Book Review: Reversing the Rivers

Title: Reversing the Rivers 

Author: William F. Schulz

Date: 2023

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania 

ISBN: 978-1512824032

Length: 267 pages (including the endnotes, because you will want to read the endnotes)

Illustrations: centerfold of black-and-white celebrity photos

Quote: "From 1994 to 2006 I was Amnesty International USA's...executive director."

The quote above is the dullish base for a moderately funny celebrity story. I would've quoted the story but the "secure" coding of the e-book version I received wouldn't let me. Lauren Bacall was acting adorably arrogant and patronizing to Schulz at a party. Lots of famous people patronized Schulz at parties, because, as he confesses in this book, he didn't mind fundraising. He liked the challenge of working out just what he needed to do to get people to give his organization money. 

This is a memoir, not of Schulz's life but of his career with what was called AI first. He raised money. He responded to internal pressure to take on causes that put him on one side or the other of American politics--no points for guessing which side--and thus discredited the organization. He retired. He met lots of famous people along the way, and shares lots of vignettes about which ones screamed at him, which became his personal friends, and why. 

AI has been around for a long time. Margaret Atwood was the first celebrity I remember naming it as her charity. In the 1980s I remember AI taking over a table at the library for letter-writing parties; a sister and I used to read the stories and occasionally sign a letter. Many of the subjects of these letters were high-profile public figures; some went on to become national leaders. 

Even in those days, though, there was some question about which cases one wanted to get involved in. As a Unitarian Universalist, Schulz's position was what most people I know would dismiss as "bleeding-heart." He argues all over again, in this book, that nobody deserves the death penalty, that prisoners of war should be housed and fed as well as our own troops, that "tasing" prisoners is inhumane. (So what about letting them brawl or riot? the reviewer asks, reading this book on a day whose news headlines included a convict's being beaten to death in prison),

People like Schulz seem to think that the purpose of capital punishment is to do some good to rapists and murderers. It is not. The purpose of capital punishment is to spare human beings from having to live with rapists and murderers. 

 

AI took up the causes of many people who were what they called POC--Prisoners Of Conscience--whom people around the world wanted to support. AI also took up the causes of people who were, in fact, criminals, and that reduced people's interest in supporting their selection of prisoners of conscience. 

Schulz notes, with mild and benign bewilderment, that many people who volunteered or even wanted careers with AIUSA were angry and bitter, inclined to waste their energy denouncing one another over minor disagreements. He doesn't note a correspondence between the incidence of screaming hostility and the incidence of extreme left-wing or globalist views among his staff, but the fact is that, when Americans are haters, they tend to hate America. 

By continuing to work with these people and listen to their ideas, Schulz let himself be put in the position of criticizing the War On Terror. "And what do the bleeding-hearts think we should do, let Al-Qaeda get away with what they did?" one heard sweet old church ladies saying. "I think W Bush is handling it rather well, not declaring war on the whole countries these people came from. As for the prisoners, how did they get to be prisoners? Nobody just rounded up all the Arab-types in the cities and locked them up, like Japanese-Americans in the War, They were breaking the law. They're being fed, and not being beaten or stoned to death or beheaded, which is what would probably have been done to them in Iraq. If people would rather do what the French government says, they should go to France."

In 2001 I remember feeling that our culture had gone into a decline, for which I blamed W Bush. The plane that hit the Pentagon hit storage space. The passengers on that plane, and on the fourth plane the passengers "rolled," were casualties. The damage done was to banks the average American would never, left to perself, have missed. Property crimes are crimes, of course, and any casualties from an unprovoked act of war are too many, but the commercial media went into a year-long orgy of reporting All September 11 All The Time that seemed intended to sustain unpleasant moods in people who read the newspapers thoroughly (as many Washingtonians felt their jobs required them to do) or watched television news shows. Book publishers stopped publishing informative material and cranked out war propaganda. A book by Gore Vidal, of all people, seemed the sanest new book in the stores and libraries. When the best book a nation produces comes from a man who, among many other bizarre choices, chose to use "Gore" as a name, that nation is not the cultural leader the United States ought to be, I felt. That was what we got for electing the Walking Target. I don't like war.

But there are some baseline rules for people who don't like war. Chief among them is that, if the country where you live is involved in a war, you don't commit treason. You don't go around bragging about how your correspondents in other countries have gone from saying that 80 or 90% of them approve of your country, last year, to saying that only 30% approve of your country, this year. 

Here let me say this to England, Germany, Turkey, and Indonesia, the countries where Schulz and AIUSA took that little poll. There are those in Europe whose approval of the United States seems to be based on whether, at this point in time, we're willing to behave like a good little colony. There are those in the Islamic countries whose attitudes are similar, only with religious bias. I don't think we should behave like a colony for one minute,. We are not a colony. Against all odds God gave us not only independence but success beyond all previous imagining. We are an exceptional nation and we should not follow would-be leaders who are in denial about this. 

We have made progress far beyond poor old benighted Europe, even beyond Britain, for a reason. That reason was not so that we could impose our values of individual freedom, success according to merit, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom to use individual property as the individual sees fit, religious freedom, civil rights for women and ethnic minorities and especially for dissidents, on other countries. We have never wanted to backslide into the benighted European customs, of which war is one, by building an empire and making other countries our vassals. We don't want to bother with that sort of thing even now. It's just too much fun to be a civilized nation where everyone has a chance to succeed under the rule of liberal and egalitarian law. Poor old backward Europe, and Asia and Africa, should try that. But we prefer to lead by example. 

We were not guided into a position of leadership, however, in order to follow Europe back into the bad old ways of enshrining stupid social hierarchies in law, and making it impossible for most people to get educations or own land or have free choices of careers, and punishing dissent as a crime, and tolerating envy enough even to listen to any whines for equality-of-outcome, and whatever else occurs to minds damaged by drinking wine with every meal. Our policy decisions should be made by the American people--who are culturally "conservative"--without reference to anyone overseas. A democracy does not listen to the confusion coming out of the countries whose people are fighting and dying to be allowed to live here instead of there, even when we warn them that they can't expect even jobs in cities any more, much less farms. 

We do not and should not hate Europe, but when Europeans fantasize about dictating policy to us we should sober them up in our sanitary, humane jails and send them home. We should make them aware that displays of envy, such as demands for redistribution of wealth, are embarrassments like toilet paper stuck to shoes. We really would like to give them the opportunity, in their newly less crowded and livable homelands, to learn what civilization is like and try it for themselves. If and whenever Europe can get through a hundred years without a war, then it will be appropriate for us to listen to what they have in the way of leaders as to equals. Today the plain fact is that, as a civilization, Europeans are not our equals. We may wish they were, but they lag and they languish.

But this is supposed to be a review of Schulz's book, and that book ends with a whimper. Schulz writes like a grown-up version of Bridget Jones. Listening to his angry employees, the inverse-racist "voices of diversity" and the deranged homosexual lobbyists who crybullied their way into AIUSA's offices, Schulz tells us, he reduced the popularity of the United States in other countries with active AI organizations, he reduced the respectability of AI in the United States, and then for a follow-up he was diagnosed with a slowly progressing fatal disease. His is a sad story--and he doesn't even seem to realize how tragic it is.

Civilizations limit the damage individuals do. It's possible that, by reading Schulz's memoir in the light of their own memories of the last fifty years, others will be guided to steer AI back in the direction of defending prisoners of conscience, and restore respectability to that organization. Let us hope. 

