Posted on by Nathan Riley

Trump’s negotiating style Part 2

Trump has broken with the Democrats and their devotion to Ukraine. In a perceptive piece, Peter Baker writes “President Trump made clear that the days of isolating Russia are over and suggested that Ukraine was to blame for being invaded.”

Blame is an odd word for the harsh realities of internation relations. In Baker’s reporting the U.S. has in recent years adopted the view that Ukraine is the victim of Russian aggression. It’s a world of good guys and bad guys. Zelinsky is standing up for freedom and self-determination. Putin, “the dictator,” is the invader. Trump’s radical change: accepting Putin’s right to impose Russia’s will on the smaller good guys. A right often exercised by the United States.

Baker is surely right. Millions of Europeans and Americans accept the view that Russia is the invader and also accept the view that the callous Trump doesn’t care.

Trump has started peace negotiations on Ukraine and accepted the Russian agenda that excludes Zelinsky. Baker describes it as a scandal. My view is international relations are not for the faint of heart. A small country like Ukraine shouldn’t pick a fight with a great power like Russia. In fairness to Ukraine, Russia’s great power status was only recently confirmed. But a huge number of Ukrainians understood that provoking Russia was a disaster and fled the country after demonstrations (with CIA help?) ousted the pro-Russian government in 2014.

The war that turned hot in 2022 after the Russian invasion has basically shattered Ukraine while Russia’s industrial base has grown to supply their soldiers and improve their fighting force. It’s an unfair world, but Baker is wrong. The United States are not good guys; they are practitioners of great power politics.

While the Times and many Americans view Russia as the bully and Ukraine as the victim, American weapons and money supported Israel’s campaign against the Palestinians. A campaign so violent that it has provoked an investigation by the International Criminal Court into allegations that Israel is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. The ICC has issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The rosy view of the U.S. as good guys is propaganda. Even if Ukraine did not cooperate with the CIA and rearm, it still should have seen the necessity of ignoring provocations and preserving a working relationship with their bigger neighbor: Russia. Perhaps a cooperative Ukraine might have avoided the February 2022 invasion.

Trump recognizes Russia’s great power status. Something that Congress and the Democrats resisted. This has had a dramatic effect on Europe, the United States, and Ukraine. The new administration in Washington believes Putin’s agenda is a workable basis for negotiations. The Russian president believes Zelensky’s leadership is illegal under Ukrainian law. Putin wants elections. Normally a U.S. demand.

As a result, Zelensky is excluded from the negotiations and will face demands that he resign. This is a concrete result of Trump’s five-week-old administration. 

At a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Brussels Pete Hegseth, the self-proclaimed warrior, and new Secretary of Defense announced policies that met Russia’s President Vladimir Putin agenda for opening negotiations.

Ukraine would not join NATO, it would cede to Russia provinces conquered during Ukraine’s misguided war against Russia.

Should an international force watch over Ukraine, Hegseth said it would be a “non-NATO Mission.” No countries were named but clearly China, a Russian ally would qualify, ditto for U.S. allies Japan and South Korea. Journalists reported Europe gave the proposal a chilly reception.

Negotiations have started; Hegseth spoke publicly on Wednesday Feb. 12 . Privately Steve Witkoff, Trumps special mediator, was in Moscow. The next day Trump and Putin had a long phone call that Trump called productive.

By Thursday, Hegseth was soothing Congressional critics and U. S. allies. His ideas would be subject to change during negotiations. He wasn’t announcing hard and fast positions. It would be up Trump to decide what “to allow or not allow.”

A possible major event has Putin and Trump holding direct talks in Moscow on May 9 for the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the German surrender to Russia in 1945, when Russia and the United States were allies against Hitler.

The President promised to engage in nuclear talks once “we straighten it all out” in the Middle East and Ukraine. The President is breaking with a costly Biden administration plan to modernize the armed forces. He told reporters, “There’s no reason for us to be building brand-new nuclear weapons…We already have so many you can destroy the world 50 times over.”

