The Wrongologist

The Wrongologist and Ms. Oh So Right are off to China in the morning. The sole purpose of this trip is to visit Shenzhen, where Ms. Oh So Right is making a series of presentations to 3 hospitals and a medical education center. The Wrongologist will be attempting to mingle within the high-tech community, which appears to be quite sophisticated and entrepreneurial. 

Shenzhen’s population is 10 million. About 6 million of
the people are migrant workers, many living in factory dormitories during the
week. Shenzhen is the largest migrant city in China, and it has a very large expatriate community. It also has the highest per-capita income of any city in China.

Photo of Shenzhen

Of note, we will be in China on June 4th, which is the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests. According to a new book by Louisa Lin of NPR, “The People’s Republic of Amnesia“, the current younger generation in China have little or no understanding of what happened when the protests came to a sudden end, since no discussion or acknowledgement of it is sanctioned.

But, China is a land undergoing great change. The Wrongologist is reading Evan Osnos’ book about today’s China: “Age of Ambition” which observes that in 1978, the average Chinese annual income was $200, while in 2014 it is $6000. What is really underway is the collision of  individual aspiration and authoritarianism.

We hope to get a direct view of that, and report on it when we return.

“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.” – Mark Twain

“I have never been able to think of the day as one of mourning; I have never quite been able to feel that half-masted flags were appropriate on Decoration Day.  I have rather felt that the flag should be at the peak, because those whose dying we commemorate rejoiced in seeing it where their valor placed it.  We honor them in a joyous, thankful, triumphant commemoration of what they did.” – Benjamin Harrison

Every year, the Wrongologist reminds everyone that Memorial Day used to be called Decoration Day. Back then, it was our most solemn holiday. It was established by a military general order issued by Gen. John Logan, the national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic.

It was first observed on May 30, 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. The Civil War claimed more lives than any conflict in US history, requiring the establishment of the country’s first national cemeteries. This is from Gen. Logan’s order:

By the end of the 1860s, Americans in towns and cities everywhere had begun holding springtime tributes to these countless fallen soldiers, decorating their graves with flowers and reciting prayers.

Decoration Day became Memorial Day when Congress passed the National Holiday Act of 1971, which moved observing national holidays observed to Mondays, creating three-day weekends.

So, along with parades, picnics and three-day sales, and many thinking that we are celebrating the start of summer, let’s stop and remember the people who died in our wars. Let’s do that irrespective of whether we “believed” in a particular war. Here are a few Memorial Day cartoons.

Remember the real costs this weekend:

Uncle Sam wants U:

Let’s remember that all of the war dead were Americans:

On
Thursday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) told the conservative pastors gathered at the
Family Research Council’s Watchmen on the Wall conference:

He
was met with an audible (and understandable) gasp. He earned more gasps when he
warned that this amendment would suppress the political speech rights of the
“citizenry” and “muzzle” pastors in their pulpits.

That
would be huge news if true, but Ace Detective Ted was embroidering. He was talking
about the coming vote by Senate leadership on a constitutional amendment that
would overturn
Citizens United and the
related McCutcheon case, which,
taken together, have steadily eliminated the limits on election spending by
corporations and wealthy individuals. Cruz was talking about the possibility of
losing his corporate money. Whenever a tea-party type talks about the Constitution,
it’s always about the money. Even when it’s about guns, it’s about the money.

Also
this week, Doyle McManus of the LA Times quoted
Grover Nordquist:

The
Tea Party now drives the Republican limo:

The real question is, who co-opted who?

Many Republicans aspire to drive the crazy train, but none can touch Pat Sajak. Yes he’s THAT Pat Sajak:

Tea Party wants Obama to violate the 22^nd Amendment:

And in other depressingly same old, same old, news this week, this week’s vote by Congress doesn’t really put the NSA on a short leash:

The Two Faces of Uncle Sam:

Notice from the Wrongologist:

The Wrongologist leaves next Thursday for a 10-day visit to Shenzhen China, where Foxconn makes the iPhone and iPad, and half of the world’s mobile phones are manufactured. If any blog reader has friends or contacts in Shenzhen, and you are willing to share their contact information, email the Wrongologist privately @: [email protected]

What’s Wrong Today:

About
a million students will graduate from college this month. As they walk with their
diplomas, they face a familiar worry: Will I get a job? Will I get a job I
actually want? Will it let me pay off my student loans? Will my income be enough for me to cover all of my additional bills and finances? Could I turn to somewhere like Qik Car Title Loans to apply for a loan based on the value of my car if I find that I’m ever short of money? Will this help me to keep on track of my current finances?

