Etiquette



DP Etiquette

First rule: Don't be a jackass.

Other rules: Do not attack or insult people you disagree with. Engage with facts, logic and beliefs. Out of respect for others, please provide some sources for the facts and truths you rely on if you are asked for that. If emotion is getting out of hand, get it back in hand. To limit dehumanizing people, don't call people or whole groups of people disrespectful names, e.g., stupid, dumb or liar. Insulting people is counterproductive to rational discussion. Insult makes people angry and defensive. All points of view are welcome, right, center, left and elsewhere. Just disagree, but don't be belligerent or reject inconvenient facts, truths or defensible reasoning.

Friday, April 29, 2022

The Christian nationalist Supreme Court supports corporate emotional abuse

Activist Republican judges weigh in 


Supreme Court: No emotional harm awards in some discrimination suits

The Supreme Court split along ideological lines Thursday in dismissing a discrimination lawsuit filed by a deaf and legally blind woman who wanted to sue a physical therapy business for emotional distress.

The court ruled 6 to 3, with conservatives in the majority, saying facilities that receive federal funds under laws such as the Affordable Care Act cannot be held liable when the harm alleged is emotional rather than a financial loss.

A district judge dismissed the suit because it said Cummings could not pursue damages based on emotional harm, and a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit agreed.

So did Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority. He said the general rule is that damages for emotional distress are available only in “highly unusual” contracts, and there was no reason to believe it covered the kind of agreements such facilities enter into regarding federal funds.
It is not just the case that Republican federal judges are merely Christian nationalist theocrats. They are also laissez-faire capitalists and neo-fascist judicial activists. One can look forward to a continuing stream of decisions that take power from consumers, one after another after another, and gives that taken power to companies. The power flows to both for-profit and non-profit human beings called corporations. This is just one example of how the power shift from human people to corporate people is going to play out. 

If you want to give companies more power taken from real humans, vote neo-fascist, vote Republican! If not, go pound sand.

Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Nuclear war scenarios



Princeton's Science and Global Security (SGS) does nuclear Armageddon simulations. Their 2019 Plan A comments:
SGS developed a new simulation for a plausible escalating war between the United States and Russia using realistic nuclear force postures, targets and fatality estimates. It is estimated that there would be more than 90 million people dead and injured within the first few hours of the conflict.

This project is motivated by the need to highlight the potentially catastrophic consequences of current US and Russian nuclear war plans. The risk of nuclear war has increased dramatically in the past two years as the United States and Russia have abandoned long-standing nuclear arms control treaties, started to develop new kinds of nuclear weapons and expanded the circumstances in which they might use nuclear weapons.

This four-minute audio-visual piece is based on independent assessments of current U.S. and Russian force postures, nuclear war plans, and nuclear weapons targets. It uses extensive data sets of the nuclear weapons currently deployed, weapon yields, and possible targets for particular weapons, as well as the order of battle estimating which weapons go to which targets in which order in which phase of the war to show the evolution of the nuclear conflict from tactical, to strategic to city-targeting phases.

The resulting immediate fatalities and casualties that would occur in each phase of the conflict are determined using data from NUKEMAP. All fatality estimates are limited to acute deaths from nuclear explosions and would be significantly increased by deaths occurring from nuclear fallout and other long-term effects.




In the months after nuclear war, fatalities from fallout and other long-term effects like lethal radiation exposure, coupled with untreated skin piercing injuries would far surpass deaths from immediate nuclear blasts. The scale of human suffering and death would dwarf everything in prior human history. That includes Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined and multiplied 10-fold. Human deaths would be billions, not just tens of millions.


Acknowledgement: Thanks to PD for bringing Nuclear Princeton and Princeton's SGS effort to my attention.




Tuesday, April 26, 2022

The Left Hand of (Supposed) Darkness

 On ‘sinister,’ ‘dexterity,’ ‘gauche,’ and ‘adroit’

Faux News is the neo-fascist propaganda arm of the neo-fascist Republican Party

CNN on Monday published a slew of text messages between Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and prominent Republican lawmakers and conservative figures — including Hannity. The Jan. 6 committee has already released several texts exchanged between Meadows and Hannity, but the ones released Monday are particularly striking, demonstrating just how firmly the White House had Hannity secured under its thumb.

