Jeremy Bentham's pickled head

From the UK, Mark Bennison writes: "As an alumnus of University College, London, I thought I would add to the Jeremy Bentham story. In case readers were wondering why there is a wax effigy of his head, and not the real one, on display, it is because the real (pickled) head is locked away in the university's vaults. This is due to the head being repeatedly stolen as a trophy by students of rival London universities!"

Corruption

Regarding bribery and corruption, Ross Rogewrs, Jr. says: "Please ask the question:  What is the difference between  a BRIBE and a POLITICAL CONTRIBUTION?  Is there a fine line of morality separating the two?  If the ROI  --- return  on  investment ---  is  great, who cares?".  RH: I do. Our whole system if based on major financial contributions from interested parties, which is simply a form of bribery.

Your comments are invited. Read the home page of the World Association of International Studies (WAIS) by simply double-clicking on:   http://wais.stanford.edu/
E-mail to hilton@stanford.edu. Mail to Ronald Hilton, Hoover Institution, Stanford, CA 94305-6010. Please inform us of any change of e-mail address.

IRAQ: Reportng on Bremer's departure speech

General Michael Sullivan writes: "The Los Angeles Times, along with other major news sources (BBC, New York Times, Washington Post), have not been reporting fair and balanced news but have emphasized their personal  agenda.  They all report the news with a biased, anti Bush, anti Iraqi War main thrust that gives their readers an overall, false impression of what has taken place in Iraq".  Mike calls our attention to "Blogging the watchdogs"
by John Leo (U.S. News and World Report, 7/19/ 04), from which here is an excerpt: "On June 28, Paul Bremer gave a farewell speech as he stepped down as U.S. administrator in Iraq. Some Iraqis, at least, found the talk moving. Ali Fadhil, 34, a resident in pediatrics at a Baghdad hospital, watched it on television with a group in the cafeteria. He said Bremer's words choked up even a onetime supporter of April's Shiite uprising. We have this information about the Bremer speech because Fadhil and his brothers are bloggers who file their own reports on the Internet ( iraqthemodel.blogspot.com). I had never heard of "Iraq the Model," but Margaret Wylie of Newhouse News Service produced a good story June 29 about Fadhil's blogging and Bremer's talk.

Word that Bremer actually gave the speech is something of a collector's item among American reporters. The Washington Post said Bremer left without giving a talk. The Los Angeles Times did worse. It missed the speech, then insulted Bremer for not giving it. A July 4 Times "news analysis" said: "L. Paul Bremer III, the civilian administrator for Iraq, left without even giving a final speech to the country--almost as if he were afraid to look in the eye the people he had ruled for more than a year." This is a good one-sentence example of what readers object to in much Iraq reporting--dubious or wrong information combined with a heavy load of attitude from the reporter. Not sorry. Bloggers in the United States have been all over this story, quoting one another, leaning on the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times for an apology or a correction".

RH: I always read John Leo with much appreciation, and I was struck with his praise of bloggers.  Undoubtedly they bring out facts which the main media ignore, but they also spread false rumors which no established news source would let pass.  As for Bremer's departure ceremony, it was a surprise, and very few newsmen were present.  They live in mortal danger, so lapses can be understood. Whether the reaction of Ali Fadhil to Bremer's speech was typical of the Itaqis generally is open to question.

RE: Corruption, bribery and bakshish.

Commenting on Steve  Torok's defense of bribery, Jon Kofas comments: ""Bribery" obviously is a word associated with criminal conduct, but there is a cultural twist to the word, depending where and how it is used. When I was growing up in Greece, the word "bakhshish" had positive implications, it meant reward for a job well done. Though "bribery" has always been a way of doing business throughout history, and there have been laws against it since the ancient times, it is a reflection of human beings' competitive nature to prevail over the other with the inevitable consequences of broader societal harm. When oil companies bribe government officials in Nigeria or Indonesia  to secure leases for exploration, that costs both consumers and workers. According to the World Bank, official corruption on a global scale accounts for about 3% of the world's annual GNP".