The
US Department of Labor (DOL) announced that unemployment among 2013 graduates is at 10.9%, down from
13% for graduates in 2012. That’s still weaker than the economy overall, and
worse than it was pre-recession.

What’s
more, those who are working have increasingly settled for jobs outside their
fields of study or for less pay than they’d expected. CNN
reports that:

So,
high unemployment, plus low pay for many who DO find jobs, and then there is the
high debt load many graduates have taken on.

Wolf
Richter of the Testosterone
Pit reports, student debt outstanding has soared 362% to $1.1 trillion
since 2003, during a period when mortgage debt rose “only” 65% to $8.2 trillion
and credit card debt actually declined by 4.2% to $660 billion. Wolf
asks a great question: How will the
burden of servicing the increasing student debt level impact these recent
graduates’ efforts to buy a home?

All
the signs point to them having great difficulty. The proportion of first-time
buyers – the single most important sign of a healthy housing market – has been
shrinking for years. This could simply be down to the fact that graduates don’t have the finances to be able to pay for a house of their own. Luckily, people who have a degree in the medical field may be eligible to qualify for physician loans to help them when it comes to buying a property of their own. But others aren’t so lucky and will have to look for an alternative in the housing market.

Over
70% of the students who are sitting through a commencement speech this spring
have student loans. They will start their careers (if any) with an average
student loan balance of $33,000.

Even
when adjusted for inflation, that’s about twice as much debt as 20 years ago.

Back
then, only 43% of students graduated with student loans. However, after decades
of sustained tuition and fee increases, working your way through college in
four years has become a difficult task. And every year, it gets worse: The
Class of 2012 was the most indebted ever. Then the Class of 2013 took that
dubious honor, only to be trumped by the Class of 2014.

Next
year, that honor will go to the Class of 2015.

The
equation might not have gone so horribly wrong if each class of graduates had
seen their median incomes move in line with their average student debt. That
didn’t happen:

Between
2005 and 2012, (the last year for which the data are available), the
inflation-adjusted average student loan balance of graduates under 30 years old
grew by 35%; while the median annual income adjusted
for inflation for college graduates between 25 and 34 years old has declined by 2.2%.

According to the Department of Numbers blog, in
2012, 36.09% of households were renters, up 3 percentage points since 2008, at the
start of the recession.
For the US, they calculate median
monthly gross rent as a fraction of median household income at 20.65% in 2012.

They
also have an analysis of how much
of a mortgage loan someone can borrow, given a monthly mortgage payment equal
to 30% of the median household income, with a 30 year fixed-rate loan. Their
estimate of the maximum amount a
household could borrow to purchase a home in February 2014 was $257.7k,
while the median US home asking price was $280.4k.

Another disparity is that the current median household income for the United States is $51,371,
yet the overall average starting salary for Class of 2013 new college graduates
was $6k lower, at $45,327, according to the September 2013 Salary
Survey by the National Association
of Colleges and Employers (NACE), a non-profit group.

Now,
the Class of 2014 takes their record-setting pile of student loans and their skimpy
wages out into the American economy. They will become the next generation of
first-time home buyers. And on top of student loans, they’re facing higher
interest rates and higher prices for real estate, forces which will suffocate some
first-time buyers.

Something
has to give. Not raising the minimum
wage in line with inflation is based on a conservative principle that says the
profits of companies are more important than the needs of the working poor.
And surely, paying workers just enough to provide food and basic shelter,
instead of paying them living wages, helps the conservatives’ goals
immensely.

Today’s
grads may have to blow up the system if they are to see change that works for
them. Perhaps they already have: They’re not buying houses, they’re renting in
urban environments, they’re not buying cars, and they’re not getting cable TV.
In short, they are adopting a significantly different lifestyle from that of
their parents. They have to. Rent payments and a subway/bus pass instead of a
mortgage and a car.

That’s not the American dream.

These
kids are part of a generation that will have difficulty building a middle class
lifestyle because finding that middle class wage is harder than ever. At the
same time, due to growing inequality and economic insecurity, the earnings and
status gap between those with a college education and those without is growing,
so aspiring students and parents will
remain willing to pay the price in order to reach for a middle class life.

