defrog | Entries tagged with i am law you are crime

As you’ve no doubt heard by now, the Supreme Court has ruled that Donald J Trump has limited immunity from prosecution for stuff he did while he was President. I’ve been too busy to write anything about it, but I got minute now, and you’re all just dying to know what I think, so here you go:

1. Actually, I don’t have much to say about it that Radley Balko hasn’t already said here. His dissection is very long but worth your time to really appreciate what just happened and why it’s probably even worse than you may have heard.

The main takeaway worth highlighting is the uselessness of Chief Roberts’ ruling that immunity only applies to “official acts” related to exercising “core constitutional powers”:

“The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official. The President is not above the law.”

The problem, Balko notes, is that in practice, the line between official and unofficial acts is so fuzzy that there might as well not be a line at all. And Roberts’ ruling pretty much ensures that by giving no guidelines on how to do that, and also making it illegal to consider the president’s motives:

As both Sotomayor and Jackson point out, the majority has created this distinction between “official” and “unofficial” acts out of thin air, then made it impossible to distinguish one from the other. A president can come up with an “official” reason for just about any crime — from accepting bribes, to arresting journalists and critics, to targeted assassinations. Then — I guess we just take his word for it.

2. Also, as Josh Marshall at TPM correctly points out, this is a big deal because the official acts of presidents are exactly the sort of thing you don’t want to give presidents immunity for – no one cares if the President steals a toaster, but we do care if he orders the military to assassinate a rival, or jails journalists, or orders prisoners to be tortured.

Marshall also agrees that the distinction between official and unofficial acts is meaningless:

… even though this is clearly not blanket or absolute immunity that it’s close enough that with good lawyering you’re all but there.

3. Of course the Republicans are crowing about this, although don’t yet seem to have figured out that President Biden – and any Democrat POTUS that follows him – now has the exact same immunity powers – which hasn’t stopped them from calling Biden be arrested for treason, but then logic and consistency has never really been a thing in MAGA World.

And anyway, it may not matter to them because they figure this election is for keeps – once Trump is back in and Project 2025 is implemented, they hope to fix it do no Democrat ever wins the White House ever again. Problem solved.

4. Which is the other big issue, of course – Project 2025 is nothing short of a declaration of cultural war by the MAGA party against the liberal scourge they fear so much and a permanent takeover of conservative rule with democratic processes preserved largely as window dressing (see: Hungary, Hong Kong, etc). And while most of it could probably be accomplished through technically legal means, whatever legal constraints exist will not be an issue as long as Trump declares them official acts.

Kevin Roberts has famously declared that Project 2025 is “a second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” And while maybe he thinks he’s saying that there won’t be any violence unless the left starts it, what it sounds like to me is: “Just roll over and accept this – don’t make us force it on you because we will.” Either way, he knows now that using violence to enforce this is on the table. And there’s a significant chunk of the MAGA cult that is very much looking forward to dishing it out.

5. It’s hard to believe the SCOTUS majority is blissfully unaware of all this (Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas certainly aren’t), although maybe some of them are kidding themselves that the institutions will still hold, and you can always just vote Trump out. But Chief Roberts seems more worried about a vicious cycle of endless prosecutions of presidents than holding them accountable for actual crimes, which suggests at best that his priorities are at odds with reality.

6. Anyway, all of this is basically the latest chapter of an ongoing debate whether any US president can ever realistically be held accountable for any crimes they commit while in office, and whether impeachment is a sufficient solution. As we’ve seen, it’s not.

I’ve posted about that before, and all I can really add to it is that the SCOTUS decision on immunity pretty much seals the deal – Presidents can crime as much as they want as long as they make them look like official acts. And I continue to believe we need to really think long and hard about whether that’s the kind of country we want to live in, and if so, why.

Crime time,

This is dF

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Current Location: Tung Chung
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The outcome of Impeachapalooza 2 is old news by now, I know, but in light of the spectacle of Donald Trump headlining CPAC – which is packed with his minions parroting his election fraud conspiracy theories – I thought I might as well post some thoughts.

1. In regards to Trump’s acquittal, I mean, sure – we knew more or less how this would end. The only real surprise was that seven Republicans voted to convict – which is apparently a US record in terms of bipartisan impeachment. Still, you know, where were most of these people when he was impeached the first time?

2. Apart from those seven, the GOP basically confirmed that they are the Trump Party, and that if he wants to make up stuff about election fraud and whip his MAGA base into a violent frenzy to overturn the election and install him as POTUS for life, then they're totally cool with that.

3. Mitch McConnell’s post-vote speech did not impress me. He can bloviate all he likes about the unconstitutionality of impeaching someone who isn't President anymore (which, let’s not forget, was the result of McConnell intentionally delaying the trial until after Trump was out of office) – the truth is that he knows which way the political winds are blowing, and if he wants to remain the Senate minority leader, he can’t be showing disloyalty to the Trump MAGA cult that comprises most of the Senate GOP now. He’s trying to have it both ways – he wants to be loyal to Trump without looking like he’s actually condoning Trump’s attempted coup.

Ironically, of course, Trump is not having any of that. Which just goes to show.

4. Speaking of which, Trump is now free to start his 2024 campaign. Or whatever it is he plans to do. Whatever it is, he did it at CPAC this weekend, and it’s pretty much what you’d expect – insult comedy, conspiracy theories and a declaration of war against his enemies. Which, notably, includes all disloyal Republicans who didn’t do enough to keep him in office. Whether or not he actually runs in 2024, Trump made it pretty clear that he’s not interested in starting a new political party – he’d much rather complete his takeover of the GOP and purge the anti-Trump heretics, or at least the ones that don’t change their tune permanently. And he’s likely to succeed.

5. On a side note, I would be very surprised if Trump didn't run in 2024. Yes, there’s the possibility that Trump will be in jail by then. However, there’s literally no rule saying you can’t run for President from a prison cell – Eugene Debs and Lyndon LaRouche did it in 1920 and 1992, respectively.

Granted, both lost. Which is why we don't yet know whether you can take office if you win – being in jail might count as “impairment”, which could result in 25^th Amendment proceedings to make Trump’s running mate President. There’s also the question of whether you could be released via pardon or some other mechanism. As I understand it, it’s pretty straightforward if you’re in a federal prison, but harder if you're in a state prison (remembering that if Trump does go to jail, it will be for breaking state laws).

In any case, I think running a campaign from prison would probably help him by feeding the “political persecution by anti-American libs” meme that the MAGA cult thrives on. So yeah, I think Trump is likely to try to get his chair back. And barring any other viable options, I think the GOP will go out of their way to help him get it.

6. As I’ve said before, the key takeaway from all this is that America does not have a viable mechanism for dealing with a crooked authoritarian President. Impeachment and the 25^th Amendment are too political to be effective remedies, and the ballot box option is only available every four years. Trump did plenty of damage in that time, not all of which can be fixed with executive orders.

The challenge is that the Founding Fathers intentionally made it difficult to get rid of a POTUS. If it were easy, the Opposition would spend every waking moment finding some excuse to have him arrested, and we’d have impeachments probably every year.

However, as we just learned over the last four years, as long as we stand by the DOJ concept that a sitting President cannot be indicted, the truth is that a sitting POTUS can commit all manner of high crimes and misdemeanours – to include attempting a coup – with no fear of consequences (apart from maybe losing the election).

We need to have a very serious conversation about whether this is a status quo worth preserving, and whether the alternatives would be worse in the long run.

Crime time,

This is dF

Current Mood: awake
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I do keep up with current events. I just can’t blog about them in real time. Blame it on deadlines, moving house and kidney stones.

Anyway:

1. Trump is now the only POTUS to be impeached twice. Which is braggable.

Is it too little too late? Well, we had that discussion during Impeachapalooza 1, where the argument was (1) there was no point impeaching him if the Senate was going to acquit him anyway, or (2) there has to be consequences for Presidential shenanigans or we might as well say the POTUS is above the law and can do anything they want.

Granted, it’s not much of a punishment. Trump probably regards his Twitter suspension as more severe than being impeached. Which is why we do need to rethink our current mechanisms for dealing with criminal presidents.

2. Yes, it damn well was a coup – or, as it’s technically known, a ‘self-coup’. Dr Fiona Hill lays it all out for you here. And there’s little room for doubt that Trump encouraged it, even if he didn’t actively organize it.

Meanwhile, each passing day seems to reveal that while the storming of the Capitol was a mix of planning and improv, at least some of them intended to kidnap and kill people in the name of keeping Trump in power. It was a poorly executed self-coup, but a self-coup nonetheless.

3. Moreover, it also seems clear that the Capitol Police and some GOP Congresspeople were complicit to some degree. Compare the security at the Capitol Building during a nearby BLM protest last year to the security on Jan 6, and it’s hard to believe any of these yahoos got within 50 yards of the entrance, let alone inside. We don’t know the full story yet, but frankly it doesn't look good.

On a related note, it’s pretty clear that after a couple of years of BLM protests – that featured massive police brutality and people being plucked off the streets and hustled into unmarked vans – there’s an obvious double standard in how police handle protests based on the racial makeup and political affiliation of the protesters.

4. As others have pointed out, the bigger problem is the complicity of the GOP. They played along with Trump’s “Democrats stole the election” meme despite zero evidence in the clear hope that it would work. Even after the self-coup, 146 Republicans voted to reject the electoral votes to deny Biden the White House, and most are still parroting the stolen-election meme. Meanwhile, the conservative white evangelical leadership that gives Trump much of his power is generally sticking with him. So.

I’m also not impressed with those Republicans now distancing themselves from Trump and saying the Capitol riot was awful and terrible and that’s not who we are, etc. Well, no – we’ve always known who Trump was and what he stood for, and he spent the entire 2020 campaign making it clear he would accept no result that didn’t result in re-election.

It’s also clear few of them take any responsibility for the coup, whether they're claiming it was really antifa in disguise or that Trump only did what he did because liberals bullied him for four years and it drove him mad, or that they have to overturn the election because Trump’s mob will come after them if they don’t. So pardon me if I doubt their sincerity.

5. The same goes for all of the corporations now saying they won’t support Trump businesses or Republicans who supported overturning the election. I mean, you know, great. But after every awful thing he’s done and said in the last four years, NOW you’re having an epiphany?

Point being, I think it’s worth asking if the people turning on him now would be doing so if the self-coup had actually worked. Maybe a few. But I suspect most of them would have cheerfully strapped themselves to the post-democracy Trump Train, because why wouldn't they?

