David Michael Newstead's Blog, page 109

September

Jack Kirby Day

 

Strange Fruit and Abel Meeropol

By David Michael Newstead. 

Abel Meeropol wrote Strange Fruit after seeing a photograph of a lynching. Later, his song was popularized by Billie Holiday and became well-known for confronting racism in America head-on. As a result, Meeropol and Holiday both faced intense scrutiny from authorities. Abel Meeropol was called to testify before the New York State Legislature regarding Strange Fruit. And not long after that, he felt compelled to leave his teaching position in New York City, relocating with his wife to California. In Part Two of this series, Robert Meeropol joins me to highlight the life of the songwriter, Abel Meeropol, and its intersections with American history. And to learn more, check out Part One.

David Newstead: How would you describe Abel Meeropol as a person?

Robert Meeropol: Abel Meeropol was a quiet introvert. His wife, Anne, was very social. She was his ambassador to the outside world.

David Newstead: I’ve met couples like this before…

Robert Meeropol: Yes and he liked to be in his study writing. That was his way of engaging. He was very closed in many ways. He was very talented artistically. He was a member of the Teachers’ Union Arts Committee in the 1920s into the 1930s. And he used to design sets for their programs. He would draw cartoons. He was a pianist. He got a Masters in English Literature from Harvard in the mid-1920s and he put himself through school by playing a honky-tonk piano in a local club somewhere. So, he did all these things and was very artistically oriented. But it was all like sort of in his head.

He also had a difficult life. Abel was born in 1903, so he was a teenager during World War One. He idolized his older brother. And his older brother went into the army and served and came back what they called in those days shell-shocked. What we now call PTSD. And his brother spent the rest of his life institutionalized. So, that was very difficult for him. And he didn’t like to talk about that at all. At the same time, he was very funny. With my brother Michael and me, he could make us laugh hysterically at any point. But in some ways, his humor was a defense mechanism. It enabled him to engage with people without actually revealing his thoughts that much.

Politically, he was kind of naïve. You know, he grew up in a left-wing household. His father was a motorman on a trolley line in New York City. And he grew up with left-wing politics. So, he joined the Communist Party in the 1920s, but he never really talked about that in specifics. And he was in the party until the 1950s. I think he left the party to adopt me and my brother. I think Abel and Anne left the party like in 1952 or so. The feeling being that if they were active party members, it would be very difficult for them to adopt us. But I don’t feel that they necessarily left the party because they had disagreed with it. They continued to be friends with party members and usually when people dropped out of the party because they disagreed with it they were ostracized. Or there was a real break. In any event, I really don’t know, because we didn’t talk about these things. We argued current politics, but talking about personal history was like pulling teeth.

But at the same time he had an undercurrent of anger that comes out in Strange Fruit. Abel was no pacifist. He was quite capable of thinking and penning very nasty things about people who he thought were terrible and did terrible things. And I think that generation who grew up and lived through two world wars and the Great Depression and Nazism, it was not surprising that people took sides and that there was less political nuance.

David Newstead: You had mentioned that he relocated from New York to Hollywood. Was he forced to go out there, because he couldn’t teach anymore?

Robert Meeropol: The handwriting was on the wall. The House I Live In was gaining traction. Strange Fruit was being played. He was a known enough quantity and he didn’t like teaching. He did not like teaching! There’s no doubt about it. But he also saw the handwriting on the wall. It’s quite possible he left teaching and went to Hollywood, because he thought he was going to lose his job. And so, all those three things put together and Abel and Anne packed up and went to Hollywood.

And in Hollywood, Communist Party writers of which there were quite few used to hold little seminars and political trainings. I can remember a story Abel used to tell about when he was in Hollywood, which was basically 1944 to 1951. And Abel Meeropol was actually written up by the local Communist Party commissar or whoever it was, because at one of these training sessions where they were reading something by Karl Marx, Abel spoke up and said “I don’t know why I need to read all this stuff. I know who the workers are. I know who the bosses are. I know who our friends are. I know who our enemies are. Isn’t that enough?” And he was written up as being undisciplined. And I think that was his attitude. He was not a sophisticated political thinker. He was very straight-forward and tended to see things in black and white terms.