“Hey. NC gonna be ok?” Hannity wrote Meadows last Nov. 3, asking whether Meadows’ home state of North Carolina was going to go to Trump.

“Stress every vote matters,” Meadows replied. “Get out and vote. On radio.”

“Yes sir,” Hannity wrote. “On it. Any place in particular we need a push”

Meadows pointed to Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Nevada, in addition to North Carolina. “Got it,” Hannity responded. “Everywhere.”  
Twitter user @acyn responded to CNN’s report by pointing out that Hannity has in the past claimed he is “not told what to say” and that “we have always been independent and follow our on path on this show.”  
We now have pretty hard evidence that Hannity’s highly rated show was basically state-run television while the former president was in office.



That speaks for itself.  

Monday, April 25, 2022

When core moral values clash and the question of culpability

Republicans understand moral psychology. Democrats don’t. Republicans have long understood that the elephant is in charge of political behavior, not the rider, and they know how elephants work. Their slogans, political commercials and speeches go straight for the gut . . . . Republicans don’t just aim to cause fear, as some Democrats charge. They trigger the full range of intuitions described by Moral Foundations Theory.” -- Johnathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, 2012 (the elephant is the very powerful, disciplined unconscious mind and the rider is the very weak, lazy conscious mind - powerful and weak refer to relative data processing bandwidth capacity, ~11 million bits/sec for unconsciousness and up to ~500 bits/sec for consciousness)

Moral Foundations Theory (Wikipdeia): "a social psychological theory intended to explain the origins of and variation in human moral reasoning on the basis of innate, modular foundations. It was first proposed by psychologists Jonathan Haidt, Craig Joseph and Jesse Graham, .... and subsequently developed by a diverse group of collaborators, and popularized in Haidt's book The Righteous Mind. The theory proposes six foundations: Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, Sanctity/Degradation, and Liberty/Oppression; while its authors remain open to the addition, subtraction or modification of the set of foundations."



An NPR program Hidden Brain, When Doing Right Feels Wrong, discusses what goes on in our minds when core moral values clash. This goes straight to the heart of what makes ruthless and even crackpot propaganda so effective in the hands of talented demagogues. Using mostly two examples, the program highlights the clash between the normal innate human impulses to be both (1) loyal to family, group, tribe, etc., and (2) fair or honest with oneself and people generally. 

Edward Snowden: The broadcast started with citing Edward Snowden and his leaking of thousands of secret surveillance documents produced by the US National Security Agency and the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance.[1] The leaked documents embarrassed the US and possibly endangered some American citizens abroad. People polarized into two mindsets about what Snowden did. Snowden fled to Russia and Putin accepted him. Some American firmly believed that Snowden was a traitor who was disloyal to the US, while others firmly believed he was being honest by warning us about US government intrusions into private lives of all kinds of people.

The police officer: The other example cited was by a young Detroit police officer who was offered an illegal way to make a lot of money by breaking into the house of a bookie who kept a lot of cash in a safe in his home. The officer was torn between loyalty to fellow officers and honesty about the law and justice. He chose honesty but he mentally struggled about his betrayal of his fellow officers who he felt close to and trusted with his life. He also felt the sting of criticism and many death threats from people who felt he was a dirty rat. His girlfriend and her child were firebombed (but not hurt) to in an attempt to kill the whistleblower cop. He called the decision to be a whistleblower against his fellow officers "gut wrenching." The reason for that is because the gut is involved in emotional feelings. This officer retired earlier this year.

A key point here is that loyalty is not more or less moral than honesty. They are simply two different innate moral impulses and they can come in conflict. They can be, and routinely are, forced into conflict by demagogues, propagandists and marketers who are acutely aware of these impulses in normal people (not sociopaths, narcissists, etc.). They fully understand much trouble normal people have in resolving moral conflicts. The rider (the conscious mind) did not evolve to question what the moral elephant decides and wants to do. The weak, lazy rider evolved to make up post hoc justifications, not to do critical moral or empirical analysis of what the elephant wants to do or why or even whether it makes any sense at all. 

