Opinion | We Need to Reframe the Debate Over Ukraine

 Even with violence returning to the Middle East, Ukraine remains a frontline of defense in a volatile world. But leaders need to start making that case.

Opinion by P. MICHAEL MCKINLEY

P. Michael McKinley is a non-resident senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The unprecedented attack by Hamas on Israel will complicate the debate in the United States and internationally about sustaining assistance for Ukraine as it defends itself against Russia’s aggression. Israel merits the unquestioned support of its allies as it responds to the most significant challenge it has faced since the Yom Kippur War in 1973. But it does not follow that the conflict in Ukraine should fade into the background.

Events in Israel along with other worrying developments — including Azerbaijan’s assault on Nagorno-Karabakh and Serbia’s border build-up with Kosovo — only underscore how quickly the international order we’ve long taken for granted has been undermined since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine 20 months ago. The world we’re entering is becoming a more volatile, violent place.

For Western nations who want to forestall that future, the first line of defense remains Ukraine. Israel is receiving support and likely to prevail in its conflict with Hamas, but without continued assistance from the United States and its allies, Ukraine is much less likely to win its war with Russia.

If Ukraine is not to suffer the fate of other “forever wars” and become a secondary priority to a possibly wider conflict in the Middle East, or a global landscape with other pressing demands, U.S. leaders need to recast the case for staying the course on Ukraine. Messaging on Ukraine should include greater realism about the conflict, its complexities, its likely outcome and what it means for global security.

The truth is that sustaining assistance for Ukraine is already a challenge, as much psychological as political. Fatigue has kicked in among Ukraine’s supporters notwithstanding reassuring statements by President Joe Biden and European leaders following the revolt by congressional GOP hardliners in Washington against further financial support for the war effort. In our recent past, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, costing trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives, increasingly came to be described as forgotten wars as they dragged on for many years.

Ukraine should not be seen in the same way. The moment is fast approaching for the Biden administration to strengthen the rationale for sustaining the war effort, by starting first with redefining the strategic commitment of the U.S. and its allies. At the NATO summit in June, it became clear that the allies have yet to provide everything Ukraine needs to significantly improve its battlefield performance. The debate continues over what weapons to supply. Allies also pushed off Ukraine’s NATO membership into an indefinite future.

Supporting Ukraine “whatever it takes” should be understood as part and parcel of supporting our allies globally in an increasingly unstable international environment. Should Ukraine fail, the world will re-enter a period of history, which only receded after 1945, where stronger nations can obliterate weaker ones, redraw boundaries, and drive national identities to extinction, and international extremists can act with impunity. We cannot afford to let that era return.

More on this argument:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/10/10/middle-east-violence-ukraine-00120709

Putin is also sitting tight in the hopes of a Trump win in 2024. Poland has stopped shipments of arms to Ukraine and Hungary is an unreliable partner. AND should Belarus join Russia's aggression, oh my!

It's time for NATO and the U.S. to give Ukraine what it needs to WIN this war rather than fight for a stalemate.

However, all our attention now is on Israel and Hamas. How easily we are distracted. 

News bits: Crooks and liars update; History bit - American fascism; Proxima B; Swamp monster

The Messenger writes about the corruption of Allen Weisselberg by a $2 million payoff from Trump: 

Ex-Trump Org CFO Allen Weisselberg Draws a Blank on More Than 90 Questions 

Before Lunch in Civil Fraud Trial

Ex-Trump Org CFO Allen Weisselberg signed a $2 million severance agreement right before his five-month tax fraud sentencing, evidence showed

Allen Weisselberg, the former Trump Organization chief financial officer is now a key witness and co-defendant in the former president's civil fraud trial.

Throughout his questioning early on Tuesday, Weisselberg came up empty in his responses to more than 90 questions before the lunch break in Trump's civil fraud trial. He answered more than 60 of those questions with some variation of "I don't recall," "I just don't recall," or "I don't remember." He responded to more than 30 inquiries with "I don't know."

If it was up to me, he would spend the rest of his worse than worthless, corrupt life in the slammer. This is what kleptocratic plutocracy and Republican Party elites act and look like. We better get used to it. 

