The Syria Nerve Gas Attack: a Reprise of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution?

A grand deception about the nerve gas attack in Syria? Seymour Hersh plainly enjoys going against the grain, but he cannot be written off as a nothing more than a crank. See Seymour M. Hersh, Whose sarin? LRB (December 8, 2013).

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The Uncle in the Presidential Closet

I guess almost all U.S. Presidents have relatives they would rather not acknowledge. Pres. Obama had an uncle who was long in the closet:

Aaron Blake & Juliet Eilperin White House corrects record, says Obama did live with uncle briefly in 1980s (AP) Washington Post (December 5, 2013).

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Where Is Latvia? In the Balkans?

"Where is Latvia? ... 

"Let me handle those questions in their proper order. 

"1. Latvia is one of the 'Baltic countries' located on the northern rim of Europe, across the Baltic Sea from Stockholm and sandwiched in between its Baltic partners Estonia to the north and Lithuania to its south. With a population of about two million, it's [sic] capital is Riga, a beautiful old city with superb architecture reminiscent of Paris or Prague in places. Latvia was a country besieged in the 20th century first by Stalin and his Bolshevik murderers, then by Hitler and his Nazi degenerates and finally -- as if that wasn't enough -- Stalin again. Though their official language is Latvian, most Latvians speak Russian and many refer to themselves as 'Russian.' Latvians, in my experience, are fun-loving, uber-intelligent people who enjoy technology to its fullest. Given their awful dictatorial experiences, they are about as resilient a people as one could find on this planet and are delighted by meeting new people and talking about technology." 

Bill Robinson, Scandiweb: Latvia's Magento Magicians Huff Post Tech (Dec. 4, 2013) 

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A Fair Championship Chess Match

The reduction in the number of games in a world chess championship match from 24 or so to 12 is a terrible idea. As this match illustrated, the ultimate victor now need only win one or two games and then play for draws.

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Comic Books

When did comic books become "graphic novels"?
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Word Inflation

Another example of appalling word inflation:
1. weather prediction 2. weather forecasting 3. weather prognostication
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The New Calculus: 320,000,000 Invasions of Privacy for 300 Leads

"'The NSA allegedly collected the phone records of 320 million people in order to identify roughly 300 people who might be a risk. It's just bad public policy…and perhaps illegal,' [Eric Schmidt of Google] said. 

...

""There clearly are cases where evil people exist, but you don't have to violate the privacy of every single citizen of America to find them,' he said."

Wall Street Journal Online (Nov. 4, 2013)

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Martin Luther's 95 Theses

Wikipedia: "On 31 October 1517, Luther posted the ninety-five theses, which he had composed in Latin, on the door of the Castle Church of Wittenberg, according to university custom."
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U.S. to Overtake Russia in Oil and Gas Production

Gold & Gilbert, U.S. Is Overtaking Russia as Largest Oil-and-Gas Producer Wall Street Journal (October 2, 2013):

The U.S. is overtaking Russia as the world's largest producer of oil and natural gas, a startling shift that is reshaping markets and eroding the clout of traditional energy-rich nations.

[snip, snip]

"This is a remarkable turn of events," said Adam Sieminski, head of the U.S. Energy Information Administration. "This is a new era of thinking about market conditions, and opportunities created by these conditions, that you wouldn't in a million years have dreamed about."
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How to Swear

Colin Burrow, Rabelais, Thomas Urquhart, and Melissa Mohr teach us how to really swear. See Colin Burrow, Frog's Knickers London Review of Books (September 26, 2013) (review of Melissa Mohr, Holy Shit: A Brief History of Swearing (Oxford University Press, 2013)):

Roll up, roll up all you ‘mangie rascals, shiteabed scoundrels, drunken roysters, slie knaves, drowsie loiterers, slapsauce fellows, slabberdegullion druggels, lubbardly lowts … fondling fops, base lowns, saucie coxcombs, idle lusks, scoffing Braggards, noddie meacocks, blockish grutnols, doddi-poljolt-heads, jobbernol goosecaps, foolish loggerheads, slutch calf-lollies, grouthead gnat-snappers, lob-dotterels, gaping changelings, codshead loobies, woodcock slangams, ninnie-hammer flycatchers, noddiepeak simpletons, turdie gut, shitten shepherds, and other suchlike defamatory epithets’.

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Our Talkative President: Of War and Peace

David Bromwich, Diary London Review of Books (September 26 [sic], 2013):

The anti-government insurgency in Syria was given an intoxicating vision of triumph by the words President Obama spoke in August 2011 that were translated, correctly, into the headline ‘Assad must go.’ ... Obama has a fondness for debonair or solemnly spoken asides that come back to worry him. ...

After 56 months of the Obama presidency, there can be no doubt that Barack Obama likes to talk. He thinks Americans and others are eager to hear what he has to say, on many subjects; and in keeping with that perception, he said in August 2012 about the civil war in Syria: ‘A red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilised. That would change my calculus.’ He gave another version, in March, of the same asseveration: the use of chemical weapons by Assad would be ‘a game changer’. These, too, were undiplomatic comments. A clearer invitation could scarcely be imagined by anyone who had an interest in drawing the US into the war. ...

[snip, snip]

Nobody doubts that an attack took place. Nobody yet knows with reasonable certainty who ordered it. Assad had the ability but, since he was winning the war and such a move was plainly suicidal, his arrival at such a decision is hard to make sense of. The rebels are said to lack the ability to use poison gas, though there are reports that they have come into possession of some chemical weapons; but a false-flag operation would have required a degree of successful dissimulation and wickedness that is equally hard to make sense of. ...

