8/15/2026

 Saturday, August 15, 2026

1549 Jesuit Saint Francis Xavier came ashore at Kagoshima, Japan

1876 US law removed Indians from Black Hills after gold find

1917 Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon met at Craiglockhart War Hospital, Edinburgh

2025 Vladimir Putin traveled to Alaska to meet with Donald Trump to discuss pathways to bring an end to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  Volodymyr Zelenskyy was not invited to the summit. 

In bed at 9, up at 4:15; 0430 111/70/63 125 202.8; 70/78/70, pop up showers

Morning meds at 7:30 a.m.  Eliquis at 7:15 a.m. and p.m.

Does AI think and reason?  How omniscient is it?  How much can it know and understand of its interlocutors?  I wonder.  Here is my most recent exchange with ChatGPT:

Me:  I've decided I don't want to reread the entirety of Crime and Punishment. I'm mainly interested in the interactions between Raskolnikov and Sonya, and RAskolnikov and his sister. Do you have any suggestions for a few chapters I may wish to reread before closing the book?     

ChatGPT: Yes. If your principal interest is Raskolnikov's relationships with Sonya and Dunya, I would not try to push yourself through the whole novel again. There is a fairly compact sequence near the end that gives you most of what you are looking for—and, I think, makes a satisfying way to close the book.

For Sonya: three chapters

1. Part IV, Chapter 4 — Raskolnikov visits Sonya.  This is the essential Sonya chapter. Raskolnikov goes to her room and, for the first time, they have something approaching an intimate conversation. She tells him about her family, her faith, and her relationship with Lizaveta. Most importantly, he asks her to read the story of Lazarus from the Gospel.

I'd especially recommend rereading this slowly. The Lazarus episode is really the theological and psychological key to their relationship: Raskolnikov is spiritually dead, and Sonya is the person who believes he can be brought back to life.

2. Part V, Chapter 4 — Raskolnikov confesses to Sonya. This is probably the single most important chapter for your purposes. He finally tells Sonya that he killed the pawnbroker—and Lizaveta. He tries to explain the crime intellectually: his theory of the extraordinary man, his desire to prove that he was capable of transgressing ordinary morality. Sonya sees through that explanation much more clearly than he does himself.

Her response is extraordinarily important. She doesn't recoil from him. She tells him that he must confess and accept suffering, and that she will follow him wherever he goes.

If you read only one chapter before putting the book down, I'd choose this one.

3. Part VI, Chapter 8 — the final meeting with Sonya. This is very short and provides the emotional payoff. Raskolnikov goes to Sonya before turning himself in. She gives him the cross, and he goes to the police to confess.  The symbolism is quite heavy-handed—but I think it's worth seeing again, particularly after the Lazarus scene.

For Dunya: two chapters

The Dunya material is somewhat different. She isn't primarily the person who understands Raskolnikov's spiritual condition; she represents familial love, moral integrity, and the possibility that he can still belong to other human beings.

4. Part VI, Chapter 5 — Dunya and Svidrigailov. This isn't principally a Raskolnikov-Dunya scene, but I would read it because of what it reveals about Dunya. Svidrigailov has learned Raskolnikov's secret and uses it to put Dunya in an almost unbearable position. She refuses to sacrifice herself even to save her brother.

It makes clear how remarkable Dostoevsky's contrast between the two siblings is: Raskolnikov believes that morality can be transcended by an extraordinary person; Dunya, under extreme pressure, refuses to transcend it.

5. Part VI, Chapter 6 — Raskolnikov and Dunya. This is the one I'd definitely read. Dunya comes to see him. He tells her that he intends to confess, and she urges him to do it. He still tries to defend the underlying idea of his crime—he killed only a "louse," and if his plan had succeeded, he could have used the money for good. But looking at Dunya, he begins to confront the suffering he has caused his family.

That scene is particularly valuable because Dunya doesn't persuade him intellectually. She can't refute his theory in philosophical terms. Instead, her very presence confronts him with the human consequences of what he has done.

And then I'd stop.

If you want the minimum possible rereading, I'd make it:

Part IV, Ch. 4 → Part V, Ch. 4 → Part VI, Ch. 6 → Part VI, Ch. 8

That's only four chapters, but together they give you what I think you are really interested in: Raskolnikov's movement from intellectual isolation toward human attachment.

And there is an interesting symmetry:

Sonya says, in effect: You are not beyond redemption.

Dunya says: You are still my brother.

Raskolnikov initially responds to both with arguments.

But gradually, the arguments become less important than the relationships.

I suspect that may be a more rewarding way for you to finish Crime and Punishment than forcing yourself through another 300 pages. The novel's philosophical machinery is important, but these four chapters contain much of what makes the novel emotionally memorable.

