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Atrios' guest blogger Pie writes:
Covington heard it first on NPR, but there's nary a peep from major news sources, not yet anyway. But I just found it in a SCOT J. PALTROW WSJ article which was printed on page A6. The story's been out there. Where's the coverage?!!!!
If you don't have a subscription to the online WSJ, click to read Atrios' excerpts of the Paltrow article.
I'm watching the DNC on television. It's a good show. Good production values. I just don't recognize the Democratic party anymore.
American political culture has become an intellectual race to the bottom. This isn't populism. It's the only destructive form of intellectualism I know of. Everyone's second-guessing themselves hoping David Brooks won't snark at them.
I'm tired of watching the Democrats fetishize Vietnam. Sure, it's a useful stick to beat George Bush without saying anything "negative." Kerry distinguished himself as a soldier, but he also distinguished himself as a antiwar activist. His Vietnam buddies earned their place on the stage, but so did his fellow antiwar activists.
Now the PBS pundits are praising Kerry's speech because "it could have been given by a Republican or a Democrat." I don't think that's true. There's a big difference between Republicans and Democrats in America. Kerry just gave a fine speech, a Democratic speech. He's in touch with the times he lives in.
He's going to win and I'm going to help him.
"Senior Al Qaeda operative" arrested. [AP]
Too bad nobody's ever heard of him...and they captured him "a few days back."
Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani -- who is [somewhere] on the FBI's list of 22 most wanted terrorists, with a reward of up to $25 million on his head -- was arrested Sunday in the eastern city of Gujrat along with at least 15 other people, Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayyat told The Associated Press.[Emphasis added.]
C'mon, Pakistan, your shit is weak. I want my HVT, Karl Rove.
I knew that numbers rackets were some kind of illegal betting, but I always assumed that playing the numbers was more like betting through a bookie and less like a lottery. Interesting... [NYT permallink.]
Although numbers rackets have long flourished in the New York underworld, the Perez family used a version of the game called bolita, a Spanish term for "little ball," investigators said.
It was introduced in New York in the 1960's, they said, by Jose Battle, a vice officer from Havana who switched sides in the United States and built an empire on the game.
In this version, investigators said, two three-digit numbers are generated every day. A nightly number is derived from the total amount bet, or handle, at Yonkers Raceway; a daily number came from whatever track was featured in The Daily News that morning.
The first digit of each three-digit bolita number is the last digit of the total handle for the first three winning horses in the first three races at whichever track is chosen. The second digit is the last number of the total handle for the first three horses in the first five races. The final digit is the last number of the total handle for the first three horses in the first seven races.
The game, for just that reason, was also known as 3-5-7.
I'm guessing there are thousands of variations. This one is interesting because it's like a lottery for people who don't trust the local purveyor of lotto services to run a truly random draw. It uses "noise" in realtime public events (race horse handles) as a kind of random number generator.
Randy Barnett of the Volokh Conspiracy has kicked off a lively discussion about libertarian justifications for war. John Quiggin of Crooked Timer responds to Barnett's arguments and suggests additional reasons why most kinds of war are difficult to reconcile with libertarian values.
In a parallel discussion, Mark Kleiman points out that orthodox libertarianism is hard pressed to justify war at all, given its hostility to the state itself and involuntary taxation, coupled with its stringent side constraints against violations of individual rights (even those that would advance the rights of the many by unjustly killing or robbing the few). To which Matt Yglesias retorts that only a "hyper-dogmatic" libertarian would see any clear connection between foreign and domestic policy.
Determining the correct libertarian response to war is complicated because we don't have a libertarian minimalist state. Barnett has explicitly sidestepped the question of what libertarians should think about the invasion of Iraq. So, we're arguing about what a hypothetical libertarian should think of a hypothetical war, waged by a hypothetical (presumably non-minimalist) state. It is important to keep two issues separate in our minds: what should a libertarian living in an ordinary state think of war, and, what foreign policies a pure minimal could state pursue. Barnett thinks there's some discrepancy between what a libertarian can support in the real world and what a just (libertarian) state ought to do.