Often what the elephant wants to do is blithering nonsense dressed up to feel like it makes sense by a political and/or religious demagogue or a special interest. Demagogues, propagandists and marketers know how to make people react emotionally and feel it.
  

The title of Haidt's book, Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion gets right to the point. These conflicts arise and they divide people. Each side of the moral divide sees the other as needing their heads examined. The human mind does not like to hold incompatible beliefs at the same time. What Snowden did was empirically both disloyal and honest, but few people are comfortable with that unstable mental state. Normal cognitive dissonance forces minds into one of two belief states, either disloyal traitor or honest whistleblower. There is little or no room for mutual understanding, but lots of room for distrust, animosity, resentment and false beliefs that support those negative feelings.

The 53 minute broadcast is here for those interested. It is very good. It brings the loyalty vs. honesty moral conflict into clear, sharp focus.


Where does culpability lie?
Republican Party propaganda routinely slanders Democrats and liberals as liars, crooks, evil, tyrannical, and often pedophiles, communists and/or something(s) else bad. Most rank and file Republicans sincerely believe most of these falsehoods. Their minds are trapped in a nasty moral cage. That propaganda is relentless and ruthless. Inconvenient fact, truth and reasoning are almost completely swept away and replaced mostly with lies, slanders, irrational emotional manipulation and/or flawed motivated reasoning. Republican elites and their propaganda forces such as Faux News, know exactly what they are doing. They have successfully played on the loyalty moral value to the extent that honesty has now been swept almost completely away.

Think about it. Why has decades of Republican propaganda relentlessly attacked the credibility and honesty of the free press, Democrats, democracy, inconvenient facts and truths, e.g., climate science, experts bearing inconvenient messages, and expertise itself. That is done to build and maintain a clash between loyalty to the GOP and its tribe-cult against inconvenient truth and honesty. Republican lies and crimes are denied and/or acceptable, while the same by Democrats are vilified as horrors. Why did the ex-president elevate loyalty to himself as a core moral value over loyalty to the Constitution, inconvenient truth, democracy and the rule of law? The GOP has successfully built a social norm and tribe/cult where loyalty routinely trumps honesty. 

The ex-president, like all other professional Republican propagandists are fully aware of the moral foundations of humans doing politics, religion and ideology generally. They get it. Or, as Haidt put it, Republicans understand moral psychology. Democrats don’t.” 


Question: Who or what is more culpable for false beliefs and bad, anti-democratic behavior, demagogic Republican elites spewing toxic propaganda, or the deceived, manipulated  and betrayed rank and file? In other words, is propaganda is irrelevant and adults are responsible for their own beliefs and behaviors, true, false, good, bad, smart, stupid, neutral or ambiguous?[2]



Footnotes: 
1. Wikipedia comments on Snowden: A subject of controversy, Snowden has been variously called a traitor,[7] a hero,[8] a whistleblower,[9] a dissident,[10] a coward,[11] and a patriot.[12] U.S. officials condemned his actions as having done "grave damage" to the U.S. intelligence capabilities.[13] Snowden has defended his leaks as an effort "to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them."[14] His disclosures have fueled debates over mass surveillance, government secrecy, and the balance between national security and information privacy, something that he has said he intended to do in retrospective interviews.[15]

2. Or, as Tom Nichols once put it, “. . . . there is only one group of people who must bear the ultimate responsibility for this state of affairs, and only they can change any of it: the citizens of the United States of America.” That raises a question: How can deceived and manipulated citizens change a state of affairs or problem they are unaware of because they have been deceived and manipulated? 

What is the plan to secure peace in Ukraine and Europe? Roundtable Discussion with Fareed Zakaria

 

Yesterday Fareed Zakaria was joined by David Milliband, Anne-Marie Slaughter and former diplomat, Kashore Mahbubani to discuss and attempt to answer the questions, in Zakaria's own terms, A)"What is the West's long game plan to secure peace in Ukraine and Europe?[and] B) What should it be?" I have included a link to the approx. 7 min. video at CNN's website, but have also selected excerpts from the discussion here. Note on names: AMS = Anne-Marie Slaughter; DM = David Milliband and Kishore Mahbubani. FZ is, of course, the host, Fareed Zakaria.

