Auguste Comte

6/07/2009

Auguste Comte (1798-1857) was a French philosopher, one of the founders of positivism. Comte was one of the first to designate society as a unified object of enquiry, a central assumption of modernist social science. He held strongly to the idea of an organic totality where the whole is more than its parts.

Auguste Comte was born at Montpellier, southern France, on January 17, 1798. He attended the Lycée Joffre and the University of Montpellier, one of the oldest European universities. Then Comte was admitted to the École Polytechnique in Paris. The École Polytechnique was notable for its adherence to the French ideals of republicanism and progress. In 1822, he published "Plan of scientific studies necessary for the reorganization of society".

In 1823, Comte got married to Caroline Massin, whom he divorced in 1842. In 1826 he was taken to a mental hospital and two months later left the institution without being cured – only stabilized by Massin. He began to work again on his philosophical plan. During this time, he published the six volumes of his Cours.

From 1844, Comte was involved with Clotilde de Vaux, a relationship that remained platonic. After her death in 1846 this love became quasi-religious, and Comte saw himself as founder and prophet of a new "religion of humanity". He published four volumes of Système de politique positive (1851 - 1854).

Auguste Comte died in Paris on 5 September 1857 and was buried in the famous Cimetière du Père Lachaise. His apartment from 1841-1857 is now conserved as the Maison d'Auguste Comte. Comte and Spencer share many positivist assumptions but the latter represents a form of methodological individualism where the “properties of the aggregate are determined by the properties of its units.” Comte and Spencer all share affinities with Darwin’s approach; the idea that the permanence of certain elements is due to their better disposition to adapt in their environment. Hence the extensive use of the organic analogy in Durkheim.

The Positive Philosophy was August Comte's first great work, and in it he propounds his theory that all institutions are based upon the ideas of men which are formed in three successive stages--theology, metaphysics and finally from the positive. When he studies the development of human intelligence, he found that it passes through three stages: 1) The theological; 2) the metaphysical; 3) the scientific or positive. In the theological stage it seeks to account for the world by super-natural beings. In the metaphysical stage it seeks an explanation in abstract forces. In the scientific, or positive, stage it applies itself to the study of the relation of phenomena to each other.

Aristotle

3/22/2009

Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, who wrote on many subjects, which included metaphysics, physics, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology. He was a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great.

Aristotle's works contain the earliest known formal study of logic. They were incorporated into modern formal logic in the late nineteenth century. In metaphysics, Aristotelianism had a profound influence on philosophical and theological thinking in Christian and Jewish traditions in the Middle Ages. Together with Socrates and Plato, Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy.

Aristotle's philosophy dealt with the universal, but he found the universal in particular things, which he called the essence of things, while Plato found that the universal existed apart from particular things, and was related to them as their prototype.

In contrast to the idealism of Plato, who said that the idea ontologically existed for itself, separated in the Topus Hyper Uranus (the World of the Ideas), Aristotle was a realistic philosopher. For him reality is the synthesis of matter and form. That is to say that an object we see in our circumstances can not exist for itself without the matter, nor can the matter stand on its own without the form. A table would not be a table without the solid matter that constitutes it, but the material of which the table is made would not be a table without the form. And the form is the concept, or the idea which the maker of that table held in his mind at the moment he was making it.

Nowdays, the third world countries are full of idealistic leaders who, like Plato, hang onto to ideas which have no substances, that is to say they are not anchored to the real world of actual things. We need realistic leaders, who, like Aristotle, can see the form synthesized and concretized with the material of the real world, and in this world of concrete forms start working on projects which can be realizable.

Rene Descartes

2/09/2009

René Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician, scientist, and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He is considered the father of Modern Philosophy, and much of subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which continue to be studied closely to this day. In particular, his Meditations on First Philosophy continues to be a standard text at most university philosophy departments.

Descartes' influence in mathematics is also apparent, the Cartesian coordinate system allowing geometric shapes to be expressed in algebraic equations being named for him. He is accreditied as the father of analytical geometry. Descartes was also one of the key figures in the Scientific Revolution.