[snip, snip]

... Kerry gave 1429 as a sure figure for the number of deaths in the August attack, but the figure is unexplained and at variance with first-hand reports: French intelligence estimated 281 deaths and Médecins Sans Frontières 355. The Kerry document was effectively discredited in less than a week, but only below the radar of the mainstream press and policy establishment. On the basis of a tissue of far-fetched inferences and assumptions, in which the most solid datum is a single radio intercept – a recording of a disturbed commander of Syrian forces given to the US by Israeli intelligence – Obama declared his intention to order an attack, and then asked Congress to authorise the use of force under wide discretion: he would be empowered to act in any way he deemed necessary to ‘respond to’, ‘deter’ and ‘degrade’ the military and defensive capabilities of the Syrian government. These are all words without a settled meaning, and they were chosen for that reason. To an amazing degree Obama’s request for authorisation of September 2013 resembles Bush’s request of October 2002.

[snip, snip]

At the end of August, with or without Britain, the US was poised for war. But public opinion was shifting towards a comfortless scepticism – the ratio of three to two against an attack had risen, by the second week of September, to more than two to one against. ... The president and his secretary of state, and with them a large section of the policy elite, had approved an effort to overthrow by military intervention a fourth government in the Middle East, after Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. With an unmistakable voice the American people were saying no.

Even so, in the first week of September, Obama and Kerry appeared to stand behind both the ambitious and the minimal versions of their meditated attack. ...

[snip, snip]

On 10 September the president addressed the nation. He used more of his time to justify the attack he was shelving than to explain the new course to which he is now committed, and it was a baffling speech in other ways too: pleading and denouncing by turns, imparting the lesson that love of peace must sometimes involve us in war, reiterating the imperative of building up the United States at home yet taking care to invoke the Holocaust. ...

Another switch by Obama appears unlikely for the time being. But mere passive attendance on the Russian proposals, saying yes to some, no to some and to others ‘We’ll think about it’, will expose his administration to the charge of ‘leading from behind’ (as he boasted of doing in Libya). Diplomacy is relatively new to this president, but now he has no other choice. Nor can he afford to give away the delicate work to the persons who clamoured loudest for an attack. ... [T]his would be an excellent moment [for Obama] to reform: a time for personal commitment in the making of policy, accompanied by fewer speeches, unscripted remarks and interviews; an occasion for energetic activity with partners besides France, Britain and Israel. ...

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Fluctuating Arctic & Antarctic Sea Ice

Seth Borensteinh, Arctic sea ice 6th lowest, but rebounds from 2012 Bloomberg Businessweek News (September 20, 2013):

"The National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., said Friday that Arctic ice was at 1.97 million square miles when it stopped melting late last week.

"That level is about 24 percent below the 20th Century average, but 50 percent above last year when a dramatic melt shattered records that go back to 1979."

Hannah Hickey, Stronger winds explain puzzling growth of sea ice in Antarctica University of Washington News (September 17, 2013):

"Much attention is paid to melting sea ice in the Arctic. But less clear is the situation on the other side of the planet. Despite warmer air and oceans, there’s more sea ice in Antarctica now than in the 1970s – a fact often pounced on by global warming skeptics. The latest numbers suggest the Antarctic sea ice may be heading toward a record high this year.

"While changes in weather may play a big role in short-term changes in sea ice seen in the past couple of months, changes in winds have apparently led to the more general upward sea ice trend during the past few decades, according to University of Washington research. A new modeling study to be published in the Journal of Climate shows that stronger polar winds lead to an increase in Antarctic sea ice, even in a warming climate."

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Syria, Israel & Chemical Weapons

Edmund Sanders, Israel also facing questions about chemical weapons, Washington Post ("September 12, 2013):

JERUSALEM -- Israel has cheered the Syrians' promise to hand over their chemical weapons and sign the Chemical Weapons Convention, but it is increasingly worried that the international pressure building may soon focus on Israel, which has refused to ratify the treaty and is believed to possess chemical weapons.

Israel signed the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1993, but it never ratified the agreement.

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Democracy and Culture

Walter C. Clemens, Jr., Democracy as Chimera New York Times (September 10, 2013). In this interesting essay Clemens says, among other things, 

"If the political culture is missing, a Weimar-type constitution will not guarantee real self-rule or stability. Cultivating a truly democratic culture takes time. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan left us this axiom: “The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.

"But this liberal dream has met more defeats than victories. Russia seemed to opt for democracy in the 1990s, but when Vladimir Putin altered the rules, most voters went along. Even in the United States, democracy remains a work-in-progress. To make it a major policy goal in countries with vastly different cultures is a chimera."

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Official Indifference to Christians in Syria

John Kass, Syrian Christians largely ignored in debate over U.S. intervention Chicago Tribune (September 11, 2013).

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John Kerry's Gulf of Tonkin

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Real War?

O my gosh, is he really going to drag us into a real (big, long) war? 

Sanger & Schmitt, Pentagon Is Ordered to Expand Potential Targets in Syria With a Focus on Forces NYTimes (Sept. 5, 2013).

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Aging Together: A New Way to Avoid Late-Life Loneliness

Barbara Hardinghaus, Aging Together: A New Way to Avoid Late-Life Loneliness Spiegel Online (August 29, 2013)

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The Rockets' Red Glare

Will (American) rockets glare (red) on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington?

• ...while Pres. Obama addresses the 50th anniversary celebrants?

What would MLK, Jr., think?
The drums of war.
In any event, I hope at least that this time there has not been another "intelligence failure."
N.B. Do you think Pres. Obama should try to get Congress to declare war on Syria? (I can't think of another recent situation in which a U.S. President is better situated to try to get such a declaration from Congress: Pres. Obama can hardly object that he needs the advantage of surprise; the whole world knows an attack is coming. [What's that? Oh, you say this attack falls short of being "war"? Mmm. I'll have to think about that. {What if Syria retaliates? Mmm.}])  
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Chapel Hill

I have been here in Chapel Hill for two weeks. Two-thirds of my books are unpacked. My computers are up and running. My massive new printer is up and running. My speech recognition software is working, more or less. I have food in the kitchen. A guy comes in to clean my apartment once a week. Everything is almost OK with the world.
Chapel Hill is pretty. It is very green. The people are friendly. The traffic is not bad. My townhouse is very pleasant. I can soon start working again – that is, I can soon start writing again.

