Lying

What is a lie?

A lie is a statement, believed by the liar to be false, made to another person with the intention that the person be deceived by the statement.

This definition mirrors the one offered by Sissela Bok in Lying: Moral Choices in Public and Private Life (New York: Pantheon, 1978), pp. 14, 17. Incidentally, Bok's book is a good place to begin exploring the morality of lying.

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As a person I hate most of all cruelty to people and other sentient creatures. However, perhaps because I happen to be a philosopher and terribly aware of its destructive consequences, my second in the order of 'hateful moral crimes' happens to be lying. I did not read Sissela Bok's book in 1978 when it was published, but perhaps such a spouse is what every college president (or other person similarly situated in a position of authority over the welfare of others) needs to keep him/her on an even moral keel? Swedish born Bok was the wife of the then president of Harvard, Derek Bok.

If one Googles the word, lying, one finds a wide range of citations mentioning the names of current American political figures -- Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld among others. One is forced now to doubt virtually all 'explanations' of 'unfortunate' political events -- such as wars started on the basis of 'mistaken' information. Or imprisonment and debasement of this or that alleged terrorist -- or 'potential' ones held in our U.S. gulags? Or the ones accountable for the torture and murder in such prisons over there where our 'alleged' enemies have been incarcerated? Or the practices of this or that corporate management that destructively affect the lives of customers, employees, the public in general? Or the alleged motives and actions ascribed to one's 'enemies'? Or the intended targets of weapons of this or that cluster of civilians massacred by this or that weapon from on high or this or that military engagement against this or that targeted person or entire city? Or the prosecution of this or that alleged criminal? Or the execution of this or that alleged murderer? Or the slander of this or that public servant?

Summarily, wherever one looks these days lying is the name of the game being played out that may well just do us all in? By some such is called the apocalypse. Others alive today may yet discover it to be the end of civilization as we have known it?

Yes, there are some who believe that lying is justified by one's good intentions. I have my doubts.

And so we go merrily rolling along -- merrily, merrily, merrily.

Columbia's Economic Planners?

[This NY Times article will be accessible today to all. But I have also added a website for Columbia's board chair, David Stern, NBA Commissioner -- "savior and dictator." It is instructive as to the behind the scenes forces driving Bollinger.

The big question mark here is whether Columbia is once again diving into an economic project way over its head. For those not familiar its the history, the vast discrepancy between Columbia's and Harvard's and Yale's endowments lies in the fact that Columbia went into real estate while the latter institutions stuck with the stock market in the critical years post WW2. I am not sure but what Columbia's Manhattanville venture is not more of the same in the face of a potential meltdown in both real estate and the stock markets vis-a-vis the global competition now beginning to haunt the U.S. economy. See Paul Krugman for regular updates. I am not sure lawyers are the best qualified for plotting future economic developments. They are trained to look to precedents from the past. Is biotech an assured money maker for Columbia 30 years down the line? Ed Kent]

Columbia's President, an Expert on Free Speech, Gets an Earful
By KAREN W. ARENSON and N. R. KLEINFIELD
Lee C. Bollinger faces a divisive undercurrent that has pierced the university and raised doubts about his own promise.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/25/nyregion/25bollinger.html?th&emc=th

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Columbia's board chair, David Stern, NBA Commissioner

http://www.askmen.com/men/business_politics/50b_david_stern.html

Summer Read: Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century

Guantánamo Comes to Define U.S. to Muslims
By SOMINI SENGUPTA and SALMAN MASOOD
For many Muslims, accusations of abuses at Guantánamo Bay
confirm the low regard in which they believe the U.S. holds
them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/21/international/asia/21gitmo.html?th&emc=th

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Islam Can Vote, if We Let It
By SAAD EDDIN IBRAHIM
Westerners should not be dismayed at the thought of
allowing religious parties a role in the emerging political
structures of the Arab world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/21/opinion/21ibrahim.html?th&emc=th

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I have had the good fortune to come upon a book which looks to be an excellent introduction to what has been going on in the most diverse Muslim world with which our national leaders seem bent on opening up a new holy war. Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century, edited by Suha Taij-Farouki and Basheer M. Nafi, L.B. Tauris, London/New York (2004) contains 11 essays mainly by British and American field experts on various aspects of Muslim thought during the transitional period of the past century (and previously) that looks most informative for us amateurs in such things.