David Newstead: Granted, Karl Marx books aren’t leisurely reading, so that’s understandable. I mean if you threw Kapital out of a one-story window, you might hurt somebody.

Robert Meeropol: Whatever it was, it was more than he wanted to read.

David Newstead: Did he leave Hollywood in the 1950s because he was blacklisted?

Robert Meeropol: I don’t think he was a big enough name at the time or a big enough cheese to be blacklisted. So, he was kind of graylisted though. I think he left Hollywood one step ahead of the blacklist. He came back east probably one step ahead of the blacklist, fearing that he was going to get named. Strange Fruit was not played during the McCarthy period. And you know, he was really struggling, but it never reached the level of the blacklist.

David Newstead: What did he do for work after leaving Hollywood?

Robert Meeropol: He and someone who did musical stuff with him named Earl Robinson collaborated on a movie called The Romance of Rosy Ridge, which was a cowboy movie. And if you watch Turner Classic Movies at 3 AM, every once in a while it’s still on. He also became the writer for James Melton’s Ford Festival, which was a rival of the Ed Sullivan Show, sponsored by Ford Automobile. And he wrote commercials for Fords. It was a failed show though. It got cancelled after a couple of years. Then, he was really struggling.

There were royalties coming in from Strange Fruit and The House I Live In, but not much. His third best known song, which is not known at all anymore actually, is called Apples, Peaches and Cherries. It was recorded by Peggy Lee and made it onto The Hit Parade around 1950. So, he was also collecting some royalties for that. But they were just barely surviving in the 1950s. He was able to scrape by. And you know, he continued to work on things. But scraping by was probably an accurate picture.

I will say one more thing that also helped. That song Apples, Peaches and Cherries was stolen by Brigitte Bardot’s boyfriend, Sacha Distel, and turned into a song called Scoubidou. It’s in French. And it became the number one European song for a while. And Abel found out about it and sued and he got a chunk of money for that. I know we bought a new car. We always drove around in old rattle traps. I mean, it was a Plymouth Valiant. It was no fancy car, but it was new. And it’s the only new car I ever remember them buying. Things like that happened on occasion that kept him going.

David Newstead: This is just an observation. But if he wasn’t afraid to take unpopular positions during the beginning of the Civil Rights movement and McCarthyism, he must have been a pretty brave person.

Robert Meeropol: He was an intellectually fearless person. No doubt about that. He had very strong beliefs. And he was absolutely insistent on being true to them. The scorn that he heaped upon people who he knew who turned on their old comrades during the 1950s was incredible. And the people who he used to work with who when they found out who he had adopted, they didn’t talk to him. They didn’t want to have anything to do with him, because they were frightened. He was incredibly scornful of that. He had this great intellectual courage.

Read Part One

 

Typing Sounds

By David Michael Newstead.

I’ve been working hard on writing projects and it sounds something like this.

Previous Installment

The Anatomy of Fascism

By David Michael Newstead.

In February, Slate interviewed Robert Paxton and asked whether Donald Trump is a fascist. Paxton is an American historian and the author of the 2004 book, The Anatomy of Fascism, which examines the causes and characteristics of history’s most ominous political classification. To learn more, read the Slate article here. And check out these excerpts from Paxton’s most famous work.

On page 41, for example, Paxton outlines features common to all fascist movements:

A sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions;
The primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether individual or universal, and the subordination of the individual to it;
The belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external;
Dread of the group’s decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences;
The need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary;
The need for authority by natural leaders (always male), culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s destiny;
The superiority of the leader’s instincts over abstract and universal reason;
The beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group’s success;
The right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group’s prowess within a Darwinian struggle.

Later on page 201, Paxton discusses American political history and how fascism specifically fits into a U.S. context.

