Well, yesterday I got my car back after some very pricey repairs (including a timing belt – which was most of the cost.) Trinette worked the time out with her boss, drove here, took an Uber to the garage, and then drove home. Yes, Nameless, I said “Hi” for you, and she says “Hi” back. Now we just need to keep it running until I’m cleared to drive. Not that driving is exactly exercise, but I’d like to be a little stronger yet.
Robyn Pennecchia, writing for Wonkette, says this so well: “Today, I would like to take a moment to congratulate myself for not going on any violent murder sprees, for never adopting a Ukrainian orphan and then claiming she was an adult who was trying to kill me and my family so I could “re-age” her and send her to live on her own at the age of eight, for not participating in any dog fight rings, for never having voted Republican, and for never having consumed human flesh. At the same time, I would like to congratulate the state of Ohio for not sending a woman to prison over a miscarriage — which is a far lower bar of human decency than many of us would have ever thought possible. More specifically, we should be congratulating the grand jury that refused to charge Brittany Watts, 34, with “abuse of a corpse,” a charge which makes a lot more sense, re: cannibalism and necrophilia than, say, miscarrying a child who had no chance of survival to begin with.”
Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad that she’a been acquitted. But I’m still furious it happened in the first place. Jury nullification can be very helpful, but it’s not something which can be depended upon.
Yesterday, the radio opera was “Wozzeck,” by Alban Berg. Its plot is so bleak that it makes the operas in the verismo school look like RomComs. Wozzeck is in the army, and a Captain and an army doctor are conducting psychological experiments on him without informed consent (for small sums of money), and laughing at him behind his back. He gets no respect from any other men either, and his partner, Marie (with whom he has a son almost old enough to start talking), is flirting (and eventually cheating) with a drum major who offers Marie earrings that Wozzeck could never afford. By the end of the opera the Captain and doctor have him so messed up that he brutally kills Marie, and then himself, and the opera ends with their son rocking back and forth on a rocking horse while the other children taunt him for being an orphan. No, it isn’t pretty – but if art were restricted to pretty, no one would ever learn anything from it. (In fact, it’s quite a stroke of Karma that this is being aired now, at a time when multiple strikes are going on. It definitely calls attention to the strikers’ plights.) The music is also not pretty – Berg, with Schönberg and Webern, comprised the second Viennese school, which developed and worked in the twelve-tone method of composition (in which there’s no such thing as a key – no major, no minor, no nothing – just notes and chords made up artificially. There is a system to it, nd it’s actually not hard to learn how to compose in it,but for the listener, it’s not that easy to make sense of it.). But it certainly makes a statement, and though the Captain and he doctor aren’t entrepreneurs, I’d still say that statement could well be about capitalism as well as the obvious class structure. The performance was recorded live at the Royal Opera House in London by the Royal Opera Company. I didn’t recognize any of the performers’ names, but I’ve gone through periods before when there were a lot of names around I didn’t recognize and few that I did. I think it means there’s a generation of singers heading for retirement and another just coming up and not yet widely known. Between that and the openness to new operas and the Met audience getting younger (average age ten years ago was in the sixties but is now in the fifties), I think the future of opera will turn out to be exciting. Also, today is Virgil’s birthday. He is 80. I’ll celebrate wih him next week which is between his birthday and mine.
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Short Takes –
Wonkette – Feds ‘Assess’ Alleged Texas Orders To Push Children, Nursing Babies Back Into Rio Grande. Assess Faster, Guys.
Quote – Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) said in a press call with other Texas Democrats that Gov. Greg Abbott “placed death traps in the Rio Grande and has now issued barbaric orders to state troopers that endanger people’s lives.” The Dallas Morning News notes that podcaster and occasional Republican Senator Ted Cruz has not returned calls for comment, while fellow Republican Sen. John Cornyn explained last week, before the allegations surfaced, that Abbott had no choice but to treat the border like a war zone because Joe Biden Open Borders Irresponsible. The story broke after a Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) trooper who was working as a medic reported his concerns to supervisors about a number of things he witnessed, including a June 25 incident in which he and other troopers came across a group of 120 migrants, including children and women with nursing babies. Click through for story (and it looks like the popup with “Continue reading” is in place.) Speaking of bleak – I don’t know which scares me most – that a governor would issue these orders, that the state troopers have leadership that would enforce them, or that the state troopers have minions who would follow and obey them. Naziism much?
The 19th – In some states, gender dysphoria is a protected disability — and momentum could be growing
Quote – The Supreme Court’s denial to take up Williams’ case could mean that it agrees with the 4th Circuit, or simply that it is not interested in taking up the issue of whether trans people are covered under disability law right now, according to legal experts. Notably, there has not been a split in opinion on this issue among two or more circuit courts, which is a typical incentive for the Supreme Court to get involved. In the last few years, the high court has declined to take up challenges to several cases that reinforced protections for transgender people facing discrimination. This trend followed the 2020 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, in which the Supreme Court found gender identity to be a protected class of sex. This is possibly because they are abiding by Bostock’s findings that trans people are protected by existing federal laws, said Ezra Ishmael Young, a civil rights lawyer and scholar. Click through for details. There is always a gap between legislated law and case law, though it’s not always this obvious – nor does it always affect people so deeply as it does here. And this is why the Supreme Court’s makeup is so critical to a free society.
Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”
There are many terms used in national and world affairs which we all “know” what they mean, but aren’t always aware that ther need to have actual legal or quasi-legal definitions in order for nations, or groups of nations, to take any action on them. One such term is “treason.” We all know what it means – at least we all know what we mean by it – but in the United States, the fact is that the Founders chose to define it in the Constitution very narrowly. That’s not surprising as a matter of history, They were fearful that it might be over-used and lead to despotism.
Another of these terms is “genocide.” We all know what it means. But how many of us realized there are very strict elements of it (or, as this author puts it, “warning signs”) which can provide citizens of a nation, or neighbor nations, to see and raise red flags in order to try to put a stop to it. Here’s a look at Russia in Ukraine through the lens of those warning signs.
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Is Russia committing genocide in Ukraine? A human rights expert looks at the warning signs
There’s a real threat that Russia will commit genocide in Ukraine. As evidence of war crimes emerges, there is reason to believe it may already be taking place.
“Russia’s forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement on March 23, 2022. Blinken cited as evidence for his allegation Russia’s destruction of “apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, critical infrastructure” and a maternity hospital in the besieged city of Mariupol that was marked with the Russian word for children.
Russia has killed at least 1,189 civilians and wounded 1,901 additional Ukrainians since it began its attack on Ukraine in February 2022, according to the United Nations. This actual death toll is likely much higher.
Such attacks on civilians during conflict are considered war crimes under international law.
But war crimes also often take place in tandem with other atrocity crimes – a legal term that also encompasses ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity and genocide.
Some observers warn that this violence has the potential to become genocidal, particularly given Russian propaganda and physical destruction of Mariupol and other cities.
Ukrainian officials claim genocide has already begun. “The aerial bombing of a children’s hospital,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on March 9, 2022, “is the ultimate evidence that genocide of Ukrainians is happening.”
Given the scale of Russian violence in Ukraine, however, genocide warnings need to be taken seriously.
The field of genocide studies, in which I have long worked, has developed frameworks for assessing the threat of genocide in such volatile situations. These tools, including one used by the U.N., indicate Ukraine is indeed at considerable risk for genocide.
Genocide refers to “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
These acts involve not just killing people, but seeking to destroy the target group by causing “serious bodily or mental harm,” creating harsh “conditions of life,” preventing births and “forcibly transferring” children to another group.
One predictor for genocide is a history of mass human rights violations and atrocity crimes, including genocide.
Russia has a long history of mass violence against Ukrainians and other groups.
Perhaps most infamously, the Soviet Union enacted land policies that prompted a food shortage and a famine, killing millions of Ukrainians from 1932 to 1933. This is known as the Holodomor, a Ukrainian word meaning meaning “death by hunger.”
Other Soviet atrocities include forced deportation of national and ethnic groups and massive political purges.
After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Russia committed mass violence against civilians in Chechnya, Georgia and Syria. It bombarded and obliterated cities like Grozny in 1995 and Aleppo in 2016.
Genocide and atrocity crimes are also strongly correlated with political upheaval, especially war. Such upheaval destabilizes a society and makes it less secure – especially for vulnerable groups of people who may be blamed for the political or economic instability.
Genocide has taken place during global conflicts, as illustrated by the Armenian genocide during World War I, and the Holocaust during World War II.
Such countries as China and Cambodia have also undertaken social engineering projects resulting in genocide.
Russia has experienced a number of political upheavals, including a current economic crisis. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the sort of armed conflict often associated with atrocity crimes.
Ideology and demonization
Genocide is justified by propaganda and language that devalues and demonizes target populations. Historical examples abound, ranging from European colonial caricatures of Indigenous “brutes” and “savages” to Nazi representations of Jews as rats.
Russia is using this type of demonizing language to justify its invasion of Ukraine. First, Russia depicts its violence as necessary to “denazify” Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin, for example, has referred to the Ukrainian leadership as a far-right “gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis.”
And second, Putin has suggested that Ukrainian identity is not real and that, historically, “Russians and Ukrainians are one people – one nation, in fact.”
Propaganda, like this 1940 antisemitic advertisement demonizing a group of people, is one warning sign of genocide. Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images
Understanding the risk
Proving genocidal intent is difficult, especially in a court of law. This is evident in current debates – including an ongoing court case at the International Court of Justice – about whether Myanmar committed genocide against the Rohingya people, a Muslim minority group.
But it can be inferred by patterns of violence consistent with the legal definition of genocide.
Russia has targeted and killed civilians and reportedly forcibly deported hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, including children, to Russia. It has bombed a maternity hospital.
Russia seeks to seize and Russify Donbas and other parts of eastern Ukraine, where, if Putin is taken at his word, an “imaginary” Ukrainian identity will be erased.
There is a significant risk that Russia will commit genocide in Ukraine. It is possible that a genocide has already begun.
============================================================== Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, it’s both interesting and useful that “genocide” can be classified as one of several “atrocity” crimes, any and all of which can be strictly defined. Think of that the next time you want to describe some action or some person as “atrocious.” Sadly, many crimes committed just in the US can fairly be describes as atrocities – particularly when bigotry is involved. You ladies have just about seen everything over the centuries. Help us to recognize what we see.