And
though student loan programs may have been designed with good intentions, they
now simply aid and abet the colleges in extracting ever more money from the
future lives of students.

Student
debt levels are high because college costs way more than it used to cost. And state
governments are not subsidizing public colleges the way they used to.

If only the masters of the universe would take off
their blinders and see that they are wiping out the future for many kids.

Short term gains today at the expense of tomorrow
will cost the country royally.

What’s Wrong Today:

Credit Suisse (CS), the Swiss bank, admitted on Monday in its guilty plea, that it helped American clients evade US taxes. From the plea:

In March, we wrote about Credit Suisse. We gave you the flavor of Credit Suisse’s evasion efforts:

The CS financial penalty was roughly $2.6 billion in fines, with $100 million going to the Fed, $715 million to the New York Department of Financial Services, and $1.8 billion to the Department of Justice (DOJ). CS will also appoint a monitor for two years subject to the approval of the NYDFS.

This fine dwarfs that imposed in 2009 on another big Swiss bank, UBS, who paid $780m, and whose offense may have been more extensive.

Yet, the most important difference with 2009 is not the money, but the charge and the plea. UBS was permitted to enter a deferred-prosecution agreement, enabling guilt to be expunged. CS was forced to plead guilty to aiding tax evasion—making it the first big firm with ties to the financial industry to be tagged with a criminal charge since Arthur Andersen in 2003.

The DOJ is crowing about its new found willingness to convict major financial institutions, with Eric Holder claiming,

The guilty plea certainly seems like a step forward from the neither-admit-nor-deny settlements that banks have counted on for the past decade, but as James Kwak said in The Atlantic:

The Economist reported that:

Moneynews reported on CS’s reaction to the plea:

Credit Suisse Group AG CEO Brady Dougan said he doesn’t expect a guilty plea to a US criminal charge will drive customers away from the bank:

And in the CS press release describing the settlement, there is no expectation of:

Two controversial aspects of the agreement: First is the survival of current senior management. Five lower-level employees who had been indicted for their involvement in the tax scheme but were still being paid, will be terminated. This despite comments by Benjamin Lawsky, New York’s Superintendent of Financial Services, who said that the activity at Credit Suisse was “decidedly not the result of the conduct of just a few bad apples.”

The Second aspect is a provision allowing the identities of CS’s American clients who dodged paying taxes to remain protected.

The Wall Street Journal quotes Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI):

Senator Levin’s committee had published a report on CS showing that more than 22,000 of its accounts were held by Americans, and the CS settlement leaves no clear path to getting those names.

When UBS settled with the DOJ, it disgorged 19,000 names of US account holders.

There are two main ways to punish criminals and deter wrongdoing. One is criminal prosecution of the individuals involved, ideally getting lower-level employees to cooperate and gathering evidence as far up the management hierarchy as possible. (Some ongoing prosecutions against several CS employees continue)

The other is putting a bank out of business by revoking, or temporarily suspending its license, called the “death penalty”. Even if he escapes jail, no bank CEO wants THAT on his résumé. And that penalty would seem entirely appropriate for a bank that engages in a decades-long criminal conspiracy that costs US taxpayers billions of dollars.

More from the Economist:

If this is true, it’s an overwhelming argument that such “too big to jail” banks shouldn’t exist in the first place.

The reason some financial institutions are too big to fail (or jail) is that their collapse could trigger losses at other major institutions and provoke a system wide panic. That was the lesson of AIG in 2008: If it failed to make good on its credit default swaps, various pillars of the financial system might have collapsed, and no one knew how far the damage would spread.

The underlying problem in 2008 was that Lehman, AIG, Citigroup, Bank of America, and other financial institutions were both illiquid and essentially insolvent: They couldn’t come up with the cash to pay their bills, and in the market at that time their assets weren’t worth enough to cover their debts.

But that’s not the case today. Our banks today are sound, so the regulators say. In that case, CS has enough assets to pay off its debts, all of its creditors and counterparties will be made whole, and there is no reason to think about a bank failure.

The fundamental point is that CS is solvent. There are no losses that would have to be absorbed by someone else. If its assets really are worth more than its liabilities, then it must be possible to close down the bank (permanently or temporarily) without harming anyone except shareholders.

