The Allied Reparation Commission found Germany in willful default on its coal delivery requires pursuant to the Versailles Treaty, thus setting the stage for the French occupation. On the same day, France and Belgium's commissioners voted to occupy the Ruhr. The United Kingdom opposed the measure. The U.S. had already bowed out.
The Ruhr is an industrial region of Germany and was traditionally a coal mining region, drawing quite a few ethnic Poles at one time due to their experience in coal mining. Locally, quite a few of those from the region refer to it as "Pott", which is a derivate of "Pütt", a derivative of "pit", or mine. By 1925, the Ruhrgebiet had around 3,800,000 inhabitants including Eastern Europe immigrants, but also including immigrants from France, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. Today the region is part of North Rhine-Westphalia, a British creation during the post World War Two British occupation, which merged the Rhineland with Westphalia. Oddly, it's been preserved since that time, although at least some distantly descended Westphalians might wonder why.
A U.S. Federal board charged with studying vocational education found that 1,700,000 children dropped out of school prior to the 8th grade, and thereby impairing their occupational opportunities.
The Gorakhpus Sessions Court in Indian returned verdicts on a February 5, 1922, burning of a police station that resulted in 22 police deaths. Forty-seven people were acquitted, 107 were found guilty of various charges, with nineteen being sentenced to death and fourteen to life imprisonment.
Just observing things, It's really struck me over time how certain social programs, of the left and the right, basically amount to nothing other than serving the needs of businesses, particularly large business entities, no matter how they are styled. This is so much the case that certain huge proponents of some programs who would regard themselves as real fire breathing leftists are actually heavy-duty capitalists, and don't know it.
This shows in their justification for the programs.
Let's, once again, make reference to our evolved place in a state of nature, and where we are actually at.
In a state of nature we'd not do what most of us do daily, which is to leave our abode and clock in time somewhere else, to come back to our home. In our natural state, while we would leave our families, the family would be the focus all the time. In our industrial societies, our work is. Most people spend most of their lives with people they are brought in contact with solely because they serve an economic interest, and nothing else.
Men got there first, long before women. But starting in the early part of the 20th Century, if not slightly before, that changed for women and now women are basically expected to work away from their homes and families.
Everyone is.
When looked at this way, we see why left wing emphasis on child care, and paradoxically abortion, are part and parcel of serving industry. If women can be prevented from having children, they can, ie., they'll have to, go to work. That's what they should be doing, working. If they must have children for some weird biological and psychological reason, well then government sponsored child warehousing, i.e., daycare, will force them back into work in another fashion.
Either way, they'll be freed, i.e., forced, to serve work.
Almost all the post 1945 liberalization of domestic law and structure works this way. Easy no-fault divorce makes it easy to dump families, sending everyone unhindered and untethered into work. Where that results in women falling below the poverty line due to their children, as they foolishly chose to have children, government funded daycare will address it. Abortion must be kept legal, we are told, as it means women can go to work.
What if things didn't work this way?
Well, men would still be men, and women be women, but they'd have to fund their families themselves, and at least attempt to choose more wisely. That would have a lot of collateral impacts, but chief among them would be, frankly, less of a focus on work and more of a focus on the domestic.
But that would also mean that a society based on consumption, and which reduced its members to consumers, would be focused on families instead.
And then who is going to make and buy all that crap?
So the next time you here Bernie Sanders spouting off about something like universal child care, remember, what he's really saying, whether he means it or not, is:
is overwrought extreme examples being presented as the norm.
If you listen to abortion proponents, every single abortion in the United States is an example of a 13-year-old who is the victim of incest and who will die for certain if the pregnancy progresses.
If you listen to the gun debate, the Battle of Stalingrad is about to bust out in your neighborhood.
Neither of these are even ballpark close to true.
Most abortions in this country are post conception birth control infanticides. And that's because for the most part responsibility has flown out the window with the Sexual Revolution, which at the end of the day was mostly about men being able to have sex without consequences. That altered women back to chattel status, which they bought into, and still are, feeling they have to put out upon demand, as its natural and weird, they believe, not to, and there are no consequences.
You've never seen a pregnant centerfold now, have you. And those girls on the cover of Cosmo. . . stick thin.