Barnett argues that just because the state is illegitimate doesn't mean that everything it does is also unjust. This is like arguing that it's okay to use a stolen credit card to buy guns to give to your neighbor to shoot her abusive husband. As a consequentialist, I'm not prepared to dismiss that option out of hand, but it's hard to see how libertarians can justify this kind of behavior within their own moral framework. After all, libertarian political philosophy is distinguished by its scrupulous respect for side constraints.
The most serious constraints on libertarian justifications for war are these:
a) Foundational issues (The state, taxation, the military, the mandate, the tyranny of the majority)
I'm going to start from the assumption that libertarians endorse a minimal state. A minimal state is a mutual protection organization which defends its members from each other and from outside enemies. A libertarian state must have an army. The minimal state may even levy modest taxes to pay the army. However, it seems that a true libertarian army must be an all-mercenary force. A traditional volunteer army violates too many side constraints. For example, soldiers in state-sponsored armies give up many basic libertarian rights such the freedom to bargain for higher pay or quite if they don't like their jobs. Libertarians couldn't justify stripping soldiers of such basic rights when they enlist, let alone drafting them. A libertarian state would either have to pay market rates for freelance soldiers, or compromise its ideals in order to raise an army.
A libertarian state would also struggle to establish its mandate to wage war A non-libertarian can argue that a democratically elected state is thereby empowered to war. Inevitably, some citizens will oppose the war, including some people in the military (who may not be excused, despite their opposition). Libertarians take the tyranny of the majority seriously. They ask:what right does the majority have to impose its views on the minority in the case of war?
b) Justification (Defense, preemptive strikes, and "preventative" wars)
The power of a libertarian state to wage war must be sharply limited. I see no reason why a libertarian state couldn't wage a defensive war on home territory. A libertarian state could also justify a truly preemptive strike against an enemy who was poised to attack. A libertarian state could not, however, engage in so-called "preventative" wars which are justified by the expectation that conflict is inevitable and the state would do better to eliminate the opposition before the enemy becomes stronger. "Preventative" war violates libertarian principles because it violates the rights of the innocent people that we will kill in order to advance our strategic position. A libertarian state isn't entitled to destroy the lives and property of innocents because it leaders constitute a possible future threat.
c) Justification ("Humanitarian" wars)
Libertarian states are not entitled to wage "humanitarian" wars. Humanitarian wars are military charity. Most libertarians think that it's wrong to tax Americans to pay for development aid the third world--even if this money is spent reversing rights abuses like the slave trade, child prostitution, or the subjugation of women. A humanitarian war is an even more radical form of redistribution because the war will kill some of our own citizens.
[Lightly copy edited 8/10/4.]
Crime School: Money Laundering, by Chris Mathers.
I've been meaning to review this book all summer. Luckily, its subject matter has been getting more topical every day. The author, Chris Mathers, is a former undercover cop and an internationally recognized expert on money laundering. Crime School is equal parts police procedural, international finance primer, memoir, and polemic. It's also really funny.
As an RCMP officer, Mathers often posed as a money launderer to drug dealers. He writes about the trials and tribulations of this difficult job:
Which brings me to another issue: how to prepare the cash. Most people, including drug dealers seem to think that money should be packaged in amounts, as opposed to denominations. Invariably, when we would start to deal with a new drug organization, I would have to sit down and explain how they would package the money to bring us. It would usually take a few weeks to filter through their entire organization
We would explain to them that the bank likes the money in stacks of the same denomination, not a "party-pack" of fives, tens, and twenties thrown together to make a million." [pg 30]
Mathers explains what money laundering is, how it's done, who's involved, and how it affects international security and the global economy. He also answers such important questions as "How much does $1 million US weigh?" FYI, a million dollars' worth of crisp new $100 bills weighs about 22 pounds-but bills wick moisture and dirt, so used bills can weigh up to 20% more than fresh ones. Mathers discusses dozens of money laundering scams, including many you've probably never heard of. For example, I had no idea that pay parking lots were one of the most important channels for money laundering in North America.