As an aside, the Wrongologist spent a couple of decades as an international banker. Back then, banks were supposed to be the ultimate symbol of honesty and decency. We are now witnessing how hollow this myth has become.

Look, were you or the Wrongologist to purposely defraud the US government of $millions, (perhaps in your case, $billions), we’d lose everything and with a felony conviction, get to enjoy several years of fine dining at the greybar hotel.

Yet, CS gets to pay a fine and move on, continuing to do business in the US, and senior bankers everywhere remain a protected class for the DOJ.

As Travis Bickle said: “someday a REAL rain is gonna come and wash the scum away”. Back then, he didn’t mean bankers.

But today, he would.

What’s
Wrong Today:

“There are no facts, only interpretation” – Susan Sontag

Last week, we talked about two Supreme
Court decisions, one with a terrible impact and one with a useful impact on
America. The useful and most recent of those decisions, Brown v. Board
of Education, was handed down 60 years ago. It was a 9-0 decision. Despite
the unanimity, there was sustained talk of impeaching the Chief Justice of that
court, Earl Warren, who had been the Republican nominee for
VP in 1948.

While we have had our share of
controversial decisions in the past 60 years, the real issue has been a shift
to voting by the justices along party or ideological lines. Adam Liptak in the NYT reported
about polarization of the Supreme Court of the US (SCOTUS): (emphasis by the
Wrongologist)

Liptak
goes on: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

OK,
he forgot Bush v. Gore
in 2000. By contrast, in just the last three terms, there were five major
decisions that were closely divided along partisan lines: the ones on the Voting
Rights Act, campaign
finance, arbitration,
immigration
and strip-searches.
In the current term, last month’s campaign
finance ruling and the Town of
Greece decision on legislative prayer fits the same pattern.

Liptak
reported earlier about a study
conducted by the legal scholars Lee Epstein, Christopher Parker, and Jeffrey
Segal, which showed that Supreme Court justices betrayed “in-group”
bias in their First Amendment jurisprudence — that is, they were more likely to uphold the First Amendment claims of defendants
whose speech they liked:

 

Importantly,
this confirms recent
polling by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps which showed that only
about a third of Americans believe SCOTUS decides cases based on the law alone. According to the poll, Americans believe the Supreme Court justices
are political, letting their personal views sway their decisions — an opinion
held across party lines. The poll tracks with other polling from Pew
and Gallup
showing the court’s favorability at historic lows.

Majorities
of Republican, Democratic, and Independent respondents all told the pollsters
that “the current US Supreme Court justices often let their own personal or
political views influence their decisions” — 54% of Democrats, 62% of
Republicans, and 63% of Independents, for a total result of 60% of respondents
agreeing with the statement.

Only
36% of respondents agreed that “the current US Supreme Court justices usually
decide their cases based on legal analysis without regard to their own personal
or political views.”

Specifically
regarding the Supreme Court’s Citizens United campaign finance decision, 80%
of Americans opposed the decision and 18% supported it. Although Republicans
(72%) were less opposed to the decision than Democrats (82%), and
Independents (84%) were most opposed to the decision.

The
polling is based on a survey of 1,004 Americans over the age of 18, conducted
from April 16–24. It has a margin of error of 3.1% at the 95% confidence level.

The
Week reported:

The
Week indicates that the court’s four most conservative members are among the four most conservative
justices to have served on the Supreme Court since World War II, with the
court’s most liberal current member (Ginsburg) well to the right of Warren Court-era liberals like William
Brennan and Thurgood Marshall. It’s not clear, however, that both parties have
an equal understanding of this: While the Bush administration saw the
confirmation of unapologetically conservative justices like Roberts and Alito,
the Obama administration has worked to nominate those — Sotomayor and Kagan —
who are considered fairly moderate on the liberal spectrum.

Moreover, it is
nearly certain that any nominee selected by a Republican president would be
more consistently conservative than the court’s current swing vote, Justice Kennedy.

The
result going forward is likely to be lurches between periods of consistently
conservative and liberal outcomes rather than producing decisions that tend to
fall within the center of public opinion (as has been the historical norm).

Says
The Economist: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Nor
should the contraceptive mandate for employers in Obamacare stand or fall
depending on the religious and ideological makeup of the Supreme Court.

