www.nytimes.com/2021/12/17/world/europe/russia-nato-security-deal.html
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Ukrainian intelligence officers spent years compiling a database of Russia’s Wagner group. We found the families of those killed in battle.
— Read on newlinesmag.com/reportage/the-fallen-mercenaries-in-russias-dark-army/ -
It is as if Afghanistan has ceased to exist for the corporate media. If you would like to hear what the situation is like in Afghanistan, listen to this podcast.
NYT The Daily
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There has been a great deal of discussion in the media lately about what the West will do if Russia launches an invasion of Ukraine. But, as has been pointed out on the podcast, Ukraine Without Hype (12/10/21), Russia has already invaded Ukraine.
The United States and the members of the G7 have threatened “massive consequences” if this current military and support structure build-up on the border with Ukraine turns into yet another full scale invasion by Russia, but what those consequences might be, has not been specified.
It is difficult to imagine Biden approving a military defense of Ukraine just after he orchestrated a disastrous unilateral withdrawal from Afghanistan. Putin is well aware of this.
And, a number of commentators are arguing that invading Ukraine now would be much less costly and risky than waiting until some future date. Putin has made it crystal clear in an article published last summer that the Russian government considers Ukraine part of Russia, not an independent country.
The Russian kleptocratic autocracy is working overtime to ideologically legitimate an invasion of Ukraine. In Putin’s article (described on MSNBC as a “letter from an abusive spouse”) he clearly appeals to Russian nationalism, arguing that Ukraine as a separate entity is a fiction imposed on people who did not see themselves as Ukrainian. This “Ukrainization” by the leaders of modern Ukraine and their “external patrons,” is a “tragedy” and “forced assimilation” and is “comparable in its consequences to the use of weapons of mass destruction against” Russia.
In an article published by the Atlantic Council, it is argued that in order to maintain the loyalty of elites and the population Putin has found it effective to engage in “small victorious wars.” These distract from the fact that the Russian economy has barely grown since 2014. Small wars are profitable and also whip up the nationalism of Russians.
The five-day war in Georgia in August of 2008, was a great popular success in Russia. For the first time ever Putin’s popularity figures reached 88%. Also popular was Putin’s seizure and annexation of Crimea. Once again Putin’s popularity rose.
Whatever the goal, actual invasion or mere threat, Putin already has some of what he wants, the West negotiating over the status of Ukraine in a way that would have been unthinkable in the past.
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My television is on TCM to avoid watching the celebrity orgy going on over the body of Bob Dole. I would encourage people to think about the amount of time wasted on this coverage, and the amount of money that has been spent moving Dole’s body around, mourning over Bob Dole’s body, securing the celebrity political elite as they gather to engaging this absurd ritual.
Bob Dole is part of the Republican infrastructure that set the groundwork for the political disaster we are currently in. Why anybody would want to celebrate or mourn over his dead body is just beyond my comprehension.
Also, there is a world out there, a world that is rapidly becoming inhabitable while a useless and feckless elite dresses up and plays their part on this ridiculous celebrity exercise.
I just cannot fathom the insularity of the bubble that allows these people to think that regular people care about watching every minute of this display.
While Rome burns, the political elite and the corporate media engage in this side show. Part of the narrative is that Bob Dole belonged to a more “bipartisan” and statesmanlike era. The Democrats showing up at this display are supposed to be given credit for their bigness of heart for mourning a member of the Republican Party. It is all absurd.
So while Russian troops mass on the border with Ukraine (to mention just one ongoing crisis) the political elite and the corporate media play dress up and try to convince the American people that they are 1) useful, 2) important, and relevant. THEY ARE NOT.
If we had a functioning media, we would have already known that Putin and the Russian oligarchy were bent on taking back Ukraine into the Russian sphere of influence. But, instead, we are talking about Chris Christie’s new book and every minute action taken by an investigative committee designed to make a lot of noise and do nothing about a coup attempt.
When I started listening to podcasts about Ukraine, I was astounded.
Specifically, commentators were talking about a public stance taken by Putin and the Russian government earlier in the year which made it evident to anybody with a brain that Russia was gong to retake Ukraine, or at least threaten to do so in order to gain concessions that wouldn’t have been even thought about otherwise.
