Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

The Bush Presidential Library at SMU: From Joke to Farce

Here.

Things are bad enough with the swine flu pandemic without the UK Minister of Health...

...revealing that he's not qualified for his job.

More on Iran

These two items I found worthwhile:  here and here (by an Iranian-American philosopher).  May the theocracy fall without anymore bloodshed.

The Geography of Vice and Sin

Here. 

(Thanks to Andy Cling for the pointer to this amusing site.)

Iran Election Results, Again

Due to other pressing obligations, I haven't been following this matter carefully, but Peter Momtchiloff calls my attention to an interesting chart from The Guardian; here are the four provinces with the most, shall we say, "suspect" results:

East Azerbaijan: Ahmadinejad received 10% in 2005, ‘57%’ in 2009.

Ardabil: Ahmadinejad received 7% in 2005, ‘51%’ in 2009.

Lorestan: Ahmadinejad received 9% in 2005, ‘71%’ in 2009.

Kuzestan: Ahmadinejad received 16% in 2005, ‘65%’ in 2009.

Hmmm.

UPDATE:  A useful round-up of links to analyses here.

Petition Regarding the Crisis in Iran

Dr. Masrour asked me to post a link to this petition, which follows upon the statement he and his wife wrote.

UPDATE:  Petition link has been changed. 

The Coup d'Etat in Iran

MOVING TO FRONT (from earlier today):   Here is the statement, including a list of web resources:  Download Iran Coup d'Etat

=================

Farid Masrour, a philosopher currently at NYU, and his wife, Giuliana Chamedes, a PhD candidate in History at Columbia and a former journalist, have prepared the following statement about recent events in Iran:

Concerned Iranians call for immediate action

A coup d'état is being carried out in Iran. 

Given the record turnout of voters for this election (around 85% of the voting-age population went to the polls), political analysts predicted that the results would be a mandate for change. 

However, the figures officially announced by the government attribute around 24 million votes to Mr Ahmadinejad. The number of votes won by Mr Ahmadinejad in the elections of 2005 was around 17 million, in an already contested election. His unpopular foreign policy, his repressive tactics, his suppression of women's rights, his treatment of racial and religious minorities, and his widely internally criticized economic policies, must have necessarily, according to all analysts, reduced the number of his voters. Thus, the more than eight million hike in the number of his supporters is simply unbelievable.

The official government figures state that the main challenger of Mr Ahmedinjad, Mr Moussavi, has received around 13 million votes. This result is shocking for various reasons. Throughout his campaign, Mr Moussavi received the official support of the former reformist president Mr Khatami, who resigned from candidacy to support Mr Moussavi in this election. There is no evidence of a fall from grace of Mr Khatami who won more than 20 million votes consecutively in two times. Moreover, almost all of the leading reformist groups in Iran have officially backed Mr Moussavi. The remaining groups have backed Mr Karoubi.There is also ample evidence that even some of the moderate-conservative groups which have traditionally voted against reformist candidates chose to back Mr Moussavi because of their frustation with Mr Ahmadinejad’s policies. Finally, the current election brought to the polls many Iranians who had previously chosen to boycott elections. In particular, numerous high-profile individuals who had advocated boycotts in years past now publicly declared that they would vote and that they would back either Mr Moussavi or Mr Karoubi. As the results of previous elections show, high voter participation in Iran tends to favor reformist candidates. All of this strongly suggests that Mr Moussavi should have obtained a record vote, higher than the average number of votes Mr Khatami obtained in 1997 and 2001. The 13 million votes officially announced for Mr Moussavi is thus grossly inferior to even the most modest projections.   

Mr Karoubi, the other reformist candidate, ran on a progressive platform. His demands include the call for a revision of the constitution in an attempt to protect the democratic rights of Iranian citizens, the protection of women’s right, e.g., promises to halt the mandatory enforcement of veil use, and the defense of the rights of religious and racial minorities. Mr Karoubi received the official backing of some of the former members of Mr Khatami’s cabinet, a number of leading clerics, many members of the women’s movement, representatives of religious and racial minorites, and the largest Iranian university student organization. The official announced result for Mr Karoubi, around 300,000 votes, is thus completely implausible and astonishing. Indeed, the figure is almost lower than the circulation number of his newspaper, lower than the results projected based on all previous polls, and almost twenty times lower than the number of votes that this candidate received in the 2005 election, when he was only 600,000 votes short of beating Mr Ahmadinejad in the first round of the elections. This again strongly suggests that the officially announced number has been simply manufactured, perhaps in an effort to portay Iranian public opinion as opposed to the progressive demands of Mr Karoubi.

In addition to the above, other evidence strongly suggests a pre-planned and systematic attempt by Mr.Ahmadinejad’s faction to manipulate the election results. First, according to the Iranian constitution, the official oversight body for elections is the Guardian Council, however this Council’s impartiality in the recent election is highly questionable. The chief of this twelve-man Council, whose members are appointed by the Supreme Leader of Iran, has explicitly and publicly backed Mr Ahmedinejad. Additionally, a letter was leaked and widely circulated a few days before the election, in which one of the high clerics in Iran, Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, claimed that manipulating the results of the election is not only recommended, but is also the duty of good Muslims when the life of the Islamic republic is in danger.

Evidence that this recommendation was followed includes an open letter written by a number of employees in the Interior Ministry, and issued about one week before the elections, which expressed worries that certain high officials in this ministry seemed to be planning to manipulate the election results. Moreover, according to numerous official reports, many of the representatives of the two reform candidates were systematically and repeatedly prevented from being present at poll sites on the election day. Iranian law states that each candidate has the right to have a representative present at each poll site to oversee the process of voting and the counting of the votes; thus on the day of the elections, the Iranian people were deprived of the legal guarantees to which they are entitled by law.