That ChatGPT response to my inquiry arrived in 2 or 3 seconds after I submitted it.  I've had other interactions with ChatGPT very much like this, even spookier, involving reasoning and value and literary judgments, the sorts of things we expect from a human being, not from a mass of interconnected computers operating on the basis of coded 1s and 0s and algorithms.   I'm sure my interactions are nothing compared to the kinds of stuff more sophisticated, more technical, and some probably nasty-minded.  It's not just that AI is smart and capable of reasoning; it's that it is amazingly smart and quick-witted about virtually everything!   That said, it also makes mistakes about simple things, or seems to get confused.  In one exchange I had with it, it confused the authorship of some books by Elizabeth Strout and Ann Patchett, matters of simple historical fact.

I've stopped reading the novel because it's too heavy an emotional load.  Throughout the novel, Raskolnikov is a tortured, suffering soul.  Everyone in the novel is suffering or pathetic.  It is, in a sense, both tragic and comic since, at the end, Raskolnikov suffers Siberian imprisonment but is redeemed by Sonya's love and hope for a religious and emotional redemption; but the novel is just relentless suffering, page after page, chapter after chapter, from beginning to end.  It is a terrific explication of Solzhenitsyn's and Steinbeck's belief that each of us is a source of both good and evil, that even the worst of us has some good in him, and the best of us some evil, but reading it is a long, hard slog.  I did it willingly when I was much younger, but I'm not up to it at my very old age.  I read both The Idiot and Notes From Underground earlier this year, but there's only so much Dostoevsky that this old guy can take.  Perhaps this is due to age.  I turn 85 in 9 days.  How many days do I have left?  How many books can I read before my eyes, or my brain, fail me?  How many hours and minutes of reading do I have in front of me?  I don't want to spend any of my precious remaining reading time in the 'Slough of Despond'  with Dostoevsky.

An exchange with Derry Keenan about my FB post yesterday:

Derry Keenan

 

Like Janine, I thank you for your descriptions and insight into the current conditions for crew members serving on those destroyers, where morale is low and basic needs aren’t available (today’s NPR reported shortages of soap, toothpaste, and access to washers to clean their t-shirts), as well as inadequate food.

My dad was in the navy in WWII but attached to the Marines as a medic. Like so many from that war he almost never talked about his experiences and the conditions of the war in then pacific, but I found a large bunch of sealed letters returned to mom because they could not be delivered—and this while she was pregnant and birthed their first child alone.

I’m so sorry, Chuck, that you had to endure that war, and my father his, and the soldiers now who must endure this administration’s senseless and immoral foreign policy. And, personally, I think Hegseth is evil and despicably dishonest.

Charles D. Clausen

 

Wow, I didn't know your Dad was a hospital corpsman serving with the Marines in WWII. I wonder if he was attached to the 4th Marine Division, in which my Dad served, including in the Battle of Iwo Jima. To my regret, I never met your Dad but I've been fortunate to meet some of your siblings and have only the warmest memories of your Mom, Mary. I even had a fantasy my Dad and your Mom getting together in their old age. As I write this, I'm looking at the wall opposite me and the fireplace poker you gave us, the one made by your brother (Kevin???). I'd love to visit with you again, but don't know how to contact you. 😥❤❤❤

Anniversaries thoughts.  First, Francis Xavier.  I'm not a big fan of missionaries, especially missionaries directly tied to colonial, mercantile imperialism, as Xavier was to the Portuguese Empire in Asia.

And speaking of empires, in the westward expansion of the American White Empire, once it was discovered that "there's gold in them thar hills", the Indigenous tribes were screwed.  Another treaty broken by our government, another violation of the so-called Rule of Law in obedience to the REAL rules of law:  He who has the gold makes the rules, and the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.  USA, USA, USA!!! 

Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon are two favorite poets.  Sassoon's The Hero reminds me, painfully, of my days as CACO for north Philadelphia in 1966-67.

'Jack fell as he'd have wished,' the mother said,

And folded up the letter that she'd read.

'The Colonel writes so nicely.' Something broke

In the tired voice that quavered to a choke.

She half looked up. 'We mothers are so proud

Of our dead soldiers.' Then her face was bowed.

Quietly the Brother Officer went out.

He'd told the poor old dear some gallant lies

That she would nourish all her days, no doubt

For while he coughed and mumbled, her weak eyes

Had shone with gentle triumph, brimmed with joy,

Because he'd been so brave, her glorious boy.

He thought how 'Jack', cold-footed, useless swine,

Had panicked down the trench that night the mine

Went up at Wicked Corner; how he'd tried

To get sent home, and how, at last, he died,

Blown to small bits. And no one seemed to care

Except that lonely woman with white hair.

Owen's Dulce et Decorum is bitter and true:

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

Owen was killed in action in France one week before the Armistice was signed, ending the war.  His mother received the telegram informing her of his death on Armistice Day.  Sassoon lived until age 80, dying in 1967.  He converted to Catholicism at age 70 for some uncertain reason. 

American poets produced some moving World War II  poetry.   A favorite is Randall Jarrell's The Death of a Ball Turret Gunner.