Yet, you shouldn’t
be surprised if the Hobby
Lobby and Conestoga
Wood cases are decided on apparently ideological (religious) lines
in the next few weeks.

It
is obvious to anyone with eyes and ears that the Supreme Court today is an
adjunct of the Republican Right. But we pretend that it is an institution
devoted to an honest and impartial adjudication of law. But, ordinary people know 9
times out of 10, how the Supremes are going to vote.

Immediately
after the Constitutional
Convention, Benjamin Franklin was asked about what had been decided. He replied that the
constitutional convention “gave you a republic, if you can keep it.”

That
“you” means “we”, and not our federal judges.

If
we don’t elect presidents and senators who are committed to keeping our
constitutional republic, then we can’t expect the judges they appoint to keep
it for us, either.

We
live now with dishonest politics, disinformed, and disinforming media,
disconnected cultures, disjointed economics, dysfunctional communities and
disrespected citizens. Repairing our country will require adding a moral
foundation to our politics.

The
US has become, if anything, meaner, smaller, nastier, and more contentious since
the 1980’s. We see push back against civil rights, the fracturing of the middle
class, the overweaning power of the oligarchy, and the radical right’s burning desire to
inflict pain on the poor, who apparently are transgressors against the American
Ideal.

Should
we talk about Hillary’s health? OK! She hit her head. Is she too old? Was
Reagan too old? Was W. too incurious? Was Bill too needy? Was Gore too
arrogant? Is Obama too arrogant? Too aloof? Too tyrannical? Too much a
pushover? Take
your pick, anyone can play! And everybody does!

Pay no attention to these toxic
buffoons.

Policy
questions? Why? You can’t have policy questions if the legislature is
paralyzed! Is this a form of ideological paralysis, or strategic paralysis? Ooh
wait! Strategy! Now let’s talk about strategy instead of policy! Is getting
your way by fooling the electorate a BAD thing, or a GOOD thing? Discuss!

You
must keep score! Who’s on first? Where are we? My head hurts, I must have hit
it on something.

Pay
no attention to toxic buffoons like Rove:

Or toxic buffoons like Marco Rubio or other Deniers:

Or, toxic buffoons like the “Select” Committee on Benghazi:

Or, buffoons in the media who keep selling the same thing:

Or, buffoons who stand on principle:

Or, bureaucrat buffoons who cook the books:

What’s
Wrong Today:

The
anniversary of two Supreme Court decisions that changed America occur this
week, and neither were by John Roberts or Antonin Scalia.

The
first decision did not change the country for the better. That decision was Plessy v. Ferguson. It was decided 118 years ago, on May 18, 1896. The
decision set the precedent that “separate” facilities for blacks
and whites were constitutional as long as they were “equal.” The
court interpreted the 14th Amendment in such a way that equality in the law
could be met through segregated facilities.

The
“separate but equal” doctrine was quickly extended to cover many
areas of public life, such as restaurants, theaters, restrooms, and public
schools. Unfortunately, the separate facilities and institutions accorded to
African Americans were consistently inferior to those provided to
the White community and contradicted the vague declaration of “separate
but equal” institutions issued after the Plessy decision.

Plessy is regarded as one of the most
notorious Supreme Court rulings in US history, often grouped with Dred
Scott v. Sandford (which held that people of African descent are not
protected by the Constitution). But
where it took a civil war and subsequent Constitutional amendments to overturn Dred
Scott, Plessy was reversed only after another Supreme Court decision,
Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.

This
week (May 17) is also the 60th anniversary of the Supreme Court
decision in Brown v. The Board of Education. In Brown, the Court found that
separate is inherently unequal – even if the school facilities and
teachers are of equal quality – because
the segregation policy itself is usually interpreted as denoting the
inferiority of the [African American] group.

Ironically,
announcement of the Brown decision came on the 58th
anniversary of Plessy v. Ferguson, the very case Brown overturned.

After
Plessey, Jim Crow laws were passed
throughout the South. They established separate facilities for Blacks and
Whites in everything from schools to restrooms, drinking fountains to witness
stands in courtrooms. African American community leaders who had achieved political
success during the Reconstruction era lost any gains made when their voters
disappeared.

Historian
Rogers Smith wrote about the Jim Crow laws in Civic
Ideals:

The
Civil Rights movement during the first 50 years of the 20th Century
accepted this policy of “separate but equal” in its struggle to gain access for
people of color into the society. They fought in many communities for equal pay
for teachers and for equal school facilities. It fought for equal libraries,
recreational facilities, and health services.