Anyone with a taste for sober, responsible, truly adult stories should read this book--just for the celebrity gossip, if they're not in a position to need to read it as a cautionary tale. But in a democracy every active citizen can benefit from reading a memoir like this one as a cautionary tale.

Book Review: All Honorable Men

Title: All Honorable Men

Author: James Stewart Martin

Date: 1950

Publisher: Little Brown

ISBN: none

Length: 300 pages plus index

Quote: “In mid-March 1939, when a group of some of the largest British and German industrialists gathered at Düsseldorf to map plans for the economic collaboration between their two countries, the press barely reported the meetings.”

James Stewart Martin was a Maryland lawyer whose opposition to monopolies got him appointed to a wartime job investigating precisely how multinational corporations helped the Nazis begin their attacks on the U.S. and U.K.:

“In 1940, 1941 and 1942, ships leaving American seaports had had the same security measures to protect their departure. Yet many of their broken hulls and water-soaked cargoes had washed up…German submarines had spotted them within sight on shore…every man on board had been marked before the captain opened his orders. Though they may not have known it, the cargoes they carried were insured with Munich. The routine system of placing insurance had put precise information on their sailing date and destination in the hands of the Germans before the ship left port.”

All Honorable Men is an old, dusty, musty book, my copy discarded by a library because after years of wear and tear it’s fallen into neglect. This is unfortunate. Despite the author’s inability to predict which names would still be familiar today (Bayer and Monsanto are mentioned, though neither was yet seen as a very important factor in the war) and the need to keep an encyclopedia handy while reading, it’s a well-told true story illuminating just how the international good feeling of the early twentieth century would cost American lives in the next generation. International good feeling, in the sense of greed for international money and grabs for international power, subsided only slightly in the 1950s and have resurged to even more cancerous levels of corporate “growth” since the Internet has developed. Huge corporations still reach out for those international mergers that gobble up the locally owned enterprises. Today even more than in the 1930s, multinational corporations stand ready to be drafted into the service of any hotheaded demagogue who can get himself into an influential position in some desperate little country that wants to challenge the English-speaking nations for world leadership.

Once again, most of us think nothing of using the Internet to document what we’re shipping, where, at what price, whether and for how much insured, or even when we’re travelling ourselves. That information is available all over the world and the main thing protecting most of us from theft, sabotage, or worse is that most of our affairs aren’t the most enticing to criminals. For now, criminals are more interested in drugs, gold, or explosives than they are in the mundane consumer goods most of us ship and receive. Today, as in the 1930s, it seems that nobody cares about such boring data as shipping receipts and airline tickets. Tomorrow, as in the 1940s, that data could cost American lives.

So y’might say I think All Honorable Men is worth reading again, yes.

Weirdness at the Department of Motor Vehicles

Only in a bureaucracy could this happen...and when it happens in a democratic country, it's time for a vote to dismantle the bureaucracy...

Every few years Americans traditionally renewed our drivers' licenses. Through most of the twentieth century, the focus of this exercise was on updating the pictures of our faces, which typically look different after five or ten years have passed. My last mugshot was extremely, and deliberately, unflattering; my weight hasn't changed since it was taken but the few people who've seen it have always exclaimed that I must've lost a lot of weight. There is a consensus that the mugshot before last still looks more like me than the last one does. I was willing to give the D.M.V. a chance to take a more realistic-looking picture.

This year, though, blaming the coronavirus, the letter from the D.M.V. said they weren't renewing pictures, and were asking people just to indicate whether the basic information on the license had changed, stick a money order into an envelope, and mail it to them. (Or, if they were anti-American enough and stupid enough, type the information into scannable, hackable, spyware-infested electronic devices which, if linked to "our secure web site," would compromise the security of that web site--on the presumption that most evildoers would at least find it easier to steal identity information off the fools' cell phones than to steal it off the D.M.V. database.)

The amount of the money order was not exactly made clear in the letter. Apparently there were at least four different possibilities and, each time I read the letter, it sounded as if a different one was applicable. I called the one phone number that had been set up for all D.M.V. questions for the entire state. Not surprisingly, I didn't get any information there. I finally looked up the information online, although of course the information the D.M.V. uses must never, never, never be transferred, no matter how secure they think their web site is, through the Internet outside the D.M.V. site, where it is not secure. That the D.M.V. web site is set up to encourage people to type that information into their own computers--or even their "smartphones," spare us all--is a crime that ought to get several idiots in the D.M.V. banned from employment in any job where they might have access to a computer, for the rest of their lives. Anyway, the web site mentioned only the cheapest of the four different fees the letter had mentioned. I liked that answer and decided to send them the amount the web site mentioned.

Well, first I waited through the quarantine thing. Then I waited to convince an older relative that I was disease-free enough to do an odd job to earn the money. Then that person had to do the quarantine thing. Then I waited to borrow the money from someone who was feeling poor and grumpy, which is probably a symptom. This person uttered fighting words, in the presence of a person of Irish descent who was worried about a sick relative, and instead of snapping back I just sat there thinking "Oh mercy, this person is older than the one I was supposed to have been working for this weekend, and probably this one ought to be doing the quarantine thing." I am getting older but that's still something in the snow-on-the-fourth-of-July category that nobody should plan on ever seeing again. But I finally got the cash, in time to mail it in before the end of the month, so this morning I tucked the cash into the envelope and headed out to the post office.

The post office occupies one half of one block in my town, and the D.M.V. occupies the other half. People who are new in town often park on the D.M.V. side when they are going to the post office.

So on the way into town I was offered a lift, and we got to talking about where we were going, and without even thinking about it the driver pulled up in front of the D.M.V. I got out and started to walk across the parking lot to the post office.

But wait! What was going on? The D.M.V. was not closed. A person who was going in said "Do you have an appointment?" I didn't. "I don't either," the person said.

Well. Why would anybody spend five dollars to buy a money order and send it by certified first class mail when they could just open a door and hand the contents of the mail around the door?!

I opened the door and showed the envelope to an employee...and the employee said, with genuine fear, as person held the form and the amount of money requested in cash, "I'm not allowed to process the payment while you're here! I have to set up an appointment! You have to use the web site or the one phone line for the entire state to set up an appointment!"

We the people of these United States need to take a stand. Government employees have to respect the valuable time of the taxpayers on whom they depend for the food they eat. Any time anyone who is being paid out of our tax money dares to suggest that we call someone else, go somewhere else, or come back another day, as distinct from saying "Please may I go and do that right now, just to make sure that this is done correctly today so that I won't be asked to interrupt your valuable time to correct any mistakes I might make," there needs to be some major adjustment in that government office. We are the employers. Government officials are the employees. We need to stop paying them for presuming that, if granted an audience with us on one day, they can expect to take up any more of our time in their current lifetime. It needs to become automatic:

IF A GOVERNMENT OFFICE NEEDS ANYTHING FROM US THAT CAN'T BE TAKEN CARE OF IN ONE DAY, IT MUST REFUND OUR TAXES, OR IF NECESSARY SIMPLY DEFUND ITS OWN BUDGET, TO MAKE SURE THAT WE RECEIVE US$100 FOR EVERY ADDITIONAL DAY THAT OFFICE'S FUNCTIONS OCCUPY OUR TIME.

