The Great Hack - Why You Should See It

Netflix was dangling The Great Hack in front of me, but I just didn't want to deal with more bad news.  Let's wait for a better time I said.  Then I heard something somewhere about how good and important it was.  But then Netflix threw The Family and I could justify avoiding Hack with the assumption that Family was also 'educational.'

Well, we bit the bullet Thursday night and watched The Great Hack.    It wasn't nearly as depressing as I expected.  In part because I knew the general outline already, I just didn't know a lot of the details and people involved.  There are some real heroes here:

Carole Cadwalladr is an investigative journalist for the Guardian and focused maniacally on Cambridge Analytica and teased out lots of important information.

David Carroll is a professor of  who sued Cambridge Analytica for his own personal data.

Ravi Naik was David Carroll's solicitor in his data rights case.

Chris Wylie is the guy with the fluorescent red hair and nose ring who worked for Cambridge Analytica who became a whistle blower

Brittany Kaiser also worked for Cambridge Analytica  and also became a whistle blower and is  the major character of this documentary.

There are villains too, particularly Alexander Nix, the head of Cambridge Analytica.  And Mark Zuckerberg doesn't come across too well either.

If Climate Change is the most important issue to focus on for the physical survival of humans on earth, then Data Rights is the most important issue to focus on for the political survival of democracy.  We may all think we're smart enough to resist the bombardment of fake ads, but I had to keep reminding myself, despite all the Lock Her Up chants, that Clinton was a very well qualified candidate.  Much more than the lesser of two evils.

All I can say is WATCH IT if you have Netflix and if you don't, find a friend who does who will invite you to watch it.  (The other day I suggested reading an article by convicted Trump supporter Sam Patten.  The Great Hack is a much easier way to absorb this kind of background information.

Get a better understanding of how Cambridge Analytica got enough Facebook data to be able to personalize ads that would emotionally anger voters into voting for the candidate they were supporting or get opponents' supporters to not vote.  Cambridge Analytica (and its parent company Strategic Communications Laboratories (SCL) did this in Trinidad, Malaysia, India, Brazil, Nigeria,

I'd also note that back in 1977 my doctoral dissertation on Privacy was completed and approved.  (At that time there were mainframe computers and the first personal computers became available as kits in 1975.  We didn't get our first computer - a Vic 20 - until 1981.  It was pretty primitive.)

But I argued back then that most people had focused on privacy as a psychological issue - a human need to keep things hidden from others.  But I argued that privacy wasn't so much a psychological need, but rather it was about power.  Who had the power to get others information and who had the power to prevent others from getting their information?  Hiding info wasn't so much about a psychological need as it was about  the consequences of others knowing.  Publicizing sex life and drug use was good for most rock stars, but a career ender for a teacher or a priest.  (At that time for a president too.)  Privacy, I argued, was about power.  And this film essentially meshed people's private information with data being the most valuable commodity on earth now and how the large tech companies have all the power and individuals have no control over their information.    I'd figured that this was a privacy was about power back in the mid 1970s, and it's why I think about why I try to read the privacy notices, despite the fact that the they are way too long and unintelligible.  

Recruiting Vampires

When I was in college a good friend from high school married a total jerk.  I was studying in Germany that year and I think I restrained myself from sending a card that just said, "Don't."  She was divorced not too long after the wedding.  At our 20th or 25th  high school reunion I asked her if anything could have stopped her.  She said her father was abusing her at home and it was the only way she could see to get out of the house.

So desperate people do desperate things.  They answer recruiting ads from ISIS.  They join the army.  They join Christian cults.  They take drugs.

If your family believes every word in the bible is true and all the people you socialize with believe the same and you go to a Christian school that teaches the earth is 6000 years old, and you are presented material like this 'proof' of the biblical age of the earth, well, it's easy to believe.  It's not any harder to believe than immaculate conception and that Christ arose from the dead.

The dangers of vaccination if packaged right can also cause people to keep their kids from being vaccinated.

Ignorance and desperation together make people susceptible to any propaganda - like the pizza parlor based human trafficking ring,  or that climate change is a hoax, or that world will end when Christ returns to earth, though some Christians debate whether there will be a 'rapture.'