This fall I will work on an evidence casebook. I will also resume work on a legal treatise. Wish me luck.
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Sun in Ultraviolet

Image Credit: NASA/SDO & the AIA, EVE, and HMI teams; Digital Composition: Peter L. Dove

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Liberty Park September 2011

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Liberty Park September 2011

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Speech recognition software

I am experimenting with Dragon speech recognition software (legal version).
I can speak more quickly than I can write.
Can I also speak more intelligently?
You be the judge.
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The Strange World of U.S. "Nonprofit" Organizations

"[E]fforts to insulate the [Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation] from potential conflicts have highlighted just how difficult it can be to disentangle the Clintons’ charity work from Mr. Clinton’s moneymaking ventures and Mrs. Clinton’s political future, according to interviews with more than two dozen former and current foundation employees, donors and advisers to the family. Nearly all of them declined to speak for attribution, citing their unwillingness to alienate the Clinton family." Nicholas Confessore & Amy Chozick, Unease at Clinton Foundation over Finances and Ambitions, NYTimes (August 13, 2013).

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The Trauma of Ordinary Life

"Trauma is not just the result of major disasters. It does not happen to only some people. An undercurrent of trauma runs through ordinary life, shot through as it is with the poignancy of impermanence. I like to say that if we are not suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, we are suffering from pre-traumatic stress disorder. There is no way to be alive without being conscious of the potential for disaster. One way or another, death (and its cousins: old age, illness, accidents, separation and loss) hangs over all of us. Nobody is immune. Our world is unstable and unpredictable, and operates, to a great degree and despite incredible scientific advancement, outside our ability to control it." Mark Epstein, The Trauma of Being Alive NYTimes (August 3, 2013).
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Pope (largely) Missing in the New York Times

It seems that Pope Francis has drawn massive and rapturous crowds during his trip Brazil. But (so far in any case) you apparently wouldn't know that if you were a reader only of the front page of the New York Times.

• The back pages of today's New York Times do have an article entitled Missteps by Brazil Mar Visit by Pope. I suppose bad or indifferent press attention is better than no press attention at all.

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Labor & the Duchess of Cambridge

Headline: "Duchess of Cambridge Goes Into Labor"
... but not, I gather, "into Labour"
How do the British media write the headline?

• Does Cambridge, Massachusetts, have a Duchess?

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Frank Gehry, Fitting Eisenhower Memorial Architect?

Frank Gehry may have many virtues as an architect. But it's hard to fathom how anyone could think he would be a fine designer of a public memorial to a five-star general and President.

Zongker, Redesigning Eisenhower Memorial Could Cost $17M ABC News (July 12, 2013)


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Christians in Egypt

Hubbard, Christians Targeted for Retribution in Egypt NYTimes (July 11, 2013):

CAIRO — The military’s ouster of President Mohamed Morsi has unleashed a new wave of violence by extremist Muslims against Christians whom they blame for having supported the calls to overthrow Mr. Morsi, Egypt’s first Islamist elected leader, according to rights activists.

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My Comment on Lotfi Zadeh's Message about Russia and the Collapse of the Russian Empire

Professor Lotfi Zadeh recently posted the following message to his (vast) discussion list, BISC:

Dear members of the BISC Group:

I should like to share with you a concern of mine -- a concern about the evolving economic and political situation in Russia. My feeling is that a serious crisis -- with wide-ranging repercussions -- may be around the corner. But first, a bit about my background.

I was born in Baku, Azerbaijan, at the time when Azerbaijan was a part of the Soviet Union. My parents were Iranian citizens. My first language was Russian. I am still fluent in Russian. When I was ten years old, my parents returned to Iran and placed me in an American (Presbyterian) Missionary School, later renamed as Alborz. My teachers were mostly from the Midwest. For me, they were role models. It was at that point in my life that I fell in love with the United States. After receiving my BSEE degree from the University of Tehran, I came to the United States in 1944 and entered MIT as a graduate student. 

I have always been and continue to be interested in what goes on in Russia. I watch TV news from Moscow every day, and watch a Russian-language news program from New York. I watch Russian TV News Channel 24 because it is serious and objective, with little or no propaganda. It is a 24 hour-a-day news program, with news on the hour. The information which I get includes both what is positive and what is negative about what goes on in Russia. The New York news channel focuses on what is negative. 

For many people, the collapse of the Soviet Union was a cause for celebration. I felt differently because, in my view, the Soviet Union was not prepared for an abrupt transition from authoritarianism to a democracy led by Yeltsin--an incompetent party official who was fond of alcohol. Clearly, there was a need for structural reforms when Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1985. He proved to be an inept leader. What did not help was that the price of oil was around $10 a barrel. He made many serious mistakes. His fatal mistake was the abandonment of the one-party rule. In large measure, it is this mistake that led to his own demise and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russia was not ready for democracy in 1991, and is not ready for democracy today, twenty-two years later. In the post-collapse years, wholesale privatization transferred national wealth into the pockets of corrupt oligarchs -- oligarchs whose enormous wealth is now hidden abroad. Freedom was abused. While institutes were closing, casinos were opening --at one time 68 in Moscow alone. Eventually, casinos were banished, but right now a top official in prosecutor's office in Moscow is in court charged with accepting multi-million bribes from the operators of underground casinos. 

One of the principal problems in today's Russia is pervasive corruption, from top to bottom. Almost every day there is a disclosure of a major scandal involving high-level officials. Former Mayor of Moscow, Luzhkov, bought a residence in London costing over 100 million dollars. The same pattern of acquisition of choice properties by Russian officials and rich businessmen is observable in France, Spain and many other countries. The government talks loudly about fighting corruption. Incredibly, a recently adopted law grants amnesty to perpetrators of so-called economic crimes--about 15,000 in number. Is granting of amnesty to perpetrators of economic crimes a new way of fighting corruption, or is it a matter of protection of high-level officials? Currently, there are over 80,000 Russian tourists in Egypt and over 30,000 in Thailand, while millions of Russians live in poverty. Infrastructure inherited from the Soviet Union is deteriorating, but there is not enough funding for replacement and upgrading. 

