The unreliability of government statements

In a post I wrote six years ago, I warned that we should not believe the reports that government officials release in the immediate aftermath of a major event because they are invariably unreliable, either because full information is not available or more frequently because governments deliberately lie as part of the propaganda process, knowing that the first version of events is the one that sticks in people’s minds. As such, I said that we should not believe any of the details that are released until they have been substantiated.

The bin Laden story seems to be another example. The government initially said that he had been armed and using his wife as a shield when he was killed ‘in a firefight’, resulting in her death as well. It turns out that both these details were false. It would not be surprising if we find out in the days, months, and even years to come that other details are also false. Look how long it took for the true stories about Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch to emerge.

So why gild the lily? Why not simply take credit for what seems like a carefully thought out and well-executed plan? Perhaps the government felt the need to discredit bin Laden. But this is pointless. After all, those who hated him do not need any additional reasons to do so, while those who are inspired by him will not believe such stories. Some may even claim that the reports of his death are a fabrication.

I think governments simply cannot help themselves. They cannot let the facts speak for themselves but feel compelled to embellish in order to either cover up their mistakes or, as seems to be the case here, to make themselves look as good as possible and their enemies as bad as possible.

What is truly surprising is that the members of the media, who should know better by now since they have been burned time and again, seem to fall for government propaganda every single time, and pass on government statements as fact, without even the hint of skepticism.

Surprising, unsurprising, and amusing facts about US religious knowledge

The recent Pew survey of US religious knowledge that I discussed on the radio and on this blog, had some features that I want to discuss further.

The things that surprised me about the Pew study were:

  • That 45% of Catholics did not understand what transubstantiation meant. You would think that this would be a big part of their preparation for first communion and subsequent devotional activities. That the number of unaware people is so high suggests that this part of their doctrine is viewed as so absurd that it is downplayed. I mean, really, the idea that the wafer and the wine become the actual body and blood of Jesus because of a prayer and are then consumed seems outlandish and even macabre. It is likely that although the words “This is the body” and “This is the blood” are said during the service, it is not emphasized that people should take it literally.
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William Cohan on The Daily Show

He discusses his new book Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World. The title pretty much says it all.

Part 1 of the interview:

Part 2, where he really dishes the dirt:

Film review: Inside Job

I just watched the above documentary that was released in October 2010 and won the Academy Award for Best Documentary. Narrated by Matt Damon, it lays bare the story of the 2008 financial crisis. It shows clearly the way the financial oligarchy has taken control of the government irrespective of which party is in office and is using its power to greatly enrich itself.

Here’s the film’s trailer:

Most of the film focuses on the way that the crash went down, the whole sordid story in which big investment banks (which have done more to harm to the US and the world than any terrorist organization and of whom Goldman Sachs is the worst) used government deregulation, predatory mortgage lending, lax ratings agencies, practically nonexistent government oversight, and complex new financial instruments to create a Ponzi scheme in which a very few got rich and then when trouble hit were bailed out by the government.

(Almost all of this was covered in my 2008 multi-part series titled Brave New World of Finance, but the film provides a lot more details and tells the story with much greater power and clarity and impact.)

Towards the end, the film highlights something I did not dwell on and that is the cozy relationship between academic economists in elite universities (such as Glenn Hubbard, Laura Tyson, Martin Feldstein, Lawrence Summers, Frederic Mishkin, and others) and the government and giant Wall Street firms, with the former providing the high-toned rationales that influenced government policies that enabled the latter to fleece the country. While we rightly deplore those people in the medical profession who act as flacks for the health industry without disclosing their conflicts of interest, it is a scandal that strict ethical guidelines seem to not exist among university academics who can take huge fees from the financial giants to produce ‘studies’ and ‘reports’ that benefitted those who paid them, justified the measures that led to the disaster, and then walked away unscathed. Watch the chair of the Harvard economics department struggle and fail to explain why they do not have similar guidelines.