We need a law to that effect. Low-level government officials tend to seek a sort of emotional relief from the stress of dealing with their co-workers by hiding in uselessness and demanding that the taxpayers use up more time to talk to other people. Very well, let them have it, if they have been trained properly: Any suggestion that a taxpayer who has already taken the time to talk to them might spare even more time to talk to anyone else begins with the payment of a fine from the employee to the taxpayer, on the spot, in cash. First the $100 bill, then the whine about something needing to be done using any other minute than the one in which the employee is speaking.

The thing every government employee should be trained to fear most is that a taxpayer might, Heaven forbid and fend, make another phone call or go to another office or even think about whatever transaction is taking place, today, after today...the obligatory result of which will be that the first government employee is fined and, in normal circumstances, fired! I think that may be the most valuable reform that can be made in the direction of making our government more cost-effective. It would eliminate unproductive employees from government offices without even using up pink paper, much less requiring supervisors to make studies of which employees most need to be dismissed.

Only legislation will have this effect, though. Several people have already documented what happens when an honest, ethical person takes a job in an office infested with time-wasters and pledges not to waste the taxpayers' time. What happens is that the time-wasters actively hate that person and show their hate by becoming even more useless than they have been, until, since the system makes it hard for all the time-wasters to be thrown out of the office, the head of the office caves in and gets rid of the efficient worker because that person "was not good for morale."

The appointment system has advantages--for years the D.M.V. was chronically full of impatient people, all breathing one another's germs and building up hostility--and I didn't want to discourage that. In order to avoid wasting taxpayers' time government offices must, however, correct the appointment systems they've been trying to set up by keeping all identifying information about people out of electronic devices. Instead of collecting people's names, the appointment setter should give each taxpayer a password, which can be printed off a computer, written down after a telephone call, or mailed out with requests for forms and fees. "You may use the D.M.V.'s 'secure' computers to set up an appointment," I said, "but the real name of any living person is just too valuable to the enemies of this country ever to be transferred through the Internet. That won't happen."

I was considering my alternatives here. Virginia being a relatively literate and affluent State, we do not have the problems some inland States are reporting with people having drivers' licenses, voter registration cards, and similar identifying documents. Many people keep such things in their cars or in their trench coat pockets. This made it much easier for those who wanted photographic identification for each voter to get legislation to that effect, which reportedly some States still don't have. Virginians are typically proud of our identities--dangerously so, in this Information Age--and happy to whip out proof that we are the Tracy Lee Doe of "Doe Hill" every time we drive a car, use a bank or bank document or credit card, fill a prescription, sign a contract, take a class, or vote. I've had neighbors who wanted to offer me a lift show me their drivers' licenses just so they would feel Properly Introduced. And even though I've also had drivers' licenses printed out with incorrect information on them, so I know that drivers' licenses are not actually proof that someone's not an enemy spy, and think respect for privacy should outweigh concern about illegal voting...in real life I'm as proud of my identity as anyone else is.

But, as a mature, stable, frugal adult, do I actually need a current driver's license? I don't drive, except in emergencies. I seldom pay other people to handle money for me, and when I do it's the post office, which handles cash and therefore has a system as secure and reliable as cash; I don't need proof of identity for banking purposes. I don't travel and don't plan to sign any contracts to pay anything over time. I'll be greatly surprised if the Ponzi scheme known as Social Security still exists when I'm seventy; I certainly don't expect to depend on the small share of a small income I've paid into it. I don't use prescription drugs. I've been looking forward to taking some of the classes many colleges offer free or cheap to older people, but I have lived all these years without the benefit of those courses. I used routinely to fill out I-9 forms on jobs, but the corporations that use those forms don't hire people over age 50. Although I receive mail through a post office box, some companies insist on adding names and home addresses to their correspondence, so if I ever needed to prove it, as it might be for claiming  a share of whatever may remain of the McFilthy oil money, I could still prove that I am the Whoever of Wherever I am in real life. All I'd have any real trouble doing, without official state identification, would be voting. I think voting is a valuable civil right everyone should exercise, but plenty of people don't vote, and they seem to lead reasonably satisfactory lives in their lazy, irresponsible, public-spirit-challenged way.

I could be sufficiently provoked just to stop paying the D.M.V. a few dollars every few years. Anyone looking at the last picture they snapped of me would probably agree that that picture, alone, was sufficient provocation to withhold money from them forevermore. I do think it's everyone's public duty to oppose the pernicious idea of using individual identity rather than cash to pay for things, which puts any country where people are stupid enough to do it one step away from The Handmaid's Tale, and the case might be made that just having a state-issued identification document is supporting that very, very bad idea.

Anyway, the employee near the door went into a back office and get a superordinate employee to set up an appointment using the D.M.V.'s very own computer. Seeing three people who could stand witness enter the office, I made sure those people could see that the envelope the employee took contained the form, and the cash, the employee needed to process right then and there.

In literally less than two minutes, out popped the superordinate employee. This was a young woman whose long black hair and drapey black veil made an especially effective combination. If she were found to be the source of the idiocy operating at the D.M.V. this morning, she could probably earn a fair living, whether she has any sense of rhythm or not, just showing up at parties impersonating an Arab dancer. Or a native of several other countries that have recently been at war with ours. Not that people like her and me are necessarily always going to be at higher risk than people with paler hair or darker skin or folded eyelids, but currently, though the young woman might not have travelled enough to realize it, our identities happen to be especially valuable to evildoers.

Had she simply filed the form and the money? She had not. She had brought back an official printed form authorizing the bearer to bring the same form and the same money back in October.

I might have made that up in science fiction (I think there was something like it in a movie called Brazil) but I was surprised to see it, in real life, in a country that's still classified as a democracy. I had to wonder whether, in an election year, in a State that's legislated that drivers' licenses be used to identify voters, someone was hoping to discourage as many people as possible from voting.

Anyone up for election this November needs to stop pouring money into silly, low-content campaign advertisements and break out a serious plan for restoring common sense to the D.M.V. Which should include making it impossible for the identity information the D.M.V. has traditionally been allowed to store, in filing cabinets, to be transferred to the D.M.V. via the Internet. Instead of trying to encourage people to type D.M.V. information into computers and transmit it electronically, the new D.M.V. must begin with a recognition that computers with modems are not secure and never will be...so, rather than encouraging people recklessly to link their computers to "our secure web site" and hand their driver's license data directly to evildoers, the D.M.V. should stick to the traditional system whereby people fill out paper forms at the local D.M.V. office and hand them directly to employees. The web site could be used to process requests for exemptions, which could allow D.M.V. employees to visit locations where they could fill out paper forms on behalf of people with disabilities.

Morgan Griffith Stands with Hong Kong

(Status update: Oh, we've had Snowstorms & Power Outages! Actually very little of the snow actually stuck to any surfaces I could see, except an occasional moving car that had been parked on the other side of the county. And the power outages were deliberately planned by a big-chain tree trimming company, apparently following orders to mow down all the trees near all the power lines in the whole county while they're here. Efforts to blame the inconvenience on "the storm" sounded funny when, at the time my lights went off, the weather outside was sunny and warm. That's what having utilities connected to a "grid" does for people. There was no physical reason whatsoever why anyone in Gate City, which got a little rain but nothing that could be described as any kind of storm, should have lost a minute of computer time--yet some of us lost days. In my own particular case, if the tree trimmers had asked me rather than a company office in Ohio, they could have taken a few more big trees just waiting for a chance to fall on a power line, while I was here on my job, without causing me a bit of trouble...and one of those trees is in prime condition, solid hardwood most of the way up, and ought to be worth some money...to a local tree trimmer, because now those Yankees have annoyed me. Anyway, I'm back.)