The public stance is argued in an article, purportedly written by Putin:
“On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.”
You can read the entire article here:
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181
This is a long, convoluted article full of historical argument that I cannot even begin to follow and I suspect is half concocted. The jest of the argument is this:
- Russians and Ukrainians are “one people.
- The “wall that has emerged” between the two countries has been constructed by enemies to divide what is “essentially the same historical and spiritual space.”
- This division is a “tragedy.”
- Belief in this division is a “consequence(s) of our own mistakes” and also based on “deliberate efforts by those forces that have always sought to undermine our unity.”
- This is an effort to “pit the parts of a single people against one another.”
- This promotion of division is also an attack on “the Orthodox faith.”
- Putin argues that a belief in Ukraine as an independent nation state, “Ukrainization” has been often “imposed on those who did not see themselves as Ukrainians.”
- Modern Ukraine, Putin argues is “entirely the product of the Soviet era.”
- Ukraine was created as a unit within the Soviet Union that was at the same time distinct, but part of the whole. It was never intended to be a separate entity. The very identification of Ukraine as distinct came from Soviet designation.
- Putin continues: “we know and remember well that it (Ukraine) was shaped…on the lands of historical Russia.”
- Putin then launches on an attack on Bolsheviks: “…Bolsheviks treated the Russian people as inexhaustible material for their social experiments. They dreamt of a world revolution that would wipe out national states. That is why they were so generous in drawing borders and bestowing territorial gifts. It is no longer important what exactly the idea of the Bolshevik leaders who were chopping the country into pieces was. We can disagree about minor details, background and logics behind certain decisions. One fact is crystal clear: Russia was robbed, indeed.”
- So, evidently, the Bolsheviks intent on “a world revolution that would wipe out national states” was “generous” in drawing borders that they never intended to be real.
- Putin then claims that his “analysis is based on well-known facts rather than on some secret records.” I have no idea what this even means.
- Putin continues: “The leaders of modern Ukraine and their external ”patrons“ prefer to overlook these facts. They do not miss a chance, however, both inside the country and abroad, to condemn ”the crimes of the Soviet regime,“ listing among them events with which neither the CPSU, nor the USSR, let alone modern Russia, have anything to do. At the same time, the Bolsheviks’ efforts to detach from Russia its historical territories are not considered a crime. And we know why: if they brought about the weakening of Russia, our ill-wishes are happy with that.”
- Then, Putin chides Ukraine: “You want to establish a state of your own: you are welcome! But what are the terms?” This is a threat, a dressed up threat, but a threat.
- Quoting the first mayor of Saint Petersburg, Putin writes: “the republics that were founders of the Union, having denounced the 1922 Union Treaty, must return to the boundaries they had had before joining the Soviet Union. All other territorial acquisitions are subject to discussion, negotiations, given that the ground has been revoked.”
- So, Putin is claiming that any people wanting independence must return to borders determined to be valid by the Russian oligarchy. You want independence? Fine, but you must accept independence of a territory defined (unquestionably smaller) by Russia.
- Then, Putin begins the characteristic victim blaming rhetoric. Russia tried to support Ukraine The Russian Federation “provided considerable support to Ukraine,” because this is a “single economic system.”
- But, the ungrateful Ukrainians bragged and promised a lot but now cannot deliver.
- “Ukraine is Europe’s poorest country.”
- Putin continues with the rewriting of events of 2014. “Even after the events in Kiev of 2014, I charged the Russian government to elaborate options for preserving and maintaining our economic ties within relevant ministries and agencies. However, there was and is still no mutual will to do the same. Nevertheless, Russia is still one of Ukraine’s top three trading partners, and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are coming to us to work, and they find a welcome reception and support. So that is what the aggressor state is.”
- “Nor were the interests of the Ukrainian people thought of in February 2014. The legitimate public discontent, caused by acute socio-economic problems, mistakes, and inconsistent actions of the authorities of the time, was simply cynically exploited. Western countries directly interfered in Ukraine’s internal affairs and supported the coup. Radical nationalist groups served as its battering ram. Their slogans, ideology, and blatant aggressive Russophobia have to a large extent become defining elements of state policy in Ukraine.”
