July 2022 – Page 2 – artdiamondblog.com

Russian-Speaking Ukrainians Learn to Speak Ukrainian, in “Outraged Defiance” of Violent Russian Invaders

(p. A9) Since Russia’s invasion, a number of language clubs have opened in cities in western Ukraine. Teachers and volunteers are reaching out to millions of displaced people who have fled to the relative safety of western cities like Lviv from the Russian-speaking east — encouraging them to practice and embrace Ukrainian as the language of their daily lives.

An estimated one in every three Ukrainians speaks Russian at home, according to researchers, and many of them — outraged by the violence of Russia’s invasion — are enthusiastically making the switch as a show of defiance.

. . .

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Ukraine’s declaration of independence in 1991, the country experienced many waves of “Ukrainization,” said Olga Onuch, who researches the relationship between language and politics at the University of Manchester. President Volodymyr Zelensky was an inspiration for one of the recent waves, she said.

A former comedian, Mr. Zelensky grew up speaking Russian, but switched to Ukrainian in 2017 before running for office.

. . .

At a Yedyni language club, teacher Maria Hvesko argued that Russia had intentionally tried to erase Ukrainian culture in the east when one of her students, Victoria Yermolenko, offered polite opposition.

“This ‘Russification’— I don’t know if it was always intentional,” she said hesitantly.

Another reason, she argued, was rapid Soviet industrialization in the mid-20th century. This brought many Russian engineers and technicians to eastern Ukraine, as well as specialists from other parts of the Soviet Union, and they used Russian as a common language.

Ms. Yermolenko switched to Ukrainian out of political conviction. But she also did it out of consideration for the local residents of Lviv, concerned they would be pained to hear Russian spoken during these days of war.

“I’ve done a lot of — what’s the Ukrainian word for re-evaluating?” she asked, in Russian.

As her teacher offered a word, Ms. Yermolenko finished the thought in Ukrainian: “So, I’m re-evaluating. For me, it’s something quite drastic. It’s like turning my world upside down.”

. . .

Ms. Onuch, the professor, said there was little data yet to support the notion that Russia’s invasion had accelerated a switch. And for many Russian-speaking Ukrainians, she said, language was not so tied to identity politics before the invasion.

“Now, they’re thinking about it, and it starts meaning something,” she said. “Taking away that glimmer of Russian greatness, to switch over to Ukrainian, is a power. They are so powerless right now. This is the one power they have.”

Ms. Yermolenko framed her decision as a positive embrace.

“I don’t want to use Russian, not only because it’s the language of the occupier, but also because: Why not use Ukrainian? It’s so cool.”

For the full story see:

Erika Solomon. “Russian Speakers Decide To Use Ukrainian Instead.” The New York Times (Monday, May 30, 2022): A9.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 29, 2022, and has the title “For Russian-Speaking Ukrainians, Language Clubs Offer Way to Defy Invaders.”)

Officers in Russian Military Are Rewarded for Following Orders, Not for Nimbly Taking Initiative

(p. A1) This war has exposed the fact that, to Russia’s detriment, much of the military culture and learned behavior of the Soviet era endures: inflexibility in command structure, corruption in military spending, and concealing casualty figures and repeating the mantra (p. A7) that everything is going according to plan.

. . .

The scripted way the military practices warfare, on display in last summer’s exercises, is telling. “Nobody is being tested on their ability to think on the battlefield,” said William Alberque, the Berlin-based director of the arms control program at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Instead, officers are assessed on their ability to follow instructions, he said.

. . .

Rampant corruption has drained resources. “Each person steals as much of the allocated funds as is appropriate for their rank,” said retired Maj. Gen. Harri Ohra-Aho, the former Chief of Intelligence in Finland and still a Ministry of Defense adviser.

. . .

“It is impossible to imagine the scale of lies inside the military,” Mr. Irisov said. “The quality of military production is very low because of the race to steal money.”

One out of every five rubles spent on the armed forces was stolen, the chief military prosecutor, Sergey Fridinsky, told Rossiyskaya Gazeta, the official government newspaper, in 2011.