A paragraph chosen at random by the editors introduction:

"But the difference between the Western and the Islamic experience of the modern is significant. While modern changes were intrinsic to Western historical development, they were largely seen by Muslims as alien and enforced. Intellectual and social resistance to modern chants, which are still visible in Western societies, were sometimes -- and remain -- pronounced and powerful to the Muslim world. The Muslim perspective on the modern was fundamentally different in another way, for even when modern systems, institutions and instruments were welcomed, it did not escape the Muslim collective consciousness that they were articulated in foreign languages and were premised on foreign values. Muslim peoples' relation to the modern was moreover complicated by the imperialist project, and the role that the imperialist administrations played in the process of change in Muslim societies."

Book Description
This book provides in-depth discussions of Islamic thought across the twentieth century, encompassing the breadth of self-expression in Muslim communities world-wide. It explores key themes in modern Islamic thinking, including the social origins and ideological underpinnings of the late nineteenth- early twentieth-century Islamic reformist project, nationalism in the Muslim world, Islamist attitudes towards democracy, the science of Islamic economics, Islamist notions of family and the role of women, Muslim perceptions and constructions of the West, and aspects of Muslim thinking on Christians and Jews.

Table of Contents
Introduction--Suha Taji-Farouki & Basheer Nafi * The Rise of Islamic Reformist Thought and its Challenge to Traditional Islam--Basheer Nafi * The Diversity of Islamic Thought: Towards a Typology--William Shepard * Sufi Thought and its Reconstruction--Elizabeth Sirriyeh * Nationalism and Culture in the Arab and Islamic Worlds: A Critique of Modern Scholarship--Ralph Coury * On the State, Democracy and Pluralism--Abdelwahab El-Affendi * The Development of Islamic Economics: Theory and Practice--Rodney Wilson * On Gender and the Family--Hibba Abugideiri * Reflections on the West--Jacques Waardenburg * Perceptions of Christians and Christianity--Hugh Goddard * Thinking on the Jews--Suha Taji-Farouki * Further Readings * Index

Author Biography
Suha Taji-Farouki is Lecturer in Modern Islam at the Institute of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, University of Durham, and Visiting Fellow at The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London.

Basheer M. Nafi is Reader in Islamic History at the Muslim College and Adjunct Professor of Islamic Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London.

Looks like a good read that can be done on a day by day basis with bibliographies provided with each selection.

Can be ordered for $24.50 at:

http://www.palgrave-usa.com/Catalog/product.aspx?isbn=1850437513

Fight for Mental Health Care for All!

[I vividly recall the time that I was called upon to debate Carl Cohen, a fellow philosopher then on the board of the ACLU, on whether the some 300,000 veterans who had been tossed out of the military with dishonorable discharges following their service in Viet Nam should be amnestied (and thereby granted veterans' benefits, particularly medical follow up on what had become for many serious drug addictions picked up in Viet Nam -- what we might describe as 'self-medication' for post-traumatic stress which some reports indicate is debilitating as many as 1/3 of our first Gulf War veterans).

Cohen was for letting the punishments stay in place -- most of those discharged had committed minor infractions consisting of such things as disobeying an order or striking a superior. They had mainly been teens drafted from the 'lower classes', as college and graduate students had been exempted from the draft until 1970, which then stimulated the responses to the war which ended it. Cohen most recently spearheaded the attack (supported by the Bush administration) on affirmative action at the University of Michigan :

http://www.umich.edu/~newsinfo/MT/97/Fal97/mt10f97.html

Stepping back from the plight of veterans "shell shocked" by WW1, similarly disabled by WW2, the Korean and Viet Nam wars, and now returning with post-traumatic stress from Afghanistan and Iraq in terribly abundant numbers, our American medical insurance programs dodge and weave generally to avoid providing equal treatment (say, the equivalent of that for diabetes) for stressed out persons, suffering from a variety of eminently treatable mental disorders ranging from the most serious to lesser varieties. I see this with my students -- some of whom prosper with treatment and others who are cut off from it and have their futures devastated by the lack of medications and minimal supervision by a prescribing psychiatrist that could allow them to live not just viable but some of the most talented of lives -- there are many Virginia Woolf's among us whom I have come to know personally:

http://classiclit.about.com/cs/productreviews/fr/aa_measure.htm

I recall asking one of my brilliant students heading on to graduate studies in psychology (for whom I was writing a recommendation) where he would be without his medications? He responded, "wondering around in the same schizophrenic haze that I was in for 10 years in the islands before I migrated to the States and got proper medical treatment." Stress for young people is what usually triggers such conditions at about college (or draftable) age. I sometimes visit my students when I can in mental health units which usually take about two weeks to restore them to normality after breakdowns. Follow up care then becomes essential and allows an entirely normal and productive life -- if made available! The alternatives are all too often suicide or prison where approximately 10% of the populations are (needlessly) mentally ill!

