[Peace-discuss] [Peace] Why Trump must go: he threatens not to continue US war provocations v. Russia and China

[Carl G. Estabrook]

I followed the fashion for China rather than Russia, in those days of John K. Fairbanks' & Edwin O.  Reischauer's interpreting China and Japan, respectively. 
Even more impressive was Benjamin I. Schwarz, author of "Chinese Communism and the Rise of Mao” (1951); I wanted to do a China field but hadn’t learnt the language… 
(But all serious American men used middle initials in the 1950s - probably where we got the habit.)

Machiavelli was a poet and a playwright, as well as an historian, and worked in the commedia dell'arte tradition that influenced Shakespeare. 
Deception, misrepresentation, and false identities were part of his art - and employed, some think, in The Prince.

—CGE

« Je sais la poésie indispensable. Mais je ne sais pas à quoi… »
—Jean Cocteau


> On Jul 16, 2017, at 9:16 PM, Boyle, Francis A <fboyle at illinois.edu> wrote:
> 
> As a matter of fact, I spent a lot of time at the History Department. I offered Russian History on my PHD Oral/General Exams with Ned Keenan as my Examiner in Russian History. Ned was the leading Professor of Russian History at Harvard for a generation. RIP. He recommended me for my law professorship. Fab.
> POEMS AGAINST THE EMPIRE
> by
> Francis A. Boyle
> © Copyright 2017 by Francis A. Boyle. All rights reserved.
> 
> “And those who have chosen the portion of injustice, and tyranny and violence shall pass into wolves or into hawks and kits—whither else shall we suppose them to go?” ---Socrates
> “To describe their character in a word, one might truly say that they were born into the world to take no rest themselves and to give none to others.” ---Thucydides
>  
> FOREWORD
> 	When I was a Senior in high school during the 1967-1968 academic year, I wrote poetry in Latin. The next year I entered college in order to study math and science and the liberal arts. Since my Father was a lawyer, I knew I could study whatever I wanted to in college and still go to law school afterwards. For the next ten years (1968-1978) I was a student at the University of Chicago and Harvard. I started as a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Illinois College of Law on August 21, 1978. In 2010 I was appointed a Professor in the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. So after a forty-two year hiatus, I decided to return to writing poetry. Better late than never!
> 	Poetry, Love, Music, and Art always stand against any empire. Because of my strident opposition to the Vietnam War, I decided to fight the American empire at the end of May 1967 soon after I had turned seventeen. I knew there would be more Vietnams and I intended to stop them! Set forth below are my poetic reflections upon the last fifty years of doing precisely that and more.
> F.A.B.
> 
> Francis A. Boyle (far left) on the floor of the International Court of Justice on 1 April 1993, squaring off against his adversary Shabtai Rosenne from Israel (far right) representing Yugoslavia, just before he argued and then won the first of his two World Court Orders overwhelmingly in favor of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina against Yugoslavia to cease and desist from committing all acts of genocide in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention on April 8, 1993 and then again on September 13, 1993. This was the first time ever that any Government or Lawyer had won two such Orders in one case since the World Court was founded in 1921. On August 5, 1993, he also won an Article 74(4) Order from the World Court to the same effect. Under Article 74(4) of the Statute of the International Court of Justice, when the Full Court is not in Session, the President of the Court exercises the Full Powers of the Court and can issue an Order that is binding upon the states parties in a case.
> 
> ABOUT THE AUTHOR
> 	Francis A. Boyle is a Professor of Law at the University of Illinois College of Law and also a Professor in the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. He holds a J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and an A.M. and Ph.D. in Political Science from the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Department of Government. He was an Associate at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs and a Teaching Fellow in the Harvard College. He also practiced law with the Boston firm of Bingham, Dana & Gould doing primarily international tax and tax with some corporate transactions work. He currently teaches courses on International Law, International Human Rights Law, the Constitutional Law of U.S. Foreign Affairs, and Jurisprudence, having previously taught courses on Criminal Law, International Organizations, Latinos and the Law, and World Politics and International Law.
