Interest in Jamal Khashoggi’s death proves that Stalin was right?

by philg

Joseph Stalin supposedly said, “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”

I’m wondering if the death of Jamal Khashoggi proves Stalin right. Like other big nation-states, Saudi Arabia has done a lot of arguably bad stuff over the years. A few examples of things that might upset Americans:

There was minimal media coverage about the Saudis being involved in wars or terrorist acts that killed thousands. Why the blanket coverage and demands for action in response to the death of Jamal Khashoggi?

[Separately, is the U.S. in a position to complain about the Saudis eliminating someone they didn’t like? Don’t we blow up guys in Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc. with drones? That’s not exactly due process.]

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White women keep getting into trouble around blackface

by philg

2015 at Yale (nytimes):

The debate over Halloween costumes began late last month when the university’s Intercultural Affairs Committee sent an email to the student body asking students to avoid wearing “culturally unaware and insensitive” costumes that could offend minority students. It specifically advised them to steer clear of outfits that included elements like feathered headdresses, turbans or blackface.

In response, Erika Christakis, a faculty member and an administrator at a student residence, wrote an email to students living in her residence hall on behalf of those she described as “frustrated” by the official advice on Halloween costumes. Students should be able to wear whatever they want, she wrote, even if they end up offending people.

(Christakis was eventually forced to resign)

2018 at NBC (nytimes):

The decision to air a rerun of “Megyn Kelly Today” came two days after the host suggested, during an on-air round-table discussion, that it was appropriate for white people to dress in blackface as part of their Halloween costumes.

Ms. Kelly apologized in an email to her NBC colleagues hours after making those remarks. On Wednesday, she delivered an on-air apology in the opening minute of her 9 a.m. show — “I’m Megyn Kelly, and I want to begin with two words: I’m sorry.”

But her demonstrations of contrition did little, it seemed, to improve her standing with her colleagues or superiors at the network. At a midday meeting of NBC News staff members on Wednesday, Andrew Lack, the chairman of the news division, did not mention her apologies and said, “There is no other way to put this, but I condemn those remarks.”

Now that DNA testing has proven Elizabeth Warren’s heritage as a Native American, would Yale consider relaxing its prohibition against “feathered headdresses”? What’s wrong with a student celebrating the achievements of Elizabeth Warren via a costume?

Related:

 

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Recreational marijuana should be legal and available…

by philg

… in some of the other towns within Massachustts.

A bunch of towns that, in 2016, voted in favor of legalizing recreational marijuana statewide (results) have then held town meetings where, by a 2/3rds majority, more or less the same people voted to ban marijuana-related business in their particular town. At a recent town meeting, Lincoln became the latest in the roster of towns that support legalized marijuana (or did as of 2016), but think that other towns in Massachusetts are better-suited to hosting marijuana-related businesses.

Effectively, then, a lot of people voted for expansion of marijuana-related enterprise who won’t be directly affected by the law. Should there be a rule that if a town votes for something statewide it can’t then ban it locally? Or if it wants to reserve the right to ban something locally then it can’t vote on the statewide question?

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Private Pilot Ground School at MIT in January

by philg

If you’d like to learn what pilots learn, and enjoy the bracing air of a Boston winter, join us in January for MIT Course 16.687. The dates are Jan 22-24, 2019 and it is all-day every-day.

Details: http://philip.greenspun.com/teaching/ground-school/

This is a for-credit class for MIT students, but it is free to non-MITers.

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The modernity of the Bolshevik Revolution

by philg

One interesting aspect of Understanding Russia: A Cultural History (course by Lynne Ann Hartnett, a professor at Villanova) is how modern and familiar the ideas of the Bolsheviks are. After the October Revolution, for example, Prof. Hartnett talks about women gaining the rights to on-demand abortion and on-demand divorce (what today is called “unilateral” or “no-fault” divorce). The rate of abortion quickly grew to exceed the rate of live births. The divorce rate in the Soviet Union became the highest in Europe. Unlike in the U.S., no-fault divorce did not come with the need to hire a lawyer and litigate in a courtroom (see Real World Divorce). The wife could go to City Hall, fill out a form, and her now-ex-husband would be informed of the divorce via mail (“postcard divorce”). [Unlike in the U.S., though, there was no possibility of an alimony revenue stream following a no-fault divorce; women in the early Soviet system were considered capable of working to support themselves and if they wanted extra spending power from a man’s income they had to get it through a voluntary arrangement.]