Talks about peace in Ukraine started on Feb 18 in Saudi Arabia. Ukraine was not invited. The location was odd for Ukrainian peace talks but a sensible one for involving Egypt in a Palestinian peace process.

At this initial meeting Moscow and Washington agreed to expand their embassy staffs. It would have the practical effect of making it easier for each country to obtain accurate information and permit non-binding discussion of tentative plans.

Perhaps another Putin hope was being realized. According to a Moscow statement, “The two sides expressed their mutual willingness to interact on pressing international issues, including the settlement around Ukraine.” Putin is eager to establish a framework for discussing major issues with the United States.

A neutral Ukraine might model itself after Austria. That country’s founding documents provide that “In all future times Austria will not join any military alliances and will not permit the establishment of any foreign military bases on her territory.”

Posted on by Nathan Riley

Marijuana Pessimism Is Promoting Ignorance

Free speech has a special virtue; it improves the chances that errors will be corrected. In a blog from early October, I praised the New York Times for its enterprise journalism focusing on the dangers of marijuana.

I thought these were new ideas, signaling to doctors the risks of marijuana. I was wrong. The research they assembled repeats the tired arguments of those worrywarts who see mostly danger from pot.

Peter Grinspoon, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, has written a book challenging the pessimists who see dangers from marijuana use. Like his father, Lester, whose famous 1971 book “Marihuana Reconsidered” was a foundational text of the drug reform movement, Peter argues that on balance the positives of marijuana are greater than the risks.

In his book, Seeing through the Smoke: A Cannabis Specialist Untangles the Truth about Marijuana, Dr. Grinspoon confronts those researchers, such as the ones the NY Times interviewed, who see grave risks and little benefit from the legalization of cannabis.

He starts the book with a family story demonstrating that the plant is medicine. It’s a tale that the researchers interviewed by the NY Times would find impossible to refute. Peter’s older brother developed a blood cancer requiring massive chemotherapy, but it couldn’t arrest the spread of leukemia. Peter asserts, convincingly, that cannabis kept his brother alive for months. It performed this task by combatting the side effects of chemotherapy.

“Without cannabis, Danny would be lying in his room with a towel over his head and a barf bucket next to his bed at the ready. With cannabis, he would be downstairs playing board games and wrestling with his younger twin brothers.” “Instead of barfing, he was eating.…the improvement in his quality of life was incalculable.”

Without a doubt, marijuana added months to the life of his brother. Surely, this effect is medicinal; it minimized the side effects of chemotherapy.

What angers Dr. Grinspoon is that throughout history the medical profession has recognized that tinctures of marijuana and the marijuana plant treat certain illnesses. Migraine headaches is just one example. When Congress took a conservative turn after the reelection of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1936, southern conservatives formed a voting bloc with Republicans. This coalition had a working majority that lasted decades. In 1937, Congress made marijuana illegal for the first time in medical history. The American Medical Association opposed the legislation, but the government agencies that had enforced alcohol prohibition and their scary stories convinced the lawmakers. Pot quickly became an illegal pleasure, and a new market monopoly was given to lawbreakers.

This change in attitude was stunning. Pharmacists and doctors for centuries had gotten positive results from medicine using cannabis. It is one of many benefits that humans have gotten from the hemp plant. Throughout human history, they have used the hemp plant for practical uses rope, shoes, and medicine. Archeologists have found artifacts that use hemp as long ago as ten thousand years.

Pessimistic medical researchers limit their research by focusing on memory and other work-related mental tasks. A comprehensive report in 2017 concluded “there is strong data for immediate impairment, but little to no data for lasting impairment.” The negative conclusions relied on selective data; had the researchers “looked at, creativity, humor, and insight,” Grinspoon suspects “there wouldn’t have been deficits, and people might have done significantly better than the norm.” In short, the pessimists are desperately hunting for reasons to conclude pot is bad.

Unsurprisingly, Peter Grinspoon offers a different conclusion: pot, like alcohol and food, works best if used in moderation. However, the pessimists are creating a real danger: ignorance. Too many doctors lack an understanding of the properties for good and bad of marijuana. They are unable to help their patients who use cannabis and can’t recommend this drug even when the benefits are clear.