Descartes was a major figure in 17th century continental rationalism, later advocated by Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz, and opposed by the empiricist school of thought consisting of Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Leibniz, Spinoza and Descartes were all well versed in mathematics as well as philosophy, and Descartes and Leibniz contributed greatly to science as well.

Descartes was born on March 31, 1596, in La Haye en Touraine, Indre-et-Loire, France. At the age of eleven, he entered the Jesuit Collège Royal Henry-Le-Grand at La Flèche. After graduation, he studied at the University of Poitiers, earning a Baccalauréat and License in law in 1616, in accordance with his father's wishes that he should become a lawyer.

Rene Descartes traveled throughout Europe. In 1622 he returned to France, and during the next few years spent time in Paris and other parts of Europe. He arrived in La Haye in 1623, selling all of his property, investing this remuneration in bonds which provided Descartes with a comfortable income for the rest of his life. Descartes was present at the siege of La Rochelle by Cardinal Richelieu in 1627.

In 1628, Descartes returned to the Dutch Republic. In April 1629 he joined the University of Franeker and the next year, under the name "Poitevin", he enrolled at the Leiden University to study mathematics with Jacob Golius and astronomy with Martin Hortensius. In Amsterdam, he had a relationship with a servant girl, Helène Jans, with whom he had a daughter, Francine, who was born in 1635 in Deventer, at which time Descartes taught at the Utrecht University. Francine Descartes died in 1640 in Amersfoort.

Rene Descartes wrote all his major work during the 20 years he spent in the Netherlands, where he managed to revolutionize mathematics and philosophy. In 1633, Galileo was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church, and Descartes abandoned plans to publish Treatise on the World, his work of the previous four years. "Discourse on the Method" was published in 1637. Descartes also lays out four rules of thought, meant to ensure that our knowledge rests upon a firm foundation.

Descartes continued to publish works concerning both mathematics and philosophy for the rest of his life. In 1643, Cartesian philosophy was condemned at the University of Utrecht, and Descartes began his long correspondence with Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia. In 1647, he was awarded a pension by the King of France.

René Descartes died on 11 February 1650 in Stockholm, Sweden, where he had been invited as a teacher for Queen Christina of Sweden. The cause of death was said to be pneumonia.

Descartes is often regarded as the first modern thinker to provide a philosophical framework for the natural sciences as these began to develop. In his Discourse on the Method he attempts to arrive at a fundamental set of principles that one can know as true without any doubt. To achieve this, he employs a method called metaphysical doubt, sometimes also referred to as methodological skepticism: he rejects any ideas that can be doubted, and then reestablishes them in order to acquire a firm foundation for genuine knowledge.

Descartes arrives at only a single principle: thought exists. Thought cannot be separated from me, therefore, I exist (Discourse on the Method and Principles of Philosophy). Most famously, this is known as cogito ergo sum ("I think, therefore I am"). So, Descartes concluded, if he doubted, then something or someone must be doing the doubting, therefore the very fact that he doubted proved his existence. "The simple meaning of the phrase is that if one is skeptical of existence, that is in and of itself proof that he does exist."

Descartes concludes that he can be certain that he exists because he thinks. But in what form? He perceives his body through the use of the senses; however, these have previously been proven unreliable. So Descartes concludes that the only indubitable knowledge is that he is a thinking thing. Thinking is his essence as it is the only thing about him that cannot be doubted.

Positivism

1/17/2009

Positivism arose in the second half of the nineteenth century. It was a new movement of thought. This movement arose in opposition to the abstractionism and formalism of the transcendental Idealists, who had made nature a "representation" of the ego. The purpose of the new school of thought was to lay greater stress upon immediate experience, upon the positive data obtained through the senses.

