine where I can look up any subject I want. Lately, these search results have been headed by a very generalized summary clearly labeled as being developed by AI (Artificial Intelligence). On occasion I might use such search results, but when I do, I will say that I am doing so. Generally, however, I try not to use such summaries in preparing Jackspotpourri.
Following such ‘AI’ search results, there follows the other results of my search. Unlike the anonymous AI-generated summaries, the sources of these results are clearly identified, giving them a greater credibility than any AI summary. It comes down to who YOU want to be in the driver’s seat in seeking information: yourself or something else (Artificial Intelligence), the structure of which somewhere along the way had to have been created by others, with whose identity I am neither familiar nor comfortable. At least when I read a column by Timothy Snyder, for example, I know from where it comes, and to some extent, what to expect.
Caution should be exercised in using Artificial Intelligence. Always!
JL * * * *
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