Update: The Messenger reports that Weisselberg has gone quiet after emails from Forbes contradict his testimony:

Ex-Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg’s Testimony Abruptly Ended 

After Forbes Story Accused Him of Perjury

A source close to New York Attorney General Letitia James confirmed that her office is looking into the latest report about the former Trump CFO's testimony

The Trump Organization’s former chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg’s testimony reached an abrupt and unexpected end on Thursday afternoon, just hours after Forbes magazine accused the convicted tax cheat of perjuring himself during an earlier stint as a witness.

Weisselberg insisted on Tuesday from the witness stand that he “never focused” on calculating the square footage of the former president’s Trump Tower triplex, a three-floor penthouse in his namesake skyscraper.

Two days later, on Thursday, Forbes reported that emails not currently in the attorney general’s possession show otherwise.  

Forbes senior editor Dan Alexander wrote that his old emails and reporter notes contradict those denials, pointing out in his story that "Weisselberg absolutely thought about Trump’s apartment—and played a key role in trying to convince Forbes over the course of several years that it was worth more than it really was."

"Given the fact that these discussions continued for years, and that Weisselberg took a very detailed approach in reviewing Trump’s assets with Forbes, it defies all logic to think he truly believes what he is now saying in court," Alexander added.

So much blatant lying by Trump and the people around him. It's insulting. 

Lock 'em up, lock 'em up, lock 'em up! 

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Some history about American fascism in the 1930s rehashed, just for the memories:

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Sci & Universe writes:

Researchers have confirmed the existence of a SECOND Earth located in the Proxima Centauri System. The planet is believed to have oceans just like Earth and may host alien life.

In the past, thousands of exoplanets have been discovered in the universe, but none of them is like Proxima B.

Researchers have discovered a planet located in the Proxima Centauri system, one of the closest stars to Earth which they believe harbors liquid water and potentially alien life.

 
The planet, named Proxima B is believed to be around 1.3 times the size of our planet and has the ideal temperature on the surface for water in a liquid state to exist.

Proxima B is located four light years away from Earth –over 25 TRILLION MILES—meaning that to visit the planet in the near future, future generation would have to come up with super-fast spacecraft that would allow them to travel to the Proxima Centauri system with ease.

If the planet proves to be ‘a SECOND Earth’ it could become one of the best options for future human colonization.

Researchers believe that the temperature on the surface of the planet could be between -90 degrees Celsius and 30 degrees Celsius. 

The planet which has already been dubbed ‘a second Earth’ is located at an ideal distance from its host star for liquid water to exist, which means that life as we know it is very likely to exist.

Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf located in the constellation Centaurus. The star itself is too weak to be observed with the naked eye, but in recent months, scientists have not taken their eyes off of it.

In fact, during the first half of this year, Proxima Centauri was followed regularly with the HARPS spectrograph installed on the 3.6-meter telescope of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in La Silla (Chile) and monitored simultaneously with other instruments from around the world. 

Future observations, for example using the 39-m ESO E-ELT telescope under construction in Chile, will allow further investigation of Proxima b and of the hypothetical presence of a thick atmosphere and a liquid water reservoir. If this turned out to be the case, it would be very exciting that the nearest star to the Sun also hosts the nearest habitable (perhaps inhabited?) planet.

Go ESO E-ELT telescope! 

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The Lever writes about the authoritarian radical right Republicans’ temporary speaker swamp beast, Patrick McHenry: 

Swamp Thing

Few Americans knew Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) before he took over last week as the temporary U.S. House Speaker — and if they know him now, it’s probably for swinging a gavel harder than you might expect, or for sporting a bow tie.

One reason regular people don’t know McHenry is because he hardly represents them. The 10-term congressman projects and personifies the cold, corporate Washington, D.C. politics that systematically preference donors’ interests over those of the public.

McHenry only reported raising $856 from small donors (those giving less than $200) in the first half of the year — or a paltry 0.06 percent of the $1.5 million he collected. According to a Lever review, roughly 90 percent of the campaign cash McHenry has raised this year came from executives in the financial, banking, cryptocurrency, and real estate industries; lobbyists and political action committees (PACs); and payday lenders and debt collectors.

These donations have coincided with McHenry, as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee this year, pushing to weaken regulations designed to rein in some of these industries — part of his long history of repeatedly going to bat for the financial sector throughout his time in Congress.  

While McHenry is ostensibly the financial industry’s chief regulator in Congress, he has instead acted as its top booster.

McHenry has spoken out against a new rule from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to block alternative investment firms, like private equity and hedge funds, from giving special rights and privileges to certain favored investors and not to others who have invested in the same funds.