For
more than 50 years, Plessy defined
the terms of that struggle.

Although
many believe that the case of Brown v.
Board of Education actually overturned Plessy,
the Cornell Law School reports that the
opinion of the case clearly stated that Brown
found Plessy to be inappropriate only in the area of public education.

Plessy v. Ferguson was never overturned by the Supreme
Court; codified and legal segregation was finally banned by the Civil Rights
Act of 1964.

For
some, the Brown decision allowed proponents for better opportunities for
Blacks to fight for positive gains and full equality. But the fact that there
were few means to implement these decisions became clear when it became obvious
that few gains were achieved. By 1960, a new student-led Civil Rights movement
was formed.

Where
the Supreme Court’s Plessy majority
ignored a plea for empathy and was unwilling (or unable) to consider the case in
its full social and historical context, the Supreme Court in Brown listened, and offered an effective
rebuttal to Plessy’s reliance on abstractions. In Brown, the Supreme Court expressly grounded its reasoning in the world
in which it, and the parties lived.

In
other words, the reasoning in Plessy and
Brown can be divided along the lines
of context and empathy, with Plessy a
failed decision made in an intellectual vacuum, and Brown as the rejection of judicial decision-making in a vacuum.

Sound
like today’s Court to you?

There
will be millions of words analyzing the Brown decision this week. Some, like
the Wall
Street Journal see a triumph:

Others
see an unfinished job. The WaPo’s WonkBlog
reports
that 60 years on, Brown v. Board of Education has largely yielded parallel
progress and disappointment:

WaPo
says that since the 1970s, integrated schools have actually
been disappearing, while residential
racial segregation in the US has
steadily declined, segregation among school-aged children has increased. So, in
the communities where they live, black and white children, as well as the poor
and non-poor, are more isolated from
each other than adults in the US population at large.

Further, UCLA’s
Civil Rights Project report, Brown
at 60 shows that relying on Brown
may not be enough:

And
it’s no longer just a black-and-white issue:

• Latinos
  are now the largest minority group in public schools, surpassing blacks. And
  about 57% attend schools that are majority Latino

• In
  New York, California and Texas more than half of all Latino students go to
  schools that are 90% minority or more

• The
  South now is the least segregated section of America. Outside of Texas, no
  Southern state is in the top five in terms of most segregated for black students

• In
  New York, Illinois, Maryland and Michigan black students attend schools where
  90% or more are minority

While
racial discrimination remains a factor, other forces are in play. Educated
parents with means have flocked to suburban districts and schools with the best
reputations for decades. In the South, many school districts encompass both a
city and the surrounding area, and that has led to better-integrated schools.

Still,
around the country, only 23% of black students attended white-majority schools
in 2011. That’s the lowest number
since 1968, despite the WSJ’s
feel-good thinking.

At
the same time, there’s been a demographic change in public schools. Between
1968 and 2011, the number of Hispanic students in the public school system rose
495%, while the number of black students increased by 19% percent and the number
of white students dropped 28%, according to the Education Department.

Segregation
will always exist.

Some
segregation today is self-imposed. Some occurs because of the end of busing to achieve
racial balance. Some is driven by economic circumstances.

58
years after Plessy, the Brown decision was a
triumph for a civil society.

Today, it hardly seems to have been enough for our
minority student populations.

What’s Wrong Today:

The level of ambivalence in Europe regarding what to
do about Ukraine and Russia’s actions continues to grow. Bloomberg reported that the EU added
13 people to its list of sanctioned Russians and, for the first time, added a
few companies. However, the companies were two Crimean energy companies that were
expropriated from Ukraine by Russia.

Are these actions proof that the EU is ready to
endure much of the self-inflicted pain that effective economic sanctions against
Russia would involve?

Not really.

French President Francois Hollande confirmed
on Monday that France will sell to Russia two Mistral
Class helicopter carriers worth €1.2 billion ($1.64 billion). You might
have thought that this sale would have been canceled, since the vessels enable
Russia to quickly deliver air power and tanks to potential battle zones in the
Black Sea area, (think: Odessa, Moldova and Georgia). In fact, the second
carrier is named “Sevastopol”, after the Crimean seaport. Russian sailors will start
training on board the first ship next month, and will take delivery in October.

