Booklist | Fire and Ashes

A noted Harvard human rights specialist tries his hand at local politics in his native Canda, giving up his spot as an informed observer of global norms and theory for the rough and tumble world of electoral math. It doesn’t go wells or Michael Ignatieff. This is his story.

Politics, he argues, is necessarily about opportunism; a gifted politician knows when to strike and when to bide his time. This may reveal a lack of principle, he thinks, but it doesn’t have to, and a skillful politician knows how to avoid giving that impression. “A poor opportunist in politics is simply someone who looks, all too obviously, like he is exploiting an opportunity,” he says. “A skillful opportunist is someone who persuades the public that he has created the opportunity

Ignatieff also has some good tidbits on the skills required by politicos.

The need to give so many people his whole attention—a good politician won’t look at his watch or his smartphone while you’re talking to him—allowed him to cultivate the art of reading faces. “I would search every face for signs of support, learn to evaluate subtle cues of indecision, evasion, or outright rejection,” he writes. Over time, he says, the habit of putting himself always on display led to a feeling of hollowness: “I would say that some sense of hollowness, some sense of a divide between the face you present to the world and the face you reserve for the mirror, is a sign of sound mental health.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303309504579186260873957216

Booklist | ‘The Trolley Problem’ by Thomas Cathcart | ‘Would You Kill the Fat Man?’ by David Edmonds – WSJ.com

Two new books address a fascinating dilemma involving a trolley and the lives of others.  Could it explain opposition to Obamacare?

This area of study germane to the field of philosophy explores the complexity and innate nature of our moral judgements within the framework of ethical decision-making and is an important area to consider for anyone interested in decision-making and leadership at the individual level:

In fact, the two versions of the trolley problem, a famous thought-experiment in philosophy, elicit instinctive versions of two conflicting ethical impulses, ones elaborated by Jeremy Bentham and Immanuel Kant respectively: utilitarianism, which seeks the greatest good for the greatest number and judges actions by their consequences; and deontology, which insists, among much else, that certain rights can\’t be violated under any circumstances.

This conflict is at the heart of two new books that use the trolley problem and its many permutations to explore how people make ethical judgments. For all the hairsplitting that the problem has inspired—a quantity of commentary that “makes the Talmud look like Cliffs Notes,” in the words of the philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah—the moral dilemmas are profound. They are manifest in our political system, for example, when we face choices that will penalize some for the good of all, or at least of others, as is the case when we debate the legitimacy of taxation and redistribution, the justification for war, the uses of torture, or the justice of affirmative action.

via Book Review: ‘The Trolley Problem’ by Thomas Cathcart | ‘Would You Kill the Fat Man?’ by David Edmonds – WSJ.com.

The Need to Care | Why the N.S.A. Matters

Germany is pulling back from its ally and Brazil threatens to creates its own internet.  What are you going conclude about the N.S.A. spying allegations?

Several U.S. senators suggest the following:

As members of the Intelligence Committee, we strongly disagree with this approach. We had already proposed our own, bipartisan surveillance reform legislation, the Intelligence Oversight and Surveillance Reform Act, which we have sponsored with a number of other senators. Our bill would prohibit the government from conducting warrantless “backdoor searches” of Americans’ communications — including emails, text messages and Internet use — under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It would also create a “constitutional advocate” to present an opposing view when the F.I.S.C. is considering major questions of law or constitutional interpretation.

And this Op-Doc video makes the case.

Edward Snowden has ignited a debate, and for that I am grateful. But now that he’s done his part, it’s time for all Americans to decide how to respond to his revelations. That is to say, it is no longer his story. It is ours.

via ‘Why Care About the N.S.A.?’ – NYTimes.com.

 

A Divided Rio de Janeiro, Overreaching for the World – NYTimes.com

More on the (slow) rise of Brazil:

But as months of street protests illustrate, progressive ideals run up against age-old, intractable problems in this city where class difference and corruption are nearly as immovable as the mountains. This is a city divided on itself.

That divide is nowhere more apparent than in the mayor’s gargantuan, $4 billion port redevelopment plan, which envisions turning an industrial area on the scale of Lower Manhattan into the glittering, skyscraper-filled hub for a new global Rio.

via A Divided Rio de Janeiro, Overreaching for the World – NYTimes.com.

Obama Signals a Shift From Military Might to Diplomacy

The times are changin’ and President Obama delivers on a promise.  You might call it the end of a neoconservative foreign policy:

“But it also reflects a broader scaling-back of the use of American muscle, not least in the Middle East, as well as a willingness to deal with foreign governments as they are rather than to push for new leaders that better embody American values. “Regime change,” in Iran or even Syria, is out; cutting deals with former adversaries is in. ”

Via http://nyti.ms/1fDehfJ

The Geneva deal is just part of what was happening. Beneath public scrutiny a secret back channel diplomacy has been underway for some time, according to reporting in the WSJ. This may help explain why France balked initially–seeing that the talks had been underway for much longer than they had imagined.