Oh, Jim!

The other night at Politics & Prose bookstore, The Newshour's Jim Lehrer was kind enough to sign a copy of his new novel, Oh, Johnny, with a dedication "To Bettye," the mother of someone I know. The heroine of his story is named "Betsy," so I had to spell it out for him. He got it right. He signed books after reading a passage from the story about a Marine suffering from shell shock that caused him to choke up...A different side of the normally low-key onscreen TV news anchor.

Oh, Johnny is about Marines, baseball, and buses--three of Lehrer's long-term interests. Lehrer mentioned his USA Today interview about the book during his talk and the Q & A (to an audience with Marines and journalists, not too many bus drivers or baseball player could be discovered), so here's a link.

Oh, yes. Lehrer did do one of his famous bus calls for the audience, recreating the first time he was paid to speak into a microphone in Victoria, Texas...

Summit of the Americas--Direct

Here's a link to the official website of the Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain, Trinidad...

http://www.fifthsummitoftheamericas.org/

To End Piracy, Stop Shippers Using "Flags of Convenience"

Today's Huffington Post reports that NATO defended a ship registered in the Marshall Islands against Somali pirates, freeing some 20 hostages. Which raises the question, why are NATO forces protecting non-NATO-flagged ships? It may be cheaper for the industry, but it is bad for global stability. Shippers should be forced to register their ships under the flags which can protect them at sea--and yes, pay for more expensive Western crews if need be. There is no reason for the profits of shipping to go to places like the Marshall Islands or Liberia, while the costs of protecting the fleets are borne by the US Navy and/or NATO. It means, simply, denying protection to ships from nations that are not protecting the ships--no more "free rides" until piracy is stamped out. In addition to denying shipping companies offshore registration in places like the Cayman Islands. Insurers would be instructed to pass the full cost of insurance to the non-Western shippers.

Bottom line: It is a national security issue to rebuild the American merchant navy at this time and give preference to US-Flag carriers in government policy. Bye-bye tax havens, bye-bye union- and regulation-busting foreign registration.

I'd hope that organized labor make this an issue, ASAP...

Russia Celebrates Orthodox Easter With Cultural Festival

From the Moscow Times:

Among the events on Sunday in celebration of the Russian Orthodox Easter will be the opening concert of the eighth annual Moscow Easter Festival.

Continuing until Victory Day on May 9, this year's festival will include the usual mix of symphonic and choral concerts and afternoon bell ringing from the towers of churches throughout the city.

In addition to its local program, the Easter Festival again reaches far beyond Moscow, bringing music to some 26 Russian cities and, for the first time in its history, going outside of the country for a pair of concerts in the Armenian capital, Yerevan.

The artistic director of the festival since its founding in 2002 has been conductor Valery Gergiev, and dominating its agenda have been performances by the orchestra of St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theater, of which Gergiev is also artistic director. Once again, it seems fair to ask whether any other city in the world blessed with musical talent comparable to Moscow's would almost exclusively enlist musicians from elsewhere for the central element of a festival bearing its name. Rather by way of exception this year, a single slot in the festival's symphonic program has been allotted to a Moscow-based ensemble, the Novaya Rossiya Orchestra.

Happy Easter to our Russian (and all our Eastern Rite) readers!

Good Friday II

It's Orthodox Good Friday, and they are celebrating it in the Holy City of Jerusalem, according to the Jerusalem Post:

Orthodox Christian clergymen and pilgrims marked Good Friday in Jerusalem's Old City, at the site where they believe Jesus was crucified on this date two millennia ago.

Protestants and Roman Catholics marked Good Friday last week, but members of Orthodox Christian churches follow a different calendar.

Black-robed Greek Orthodox clergymen held wooden crosses as they entered the courtyard outside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Armenian priests also held Good Friday prayers at the ancient church, which is shared by different sects.

CQ: CIA Torture Memo Release Shows Congressional Oversight Failed

According to Congressional Quarterly:

Steven Aftergood, an expert in government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, says Obama's decision to release the information in response to the ACLU's [FOIA] suit points to a breakdown in relations between the branches.

"Congressional oversight did not get the job done," Aftergood said. "This reflects a significant and dangerous weakness on the part of Congress."

Aftergood noted former CIA Director Michael Hayden told MSNBC that the interrogation program "began life as a covert action." According to that reasoning, Aftergood says, Bush should have issued a presidential "finding" or some other official declaration authorizing the program. Instead, the interrogations were a covert action, increasing the potential for deception, Aftergood notes.

All of which means the release of the memos will probably provide fodder for future congressional hearings, as lawmakers try to play catch-up.

No "truth commission" would be required if Congress would do it its job here, IMHO...

Maersk Alabama Crew Goes to Washington

Buried in the inside pages of the Metro section of today's Washington Post, a tale of heroism on the high seas, as the crew of the Maersk Alabama faced down Somali pirates, recalled by Reza Zahid:

ATM Zahid Reza, an able-bodied seaman aboard the Alabama, and William Rios, the ship's boatswain, were among those who stole the show. After sneaking outside to drink a cup of coffee and smoke a cigarette, the two were quickly spotted by cameramen, who rushed outside to hear their stories.