The United States itself has never been exempt from fascism. Indeed, antidemocratic and xenophobic movements have flourished in America since the Native American party of 1845 and the Know-Nothing Party of the 1850s. In the crisis-ridden 1930s, as in other democracies, derivative fascist movements were conspicuous in the United States: the Protestant evangelist Gerald B. Winrod’s openly pro-Hitler Defenders of the Christian Faith with their Black Legion; William Dudley Pelley’s Silver Shirts (the initials “SS” were intentional); the veteran-based Khaki Shirts (whose leader, one Art J. Smith, vanished after a heckler was killed at one of his rallies); and a host of others. Movements with an exotic foreign look won few followers, however. George Lincoln Rockwell, flamboyant head of the American Nazi Party from 1959 until his assassination by a disgruntled follower in 1967, seemed even more “un-American” after the great anti-Nazi war.

Much more dangerous are movements that employ authentically American themes in ways that resemble fascism functionally. The Klan revived in the 1920s, took on virulent anti-Semitism, and spread to cities and the Middle West. In the 1930s, Father Charles E. Coughlin gathered a radio audience estimated at forty million around an anticommunist, anti-Wall Street, pro-soft money, and – after 1938 – anti-Semitic message broadcast from his church in the outskirts of Detroit. For a moment in early 1936 it looked as if his Union Party and its presidential candidate, North Dakota congressman William Lemke, might overwhelm Roosevelt. The plutocrat-baiting governor Huey Long of Louisiana had authentic political momentum until his assassination in 1935, but, though frequently labeled fascist at the time, he was more accurately a share-the-wealth demagogue. The fundamentalist preacher Gerald L. K. Smith, who had worked with both Coughlin and Long, turned the message more directly after World War II to the “Judeo-Communist conspiracy” and had a real impact. Today a “politics of resentment” rooted in authentic American piety and nativism sometimes leads to violence against some of the very same “internal enemies” once targeted by the Nazis, such as homosexuals and defenders of abortion rights.

Of course the United States would have to suffer catastrophic setbacks and polarization for these fringe groups to find powerful allies and enter the mainstream. I half expected to see emerge after 1968 a movement of national reunification, regeneration, and purification directed against hirsute antiwar protesters, black radicals, and “degenerate” artists. I thought that some of the Vietnam veterans might form analogs to the Freikorps of 1919 Germany or the Italian Arditi, and attack the youths whose demonstrations on the steps of the Pentagon had “stabbed them in the back.” Fortunately I was wrong (so far). Since September 11, 2001, however, civil liberties have been curtailed to popular acclaim in a patriotic war upon terrorists.

The language and symbols of an authentic American fascism would, of course, have little to do with the original European models. They would have to be as familiar and reassuring to loyal Americans as the language and symbols of the original fascisms were familiar and reassuring to many Italians and Germans, as Orwell suggested. Hitler and Mussolini, after all, had not tried to seem exotic to their fellow citizens. No swastikas in an American fascism, but Stars and Stripes (or Stars and Bars) and Christian crosses. No fascist salute, but mass recitations of the pledge of allegiance. These symbols contain no whiff of fascism in themselves, of course, but an American fascism would transform them into obligatory litmus tests for detecting the internal enemy.

Around such reassuring language and symbols and in the event of some redoubtable setback to national prestige, Americans might support an enterprise of forcible national regeneration, unification, and purification. Its targets would be the First Amendment, separation of Church and State (creches on the lawns, prayers in schools), efforts to place controls on gun ownership, desecrations of the flag, unassimilated minorities, artistic license, dissident and unusual behavior of all sorts that could be labeled antinational or decadent.

Watch this video from the New York Times

Chest Hair – A Personal Reflection

By David Michael Newstead.

I used to only have three chest hairs. In fact, I distinctly remember standing in a swimming pool as an adolescent and counting them.

One. Two. Three.

There they were. And just as easily, I pulled them out. Instantly, I’d reverted to a hairless chest and that was that, I thought. Problem solved!

Of course, the more time that went by the more chest hairs started to appear. Then one day, there were too many to count. Now, that may not be a particularly artful way to talk about growing up or to measure the passage of time, but it’s accurate enough.

So, recently when I noticed three gray hairs in the middle of my chest, it was an odd kind of deja vu. I was standing in a swimming pool again and there they were.

One. Two. Three.