Grinspoon’s book Seeing Through the Smoke seeks to help doctors and the public understand how they can get benefits from pot.  As a physician, he advises that pot sold in legal markets is tested and users are not exposed to “mold, heavy metals, and other contaminants.” It is a much safer product than the illegal substance.

Peter Grinspoon is trying to create a common language and values that allow the public to make informed choices and to create a common understanding that will lead to a new consensus.

Posted on by Nathan Riley · 2 Comments

Don’t Be Fooled: Marjiuana Isn’t Always Fun. For Some It Carries Serious Risks

Legalization is no panacea. Simply lifting the criminal penalties creates new problems, not insurmountable but which require community attention.

Nobody knows this better than Portland, Oregon, where the decriminalization of all drugs became a major source of public dissatisfaction. As might be expected, Covid added to the city’s problems, but national attention focused on the open-air use of drugs, making it a political issue. So widespread was the discontent that the City abandoned its governmental structure. Among the changes, City council districts replaced at-large elections.

A spectacular and thoughtful article has brought similar attention to the problems tied to the sharp rise in marijuana use. About 4.5 million people aged 18 and over use marijuana daily or near daily. In 2002, approximately 1.5% of adults 26 and over were daily users. Today, it has skyrocketed to an estimated 7%.

In a major piece of enterprise journalism, the Times spoke to close to 600 users and discovered frequent illnesses in states across the nation. The journalists described widespread use even among users experiencing negative reactions, who often didn’t connect their symptoms to marijuana use. Although alarmed, many experts the Times consulted remained supporters of legalization. However, every one of them wanted wider recognition of the medical problems, which are often unknown to doctors and emergency rooms.

The newly legal businesses frequently offer products whose potency would give most stoners concern. New users without marijuana experience were vaping with products that had a 90% THC concentration. Anybody who’s hung out with drug users has met some people with a compulsion to persistently seek stronger drugs in the hopes of experiencing better highs.

Current legalization policies not only give such adventurers a free hand to try more potent versions of pot but also permit the marketing of these products to persons with limited experience who are unable to recognize ill effects, even dangers. Legal weed dispensaries don’t only sell grass that is recently harvested; they also sell hybrid products that provide an ever-increasing kick. In short, the Times team described a laissez-faire market lacking regulation.

Think about what would happen if liquor stores had no idea whether their whiskey was 80 proof, 100 proof, or 120 proof. Liquor products are standardized to protect buyers. They know what to expect because government rules mandated be presented to the consumer.

Pot is sold in a variety of products, sometimes from pot plants, other times from hemp, and undoubtedly many products in a pot store are cooked and unnatural.

As people grow older, they select their attitudes towards beer, wine, and liquor. A growing number of young adults simply don’t drink. Bar or restaurant patrons frequently encounter servers who don’t use alcoholic drinks.

What is surprising is the extent to which users experience problems that are often associated with booze: vomiting, mental confusion, and even cause psychosis. But all too often the public believes pot is harmless, which is often true but not always.

A more serious illness tied to marijuana is cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome (CHS). A wide range of symptoms mark the syndrome:  “nausea, vomiting and pain… extreme dehydration, seizures, kidney failure.” Even cases of cardiac arrest are reported. According to the three reporters on the Times team, doctors and users are unfamiliar with the connection between these symptoms and marijuana use.

Legalization properly done will inform the makers of marijuana products, the medical community, and consumers about the risks. The bottom line is that pot and other psychotropic drugs should be treated with respect, and many should stay away.

The outlook is cloudy. Congress can’t even agree on legislation that gives sellers and growers full access to banking facilities. Many people still attribute magic powers to pot and see it as a life-destroying force. The great merit of the Times article is the clarity with which it recognizes the pleasures experienced by potheads while offering specific and detailed information about how things can go wrong. The impact of the Times story, presumably the first of many, on the legalization community is uncertain. Many, including this writer, will think it’s an argument to make pot use a crime. It took me three readings to realize that Megan Twohey, Danielle Ivory, and Carson Kessler had fairly weighed the contentious arguments and found problems that any fair-minded person would want to address.

