The Vaxman Cometh

August 18, 2021

The Good News

“An ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place we can go as we are and not be questioned.” — Maya Angelou

Not Cam-boding Well For War Criminals

The Khmer Rouge was the vicious totalitarian regime in Cambodia responsible for the deaths of at least 1.7 million people in the late 1970s. A court was established in 2003 as part of an agreement between Cambodia’s government and the United Nations. Its purpose was to bring to trial senior leaders and those “most responsible” for carrying out the atrocities committed during those horror-soaked years in which Pol Pot and his Communist followers annihilated nearly 25% of Cambodia’s population.

The tribunal, formally named the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), got underway in 2006. There were questions from the start about how effective and independent the ECCC would be, given the awkward compromise reached between the Cambodian government and the U.N. After 11 years and nearly $300 million spent, the ECCC had convicted just three people. For comparison, four Allied Powers set up an international tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany in 1945 that took ten months to try 24 high-ranking Nazis and six Nazi organizations for atrocities committed during WWII, including the murder of six million people.

Of the three people the ECCC convicted, two were members of the highest circle of the radical Communist regime: Nuon Chea, 90, No. 2 in the hierarchy, and Khieu Samphan, 85, the chief of state. Both received life sentences for crimes against humanity. The third defendant, commander of a notorious Khmer Rouge prison, also received a life sentence. Chea and Samphan were tried again later in a separate proceeding for genocide and other crimes.

Political interference played a big part in who would be tried and the trial’s slow pace. Cambodia’s prime minister, Hun Sen, opposed additional indictments, suggesting it might lead to civil war. The country’s former foreign minister said flatly that further indictments “will not be allowed.” Several former members of the Khmer Rouge serve in Cambodia’s government, including Hun Sen, and it’s been careful to protect its own.

In November 2018, the ECCC declared for the first time that the Khmer Rouge committed genocide against the Muslim Cham minority and ethnic Vietnamese. The panel also issued guilty verdicts against Chea, 92, and Samphan, 87, now the two most senior surviving members of the regime. Samphan’s defense was that he hadn’t known of the widespread murders taking place on his watch.

On Monday, Samphan, now 90 and the last living leader of the Khmer Rouge, appeared in court to appeal his conviction and life sentence for genocide and the other crimes. His lawyer opened by arguing the conviction should be overturned on procedural and evidentiary grounds, reiterating that his client had been unaware of the atrocities being committed. Prosecutors ridiculed Samphan’s claim that he “knew nothing, saw nothing and heard nothing” during his nearly four years at the helm of the movement. However, David Chandler, an expert on Cambodian history, agreed that Samphan hadn’t been allowed to do anything because he really was only a puppet and not “a thug” — just the “civilized face” of the regime. “But they didn’t keep things from him,” Chandler said. “He knew exactly what was going on.” The slow-moving tribunal is expected to render its judgment on Samphan’s appeal in late 2022. (History, NYT)

More Blazes In The East

On Monday, Israeli officials appealed to allies in the region for help in battling wildfires that broke out Sunday and were consuming large swaths of forest west of Jerusalem. 75 firefighting teams and a number of planes worked to contain blazes forcing people from their homes in several communities and cloaking the Holy City in a pall of thick black smoke.
By Tuesday, 110 teams accompanied by eight aircraft were fighting fires that had burned almost 8 square miles of land. The fire chief said investigators were still working to determine the cause of the conflagration, but he confirmed that the fire “broke out as a result of human activity.” Israel and other countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea have had a searing summer, with deadly wildfires in Algeria, Cyprus, Greece, and Turkey. (AP News, Al Jazeera)