Reza said he lured one of the Somali pirates to the darkened engine room by saying he would turn over the crew members who were hiding. He and the Alabama's chief engineer then attacked the pirate and took him hostage, Reza said.

"I told him: 'Trust me. You are Muslim. I am Muslim,' " Reza said.

The crew's visit to the Gaylord was arranged so quickly that it surprised many of those staying there. Linda Fitzpatrick, who was in town from Atlanta for a digital software conference, said she found out about the celebrity guests only yesterday morning, when her husband called her to say: "Guess what? Your hotel is on TV." She said she was able to snap some photos of the crew even as dozens of reporters charged past her to do the same thing.

"It was very active," she said with a laugh.

The 19 members of the Alabama landed at Andrews Air Force Base just before 1 a.m. yesterday, meeting up with family members before departing for the Gaylord. When they arrived at the hotel after 2 a.m., they were greeted by an open bar and a candlelit buffet.

The Alabama's captain, Richard Phillips, was not there, his trip home delayed while the destroyer he was on responded to another pirate attack on a U.S.-flagged ship, the Liberty Sun. The crew foiled that attack, and Phillips was delivered to the Kenyan port city of Mombasa yesterday. He was expected to return to the United States from there.

About 2 p.m., the Alabama's crew members departed without ceremony. Some evaded reporters as they left; others left with a wave and a smile.

Kevin Mousaw, 53, stood outside the hotel with his 16-year-old son, Joshua, trying to snap a picture of the crew members. A police officer in Canton, N.Y., and in town because his wife was attending a conference, Mousaw said he wanted proof for his colleagues that he crossed paths with the suddenly famous crew.

"It'd be nice to take home. My guys at my station won't believe it."

Daniel Henninger: Pirates v The Rest of Us

From yesterday's Wall Street Journal:

But that pirate assault on an American-flagged ship, its captain's bravery, and his rescue by one U.S. Navy ship should be seen for what it is: A metaphor of the world as it is today. It is a world awash in pirates.

Some are small pirates like the Somalis, but many others are big pirates. They live in North Korea, Iran and in al Qaeda's hideouts along Pakistan's northwest frontier. They are Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Janjaweed in Darfur. Pirates strap themselves with dynamite to smash the routines of daily life in crowded town squares. Hugo Chavez is the pirate king of Latin America. There are others.

Each wants to replace our system of laws, rules, institutions and sovereignty with their disorder. Then disorder becomes normal.

Extending Mr. Obama's idea, all of these should be "held accountable" for their acts against the civilized world. But they are not held accountable. Sunday was the exception, not the rule. In consequence, the organized world has shown itself willing to dance along the edge of anarchy.

Somalia's pirates are back in the water, but so are the others. On Tuesday, the pirates in North Korea, a week after flouting the U.N.'s prohibitions on its programs to build missiles and nuclear weapons, mocked these authoritative powers by announcing they would resume production of nuclear weapons. The North Koreans have one step remaining in their nuclear program -- to successfully affix a warhead to a launchable missile.

The pirates of Iran this past week told the world they are running 7,000 centrifuges at their Natanz uranium enrichment plant. When North Korea launched its long-range Taepodong-2 missile April 5, specialists from Iran were there.

Iran and North Korea are crossing the nuclear threshold, anarchy's doorstep. Standing on the other side are the great powers, seeking negotiations. No serious person would think of attempting a strategy of negotiation-only with Somalia's pirates, and that is rational. With the nuclear pirates we are insistently irrational.

In between lies Pakistan. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that after achieving a "peace agreement" with the established authorities in Islamabad, the pirates of the Taliban are pouring into Pakistan's Swat Valley. Swat once was the jewel of Pakistan. A town square there is now called "Slaughter Square," piled with executed bodies. Swat's hostage residents have dropped off the narrowing edge of the civilized world.

Return to Sunday's metaphor. When the pirates holding Capt. Phillips began to point their guns at his back, someone in authority on the USS Bainbridge concluded that the risks to him had become too high and told the three Seals it was time to shoot. The civilized world, at risk, needs more concrete acts of pirate defeat, not containment alone.

Just as those pirates were finally shot, shooting down North Korea's next launched missile or striking Iran's nuclear plant at Natanz has to become at least thinkable -- rather than unthinkable, as now.

Days after North Korea launched, Mr. Obama announced he wants to reduce our nuclear arms inventory so as to "give us a greater moral authority to say to Iran, don't develop a nuclear weapon; to say to North Korea, don't proliferate nuclear weapons." Who would ever invoke "moral authority" with Somalia's pirates? So why North Korea or the others?

We need to understand that these are not just security threats but a systemic threat. Each weakly answered pirate affront erodes the public's confidence in the West's promise of an ordered world.

