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  • Rudy “9/11” Giuliani – Shameless Exploitation Of A Tragedy

    Politicians exploiting tragedy and fear are nothing new.  No photo op, gimmick, credit grabbing or pandering is above the political fray. Therefore it was hardly a surprise that Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of New York City on 9/11/2001 and a wily political opportunist, attached himself to the momentous events of that day with the tenacity of a leech – inflating his role as the super efficient, confident and courageous leader who managed the chaos in the aftermath of the tragedy and comforted citizens. Before he entered the Republican presidential race, Giuliani made millions on the lecture circuit and in the private sector by milking the events of 9/11 and his image as an intrepid "take charge" guy, calling himself "America’s Mayor."  Well, the mayor now aspires to be president and his campaign theme  hinges almost solely on one achievement – his role as the leader of 9/11.  One has to wonder if Giuliani might "trademark" that date or have it tattooed on his forehead, lest we forget.  Until he does that, he sure has found new and tasteless ways to make money from the association.

    Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani has been criticised over a fundraising party at which participants are being urged to donate $9.11.

    The International Association of Fire Fighters accuses him of exploiting the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks.

    Mr Giuliani rose to national prominence as New York’s mayor on 9/11.

    The Giuliani campaign says it did not plan the event, which is due to take place on Wednesday evening in California at the home of a supporter.

    Nevertheless, the firefighters association said the stated theme of the fundraiser – "$9.11 for Rudy" was in poor taste.

    "It is nothing short of disrespectful to the legacy of the thousands of civilians and 343 brave firefighters who died at Ground Zero," said Harold Schaitberger, IAFF president.

    Democratic presidential candidate Chris Dodd described the fundraiser’s theme as "unconscionable, shameless and sickening."

  • Anthropomorphism and Empathy Revisited

    Early last year I wrote a post on pet euthanasia when the memory of a beloved and very loving pet’s death was painfully fresh in my mind. The article was linked to a Newsweek essay by Jonathan Cooperman who had just gone through the wrenching experience of putting his playful Doberman to sleep. I argued that those of us who love our animal companions deeply, relate to them at some level as persons. In doing so, we unashamedly accord them the dignity and worth that we normally reserve for our human family members. While some find the notion bewildering and even preposterous, others like me, find nothing unusual about the sentiment. 

    Abbas Raza, fellow pet lover and editor of 3 Quarks Daily, recently went through the ordeal of dealing with the near fatal sickness of his much loved cat, Freddy. He was distraught and disconsolate and was surprised by the depth of his own sorrow. In a heartfelt article, Abbas examines his emotions and his deep attachment to his feline companion. He concludes that Freddy had long ago ceased being a "cat" in his mind and had been transformed into a very interesting and endearing "person" whose company is now an essential source of joy for him.

    There are two kinds of people: there are the kooky kind who will spend $4,000 on dialysis for their cat whose kidneys are failing (substitute some significant expenditure of resources for individuals in differing financial circumstances—you know what I mean), even if only to extend its life briefly; and then there are the kind who will make fun of the former (or even regard them with moral disapproval—that money could have been used for better purposes, etcetera). Recent events surprised me by showing that I belong in the first category. And now that I know I belong there, I am going to attempt an explanation or at least hazard a conjecture, a speculation, a plain guess, at what puts some people there.

    I have thought a bit about my own reactions which, as I mentioned above, surprised and even embarrassed me. … Here’s what I think: while you can have various degrees of affection for pets, there is a quantum leap that you can make (and this is a Rubicon that cannot be uncrossed): if in your own psychological representation of your pet, you habitually grant them personhood, then there is no choice but to treat them as you would a person because different parts of your mind which specialize in generating the emotions which allow you to interact with (and love) other humans come into play, and these are irresistible impulses. You might as well try to not care about your children. I believe that some animals, like cats and dogs, have through their long histories of living in people’s homes as pets (more than 10,000 years in the case of cats), been naturally selected to encourage human empathy. Imagine what a survival advantage it is to the household cat that its young behave in such ways and make such tiny, vulnerable (to the human ear) sounds that it takes a particularly monstrous human to harm a kitten. Similarly, they have, I think "learned" (even if they do not have the equivalent emotion–after all, just as I don’t know what it is like to be a bat, I don’t know what it is like to be a cat either) to express emotions that move us and encourage us to conceive of them as persons.

    Read Abbas’ entire article here.

  • Nelson Mandela – R.I.P.?

    You didn’t hear about Nelson Mandela’s death, did you?  Neither did I or the rest of the world. But George W. Bush, the president of the most powerful nation in the world thinks Mandela is dead. Not just that – but that Saddam Hussein may have killed him. How’s that for breaking news?  I watched Bush’s press conference and when I heard this claim, I nearly dropped the plate I was washing in the kitchen.  The statement is so incoherent that I can’t quite figure out if it was a Bushism, a subtle metaphor or another depressing example of presidential ignorance. Can you tell?   The White House has not issued a clarification.