So while I was amused at first to see comments on this blog recruiting people to become vampires, I got got concerned, but also curious.  Most of these comments go to a post called, The Vampire History of Alaska.  I mark them spam as soon as I get them.  They tend to look like this one which came from someone in Accra, Ghana:

"Good Day,
Do You Want To Be A Vampire?
Been A Vampire Will Make You
• Make Stronger.
• Think Faster.
• World Famous
• Will Never Experience Suffering Anymore In Your Life.
• Can Never Be Oppressed By Anyone
• Above All You Will Live Very Long on Earth And Be Protected All Through Your Life.
For More Info About Been A Vampire & If You Interested On Been A Vampire Kindly Contact This Email
Contact Me: realvampire.......@xxxxxx.xxx" 

Here's the info stat counter offers me for each person who comes to the site.  This is the detailed page for the vampire comment above.

Many of them look more like this:

Gina has left a new comment on your post "Vampire History of Alaska - Why You Should Vote Ye...":
DO YOU WANT TO BE A VAMPIRE OR YOU WANT POWERS AND PROTECTION COME AND BE AMONG THE VAMPIRES KINGDOM TODAY AND YOU GET WHAT EVER YOU DESIRE CONTACT LORD GUMBALA AT ( . . . vampire . . . @x x x x x  )
Welcome to ( Gumbala Vampire Kingdom). Do you want to be a vampire,still in human,having talented brain turning to a vampire in a good posture in ten minutes to a human again, with out delaying in a good human posture. A world of vampire where life get easier,we have made so many persons vampires and have turned them rich,you will assured long life and prosperity,you shall be made to be very sensitive to mental alertness,stronger and also very fast,you will not be restricted to walking at night only even at the very middle of broad day light you will be made to walk, this is an opportunity to have the human vampire virus to perform in a good posture.if you are interested contact us on . . .vampire. . .@gmail.com 

I was tempted to email and ask about how many people respond to these comments, but I have lots of other things to do and I'd rather not get targeted by vampire recruiters.

Fortunately, The Bloggess did contact a vampire recruiter in 2017 and did a great job of engaging the recruiter.  You can read all that here. 

An Unusual Glimpse At World Of Trump's Guilty Crowd - Sam Patten Writes Long Piece For Wired

Who's Sam Patten you ask.  Good question.  Even though I read Seth Abramson's Proof of Collusion, I didn't remember how Patten fit in.

When you read an article like this by someone who has pled guilty in presidential level political activities, you always have to take it with a grain of salt.  Well, maybe a whole salt shaker.  But while you're reading this with your crap detector turned high, you'll still get a sense of the wild world of international political consulting of a certain persuasion.  And there are lots of names  you'll recognize starting with Paul Manafort, Kilimnik, Yushchenko and Yanukovich,  and others whose names you've heard, but couldn't keep straight, and places like Kiev, Bagdad,  Moscow, and organizations such Cambridge Analytica.

The article offers some background context to the players and the games they play.  It begins in a courtroom where Patten is about to plead guilty.

"WHEN JUDGE AMY Berman Jackson emerged into the courtroom through a door cut seamlessly into the wooden veneer of the wall, she commanded my full attention.
I HAVE SERVED powerful women many times before in my life—senators, secretaries of state, opposition leaders—and knew how to bow before them. Today was a variation on the theme: I was here to plead guilty before Jackson to a federal felony.
I was so transfixed by her that I never stopped to think who was notably absent from the courtroom on that last day of August: my business partner Konstantin V. Kilimnik or, as I knew him, Kostya. In two weeks, his long-time boss Paul Manafort would stand in the very spot I did and do the same thing I was about to do.
Kostya was initially referred to in the American press as “Person A” in the government’s case against Manafort, the former chair of the 2016 Trump campaign. When prosecutors moved in February of this year to nullify Manafort’s cooperation agreement with them—because he violated the deal by lying about his contacts with Kostya—a lead prosecutor told Judge Jackson that Manafort’s lies went “very much to the heart of what the special counsel’s office is investigating.” In particular, the government asserted, Manafort had shared Trump polling data with Kostya, leaving many to wonder and speculate about why he might have done such a thing."

How many times can a Republican operative have served powerful women - he does mention working for Snow - and why do you have to bow before them?  Sounds, at best, patronizing.  Why is he making such a big deal about the judge being a woman in the first place?   But I don't know him.  Just doesn't sound right to me.