From U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith (R-VA-9):

"
Monday, December 2, 2019 –                                
Hong Kong: How We Got Here
"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. It has to be fought for and defended by each generation."
These words of President Ronald Reagan come to mind when I observe events in Hong Kong today. The people of that territory in East Asia, which came under the sovereignty of China less than a generation ago, are now fighting to keep alive the freedom they have known.
Hong Kong possesses a unique status in China, rooted in its history.
In 1842, the British Empire formally took control of the island of Hong Kong. Parts of the surrounding territory came into its possession as well through the nineteenth century. Some of these areas, the New Territories, were leased from China for a 99-year period under an agreement ratified in 1898.
During the period of British rule, Hong Kong blossomed as an important port and financial center. Further, it was governed by Western-style institutions and practices, giving it an identity distinct from mainland China.
Refugees often flocked to the area, especially residents of China fleeing Japanese invaders in the 1930s and the Chinese civil war between Nationalists and Communists following World War II.
In the 1980s, nearing the end of the 99-year lease for the New Territories, the British and Chinese governments negotiated the cession of Hong Kong in its entirety back to China. The Joint Declaration they signed in 1984 established the model of “one country, two systems.”
While China would exercise sovereignty over the territory beginning in 1997, Hong Kong would retain considerable autonomy over its laws as well as its free market system. It would have its own judiciary and legal system.
Essentially, Hong Kong would be able to keep the things that had made it thrive.
Many hoped that the incorporation of a prosperous, free area into China and letting it keep its rules would provide an example for that country. The Communist mainland could see the benefits that Hong Kong enjoyed thanks to its government and market economy.
Margaret Thatcher, the British prime minister who had negotiated the Joint Declaration, expressed this view as her country prepared to turn over Hong Kong to China:

Chinese people will come to Hong Kong, they'll see and they'll say why is it different, and what is the difference? It is the same people, the same talents, but here there is a rule of law founded on the belief that each and every person matters in personal lives.

Unfortunately, in the years since China assumed control over Hong Kong, that hope has not been realized.
Instead, China’s Communist oligarchic rulers have sought to bring the territory more thoroughly under their thumb.
Earlier this year, a bill was introduced in Hong Kong’s legislative body to permit extradition to mainland China. It would encroach on Hong Kong’s independence, potentially allowing China to target political dissidents and deprive residents of the rights they enjoy.
Thousands of people took to the streets in protest. The object of their movement grew beyond the specifics of the extradition bill. They were standing up for their rights.
China responded by cracking down on the protestors, with police using tear gas and rubber bullets, and even live ammunition on a few occasions. It threatens to acquire the political domination over Hong Kong it wants by force.
The history of Communist rule in China suggests this is no idle threat.
The Communist oligarchs invaded Tibet in 1950 and brutally put down an uprising there in 1959. Their suppression of the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989 shocked the world; the number of people they killed has never been established for sure. In our time, they detain individuals of the Uighur ethnic minority in concentration camps.
The people of Hong Kong deserve America’s support as they stand up for democracy. When the U.S. House of Representatives recently passed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019, which would hold China accountable for its actions, I voted for it. President Trump signed the bill into law on November 27.
From our own experience, we know the value of the timeless principles of liberty. Hong Kong knows this, too, and we should stand with them in their contest for freedom.
If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office. You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405, my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671, or my Washington office at 202-225-3861. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov. Also, on my website is the latest material from my office, including information on votes recently taken on the floor of the House of Representatives.
"

Understanding the "Don't Care" Jacket

What was all the fuss about the “jacket” Melania Trump wore on a humanitarian mission last week? If you're like me, your immediate reaction to all the tweets and e-mails was, "Who cares?"--but you should care. This is why.

I didn't care. You can take the model off the runway but you can’t take the runway out of a real supermodel. With her trademark ability to look fabulous in colors that make normal human beings look either dirty or jaundiced or both, Melania will probably look as if she were struttin’ and stylin’ the latest color-you-can’t-wear in her coffin, long after her baby-boomer critics are gone. Left-wingers, spare your envy, I thought. Generation X are grown-ups now. Deal with it.

I saw the official photo of her leaving the plane in something cream-colored. Shirt, jacket, dress, who cared? We all know designers fight for the right to get the First Lady to wear their designs. If the cream-colored item was her “Don’t Care Jacket,” straight from the studio of whoever fancies himself or herself the next Christian Dior, I saw nothing newsworthy there.

But no, somebody said, the message “I don’t care” had actually been painted on the jacket. A “rain jacket” she’d worn while changing planes in the rain.

Say whaaat? Number one, they obviously hadn’t seen the same plain white top-piece I’d seen. Number two, although everybody knows the message of rain gear painted with “I don’t care” or “Let it snow” or “This is my ducky day” is that you don’t mind the weather in your warm dry gear, since when do Washingtonians wear rain gear other than the classic trench coat?

Little kids might get the “I’ll be your sunshine today” treatment, but not for long. I’ve seen (and bought for The Nephews) classic trench coats in children's size three. 

Nobody makes Washingtonians do this. Newcomers to the city bring other rain gear, but soon learn: There is no garment more appropriate to Washington’s climate than the classic London Fog. 

Some frown on the trench coat’s surplus-store look, but Melania, never averse to documenting that she looks healthy in olive or khaki, has been known to wear shirts and jackets inspired by actual soldiers’ uniforms.

So what kind of “rain jacket” had Melania chosen, and who had begged or bribed her to wear it? This I had to see, so I clicked over to the Daily Kos, which is a left-wing group blog similar to The Blaze, only shriller. (I subscribe to both blogs’ e-mail updates but seldom click through because both sites are cluttered and behave badly.)

Yes, there was the Queen of the Runways, modelling an olive-drab hooded rain jacket. (The hood was a nice effect, not unlike the button-on hoods sold with some of the better classic trench coats.) On the back someone did indeed appear to have painted “I don’t care and neither do U.” A prank by one of the fun-loving Trump children, perhaps? No, said Kos readers, it was a design currently for sale in an online store (link), from Zara.

ZARA???!!!

Zara that’s reportedly still refusing to pay laborers for work they did in 2016?

https://www.change.org/p/justiceforbravoworkers

(Just to be clear, these laborers in Turkey are petitioning for back wages they earned but weren't paid during a corporate takeover. Reportedly most are still working now, but have yet to collect what they earned then.)

So this is not the normal little-kid “I don’t care how hard it rains” motif.

This is not just the often reported, sometimes quite amusing, “foreigner plays with unfamiliar writing system as art motif.” 

Anyone who’s wearing anything from Zara is telling the world “I support companies that fail to pay workers.”

That’s  "The Rrrest of the Story" behind the Daily Kos report (no link to a messy page) that Zara has been cranking out designs with all kinds of messages calculated to raise a fuss in the English-speaking world, issuing bogus apologies for one garment after another emblazoned with bait for one hypersensitive demographic after another. I didn't see the specific garment that upset Holocaust survivors (now that's a group with a valid reason for being hypersensitive) but I did see a "Gluten Free" design that raised screams of "Don't you even caaare about celiacs?"