The erosion is persistent and cumulative. A crack sometimes falls apart. The world's foreign ministries and foreign policy intellectuals, secure in the calm sun that rises each morning where they live, try to make all this seem complex and very difficult. What we saw in the floodtide of jubilation over the rescue of Capt. Phillips is that eventually it's not complicated.

IMHO, I'd add Wall Street bankers and insurers benefitting from the US Government bailout to Henninger's list of pirates...

Mackubin Thomas Owens: How to Stop Piracy

From the Foreign Policy Research Institute:

In the 19th century, the United States also played a role in ending the piratical forays of the Barbary States of North Africa. This is one of the reasons why it has been nearly two centuries since pirates last attempted to seize a vessel flying the American flag.

After losing the protection of Great Britain as a result of America’s Declaration of Independence, American ships were preyed upon by the Barbary States—Algiers, Tunis, Morocco, and Tripoli (today's Libya). Like the Europeans during the same period (and most maritime states today), the Americans deemed the cost of military action too high and opted to pay “tribute” to the Barbary States. But the demands for these bribes kept growing while the seizure of U.S. ships only increased.

Congress authorized the construction of several frigates and President Thomas Jefferson dispatched them in 1801 for “policing actions” in the Mediterranean after the pasha of Tripoli declared war on the United States. During the next several years, the fledgling American Navy bombarded the harbors of Algiers, Morocco, and Tunis or threatened them with bombardment. As a result of these actions, these states agreed to cease cooperating with Tripoli. But the pasha remained defiant.

In 1804, a naval force under Captain Stephen Decatur boldly sailed into Tripoli harbor, where he set fire to the captured USS Philadelphia, later rescuing its crew, bombarding the fortified town, and boarding the pasha's own fleet where it lay at anchor. In April 1805, Captain William Eaton led an expedition consisting of U.S. Marines, mercenaries, and Arab rebels across many miles of desert to take Tripoli's second city, Derna, by surprise, largely ending the depredations of the Barbary pirates against U.S. ships in the Mediterranean.

To adopt such an approach to piracy today, however, would require a return to a distinction in the traditional understanding of international law, one that did not extend legal protections to individuals who do not deserve them. This distinction was first made by the Romans and subsequently incorporated into international law by way of medieval and early modern European jurisprudence, e.g. writings on the law of nations by such authors as Hugo Grotius and Emer de Vattel.

The Romans distinguished between bellum, war against legitimus hostis, a legitimate enemy, and guerra, war against latrunculi—pirates, robbers, brigands, and outlaws—“the common enemies of mankind.” The former, bellum, became the standard for interstate conflict, and it is here that the Geneva Conventions and other legal protections were meant to apply. They do not apply to the latter, Guerra—indeed, punishment for latrunculi traditionally has been summary execution, although the extreme punishment was not always exacted. The point is that until recently, no international code has extended legal protection to pirates.

As Grotius wrote in Mare Librum (The Free Sea), “all peoples or their princes in common can punish pirates and others, who commit derelicts on the sea against the law of nations.” And more forcefully, Vattel wrote in his 1738 treatise, The Law of Nations, that “legitimate and formal warfare must be carefully distinguished from those illegitimate or informal wars, or rather predatory expeditions, undertaken, either without lawful authority, or without apparent cause, as likewise without the usual formalities, and solely with a view to plunder.”

Once this distinction is revived, it opens the way for the only real way to stamp out piracy, as was done in the 19th century: the use of force to wipe out the pirate lairs. Under the old understanding of international law, a sovereign state has the right to strike the territory of another if that state is not able to curtail the activities of latrunculi.

As John Locke understood, pirates are in a “state of nature” relative to political society. And political society has the right to defend itself against such individuals:

“That, he who has suffered the damage has a right to demand in his own name, and he alone can remit: the damnified person has this power of appropriating to himself the goods or service of the offender, by right of self-preservation, as every man has a power to punish the crime, to prevent its being committed again, by the right he has of preserving all mankind, and doing all reasonable things he can in order to that end: and thus it is, that every man, in the state of nature, has a power to kill a murderer, both to deter others from doing the like injury, which no reparation can compensate, by the example of the punishment that attends it from everybody, and also to secure men from the attempts of a criminal, who having renounced reason, the common rule and measure God hath given to mankind, hath, by the unjust violence and slaughter he hath committed upon one, declared war against all mankind, and therefore may be destroyed as a lyon or a tyger, one of those wild savage beasts, with whom men can have no society nor security: and upon this is grounded that great law of nature, Who so sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.”

The United States acted in accord with this understanding in the early 19th century. In response to raids from Spanish Florida by Creeks, Seminoles, and escaped slaves, General Andrew Jackson, acting on the basis of questionable authority, invaded Florida, not only attacking and burning Seminole villages but also capturing a Spanish fort at St. Marks. He also executed two British citizens whom he accused of aiding the marauders.