Finally, a public and official statement issued by the Revolutionary Guards, one of the two branches of the army in Iran, charged Mr Moussavi and Mr Karoubi with an attempt to overthrow the Islamic republic with a colorful revolution, following the example of the colorful revolutions of East Central Europe and mid Asia. The letter explicitly threatened that the Guards would violently suppress any such movement before it is born. All of the above evidence suggests a systematic plot to not only manipulate election results, but also to use intimidatory and violent tactics to block any popular reaction.

The plot was indeed executed. On Thursday, June 11th, the night before the election, SMS services were cut off by the central government. Text messaging, which had become one of the most widely used means for political communication during the last few years in Iran, continues to remain suspended to this day. The Persian-language BBC, was also made unaccessible in Iran starting at the same time, on the night before the election. According to BBC officials, an unknown source is actively sending noise over the wavelength of the BBC broadcast in order to jam the signal. On the day of the election, numerous hours before the official closure of the polls, a considerable number of people were prevented from voting due to a “shortage of paper ballots”. Mr Mousavi’s campaign headquarters in Tehran was attacked in the evening of Friday, June 12th, the day of the election, once it became that Mr Ahmadinejad had lost by a clear margin.

According to sources with links to the Interior Ministry the real numbers were widely different from the officially announced figures: 30 million Iranians voted for change, with around 24 million chosing Mr Moussavi, and around 6 million backing Mr Karoubi. Our sources say that only 10 million Iranians have given their votes to Mr Ahmadinejad.To date, the two reform candidates have not recognized the results of the election, and have accused the ruling party of foul play.

Since the announcement of the official election results, hundreds of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets, in what is largely interpreted as an unorganized outcry against a stolen election. The protesters are chanting phrases such as "Down with the dictator", and "Give us our votes back". These protests are taking place in most of the major cities of Iran. This movement is spontanous, cuts across class lines, and has no clear leadership. Furthermore, there is absolutely no evidence that there is any foreign instigation, funding or involvement of any kind.   

Over 100 reformists and various local and international journalists have also been arrested. The internet services were initially cut off entirely and now work only intermittently, with various websites (including the BBC) blocked.

Anticipating the public reaction, the local and riot police occupied the streets in large numbers a few hours before the announcement of the results on Saturday morning. The response to the protests was immediate. The police used tear gas, pepper spray, and batons against female and male protesters. Evidence of this unprecedented violence is widely available online. Since last night, the situation has escalated. In addition to the presence of police forces, various government-funded plain-clothed militia groups, including Basiij (the militia wing of the Revolutionary Guards), have entered the scene, now armed with firearms, knives, machetes and hand granades. Because of the lock-down of the country, it is difficult to estimate the full extent of the violence already perpetrated, however various reports state that gunshots are echoing in a number of Iranian cities. The latest unconfirmed reports from trustworthy sources state that at least fifteen Teheran University students have been shot in the university dorms by members of the militia starting at around 1am. The unconfirmed death toll of the universty dorm raid is five students (four male, one female). Nearly four hundred students, including those who were severely injured during the attack, are reportedly arrested.   

Mr Moussavi, Mr Karoubi, and all the major reformist groups had called for a peaceful mass protest for today, Monday June 15th, to begin at 4pm in Teheran and in all of the major cities of Iran. It appears that this protest has been called off. But according to our sources anger against the coup and the brazen government-sanctioned violence continues to mount. So it is highly probable that the protestors will continue flooding the streets despite the ever-increasing danger and the government’s recent announcement that all forms of public protest are illegal and will be dealt with seriously. Indeed, the response of the government in the first few days following the Iranian election and the escalation of violence since last night, suggest that the government will not refrain from shooting the protesters today and in the upcoming days. Hundreds of thousands of Iranian citizens are in grave danger.

Therefore, we demand the following:

1- It is of utmost importance that the international community immediately use all diplomatic means of intervention to prevent a mass bloodshed in Iran.

2- The international media must use unequivocal terms in exposing this blatantly fraudulent election, something which thus far it is not doing.

Please circulate these demands widely to prevent consequences that are not only dangerous for Iranian citizens but also have inevitable consequences for the whole region.  We strongly believe that under no condition should there be any foreign armed intervention as a response to this crisis.

Final Thoughts on Feser

Here.

W.H.O. Finally Declares Swine Flu "Pandemic"

The official announcement is here; the decision was almost certainly overdue.  One good consequence of the decision will be the production of an appropriate vaccine, which, one may hope, will prevent a catastrophic flu season next winter.

What's wrong with the world, the shorter version

I added this as an addendum to the earlier post, but it's sufficiently amusing and clever that it warrants its own link.

Anonymous and Pseudonymous Speech in Cyberspace Again

Discussion of the latest tempest in a teapot here.

Hypocrisy Watch

State law schools face this problem all the time; I assume it is less common for politicans to lobby philosophy PhD programs to admit students!

What's wrong with the world?

People like Ed Feser (Pasadena City College), apologist for discrimination, now apologist for murder.   It would really be hard to make this stuff up.  Meanwhile, some suggestions for what to do by those who support abortion rights for women and oppose domestic terrorism against providers.