FZ: Anne-Marie, what should the long game be?

AMS: So the first part of that game has to be simply to stop the fighting. We're going to see the complete destruction of eastern and southern Ukraine. And if you look at what happened after 2014 when they took over part of eastern Ukraine and Crimea, it can just go forever, the fighting. So we have to stop the fighting.

Second, however, we actually need a geopolitical configuration that is not Russia and China, Europe and the United States, and the rest of the world. And if you look at what happened with the human rights vote, you saw India, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Egypt, Indonesia all abstained. That is not a good geopolitical configuration.

So the United States actually wants not to isolate Russia and push it closer to China for the long term. And then longest of all, the United States needs to think about what is a European security architecture that makes Europe actually whole and free and safe? I don't think we get there with Putin in power. But Putin's not going to be in power forever and we actually have to think about the next couple of decades where we can protect Ukraine but Russia is once again integrated into Europe.

 DM: I think Anne-Marie is absolutely right to herald or to point out that while the West is more united than it was before, the world is equally divided and the votes that she's referred to at the U.N. should be fundamental. I'm sure Kishore will come in on this. But from my point of view, the strategy has to be about more than a Europe whole and free, it has to be a world that has some rules to govern the way in which it's run. 

 FZ: Kishore, let's get to precisely this issue, why is it that, you know, when people think about democracy versus autocracy, the problem with that formulation, as David very well put it, is some of the world's largest democracies are at best sitting on the fence? India, Indonesia, Brazil, even Mexico. What do you think is going on from your perspective?

KM: Well, I think, as you know, when Russia invaded Ukraine, most of the world was horrified. It was terrible. And there was a great global consensus against it. But now I share the concerns of Anne-Marie and David that clearly the West, as you know, represents 12 percent of the world's population, 88 percent lives outside the West. 

And if the perception of the 88 percent has shifted in the last three months at all, and what they see now is on the one hand, and I agree with David, that the legal moral dimension here that Russia is wrong but the rest of the world can also see that this is a geopolitical game where the West is trying to weaken Russia and not really searching for peace in Russia. And that's why the rest of the world saying, OK, if that's going to be your game in Ukraine, if you want to weaken Russia, you want to weaken Putin, that's your agenda, that's not our agenda.

Our agenda is to create a better world of rules and predictability, and that's what the rest of the world will want to see, some kind of a fair idea of where are we going with all of these, you know, moves in Ukraine? What's the destination?

ZM: But, Kishore, it's Putin who doesn't want to negotiate and until the Russians feel that they are forced to the negotiating table, you're not going to get a peace deal. Zelenskyy has from day one offered to negotiate and has offered major concessions publicly, like Ukrainian neutrality and no NATO. It is Putin who is not doing it because it appears he wants greater control over Ukraine. What do you do then?  

MB: Well, you know, I was a diplomat for 33 years, Fareed, as you know. And in diplomacy it's not what people say publicly that is their position, it's what they're prepared to negotiate privately. And as you know, our good friend Henry Kissinger suggested a formula in 2013 in this "Washington Post" article* and I truly do believe that what Henry Kissinger proposed in 2014, of course it's got to be amended because we're in 2022, the basic outlines where Ukraine is free to choose its own destiny, free to join the European Union but not join  NATO clearly and explicitly,  and also work out some kind of compromise between the eastern and western sections of the country-- don't ban Russia from the country, for example. So there are ways and means of achieving a diplomatic settlement, and that's the tragedy of Ukraine. Because the outline of a settlement was given by Henry Kissinger 8 years ago.

 
ZF: David Miliband, you know, again, it feels to me like Zelenskyy has proposed variations of what Kishore is talking about.  

DM: I think you're right. Remember George Kennan said 50 or 60 years ago, Russia's tragedy is that it can only see Ukraine either as a vassel or an enemy**. And what he said then is actually Russia's crime today because what they've done is invade and they bring state. And the challenge that you're laying down I think is absolutely right, the Ukrainians are not the aggressors here.