Most of President James Monroe’s cabinet, especially Secretary of War John Calhoun, wanted Jackson’s head, but Secretary of State John Quincy Adams came to Jackson’s defense. He contended that the United States should not apologize for Jackson’s preemptive expedition but should insist that Spain either garrison Florida with enough forces to prevent marauders from entering the United States or “cede to the United States a province, which is in fact a derelict, open to the occupancy of every enemy, civilized or savage, of the United States, and serving no other earthly purpose than as a post of annoyance to them.” As Adams had written earlier, it was his opinion “that the marauding parties ought to be broken up immediately.” As John Gaddis has observed, Adams believed that the United States “could no more entrust [its] security to the cooperation of enfeebled neighboring states than to the restraint of agents controlled, as a result, by no state.”

Unfortunately, we have permitted legalism and moralism to twist our understanding of the “rule of law” into something that Grotius, Vattel, Locke, or the Founders would no longer recognize. For instance, European navies have been advised to avoid capturing Somali pirates since under the European Human Rights Act, any pirate taken into custody would be entitled to claim refugee status in a European state, with attendant legal rights and protections.

Simon Johnson: American Bankers Have Become Oligarchs

From The Atlantic Online (ht Drudge via FT):

To paraphrase Joseph Schumpeter, the early-20th-century economist, everyone has elites; the important thing is to change them from time to time. If the U.S. were just another country, coming to the IMF with hat in hand, I might be fairly optimistic about its future. Most of the emerging-market crises that I’ve mentioned ended relatively quickly, and gave way, for the most part, to relatively strong recoveries. But this, alas, brings us to the limit of the analogy between the U.S. and emerging markets.

Emerging-market countries have only a precarious hold on wealth, and are weaklings globally. When they get into trouble, they quite literally run out of money—or at least out of foreign currency, without which they cannot survive. They must make difficult decisions; ultimately, aggressive action is baked into the cake. But the U.S., of course, is the world’s most powerful nation, rich beyond measure, and blessed with the exorbitant privilege of paying its foreign debts in its own currency, which it can print. As a result, it could very well stumble along for years—as Japan did during its lost decade—never summoning the courage to do what it needs to do, and never really recovering. A clean break with the past—involving the takeover and cleanup of major banks—hardly looks like a sure thing right now. Certainly no one at the IMF can force it.

In my view, the U.S. faces two plausible scenarios. The first involves complicated bank-by-bank deals and a continual drumbeat of (repeated) bailouts, like the ones we saw in February with Citigroup and AIG. The administration will try to muddle through, and confusion will reign.

Boris Fyodorov, the late finance minister of Russia, struggled for much of the past 20 years against oligarchs, corruption, and abuse of authority in all its forms. He liked to say that confusion and chaos were very much in the interests of the powerful—letting them take things, legally and illegally, with impunity. When inflation is high, who can say what a piece of property is really worth? When the credit system is supported by byzantine government arrangements and backroom deals, how do you know that you aren’t being fleeced?

Our future could be one in which continued tumult feeds the looting of the financial system, and we talk more and more about exactly how our oligarchs became bandits and how the economy just can’t seem to get into gear.

The second scenario begins more bleakly, and might end that way too. But it does provide at least some hope that we’ll be shaken out of our torpor. It goes like this: the global economy continues to deteriorate, the banking system in east-central Europe collapses, and—because eastern Europe’s banks are mostly owned by western European banks—justifiable fears of government insolvency spread throughout the Continent. Creditors take further hits and confidence falls further. The Asian economies that export manufactured goods are devastated, and the commodity producers in Latin America and Africa are not much better off. A dramatic worsening of the global environment forces the U.S. economy, already staggering, down onto both knees. The baseline growth rates used in the administration’s current budget are increasingly seen as unrealistic, and the rosy “stress scenario” that the U.S. Treasury is currently using to evaluate banks’ balance sheets becomes a source of great embarrassment.

Under this kind of pressure, and faced with the prospect of a national and global collapse, minds may become more concentrated.

Simon Johnson's blog is called BaselineScenario.

Happy 100th Birthday, Tel Aviv!

From Haaretz:

The beauty of Tel Aviv
By Haaretz Editorial

The Festival of Spring, Passover, will find Tel Aviv celebrating its 100th birthday. Although the events will take place in the city's avenues and street, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that marking the establishment of the first Hebrew city is a national holiday of sorts.

Ever since its beginnings as Ahuzat Bayit on the coastal sands, the city has been a symbol of modernity, openness and freedom. That is how it's seen by tourists and locals alike.

There's a good reason it's called "the nonstop city." Tel Aviv breathes, shakes and buzzes 24 hours of every day of the year. Even its name has become synonymous with an informal, easygoing atmosphere.

Over the years, Tel Aviv has been lucky enough to have some gifted planners and successful mayors who shaped some impressive features into the city. It is considered the capital of the Bauhaus style and the traces of the quaint beauty of the "garden city" concept are still visible in how it integrates community parks with low buildings. And Tel Aviv's beach boasts a pleasant and broad boardwalk.

