Disappearing people

  One of the ways that brutal right-wing Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet would terrorize the Chilean people into patriotic submission to his authority was by disappearing people. This was different from simply torturing and executing them. He and his goons certainly did that too. But disappearing people was different. With executions and bodies, families at least had certainty with respect to what had happened to their loved one. With disappearances, they never could be certain that their loved one really was dead. There was always a small part of people that retained some amount of hope that maybe — just maybe — their loved one would show up after being released from years or decades in some prison. It was a brutal way to psychologically torture the family members of the person who had been disappeared and everyone else in society.

First they came for the cowards

  When I read about the capitulation to President Trump by the big law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, I couldn’t help thinking about the capitulation of lawyers in countries like Germany and Chile.

  Paul Weiss is based in Washington, D.C. and employs around 1,000 lawyers. Its income last year was around $2.6 billion. Upset that the firm had taken positions not to his liking, Trump targeted the firm with an executive order stating that “the Attorney General, the Director of National Intelligence, and all other relevant heads of executive departments and agencies (agencies) shall immediately take steps consistent with applicable law to suspend any active security clearances held by individuals at Paul Weiss and Mark Pomerantz, pending a review of whether such clearances are consistent with the national interest.”

Putin may not outrun the warrant for his arrest – history shows that several leaders on the run eventually face charges in court

  The Russian government, U.S. President Joe Biden, and mainstream Western media are among the observers who all responded to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s arrest warrant for war crimes with a shrug.

  In March 2023, the International Criminal Court announced the warrant for Putin and his commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, because they allegedly directed the abduction of Ukrainian children. The court says that these charges amount to war crimes.

Jacob G. Hornberger: The wall of a dictator

  On Wednesday President Donald Trump ordered the construction of his much-ballyhooed wall along the U.S-Mexico border to begin. Obviously Trump doesn’t see any need to go to Congress to seek approval for his gigantic, socialist, public-works, multibillion-dollar edifice. He’s the president. He can issue “executive orders.” He can do whatever he wants. Who needs congressional approval? Anyway, Congress might turn him down. Or they might delay construction by deliberating and debating the issue. Who needs all that when one can simply issue an executive order to get the wall built?

  This is how dictators have always operated — simply by decree. They don’t need legislatures and, therefore, they either ignore them or they abolish them. And they expect the judiciaries to fall into line and support whatever they do.