DRAIN THAT SWAMP!! DRAIN THAT SWAMP!! DRAIN THAT SWAMP!! 

Yeah right. The swamp will drain when pigs fly.

Bang that gavel harder!

History: The origin of Hamas

This 6 minute video explains the critical role that Israel played in creating the radical extremist Hamas identity as part of a plan to divide and keep Palestinians suppressed. The plan backfired. 

PD posted this in a comment here yesterday. This information is well worth knowing. It puts the current horror in Israel and Gaza in some context. 

News bits: Tax gap update; Mary Trump speaks again; War update; Lighter news - The Goat Rodeo

The Hill reports about something (on of my fave topics) that I've been screaming and howling about for years, the annual festival of gigantic theft for tax cheaters that congress requires by law:

IRS ‘tax gap’ widens to $688 billion in 2021: report

The gap between taxes owed and paid to the government is wider than originally estimated, according to a new report released Thursday by the Internal Revenue Service.

The projected gross “tax gap,” the difference between the total taxes owed to the IRS and how much is collected on time, jumped to $688 billion for tax year 2021, the agency projects. That’s about $138 billion higher than revised projections for the three-year period ending in 2019.  

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), passed by Democrats last August, included an additional $80 billion in funding for the IRS to beef up its enforcement efforts.

Republicans have opposed the new IRS funding, and they made a bill that would reverse most of that funding their first legislative priority when the party retook the House in January.  

Republicans love tax cheating by rich people and big corporations because (i) most of the cheaters are rich, like many or most Congressional Republicans, and (ii) the authoritarian radical right GOP hates, hates, hates government and taxes.

Based on detailed analyses from tax years 2001 and 2006, my estimate of the current tax gap (tax cheating) is at least about $800 billion, not $688 billion. 

But something has changed at the IRS. The prior tax gap estimates I can recall were at about ~$480 billion, which I believed was to low to be credible. Someone has pressured the IRS to be more honest about this. Radical right Republicans hate release of info like this, so the pressure for transparency and honesty cannot be coming from them. 

Anecdote: Years ago when it was obvious that IRS tax gap estimates were too low, I wrote to the IRS information office that answers taxpayer questions. I was told that they did not answer taxpayer questions. I took that to mean the IRS was telling me I was an idiot taxpayer and I should shut up, pay my taxes and go pound sand. By then, the radical right had cowed the IRS into silence because the radical right hates the IRS and wants it to go away.

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The New Republic writes about Mary's latest commentary regarding her poisonous uncle:

The stakes of the 2024 election could not be clearer, says Mary Trump: It’s “​​a choice between democracy and fascism.”

They identify not with Donald’s strength … but they identify with his weakness,” Trump said, arguing that his supporters know to some extent that he’s a fraud. In fact, they like that about him. “They identify with the fact that he gets away with everything.”

“To me, one of the biggest scams was this myth that Donald was this successful businessman … that he was a champion of the working man,” she said. “By the way, that’s not something he ever says. Somebody else made that up about him.”

Trump said that Donald’s portrayal in the media as a working-class hero is founded on a misunderstanding—he grew up privileged in Manhattan, after all—and that he then exploited it. “He just then flew his stupid private jet from rally to rally, and I guess that was enough to convince people that he really cared about them,” she said.

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War update

Impending humanitarian crisis alert: Israel says 1.1M residents must leave north Gaza Strip but the U.N. says that’s impossible

Airburst burning white phosphorous rains down

Israel is using white phosphorous bombs - the material ignites on contact with air and leaves horrible burns sort of like napalm (Israel denies it is using this weapon). WaPo writes: 

Human Rights Watch confirmed in a statement released Thursday that white phosphorus was used over the Gaza City port on Wednesday, after interviewing two witnesses who noted the stifling smell of white phosphorus. The organization also analyzed video of the event and identified airburst 155mm white phosphorus artillery projectiles were used in the strike. They condemned the use of the chemical, which can severely burn people and set fire to civilian structures, in such a densely populated area.  

 WaPo: With exits to Israel and Egypt shut, the retaliatory military operations have effectively turned the narrow 25-mile long Gaza Strip into a kill box.

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A WaPo opinion by Dana Milbank comments: 

House Republicans collapse into anarchy

War in Israel. War in Ukraine. The federal government shutting down in 35 days. These are uncertain times.

But there is one eternal truth, one unwavering constant to steady us when all else is in flux: Every time the House Republican majority tries to govern, it’s guaranteed to turn into a goat rodeo.