Preservation efforts have restored prestige and glamour to once-beautiful buildings and whole streets have been renovated to become more beautiful than ever. The neglected boulevards of yesteryear have been renovated as well, and are now inviting and brimming with life.

Museums, galleries, concert halls and theaters, a university campus and private and public colleges, a large central park and sports centers - all provide culture, entertainment and education to the city's residents, attracting people from across the land.

But Israel's main city - a radical antithesis to Jerusalem and its increasingly ultra-Orthodox trends and penury - which has developed into a metropolis resembling its Western counterparts, has two notable strikes against it: an inadequate public transport system and filth.

Public transport is Tel Aviv's weak point. Since the 1970s, governments have deliberated on and passed resolutions to create an advanced public transport system such as a subway or light rail, with ample capacity and a ready bus network. Anything to free up the ever-inflating congestion that clogs the city's exit and entrance points and paralyzes the traffic inside.

All the plans have been delayed, owing to various excuses and through a tiresome chain of events, as pollution, overcrowding and financial burdens have gradually intensified.

Tel Aviv's blossoming as Israel's business and employment center is especially striking against the backdrop of Israel's other cities and their gradual decline. Effective transport to create a rapid link between the north and south of the country will also ease this socioeconomic hardship.

Filth on the street also plagues the city like a grim shadow. No mayor has been able to eradicate it. But despite all this, and even though many of its neighborhoods are still spectacularly ugly, it seems the words of one Tel Aviv poet fit the city very well. "There are prettier ones," Nathan Alterman wrote, "but none share its beauty."

Even the derogatory nickname which has been applied to Tel Aviv, "the bubble," need not offend the city. Bubbles too are sometimes necessary for countries in search of a normal life.

Michael Knud Ross, Norwegian-American Painter

Just one more day to see a lovely exhibition of paintings called "Spring," by Michael Knud Ross, a Norwegian-American painter, at the Dumbarton Concert Gallery in Georgetown's Historic Dumbarton Church. The closing reception is tomorrow night, from 4-7 pm. A friend of someone I know invited us to the opening reception, and I had meant to blog about the show for some time. Ross is an interesting realistic painter. I liked his paintings, so did someone I know, and so did the friend of someone I know. So, here is what the Norwegian embassy website has to say:

Spring is rebirth, vitality, promise. It is a time when birds fly north to nest, buds turn to leaves, people smile more, new beginnings seem possible, fears subside, hope emerges. The paintings in this exhibition stand on the threshold of spring: they are lively snapshots of nature blooming and of the people and little creatures that inhabit its skies and fields and waters. Colorful birds share their little, vibrant personalities. Figures touch and feel as they walk through landscapes of sunshine. Seas churn, fields glow, the senses awaken."

Ross recently returned from a three-month trek across west-Africa; several paintings in the exhibition come out of this experience.

Michael Knud Ross was born in Oslo, grew up in Scandinavia and Washington DC, and currently resides in San Francisco. In 2004 and 2005 he produced twelve public sculptures for disused emergency-call boxes in Washington, D.C. that are still on view. Recent exhibitions include a solo show at Geras-Tousignant Gallery in San Francisco in 2008, a solo show at Terrence Rogers Fine Art in 2007, and curating a survey of contemporary Scandinavian realism at Hillyer Art Space in Washington DC in 2007. His work is represented by Geras-Tousignant Gallery in San Francisco.

When: April 4 through April 14 (by appointment). Opening Reception on Saturday, April 4, 6-8 pm. Closing Reception on Tuesday, April 14, 4-7 pm.

Where: Dumbarton Concert Gallery, Georgetown's Historic Dumbarton Church, 3133 Dumbarton Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20007

Info: http://www.michaelrossart.com

Obama's Easter Surprise: 3 Dead Somali Pirates & One Live American Captain

As President Obama took communion at Easter Service in St. John's Church in Washington, DC, the US Navy did the right thing, saving America's truly heroic Captain Richard Phillips from Somali pirates who had taken him hostage...

IMHO, This action may be a game-changer in quite a few ways:

First, it helped President Obama differentiate himself from President Jimmy Carter, who saw his administration destroyed by a hostage crisis;

Second, it put an end to the Bush administration's tolerance for piracy;

Third, it has enraged the Somali pirates and their supporters, who have threatened to attack the US again--adding a new dimension to the war against Al Qaeda, which drove America from Somalia in the Clinton administration;

Fourth, it has demonstrated that Obama is willing to use force when necessary;

Finally, it showed the US Navy can do something right, that not every operation bogs down into a quagmire...restoring a modicum of deterrence to a world that may have wanted to see the US as Chairman Mao once called us: "a pitiful, helpless giant."

Not so pitiful, not so helpless, after all.

Well done, Mr. President! We salute you!

BTW, I'm glad you finally got a dog for the girls, too...

