Stop the Overheated Rhetoric; the Actual Executive Order is Bad Enough

I just read the text of the recent executive order that supposedly "Bans Muslims" and some of the relevant statutes. Unsurprisingly, much of the overheated rhetoric and clickbait headlines (even from reputable news outlets) are inaccurate. I believe it is essential, especially if you oppose the order, to be as precisely accurate as possible when writing about it. This is my analysis based on reading the original documents - I would welcome any corrections if I got anything wrong.

First, we must distinguish between the two main elements of the order. One comprises restrictions on entry to the US of certain visa holders, both temporary visas and immigrant visas ("green cards"). The other comprises restrictions on admission of refugees. These two sets of restrictions should not be confused, as they are not the same and have different effects.

1. The order does not "ban Muslims". It stops entry of citizens of any of a set of countries, most of whom are Muslim, and does not affect entry for most of the world's Muslims.
2. The order does not list a specific set of countries to be affected, but rather refers to the list of countries which are not eligible to be part of the visa waiver program, per 8 U.S. Code § 1187. As far as I can tell, this list came from the Obama administration. As far as I can tell, there is no actual evidence that Trump picked a specific list of countries whose citizens he wanted to ban, contra many memes out there. The supposed link to his business interests is pure speculation. Indeed, there are other Muslim-majority countries where he does not have business interests which are not on the list.
3. The order is being applied to green card holders, that is, legal permanent residents (LPRs). (Evidently, DHS initially did not apply it to LPRs, but the White House overruled them.) This is unconscionable, and perhaps illegal. Indeed, the US insists that green card holders maintain continuous residence in the US - they cannot be out of the US more than six months without potentially losing their status. It is an odious policy, and bad for the US in many ways, to keep out someone whose home, family, and livelihood are all legally in the US, perhaps for many years.
4. A great many talented and productive academics and graduate students here will now be unable to travel abroad, for fear of not being able to return - indeed, many have already been caught abroad by this order and cannot return to their jobs or their studies. This is real human suffering, and also highly negative impact on US science and technology. Harming US research capabilities will certainly not help increase American greatness.
5. It is also entirely unclear to me on what legal basis people holding valid visas can simply be barred from entry for no reason other than their country of citizenship, without revoking their visas (this may depend on the visa type). Issuance of such visas and the legality of entry to the US is governed by Congressional statute. It would seem therefore to fall within their purview. (Alas, Congress has allowed the Executive to appropriate rather too much of its power in recent years and I don't expect them to do much now.)
6. The immediate application of this order within hours to people who had no warning, who were en route to the US with valid visas, who live in the US (whether as legal residents, as students, etc.), does nothing to improve the security of the country. It does, however, create an enormous amount of human suffering.
7. The limit of 50,000 refugees per year is well within historical norms before 2016. It is therefore not outrageous, but certainly can be argued with, on the merits.
8. The prioritization of people persecuted for being members of minority religions is entirely proper and long overdue.
9. The suspension of the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) is extraordinarily overbroad for its purpose, and will cause great human suffering, especially as applied to people already in transit. The clause enabling case-by-case refugee admission (jointly by the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security) is vague, and does not provide any sort of meaningful allowance for refugee admission.
10. The idea of reviewing policies and procedures for immigration and refugee screening is excellent. However, to suddenly and very broadly stop all entry to the country for huge numbers of people is absurd, and clearly not well thought out. The chaos in airports today bears this out.
11. Promulgating poorly-thought out orders with little-to-no interagency or legal review, and no pre-implementation planning, that then require multiple iterations of executive clarification and changes in implementation, is a recipe for instability and chaos. Such instability is, in my opinion, likely to reduce the security of the United States, possibly dramatically so.

Some thoughts on the 2016 election

Listen. Seek first to understand. Do not assume malice, or stupidity, or even ignorance, but start from an assumption that those you disagree with (even vehemently) are rational and intelligent, but may have good reasons for seeing things differently from you. Dismissing people out of hand will persuade no one. We have had too much of that on all sides - it creates rancor, and hardens people's political positions. That helps none of us.