6. Will there be martial law on Tuesday? No idea. I doubt it, in that Trump needs military support to pull that off, and it’s not clear he has it. I’m also not convinced the MyPillow guy will change that equation, although if he does, it won’t even be the weirdest episode in this sorry excuse for a Netflix series. I’m not saying Trump won't try it – or that his cult won’t try something on their own. I’m saying I think it will fail.

But again, that won’t mean we’ve seen the last of Trump and his MAGA cult. While it will be nice having an adult in the White House again, we’ve got a long road ahead of us, and it’s not going to be a pleasant one. These people are not going to magically go away when Biden is inaugurated. Trump may be out of power, but his legacy will remain a cancer in US politics and society for a long time.

BONUS TRACK: Here’s an interesting local angle to the Capitol mob – not unsurprisingly, HK chief Carrie Lam and Chinese state media are trying to compare the coup to that time in 2019 when HK protesters broke into the LegCo chambers and trashed the place. The objective is a half-assed attempt to call out the US govt as hypocrites: “Oh, you loved it when rioters invaded LegCo – not so much fun now that it’s happened to Congress, huh? So maybe shut up about HK violating everyone’s human rights because now you understand why we are justified in cracking down on them.”

It is, of course, a bad and inaccurate comparison. But then the wonderful thing about state propaganda is that it doesn't have to make sense.

White riot,

This is dF

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Previously on Senseless Acts of Bloggery:

As for what happens next, that’s a whole other post and it’s going to take me a little time to get that written – and it seems that particular story is fast-moving. So I’m gonna need a little time on that.

So yeah, about that:

1. We already knew what Mitch McConnell was going to say about whether the Senate should be accepting SCOTUS nominations during an election year – i.e. literally the exact opposite of what he said in 2016 when Antonin Scalia passed away and Presidente Obama nominated Merrick Garland. It was so expected you can’t call it irony, or even a plot twist.

2. We also knew that at the end of the day, the rest of the GOP Senate would back Mitch up on it. Apparently it’s worth being lambasted as shameless opportunist hypocrites if they can get a SCOTUS supermajority – not least since at least some of them have put up with Trump for the last four years for that very purpose. If they don’t push this now, they’ll have sold their soul for nothing and they may not have an opportunity like this again.

3. I don’t have much to say about Amy Coney Barrett, except to say that, considering who else was on the shortlist, it could be a lot worse. But then that’s kind of like saying it’s better for a kaiju to destroy the city than Cthulhu.

If it helps, all those memes claiming The Handmaid’s Tale is based on People of Praise are apparently incorrect. (Short version: wrong ultraconservative Catholic splinter group.)

That said, the thing about SCOTUS (and this is important to remember) is that Supremes tend not to stick strictly to party lines, depending on the case before them and the legal arguments being made. I’m not saying ideology doesn’t matter – I’m saying it doesn’t produce a predictable result every time. In other words, having a political majority on the SCOTUS bench isn’t the rubber-stamp slam dunk everyone thinks it is. In the past year, SCOTUS has made quite a few decisions in favor of the liberal side of the case in question.

Granted, this was largely because conservative lawyers presented legally weak and sloppy arguments to make their case – which in turn was mainly because conservative lawyers went in thinking they were preaching to the choir and didn’t need to work hard because hey, it’s a 5-4 majority and two are Trump appointees, how can we possibly lose?

They lost because SCOTUS generally doesn’t work like that. To be sure, a justice’s political leanings do matter – but mainly in terms of interpretation of the law. At the end of the day, the law – and its applicability to the specific case – is what matters, not the outcome a judge might personally want. Sometimes the decision is based on technicalities (the current conservative SCOTUS team saved DACA because of sloppy paperwork).

That said, a 6-3 supermajority may well change that dynamic considerably.

4. We’ve had supermajorities before, of course. However, this particular supermajority is problematic for a couple of reasons.

One: everyone’s view of the role of SCOTUS has become increasingly politicized (i.e. most people think the role of SCOTUS is not to serve as a check against unconstitutional laws, but to settle political arguments), which is not good.

Two: This conservative supermajority is arriving in the broader context of an unhinged authoritarian POTUS who has gone out of his way to undermine the election process to ensure that he wins, and that the 40% of people who support him will accept no other result as legit.

Which means if Trump loses and refuses to step down (which is a distinct possibility), the inevitable court case will go before a SCOTUS with six conservative Supremes, three of which were appointed by Trump. That might not go the way he thinks. But if it does, SCOTUS will lose whatever legitimacy it has and Trump will be an authoritarian POTUS with a federal judicial system rigged in his favor. That’s a bad combination – unless yr part of the MAGA cult, I guess, then it’s the moment you’ve been waiting for all this time.

5. Assuming Barrett is confirmed (and it’s not yet clear just how the Demos could prevent it at this stage), the question for the Demos is: what now?

There are currently three possible Demo strategies being bandied about:

(1) Pack the court

(2) Term limits for Supremes (18 years is the most common suggestion, though there are others)

(3) Both.

6. Both are old ideas, and both are legal. I confess I’m not a fan of either strategy, but I think the court-packing option is the worst of the two for the reason mentioned above – i.e. SCOTUS is supposed to be politically independent. It’s not meant to represent the will of whatever party controls the White House and/or Congress.

To me, court-packing legitimizes the idea of SCOTUS as political-ideology enforcer because the whole point is to intentionally stack the odds in your favor. Yes, this has become the objective of SCOTUS nominations under the current system, but it’s much harder to do – unless, like Trump, you get lucky. (While we’re at it, let's admit if HRC was POTUS under the same conditions, you can bet we’d be having the same argument with everyone’s roles reversed.)

But let’s be clear – the intention of court-packing is to give the political party doing the packing control over SCOTUS. I’m not cool with that, even if (as mentioned above) the SCOTUS rulings aren’t as predictable as people seem to think.

Also, on a more practical level, if the Demos can expand the SCOTUS bench to 15 justices to give liberal judges a majority, the next GOP admin could come in and add 15 more, or knock it back down to nine, or six, or whatever. Where will it end?

7. Term limits are a better option, although I disagree with the argument that it would make nomination battles less political. If anything, it will make them more political. Still, the politicization issue is a much deeper-rooted problem that no reconfiguration of SCOTUS will fix.

Meanwhile, whether term limits would result in a more balanced bench seems to depend on the outcome of each election – if (say) the GOP wins the White House four times in a row, you’re looking at an 8-1 GOP-appointed bench that would take up to nine years to reverse. (Feel free to check my math, because I didn’t.)

Still, it's not a bad idea in itself. And if the Demos do resort to court-packing, I'd rather they make term limits part of that deal.

8. The thing is, any of these options require a Biden/Harris victory AND the Demos holding the House and retaking the Senate. If Trump wins, and/or the GOP holds the Senate, that’s not going to happen.

And as mentioned above, if Trump loses and refuses to step down, we’ve got far bigger problems.

Developing …

Judge dread,

This is dF

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg is gone. I have thoughts:

1. I’ve always been amazed and impressed at how RBG became an icon for so many people in the sense that I can’t think of any other Supreme in my lifetime that had a fanbase like hers. Granted, that’s largely to do with the fact that she built up her rep as a champion of gender equality and human rights well before she made it to the SCOTUS bench. Still, it’s hard to imagine people getting this stoked over, say, Samuel Alito or Clarence Thomas.

Or even Sandra Day O’Connor, who famously was the first woman ever to make Team SCOTUS. I remember what a big deal it was when her nomination was confirmed, and there’s no doubt she paved the way for RBG, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. And if you believe her biographer, she did more to protect abortion rights than she generally gets credit for. But she doesn't get nearly the love and adoration that RBG gets.

I'm not entirely sure why this is – though I would put good money on the likelihood that social media has something to do with it. RBG was nothing if not meme-able, especially as she seemed to become increasingly indestructible in her old age. (Also, you know you've made it when you become a recurring character on SNL.)

It's also possible the growing urgency of gender issues as the Christian Right (and their mission to overturn Roe v Wade at any cost) grew more powerful also made her presence on the bench more important, especially with the left/right balance of SCOTUS shifting in favor of the right.

Whatever the case, I don’t think we’re going to see a Supreme this famous or beloved for a long time yet – certainly not if Trump gets another four years.

2. I’ve also found it amusing that her nickname is based on a gangsta rapper that (I would presume) at least some RBG fans may not be fans of, or even have heard any of his songs. I could be projecting there. But we do live in an age where people wear concert t-shirts of bands they have never seen live or even listen to, so, you know.

Anyway, great nickname.

3. As for what happens next, that’s a whole other post and it’s going to take me a little time to get that written – and it seems that particular story is fast-moving. So I’m gonna need a little time on that.

Superstar (that’s what you are),

This is dF

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Current Location: Tung Chung
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ITEM: The Great Hong Kong National Security crackdown continues, with the police arresting ten (10) people for “collusion with foreign forces”. Notably, one of them was Jimmy Lai, founder of Next Media and publisher of Apple Daily ( the last openly pro-democracy newspaper in HK), and someone who has been on the Beijing hit list for a very long time.

So here’s some bloggery about that:

1. This is essentially about petty revenge. The HK govt, Beijing and the police hate Lai, and have wanted to punish him for a very long time. Lai has always been a media rabble-rouser, both in HK and Taiwan, and the CCP has always been a favorite target of his. He’s already been arrested for unlawful assembly and related charges, but that’s not enough for BJ – they want him (and people like him) in jail for the rest of his life.

2. No one knows what “collusion with foreign forces” means in this case – and it’s not certain we’ll ever find out – but we do know that Beijing’s definition of such things tends to be very loose. For example, last month the police arrested four kids on NSL charges of secession – where in this case the act of “secession” was literally sharing a pro-independence article on Facebook.

3. With people now convinced that this spells the death of press freedom in HK, at least one Beijing official is trying to spin this by claiming Apple Daily is not a newspaper but a political organization that just happens to print newspapers. So it doesn’t count as curbing press freedom, see?

In other words, you’re a media organization until Beijing decides you’re not a media organization but a rebel political group.

4. Also, the reassurances about press freedom aren’t that convincing when remembering the police didn’t just arrest Lai – they sent a hundred cops to raid the Apple Daily office for “evidence” – and then arbitrarily banned certain media from the press briefing.

The police made an attempt to explain it the following day:

“It depends on the past performance of those media — whether they behaved in a way that the police deemed unprofessional,” the police chief said. “Criteria include whether their reporting is objective, whether they have participated in actions other than reporting, whether they would obstruct officers from performing their duty or if they would pose danger to officers.”

Which isn’t helpful, but it does illustrate a few things: (1) Police chief Chris Tang has a list of media he does not like and will not cooperate with, (2) he clearly thinks press freedom should be limited to news outlets he personally deems worthy, and (3) if the govt ever decides to implement an accreditation system for journalists (which the police have openly advocated for some time), Tang already has a wish list of who he wants rejected.