Milbank writes a long, long opinion that recites the amazing lunacy of what the radical right GOP has degenerated into in the House. He explains his goat rodeo reference like this: Rep. Harriet Hageman (Wyo.), the Trump-backed slayer of Liz Cheney, walked into the caucus meeting wearing a big smile and carrying a lasso. Was she planning to rope some goats? She didn’t say.  

Carrying a lasso? What a lunatic. OMG, we're all gonna die. Run away!!

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DJT: “The same people that raided Israel are pouring into our once beautiful USA, through our TOTALLY OPEN SOUTHERN BORDER, at Record Numbers.”

PolitiFact: 

UN officials condemn Israel for war crimes leading to "humanitarian disaster"

Palestinians inspect the rubble of the West mosque destroyed after it was hit by an Israeli airstrike at Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, early Monday, Oct. 9, 2023. Israel’s military battled to drive Hamas fighters out of southern towns and seal its borders Monday, as it pounded the Gaza Strip from the (AP Photo/Adel Hana)

A group of United Nations humanitarian experts denounced attacks on civilians in the escalating conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza early Thursday, saying Israel is now committing “war crimes” through “collective punishment” by blockading aid from the territory.

The war has killed at least 2,500 people on both sides. Concerns for civilians in Gaza have mounted in recent days as the territory runs out of power and medical supplies due to a complete blockade by Israel.

“We strongly condemn the horrific crimes committed by Hamas, the deliberate and widespread killing and hostage-taking of innocent civilians, including older persons and children. These actions constitute heinous violations of international law and international crimes, for which there must be urgent accountability,” the U.N. group said.

“We also strongly condemn Israel’s indiscriminate military attacks against the already exhausted Palestinian people of Gaza, comprising over 2.3 million people, nearly half of whom are children,” it added. “They have lived under unlawful blockade for 16 years, and already gone through five major brutal wars, which remain unaccounted for.”

“This amounts to collective punishment,” the experts continued. “There is no justification for violence that indiscriminately targets innocent civilians, whether by Hamas or Israeli forces. This is absolutely prohibited under international law and amounts to a war crime.”

The U.N. said Thursday that more than 650,000 people in Gaza are running out of water due to the blockades. Medical supplies are also dwindling in the area's hospitals, which are at times without power. The Israeli energy minister said early Thursday the country will not allow aid into Gaza, despite calls from organizations, including the U.N.

“Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home,” Israel Katz said on X, formerly Twitter. “Humanitarian for humanitarian. And no one will preach us morals.”

The Red Cross warned Thursday those hospitals could soon turn into “morgues” without immediate aid.

“As Gaza loses power, hospitals lose power, putting newborns in incubators and elderly patients on oxygen at risk,” Fabrizio Carboni, International Committee of the Red Cross regional director for the Near and Middle East wrote in a statement. “Without electricity, hospitals risk turning into morgues.” 

The Israeli military has committed to completely eliminating Hamas through a campaign of extensive airstrikes and an expected ground invasion. 

The U.N. experts specifically called out Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over comments calling Gazans “human animals” on Monday.

“Besides this appalling language that dehumanises the Palestinian people, especially those who have been unlawfully ‘imprisoned’ in Gaza for 16 years, we condemn the withholding of essential supplies such as food, water, electricity and medicines,” the group continued. “Such actions will precipitate a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where its population is now at inescapable risk of starvation. Intentional starvation is a crime against humanity.”

It is also difficult for Gazans to leave the territory because the only border with Egypt was closed again Thursday due to Israeli airstrikes in the area. The crossing was previously closed on Monday due to strikes. 

The Egyptian government has also urged Israel to stop the strikes so aid can enter Gaza.

The U.N. group called on both sides of the conflict to immediately negotiate a ceasefire, in addition to corridors for humanitarian aid and a release of the captured on both sides of the conflict.

 

 -Fr. The Hill 10/12/23: https://thehill.com/policy/international/4251899-un-civilians-israel-gaza-war-crimes/

 

 

Legal analysis: How the USSC is both powerful and political

Quick summary 

The USSC has key tools that give it enormous power that is on a par with congress plus the White House. Those tools are:

• It decides which cases to hear or reject

• It decides which legal questions the parties pose to answer or ignore 

• It writes its own legal question(s), even if none of the parties posed it

One legal scholar said the Supreme Court is moving away from “deciding cases” and toward “answering discrete policy questions.” Those three tools allow it to do that.
Credit...