We live in a large and incredibly diverse and now divided country. There are not just two Americas, there are many. Government should therefore be as local as possible, otherwise politics becomes a cage match to determine whose views will control everything. Federalism is a historically-validated way to allow for a diverse and yet civil and functioning polity.

The presidency has accumulated far too much power, and so presidential elections take on apocalyptic dimensions (on all sides). Don't think about what your choice would do with the power, think about what the other guy's choice would do with it. And then limit the power inherent in the office to reasonable proportions.

Supreme Court appointments have become a significantly distorting element in our presidential elections. One's choice of president should not hinge primarily on who he or she will appoint. Reform of the system is clearly needed. One reasonable suggestion is 18-year terms, ensuring that each president has a predictable number of appointments. There are other ideas, but something must be done. A president is more than a justice-appointer.

All of us, at this time, should take great care with what we say, whether out of pain and fear, or out of relief and joy. Let us all try to contribute to an atmosphere of reconciliation, of improved understanding of each other, and of rebuilding a political culture in which we need not agree but can work together.

Guccifer 2.0: Russian, not Romanian

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai recently interviewed (over Twitter) Guccifer 2.0,  who released documents hacked from the Democratic National Committee and claims to be the hacker of the DNC, concluding that he is probably not Romanian as he claims to be, and may very well be Russian. (Other evidence also points to the hack being perpetrated by the Russians.)

What, if anything, does Guccifer 2.0's language usage in the interview say about his likely national origin?

I performed a linguistic and stylistic analysis of Guccifer 2.0's English language responses in the interview. I examined all the clear errors in English grammar and style/usage, and considered whether each indicates that the writer is more likely a native Romanian or a native Russian speaker.

Summary of Results:
There are seven unusual (non-native) features in the English of the interview. Out of these seven, five clearly point to the author being a native Russian speaker, one weakly points in that direction, and the last says nothing. Hence we can conclude that the author is far more likely to be Russian than Romanian.

Detailed Analysis:

1. He refers to himself as a "women lover" in the plural.  In Romanian this would be "iubitor de femei" (instead of "femeie"), while in Russian it would be "любитель женщин".   Note that in Romanian, the phrase contains the preposition "de", corresponding to English "lover of women", while in Russian there is no preposition, as in the English phrase he used. Also, the odds of the Russian combination occurring as a phrase (based on Google searching the phrases with constraint site:ru and site:ro, respectively) is higher that of the the Romanian combination occurring as a phrase.  Thus the phrase is more likely a calque from Russian than from Romanian.
2. He writes "I've already told," instead of "I've already told you." This is a case of "pro-drop", where an argument to a verb (usually a pronoun) is dropped when understandable from context. In Russian, the equivalent sentence "Я уже сказал" (or "я уже ответил") is grammatically and contextually correct. In Romanian, the equivalent sentence, "Deja am spus" is technically correct, but it sounds odd and robotic to native speakers without the pronoun "ti" (you). This example is thus evidence that the writer is more likely Russian than Romanian.
3. He uses the word "deal" multiple times to mean "hack" or "operation" (e.g., "DNC isn't my first deal", "...all my deals"). In Russian, a deal is "сделка", business is "бизнес", an affair is "дело", an operation is "операция", an effort is "усилие", and an enterprise is "предприятие". In Romanian, these are, respectively, "afacere", "afaceri", "afacere", and "operație", "efort", and "afacere".  This may point towards Romanian, due to the similarity of several of the common translations for this concept, but more likely points towards Russian, due to the similarity between "дело" (delo) and "deal" (as well as "сделка" sdelka) - the English word "deal" is an false cognate of these words, that a Russian speaker may choose because of the similarity of sound.
4. He replies to a request to reply in Romanian as proof of his origin with "Man, I'm not a pupil at school." This is odd because of the use of the word "pupil" ("kid" would be more likely in colloquial English), the use of the preposition "at" instead of "in", and the start of the sentence with "Man, ...". 
1. In both Russian and Romanian, the phrase "pupil at school" ("ученик в школе" and "elev la școală", respectively) is slightly rarer than either "kid at school" or "boy at school". There is no clear difference here.
2. In Russian, both English prepositions "in" and "at" are generally translated by "в", while Romanian has different prepositions, "în" (in) and "la" (at), giving evidence for a Russian native language.
3. The odds of the phrase "I'm not" (Russian: "я не"; Romanian: "eu nu") being preceded by "Man, ..." (Russian: "Человек" or "Tоварищ,"; Romanian: "Omule,") in Russian is more than five times greater than in Romanian. This phrasing is evidence for a Russian native language over Romanian.
5. One of the most prominent features of Russian (and other Slavic-language) speakers writing in English is the general lack of articles (the words "a" and "the"), as those languages lack them. Romanian, on the other hand, as a Romance language, has both definite and indefinite articles. While many of the interview responses used English articles correctly, there were a number which did not (e.g., "I used [a] 0-day exploit" and "... the NGP VAN soft"). The inconsistency is not a complete proof of Russian (or Slavic) L1 authorship, but is strong evidence that the writer is a Russian speaker with relatively good English.