    Here is part of Bush’s exchange with NBC’s David Gregory:

    Q I’ll ask you about Iraq. Efforts to curtail the deployment of troops is an ongoing debate right now. One of the things you spoke about in your address last week had to do with impatience with the Iraqi government. And you spoke about that, but not in much detail. How is that dynamic changing, your level of frustration with the lack of political progress? And how long can Americans reasonably expect you to wait before you take some kind of action that really forces the Iraqi government’s hand to reach the goals of reconciliation that you set for them?

    THE PRESIDENT: In my speech, I made it clear that there has to be a change in security for there to be reconciliation. And I also said that progress will yield fewer troops. In other words, return on success, is what I said.

    There are two types of reconciliation, David. One is that reconciliation, that very visible reconciliation that happens through the passage of law. In other words, it’s reconciliation that shows the Iraqi people that people from different backgrounds can get along and, at the same time, that government can function. Clearly there needs to be work there. In other words, there needs to be the passage of law. For example, we strongly believe that an oil revenue-sharing law will send a message to Sunni, Shia and Kurd alike that there is an effort at the national level to achieve reconciliation. …..

    …. Part of the reason why there is not this instant democracy in Iraq is because people are still recovering from Saddam Hussein’s brutal rule. I thought an interesting comment was made when somebody said to me, I heard somebody say, where’s Mandela? Well, Mandela is dead, because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas. He was a brutal tyrant that divided people up and split families, and people are recovering from this. So there’s a psychological recovery that is taking place. And it’s hard work for them. And I understand it’s hard work for them. Having said that, I’m not going the give them a pass when it comes to the central government’s reconciliation efforts.

    And just minutes ago I heard the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad make this outrageous claim.

    Asked about widely documented government abuse of women and homosexuals in his country, Ahmadinejad said, "We don’t have homosexuals" in Iran, and that women did have freedoms.

  • Outlaw Art

    Picasso, Monet, Matisse, Miro, Kandinsky, Warhol, Van Gogh and a self portrait by Edvard Munch. One of the best of Jackson Pollock. A leading  museum of fine art in Europe or America?  How about the basement of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran? 

    Earlier this year I posted an article by Indian journalist Manoj Joshi in which he recorded his impressions of today’s Tehran. Among other things, he observed: 

    Iran’s modern art collection, housed in the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, is the best outside of Europe and the US. But when I searched the galleries for Monet, Pissarro, Van Gogh, Diego Rivera, Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Munch and a score of other world-famous artists it is reputed to have, I found nothing: only painting after painting depicting the Islamic Revolution and a few pieces of brilliant Iranian modern art.

    I asked a curator where the other paintings were and his response was: “They have been locked away since the Revolution and are displayed only once a year for a period of a month.”

    Iran, awash in oil money in the 1970s, acquired some of the finest specimens of western art. The works saw the light of day for just a few short years. Soon after the acquisition, the Shah of Iran was deposed and Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution swept over the cultural landscape of Iran. Western art came to be looked upon as anti-Islamic, tasteless and even subversive. Consequently, the extravagant cache of masterpieces was banished to the basement of the museum – rarely put on public display. Joshi didn’t get to see the hidden art treasure of Tehran.  But Kim Murphy, a writer for the Los Angeles Times managed to get a glimpse.  (If the L.A. Times link gives you trouble, see the same story here)

    Iran_art Habibollah Sadeghi looks vaguely irritated to see me: not surprised, seeing as he has spent the last 10 days evading my phone calls, letters and polite appeals delivered through intermediaries. He knows I want to see his Picassos. He doesn’t want to show them to me.

    But Iranian hospitality being what it is, Sadeghi is forced to invite me into his office for tea. "I got your letter," he says. "Frankly, I was somewhat offended that you seem to think our paintings are like some big nuclear secret. They are not a secret at all."

    "I know," I reply. "That’s why I came to see them."

    We are not talking about the paintings on the wall at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, which Sadeghi directs. Those are, at the moment, a stylish if bland collection of Iranian textile and costume design for the fashion-conscious and appropriately modest Iranian woman.

    No, we’re talking about the outlaw paintings in the basement, locked in the museum’s vault. Not just the Picassos — the Kandinskys, the Miros, the Warhols. The Monet, the Pissarro, the Toulouse-Lautrec, the Van Gogh. Possibly the best Jackson Pollock outside the U.S.

    Ruled by one of the most vehemently anti-Western governments in the world, Iran is, by many assessments, home to the most extensive collection of late 19th and 20th century Western art outside the West. It is a treasure trove of masters that is all but forgotten outside knowledgeable art circles because, for all but a few of the last 30 years, it has been virtually unseen.