The great advances made by the biological, social and economic sciences of the age, and particularly the discoveries concerning electrical energy, favored the emergence of Positivism. Certainly great progress was made in the physical and social sciences during this period. Of particularly great impact upon the development of thought during this period was the hypothesis of the origin of species of Charles Darwin (1809-1882). Darwin's theory is that matter, mechanically and without any intervention of superior forces, developed itself into a multiplicity of living beings by virtue of certain laws inherent in matter itself.

Positivism found a precedent for its doctrines in English Empiricism, which had acclaimed experience as the sole source of human knowledge. At the same time, however, because of the new interpretation it gives to reality, Positivism differs from Empiricism. The new school of thought held that the sole reality is matter which, through internal energy, is mechanically evolved from inferior forms until it attains consciousness in man. Thus, notwithstanding the intention it had of opposing Idealism, Positivism is closely allied to Idealism in its immanentist concept of reality. For this reason, Positivism, like Idealism, has a distinctly Kantian origin, although Positivism and Idealism went their separate ways in applying Kant's teachings to the problem under investigation.

Idealism had developed the thinking ego and had transformed it into an ego endowed with the power of creating reality; Positivism starts with the concept of the thing in itself, divinizes it, and considers it a kind of energy which is able to create all reality, including man. Thus, although Positivism attempts a reversal of the Idealist position, both are occupied with the "creative force" of matter. This "force" Positivism utilizes in formulating its doctrine of evolution.

Friedrich Nietzsche

1/02/2009

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a nineteenth-century German philosopher and classical philologist. He wrote critical texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy, and science. Nietzsche used a distinctive German language style and displayed a fondness for metaphor and aphorism. Nietzsche's influence remains substantial within and beyond philosophy, notably in existentialism and postmodernism. Friedrich Nietzsche’s thoughts challenged the foundations of Christianity and traditional morality. He believed in life, creativity, health, and the realities of the world we live in, rather than those situated in a world beyond. Central to his philosophy is the idea of “life-affirmation,” which involves an honest questioning of all doctrines that drain life's energies, however socially prevalent those views might be. Often referred to as one of the first existentialist philosophers, Nietzsche's revitalizing philosophy has inspired leading figures in all walks of cultural life, including dancers, poets, novelists, painters, psychologists, philosophers, sociologists and social revolutionaries.

Friedrich Nietzsche was born on October 15, 1844, in the small town of Röcken, near Leipzig, in the Prussian Province of Saxony. Nietzsche's parents were Carl Ludwig Nietzsche (1813–1849), a Lutheran pastor and former teacher, and Franziska Oehler (1826–1897), who had two other children: a daughter, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, born in 1846, and a second son, Ludwig Joseph. In 1849, Nietzsche's father died from a brain ailment. When his younger brother died, too, in 1850, the family then moved to Naumburg, where they lived with Nietzsche's paternal grandmother and his father's two unmarried sisters. After the death of Nietzsche's grandmother in 1856, the family moved into their own house.

When Nietzsche turned 14, he began to attend a first rate boarding school, Schulpforta, where he prepared for university studies. At 19 he graduated from Schulpforta and entered the university of Bonn in 1864 as a theology and philology student, but his interests soon shifted exclusively towards philology and philosophy. In 1865, Friedrich Nietzsche accidentally discovered Arthur Schopenhauer’s book “The World as Will and Representation,” in a local bookstore. Schopenhauer’s atheistic vision of the world greatly influenced Nietzsche’s mind. Schopenhauer was especially significant in the development of Nietzsche's later thought. Lange's descriptions of Kant's anti-materialistic philosophy, the rise of European Materialism, Europe's increased concern with science, Darwin's theory, and the general rebellion against tradition and authority greatly intrigued Nietzsche. The cultural environment encouraged him to expand his horizons beyond philology and to continue his study of philosophy.