> He was the Parhad Lecturer at the Faculty of Medicine for the University of Calgary in Canada in 2001. He was the Bertrand Russell Peace Lecturer at McMaster University in Canada in 2007. He has written 20 books dealing with world politics, international law, human rights, American foreign policy, the Middle East, Iraq, Bosnia, Ireland, Puerto Rico, Native Hawaiians, Tamils, Palestine, Libya, defending civil and G.I. resistors, nuclear weapons, biological warfare, etc. 
> He drafted the U.S. domestic implementing legislation for the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972 known as the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 that was passed unanimously by both Houses of the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President George Bush Sr. He served on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International U.S.A for four years. He served as Legal Advisor to Chairman Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization on the Palestinian Declaration of Independence of November 15, 1988 and its creation of the State of Palestine that is now a United Nations Observer State. From 1991 to 1993 he served as Legal Advisor to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Negotiations and its Chair Dr. Haidar Abdul Shaffi who instructed him to draft the Palestinian counter-offer to the now defunct Oslo Agreement. 
> In 1993 he represented the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina before the International Court of Justice where he won two World Court Orders overwhelmingly in favor of Bosnia against Yugoslavia to cease and desist from committing all acts of genocide in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention. He also represented the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina at the Owen-Stoltenberg “Peace” Negotiations in Geneva in 1993 where he prevented Bosnia’s destruction as a State and saved its membership in the United Nations Organization. He was Attorney of Record for the Mothers of Srebrenica and Podrina before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and secured the indictment of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic for every crime in the I.C.T.Y. Statute including two counts of genocide: one for Srebrenica and the second for Bosnia in general. He started the Divestment/Disinvestment Campaign against Israel in 2000 and became D in the Palestinian BDS Campaign in 2005.
>  
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Carl G. Estabrook [mailto:galliher at illinois.edu] 
> Sent: Sunday, July 16, 2017 7:13 PM
> To: Boyle, Francis A <fboyle at illinois.edu>
> Cc: prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace Discuss <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
> Subject: Re: [Peace] Why Trump must go: he threatens not to continue US war provocations v. Russia and China
> 
> You should have come over to the History Department. As we say on News form Neptune, the poets often get there first.
> 
> 
>> On Jul 16, 2017, at 6:58 PM, Boyle, Francis A <fboyle at illinois.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> I spent ten years (1968-1978) studying Philosophy, Jurisprudence and Political Philosophy at the University of Chicago, Harvard Law School and the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences where I got my PHD in Political Science--the No. 1 Ranked Program in the country. My PHD Examiner in Political Philosophy was Judith Shklar. Not one professor I ever had dismissed Machiavelli's The Prince as a "joke" or a "parody." Fab.
>> 
>> Francis A. Boyle
>> Law Building
>> 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.
>> Champaign IL 61820 USA
>> 217-333-7954 (phone)
>> 217-244-1478 (fax)
>> (personal comments only)
>> 
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Carl G. Estabrook [mailto:galliher at illinois.edu]
>> Sent: Sunday, July 16, 2017 6:53 PM
>> To: Boyle, Francis A <fboyle at illinois.edu>
>> Cc: prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace Discuss 
>> <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
>> Subject: Re: [Peace] Why Trump must go: he threatens not to continue 
>> US war provocations v. Russia and China
>> 
>> Probably worthwhile to point out that they’ve been taken in by a murderous joke. Cf. ‘The Great Dictator’ (1940).
>> 
>> ‘...among all the manuscripts of The Prince dating from Machiavelli's 
>> life-time (and it seems to have had a considerable circulation and to 
>> have been multiplied by professional copyists), we have never found 
>> the copy which should have had the best chance of preservation - I 
>> mean that copy, beautifully lettered on vellum and richly bound, 