UPDATE:  Jeremy Shipley posts a perceptive reply to Professor Feser in the comments section:

Do the poster and commenters think that a relevant disanalogy arises from the fact that Tiller performed late-term abortions only when either the fetus was discovered to have a severe defect or when the woman's health was threatened? If not, why not? It certainly seems to me that even if I thought Tiller and others had reached the wrong conclusion that I could recognize the moral question as sufficiently difficult that a comparison with Jeffrey Dahmer was beyond the pale. Indeed, what is the purpose of making such a comparison? Surely it is not meant to rationally persuade others to your conclusion. You can't possibly have sat down to write this post thinking that you would change anyone's mind by this argument.

Furthermore, your injunction against vigilantism rings a bit hollow. Do you really mean for this to be an absolutely inviolable principle? Suppose a racist government refuses to protect a minority from persecution. Don't members of the minority have a right to protect themselves? Or, suppose a government refuses to outlaw rape. Would it not be justifiable to protect women by means outside the law? Do you really believe that there are absolutely no circumstances in which vigilante action is justified? I suspect insincerity. You offer a tenuous premise as the only reason more doctors should not be murdered. In light of the fact that your main argument cannot possibly be construed as an attempt to persuade and in fact adds nothing but incendiary rhetoric, I'm inclined to conjecture that the injunction against vigilantism is just cover for an incitement to further violence. That is, I suspect some might read this post and think "if the government had refused to stop Dahmer, I would have"; furthermore, I suspect you know that.

Of course, Professor Feser knows that.

ANOTHER:   More information on the tactics of the terrorists of the Christian right.

AND MORE on the latest victim of the domestic terrorists.

UPDATE 6/6:  Professor Feser's non-reply.   A word for Professor Feser:  it is not a "lie" to call you on your morally depraved rhetoric (and to link to your very words to prove the point!).  Anyone in their right mind can see what the point of comparing an abortion provider to a serial killer/cannibal actually is, and it isn't to lend weight to your two or three (prudent) sentences expressing nominal objections to his murder (cf. Mr. Shipley's remarks, quoted above).  The entire profession, except perhaps a few fringe lunatics (most of whom are already your co-bloggers), understands what's going on, which is why no one objects to my calling you on it.  Your hysterical rhetoric in reply is just a giveaway that you know you've been caught red-handed, as it were.   You and your co-bloggers are, indeed, "what's wrong with the world," as many readers of this blog have noted before.  ADDENDUM 6/8:  Professor Feser, please calm down--I didn't link to your now lengthy "reply" to Mr. Shipley because I hadn't seen it, because, unlike you, I don't spend the entire day reading blogs.  The post I did link to was your purported reply to me.  I am happy to link to your reply to Shipley, since all readers can assess its merits for themselves, just as all readers can assess whether or not you are an apologist for murder, since I linked to your comments in the first place.  Of course, you know what you are, and that is why you're increasingly hysterical on this subject.

ANOTHER 6/10:  This is a very funny, and apt, recap of the whole back-and-forth.  (Addendum:  I see Professor Feser has already discovered this item and--of course--'responded' at length.)

A FINAL UPDATE, 6/12:   The comment section at the post linked above is instructive, both about Feser and his readers, who seem to have a lot of trouble staying focused on the issue at hand.  Professor Feser reports deleting some of the personal attacks on him, but, being a high-minded and honorable fellow (unlike all his critics, of course), he left all the personal attacks aimed at me--including his own:

And what do you think Nietzsche would have thought of a pathetically status-obsessed egalitarian university professor whose "living dangerously" consisted of firing off nasty blog posts from the comfort of an office building, and only ever targeted at people he thought couldn't hurt him professionally?

Since no on else cares about this freak show, let me address my remarks to its main audience.  Professor Feser, you're obviously burning with fury that I've called you out, more than once now, on your twisted view of the world, but surely you can do better than irrelevant personal attacks?  I have focused on the appalling nature of your views, why not keep the focus there?   When your fury subsides, I assume you will acknowledge that I do not produce rankings because I'm "status-obsessed":  nothing has caused more harm to my professional "status" than producing them (I've remarked on this before, and it's obvious to anyone awake) and my actual opinion of lots of "high-status" academics is a matter of long public record.  (Think for a moment about why someone sympathetic to Marx would be interested in rankings.  You're not much of a philosopher, but you're not stupid, I'm sure you can figure this out.)  And you know as well as I do that the list of people I've excorciated includes philosophers and academics of far more significance than you (that's the extent of my egalitarianism, I am an equal opportunity critic).  I'm not as big a coward as most academics and I do say what I think.  That I've been as professionally successful as I have been (is this part of what irritates you?) is attributable to some combination of smarts and good luck.  It surely can not be attributed to my imprudent habit of targetting every religious fanatic, reactionary, mediocrity, and fool, whether they're at Harvard or Chicago or Pasadena City College.  You and your swarmy co-blogger Beckwith had dropped off my radar screen until you showed up as apologists for discrimination against gay men and women and I started reading the extraordinarily deranged blog you folks produce.  Catholicism and your sophomoric version of "natural law theory" do not excuse the moral depravity and venal creepiness of so much of what you folks believe.  On the other hand, I confess I was amused by all the effort Professor Beckwith put in to his exercise in failed reasoning by analogy, but I assume it was prudence on his part to depart from normal practice at WWWW and not open comments, lest someone make the obvious points in reply.  In any case, it's my intention to resume ignoring you, since mine and my readers' appetite for the "bizarro world" of WWWW (to borrow Professor Norcross's phrase) is probably sated.