Much later in the article, he returns to Kiev.  In this paragraph he's justifying switching sides.  I can understand this as an earnest belief on his part, but I don't really know enough to do anything other than withhold judgment til I know more.

"This was not the first time I’d embroiled myself in this kind of complexity. In former Soviet Georgia I worked for then-president Mikheil Saakashvili’s party and helped it win a super majority in parliament in 2008, only to return to the country three years later to work for his opponents, who succeeded in ousting him. This was because the situation had changed and Saakashvili had, in my view and in that of a number of others, gone off the rails. My present circumstances might on first glance seem equally contradictory, given that they derive in large part from my involvement with figures close to Donald Trump—even though I voted for his opponent in 2016. Did I abandon my idealism? No. Politics isn’t about making statements, it’s about outcomes."

He's an idealist he says.  He's got a second wife and a son, yet he's traveling all over the world, apparently without them.  The thrill of the intrigue and being close to power seem to be the draw, and if he can justify he's doing it for idealistic reasons, well that makes it all easier, I guess to justify what he's doing.

"Kostya took me to Parus (meaning “sail”), a steel and glass high-rise that had sprung up in central Kyiv since my earlier sojourn, and we shot up to the 19th floor in an elevator that whistled and whined with the wind. A roll-up steel door (not charred, by contrast rather spiffy and high-tech) opened, and Lyovochkin’s security detail waved us into a glistening white conference room hovering like a spaceship high over the capital’s downtown.
Once we were settled in white leather revolving chairs and had been offered tea and chocolates by a secretary, Lyovochkin strode in, wearing a deconstructed blazer that accentuated his athletic frame. I started to introduce myself, but he waved his hand and said, 'No need, I know perfectly well who you are and,' glancing approvingly at Kostya, 'suspect you know why you’re here.'”

He's told us earlier that Lyovochkin was running the opposition bloc in the Ukraine. And what was he good at?

"In preparation, I had scribbled out the basis of a plan that I’d dubbed Operation Claw Back. It outlined a shift in narrative that called out our opponents for being opportunists with little concern for the people. Kostya handed it to him. Smiling, Lyovochkin glanced through it. “Perfect,” he said, “Let’s get to work.”
I immediately started making ads attacking our opponents. All in all I wrote maybe 20 scripts, about half of which were produced."

When we're online, we tend to just hit the surface of stories in the news and then there are six more that vie for our attention.

It's worth shutting down all the other tabs and just going into one area in depth.  Fill in some colors and landscapes and characters and get a sense of the world of intrigue Trump's entourage emerged from to assist him.  And get a sense of all the connections to Russia and Ukraine and other locations.

Here's the link again:  KOSTYA AND ME: HOW SAM PATTEN GOT ENSNARED IN MUELLER’S PROBE

Yes, it's strange that in the title he uses both the first person (me) and the third person (Sam Patten) to refer to himself.  And he's also making it clear in the title that it's not his fault, Kostya made me do it.  While writers usually don't write their headlines, I suspect he had some say in this one.



I'd note too, that Macmillian offers a different perspective of the intrigues around Trump.  Here's a teaser from chapter 8 of Abramson's next book Proof of Conspiriacy.  This is not a first person account.  Abramson works from published stories in the media.  This excerpt has lots of Jared Kushner's relationship with MBS, the Saudi Prince.  I'm sure these two wealthy 30 something young men have lots in common and feel quite at home with each other.

What's The Difference Between a Memoirs and a Memoir? And an Autobiography? But That's Just The Hook. There's Also Kimani. [Updated]

I follow  Kimani Okearah @theKimansta on Twitter.  He's a photographer for the Sacramento Kings.  Well, that's not exactly right.  He's a photographer for Vox News and he covers the Kings for them.  I follow a number of folks who experience life differently than I do just to keep tabs on worlds I don't know well.  Mostly there's basketball in his Tweets, but also stuff on race, and health, and things I'm not really sure what they are about.  But there's something sweet and decent about him. I've grown to like him.

It turns out one thing we have in common is an interest in film.  He's working on a documentary.  It's called 30 Year Memoirs of a Crack Baby.  He's the crack baby and he has, among other congenital health issues, a seriously problematic large intestine.

But as I read the title I wondered, why is it memoirs instead of memoir?  So I googled.