For the full story see:

Neil MacFarquhar. “Soviet-Era Tactics Hobble Russia on Battlefield.” The New York Times (Tuesday, May 17, 2022): A1 & A7.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 16, 2022, and has the title “Russia Planned a Major Military Overhaul. Ukraine Shows the Result.”)

“Maverick” Chinese Entrepreneur Zhou Hang Dares Criticize Zero Covid Policy

(p. B1) China’s entrepreneur class is grappling with the worst economic slump in decades as the government’s zero Covid policy has shut down cities and kept would-be customers at home. Yet they can’t seem to agree on how loudly they should complain — or even whether they should at all.

. . .

Their approach, the equivalent of an ostrich sticking its head in the sand, doesn’t make sense to Zhou Hang. Mr. Zhou, a tech entrepreneur and a venture capitalist, has questioned how his peers can pretend it’s business as usual, given the political and economic upheaval. Stop putting up with the ridiculous reality, he urged. It’s time to speak up and seek change.

Mr. Zhou is rare in China’s business community for being openly critical of the government’s zero Covid policy, which has put hundreds of millions of people under some kind of lockdowns in the past few months, costing jobs and revenues. He’s saying what many others are whispering in private but fear to say in public.

“The questions we should ask ourselves are,” he wrote in an article that was censored within an hour of posting (p. B4) but shared widely in other formats, “what caused such widespread negative sentiment across the society? Who should be responsible for this? And how can we change it?”

He said the lockdowns in Shanghai and other cities made it clear that wealth and social status meant little to a government determined to pursue its zero Covid policy. “We’re all nobodies who could be sent to the quarantine camps, and our homes could be broken into,” he wrote. “If we still choose to adapt to and put up with this, all of us will face the same destiny: trapped.”

. . .

Mr. Zhou, 49, is known as a maverick in Chinese business circles. He founded his first business in stereo systems with his brother in the mid-1990s when he was still in college. In 2010, he started Yongche, one of the first ride-hailing companies.

Unlike most Chinese bosses, he didn’t demand that his employees work overtime, and he didn’t like liquor-filled business meals. He turned down hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and refused to participate in subsidy wars because doing so didn’t make economic sense. He ended up losing out to his more aggressive competitor Didi.

He later wrote a best seller about his failure and became a partner at a venture capital firm in Beijing. In April [2022], he was named chairman of the ride-sharing company Caocao, a subsidiary of auto manufacturing giant Geely Auto Group.

A Chinese citizen with his family in Canada, Mr. Zhou said in an interview that in the past many wealthy Chinese people like him would move their families and some of their assets abroad but work in China because there were more opportunities.

Now, some of the top talent are trying to move their businesses out of the country, too. It doesn’t bode well for China’s future, he said.

“Entrepreneurs have good survivor’s instinct,” he said. “Now they’re forced to look beyond China.” He coined a term — “passive globalization” — based on his discussions with other entrepreneurs. “Many of us are starting to take such actions,” he said.

For the full story see:

Li Yuan. “A Solitary Critic on ‘Zero Covid’.” The New York Times (Saturday, June 11, 2022): B1 & B4.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 10, 2022 and has the title “A Chinese Entrepreneur Who Says What Others Only Think.”)

Spreading Smallpox Inoculation to Impress Voltaire

(p. A15) Dimsdale had been summoned by Catherine the Great to inoculate not only the empress herself but also her 13-year-old heir, the Grand Duke Paul.

. . .

As Lucy Ward dramatically relates in “The Empress and the English Doctor: How Catherine the Great Defied a Deadly Virus,” Catherine’s invitation was a high-stakes affair, a testament to Dimsdale’s writings on the methodology of smallpox inoculation and his reputation for solicitous care. His Quaker upbringing had encouraged a brand of outcome- rather than ego-led practice.

. . .

As devastating as smallpox was, for the empress herself and the grand duke who would succeed her to personally undergo inoculation was a risk to both patient and doctor. On the success side stood immunity from the disease, an almost holy example for Catherine’s people, and as-yet-untold riches for her nervous doctor. On the other side, not only the fact that all Russia would refuse the treatment if their “Little Mother” died, but also a disaster for Dimsdale and the son who had accompanied him. Geopolitics came into play too—if things went wrong, some would interpret it as a foreign assassination.

. . .

