🤯 WACKO PRIORITIES! — Huge Backlogs & Poor Public Service, Yet DOS Bureaucracy Finds Time To “Correct” Their Own “Mistake” From More Than 6 Decades Ago, Thus Making American Doctor “Stateless!”

Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy can obscure common sense!
ATTRIBUTION: Creative Commons 3.0

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/11/25/virginia-doctor-passport-citizenship-nightmare/

Theresa Vargas reports in WashPost:

Theresa Vargas
Theresa Vargas
Reporter
Washington Post

Siavash Sobhani is stateless.

The Northern Virginia doctor knows at least that much about his situation. He knows he is no longer considered a citizen of the United States — the place where he was born, went to school and has practiced medicine for more than 30 years — and that he also belongs to no other place.

“I’m in limbo,” he told me on a recent afternoon.

In the past few years, there have been many passport-renewal nightmare stories, with processing delays forcing people to beg, lose sleep and miss once-in-a-lifetime trips. But what Sobhani has experienced this year after trying to renew his passport is uniquely unmooring.

As he tells it, when he sent in an application for a new passport in February, he had no reason to expect he’d face any difficulties. He had renewed his passport several times previously without problems. This time, it was set to expire in June, and he wanted to make sure he had a valid one in hand before his family took a trip in July.

But he did not receive a new passport. Instead, at the age of 61, he lost what he had held since he was an infant: U.S. citizenship.

A letter from a State Department official informed him that he should not have been granted citizenship at the time of his birth because his father was a diplomat with the Embassy of Iran. The letter directed Sobhani to a website where he could apply for lawful permanent residence.

“This was a shock to me,” said Sobhani, who specializes in internal medicine. “I’m a doctor. I’ve been here all my life. I’ve paid my taxes. I’ve voted for presidents. I’ve served my community in Northern Virginia. During covid, I was at work, putting myself at risk, putting my family at risk. So when you’re told after 61 years, ‘Oh there was a mistake, you’re no longer a U.S. citizen,’ it’s really, really shocking.”

. . . .

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Read Theresa’s full article at the link.

Months for a routine passport renewal? If you’re lucky! The DOS has struggled to cope with a totally predictable and largely self-aggravated “crisis!” Who would have thought that after several years of pandemic isolation and with a booming economy, Americans would start traveling again in record numbers? Probably, everybody in America except ivory tower DOS bureaucrats who failed to prepare for the obvious and to elevate public service over intrasigence!

As a veteran of more than four decades of dealing with the immigration bureaucracy — from both the inside and outside — I can testify to the truth of the adage that “Some cans of worms are better left unopened!” (Corollary: “If you open it, you own it!”) Where’s the common sense here? Lost in the bureaucratic fog, 🌫️ I guess!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-2-23

DEFEATED U.S. REGIME’S MALICIOUS INCOMPETENCE DISMAYS ALLIES, STRENGTHENS IRAN, LEAVES BIDEN-HARRIS WITH FOREIGN POLICY MESS THAT MIGHT NOT BE QUICKLY SOLVED — Misgovernance, Stupidity, Corruption Have Lasting Consequences For National Security! — Kakistocracy Is Bad!☠️🤡🤮⚰️👎🏻

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/trump-sanctions-on-iran-faltering/2020/11/15/5ce29fbe-22c1-11eb-a688-5298ad5d580a_story.html

From WashPost:

By Joby Warrick and Souad Mekhennet

November 15 at 6:49 PM ET

Last week, as the White House digested news of a defeat at the polls, Trump administration officials were greeted with reports of troubling setbacks on two fronts in the country’s long-simmering conflict with Iran.

First came a leaked U.N. document showing yet another sharp rise in Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium. Then, satellites tracked an Iranian oil tanker — the fourth in recent weeks — sailing toward the Persian Gulf after delivering Iranian petroleum products to Venezuela.

The first item was further proof of Iran’s progress in amassing the fissile fuel used to make nuclear energy and, potentially, nuclear bombs. The second revealed gaping holes in President Trump’s strategy for stopping that advance. Over the summer, the administration made a show of seizing cargo from several other tankers at sea in a bid to deter Iran from trying to sell its oil abroad. Yet Iran’s oil trade, like its nuclear fuel output, is on the rise again.