The professor also cites paid maternity leave and state-run day care as early Soviet programs.

Radical thinkers today like to talk about reconceiving state-run education as a lifelong process rather than merely K-12. The Soviets were there 100 years ago! Prof. Hartnett talks about how lifelong education was an explicit goal and the Soviets quickly organized programs for both peasants and factory workers.

I wonder what percent of the positions taken by a modern American politician might have been anticipated 100 years ago by the Bolsheviks. It would be an interesting exercise to line up what our current leaders say and promise to what the Bolsheviks were saying and promising.

Separately, the lecture series adds a data point to how present-day academics think about capitalism and the market. Prof. Hartnett does not seem to be a fan of Marxism-Leninism due to its reliance on violence to keep the population in line. However, when talking about pre-revolutionary Russia, with its 7 percent annual economic growth (like China today), she describes factory workers as “underpaid.” There does not seem to be any evidence of collusion among employers and state intervention in the economy was minimal compared to modern welfare states. Thus, it seems likely that the workers were earning a market wage. Due to the ample supply of labor this might have resulted in “low paid” workers, but to the modern American academic “low paid” seems necessarily to imply “underpaid” (unfairly low wage).

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Okay for Harvard to violate the 14th Amendment if they do it gently?

by philg

I was chatting with a friend who is a Harvard graduate and a tenured professor at a big American research university. He asked for my opinion of the Harvard admissions race discrimination trial. I said that “As long as they are availing themselves of the river of Federal cash subsidies from the Department of Education, I think they have to comply with the Fourteenth Amendment. If they want to throw a race-based party then they need to do it without collecting tuition from students who are getting Federal student loans and grants.”

His response was to ask whether administrators shouldn’t fight against the nearly-all-Asian university that a purely merit-based admissions policy might produce. I said “Taking the long view, Chinese civilization is probably the world’s most successful and the Chinese intellectual tradition the strongest. Chinese universities have been more or less all-Asian. So if Harvard’s mission is academic excellence, what’s wrong with mostly Asian students?”

His personal view was that administrators should engage in racial discrimination, but that they should do so “gently.” He described a “non-gentle” year in his own (rather technical) department in which three sought-after non-white non-Asian women were accepted to graduate school. A dean had come down on the unlucky faculty and taken them to task for their non-diverse cluster of nerds. Despite special treatment, including an expensive investment in tutoring, two out of the three favored minorities failed out within two years. The experience of watching these students struggle and fail did not sour my friend on the idea of race-based discrimination, apparently contrary to the Constitution. Instead, he wanted the dials turned down slightly so that people admitted on the basis of their race or sex were less likely to fail.

I’m kind of surprised that few Americans seem to take the Fourteenth Amendment seriously. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, for example, faced no media criticism for talking about how proud he was that all of his law clerks were female. Why did people accept the idea of a federal official, part of whose job was enforcing the Fourteenth Amendment, being happy that all of his employees were of one race or sex?

  • “What Is Harvard Trying to Hide?” (Politico): Harvard’s documents also showed that while applications from “Chicano,” “Puerto Rican,” “Native American” and “Black” applicants were directed to readers from those groups, the other entry on that list was framed differently: “Blue Collar Asian. Harvard officials said the sole Asian-American admissions officer at the time, Susie Chao, sought to read all the applications from Asian-Americans whose parents had a blue-collar background and many of those from wealthier families. Applicants from other ethnic minorities generally got a minority reader regardless of the family’s background, the records showed.
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Hang out on Saturday with white people who like to talk about racial justice

by philg

An email from the town think-gooders:

Hello Lincoln Families,

We invite you to join with others who are committed to racial justice, equity, and inclusion at the AROS Metro West Symposium – Saturday, October 27, 2018 at the Regis College Fine Arts Center in Weston, MA, from 9:30 am to 3:30 pm. Learn about structural racism, share strategies about anti-racist campaigns, and strengthen local anti-racism organizing efforts.