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,

And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.

Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,

I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.

When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

Ball turrets were features on the underbellies of B-17s and B-24s.  The gunners crammed in the fetal position in them, manning their 50-caliber machine guns against enemy fighter aircraft.  

8/14/2026

 Friday, August 14, 2026

1846 American naturalist Henry David Thoreau was jailed for refusing to pay taxes

1929 The Jewish Agency for Palestine was formed

1935 FDR signed the Social Security Act

1945 Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh movement launched a coordinated uprising against French rule across Vietnam following the Japanese surrender

1945 V-J Day, the Empire of Japan surrendered unconditionally to the Allies, ending World War II

2018 Pennsylvania grand jury alleged 300 "predator priests" abused over 1000 children over 30 years and Catholic leaders covered it, up after a 2-year investigation

2019 "The 1619 Project" produced by Nikole Hannah-Jones to examine the legacy of slavery in America was launched

In bed at 9:30, awake at 3:45; 0400 203.8 116/71/62 123; 69/77/67, patchy dense fog, partly cloudy.

Morning meds at 7a.m.  Eliquis at 6:20 a.m. and 6:20 p.m. Trulicity injection at 6:30 p.m.

Life in a war zone; life aboard ship.  Watching cable news yesterday, I saw coverage of the morale problems among sailors on the ships off the Persian Gulf, especially sailors aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which has been at sea for 9 months.  The sailors haven't set foot on dry land this year.  They've also been living with some serious toilet and laundry facilities, and food problems, much of the time at sea.  

The coverage brought back many memories.  First, of my 6 weeks aboard the USS Coney, DDE 508, in the summer of 1960, 66 years ago.  It was my first summer of active duty as a midshipman in the NROTC.  Secondly, of my time T&T in Quantico, 2 summers later, and of my time in Danang, in 1965-66.  On the Coney, we were berthed in the crew's quarters in the bow of the ship, and ate in the crew's mess.  Until one lives in the crew's quarters aboard a Navy ship, one doesn't fully appreciate what the term "close quarters" means.  The video coverage of the mess deck on the Abraham Lincoln reminded me of this: sailors elbow to elbow and, as we used to say in the Marines, asshole to belly button.  Living in that 24/7 is challenging even in the best of circumstances; doing so for 9 months with no shore leave to blow off steam is hard to imagine.  My time at T&T, another 6-week summertime active duty, was my first experience living in a barracks, which is nowhere near as bad as a sailor's life aboard a Navy ship, but is still living in pretty close quarters, with bunk beds, common head and shower facilities, and no privacy.  In Danang, I lived in a strong-backed tent for my first 6 months there.  I can't remember how many of us lieutenants shared the tent, whether it was 10 or 12 of us, but all we had was our cot, our mosquito netting, and our footlocker.  During monsoon season, it was like living inside a kettle or snare drum.  After my 6 months in the tent, I acquired enough time in-country to move to a corrugated steel hut with a little bit more personal living space and a common area where we could play cards or acey-deucy when we weren't working.  After two months or so there, I was transferred to Camp Schwab, Okinawa, where I lived in a BOQ with a private room; I felt like I had died and gone to Heaven.

The photo is of me sitting on the sandbagged bunker outside my tent in Danang, wearing my Korean War-era utilities and heavy leather combat boots before more familiar Vietnam-era camouflage jungle utes and boots became the norm.  Also wearing the dog tags that I still wear today: CLAUSEN, C D 087308 USMC Cath.

I suspect that people who have never been in the military, never served aboard a Navy ship, or in a war zone cannot appreciate what those sailors at sea off Iran are experiencing.  Actually, neither can I, but I can imagine.

My FB post this morning:

In the summer of 1960, when I was still 19 years old, I spent six weeks as a midshipman living and working on the USS Coney DDE-508, a Navy destroyer on the Atlantic Ocean.  I slept in the crew’s berthing compartment and ate in the crew’s mess.  We sailed through one hurricane and one tropical storm, and I spent many days suffering from mal de mer, sea sickness.  Sixty-six years later, I still have many vivid memories from that summer aboard a Navy ship, but what I am recalling most vividly today is the feeling of near claustrophobic confinement living and working below deck, in the windowless ‘bowels’ of the ship.  We slept in canvas ‘racks’ or cots, stacked 4 high, separated from the men right above, below, and next to us by about 18 inches.  You can’t sit up on the rack; you had to crawl into and out of it.  There is no privacy, none whatsoever.  Each of the berthing compartments housed dozens of sailors, crammed together like sardines in a tin can.  Indeed, the Navy’s destroyer fleet was nicknamed ‘the tin can Navy.’  The ladders (stairs) and passageways were wide enough to accommodate only one man at a time.  Crew members are assigned to the berthing compartment nearest to their battle stations.  The only relief from the claustrophobic conditions below decks was to get ‘topside’ to the main deck or O1 level during the not-often available time off.  In heavy seas or stormy weather, access to these decks may be forbidden with the bos’n’s announcement, “Now hear this.  Now hear this.  The weather decks are secured.”