[UPDATE 8/15/19:  Kathy in KY commented that the boxes for Memoir and Autobiography had the same texts.  (I've corrected that.)  But then that leaves this post without a distinction between memoir and memoirs.  So here's one from the blog Memoir Mind  that seems to make sense:

"Writing about one's whole life is writing one's memoirs, plural. It's more akin to autobiography, in which you tell all about what happened, often with intense detail, the personal version of the kind of research a biographer would do if they were writing a life about you. Memoirs tend to be more informal than autobiography, but still have that life-encompassing feel. Most of the people who write them are well-known - that's how and why others would buy an entire book about their entire life, or multiple books about their entire life.
Memoir, on the other hand, the currently hot trend in writing and the topic of this blog, is focused on a particular time in one's life, or a theme or thread."

And, back to the original post, below is the bigger picture with the corrected illustration.]

The Author Learning Center explains the difference between a memoir, autobiography, and a biography.    And if you look closely in their summary of a memoir, the second bullet offers a brief note on the difference.

Text comes from The Author Learning Center 

Kimani is asking for a lot of money on GoFundMe, but films cost a lot to make.  He's an expert on the topic.  And since it's a memoirs, it will be a "1st person POV" and less "formal and objective" than a memoir. [And since it's a memoirs, it will be about his whole life, not just one time, theme, or thread.]

I'd urge you to go to his GoFundMe page.  Read it.  And if you weren't born to crack addicts and taken from your parents at 6 months and put into foster home and kicked out of that home as soon as you turned 18, you're probably had a lot more 'privileges' than Kimani has had.  So you could share some of your privilege by checking out his site.

And making a donation.  It doesn't have to be a lot.  $5 would do, but if you're going to go to all the trouble, you might consider making a larger contribution.

He hasn't had a contribution for a couple of days.  I think it's because people would rather look away.  But please, overcome that urge, and give him five minutes.  And when the movie is showing (at the Anchorage International Film Festival I hope), you'll know that you helped make it possible.

I'm not putting up his picture.  I want you to imagine what he looks like.  And then go check how well you conjured up his image.  I'm going to check how many people linked from this page to his GoFundMe page.    Yes, I can do that (and so all other websites.)

Tomás Is Loose In Kentucky

My Spanish friend Tomás is in his first few days in Kentucky.  He's a wicked artist, particularly when he's doing caricatures.

We met in 2010 when he left a comment on this post about Exit Glacier and we connected before he and his family returned to Spain. Here's a post with pictures of Tómas and his family and his great kids book Salfón:  El limpiodor de tejados.

His wife will be teaching science (I think)  in a Spanish language high school program in Lexington.  And I'm sure Tómas will be drawing.  In fact he sent me his first US drawing.

I did mention that while he is visiting in Kentucky, he would surely be drawing McConnell.  Let's see how his take on the senior Senator from Kentucky evolves over the year.

Meanwhile I picked up a second book on Peron at the library today - Perón and the enigmas of Argentina by Robert D. Crassweller. This one starts out trying to capture who Perón was by looking at the many long term cultural influences.  One of them is "the heritage of Castille" which he traces to 1492 when the Moors left and the Reconquest.

"That long and arduous crusade had deeply marked the Castilian character and personality.  Society was pastoral and had lived by war for centuries, disdaining lesser and demeaning pursuits such as commerce.  A powerful and authoritarian state emerged, energized by effective government.  The parliament of Castile, the Cortes, lacked the power of the purse and soon languished.  Royal power, resolutely exercised, curtailed any political role for the aristocracy, which contented itself with social privilege, and there was no significant challenge from below.
Freedom in the Anglo-Saxon sense of the world was not a product of these tendencies, but that implies neither tyranny nor misrule  All the monarchs of the age were popular and intuitively sensitive to public moods and aspirations.  Thus royal authority was willingly accepted and viewed as consistent with freedom and liberty.  Absolutism, tied to religious values, was not seen as tyranny, since individual rights and dignity were protected." (pp. 24-25)

I'm just quoting, not saying it's accurate.  It's certainly simplistic, as a short synopsis like this must be.  After all, the subjects of the religious persecution - non-Catholics, particularly Jews - didn't have their rights and dignity protected and probably would disagree.

What I found particularly interesting was a description of the Spanish state and church ruled a much different culture than that in northern Europe.