In 1867 Nietzsche signed up for one year of voluntary service with the Prussian artillery division in Naumburg. However, a bad riding accident in March 1868 left him unfit for service. Consequently Nietzsche turned his attention to his studies again, completing them later that year. Nietzsche received a remarkable offer to become professor of classical philology at the University of Basel. He was only 24 years old and had not completed his doctorate or received his teaching certificate. Despite the fact that the offer came at a time when he was considering giving up philology for science, he accepted. Nevertheless, Nietzsche served in the Prussian forces during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 as a medical orderly. In his short time in the military he experienced much, and witnessed the traumatic effects of battle.

Nietzsche became highly popular and fashionable among the pseudo philosophical intellectuals in the second half of the 20th century. Nietzsche's philosophical starting point was Arthur Schopenhauer and his nihilism. On the other hand, we should not overlook the significant impact of Hegel's philosophy on the development of Nietzsche's thought, for Hegel was the first Western philosopher who attempted to comprehend reality as a process, specifically as a historical process. His radical criticism on Christianity (“God is dead!” and “Christianity is the religion of the slaves and weaklings,” etc.) created various sharp confrontations with and creative activities among theologians. Nietzsche's philosophy is a radical assertion of Individualism in the sense that to do philosophy is to do so as a concrete, particular invidual. It demands the responsibility of the individual as a thinker and a human-being as such.

On January 3, 1889, Nietzsche suffered a collapse which seems to have triggered a psychotic break down. Two policemen approached him after he caused a public disturbance in the streets of Turin. Commentators have frequently diagnosed a syphilitic infection as the cause of the illness. While most commentators regard Nietzsche's breakdown as unrelated to his philosophy, some, including Georges Bataille and René Girard, argue that his breakdown may have been caused by a psychological maladjustment brought on by his philosophy. At least one study has suggested that brain cancer rather than syphilis led to his breakdown and killed him. Others have classified Nietzsche's "madness" as frontotemporal dementia. In 1898 and 1899 Nietzsche suffered from at least two strokes which partially paralyzed him and left him unable to speak or walk. After contracting pneumonia in mid-August 1900 he had another stroke and died about noon on August 25.

Hegel: Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis

12/19/2008

The triad thesis, antithesis, synthesis is often used to describe the thought of German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel stresses the paradoxical nature of consciousness; he knows that the mind wants to know the whole truth, but that it cannot think without drawing a distinction. Unfortunately, every distinction has two terms, every argument has a counter-argument, and consciousness can only focus on one of these at a time. So it fixes first on the one, then under pressure fixes second on the other, until it finally comes to rest on the distinction itself. Hegel refers to this process of alternation and rest as dialectic.

In other words, the dialectical method involves the notion that the form of historical movement, process or progress, is the result of conflicting opposites. Thus this area of Hegel's thought has been broken down in terms of the categories of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Hegel's philosophy of history embraces the concept that a conflict of opposites is a struggle between actual and potential worlds.

A thesis can be seen as a single idea. The idea contains a form of incompleteness that gives rise to the antithesis, a conflicting idea. A third point of view, a synthesis, arises from this conflict. It overcomes the conflict by reconciling the truths contained in the thesis and antithesis at a higher level. The synthesis is a new thesis. It generates a new antithesis, and the process continues until truth is arrived at.

Dialectic of Personhood:
THESIS: Start here: "I am born; I am a child."
ANTITHESIS: Negation of the thesis. "I have grown; I am an adult; so, I am NOT the child I used to be."
SYNTHESIS: Negation of the opposition between thesis and antithesis. "I am NEITHER child NOR adult, but a whole person."

Dialectic of the Drinking Glass:
THESIS: Looking at a glass with some water in it, consciousness would not see anything at all if it did not distinguish between what is water and what is not water. If we suppose that consciousness begins as an optimist, then its thesis is an argument that the glass is half-full.
ANTITHESIS: Faced with the objection that this is not the whole truth, consciousness becomes a pessimist who argues for the antithesis that the glass is half-empty. The antithesis is the opposite of the thesis.
SYNTHESIS: Faced with the objection that this is not the whole truth either, and having already taken both sides, consciousness realizes that the whole truth is a synthesis: the volume that is empty equals the volume that is full.