The unspeakable scenes that we're seeing in Mariupol that I fear are going to be repeated in other parts of the east of the country, whether it's more besiegement to come. What we have here is a classic scissors effect, where the greater and greater misery within Ukraine is going to find ripple effects around the world because remember the impact on food prices, the impact on energy prices, the impact on -- at a time of a global debt crisis that's looming for too many emerging economies. Those are forces that have been unleashed by this invasion***.

But it's not an invasion that has been precipitated by any actions on the part of the Ukrainians. And that's why I come back down to this question, but the choice lies in Moscow. If it insists on seeing a vassal or enemy next door in Ukraine, it's a recipe for the kind of pulverization obliteration that's going on at the moment.

FZ:Anne-Marie, the point David was making about the agency of the Ukrainian people, they have a voice, they have a vote. Well, now you have the Swedes and Finns saying they want to be part of NATO. Not for sure but they seem to be moving along that track. What should NATO do in that circumstance?

AMS: NATO should take its time above all. There's a real opportunity here to think much more creatively about European security architectures and Western security architectures that do not simply expand NATO ever further to the Russian border, which honestly, it's not at all clear that NATO will accept, that the American people will accept; but more importantly you can have the United States, Canada, Germany, Britain, with a guarantee, a security guarantee for Finland and Sweden, for really the Nords.

You can think about a security architecture that works but then allows, again, over the course of decades for a far more flexible set of European security architectures that eventually would include Russia.
Russia is part of Europe, right? Russia is part of Europe. If you think about Western literature, music, art, math, all of that, that is the Russian people.

And we're not going to have security in this century, nor are we going to be able to work on the global problems that menace all of us unless we can at least imagine a security architecture that includes Russia. This moment of possibility expansion of NATO should be a trigger for rethinking, not for simply, mildly expanding.

(The conversation then turns to the Marine Le Pen/Emmanuel Macron runoff that took place yesterday, and which Macron won).

****************************************************************************

Notes and Remarks:

* Kissinger's 2014 article on peace in Ukraine can be read here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/henry-kissinger-to-settle-the-ukraine-crisis-start-at-the-end/2014/03/05/46dad868-a496-11e3-8466-d34c451760b9_story.htm

**David Milliband here misquotes George Kennan, and takes the inexact quote out of its original context. As Fareed Zakaria writes of the original quote in a NYT article: "In 1944, having dinner with the Polish prime minister, who had received encouraging words of support from the Russians for the country’s independence, Kennan was sure that no matter what anyone said, the Poles would end up badly. “The jealous and intolerant eye of the Kremlin can distinguish, in the end, only vassals and enemies, and the neighbors of Russia, if they do not wish to be one, must reconcile themselves to being the other.”  https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/books/review/the-kennan-diaries-by-george-f-kennan.html

The "jealous and intolerant eye of the Kremlin" Kennan was referring to is, of course, that of Joseph Stalin who then had an iron grip on the Soviet State, and had shown this "jealousy and intolerance" in the then-recent Molotov-Ribbontrop Pact Stalin made with Hitler. In that pact (later broken by Hitler thus plunging the USSR into the 2nd World War) the two tyrants agreed to maintain peaceful relations with one another. The treaty also contained a "secret protocol" that carved German and Soviet spheres of influence up across Eastern Europe including Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Finland and Bessarabia (where "Transnistria" in Moldova is today).  Kennan's "jealous and intolerant eye... seeing only vassals and enemies" in its neighborhood had nothing to do with post-Soviet Russia. When asked in a PBS interview if he agreed with Henry Kissinger's assessment of Russians as being "by historical nature expansionist and imperialistic," Kennan said, "No. That's a dangerous formulation, and a dangerous way of thinking," adding that "our differences in the Cold War were with the Soviet regime" and not Russian "National Character"  conceived in terms of an imperialistic stereotype. (see: https://www.scribd.com/audiobook/375659791/George-Kennan-At-A-Century-s-Ending )

It is not surprising that Milliband, a "third way" New Labour man and avid interventionist ala Tony Blair, would-- perhaps accidentally-- confuse Stalin's Kremlin of 1944 with Russia in the 20th and 21st centuries.

