In this mailing:
- Alan M. Dershowitz: A Few Thoughts on Law and Justice
- Peter Huessy: Iran's Sprint to the Bomb
by Alan M. Dershowitz • July 23, 2020 at 5:00 am
For me, the real enemies of America are the extremists on both sides: the hard left that would bring America down, the hard right white supremacists and neo‑Nazis.... People from the hard left do not even want to hear from people on the center left.
I think the last thing The New York Times wants is for people to come to their own conclusion, because The New York Times bars dissenting points of view and fired editors who authorize them to be published on its pages.... The Times has taken the "op" out of "op-ed."
The combination of elected prosecutors and elected judges has made our legal system far too political. Too many decisions are made by people, crowds, and pressure groups. When you combine four aspects of our system -- prosecutors are elected, judges are elected, juries are ordinary, lay people, and the judges who control the juries are often subject to re‑election -- the risks of our justice system being turned over to the masses, to the mobs, to the crowds, to the chanters, becomes all too real, and our system of checks and balances becomes weaker.
Remember that when America was founded at the end of the 18th century, the greatest fear was of the mob. We were watching what was happening a little later on in France with the revolution, and with the killing of so many innocent people in the name of the revolution.
In China, some years ago, I was invited to go to a trial, a man who was accused of stealing some items. After the evidence came in -- you had evidence from the prosecution, the defendant testified -- and then the judge ordered the doors opened. Hundreds of people poured in from the streets. The judge said, "Now we'll hear from the masses." The masses started yelling, "Convict! Convict! Convict!" Of course, the judge convicted, because the masses were the ones in a communist country who had control over the justice system. I never want to see that happen in the United States of America
It is very hard to be a dissenter today. If you are a dissenter today, you risk being canceled. If you are an editor who is willing to publish dissenting material, you risk being fired. If you are a dissenter today in a crowd, you risk being beaten up.
If there were no police, if the police were defunded, wealthy people would hire private security guards, but the people who cannot afford private guards need to have a well‑funded police force. I am in favor of extra funding for the police. Give them better training. Teach them how to subdue people without using lethal force.
The problem with the UN is not that it passes too many resolutions, but too few. It never attacks its favorite countries. It applies a double standard of injustice. It has devoted more time to condemning Israel than all the other countries of the world combined. Let us see what it says about recent reports concerning murders in Iran of gay people, for instance the recent murder of a 14‑year‑old by her father as an honor killing. Let us see what it says about so many of the violations of human rights around the world. Well, do not hold your breath. It will say nothing. It will focus only on Israel and the United States. There is a case to be made for the United States withdrawing and defunding...
If we were to experience a worse pandemic, worse economic situation, worse racial tensions, all of those could lead to a crisis with democracy, which is very fragile. Indeed, I think the extremists on the hard left are hoping that happens so that they can try to attract other people to their extremist anti‑American agenda.
I never expected I would be spending the last years of my life and career bringing lawsuits, but I am now contemplating a lawsuit against Netflix for falsely accusing me of having sex with a woman I never met, never heard of -- and who has audio tapes and emails and manuscripts in which she admits, her lawyers admit, that she never met me and could never have met me; and yet Netflix runs this and does not publish what I gave them, all the material showing that I could never have met this person... I think it is important for the First Amendment to hold irresponsible media -- powerful, irresponsible media -- accountable.
(Image source: iStock)
What I want to talk about today is the age of extremism in which we are currently living. I just published a new book, The Case for Liberalism in an Age of Extremism: or, Why I Left the Left But Can't Join the Right.
It is a political memoir about the homelessness that I and many of my friends and colleagues feel. We feel that the Democratic Party has turned too far left for us in many respects. We cannot support "the squad," those who would get rid of the framework of our free market economy, those who are opposed to dissent.
Yet we would feel uncomfortable supporting a party that disapproves of a woman's right to choose, gay marriage, concerns for the environment, reasonable gun control. Many of us feel homeless. The book is a memoir that could have been written by either a centrist conservative or a centrist liberal.
by Peter Huessy • July 23, 2020 at 4:00 am
It cannot... be a surprise that Iran is still sprinting toward deliverable nuclear weapons with the very uranium enrichment technology permitted by the 2015 agreement. While the U.S. Senate was told the deal would halt Iran's pursuit of nuclear weaponry, the deal only camouflaged the mullahs' ambitions to acquire it.
Worse, when the deal's provisions were to sunset this decade, Iran would have been free to acquire full nuclear capability without pretending it was not.
China is buying time for Iran. Perhaps China believes that its presence in the region will persuade the United States to show "restraint." The United States should not take the bait.
The prospects ahead are possibly dark. A change in US administration may likely see a return to the JCPOA, an end to sanctions and maximum pressure, and an Iranian sense of having won a major struggle with the "Great Satan." That is not a prospect America's allies want to accept. The United States should not risk waiting, either.
The world knows that the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) never ended -- or even intended to end -- Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons. The ticking clocks you hear denote a race between America and its allies pursuing the destruction of Iran's nuclear weapons program on the one hand, and Iran's sprint to the bomb and an umbrella of terror on the other. (Image source: iStock)
In 2013, Danny Danon, Israel's Deputy Defense Minister, warned that Iran was speedily moving to develop advanced centrifuges that will enable it to enrich uranium needed for nuclear weapons within one month. "We have made it crystal clear ," Danon said, "Israel will not stand by and watch Iran develop weaponry that will put us, the entire Middle East and eventually the world, under an Iranian umbrella of terror."
This concern was shared by the United States and thus, in 2015, a nuclear agreement -- the Joint Comprehensive Program of Action (JCPOA) -- was made between the United States, along with Russia, China, France, Great Britain and Germany, and supposedly Iran, which never signed the deal. Ostensibly Iran would give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons and the U.S. would withdraw its economic sanctions.
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