And in spite of a recent, probably pandemic induced uptick in crime, this is the least violent era, and most crime free era, in American history.
When in trouble, or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.
Unknown.
Everyone has heard the news, of course, a leaked draft of a United States Supreme Court opinion would, if it becomes the final opinion, definitively overrule Roe v. Wade.
Which means that the Supreme Court has not overruled Roe v. Wade yet, and it very well may not, and if it does, it frankly likely will not in the form of the draft opinion, even though the draft is a good draft and this is the approach, absent one based on natural law, that they should take, in context.
Well, anyhow, a firestorm of predictable protests has broken out. So let's look at the controversy, such as it is, and the supposed issues and features of it.
A surprise that isn't a surprise.
Let's start with an obvious one.
Every legal analyst in the universe has known that Roe v. Wade was going to be overruled, so this is no surprise whatsoever. The huge surprise would be if it wasn't. This has been suspected for years.
So why the shock and amazement?
. . . a Lander resident, said she wasn’t surprised by the leaked draft, which was publicized Monday. But she was “a little surprised at the audacity of the claims that (Roe v. Wade) has been so wrong all along,” she said.
Casper Star Tribune.
Well, I really don't know, quite frankly, but part of it is simply manufactured. Indeed, for that reason I think the leaker is most likely from the political left, not the right. Since the leak, the press has taken up the theory that surely the leaker is from the right, and this is an effort to keep doubtful judges from straying. Knowing that protests would result with Roe was overruled, no matter what, the opposite is much more likely. The release was likely from the left, as part of a last ditch effort to keep Roe in place.
As part of that, quite frankly legal scholars have found the text of Roe to be wanting right from day one. Hardly noticed now, quite a few on the left questioned it for decades, and even such figures as Justice Ginsberg stated that the text was pretty much crap. The Court nearly overruled it at the time of the Casey decision, and apparently was set to until Justice Kennedy changed his mind out of a fear of what it would do to the court. Kennedy is my least favorite modern justice so that he'd become a limp noodle at this point only cements my opinion of him, quite frankly, but as he's done on to retirement, and the justices appointed after him were not of his mindset, that Roe would be reversed isn't a surprise at all.
Scary democracy.
Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division. It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.
From the draft opinion.
So, after the tulmet and shouting, what does that draft, if it becomes the law, really do?
Well, if you listen to folks like Chuck Todd, Cossacks will be arriving at your house next Thursday to rifle through your drawers, steal your children, eat your lunch, and shave your cats.
Not so.
It does one thing, really, and only one. It returns the issue of legislating and regulating on the topic of abortion, to the voters, through their legislators.
That's it.
Basher: All right chaps. Hang on to your knickers. [He triggers the bomb, and the safe door cracks open.] [Laughing, Basher dances into the vault – and the alarm goes off] Basher: Oh leave it out! You tossers! You had one job to do!
Ocean's Eleven
And everybody loves democracy, and therefore the left in particular is excited about that, right?
Obviously not. So much so, that even legally trained Democratic politicians are willing to tell some huge whoppers about it.
The court's decision does one thing and one thing only. It returns this issue to the states, which means it returns it to the voters.
That doesn't deprive anyone of anything, if the concept of deprivation is even operable here. It doesn't tell women what to do about anything whatsoever.
Our nation’s historical understanding of ordered liberty does not prevent the people’s elected representatives from deciding how abortion should be regulated.
* * *
Our decision returns the issue to those legislative bodies and it allows women on both sides of the abortion issue to seek to affect the legislative process by influencing public opinion, lobbying legislators, voting and running for office. Women are not without electoral or political power
Justice Samuel Alito.
Well, that's just a sham, right because men control the vote, right?
Not so at all.
Women are registered to vote in the U.S. at higher rates than men. In recent years, the number of women registered to vote in the U.S. has typically been about 10 million more than the number of men registered to vote.
Rutgers.
And here's the thing, it's been shown that in states that will act to restrict abortion, like Oklahoma for example, the female electorate in those states supports those moves. That is, more women favor restricting abortion than not.
That's the way democratic societies are supposed to work.
Indeed, while there are indeed rights enshrined in the Constitution to protect minorities against majorities, they are few in number, and they should be. They must be limited to essentials to guard against demonstrated abuses, or they inflict abuses, or, and here's the thing, they can also address essential existential rights to protect them.
