The goals of Soviet torture

The New Neo Posted on by

From Martin Amis’s book Koba the Dread:

…[T]orture, among its other applications, was part of Stalin’s war against the truth. He tortured, not to force you to reveal a fact, but to force you to collude in a fiction.

And the Party leadership knew it was a fiction. This made the use of torture even more evil, if such a thing be possible.

More:

On arrest, the invariable response was Zachto? Why? What for?

This was evidence of the belief—in the “normal,” non-Gulag world—in some sort of rational motivation for such things. But that soon evaporated:

When she hears that a friend had been picked up (this was in the early 1930s), Nadezhda Mandelstam said: Zachto? Anna Akhmatova lost patience. Don’t you understand, she said, that they are now arresting people for nothing.

In those words “for nothing,” the reference is not just to the fact that the arrested people are innocent. There is also a higher “for nothing,” which is embodied in our present knowledge that the Soviet experiment was a complete failure both in economic and human terms, and (fortunately) did not last for even a century in its most virulent forms. But still, it lasted way too long, and caused untold human suffering—for nothing.

Amis writes:

There are several names for what happened in Germany and Poland in the early 1940s. The Holocaust, the Shoah, the Wind of Death…There are no names for what happened in the Soviet Union between 1917 and 1953 (although Russians refer, totemically to “the twenty million,” and to the Stalinshchina—the time of Stalin’s rule). What should we call it? The Decimation, the Fratricide, the Mindslaughter? No. Call it the Zachto? Call it the What For?

And here’s quite a quote, from the founder of the Cheka:

Dzerzhinsky said: “We represent in ourselves organized terror ”“ this must be said very clearly.” and “[The Red Terror involves] the terrorization, arrests and extermination of enemies of the revolution on the basis of their class affiliation or of their pre-revolutionary roles.”

Which was most important to the perpetrators, the terror or the supposed goals behind the terror? I do not know, but my gut tells me it was the terror itself and the feeling of power it gave the perpetrators. The rest was at least in part a justification for what they secretly (or perhaps not so secretly) enjoyed.

Oooo, the poor plagarists, the pressure made them do it

The New Neo Posted on by

I am getting really, really, really sick of this sort of excuse/explanation:

“The problem [of plagiarism] is as old as journalism,” says Stephen Ward, director of the Center for Media Ethics at the University of Wisconsin. “It’s a systemic issue, it’s a case of extreme pressure being put on people. Newsrooms are hot competitive environments, and whether that’s on Wall Street or at The New Yorker, people may take chances to get noticed.”

Only if they’re unethical people in the first place. If you’re a writer and a person of integrity, you just don’t do it—not to get ahead, not to meet a deadline, not for any reason (except through error/carelessness, perhaps).

One of the very first things a young person learns in school when being taught to research a paper (or should learn; I’m not quite sure what they’re teaching any more) is that anything you borrow or quote must be attributed. When I was a kid, we were instructed in the use of a complex system involving little index cards and handwritten notes. The whole thing was very difficult to organize, and labor-intensive as well. Now such research is simplicity itself if the source is online—just cut and paste.

The newest case of plagiarism is by Fareed Zakaria, who has apologized and called it a “terrible mistake” and a “serious lapse.” Those are strong words, but ambiguous ones as well. Is he saying he didn’t know he did it, and it was a careless although serious error? Or is he saying he knew full well, and the “mistake” and “lapse” were moral ones? And if the latter, my question for Zakaria is: why did you do it, then?

And a reader who scrutinizes the passages Zakaria plagiarized might well wonder (as I did) whatever he could have possibly seen in them that would have tempted him to copy them. They are remarkably pedestrian, the kind of thing that could be found in a good high school term paper.

I must say, I don’t get it. Although it occurs to me that perhaps they were all students of the great Lobachevsky (as interpreted by Tom Lehrer, of course):

Will wonders never cease?

The New Neo Posted on by

A positive article—at least, sort of halfway positive—about something Mitt Romney once did, appearing in the NY Times.

[NOTE: By the way, you can talk about today’s bad-news polls in this thread, if you like. It’s possible to criticize the internals as oversampling Democrats, but still the trend is there and I think it’s real. Whether it matters much at this point—when the Obama team has spent a lot of time lying about Mitt Romney and who he is, and before Romney has chosen a VP or presented himself to the American people via a convention and then the debates—is what I wonder.]