Of course, I could pull the hairs out if I wanted to, but it wouldn’t change anything. Time was marching forward relentlessly. The clock was ticking. And standing there in my bathing suit, it made me pause for a moment to reflect on the past, think about the future, and consider the widening gulf between the two.

August

Is Bashing Clinton’s Voice Sparked By Nature Or Nurture?

By Diane Rubino. 

Hillary Clinton’s voice is a magnet for criticism. Every characteristic—accent, authenticity, pacing, pitch, tone, and volume—has been examined and found wanting. The pejorative “nagging” has dogged Ms. Clinton for years.

Although Donald Trump’s yuugge voice is often parodied, critiques seem to be more often a reaction to content rather than traits.

One obvious response to negative opinions of Clinton’s voice is that the evaluations—and evaluators—are sexist.

But I’ve noted mysterious trends in my own speech. My voice automatically gets higher when I speak to children and pets. It also drops involuntarily when I’m angry. I’ve heard a similar range in men and noticed the squeaky bark of a tiny dog morph into a deep growl.

NATURE. When it comes to pitch, i.e. whether a voice is considered “high” or  “low/deep,” there are unseen forces at work.

Studies of men and women show that, like me, people across continents and languages use a higher pitch for babies and pets without consciousness. (Burnham et al, 2002)

Politics aside, then, Hillary’s relatively higher pitch is playing against type when she discusses policy and diplomacy rather than time out and kibbles.

Hormones also play a key role in relation to pitch and the perception of it. Saliva tests show that the deeper a man’s voice, the more testosterone he has. Similar studies in women show they’re more likely to prefer deeper voices when they’re at the most fertile stage of their menstrual cycle. (Pisansky et al, 2014)

NUTURE. So part of the criticism of Clinton’s voice is rooted in biology. But humans are rarely content to leave nature alone. We need to add our own spin, and this begins early in life.

Baby Hillary, for example, probably got less attention when she cried than Baby Donald. Though the pitch of an infant’s wail is gender-neutral, study participants projected masculinity and femininity onto crying 3-month-olds. Men in the study labeled lower-pitched cries “masculine” and assumed that these sobs were more likely to be a sign of discomfort than “feminine” crying. (Reby et al, 2016)

Finally, in an increasingly violent world, it’s notable that perceptions of trustworthiness and dominance are associated with masculine vocal features, such as low pitch. The higher, feminine pitch, however, is perceived to be friendly and non-threatening. (Knowles and Little, 2016) This interpretation could make a difference to fearful “Let’s make America safe again” voters.

MASH UP. So the answer to the title’s query is that nature and nurture impact the pitch we use and our perceptions of this vocal trait. It’s the mash up between the two that fuels Hillary voice bashing.

So what’s the enlightened Philosophy of Shaving reader to do? Be controlled by unconscious forces? As if.

I’ve listed a few ideas as a springboard for thinking differently.

Become aware of your own vocal variety, without judging and trying to change it.
Note the pitch of the voices around you and the ensuing reactions.
With awareness raised, be hopeful. Each of us has been “trained” to override some of our instincts.

Though sexist ideas about pitch are deeply and hormonally rooted, you can break away from the pack.

What are your thoughts?

Diane Rubino is an activist, New York University instructor, and applied communications professional who seeks to make the world more healthy and humane. Learn More.

Welcome to Cleveland

Seek Justice for Us – An Interview with David Crane

By David Michael Newstead. 

David Crane is a law professor at Syracuse University and the former Chief Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone. As Chief Prosecutor, he indicted then Liberian President Charles Taylor, leading to Taylor’s conviction for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Today, David Crane joins me to discuss impunity in Africa, his investigation into Syrian war crimes, and the need for expanded human rights laws in the United States.

David Newstead: Considering that you helped to prosecute Liberian President Charles Taylor and that Chad’s former dictator Hissène Habré was recently convicted for human rights abuses, do you feel like particularly in Africa’s case that impunity has ended for heads of state and elected officials?

David Crane: Oh, not at all. Unfortunately, impunity has raised its head in a very negative way. When we indicted Charles Taylor back in June of 2003, it was a beginning. I thought a very hopeful beginning against the good old boys club of Africa. We had broken down that barrier and heads of state in Africa would be held accountable.