Although the triad is often thought to form part of an analysis of historical and philosophical progress called the Hegelian dialectic, the assumption is erroneous. Hegel used this classification only once, and he attributed the terminology to Immanuel Kant. The terminology was largely developed earlier by the neo-Kantian Johann Gottlieb Fichte, also an advocate of the philosophy identified as German idealism.

The triad is often said to have been extended and adopted by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels; however Marx referred to them in The Poverty of Philosophy as speaking Greek and "Wooden trichotomies".

The Assault On Pelindaba

12/07/2008

(From CBS)

"Go back and read chapter 14 of my book, your next story should be about nuclear terrorism," George Tenet told us as we finished up a hefty steak dinner at one of his locals in Georgetown. Chapter 14 of Tenet's book is called 'They Want to Change History,' the 'They,' is Al-Qaeda, and what follows is a warning from the former director of the CIA: it's not a question of if terrorists will detonate an atomic bomb somewhere in the United States but merely a question of when. That was a helluva statement coming from the guy who had access to virtually every piece of secret intelligence on the issue. Also a nice way to end dinner, I thought.

I took the shuttle back to New York and called up the usual suspects - Department of Energy types, MIT and Harvard scholars, folks at the IAEA and intelligence sources. Not surprisingly, their opinions on this one issue differed wildly. Some said nuclear terrorism was a very real threat, others said no way but everyone said building and detonating an atomic bomb is easy compared to getting your hands on enough weapons grade uranium to do the job.

Nuclear nations enriched tens of thousands of pounds of weapons grade uranium - how secure was it? Was all that uranium safely under lock and key? Over the years, I had heard about the bad guys trying to sell small amounts of the stuff on the black market - Eastern Europe, Turkey, the Caucasus, these were obvious starting points. Just as I was about to embark on an all-expenses paid trip to the darker side of Tbilisi, I learned of the attack on the Pelindaba nuclear plant in South Africa and the amazing story of Anton Gerber.

Pelindaba is a sprawling facility just outside Pretoria and it houses hundreds of pounds of weapons grade uranium left over from that country’s nuclear weapons program - and late last year it was the scene of a coordinated attack by two groups of armed gunmen. The attackers had cut through an electrified fence, slipped by security cameras and made it all the way to the plants Emergency Control Center. That’s where they ran into Anton Gerber. Lucky for us, Gerber wasn’t in the mood to surrender and took them on barehanded before he was shot through the chest. The bullet pierced his lung and he nearly died on the scene. The gunmen fled, leaving the same way they entered. Gerber was the hero, Gerber saved the day. So here was a story I knew would keep people on the edge of their seats and put the issue of global nuclear security front and center.

Perfect. But getting to Gerber wasn't going to be easy. I couldn't just hop on a plane, go knock on his door and hope that he’d invite me in and tell me his story - those days were over. Not to mention, months had passed since the attack, Gerber wasn't talking and a lawsuit had been filed by him against the facility. My sense was they were hunkered down, in for the long-haul. I'd be crazy to cold-call him, I needed to reach out to his lawyer and pitch him the idea of Anton Gerber telling his story to Scott Pelley, and to millions of Americans. It took weeks before everyone was on the same page but by August I finally had the green light to call him, his attorney, O'lef de Meyer was on-board and had promised me Anton would pick up if I called.

Admittedly, I was a bit nervous dialing his number because this time I didn’t have the luxury of sitting down face to face over a drink or dinner to explain who we are and what we do - why 60 Minutes is the gold standard of television news journalism. I wasn’t even sure whether he knew what 60 Minutes was. The phone rang 10 times before Anton picked up. I introduced myself and made my pitch then gently turned it over to him and listened as he told me his incredible tale. It came out in one long stream, with twists and turns that pointed to an inside job - great doesn’t even begin to describe it. A story like this just doesn’t come around that often. I was furiously taking notes, trying to keep up, occasionally interrupting to ask for more detail but for the most part I just listened. The phone cradled between my ear and my shoulder, I remember thinking he probably hasn’t talked about the attack for a while. In some weird way this was therapy for him, I was the shrink 8,000 miles away. He was articulate and exact about the details but also very emotional, believable. I could hardly wait to report back to my bosses and get out there. But before I could do that, I had to ask the question.