The Symposium is co-sponsored by Community Change, Inc. and The Center for Inclusive Excellence at Regis College.

The keynote speaker will be Debby Irving, a racial justice educator and author of Waking Up White and Finding Myself in the Story of Race. Debby will share her personal struggle to understand racism and racial tensions, and offer a fresh perspective on bias, stereotypes, manners and tolerance.

Workshops include:

· Criminal Law Reform and Ending Mass Incarceration

· Eliminating Harmful Native American Stereotypes [led by Elizabeth Warren?]

· White People Challenging Racism

· METCO Building Bridges [poor suburban taxpayers subsidizing rich foreign owners of Boston skyscrapers; see https://betterlincolnschools.wordpress.com/ ]

(Lincoln and Weston are two of the whitest towns in the United States.)

Maybe some local readers will go and tell us how it was…

 

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Migrant caravan members from Honduras are required to apply for asylum in Guatemala or Mexico?

by philg

A caravan of 7,000 Hondurans (“The Committee to Re-elect the President”?) are making their way through Guatemala and Mexico to the U.S. The good news is that they are entitled to free housing, free food, free health care, and a free smartphone as soon as they arrive (“The Contracting States shall accord to refugees lawfully staying in their territory the same treatment with respect to public relief and assistance as is accorded to their nationals” — Article 23 of the UN Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees).

However, there seems to be a dispute about whether these 7,000 folks are restricted in terms of where they can apply for asylum. From “President Trump Threatened to Turn Back Caravan Migrants If They Don’t Claim Asylum in Mexico. That’s Not Legal” (TIME):

President Donald Trump has said the Central American migrants traveling via caravan should seek asylum in Mexico – and threatened that they will be turned away if they reach the U.S. border.

“People have to apply for asylum in Mexico first, and if they fail to do that, the U.S. will turn them away. The courts are asking the U.S. to do things that are not doable!” he tweeted Sunday.

But following through on that threat could violate international law, experts say.

As a signatory of the 1951 Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, Mexico is obligated to protect people who are outside of their country and afraid to return due to a well-founded fear of persecution based on religion, race, nationality or membership to a particular social or political group.

The United States is also a signatory. And while Mexico is required to offer protection for refugees under international law, migrants have no obligation to request it there.

Under U.S. immigration law, the the United States can deny asylum if a person can be returned to a country where their life or freedom is not in danger, but only if the U.S. has entered into a bilateral or multilateral agreement that codifies the arrangement.

The U.S. and Canada have such an agreement. It says that people must seek refugee status in the first country they arrive in—either the U.S. or Canada—but there are some exceptions for cases of family reunification.

No such agreement exists with Mexico.

Additionally, some argue that Mexico would not meet the standards for such a designation. For one, given high rates of crime, there are credible safety concerns.

(In other words, the country in which Americans are willing to pay $1,000 per day to vacation is intolerably dangerous for a Honduran native speaker of Spanish.)

In Europe, it seems that “the country where an asylum seeker first enters the union is responsible for registering the asylum application and taking fingerprints.” (see “Explaining the Rules for Migrants: Borders and Asylum,” nytimes, 9/16/2015) But the U.S. is not part of this “Dublin Regulation,” so perhaps the last paragraph of the TIME article is definitive:

“If people who are fleeing persecution and violence enter Mexico they need to be provided access to the Mexican asylum system, and those entering the United States need to be provided access to the American asylum system,” says Chris McGrath, a UNHCR spokesperson.