I share these memories because I’m thinking of all the sailors and Marines who have been serving, unrelieved, on the waters off Iran and the Persian Gulf.  For many, including those aboard the  aircraft carrier, USS Abraham Lincoln, the normal challenges of life at sea have been compounded by failures in their ship’s life-support facilities and erratic mail service.   Some ‘care packages’ from home arrive on time, but others arrive very delayed, and yet others not at all.  These service men and women are on duty and on alert 24 hours a day, no 9 to 5 jobs at sea or in a combat zone.   Their work is demanding, with errors and sloughing off not acceptable.  They deserve our thanks and our support, and they deserve the support of the Department of Defense and of its secretary, Pete Hegseth.  It is not acceptable that Secretary Hegseth continually denies the serious morale problems among our sailors and Marines and other problems with delayed maintenance of the ships on which they serve.  When I was in Vietnam and long afterwards, how many times did I hear about “the light at the end of tunnel”?    Now we are told, over and over, that we are winning and that peace is just around the corner and there are no problems with our sailors and Marines.  They, and we, deserve better.

Janine Geske

 ·

Thank you for this reflection piece. I watched a retired marine, who has served on aircraft carriers multiple times, describe the experience like living in a minimum security prison. I think in a lot of ways this seems much worse. We should be ashamed as a country, that in this day and age, our soldiers are being treated this way. 

 

Reply

I by no means denigrate the situation of the sailors on the 2 aircraft carriers, the guided missile cruiser, or the dozen or destroyers in this armada, but I suspect that the situation for the Marines of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit on the troop ships of the Amphibious Readiness Group is even worse.  Unlike the sailors on ships, who have jobs to perform each day and night, those Marines are mostly waiting and doing what little training they can do while crammed aboard troop ships.  Usually the wait time is relatively short before deployment by airlift or amphibious landing, but in this wretchedly unwise and unnecessary war, it has turned into months.   I only served on a troop transport vessel once, and only for a couple of days, but found the experience near-suffocating, and the climb down cargo nets to the little landing craft, bobbing in the ocean below, a little terrifying.  My heart aches for those sailors and Marines.  I suspect I'll see some of them at Milwaukee's VA Medical Center when they are discharged, if I hold on that long.

N.B.  In this afternoon's edition of the NYTimes: 

President Trump [America's No. 1 wartime draft dodger] on Friday dismissed concerns about dire conditions reported aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier that has been deployed for more than eight and a half months, much of it in support of the war against Iran.

Mr. Trump’s comments came in response to a reporter in Washington who asked about the reported conditions stemming from the extended deployment, which have included shortages of basic supplies, safety and hygiene issues and deteriorating mental health. When the reporter said that the crew members’ families were concerned, Mr. Trump said, “No, they’re not.”

The president, who was about to depart for an event in New York, was asked whether he was concerned about the crew’s mental health and whether he thought the deployment had gone on too long.

“No. No. No,” he said. “Not nearly long enough.”

A Walk With Rachel.  I took the hi-boy rollator that I named "Rachel" to distinguish it from "Judy," my lo-boy rollator, for a long (for me) walk from our house around the cul-de-sac at the end of our block.  I listened to Part I, chapter, 5 of Crime and Punishment, in which Raskolnikov anguishes over his plan to kill the pawnbroker with an axe.  He has a vivid dream of a group of peasants beating an old horse to death because she has become less capable of pulling a wagon. wakes from it and wonders how he can possibly think of committing the heinous act he is planning.  The chapter makes abundantly clear his murder will be 'with malice aforethought.'

Anniversary thoughts:  One year ago, Pat Gorence's visitation,   I drove to the East Side Library at North Avenue and Cramer Street for a pit stop, then up Cramer to Sts. Peter and Paul church, our old parish when Anne and I and the kids lived on Newberry Boulevard.  I arrived at about 1:15 for the visitation, which was scheduled from 2 to 3.  I was able to park in a handicapped spot on the church/school grounds, escaping the long walk that late walk from the car to the church that arrivals had to deal with.  I entered the church at 1:50 and there was already a long line down the center aisle of the church, where Pat's open casket was placed and where John Bach and the children formed a receiving line.  I was pleased that John recognized me (after I introduced myself) and remembered out first meetings when Pat started law school and our shared experiences in the Dominican Republic in 1997.  Christine Wilzynski-Vogel from the law school's alumni relations office was in the line ahead of me and we had a nice chat as we approached the receiving line.  I spotted LOA at the back of the visitors' line at about 2:10 and returned his iPhone to him.  We were able to chat a bit before I left for home.  I opted not to wait for him to get through the line so we could chat some more or get a cup of coffee because the wait promised to be quite long, longer than my bladder could tolerate.

