Fun fact: Colo. constitution puts nuke tests to a vote

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In theory, nuclear weapons cannot be tested in the state of Colorado without an affirmative vote by the public in a referendum, according to Article 26 of the State Constitution:

ARTICLE XXVI Nuclear Detonations

Section 1. Nuclear detonations prohibited – exceptions. No nuclear explosive device may be detonated or placed in the ground for the purpose of detonation in this state except in accordance with this article.

Section 2. Election required. Before the emplacement of any nuclear explosive device in the ground in this state, the detonation of that device shall first have been approved by the voters through enactment of an initiated or referred measure authorizing that detonation, such measure having been ordered, proposed, submitted to the voters, and approved as provided in section 1 of article V of this constitution.

Section 3. Certification of indemnification required. Before the detonation or emplacement for the purpose of detonation of any nuclear explosive device, a competent state official or agency designated by the governor shall first have certified that sufficient and secure financial resources exist in the form of applicable insurance, self-insurance, indemnity bonds, indemnification agreements, or otherwise, without utilizing state funds, to compensate in full all parties that might foreseeably suffer damage to person or property from ground motion, ionizing radiation, other pollution, or other hazard attributable to such detonation. Damage is attributable to such detonation without regard to negligence and without regard to any concurrent or intervening cause.

Section 4. Article self-executing. This article shall be in all respects self-executing; but, the general assembly may by law provide for its more effective enforcement and may by law also impose additional restrictions or conditions upon the emplacement or detonation of any nuclear explosive device.

Section 5. Severability. If any provision of this article, or its application in any particular case, is held invalid, the remainder of the article and its application in all other cases shall remain unimpaired.

 
Anti-test sentiment has run high in Nevada and the nearby Mountain West states in the fallout air path (e.g. Utah and Colorado), ever since the heavy testing in the 1950s in the desert outside Las Vegas.

As an example: In September 2008, Utah’s lone Democratic member of Congress, Rep. Jim Matheson, boldly declared out of nowhere — given ongoing (admittedly voluntary) ban on all U.S. testing since 1992, not to mention the growth of metropolitan Las Vegas over 50 years — that he had “become very concerned about recent Congressional actions that may lead to the resumption of nuclear weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site.” He was convinced, at least for campaign purposes, that test resumption in Nevada was imminent and that his re-election was necessary to stop it from spreading radiation across Utah.

So back to Colorado. Would the State Constitutional ban on in-state nuclear testing actually hold up if it came to it (not that there’s a whole lot of likelihood of such a test being conducted, let alone in Utah)? I suspect not. A nuclear test would fall under the purview of the United States military and the commander-in-chief. The U.S. Constitution puts military decisions squarely in the hands of the Federal executive branch apart from official Declarations of War. And it probably violates the so-called “Supremacy Clause”:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any state to the Contrary notwithstanding.

 
Which is interesting because it makes another potential spot in the Colorado State Constitution that is unconstitutional under the U.S. Constitution.

Still, as Mountain West Supremacy Clause crises go, this is no Bundy Ranch standoff. Plus, one imagines it would be so unpopular for the Feds to override the state’s ban without a referendum that they would simply choose another test location rather than have a court showdown over the Supremacy Clause.

operationupshotknotholegrable
Above: 1953 Operation Upshot-Knothole, Grable Test – Nevada Test Site.

Did Eastern Syria really fall to ISIS?

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There have been a number of frantic headlines in the past couple days reporting things likes “Extremist Group Takes Syrian Towns, Key Oil Field”. The suggestion is that more dominoes are falling and key leaders/communities are pledging themselves sincerely to ISIS rule.

Reading between the lines and below the lede, I suspect that the story there is less some dramatic conquest by ISIS and more of another ephemeral mass defection of the neo-feudal eastern Syrian “oil sheiks” — a very loose group of local warlords who have been using the civil war to make their surrounding territories into independent fiefdoms producing oil, gas, and power for all sides willing to pay. That’s a very tenuous alliance for ISIS, because these sheiks have switched sides constantly during the war. In some cases, some were producing and selling gas and power to both the Qaeda-backed Nusra Front and the government at the same time. As I explained it about a year ago:

The pre-Socialism clan system is re-asserting itself in the midst of the chaos because people need local order and income. These clan administrators take control of local oil & gas production and then essentially pay electricity or gas tributes to both the regime and the Islamist rebels to keep them off their backs.