Dieting and the obesity paradox

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s a real paradox, one I’d not heard of before, and it shows once again how little we really know about disease and weight and health.

Type 2 (adult onset) diabetes, which is more common in the overweight, also occurs in normal weight people, who constitute about 20% of the population that suffers from the disease. But the odd thing is that normal weight Type 2 diabetics seem to do worse than the overweight ones in terms of mortality, and no one has a clue why:

In the study…researchers reviewed data involving more than 2,500 people with Type 2 diabetes, some of whom were followed for decades.The scientists found that those who were of normal weight around the time of their diagnoses were twice as likely to die during the study period, compared with those who were overweight or obese.

The researchers could not explain why having a greater body mass index, or B.M.I., might protect someone with diabetes. But they did point out that some doctors may be prone to treating thin diabetics differently from their obese counterparts, and may be less likely to push them to make diet and exercise changes that could improve their survival.

That explanation is just a guess. I have a different guess, which is that since overweight can bring on Type 2 diabetes in the genetically susceptible, those who develop it when they’re not overweight probably have a more severe form of the disease in the first place.

But that’s not all. The obesity paradox is not limited to Type 2 diabetes:

The findings also provide evidence that patients with Type 2 diabetes may display what researchers call the obesity paradox, the observation that people with certain chronic diseases tend to have lower mortality rates if they carry excess pounds. The phenomenon has been documented previously in people with heart failure, hypertension and kidney disease.

Yep—there’s an awful lot we don’t know.

War ballets

The New Neo Posted on by

This article about US Marine and Iraq war veteran and ballet dancer Roman Baca, who has choreographed ballets based on themes connected with the war, its veterans, and their families, reminds me of the fact that although there have been a number of ballets attempting to depict war and the military, they just don’t seem to work very well.

That’s hardly surprising. “War ballet” would seem to be the ultimate oxymoron. On the other hand, there have been extremely successful poems, novels, and paintings about war, so why not dances?

The answer is that dance just doesn’t seem to be the right medium. It’s too light, too pretty, too abstract, too something—or maybe not something enough. But every now and then someone gives it a try, quite a few of which I’ve had the dubious pleasure of seeing.

Perhaps the most successful war ballet is Kurt Jooss’ “The Green Table,” an expressionist German work choreographed in 1932 between the two World Wars. Saying it’s the most successful war ballet doesn’t mean it entirely succeeds; perhaps I should say it’s the least unsuccessful. Like the other war ballets I’ve seen, it’s heavy-handed and static and portentous and yet still offers only a caricature of war. Here’s a video of the first few minutes; it starts with the diplomats’ negotiations (the entire thing is on YouTube in five parts, if you’re interested):

As heavyhanded as that is, the following is worse: the Chinese Communists’ bizarre “Red Detachment of Women.” I’ll let it speak for itself:

Far more successful—because it’s really not a “war ballet,” it’s more about the atmosphere and era in the USA around the Second World War—is “Company B” by Paul Taylor, set to music by the Andrews Sisters and featuring some of the swingiest costumes ever:

Unfortunately, the available “Company B” video is so short it fails to give the full flavor of the work, and emphasizes its lighter aspects. And there’s no doubt it has a lot of joy and flair, as well as nostalgia. But as in Paul Taylor’s best work, there’s darkness there too, although here it’s kept in the background (literally) by having the “war” part of the dance conveyed at the back of the stage as a sort of counterpoint to the bittersweet gaiety up front.

Obama and the trickle-down fairy dust

The New Neo Posted on by

Bridget Johnson notes that Obama has a new catch-phrase that he’s used five times in recent speeches, “trickle-down fairy dust.” Here’s a typical example:

We know better than this. They have been trying to sell us this trickle-down, tax cut fairy dust before. We’ve seen this before.

Yes, we have—at least we’ve seen the fight about it, although back then the principle was called “voodoo economics” by none other than Bush I (and one would think that both “voodoo” and “fairy dust” would be equally unacceptably non-PC at this point, but perhaps Obama is trying to accentuate the wimp factor when speaking of Romney).

