Author: HM2 FMF-SW Ret

Military.com reports that the case of a former U.S. Army Reserve Sgt is heading to the Supreme Court.

Vincent Staub sued his former employer, Proctor Hospital of Peoria, Ill., in 2004 after being fired from his job. He claims he was let go after fellow employees, bitter or resentful over his taking time off for military service, conspired to damage his job performance. Staub won in district court in Illinois but had the verdict overturned by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in March 2009.

I’m hoping that this is a strong case.  As others report in the article, if the court rules for the employer, the fallout will cripple USERRA. National Guard and Reserve forces are essential to our national security and must be protected from predatory employment practices.

That having been said, most vets I work with don’t want to file USERRA complaints because they believe that they will face discrimination if they do get their jobs back.  The Supremes need to make sure USERRA keeps it’s teeth.

Of course who knows which way they’ll go.  Maybe they’ll rule that Reservists aren’t people so they don’t need jobs or maybe they will rule that employers have the right to be assholes to returning veterans.  Who knows?

The World Court ruled yesterday that Kosovo’s declaration of independence did not violate international law.  Yet, the courts stopped short of saying that Kosovo is, in fact, a legal state. 

Legal experts said that while the International Court of Justice had ruled that Kosovo’s declaration of independence was legal, it had avoided saying that the state of Kosovo was legal under international law, a narrow and carefully calibrated compromise that they said could allow both sides to declare victory in a dispute that remains raw even 11 years after the war there.

The war has been over for 11 years and Kosovo has been independent for two, yet they are not legally a country.  This does little to resolve the issues facing Kosovo in the international community. 

Serbia was adamant that it would never recognize what it had previously called a false state, while Russia, one of its staunchest allies, insisted that the court’s decision did not provide a legal basis for Kosovo’s independence.

For our part, we are supportive of the emerging state and called on Europe to get on board.

The State Department said the ruling was “a judgment we support,” according to The Associated Press. “Now it is time for Europe to unite behind a common future.”

So, why did the court play it safe? Politics as usual.

James Ker-Lindsay, a Balkan expert at the London School of Economics, said the court had trod carefully in weighing the right of a people to self-determination over the right of a sovereign state to territorial integrity, and had decided to sidestep the issue altogether.

“It has essentially said that Kosovo’s legitimacy will be conferred by the countries that recognize it rather than by the court,” he said.

In many ways, I think, that is the way it has always been.  However, people have the right to self determination whether the court says so or not.  So, it might as well say so.

The BBC reports that some cryptic ass hatgovernment official has criticized the US for tying Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse, the lone surviving Somali pirate from last year’s hijacking of the Maersk Alabama 280 miles from the Somali coast. 

Mr Cumar told the BBC’s Network Africa he had been trying to work out why the US would have any authority to try Muse’s case and those of several other suspects in custody in the US.

Um…dunno, maybe it had something to with the Alabama being a US flagged vessel with an American crew, or that they were apprehended by Americans?

“The Somali government’s position has always been that we questioned the jurisdiction of this case,” he said.

Right, so the government of Somalia should have the jurisdiction and they would hold a fair trial and then execute sentence those convicted. Sounds fair to me right?

Somali pirate suspects have been tried in various countries across the world, as Somalia has no functioning central government. (emphasis added)

To be fair this Cumar fella does have a solution:

Mr Cumar says he wants a UN-backed international tribunal to deal with piracy cases.

This could work.  What countries would be on the Tribunal? Maybe Rwanda, Somalia and Haiti?  They all have experience dealing with this kind of thing?  Or maybe the French the Swiss and the Venezuelans?  Wait there is one problem:

Previous attempts to form an international tribunal have failed because of a lack of funding.

Okay.  Well, it’s a good solution, but no one wants to pay for it.  There is another solution:

Foreign forces have frequently caught pirates off Somalia, disarmed them and then put them back to sea because there is no local authority to deal with them.

Catch and Release.  How’s that working for us?  Since Somali piracy is on the rise, not so well.  So here’s my idea.  If the dysfunctional government of Somalia has a problem with us capturing and trying their problem children here after they attack our ships, then our new policy should be to sink the boats, torpedo the mother ships and declare armed pirates hostile.  Then there’s no one to try and no one to attack the ships.  Problem solved.

I found this in the print edition of the Wall Street Journal yesterday and had to track it down this morning. 

Apparently gourmet chefs have been smuggling foreign meats into the U.S. for years.  The tone of the article is generally that these are poor put upon chefs. 

“Smuggling is something you do with drugs or kids,” jokes executive chef Chris Cosentino, whose San Francisco restaurant Incanto specializes in dishes that use most every part of an animal. “Our goal is to improve the food system.”

Now I have nothing against good food and figuring out recipes. (For God’s sake man, look at me from the side.)  But, this is stupid.  You have to read a while but you eventually find out why Customs has a beef. (I couldn’t help it sorry.)

Sausages and hams “are much more dangerous than people think,” says Janice Mosher, an official at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which seizes about 4,000 pounds of prohibited meat, plant and animal products a day. “Those items truly have the ability to spread disease.” The government is concerned that bacteria from a smuggled piece of meat will spread through the ecosystem, infecting livestock and hurting agricultural production, Ms. Mosher says.

I find it hard to believe that there isn’t another answer to this problem beyond smuggling.  As much as we might not like it, the rules are the rules and we should all follow them.

The final word of the article sums it all up:

While that may bad news for salumi makers, it made Mr. Creminelli feel better about the state of aviation security generally. “If they stop me for salami, hopefully they can stop someone who is doing something really wrong.”

’nuff said.