Obama's Cairo Speech

An amazingly forthright and sensible commentary in The New York Times of all places:

On U.S. Middle East policy, a subject far more important to any Arab audience than an American president’s views on Islam or ability to cite the occasional Quranic passage, President Obama missed two golden opportunities. On Iraq, he could have issued a formal apology for an illegitimate war and the unspeakable reigns of terror presided over by the U.S. occupation, or noted his own early opposition to the U.S. invasion, or said nothing. Instead, he chose to make the ludicrous claim that Iraq today is a better place than in 2003.

On Palestine, he confirmed once again that American elites are more pro-Israel than Israel itself. Lengthy denunciations of Palestinian violence (Israeli violence was left unmentioned and presumed nonexistent); detailed exposition of the (European) Holocaust, an appropriate excursion into the conflict’s background which, however, becomes improper when simultaneously pretending Palestinians were transformed into a dispossessed and stateless people by a freakish act of nature; pre-conditions solely for Palestinians; and a determination to hawk damaged goods in the form of worthless initiatives long past their sell-by date. It’s the Occupation, Stupid! And that’s not a reference to Tel Aviv.

In sum, great presentation, mediocre substance and a seeming failure to recognize it’s all about policy, not respect. And when it comes to the U.S., policy is about much more than an initiative to promote female literacy.

I imagine the editors will be deluged with deranged e-mails and letters from readers who view any position to the left of Likud as a moral outrage.

Elsevier Should Go Out of Business...

...after this scandal.

Paramilitary Boy Scouts?

Weird.

Why it would be wrong to be complacent about swine flu

Some useful reminders here.  The two really big unknowns:  what will happen with swine flu in the Southern Hemisphere's upcoming flu season, and will swine flu return (and in what form) when flu season starts in the Northern Hemisphere next fall?

Fitting Company for Michael Savage

Michael Savage, a not-so-crypto fascist and racist talk show host in the US, has been put into some appropriate company, thanks to the British Government.   Of course, it will just have the perverse effect of gaining him more attention in the U.S.

Happy May Day...

...from the Virtual Stoa.

UPDATE:  On the history of the song (thanks to Jerry Dworkin for the pointer).

Modelling a Swine Flu Pandemic in the US

Interesting material here.   See also this news item.

Some Swine Flu Resources

A public health blog, which appears to be well-informed.

The U.S. Center for Disease Control information page, including statistics on confirmed cases.  I've not found anything comparable at the WHO site, but please feel free to add links to WHO or to other national health service sites in the comments.

A BBC page with "reader reports" from affected areas--not sure how reliable these are, but some are rather disturbing.   This selection of opinions from UK experts is also informative.

A Slate article offering a plausible hypothesis about why the mortality rate appears so alarmingly high in Mexico, while cases elsewhere are reportedly mild. 

More links to good information sources and reports from readers welcome in the comments.

APRIL 29 UPDATE:  So we've gone in the US from 45 confirmed cases on April 27, to 64 on April 28, to 91 today.  I'm no expert, but that doesn't strike me as an alarming rate of increase, given that now health authorities are testing for swine flu wherever they find symptoms.  The New York cluster may be the most worrisome, since it seems to have spread from those who had travelled in Mexico to some who did not.  My guess, from what I'm reading, is that within a week we'll have a clearer fix on where this is heading.  Warming temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere may help slow the spread, but that may just postpone epidemic or pandemic risk until the fall.  It is possible, as I understand it, that a vaccine could be ready by late fall.

ANOTHER APRIL 29 UPDATE:   There are reports of a suspected swine flu case in a Chicago elementary school child (had to happen sooner or later), but this quote from another one of our gifted public officials in this state caught my attention:  "There's no need to panic at this point," said Dr. Damon Arnold, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health.  I'm glad to know that at some point, Dr. Arnold will advise panic!

APRIL 30:  CDC reports 109 confirmed cases in the US, up from 91 yesterday.

MAY 6:  CDC now reports about 640 cases in the US, though they have loosened up the reporting standards recently, which partly explains the big jump.  640 cases in a country of 300 million obviously isn't particularly significant, though the question is at what rate, and for how long, the case load will continue to increase.

MAY 7:  CDC reports 896 cases in the US.  That's a ten-fold increase in about a week, some of it attributable, again, to more relaxed reporting standards that have resulted in a lot of back-logged cases now being counted.   Will there be 9,000 cases in the U.S. a week from today?  We'll see, though I'm inclined to think not.

MAY 8:  1639 cases "officially" as of today in the US.    That's almost a doubling in one day.  Not good, though perhaps still attributable to confirmation of earlier suspected cases.

MAY 10:  Over 2560 official cases in the US, so no more one-day doubling.  But if it is now doubling every three days, we'll have over 200,000 cases in the US by the end of the month.  If.

MAY 13:  3352 cases, so a doubling over five days, and an increase of only about 30% from three days ago, so a considerable slowing in new cases.   Reports from Mexico of cases of swine flu without fever underline the reality that the total number of cases--as opposed to confirmed ones--is probably 20 to 30 times higher, though the fact that they escape detection probably has much to do with their lack of severity.

MAY 15:  4715 CASES confirmed in the US by the CDC, marking a 40% increase in the last two days.

Hugo Chavez: More Powerful Than Oprah!

First he turns a Chomsky book into a best-seller, now it's Galeano (whom we have often linked to in the past).   His endorsements are not only more influential than Oprah's, he's also got significantly better taste!

Given That All Civilized Countries Have Universal Health Care...

...why doesn't the United States?  This is a partial explanation.