Well, that's what Roe did, right?
Not so much. Indeed, right at all.
What a conservative court could do, and didn't.
To listed to the press, you'd think that what the Supreme Court determined was that abortions should be illegal, which is completely false. But that's why this decision is not a "conservative" one, it's a libertarian one.
We've noted before that there are no real "conservatives" on the Supreme Court. If there were, a much different result could be reached.
At one time, the Supreme Court openly took the position that there was a natural law, and that the natural law deserved consideration in matters. It didn't always dominate, however, and a really good example of that is a case we've discussed here before, The Antelope. In that pre Civil War case the Supreme Court outright held that slavery was against the natural law, but not against the law of the United States, and therefore the law of the United States won out.
As abortion, however, involves the killing of a human being, no matter how a person may wish to camouflage that, a very different result could be reached.
Indeed, perhaps one thing the long build up to this debate may have served to do is to destroy the bogus arguments about the topic of abortion that had existed at one time. Early on there were plenty of people who claimed to not know when human life began, but hardly anyone takes that position anymore. Current abortion supporters either just don't address this at all, or are outright in their view that a mother has the right to off her child up to a certain point.
In order to take that position, except in the case of the life of the mother, a person is really limited, if they think it through, to a position of atheistic conveyance. That is, there's nothing beyond us and our immediate goals dominate. That argues, we'd note, not only for abortion, but also pretty widespread killing in general. Certainly euthanasia should be allowed, if we believe that, but we probably ought to kill most felons too, as it would be a lot cheaper and convenient if we did that, rather than warehouse them in prisons. And for that matter we probably ought to do in those with serious mental defects.
That very few really are for mass killing tends to demonstrate that few have really thought this through. It's much easier, frankly, just not to. If you do, this is the only place to go. Once we start killing for convenience, the old phrase "well. . he needed killing" begins to have pretty wide application.
Anyhow, a contrary natural law position is that all humans have a right to life that can only be forfitted to protect a person or society from the putative decedent inflicting bodily harm. Ie., generally, there's a right to self-defense, but that's where the line is drawn in an individual killing another person. And there's no reason that a really conservative court couldn't hold that the infant's rights and the mother's are co-equal, and therefore at a bare minimum she could not kill the infant save in the instance of the infant being set to inflict certain grave bodily injury.
And indeed, frankly, in the history of our laws, and in keeping with the concept of being secure in our persons, that's the opinion that would make the most sense.
That isn't the one the court decided. Not even close.
The Supreme Court has never taken away a right
This argument is based solely on the idea that the unborn child has no rights at all, that's the only way you can get the argument to work.
Even then it's a bad argument, although its the stare decisis argument. Essentially it holds that no matter how badly the Supreme Court messes something up, once they totally screw it up, it must be preserved as a screw-up for all time and eternity.
If this was the case, the Dred Scott decision, which held that a slave owner had a right to the return of his slave even if they crossed into a free state, would still be admired as a brilliant legal decision. Indeed, it should be noted, that holding wasn't much different than Roe. One party had a right, and the other didn't.
The Civil War and the post-war amendments took care of that situation, of course, not the Supreme Court itself. But the point is obvious. If some people had a right, for example, to a "separate but equal" education, and then that was changed, yes, you were taking away a right that had previously been extended, but one that needed to be because the prior decision was wrong.
This decision doesn't even go that far, of course. It just tosses things back to the states.
It jeopardizes other "rights"
This is the one argument, and the only one, that actually makes some sense, although only somewhat.
Because the fanciful creation of a fictional right by Roe utilized a discovery of a right that didn't actually exist within the "penumbra" of the Constitution, it created a method to extend such rights where they also didn't really exist in print. That created a frankly dangerous situation in that Roe was easy to cite as a basis for finding those rights existed.
Having said that, the impact here is much more limited than might be claimed. The claim that it's going to lead to a lot of state legislation regarding marriage, for example, is constrained by Loving v. Virginia, which predates Roe. So no matter what may be claimed, it's not the case that states can now outlaw interracial marriage, as some have suggested might now occur. That wouldn't occur anyhow, but the holding in Loving and what it means is in no way impacted.