Recently, Russia was admitted to the World Trade Organization (WTO), after knocking on the door for over 18 years. In my view, this is a serious blunder. WTO is an invention of exporting countries. In large measure, Russia is an importing country, except for oil, gas and minerals. Entry into WTO is likely to result in a decline in domestic production. The Space Program is in trouble. On July 2, a Proton rocket carrying three Granat satellites exploded shortly after launch. This was the seventh failure in two-and-a-half years. The latestfailure calls into question the sustainability of Russia's Space Program. Right now, an incredible event took place. On July 3, the government introduced a bill calling for a drastic reorganization of the Russian Academy of Sciences -- a vast enterprise and a sacred institution in the Soviet era-- with the expectation of approval by July 5. After a storm of protest, the final approval was deferred till autumn.

The stock market is steadily declining. Capital is fleeing the country at the rate of about 70 billion dollars a year. There is a shortage of skilled labor. Many of the best graduates are moving abroad. The rate of growth is declining, while the deficit, though very small, is increasing. A new wave of privatizations is taking place, depriving the government of major assets and enriching corrupt officials. In coming years, the income from oil and gas is expected to decline. Inflation stands at close to 7%. The mounting economic problems which lie ahead may stir unrest. Fears of unrest may well play an important role in strategic decisions by the leadership of Russia, both internally and externally. A gradual return to authoritarianism may well be viewed as a necessity for survival. What is the prognosis? A great deal depends on the price of oil and gas in coming years. If the prices stay high, as they are today, Russia may gradually overcome its problems by tightening the screws and moving away from democratic reforms. If not, the dark clouds may be a harbinger of unrest and discord. Note. I am a pessimist by nature. Comments are welcome.

Regards,

   Lotfi

-- Lotfi A. Zadeh

Professor Emeritus 

Director, Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing (BISC) 

 Address: 729 Soda Hall #1776

Computer Science Division Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences University of California Berkeley, CA 94720-1776 

zadeh@eecs.berkeley.edu Tel.(office): (510) 642-4959 Fax (office): (510) 642-1712 Tel.(home): (510) 526-2569 Fax (home): (510) 526-2433 URL: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~zadeh/ 

BISC Homepage URLs URL: http://zadeh.cs.berkeley.edu/

I submitted the following comment about Professor Zadeh's post:

I was born in Riga, Latvia. As my mother grew up, she leaned, first, Polish; second, Russian; and, third, Latvian. Her favorite poet was Pushkin (in Russian, of course). Though I did not speak Russian or know much about Russian literature, I had warm feelings toward Russian culture. (I particularly admired Russian chess and Russian prowess in many sciences.) But I did not have warm feelings toward the Soviet Union or Russian imperialism. (The New Soviet Man spoke principally Russian). This was and is understandable: Stalinists deported my maternal grandparents in June 1941 to Siberia in cattle cars for the crime of being bourgeois (I do not exaggerate; I have copies of the NKVD arrest warrants) and in 1944 my mother fled Latvia with her two children to escape arrest for the crime of having bourgeois parents. So to the extent that the collapse of the Soviet Union led to the independence of the Baltic Republics, I do not regret the collapse of the Soviet Empire. However, I do agree with Lotfi that there were grand elements in the old Soviet Union. For example, it is true that chess, theoretical physics, and mathematics flourished in the Soviet Union as almost nowhere else. It is also true, the perversions of Stalinism notwithstanding, that there was something noble about the Soviet Union's aspirations toward universality, toward the general brotherhood of the common man, or the proletariat. But the mass killings and deportations and so on of the Soviet era were so vast and horrendous that it is understandable that Latvians could not easily forgive and forget, and that post-Soviet Russia had to pay the price of its past by granting the Baltic Republics (and other nations) their independence.

I arrived in the U.S. when I was six years old. I became almost completely (but not completely) Americanized. Although America has faults - in the post-2001 era it has some very serious faults - America has been good to me; and, despite the hardships my family experienced in the U.S. when I was young, I am glad I grew up here .

See http://tillers.net/personalhistory/history.html (visual personal history)

Peter Tillers

http://tillers.net

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Inta Ruka, Latvian Photographer

On aljazeera.com:

Inta Ruka is one of Europe's most noteworthy photographers. For 30 years she has taken hauntingly beautiful portraits of the faces of Latvia.

In this documentary, filmmaker Maud Nycander portrays her friend and colleague who, despite her renown, still works as a cleaner at the Swedish embassy in Riga.

The story of Inta Ruka also documents the radical transformation of Latvia over the past 20 years. We meet her mother and teenage son - two people not only from different generations, but from different worlds, from Siberian labour camps to designer clothes and computer games. And in between them stands Ruka herself - who does not want to let go of the security of her cleaner's job despite her brilliant career as a photographer.

The Photographer from Riga can be seen from be seen from Wednesday, July 3, at the following GMT: Wednesday: 2200; Thursday: 1200; Friday: 0100; Saturday: 0600; Sunday: 2000; Monday: 1200;Tuesday: 0100

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Nice work, if you can get it

"In one of the most notable revelations, the disclosure filing of the [New York State] Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, showed that he earned $350,000 to $450,000 last year in his part-time job at a Manhattan personal injury law firm,Weitz & Luxenberg." Kaplan & Hakim, Legislators Reap Benefits of Part-Time Jobs at Law Firms, Filings Show, NYTimes (July 3, 2013).

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Turnover Down Under?

Emma Griffiths, Kevin Rudd to face off against Julia Gillard in Labor leadership spill, loser to quit Parliament Australian Broadcasting Corporation (June 26, 2013).

The consensus Down Under is that Gillard is out.

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Booze-Free Flight to Havana, Courtesy of the FSB

Barry & Herzenhorn, Empty Seat Deepens a Mystery in Moscow NYTimes (June 24, 2013):

MOSCOW — Seat 17A was empty on Monday afternoon as Aeroflot Flight 150 took off from a Moscow airport. But most seats around it were filled.