    "You can’t find any collection of this comprehension outside the Western world," said [Ali-Reza] Samiazar, (Sadeghi’s predecessor as director of the museum) who now teaches at a Tehran art institute. "In Tokyo, you may find important works by Impressionist artists. But in terms of a comprehensive collection covering all the major movements, no. Nowhere. Not in the East European countries, not in Scandinavia, not in South America or Asia. Not anywhere. It’s one of the most important cultural assets of this country."

    Which has brought me to Sadeghi’s office, and my exercise in dignified begging.

    Sadeghi says there are plans afoot to build a major national gallery in Tehran to put the paintings on permanent display, along with the museum’s extensive collection of Iranian contemporary art, and acquire new works — a Cezanne, perhaps — to fill in the holes in the Tehran collection.

    "This collection is near to our soul. It is a precious thing for us, we keep it like the apple of our eye. But we also believe the collection of the vault belongs to the whole of humanity."

    "All the more reason to see it," I say.

    "You will see it," he says.

  • Frank Pasquale: Anonymous Blogger

    Yesterday morning I came across this article in the Houston Chronicle. The story is of a law suit involving free speech and privacy rights of an anonymous blogger who has been relentlessly critical of a medical facility in Paris, Texas.

    An unlikely Internet frontier is Paris, Texas, population 26,490, where a defamation lawsuit filed by the local hospital against a critical anonymous blogger is testing the bounds of Internet privacy, First Amendment freedom of speech and whistle-blower rights. A state district judge has told lawyers for the hospital and the blogger that he plans within a week to order a Dallas Internet service provider to release the blogger’s name. The blogger’s lawyer, James Rodgers of Paris, said Tuesday he will appeal to preserve the man’s anonymity and right to speak without fear of retaliation.

    Rodgers said the core question in the legal battle is whether a plaintiff in a lawsuit can "strip" a blogger of anonymity merely by filing a lawsuit. Without some higher standard to prove a lawsuit has merit, he said, defamation lawsuits could have a chilling effect on Internet free speech. "Anybody could file a lawsuit and say, ‘I feel like I’ve been defamed. Give me the name,’ " Rodgers said.

    But there is little case law in Texas or nationally to give judges a standard for when to expose anonymous postings on the Internet.  "Right now it’s a very murky area of the law," Rodgers said this week.

    Since March 2005, The-Paris-site blog has been relentlessly critical of the business management and health care provided by the Paris Regional Medical Center, owned by Essent Healthcare Inc. of Nashville, Tenn.

    "Quality issues are in play, patients are avoiding the facilities unless they have no choice, and employees are only staying because their families anchor them, not because of any loyalty to Essent," is a mild example from an April blog posting.

    Further down the article, I came across this revelation and did a double take.

    The blogger identifies himself under pseudonyms of fac_p and Frank Pasquale. Most blog commenters — some of whom appear to be hospital employees — are anonymous.

    Now as it happens, there is another Frank Pasquale, a very non-anonymous blogger who uses his real name on various legal sites. Pasquale is a law professor and he frequently writes on medico-legal issues. I am familiar with Professor Pasquale, having read his articles first at PrawfsBlawg and later at other legal blogs.

    The "real" Pasquale was contacted by a Houston Chronicle reporter in this context who asked:

    "I’m a reporter with the Houston Chronicle, and I’m doing a story on the fight between the anonymous blog in Paris and the local hospital. And I had a few questions I wanted to ask you for the story if I could :

    The lawsuit Essent Healthcare filed against the blogger says he stole your name for his identity on the blog. Have your read this blog? If so, do you believe it is your identity that was stolen, or just a coincidence? If it was your identity, what do you think the significance of this is for other people who are similarly situated to you on the Internet?"

    What indeed is the implication here?  Is it a coincidence that the anonymous blogger chose Pasquale’s (who happens to write quite prolifically on medical matters) identity ?  The name Frank Pasquale is not exactly John Smith. Therefore it seems unlikely that it was pulled out of a hat.  Whether or not the Texas blogger, fac_p  has slandered Essent Healthcare as the hospital claims, can it be true that he / she has deliberately impersonated another "blogger?" Can that be proved?  And if so, is that in some way illegal? How very interesting! 

    There is a comment on this bizarre blog event by Mike Madison of the Madisonian. See Frank Pasquale’s  own entry from June, 2007 on his "purloined persona." Interestingly enough, the anonymous blogger fac_p left a comment on this post evoking "John Smith" and asked:

    "As to the charge of mis-representing myself as an associate professor by your name, at no time was that done, and if you would care to peruse the site, you can verify that.

    Had I picked John Smith, would any such claim be made?"

    I have corresponded with Professor Pasquale on a few occasions. So I decided to ask him what  was going on. He said to me in his characteristically calm manner:

    The paradox is that the blogger can’t prove he’s not impersonating me without saying "I am named Frank Pasquale".  . . which would reveal his identity! 