The Trump administration is entering its final months with a flurry of new sanctions intended to squeeze Iran economically. But by nearly every measure, the efforts appear to be faltering. The tankers that arrived in Venezuela in recent weeks are part of a flotilla of ships that analysts say is now quietly moving a million barrels of discounted Iranian oil and gas a day to eager customers from the Middle East to South America to Asia, including China.

The volume represents a more than tenfold increase since the spring, analysts say, and signals what experts see as a significant weakening of the “maximum pressure” sanctions imposed by the Trump administration since it withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018.

Other countries, many of them scornful of Trump’s unilateralism on Iran, are showing increasing reluctance to enforce the restrictions, even as Iran embarks on a new expansion of its uranium stockpile, according to industry analysts and intelligence officials, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive assessments.

[Trump imposes more sanctions and sells off Iranian oil]

As a result, Trump is widely expected to leave President-elect Joe Biden with a crisis that is worse, by nearly every measure, than when he was elected four years ago: an Iranian government that is blowing past limits on its nuclear program, while Washington’s diplomatic and economic leverage steadily declines.

“The Tehran regime has met ‘maximum pressure’ with its own pressure,” said Robert Litwak, senior vice president of the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the author of “Managing Nuclear Risks,” a book on countering proliferation threats. Far from halting Iran’s nuclear advances, Litwak said, the administration’s policies have “diplomatically isolated the United States, not Iran.”

The weakening of sanctions pressure gives Iran more time to deal with its still formidable economic challenges, without losing a step in its bid to re-create uranium assets it had given up under the terms of the nuclear accord, the intelligence officials and industry experts said. Last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported to member states in a confidential document that Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium has swollen to nearly 8,000 pounds, more than 12 times the limit set by the 2015 nuclear deal. Iranian officials justify the breach by noting that it was Washington, not Tehran, that walked away from the agreement.

Even among staunch U.S. allies in Europe and Asia, dismay over the Trump approach has cooled support for the kind of broadly enforced economic boycott that might push Iran to change its behavior, analysts said.

“Many eyes may be averted now” when it comes to Iranian cheating on sanctions, said Eric Lee, an energy strategist with Citigroup in New York. “Many countries are frustrated with U.S. unilateralism, even those with well-placed misgivings about Iran.”

. . . .

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Read the full article at the link.

I have no doubt that President Joe Biden will return competence to the State Department. But, repairing the mess left by the unholy Trump/Pompeo clown show won’t happen overnight. Respect and trust are built up over time. Once lost, they are not quickly regained. 

For example, any immigration/human rights expert could tell you how once-respected State Department Country Reports on Human Rights have gone from being the “international gold standard” to being “hackish” far right political screeds not worth the paper they are written on. This, in turn, has forced private organizations and NGOs to spend time, effort, and resources doing the State Department’s job. Meanwhile, the loss of competence and expertise at EOIR and the indifference of many Article III Judges means that even with the heroic efforts of of the private sector, justice for asylum seekers is more of “crap shoot” than a fundamentally fair legal process!

Kakistocracy has consequences!🤮🤡Seldom happy ones.💩☠️⚰️

 

PWS

11-15-20

UPDATE: SCARY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: “Malicious Incompetent” Mike Pompeo Now Operating @ “Peak Incompetence” As He Tries To Totally Screw America In The Waning Days Of the Clown Show!

Jason Rezaian @ WashPost:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/16/mike-pompeos-legacy-incompetence-peaked-with-his-failed-iran-policy/

 

WILLIAM SALETAN @ SLATE: “Trump Is a Remorseless Advocate of Crimes Against Humanity” – “But Trump’s election and his persistent approval from more than 40 percent of Americans are a reminder that nothing in our national character protects us from becoming a rapacious, authoritarian country. What protects us are institutions that stop us from doing our worst.” 

William Saletan
William Saletan
Writer & Political Journalist
Slate

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/01/trump-remorseless-advocate-crimes-against-humanity.html

 

Saletan writes:

It’s hard to keep up with President Donald Trump’s scandals. One day he’s covering up taxpayer-funded travel expenses for his family. The next, he’s stealing money for his border wall. The next, he’s being implicated by an accomplice in the extortion of Ukraine. But one horror is right out in the open: Trump is a remorseless advocate of crimes against humanity. His latest threats against Iran, Iraq, and Syria are a reminder that he’s as ruthless as any foreign dictator. He’s just more constrained.