"The State had never known feudalism in the the northern European sense of a system with centers of politics power apart from, and often in opposition to, the royal authority.  There had been no Magna Carta inSpain, no warlike barons jealously and successfully protecting their local powers, no system of courts enforcing laws that did not originate with the king's justice.  The Church was the Church of the Counter-Reformation, necessarily broad and pluralistic in many respects, a palace of many chambers, but nowhere in it had there been any experience in sharing of the power that was tightly consolidated in the successors of St. Peter.
Thus neither Crown nor Church could contribute to the traditions, the techniques, and the psychological attitudes that are essential for adjusting successfully the claims of competing power centers in a society containing many such.  The arts of compromise and conciliation, and the habits of mind necessary for their appreciation, were dormant and underdeveloped."(25-26)

 Again, I can't judge how accurate this is, but it seems appropriate to do a little Spanish history as I welcome Tómas and his wife to the US.  But let me do a little more.  So far he's talking about what the Spanish heritage Perón would eventually inherit didn't do well, but he goes on to talk about what it did well. He does a paragraph about the philosophy and political thought coming from Aquinas, Aristotle, and Renaissance Scholasticism, not from the social contract theory of Rousseau, Locke, and Hobbes.

"Rather, it was  a powerful stimulus to an organic theory of life and of the State, a theory of natural harmony in which every human and every institution had a purpose, a station, ordained and secure.  And it was also a powerful support for the prevailing Mediterranean and Iberian corporatism, defined in the broad sense of a 'sociopolitical organization that is  . . hierarchical, elitist, authoritarian, bureaucratic, Catholic, patrimonialist . . ."
"Castilian society exalted courage and honor and defined them in an exclusive and stringent code as ideals appropriate for the man of rank, the gentleman, the hidalgo.  For such a man and such an ideal ". . . work did not redeem and had no value in itself.  Manual work was servile.  There was little or no interest in science and its fluid experimentation, or in technology and technique in general, or in any kind of economic activity.  The superior man neither worked nor traded:  he made war, he commanded, he legislated.  He also thought, contemplated, loved, wooed, and enjoyed himself.  Leisure was noble." (26)

While it may seem I've taken quite a bit from Crassweller, he would probably say I left out the most important parts.  And this is only one of the cultural heritages he's telling us we need to understand if we are going to get a good sense of Perón.  Another will be the creole heritage.  I like the idea of going back like this to find influences on Perón, but I also realize it's a risky act.  Is he going back and finding things in Spanish culture that manifest themselves in Perón, leaving out much that is not 'Perón"?  I can't judge.  Maybe Tómas will be the best evaluator of this cut and paste Spanish heritage.


[Kathy, for some reason my brain says you're in Louisville, which isn't that far, but not that close either.  Am I right?]

"Trump is a klutz, a bully and a liar. But he's no white supremacist"

That's the headline on Paul Jenkins' column in the ADN today.   Headlines are written by editors, but he does in fact say that in his column, though not in one sentence that succinctly.

But after calling the president a liar, he excoriates Democrats for 'stretching the truth' about saying Trump is a white supremacist by parsing the president's words and the context of this post Charlottesville comments about there being good people on both sides.

I don't have all that in front of me, but even if he is right about what Trump exactly said and meant, there are still some problems:

1.  All the other actions and words of the president that support the idea that he's a white supremacist.

2.  His praise (that he's not a white supremacist) comes after acknowledging he's a 'klutz, bully, and liar."  And he also acknowledges

"He says things that unnecessarily tarnish the presidency and embarrass this country.  He runs with his filters turned off and he often is insulting, combative, denigrating to women, Muslims, and Hispanics."

The only saving grace, he tells us, is that Trump was better than the other candidate.  If he really means that, then impeachment would allow a replacement that wouldn't be Hillary Clinton.

I feel a little like Alice in Wonderland reading this.  He even quotes Goebbels

"If you tell a lie beg enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it"

But that's about the Democrats' "big lie" about calling Trump a white supremacist.  Not about all the repeated big lies he acknowledges that come from his president.

What is the point of this column?  Some possibilities:

1. It's Sunday and he owes one to the ADN and he has nothing to say.
2. It's a secret signal to say that the Republicans are morally bankrupt, without actually saying it.
3. It's fodder for the MAGA crowd, but if that's the case, why not embrace white supremacy instead of implying it's not a good thing?
4. It's there to piss off liberals, just because the ADN gives him a weekly column.  