The bottom line here is that one of the huge groups of Americans that we are seeing emerge from the travails of our stressful modern culture are those who need decent medical assistance to get their lives back in order. The following report is of one NYC group fighting to achieve such in the face of still archaic public attitudes towards mental illnesses and lack of awareness of the new and effective means that we have developed to treat it.

P.S. The ACLU board voted almost unanimously back then for amnesty of our walking wounded from Viet Nam. The U.S. Military and Congress left these victims of a terrible war to fend for themselves. You may encounter their remnants daily as the homeless wondering our streets in search of funds to maintain their drug habits. Many spent time subsequently in prison in pursuit of same; most died young. Ed Kent]

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REMINDER: Tues, May 24, 7:30pm: "How Can a National Health Program Bring
Sanity Into Mental Care?" a forum with Marianne Jackson, PhD and Peter
Steinglass, MD. Details at the end of this message.

Dear Members and Friends of Physicians for a National Health Program,

PNHP- NY Metro Chapter is holding it's annual mid-year fundraising party
on Saturday, June 4, 7-11pm at the Community Church of New York, 40 East
35th Street in Manhattan. It will be a special opportunity to hear a
timely and topical cabaret musical comedy about the health care
situation in country ("Damaged Care") with Drs. Greg LaGana and Barry
Levy, as well as to party with PNHP friends and colleagues. It will also
help raise much-needed funds for the local chapter. (The suggested
donation is $150, or whatever people can afford--especially students and
house staff.)

By now you should have received your invitation in the mail. We need
your help in contacting our membership and friends to remind them to
send in their reservations. Starting about May 20 we will be calling
those who have not yet responded to the invitation. If you can help by
making some of these calls, please contact Joanne Landy at 212-666-4001
or send the form below to jlandy@igc.org. Also, please invite your
friends and colleagues to come. Let Joanne know the names and addresses
of people to whom she should send invitations, mentioning your name.

Finally, we are in search of a d.j. to donate his or her services so
that we can have some dancing. If you know of a potential volunteer d.j,
please tell us!
Thanks for helping to make this event a success!
Jim and Joanne
Jim Cone, MD - Member of the Board
Joanne Landy, MPH-Executive Director
PNHP-NY Metro Chapter
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - (If you have trouble filling in the form, just send the information in a
fresh email or fax it to 212-866-5847)
____I will be mailing in my own reservation
____I plan to bring _____(how many) guests
____Yes, I can make calls inviting people to the party
____Yes, I know a potential d.j._______________________
____Please send invitations to the following people, mentioning my name
(list names and addresses):
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
YOUR NAME_________________________________
COMMENT___________________________________


REMINDER: Tues, May 24, 7:30pm: "How Can a National Health Program Bring
Sanity Into Mental Care?" with Marianne Jackson, PhD and Peter
Steinglass, MD. Beth Israel Medical Center, Phillips Ambulatory Care
Center, 10 Union Square East (between 14th and 15th Streets). Second
Floor Lecture Hall, Admission Free. Sponsored by Physicians For A
National Health Program, NY Metro Chapter, Co-sponsors, Metro New York
Health Care For All Campaign, Public Health Association of New York
City, American Medical Students Assn., Region 2.

On Decent Treatment for Our Service Workers

With the jobs for many of our workers being outsourced -- manufacturing to China, high tech to India, etc. -- not much is left for a vast number of Americans but service jobs -- fast food, household work, retail clerking, etc. Hence the conditions of work, if not the salaries from same, ought to be as comfortable and humanely operated as possible. Such is, however, not the case in too many instances. In our Morningside Heights (Columbia University) neighborhood we had until two years ago a happy university market. The half owner, however, was obliged to sell to satisfy the estate interests of his deceased partner and a new outfit bought the lease from Columbia and proceded to change things radically -- mainly getting rid of all but a handful of loyal workers by cutting their salaries drastically. Those of us who watched this process were horrified at the hardships imposed upon the laid off workers and word of bad treatment of a few who had tried to remain on with the new owners, a small chain growing in sizs by acquiring and revamping markets such as ours.