RH: Baksheesh or bakshish comes from the Hindi or Persian word meaning to give. It is widely used in the Middle East, but I am surprised that it is used in Greece.  When my wife and I traveled around the world, communications between India and Pakistan were closed down,  At the border between Amritsar and Lahore, we hired a porter to carry our bags to the crossing point, where he began shouting "bakshish" in Hindi. For him it had a positive connotation, but for Westerners the word has a negative one.

        

RE: Sandy Berger

Randy Black denounced Sandy Berger  and asked  "Will be ever be rid of Clinton and his criminal cohorts?", Jon Kofas responds "It is my understanding that Sandy Berger is no longer under investigation, and that he has been cleared, but that mainstream has not reported on this issue. Is there any evidence to the contrary?"  From the UK, John Heelan writes "Is that not similar to Bush's military records being "accidentally destroyed"?. And to Nixon's tapes being destroyed?  To paraphrase Randy Black's question, "What is there that George W. Bush does not want others to find out about his military service?".  RH: I am puzzled. I heard that Berger had been cleared, but I have seen no satisfactory explanation  of the documents scandal.

Sandy Berger

Under the heading "Will be ever be rid of Clinton and his criminal cohorts?",Randy Black writes: "Sandy Berger, national security advisor to Bill Clinton and current security advisor to John Kerry, stole/removed/destroyed/threw away classified pre-9/11 terrorist reports and documents written by Clinton antiterrorism czar Richard Clarke during the Clinton Presidency. The documents, taken by Berger from a secure room at the National Archives and destroyed, were being reviewed at the request of Bill Clinton last October. Clinton was evidently was too busy to do the reviews himself. The FBI used search warrants to search Berger’s home and office. Berger returned some of the documents that he “accidentally” removed, but “accidentally” destroyed others. The big question: What was there that Clinton did not want others to find out about his pre-9-1-1 anti-terrorist activities?"
 
Samuel Berger, former President Clinton's national security adviser, is under federal criminal investigation for allegedly removing classified documents and handwritten notes from a National Archives screening room during preparations for his testimony before the 9/11 commission.>>
Source: http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/07/20/berger.probe/index.html

Corruption?

From Thailand, Steve Torok writes:"Although there is a lot of noise about corruption, this area has not been thought through properly. One man's management by incentives is another man's corruption. Cooperative games can be shown to lead to better outcomes than competitive ones -- provided only mutual jealousy does not kill them before they start, and provided they are governed by enlightened self-interest, in the sense of Adam Smith, rather than greed..".  RH:So a bribe is an incentive and a cooperative game?

Re: Geoffrey Nunberg, GOING NUCULAR

I wrote: "Treat with the same doubt  the assertions of politicians and commentators, learning from Geoffrey Nunberg to catch the overtones or undertones of the words they use".  From the UK, John Heelan comments "and, according to Pierre Macherey,  the silences where they should have said something; the very silence itself conveying a message, intended or not".  RH: On Macherey and hs "seminal" book, see Pierre Macherey: Pour une théorie de la production littéraire (Paris, Maspero, 1966); Pierre Macherey, A Theory of Literary Production (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978).

Your comments are invited. Read the home page of the World Association of International Studies (WAIS) by simply double-clicking on:   http://wais.stanford.edu/
E-mail to hilton@stanford.edu. Mail to Ronald Hilton, Hoover Institution, Stanford, CA 94305-6010. Please inform us of any change of e-mail address.

Zoroaster, Christ and Mohammed

Nushin Namazi from Persia has sent be a long piece about religions, from which is excerpted what she writes about Zoroaster: Zoroaster's family raised cattle and horses and belonged to an Indo-European people who called themselves Aryans, meaning "noble." They were polytheists and believed in superstitions and magic. The greedy priests during his time put on a good show of bloody sacrifices, instant intoxicants, and loud chants to please the gods and exploit the simple laity. The people were also exploited by their ruling princes. Zardosht looked at the Aryan cult with doubt at the tender age of seven. His doubts increased when the priests could not satisfy him with their dubious answers. They, in their frustration, shunned him. He left them to discover the truth by himself. His questioning search into the contrast between social disorder and natural order led him to discover the Being whose supreme wisdom created the order which prevails throughout the universe. His communion with the "Being of Supreme Intellect" Ahura Mazda, gave him a message he conveyed to others. He publicly  proclaimed his divine message at the age of thirty with the sole aim of leading the entire human society to an ever-fresh spiritual and material existence. Zardosht renounced and discarded the old cults and practices. He eliminated every rite and ritual that was performed to appease false gods, enrich priests, and exploit the people. He cleansed minds of superstitions. His doctrine was based on the "Primal Principles of Life". The priests and princes, realizmg the threat to their vested interests, vehemently opposed him, and forced him and his few friends to leave home. Zardosht went to the court of Vishtaspa, the leading ruler in the region. They had a two-year long discussion, and Zardosth converted the king and his companions, who became fervent preachers of the new religion, and it spread fast, far and wide. This is excerpted from Ali Akbar Jafarey,The Good Religion of Zardosht".

