Adam Lee reads Atlas Shrugged so you don’t have to

Ayn Rand’s paean to capitalism as expounded in this book has commanded a loyal following from many of the worst people in public life, such as former chair of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan and current speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan. Its basic message that wealth equates with virtue is targeted at those who are already wealthy by appealing to their vanity, that they are successful not because of family or luck but because they are smarter and more industrious than everyone else, something that we know is not true.
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The major role that luck plays in success

I think anyone who is ‘successful’ in life (however one defines that word) and is at least mildly thoughtful will have an appreciation of the important role that luck played in them getting where they are. Show me a person who thinks that they achieved their success purely because of their own talent and abilities, and I will show you an arrogant jerk. Where you were born and the circumstances of the family you were born into are two major luck factors but as one grows up, there are so many others such as the friends you happen to make, the teachers you encountered, purely random encounters and events that impinge on your life, and so on. Without much effort I can write down a long list of lucky breaks in my life that have enabled me to be ‘successful’, not in terms of great wealth or fame, but just simply in avoiding disaster or great hardship.
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Don’t expect anything good from Senate Democrats on foreign policy

Jon Schwarz goes into all the terrible positions that Chuck Schumer, whom the Democrats chose as their leader in the US Senate, has taken over the years. Schumer has been an uncritical supporter of Israel and advocated for much of the neoconservative agenda that has brought so much ruin and suffering in the Middle East.

Schumer’s positions on domestic policy leave much to be desired, but not on every issue. By contrast, his views on foreign policy are largely indistinguishable from the Republican Party in general and Trump specifically.
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So taken together, it’s obvious that Schumer does not and never will offer voters an alternative to Trump and Republicans in general on the most important questions of national security. That’s because Schumer truly, deeply and sincerely agrees with them.

As long as Schumer is the leader of the Democrats in the US Senate, we will have a terrible foreign policy.

If this is not who you are, then how could this happen?

I wrote about Aaron Schlossberg, the lawyer who was captured on video when he went on a racist tirade against workers at a fast food restaurant in New York City who were speaking Spanish and said that he would call ICE on them and that he was paying for their welfare. He was quickly identified and received a great deal of notoriety, with public shaming that consisted of mixtures of condemnations and ridicule, one element of the latter being a Spanish-themed street party in front of his apartment, complete with tacos and a mariachi band.
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Understanding recent developments on Korea

The current uncertainty over whether the meeting between North Korean president Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump will actually take place on June 12 in Singapore should not detract from how important getting just an agreement to meet is. In one of the best articles I have seen so far, John Feffer argues that the foreign policy establishment in the US is correct that Donald Trump got manipulated into agreeing to a summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jung-un but that this was good thing.
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Pandering to extremists

Appealing to the vanity of one’s audience is one of the standard rhetorical tricks of speakers seeking to ingratiate themselves and thus make their message more palatable. Donald Trump in the US has raised such pandering to extremists to high levels. But this kind of appeal to the tribal vanity of the audience is by no means unique to him and one does not have to look far to find other examples that are as extreme.
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On Israel, satire in The Onion gets closer to the truth than the news media

Israelis and their supporters in the US celebrated the moving of the US embassy to Jerusalem even as the Israeli armed forces killed dozens of unarmed protestors in Gaza. Jeremy Scahill writes about what happened and Norman Finkelstein’s new book about the harrowing conditions in Gaza.

ISRAEL HAS ONCE again conducted a premeditated, full-scale massacre in broad daylight, in front of the cameras of the world. Once again, it took place in Gaza.

On May 14, Israeli snipers and other forces gunned down more than 60 Palestinians, and wounded thousands of others, including civilians, journalists, and paramedics. “You try nonlethal means and they don’t work,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “So you’re left with bad choices. It’s a bad deal. You know, you try and you go for below the knee, and sometimes it doesn’t work, and unfortunately these things are avoidable.”

It appears that the only way not to be killed, according to Netanyahu, is to meekly accept imprisonment inside the prison of Gaza. Among those killed by Israeli forces was an 8-month-old infant. Her name was Laila al-Ghandour. They also killed at least seven other children and a man in a wheelchair, and that man had lost his legs after they had to be amputated following an earlier Israeli attack.

Israel has made it clear that it believes that it has the right to systematically murder Palestinians for the crime of continuing to exist. There is no defense for what Israel has done. None.

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Blowback from torture

Gina Haspel has been confirmed as head of the CIA with assistance from Democratic senators despite her appalling record of supervising brutal torture methods and then destroying evidence. Jeremy Scahill reports how Dr. Sondra Crosby, a professor of public health at Boston University and a doctor and a Naval reserve officer, described what she saw to the committee that was conducting the hearings, and that it was worse than what she had seen in torture victims in other places.
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How Facebook enabled Buddhist vigilante violence in Sri Lanka

The New York Times has a daily podcast where they discuss with their reporters a single story that they covered. On Wednesday, May 16 they had an episode titled When Facebook Rumors Incite Real Violence about how rumors on Facebook led to deadly violence in Sri Lanka. (Scroll down to find it.) The story provides yet another example of how religious majorities tend to be intolerant and that Buddhists, despite their reputation of being a ‘peaceful’ religion, are no less susceptible to violence than Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Muslims. There is no religion that cannot be turned into a vehicle for intolerance and violence when they acquire the means to be so.
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