Don't you even caaare about companies that just abscond with the wages their workers have earned, online shoppers of America? And if you don't, why should those workers give a flyin' flip whether their "edgy new urban styles" offend you? My guess is that they're printing up the most obnoxious slogans they can think of, short of obvious robot-censor-triggers like "I Hate U." 

It's called sabotage. It's the next step after sewing into clothes little notes that read "I made this garment but I didn't get paid for it."

I care, Gentle Readers. So should you. And so should Melania Trump.

She probably didn't see the original story; the First Lady of the United States does not actually have a lot of time to hang out online, and some criticize her even having a Twitter account. Well, here's the story, being tweeted specifically to her--or her social media consultant, rather. It would be great publicity for Melania Trump to investigate the story behind her famous rain jacket.

In theory Americans can't do much to help laborers in Turkey collect money owed to them by a company in Spain. In practice, being as famous, as rich, and as pretty as Melania can fairly be considered a super-power; Melania Trump just might be able to resolve this situation.

________________

Amazon book link? Why not? For those whose minds didn't replay the distinctive sound of "The Rrrest of the Story," a selection of the fun facts Paul Harvey Aurandt used to narrate on radio under that title:

Morgan Griffith on Dreamers' Babies

This web site shares the ambivalence here expressed by U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith (R-VA-9):

"
Fixing America’s Immigration System
It seems likely that legislation regarding immigration and the southern border will move in the House soon.
Like many of you, I want to secure our borders AND am sympathetic to the plight of the so-called DACA children. These are children of illegal immigrants whose parents brought them here at a tender age and, as a result, have little or no knowledge of their home countries. We must find a way to treat these children fairly, but any effort that fixes the DACA situation must also include significant and substantial upgrades in border security, particularly along the southern border where we have so many problems. When people and goods can cross the border with impunity, national security is threatened and the rule of law is undermined.
DACA and border security are priorities for fixing in any immigration legislation that may soon move, but the broader immigration system also needs significant and substantial reform.
Immigrants have often strengthened our country, whether they come from Asia, Africa, Europe, South America, or Central America. But the present system doesn’t serve our national interest. Parts of it, such as the visa lottery that strews visas among countries underrepresented in other avenues of legal immigration, seem downright absurd.
The whole immigration system needs a reorientation toward bringing in the skills that will create jobs, power the economy, and improve life for all, whether other immigrants or the native-born.
The recent British royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle reminded me of how immigration can have a positive impact on a country. Of course, Meghan Markle is an American now married into the British royal family. Before the night of her wedding, she stayed at Cliveden House, once the residence of Nancy Astor, who was born in Danville, Virginia, but went down in history as the first female Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom.*
It’s not news that someone can be born in one country and thrive in another. It’s the task of an immigration system to bring in those who are most likely to thrive.
Coming legislation on immigration should look after DACA beneficiaries, but it should also look after our national needs. This opportunity is too critical to our future to get wrong.
If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office. You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov. Also on my website is the latest material from my office, including information on votes recently taken on the floor of the House of Representatives.
*By the way, Lady Astor was also a famous sparring partner of Winston Churchill. A story goes that she once told him, “Winston, if I was married to you, I’d put poison in your coffee.” To which he replied, “Nancy, if I was married to you, I’d drink it.”
"

Morgan Griffith on the Paris Climate Agreement

Official editorial comment from this web site: D'accord.

I like solar power, wind power, small efficient hydro-power devices that don't dam or damage watercourses, and Virginia can and should be selling those too. I'm actively working on garbage power and trying to get my home off the grid. Meanwhile, I think it's pretty silly for people sitting in different countries to tell us to shut down power plants or (in practice) criminalize individuals' burning wood, coal, or garbage when the power grid shuts itself down in response to extreme weather...while they continue buying and burning our coal.

We all need to get seriously Green...and "cap and trade" is so not the way that's done.

From U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith (R-VA-9):

"
Paris Agreement Revisited
I opposed American adoption of the Paris climate agreement from the moment it was introduced. The United States already led the way in energy innovation, using all the resources we possess to produce cleaner, cheaper energy. The Paris agreement imposed steep, unrealistic cuts to American emissions while letting big polluters like China continue to pump out greenhouse gases. Submitting to the agreement sacrificed our ability to act in the United States’ best interests with nothing to be gained in return.
So I applauded President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the agreement last June. Two recent newspaper stories provide more evidence of the pact’s flaws and that withdrawal was best for our country.
The Washington Post lamented the failure of many countries to meet the goals of the agreement (saw that one coming – the agreement was unrealistic from the beginning).
In the case of Germany, greenhouse gas emissions rose in 2015 and 2016, even as it pledged to cut them by 40 percent below their 1990 levels before 2020. The European Union as a whole, according to their own environmental agency, looks unlikely to hit their target of a 40 percent cut below 1990 levels by 2030 (again, this was foreseeable).
On the one hand, these countries cannot achieve goals that were not realistic in the first place. On the other hand, the accord only requires China to start reducing its emissions by 2030, letting it increase them until then.
The terms of the Paris accord were more likely to suppress U.S. economic growth than limit world greenhouse gas emissions.
Is there a double standard in how some countries panned our exit from Paris while falling short in their own commitments to it? If there is, I won’t complain, because as a Washington Times story on February 21 noted:

“As France, Germany and Italy chastised President Trump for rejecting the Paris climate accord in June and mocked the U.S. for turning its back on the environment, their nations were busy importing record amounts of American coal.”

The numbers provided in the report are striking. In 2017 the United States exported 13 million more short tons of coal to Europe through September than it had in the year 2016.
Looking at individual countries over that time through September 2017 as compared to the previous year, France doubled its imports of American coal and Germany and Italy each increased their imports by nearly a million short tons.
These countries aren’t the only ones importing more of our coal. Asia has also proven to be a growing customer, and our total exports were up by 95 million short tons last year as compared to the previous year.
Paris or no Paris, I’m glad these countries have decided to buy more coal mined in the United States. I hope they recognize that our country has plenty to contribute without participating in the agreement. The “energy renaissance,” as Energy Secretary Rick Perry called it in a Subcommittee on Energy hearing last fall, can mean reliable power to benefit not just our own country but others as well.
Further, buying energy from us likely means buying less energy from unfriendly powers such as Russia. Strong American energy exports diminish the influence of antagonists to our own country and to the West.
Free from international bureaucrats and arbitrary regulations, the United States can power the world. Free to develop resources as we best see fit, Americans can strive for energy that is cheaper, more reliable, and yes, greener.
Greener, because the world is not going to stop using coal, whether it be American, Australian, or Indian coal. Hopefully, we can reach a bipartisan agreement to find ways to burn coal more cleanly instead of trying to destroy the American coal industry.

If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office. You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov.
"

Tim Kaine Forgets Vietnam

Maybe because the Vietnam war was actually a quagmire into which Democrats led us, some Democrats seem to forget that the point of constitutional law mentioned here has been sliced, diced, and trampled into the ground for about as long as Tim Kaine and I have been--conscious, anyway, or arguably even alive. Anyway, from U. S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA):

"

I’m highly concerned that the Trump Administration is not seeking the Congressional approval the Constitution requires before taking military action — especially given the recent news that an increasing number of U.S. troops will remain in Syria for missions beyond countering ISIS without a new war authorization from Congress.