Which raises the question:  Why doesn't the ADN have a policy that excludes personal attacks and requires regular columnists to stick to actual, rational discussions of policy?

If anyone needs to see the whole thing, it's here.

Learning From History - Juan Perón

We've all heard, in one form or another, George Santana's warning "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

But figuring out what the lessons are isn't easy.  People interpret the past differently.  They take in some factors, but not others.  People applied a lesson of post World War II - how Russia took over various countries and made them part of the communist bloc  - to support the US going to war in Vietnam, which was supposed to stop the fall of SE Asian countries, like dominoes, to the communists.  It was the wrong lesson.

After spending a month in Argentina and learning a little about the history of the country, I decided to get some books on Juan Peron to learn more.  I'm just starting the first one - a series of articles about different aspects of Peron and his government.

But which lessons should one take away?  Chapter 2, "Evita and Peronism" begins

"Few political figures in the history of Argentina have aroused as much violent hatred or passionate love as Eva Perón.  To her followers, she was Evita, a selfless woman who worked tirelessly to improve the lives of workers, destitute women, and needy children .  . .To her enemies, however, she only an ambitious actress, a trollop who rose to the top by using countless men, a hypocrite interested in money, jewels, and luxurious clothes . . ."  

Juan Peron was, in the words of Frederick C. Turner,

"far more than the most important leader of Argentina in the twentieth century.  In many ways, he was a prototypical figure of this century.  His ideals were far grander than his lasting achievements;  he sincerely wanted to improve the welfare of the least privileged members of his society.  Yet, despite distrubitionist policies that made the poor unswervingly loyal to him, his economic initiatives spurred inflation and undercut the economic growth that might have been the surest aid to the lower classes in the long run."

We can argue whether he was a good man or not, or whether he was a good president or not, or whether his policies made Argentina a better country.  But what is clear is that he was a larger than life figure who apparently had the best of intentions, but even his supporters acknowledge that he didn't really succeed in improving the long term outcomes in Argentina.

There are parts that I can relate to immediately because of the trip.  Like this sentence:

"The descamisados (the shirtless ones) would gather in the Plaza de Mayo and Perón, the leader, would address them from a balcony of the Casa Rosada."

We went to the Plaza de Mayo on our second outing in Buenos Aires, when it was raining quite a bit.

Here's the Casa Rosado and the balcony from which he spoke is probably on the picture. The first time was 1945.  There were various factions.  He had been the Minister of Labor, but when one president was replaced he had been arrested.  But not for long (5 days) and the labor unions he had worked for marched to the Plaza de Mayo for his release.  And he got out and addressed them.  It was 17 de Octobre and that's still and important day.  There's even a street with that name.

This is the Pirámide de Mayo in the center of Plaza de Mayo.

It wasn't til almost our last day in Argentina when we went of a tour organized by our original host in Buenos Aires to La Boca, that I learned about descamisados.  We saw the words on this building and she explained it meant "the shirtless" (camisa means shirt) and these were the poor who were Perón's staunchest supporters.

When Turner talks about the bibliography, he mentions that it  omits

"references to one of the ways in which tens of thousands of people are currently obtaining a view of Perón:  through Evita, the malicious, one-sided, anti-Peronist musical that has been playing to packed houses in London and New York.  As theater, it is arresting;  as history, it is false.  The musical cheaply exploits the image of Evita as a harlot and perpetuates such myths as her great participation in bringing Perón to power in 1945.  It alleges the dangerous charisma, the essential opportunism of Perón. Yet, in a perverse manner, even this historical travesty underlines the importance and the continuing attraction of Perón and Evita;  its creators may occasionally touch upon the truth quite by accident rather than through design or understanding. . ."

I'm just starting on my Perón adventure, but it's already a reminder that history has many stories that can help us think about the present.  There's a force that tends to pull me toward comparisons between Perón and Trump.  (Turner looks at similarities and differences between Perón and Hitler and Musolini - only because they were alike as very powerful charismatic leaders of their countries.  There are similarities to Trump

"Without sufficient institutional limitations on his rule, choosing his lieutenants, like his wife, on the basis of their loyalty and submissiveness rather than their brilliance or their academic credentials, Perón did make too many major decisions personally.  Having surrounded himself with admirers, he did not benefit from the critical responses of insiders that might have improved the quality of those decisions and therefore also their public acceptability in the long run."