Dozens of journalists had scrambled to book seats at the last minute, certain they were a half step from the most sought-after interview in the world: Edward J. Snowden, who was widely reported by Russian news agencies to have booked Seat 17A. But as the plane taxied from the gate, a reporter from The Associated Press published a photograph of the empty seat, and the situation became abundantly clear.It seemed that a stream of reports from unnamed Russian officials, disseminated over Russian news agencies, had been an exuberant deception, throwing up a cloud of dust while Mr. Snowden quietly evaded the United States government. At nightfall, it was impossible to say with certainty where Mr. Snowden was.

By contrast, everyone knew where half of the Moscow press corps was: halfway to Havana, on one of the few regular Russian flights that does not serve alcohol. It was the kind of plan that the F.S.B., and the K.G.B. before it, would describe as a “special operation.” And somewhere in Moscow, it was clear, someone was laughing.

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Edward Snowden

I would not have done what Edward Snowden did. But I find it odd that almost all of our political leaders – Dianne Feinstein, Charles Schumer, Lindsey Graham, etc., etc. – condemn Edward Snowden without even considering the question of whether the government surveillance he revealed is legal or illegal. I wonder: Would they condemn him if they believed the government surveillance he revealed violates the Fourth Amendment?

Another point: Why do so many apparently intelligent people take the position that if the Executive Branch and Congress (or some part of Congress) "approve" of government surveillance (often by inaction, it is supposed), that such approval legitimates otherwise unconstitutional surveillance? Have they forgotten that it is black-letter law that ordinarily neither executive nor congressional approval transforms unconstitutional government action - state action that violates a Bill of Rights guarantee - into constitutional government action? The default rule is that neither the Executive Branch, nor Congress, nor the Executive Branch and Congress acting together, have the authority to approve government action that violates the Fourth Amendment.

Expedient legal thinking rules in the halls of our government. Postscript: it is hard to say – it is impossible to say – whether there has been judicial review of the constitutionality of this or that type of covert surveillance by the NSA. That's because the opinions of the FISA court are secret! &&& The dynamic evidence page

American Wars

This is a perceptive essay about why America should have a less active (a/k/a less belligerent) foreign military policy, but it is odd that Haass makes no mention of the moral considerations for reduced resort to wars and foreign military operations:

Richard N. Haass, America Can Take a Breather. And It Should. (Op-Ed.) NYTimes (June 22, 2013)


A snippet:

The United States is currently enjoying an unprecedented respite in the foreign policy arena — a temporary relief from the normal rigors of history that allows us to take stock at home and abroad.

It may seem outlandish to claim that we’re in the midst of a lull, given that America faces a civil war in Syria, an Iran that seems to be seeking nuclear weapons, an irresponsible North Korea that already possesses them, continuing threats from terrorists, a rising China and rapid climate change.

Yet the United States enjoys a respite all the same. For the three and a half centuries of the modern international era, great powers have almost always confronted rivals determined to defeat them and replace the global order they worked to bring about. In the last century, this process unfolded three times. The results were violent, costly and dangerous, and included two world wars and a cold war.

Today, there are threats, but they tend to be regional, years away or limited in scale. None rises to the level of being global, immediate and existential. The United States faces no great-power rival. And this is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.

The biggest strategic question facing America is how to extend this respite rather than squander it. This will require restraining foreign involvement and restoring domestic strength. We can no longer seek to remake countries in the Middle East and South Asia, as was tried at great cost and with little success in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Instead, we must revive the American economy, something that will not only improve the living standards of our citizens but also generate the resources to discourage would-be competitors from choosing the path of confrontation and to deal with them if they opt for confrontation all the same.

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For the good of the little people ...

Perhaps Mr. Obama now muses: Why do those little people care about religion or the use the federal government makes of the telephony metadata it collects from and about them? We (people in the government) don't want to listen to their (little people's) telephone calls. We just want to know who they call, who calls them, when the calls are made, and where the calls are made and received. What harmful use could the government possibly make or want to make of such information? In any event, don't they - the little people, that is -- realize that the government is only acting for their own good? How could anyone possibly think that the government might use such information to harm little people? (Joe Stalin, you say? Stasi, you say? The military juntas in various times and places, you say? Well, they weren't American, were they? Res ipsa loquitor, wouldn't you say?) 

Rick Lempert coined (or adopted) an apt phrase that describes the problem we face: the creation of the infrastructure of tyranny.

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Christians in the Middle East

Oppression of people because of their religious beliefs is deeply offensive and wrong. In government and media circles there is, fortunately, a fair amount of concern for  religious groups such as (depending on the country or region) Shiites and Buddhists. But, with rare exceptions, there is little discussion by prominent U.S. government spokesmen for the fate of Christians in countries such as Iraq, Egypt, and Syria.
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Obama and Civil Liberties

You know you're in trouble when the Wall Street Journal questions your commitment to civil liberties:

Nicholas & Bravin, Obama's Civil-Liberties Record Questioned Wall Street Journal (June 6, 2013)

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The "need to have all schools connected to the internet"

"Speaking at a fund-raiser in Silicon Valley Thursday night, Mr. Obama did not mention the surveillance programs or the leaks of secret documents. In comments to tech executives at the home of Vinod Khosla, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, the president focused on the need to have all schools connected to the Internet." (Wyatt, Baker & Shear, Spy Chief Calls Leaks on U.S. Surveillance ‘Reprehensible’ NYTimes, June 7, 2013) Presumably that's because NSA also needs to monitor students at our elementary and secondary schools.

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America, the Surveillance State

Dan Roberts & Spencer Ackerman, America's surveillance state: anger swells after data revelations The Guardian (online) (June 6, 2013).

Snippets:

"The scale of America's surveillance state was laid bare on Wednesday as senior politicians revealed that the US counter-terrorism effort had swept up swaths of personal data from the phone calls of millions of citizens for years.