But because of some missteps by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the withdrawal of the African Union as a participant largely in the ICC for a lot of reasons. And the recent declaration a year ago by African heads of state saying they will not be held accountable for whatever they do in office, I thought we took about a 30 year step backwards.

The Habré investigation and trial were on-going. So even though it appears that we have some positive steps, in reality I just have to tell you I’m not confident where this is going. And I’m a little bit disappointed in the attitudes politically of African leaders related to dealing with their own people. It’s not a good step forward frankly. Even though the Habré conviction is important, there are other political leaders in Africa that need to be held accountable. And I fear that they will not, particularly with the political climate against international justice at this point.

David Newstead: You’ve also been working on possible war crimes prosecutions related to the Syrian conflict, is that correct?

David Crane: Yes. I’ve been working on this from the very beginning since March 2011. Over five years.

David Newstead: Would that mainly focus on prosecuting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad? Or other actors in the conflict as well?

David Crane: The Syrian Accountability Project, which we put together to deal with this back in March of 2011, is looking at all parties neutrally. So, we’re looking at all sides, all players. Which has gone from just the Free Syrian Army versus Assad to about eleven significant players who are just chewing the people of Syria apart. So, we want to make sure this is considered and known as a neutral effort to seek justice for the people of Syria. It’s not about going after just Assad, but everyone. Because everyone is going after the people of Syria.

David Newstead: So, not only Assad, but also ISIS and Al-Nusra Front and other factions?

David Crane: Oh yeah. All of the factions. To include the Free Syrian Army. Everybody.

David Newstead: In 2014, you were involved in the release of some 55,000 photographs of human rights abuses in Syria.

David Crane: Yes, I was the co-author of the Caesar Report detailing those abuses.

David Newstead: Can you say more about the evidence that your group has been collecting since then and what that consists of?

David Crane: That’s a good question. A fair question. Again based on my long term experience in this business particularly taking down one of the few heads of state in history, I’ve basically built a practical legal way of doing that. Using the same techniques that we used in West Africa, we’re doing the same thing in Syria and in the Levant region. And that is developing a conflict map, a crime-based matrix, and associated documents, which we can then build into indictments.

We’re very careful in the data that we use in our crime-based matrix, which shows chronologically time, location, unit involved, and then the alleged crime itself. And then also what we do is we list the violation of the Rome Statute, the violation of international humanitarian law as well as the violation of the Syrian criminal code. So, this could be used by either a local prosecutor, a regional prosecutor, or an international prosecutor, referring to this package that we’ve been putting together over the past five and a half years. So, they could use this to start building their own case against those who they feel have committed either Syrian crimes or international crimes.

The data is carefully vetted. We have contacts throughout the world (to include the Middle East, to include in Syria) providing us real-time, real-world criminal information that we then take and verify. Our rule is that it has to be verified as has happened. We have a rumor of an incident and then we have to verify it by two other sources before we put it on the crime-based matrix. But the fascinating thing is that crime-based matrix is now over 7,000 pages. And it’s on an Excel spreadsheet.

David Newstead: You have a 7,000 page Excel spreadsheet?!

David Crane: Yeah, 25 incidents per page. Now again, this is just verifiable incidents of possible international crimes. You have to understand that when I was doing this just twelve years ago, we had to create our case the old-fashion way. You know, getting out there and finding the evidence. Now, it’s completely reversed. All of the data that’s coming out of Syria and it’s in terabytes almost daily, it’s a tsunami of information. And what ends up happening is that you’re looking for that needle in the haystack as opposed to no haystacks.

And I think this is important for you and your readers to understand that 99.99% of the information coming out of Syria in whatever capacity it is – through social media, internet, direct testimony, whatever – is not useful in court. We can’t turn it into evidence, because of the authenticity of it, the chain of custody, and all of that. So, we have a great database for the history of the events and that’s important. The data can be used for other things.