This is, after all, the same police chief who is obsessed with the idea that some reporters who show up to cover the police are not actual reporters but protesters disguised as reporters. Or something. I have no idea what he thinks these clandestine fake journalists (if they exist, and he’s never proven that they do) are up to. I suspect he doesn’t either because he’s just making it up to justify police violence against anyone wearing a press vest.

5. It’s also worth remembering the broader context in which this happened. Ever since the NSL was passed, press freedom in HK has been eroding one step at a time.

Rachel Cheung has compiled a list here. But the pattern is clear: the HK govt is working make it very difficult for foreign journalists to work here, and attempting to establish norms in which media is forced to self-censor or stick to stenography if they want to avoid an NSL rap. Loyalist papers like Ta Kung Pao will get access and exclusives because they can be counted on to toe the govt line, and even serve as cheerleader.

For everyone else, the Apple Daily raid and selective came across as theatre that was intended to send a clear message to all other media outlets: watch what you write, or you may be next.

That’s certainly how the local Foreign Correspondents Club is taking it. And, you know, they’re not wrong.

6. Still, it’s not all doom and gloom. For one thing, Apple Daily wasn’t shut down. It’s still in operation. Indeed, it went to press the very next day with a very defiant headline vowing to fight on despite govt oppression and an expanded print run of 550,000 copies (as opposed to the usual daily run of around 70,000 copies).

Result: as far as I know they sold every copy. And the company’s stock price jumped over 700% in two days.

Bet that annoyed the govt no end.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I bought two copies (see photo, above). Which technically means I could be arrested for helping to fund collusion, should the police or Beijing decide to interpret it that way. But then they’d have to arrest 550,000 people, so it’s probably not worth the effort.

Meanwhile, a restaurant owned by one of Lai’s sons – who was also arrested as part of the same sweep – did awesome business yesterday.

Because this is how we protest in HK now. We can’t march, and even holding up blank signs in a shopping mall is illegal now – but we can find other ways to make our feelings known.

How do you like them apples,

This is dF

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: Tung Chung
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Today marks the 23^rd anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong from the UK to the PRC under the One Country Two Systems arrangement.

Alternatively, it’s Year 0 of the second handover to China in which One Country Two Systems has been changed to One Country Two Nearly Identical Systems.

Which means I might go to jail for posting this. Or not. Let’s see, shall we?

1. As expected, Beijing approved and enacted its national security law (NSL) for HK yesterday. Characteristically, they released the text of the national security law last night. In the middle of the night. In Chinese only. And only after the law was already in force.

Several people have already translated it into English. You can read this explainer if you like, or this more detailed translation.

Anyway, for the most part it's as bad as we suspected. And even where it doesn't sound so bad, there are two caveats: (1) the wording is intentionally vague to allow for very loose interpretation of what counts as an offense, and (2) the law basically says that Beijing has final say on what does and doesn't count, and that the law supersedes any HK law it might come into conflict with.

So for all intents and purposes all of the human rights violations that regularly happen in mainland China in the name of national security can now happen here.

Carrie Lam, for one, seems mighty pleased.

As well she should – Beijing has fixed the protest problem she created in the first place, and now she can go around blathering about how HK is harmonious and safe now that all political opposition has been suppressed.

2. The chilling effect is real – even before the details of the law was revealed, some people were taking cover. Which evidently was the point. Anyway, two of the opposition parties founded after the 2014 umbrella occupation have disbanded, some protesters are deleting their Twitter accounts, church leaders who opposed the NSL have deleted their posts, some “yellow economy” (pro-protest) restaurants have closed, and Chickeeduck is being evicted from a mall. And all that before we even knew what was in the law.

President Xi Jinping is smiling so hard right now his face may just freeze that way.

3. The HK police are also happy because why wouldn’t they be? They’ve already been greenlighted to do anything they want to anyone they don’t like.

4. Carrie Lam’s predecessor CY Leung is so happy he’s now offering bounties of up to HK$1 million for anyone who provides clues that aid the arrest of "national security law offenders", or to those who have information on "anyone who has fled the city".

Put another way, CY sees the NSL as his ticket to get revenge on every last pro-Democracy politician and activist who gave him crap while he was CE. (Indeed, a lot of his sideline commentary in the last year has included everything from the usual foreign conspiracy theories and saying the police should use even more violence on protesters to hoping the NSL would be retroactive to the point where anyone who staged a protest during his admin would get life in prison.)

5. Since 2003, we’ve typically marked July 1 with two activities: (1) a flag-raising ceremony that no one attends unless they’re paid to be there and (2) an all-purpose protest march covering whatever grievances the people have that year.

The latter is now illegal under the NSL, although police had already banned this year’s march under the COVID-19 social distancing rules that at this point exist solely for the purpose of enabling police to ban protests. Maybe now that they don’t need that excuse, they’ll drop the rules altogether?

Activists are determined to march anyway. It would be great if 2 million people (or more) showed up, though that’s unlikely. Anyway, the police have already prepared brand new warning flags for them.

[The running gag on Twitter is that protesters will be teargassed, beaten and arrested before they can finish reading the warning. Ha ha.]

6. As for what this all means for the protest movement, I suppose that depends on what happens next. There’s been a lot of chatter about how the protesters went too far and ended up accelerating the arrival of 2047 (the year our SAR status was to expire) and gained nothing. Others say the protests have worked in a broader sense because it not only exposed the corrupt violence inherent in the system and proved that the HK govt was always a Beijing puppet, but also forced the sort of crackdown needed to rally international pressure on Beijing, who frankly has been throwing its weight around a lot in recent years since Xi became President.

While we’re waiting for that to happen, I like to think that resistance in HK will take smaller, subtler forms – mini flash mob performances of the alt-national anthem, midnight graffiti, tiny acts of defiance to keep hope alive. But for now I think a lot of people will go silent, if only to regroup and figure out what to do next.

7. Since people have asked:

We are fine, and I don’t expect the current situation to impact us personally for the time being. The general wisdom (such as it is) is that the HK govt/Beijing will slap NSL vengeance on prominent opposition figures first – likely the ones who have already been arrested during the course of the protests. They’re the ones who will be prosecuted and jailed first to serve as examples to the rest of us. The objective is rule of fear, and the authorities will be just as happy if the average malcontents and dissenters either shut up or leave HK altogether – if only because jailing over 2 million people is time consuming, expensive and not the kind of thing you want to be doing when HK’s unemployment rate is as high as it is.

So for the near future, at least, I don’t think I have anything to worry about beyond having the occasional post deleted or flagged. Beyond that, who knows?

Developing (obviously) ….

Under the gun,

This is dF

EDITED TO ADD [3:30pm]: Well that didn't take long. The police have made their first arrest under the NSL. The offense: allegedly carrying a flag saying "Hong Kong Independence".

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What a year it’s been.

Not 2020 (although yes, that too) – I mean the last 12 months here in Hong Kong.

One year ago today, over 1 million people marched on the streets demanding the withdrawal of a proposed Extradition Law Amendment Bill (ELAB) that would allow Hong Kong citizens to be extradited to mainland China. Despite the fact that it was the largest turnout for a protest of any kind since 1989, the govt said no. And so the anti-ELAB movement began – and of course blossomed into something much, much bigger.

And one year later, where are we now?

Technically, the protests themselves tapered off after December 2019 for a number of reasons – COVID-19, of course, but I think it was also due to two key events: (1) the District Council elections, in which pro-democracy candidates took every district except one, and (2) the Battle of PolyU, which was so intense (and traumatic for most of the protesters there) that relatively few people fancy the prospect of a rematch.

Also, the police have taken advantage of the lull to formulate a more proactive strategy of ruthlessly shutting down protests before they can rev up into something bigger. All anti-govt protests are essentially considered illegal now, and disproportionate violence, mass arrests of innocent people and attacks on journalists are justified by the police force’s massive propaganda campaign portraying the protest movement in general as a foreign-funded terrorist campaign.

Which in itself is the justification Beijing is now using to impose a national security law on HK for the explicit purpose of enabling HK and Beijing to deal with protesters the same way Beijing deals with dissent of any kind – secret trials, forced confessions, re-education camps, basically everything China already does to Uighurs in Xinjiang. The NSL not only effectively kills off One Country Two Systems as a human-rights/democracy preservation mechanism (which was generally the point of it), it also changes the game in terms of the protests. It’s one thing to put pressure on the HK govt, which at least has a modicum of democracy and free speech. It’s quite another to do the same to a viciously totalitarian dictatorship that’s out to make a very clear point: we run this dump, we will always have the last word, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.

Sure, this was probably always true in the long term. But we thought we had more time before Beijing went for the nuclear option. Turns out not.

So the two big questions before us are:

1. What now?

That depends who you ask. This piece in SCMP – in which Jeffie Lam interviewed protesters about their next move – is somewhat gloomy. This piece from The Guardian reflects a more defiant tone.

But the general gist is this: overall the protest movement isn’t ready to give up yet – we’ve come too far and too much is at stake. Also, Beijing’s aggressiveness essentially proves the protesters were right all along about its true intentions and the HK govt’s complicity. But no one’s really sure what the next move should be.

One ray of hope is the upcoming LegCo elections in September, which could go the way of the District Council elections. Meanwhile, many business sectors have been setting up unions for the express purpose of organizing strikes to pressure the govt.

Still, Beijing and the HK govt undoubtedly have plans for this too. We can safely assume the HK govt will do what it can to rig the LegCo elections in its favour by disqualifying as many pro-democracy candidates as possible (and indeed, it may be no coincidence that the NSL is expected to be in force just before the election). As for the strikes, the NSL will probably be used to deal with those – Carrie Lam is certainly displeased with the idea.

As for the street protests, those will probably continue – indeed, there was one this evening in Central to mark the anniversary, which of course the police shut down quickly – but they’re not likely to happen at the frequency or scale of 2019. Hong Kong Civil Right Front is planning a major march on July 1 (a.k.a. Handover Day), and the massive defiance of a ban on the Tiananmen Square candlelight vigil was an encouraging sign. But for the most part, I think street protests will be relatively limited.

Still, there are other ways to resist besides massive street marches. We’ve also seen the return of “sing with you” flash-mob protests in malls where students show up to sing the alternate national anthem, which also tend to get shut down swiftly. But every little bit helps.

Stephen Vines points out here that the one thing we have going for us is that history is not on the side of autocracies. Sooner or later, they go too far once they believe in their own infallibility:

… all autocracies, especially those in the modern age, have feet of clay. Their reliance on oppression to retain their position is inflexible and belies the weakness inherent in a system that only has one way of clinging to power.