Trump admires tyrants and defends their atrocities. He has excused North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un’s mass executions (“Yeah, but so have a lot of other people”) and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s murders of journalists and dissidents (“At least he’s a leader”). As a presidential candidate, Trump shrugged off the gravity of using chemical weapons. “Saddam Hussein throws a little gas, everyone goes crazy,” he joked.

At home, Trump has encouraged religious persecution and political violence. He called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States (he later imposed a modified version of the ban) and for collective punishment of Muslims who live here. As a candidate, Trump urged his supporters to “knock the crap out of” protesters. In 2018, at a political rally, he praised a Republican congressman for criminally assaulting a reporter. “Any guy that can do a body slam,” said Trump, “he’s my guy.”

Trump has long advocated war crimes. He has endorsed torture not just for information, but because our enemies “deserve it.” As a candidate, he proposed that for the sake of “retribution,” the United States should “take out” the families of terrorists. Wives and children were legitimate targets, he argued, because by killing them, we could deter terrorists who “care more about their families than they care about themselves.” Two months ago, he intervened in legal and military proceedings to thwart punishment of three American servicemen who had been indicted for or convicted of atrocities. Then he deployed the men in his reelection campaign.

Trump agrees with past presidents that we and our terrorist adversaries have played by “two [different] sets of rules.” But unlike his predecessors, he takes no pride in America’s higher standards. He sees them as a needless impediment, defended by “weak” and “stupid” people. In 2016, Trump complained that ISIS was “cutting off the heads of Christians and drowning them in cages, and yet we are too politically correct to respond in kind.” Torture laws should be relaxed, he argued, “so that we can better compete with a vicious group of animals.” “You have to play the game the way they’re playing the game,” he explained.

Trump takes no pride in America’s higher standards. He sees them as a needless impediment, defended by “weak” and “stupid” people.

Some presidents have caused pain through recklessness or indifference. Trump inflicts pain on purpose. To deter migration from Latin America, his administration separated migrant parents from their children. Trump argued that the separation was a “disincentive.” Too many people, he explained, were “coming up because they’re not going to be separated from their children.” Later, he used the same sadistic logic to force a migration in Syria. He boasted that by facilitating Turkey’s invasion of that country, he had precipitated the “pain and suffering” necessary to compel Syrian Kurds “to leave.”

In Africa and the Middle East, Trump proudly advocates plunder. In October, he said the United States should have taken Iraq’s oil to make sure we were “paid back” for the costs of our occupation of that country. In Syria, he stationed U.S. forces at oil fields, explaining that he viewed those fields as a revenue stream. (“$45 million a month? Keep the oil.”) He proposed a business arrangement to exploit Syria’s oil: “What I intend to do, perhaps, is make a deal with an ExxonMobil or one of our great companies to go in there and do it properly.” Last Friday, in a Fox News interview, the president repeated that he cared only about the oil. “I left troops to take the oil,” he told Laura Ingraham. “The only troops I have are taking the oil.”

Two weeks ago, the United States killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike.
To deter retaliation, Trump threatened to bomb Iran’s cultural sites—an explicit war crime. “If Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets,” he tweeted, “we have targeted 52 Iranian sites … some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD.” In an exchange with reporters, Trump dismissed legal objections to his threat. “They’re allowed to kill our people. They’re allowed to torture and maim our people,” he fumed. “And we’re not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn’t work that way.”

Iraq’s Parliament, furious that Trump had killed Soleimani on its soil and without its consent, voted to expel American troops. But Trump refused to comply unless Iraq paid ransom. “We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that’s there,” he told reporters. “We’re not leaving unless they pay us back for it.” He threatened to “charge them [the Iraqis] sanctions like they’ve never seen before.” Later, Trump told Ingraham that Iraq would also “have to pay us for embassies.” When she asked him how he planned to extract the payment, Trump replied, “We have $35 billion of their money right now sitting in an account. And I think they’ll agree to pay. … Otherwise, we’ll stay there.”

Trump views the military as a mercenary force he can send around the world for hire. A Very Stable Genius, the new book by Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post, describes a White House meeting at which Trump said American troop deployments should yield a profit. Trump told Ingraham he’s doing exactly that: “We’re sending more [troops] to Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia’s paying us for it.” He recounted his business pitch to the Saudis: “You want more troops? I’m going to send them to you, but you’ve got to pay us.” And he proudly reported that the Saudis had accepted the deal. “They’re paying us,” he told Ingraham. “They’ve already deposited $1 billion in the bank.”