Even Some High-Flying Capitalists Are in Disbelief at the Corruption of the Obama Bailout

Here:

Fundamentally, my view is that the U.S. economy is on very thin ice, and that by focusing on the bailout of corporate bondholders rather than the restructuring of debt, we are courting the risk of a far deeper downturn. Last year, I didn't think it was conceivable that policy-makers would attempt to address this problem by making lenders whole with public funds. This is an ethical abomination, putting the public in the position of absorbing the losses that should properly be borne by those who provided capital to these institutions. It is not sustainable. What it does it place the public in the position of losing first, but it will not, and cannot prevent the ultimate failure of the debt – for the simple reason that without restructuring, the debt can't be serviced.

It is true that insurers, pension funds, and other entities own part of the debt of these financial institutions, but they certainly do not own all of it, and to the extent that it is in the public interest to use public funds to reimburse the losses of various entities, that can and should be part of the political process. But to broadly immunize every bondholder of these institutions with public funds is repulsive. Even the bondholders of Bear Stearns can expect to get 100% of their principal back, with interest.

Aside from the abuse of the public trust inherent in these bailouts, it is also offensive to anybody who devotes a significant portion of their income to charity, because there are so many better uses for trillions of dollars. Think about it. Two of the wealthiest people on Earth, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, after lifetimes of work, will be able to commit a combined total of less than $100 billion to charity if they give everything they have. That figure is dwarfed next to the sums being allocated to protect corporate bondholders from taking a “haircut” on distressed debt, or swapping a portion of it for equity – both perfectly appropriate ways of compartmentalizing the losses of these financial institutions, without public funds, and without receivership or “nationalization.”

A Moment of Truth for Obama: Will He Replace His Bribed Economic Advisors?

By way of background:

Not surprisingly, Lawrence Summers is convinced that he deserved every penny of the $8 million that Wall Street firms paid him last year. And why shouldn’t he be cut in on the loot from the loopholes in the toxic derivatives market that he pushed into law when he was Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary? No one has been more persistently effective in paving the way for the financial swindles that enriched the titans of finance while impoverishing the rest of the world than the man who is now the top economic adviser to President Obama.

It is especially disturbing that Summers got most of the $8 million from a major hedge fund at a time when such totally unregulated rich-guys-only investment clubs stand to make the most off the Obama administration’s plan for saving the banks. The scheme, as announced by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, a Summers protégé, is to clean up the toxic holdings of the banks using taxpayer money and then turn them over to hedge funds that will risk little of their own capital. At least the banks are somewhat government-regulated, which cannot be said of the hedge funds, thanks to Summers. 

It was Summers, as much as anyone, who in the Clinton years prevented the regulation of the hedge funds that are at the center of the explosion of the derivatives bubble, and the fact that D.E. Shaw, a leading hedge fund, paid the Obama adviser $5.2 million last year does suggest a serious conflict of interest. That sum is what Summers raked in for a part-time gig, in addition to the $2.77 million he received for 40 speaking engagements, largely before banks and investment firms.... 

Summers was a top adviser to the Democratic presidential candidate last year, and that might have enhanced his speaking fees, which seem to have a base rate of $67,500, the amount he received on each of two occasions when he appeared at Lehman Brothers before that company went bankrupt. Lehman had purchased a 20 percent stake in D.E. Shaw while Summers was employed by the hedge fund, and it would be interesting to know if the subject of the overlapping business came up during Summers’ visit to Lehman. 

Lehman was only one on an impressive list of top financial firms that consulted Summers during a troubled period. Goldman Sachs was so interested in his thoughts that it paid him more than $200,000 for two talks, even though it soon needed $12 billion in taxpayer bailout funds. Citigroup, which has been going through hard times, managed only a $54,000 fee for a Summers rap. Merrill Lynch could pony up only a scant $45,000 for a Summers appearance last Nov. 12, but that was at a point when Merrill was in deep trouble, with the government arranging its sale. Summers, anticipating an appointment in the administration of the newly elected Obama and perhaps wanting to avoid any embarrassment the fee might bring, decided to turn over the $45,000 to a charity.

Why was someone as compromised as Summers made the White House’s point man overseeing $2.86 trillion in bailout funds to the financial moguls whom he had enabled in creating this mess and many of whom had benefited him financially?  Will no congressional panel ever quiz Summers about his grand theory that the derivatives market required no government supervision because, as he testified to a Senate subcommittee in July of 1998: “The parties to these kinds of contracts are largely sophisticated financial institutions that would appear to be eminently capable of protecting themselves from fraud and counterparty insolvencies. … ”

The very same executives that Summers had previously assured us could be trusted without any regulation. Why should we now trust Summers any more than we trust them?....If this was happening in a Republican administration, scores of Democrats in Congress would be all over it, asking tough questions about what exactly did Summers do to earn all that money from the D.E. Shaw hedge fund. As it is, with their silence they are complicit in this emerging scandal of the banking bailout.

The Capitalist Assault on Children

A shame this issue doesn't get more attention, though given the insanely protective legal regime in the U.S. for so-called "commercial speech," it would be hard to combat this ugliness through the law (so turn off the Idiot Box!):

As the United States and the rest of the world enter into an economic free fall, the current crisis offers an opportunity not only to question the politics of free-market fundamentalism, the dominance of economics over politics, and the subordination of justice to the laws of finance and the accumulation of capital, but also the ways in which children's culture has been corrupted by rampant commercialization, commodification and consumption. There is more at stake in this crisis than stabilizing the banks, shoring up employment and solving the housing problem. There is also the issue of what kind of public spaces and values we want to make available, outside of those provided by the market, for children to learn the knowledge, skills and experiences they need to confront the myriad problems facing the twenty-first century....