Put simply, autocracies generally don’t last. It may take decades, but inevitably that weakness can be exploited if you poke at it long enough. You just gotta keep poking.

So whatever form resistance takes, the important thing is to keep resisting. Size and scale don’t matter – what matters is to undermine their authority any way you can (peacefully, when possible).

Sing songs in malls; stage work strikes when you can; support businesses who support the cause; wear black t-shirts; document brutality and injustice where you see it; make art; be creative. Go underground if you have to, but don’t stop. The one thing Beijing and Carrie Lam want more than anything in this world is for us to sit down, shut up and obey. Do none of these things.

Resist,

This is dF

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I’m late with this, I know. But in case you hadn't heard, the Hong Kong police banned this year’s candlelight vigil to observe the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

We held one anyway.

BACKSTORY: Hong Kong has held a rally every June 4 since 1990 to remember the massacre and demand the Chinese govt admit the truth of what happened. This year was the first year the police denied permission to hold it – ostensibly because of COVID-19 social distancing restrictions, but anyone with any sense knows that’s not the only reason. We know that the restrictions have been used specifically to target any anti-govt protest gathering, even ones that don’t require police permission and do comply with social distancing rules.

And of course, with the national security law scheduled to be shoved down our throats by Beijing sometime soon, we know full well that the vigil will be banned anyway, so there’s no reason to assume this year’s ban just happened to coincide with the COVID restrictions.

As it happens, the vigil organizers expected this, and came up with a back-up plan – the core group would go to Victoria Park (the usual location for the vigil), have a small scaled down ceremony, and broadcast it live on YouTube. Meanwhile, different districts could hold their own small observances – otherwise everyone who wanted to participate could light candles wherever they were at 8pm and watch the broadcast.

Which is what the bride and I eventually did.

Anyway, the police did what we expected them to do – set up metal barriers all around Victoria Park first thing in the morning to close it off to the public. Around 7pm, the organizers showed up, pulled down the barriers and proceeded as scheduled.

Thousands showed up to join them.

Notice the social distancing.

Interestingly, the police – for once – didn't intervene. There was a pointless skirmish in Mong Kok afterwards, but a relatively minor by HKPF standards, especially considering the protesters essentially outright defied their ban.

Mind you, I'm not giving the police credit for restraint. My hypothesis is that they only held back because (1) the whole world was watching, and (2) Beijing and the HK govt are in the middle of a global propaganda campaign trying to convince the world that the upcoming NSL is nothing to be afraid of and HK will still be all about freedoms and the NSL. Cracking down on a vigil remembering another crackdown on freedom is the last thing they need right now – optics-wise, anyway.

That said, I expect the other shoe to drop eventually. At the very least I think they'll arrest the HK Alliance organizers for illegal assembly etc. Not right away, of course – remember that those 15 activists were arrested for protests that happened months ago. They may wait until after the NSL is passed to inflict maximum damage (pro-Beijing figures have suggested the NSL will be grandfathered to apply it to past activities before the law is enacted – I would be surprised if it isn’t, and we know exactly who the first targets are going to be in that scenario).

Either way, the police are going to make sure the organizers pay for this dearly. And anyone else they decide to punish for showing up.

Anyway, if this has to be the last Tiananmen Square vigil in HK, it was a great way to go out as a massive show of resistance to the coming crackdown.

BONUS TRACK: Oh by the way, the HK govt celebrated June 4 by passing a law that makes mocking, booing or otherwise disrespecting China’s national anthem a crime. Really. The punishment is up to three years in jail.

The govt says it doesn’t impinge on anyone’s freedom of expression because it’s still legal to do it in your own head – just not out loud.

Light a fire,

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ITEM: Wesley Lowery of 60 Minutes posted a Twitter thread in which he notes that the “police targeting journalists” narrative in the media is problematic in that it infers that the press has (or should have) more First Amendment protection than the protesters who are also being targeted.

The basic thrust is that both the press and protests have explicit freedom guarantees in the 1A, so when both groups’ rights are being violated, why be more outraged over one than the other?

It’s an interesting point – and clearly a good one, because it took me awhile to ponder this before coming up with a sensible reply.

1. First of all, I think it’s entirely possible to be outraged by both, and my impression is that most of the people who support the protests are.

2. That said, I do get Lowery’s point – there is this assumption that journalists should be off-limits in ways that protesters aren’t, and that doesn't seem fair. However, I don’t think it’s an apples-for-apples comparison, because journalists tend to be conferred special status for a couple of key reasons.

3. For a start, there’s the traditionally sanctified role of the press as the “Fourth Estate” in the checks-and-balances structure of the US govt. The watchdog role of media only works if they have the freedom to report without govt recrimination. Indeed, that’s the entire point of having a free press in the first place.

4. The other aspect – and perhaps more relevant to protest coverage – is the age-old notion that in any conflict situation, journalists are ostensibly objective non-combatants on the sidelines tasked with telling people what is happening and why. Yes, the reality is messy and complicated, and some will say there are no true non-combatants in a war zone, but we generally accept the idea that in conflict scenarios, you don’t target people who are not involved in your fight. And journalists are especially off-limits because of Point 3 above.

5. Even more directly related to the protests, journalists are there to not only report that a protest is happening, but also report whatever injustices or abuses of power may occur. And in the broader context of the POTUS himself declaring that any media outlet that is not praising his glory 24/7 is “the enemy of the people” spouting fake news for the purposes of overthrowing him, police brutality against journalists is especially egregious because it amounts to state power wielded by thugs to intimidate and/or punish the "enemy".

6. By contrast, protesters have specific 1A rights like the press do, but the role and relationship is different. Protests are a mechanism to air grievances en masse to get the government’s attention that enough people are upset about a particular issue that it needs to be addressed ASAP. The objective is also to get the attention of the press, who need the freedom to report unobstructed for the reasons mentioned above.

7. Where it gets interesting, however, is that 'citizen journalism' is very much a thing in this age of social media and ubiquitous smartphones that are essentially pocket-sized media production studios. So in a practical sense, we are all watchdogs. We are all journalists. So the roles specified in the 1A become blurred at least at street level, if not in a legal sense. We can get into a whole debate about pro journalism vs citizen journalism, and which one is more credible or reliable, etc. But it’s interesting that in the specific example of protests, the distinction between the 1A right to assemble and the 1A right of press freedom isn’t as clear as it used to be.

8. I’m not sure if this is what Lowery had in mind when he wrote that tweet – and it seems like he’s critical of journalists getting (or demanding) special treatment over protesters. I’m not so sure that journalists demand it, but if they do, I suspect it’s for the above reasons rather than any sense of entitlement (though I’m sure there are exceptions).

To be clear, though, Lowery isn’t saying journalists should have less 1A-based immunity from police violence – he’s saying protesters should have as much immunity from police brutality as the press do.

Dude’s got a point.

The weird turn pro,

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It seems like we’ve crossed some sort of event horizon or cultural Rubicon when I scroll past protest photos and videos on Twitter and I have to look closely to see if they’re from Hong Kong or Minneapolis.

The parallels are striking, from the excessive and indiscriminate use of tear gas and gratuitously pepper-spraying and arresting reporters to pundits and leaders calling protesters thugs who should be shot and blaming teachers and church leaders for encouraging them.

And not just in Minneapolis, of course. Protests are popping up in other major cities. Even the White House was in lockdown temporarily.

And, you know:

1. To get the obvious out of the way, yes, all four officers should be arrested (Derek Chauvin has finally been charged with murder – the others should at least be charged with accessory), though it seems the police seem to be going with the defense that George Floyd would still be alive if he’d lived a healthier lifestyle, and I don’t see that helping to ease tensions.

2. And yes, institutional racism in America is most definitely a thing, and has been since we were still colonies of the Crown. Trump’s so-called presidency has made things worse, but the problem existed long before he invented Birtherism.

Indeed, the protests are not just about George Floyd. They’re about Kenneth Walker, Breona Taylor, Sean Reed, Ahmaud Arbery, Steve Taylor (and that’s just in the last month) and so on and etc all the way back to Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown and the thousands upon thousands before them – to say nothing of the whole stupid Amy Cooper saga.

3. So IMO the anger and fury of protesters is 100% justified. The violence, not so much, but it’s understandable. MLK Jr told us this way back in the 60s: riots are the language of the unheard, and the inevitable result of systemic injustice – they don’t just magically pop up out of nowhere.

That said, it’s worth adding that protest violence is often the result of police handling the protests badly by escalating tensions rather than defusing them, whether intentionally or by accident. In cases where the police themselves are the object of protest anger, simply showing up in riot gear is almost guaranteed to make a bad situation worse. I’ve seen anecdotal accounts that this is the case in Minneapolis. It’s certainly the case in Hong Kong. Like the saying goes, when you send in riot police, you get a riot.

4. Like in HK, the law-and-order response from Trump and those who worship him has been predictably awful and likely to get people killed. One thing going for the US is that the police is not just one force that takes orders from the White House – it’s a diverse array of local and state forces, and at least some of them are trying to defuse tensions rather than escalate them.

5. It’s hard to know how bad this is going to get. Past history isn't much help – usually, things die down after a few days and we spend the aftermath discussing the problem and generally doing little to address it. Here in 2020, we have a white supremacist in the White House with a cult army of supporters fuelled by paranoid conspiracy theories that liberals, the media and PoC are all out to get them.

I guess we’re lucky the Open Carry buffoons who stormed capital buildings because they couldn't get haircuts on demand haven't shown up at these protests to “help” – not yet, anyway. That could change.

And I don’t even want to think about what all this could mean for the 2020 election.

6. Anyway, as I said, we’ve been living our own version of this in HK for some time now in terms of protests and police brutality. And it's almost like we’ve become a template for Minneapolis – not just the police going crazy with tear gas and targeting reporters (at least the non-white ones), but protesters reportedly throwing tear gas canisters back at police.

So there’s a certain hypocritical irony that Trump advocates shooting black protesters for rioting while he simultaneously takes steps to punish Beijing and the HK govt for oppressing protests here.

That said, I’m not sure he even knows what’s going on here. His statement on HK doesn’t say a word about police brutality or human rights. He’s concerned mainly with HK’s loss of autonomy under 1C2S, and I think he only cares inasmuch as it’s something else he can add to his anti-China rhetoric, which he deploys mostly to entertain his cult and push the nonsense narrative that China – not Trump – is to blame for COVID-19 killing over 100,000 Americans.