What it might mean for same-sex marriage, however, is in fact much less clear. The reason for that is that the holding in Obergefell was frankly made up just like the holding in Roe, and everyone pretty much knows that. Indeed, Obergefell may be the last of the post 1970s decisions that really simply invented something out of whole cloth, and the process used to arrive upon it was nearly identical to that of Roe's.
Indeed, the near term history of it was as well. Like Roe, following it gained widespread acceptance while, at the same time, it was clear that it wasn't universally accepted, and it had the impact of simply preserving a debate rather than deciding one. Long term, therefore, it might very well be expected to have the same history. Given that, its frankly the case that it would be better if Obergefell was in fact overruled and this returned to the states right now. That won't occur, however, as it would be too traumatic for the court.
This likely might mean, however, that coming attacks on state's rights to regulate marriage, which has always been the legal norm, might be arrested. I.e., we may not see any polygamy challenges soon, which we could have expected otherwise.
The other thing we keep hearing is that this may mean that the Supreme Court will send the issue of the regulation of contraceptives back to the states. This is also unlikely.
The Court determined this issue before Roe as well, in 1965's Griswold v. Connecticut. The raising of the issue is a stalking horse, but it's not a wholly illogical thing to bring up. Rather than Roe being a foundation for Griswold, it's actually the other way around.
The thing here that's of interest is that contraceptives have become so accepted that their health hazards, known to a much better degree in 2022 than they were in 1965. That's not really on point, but it's interesting in that if the same pharmaceuticals were being released for the first time today, as they were then, I'm not sure the FDA would actually approve them for public safety reasons. At any rate, this decision, if it becomes law, has no impact on the 1965 opinion and no matter what the arguments on this topic are, or may have been, its doubtful this will change in any fashion, even if legally it probably really ought to revisit the topic.
That brings up "abortion pills". It's been claimed that this may mean, and it very well might, that states will outlaw these, or outlaw them coming by mail.
On the last item, that's a curious one, and particularly creepy one, which will simply note.
The thing here is whether or not court's will rule that this is simply an area dominated by the Federal Government through the Commerce Clause. Generally that's the case with pharmaceuticals and state's don't, and probably can't, regulate them at all. That issue is sure to come up, and the direction even the Supreme Court takes on this may very well be surprising to those panicking now. It should be noted, as will be below, that the entire concepts of abortion pills as legitimate pharmaceuticals is more than a little Orwellian and not much different than imagining small arms ammunition to be the same thing, but nonetheless, this is not nearly as predicable as some may imagine.
But what about. . .
Because so much of this is patently obvious, supporters of abortion resort rapidly to stalking horse arguments, the classic one being "well what about instances of rape or incest".
No normal person even wants to discuss rape and incest, so this argument sends a person into silence as a rule, but we'll point out here that at least as to rape, ever single living human being on the planet is undoubtedly a descendant from that event at some point. I know one very gentle soul who knows for a fact that, in his case, he is, his grandmother having been employed as a maid and suffering a rape from her employer. His "grandfather" was not, but rather a man who married her while she was still pregnant.
Here's the thing, a person is no less a person because of a rape. That's a hard truth, but a truth nonetheless. Yes, carrying a child due to rape must be awful, but nonetheless, killing a person because of it doesn't make the event less awful.
Interestingly here, I'd note, rape is one of the original common law felonies and was in fact punishable by death at one time. Seemingly nobody makes the argument that rapist should be executed, but then that argument does not have an equivalency here.
Incest is an even more horrific crime against the individual and nature, but the same arguments pertain.
In both instances, however, it would be noted that the number of abortions due to these events is incredibly small, something like 1% at most. So the argument that widespread bloodshed should be allowed because of the 1% is knowingly disengenguine. It's much like the logic that allowed white communities to wipe out entire black ones in the South due to an allegation of rape. One person, that is, was accused, typically falsely, but the entire black section of town is torched.
That in fact gets to two other arguments, one involving distance and the other involving race.
Another argument that's revived in this debate is the old one about somebody having to travel for miles and miles to another state to procure an abortion. First of all, that assumes abortion is legitimate to start with. But just as an argument, it's a dog that doesn't hunt anymore.