"After the revelation by the Guardian of a sweeping secret court order that authorised the FBI to seize all call records from a subsidiary of Verizon, the Obama administration sought to defuse mounting anger over what critics described as the broadest surveillance ruling ever issued.

...

"Intelligence committee member Mark Udall, who has previously warned in broad terms about the scale of government snooping, said: "This sort of widescale surveillance should concern all of us and is the kind of government overreach I've said Americans would find shocking." Former vice-president Al Gore described the "secret blanket surveillance" as "obscenely outrageous".

"The Verizon order was made under the provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa) as amended by the Patriot Act of 2001, passed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. But one of the authors of the Patriot Act, Republican congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, said he was troubled by the Guardian revelations. He said that he had written to the attorney general, Eric Holder, questioning whether 'US constitutional rights were secure'.

"He said: 'I do not believe the broadly drafted Fisa order is consistent with the requirements of the Patriot Act. Seizing phone records of millions of innocent people is excessive and un-American.'...

"[White House spokesman Josh Earnest said] the [FISA] order only relates to the so-called metadata surrounding phone calls rather than the content of the calls themselves. 'The order reprinted overnight does not allow the government to listen in on anyone's telephone calls,' Earnest said.

"'The information acquired does not include the content of any communications or the name of any subscriber. It relates exclusively to call details, such as a telephone number or the length of a telephone call.'

"But such metadata can provide authorities with vast knowledge about a caller's identity. Particularly when cross-checked against other public records, the metadata can reveal someone's name, address, driver's licence, credit history, social security number and more. Government analysts would be able to work out whether the relationship between two people was ongoing, occasional or a one-off."

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Fine Dining in Jersey City

Believe it or not, Jersey City and environs have some pretty nifty restaurants. See Helen Stapinski, Only the Food Is Exotic, The Ethnic Buffet of Hudson County, N.J. NYTimes (May 28, 2013).

Laico's is an Italian restaurant hidden on a residential street in Jersey City. (NYTimes)

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Letting Go (of Books etc.)

Stanley Fish, Moving On, NYTimes (May 27, 2013):

Snippets:

"I have sold my books. Not all of them, but most of them. I held on to the books I might need while putting the finishing touches on a manuscript that is now with my publisher. I also kept the books I will likely need when I begin my next project in the fall. But the books that sustained my professional life for 50 years ... are gone.

 ...

"The ostensible reason for this de-acquisition is a move from a fair-sized house to a much smaller apartment. It is true, as Anthony Powell said in a title, that books do furnish a room, but in this case, too many books, too little room. But the deeper reason is that it was time. What I saw on the shelves was work to which I would never return....

"... I had always thought that I could return to my annotated copies of familiar texts and pick up where I left off. That fantasy, I now see, was part and parcel of the core fantasy that I would just go on forever, defending old positions, formulating new ones, attending annual conferences, contributing to essay collections, speaking at various universities, teaching the same old courses, confidently answering the same old questions.

"I’m not going to go on forever. ...

"... Behind these musings is a word I can barely utter — 'retirement.' ..."

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I recently retired from full-time teaching - but not from writing. So I threw away some of my books, but not most of them. In any event, quite a few of my books are for purely personal pleasure and are still unread. So I can't throw those away, can I?

• Addendum: Some of my "academic" interests survive my retirement; some of the questions I ask myself genuinely interest (and preoccupy) me.
  

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What Is a "Crisis"?

“If investments in the banks fail, ‘Oh, it’s a tragedy,’ ” [Pope Francis] said, speaking extemporaneously for more than 40 minutes at a Pentecost vigil last weekend, after a private audience with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, the architect of Europe’s austerity policies. “But if people die of hunger or don’t have food or health, nothing happens. This is our crisis today.”

Rachel Donadio, Francis’ Humility and Emphasis on the Poor Strike a New Tone at the Vatican NYTimes (May 25, 2013)

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Guns in the Sky; Good Guys with Guns

Nicholas Davidoff, More Guns in the Sky NYTimes (May 25, 2013). A snippet:

"Confidential. For N.R.A. internal. Now that the Senate has voted down new gun control laws and we have the president on the defensive — never thought I’d say it, but God bless the I.R.S.! — we have a real opportunity to guide Congress along a common-sense path that will further ensure the freedoms of peaceful, law-abiding citizens. Herewith, talking points on the next crucial phase of our work. Please distribute to all concerned elected officials who share our love of liberty and public safety.

"Objective:

"We aim to pass laws that will allow passengers to carry guns on commercial airplanes; this will make business class the safest place in America.

"Talking Points:

"Experts say, 'This is the most progressive means of preventing hijacking in aeronautic history.'

"Air Marshals are good people, but on a modern aircraft anyone can nod off. Our plan mitigates snoozing risks. And consider the budget savings when every flyer becomes a Citizen Air Marshal (CAM).

"CAMs eliminate the need for uniformed personnel patrolling our nation’s terminals. Now trained personnel can be deployed to the domestic and international hot spots, including war zones and schools.

"Duty-free ammo sold on international flights is good for the American economy."

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Obama on Guantanamo: A True Profile in Courage

Barack Obama: a genuine profile in courage. I have had reservations about some of Obama's policies. But he has now won me over 100%. That's because President Obama has just proclaimed again his determination to close Guantanamo and reduce injustice to those people who are needlessly detained there - and his explanation of the importance of doing this is just magnificent. See the C-Span video of his speech.
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Hitting the Wall

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Naked Mayoral Power in Jersey City

Charles Hack, Jersey City Mayor Healy tells Star-Ledger 'three Hispanic girls' lured him out of house for naked pix nj.com (May 5, 2013):

"So you think you've heard all Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy had to say about the naked pictures of himself, slumped on the stoop of his Ferry Street home, that surfaced shortly before the November 2004 special election? Well, think again.

"Star-Ledger columnist Tom Moran reports today that Healy has offered new details about the photos that comes, in Moran's words, 'with a bizarre sexual twist.'

"According to the version offered to Moran, Healy said three young women woke him up by banging trash cans outside his house, so he rose from bed, wrapped a towel around himself, and went to investigate.