8/13/2026

 Thursday August 13, 2026

1942 The Manhattan Project commenced with the aim of developing an atomic bomb

2004 Hurricane Charley devastated Punta Gorda

2025 Israeli forces launched a massive aerial bombardment on Gaza City, killing 123 people across the Gaza Strip, amid reports that the Israeli Army was about to enter the city.

2026 Settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank continued, aided by the IDF.

In bed at 9:15, awakened by the alarm at 6:20;  0635. 202.6  120/75/64 135; 67/77/66, Cloudy with dense fog, visibility 1/4 mile or less till 10 a.m.  Rain is expected most of the afternoon.

Morning meds at 8:15 a.m.  Eliquis at 6:45 a.m. and 6:20 p.m.

Nikki Onorato (Kevil) wearing the bishop's mitre that Steve received at yesterday's Chicago White Sox game honoring Chicago native and White Sox fan Robert Prevost.  The Sox management distributed thousands of them, calling them 'Pope hats',  to the fans who attended the game, including Steve.  Below is one of my favorite drawings, a graphite pencil drawing I did from a photo I took of Nikki 2 years ago.

Six Degrees of Separation.  I thought of this play that Geri and I saw at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center in New York decades ago.  The play was based on the idea that all people are six or fewer social connections away from each other. As a result, a chain of "friend of a friend" statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps.  I think of it when I see Nikki in Steve's "pope hate" from the Sox game.  Pope Leo XIV and I share some connections.  He was raised in Dolton, Illinois, which is next door to Riverdale, IL, where my sister and her husband and my Mom and Dad owned townhouses.  His family and mine attended the same Catholic Church in Riverdale, St. Mary of the Assumption.  His parents both graduated from DePaul University, which I would have attended had I not won the NROTC scholarship to Marquette.  Geri attended DePaul for a while.  His mother taught and was a librarian at Mendel High School, a Catholic boys' school on the South Side that I would have attended had I not chosen Leo, which was walking distance from our home(s), whereas Mendel, at 250 E. 111th St., would require 2 bus rides each way.  Mendel was taught by the Augustinians, Prevost's order, whereas Leo was taught by the Irish Christian Brothers, the "ICBs" or, as we called them, the International Child Beaters.  Prevost attended the Catholic Theological Union in Hyde Park, near the University of Chicago, where I was sent by Brother Coogan, the best and most influential teacher in my life, to do English literary research in my senior year at Leo.  Prevost and I were both altar boys in grade school and attended only Catholic schools.  With those kinds of backgrounds, not surprisingly, we each considered taking up a religious life.  He followed through with it; I gave it up when I discovered girls and lust, though two of my best friends in high school joined the ICBs, Johnny Flynn and Jack O'Keefe.  Both of Prevost's parents were immigrants.  My maternal grandparents and paternal great-grandparents were immigrants.  I was surprised to learn that Prevost has some Creole ancestry on his mother's side and that among his ancestors were both Black slaves and slaveowners.  His family history may explain much of his solicitude towards migrants and minorities.  Of course, that solicitude is wholly consistent with Christ's teachings.

An interesting comparison.  In today's NYTimes, a guest opinion piece by Trump aide Peter Navarro:

The recliner really is made in Vietnam. The plant, just north of Ho Chi Minh City, is legit — it’s got thousands of workers making real furniture. The motor inside the recliner is another story.

The motor arrives from China finished, branded and boxed, shipped by the container load from a factory in the same corporate family as the furniture maker. Workers unbox it and bolt it into the recliner. Within 90 days the recliner sails from Vung Tau and lands at Norfolk, Va., where the Chinese mechanism is declared as Vietnamese. If the paperwork holds, that “Made in Vietnam” claim erases 25 percentage points of American tariff that would otherwise be levied.

It is not an isolated case. On Thursday, the White House is releasing a report documenting the great transshipment scam: a shadow network of more than 40 countries enabling sleight of hand to deceive American consumers and customs officials about where their exports really originate. In the process, these countries are robbing the United States of tens of billions of dollars a year and countless manufacturing jobs.

From the NYTimes on August 6, 2026, an article by Jesse Drucker and Dylan Freedman, Crocs Has A Trick For Dodging Taxes, A Tiny Office in Malta. 

Welcome to Malta. The tiniest country in the European Union, with roughly the population of Milwaukee, it is home to turquoise water beaches and a raging nightclub scene. It is also the world’s hot new corporate tax haven.

The accounting firms KPMG, PwC, Deloitte and EY are aggressively marketing the strategies that Crocs and other companies are using to push profits to Maltese units with ghost offices and no employees. A KPMG presentation reviewed by The New York Times laid out a byzantine arrangement for prospective clients to slash their tax bills by arbitraging U.S. and Maltese rules.

“The choreographers are the Big Four,” said Michael Hamersley, a former tax lawyer at KPMG and EY. “They seek out the opportunity to exploit the tax system.” 