Posted on by Nathan Riley

Surprise Win for Black Lives Matters

Leave it to the President to draw the battle lines in black and white. Black Lives Matter versus Trump’s frightening twitter promise to “assume control.” He added, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you.”

Stop the police killings, permit the police killings, the President’s choices are simpleminded, even preposterous. Governments promote domestic tranquility and should not satisfy a fantasy about obey or be killed. Fanning the flames of conflict is beyond the pale, but within days, panicked Democratic mayors and governors had put the police in riot gear. Looting mattered more than the deaths of black people. Trump repudiated the protestors chief goal-making black lives matter.

A NY Times columnist with a growing reputation concluded the “militaristic posture” made matters worse. It provoked and increased the likelihood demonstrators would go off the rails and start breaking things. Jamall Borrell reminded us attacking protesters “does more to inflame and agitate, than it does to calm the situation.” Unasked was the question rattling thinking observers did the President see this conflict as a positive feature or a defect? The President was looking for trouble and Democratic political leaders looked trapped.

The reign of error never happened. The provocation failed. The left won a stunning victory with demonstrators winning the battle for public opinion. Mayors threw in the towel cancelling curfews; politicians adopted the Black Lives Matter program. Including the most basic one, demanding the U.S. cut spending on police and prisons so schools, health and social services can expand. A radical change in Democratic party policy is possible.

New York State overturned a 40-year-old policy of secrecy that was dear to police unions. Democrats voted for the public against labor; it’s the kind of change that makes everyone ask is this a new era with new rules? Police officers’ disciplinary records will become public record.

When an incident grabs the public’s attention, we can learn is this a first offense or one of a string. Everyone is betting the police like the Catholic Church kept bad actors on the job long after their faults are apparent.

This result is unexpected and may herald a reformed Democratic Party. When the looting started, politicians feared the protestors message would be stifled. In the media, criminal Blacks would replace outraged Blacks. The misbehavior of a few would overshadow the disciplined protests. In a grievous error, curfews were imposed. During this Presidential election year Democratic leaders declared their voters to be criminals if they were on the streets after 8 PM. An order, that the protestors would disobey, and the resulting conflict could split the Democratic Party making Trump’s reelection possible.

The police like the President were aggressive. They didn’t shoot looters; they shot pepper spray, tear gas and other projectiles justified because the weapons injure but are not lethal. A witless distinction devised by those who enforce a might makes right discipline. Pepper spray is neither reasonable nor an act of mercy when applied to peaceful demonstrators.The police turned into morons for Trump.

The crowds shouting “no justice, no peace” or walking hands held high chanting “don’t shoot” were on the TV screen and social media. These demonstrations of people from all races were huge and tracked Bernie Sanders supporters. They might not have voted, but they turned up when it mattered after the killing of an unarmed man. 140 cities had them. The local had gone national. George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis could have been a local City story, but thanks to the organizing of Black Lives Matter, the nation recognized police departments murder black people. Eric Garner Sandra Bland, Freddie Gray Breonna Taylor, and Laquan McDonald to name just a few. We know the names, because of Black Lives Matter. The slogan makes the rights and the wrongs of the issue crystal clear. And it persuades people of all races. It is a slogan about identity politics that makes our common humanity most important.

Imposing curfews and putting police into riot gear could have been a catastrophic error especially by Democratic politicians. They were accepting the cynical view right or wrong mattered less than the supposed political truth Democrats must be against looters. The media’s penchant for “if it bleeds, it leads stories” meant disorder would be the story. Burnt vehicles and stolen merchandise must be protected by batons and projectiles. Damn the constitutional rights of a multi-racial coalition calling for a stop to police killings.