“'Three Hispanic girls, young kids,' Healy is quoted as saying. 'So I go out on the porch and they pulled the towel off me. Now I start laughing, and then they started doing other stuff. I said, "I’m old enough to be your grandfather."'

“'It was filthy,' he says. 'I chased them away, and I just sat down.'"

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Warfare Over Empire

Charles Bagli, 102 Floors, 10 Million Bricks and One Tangled History NYTimes (May 4, 2013):

"The Empire State Building stands as an enduring symbol of New York City — and of the mayhem and legal conflict to which New York City real estate titans are prone."

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Should we call such magnates "titans"?

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There was also much legal and other "mayhem" over the reconstruction of the One World Trade Center. See, e.g., Larry A. Silverstein.


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No rush to judgment?

I hope that our sage political leaders will not rush to judgment on the question of the Assad government's use vel non of chemical weapons or Sarin. I also hope our leaders will not push to get the U.S. into another war. (These wishes are not directed at Sen. John McCain, who seems to lack all prudence and judgment.)
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Human Computer

Haresh Pandya, Shakuntala Devi, ‘Human Computer’ Who Bested the Machines, Dies at 83 (April 23, 2013):

Shakuntala Devi, an Indian mathematical wizard known as “the human computer” for her ability to make incredibly swift calculations, died on Sunday in Bangalore, India. She was 83.

Ms. Devi demonstrated her mathematical gifts around the world, at colleges, in theaters and on radio and television. In 1977, at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, she extracted the 23rd root of a 201-digit number in 50 seconds, beating a Univac computer, which took 62 seconds.

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Then there are the people who can solve the puzzles created by Will Short...

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The Ideological and Intellectual Detritus of a Tragedy: premature judgments in investigations

There were two bomb explosions in Boston yesterday. Little if anything is known about the possible culprit or culprits. Nonetheless...

a commentator on a left-leaning public radio station in Boston said (s)he thought the most likely culprits were right-wing Minutemen
a commentator on a right-leaning radio station in New York City said (s)he thought the most likely culprits were radical Islamists
Both commentators are feckless idiots.
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New Web Site about Worldwide Persecution of Religion

Perhaps the following web site will help convince the U.S. State Department to at least mention the extensive persecution of Christians in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Egypt: http://persecutionreport.org/

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What's My Line?

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Yoo and Addington Are Outlaws (in Russia)

I see that the Russian government retaliated against the U.S. government by barring (among others) the following two people from setting foot in Russia: "John Yoo, a former U.S. Justice Department official who wrote legal memos authorizing harsh interrogation techniques; [and] David Addington, the chief of staff for former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney." Russia Bans 18 Americans After Similar US Move NYTimes (AP) (April 13, 2013). I suppose some wag will wonder whether the U.S. government might be induced to bar these two people from American soil as well. (Of course, I do not for a moment entertain such a thought. Expelling Addington and Yoo would be quite unAmerican. Isn't that right?)

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Who Cares about Christians in Egypt?

Tarek El-Tablawy & Salma El Wardany, Egypt Copts Blast Mursi at Memorial After Fatal Weekend Clashes Bloomberg News (April 7, 2013):

"Hundreds of grieving Coptic Christians packed inside a Cairo cathedral called for an end to Muslim Brotherhood rule after the worst sectarian clashes in months laid bare the polarization in the country.

"The anguish in the church today erupted ahead of funerals for at least four Christians killed in weekend fighting with Muslims in the Greater Cairo town of Khosous. The skirmishing was the bloodiest in a weekend of political violence as a leading youth organization took its opposition to Islamist President Mohamed Mursi to the streets." 
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Pope, Not-Yet-Easter 2013

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More on Philip Roth

February 1st, 2013

Philip Roth

Philip Roth: Unmasked

American Masters explores the life and career of Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning novelist Philip Roth, often referred to as the greatest living American writer. Reclusive and diffident, Roth grants very few interviews, but for the first time, allowed a journalist to spend 10 days interviewing him on camera.

The result is Philip Roth: Unmasked, a 90-minute documentary that features Roth freely discussing very intimate aspects of his life and art as he has never done before. The film has its world theatrical premiere March 13-19 for one week only at Film Forum in New York City and premieres nationally Friday, March 29 on PBS (check local listings) in honor of Roth’s 80th birthday.

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Philip Roth on PBS

My local public TV station will air a program on Philip Roth at 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time today, Good Friday. I am looking forward to this program. (I live close to Roth's home town Newark, New Jersey.)
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Ronald Dworkin on Atheism and Religion

This is an interesting essay: Ronald Dworkin, Religion without God New York Review of Books (April 4 [sic], 2013).

The New York Review's blurb states: "Before he died on February 14, Ronald Dworkin sent to The New York Review a text of his new book, Religion Without God, to be published by Harvard University Press later this year. We publish here an excerpt from the first chapter."
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Early Morning in Liberty Park

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President Obama and Political Hackery

President Obama is sometimes a person of extraordinary gifts. For example, his recent talk to students in Jerusalem was eloquent, wise, and humane. But sometimes Obama is a creature of pure expedience. See his endorsement of Mayor Jerramiah Healy of Jersey City. This endorsement is truly appalling. Healy is a tawdry political hack.

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Meister des Hausbuches (1475)

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President Obama's (Semi-)Secret Global Warfare

This op-ed piece discusses Obama's secret and semi-secret use of drone warfare around the world: Mary L. Dudziak, Obama's Nixonian Precedent, NYTimes (March 21, 2013).

Ms. Dudziak concludes, "The Cambodia bombing, far from providing a valuable precedent for today’s counterterrorism campaign, illustrates the trouble with secrecy: It doesn’t work."
I would have thought that the bigger problem is the possible illegality of secret drone warfare around the world.
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John Sexton

Although I personally very much dislike the "superstar" system that President Sexton apparently has run at NYU - faculty superstars, so-called, get paid a lot more than "ordinary" faculty members - I find it hard to sympathize with the NYU arts & science faculty's vote of no confidence in him. Sexton has done an awful lot to make NYU one of the world's leading universities.