The leak of offshore law firm records known as the Panama Papers linked Maltese politicians to companies enabling tax evasion and money laundering. In 2017, a remote-controlled car bomb killed the investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in her driveway after she exposed those connections.

After Malta said in 2023 that it would delay joining an international tax crackdown for six years, American companies including Victoria’s Secret, Kraft Heinz and PepsiCo flocked to the island, setting up hundreds of shell companies to exploit its near-zero tax rate. The number of Maltese subsidiaries established by U.S. companies has soared, up nearly 70 percent over the past three years, according to U.S. securities filings and Maltese corporate records.

The Trump administration turbocharged Malta’s tax appeal. On his first day back in office, President Trump withdrew the United States from the international effort to enforce a 15 percent global minimum corporate tax. This past January, the United States completed an agreement with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development largely exempting American companies from the pact. With more than 130 countries signed on to enforcing a minimum tax, Malta’s tax laws became particularly attractive.

Officially, Malta levies a 35 percent corporate tax, but firms can drive that rate to nearly zero. Accounting firms supply local tax advisers to serve as board members for the shell companies, while colleagues at the same firms audit the entities’ financial statements.

Navarro, a Trump lackey, condemns the avoidance of tariffs, which are sales taxes, while enabling the avoidance of income taxes.  What a surprise!

Crime and Punishment.  I'm making slow progress into the novel, only getting in Part I, chapter 4 at midday today.  In chapter 3, Roskolnikov received the very long letter from his mother that serves as a counterpart to Marmelodov's long, drunken, woebegone rant in the tavern in chapter 2.  The latter gave us the background story of Marmelodov's family, especially the plight of poor Sonya, and the mother's letter gave us the background of Roskolnikov's family, especially the plight of his sister, the poor Dunya.  Sonya's poverty reduced her to prostitution, selling herself to many men, and Dunya's poverty was forcing her into a loveless marriage to the lout of a lawyer, Pyotr Luzhin, selling herself to one despicable man for the sake of her mother and brother.  Both the tavern rant and the letter are literary devices used to establish concisely the backgrounds and plights of principal characters in the novel, and to reinforce Raskolnikov's motive to murder the pawnbroker, which hasn't happened yet.  Both devices strike me as contrived and melodramatic, perhaps excessively desperate, plight-y, and exaggerated, but I'm probably too harsh in my judgments.  Nineteenth century novels tended to be long and drawn out because they were intended to provide hours of entertainment to readers, many and pershaps most of whom were reading by candlelight on long winter evenings before radio, television, and the internet.  It's interesting to consider the economic and social world that Dostoevsky creates, one where the bad guys are the "haves" and the innocents are the "have nots."

After reading his mother's letter, Raskolnikov walks the street of St. Petersburgh, fuming, furious over the great inequality in wealth between the well-off and most Russians, including the Marmedelovs and his mother and sister.  He encounters a very drunk girl of 15 or 16, staggering along the street in disheveloped clothes, with a well-of, well-dressed man in his 30s following her, wanting to use her for sexual pleasure.  Raskolnikov summons a policeman to protect the girl.  

The story is very modern in its portrayoal of the effects of great inequality and of poverty on the innoent, of the inescapable injustice of life, and of the truth of Thucydides's comment that the powerful do what they can and the powerless suffer what they must.  Dostoevsky could have been writing of the plight of the economic underclass in the U.S. and indeed throughout the world, subject to those who exploit their vulverability and powerlessness, which, in some sense or another, to one degree or another, includes all of us.  MLK in Where Do We Go From Here: “It is not enough to say that the poor are the victims of the system. We must say that the rich are the beneficiaries of the system.”  Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle in which his nderlying argument is that the respectable middle and upper classes are able to live comfortably because someone else is doing dangerous, degrading, poorly compensated work.  In Reinhold Niebuhr's Moral Man and Immoral Society, a central theme of his social ethics is that people who are individually decent can nevertheless participate in—and benefit from—systems of injustice.   One of his recurring observations is that the privileged classes will generally interpret their own interests in moral language: “The privileged classes are usually able to persuade themselves that their privileges are just.”  The same human being who is capable of generosity and self-sacrifice becomes capable of quite different behavior when acting as a member of a group pursuing its interests.  Even good people, acting together in institutions, can create and preserve injustice because group self-interest is more powerful than individual morality.

I plead guilty.

 

 

8/12/2026

 Wednesday, August 12, 2026

1950, Pope Pius XII published the encyclical Humani generis

1965 Race riot on the West Side of Chicago

1978 Patriots receiver Darryl Stingley suffered a spinal cord injury, leaving him with quadriplegia from a hit by Raiders Jack Tatum in a preseason game

2021, Phoenix became the US's fastest-growing city (+11.2%), overtaking Philadelphia to be the nation's fifth-largest at 1.6 million, according to the US Census

2021 US Census revealed the country grew more diverse, with growth in Hispanic (+23%) and Asian (+36%) populations, and the first-ever decline in the White population

2025 Israeli settlers beat a Palestinian-American man to death in the West Bank.

In bed at 10:15, up at 5:45; 0605 107/67/67 124 202.6; 68/79/57, cloudy, rainy conditions around 1 p.m.