Which I only mention because a number of HK people seem to think Trump can somehow save us if he takes action. Thing is, Trump doesn’t care about us, or about human rights in general. He pals around with oppressive authoritarians and ruthless dictators, and even talks about Xi Jinping as a good friend. Sure, it's all in his head. The point is that if his actions do us any good whatsoever, it will be by sheer dumb luck.

And okay, when things look increasingly hopeless as they do here, you can't afford to be picky. If Kim Jong-un or Rodrigo Duterte intervened to save us, we’d probably take it.

Still, the thing about Trump is that his whims turn on a dime, and he regularly undermines his own policies on Twitter. Also, his “plan” is pretty vague and hasn’t actually been enacted yet. Everything depends on details and execution, and it’s always possible that his “solution” to HK will be worse than the problem.

7. Oh, BTW, shoutout to Laura Ingraham for coming up with the worst attempt so far to convince black people that Trump totally understands what they're going through.

Developing …

Revolution earth,

This is dF

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The reception to Beijing’s plan to slap a National Security Law (NSL) on Hong Kong in the name of “urgency” – and the HK police’s reaction to that reception – has been about what you’d expect.

Of course, not everyone is freaking out about the NSL. Quite a lot of people welcome it, and have been going around making very conspicuously public statements saying so. Every govt department head has been releasing statements supporting the law – each and every one of them verbatim copies of each other apart from the dept name and corresponding serial number. So you know they’re sincere.

Meanwhile, Beijing officials, HK govt officials and pro-Beijing editors and pundits have spent the last few days making public statements or publishing op-eds assuring everyone (especially the international community) that their fears are unfounded. There is nothing to worry about. All is well.

And so on.

Pretty much all of them boil down to the same basic points:

1. Everyone has national security laws, why can’t we?

2. The NSL will only apply to a tiny, miniscule minority of people. If you are not one of them, you have nothing to fear.

3. The NSL will bring peace and harmony to HK, and all this political turmoil will be a thing of the past, and we can get on with our lives and the economy can recover and everything will be awesome.

I’m not kidding about the last one. Here’s our first CE Tung Chee-hwa saying it. And here’s SCMP columnist Alex Lo calling the NSL a “masterstroke” that means “Hong Kong can now be depoliticised and get back to reviving its economy and improving people’s lives”.

Zounds! Imagine that. Years of polarized politics, frustration at the broken promises of universal suffrage, mistrust of the police, and fears of being “disappeared”, magically wiped away just like that by this one law.

“Well, why didn’t they say so earlier?” etc.

As you might imagine, I find their reassurances rather unreassuring. And one reason (of many) is that not a single one of these people has said exactly HOW the NSL will bring peace and harmony.

Seriously: how? I want one of these people to please spell out for me in detail how NSL will accomplish this in a way that isn't scary or alarming.

None have. I think I can guess why.

I’ve noticed that statements and op-eds opposing the NSL have gone into great detail as to why it’s a bad idea and means the end of One Country Two Systems, giving historical and contemporary context, with numerous examples of how “national security” could be (and already has been) abused in China and elsewhere to stifle and punish opposition.

See for example this column from Cliff Buddle, which ran in SCMP the same day Alex Lo’s column did. He makes a detailed and thoughtful analysis (that saves me a great deal of typing) explaining why there’s good reason to worry about the NSL, and to doubt Beijing’s claims that it will be very narrowly applied.

By contrast, Alex Lo’s column doesn’t back up his assertion at all. He doesn’t explain how the NSL will depoliticize HK, end the protest violence and go back to normal. It simply will. As if the entire problem all along was that we didn't have Draconian enough laws to deal with these punks throwing petrol bombs in the streets. Now that we’re going to have one, problem solved and we can all get along.

There are various reasons for the gaping plot hole in such declarations. For one thing, the people making them are under no obligation to defend their conclusions. It’s not like the law won’t passed if not enough people are convinced that it’s necessary, so why make an effort to back your argument?

For another, the point of these statements is really to be seen publicly declaring sworn loyalty to the new regime. These people know where the power lies, and like good Quislings they’re making sure the Powers That Be point the NSL crosshairs at someone else.

Also, at least for now, no one wants to say the quiet part out loud – the NSL will bring about peace and harmony by using the strong arm of radical law enforcement to terrify the opposition into silence and make examples of anyone who resists.

Voilà: peace and harmony.

This is what China does with its malcontents – this is what the HK govt and its supporters want for HK.

They'll say they don't, of course. And you know, I’m sure many of them imagine in their heads that we’ll still have the same freedoms (or at least they will, because they don't harbour verboten political beliefs, so same thing, really). And maybe some of them actually believe the NSL will be only used against the most violent radicals, and that once those people are dealt with, everyone will be right as rain.

In reality, it's a classic case of trading liberty for security without the slightest understanding just what the price of that security will be. Or maybe they do – and they’re okay with that as long as it’s someone else paying that price.

I wonder how they’ll feel if the price becomes higher than they expected, and where they might draw the line – midnight house raids? Disappearing journalists? Xinjiang-style re-education camps? Tiananmen 2.0?

Welp. We’ll find out.

The price of everything and the value of nothing,

This is dF

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Thursday night, Beijing’s National People's Congress Standing Committee announced it will put forward proposals to enact national security legislation in Hong Kong that will officially make sedition, treason, foreign interference and terrorism crimes in the SAR – bypassing the HK government’s Legislative Council in the process.

By no coincidence, this comes after the HK govt, the HK police, pro-government politicians and Beijing liaison officials police have spent past few months consistently building up the narrative that the protest movement as secessionists and terrorists backed by foreign interference – which just happen to be the exact specific things this bill is targeting.

You see where this is going, yes?

Backgrounder: Under the Basic Law (the mini-constitution that governs Hong Kong under the One Country Two Systems arrangement that allows HK to operate separately from China for 50 years), Article 23 requires the HK govt to enact legislation covering “national security” issues such as sedition, treason and terrorism before its SAR status expires in 2047. This is, to say the least, thorny, because at the time the Basic Law was drafted, everyone knew what the Chinese govt counts as sedition and treason (i.e. simply saying something critical of the govt was equivalent to actively attempting to overthrow it), and that Beijing would naturally expect HK’s law to have similar criteria.

The HK govt first introduced an Article 23 bill in 2003. The response from the HK public was 500,000 people marching on the street to oppose it. The HK govt backed off and didn't bring the matter up again.

Now, in 2020, national security legislation is back, mainly because Beijing (and Carrie Lam, and her crew) have said that it’s the only way to put an end to the protests.

That’s not even remotely true, but it’s the only solution Beijing is interested in because that’s how they handle it on the mainland, and frankly they’re sick of our crap and want to out the fear of God into us. And with HK’s pro-Beijing majority in the Legislative Council not having a big enough majority to railroad legislation through locally, Beijing has evidently decided to bypass LegCo and enact national-security laws here by adding them to Annex III of the Basic Law. HK still has to pass its own national security law under Article 23, but in the meantime, the laws under Annex III will do nicely.

The vote is expected next week.

And so, what then?

I don't know. A lot depends on the details, but there’s no real reason to be optimistic when you loOk at the broader context in which all this is happening. Carrie Lam and her henchmen were just on TV telling us (and the world) that there’s nothing to worry about: we’re still a totally free and open society, and One Country Two Systems will remain completely intact after this bill is passed.

She said that about the extradition bill too.

I mean, these are the same people who just managed to get a long-running political satire program on RTHK taken off the air for the terrible crime of making fun of the police (by a comedian who used to be a police officer!), which to them is no different from actively encouraging people to hate the police. So no, I don't trust them to wield this new power responsibly or fairly.

Is it truly the end of One Country Two Systems?

It’s too soon to say definitively – I think it will continue to exist in the technical sense that HK will still be considered a semi-autonomous region that gets to plan its own economy and have its own version of democracy, etc. But it will be run the way Beijing tells them to run it – and Beijing will be a lot more proactive in doing just that. In terms of free speech, human rights and civil liberties, the HK system may be a separate system, but it will be a system nearly identical to the mainland system, rendering the term another meaningless catch-phrase for Beijing’s foreign ministry spokespeople and the CE to throw around when they respond to international criticism, like “hegemony” and “rule of law”.

How will protesters react?

There’s a march planned for Sunday that the police will almost certainly ban, and will beat up and arrest anyone who tries (as well as anyone who happens to be near anyone who tries, the media and innocent bystanders included). Beyond that, I don’t know. My sense is that the protest movement overall won’t give up – the fact that Beijing is resorting to this shows that the protests has truly rattled the CCP. So stopping now would be a waste of all the effort put in so far.

But they aren’t crazy about another year of sucking tear gas in nightly street fights with riot police either, not least because they know it’s a futile gesture anyway. I’ve heard they’re looking for alternative resistance action plans.

On the other hand, if they feel they truly have nothing to lose, maybe they’ll go out swinging. In which the police would be delighted to accommodate them.

Either way, it seems 2047 has indeed come early.

For more information:

Read this Vox explainer.

Read also this mildly hopeful commentary from Stephen Vines.

The other shoe,

This is dF

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A clarification on my previous post regarding COVID-19 in HK, the difficulties of maintaining social distancing for long periods of time, and the role of govts in sustained social distancing:

In HK, we mitigate that with masks and hand sanitizer, etc. But it only goes so far. You need solid and consistent govt leadership setting the example and imposing limitations.

I should have added:

Not that we have that in Hong Kong.

The new social distancing regs that kicked in today are good in theory (if somewhat flawed). But a potentially bigger problem is enforcement – partly because the details are difficult to enforce consistently and fairly, and partly because consistent and fair enforcement is the responsibility of the HK police force, which is not especially renowned for being consistent or fair.

In fact, the HK police is probably the most hated organization in Hong Kong right now, and most if not all police officers hate us back. That’s not a good mix when a squad of cops walk into a restaurant and start measuring how far apart diners are and making them move if they’re less than six feet apart.

It also doesn't help that the HK police are currently obsessed with the fact that protests still happen in HK (and still receive a lot of public support), which means not every protester is in jail, and they remain convinced the way to fix this is to continue to arrest, jail, beat, pepper spray, tear gas and harass as many protesters as it takes until the protests stop.

<tangent>

They’ve also been going out of their way in recent months to establish a clear narrative that the protest movement is in reality a terrorist movement. Stephen Vines has a concise write-up on this, but essentially police have uncovered several stashes of bombs, weapons and ammo that they say is intended to wage a campaign of bombing and cop-killing across HK. They frequently describe this as if the campaign is already happening, even though the handful of incidents they can actually point to – though certainly illegal – have caused minor damage and injured no one.