This is the big enchilada question, the all-or-nothing question. Without Anton Gerber's story there is no story. I have to admit, some of the time you know but with Anton I had no idea. I tried to put myself in his head while I worked up to the question but of course I couldn’t even begin to touch his experience. Here’s a man who nearly died from a gunshot wound in the middle of the night protecting the plant from God knows who and God knows what - worst case scenario, bad guys getting their hands on weapons grade uranium. I took a deep breath and fired away: Would you be willing to go on the record and tell your story on 60 Minutes? I held my breath and waited for his answer, "Yes, I can do that."

Assault on Pelindaba

I And My Circumstances, Ortega y Gasset

12/01/2008

For Ortega y Gasset, in order to promote new ideas and to explain reality, the philosopher must leave behind prejudices and previously existing beliefs and investigate the essential reality of the universe. He suggests that there is no me without things and things are nothing without me, I (human being) can not be detached from my circumstances (world). This led Ortega y Gasset to pronounce his famous maxim "I am myself and my circumstance" which he always situated in the core of his philosophy.

For Ortega y Gasset, the Cartesian 'cogito ergo sum' is insufficient to explain reality—therefore the Spanish philosopher proposes a system where life is the sum of the ego and circumstance. This circumstance is oppressive. Therefore, there is a continual dialectical exchange of forces between the person and his circumstances and, as a result, life is a drama that exists between necessity and freedom. In this sense Ortega y Gasset wrote that life is at the same time fate and freedom, and that freedom “is being free inside of a given fate. Fate gives us an inexorable repertory of determinate possibilities, that is, it gives us different destinies. We accept fate and within it we choose one destiny.” In this tied down fate we must therefore be active, decide and create a “project of life”—thus not be like those who live a conventional life of customs and given structures who prefer an unconcerned and imperturbable life because they are afraid of the duty of choosing a project.

With a philosophical system that centered around life, Ortega y Gasset also stepped out of Descartes' cogito ergo sum and asserted "I live therefore I think". This stood at the root of his Nietzsche-inspired perspectivism, which he developed by adding a non-relativistic character in which absolute truth does exist and would be obtained by the sum of all perspectives of all lives, since for each human being life takes a concrete form and life itself is a true radical reality from which any philosophical system must derive.

Cold War Reminder: Chavez Welcomes Russian Warships

11/25/2008

(From FoxNews)

LA GUAIRA, Venezuela — Russian warships sailed into port in Venezuela on Tuesday in a show of strength as Moscow seeks to counter U.S. influence in Latin America. Russia's first such deployment in the Caribbean since the Cold War is timed to coincide with President Dmitry Medvedev's visit to Venezuela, the first ever by a Russian president.

The deployment of the naval squadron is widely seen as a demonstration of Kremlin anger over the U.S. decision to send warships to deliver aid to Georgia after its battles with Russia, and over U.S. plans for a European missile-defense system.

But U.S. officials mocked the show of force. "Are they accompanied by tugboats this time?" U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack joked to reporters in Washington.

Russian sailors dressed in black-and-white uniforms lined up along the bow of the destroyer Admiral Chabanenko as it docked in La Guaira, near Caracas, and Venezuelan troops greeted them with cannons in a 21-gun salute.Two support vessels also docked, and the nuclear-powered cruiser Peter the Great, Russia's largest ship, anchored offshore.

Chavez, basking in the support of a powerful ally and traditional U.S. rival, wants Russian help to build a nuclear reactor, invest in oil and natural gas projects and bolster his leftist opposition to U.S. influence in the region.
He also wants weapons — Venezuela has bought more than $4 billion in Russian arms, including Sukhoi fighter jets, helicopters and 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles, and more deals for Russian tanks or other weaponry may be discussed after Medvedev arrives Wednesday.

