Federal Judiciary

Starved and dangerous, &c. -- By: Jay Nordlinger

Readers of this column have heard perhaps more than they want about hunger strikes in Cuba. In late February, the prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo died after an 83-day strike. Yes, 83 days -- that?s a long time. And his jailers did not make it any easier for him, as I detailed in this piece. More about that piece in a moment.

There is another hunger strike going on in Cuba now, by Guillermo Fariñas. Impromptus readers are well familiar with him. He is an independent journalist -- not currently in prison -- who is a perpetual thorn in the dictatorship?s side. Raúl Castro lashed out at him the other day, and at the dead Zapata. He said that hunger strikes such as theirs were ?blackmail? organized by foreign countries, out to get Cuba. That?s how the Castro brothers talk.

He also said that Cuban hunger strikers were glorified by ?Western media.? I say: If only. What?s Raúl reading, National Review? (For a news story on Castro and his statements, go here.)

In the March 22 NR, I had an essay about hunger striking -- that is the piece I linked to above. And this is a relatively complicated subject, morally and otherwise. It?s not necessarily out of bounds to refer to a hunger strike as blackmail. Here is a paragraph from the essay:

A hunger strike is an extreme act, and an extremely coercive one. In a sense, the striker has a gun to his head, saying, ?If you don?t meet my demands, I will kill myself. What?s more, it will be your fault.? People go on hunger strikes in the service of good causes and bad causes. Great men do it and wicked men do it. They do it in prison and out. They do it in democracies and under tyrannies. Some strikers are mad, others are perfectly sane. Some are mere showboaters, some are in earnest, even saintly. Some strike for a limited period of time -- ?I will deny myself food for a week. Let?s see what that achieves.? Others vow to go unto the end.

Who are some of the great men who have gone on hunger strike? Well, to consider the Soviet Union alone, one thinks immediately of Sakharov, Sharansky, and Bukovsky. And, in The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn describes a mass hunger strike on the part of prisoners. It went on for three days. It did not do much good, however, because no one outside the camp heard about it. There were not many inquisitive reporters hanging around the Gulag.

I suppose my introduction to hunger strikes was the IRA -- Bobby Sands and all those boys, wasting away angelically. Even murderers and maimers can look pitiable as they waste away unto death. Vojislav Seselj, a sidekick to Milosevic, hunger-struck at The Hague. Terry Nichols, who conspired in the Oklahoma City bombing, has gone on strike: for a different diet, which must include a wheat-bran supplement.

Nichols is an inmate in Colorado. As I say in my piece, ?Planners of mass murder in America are very picky prisoners.?

In any case, hunger strikes are, again, a complicated, many-faceted subject. I recently talked with Armando Valladares about it. He is the Cuban poet and former political prisoner who wrote Against All Hope, a classic memoir. Valladares went on hunger strike eleven times. The shortest was his first, three days; the longest was 36. He confirmed to me that, under a totalitarian dictatorship, a hunger strike is a last, desperate act. A person undertakes it when he feels he has no other choice.

And I liked what a spokesman for Amnesty International, Gerardo Ducos, said at the time of Zapata?s death: ?Faced with a prolonged prison sentence, the fact that Orlando Zapata Tamayo felt he had no other avenue available to him but to starve himself in protest is a terrible indictment of the continuing repression of political dissidents in Cuba.?

Before I leave this subject, for now, let me just share the final paragraph of that NR piece:

I remember being horrified in 2008 when an inmate in [the Cuban] gulag -- Juan Carlos Herrera Acosta, an independent journalist [like Fariñas] -- sewed his mouth shut. My horror was magnified when I saw an artist?s rendering of what the prisoner might look like in that condition. He had been tortured for so long, and was so deprived of hope, he committed this desperate, barely comprehensible act. What would we do in his shoes? Luckily, the likes of us will never find out.

Luckily, yeah.

Last Friday, I dwelt at some length on Ed Koch and his present alarm over Obama -- particularly where Israel policy is concerned. Yesterday, the former mayor came out with a high-octane column: here. He asks,

?What would we do if Venezuela invited Russia to build a missile-launch pad, or Russia provided Venezuela with the plans and materials for building nuclear weapons? Would there be a replay of the Cuban missile crisis of the 1960s??

He answers,

?Based on our continuing failure to confront North Korea and Iran with regard to their nuclear activities, I suspect we would do nothing. I fear that we have lost the battle and lost our nerve.?

Wow. He goes on to say -- buckle your seatbelt -- ?There is a foul whiff of Munich and appeasement in the air.? And he concludes with, ?One well-known supporter of Israel, with great access to the White House, said to me recently, ?I have never been so terrified.? Me too.?

Wow again. Bear in mind that Koch is a Democrat who, with extreme pride and certainty, supported Obama over McCain.

Many people are asking whether American Jews will abandon Obama and the Democratic party in 2012. I for one am skeptical. Forgive my cynicism -- or call it weariness -- but if Obama bombed Tel Aviv and mandated the eating of pork, American Jews would stick by him: because the liberal-Democratic faith is the strongest faith of all.

Norman Podhoretz wrote a book about this, Why Are Jews Liberals? He wrote it, he says, because that is the question he has most frequently been asked: the question posed in his title.