 
I’m betting they defect back the moment they see an opportunity. At the moment, ISIS has access to a lot of heavy weaponry stolen in Iraq. It’s exactly the kind of stuff these warlords have previous expressed interest in acquiring through their oil and gas bartering.

“…the several States and with the Indian Tribes…”

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The title above is a quotation from one the few passages of the U.S. Constitution of 1787 making any references whatsoever to the multitude of indigenous nations on the North American continent at the time. That sort of vague afterthought attitude probably encapsulates well the attitude of most of the Founding Fathers and Constitutional Framers, despite the hundreds of distinct native communities in just the northeast woodlands and southeast woodlands regions alone (i.e. the original U.S.).

The early national leaders and writers of those key documents were generally coastal elites without much direct contact with the American Indian nations that had already been cleared by war, disease, and expulsion from those areas. The backcountry mountain settlers, who had helped precipitate much of the events that spiraled into Revolution by repeatedly trying to cross the Appalachian Mountain “line in the sand” drawn by the British Crown, were neither represented in the circles that established the country nor under their authority most of the time. They generally just wandered off to attack indigenous communities when they felt like it — and then waited either for retroactive approval by the coast or substantial military reinforcements from the coast, if things got out of control. Even the rare treaties made in good faith by colonial and U.S. coastal governments were generally violated by factions who had not been involved in the negotiation process or did not consider themselves subject to those powers anyway. But the U.S. government rarely ever gave more than a slap on the wrist to the offenders.

In general, the country and its predecessor colonies had a very inconsistent and not systematically planned relationship with the American Indian nations — apart from the consistency of overall negativity and genocidal behaviors, and in particular of pushing them westward and into generally ever-smaller areas. That last pattern is tracked in the Lower 48, from the 1783 Treaty of Paris to 1892 and then 2010, in the eHistory video below:

This of course does not really get into the situations in Alaska or in Hawaii. It’s also really important to remember that the semi-systematic thoughtlessness toward and theft from Indian Country by the U.S. government is not some 18th century relic, but continues to present, as we discussed in a recent episode of the radio show.

A more rapid animated gif version of the video is below:
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How do you avoid war for 2000 years in the ancient world?

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That question the persistent mystery [read first] surrounding the (Pakistani) Indus Valley’s Harappan civilization and its big cities like Mohenjo-daro. It’s odd because their art, artifacts, and records seem to have no indication of military presence, even for defensive purposes. When you realize the society was a major contemporary of (and trading partner with) war-torn Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, it suddenly seems almost impossible. And that’s without thinking about just how many wars there have been in the past 2,000 years.

I did some googling and quickly stopped because it turns out there’s a very elaborate “History” Channel-style or Discovery Channel-style conspiracy theory involving the topic, but I decided to offer some slightly more logical speculations, from the standpoint of trying to figure out the political and economic structure necessary to sustain such a long period of peace in the ancient world.

Although it would be harder to sustain peace over a long period in later times when populations were large enough to bump up against each other constantly — this would theoretically be possible/explainable under two easily imagined though not necessarily easily maintained conditions:

Condition 1. A very collective-thinking/communal culture over a large area could merge peacefully into a larger entity/civilization on the belief that more could be gained by merging than remaining independent (rather than merging by conquest as most classical and ancient empires did). One senses that with Harappan penchant for urban grids and brick standardization (while peer cities in other civilizations were virtually unplanned), they either had to be highly collective or highly authoritarian in character. And the latter basically requires troops that they didn’t have. (A third option would be somehow convincing everyone the leaders are gods on earth who must not be questioned or challenged, but that’s a hard facade to keep up for even a year.)

Condition 2. By following, as a foreign policy, the immortal principle “Don’t start none, won’t be none.” If you never attack your neighbor, it’s going to go a long way toward reducing the likelihood of a war with your neighbor because you’ve taken one of the potential triggers for an endless feud out of the picture.

That said, both of those conditions would seem to require a hell of a lot of restraint/forbearance and hoping — prisoner’s dilemma style — that your neighbor doesn’t suddenly flip on you without provocation. And given the history of early human species (not homo sapiens), it seems hard to believe you could get by for 2,000 years without your luck running out way earlier.

Although I suppose if you managed to find a little semi-isolated breadbasket (oh hey, maybe the river valley between the Khyber Pass and Thar Desert?) and develop enough surplus to both feed your excess regional labor and buy off your potential external attackers, you could really keep a good thing going for quite a while.

That policy, of course, really relies on not trying to hoard all the surplus at the top of the government/ruling class.