Explosion Victims Unable To Be Treated

A fuel tanker that exploded early Sunday morning in the Lebanese village of Tleil killed 33 people and left nearly 80 wounded. The northern village, and the rest of Akkar province, is one of Lebanon’s poorest. Its hospitals do not have burn units, and many of the wounded had to be treated as far away as the capital of Beirut, about a two-and-a-half-hour drive.
Hospitals throughout the country have been struggling for two years to find fuel and medicines, and to retain doctors and nurses, after the Lebanese pound lost more than 90 percent of its value to the U.S. dollar. The health ministry has reached out to other countries for help.
Lebanon was struggling with severe fuel shortages and power outages prior to the explosion. Over the weekend one of the country’s top hospitals issued a harrowing statement saying it had less than two days of fuel, threatening the lives of about 150 patients on respirators and dialysis machines. (Al Jazeera)

Additional World News

Gavin A Hard Time

California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom is facing a recall election on September 14. Gubernatorial recalls in California involve a two-part ballot. Voters are asked whether to recall the sitting governor, then asked who should replace him.
If a majority of voters oust Newsom, whichever candidate receives the most votes on the second question wins. That allows a replacement candidate to be elected with a small plurality and potentially far fewer votes than those cast to keep the current governor. Newsom is in a tight race to stay in office and the leading Republican contender to replace him consistently gets support from 25% or less of the electorate.
On Saturday, two California voters filed a federal lawsuit arguing the state’s recall provision is unconstitutional because it allows sitting governors to be replaced by candidates who’ve received fewer votes. The court is asked to either prohibit the recall election or add Newsom’s name to the replacement candidate list. (Politico)

The Vaxman Cometh

Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis stands by his ban on mask mandates for school students and staff in the state, and the following post on one Florida school district’s website isn’t likely to change his mind. The post says that “Board Members will meet to discuss the latest district COVID-19 impact and will discuss the best way to mitigate against the spread of the virus, up to and including mandatory face coverings for all students and staff.”
More notably, however, is the part of the post that reads: “As of 7 a.m. Monday, 5,599 students and 316 employees in Hillsborough County Public Schools are in isolation or quarantine. Isolation refers to individuals who have tested positive for COVID-19 while quarantine refers to those who have had close contact with a positive case.”
Meanwhile, Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott, who also stands by his ban on mask mandates, tested positive for Covid-19, just hours after appearing with hundreds of maskless supporters at an indoor GOP event outside Dallas. Abbott is fully vaccinated and is receiving Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody treatment while isolating in the Governor’s Mansion — options not available to school children under age 12 and the vast majority of other Texans.
On Tuesday, there were 11,791 lab-confirmed Covid-19 patients in hospitals and 327 ICU beds available throughout the state. Texas also held the national record for Most Pediatric Covid-19 Hospitalizations. (hillsboroughschools.org, CNN)

Additional USA News

Problems Are Cropping Up

Climate scientists projected for many decades that the potential for severe droughts was coming. In 2000, a study confirmed that a megadrought, worse than anything in recorded history, was likely already in progress in the Western U.S. But in California’s Central Valley, almond production was expanding at breakneck speed.

From 1995 to 2020, land planted with almond trees grew from 756 square miles to 2,500 square miles, and almond production grew from 370 million pounds to 3.1 billion pounds. Growers seeing dollar signs just couldn’t stop planting almond orchards. Even during California’s 2012 to 2016 drought — because almond prices were rising — farmers and investors planted hundreds of square miles of new orchards in areas lacking reliable water supplies.

80% of the world’s almonds are grown in the drought-stricken Central Valley. Each nut takes a gallon of water to produce; they’re the state’s second thirstiest crop, behind alfalfa hay. Together, the two crops suck up 25% of California’s annual agricultural water use. 70% to 80% of California’s almonds are exported, and as a water management specialist at UC Davis put it: “The water embodied in the production of those almonds is being exported out of this state.”

The drought has drained reservoirs that supply water to Central Valley farms. The more scarce and expensive water becomes, the more farmers must downsize production; some just abandon their parched orchards. To quote a wise old metaphor: ‘the chickens are coming home to roost.’ (Science Daily, AP News, New Republic)

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