Under the Constitution, the President cannot declare war without Congress, but the Trump Administration operates as if Congress doesn’t need to be involved at all. Our founding fathers tried to prevent exactly this: a President acting like a king by unilaterally starting war.

As the U.S. mission in Syria continues to expand, the Trump Administration still has not released its memo justifying last April’s airstrikes to the American public or Congress. That lack of transparency is unacceptable, and I’m concerned this same legal justification could be used as a precedent for further executive unilateral military action, even an extremely risky ‘bloody nose’ strike against North Korea.

I’m calling on the Trump Administration to immediately release all legal justification for its broad view of executive war powers — including the Syria memo — and get Congress’ approval before continuing to put American troops in Syria and Iraq in harms way.

Sincerely,

"

Tortie Tuesday: Samantha and the Russians

Status update: It's been a very cold winter. You know it's been a very cold winter when the weather is back to what people in your area normally call cold--which in Virginia means overnight lows slightly below freezing, afternoon highs slightly above freezing, overall average within a few degrees of the freezing point of water--and you hear people saying with sincere relief, "It's warmer today."

As I left the house this morning the ground was still icy, but air temperatures were above freezing, and as I anticipated catching a ride in an overheated car to a cafe kept warm by the baking of all those yummy wheat-based pastries I'll never taste, I strolled out over the frozen ground in a T-shirt dress--beneath my blanket shawl--and canvas shoes. It's warmer today. The wind was still chilly but it didn't bite into me anything like the way the wind was biting just last week, when I was wearing boots and that snowproof over-dress between winter-weight clothes and the blanket shawl. Zero degrees Celsius feels warm by comparison with zero degrees Fahrenheit.

Two unrelated status-update-type things need to be posted today: official pictures of Samantha-kitten, who thinks she's Queen Cat while Heather is m.i.a., and an official comment for our Russian e-friends.

Last week I posted Samantha-kitten's first "interview," but didn't have photos of her to add. This week I have Samantha's first photo...

Not her most flattering angle, as she glared warily at the cell-phone camera, but progress is being made--she didn't try to bite the camera. (Also, during the weekend, Samantha let me touch her paws without nipping or scratching.) She's still extremely suspicious of anything going on in the air above her head. This may be related to the early conditioning that's made her a jumper and climber. She'll try to grab anything she suspects of being food out of my hands...by the Patchnose family standards Samantha has no manners at all.

Anyway the picture does show the distinctive patches of black, white, and shades-of-orange on her face. She may actually be some sort of cousin to Heather. She shares Heather's father's body shape, extra-long tail (both Pitt and Samantha have to hold their tails up or curled while walking), mostly dark color, and tough, wary personality. She has dainty little paws unlike Pitt's huge polydactyl paws, or even Pitt's brother Damian's normal-shaped but extra-large paws--but she could be Pitt's granddaughter or great-granddaughter through feral cats that have ranged around town. 

(Pitt, as in "black as the...," stayed feral whereas Damian tamed easily. They were brothers abandoned in the same time and place. Both were always polite to me, and Damian was adopted and neutered and became a little girl's house pet, but Pitt looked mean and could be mean. I don't know whether Pitt's still alive somewhere; I've not seen him lately.)

In her second photo Samantha had been taking a cat-nap, or kitten-nap, and woke up just in time to blink at the camera. Yes, she does have adorable, cuddly-pet moments as well as growly, touch-me-and-I'll-bite ones...

Now about the Russians...Recently my Twitter page has been acting strange, and I received an e-mail alert from Twitter that my account was being investigated because apparently I'd followed or been followed by Russians on Twitter.

Problem? None was mentioned, but of course I've seen all those non-news stories about U.S. voters having been unethically, immorally influenced by evil, lying, cheating Russians who may have posed as U.S. citizens online in order to influence our vote, aaaggghhh...

Official statement: I, the writer known as Priscilla King, voted for Ben Carson based on his books and reputation. (I don't know him personally, but admire him enough, and distrusted Trump and Clinton enough, to feel that in 2016 wasting my presidential vote was worth it. GBP had the pleasure of voting for a presidential candidate she really liked in 1980 and 1984; I've had to pick the candidate I most wanted to vote against in every presidential election of my lifetime, and did not want to lose my first opportunity to vote for one I really liked.) Adayahi supported Trump early in the campaign because he approves of Trump's successful-self-made-businessman image. Grandma Bonnie Peters voted against Clinton because she disapproves of the whole Clinton clan. I don't even know how other members of this web site voted but I doubt very much that Internet connections had anything to do with it, since they spend so little time plugged in to the Internet.

Here's the problem I see, though. I have no problem with people of any nationality as human beings. The Internet is global; I see that as a potentially good way people can speak our truth, break down stereotypes, disprove propaganda, etc. etc. It's also a potential way people can cheat and exploit one another but I think the best way to prevent that is for everyone to keep real personal information out of the Internet. I like that Live Journal is Russian-based and Blogspot is automatically published in international "editions" with URL's that end in .nz and .ru and .fr and so on. I follow several people who blog in English from other countries and would enjoy being able to follow more of them.

Whether Twitter has a problem with certain specific countries having access to Twitter, I don't know; that would be Twitter's problem not mine. My current policy on following people on Twitter is: news sources, elected officials, writers I read, and e-friends I e-know fairly well, only. For about a year I would follow people who were following me, but this led to a messy Twitter feed and I had to unfollow a few accounts to be able to find the news items in among all the irrelevancies.

The computer has consistently reported this blog having lots of Russian readers, and also Ukrainian and occasionally significant numbers of Finnish, Swedish, and Norwegian readers. What they're getting out of this web site I wish I knew; I wish they'd use the automatic translation feature and comment.

How factual are these stories? Who knows? It's comedy, but he really did visit all those places...

What comes to mind is one of P.J. O'Rourke's stories, in (IIRC) Republican Party Reptile, where he talked and drank with a few Russians he met around the end of the Cold War. They translated a toast for him as "To Mother Russia: who comes with a sword, dies by the sword," and he drank to that. Then he taught them the one that goes (more or less) "To the United States: who meddles with the eagle must learn how to fly," and they drank to that. Everybody was sort of wary and defensive, like Samantha-kitten--but everybody wanted to practice peace and even something in the way of friendship, and they managed. I'll drink (coffee) to that.

When I read foreign election news--even election news from different States, usually--I remember that it's not my election. Usually I'm glad. Elections to the U.S. Congress do have some interest for residents of different States, since up-and-coming Congressmen from other States are potential presidential candidates or cabinet members. (In Alabama's special Senate election earlier this winter, the age of the candidates involved ruled out that consideration. In the cases of relatively young Members of Congress like Rand Paul and Mia Love, otoh...) Elections in other countries...bleep would I know who's the best representative for those people or why? When you really think about issues rather than just supporting a party, it can be hard enough to work out what's best for your own community.

I feel that way about foreign readers' opinions about U.S. elections too. Foreign readers' insights into issues may be useful. Foreign readers don't have a vote for an actual candidate, though, for a valid reason.