- “It would not be an exaggeration to say that the path of forced assimilation, the formation of an ethnically pure Ukrainian state, aggressive towards Russia, is comparable in its consequences to the use of weapons of mass destruction against us. As a result of such a harsh and artificial division of Russians and Ukrainians, the Russian people in all may decrease by hundreds of thousands or even millions.”
What Putin is arguing here is that the West and Ukrainians have attacked Russia, essentially used the equivalent of “weapons of mass destruction against us (Russia).” Therefore, the invasion of Ukraine is an act of self-defense.
But, we need to spend 48 hours of corporate media time listening to empty, self-serving rhetoric about Bob Dole.
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President Joe Biden on Wednesday ruled out sending US troops to Ukraine to defend the country from a Russian invasion a day after laying out the consequences for such an incursion during a stern phone call with President Vladimir Putin.
— Read on www.cnn.com/2021/12/08/politics/biden-putin-us-troops/index.html -
Russian House of Soviets, Lenin on Moscow Square. St. Petersburg. Wednesday 8 December 2021
- The 2014 uprising in Ukraine, the ouster of pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych, and the overthrow of the Ukrainian government were severe blows to the pride of Vladamir Putin and the Russian establishment/oligarchy.
- Added to the economic importance of Ukraine is the profound cultural centrality of Ukrainian history as part of the Soviet Union, and the political significance of the independence gained by the Ukrainian people.
- Putin has reportedly never gotten over the breakup of the Soviet Union, the independence of Ukraine or the movement of the Ukrainian people towards the West.
- As was pointed out in the Ukraine World Podcast, Putin and the Russian oligarchy have never conceived of Ukraine as an independent state. They have never considered Ukraine as independent and cannot now accept the status quo.
- As Timothy Snyder pointed out, Putin and Russia have never considered Ukrainians as anything but vassals. They do not even negotiate with Ukrainians, but with the West over Ukraine.
- And, the status quo, as unpalatable as it may seem, may not remain the status quo much longer.
- Putin may feel that the window of time for pressuring Ukraine back into the Russian sphere is rapidly closing.
- Not long after Biden took office, Russia announced itself fed up with the status quo relating to Ukraine and NATO expansion.
- Also, around the first of the year, Zelensky expressed more publicly than he had in the past, an interest in Ukraine joining NATO.
- Since Ukraine is not currently a member of NATO, there is no automatic responsibility of the West to react if Ukraine is invaded. If Ukraine joins NATO, however, this changes completely.
- Note: I cannot see after withdrawing from Afghanistan, Biden involving military troops in any conflict in Ukraine. Putin, of course, knows this and it adds to the likelihood of intervention.
- There is, of course, a great deal of debate about whether Putin intends to invade or just threaten. But, as has been pointed out, not only is there an unprecedented movement of troops, but also a structuring of support for an invasion, like locating medical supplies near the border.
- It would probably be an error to suppose that Putin’s choice is binary. Even though U.S. officials persist in talking about the choice as either an invasion with a full scale military operation and seizure of territory, or backing down and not invading. But, as others point out, Putin has stated that he would never invade any territory unless he were certain of victory.
- So, a number of regional experts foresee an operation that includes pinpoint strikes and then strategic withdrawals. The object, according to these commentators, is to destroy Ukrainian military capability. Occupation is not the goal.
- Putin, so the theory goes, wants to demonstrate to Ukraine and the rest of the former Soviet Block that all their efforts towards independence can be negated easily and quickly, leaving them vulnerable and back inside the Russian sphere.
- While there have been strides in the development of Ukrainian military capability, it cannot even compete with the highly technological, mobile Russian military expertise.
- Putin pursued economic strategies to block Ukraine from moving out of the Russian sphere of influence and toward the west.
- In 2014, it became evident that that strategy had failed. Ordinary people rose and drove out the pro-Russia president who had to flee to Moscow to keep from being imprisoned. The Ukrainians made their choice clear when they drove out a Russia friendly president and ushered in the pro-western government.
- Putin saw this as a coup engineered by the West and the CIA to divide the Russian sphere of influence. So, Putin seized Crimea.
- Putin intended to demonstrate that he cares more about the fate of Ukraine than the west.
- Putin also sees the writing on the wall in the policies and actions of Zelensky. In early 2021, Zelensky’s government began cracking down on Russian controlled media inside Ukraine and a Russian connected oligarch. The government also participated in military exercises with Western forces.