But as a former international chief prosecutor, I’ve got to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt using rules of evidence before a court. And that data creates leads. But at the end of the day, if they called me right now and said “You’re now the Chief Prosecutor for Syria!” all of this would be useful to me. We’ve converted that into useful information. That’s how the Syrian Accountability Project takes it one step further. We’ve converted this information into criminal information, which then can be converted into evidence by a future prosecutor. So, we’ve kind of strained it a bit if you get my drift. You know, we’re moving it to where a future prosecutor be they local, regional, or international can go into court and prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. So, that’s the data issue.

David Newstead: That sounds like a very important, but involved effort of trying to put all those pieces together.

David Crane: It’s a very considerate process by which we then put that on a database. But it is amazing, isn’t it? You multiply 7,000 or now it’s almost 7,500 pages times 25 incidents, you get a sense of what is happening over there.

David Newstead: And that the conflict has dragged on for so long.

David Crane: Now again, it’s important to note that the Caesar Report I mentioned earlier is direct evidence and it is credible evidence and can be used in a court of law. After we finished our report, it was importantly treated by the press and really put a heavy burden on Assad. The sad thing about this is, this is only coming from 3 detention facilities. And yet, we can probably verify that between 10,000 and 12,000 human beings were destroyed in just 3 detention facilities. We estimate that there are over 52 detention facilities. So, the Caesar Report may have just been the tip of the iceberg.

In this business, it’s very unusual to have direct evidence of atrocity in the sense of one you can take into court. The smoking gun, so to speak. We had it in Nuremberg, because the Nazis wrote everything down. We have found that the Assad regime, very much like the Nazis in Germany, writes these things down. And we were able to get a look in the window of some of this through the Caesar Report.

So after the Caesar Report, what I did was to have a neutral country meet with the people who had the original thumb drives. And we were able to negotiate an agreement between the organization that Caesar was a part of and this country to have their chief prosecutor and evidence custodian take the originals and put them in an evidence bag and to start a chain of custody and then put those thumb drives in the country’s evidence locker. So some day when a prosecutor asks for that, there’s a chain of custody. There’s an authenticity. It can be signed over to them and put into their evidence room. So when they bring these documents and these photographs into evidence, they can authenticate it. Because the issue is with all these videos and all these pictures we’re seeing is – What’s the authenticity? Who took that? Why? Is that a real photo? Is that a real video? Who took the video? Where is it? You see where this gets very complicated very quickly.

But the Caesar Report and the evidence that we were able to seize and put in an evidence locker, that’ll convict Assad in and of itself of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

David Newstead: Shifting gears some, I wanted to ask about the Magnitsky Act, which currently bans Russian human rights abusers from using the U.S. banking system or vacationing in the United States. We’re in an election year, but there is a proposal in Congress to expand that law to place similar restrictions on human rights abusers from all over the world. Do you feel it’s necessary to expand the Magnitsky Act? And if so why?

David Crane: Well again, this is a beginning of a beginning to be honest with you. I think the Magnitsky Act is a signal of U.S. commitments to addressing these types of acts such as what happened with Sergei Magnitsky and other human rights abuses by countries around the world.

Of course, it’s really kind of tongue in cheek. After the first ten years of the 21st century, we did not cover ourselves in glory for obvious reasons. So, it’s very difficult. It’s going to take a while for the U.S. to regain the credibility that it built up since the My Lai massacre of being a country that did take care of these things.

The Magnitsky Act is a beginning of a new beginning where we’re trying to turn the ship around. We’re showing the world that those who commit crimes such as these will be held accountable and will be held accountable at a larger level than just domestically – that there’s an international price to pay dealing with embargos and seizures of assets and those kind of things. So, I think it’s a very positive step.

But I think you’re very correct. It’s an election season. So, two things can happen. If we have a Republican administration, then I’m not sure where this is going to go. It certainly could die a sad death. In a Democratic administration, I think there’s more hope for it to move forward. It just depends on the balance of power in the House of Representatives and the Senate. I think we’re going to be in a hiatus for right now. As we get closer to the election, you know everybody is running campaigns right now.

David Newstead: So to clarify, you don’t think the Magnitsky Act would be prioritized under a possible Trump administration?

