zenpundit.com

IRANIAN HARDLINERS AGREE WITH ZENPUNDIT

Apparently their own lack of legitimacy is something that embarrasses even them and in a move straight out of an Ayn Rand novel they have taken to threatening the remaining reformist officials and candidates if they fail to participate in the upcoming rigged elections. ” Supreme Guide ” Ayatollah Khameini has called for ” enthusiastic ” electoral activity – with a preordained outcome of course.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

– Edward de Bono

TIBET AND ” THE MARKETING OF MISERY”

Nathan at The Argus has a thoughtful post about the irrational politics of sympathy for separatist movements for oppressed minorities, comparing in this case the plight of the Uighurs and the Tibetans. Both suffer under authoritarian rule from Beijing and a policy of forced Sinicization ( how many Han Chinese would willingly relocate to either Tibet or Xinjiang without a mixture of bribery and coercion from China’s central authorities ? ) yet the former cause languishes while the second is celebrated.

To use a Soviet analogy, Tibet is China’s equivalent of the Baltic states. Forcibly and illegally incorporated into China by Mao, Tibet is apt to leave the minute Beijing’s grip relaxes and it is safe to do so. Oppression has no more made the average Tibetan into thinking they were Chinese than Stalin’s terror transformed Lithuanians or Estonians into good Soviets. On a juridical basis, if not a moral one, the Tibetans have a stronger claim.

The Uighurs have a more inchoate history but one in which Chinese rule is also tenuous at best. The Soviet equivalent here is more akin to that of the Chechens, another Muslim group highly resistant to assimilation and whose claims to autonomy were often opposed by Moscow at a bloody price. Historically, Chinese rule over ” Kashgaria ” often amounted to periodic punitive expeditions marching into Turkestan, deposing local rulers who sometimes were not even Turkic themselves and appointing new tributaries ( again sometimes not even Turks) who often proved disloyal in the long run. When China lapsed into warlordism as it did during dynastic collapses, the Uighurs were effectively independent though usually under relatively transitory ” empires ” of some kind.

Nathan is correct. Both minority groups are suffering the same kind of oppression and morally speaking it would be hard to differentiate the two claims but ” marketing ” is crucial to success in the international arena and the Uighurs need that kind of help if they are to alleviate some of their suffering.

THE LATEST ON THE CRISIS IN IRAN

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SHOULD SUPREME COURT JUSTICES BE TAKING POINTERS ON THE DEATH PENALTY FROM JACQUES CHIRAC ?

Apparently Stephen Breyer thinks so. An outstanding article from The Public Interest on the growing tendency of the Federal judiciary to inject customary international law theory -i.e. the political agenda of transnational progressive NGOs, EU bureaucrats and au courant law profs – into cases dealing with principles of Constitutional law. It’s an excellent analysis of a worrisome trend gaining traction with liberal intellectuals. A quote from the article:

“Behind these seemingly benign references to international agreements and foreign practice stands a vast and ongoing intellectual project, one which the justices themselves occasionally acknowledge. Justice Breyer, the Court’s most intellectually au courant justice, boldly declared last spring on ABC’s “This Week” that “whether [and how] our Constitution … fits into the governing documents of other nations” is a “challenge for the next generations.” In a speech before the American Society of International Law, Justice Breyer issued a public call to lawyers and law professors to provide the Court with “relevant comparative material” that would otherwise prove difficult for its justices and clerks to find. In an earlier speech before the same audience, Justice Ginsburg announced that “comparative analysis emphatically is relevant to the task of interpreting constitutions and enforcing human rights,” and that “conclusions reached by other countries and by the international community should at times constitute persuasive authority.”

Naturally, as you might assume, the attractiveness of this gambit is not merely in the substantive policy results that might accrue – draconian gun control, abolition of the death penalty, international supervision of American elections to ensure the ” correct” result, expansion of the welfare state to European norms – but also in the process that could be established. Essentially, if this tactic of borrowing liberally from foreign and international courts becomes legitimized then anytime a judge felt unduly constrained by a federal statute, precedent or the language of the Constitution the judge could then substitute the reasoning of a proclamation from an undemocratic body on any vaguely cognate matter. It’s a remarkably elitist viewpoint and absolutely breathtaking in it’s contempt for the principles that undergird the American political system, particularly democratic accountability and the Supremacy clause of the Constitution.

There is a simple answer though it is one I doubt the GOP will dare to call for – the Congress can simply exercise it’s constitutional authority to set the jurisdiction of the Federal courts to referring to American case law, statutes and ratified treaties when making rulings. A severe and unprecedented sanction but a corrective that may be required if Americans are to retain any semblance of control over their government and their individual liberties.