Pirate Hostage-Taking Followed Bow to Saudi King

IMHO, there's a direct connection between the fate of Maersk Alabama Captain Richard Phillips and President Obama's stunt at the G-20... Here's my thinking about how the pirates were thinking:

If the US bows to King Abdulla, why wouldn't the US bow to Somali pirates? After all, other countries routinely pay ransom nowadays, after all...

From the Khaleej Times:

The pirates, armed with AK-47s, pursued for several hours before finally catching Alabama. They climbed over the side and briefly overpowered the 20 crew members, all Americans. It was the first successful hijacking of an American-crewed vessel in memory, but only the latest in a long string of ship captures by Somali pirates. The violent takeover made Alabama the 67th vessel attacked since the beginning of 2009, according to the International Maritime Bureau, and approximately the 200th since 2008. Captured vessels netted some $20m in ransom last year. Today some dozen vessels and 200 seafarers are still being held in rowdy pirate towns in lawless northern Somalia.

IMHO, The saddest thing about Bush's botched Global War on Terror--which claimed to follow Benjamin Netanyahu's analysis that stamping out terrorism is analogous to stamping out piracy--is that instead of eliminating terrorism, the Bush administration ended up reviving piracy.

Good Friday

Today is Good Friday, a fast day for observant Catholics. More information from ChurchYear.net.:

Good Friday is the Friday within Holy Week, and is traditionally a time of fasting and penance, commemorating the anniversary of Christ's crucifixion and death. For Christians, Good Friday commemorates not just a historical event, but the sacrificial death of Christ, which with the resurrection, comprises the heart of the Christian faith. The Catholic Catechism states this succinctly:

Justification has been merited for us by the Passion of Christ who offered himself on the cross as a living victim, holy and pleasing to God, and whose blood has become the instrument of atonement for the sins of all men (CCC 1992).

This is based on the words of St. Paul: "[Believers] are justified freely by God's grace through the redemption in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as an expiation, through faith, by his blood... (Romans 3:24-25, NAB). The customs and prayers associated with Good Friday typically focus on the theme of Christ's sacrificial death for our sins.

The evening (at sunset) of Good Friday begins the second day of the Paschal Triduum. The major Good Friday worship services begin in the afternoon at 3:00 (the time Jesus likely died). Various traditions and customs are associated with the Western celebration of Good Friday. The singing (or preaching) of the Passion of St. John's gospel consists of reading or singing parts of John's gospel (currently John 18:1-19:42 in the Catholic Church). The Veneration of the Cross is also common in the Western Church. This is when Christians approach a wooden cross and venerate it, often by kneeling before it, or kissing part of it. In addition to these traditions, Holy Communion with the reserved host is practiced. In the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church, no Masses are said on Good Friday or Holy Saturday, therefore the reserved host from the Holy (Maundy) Thursday Mass is used. This is called the "Mass of the Pre-Sanctified." Many Churches also offer the Stations of the Cross, also called the "Way of the Cross," on Good Friday. This is a devotion in which fourteen events surrounding the death of Jesus are commemorated. Most Catholic Churches have fourteen images of Jesus' final days displayed throughout the parish, for use in public Stations of the Cross services. Another service started by the Jesuit Alphonso Messia in 1732, now less common, the Tre Ore or "Three Hours," is often held from noon until 3:00 PM, and consists of seven sermons on the seven last words of Christ. This service has been popular in many Protestant churches. Good Friday, along with Ash Wednesday, is an official fast day of the Catholic Church.

The Eastern Churches have different customs for the day they call "the Great Friday." The Orthodox Church begins the day with Matins (Morning Prayer), where the "Twelve Gospels" is chanted, which consists of 12 passages drawn from the Passion narratives. In the morning, the "Little Hours" follow one after the other, consisting of Gospel, Epistle, and Prophet readings. Vespers (Evening Prayer) ends with a solemn veneration of the epitaphion, an embroidered veil containing scenes of Christ's burial. Compline (Night Prayer) includes a lamentation placed on the Virgin Mary's lips. On Good Friday night, a symbolic burial of Christ is performed. Traditionally, Chaldean and Syrian Christians cease using their customary Shlama greeting ("peace be with you") on Good Friday and Holy Saturday, because Judas greeted Christ this way. They use the phrase "The light of God be with your departed ones" instead. In Russia, the tradition is to bring out a silver coffin, bearing a cross, and surrounded with candles and flowers. The faithful creep on their knees and kiss and venerate the image of Christ's body painted on the "winding sheet" (shroud). For more information see The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church and The Catholic Source Book.

A Scene from the White House Seder

The White House Blog recently posted this photograph of what is reported to the be first Seder hosted by a sitting US President, perhaps intended to soothe some feathers that may have been ruffled by President Obama's reported (and clumsily denied) bow in front of Saudi Arabia's King Abdulla...

Guest list on the Huffington Post. Didn't see the Israeli Ambassador's name on it...

Huffington Post: Passover Traditions From Around the World...