- Putin’s actions have actually alienated people in Ukraine. Polls indicate that more people than when Zelensky first took office support joining NATO and a move toward the West.
- Putin, evidently, does not believe this. He has indicated that a move toward Russia is the will of the people and that Russian forces would be welcomed, regarded as liberators.
- And, Putin may estimate that a war now could be less costly than later.
- While U.S. officials bandy around the threats of “sanctions” according to specialists, Putin has been sanction proofing the Russian economy since 2014.
- And, sanctions on Russia will affect powerful interests around the world. In order to enact meaningful sanctions, Biden would not only have to take on the Russians, but banking and other interests internationally. There is little indication that he is prepared to do this.
- What Putin wants is not to annex Ukraine, but to influence it. He wants to alter and control the structure of security in Eastern Europe.
- While this mobilization near the border of Ukraine may be only an example of “coercive diplomacy,” the intent is to keep Ukraine out of NATO and get an agreement to limit NATO expansion in Eastern Europe.
- If Biden agrees to this in order to avoid a war, he will violate the concept of self determination that has influenced policy in the post-war era.
Sources:
Podcasts:
The Daily, NYT (12/8/21) Interview with Moscow Bureau Chief, NYT, Anton Troianovski
Ukraine World Ep. 58: The New Russian Attack on Ukraine.
Ukraine World Ep. 57: Ukraine in November 2021.
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“A moral panic is a widespread fear, most often an irrational one, that someone or something is a threat to the values, safety, and interests of a community or society at large….Moral panics are often centered around people who are marginalized in society due to their race or ethnicity, class, sexuality, nationality, or religion. As such, a moral panic often draws on known stereotypes and reinforces them. It can also exacerbate the real and perceived differences and divisions between groups of people. Moral panic is well known in the sociology of deviance and crime and is related to the labeling theory of deviance.”
The prosecution should have had an academic testify about moral panic. It is a familiar term, used all the time in sociology, especially among those who work in the fields of criminology and social deviance.
The people in Satilla Shores worked themselves up into a moral panic about crime in the neighborhood. It is relatively easy to create such a panic just by word of mouth. Social media just makes the creation of a moral panics easier. Once people started talking about, posting about, “intruders” in the neighborhood, and items being stolen, the narrative took on a life of it’s own.
Every unrecognized person becomes an “intruder.” Every misplaced item becomes “stolen.” Even when individuals encounter facts which disprove the “intruder/crime” label, they rarely go around the neighborhood and tell everybody that they were mistaken.
Several witnesses in this trial admitted that while they had heard that the owner of the construction site thought he had had items stolen from his boat, they never heard that Larry English had driven that boat back and forth to various locations and wasn’t sure himself where these items had been stolen. English never even told the police that the items were stolen in Satilla Shores.
It was brought out through testimony that strange cars were reported as being in the neighborhood only to later be identified as cars belonging to relatives of residents. Items that were reported as stolen (including a supposedly loaded gun belonging to Travis McMichael) were left in unlocked vehicles. One woman who testified whose purse was widely discussed, left her own purse in an unlocked car and it wasn’t stolen. Somebody reported that their brother-in-law had a case of beer stolen out of a car parked in Satilla Shores. (Folks, if you believe that one, you are really sheltered.)
What happens when people work themselves up into a moral panic is that every misplaced item becomes “stolen” and fodder for more gossip and speculation.
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I watched every minute of the trial of the men who killed Ahmaud Arbery.
It was a weekday afternoon and the Medical Examiner took the stand. I was tired, everybody seemed tired. The Medical Examiner was not the most riveting witness. He had retired and then decided he wanted to go back to work, so he came to Georgia and was hired as the Medical Examiner. He was professional, soft spoken, and businesslike.
Like most people, probably, my mind was wandering.
Then, Bob Reuben, defense attorney for Travis McMichael asked the Medical Examiner (ME) if Ahmaud Arbery’s body had “long, dirty toenails.” The ME said yes.
What? My head popped up. Even my tired ears perked up. What the devil was that about?
I was appalled. What reason could Reuben have for asking such a question? But, no more was made out of it. I tweeted about it at the time. What reason, I asked, other than just trying to make Ahmaud Arbery seem distasteful, could the defense have for asking this question?