The police have, of course, produced no evidence whatsoever that these stashes have anything to do with the protest movement or that the people arrested intended to use them to target the police. But apparently, according to Vines, that hasn't stopped Carrie Lam and other govt officials from reportedly telling foreign diplomats in HK that the protest movement is either a terrorist threat in itself or providing cover for a fringe terrorist group (funded by foreign elements! Probably!).

One aspect the Vines column doesn’t touch upon is the fact that this is happening while a number of adamantly pro-govt/pro-police legislators are calling for Article 23 legislation.

Quick history lesson: Article 23 of the Basic Law – our mini-constitution established with the 1997 handover from the UK to China – says HK must establish a ‘national security’ law by 2047 that specifically covers terrorism, sedition and treason. The HK govt tried this in 2003 and was countered with what at the time one of the biggest street protests in HK’s history, for the simple reason that we knew perfectly well that the ultimate purpose of the law sooner or later was to allow the HK govt to define terrorism, sedition and treason the same way China does: literally anything that criticizes or challenges any govt action, policy or official in any way. Simply disagreeing with the CCP could bring you up on charges of attempting to overthrow the govt.

Imagine what the HK govt would do with such a law right now.

The pro-govt people are practically drooling at the prospect. So are the police. Luckily, we’re in no immediate danger just yet – the whole protest movement started with an extradition bill that would have enabled HK anti-govt activists to be extradited to China for whatever China felt like charging them with (“soliciting prostitutes” is a classic go-to charge). It would be beyond stupid even by Carrie Lam standards to pursue an Article 23 bill now.

On the other hand, the police have just arrested a pro-Democracy district councillor for sedition using an old Colonial law that hasn’t been used for decades. The “sedition” was allegedly forwarding a Facebook post that allegedly gave details of a police officer who some people think was responsible for half-blinding Indonesian journalist Veby Indah covering the protests last September.

A doxxing charge would be understandable (flimsy and arbitrary, but understandable). Sedition? Come on.

The arrest itself is fairly obviously petty revenge by the police (who decided to arrest her at her home at 1:45am). It’s also widely believed to be a test to see if they can actually make a sedition charge stick, and if the public will go along with it, which would pave the way for more sedition arrests and maybe bolster support for Article 23. The police narrative about protesters = terrorists might also possibly being crafted for that purpose.

</tangent>

So anyway, THIS is the police force that will be tasked with enforcing the new social distancing rules – and arresting anyone found violating them.

To be clear, I don’t think they’re going to equate sitting five people at a restaurant table with sedition. But there’s a running bet on Twitter that the police will use the social distancing law as another thing they can arrest protesters for (wearing a surgical mask is technically still illegal, although right now enforcement is, to say the least, impractical). Or – absent any actual protests – they’ll use it as a pretense to shake down and arrest anyone they think might be connected with the protests – especially in restaurants and other businesses that have been openly supportive of the protests. And the police are widely expected to handle those situations the same way they handle anything protest-related – with lots of tear gas, pepper spray and gratuitous violence.

Or maybe they'll use common sense for once and realize that we're all in this together and if there's one thing we should be unifying over, it's this.

Ha ha. No.

So, yeah, the social distancing law might have been necessary, but enforcement is likely to be messy in more ways than one.

All this because some people decided going to LKF to drink a lot of overpriced beer was more important than flattening the curve.

Hope it was worth it.

Don’t go out there,

This is dF

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Crossposts: https://def-fr0g-42.livejournal.com/1609221.html

And so Trump has been acquitted by the Senate – inasmuch as anyone can be “acquitted” in a rigged trial in which everyone knows you’re guilty but the majority of the jury doesn’t care because you're their golden boy.

I have thoughts:

1. It’s hard to be disappointed in a result that we all saw coming all the way down 5^th Avenue. Mitch McConnell told you in advance how this was going to go. And while some liberals have complained about the Democrats’ overall impeachment strategy, the truth is it didn’t matter what their strategy was – the fix was in even before Mueller time.

2. It’s worth keeping a historical perspective – the outcome was ostensibly no different than any other impeachment trial. No POTUS has ever been removed from office via impeachment precisely because the trial vote inevitably splits along party lines without a two-thirds majority. (Okay, Mitt Romney is the sole exception, for all the good it did. And, you know, good for him.)

3. The other predictable outcome is Trump’s babbling, unhinged, free-verse “TOTAL EXONERATION” victory dance, which he will be performing every chance he gets from now until Doomsday. And of course, he will continue to do exactly what he’s been doing, only with the assurance that the GOP will cover for him and absolutely no one will be able to stop him. Characters like Lamar Alexander and Susan Collins who are going around saying “I think Trump has learned not to do it again” are either delusional or just trolling the libs.

You can also expect him to exact revenge on witnesses, Romney, Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, James Comey, John Bolton, CNN and everyone else he hates for disloyalty. (Note: by “revenge” I’m mainly thinking of rage tweets, empty threats and firing anyone he can have fired, not arrests and assassinations, but on the other hand, who really knows at this stage?)

4. In a way it’s just as well when you think about the outcome of a conviction result – namely, President Pence, who would inherit Trump’s cult, who in turn would be so apoplectically outraged as to make the Evil Godless Crooked Demos pay by doing God knows what. And you can pretty much bet Trump himself would pour as much gasoline on that particular garbage fire as possible.

5. Which is why I stand by my current prediction that Trump is very likely going to be re-elected. After everything he’s gotten away with, there’s no reason to assume his base will abandon him now. Also, the economy’s technically great, which generally helps incumbents (even whacky ones).

6. I’ve posted about this before, but all of this raises the valid question of the utter uselessness of impeachment as a control against corruption, and if we should resign ourselves to the notion that the President will always be above the law and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. If that’s not the country we want, we should probably give this some serious thought while there’s still a chance to do something about it.

Meanwhile, I'm just going to leave this Bloom County comic from 1981 here. Because Berke Breathed knows what time it is.

Scott free,

This is dF

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Meanwhile, apart from the District Council election, the other wild-card development in the HK protest saga is Trump signing the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act (HKHRDA), which means HK could lose its special trading status with the US if Congress decides HK and/or China is coming down too hard on protesters, free speech and liberty in general.

Protesters are thrilled. Beijing is the opposite of that.

Is it a game changer? I’m skeptical. Here’s why:

1. For a start, it’s technically redundant. As this lengthy but worthwhile post from Julian Ku at Lawfare explains, most of the provisions in the HKHRDA already exist in some form or other, such as visa protections for Hong Kong residents, targeted sanctions and the ability of Congress to revoke HK’s “special status” in terms of trade and investment.

The key difference is that the HKHRDA expands the criteria for “special status” re-evaluation and requires Congress to review it once a year. According to Ku, it’s worthwhile for that and the symbolism inherent in telling China that while Congress rarely agrees on anything, it’s so united on this issue that even Trump couldn’t afford to blow it off. Which brings us to:

2. To be honest, I’m surprised Trump signed it, because he clearly didn't want to. I’m pretty sure he would have preferred to use the threat of signing it as a negotiating tool in his trade war with China. I suspect the only reason he did sign is because Congress has the votes to override a veto and Trump didn’t want to give Nervous Nancy, Little Marco and Lyin’ Ted the satisfaction of beating him at something.

I’m 100% positive he didn’t do it because he cares about the people of HK. The clue is in his signing statement – notice who he mentions first, and “out of respect”. That should give you an idea of where his priorities lie.

3. The same goes for the GOP Congresspeople who were fronting the bill – especially McConnell, Rubio, Cruz et al. They’re mainly in it for the anti-China grandstanding. China has been and remains a favorite and easy target for Republicans who still fancy themselves as anti-Commie heroes and like to be seen bashing totalitarian dictatorships. (See also: the GOP’s war on Huawei.)

4. Consequently, any subsequent enforcement of the bill is inherently going to be a political decision.

This matters because Hongkongers see the bill first and foremost as an issue of justice and human rights specific to HK’s situation. For Congress (and again, for Republicans especially), it’s partly that, but it’s mainly a tool for achieving American foreign policy objectives regarding China and elsewhere.

Put simply, as this analysis from Lausan Collective argues, the law exists mainly to further America’s economic and geopolitical interests, which historically have typically been prioritized above human rights. That means enforcement is likely to be selective, circumstantial and ultimately self-serving. The HKHRDA might be good for HK at face value – but it comes at a cost that, on a macro level, could make things worse.

5. Which is why I cringe when local people declare Trump, Rubio, Cruz and McConnell heroes and saviors for standing with HK People™.

Granted, this is because I happen to believe Trump is a racist, sexist, corrupt, mentally unhinged dictator-wannabe, and the GOP is a mass of spineless sycophants enabling and encouraging him.

All that aside, I don’t believe Rubio, Cruz and McConnell really care about HK people except as some abstract representation of the general fight for freedom from Beijing oppression that they can use in a speech. Trump cares more about winning his trade war with China, and generally sees HK as an inconvenient but possibly useful negotiating tool.

In fact, I’m not convinced he even understands what’s going on in HK. This is after all the same guy who reckoned Xi could sort the whole thing out in one “personal meeting” with the protesters (who infamously have no leaders to speak of), and also recently said the only reason Xi hasn’t sent in the tanks yet is because he, Donald J Trump, personally told him not to, yr welcome.

6. So all up, I think the protesters celebrating the HKHRDA should be prepared for disappointment – at least if they’re depending solely on the US to be their champion to the point of producing results.

7. That said, some HK protest groups seem to understand this – which is why they’re now hoping to get other countries like Canada, Germany, Australia and the UK to pass similar measures on the reasonable grounds that neither Carrie Lam nor Beijing is likely to give in to pressure from the US alone, but if enough countries join in, they will be forced to rethink their approach.

(If nothing else, getting the UK to pass its own HKHRDA will put pressure on Lam and other govt leaders who have British passports that they might be banking on as escape hatches in case China finally brings the hammer down on HK.)

This makes sense as far as it goes, because I really don’t believe the HKHRDA on its own will move the needle much in terms of how Lam handles the protests from this point on. Piling on the pressure from other countries might – and if nothing else, other such laws might actually have some teeth to them.

In any case, it’s going to take time for Lam and/or Beijing to feel the heat. Until then, the beatings will continue until morale improves.

Just another bill,

This is dF

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So now the Mueller report is publicly available (redacted, of course) and the hot take now is:

Mueller was indeed looking very narrowly at the Russian conspiracy part, but leaves no doubt that Russians were meddling in the election to help Trump, and Trump campaign officials were keen to get some help from them.
The reasons Mueller punted on obstruction were (1) he was working under the legal notion that a sitting president can’t be indicted, and he didn’t want to put that to the test, and (2) most of Trump’s attempts at obstruction were thwarted by his own people.
While Mueller didn’t think criminal indictments were feasible, he definitely hinted that impeachment was an option based on his findings.
The media, for the most part, got the story more or less right in terms of what happened.
William Barr's 4-page summary and pre-release press conference is so at odds with the content of the report that it's difficult not to conclude he was hoping to spin perception of the report in favor of Trump.
The report is a damning indictment of Barack Obama because he knew the Russians were interfering in the election and didn’t lift a finger to stop them. (Okay, the Mueller doesn’t say anything remotely close to that – that’s coming exclusively from conservative pundits because well OBVIOUSLY.)