Russia's ambitions in Latin America, however, may be checked by global events. Both Venezuela and Russia are feeling the pinch of slumping oil prices, and their ability to be major benefactors for like-minded leaders is in doubt given the pressures of the world's financial crisis.

McCormack, the U.S. State Department spokesman, noted that Russia's navy is but a shadow of its Soviet-era fleet.

"I don't think there's any question about ... who the region looks to in terms of political, economic, diplomatic and as well as military power," McCormack said. "If the Venezuelans and the Russians want to have, you know, a military exercise, that's fine. But we'll obviously be watching it very closely."

When Russia sent two strategic bombers to Venezuela in September, some drew comparisons to the Soviet Union's deployments to Cuba during the Cold War. But both countries have shown signs of trying to engage President-elect Barack Obama, and Chavez told reporters that it's ludicrous to invoke the Cold War to describe these naval exercises.

"It's not a provocation. It's an exchange between two free countries," Chavez said Monday night. The ship maneuvers inside Venezuela's economic zone in the eastern Caribbean will begin Dec. 1, enabling sailors to practice reconnaissance, anti-drug patrols, anti-terrorism and search and rescue operations. Rear Adm. Luis Morales said anti-aircraft exercises involving Venezuela's newly bought Sukhoi fighter jets will not involve live ammunition.
The maneuvers "should be viewed largely as a propaganda exercise," said analyst Anna Gilmour at Jane's Intelligence Review.

"Pragmatic Russian policy suggests that it will content itself with a brief high-profile visit, rather than a longer-term deployment that could cause severe tensions with the U.S., at a time when Russia may be looking to re-engage with the new administration," she said.

Medvedev's tour to Peru, Brazil, Venezuela and Cuba was planned before the financial crisis, and Russia must now downsize its ambitions in Latin America because its pockets are no longer so deep, said Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor of Russia in Global Affairs Magazine.

"Russia will have to put off big projects like the construction of a gas pipeline across South America," Lukyanov said. The proposed natural gas pipeline is Chavez's brainchild, a controversial and ambitious plan for which he has explored Russian investment.

But Russia still has an economic interest in selling more weapons and boosting business in Latin America, and Venezuela can help "open the doors," noted Venezuelan political scientist Ricardo Sucre Heredia."It's a win-win relationship for the two countries," Sucre said. "Russia gains in terms of its international power and its presence, and Venezuela gains in terms of having an ally."

The Fed and The White House

11/18/2008

Tension with the White House was long part of the Fed chief’s job description, largely because the bank’s dual mandate (fighting inflation and promoting growth) was seen to be in conflict with itself. No president wants inflation, but most want high interest rates even less. Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted to finance World War II with cheap money, and Henry Morgenthau Jr., his Treasury secretary, simply directed the Fed to buy Treasury bills at a fixed rate of 2.5 percent. This kept rates flat, but led to inflation after the war.

The Fed was liberated from the Treasury in a famous accord in 1951. William McChesney Martin Jr., who was appointed Fed chairman that year, battled Harry Truman and successive presidents to establish the prototype for an independent Fed chief. It was Martin who proclaimed that the chairman’s job was to “take away the punch bowl just as the party gets going” — in other words, to raise interest rates when a booming economy threatened to cause inflation. And it was Martin who created the quasi legend that Fed chiefs could decide an election. He tightened rates in the latter part of 1959, triggering a recession that began in April 1960. Nixon, the incumbent vice president and Republican presidential nominee that year, blamed Martin for sabotaging his chances in November.