 

While the "empire of consumption" has been around for a long time, American society in the last thirty years has undergone a sea change in the daily lives of children - one marked by a major transition from a culture of innocence and social protection, however imperfect, to a culture of commodification. This is culture that does more than undermine the ideals of a secure and happy childhood; it also exhibits the bad faith of a society in which, for children, "there can be only one kind of value, market value; one kind of success, profit; one kind of existence, commodities; and one kind of social relationship, markets." Children now inhabit a cultural landscape in which they can only recognize themselves in terms preferred by the market.

Subject to an advertising and marketing industry that spends over $17 billion a year on shaping children's identities and desires, American youth are commercially carpet-bombed through a never-ending proliferation of market strategies that colonize their consciousness and daily lives. Multibillion-dollar corporations, with the commanding role of commodity markets as well as the support of the highest reaches of government, now become the primary educational and cultural force in shaping, if not hijacking, how young people define their interests, values and relations to others....

 

What is distinctive about this period in history is that the United States has become the most "consumer-oriented society in the world." Kids and teens, because of their value as consumers and their ability to influence spending, are not only at "the epicenter of American consumer culture," but are also the major targets of those powerful marketing and financial forces that service big corporations and the corporate state....Gilded Age corporations, however devalued, and their army of marketers, psychologists and advertising executives now engage in what Susan Linn calls a "hostile takeover of childhood," poised to take advantage of the economic power wielded by kids and teens. With spending power increasing to match that of adults, the children's market has greatly expanded in the last few decades, in terms of both direct spending by kids and their influence on parental acquisitions. While figures on direct spending by kids differ, Benjamin Barber claims that "in 2000, there were 31 million American kids between twelve and nineteen already controlling 155 billion consumer dollars. Just four years later, there were 33.5 million kids controlling $169 billion, or roughly $91 per week per kid." Schor argues that "children age four to twelve made ... $30.0 billion" in purchases in 2002, while kids aged twelve to nineteen "accounted for $170 billion of personal spending"....

According to Lawrence Grossberg, children are introduced to the world of logos, advertising and the "mattering maps" of consumerism long before they can speak: "Capitalism targets kids as soon as they are old enough to watch commercials, even though they may not be old enough to distinguish programming from commercials or to recognize the effects of branding and product placement." In fact, American children from birth to adulthood are exposed to a consumer blitz of advertising, marketing, educating and entertaining that has no historical precedent. There is even a market for videos for toddlers as young as four months old. One such baby video called Baby Gourmet alleges to "provide a multi-sensory experience for children designed to introduce little ones to beautiful fruits and vegetables ... in a gentle and amusing way that stimulates both the left and right hemispheres." This would be humorous if Madison Avenue were not dead serious in its attempts to sell this type of hype - along with other baby videos such as Baby Einstein, Brainy Baby, Sesame Street Baby, and Disney's Winnie the Pooh Baby - to parents eager to provide their children with every conceivable advantage over the rest. Not surprisingly, this is part of a growing $4.8 billion market aimed at the youngest children. Schor captures perfectly the omnipotence of this machinery of consumerism as it envelops the lives of very young children:

At age one, she's watching Teletubbies and eating the food of its "promo partners" Burger King and McDonald's. Kids can recognize logos by eighteen months, and before reaching their second birthday, they're asking for products by brand name. By three or three and a half, experts say, children start to believe that brands communicate their personal qualities, for example, that they're cool, or strong, or smart. Even before starting school, the likelihood of having a television in their bedroom is 25 percent, and their viewing time is just over two hours a day. Upon arrival at the schoolhouse steps, the typical first grader can evoke 200 brands. And he or she has already accumulated an unprecedented number of possessions, beginning with an average of seventy new toys a year....

For the last few decades, critics such as Thomas Frank, Kevin Phillips, David Harvey and many others have warned us, and rightly so, that right-wing conservatives and free-market fundamentalists have been dismantling government by selling it off to the highest or "friendliest" bidder. But what they have not recognized adequately is that what has also been sold off are both our children and our collective future, and that the consequences of this catastrophe can only be understood within the larger framework of a politics and market philosophy that view children as commodities and democracy as the enemy.... 

Classic NY Times Article Noting that Gay Men Face Persecution and Murder in Iraq...

....post-Saddam, but failing to even mention that homosexuality was not a criminal offense during most of Saddam's regime (only near the very end, in 2001, in response to pressure from religious conservatives--the Ed Fesers of Iraq, as it were--Saddam finally criminalized homosexual sodomy, presumably as part of his general effort to court religious support for his previously secular regime).  The NY Times, of course, supported the criminal war of aggression against Iraq.

The more things change, the more they remain the same...

...at least in a one party state.

ADDENDUM:  And relatedly.

The Right-Wing Slime-and-Smear Machine Targets Harold Koh

Koh, Dean of Yale Law School, has been nominated by Obama as Legal Adviser to the State Department.  Because he is not completely bonkers, or a crypto-fascist (he's the proverbial "good liberal"), the right-wing slime-and-smear machine has gone into overdrive about his nomination, for example, here and here.