By and large, in states that will outlaw abortion, it's already the case that it's fallen out of favor to such an extent that people already experience this. So that won't change much. The other thing is that an argument that made some sense as an argument in 1973 doesn't anymore.
Indeed, in 1979 the Nitty Gritty Dirt band issued a song about wistful thinking of traveling that included this line:
Voila! An American Dream Well,
we can travel girl, without any means
When it's as easy as closing your eyes
And dream Jamaica is a big neon sign
That song involved a person dreaming of travel, but the "we can travel . . . without any means" became pretty much true in later years and almost was then.
The truth is, in the modern United States, this is already a feature of the landscape of this issue and, while people really hesitate to note it, the American culture of 2022 is so much wealthier than that of 1972 that things like travel are much less an impediment to anything than they were then. Indeed, the concentration of poverty in some urban areas of the United States actually reflects that, as the urban poor have migrated to them, rather than being stuck in urban areas that they were previously in by default.
That bring up the odd "particularly minority women", by which pro abortion people fall back on one of their oldest arguments, which is that abortion is necessary to off African American babies.
This treads on being a racist argument on their part, and it at one time very much was. Early proponents of any type of birth control often based their arguments on controlling the black population.
There's no overt effort to do this now, but the racist nature of the argument nonetheless comes through. It suggests that there's just something different about blacks and for abortion . . .
An interesting aside to this is the degree to which the WASP culture in the US is sort of a post children culture in and of itself. There are a lot of cultural aspects of that which are outside this debate, but regarding children as almost sort of a virus is part of it. Which gets to this
"Healthcare"
There's suddenly all sorts of claims and for that matter press about abortion being "healthcare".
Something that frustrates a natural process isn't healthcare, and that's obvious. The natural process is what is seeking to be prevented. It's the antithesis of healthcare. This is no more healthcare than it would be if you stopped into your doctor, and he just suggested killing you if you had a cold. Yes, it'd stop the cold alright, but sure wouldn't be healthcare. Accelerating death or actually causing it never is.
It'll impact the fall election.
Finally, this is really a different topic, but it comes up again and again. How will this impact the fall election?
The hope of Democrats is that it brings out hordes of enraged Democratic voters who will help them keep slim majorities in the House and Senate.
It won't.
If anything, recent history has shown that no matter what the issue is, Democratic voters tend to stay home and watch reruns of Dawson's Creek or something rather than go vote.
The current median age for giving birth in the United States is age 30.
Yes, you've seen these couples here before.
For women born in the 1910 to 1935 time frame, having a first birth over age 30 was fairly rare, with less than 10% of women falling into that category. This was up to 20% by the 1960s.
Women born in 1935 had the lowest average age of first birth for the 20th Century, with the same being 20.8 years of age. This supports, FWIW, what we earlier noted about average marriage ages, which dropped in the 1950s, before climbing back up to the usual historic norms, contrary to the assumption that marriage ages were historically low, which is incorrect.
The average first age for women born in 1910 was 21.1. The average for women born in 1960 was 22.7.
As of 2018, in the US, it was 26.9 years of age. How this correlates to the "women born" statistic we're otherwise using is a little dicey, even though it would appear to be a simple application of math, but it would be basically women born in the 2000s.
That is, in other words, way up.
In Europe, currently, first time mothers are on average 27 to 29 years of age, up from 23 to 25 years of age in the 1970s. In Spain, the median age is over 30 for first births.
Women born in 1935 had on average three births, the
highest of the following three generational cohorts.
Births per woman
Year cohort completed fertility
1910 cohort:
2.4
1935 cohort:
3.0
1960 cohort:
2.0
This is, I'd note, considerably lower than is often presumed. Having said that, family sizes were larger in prior years.
During the 1920s in the United States, the average age at which a woman would have her last child was 42.
In France, as sort of a random statistic, the current abortion rate mirrors the children lost in childbirth rate of approximately a century ago. I don't know what a person makes of that, if anything, but as this is a statistical thread, there's that stat.
In the US, along a similar line, at least as of about a decade ago, the number of "single mothers" due to a father not having a role, for one reason or another, actually equated with the same figure in the late 19th Century due to male accidental deaths.
My own mother was 37 when she had me, an age that seems pretty old in context. She's just turned that age, actually.