Hag Sameach! From today's Huffington Post:

GIBRALTAR: In the British territory of Gibraltar, the tiny island off the coast of Spain, Jews actually mix the dust of bricks into their charoset dish, a symbol of the mortar used to hold together the brick walls the Jews built in Egypt, according to Hillel....

Arianna Huffington on Larry Summers' Ptolemaic Economics

From today's Huffington Post:

Of course, it's less of a surprise that Geithner and Summers believe in bank-centrism -- they're both creatures of it. Which is why it wasn't a shock when it was reported this weekend that Summers had received $5.2 million for advising a hedge fund last year, or that he received hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees from some of the very banks -- including J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs -- that have been on the receiving end of billions in taxpayers money. Billions that have come with very few strings attached -- and almost no transparency.

I am in no way suggesting there is anything corrupt about this or any quid pro quo involved. It's just that in a bank-centric universe, funneling no-strings-attached money to too-big-to-fail banks is the logical thing to do.

So is arguing that the banking crisis is just a liquidity problem rather than an insolvency one, as Geithner continues to do (and if the stress tests come back declaring Citi solvent, it will be high time to start stress testing the stress testers).

In a bank-centric universe, it's also no surprise that "mark-to-market" accounting rules, in which banks have to calculate and report their assets based on what those assets are actually worth, instead of what they'd like them to be worth, are being abandoned. A good name for the reworked accounting standards would be mark-to-fantasy, because that's basically what balance sheets will be under these new rules. Of course, to a true believer in bank-centrism, the problem with mark-to-market is that it's not good for the banks. It's the accounting equivalent of Galileo's telescope.

Last week at the G-20 meeting, Gordon Brown proclaimed that "the old Washington consensus is over." But when it comes to attacking the financial crisis, the zombie Wall Street/Washington consensus that has everything in America orbiting around the banks is still the order of the day.

The longer bank-centrism is the dominant cosmology in the Obama administration -- and the longer it takes to switch to a plan that reflects a cosmology in which the American people are the center of the universe and are deemed too-big-to-fail -- the greater the risk that the economic crisis will be more prolonged than necessary. And the greater the suffering the crisis will continue to cause.

There is an enormous human cost to this bank-centric dogma. Unemployment, already at levels not seen since 1983, is skyrocketing. In many places in the country, it's approaching 20 percent (and in Detroit it's 22 percent).

Writing about the "grand book" that is the universe, Galileo declared that it "cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written... without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth."

That's where we find ourselves today, wandering about in a dark financial labyrinth -- being led by good men blinded by an obsolete view of the world.

Huffington Post: Larry Summers "Best White House Aide Money Can Buy"

According to David Sirota's analysis of the G-20 meeting:

Was there a quid pro quo whereby Summers took cash from Wall Street and then entered the administration and did Wall Street's bidding? Not explicitly, no. Bribery in our country most often operates in the world of the implicit - Summers got the cash because he was a solid Wall Street investment, a guy who could be counted on to continue championing deregulation in crucial government and public policy spheres. It was likely both a reward for his longtime deregulation advocacy, and an encouragement for him to continue in that advocacy - a signal that he will continue to be rewarded for his extremism.

And we now see the consequences. With the global community ready to embrace very strong financial regulations, our government - whose economic policy is steered by Summers - worked to water down those regulations. Indeed, a $7 million investment got Wall Street a huge return - perhaps it's best investment in the lat few years.

Put another way, there's a cause and effect there - it may not be overt, it may be subtle, the news media may be more interested in reporting on the trivialities of Barack and Michelle's European travels, and the Summers case may be a microcosm of a larger systemic probem, but it's there. You can avert your eyes from it, stomp your feet and pretend beyond a reasonable doubt that it's not true, but it's right there.

Richard Posner on Rationality and Economics

Someone I know told me to read Richard Posner's review of Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism, by George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller, in The New Republic. An excerpt:

There is a simpler explanation for unemployment in depressions, one that dispenses with irrationality. A worker who, rather than being paid a flat wage, is paid a percentage of his firm's income would be unlikely to complain when his wage dropped in a depression; he would know that his wage was variable, and he would plan his life accordingly. But if paid a fixed wage, he is likely to count on it as a steady source of income. Since depressions are rare and have unpredictable consequences, he will not have been able to protect himself from the consequences of a depression-induced cut in his wage. He is going to be upset to find that he is working as hard or harder but being paid less, and he will not be reassured by being given a lecture on deflation and purchasing power, because he will not understand or believe it. And whereas wage cuts make the entire work force unhappy, layoffs make just the laid-off workers unhappy, and since they are no longer on the premises they do not demoralize the remaining work force by their unhappy presence. The employer, for this and other reasons--such as wanting to economize on benefits and overhead and induce the remaining workers to work harder lest they be laid off too--is likely to prefer laying off workers to cutting wages. (Unemployment insurance is a factor as well.)