>> presented with its dedication to the Medici prince. Not only is it 
>> absent from the Laurentian library now, there is no trace that it was 
>> ever there. There is no evidence that it ever existed. Probably 
>> Machiavelli figured that the joke was not worth the extra expense.” 
>> [G. Mattingly]
>> 
>> 
>>> On Jul 16, 2017, at 6:46 PM, Boyle, Francis A <fboyle at illinois.edu> wrote:
>>> 
>>> That is irrelevant to my argument. All Straussians have been educated to take Machiavelli's The Prince quite seriously--and they do and they apply it.  fab.
>>> 
>>> Francis A. Boyle
>>> Law Building
>>> 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.
>>> Champaign IL 61820 USA
>>> 217-333-7954 (phone)
>>> 217-244-1478 (fax)
>>> (personal comments only)
>>> 
>>> 
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Carl G. Estabrook [mailto:galliher at illinois.edu]
>>> Sent: Sunday, July 16, 2017 6:42 PM
>>> To: Boyle, Francis A <fboyle at illinois.edu>
>>> Cc: prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace Discuss 
>>> <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
>>> Subject: Re: [Peace] Why Trump must go: he threatens not to continue 
>>> US war provocations v. Russia and China
>>> 
>>> I’m sure he did. But I think Garrett Mattingly was probably the better historian.  
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Jul 16, 2017, at 6:39 PM, Boyle, Francis A <fboyle at illinois.edu> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Well I studied Machiavelli with Strauss’s right-hand man, co-author and literary executor  of his Estate, Joseph Cropsey of Strauss and Cropsey. He took Machiavelli’s The Prince  quite seriously and taught it as such to all of his students at the University of Chicago. Fab.
>>>> 
>>>> Francis A. Boyle
>>>> Law Building
>>>> 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.
>>>> Champaign IL 61820 USA
>>>> 217-333-7954 (phone)
>>>> 217-244-1478 (fax)
>>>> (personal comments only)
>>>> 
>>>> From: Carl G. Estabrook [mailto:galliher at illinois.edu]
>>>> Sent: Sunday, July 16, 2017 6:33 PM
>>>> To: Boyle, Francis A <fboyle at illinois.edu>
>>>> Cc: prairiegreens at lists.chambana.net; Peace Discuss 
>>>> <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
>>>> Subject: Re: [Peace] Why Trump must go: he threatens not to continue 
>>>> US war provocations v. Russia and China
>>>> 
>>>> 1.) D in the BDS campaign (worth discussion on its own) stands for ‘divestment’ and doesn’t necessarily imply the ZFC ("Zionists are a Fifth Column for Israel”) theory. 
>>>> It’s a campaign against Israel’s illegal occupations that says little about US policy - altho’ it’s true that Israel could not continue the occupations without US economic, diplomatic, and military support.  
>>>> 
>>>> 2.) Criticisms of Leo Strauss, Carl Schmitt, and the Federalist 
>>>> Society are undoubtedly appropriate. (See e.g. Leo Strauss, 
>>>> 'Thoughts on Machiavelli," 1958.)
>>>> 
>>>> 3.) It may however be historically inaccurate to call them 
>>>> Machiavellian, except as the word has entered into popular political 
>>>> parlance (especially English: 'Machiavel' had its present censorious 
>>>> meaning in 16th century English, as “an intriguer and unscrupulous 
>>>> schemer”; cf. 'Merry Wives of Windsor', 3.1: "Am I politic? am I 
>>>> subtle? am I a Machiavel?”)
>>>> 
>>>> 4.) The work for which the accomplished scholar, historian and playwright Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) is best known, 'The Prince', was probably a rather bitter satire on how ‘princes’ - despots - behaved, and not the instruction manual it’s been taken as: <http://www2.idehist.uu.se/distans/ilmh/Ren/flor-mach-mattingly.htm>.
>>>> 
>>>> 5.) It’s probably at least reductionist to call the US invasion of Iraq - the greatest crime of the century to date - "aggression against Iraq for the benefit of Israel.” The long-standing US goal of control of Mideast energy resources was clearly the object of the invasion. Control, not just access, to what the State Department called in 1945 “the world’s greatest material prize” is what the US demands; we import very little oil from the Mideast for domestic use; but control provides a choke-hold over competing economies from Germany to China.
>>>> 
>>>> 6.) Regarding attending  the U. of Chicago and other pillars of the 
>>>> American educational establishment (including what Chomsky calls 
>>>> “the academy for the passive and the obedient in Harvard Square”), 
>>>> perhaps we should remember Ernesto Che Guevara's comment: "I envy 
>>>> you North Americans. You live in the belly of the beast.” (Or, as 
>>>> someone I knew said a half-century ago, "You have to be from 
>>>> Scarsdale to know how bad it is.”)
>>>> 
>>>> —CGE
>>>>