By focusing on the power to dictate the legal question to be answered, the USSC has basically the same power that congress and the president have. Once a court decides a legal question, e.g., is Roe v. Wade constitutional, the decision has the same power as a law that congress and a president can make. 

One can see how a radicalized, authoritarian USSC, like the one we have today, can greatly change the law, government, commerce and eventually society itself. The USSC could, and is now in the process of, convert the constitution from a document that reflects secular democracy to one that reflects radical Christian Sharia law.  

The legal analysis

A fascinating but critically important legal analysis discussed by the NYT about how the USSC can be political reveals the vast power of the USSC to do what legislatures + presidents do:

By choosing among and sometimes writing the questions the court agrees to answer, recent studies say, the justices have distorted the judicial process

We say that the Supreme Court decides cases, but that is not correct. It picks isolated questions to answer, often choosing among ones proposed by the parties or writing ones of its own.

That practice adds a disturbing element of politics to the judicial process, said Benjamin B. Johnson, a law professor at the University of Florida and the author of three recent papers on the subject.

“They are no longer doing what a court does, which is deciding cases,” he said. “They’re now doing what a legislature does, which is answering discrete policy questions.”

Consider a few examples.

When the court agreed to hear one of this term’s most important cases, it rejected a modest question proposed by the plaintiffs and said it would only consider one that asked it to overrule an important precedent, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council.

The same thing happened in the Dobbs case, which eliminated the constitutional right to abortion. When the court granted review, it picked only the broadest of the three proposed questions, one that led it to overrule Roe v. Wade.

“Even though the court had alternative pathways to resolve the case without inviting a firestorm of controversy,” Professor Johnson wrote in the Alabama Law Review, “the justices intentionally eliminated those alternatives from their review.”

In the recent case of a Christian web designer who challenged a Colorado law barring discrimination based on sexual orientation, the court accepted only part of one of her two proposed questions. The court said it would not consider whether the law was at odds with her right to free exercise of her religion and would treat the case solely a free-speech challenge.

And when the court agreed to hear two big cases on the First Amendment and social media last month, it did not adopt the questions proposed by any of the parties. It looked instead to a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the Biden administration, choosing two of its four questions.

This sort of cherry-picking and revision, Professor Johnson said, is on the rise. “What was once a relatively rare occurrence now makes up between a tenth and a quarter of the docket,” he said.

Data compiled by Professor Johnson from the two decades ending in 2020 seems to back that up. When the court added or subtracted questions, he found, the case was more likely to attract friend-of-the-court briefs and to result in 5-to-4 splits.

A century ago, in 1925, Chief Justice William Howard Taft persuaded Congress to cut back on the kinds of cases the Supreme Court had to hear, allowing the court to choose for itself which ones it would decide. That itself was an extraordinary move. Giving the justices almost total discretion over their docket helped to transform and empower it.

But the 1925 law did not authorize the justices to take the further step of picking the questions they would answer. “This is clear both from the statutory language and the justices’ own testimony in favor of the bill,” Professor Johnson wrote. Indeed, Chief Justice Taft had assured lawmakers that in federal cases the “power of review extends to the whole case and every question presented in it.”

Still, in later decisions and then in the court’s own rules, the justices said they would consider only discrete questions.

That was so, Professor Johnson wrote, “even though Congress mandated — and the justices promised — review of the entire case.”

It is one thing to allow the Supreme Court to decide which cases to hear and another to let it choose to answer the questions proposed in the petition seeking review. But it is a third thing for the justices to choose among those questions. And it is yet another thing for them to write their own questions.

But the court has drafted its own questions in any number of landmark cases, including ones on the right to counsel, the 2000 presidential election, campaign finance, same-sex marriage, class actions, recess appointments and immigration.

At the same time, the Supreme Court has had little patience with lower courts that try something similar.

Three years ago, for instance, the justices chastised a federal appeals court for revising the questions before it, saying that it ran afoul of “the principle of party presentation.” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, quoting an earlier decision, explained that “we rely on the parties to frame the issues for decision and assign to courts the role of neutral arbiter of matters the parties present.”

This is why I keep pointing to the grave danger this USSC poses to democracy, civil liberties that God hates and the rules of law that kleptocratic plutocrats hate. The danger is lethal and intentional, and thus it cannot be overstated.