With a happy result for her and her less-robust son, Catherine sets about publicizing the success. Dimsdale receives the equivalent of more than $20 million and a barony. Bronze medals are cast of Catherine’s profile, reading “She herself set an example.” It helps that Catherine was competitive beyond reason: “we have inoculated more people in a month than were inoculated in Vienna in eight,” she wrote to Voltaire, determined to beat Empress Maria Theresa’s efforts.

For the full review, see:

Catherine Ostler. “BOOKSHELF; Inoculate Conception.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, June 23, 2022): A15.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review was updated June 22, 2022, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; ‘The Empress and the English Doctor’ Review: Inoculate Conception.”)

The book under review is:

Ward, Lucy. The Empress and the English Doctor: How Catherine the Great Defied a Deadly Virus. London, UK: Oneworld Publications, 2022.

Organic Strawberries Blamed for Hepatitis A Outbreak

(p. A21) Public health officials said they were investigating an outbreak of hepatitis A in the United States and Canada that is potentially linked to organic strawberries.

American health officials said the outbreak most likely came from fresh organic strawberries branded as FreshKampo and H-E-B that were bought between March 5 and April 25.

The strawberries were sold at stores including Aldi, H-E-B, Kroger, Safeway, Sprouts Farmers Market, Trader Joe’s, Walmart and Weis Markets, the Food and Drug Administration said.

. . .

In the United States, the F.D.A. said it had identified 17 cases of hepatitis A linked to the strawberries — 15 in California and one each in Minnesota and North Dakota. Twelve people have been hospitalized, the agency said.

. . .

Hepatitis A is a contagious virus that may cause liver disease.

. . .

Symptoms usually develop 15 to 20 days after eating the contaminated food and can include fatigue, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, jaundice, dark urine and pale stool, the F.D.A. said.

For the full story see:

Michael Levenson. “Strawberries Linked to Hepatitis A Outbreak, F.D.A. Says.” The New York Times (Wednesday, June 1, 2022): A21.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 31, 2022 and has the title “Hepatitis A Outbreak in U.S. and Canada Linked to Strawberries.”)

Dr. Zelenko’s pre-Covid-19 memoir is:

Zelenko, Vladmir. Metamorphosis. Lakewood, NJ: Israel Bookshop Publications, 2019.

A highly credentialed Yale academic presented evidence of the promise of hydroxychloroquine for early outpatient treatment in:

Risch, Harvey A. “Early Outpatient Treatment of Symptomatic, High-Risk Covid-19 Patients That Should Be Ramped-up Immediately as Key to the Pandemic Crisis.” American Journal of Epidemiology 189, no. 11 (Nov. 2020): 1218–26.

Truckers Hurt If Union Dock Workers Strike to Add to Their Six Figure Pay, and to Block Efficient Technology

(p. B1) LOS ANGELES — David Alvarado barreled south along the highway, staring through the windshield of his semi truck toward the towering cranes along the coastline.

He had made the same 30-minute trek to the Port of Los Angeles twice that day; if things went well, he would make it twice more. Averaging four pickups and deliveries a day, Mr. Alvarado has learned, is what it takes to give his wife and three children a comfortable life.

“This has been my life — it’s helped me support a family,” said Mr. Alvarado, who for 17 years has hauled cargo between warehouses across Southern California and the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, a global hub that handles 40 percent of the nation’s seaborne imports.

He weathered the blow to his paycheck early in the pandemic when he was idling for six hours a day, waiting for cargo to be loaded off ships and onto his truck. Now the ports are bustling again, but there is a new source of anxiety: the imminent expiration of the union contract for dockworkers (p. B5) along the West Coast.

If negotiations fail to head off a slowdown, a strike or a lockout, he said, “it will crush me financially.”

The outcome will be crucial not only for the union dockworkers and port operators, but also for the ecosystem of workers surrounding the ports like Mr. Alvarado, and for a global supply chain reeling from coronavirus lockdowns and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Inflation’s surge to the highest rate in more than four decades is due, in part, to supply chain complications.

The contract between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which represents 22,000 workers at 29 ports from San Diego to Seattle, and the Pacific Maritime Association, representing the shipping terminals, is set to expire on Friday. The union members primarily operate machinery like cranes and forklifts that move cargo containers on and off ships.