    The key problem here is I don’t know if the blogger’s name is actually Frank Pasquale.  Though I blog a lot on health issues. (see here: http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/health_law/)
    I don’t know why someone trying to shame (defame?) a particular hospital would appropriate my name.

    By the way, I don’t want to use the term "defame" in part because I’m afraid I could be sued by the Paris, TX blogger for defaming him by saying he defamed someone else!

     

  • Bush’s Exit Strategy: Goodman and Good Sense #6

    In recent days I have lamented to myself and to some of my co-bloggers that much as I would like to go back to regular political blogging, I just can’t bring myself to gather my thoughts. I have nothing new to say about the Bush administration that I haven’t said before. Immoral and unethical? Check. Boorish and incompetent? Check. Dishonest and disingenuous? Check. Heartless and calculating? Check. The worst presidency in the history of the US? Check.

    Last night I heard George W. Bush describe his plans for the future of Iraq and the US military’s involvement there. As usual, he said nothing that we didn’t know or didn’t expect. And unsurprisingly, it made little or no sense. Once again, the Commander in Chief chose to hide behind the shiny uniform and medals of one of his military generals. (See this You Tube video of Bush lamenting the treatment of General Petraeus by Democrats. The video was inspired by the outburst of a distraught Britney Spears fan.) The testimony by General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker before the Congress, strategically planned on and around the September 11 anniversary, paved the way for Bush to once again come before American citizens and sell another bill of faulty goods – this time the much vaunted  "surge" in Iraq.  No one, including the most ardent supporters of Bush, expects the military surge to solve any problem, in the short or the long term. We all understand that this is a stalling strategy – a Texas Hold ‘Em game of poker faced bluffing. The only real plan Bush has is to hand over this disaster to the next president (probably a Democrat) and escape into his retirement years with a sigh of relief. As has been the story of his life, someone else will have to clean up Bush Jr’s mess.

    Columnist Ellen Goodman echoes my sentiments. She rightly points out that the only exit strategy George Bush cares about is his own.

    It was no accident that bin Laden timed his videos for Sept. 11. But then again, how fitting it was that the hearings on the Iraq war coincided with the anniversary of his attack.

    The testimony was dotted with overt and subtle messages about Iraq as the center of the war on terrorism without acknowledging how it became the center. In opening statements, Ambassador Ryan Crocker used "al-Qaida" nine times and Gen. David Petraeus used it 17 times without mentioning that there was no al-Qaida in Iraq before we were in Iraq.

    There was nothing new in this false connection. For that matter, there was no news at all from the hearings, if by "news" we mean something unexpected: "General Bites Commander in Chief."

    Was there any doubt that Petraeus wanted to keep the surge troops as long as possible? Was there any doubt that Bush would claim to follow the advice of the man he commands and announce plans to withdraw those 30,000 troops by next summer?

    Nevertheless, to my surprise, these hearings did mark a turning point. In place of swagger, we saw sobriety. There was no presidential voice in these rooms telling the senators and representatives, as he told the Aussies, "we’re kicking ass." The cockeyed optimism of "Mission Accomplished" was replaced by the controlled pessimism in Crocker’s voice as he claimed, simply, that "success is attainable."

    But if you need more proof of sobriety, there was the moment of the hearings when Petraeus was asked whether Americans were safer now. After a pregnant pause, he answered: "Sir, I don’t know, actually."

    The choices facing voters will be these: Chaos in Iraq, or casualties in America. The forces of terrorism let loose in the world, or the real war against terrorism distracted by the war in Iraq. One side will ask how we can justify the massacres and mayhem that may well follow our departure. The other side will ask how we can justify asking one more, or 1,000, or 5,000 Americans to die – for what? A mistake.

    Between these two unbearable options, I choose leaving. But any choice comes with a bitter recognition of the financial, moral and political fallout from this president’s decision and deception.

    In Robert Draper’s aptly named book on the Bush presidency, "Dead Certain," the president muses on his retirement. "I’ll give some speeches, just to replenish the ol’ coffers," he says. "We’ll have a nice place in Dallas," he adds, where he will run "a fantastic Freedom Institute. I can just envision getting in the car, getting bored, going down to the ranch."

    Robert Draper reports in the same book that Bush confessed to crying during his presidency:

    Draper says President Bush also admits that he cries. “I’ve got God’s shoulder to cry on. And I cry a lot. I do a lot of crying in this job. I’ll bet I’ve shed more tears than you can count, as president," Bush told Draper.

    Multiply that by hundreds of millions Mr. Bush, to include others in the world who have been reduced to tears by your presidency. Perhaps it’s worse than crying. Your presidency sometimes feels like a pebble stuck in our throats and we can only hope to breathe freely when it is dislodged – in a little more than fifteen interminable months.