Morning meds at 9 a.m.  Eliquis at 6:20 a.m. and p.m.

In the partisan primary,  David Crowley beat Francesca Hong, but by less than half a point, so there will probably be a recount.  I fear neither can beat Tom Tiffany, the Republican Trumpie, in November.

Looking back.  Each day I try to look back to what I wrote in this journal in each of the past four years on that date.  I do it, in part, to see what I was thinking and writing about on those days, and how my mental and physical health were doing, but also to see whether I'm embarrassed by what I wrote or whether I no longer think or feel the same way as I used to.  I usually find that my thinking hasn't changed much over the last 4 years, though sometimes I'm a bit more or less exuberant about whatever I wrote.  Today I was struck by what I wrote on 8/12/2024, before Trump proposed his $1.5 trillion defense/war budget for FY2027, and before he started his on-again, off-again war against Iran, which will almost be another strategic loser to pile on top of Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

WISN radio.  I listened to this right-wing station while driving home from the VA.  It was the Mark Belling show hosted by some other guy whose name I didn't catch.  He spoke of the danger of nuclear wars or other wars between the great powers in today's world and much of it made sense to me.  Ukraine has invaded Russia.  Israel has conducted an assassination in the capital of Iran and is awaiting a lethal response in Israel proper from Iran and from Hezbollah.  The US, joined at the hip to Israel and its fascist, apartheid government, has sent another aircraft carrier and a guided missile submarine to the area.  We are overstretched in terms of our military-industrial capacity to continue to arm Ukraine's fight against Russia and Israel's fight against Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran-backed militias in Syria and Iraq.  Plus, America is as deeply divided at home as it has been since the days of the Vietnam War and civil rights demonstrations and riots.  Israel is also deeply divided and distressed. It has become an international pariah, at least outside the U.S. and Western Europe.  Thus, it's a good time for China to take on Taiwan if it chooses.  Who are we hoping not to use tactical nuclear weapons now?  Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu.  Why do we suppose either of these wicked men would decline to use some of their many nuclear weapons if it served their nationalistic and personal purposes?  Why would we think that Joe Biden, Tony Blinken, or Lloyd Austin can contain or control a crisis in the Ukraine War, the Middle East, or the Taiwan Straits?  I think back to the first and second Taiwan Straits crises in the 1950s and the great tension over the fate of Quemoy and Matsu, tiny islands off the coast of mainland China, claimed by both China and by Taiwan and within artillery range of communist howitzers.   President Eisenhower threatened to use nuclear weapons against China over the islands which led directly to China starting a nuclear weapons program of its own.  From Wikipedia: "During the crisis, American leadership risked the alienation of the American public, relations with key allies such as France and Japan, and even nuclear war. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles argued that while the status quo result was a victory, the American government could not permit such a situation to arise again."  The memory of this period and those tiny islands reminds me again of my view that the greatest threat to world peace is the United States, its capitalist economy and government, and its military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about on January 17, 1961. Before and during the Second World War, American industries had successfully converted to defense production as the crisis demanded, but out of the war, what Eisenhower called a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions emerged. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry was new in the American experience.   Eisenhower warned, "[while] we recognize the imperative need for this development...We must not fail to comprehend its grave implications we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence…The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." Eisenhower cautioned that the federal government’s collaboration with an alliance of military and industrial leaders, though necessary, was vulnerable to abuse of power. Ike then counseled American citizens to be vigilant in monitoring the military-industrial complex, but of course, we never have.  About half of the world's wealth is now controlled by American transnational corporations, many of which are part of the so-called "defense," which is to say, war industry.  Their control over our government's foreign and economic policies is so patent that when Joe Biden pitches more arms for Ukraine and for Israel, he points out that the cost of the aid will almost entirely go to American war industries. Just the other day we learned that the small-diameter, 250-pound bomb that killed more than 100 displaced Palestinians sheltering in a school complex in Gaza City was manufactured by Boeing.  We paid for it with our tax dollars and escalating debt and Boeing and its shareholders profited.  They can't be counted on to make safe aircraft anymore or to be able to bring their astronauts back from space, but they can make weapons to kill Palestinians during their morning prayers.

Many years ago, while sharing lunch with the other lawyers in our firm, we were discussing national security, and I argued that the greatest threat to world peace has long been our own government and economy.  Our huge economy, especially after World War II, means we have a huge need for natural resources from abroad and a huge need for friendly foreign markets for our products.  That produces a huge need for a huge military to protect both the required access to foreign resources and the required foreign markets.  That's why our troops, and no other nation's troops, are stationed all over the world. I should have expected my colleagues' reaction, which was as if I had questioned their mothers' virtue.  No, America is the world's great peacemaker, notwithstanding Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Venezuela, Iran, and perhaps Cuba.   I don't think so, and haven't, at least since Vietnam.