I found out the answer on Monday.
Laura Hogue, attorney for Greg McMichael, got up before the jury and blew every racist, fear mongering whistle imaginable. Then, she commented that Ahmaud Arbery was wearing tennis shoes, without socks to “cover his long dirty toenails.” Again, I was just appalled. She drew out the words, speaking every one of them distinctly as if conveying meaning to the jury. “…long……..dirty……toenails.”
This was no off-the-cuff remark. It was intentional, prepared for by Reuben asking the question of the ME. Hogue couldn’t have used in closing something that wasn’t entered into evidence. Reuben asked the question to get it in and Hogue followed up by using it in the closing.
Arbery’s parents were mortified. The father left the courtroom and both parents commented on the courthouse steps about how disgusting it was for the defense to try to smear Ahmaud Arbery’s character. I completely agree.
Lawyers on national television criticized the comment, but then defended Laura Hogue’s right to use it. As one attorney commented, the defense attorney has the obligation to use whatever it takes to defend the client. But, that is just bullshit.
It’s the kind of reasoning that allows lawyers to argue that they do not have any obligation to moral standards at all. And, it is simply not true. It’s the kind of argument that allows lawyers to sleep at night and be accepted at the Bar Association cocktail party. It makes me furious.
No lawyer had the obligation to use racist hate mongering and smear tactics to defend their client.
Hogue (female) has, of course, defended herself by saying that she was merely trying to demonstrate that Ahmaud Arbery was not a jogger. I’ve got news for her. Some people jog without socks. And, even if you accept the no-socks defense as fair game, the “long, dirty toenails” was not.
Trust me, the same lawyers who will gin up racial hatred and dehumanizing stereotypes will also try to pick a fascist jury, arouse fascist sentiments and dehumanizing stereotypes to defend Nazis. It’s only a matter of time. And they will go on national television and defend themselves and their colleagues will defend them as well.
This behavior by the defense, and it does not only apply to Hogue (the female) was planned defense strategy. Reuben asked the ME the question to get the testimony on the record. Hogue (the female) hit it out of the park. All the defense attorneys in this case are part of the racist defense strategy utilized throughout the entire trial and they should all be condemned, shunned and disbarred.
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Citizen’s Arrest Law
- The Glynn County Police Department initially made no arrests in the Arbery case. Watching the body cam videos of the officers who arrived on the scene, several things are notable.
- The officers never once thought they were in danger from the three men who had just hunted down another man and killed him in the street.
- Even though these officers testified that officer safety was paramount in such scenes, they were obviously not in the least afraid of the three men.
- None of the men were even searched to see if they had weapons. They were not separated from each other when the statements at the scene were being taken. One officer, supposedly interviewing Greg McMichael, allowed another man who has yet to be identified, to come up and interrupt his interview. When the prosecutor asked this officer why he had allowed this to happen (contrary to all standard operating procedure) the officer said: “I can’t give you a good answer to that question.”
- It was obvious that the officers who responded were clear that the McMichaels and Bryan were friends, colleagues, on the same side.
- One of the officers even said, commiserating with the McMichaels, “I can imagine.”
- When Greg McMichaels asked if the police were going to handcuff Travis (the shooter) the female officer says: “No. Why would we handcuff him?” Why indeed.
- Two of the three men were allowed to go home and “clean up” before driving themselves to the police station to give a statement.
- Nobody who has any sense would believe that if the racial composition of this were changed (the hunters and killers were black and the victim was white) the outcome would have been the same.
- Additionally, Greg McMichael was all over that crime scene. He was photographed talking to everybody, Travis, Bryan, the coroner, the officers, Diego Perez, a neighbor. He also let no opportunity go by in which he didn’t inform everybody that he was a former investigator for the DA’s office.
- Greg McMichael’s race and his status as former law enforcement, did the trick.
- Later, after the DA recused herself (because Greg McMichael worked in her office), the case was passed on to the District Attorney in Waycross, Barnhill.
- In a letter to the Glynn County Police Department, Mr. Barnhill, who eventually recused himself from the case, wrote that the men were in “hot pursuit” of Mr. Arbery, and that they had “solid first hand probable cause” that he was a “burglary suspect. He therefore, recommended no arrests.