One of the main themes of the book is the intimate connection between organized crime and terrorism. Mathers notes that every organized crime syndicate in the world has its roots in ideological struggle (even outlaw biker gangs) [pg 105].
Mathers argues that the fight against organized crime and the fight against terrorism are one and the same. Money laundering is particularly insidious because it introduces the proceeds of crime into the "legitimate" financial system, often through the complacency or complicity of mainstream financial institutions. (E.g. the disgraced Riggs Bank, money launderers to Pinochet, Prince Bandar, and the dictator of Equatorial Guinea.)
There's been a lot of talk in the media about the booming opium trade in Afghanistan. As Mathers points out, money laundering is the mainspring that connects drugs and terrorism. Without money laundering Al Qaeda and the warlords can't convert the drugs into cash to buy weapons, build training camps, or disseminate propaganda. (Since 9/11 the international community has taken renewed interest in money laundering and many millions of dollars of Al Qaeda assets have already been seized.)
Fortunately or unfortunately, Mathers writes like a hardboiled cop. It's refreshing to hear him explain high finance clearly using terms like "the condom theory of correspondent banking." His incessant references to "the bad guys" and his slightly xenophobic posturing get a little annoying.
Despite these tics, Mathers is clearly driven to protect the powerless from the powerful. Money laundering persists because of a multitiered system of oppression, violence, coercion, and greed. Terrorists and money launderers advance their aims on the backs of the world's most vulnerable and desperate people (e.g. the poor, immigrants, sex workers, addicts). The profits fund civil wars and terror bombings.
The final chapter is called "Cops, Cash, and Corruption." Mathers would probably deny this, but this is a chapter about the phenomenology of temptation. He gives a very frank assessment of what it's like to be a money laundering undercover cop
For some people, though, the problem with a job like this is that they can't get over the novelty of handling huge amounts of cash. Sometimes one of the younger guys would hold up a big stack of money and say something like "I could pay off my house with this." I found that kind of talk troubling and I told them so. I told them that it wasn't money, it was evidence, and it had to be treated like evidence. You should never start equating amounts of seized money to actual things. [Emphasis added.]
That last line reminded me of a discussion at Emiratio about vegetarianism. Sheiva, the author, wondered if it was okay for vegetarians to allow themselves to savor the smell of meat even if they think it's wrong to eat it. An interesting discussion ensued. I side with Mathers in the view that behavior is inertial. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with enjoying the smell of meat or the fantasy of pocketing "evidence"--but there are good practical and theoretical reasons not to indulge in these pleasures if you want to be an ethical person in the long run. One might argue, as someone in Sheiva's comments thread did, that it is wrong to do intrinsically benign things that increase one's risk of future harmful transgressions. I won't argue this point here, but I think the Mathers' passage is an interesting example of someone who thinks this attitude pays off in real life.
A British Parliamentary committee reports that Afghanistan could implode if drastic action isn't taken to stabilize the country. [CNN, July 28.] The opium trade is flourishing, the warlords have yet to be disarmed, al Qaeda and the Taliban insurgents battle coalition forces in the south and east, more than 30 aid workers have been killed this year, and aid organizations like MSF are streaming out of Afghanistan.
LONDON (AP) -- The Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Cos. agreed to pay a $120 million penalty to U.S. authorities for the company's misstatement of its oil and gas reserves.. [NYT permalink.]
The crime?
The Anglo-Dutch company stunned shareholders in January when it downgraded 20 percent, or 3.9 billion barrels, of its reserves from ``proven'' to less certain categories. Three other downgrades followed, for a total reduction in reserves of 23 percent, or 4.47 billion barrels, from previously reported levels.[Emphasis added.]
Students Held Back to Win, a disturbing article in the LA Times about promising grade school athletes who are repeating grades to gain a developmental edge.
This article is obnoxious because doesn't question the massive sense of entitlement of these athletically gifted kids and their families. The article cites some experts who doubt that it's in the best interest of the child athletes and others who wonder whether it's fair to pit these hothouse stars against younger kids. But the article doesn't even touch on the real issue: ambitious parents are costing the taxpayers thousands of dollars. Why should the cash-strapped citizens of California pay to incubate basketball stars?
