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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