Martin ran into even tougher pressure from Lyndon B. Johnson, who tried to browbeat him into easing rates. One version of what occurred, according to Richard Fisher, the current head of the Dallas Fed, who has studied the history, is that “Lyndon took Martin to his ranch and asked the Secret Service to leave the room. And he physically beat him, he slammed him against the wall, and said, ‘Martin, my boys are dying in Vietnam, and you won’t print the money I need.’ ” Martin ultimately caved. By the time he retired, in 1970, inflation was a worrisome 6 percent. Soon after, President Nixon told Burns to promote maximum employment. In fairness to Burns, he was laboring under the unforgiving strictures of an academic model known as the Phillips curve, which held that low inflation and economic growth were incompatible opposites. If you wanted to raise employment, you had to permit more inflation. And that’s what Burns did.

By the late ’70s, inflation was as much a psychological condition as an economic one. As prices rose, unions scored automatic cost-of living hikes, and so businesses raised prices even more. With inflation in double digits, Jimmy Carter finally nominated Volcker, an aloof, 6-foot-7 career public servant, who seemed to garble much of what he said through a half-chewed cigar. From the intelligible part, it was clear that Volcker intended to break the inflationary cycle. Volcker tightened the money supply so much that the fed funds rate soared to 20 percent. This led to a brutal recession, which was especially tough on workers and businesses in interest-rate-sensitive industries like real estate. “It’s no fun raising interest rates,” Volcker admitted. Idle builders were so enraged that some sent him two-by-fours in the mail. High interest rates took a terrible toll on President Carter. In September 1980, with Carter and Ronald Reagan in a close race, Volcker administered the coup de grâce by hiking the discount rate. A decade later, President George H. W. Bush blamed Alan Greenspan’s tight money policy for his own defeat.

For Bernanke’s generation, the great inflation served as a bookend to the 1930s. It was an object lesson on the dangers of creating too much liquidity. Once again, Milton Friedman changed the profession’s understanding, this time by deciding that, in the long run, the Phillips curve was wrong. Printing money (or as Friedman famously quipped, dropping bundles of bills from a helicopter) would spur the economy only temporarily. At first, as the money supply expanded, businesses would hire more workers and produce more goods. The economy would be “tricked” into operating at a higher gear. But after a while, workers would insist on wage hikes, and companies would jack up prices. The higher prices would cool off the economy again. So the net result of printing money would be just inflation — no gains in production. In the long term, neither the Fed nor anyone could spur an economy to grow faster than its “natural rate” — which is determined by all those other factors: productivity, population changes, technological advances, demand for exports and so forth.
Thus the dictum that inflation would lead to jobs was out. According to the new thinking, low inflation is consistent with, and even a prerequisite for, reaching whatever the economy’s potential is. That means that Fed chiefs and presidents are on the same side. Bill Clinton bought into the idea, which is to say he broke with precedent and left Greenspan alone. Only in the very short term — say, when a stimulus is needed — are the Fed’s two mandates in conflict. Of course, since elections are decided in the short term, the potential for political infighting remains.

To Bernanke, the political dimensions of the job came as a mild shock. The day we met, he had come from breakfast with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr.; the day before, he met with a congresswoman. (The Fed is a creature of the Congress, and Bernanke must take care not to alienate it.) A few months back, when Senator Christopher Dodd invited Bernanke and Paulson to discuss some “current issues,” the senator, who was then running for the Democratic nomination, staged a news conference for a score of media members whom he had, conveniently, also invited. This is the sort of thing they don’t train you for at M.I.T.

Bernanke grew up in the small town of Dillon, S.C., at the tail end of the segregation era (in high school he wrote a schoolboy’s novel about whites and blacks coming together on the basketball team). His father and his uncle ran a local drug store. Folks trustingly called them Dr. Phil and Dr. Mort. Ben, who skipped first grade, was obviously smart from the get-go. He played the saxophone, just as Greenspan did, and waited tables two summers and worked construction another. The Bernankes were observant Jews, and Ben’s folks fretted when he got into Harvard that if he strayed from home he might wander from his religious teachings. It was never a risk. Judaism is important to Bernanke, though, as with other personal subjects, he does not discuss it. As a doctoral candidate at M.I.T., he blossomed into a star, and at the tender age of 31 he received a tenured position in the economics department at Princeton.