She was one of seven children.
When she and my father married, in 1958, she was 32, above the median age that women tended to marry at the time. Her mother and my grandfather on her side were also above the median age when they married, actually. Her mother's first name was Leocadia, a name that hasn't repeated in the family since then. People tend to call her "Leo", which we of course tend to think of as a male name. Oddly my father's mother, whose first name was Katheryn (a name which has repeated quite a bit in the family), was usually called "Bob". My father, in contrast to my mother, was one of four children, a more typical family size for people born in the 1920s.
Parco was a company town, as noted below, built by a refining company in 1924-25. The luxury hotel was built by the company on the then fairly new Lincoln Highway, and the town no doubt benefited as it was also a stop on the Union Pacific. Only seven miles away from the larger and older town of Rawlins, the Interstate Highway bypasses it and its a remnant of its former self.
Not too many people stop at Sinclair who are just passing through. But at one time that wasn't true. And that's why the town has what was once a luxury hotel (now a Baptist church), a spacious park, really nice tennis courts, and the like. Only the sign on the hotel remains, as well as a historical monument, to remind us that Sinclair is the town's second name. It was originally Parco, a company town founded by the founder of what is now the Sinclair Refinery, the Producers & Refiners Corporation.
On the same day, the first midair collision between an airliner and another airplane occurred when a Grand Aeriens Farman F.60 hit a Daimler Airway de Havilland DH.18. The latter airplane was carrying mail. All the occupants of both airplanes, seven people, were killed in the collision. The tragic event took place over Picardie, France.
Cherry blossoms were in bloom in Washington D. C.
Lt. Mina C. Van Winkle, Director of the Women's Bureau of the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, was on trial for refusing to turn two girls over to two men purporting to be their father's. The panel was a police review board, and the charger was insubordination. As such things will do, the event brought attention to the fate of female runaways.
Of some slight interest, police dress uniforms of the era remained very much like the Civil War era Union Army uniform from which they were drawn.
Talks will resume today between Russia and Ukraine. So far they have failed to produce results.
The weekend shows all featured concerns that Russia will deploy chemical weapons.
Russia struck a training base which is approximately ten miles from the Polish border with missiles.
Russia is seeking economic relief and military drones from China. The request for drones is particularly telling as it's the attempt to import weapons from a foreign source, something Russia has not done since World War Two, demonstrating a material deficiency.
March 15, 2022
Russo Ukrainian War
March 15, 2022
By Viewsridge - Own work, derivate of Russo-Ukraine Conflict (2014-present).svg by Rr016Missile attacks source: BNO NewsTerritorial control source: ISW & Template:Russo-Ukrainian War detailed map, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115506141
The lines remain largely the same as yesterday, with a slight Russian advance in the north. The Russians have continued to assault cities through various forms of artillery and rocketry.
This has resulted in large-scale civilian loss of life, including the heavily pregnant woman whose photograph was widely distributed. The woman, photographed on a stretcher, was severely injured and both she and her baby died as a result of the Russian strike on a pregnancy hospital in Mariupol.
An article by a participant reveals that the Marine Corps ran a hex and counter game of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, with largely similar results up to the present time. The author noted that a premise of the game was that the Russians committed less than they could, failing to understand how stout Ukrainian resistance would be.
That assumption has been widespread, but the problem with it is that it ignores the reality of Russian effectiveness on the ground. The Russians military continues to have apologists, but at this point it's pretty difficult to conclude that the Russians simply weren't prepared for what they've encountered and, moreover, their military is experiencing its traditional incompetence. Yesterday, the news broke that the Russians are seeking drones and field rations from the Chinese, indicating an inability to readily supply good drones of their own and moreover a shortage of field rations. While I've even seen that explained away, that's a clear indication that this war has gotten over their heads and abilities. That doesn't mean they'll lose, but it does mean that they're being outfought and attrition of material items is catching up with them on at least a basic level on one thing, food.
An examination of the chemical weapons story being tossed about by the Russians reveals that it originated on American far right websites and was adopted by the Russians. That means that those circulating it now, such as Candace Owens, have picked up on a far-fetched American conspiracy theory story adopted by the Russians are now basically unwitting Russian tools.
A bill has been introduced in the U.S. Congress to issue letters of marque and reprisal.