- There were no arrests until the men themselves released the video of the killing. One of the female neighbors who was a witness, testified that Travis McMichael talked to her about leaking the video. But, when the released it, they didn’t get the “positive” reaction they had anticipated.
- These men actually thought that releasing the video of them murdering another human being was going to get a “positive response.”
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Blog 21 November 2021: Citizen’s Arrest
This is the text of the Georgia Citizen’s Arrest law that is being used in the defense of the three men who hunted down Ahmaud Arbery and killed him in the street.
“A private person may arrest an offender if the offense is committed in his presence or within his immediate knowledge. If the offense is a felony and the offender is escaping or attempting to escape, a private person may arrest him upon reasonable and probable grounds of suspicion.”
https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2010/title-17/chapter-4/article-4/17-4-60/
According to Joseph Margulies, of Cornell University, citizen’s arrest laws date back to before the founding of the country. These laws allowed citizens to detain someone they had seen commit a crime. The laws were designed for an environment in which there were few police.
The Georgia law, updated since then, was put into effect in 1863 and was designed as a slave catching statute. Georgia along with other states, primarily in the south, later expanded these laws to cover citizens arresting someone they reasonably suspected of trying to escape from a felony.
This law was only repealed after Ahmaud Arbery was killed. [1]
The jury will have to decide whether the three men “reasonably suspected” Arbery of committing a felony and trying to escape. The issue will be whether the predominately white jury thinks that the three white men reasonably believed that Arbery had committed a crime.
Margulies also points out that there is a “stand your ground” law in Georgia which allows the use of deadly force if a person “reasonably believed that they were at risk of serious bodily injury or death.” [2]
NPR Article: https://www.npr.org/2021/10/26/1048398618/what-is-the-citizens-arrest-law-in-the-trial-over-ahmaud-arberys-death
Ira P. Robbins, a law professor at American university who studies these citizen’s arrest laws, wrote: “…a member of the public doesn’t know — and likely cannot understand — the nuances of citizen’s arrest, particularly when it comes to the use of deadly force.” “That’s why it is so dangerous for people to take the law into their own hands.”
In an article in the New York Times, a case in surburban Atlanta is described. “…Hannah R. Payne, 22, is awaiting trial on murder charges for the shooting death of Kenneth E. Herring, a 62-year-old mechanic who left the scene of a fender bender last May. Ms. Payne, who was not involved in the crash, chased Mr. Herring in her Jeep.”
“Witnesses told police in Clayton County, Ga., that Ms. Payne blocked Mr. Herring’s truck, approached the open driver’s-side window of his vehicle and punched him with her left hand as she pointed a 9-millimeter firearm with her right.”
“A 911 dispatcher told her (Payne) to stand down, but the police said the call recorded Ms. Payne’s demands: “Get out of the car,” she yelled, using a vulgarity. A single shot was fired, and Mr. Herring stepped out of the truck and died.”
Payne was described by her lawyer as an “all-American girl” who “thought she was helping out,” but she is now “facing a long prison term for a killing that shares eerie similarities to the shooting death of Mr. Arbery, who was killed in February after a father and son told the authorities they thought he was the suspect of a rash of recent break-ins in their neighborhood.”
After the refusal of a Wisconsin court to convict Kyle Rittenhouse for taking it on himself to go armed into a situation where he knew he was going to be at risk and put other people at risk, there will be more of these incidents.
People (including women) are bragging on social media about how they will “pop” you if you cross them. They are proud of this aggressiveness. Women have adopted this Marjorie Taylor Greene “packing and proud of it” mentality. One of the neighbors in the Satilla Shores neighborhood where Ahmaud Arbery was killed, testified about usually carrying a gun and running out in the dark in her neighborhood when she thought something was happening. She even testified that she feared her own husband was going to be shot by the McMichaels one night because the husband was in a vacant house site looking for “intruders.”
These citizen’s arrests laws are dangerous, unconscionable, and completely unnecessary.
[1] In this article, published by NPR, the killing of Ahmaud Arbery is said to have happened “after a fight broke out in the road…” A fight did not “break out.” Three men were pursuing Arbery, cutting him off and positioning themselves so that Arbery was “trapped like a rat” as described by Greg McMichael.