A political coalition that wants unity must vigorously support black lives matter. Political allies must protect their partners from assassination; that is asking the barest minimum. Black white and brown must stop their local police departments from battering their citizens. By giving into Donald Trump, Democrats were on the verge of a crisis that could cost them the election.

The popularity of Black Lives Mattered was generally recognized. At the end of May the Sunday Times published an article about Citibank and other giant corporations hitch hiking on the popularity of the Black Lives Matter slogan.

Retired Marine General James Mattis dissed the President. The former Secretary of Defense’s words were measured but their meaning biting. He had the telling advantage of being right. The man, who Donald Trump appointed Secretary of Defense, ignored his old boss the President directing his advice to the American people-don’t be fooled by this looting nonsense.

The unity of “civil society” is not threatened by marauding youth, the General wrote in The Atlantic but by this President who undermines unity. His policies can be squelched if “civil society” unites and uses its resources to tell the truth. This unity will stop Donald Trump who seeks to divide Americans, and the damage to the United States from his actions is way more serious than an outbreak of property damage.

General Mattis’s warning graced the front page of newspaper and was a teaser for TV news casts across the nation. It was saturation coverage and journalism “We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers,” he advised. “The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values.

“When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the constitution,” Mattis wrote. “Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the constitutional rights of their fellow citizens – much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.

The General is crystal clear: if you follow Trump’s advice to exaggerate the dangers of looters in order to justify the claim that an insurrection existed disunity would follow. The popular storm could conceivably paralyze government.

This is high stakes politics. Siding with the President could be disastrous. The armed force would be called upon “to violate the constitutional rights of their fellow citizens.” This would tear a gap in the fabric of society creating conflict with Americans over what is plainly a matter of conscience. “The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values.” The protestors deserve respect.

The path to civic unity, the General insisted, lay with supporting black lives matters. An opinion that gained added weight because the military and the left of the Democratic Party are traditional opponents. The left wants to raid the Military Industrial Complex budget to build schools, hospitals and housing. The General insisted look at the big picture, that’s Donald Trump, first he must go.

The effect was immediate during the day cable tv commentators paid new attention to the lawful protesters. The crackdown wasn’t inflaming the streets, inciting riots or turning the demonstrators into bad guys.

Instead the police brandishing shields and firing pepper spray became the lawless element. They arrested thousands who stood with arms upraised chanting don’t shoot. District attorneys refused to prosecute the cases “in the interests of justice.”

The police are humiliated; their traditional political power sidelined. The crowd control methods from the 1960s became the police riots of 2020. They confronted criticism with violence; their commitment to law and democracy was feeble at best.

It’s a stunning victory for the left. They immediately turned this new strength into hardball demanding police budgets be cut and school budgets improved. A historic demand of the left without advanced warning became a political reality-on everyone’s agenda. This demand was picking up some real political support. Public Health officials were quick to remind their media outlets their budgets have been cut even though police manhandle mental patients daily under conditions that make human rights advocates squirm.

The demand has legs because tax collections by local governments has plummeted during the covid-19 lock down. These governments must cut budgets. The police make a perfect target.

In one of its most public and heated controversies Democratic Party unity was preserved. Fatal conflicts between the Sanders Democrats and those claiming the mantle of pragmatic realists was averted. Events minimized an initial decision to align with the President unleashing get tough policies. In the end the blame fell on the police.

What remains concerning is why the Democratic leadership got stampeded into making a traditional law and order response. Why did it take a disaffected member of the Trump team to remind the media, the public and the Democrats that Donald Trump must go is the problem? The streets were speaking the truth; the protestors were calling on America’s conscience to honor its own ideals.

It is on this basis that General Mattis and presumably the leaders of the Atlantic posted the reminder that unity is the responsibility of everybody in society and only then can we be assured of defeating Trump. Clearly understood was that meant shutdown police killings. Undoubted most thought government should have done that decades ago.

Clearly one wing of the pragmatic Democrats understands that unity means one sides supports the other side on important issues. The next matter deserving discussion is what do we do this revitalized power to demonstrate and set the agenda. That is a subject worth its own discussion.