117th CONGRESS
2d Session
H. R. 6869
To authorize the President of the United States to issue letters of
marque and reprisal for the purpose of seizing the assets of certain
Russian citizens, and for other purposes.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
February 28, 2022
Mr. Gooden of Texas introduced the following bill; which was referred
to the Committee on Foreign Affairs
_______________________________________________________________________
A BILL
To authorize the President of the United States to issue letters of
marque and reprisal for the purpose of seizing the assets of certain
Russian citizens, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. ISSUANCE OF LETTERS OF MARQUE AND REPRISAL FOR PURPOSE OF
SEIZING ASSETS OF CERTAIN RUSSIAN CITIZENS.
(a) Authority of President.--The President of the United States is
authorized and requested to commission, under officially issued letters
of marque and reprisal, so many of privately armed and equipped persons
and entities as, in the judgment of the President, the service may
require, with suitable instructions to the leaders thereof, to employ
all means reasonably necessary to seize outside the geographic
boundaries of the United States and its territories any yacht, plane,
or other asset of any Russian citizen who is on the List of Specially
Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons maintained by the Office of
Foreign Assets Control of the Department of the Treasury.
(b) Security Bonds.--No letter of marque and reprisal shall be
issued by the President without requiring the posting of a security
bond in such amount as the President shall determine is sufficient to
ensure that the letter be executed according to the terms and
conditions thereof.
The bill will not pass, but it's interesting how this is the second time this suggestion has come up in the last twenty years, showing a slight renewed interest in one of the war powers that had seemingly fallen away completely.
Yesterday, an employee of a Russian television show popped into the background of a news broadcast with a sign protesting the war.
March 16, 2022
Ukraine has launched counteroffensives in the north seeking to relieve its besieged cities, including Kyiv.
Ukrainian President Zelenskyy addressed the U.S. Congress.
March 18, 2022
Among the casualties of war is civilian Oksana Shivits, a famed Ukrainian actress, who was killed by a Russian missile strike.
Yet another Russian general, together with his staff, was killed in action.
An interesting prediction from a well known commentator:
The incredible is about to happen: Ukraine appears to be about to defeat Russia in Ukraine. Russia allocated 100 out of its ca 170 battalion tactical groups to its assault on Ukraine. According to the Ukrainians, about 50 btgs are now out of action.
March 19, 2022
March 19, 2022
By Viewsridge - Own work, derivate of Russo-Ukraine Conflict (2014-present).svg by Rr016Missile attacks source: BNO NewsTerritorial control source: ISW & Template:Russo-Ukrainian War detailed map, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115506141
Russian forces have been gaining ground in the south and in the north once again. This has been little reported on, but whatever has been holding them up may have, at least to some degree, been overcome to some extent. Since the last map was posted, a significant amount of Ukrainian territory was taken in the south and southeast.
The Russians have been hitting Lviv with rockets regularly.
Russian cosmonauts, in a bold act of protest, arrived at the International Space Station yesterday wearing suits that were in Ukraine's national colors.
The United States has cautioned China to avoid aiding the Russians in the war.
March 20, 2022
March 20, 2022
By Viewsridge - Own work, derivate of Russo-Ukraine Conflict (2014-present).svg by Rr016Missile attacks source: BNO NewsTerritorial control source: ISW & Template:Russo-Ukrainian War detailed map, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115506141
Russian forces continue to gain ground in the south.
Fighting continues on in Mariupol with the Russians continuing to hit urban structures resulting in civilian loss of life.
The Russians have deployed hypersonic missiles in their long range bombardment efforts, the first use of the same in war.
The Russians appear to be starting to recruit Syrians to serve in their forces in the war.\
March 20, cont:
On the weekend shows, Mitch McConnell made a pitch for aiding Ukraine and noted that we should take the view that the Ukrainians may win, and we should help them do so.
Russia has been deporting residents of Mariupol to camps.