There are in total 7 oddities in the English text that may indicate the native language of the writer. Five out of the seven point clearly to Russian over Romanian as the native language, one ("deal") points weakly to Russian, and the last ("pupil") is inconclusive.

Overall, therefore, the linguistic evidence consistently points towards the writer being a native Russian speaker. It is also possible that the writer is a Romanian speaker who has studied Russian (often L2 features spill into a third language more than L1 features do); however the writer denied knowing any Russian, and so the most reasonable conclusion is that he is a Russian native speaker rather than a Romanian native speaker. This evidence, combined with the evidently problematic Romanian language use in the interview, indicates clearly that Guccifer 2.0 is a Russian pretending to be a Romanian. (Note that this says nothing about whether the hack was perpetrated by state-backed actors or an independent hacker or group.)

This analysis is quoted in the New York Times and Yediot Aharonot (in Hebrew).

UPDATE: 

Special prosecutor Mueller's July 13 indictment of 12 Russian GRU operatives on confirms that Guccifer 2.0 was a front persona run by Russian nationals for the GRU, per US intelligence assessments.

Open letter to Sharon Kugler, Yale University Chaplain

Dear Ms. Kugler,

As an alumnus of the university, I was greatly disturbed to read the recent (Aug 21) letter to the editor in the New York Times from Rev. Bruce Shipman, the Episcopal chaplain at Yale. In this letter, he lays the blame for the increasing incidence of anti-Semitic attacks and other incidents on the actions of the State of Israel. This is as puerile as it is repugnant.

No matter what one thinks about the actions of Israel’s government, only someone who was already an anti-Semite would respond by attacking Jews in the streets. A mob attacking Jews in a Paris synagogue is not a political protest. Someone shooting defenseless Jewish school children in Toulouse is not criticizing the Israeli government. It should be obvious to any thinking person that the inclination to such anti-Jewish violence preexisted any political excuse.

More fundamentally, however, Rev. Shipman’s argument is just like one blaming African Americans for racism because of high crime rates. What more need be said? It is a morally repellent claim which anyone, especially one considered a man of God, should reject with all force conceivable.

Reasonable people can certainly have differences of opinion as to the propriety and even morality of various governmental actions. But there should be no question that it is deeply immoral to use such opinions to justify hateful, racist violence.

The Yale Religious Ministries Agreement, which Rev. Shipman has signed, stipulates that members “will not undermine another faith community.” And yet he has done exactly that, by justifying anti-Semitism. This is an outrage, and he should be promptly expelled from the Yale Religious Ministries, as provided for in that Agreement.

Sincerely,

Shlomo Engelson Argamon (’94 PhD)