One small item that I noticed along the way was that the young women who manned our checkout counters in our new market were working long hours without rest periods and stools to sit on to ease their tired backs and feet -- some were pregnant and at least one noted the pain of her back one day. So I explored the ins and outs as reported below of acquiring stools for these young women to ease their working conditions. What I discovered was a bit of an American horror. Unlike our counterpart nations in Europe and Canada, American retailers quite cruelly have by tradition made things quite uncomfortable for their workers as some of the comments below indicate. The NY Times did a story on my efforts to be assistance and responses have been flowing in since by email and phone. Some are included in what follows, including one that reports that the denial of such conveniences as seating contravenes one of our little known and unenforced NY State Labor laws:

Following upon publication in the NY Times City section yesterday (5/15/05) of "As They Ring It Up, They Should Be Sitting Down," I received a number of communications by phone and email indicating not only support for the proposal that young women working long hours on their feet behind checkout counters should have stools upon which to rest, but that such are mandated by NY State Labor Law 203-b!

To quote Steve Landis fully:

Professor Kent,

It was a pleasure speaking with you this morning and reading about you in this morning’s New York Times.

As I indicated, I practice labor and employment law and am the Chair of the New York County Lawyers’ Association Labor Relations & Employment Law Committee. In my practice, I previously dealt with a similar issue and thought I could be help solve your concerns. Below is the statutory provision that we discussed, which I expect will be helpful to you in regarding the absence of chairs at the Morton Williams supermarket. For your convenience, I have cut and pasted the language, along with the url, so that you can refer to it in your further discussions:

NYS Labor Law §203-b
§203-b. Seats for female employees. A sufficient number of suitable seats, with backs where practicable, shall be provided and maintained in every factory, mercantile establishment, freight or passenger elevator, hotel and restaurant for female employees who shall be allowed to use the seats to such an extent as may be reasonable for the preservation of their health. In factories, female employees shall be allowed to use such seats whenever they are engaged in work which can be properly performed in a sitting posture. In mercantile establishments, at least one seat shall be provided for every three female employees and if the duties of such employees are to be performed principally in front of a counter, table, desk or fixture, such seats shall be placed in front thereof, or if such duties are to be performed principally behind such counter, table, desk or fixture they shall be placed behind the same.

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/nycodes/c54/a9.html

I wish you the best of luck. Please let me know how it turns out.

Steven S. Landis
Shebitz Berman & Cohen, P.C.
800 Third Avenue, 30th Floor
New York, NY 10022

(212) 832-2797

slandis@shebitzlaw.com

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Where have all the retail clerk unions been on this one?

Other callers such as Monica Strauss noted that European countries routinely provide seating arrangements for check out clerks.

Vincent Valdmanis reported: I read in today's NY Times of your efforts to get chairs for the cashiers at Morton Williams on 115th and Broadway. In the article Avi Kaner says "we could not find any other chain in the United States that uses stools." If he looked outside the country he would. Switzerland has scrupulous ergonomic standards for workers, especially in the service sector. There cashiers at grocery stores (the two principle chains being Migros and Coop) don't simply sit, they sit on modern height-adjustable swivel seats with high-density foam supports. There are also a number of other ergonomic features of their check-out lines, including placement of lightweight flat LCD computer screens on adjustable swing arms and locating computer keypads at or below the cashier's waist level.

Some comments from those who have been there and suffered it:

Thanks for taking this on. Many years ago I worked at Gimbels East (remember that?) on East 86th Street. I had a full-time day job and worked evenings and weekends at Gimbels . We were not allowed to sit or even lean. It was very difficult. It is not healthy to stand without rest for hours at a time. Any health consequences may not show up until years later.
M

Susan suggests:

Re stools for cashiers and sales people -- I've had many jobs in the course of my life, including waitressing and selling things from behind sales counters, both of which kept me on my feet. I was a lot younger at the time, so that helped, and waitressing is much more active than selling or cashiering, so that helps with circulation can say that a major reason most companies do not want sales people and cashiers sitting is because it makes them look too relaxed, not sufficiently "ready to serve." You see this everywhere -- airline check-in people, fast-food check-out people, sales people from small stores to large department stores, etc. (Do postal clerks sit? If so, it's probably
written into their contracts.)