Anyway, there’s a lot to unpack (this Lawfare blog post is very long but worth reading for a good initial analysis), but the report’s public release brings us to the next question: do Demos impeach him or not?

The current debate (such as it is) goes something like this:

FUCK YES
Well hold on, there’s an election on, see, and …

To expand on these:

1. Impeach: It’s not just about the Mueller report (which would be enough), it’s the totality of Trump’s entire presidency, from using it to enrich his business and installing his family into key posts without security clearance to his racist immigration policies, and general denigration of the dignity of the office. He had help from Russia (whether he actively colluded or not) to get elected. He is in every way unfit for the job. The process of impeachment was created for this very situation. If we don’t even try, we’re basically giving him a free pass and telling every POTUS to follow that they can abuse the office as much as they want without consequences, and democracy will be further undermined. We can’t let politics keep us from our constitutional duty.

2. Don’t impeach: Well, yes we can, because impeachment by design is a political procedure, not a legal one, so it’s reasonable to consider the political implications. On that note, there’s no point to impeachment because we know Trump will be acquitted, which means the ONLY way we’re getting rid of this clown is to beat him in 2020, and we can’t afford to blow it, not least by giving him tons of political witch-hunt ammo at a time when current polls suggest the majority of voters are NOT in favor of impeaching Trump. So, if defeating him in 2020 is the only way to kick him out of office, let’s focus on that.

So for me, since I assume both sides of this agree that they want Trump to lose his re-election bid, the two key questions to ask are (1) will a full-on impeachment bid (which we already know will fail) backfire spectacularly and ensure a second Trump term? And (2) is it worth putting principles and ‘constitutional duty’ first in the name of protecting American democracy if there’s a real risk that it could strengthen Trump’s push towards authoritarianism?

This of course raises the question of how big a political risk impeachment is. It’s possible as the trial goes on – and as more evidence of shenanigans comes to light – public opinion will shift in favor of it, and even if it doesn’t, the continual focus on Trump’s behaviour could at least hurt his re-election prospects. Some are already pointing to the apparent fact that the Mueller report indicates that either Russia has compromising sex tapes of Trump, or Trump thinks they do, which raises blackmail concerns. (I remember a lot of people justifying Clinton’s impeachment by saying his sexual proclivities could make the POTUS vulnerable to foreign blackmail – surely the same people would apply the same standard to Trump hahahahaha no, I know.) Maybe that could be an angle?

If nothing else, the redacted Mueller report did manage to knock Trump’s approval ratings down to 37% (from around 40%).

On the other hand, Trump could bounce back from that – certainly by now the Trump/GOP/Fox News machine is so perfectly aligned (and inoculated by the Fake News Enemy Of The People meme) that they’ll be able to maintain the Hoax Witch Hunt Total Exoneration meme with the base and maybe build his ratings back up to the low 40s. I know that sounds impossible, but then it seemed impossible in 2016 that Trump could ever win as scandal after scandal piled up.

So I think the Impeach Now camp is kidding itself if it thinks it thinks even an unsuccessful impeachment trial will increase his chance of losing in 2020.

But don’t get me wrong – I’m sympathetic to them, because I gather that they're also motivated by the fact that they absolutely cannot stand the idea of Trump getting away with this. Which he’s likely to do – whether he leaves office on 2020 or 2024, Trump will likely never spend a day in jail for what he’s done, and at least 40% of the country will swear blind until the end of time that he was a great president persecuted by the Evil Liberal Fake News Cabal run by the Barack Obama Deep State.

I hate that too. But let's be honest – impeaching Trump won’t fix that, and it won’t be a deterrent for the next Trump or Nixon or whoever. That’s because – like it or not – if the American democratic system is exploited by a crooked POTUS, the only remedies are the ballot box or impeachment (or the 25th Amendment, but that’s only for specific cases). And any effort to change that (especially if it involves constitutional tweaking) is likely to either fail or inadvertently make things worse.

Remember that there’s a reason it’s hard to unseat a POTUS – at its heart, impeachment is the political act of undoing the results of a democratic election. Yes, in this case we’re talking about a POTUS who not only lost the pop vote, but also benefited from outside interference from Russia. But the former is technically legit, and the latter has no legal recourse in terms of do-overs. If we do try to reform the system, it requires both sides to agree to the changes. And that’s a tall order in 2019 America.

So to come back to the question of impeachment: should the Demo-controlled House impeach Trump on the principle of constitutional duty?

My personal opinion: sure, go ahead, just don’t be stupid about it. Have a strategy that takes into consideration the political consequences – don’t pretend they don’t exist or don’t matter. Be mindful also that Trump will be acquitted – and set yr expectations and goals accordingly. The mission is not to kick Trump out of office early – it’s to defeat him in 2020.

If you can run an impeachment trial that helps accomplish that goal, great. If not, I’d rather you didn’t, because at this stage I’m not convinced that standing on principle is worth the tradeoff of four more years of Trumpapalooza.

The teaches of impeaches,

This is dF

Current Mood: awake
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Crossposts: https://def-fr0g-42.livejournal.com/1511504.html

I’ve been too busy to blog about the Mueller report, which is probably just as well since it’s one of those potboilers that is going to be unfolding for quite awhile.

And I’m not sure what I could add, but I’ll give it a shot.

1. It’s hard to comment more on the report until we see it – which it seems every Republican in America does not want to happen. Which should tell you something about their “total exoneration” nonsense. It’s safe to assume there’s a lot of stuff in there that’s damaging to Trump, even if he can’t be actually prosecuted for any of it.

2. And in fact, we don’t really know that he can’t be, at least as far as the Obstruction of Justice part. Mueller left it open, possibly because he’d decided he went as far as he could go with it and wanted to make sure the work continued – perhaps with Congress.

3. Predictable MAGA hysteria notwithstanding, there’s now a lot of hand-wringing, soul-searching and fingerpointing about how the media got the Trump-Russia story wrong. Or did they?

Matt Taibbi certainly thinks so. Timothy L. O’Brien of Bloomberg thinks Matt is kinda nuts.

As usual, I’m somewhere in the middle. I think Taibbi is cherrypicking radical examples (Maddow, MSNBC in general, Daily Beast, Jonathan Chait’s New Yorker story, etc) to paint the entire media with the same brush, but I do agree with his overall concern – that the media had to be really careful how they treated the Mueller investigation, especially at a time when Trump is actively stoking up anti-media fervor and labelling all critical stories of him as one-sided Fake News. And in the end, many of them gave in to their sensationalist tendencies that turned out to play right into his hands.

On the other hand, the build-up of the Mueller case was as much the product of people on Twitter and social media who passed around otherwise sober stories as though they were smoking guns. Liberals and other anti-Trumpers were reading more into what was there, conflated allegations with proof, and were banking on Mueller to nail the bastard, put him in jail and save the country, even though anyone who paid the slightest attention knew that Mueller was never going to do that. His job wasn’t to arrest Trump (which he probably can’t do anyway) – it was to look into specific allegations and report his findings to the AG, who would then decide what to do with them. And even if the AG wasn’t a pro-Trump appointee, the most he/she would likely do is hand over to Congress for impeachment proceedings – which, as I mentioned earlier, isn’t going to happen.

So I think media coverage was only part of the problem.

Also, I don’t agree with Taibbi’s claim that RussiaGate was a myth that the media clung to because it was the perfect explanation for why they totally failed to see Trump’s election victory coming. It may well be the case that Trump didn’t actively conspire with Russia to win the election, but it’s already well established that (1) Russian hackers did in fact attempt to influence the outcome of the election, (2) they succeeded, and (3) there was some sort of oddball connection between Trump and Russia that Trump and his associates did not want revealed to the point that they were willing to lie to the FBI and Congress about it. Indeed, five Trump associates are now in jail precisely for doing that, and a sixth one has been arrested. You can thank Mueller for all of those, as well as the 26 Russian nationals, three Russian companies, one California man, and one London-based lawyer who have also been indicted.

Some myth.

I take Taibbi’s point that the media is supposed to respect the “innocent until proven guilty” tenet of due process, and it’s true that the media’s sensationalist tendencies tend to blur those lines, especially with TV news. But let’s not pretend there was no basis for the Trump-Russia stories, or that the Mueller report proves the entire mass media industry got it wrong.

4. Meanwhile, as you might imagine, I am not at all impressed with Team MAGA’s “Total Exoneration b/w Democrats and Fake News Media Colluded to Destroy Trump” line, complete with the authoritarian schtick of naming names, accusations of treason and making “recommendations” that TV producers think twice about booking anyone on their list.

But then I’m not the target consumer – the MAGA base is. They’ll be screaming the “baseless witch hunt” conspiracy between now and the next election, and every effort by Demos to investigate further (and the media’s coverage of it) will be presented as evidence of that – and their base will devour every word.

Taibbi argues that’s why Demos and the media really need to move on from Mueller (at least until the report is released) if they want to maintain credibility – why hand them ammo if you don’t have to? That might be true, but it’s also true that Team MAGA manufactures its own ammo, so they’d be screaming “baseless witch hunt” even if Mueller had produced smoking guns.

5. Meanwhile, there is of course also the matter of all those other federal and state investigations into a wide range of shenanigans allegedly committed by Trump and/or his minions, as well as the question of whether Trump colluded with Russia in a different way (i.e. by giving them sanctions relief for the express purpose of enriching himself even though he knew at the time Russia was attempting to hack the election).

Those should continue to be investigated and reported, of course, but as far as impeaching Trump or convincing the GOP to abandon him, you can pretty much forget it. The witch-hunt narrative is pretty much set in stone, and the GOP is all-in with Trump at this stage. In terms of election strategy, it’s probably time to stop using scandals as a weapon – Trump has essentially immunized himself from that (and it certainly didn’t stop him from getting elected in the first place).

Going nowhere,

This is dF

Current Mood: awake
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A few final thoughts about Brett “Beer Likes Me” Kavanaugh and his successful job interview:

1. I’m not surprised. I mentioned before that I didn’t really think the GOP was going to give up on Kavanaugh – partly because they clearly want him to overturn Roe Wade (Steve King is already bragging about it) and partly just to trigger the libs, I imagine. They have tended to follow Trump’s lead when confronted with criticism or protests from the left and essentially double down just to see the looks on their faces. Anyway, it seemed pretty obvious to me where all this was going.