This explanation for unemployment in depressions is consistent with Akerlof and Shiller in giving weight to cognitive and emotional factors (workers do not understand deflation, unhappy workers can demoralize the workplace), but it avoids jargon and condescension and the fascination with irrationality. Yet it may be too simple to please an academic economist. One reason why Keynes fell into disfavor among academic economists, and why Akerlof and Shiller want to dress him in the garb of a behavioral economist, is that although he was a brilliant economist and remains a hero of liberal economists, he was not a formal or systematic thinker. He belonged to the era before economists insisted on mathematizing the discipline. The General Theory is beautifully written--and full of loose ends and puzzling omissions. Keynes was a self-taught economist and a part-time academic. He had a rich and varied non-academic life as a government official and adviser, journalist, speculator, academic administrator, and member of the Cambridge Apostles and the Bloomsbury group. Having observed how people, including himself, behaved in the real world, he was unself-conscious about incorporating into economic theory such unsystematized and untheorized concepts as "animal spirits" (and its opposite, "liquidity preference"--the desire to hoard cash rather than spend or invest it).

The complexity of a modern economy has defeated efforts to create mathematical models that would enable depressions to be predicted and would provide guidance on how to prevent them or, failing that, to recover from them. The insights of behavioral economics have not done the trick, either. Shiller is to be commended for spotting bubbles, but few if any other behavioral economists noticed them; and he and Akerlof offer no concrete proposals for how we might recover from the current depression and prevent a future one. They want credit loosened, but so does everyone else--so did Keynes, who criticized our government for tightening credit in the early stages of the Great Depression.

We will discover soon enough whether the measures taken by the Obama administration are reviving the animal spirits of producers and consumers. The intentions are good. But the lack of focus, the partisan squabbling, the dizzying policy oscillations, the delays in execution, and the harassment of bankers are bad. By increasing the uncertainty of the business environment, these things are dampening the animal spirits--the courage to reason and act in the face of an uncertain future. Seventy-three years after the publication of The General Theory, it may still be our best guide to recovery from our present distress, not least because of its common-sense psychology.There is a simpler explanation for unemployment in depressions, one that dispenses with irrationality. A worker who, rather than being paid a flat wage, is paid a percentage of his firm's income would be unlikely to complain when his wage dropped in a depression; he would know that his wage was variable, and he would plan his life accordingly. But if paid a fixed wage, he is likely to count on it as a steady source of income. Since depressions are rare and have unpredictable consequences, he will not have been able to protect himself from the consequences of a depression-induced cut in his wage. He is going to be upset to find that he is working as hard or harder but being paid less, and he will not be reassured by being given a lecture on deflation and purchasing power, because he will not understand or believe it. And whereas wage cuts make the entire work force unhappy, layoffs make just the laid-off workers unhappy, and since they are no longer on the premises they do not demoralize the remaining work force by their unhappy presence. The employer, for this and other reasons--such as wanting to economize on benefits and overhead and induce the remaining workers to work harder lest they be laid off too--is likely to prefer laying off workers to cutting wages. (Unemployment insurance is a factor as well.)

This explanation for unemployment in depressions is consistent with Akerlof and Shiller in giving weight to cognitive and emotional factors (workers do not understand deflation, unhappy workers can demoralize the workplace), but it avoids jargon and condescension and the fascination with irrationality. Yet it may be too simple to please an academic economist. One reason why Keynes fell into disfavor among academic economists, and why Akerlof and Shiller want to dress him in the garb of a behavioral economist, is that although he was a brilliant economist and remains a hero of liberal economists, he was not a formal or systematic thinker. He belonged to the era before economists insisted on mathematizing the discipline. The General Theory is beautifully written--and full of loose ends and puzzling omissions. Keynes was a self-taught economist and a part-time academic. He had a rich and varied non-academic life as a government official and adviser, journalist, speculator, academic administrator, and member of the Cambridge Apostles and the Bloomsbury group. Having observed how people, including himself, behaved in the real world, he was unself-conscious about incorporating into economic theory such unsystematized and untheorized concepts as "animal spirits" (and its opposite, "liquidity preference"--the desire to hoard cash rather than spend or invest it).

The complexity of a modern economy has defeated efforts to create mathematical models that would enable depressions to be predicted and would provide guidance on how to prevent them or, failing that, to recover from them. The insights of behavioral economics have not done the trick, either. Shiller is to be commended for spotting bubbles, but few if any other behavioral economists noticed them; and he and Akerlof offer no concrete proposals for how we might recover from the current depression and prevent a future one. They want credit loosened, but so does everyone else--so did Keynes, who criticized our government for tightening credit in the early stages of the Great Depression.

We will discover soon enough whether the measures taken by the Obama administration are reviving the animal spirits of producers and consumers. The intentions are good. But the lack of focus, the partisan squabbling, the dizzying policy oscillations, the delays in execution, and the harassment of bankers are bad. By increasing the uncertainty of the business environment, these things are dampening the animal spirits--the courage to reason and act in the face of an uncertain future. Seventy-three years after the publication of The General Theory, it may still be our best guide to recovery from our present distress, not least because of its common-sense psychology.