There are various responses and corrections by law professors and commentators here and here and here.  It is sad, but telling, that a key part of the defense to the attacks is to claim that Koh never "cheered on" Nicaragua for challenging the U.S. in the International Court of Justice for its terrorist campaign against Nicaragua, and that he never compared the U.S. to Iran and North Korea as serial violators of international law.  But why didn't he?  In both cases, that would have been the morally and legally correct postion for a responsible intellectual to have advocated.   Alas, there is nothing more fatal in politics than someone taking the morally defensible position.

Personally, I'd rather see Richard Falk or Francis Boyle nominated for the job, but that ain't the world we live in.  Harold Koh is the best one can expect, even from a plutocratic empire in decline, and he would no doubt do a decent job.  Hopefully he'll weather this smear storm.

A traitor to his class...

...probably speaks the truth about how the allegedly prudent wing of the Republocrat Party is handling the current crisis of capitalism:

From the beginning of the recent crisis, starting with Bear Stearns, I have emphasized that nearly all of the financial institutions at risk of insolvency have enough liabilities to their own bondholders to fully absorb all probable losses without any loss to customers or the American public. The sum total of the policy responses to this crisis has been to defend the bondholders of distressed financial institutions at public expense.

Note that in the example balance sheet above, 30% of the liabilities of the institution represent debt to the company's own bondholders. It is these individuals – not homeowners, not the American public – that are being defended by the promise of trillions of dollars in public money.

For example, while Citigroup has approximately $2 trillion in assets, those assets are financed not only by customer deposits, but also by nearly $600 billion in debt to Citigroup's own bondholders. It is these private bondholders who provided the funds for Citigroup to acquire questionable assets.

The bondholders of distressed financial institutions – not the American public – should bear responsibility for the losses of those institutions. This can be accomplished, without harm to customers or the broader financial system, in one of two ways:

1) The bondholders could voluntarily agree to move a portion of their claims lower down in the capital structure, swapping debt for equity (preferred or common), allowing the bank to have a larger cushion of Tier-1 capital, avoiding insolvency, and hopefully allowing the bank to recover by its own bootstraps , preferably assisted by debt restructuring on the borrower side (via property appreciation rights and the like). Alternatively;

2) The U.S. government could take receivership of the financial institution, defend the customer assets, change the management, wipe out the stockholders and a chunk of the bondholders claims entirely, continue the operation of the institution in receivership, and eventually sell or reissue the company to private ownership, leaving the bondholders with the residual. Indeed, this is how the largest bank failure in history – Washington Mutual – was handled so seamlessly last year that it was almost forgettable. This is not Argentina-style “nationalization,” but receivership – a form of “pre-packaged bankruptcy” that protects the customers and allows the institution to continue to operate, followed by re-privatization. This would fully protect all of the customers and depositors at no probable expense to the public.

What should not be done is what was allowed in the case of Lehman Brothers – a disorderly failure, by which the company was allowed to fail with no conservatorship of the existing business. It was not the failure of Lehman per se, but the disorder resulting from its piecemeal liquidation, that caused distress to the financial markets.

That said, it is true that the bondholders of major banks include pension funds, insurance companies, mutual funds, foreign investors and other holders that would be adversely affected by a writedown in bond values. But this is part of the contract – when one lends money to a financial institution, one also assumes the risk and responsibility of bearing the losses. Congress always has the ability to mitigate the losses of some parties, such as pension funds, if it is agreed that this is in the public interest. But to defend all bondholders of financial institutions at public expense is to commit the future economic output of innocent citizens to cover the losses of mismanaged financial institutions. As a result of the intervention by the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury, even the bondholders of Bear Stearns stand to receive 100% repayment of both interest and principal on their bond investments. This is absurd.

The World's Most Alienating Airport?

How could it be otherwise?

Ross Douthat, Well-Known Ignoramus about Philosophy, To Be New "Conservative" Columnist at NY Times

A long-time reader writes:

I suppose the right's standards have fallen so low that this shouldn't come as a surprise: Ross Douthat --- some of whose foolishness is chronicled here and here --- will be the new conservative columnist for the NYT.  The amusing thing is that, since he's replacing the world-historical abomination that is William Kristol, this might actually be an improvement.

He also shares this amusing link about Mr. Douthat.  I have to confess that, apart from Krugman, I never read any of the columnists, since they are all either trite or case studies in "the less they know, the less they know it."

UPDATE:  He gets beaten up here too for his ignorance of philosophy (though be forewarned that a notorious humanities blog troll, John Emerson, clutters up the thread--he may know even less about philosophy than Mr. Douthat).  (Thanks to Mike Otsuka for the pointer.)

WOW!!!  "Not too smart" and "dishonest" doesn't begin to capture this!

MORE FUN with the fool du jour.  (Thanks to John Casey for this one.)

Cologne Cultural Archive Catastrophe

Reader Anne Nester calls my attention to the major loss of original cultural documents due to a building collapse in Cologne; among the lost documents are works by philosophers, including Hegel and Marx.  They are now seeking help from anyone with scans or digital images of lost documents.  There is more information about how to help here.

Overworked? Keep it in perspective!

Jonathan Wolff (UCL) comments.

Dutch TV Looks at the Current Crisis of Capitalism...

...through the lens of discussions with University of Chicago faculty and students.  (To see the picture, you may need to "x" out the box to the right of the screen, depending on your browser.)  Much of the program is in English, with Dutch subtitles.   Martha Nussbaum (at roughly 37 minutes and thereafter) and myself (25-30 minutes in roughly), plus several Chicago philosophy graduate students (throughout the show), as well as a number of my law school colleagues (Douglas Baird, Todd Henderson, Eric Posner, David Weisbach) and law students are among the discussants. 