Even in Virginia my e-mail sometimes reflects passionate divisions of opinions between people who identify with the same political party, in different sides of the State--and these are apparently valid, plausible disagreements about the effects a specific bill might have on different communities. Currently I'm seeing intense debate about whether one specific bill, which my Delegate happens to be backing, is more likely to empower people who can hardly pay their winter electric bills to start harvesting and selling electricity to our local utility company, or empower a different local utility company to encroach on other people's property in a different part of the State. This is not a dispute between good and evil people, or even good and evil corporations--corporations are amoral, driven by greed and checked only by how immoral their customers are willing to allow them to be. It is, so far as I can tell, a dispute about how to word a basically good bill so that that bill can become a law that's equally as good for flatlanders as it is for mountain people.

(I'll say this to correspondents from further east. I have privately e-mailed Delegate Kilgore about this. What I said was basically that I'm praying for him "harder" than I've ever prayed for him before. I believe he and the bill have good intentions; I'm praying that those good intentions can be secured in laws that won't admit abuses of our district as well as yours.)

Sometimes truth has to be hammered out like a piece of hot iron, even when people consider what's best for one town, so if people have opinions about what's best for a whole country--and that country is not even their own--they need to be prudent about how they communicate those opinions. Blatant cheating, pretending to be a member of a community you've never even visited, never serves the Highest Good of All.

Yes, there are people who encourage that. I used to get e-mail from some fiscal conservatives in California who wanted more comments on issues discussed on a California news site. No problem, until the news site started trying to filter out the out-of-area comments by asking commenters to enter their zipcodes. "Use my zipcode," a correspondent invited. No, thanks. Some things need to be remembered regardless of where people live, but I do not, in fact, live in your community. And though I've written lots of reviews based on research about what customers say about products I've never used, I don't want to post any outright lies in reviews that claim that I, Priscilla King, have used those products.

Some foreign writers can and do write well enough in English to pass tests designed to guarantee clients that writers they hire have "native fluency." I don't want to encourage these people to pretend they're U.S. citizens in order to qualify for the odd five-dollar hack writing job, but I do feel empathy for the ones who try it...and respect for the ones who succeed. On Twitter, where flawless English spelling and grammar are not required...I may feel a bit judgmental about the people who've paid foreigners pennies a day to follow, like, and retweet their products (or political campaigns), but it's hard to feel anything but sympathy for the writers. Some of them worked jolly hard to learn a fairly difficult language and construct screen identities that suggest that they're natives of places they've never visited.

I'd like to encourage them to out themselves. Be honest. Use sites where you're free and positively encouraged to post from where you are, as who you are. If your real name is Olga, your real residence is Moscow, and you like or dislike a U.S. politician because you believe the stated policy X will affect you in the way Y, this U.S. reader is interested in knowing that. Use a cartoon picture and a screen name like Natalya, in order to protect the privacy of the real Olga, but tell us you're from Moscow. That's interesting...and it helps break down stereotypes that work, in the long run, against the interests of people from your country doing legitimate business here in the United States.

If I followed any Russians on Twitter, I have no idea who they are--probably people I didn't follow very long because their irrelevant conversations were clogging the feed, but at least their Twitter page fooled me on the day I visited it, so I salute them. Your English, your ability to post clever one-line jokes and cute pictures, made the grade! Cheers to you! Now please use those talents for good purposes. If you have a legal right to use Twitter from Russia--I don't know, these things change--set up Twitter accounts that admit you're in Russia. If not, use Google + or Live Journal instead. Do what you want to do; be what you are.

The more all of us can stop growling and nipping, start purring and cuddling, the better off we'll be.

(This is Samantha's very first picture...you can't really see Samantha, so it doesn't count, but maybe somebody out there will enjoy the butterfly.)

Morgan Griffith Told Us So

Shared by U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith (R-VA-9):

"
Tuesday, November 14, 2017 –
According to the Washington Times:

Two years after nearly every nation on earth signed the landmark Paris climate accord, researchers say the deal is failing to live up to its mission as China drives a spike in global carbon emissions, reversing years of steady decline.

The sobering news comes as world leaders gather in Germany for a high-level climate summit designed to marshal support for the Paris agreement and to encourage countries to make even more ambitious commitments to cut their own pollution.

Other nations have been critical of President Trump for announcing over the summer that the U.S. would pull out of the deal, but data released Monday show that American emissions are still dropping while those of China and other countries are back on the rise.

To read the rest of the article, click here.
"

Tim Kaine on the Attack in Niger

From U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA):

"

We continue to think about the families and loved ones of our fallen servicemembers in Niger this month. The many questions surrounding their deaths show the urgent need to have a public discussion about the current extent of military operations around the world.

As the United States’ war on terrorism continues to expand, it’s critical for Congress to reassert itself in the debate. Since taking my oath of office, I’ve called on my colleagues to vote on a new authorization for use of military force (AUMF) so Congress can provide a transparent public discussion on matters of war. A new AUMF would send a powerful message of resolve to our enemies, our allies in the fight against terrorism, but most importantly it would show our troops – many who call Virginia home – that we stand behind them in their mission.

It’s well past time for Congress to fulfill our constitutional responsibility. I look forward to discussing this issue next week when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee holds another hearing on my bipartisan AUMF with Senator Jeff Flake.

"

Morgan Griffith Faces Challenges

From U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith (R-VA-9); this web site has no foreign policy; members of Congress are required to legislate on foreign policy. Pray for your Congressmen, Gentle Readers...

"
Healthcare and Foreign Affairs
Healthcare Update
Due to its arcane rules, the Senate faces a September 30 deadline for voting on a plan to replace Obamacare that requires a simple majority, not a 60-vote supermajority, for its passage. Current efforts center on the plan put forward chiefly by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA).
The House of Representatives passed a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare months ago, and it was frustrating to see the summer slip by with no movement on this issue by the Senate. If it manages to act by the end of the month, the House will have no options beside yes or no on the Graham-Cassidy plan. This makes it impossible for us to follow normal process and have a conference committee on the differences between the two houses. This is not a good way to legislate.
Challenges Around the Globe
The 72^nd Session of the United Nations General Assembly convened in New York in September. Among the world leaders who addressed the meeting was President Trump, who gave an important speech outlining how his “America First” policies would guide U.S. relations with other nations.
While much attention was paid to the leaders who participated in the General Assembly, some who weren’t there were instead engaged in activities of deep importance to the United States and its allies.
Russian President Vladimir Putin did not attend the General Assembly. Instead, he attended a large-scale military exercise in the western part of his country and in Belarus. The exercise likely involved more troops than Russia publicly claimed, and they practiced with state-of-the-art equipment.
The exercises rightly unnerved Russia’s neighbors along its western border, including Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, which have long been targets of Russian power and suffered under decades of Soviet domination.
Chinese President Xi Jinping also was not present at the United Nations, as his country’s Communist Party Congress nears. Under his tenure, China has widened its reach around the globe, both economically and militarily.
In the South China Sea, through which an estimated one-third of global shipping travels, China’s expansive territorial claims put it at odds with several other countries, including the United States. With attention focused on other hot spots, China has asserted itself more in this region. Previously, it had built islands on reefs in dispute for military airbases. This year, China has bullied other countries to stop them from engaging in commercial activities such as drilling, in particular Vietnam. This past summer, it reportedly threatened to attack Vietnamese military bases if that country didn’t stop a gas-drilling project. Vietnam complied and ordered the project to stop.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un didn’t appear at the U.N., in keeping with his regime’s rogue character. Despite its isolation, his country poses a growing danger to the United States and allies in the Pacific. North Korea continues testing nuclear devices and missile systems that could deliver nuclear payloads. A nuclear-armed North Korea destabilizes the Korean Peninsula and alters the balance of power in Asia. It could strike the United States and allies such as South Korea and Japan or sell its weaponry to other rogue regimes or terrorist groups.
To increase pressure on North Korea, President Trump issued an executive order on September 21 imposing new sanctions on the country’s trade and financial sectors. By undercutting North Korea’s economy, it may have difficulty funding its nuclear program and have to come to the bargaining table, but China will have to truly participate in the sanctions for this to happen.
The activities described above each challenge the security and prosperity of the United States, although in different ways. North Korea is an avowed enemy of the United States, and the recent developments in its nuclear program are the latest in a series of provocations. The Trump Administration recognizes the gravity of this threat. Other countries need to as well. Trying to “be sweet” and placate the North Koreans hasn’t had a positive effect, so President Trump is right to take a tougher stance.
As for Russia, its military drill along the western border offers an uncomfortable reminder of its Soviet and imperial past. It should be discouraged from acting on any dreams to restore its empire. China, in contrast, is a rising power, but its rise should not be aided by bullying tactics in an area that has great importance to our economy and the economy of the rest of the world.
U.S. diplomats have a lot of work to do, but a lot is at stake.
If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office. You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov.
"