Trump’s amorality—his complete indifference to rules against theft, abuse, exploitation, and killing—is a public relations problem for his apologists. They struggle to cover it up. First they softened his Muslim ban to a “travel ban” on certain majority-Muslim countries. Then they concocted non-sadistic rationales for his family-separation policy. Last week, after Trump threatened Iran’s cultural sites, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo assured the public that Trump would obey the law. Pompeo also whitewashed Trump’s threats against Iraq, insisting that American troops were in that country to protect its “sovereignty.” Mark Esper, the secretary of defense, claimed that when Trump spoke of Saudi Arabia paying for U.S. troop deployments, “What the president is referring to is burden sharing.”

But Trump refuses to be silenced. Hours after Pompeo promised that the president wouldn’t target Iran’s cultural sites, Trump repeated that he would. Later, Trump stiff-armed Ingraham’s attempts to clean up his language about stealing Syrian oil. “I left troops to take the oil,” he told her. She tried to correct him: “We’re not taking the oil. They’re protecting the facilities.” Trump shrugged off this reformulation. “Well, maybe we will, maybe we won’t,” he said. “Maybe we should take it. But we have the oil.”

Having an evil president doesn’t make the United States evil. We have a lot to be proud of: a culture of freedom, a strong constitution, vigorous courts, democratic accountability, and laws that protect minorities and human rights. On balance, we’ve been a force for good in the world. But Trump’s election and his persistent approval from more than 40 percent of Americans are a reminder that nothing in our national character protects us from becoming a rapacious, authoritarian country. What protects us are institutions that stop us from doing our worst.

Thanks to Magda Werkmeister and Daijing Xu for research assistance.

 

*********************************************

I’d argue that far from being a strong bulwark against Trump’s authoritarian tyranny, our democratic institutions – Congress, Article III Courts, the bureaucracy, and even much of the media — are in a state of constant meltdown under his regime’s relentless attacks. We can see that graphically played out every day in the GOP’s largely fact free and totally dishonest defense of Trump’s running roughshod over both the Congress and our Constitution.

I can’t detect a sliver of desire on the part of the GOP and its enablers to hold Trump accountable for any misdeed — even soliciting foreign interference in our electoral process and then lying to cover it up. The facts really aren’t in dispute here. Whether the U.S. could survive another four years of Trump and remain a democratic republic is still, unfortunately, an open question.

We can hope for the best. But, without “regime change” in November 2020, the worst might still be ahead.

In the meantime, the Article III Courts should do their constitutional duty and stop “coddling” the regime’s various schemes and gimmicks to commit, encourage, and enable “crimes against humanity.” We certainly aren’t going to get any accountability or restraint on Trump’s misconduct and open contempt for American institutions from a Congress where the Senate is led by “Moscow Mitch” and his enablers.

 

PWS

01-22-20

 

YEGANEH TORBATI & ZOE CHACE: “The Library” — How The Trump Administration’s Intentional Cruelty & Inane Policies Created A Scene From A Dystopian Novel For Some Families! — Sometimes, Humanity Prevails Over The Forces Of Evil!

Dear friends and colleagues,

As 2018 draws to a close, I hope you’ll have time to listen to this week’s episode of This American Life. Act One of the show is a segment produced by Zoe Chace about the Iranian families, separated by the Trump administration’s travel ban, who are reuniting at the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, a library straddling the U.S.-Canada border. I wrote about the reunions for Reuters last month, and spoke with Zoe about what I saw when I visited the library.

You can also watch the video version of the story my colleague Zach Goelman produced here.

Hope you all have a wonderful new year.

Best,

Yeganeh

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Remember, either Chief Justice John Roberts or Retired Justice Anthony Kennedy could have stopped this nonsense; both chose to “swallow the whistle” instead. So, real human beings suffer unnecessarily.

And, to the extent that either thought that their weak-kneed pleas for some civility and sanity from Trump in the future would accomplish anything, we can see the results. After Trump attacked Federal Judges and Roberts personally, the Chief Justice finally got wise and stopped (at least temporarily) facilitating Trump’s cruelty, irrationality, and abuses of Executive Power.

The future of our Republic could well depend on the Chief Justice’s continued willingness to stand up for individual rights and institutional integrity against Trump’s corrupt attacks. Depending on how he performs, he could go down as one of the greatest or worst Chief Justices.

PWS

01-01-19