. . .

The negotiations have centered largely on whether to increase wages for the unionized workers, whose average salaries are in the low six figures, and expanding automation, such as using robots to move cargo containers, to speed up production, a priority for shipping companies.

“Automation allows greater densification at existing port terminals, enabling greater cargo throughput and continued cargo growth over time,” Jim McKenna, the chief executive of the Pacific Maritime Association, said in a recent video statement on the negotiations.

. . .

As he drove past the ports, Mr. Alvarado turned his truck into a warehouse parking lot, where the multicolored containers lined the asphalt like a row of neatly arranged Lego blocks.

It was his third load of the day, and for this round, he didn’t have to wait on the longshoremen to load the carrier onto his truck. Instead, he backed his semi up to a chassis, and the blue container snapped into place.

He pulled up Google Maps on his iPhone and looked at the distance to the drop-off in Fontana, Calif.: 67 miles, an hour and half.

It might, Mr. Alvarado said, end up being a four-load day after all.

For the full story see:

Kurtis Lee. “As Dockworkers Near Contract’s End, The U.S. Has a Stake.” The New York Times (Thursday, June 30, 2022): B1 & B5.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the same date as the print version, and has the title “As Dockworkers Near Contract’s End, Many Others Have a Stake.”)

“More a Great Reshuffling Than a Great Resignation”

In the passages quoted below, Nobel laureate, and often-strident leftist Paul Krugman, modifies his views on the state of the U.S. labor market in an interesting and plausible way. I believe another part of the story, as Newt Gingrich has suggested, is that some workers may be following the advice of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, by in effect going on strike. So the Great Resignation may not entirely be a “myth.” More remains to be learned.

(p. 3) Have large numbers of Americans dropped out of the labor force — that is, they are neither working nor actively seeking work? To answer this question, you need to look at age-adjusted data; falling labor force participation because a growing number of Americans are over 65 isn’t meaningful in this context. So economists often look at the labor force participation of Americans in their prime working years: 25 to 54. And guess what? This participation rate has surged recently. It’s still slightly below its level on the eve of the pandemic, but it’s back to 2019 levels, which hardly looks like a Great Resignation.

What about early retirement? If a lot of that was happening, we’d expect to see reduced labor force participation among older workers, 55 to 64. But they’ve come rapidly back into the labor force.

A few months ago, it still seemed reasonable to talk about a Great Resignation. At this point, however, there’s basically nothing there. It’s true that an unusually high number of workers have been quitting their jobs, but they have been leaving for other, presumably better jobs, rather than leaving the work force. As the labor economist Arindrajit Dube says, it’s more a Great Reshuffling than a Great Resignation.

. . .

How can labor markets be so tight when payroll employment is still well below the prepandemic trend?

. . .

First, as the economist Dean Baker has been pointing out, the most commonly cited measures of employment don’t count the self-employed, and self-employment is up by a lot, around 600,000 more workers than the average in 2019. Some of this self-employment may be fictitious — gig workers who are employees in all but name but work for companies that classify them as independent contractors to avoid regulation. But it also does seem as if part of the Great Reshuffling has involved Americans concluding that they could improve their lives by starting their own businesses.

Second, a point that receives far less attention than it should is the decline of immigration since Donald Trump came to office, which turned into a plunge with the coming of the pandemic.

For the full commentary, see:

Paul Krugman. “The Myth of the Great Resignation.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sunday, April 10, 2022): 3.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date April 5, 2022, and has the title “What Ever Happened to the Great Resignation?”)

Ayn Rand’s magnum opus, mentioned above, is:

Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged. New York: Random House, 1957.

“Quiet, Unassuming” Dr. Zelenko Got Twitter Suspension and Death Threats for Speaking on Hydroxychloroquine

Dr. Zelenko was stricken with a rare form of lung cancer in 2018, shortly before the Covid-19 pandemic. I wonder if that increased his personal sense of urgency to find a cure for Covid-19?

(p. A21) Vladimir Zelenko, a self-described “simple country doctor” from upstate New York who rocketed to prominence in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic when his controversial treatment for the coronavirus gained White House support, died on Thursday in Dallas. He was 48.