RH: "Christ was illiterate and could not write. His disciples wrote the Bible for him and deified him. There is
controversy among Christians as to whether Christ ever saw himself as god or simply a messenger"  I assume this too came from Jafarey's book. Where did he get the idea that Christ was illiterate? Our expert if comparative religion, Jon Huyck, could throw some light on this.  Incidentally, he has just gone to, where he will join the clergy of the American Cathedral in Paris.

This is what Nushin says about Mohammed: "Salman Farsi, a zoroasterian prince and a magician, was a revolutionary
man who also was disturbed by his times and was eventually banished from the Sassanian court. His story is documented by Arab and Iranian scholars (Shojaedin Shafa). It is even written in the Koran that Mohammad was illiterate and could not write. Salman Farsi who was intimately familiar with his own native country and Christianity, weaved a new religion together that provided a set of specific laws for the barbaric Arabs. However, Salmon Farsi's ultimate goal was to seize the crown of his motherland. It is a known fact in the history of Iran and it is well  documented that conversion to Islam was through force and persecution".

RH: Nushin opposes the rule of the Mullahs in Iran. Presumably devout Persian Muslims and Arab specialists like Ed Jajko give a quite different version. Surprisingly San Francisco is now the center for the propagation of Zoroastrianism in English, French, German, Italian -Spanish and Portuguese: "Welcome to TheParsiChronicle.com- My name is Ader Gandi and I live in San Francisco, California, USA. My email address is Ader@Gandi.com .... my AIM name iandi .... my MSN Messenger is AderGandi.  I started TheParsiChronicle.com on December 1st. 2003. My idea behind the TheParsiChronicle.com is simple: keep a chronicle of Parsi-Zoroastrians mentioned in the news. Consider it a living history of our community.I welcome your comments and suggestions. You can subscribe to future news about Parsis and Zoroastrians by emailing Ader@Gandi.com with the word subscribe in the subject lineª. RH:  This seems to refer to Indian rather than Persian Zoroastrians. Do Parsis accept converts?  Originally all were converts, so it is hard to understand their alleged refusal.  I suspect that it may be racial.  The Persians viewed themselves as Aryans and therefore superior to the surrounding ethnic groups.  Since we know so little about these matters, clarification from experts including Ed Jajko would be appreciated. Incidentally, why did Nietzsche become interested in Zoroaster? Was it just part of German interest in oriental religions?

Geoffrey Nunberg, GOING NUCULAR

Geoffrey Nunberg of Stanford's Center for the  Study of Language and Information is the author of a new book Going Nucular, which needless to say is a reference to the `pronunciation used by President Bush, deliberately according to Nunberg, who  follows the example set by George Orwell in "Politics and the English Language" (1950).  He reads the press and above all he listens to TV to catch the mannerisms used by politicians and commentators, often with the purpose of fudging the truth. He discusses the metamorphosis in the US  of the word "liberal", which has here acquired a quite different meaning from what it has in Europe. The word "Caucasian" has changed meaning according to the racial politics of the day.  In fact, the word goes back to the German anthropologist Johannes Blumenbac,h who invented it in 1795 under the impression that the Aryan "race" came from the Caucasus,  We have discussed the use of the word "Aryan" in connection with Persia/Iran.  This brings up the whole history of anthropology, which is still in a state of flux. Arguments about it were presumably responsible for the splitting of Stanford's Anthropology into two.  Whenever anyone makes a statement about anthropology, regard it as tentative. Treat with the same doubt  the assertions of politicians and commentators, learning from Geoffrey Nunberg to catch the overtones or undertones of the words they use.