France
24 reported that, despite tensions between Russia and the West reaching
their highest point since the end of the Cold War, French President Hollande
invited Vladimir Putin to attend the commemoration of the landing at Normandy by
the allies on June 6. Russia’s ambassador to France, Alexander Orlov:

France 24 quoted President Hollande:

Hollande said in an interview with France 2 that the Normandy
landings were only possible because of the Soviet Army’s effort in the east, while
French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said:

Bloomberg quotes
German Chancellor
Angela Merkel: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

The June 6 commemoration will mark the first time
Putin and Western leaders will come face-to-face since the outbreak of the
crisis in Ukraine. Mr. Obama will be at the Normandy Commemoration, but Josh Earnest, a White
House spokesman, said there were no plans for Obama to have a separate meeting
with Putin.

It may be appropriate for the parties to separate
the war commemorations of WWII from the current geopolitical conflict, and it
seems that the US was in agreement about Putin attending the ceremonies.

But the Ukraine situation continues: On Tuesday, days
after Ukraine received the first $3.2 billion tranche from an International
Monetary Fund (IMF) aid package, Russia’s Gazprom sent Ukraine a $1.6 billion bill for pre-payment of June’s gas deliveries, at $486.50 per
thousand cubic meters (the highest in Europe, and up from $268.50 before
Ukrainian President Yanukovych was deposed). Failure to pay, Gazprom said, will mean
that supplies will be cut off starting June 3.

Mr. Putin says Russia wants to see Ukraine’s future
resolved through dialogue, that it didn’t want Sunday’s independence referendum
in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, and that it is withdrawing
troops from Ukraine’s border. But, he then endorsed the referendum results, and
hasn’t moved his troops away from the boarder.

So, if we look at actions, rather than just what has
been said, the Europeans also continue to show their deep ambivalence regarding
Putin’s words and actions in Ukraine. Europe wants the conflict to just go away,
while Kiev has no ability to respond to its citizens’ need for protection, or
to the moves of its Eastern citizens toward independence.

According to The
Jamestown Foundation: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

Putin has executed a smart tactical maneuver by
playing to the business/political interests in the West that say Ukraine isn’t
worth a confrontation. He also continues to use Russia’s economic clout with
Europe to stifle any unified and severe sanctions response from the EU.

Russia is also closely involved with several of Mr. Obama’s
top foreign policy priorities, even negotiating alongside Washington in talks
aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear program.

All of this leaves the US without much leeway to act.

Despite the results of the Eastern referendum, the diplomatic initiative could remain in
the hands of Ukraine. The presidential elections on May 25th
could rescue Ukraine from being a failed state if turnout is high, and the
results undisputed.

A reconstituted Ukrainian state would see Russia as
an existential threat, so “winning Crimea, but losing Ukraine” is the best
Putin could achieve, if the elections were to be a unifying event for the
country.

Instead, civil war, is a real possibility. The Jamestown
Foundation reports that nearly half of Russians now see civil war as the most
probable outcome of the Ukrainian crisis (up from 22% in early March). Mr. Putin
could be the loser if there is a brushfire civil war, since any Russian intervention
might trigger unity in Europe against Moscow.

Whether
it is a successful election or civil war, the US should not do more. Europe
doesn’t want to do more, Russia doesn’t want to do more. Ukrainians can’t do much more. All of these actors have to want to do more than the US if we are to be an effective broker in the region.

America’s
neo-cons want us to get involved. We hear them shout: “appeasement” and “Obama
is another Chamberlain” (That’s Neville, not Wilt).

Why
is it in our interest to listen to them?

What’s
Wrong Today:

According
to Turkish media, on May 29, Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan will attend a
symbolic prayer in the orthodox temple of Hagia Sophia,
on the anniversary of the siege of Constantinople by the Ottomans.

