In Germany the financial press is sorting through a scandal that Americans might naturally see as a cross between Enron and Madoff, the matter of Wirecard. Wirecard was a Bavaria based payment processing company founded back in 1999, the pinnacle of all things "dotcom." It was known as "InfoGenie" at first, though that changed to the name I'm using in 2005. Fast forward: on June 25, Wirecard filed for insolvency, and announced that close to 2 billion euros (that would be about 4.3 billion US dollars) thought to have been in its corporate treasury were "missing." Its CEO, Marcus Braun, was soon arrested. Apparently there was a scheme among various honchos to funnel money out of the corporate accounts and into their own. COO Jan Marsalek, who is alleged to have been central to this scheme, skipped town ahead of the posse (if I may use an Americanism in this context). This gave the scandal something that US financial scandals almost never have:...
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Philebus is one of Plato's Socratic dialogues. The title character barely participates. Socrates duels, rather, with Protarchus. And the central theme of the (wide ranging) discussion is hedonism. To what extent is the good life a life defined by successful pleasure seeking? The key passage runs thus: Socrates: Then would you think you needed anything else besides, if you possessed this one blessing [pleasure] in completeness? Protarchus: Certainly not. Socrates: Consider what you are saying. You would not need to be wise and intelligent and reasonable, nor anything like this? Would you not even care to keep your sight? Protarchus: Why should I? I suppose I should have all I want, if I was pleased. Socrates: Well ... inasmuch as you would not possess intelligence and memory and knowledge and true opinion, you would, in the first place, necessarily be without the knowledge whether you were pleased or not. For you would be devoid of any kind of wisdom. You admit this...
Here is an explanation, from Thomas Aquinas, of why patriotism is a virtue: "A man becomes a debtor to others in divers ways in accord with the divers types of their excellence and the diverse benefits that he receives from them. In both these regards, God occupies the highest place ... in second place, the principles of our being and governance are our parents and our country, by whom and in which we are born and governed. And so, after God, a man is especially indebted to his parents and to his country. Hence, just as religion involves venerating God, so at the second level piety involves venerating one's parents and country. Now, the veneration of ... one's country includes the veneration of one's fellow citizens and of all the friends of one's country." You're taking 'divers' leaps here, Tom, even if we grant you certain premises.... BTW, is "divers" just an alternate spelling of "diverse"? I've generally read ...
As POTUS has recently tweeted, he's a book-of-the-month club onto himself. That, unlike so much that comes from his thumbs, is a truth. But the guy who is the subject of this club keeps trying to use the power of his office to stop the presses, or stop up the mouths of anyone who challenges the narratives he wants to feed us. One great piece of good news is that he has been regularly failing at that. One of the good things about Mary Trump's new book, released to the world after a court fight, is precisely that it is outselling the last one. John Bolton is an unreconstructed imperialist. I used to call him a neocon, but I repent of that. The neocons want the US engaged in nation building, which involves some blank checks for violence, but at least in principle they generally think that the nations CAN be built to a point where they could stand on their own and handle their own affairs, so the US can and presumably would under their sayso withdraw. Bolton pretty c...
The conventional answer to the question I've provided as our headline today is: the war began on September 1, 1939, when the Germans invaded Poland. But it seems to me there are other plausible dates. The most plausible is to see the first action in the war as the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in October 1935. This followed by just one month the passage of the Nuremberg laws in Germany "for the protection of German blood and German honor." Events were moving in parallel above and below the Alps, and below the Pyrenees as well. In that case, we can begin to fill out a timeline of those usually neglected first four years of the second world war. 1936, Civil war erupted in Spain and The fascist regimes in Italy and Germany concluded a treaty of alliance (and supported their Spanish allies). 1937, Japan's tentative truce with China dissolves in fighting near the Marco Polo Bridge. Dec. '37 - Jan. 38, Rap of Nanjing. September '38, Mussolini cancels...
An Englishman, an Irishman, and a Scotsman walk into a bar. (Sorry, no Welshmen.) Each orders a beer. Each soon finds that there's a fly in it. The Englishman turns his nose up, pushes the beer back across the bar and wants his money back. The Irishman fishes the fly out of the beer, tosses it away, and drinks happily. The Scot fishes the fly out of his beer, and holds it above the mug with one hand while prodding it with the thumb of the other hand. He shouts, "Spit it back out, ya thieving insect! Spit it back out!" Cymbal clash. ------------------------ So ... Tommy Tuberville may have ended Jeff Sessions' political career. If he does nothing else right in his life, that will still serve as a check in the bank of karma. Also, Tuberville, as the nominee of the Republican Party to be the next US Senator from Alabama, will probably win that seat. After all, Doug Jones, the incumbent and Tuberville's remaining adversary, got the job chiefly becaus...