[2] I do not know if this “stand your ground” law is still in effect. I think it it.
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I have spent two weeks watching every minute of the trial of the men who hunted down Ahmaud Arbery and killed him in the street.
I am reminded of something my mother said about the O.J. Simpson trial. After watching for a week or so, she phoned me and said: “I think they should put them all in jail.” “Who?” I asked. “Everybody,” she replied. “The judge, the lawyers, the police, O.J. Simpson, the media, everybody.”
As usual, she made me laugh. But, I’m not doing much laughing at the moment. I’m glad she’s not alive to have gone through four years of Trump, the rise of the fascist Republican party, and the flourishing of the worship of guns and violence. And, I’m glad she’s not seeing the trial in the Ahmaud Arbery case, or the Rittenhouse fiasco.
The trial of the men who murdered Ahmaud Arbery and the Rittenhouse case reveal such a disturbing, depressing side of this country, I can hardly breathe.
The defense in the Ahmaud Arbery trial has been pure racist fear mongering. Ahmaud Arbery was described over and over again as “creeping” and threatening. Travis McMichael testified that there was something not right about him. One defense attorney pointed out that Larry English’s 15-year-old daughter had been on his property. What if, the lawyer exclaimed, she had run across Arbery? “Who knows what would have happened.” One of the defense attorneys actually asked the medical examiner (for no reason other than racist smear mongering) whether Ahmaud Arbery’s toenails were “long and dirty.’
An essential part of the case of the defense has been that the Satilla Shores neighborhood was in fear, under siege, under attack. But, not even the prosecution pointed out in any systematic way that this “neighborhood on edge” was a classic case of what sociologists call a “moral panic.”
Through Facebook and neighborhood watch social media (and probably Fox News) the members of this little subdivision worked themselves up into a frenzy in which mothers were texting other mothers to “get the boys inside” there’s an intruder in the neighborhood and other alarmist messages. One of the neighbors was spending all her time watching surveillance monitors and running armed into the front yard when she suspected something was happening.
You must understand that these people loved what they were doing. They were playing a part in a self-created drama. No matter how much they whine and complain about the danger they were in, they actively participated in ginning up that fear and exaggerating that danger. They shared stories about “intruders” even when those intruders turned out to be relatives of their neighbors whose cars weren’t recognized.
A couple of witnesses even admitted that they never passed information along or heard information which indicated that these alarm notifications were groundless. The initial “crime” that was talked about all over the neighborhood was the stealing of expensive equipment out of Larry English’s boat. At least two witnesses claimed not to have ever known that English himself admitted that he had driven the boat back and forth to several locations and wasn’t sure himself where the equipment was stolen.
But, the neighbors all participated in and got pleasure from sounding the alarm, running armed into situations, telling themselves they were heroes protecting their children. One of the female neighbors testified in talking about one of these incidents something like: My children (elevated voice, MY CHILDREN) were feet away. But, this same woman when she saw police cars with lights on in the neighborhood, drove with all her children in the car to the site of the murder. This woman, so terrified of “intruders” that she freaked out when a man was walking around the neighborhood taking pictures, drove her own children to a murder scene and then complained about how shocking it was.
(Note: She also later went on a boat ride with one of the men who committed this murder).
This woman, who carried a gun herself, was at one point so afraid of what might happen that she thought the McMichaels were going to shoot her husband who was in a vacant house at night searching for an “intruder.”
And we all know how the neighbors whittled down the available suspects who were in the neighborhood (a white couple, white children, a white homeless person, a white man who was arrested in the neighborhood by the federal police) to focus in on the one young black man seen inside the vacant house building site. Well, they actually didn’t “whittle.” They jumped with all the feet they had on this one person, sure that he had committed a crime.
The belief that neighborhood gossip and postings on Facebook are reality, the willingness of people to pass around this speculation as fact, the willingness of these people to run into the streets armed with guns willing to shoot somebody (as long as they are black), and the belief to this day that they did nothing wrong just astounds and depresses me.
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17 November 2021
Trial Notes
Motions are being heard about directed verdicts and dropping charges against the three defendants in the Ahmaud Arbery case.
- It is standard for defense attorneys to request a directed verdict to drop all charges and free their clients. It is rarely granted.