2. Regarding the FBI “investigation”, German Lopez minces words here, but he’s on point – the only reason Flake demanded an FBI investigation (and the only reason Trump agreed to it) was so that GOP senators could say to the Demos, “Look, you wanted an FBI investigation, you got an investigation, what more do you want us to do?” That’s all. It’s obvious too that Trump limited the scope as much as possible to make sure the FBI didn’t come up with anything, but honestly I don't think it wouldn’t have mattered in they came up with actual video of Kavanaugh sexually assaulting Ford or anyone else – Kavanaugh is their boy and he’s going on that bench if they have to staple him there.

3. For me personally, what’s truly horrifying and infuriating about all this isn’t so much Kavanaugh’s past or political views – it’s the sight of the President of the United States of America openly mocking Dr Ford and essentially establishing the axiom that the real victims of sexual assault are men.

And really, that in itself isn't so horrifying and infuriating as the sight of all the people in that rally laughing and cheering him on. I’m hardly the first person to say this, but it’s true – the reason so many women don’t report sexual harassment, assault and rape is EXACTLY because of what just happened in the Kavanaugh/Ford saga.

Also, look at all these headlines here of men who actually committed sexual assault getting off light.

So yeah, the message from POTUS, his rally fans and the GOP is clear – if yr a woman who has been sexually assaulted or molested, it’s probably yr own fault so shut up and walk it off, because you might ruin the guy’s career and we wouldn’t want that, would we?

4. I also wouldn’t bank on that costing Republicans the women vote, because there are plenty of women in his crowds who either don’t believe Dr Ford or don't care, because (1) they like Kavanaugh and (2) Ford only has herself to blame for what happened. Which is depressing, but there it is. So it's probably a good idea to get out there and vote in the midterms on the assumption that the last two years do not add up to a slamdunk Blue Wave.

5. Trevor Noah has a good riff here on Trump’s weaponization of victimhood, which of course Trump did not invent, but he uses it effectively, and men and women alike buy into it.

6. As for Kavanaugh joining the Supremes, all I can say is what I said before – his presence doesn’t automatically guarantee Roe v Wade being overturned, or giving Trump cover from prosecution or whatever. I’m not saying that won’t happen, I’m saying there’s always the chance that it won’t.

If it helps, this article from FiveThirtyEight points out that SCOTUS has a long proud history of tailoring their opinions to prevailing public sentiment – willingly or otherwise. And at the moment, public sentiment is very much on the side of protecting Roe v Wade.

That will undoubtedly upset conservatives who like to complain about activist judges who don’t stick to literal interpretations of constitutional text, but then we all know by now that those same conservatives generally as rule only really care about that when SCOTUS rules against their side, so I don’t take their complaints too seriously.

Court is adjourned,

This is dF

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I started writing this post back when Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement and the big concern then was (1) Trump forced him to retire because Kennedy’s son is tied to Russia somehow (which might be true but there's no hard evidence of this) and (2) Trump’s nominated replacement, Brett Kavanaugh, is a radical Trump conservative whose sole qualification for Republicans is his ability to overturn Roe v Wade and affirm the legal power of Trump to pardon himself for whatever crimes Robert Mueller eventually charges him with.

Obviously the concerns have piled on since then, thanks to Dr Christine Blasey Ford informing us what young teenage Brett used to get up to.

So, okay, a few things:

1. Roe v Wade: personally I think Kavanaugh’s political opinions may not necessarily be an indicator of how he would rule, if only because (1) it depends on the specific case brought before SCOTUS and the legal decisions that brought it to them, etc and so on, because that’s what they tend to rule on, and (2) my experience with the Supremes has been that they don’t always vote along predictable party lines (Kennedy being a case in point – he’s a staunch conservative who legalized gay marriage nationwide). So I don’t know that Kavanaugh’s confirmation would automatically spell the end of Roe v Wade. But obviously I can’t rule it out either.

2. Self pardons: Trump has been declaring loudly that he can totally pardon himself, and that sitting POTUSes can’t be indicted anyway. The thing is, he might technically be right. We don't really know for sure because it’s never really been tested. This Snopes article has a good breakdown of the legal arguments, but the upshot is that the Constitution grants the POTUS virtually unlimited power to pardon people, and there’s nothing in there that says he CAN’T pardon himself, with the exception of impeachment charges, which the Founding Fathers™ ultimately decided was the best remedy for a corrupt, criminal president. There may be a case of applying common law (i.e. you can’t be the judge at yr own trial), but there’s no guarantee any judge will rule that way, whether it’s Kavanaugh, Kennedy or anyone else on the bench.

3. Boys will be boys: All I can really say about Dr Ford’s allegations for now is that it’s helped shine a spotlight (again) on the fact that many Republican men are really, really, REALLY bad at talking about rape and sexual assault/harassment – which is especially egregious in the wake of #MeToo, which evidently convinced Republicans that the proper response to rape/sexual assault/harassment allegations is to double down on insisting it must be the victim’s fault somehow, or boys will be boys, or the perp has suffered enough and we don't want to ruin his entire life over one transgression, and we’re sure he’s sorry about it and it won't happen again – all of which basically add up to the message that the feelings of the accused man always matter more than the feelings of his female victim. (Unless the accused man is Al Franken or Anthony Weiner, in which case by all means, ruin his life and make an example of him.)

So yeah, obviously my sympathies lie more with Dr Ford at this moment, and the conservatives defending Kavanaugh have pretty much zero credibility with me.

4. The Return Of Anita Hill: We’ve sort of been here before with Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill, which some fear will be a precedent for both how Dr Ford will be treated by the Senate Judiciary and Kavanaugh’s eventual confirmation despite her allegations.

On the bright side, according to this article, two key differences are (1) there were no women on the Senate Judiciary committee in 1991, but there are several today, and (2) #MeToo has changed the conversation we usually have about these kinds of things (except for Republican men, of course).

On the other hand, a number of Republican women have stepped up to defend Kavanaugh (not counting those 65 high-school “friends”), and one even said that even if Ford isn’t lying, so what?:

… we’re talking about a 17-year-old boy in high school with testosterone running high. Tell me, what boy hasn’t done this in high school?” Gina Sosa asked.

Well, sure. Every teenage boy goes through that period where he corners a girl at a party, turns up the music so no one can hear her protest and then covering up her mouth as he tries to force her to have sex with him. Everyone knows that.

So yeah, there’s a good chance that Christine Ford is going to be the new Anita Hill in the sense that the Senators are going to do their damnedest to badger, humiliate and discredit her, and the result is likely to be that Kavanaugh gets to be the new Clarence Thomas – because it does seem as though the current stance of the GOP is: “You know what? We honestly couldn’t care less if Kavanaugh rapes every woman he meets, films them all and posts them on YouTube so long as we get a guy on the SCOTUS bench who will rule in our favor.”

I might be wrong about Kavanaugh’s chances, but to be honest I think the only way he’s not getting this job at this stage is if he drops out voluntarily.

5. For the record, even before Christine Ford came into play, I personally didn’t think Kavanaugh should be confirmed – at least not with 100,000 pages of his judicial records being withheld. The fact that they are being withheld – and by Trump’s insistence – is in itself suspicious.

Redacted,

This is dF

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Crossposts: https://def-fr0g-42.livejournal.com/1453553.html

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WIN THE WHITE HOUSE, CRIME ALL YOU WANT
IMPEACHAPALOOZA 2: COUP COUP KACHOO (SLIGHT RETURN)
IMPEACHAPALOOZA 2: COUP COUP KACHOO
SCOTUS SUPERMAJORITY BLUES
OMG RBG RIP
AN APPLE A DAY ANNOYS THE POLICE: THE STRANGE AND TERRIBLE SAGA OF JIMMY LAI
OLD AND BUSTED: RULE OF LAW. NEW HOTNESS: RULE OF FEAR.
ANARCHY IN THE HK PART 396 (ANNIVERSARY EDITION)
IT’S 2020 AND WE REMEMBER TIANANMEN SQUARE WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT
THE POLICE ARE TARGETING JOURNALISTS / WE ARE ALL JOURNALISTS NOW
MINNEAPOLIS IS THE NEW HONG KONG
ANARCHY IN THE HK PART 395: HOW MUCH WOULD *YOU* PAY FOR NATIONAL SECURITY?
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ANARCHY IN THE HK, PART 392 (KEEP YR DISTANCE EDITION)
ACQUITTERS NEVER WIN (EXCEPT WHEN THEY DO)
A WELL-INTENTIONED BUT SOMEWHAT MISPLACED HONG KONG THANKSGIVING
TO IMPEACH OR NOT IMPEACH
MUELLER REPORTS, YOU DECIDE
PUTTING THE “BEER” IN “SUPREME COURT”
A TRUMP SUPREME (OR: ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY MY ONLY POST ABOUT BRETT KAVANAUGH)

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WIN THE WHITE HOUSE, CRIME ALL YOU WANT

IMPEACHAPALOOZA 2: COUP COUP KACHOO (SLIGHT RETURN)

IMPEACHAPALOOZA 2: COUP COUP KACHOO

SCOTUS SUPERMAJORITY BLUES

OMG RBG RIP

AN APPLE A DAY ANNOYS THE POLICE: THE STRANGE AND TERRIBLE SAGA OF JIMMY LAI

OLD AND BUSTED: RULE OF LAW. NEW HOTNESS: RULE OF FEAR.

ANARCHY IN THE HK PART 396 (ANNIVERSARY EDITION)

IT’S 2020 AND WE REMEMBER TIANANMEN SQUARE WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT

THE POLICE ARE TARGETING JOURNALISTS / WE ARE ALL JOURNALISTS NOW

MINNEAPOLIS IS THE NEW HONG KONG

ANARCHY IN THE HK PART 395: HOW MUCH WOULD YOU PAY FOR NATIONAL SECURITY?

ANARCHY IN THE HK PART 394: NATIONAL INSECURITY EDITION

ANARCHY IN THE HK, PART 392 (KEEP YR DISTANCE EDITION)

ACQUITTERS NEVER WIN (EXCEPT WHEN THEY DO)

A WELL-INTENTIONED BUT SOMEWHAT MISPLACED HONG KONG THANKSGIVING

TO IMPEACH OR NOT IMPEACH

MUELLER REPORTS, YOU DECIDE

PUTTING THE “BEER” IN “SUPREME COURT”

A TRUMP SUPREME (OR: ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY MY ONLY POST ABOUT BRETT KAVANAUGH)

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