Your comments are invited. Read the home page of the World Association of International Studies (WAIS) by simply double-clicking on:   http://wais.stanford.edu/
E-mail to hilton@stanford.edu. Mail to Ronald Hilton, Hoover Institution, Stanford, CA 94305-6010. Please inform us of any change of e-mail address.

VENEZUELA; Chavez, the referrendum, & Foreign Capital

Jon Kofas writes: "On Sunday, August 15, while the world will be preoccupied with the Olympic games, Venezuelan voters will cast their ballot on whether to recall the controversial leftist-populist president Hugo Chavez. The media in this country, segments of the European and Latin American press have treated Chavez as an unstable dictator. He came to the political scene in 1992 amid a global recession. President Carlos Andres Perez accepted IMF austerity which only exacerbated the recession and lowered living standards among workers and the lower middle class. Helping to found the Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement, colonel Chavez was a critic of Venezuela's oligarchy and the political elites that went along with the IMF catering to foreign capital. When he won the election in 1998, he promised social, political, and economic reform. Like many populists, Chavez freely engages in hyperbolic rhetoric, though his actions are not very different than any nationalist politician. Foreign companies are not worried if he wins this Sunday, though they would not mind at all if he were out of the picture for good. Venezuela needs foreign capital (loans & direct investment), and Chavez will not do anything to jeopardize the fragile economy.

I am predicting a clear victory for him, followed by lower oil prices on Monday in world markets. My Argentinian and Chilean academic friends down there think that the country needs a break from his type of politics and that his defeat will result in a better economy. That he is still in power, despite attempts to get rid of him by domestic and foreign elements is a great testament to the OAS leadership, especially Mexico & Chile that disagreed with the Bush administration on the process of transition".

RH:  We shall see. Will Chavez fare better than his friend Fidel Castro?

Your comments are invited. Read the home page of the World Association of International Studies (WAIS) by simply double-clicking on:   http://wais.stanford.edu/
E-mail to hilton@stanford.edu. Mail to Ronald Hilton, Hoover Institution, Stanford, CA 94305-6010. Please inform us of any change of e-mail address.

ISAIAH BERLIN

From Mexico, Alejo Orvañanos writes: " Reforma (a leading newspaper in Mexico) Jesús Silva published (7/19/04) an article about Isaiah Berlin, which I think you will find of interest.  Do you think WAISERS would like to discuss Berlin's ideas about liberalism?" The article (in Spanish) Alejo sends is by the son of Jesus Silva Herzog, a Mexican historian whom I knew.  It describes how Isaiah Berlin, stationed in Washington, went to Cuernavaca to recover from an illness.  He returned to Washington in good health, but with no desire to return to Mexico, which he viewed as a wild, savage country. This fits in with my lifelong concern about the image of one country in another. His view of Mexico was common in the US and Europe as a result of the atrocities of the Mexican Revolution. Only after World War II did this attitude change.  We can add Berlin's ideas on liberalism to the list of subjects of special interest to WAIS.  I would suggest that Anthony Smith, president of Magdalen College, initiate the discussion, since he must have known Berlin.

The following warning must be unnecessary, since WAISers are walking encyclopedias, but just in case I will give it.  Isaiah Berlin was stationed in the British Embassy during World War II.  Churchill was very impressed with the dispatches he sent, and asked to meet him. The US government obliged by sending Irving Berlin.  Churchill's luncheon conversation puzzled both men.  What's in a name? I repeat. We are talking not about Irving, but about Isaiah Berlin. Both were born in Russia, Irving in Temun in 1888. Isaiah in Riga in 1909. Can Cameron Sawyer tell us if the two are known in Russia? Since Irving wrote "God bless America",  I suggest it be sung at parties at the American Embassy. Isaiah's career is summarized in this BBC obituary:

The philosopher and historian of ideas Sir Isaiah Berlin died in Oxford on  on November 8. 1997, aged 88. Thought by many to be the dominant scholar of his generation, the death of Sir Isaiah, an extraordinary, life-loving man with a mind like an encyclopaedia, leaves a hole in the intellectual life of Britain impossible to fill. "A fox" intrigued by many ideas. In 1953 Isaiah Berlin published a book called The Hedgehog and the Fox. Foxes, he wrote, are people who know many things; hedgehogs know one big thing. It was in part a study of Berlin's literary hero, Tolstoy, whom he described as a fox who wished at times that he was a hedgehog.