- Hogue (male) is trying to separate individual crimes (false imprisonment and shooting) and individual locations (what happened on one street as opposed to what happened on another).
- The state is arguing, citing a recent Georgia Supreme court (GSC) decision, that all these events were part of the same series of actions. The GSC decision, evidently prevents the state from charging separate felonies that were committed as part of the same series of events.
- It should come as no surprise that William Bryan attorney, Kevin Gough, is threatening (once again) severance of Bryan’s case from the case against the other two.
- Gough is also claiming that the death of Ahmaud Arbery was “suicide by Citizen’s Arrest” implying that Mr. Arbery was responsible for his own death.
- The prosecution agreed to leave race out of the case. I’m not a lawyer and I can see both sides of the argument of whether to include this evidence, but excluding it certainly causes problems.
- The defense attorney for Greg McMichael is arguing that the charge of malice murder should be thrown out because there is no evidence to support it. But, Bryan in his statement to GBI agent Dial said that Travis McMichael stood over the body of Ahmaud Arbery and said “F…ing ni…er.”
- Consistent with the sentiment expressed in that excited utterance, one of the themes of the defense is that Ahmaud Arbery is responsible for his own death.
- If Mr. Arbery had run in a different direction, had stopped, had spoken, had run through a yard, etc. he would have had no problem. As Travis McMichaels said, it’s the victim’s fault.
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15 November 2021
The State today called a witness from the State Crime Lab who testified to finding tee shirt fibers on the truck of William Bryan. When the state asked about the ease with which fibers can be transferred from one surface to the other, Defense attorney Gough objected.
Gough, in his usual, “let’s try to make a big deal out of nothing” strategy (to legal argument as well as life, it seems) tried to say that there was a “casym” of difference between what she testified to and what she wrote in her report.
She wrote in her report that she couldn’t exclude the possibility that the fibers were from Arbery’s tee shirt. She said in court that could not definitely say that these fibers were from Ahmaud Arbery’s tee shirt.
When Gough implied that he had uncovered the “Perry Mason” discrepancy in testimony, the technician replied that the two statements were not mutually exclusive. I really hope the jury is not hopelessly stupid.
When this witness took the stand, I started wondering how hard a person with a tee shirt on needed to come in contact with a truck door to leave fibers. Gough, evidently saw this as a problem as well since he objected when the State asked about different surfaces and the ease with which fibers can be transferred.
Gough also once again used the hopelessly inadequate investigation by the Glynn County Police (GCPD) to plant doubt in the minds of the jurors. He asked the technician if she had collected fibers from the grill of the truck, the front of the truck, the back of the truck. There was no objection about the relevance of this questioning.
The investigation by the GCPD has been a repeated theme for all the defense attorneys, but especially for Gough. They are using the fact that the GCPD virtually accepted every word said on the scene of the murder by the white defendants and didn’t investigate to create doubt. And there is a lot of room to maneuver here. GCPD did not separate the defendants; they did not search the defendants. They did not include the trucks in the crime scene and allowed at least Greg McMichaels to drive his own truck to the police station.
Again and again, the defense has used this against the state. This evidence wasn’t collected, this part of the crime scene wasn’t preserved. For example, Gough asked if the entire path of Arbery’s run was checked for evidence. He was implying that Arbery had a weapon that was not recovered. The defense attorneys are trying to encourage the jury to have doubt of guilt because the police failed to do an adequate investigation. It’s the O.J. Simpson defense.
Also, the defense attorneys have used the fact that the GCPD didn’t make any arrests as an indication that the men weren’t guilty. The argument is that they weren’t arrested at the time, so there was no reason to arrest them. I suppose, the extension of that thinking is that since “the media” has transformed this into a case about race, the men were only arrested because of inappropriate pressure by “civil rights activists.” (And we have Jesse Jackson sitting in the courtroom).
Jurors were questioned and some eliminated because they had supported the “social justice movement” (an ill defined term) in any way.
There are people on Twitter who believe that there is a chance of getting a guilty verdict in this case even with eleven white jurors. I am not that optimistic. Gough was a public defender in this county for decades. If nothing else, he knows his jurors and he is clearly laying a map for racist thinking in this case, providing pegs for the jury to put their racist Col. Sanders hats on.
Law, Power, and Justice 