I was taught, from the cradle -- taught by my environment -- that the Republican party stood for racism, bigotry, war, racism again, disregard of the poor, racism, backwardness, racism, racism . . . And yet I grew up and found it wasn?t so. But growing up -- as I?ve said so many times in this column, and elsewhere, and in so many ways -- can be hard to do.

The State Department spokesman, P. J. Crowley, was quippy in response to the idea that Chávez?s Venezuela could have a space program. Check out a news story, here. Crowley said,

?We would note that the government of Venezuela was largely closed this week due to energy shortages. To the extent that Venezuela is going to expend resources on behalf of its people, perhaps the focus should be more terrestrial than extraterrestrial.?

That?s the sort of quip -- the sort of cheek -- I would ordinarily applaud. But I ask myself: What are we Americans to be in space? I think we have three shuttle launches left to go -- then we?re hitchin? rides with the Russkies, if we want to go up. And if the United States falls for collectivism -- if we choose to become a vast, continental Sweden -- what sort of power in the world, and in space, can we be?

I?m not sure Americans have great reason to feel cocky at the moment.

Let?s do a little language -- taking off from Crowley?s words. He said, ?We would note that the government of Venezuela was largely closed this week due to energy shortages.? I wish he had said ?owing to,? rather than ?due to? -- there used to be a useful distinction. (You can look it up -- I?m not bothering to explain now.) He also said, ?To the extent that Venezuela is going to expend resources on behalf of its people . . .? I wish he had said ?in behalf? -- there used to be a useful distinction. (You can look it up . . .)

Okay, just two seconds: ?I testified on behalf of Joe today, because he was sick and couldn?t be present.? ?I testified in behalf of Joe today -- I backed his case. He was sitting right there in the courtroom.?

Anyway . . .

It is a discussion I have had with many of my friends -- especially the legal eagles. It is a discussion that is fresh again, because Justice Stevens is set to retire, apparently. The matter is this: When Republican presidents appoint men and women to the Court, they are liable to turn on you -- liable to become liberal. Think of Brennan, Stevens, Souter . . .

But Democrats always stay true, don?t they? I mean, Democratic presidents never appoint a Breyer, a Ginsburg, a Sotomayor, only to see that person turn conservative, breaking Democratic hearts.

Kind of interesting/frustrating . . .

It is true that Whizzer White was fairly conservative -- but so, in many respects, was the president who appointed him, Kennedy.

I kind of chuckled when I read the headline -- good news for the administration at last! The headline was, ?Obama doesn?t bounce 1 in historic first pitch.? And the article went,

President Barack Obama threw it very high and wide, but at least he didn?t bounce it.

 

The president marked a 100-year tradition when he tossed out the ceremonial first pitch at the Washington Nationals home opener against the Philadelphia Phillies on Monday. . . .

 

One hundred years ago this month, President William Howard Taft led off the Washington baseball tradition with a toss from the stands to pitcher Walter Johnson.

Ah, this gives me a chance to brag -- again, I believe. My great-grandfather knew Walter Johnson -- the Big Train was a customer of his. My great-granddad had the Young Men?s Shop, corner of 13th and F. (Men?s accessories, I believe -- cufflinks and the like.) President Roosevelt (FDR) was also a customer -- I have a letter from him, somewhere. But Walter Johnson -- that is really impressive. (And Johnson might well have done better at Yalta.)

The mention of Yalta reminds me of something: Koch spoke of the ?foul whiff of Munich.? He was born in 1924. Plus, he has a historical consciousness. But average people, younger than he: Do they know what those words mean? Hope so -- but not sure ?tis true.

Every December, I do some writing about ?Merry Christmas? and ?Happy Holidays? -- and about how the latter term has gobbled the former. And every year, people write me to say -- this is as dependable as a Swiss clock -- ?I was in church, and the usher greeted me with ?Happy Holidays.? I said, ?It?s okay to say ?Merry Christmas.? We?re in church!?

I thought of this last Sunday morning when the usher at church greeted me, all smiley and warm, with ?Happy Holiday!?

This was not a young person, either -- she was in her 80s, I imagine. But she had absorbed the modern rules, or habits. This was somewhat odd, because usually older people stick with the language they learned in their formative years. That?s why Senator Reid, a couple of years ago, said ?Negro dialect? (and why Justice Marshall said ?Negro? till the day he died, which was well into the ?African American? era).

(Marshall was really stubborn. You couldn?t tell him much what to do.)

David Pryce-Jones had occasion to tell one of my favorite stories the other day -- a story I learned from him. Many of my favorite stories, I know from David. To hear this one straight from him, go here.

It concerns George Lane, who died recently at 95. He was a Hungarian Jew who went to England in the Thirties. He joined the Commandos, and was captured by the Germans. He was then plopped in front of Rommel and other generals to be interrogated.

One of those generals, smart and wary, said, ?If you?re British, as you say you are, why do you speak English with an accent?? Lane replied, ?Because I?m Welsh.? That reply saved his life, of course.

And it will forever remain my definition of quick thinking: ?Because I?m Welsh.?

Full post as published by Bench Memos - National Review Online on April 06, 2010 (boomark / email).