Isaiah Berlin was perhaps also a fox, intrigued by many ideas, unendingly curious, open-minded and pleading above all for tolerance. He was born into a Jewish family in 1909 in the Latvian capital Riga. Witnessing a man being overpowered by police and dragged away during the Russian Revolution made him a convinced anti-Communist, although he was never strident in any of his criticisms. When he was 10 the family came to Britain which, he believed, was the best country for him. "I think on the whole, so to speak, people are more tolerant. And if liberal civilisation is what we're in favour of, then I think of the great countries of the world, I think, perhaps, it comes top of that," he once said.

In lectures, essays and broadcasts, he argued for a greater understanding of the essential values of liberal civilisation - pluralism and liberty. He was afraid of, and intellectually opposed to, absolutisms of any kind, and particularly the main intellectual absolutism of the 20th century, Marxism-Leninism. The problem with absolute values, he argued, is that they often conflict. Complete freedom and complete equality were incompatible. "Complete equality means people above other people have to be kept down in order to promote chances for everybody. The two things (complete freedom and complete equality) can't be had together but are both perfectly noble ultimate ends. And one has to choose in the end," he argued. "Now the idea that all values -- not all, but some values are incompatible, leads to the idea that utopias are intrinsically unattainable, not merely in practice but even in concept."

Isaiah Berlin went to school in London and to unversity at Oxford. The family spoke English at home, but he read his way through his father's library of Russian literature, and later was to lecture in a number of languages. During World War II he served in the British Embassy in Washington providing, Winston Churchill with a weekly summary of American opinion which was said to be Churchill's favourite reading. After the war he was seconded to the embassy in Moscow where he met the poet and novelist Boris Pasternak and the poet Anna Akhmatova. This meeting became the subject of one of his most moving and memorable essays in a selection called Personal Impressions.

He had professorships at Harvard and Oxford, honorary doctorates at universities all over Britain; he wrote books and essays on the ideas behind politics and philosophy - a short work on Marx published in 1939 is still one of the most readable there is on the subject; and he gave public lectures that people queued to attend. He spoke at incredible speed because, some said, his mind worked so fast. He himself put it down to nerves, maintaining that all he wanted was to get to the end as quickly as he could. He insisted it should be possible to express any idea, no matter how complex, in simple terms and direct language.

Professor Jerry Cohen, the current Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford University, a position which Sir Isaiah himself held for many years, remembers Isaiah Berlin as a man who was more alive than any human being he has ever known. "He loved life. He radiated life out from himself. He was the most effervescent person one could ever know," Professor Cohen told BBC radio. "He was always bubbling and everybody around him couldn't but rejoice in that. There was nobody who disliked him. They couldn't."

As for his intellectual legacy, Dr Samuel Guttenplan of Birkbeck College in London returns to the theme of pluralism. "He often said to me and many other people that, unlike other philosophers, he had no disciples. Nor did he want them. And I think what he meant in part by that was that there was no body of doctrine that could be specifically associated with his name,  "But of course this was the usual kind of modesty, humility that Isaiah often expressed. And in fact, especially in the last 10 years, people have come to realise that although there was no particular doctrine, what he stood for -- the pluralism of values and the need to recognise the tolerance that goes with pluralism, and the particular way in which the pluralism of values is represented in our society and ought to be represented in more societies -- I think that will come to be seen as a major contribution."

Isaiah Berlin loved music. In a 1997 radio interview  he said that at his funeral he wanted his friend, the pianist Alfred Brendel, to play the andantino from Schubert's piano sonata in A. Then he quickly checked himself. "He's a great friend," he said. "I'd rather not put it on him (ie give him such a painful task). No, no. No, no. I'd rather not die."  RH: Isaiah Berlin, a great lover of music? What did he think of Irving? They presumably met. Isaiah's conversation (in Russian?) must have  puzzled Irving as much as Churchill's did.
 
Sir Isaiah Berlin's concept of the term liberal