The Institute for the Study of War reported that it regards Russia as having lost the first stage of the war and that it is now basically digging in for a long war. It reports:
Ukrainian forces have defeated the initial Russian campaign of this war. That campaign aimed to conduct airborne and mechanized operations to seize Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, and other major Ukrainian cities to force a change of government in Ukraine. That campaign has culminated. Russian forces continue to make limited advances in some parts of the theater but are very unlikely to be able to seize their objectives in this way. The doctrinally sound Russian response to this situation would be to end this campaign, accept a possibly lengthy operational pause, develop the plan for a new campaign, build up resources for that new campaign, and launch it when the resources and other conditions are ready. The Russian military has not yet adopted this approach. It is instead continuing to feed small collections of reinforcements into an ongoing effort to keep the current campaign alive. We assess that that effort will fail.
It further reports:
The Ukrainian General Staff reported for the first time that the Kremlin is preparing its population for a “long war” in Ukraine and implementing increasingly draconian mobilization measures. The General Staff reported the Russian military commissariats of the Kuban, Primorsky Krai, Yaroslavl Oblast, and Ural Federal Districts are conducting covert mobilization measures but are facing widespread resistance.
In an odd development, in some parts of the US efforts to collect arms for Ukraine have commenced, although how much help donated arms could be, let lone whether they could get there, is a pretty problematic question.
NATO representatives and US Defense Department representatives hinted that the use of biological or chemical weapons by the Russians may cross a line which would result in direct NATO involvement in the war.
March 21, 2022
Ukraine rejected Russian calls for the surrender of Mariupol. Western analysts have opined the Russians may be too exhausted to take the city in a house to house battle.
There are growing fears that Russia, should it win in Ukraine, may take on the Baltic States, members of NATO, next, or Moldova, which is not.
March 22, 2022
The Ukrainians pushed the Russians out of a Kyiv suburb.
Over the last few days, the Ukrainians have been mounting some offensive actions.
March 23, 2022
From the Wall Street Journal:
NATO says that up to 40,000 Russian troops have been killed, wounded, taken prisoner or are missing in Ukraine, said a senior military official from the alliance.
40,000.
NATO estimates that between 7,000 and 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed since the invasion began on Feb. 24. Using statistical averages from past conflicts that for every casualty roughly three soldiers are wounded, NATO analysts reach their total figure.
Russia began its invasion with roughly 190,000 troops. It has since brought in additional troops from Chechnya, Syria and other locations.
This would mean that the Russian Army has sustained as many combat deaths in Ukraine as the Soviet Army did during its entire campaign in Afghanistan.
March 24, 2022
Russo-Ukrainian War
High ranking Russian official Anatoly Chubais resigned his post and left the country due to the war in Ukraine.
Russian journalist Oksana Baulina was killed while filming in Kyiv.
Renault, which had resumed production in Russia, has stopped again.
Finland has detained 21 yachts with ties to Russians.
North Korea
North Korea fired a missile that may be an ICBM into the sea.
March 25, 2022
Russo Ukrainian War
Half of Ukraine's children have been displaced due to the war.
The Ukrainians destroyed the large Russian landing ship Orsk and damaged two other Russian naval vessels in the occupied port of Berdyansk.
Ukrainians have been regaining some ground near Kyiv.
There are reports that yet another Russian general, Yakov Rezantsev, has been killed in Ukraine. He reportedly was close to Putin and had predicted the war in Ukraine would be short.
Col. Yury Medvedev, a Russian commander, was injured when a Russian tank crewman intentionally ran over him with a tank.
There are reports that hackers and railway workers in Belorussian have been disrupting the railway system there in support of Ukraine. Pro Ukrainian protests have broken out in the country.
March 26, 2022
Russia declared yesterday that its goal in the war had been to take all the Donbas region and that the larger offensive was just a diversion, a claim that's fairly obviously baloney. More likely, this signals an effort to recast the war in that light, perhaps to the Russians themselves, in an effort to declare victory and potentially wind the operation down in light of the difficulties it has been facing.
The announcement is quite significant, however, as it signals the war has likdly entered a new phase with Russian forces going, at least temporarily, into a defensive posture.
Russian forces have ceased offensive actions near Kyvi and gone on the defensive. Ukrainian forces have been on the offensive there in recent days.
The BBC reports that the Russians have lost a total of six generals in the war in Ukraine. In contrast, the United States lost 12 generals during the long Vietnam War, and one in Afghanistan.
The Pentagon reports that Russian cruise missiles have a failure rate of 20% to 60%.