. . .

Like many health care providers, he scrambled when the coronavirus began to appear in his community. Within weeks he had landed on what he insisted was an effective cure: a three-drug cocktail of the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine, the antibiotic azithromycin and zinc sulfate.

. . .

“At the time, it was a brand-new finding, and I viewed it like a commander in the battlefield,” Dr. Zelenko told The New York Times. “I realized I needed to speak to the five-star general.”

On March 28, [2020] the Food and Drug Administration granted emergency authorization to doctors to prescribe hydroxychloroquine and another antimalarial drug, chloroquine, to treat Covid. Mr. Trump called the treatment “very effective” and possibly “the biggest game changer in the history of medicine.”

But, as fellow medical professionals began to point out, Dr. Zelenko had only his own anecdotal evidence to support his case, and what little research had been done painted a mixed picture.

Still, he became something of a folk hero on the right, someone who offered not just hope amid the pandemic but also an alternative to the medical establishment and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who insisted that months of research would be needed to find an effective treatment.

. . .

A quiet, unassuming man, Dr. Zelenko seemed unprepared for the attention he received, which included harassing phone calls and even death threats. In May 2020, a federal prosecutor opened an investigation into whether he had falsely claimed F.D.A. approval for his research.

. . .

After the F.D.A. rescinded its approval of hydroxychloroquine as a Covid treatment, he founded a company, Zelenko Labs, to promote other nonconventional treatments for the disease, including vitamins and quercetin, an anti-inflammatory drug.

And while he claimed to be apolitical, he embraced the image of a victim of the establishment. He founded a nonprofit, the Zelenko Freedom Foundation, to press his case. In December 2020, Twitter suspended his account, stating that it had violated standards prohibiting “platform manipulation and spam.”

. . .

In a memoir, “Metamorphosis” (2018), Dr. Zelenko wrote that he grew up nonreligious and entered Hofstra University as an avowed atheist.

“I enjoyed debating with people and proving to them that G-d did not exist,” he wrote. “I studied philosophy and was drawn to nihilistic thinkers such as Sartre and Nietzsche.”

But after a trip to Israel, he began to change his mind. He gravitated toward Orthodox Judaism, and in particular the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.

He graduated from Hofstra in 1995 with a degree in chemistry, and he received his medical degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 2000.

. . .

In 2018, doctors found a rare form of cancer in his chest and, in hopes of treating it, removed his right lung.

For the full obituary see:

Clay Risen. “Vladimir Zelenko, 48, ‘Country Doctor’ Who Pushed Unfounded Covid Remedy.” The New York Times (Saturday, July 2, 2022): A21.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date July 1, 2022 and has the title “Vladimir Zelenko, 48, Dies; Promoted an Unfounded Covid Treatment.”)

Dr. Zelenko’s pre-Covid-19 memoir is:

Zelenko, Vladmir. Metamorphosis. Lakewood, NJ: Israel Bookshop Publications, 2019.

A highly credentialed Yale academic presented evidence of the promise of hydroxychloroquine for early outpatient treatment in:

Surge in Blacks Buying Guns “for Protection Against Crime”

(p. A17) It’s well known that gun sales have surged in recent years, but less well known is that blacks have led the trend. Retailers in an online survey conducted by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade group, reported that they sold 58% more guns to black customers in the first half of 2020 than a year earlier, the highest increase for any ethnic group. Personal safety tops the list of why people decide to buy a firearm. In a 2021 Gallup survey, 88% of respondents said they own a gun “for protection against crime,” which is up from 67% in 2005.

. . .

The source of the problem is the failure or inability of the government to protect us. Common sense dictates that we do what is necessary to protect ourselves in the meantime.

For the full commentary, see:

Jason L. Riley. “Why Black Americans Are Buying More Guns.” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, June 8, 2022): A17.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary was updated June 7, 2022, and has the same title as the print version.)

Arbitrary Long Lockdown Shows Shanghai “the Precarity of Rights” Under Communist Xi

(p. A5) BEIJING — June [2022], for Shanghai, was supposed to be a time of triumph. After two months of strict lockdown, the authorities had declared the city’s recent coronavirus outbreak under control. Businesses and restaurants were finally reopening. State media trumpeted a return to normalcy, and on the first night of release, people milled in the streets, shouting, “Freedom!”