I said it’s true we’ve heard this duked out before. But Bush I was hardly the beginning of the argument; it goes back at least to William Jennings Bryan, who used the phrase “leak through” in 1896, in his famous “Cross of Gold” speech:

There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it.

“Trickle” and “leak”—the picture conjured up is almost inevitably that of wetting one’s pants, or of urinating on the masses. The phrase has virtually always been a pejorative used by the Democrats; as Thomas Sowell has pointed out, it’s not used by those on the right, and the theory the left critiques is not the theory under which the right is operating:

The point, however, is not simply to move money around but to change behavior in a way that will result in more economic activity. Tax cuts have a long track record of doing that, resulting in rising national incomes and rising employment.

But there is no way that some people are ever going to admit that what they call “tax cuts for the rich” are tax cuts for the economy. As far as they are concerned, this is all just an excuse to “give” something to the rich, in hopes that it will “trickle down” to the lower income brackets.

A year ago this column defied anyone to quote any economist ”” in government, academia, or anywhere else outside an insane asylum ”” who had ever argued in favor of a “trickle down theory.”

Many people quoted David Stockman as saying that others had made that argument. But David Stockman was not even among the first thousand people to make that claim. What is crucial is that not one of those who made the claim could provide a single quote from anybody who had advocated a “trickle-down theory.”

The “trickle down theory” has been a stock phrase on the left for decades and yet not one of those who denounce it can find anybody who advocated it. The tenacity with which they cling to these catchwords shows how desperately they need them, if only to safeguard their vision of the world and of themselves.

Sowell wrote that in 2006. And Obama is proving it’s still all too true.

Wishing the presidential race were “fair”

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s that word again, fair:

Chris Rock would like the presidential race to be more “like a real fight.”

“I wish we didn’t have to stoop to this level. I wish they made it like a real fight. I mean, we’re watching the Olympics right now and everything is fair,” the comedian said on “CBS This Morning” on Thursday. “I wish both guys could only spend the same amount of money and let the best man win.”

Now, Chris Rock is a comedian, but he’s not trying to be funny here. His statements are not all that significant in and of themselves, but I think they’re a good example of a certain trend in thinking on the liberal side.

Note that Rock focuses on financial equality of result (not equality of opportunity) as the basis for “fairness.” And of course his Olympic analogy falls flat even on that score, since different countries have widely differing amounts of money available to support their athletes and their training, and different systems of doing so. So, even by Rock’s definition of “fair” (or maybe especially by his definition of “fair”), his statement makes little sense.

It’s highly unlikely that Rock did much complaining about this back in 2008, when the financial disparity favored Obama. I well remember when candidate Obama announced he was abandoning his pledge to run his campaign through public financing:

It’s not just that he reneged, either–it’s how he reneged. Who’s to blame, according to Obama? Why, John McCain and the nasty Republicans, that’s who. James Joyner writes that this charge of Obama’s does take “a bit of gall.” I’d say it takes substantially more than a bit, as well as a heavy dose of the whining, blaming, audacity in which the holier-than-thou Obama tends to specialize:

The public financing of presidential elections as it exists today is broken, and we face opponents who’ve become masters at gaming this broken system,” Mr. Obama said. “John McCain’s campaign and the Republican National Committee are fueled by contributions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs. And we’ve already seen that he’s not going to stop the smears and attacks from his allies running so-called 527 groups, who will spend millions and millions of dollars in unlimited donations.”

As they used to say in the schoolyard, takes one to know one. Actually, it’s Obama’s campaign that’s been doing virtually all of the latter, as Jim Kuhnhenn of the AP points out:

Despite that claim, few Republican-leaning groups have weighed into the presidential contest so far. In fact, Obama allies such as MoveOn.org are the ones that have been spending money on advertising against McCain.

When Obama was ahead, it was all good. But now that Romney’s been raising more money, it’s bad and needs to be corrected.

When Obama announced his change of heart on this, back in 2008, I was especially struck by two things. His abandonment of a principle he had purported to support was not really one of them; politicians do that sort of thing all the time. It was his audacious blaming of Republicans for his actions that impressed me and seemed likely to be repeated as his go-to m.o., as well as the fact that his supporters and the MSM not only did not criticize him for his abrupt change of position and abandonment of principle, but supported and made excuses for him. It drove home just how fervent was the devotion to him, and how deeply the press was in his pocket, and was a portent of things to come.