Book Review: The Black Sea

A Fair Trade Book

Title: The Black Sea

(Note that what I have is not the advance reading copy, and has a different jacket.)

Author: Richard Setlowe

Author's web site: http://richardsetlowe.com/

Date: 1991

Publisher: Ticknor & Fields

ISBN: 0-395-56927-3

Length: 413 pages

Quote: “‘The Society felt a Russian ship would add another dimension to the cruise,’ Maggi answered. ‘But this is a voyage to the exotic isles of the Java Sea,’ Liz proclaimed.”

The year was 1991 and the times they were a-changin’. The Cold War was over. Americans were free to like Russians (no longer “Soviets”) if we could. (“The French always insisted that the Russians and the Americans were by nature so much alike that they would be great friends if they had not been enemies,” Setlowe observes on page 134.) Many  southern Asian countries were opening the doors to trade and tourism from both countries…and radical “Islamism,” jihadism, was building up to become a threat in Asia. And Richard Setlowe, Navy veteran, reporter, and novelist, who had travelled in Asia extensively, was asked to write about what he’d observed and where he thought it might be leading.

Setlowe’s way of talking about what he knew and believed about our relationships with the Asian countries was this novel, in which a mixed group of Russians and Americans bond when they’re taken hostage by a gang of Malay pirates. The heroic spirits of Captain Stewart, the veteran, and Maggi, the interpreter, and Tengku, the pirate chief, are strained to their limits as the three form a romantic triangle that will, of course, be resolved by at least one of the three killing at least one of the others; I’ll leave those who are interested to find out who kills whom.

If you like adventure stories with a good deal of violence—tortures, rapes, and beheadings narrated in the most matter-of-fact way—in among descriptions of beautiful tropical sunsets, debates about when to call similar dishes “shashlik, shish kabob, or satay,” and reflections on the Koran and the Tao Te Ching, then you’ll like The Black Sea. It’s not a favorite of mine but it’s well written, for its genre, and by now we’ve seen that some of Setlowe’s insights were true.

The usual Fair Trade Book policy applies: Send $5 per book + $5 per package + $1 per online payment to the appropriate address from the very bottom of your screen, out of which we'll send $1 per book to Setlowe or a charity of his choice. 

Petition That Needs to Be Discarded

Not that I really expect the presidents, premiers, and prime ministers of Europe to read this blog, but if anybody Out There can forward this particular post to any of them, I think it's one they need to read:

Sir or Madame,

Your office may be receiving several "signatures" on a petition found at this web address:

https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/horse_blood_rb3/?aQLXlfb

Mine may appear on the list of signatures. Well, that's a false electronic signature. I attempted to click to see the petition, not to sign it. I've never seen the actual text of the petition, but I believe that, if I'd seen it, I would not have signed it.

This is not, of course, because the situation described in the e-mail that linked me to the petition is acceptable. It's because the petition described in the e-mail is unacceptable--vague, subjective, and overreaching. A petition to ban the abuse of pregnant mares, as described specifically in the e-mail, I would have signed on the basis of reasonable evidence that that abuse is taking place. A petition to ban whatever some (unidentified) person may have defined in some other (unspecified) document as "causing suffering to animals," which could theoretically include flyswatters, I would not sign, nor would I ever encourage anyone to sign such a petition.

Nor do I encourage anyone to take that kind of petition seriously. I urge you to discard this petition and ask the misguided people at Avaaz.org to start all over, with specific petitions that document and oppose specific abuses, rather than using blurry, emotional terms to cover who knows what kinds of unpopular additions to a single popular petition.

Here is the e-mail--note that the only working links to the petition are to "sign," not to "read" or "copy"!

"
This is on fire -- in days over a million have joined! Add your name and share with everyone to make this even bigger before it’s delivered to ministers:

It’s a horror movie - hundreds of pregnant horses are hooked up to machines that drain their blood, even until death! All so big drug companies can sell their hormones to industrial pig farmers!! EU ministers meet in days and could ban this disgusting trade. Let’s jolt them into action with a massive call - sign the petition below *with one click*, and tell everyone! SIGN HERE Dear friends, It’s straight out of a horror movie: hundreds of pregnant horses hooked up to blood-draining machines, some so weak they collapse and die. But we can stop this right now. The industrial horse torture is driven by European pharmaceutical companies who use the blood to speed up factory farming! The EU has said it’s considering action, but so far nothing has happened. No more horses need to die! Ministers are meeting in days -- let’s light a fire under the EU with a massive petition demanding they ban the abusive pregnant horse blood trade. Add your name to the petition below *with one click* and tell everyone: Click to sign the petition To the EU Parliament, Commission, and Council: We call on you to ban the import to Europe of any goods produced using techniques which are cruel and cause suffering to animals. As a world leader in animal welfare, Europe should apply its own standards to products it imports. Click to sign the petition Death is far from the only horror: so much blood is taken that it can lead to shock and anaemia. And because only the blood of pregnant horses is valuable, they’re often forced into repeat pregnancies and abortions. Demand is driven by pharmaceutical companies who sell the hormone found in pregnant horse blood to factory farmers to get pigs and other animals in “heat” on demand -- another layer of abuse in this sorry story. If we shine a light on this horror by raising a massive global outcry now, we can help get a ban of all products made from the suffering of animals -- making it difficult for companies all over the world to make big profits from this disturbing industry. Add your name to the petition above with one click on the link, then forward this to friends and family -- let's build pressure on the EU to act! Click to sign the petition Horses are full of beauty, grace and majesty -- it's hard to understand how people could be so cruel. But when we come together in massive numbers to protect animals from the horrors they face every day, we can do incredible things. Let's do it now for these horses who need us to be their voice more than ever. With hope, Oliver, Rewan, Bert, Ari, Camille, Nataliya, Ricken and the entire Avaaz team

"

Please forward it back to the Avaaz team with the notification that, since it's impossible to determine how many of those millions of signatures were honestly collected, and it's also impossible to determine what those people may or may not have intended to support, this petition is garbage.