Your opinion?

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Rand Paul II

Rand Paul lecture on foreign policy
See also Douthat on Rand Paul..
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Hero Worship

Hero worship reminiscent of that for Josef Stalin.
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Rand Paul, Drones, U.S. Citizens, and Due Process

Rand Paul defends due process for U.S. "noncombatants" (citizens) on U.S. soil. 

See C-Span.

Rand Paul for President?
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USA SCIENCE & ENGINEERING FESTIVAL – ROLE MODELS IN SCIENCE & ENGINEERING ACHIEVEMENT

Lofti Asker Zadeh

Lotfi Asker Zadeh -- Computer Scientist and Mathematician

The Father of the scientific concept,"Fuzzy Logic", as well as "Fuzzy Sets" and "Fuzzy Systems"

You've likely heard of the term "Fuzzy Logic", or "Fuzzy Mathematics". But despite what their names may imply, there is nothing inexact about these scientific concepts were formulated, says Lotfi Asker Zadeh, the famous UC Berkeley University mathematician and computer scientist who coined the names of these theories and spent a career advancing their applications.

Known as "The Father of Fuzzy Logic",Lotfi was born in 1921 in Baku, Soviet Azerbaijan to an Iranian father (a journalist) and a Russian mother (a pediatrician). In 1931, when Zadeh was ten years old, he moved with his family to Tehran, Iran where he was enrolled in Alborz College (an American-run Presbyterian school), where he was educated for the next eight years. In 1942, he graduated from the University of Tehran with a degree in electrical engineering and emigrated to the U.S. the following year, enrolling at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Why He's Important: While a professor and scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, he published his seminal work on "Fuzzy Sets" in 1965 in which he detailed the mathematics of what he called the Fuzzy Set Theory. In 1973, he formally proposed his theory of "Fuzzy Logic", which, based on precise formulas, began allowing scientists, mathematicians and others to make accurate, realistic research data decisions when working in environments of incomplete information, uncertainty and imprecision. Fuzzy Logic does this by allowing for approximate values and inferences as well as for incomplete or ambiguous data (fuzzy data) -- instead of relying solely on crisp data (binary yes/no choices).

Other Achievements: Fuzzy Logic and his Fuzzy Set theory in general have been applied to numerous fields – from computer technology and control theory to artificial intelligence. Lotfi is also credited, along with John Ragazzini in 1952 with pioneering the development of the z-transform method in discrete time signal processing and analysis. These methods are now standard in digital signal processing, digital control, and other discrete-time systems used in industry and research. His latest work includes computing with words and perceptions.
Education: Lotfi received his Master's degree in electrical engineering from MIT in 1946, and his Ph.D in the same discipline from Columbia University where he taught for 10 years before joining UC Berkeley in 1959.

In His Own Words: Commenting how he came up with the name "Fuzzy Logic," he says: "I decided on the word 'fuzzy' because I felt it most accurately described what was going on in the theory. I could have chosen another term that would have been more 'respectable'. For instance, I had thought about using the word 'soft', but that really didn't describe accurately what I had in mind. Nor did 'unsharp', 'blurred', or 'elastic'. In the end, I couldn't think of anything more accurate so I settled on "'fuzzy'".

At age 92, Dr. Zadeh still remains active in his field. He serves as an editor of the International Journal of Computational Cognition, and his website at UC Berkeley lists him as Professor in the Graduate School of Computer Science. In addition, his Facebook page reports that he still goes to his office at UC Berkeley everyday whenever he is not out of town at national or international professional conferences.

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Infrared Andromeda

Ain't nature magnificent?

ESA/Herschel/PACS/SPIRE/J.Fritz, U.Gent/XMM-Newton/EPIC/W. Pietsch, MPE

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Robust Conversation

Some politicians (and some other people too) are wont to say, now and then, that the public should "have a conversation" about this or that issue. But most political talk is not much like a dinner conversation; most of it is much more like an argument. People who agree about fundamentals have conversations. The rest of us have arguments (unless we keep quiet).  &&& The dynamic evidence page

An Interesting Meditation on Pope Benedict XVI

Ross Douthat, The Ratzinger Legacy NYTimes (March 2, 2013):

It was the work of Ratzinger’s subsequent career, first as John Paul II’s doctrinal policeman and then as his successor, to re-establish where Catholicism actually stood. This was mostly a project of reassertion: yes, the church still believes in the Resurrection, the Trinity and the Virgin birth. Yes, the church still opposes abortion, divorce, sex outside of marriage. Yes, the church still considers itself the one true faith. And yes — this above all, for a man whose chief gifts were intellectual — the church believes that its doctrines are compatible with reason, scholarship and science.

[snip, snip]

[Ratzinger] did stabilize Catholicism, especially in America, to an extent that was far from inevitable 40 years ago. The church’s civil wars continued, but without producing major schisms. Mass attendance stopped its plunge and gradually leveled off, holding up even during some of the worst sex abuse revelations. Vocations likewise stabilized, and both ordinations and interest in religious life have actually risen modestly over the last decade. Today’s American Catholics, while deeply divided, are more favorably disposed to both the pope emeritus and the current direction of the church than press coverage sometimes suggests.

[snip, snip]

But for all of Catholicism’s problems, the Christian denominations that did not have a Ratzinger — those churches that persisted in the spirit of the 1970s and didn’t reassert a doctrinal core — have generally fared worse. There are millions of lapsed Catholics, but the church still has a higher retention rate by far than most mainline Protestant denominations. Indeed, it is difficult to pick out a major religious body where the progressive course urged by so many of Ratzinger’s critics has increased vitality and growth.

This doesn’t mean there isn’t some further version of reform, some unexpected synthesis of tradition and innovation, that would serve Catholicism well. And if such a path exists, Pope Benedict was probably not the leader to find it.

But he helped ensure that something recognizable as Catholic Christianity would survive into the third millennium. For one man, one lifetime, that was enough.

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