Suppose that the TIME article and the UN bureaucrats are right and a caravan of 7,000 Hondurans can transition through Mexcio to California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, wouldn’t it work equally well for all of the migrants currently in the EU? There are millions of refugees in Germany. They are the majority of the welfare recipients in Germany (Wikipedia: “In April 2018 more than half, at 55%, of the recipients had a migration background. According to the Federal Employment Agency this was due to the migrants lacking either employable skills or knowledge of the language”). Instead of paying out Hartz IV benefits every month to a refugee, why not offer him or her a one-way plane ticket to a Mexico border town? Maybe the U.S. will deny the refugee’s application for asylum after 2 or 3 years, but during all of that time, the German taxpayer is relieved of the responsibility for paying Hartz IV. The refugee will be way better off as well because (a) no need to learn German, and (b) the American welfare system provides for a much higher standard of living than the German Hartz IV welfare system.

We’re told that the Europeans don’t love us anymore because Trump. What is stopping them from wishing bon voyage to Airbus A380s full of welfare-collecting refugees enthusiastic about living the American Dream in California or Texas via Mexico?

Alternatively, is it possible that Trump is right? Is there a rule that prevents a refugee from traveling to a lot of intermediate countries before settling down in the place that offers the most generous “public relief and assistance as is accorded to their nationals”?

Related:

 

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Why would North Dakotans want to re-elect Heidi Heitkamp?

by philg

Heidi Heitkamp, a senator from North Dakota, reached me on Facebook with a sponsored listing (i.e., an ad):

I’m in the fight of my life right now … We have another $12,500 to raise, but luckily, a group of fired-up donors has offered to match all gifts, but only until midnight. Time’s running out, and whether or not we hit this goal before midnight could determine senate control. Please, will you give now and get every dollar DOUBLED?

Maybe there is a way on Facebook to target ads to “Coastal Elites” and I was mistakenly flagged as “elite” while correctly identified as living in Massachusetts?

Suppose that raising money from folks in Massachusetts is successful. Why would voters in North Dakota want to be represented by someone who has to answer to East Coast funders? Is the regional nature of U.S. politics breaking down?

[Heitkamp voted to keep the convicted-by-Facebook rapist Brett Kavanaugh on the appeals court:

She also credited the “heartfelt, credible and persuasive testimony” given by Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her at a party during high school.

“She had nothing to gain and everything to lose,” Heitkamp said. “When I listened to Dr. Ford testify, I heard the voices of women I have known throughout my life who have similar stories of sexual assault and abuse.”

So I responded to the sponsored listing with

Will you celebrate your victory by flying to French Polynesia with Christine Blasey Ford as your experienced guide? (maybe you can help Dr. Ford with her fear of flying in case the new B787 with fainting couch is not ready?)

This was not well-received by the Heitkamp faithful:

Brenda Torres Your are a moron hope you have a female in your family that get assaulted and is not believed let’s see how you feel about that idiot!! Making fun of a sexual assault victim typical male pig protecting a rapist!

So the person with a traditionally female name (Brenda might be a “woman”) who is passionate about ensuring that survivors are believed wants to see more women assaulted, so long as those women have the misfortune to be related to “a male pig.” Where is the solidarity among the sisterhood? (assuming that “Brenda” actually does identify as a sister)]

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Want to join me on a Cuba, Caymans, and Haiti cruise Dec 9-17?

by philg

Readers:

An Irish helicopter pilot friend and I are escaping our respective families and winter weather from Dec 9-17 on Royal Caribbean’s Empress of the Seas (itinerary). The basic cabins are absurdly cheap, about $100 per-person per day. This includes a bed, three meals set up to minimize the risk of food poisoning, and entertainment. Should be cheaper than staying home!

It would be awesome if some of you can join. We can evaluate socialism first-hand in Cuba and give Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a full report. We can take some photos of Labadee and send them to Donald Trump so that he can see just how wrong he is about Haiti (as, of course, he is wrong about everything).

Our experience in Haiti will be authentic, according to Wikipedia:

The resort is completely tourist-oriented, and is guarded by a private security force. The site is fenced off from the surrounding area, and passengers are not allowed to leave the property. Food available to tourists is brought from the cruise ships. A controlled group of Haitian merchants are given sole rights to sell their merchandise and establish their businesses in the resort.

Royal Caribbean offers high-speed statellite Internet at a reasonable (considering the satellite link) price. So “have to work that week” is no excuse!

Please email me (philg@mit.edu) if you can join.

Related:

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