"Perón's failures were more prosaic than stupidity or cowardice:  unfortunately, like so many of us, he failed to understand economics and relied far too much upon his own judgment. . . Perón understood the warm, human issues of political symbolism and the generation of mass support, not the colder constraints of budgeting and sacrificial strategies for economic growth."

Marysa Navarro's chapter on Evita Perón includes this on personal loyalty to Perón:

"Stating unequivocally her fanaticism toward Perón, she demanded - and obtained - that same commitment from his followers.  In so doing, she was responsible for the creation of a cult of the leader that required absolute loyalty to him, complete trust in him, unconditional allegiance to him and blind obedience to his word."

But also serious differences.  Turner argues that Perón had a heart and cared about human beings.

"Noting that Perón increased the share of national wealth going to the workers from 38 percent in the early 1940s to 46 percent in 1948, Juan Corradi quite rightly points out that the workers' support for Perón came from a rational perception of their interests rather than simply from their admiration of Perón's special gifts of leadership style."

What I've got so far is that there is disagreement about Perón still. This first book was published in 1987, over ten years after Perón's death, but still a long time ago.  So I'm not sure what more recent books say.

I'd note that while General San Martin has squares and streets named after him everywhere we went, I didn't notice the same widespread presence of Perón.  We even had to ask people to find Evita's grave at the Recoleta Cemetery.

Gun Lobby Example: Here's Why The Public Interest Regularly Gets Sabotaged

It became clear to me, while teaching about ethics and 'the public interest' that there were good explanations why the public interest loses out regularly to special interests.

Single Issue vs. Many Issues
Each special interest is focused narrowly on one topic - developers, airlines, doctors, unions, auto manufacturers, the  mining industry, oil industry, etc - are narrowly focused on lobbying for what is most important to them.

Protecting the public interest against all those many well funded private interests, is more difficult.  It's hard to keep up with all the threats to the public interest because the public interest is much broader and more generalized.  The public has interests in a clean environment, fair treatment of consumers, work place safety, good education, auto safety, and on and on.  Protecting all these against corporations looking for less regulation, higher profits, as well as tax benefits, is hard.  There's just too much to keep up with.

This LA Times article by George Skelton about the gun lobby and the gun control interests of the public illustrates this basic dilemma for those interested in protecting the public interest.

From George Skelton, LA Times:

Sure, voters tell pollsters Congress should pass legislation to toughen up background checks on gun buyers. Most even want to ban military-style assault weapons.
But gun control is far down the list of voters’ priorities. Many other policy issues rank higher: immigration, jobs, schools, climate change.…
So after every shooting massacre, when more innocent people are murdered by some wacko with a firearm designed for mass killing, there’s tough talk, screaming and flailing for a few days. Then everyone calms down and snoozes until the next slaughter.
Politicians — mainly Republicans and moderate Democrats in Congress — don’t feel constant pressure from gun control supporters. These voters have been firing with cap pistols.
But the other side is rigidly committed. The gun zealots — those mesmerized by the power of firearms — tend to be “single-issue” voters who are inspired by the National Rifle Assn. Their No. 1 litmus test for any candidate is the politician’s position on gun rights.
Most Republicans and many moderate Democrats are scared silly and timidly vote against virtually all meaningful gun controls. That is, unless the congressional leader is a Republican, such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Then the frightened politicians are spared from voting at all because the leader blocks the bill from the floor.
At least, that’s the way it has always been.

So there it is spelled out - while most people want some form of legislation to curb gun violence, it's one of many issues of interest.  They aren't all focused and ready to lobby hard on that single issue.

But gun lobbyists are focused on that one specific issue at the receipt of an email.


While I think this article makes that point clearly, I find Skelton's style a little loose.  Some examples:

1. " But gun control is far down the list of voters’ priorities. Many other policy issues rank higher: immigration, jobs, schools, climate change.…"
Well here's a summary of issues - first overall, then by different political shades.  The list comes from a Citizens Climate Lobby talk in November 2018 by

Click on image to enlarge and focus

I don't know where Skelton came up with his list of top issues, but this one is more statistically valid I suspect.