I only learned quite recently about the 5th century philosopher Syrianus, a late neoplatonist. I'm going to give you a rather lengthy italicized quote from him. He is discussing Aristotle, and in particular a critique Aristotle offered of both Plato and Pythagoras. I am not a natural controversialist, nor yet would I count myself as a disciple of Aristotle on merely a few or trivial topics; rather, I am one of those who admire both his logical methodology overall and who accept with enthusiasm his treatment of ethical and physical questions. And that I may not make a bore of myself by enumerating in detail all the excellent aspects of this man’s philosophy, let me just ask why every intelligent person might not justly marvel at the apt remarks, accompanied by demonstrations of the highest quality, to be found in this most excellent treatise on the subject of both forms in matter and definitions, and on the subject of the divine and unmoved transcendent causal principles of ...
It now appears that the electoral college may be effectively undermined without the need for invoking the cumbersome constitutional amendment process. The process is underway, and the late term decision this year by the US Supreme Court helped. After all, what would happen if each state bound its electors to vote for whichever candidate won the largest number of popular votes? SCOTUS' decision suggests (although this cannot be described as the res judicata) that the states can do pretty much whatever they want in this respect. If every state does this, then every subsequent electoral college outcome will be the same: a unanimous ratification of the popular vote. I'm not sure how long the institution will survive as a purely ceremonial matter once this outcome becomes obvious, but it hardly matters. There are surely people who will consider it an honor to be one of those casting these pre-ordained ballots, the constitutional letter will be observed, and the actual popular ...
Shep Smith, who was at Fox News beginning at its launch, and rose to become its "breaking news" head, left that operation last October. He left with a final on-air statement expressing gratitude for the opportunities he had been given there, mentioning a non-compete agreement into which he had apparently entered, and signing off without a word of explanation. For many people, the explanation was not all that difficult to imagine. Smith had become the 'token liberal' at Fox News, an in-house critic of some of the wilder conspiracy mongering of Sean Hannity and others. For some time, his bosses welcomed this. It made them seem at least a little bit "fair and balanced" to have him around. But he seems to have outstayed his welcome. He quit before being fired, and he said in an on-air goodbye to his audience that he had signed a non-compete agreement. That agreement sees to have been of short duration, because it has only been a little more than half...
So, it turns out the two famous Greek philosophers names Zeno were roomies. They lived in a high-rise apartment in downtown Athens. They didn't always get along, although I would not go so far as to say that they were an odd couple. Here's a bit of dialog from a possible television sitcom: "Zeno, did you drink all of the orange juice from this jug?" "No." "Oh, come one. Who else could have done it?" "The question you ought to be asking yourself is how could ANYONE have done it After all, first one would have to drink the first half of it. And to do that, one would have to drink the first quarter of it. And to do that ... you get the idea? infinite repetition suggests the process could never get started." "I don't want to discuss paradoxes now, Zeno. I want you to admit you took the orange juice. I'm not going to be angry. I'm a stoic, after all." "I think I'll buy some from Parmenides th...
One big piece of news about the end of the Supreme Court's term is that it came without an announcement of anyone's retirement. There is no vacancy, thus we do not face the prospect of any further Trump effort to fill another seat through the remainder of his term. That's a good thing. As to the cases, I'd like to have something to say here about five as yet unmentioned. All of them important. Abortion Rights I've mentioned before a decision this term that may have helped persuade the evangelical Christian core of the Trump coalition that he isn't delivering for them: the reading of the civil rights act so as to protect gay employees from firings. Here we reach another decision that might contribute to that disenchantment. And everything that weakens the Orange Dynast politically is at this moment a good thing. Abortion rights survive. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-1323_c07d.pdf The case this session was June Medical Services v...
This is the third part in our series of blog posts about the latest term of the Supreme Court. We'll get to some basic structural stuff in this post, with the question of non-state territories, over which the national government is often said to have a direct control. Does it? With regard to Puerto Rico, and possibly the District of Columbia: what does that entail? Obviously there are local authorities for both of those places -- heck there are also park rangers for national parks who have various sorts of discretion. But this isn't the federal layering of sovereigns we've heard about, is it? The Appointments Clause I'm looking at a clause of the constitution that seldom makes the headlines, but that is nonetheless of great importance within the overall system. Article II, sect. 2, clause 2, the "appointments clause." It says that that president shall nominate, and with the advice and consent of the Senate he shall appoint, all "officers of the Un...