Most of the U.S. Now Identifies with the Democratic Party

Which is obviously good, since, as one blogger recently noted, the Republican Party is "populated and led by miserable, repellent sociopaths who have managed, in eight miserable years, to wreck this country and effectively obliterate another."  On the other hand, let's not get too cheery:  the Democratic party is still far to the right of every social democratic party in the civilized world, and so in that very important respect, the reactionary turn in American political life that began with Reagan remains firmly with us.  The real question is whether Obama will really reverse that trend:  certainly the political demographics give him the opportunity, if he can really lead. 

Why is American conservatism in shambles?

The answer.

God, Teapots, and Ross Douthat

Here.  Amusing.

An Important New Ranking...

...of every song by the Beatles.  Somebody had time to burn it appears.

More on Gaza, and an Open Letter

This orthodox Jewish philosophy professor has a blog that is very much worth reading; he and a colleague have also drafted a fine open letter in protest of the Israeli barbarism in Gaza.

UPDATE:  Noam Chomsky has weighed in with suitably scathing commentary.

Obama Actually Mentions "Nonbelievers" in His Inaugural Addres...

...and not to denounce them either.  Is this another first in American history?  Does anyone know?

"The Internet's Anonymity Problem"

Saul Levmore, a leading law and economics scholar and Dean of the University of Chicago Law School, has a quite interesting and sensible piece on the abuse of anonymity on the Internet, and the inexplicable fact that, as current law stands, we treat the Internet differently than all other media of communication, including the proverbial "bathroom wall."  I am, as longtime readers know, with Schopenhauer in being a skeptic about the value of anonymous speech in most cases.  But I do frequently permit anonymous comments here, though, of course, I serve as the mediator and thus partial guarantor of their reliability and integrity.  There are other contexts, too--for example, where fear of reprisal by the state is a real concern; or when feminists post about issues that are likely to excite the vicious misogynistic side of cyberspace--in which anonymity can be quite important.  But as things stand now, anonymity is often abused on the Internet, so that individuals can behave irresponsibly with impunity, without incurring any of the social costs that would ordinarily accrue to those who behave that way.  (Obviously, anonymity isn't the only problem.  There are plenty of jackasses [examples here or here or here] or just random lunatics who sign their names to their foolishness and/or misconduct, but at least these folks have to bear the costs of their behavior.)   In a couple of recent cases, the identity of some obnoxious anonymous bloggers (or, in one case, a commenter) has been brought to my attention, though in the worst case (someone using his blog to attack a fellow student at his university in vicious, personal terms), the blogger deleted the comments after being outed by the victim and apologized in writing.  Those who continue to blog anonymously ought to follow the lead of this blog, which after some bad behavior exploiting anonymity by both bloggers and commenters, adopted some fair-minded policies.  That someone chooses to blog anonymously creates no moral or legal obligation for anyone else to honor that choice.  (In the United States, at least, government may sometimes have a constitutional obligation to protect the anonymity of speech, but that's a different matter.)  Anonymous and pseudonymous bloggers ought to bear that in mind.

Galeano on Gaza

Excellent writing, as always; a choice excerpt:

The so-called international community, Does it exist?

 

Is it anything more than a club of merchants, bankers and war-makers? Is it anything more than an artistic name that the United States attaches when it engages in theatre?

Some Realism About Gaza

Here.

Yet More on the Israeli Attack on Gaza

Yitzhak Melamed (Johns Hopkins) writes:

While the scope of the IDF's atrocities in Gaza in unraveling--including an explicit admission by a top Israeli army officer, Gadi Eisenkott, that "We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective these [the villages] are military bases....This isn't a suggestion. This is a plan that has already been authorized"-- there is a new development that might be  a major step in turning Israel into a full-fledged apartheid state.

The Israeli Central Election Board decided yesterday to disqualify the two major Arab parties due to their rejection of Zionism and the status of Israel as a primarily Jewish state.  The only non-Zionist/Arab party left - the Communist Party (Hadash) - was left intact by virtue of a 60 year status-quo that allowed this party to run. However, if the Israeli High Court approves the disqualification of the other Arab parties it is likely that the Communist Part/Hadash will boycott the elections, and Israel will become legally Arab-rein, with it's close to 20% Arab citizens excluded from the political process. It is likely that the Israeli high court will turn down this decision (criticizing the Arab parties, but preaching that even non-Zionism should be tolerated). Still the very fact that the decision was supported by the representatives of the Israeli's Labor party (the so called  Israeli "left") in the Israeli Central Election Board should be noted. Next time you hear Israeli advocates of National Liberalism, ask them what should be done with those who refuse to go along the nationalist agenda.

The Case for a Boycott and Divestment Campaign Against Israel

Well-stated here.

McGinn Reviews Bill Maher's New Film on Religion...

...and concludes:   "We indeed don’t know everything, but some things we know quite well—and the complete falsity of religious doctrine is one of them."

International Law and Gaza

Here is an informative analysis of the legal issues.  The legality or illegality of the Israeli actions is, of course, wholly independent of their immorality.

Gaza Petition and More Resources

Philosopher Yitzhak Melamed (Johns Hopkins) calls my attention to this petition about the atrocities in Gaza, and adds:  "if you are interested, here are two links to the only two Israeli/Jewish groups that came out unequivocally against the barbarism of the Israeli operation in Gaza":  here and here.  (The latter is the site of an orthodox group opposed to Zionism generally; the former that of a secular, progressive Israeli organization.)

Good Essay by Robert Fisk on the Gaza Situation

Here.