2.  "some wacko with a firearm"  - Sorry, this just perpetuates stereotypes of mass shooters as totally crazy folks.  Sure, anyone who mows down a bunch of people is not within the normal range of empathy, moral judgment, personal control, and perhaps other categories.  But given the characteristics of mass shooters listed in the previous post, they've mostly been abused or bullied and didn't have the kind of support most people get.  In that context, their behavior might not seem so irrational or crazy.  We need less clichéd ways of talking about these people so we can come up with effective ways of 1) not letting people get to this stage and 2) having systems in place that intervene when they start showing signs or even talking about shooting up folks.

3.  "mainly Republicans and moderate Democrats in Congress"  - What the hell is a moderate Democrat?  I keep having to remind people that if Richard Nixon was in today's Congress he'd be labeled among the most liberal Democrats.  We got the EPA, the Clean Water Act, the Freedom of Information Act, the Privacy Act, and a bunch of other things (Roe v Wade decision came down while he was president and he didn't yell and scream about it)  during his administration.  Yet he was seen in his day as conservative.  Moderate Democrats today are conservatives by 1960s-1970s standards.  Calling them moderates is a huge misnomer.

OK, I'm done.  No wait, I wanted to offer a possible option for the public interest.

The Citizens Climate Lobby is a public interest lobbying group (which I'm a member of) that is focusing very narrowly on one issue - getting a carbon fee and dividend law passed.  They've got chapters in almost every Congressional district so constituents can lobby - regularly, cordially, and with lots of information - their members of congress.  It's a good model.  If we had Citizens  XXXX Lobby for all of those issues on the chart above we could get a long way in blocking special interests whose favored legislation has harmful consequences on the public interest.

Researchers Offer Four Common Characteristics of Mass Shooters

Scholars Jillian Peterson and James Densley  list four common traits of the mass shooters they studied.  This is a very abbreviated form from the LA Times.

"First, the vast majority of mass shooters in our study experienced trauma and exposure to violence at a young age. The nature of their exposure included parental suicide, physical or sexual abuse, neglect, domestic violence and/or severe bullying. . .
Second, practically every mass shooter we studied had reached an identifiable crisis point in the weeks or months leading up to the shooting.  . .
Third, most of the shooters had studied the actions of other shooters and sought validation for their motives. . .
Fourth, the shooters all had the means to carry out their plans.     . . "

They go on to list ways to prevent such shootings.  Basically:

• remove access to good locations by adding more security
• remove access to guns
• remove the notoriety they seek and get from the media
• remove barriers to reporting people for people who see signs of potential violence*
• much more education about mental health and how to cope and get help in all schools

*This is in contrast to the article that friends of the Ohio shooter broke off from him when he DID show signs, but apparently they didn't tell police until after the shootings.  

But let's remember that the NRA not only leans hard on its Republican (and a very few Democratic) members of Congress to prevent  banning any weapons or adding any restrictions to getting weapons, BUT just as pernicious is their successful ban on government agencies doing research on gun violence.  If you can't do research, you can't show the impact of guns on society.  Fortunately, there are some non-governmental research who continue to study gun violence.

In the 2016 election cycle, Open Secrets tells us the NRA spent  $839,574 on Congressional candidates.
In 2018 (not a presidential election year), they spent  $711,654.

Here's what they spent on Alaskan members of Congress in 2016.  

Name	Office	Total Contributions
Young, Don (R-AK)	House	$6,950
Murkowski, Lisa (R-AK)	Senate	$4,500
Sullivan, Dan (R-AK)	Senate	$2,000

And let's remember the NRA, which used to be an organization of hunters and gun collectors that taught gun safety, is now an organization funded significantly by the gun industry.

How many shootings will it take until half the voting population personally knows someone who died in a mass shooting?  Will we change the laws then?

Some Spanish Words That Caught My Fancy

I think it becomes clear why I liked these words - they are literal and thus easy to remember.  But I mentioned them to a couple of native Spanish speakers and they had never actually thought about them being literal and they smiled when they saw it that way.




paraquas  parar = to stop  (bus stop is parada)  and aguas = waters

It rained our first few days in Buenos Aires and then it didn't rain for the rest of the month we were in Argentina.  These folks are carrying paraguas.



anteojos  ante = before    ojos = eyes

He's wearing anteojos.




medialunas   media = half    lunas = moons

The medialunas are on the bottom of this pastry display.  This is more a metaphor.  If it's not clear what the arrow is pointing to - those are croissants.  I didn't zoom in to just the croissants because everything else looks so good.