Climate warming, climate cooling: the law of unintended consequences

The New Neo Posted on by

These consequences may have been unintended, but they certainly should not have been unforeseen:

When the United Nations wanted to help slow climate change, it established what seemed a sensible system.

Greenhouse gases were rated based on their power to warm the atmosphere. The more dangerous the gas, the more that manufacturers in developing nations would be compensated as they reduced their emissions.

But where the United Nations envisioned environmental reform, some manufacturers of gases used in air-conditioning and refrigeration saw a lucrative business opportunity.

They quickly figured out that they could earn one carbon credit by eliminating one ton of carbon dioxide, but could earn more than 11,000 credits by simply destroying a ton of an obscure waste gas normally released in the manufacturing of a widely used coolant gas. That is because that byproduct has a huge global warming effect. The credits could be sold on international markets, earning tens of millions of dollars a year.

That incentive has driven plants in the developing world not only to increase production of the coolant gas but also to keep it high ”” a huge problem because the coolant itself contributes to global warming and depletes the ozone layer. That coolant gas is being phased out under a global treaty, but the effort has been a struggle.

So since 2005 the 19 plants receiving the waste gas payments have profited handsomely from an unlikely business: churning out more harmful coolant gas so they can be paid to destroy its waste byproduct. The high output keeps the prices of the coolant gas irresistibly low, discouraging air-conditioning companies from switching to less-damaging alternative gases. That means, critics say, that United Nations subsidies intended to improve the environment are instead creating their own damage.

I’m not meaning to pick on the UN, especially (okay, maybe I am). This sort of thing is a hazard in all economic planning designed to shape people’s behavior and encourage one type of action over another, but as I said, it’s a hazard that probably should have been foreseen. I am most definitely not an economist, nor do I play one on TV, but I’m pretty that if something is incentivized/rewarded, that behavior will tend to increase, if it is at all discretionary. In this case, producing the gas and then destroying it became more profitable than not producing it. Companies are in the business of making money, in addition to making things. And so—more of the gas is produced.

The rest of the article is worth reading, as well. It goes into how difficult it has been to change this system once it took hold. The countries that are most involved in the overproduction of the gas are, unsurprisingly, China and India.

Here’s a quote that underlines the “unintended” part of the equation:

“I was a climate negotiator, and no one had this in mind,” said David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “It turns out you get nearly 100 times more from credits than it costs to do it. It turned the economics of the business on its head.”

Forget, for a moment, about the controversies in the science of global warming. Even if the science really were incontrovertibly settled, there would still be the problem of the shortsightedness and limitations of interventions designed to change things.

Johnson’s daisy ad

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Baltimoran” makes the following interesting observation in connection with my discussion of the effects of lies in political ads:

I suppose the campaign ads we’ve seen the last few months are worse than what we’ve all gotten used to in recent years, but they aren’t that bad by historic standards. No one’s trying to accuse Mitt of wanting to start a nuclear war for example.

True. Baltimoran is no doubt referring to LBJ’s famous daisy ad, which I discussed previously in this post. Let’s watch it again; it’s pretty abominable:

However, there are quite a few differences between then and now. The most important one is that the ad aired only once and then was pulled by the Johnson forces as being too controversial, because of the hail of criticism it immediately evoked:

“Daisy” aired only once, during a September 7, 1964 telecast of David and Bathsheba on The NBC Monday Movie. Johnson’s campaign was widely criticized for using the prospect of nuclear war, as well as for the implication that Goldwater would start one, to frighten voters. The ad was immediately pulled, but the point was made, appearing on the nightly news and on conversation programs in its entirety. Jack Valenti, who served as a special assistant to Johnson, later suggested that pulling the ad was a calculated move, arguing that “it showed a certain gallantry on the part of the Johnson campaign to withdraw the commercial.”

So was pulling it a cynical move as Valenti suggested? Or did politicians adhere to a higher standard back then, as a result of public pressure? Or would it be more correct to say that, if so, it was actually the public which had the higher standards, and forced the politicians to adhere to them?

Spambot of the day

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Here’s a message from the spambot who calls himself “Josh Dear,” and is contemplating some explicit although repetitive and required fun with Mary:

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