Anniversaries thoughts:  First, why mention Pius XII and Humani genris?  Because he and it were the reason I had such a cramped education in philosophy and theology at Marquette University between 1959 and 1963.  I and my classmates were indoctrinated, literally, with the Scholastic philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas developed in the the 13th century.  Humani generis forbade the teaching - or thinking- of philosophical and theological positions that any way deviated from the official teaching of the Catholic Church, doctrines and dogmas.  The encyclical was written in the years following the Great War, the Great Depression, World War II, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Holocaust, i.e., following the cataclysms of the first half of the twentieth century that shook to the core our understanding of human nature, human life, and history.  It was the era in which Existentialism developed and old understandings of human nature and of history and of good and evil were questioned by all serious thinkers.  It was that questioning that Pius wanted to put an end to and to a large extent he succeeded.  At Marquette, in both theology and philosophy classes, I learned Thomism and neo-Thomism, the officially sanctioned teaching of the Church issued under its Magisterium, or Teaching Authority granted by God Himself.  I believe I am recalling correctly that even non-Catholics were required to take Philosophy 50, The Philosophy of Man, a thoroughly Scholastic interpretation of human nature.  I remember Dr. Simmons, my Epistomology professor, and Dr. Connell, who taught other philosophy and theology courses, following the party line: Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Summa contra Gentiles.  I still get disgusted just thinking about it.  Propaganda, indoctrination, wasted educational and growth opportunities.

The ridiculousness of Pius's edict is clear in his attack on the theory of polygenism, that the human species developed from a number of different groups of progenitors, not just from Adam and Eve.  Pius wrote:

[T]he faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which through generation is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.

Pass the basin, please. 

Second, in August of 1965, there was a Black riot in the Garfield Park neighborhood in Chicago.  It lasted 3 days and occasioned 80 injuries and 169 arrests. Still, it received relatively little attention because it started the day after the much larger Black riots in Los Angeles's Watts district, where 34 died, more than 1,000 were injured, more than $40 million in property damage occurred, and 14,000 National Guard troops were deployed.  I learned of the many riots and demonstrations going on in America while I was in Vietnam with tens of thousands of other American troops doing all we could to practice our profession of killing their people and destroying their stuff while at home America was burning.  Talk about cognitive and emotional dissonance.

Third, I reflect with some shame on Darryl Stingley's paralysis caused by Jack Tatum's 'hard hit' in a preseason exhibition game on this date in 1978.  Tatum's nickname was "The Assassin," which tells us all we need to know about him and about the game of football, especially professional football.  I stopped watching football several years ago because I didn't want to support the game even as a statistic, i.e., viewership.  I stopped because of disgust with the NFL owners' denial of CTE in their players but I should have stopped back in 1978 when brain-concussing 'hard hits,' especially on quarterbacks and wide receivers, were euphemized as getting "his bell rung" by guys like Jack Tatum. 

Lastly, Phoenix is America's fastest-growing city.  Insane!  

Crime and Punishment.  I read Dostoevsky's novel many decades ago and liked it, mainly because of the relationship between Raskolnikov and his mother and sister on the one hand and the young prostitute Sonya on the other.  I think I re-read it years later, but I'm not sure of that.  Maybe I only wanted to re-read it. In any event, I've started reading it again this afternoon, but without a firm commitment to work my way through all of it.  Early on, as I read in Part I,  chapter 2, I thought how contrived it seemed, with Marmeladov drunkenly laying out his and his family's history of hardships and poverty.  "Contrived" was the criticism I leveled against the concluding chapters of East of Eden just the other day, and one that I've thought several times while reading several novels over the last several months.  I invariably have to remind myself that all novels are 'contrived,' since they are works of fiction, made up, or contrived by their authors.  I was also a bit surprised by my emotional response to Marmeladov's tale of woe, how sorry I felt for him and his family, especially his daughter Sonia, and I wondered if I had the same emotional reaction when I read it before, as a much younger guy.  I realized that Dostoevsky was using Marmeladov's family as a stand-in for millions of poor families in 19th-century Russia, especially in the cities.  I know, though, that the reason I enjoyed the novel in earlier reading(s) was my emotional involvement in Raskolnikov's relationships with Sonya and with his mother and sister.  

Dr. Neary.  I spent part of the morning getting a filling replaced by Anne Neary.  The filling is in one of my front teeth, and as I lay supine in the dentist's chair, I thought of a song from my youth:

All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth

My two front teeth, my two front teeth

Gee, if I could only have my two front teeth

Then I could wish you "Merry Christmas"

And it seems so long since I could say

"Sister Susie sitting on a thistle"

Gosh, oh gee, how happy I'd be

If I could only whistle

All I want for Christmas is my

(Two front teeth, two front teeth, two front teeth)

Gee, if I could only have my two front teeth

Then I could wish you "Merry Christmas"