Julie Geng, a 25-year-old investment analyst in the city, could not bring herself to join. “I don’t think there’s anything worth celebrating,” she said. She had spent part of April confined in a centralized quarantine facility after testing positive and the feeling of powerlessness was still fresh.

“I feel there is no basic guarantee in life, and so much could change overnight,” she said. “It makes me feel very fragile.”

. . .

Some residents are confronting the precarity of rights they once took for granted: to buy food and to expect privacy in their own homes. Some are grieving relationships that fractured under the stresses of lockdown. Many people remain anxious about the weeks they went without pay or whether their businesses will survive.

Hanging over it all is a broader inability to put the ordeal fully behind them, as China still holds to its goal of eliminating the virus. The authorities announced recently that every district in the city would briefly lock down each weekend until the end of July for mass testing.

. . .

The long-term fallout of the containment policies was already becoming clear in the inquiries that Xu Xinyue, a psychologist, received in recent weeks.

When the pandemic began two years ago, said Ms. Xu, who volunteers for a national counseling hotline, many callers were scared of the virus itself. But recent callers from Shanghai had been more concerned with the secondary effects of China’s controls — parents anxious about the consequences of prolonged online schooling, or young professionals worried about paying their mortgages, after the lockdown pummeled Shanghai’s job market.

Others were questioning why they had worked so hard in the first place, having seen how money could not ensure their comfort or safety during lockdown. They were now saving less and spending more on food and other tangible objects that could bring a sense of security, Ms. Xu said.

“Money has lost its original value,” she said. “This has upended the way they always thought, leaving them a bit lost.”

. . .

Anna Qin, an education consultant in her 20s, has started going to the office and the gym again. She walks and bicycles around the city, delighting in feeling her feet on the pavement.

But the fact that such mundane things now feel so special is just a reminder of how much the city was forced to sacrifice.

“We’re glad it’s opening up again, but also there’s no acknowledgment of what we went through,” she said.

“Now it’s closed, now it’s open, and we have no control. And now we’re supposed to be happy.”

For the full story see:

Vivian Wang. “Strict Lockdown Is Over, But Raw Feelings Linger.” The New York Times (Thursday, June 30, 2022): A5.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 29, 2022 and has the title “‘Very Fragile’: Shanghai Wrestles With Psychological Scars of Lockdown.”)

Environmentalists on California Appeals Court Declare the Bumblebee to Be a Fish

(p. A9) What is black, yellow and coated in pollen?

Bumblebee, you say? A panel of top judges in California reviewed the matter and came up with fish, a judgment sending ripples across the state.

The unanimous ruling last week by a state appeals court was intended to straighten out a legal swarm involving conservationists, farmers and the interpretation of a scientifically challenged, half-century-old law.

. . .

(p. A10) California almond farmers were among those worrying about bees alighting on the endangered list. The state’s annual almond harvest, about 3 billion pounds, relies on bees pollinating as many as 1.3 million acres of the trees. Trade groups believe new protections would restrict farmers from working around bumblebees and prevent the use of pesticides, which protect trees but can hurt bees.

The farmers combed the text of California’s 1970 endangered-species law. It affords special protection to any endangered “bird, mammal, fish, amphibia or reptile.” Bees, farmers said, shouldn’t be included. The first California court to hear the case agreed, and the Fish and Game Commission appealed.

The commission pointed out that the legal definition of “fish” in California has been for years somewhat vague.

. . .

Justice Ronald Robie, author of the court’s opinion, is an expert in environmental law and wrote a textbook on the subject, according to his official biography. In his opinion, Justice Robie acknowledged the inevitable confusion.

“A fish, as the term is commonly understood in everyday parlance, of course, lives in aquatic environments,” he wrote, yet the court must follow its best interpretation of the legislature’s intent.

For the full story, see:

Matt Grossman. “In California, A Bumblebee Is a Fish.” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, June 8, 2022): A1 & A10.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated June 7, 2022, and has the title “When Is a Bumblebee a Fish? When a California Court Says So.”)