Some of those academic economists agreed to appear in the film, no doubt expecting to be given the usual softball treatment they receive from financial journalists and they become visibly uncomfortable and hostile as they get questioned on their own ethics. Glenn Hubbard, now dean of the Columbia Business School, is a case in point. As Charles Ferguson, the film’s writer, director, and producer says in an NPR interview, “Well, the entire interview was fairly contentious, as you can imagine. It surprised me somewhat to realize that these people were not used to being challenged, that they’d never been questioned about this issue before. They clearly expected to be deferred to by me and I think by everybody.” Watch the clip:

In an article, Ferguson writes:

Indeed, one of the most disturbing things I learned in making Inside Job, an issue discussed in the film, is that US universities do not require disclosure of financial conflicts of interest by faculty members, place no limits on the sources and size of professors’ outside income, and do not collect information on the size of this income.
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Over the past 30 years, the economics discipline has been systematically subverted, in much the same way as American politics – by money, especially from the financial services industry. Many of the most prominent economists in America are now paid to testify in Congress, to serve on boards of directors, testify in antitrust cases and regulatory proceedings, and to give speeches to the companies and industries they study and write about with supposed objectivity. This is not a marginal activity; it is now an industry, run by a half dozen large companies.

Some prominent academics have close ties to financial services yet neither their university employers nor the journals in which they publish require them to disclose their conflicts of interest, their financial positions, or the relationship between their financial interests and the policy positions they take.

You can listen to an NPR interview with Ferguson about the making of the film, where he elaborates on how the system is corrupted.

What you find is that very prominent professors of economics, often people who have also held high government posts, are paid to testify in Congress. They are paid to be expert witnesses in both civil and criminal trials. They’re often paid to write papers that praise the financial services industry and argue on behalf of deregulation of the industry. They make millions, in some cases tens of millions, of dollars doing this. And this is usually not disclosed. And in fact, university regulations do not require disclosure of these payments.

The film is well worth seeing. But be warned that it made me very angry and may make you too. And what will make you most angry is that none of these people in academia, government, and Wall Street are even being investigated for their actions, let alone in jail where they deserve to be. And if what they did was not technically illegal under current law, the law should be changed to make it illegal.

After bin Laden

When my daughter called me at 10:30 last night to say that Obama was going to make an announcement, I figured that it must be something the White House considered good news, since no politician rushes out late on Sunday night with bad news.

When it was leaked out soon after about the death of bin Laden, I felt a curious sense of anti-climax. I realized that it was because I had long felt that bin Laden was a spent force and had become just a symbol, to some a source of inspiration and to others a convenient specter with which to frighten people and continue wars and assault civil liberties. Both sides will find new reasons to continue their present course.

Although I would have liked to seen bin Laden arrested and brought to trial, I realize that I am a relic of a bygone era where the idea of summary justice and execution is seen as abhorrent. I had always considered the events of 9/11 a mass murder and not an act of war, and thus saw the problem as one for law enforcement and not as a military issue. But in the present climate in which even the thought of trying low-level captives in Guantanamo in regular courts seem to drive our political leaders into hysterics of fear, there was no possibility of bin Laden ever standing trial. So the reports that the commandos had been given orders to kill him and not even try to capture him and bring him to justice did not come as a surprise.

I did find the reports of raucous celebrations in Washington and New York to be unseemly. The death of anyone, however much we dislike them, is not an occasion for scenes similar to those following sporting victories. It reminded me of the gloating over the deaths of Saddam Hussein’s sons, with front-page displays of their bloodied corpses. I am certain that photos of the dead bin Laden were taken and it is only a matter of time before they are revealed as the speedy burial of his body at sea will undoubtedly create speculation, at least by the dead-enders who doubt Obama’s eligibility to be president, that this whole event was a hoax staged by him for political gain. It would not surprise me in the least to hear this theory propounded in the days to come and that 27% of the public believes it.

Were the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and the destruction of two countries to kill this one person worth it? Not to my mind. It struck me that the manner of bin Laden’s death, the result of actions by a small commando unit on the basis of precise information obtained by intelligence agents as to his location, was something that did not require the massive death and destruction unleashed by a nearly decade-long war waged in two countries, coupled with the dismantling of centuries old constitutional safeguards protecting civil liberties at home.

When theologians justify atrocities

Since there no credible evidence to back up the idea of god, believers essentially have to resort to debating tricks to try and justify their beliefs. Theologians are quite good at this because they have a lot of practice. After all, it takes considerable rhetorical and logical skill to debate questions like how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. But debating tricks are just that, tricks, and any reasonably good debater can quickly identify the ones used by an opponent and neutralize them.
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