David Crane: I don’t know. I mean, your guess would be as good as mine. There’s been no discussion at all in the campaign about human rights in any way, shape, or form that I’ve noticed. I’ve just not noted any of that. And it’s not inconsistent with the way the U.S. is from a political point of view domestically. You know, human rights does not get you votes. I mean at the end of the day, that’s just a fact. It’s not that Americans don’t care, but that’s just not going to cause people to vote for you. So what you’re going to see, the human rights issue writ large is just going to be set aside. I don’t see anything getting done in the next year frankly, regardless of who is in the administration. Because it takes a new administration a year or six month just to figure out where they’re going. And that’s another hiatus as well. So, you’ve got the political buildup to the election and then you’ve got the new administration trying to establish itself. And so, these kind of things tend to get put aside or dumped depending on the political perspective.

David Newstead: Are there any specific examples of human rights abusers that you feel epitomize why we need an expanded version of the Magnitsky Act?

David Crane: Oh sure. I mean, we can go around the world. I can spend the rest of the afternoon talking to you about that. A good example is Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe. He would be directly affected by a more globalized Magnitsky Act. Africa would be very much affected by a lot of this.

David Newstead: In terms of leaders’ banking and their ability to go on vacation and so forth?

David Crane: Of course. Absolutely. You know even if the International Criminal Court can’t do anything or if the world has just decided not to do anything about a crime… At the end of the day, international criminal law is driven by politics. The bright red thread of all this is politics. It’s always a political decisions to hand over a head of state to somebody as opposed to a legal reason. That’ll always be a political decision. But it’s important for the U.S. have this ability. Because really at the end of the day, if you’re going to get a thug or a dictator or a tyrant’s attention just grab him by the money. That and his ability to move around the world, that definitely gets their attention.

I think the beauty of the Magnitsky Act concept is that it hits them where it hurts. These are basically mafia characters. I mean, it’s all about money and power and greed with them. And if you limit them or cause them to reconsider travelling or doing something like that, I think that’s a real benefit. So, I very much support this kind of initiative that was started with the Magnitsky Act and now is going to be expanded in a broader sense.

David Newstead: I remember several years ago Assad’s wife was banned from going shopping in Europe. And prior to that, she was known for taking these very expensive shopping trips to Paris and places like that. And I assume other dictator’s wives and family members are the same?

David Crane: Sure. And you know with the Magnitsky Act, something like that could cause detention. That could cause seizure of assets. That could cause extradition. Yeah, exactly. And she goes back to her husband saying “I can’t go to Paris anymore!” She’s not going to be happy about that. And from just a domestic point of view, it can be really problematic for these guys. And it’s all guys. It’s not women. So yeah, their wives and families are potentially giving them hell, because they can’t go to the places they’re used to. Because they’re not going to go shopping in downtown Damascus. That’s a good example though of how that can hurt.

Question from a Reader: Given your experience in West Africa and your current project related to Syria, I’m curious what motivates you to do this work?

David Crane: Well, let me just give you a simple example of that. One day I was at one of our outreach programs where I walked the countryside of Sierra Leone, listening to my clients talk to me about what happened. I was at school in McKinney that used to be the headquarters of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), the ones that used to cut people’s hands and arms and noses and ears and buttocks off just because they liked doing it. And I was in the audience just standing among them talking and a young man stood up. He was about twelve years old. He looked at me with tears in his eyes and he said “I killed people. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.” And he fell into my arms, crying. And of course, I had tears in my eyes. And as I looked up, there was a young woman who stood up and half her face was missing. I was told later her face had been put in a pot of boiling water by the RUF. She was holding a young child and she just looked at me from her one good eye and said “Seek justice for us.”

So, it’s for the little guy. We tend to talk to about 50,000 here or 100,000 there. But it’s one person at a time. So, that’s what motivates me. It’s a righteous fury. You know, I had the honor and privilege of doing something about that when Kofi Annan appointed me to go to Sierra Leone and do that. But that’s what keeps me going, because I always remember those individuals who the world just steps over and moves on. Whereas, I don’t. I remember them and this is for them. And so, there are very much the same kind of people in Syria and around the world. So, I do this for them.

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