From
the Economist:
Prime Minister Erdogan plans to lead prayers in the building to mark the 561st
anniversary of the conversion of the Sophia to a mosque:

Bulent
Arinc, a deputy Prime Minister, has already overseen the conversion of two
other Hagia Sophia churches: one in Iznik in 2012 and another in Trabzon in
2013. The Economist quotes Arinc:

Since
1935, the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul has been a museum, not a church or a mosque.
This was the solution devised by Kemal Ataturk, one of the 20th century’s great
statesmen, to resolve competing claims by the Muslim and Christian communities
in Turkey. The Sophia was built by the Romans in 360. The dome visible in the
photo below was added in 537. Constantine made it the home of the Roman church
(and named the city, Constantinople). It was an Eastern Orthodox Church for a
short period, and from 1453 to 1931, it was a mosque. Here is a photo of the Hagia
Sophia taken last March:

Photo by the Wrongologist

The
Sophia shows the additions and subtractions as its religion changed from
Christian to Islam. Following the building’s conversion into a mosque in 1453,
many of its mosaics were covered with plaster, due to Islam’s ban on
representational imagery:

Photo by the Wrongologist

This is one of the Deësis mosaics that date from 1261. It was commissioned to mark the
end of 57 years of Roman Catholic use and the return to the Orthodox
faith. It is the third panel situated in the imperial enclosure of the
upper galleries. It is widely considered the finest in Hagia Sophia,
because of the softness of the features, the humane expressions and the
tones of the mosaic. Here is a detail from the mosaic:

Photo by the Wrongologist

These mosaics were uncovered in the 1930s by a team from the Byzantine Institute of America led by Thomas Whittemore. The team uncovered all major mosaics. Since
then, there has been a continuing effort to partially restore the provenance of
the building.

The threat to the
Sophia’s museum status emerged in December 2012 when a local court ruled in
favor of the General Directorate of Pious Foundations, the government body
responsible for the country’s ancient mosques. It declared that the mosque was
an “inalienable” part of the legacy of Mehmed II, who conquered Istanbul in
1453 and converted the church to a mosque in 1453. The Sophia was the personal
property of Mehmed II (the title deed survives). And in his will, Mehmed II
decreed that it should remain a mosque “until Judgment Day.”

The court held that
the Ministry of Culture that manages the Sophia, had been “illegally occupying”
the building.  

However,
the recent push for conversion back to a mosque seems to be another game playing
out between Mr. Erdogan, his AKP party and Fethullah
Gulen, the Pennsylvania-based preacher whom Mr. Erdogan has accused of
seeking to overthrow his government.

According
to Al-Monitor,
several columnists from the Fethullah Gulen community had launched a campaign
calling for the Sophia to be turned to a mosque and opened to Muslim
worship. Apparently, they are using Twitter intensively to spread the message.
From the Turkish paper Hurriyet, an article by Ertugrul
Ozkok:

Some think
that with this move, the Gulen Movement is trying to restore its political
credentials. Mr. Gulen had tried to discredit the government through a
corruption probe launched by his disciples in the judiciary. Regardless of the
truth of that, you can read the Wrongologist’s report here.

Now it may
be that Mr. Gulen is attempting to wedge Mr. Erdogan by putting him into
difficulty about his religious position, which previously had been against any
change in the Sophia’s status. Even Mr. Arinc, who wants the Sophia to be a
mosque, did not take the bait, declaring that a conversion of the Sophia was “not
on the government’s agenda”. Bulent Turan, an AK deputy said: (brackets by the
Wrongologist)

Here is a
photo taken inside today’s Sophia that demonstrates the multicultural history
of the building:

The medallion on the right
represents Allah, while the medallion on the left is for Mohammad.

Behind the
medallions is the nave of the original church, with the middle window pointing
to Jerusalem. The lighted arch in the nave was added when the building became a
mosque, and it points toward Mecca.

Turkey
currently has about 85,000 mosques, around 10,000 of which have been built
since the AKP came to power in 2002. A huge mosque is currently being
constructed on the highest hill overlooking Istanbul.

But there
have been no efforts to take working churches away from Christian communities
and turn them into mosques.

Photo
by the Wrongologist

In 2011, the government ordered the return of
property confiscated decades ago to the dwindling Christian and Jewish
communities in Turkey, which number less than 200,000 people in a country of 75
million.

Turkey has been
held up as proof that the Islam is perfectly compatible with multiparty
democracy, a pro-Western foreign policy, and healthy economic growth.
Re-converting the Sophia to a mosque would make many in the West rethink that
view.

Yet today, politics
may lead the Sophia, and Turkey, in that different direction.

This magnificent
temple that was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1985, inspires
its 3+million annual visitors as an example of tolerance and pluralism in a world
rapidly moving away from these concepts.

It should
remain open to all.