Harappan civilization map. (Credit: MM - Wikimedia)

Harappan civilization map. (Credit: MM – Wikimedia)

July 2, 2014 – Arsenal For Democracy 90

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AFD-logo-470

Topics: Buffer zones, search and seizure, recess appointments, and Detroit water shutoffs, plus Jameis Winston and the flaws of college athletics. People: Bill, Sasha, Persephone, Greg, Nate. Produced: June 28-30, 2014.

Discussion Points:

– Detroit begins shutting off water for thousands of poor people
– The Supreme Court rules against abortion clinic buffer zones
– The Supreme Court rules that cell phone searches require warrants
– The Supreme Court blocks President Obama’s unconstitutional recess appointments
– Is Jameis Winston everything that’s wrong with college athletics in America — but not the way people think?

Part 1 – Supreme Court:
Part 1 – Supreme Court – AFD 90
Part 2 – Detroit Water Shutoffs:
Part 2 – Detroit – AFD 90
Part 3 – Jameis Winston:
Part 3 – Jameis Winston – AFD 90

To get one file for the whole episode, we recommend using one of the subscribe links at the bottom of the post.

Related links
Segment 1

– Reuters: U.S. high court curbs state limits on abortion clinic protests
– AFD: Supreme Court says cell searches require warrants
– Flashback to Salinas v. Texas (2013) on “right to remain silent”
– NYT: High Court Finds Against Obama in Recess Case
– Previous coverage on AFD Radio – Recess appointments case: AFD Ep 36 (Jan 29 2013)

Segment 2

– Detroit News: Groups seek UN aid for Detroit water shut-offs
– Rep. John Conyers: Detroit’s Water Cutoffs: Counterproductive and Coldhearted
– Michigan Radio: Welfare rights group backs UN criticism over Detroit water shutoffs
– CityLab: Outraged Canadians Report the Detroit Water Authority to the UN for Human-Rights Violations
– Michigan Live: U.N. panel calls Detroit water disconnection ‘violation of international human rights’

Segment 3

– Deadspin: Who Does Jameis Winston Think He Is—Joe Namath?
– Deadspin: FSU Athlete Explains Why Jameis Winston Allegedly Stole Food

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You have no excuse not to vaccinate

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…when even the Amish are doing it.

Amish communities in six counties are taking drastic actions to control a rapidly spreading outbreak of measles, including vaccinations, quarantines, cancelation of church services, and postponements of weddings and other events where people would gather in large numbers from multiple locations.

They aren’t religiously opposed to vaccines, contrary to popular belief, but just have a low rate of vaccination due in part to nobody requiring them to get shots.

Meanwhile, on that note, a Federal judge in New York — where the crunchy anti-science-left private school parents have made measles all the rage again — just expanded the power of schools to strongly encourage vaccination, by compelling kids who aren’t immunized (by parental choice) to effectively drop out of school for days or weeks at a time every time someone else at the school became sick. The various parents in the suit tried to claim a religious exemption — again, remember that even the Amish don’t mess around with such BS — to this school exclusion, but the judge said that public health concerns trumped that under the famous Supreme Court ruling from the first decade of the 20th century:

In turning down all three families, Judge Kuntz cited a 1905 Supreme Court ruling that upheld a $5 fine for a Massachusetts man who disobeyed an order to be vaccinated during a smallpox outbreak, a case that helped establish the government’s right to require immunizations as a matter of public health.

 
So, you don’t have to vaccinate your kid, but the public school doesn’t have to let your kid be there either. The lawyers for the families tried to claim the vaccines of are somehow differenter and dangerouser now than in 1905 because reasons.

Past Arsenal For Democracy Radio Segments on This Topic

Guest expert Dr. Sydnee McElroy of the “Sawbones” podcast explains the science of vaccines.

Part 1 – Sydnee McElroy – AFD 78

Nate and Greg join Bill to talk about rising vaccine hysteria, the importance of public vaccinations, and how the “debate” fits into the broader arc of American politics and ideology.

Part 1: Vaccines – AFD 76

More on the New York ruling this month:

Ms. Check said she rejected vaccination after her daughter was “intoxicated” by a few shots during infancy, which she said caused an onslaught of food and milk allergies, rashes and infections. Combined with a religious revelation she had during the difficult pregnancy, she said, the experience turned her away from medicine. Now she uses holistic treatments.

“Disease is pestilence,” Ms. Check said, “and pestilence is from the devil. The devil is germs and disease, which is cancer and any of those things that can take you down. But if you trust in the Lord, these things cannot come near you.”

Seems legit.

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