*** It is, of course, true that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has not only devastated the people and land of Ukraine, but as DM says, had an "impact on food prices [and] energy prices...at a time of a global debt crisis that's looming for too many emerging economies." What he doesn't mention is the manner in which those impacts are greatly amplified by an unprecedented sanctions regime whose effects are shouldered disproportionately by the so-called "Global South"-- basically the poorer countries. The Biden Admin has responded to their reluctance to get on board with the sanctions with moralistic  pressure and threats. In a speech just before the IMF and World Bank annual meetings in Washington last week, Treasury Sec.  Jessica Yellin warned all countries that any attempt to "undercut sanctions" would be met with "serious consequences." From the speech:

"Let me now say a few words to those countries that are currently sitting on the fence, perhaps seeing an opportunity to gain by preserving their relationship with Russia and backfilling the void left
by others. Such motivations are shortsighted,” she said at the Atlantic Council. “And let’s be clear, the unified coalition of sanctioning countries will not be indifferent to actions that undermine the sanctions we’ve put in place." 
https://www.wsj.com/articles/yellen-warns-nations-staying-neutral-in-russias-war-with-ukraine-11649879113?mod=saved_content

Press Sec. Jen Psaki added the following: 

"In this moment where you have a dictator invading another country targeting civilians, you have to contemplate what side of history you want to be on. And that is true for any country around the world."(ibid) 

What none of these people address is the unmet needs (e.g. food, energy and medical supplies) that sanctions disrupt in these already significantly impoverished nations (if you use, say GDP per capita as an indicator). Yes, the war itself is will cause, as Zelensky warns, a global food crisis with humanitarian effects if the fighting doesn't stop-- if Ukranians can't sow and reap. But the sanctions augment such problems greatly. 

Just to take one of many examples-- one country in Africa, and not even the poorest one-- Egypt. Russia and Ukraine account for about 30% of the world's global wheat exports. Before the war, the 2 countries supplied more than 80% of Egypt's wheat needs, according to the USDA.  Not only has the war made agriculture in Ukraine all but impossible, but the sanctions have disrupted supply chains by cutting off access to affordable wheat from the Black Sea. To ship most of these commodities, they have to pass through Odessa and other  ports on the Black Sea that have been closed to commercial use since many European countries imposed sanctions on Russia over its invasion. In addition, the rise in oil prices caused by sanctions has driven shipping costs up. The inflation gets passed on to the people who want to buy bread in Egypt (and many other African countries that will are expected to undergo severe food shortages this summer). Zelensky has emphasized this consequence of the war (potential famines), but has not emphasized the role of sanctions in accentuating the problem. I understand why, and I understand the purpose of the sanctions regime. But the collateral damage of this economic warfare falls, as usual, disproportionately on the shoulders of poor nations rather than those like Switzerland, UK,  Canada , Japan and the like, who at least have a better chance of braving the coming storm of austerity due to sanctions.   

This is just one example of the collateral damage that will result in many countries from the prolonged use of unprecedented sanctions designed to force Putin "to the bargaining table." As, Zakaria and his guests acknowledge, there's no clear "long game plan" for a peace agreement even if the Russians were driven by sanctions to try diplomacy in earnest. Some political economists sympathetic to the emergency need to use sanctions to stop the fighting have proposed more precise ways of conducting this "economic warfare" that considers the kind of collateral damage I mention, and aims to minimize it. Right now sanctions are broad and sweeping and cause unpredictable and unintended consequences of great magnitude across the globe. Since it seems clear that this approach to warfare will be used not only in the months ahead, but in conflicts down the road in the world, there need to be rules, just as there are international legal standards for humanitarian treatment in military war. Here's  political economist, Kaushik Basu's preliminary sketch of such a framework https://www.livemint.com/opinion/online-views/the-new-art-of-economic-warfare-and-the-global-need-to-regulate-it-11648659394026.html  Basu was chief economist for the World Bank from 2012-16 and is a professor of International Studies and Economics at Cornell U.

************************************************************


Here is a link to FZ's discussion with the 3 guests at CNN (thank you, Birdman, for bringing this CNN segment to my attention) :  https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2022/04/24/exp-gps-0424-panel-the-west-and-ukraine.cnn

Here is a link to the transcript of the show: https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/fzgps/date/2022-04-24/segment/01