In jobs that include some sort of movement -- including bagging groceries on check-out lines, the standing is not as bad as it may seem to someone who's never done it, and one gets used to it. What is bad is not getting enough breaks in order to stretch, move around or to put your feet up. A half-hour lunch break during an eight-hour shift does not seem nearly enough "down-time." I think NY state law requires a one-hour break for every eight hours worked, so the cashiers at M-W should probably also be getting two fifteen-minute breaks during their shifts as well.

Tom Fedorek notes:

I am very seldom in agreement with anything Ed Kent has to say, but on this issue I believe his point is well taken. Many, many moons ago, I used to manage a store. My cashiers always had the option of sitting, although many chose to work standing. The chairs and stools at the counters were never an impediment to the efficient processing of sales. Ringing a register is a tiring job and there is no plausible reason why cashiers who would prefer to sit should not have the option of doing so. Tom Fedorek

And I responded to Carla Zanoni who quite acutely noted the gender bias in the old law:

Needless to say, you are quite right about the gender bias. This is an old law. However, one notices that there seems to be some gender bias as well in employment practices in retail stores where women 'man' the registers and men do the stocking jobs. And the gender stats in NYC unemployment would suggest that minority women (many of those affected) are getting jobs more readily. There is a telling record of discrimination against women as presumably all know. The AT&T suit back in the 1970s as I recall first took on the gender bias in jobs (women only as operators and men a repair people). Here are some key cases along the way:

http://www.equalrights.org/about/history.asp

The stools thing looks to me to be typical bias -- in this instance inflicted on women by men owners and supervisors of establishments who don't get pregnant, have to stand on their feet for lengthy periods without relief, etc.

Best, Ed Kent

specdiva wrote:

Although I agree with the sentiment and support the cause, does anyone else find this wording a little sexist? Why is this only for women? Are women too weak to work through a day while men are strong enough to handle it?

Odd.

Carla Zanoni

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As a footnote to the above, I had been most recently sketching for two of my Brooklyn College classes Henry David Thoreau's creation of the concept of 'civil disobedience' as a device for protesting specific injustices and the effective use of it by Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and many others. I had suggested that we should all pursue King's marvelous example when we discover such injustices as outlined in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" in which he suggests the stages leading up to active (law breaking) civil disobedience: 1) identify the injustice, 2) negotiate to try to resolve it, 3) prepare to undertake a civil disobedient action which is: a) public, b) non-violent, c) targeted at the specific injustice , d) carried out lovingly, e) with willingness to accept arrest and punishment.

In this specific case it looks as though the shoe is on the other foot -- all those markets NOT providing comfortable seating for their "female" employees are violating NY State law!!! Hopefully they will rectify this presumably legally punishable deficit ASAP.

I urge any and all who share this concern to bring this matter to the attention of their local market managers et al. Boycotts can be arranged later for those stores that still refuse to provide stools ensuring basic decent treatment of their employees. Hopefully Avi Kaner will become our neighborhood hero by making Morton Williams University Market the first of our Morningside Heights markets to comply with State Labor Law 203-b?

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For those who missed it, here is yesterday's article:

Morningside Heights
As They Ring It Up, Should They Be Sitting Down?

By SUH-KYUNG YOON
Published: May 15, 2005

The last time Edward Kent went to the Morton Williams University Supermarket at 115th Street and Broadway, he left with a shopping list - four stools high enough to reach the cash register, and low enough to bag groceries.

Aching backs behind the counter at Morton Williams?

Mr. Kent, a 72-year-old philosophy professor at Brooklyn College, had noticed while standing on the checkout line that the cashiers had nowhere to sit. "Their legs must hurt, their backs must hurt, and one of the checkout women I saw was pregnant," he said. So Mr. Kent swung into action, negotiating a special price for stools at a local hardware store and discussing the hazards of standing with the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

In the last three weeks, he has e-mailed each of his findings to Avi Kaner, vice president of Morton Williams. Mr. Kaner has not returned phone calls, but in e-mail responses to Mr. Kent, he wrote that "we could not find any other chain in the United States that uses stools" and that the chain's store supervisors "all think it's a bad idea." The supervisors, he wrote, believed that cashiers sitting on stools might develop backaches as they reached over to lift and bag groceries, or might slip off the stools, leading to injuries, lawsuits and rising insurance premiums.

Most of the cashiers and their customers know nothing about the wrangling over the stools. Elizabeth Marhela, 19, is on her feet throughout her eight-hour shift, minus her 30-minute lunch break. Would she like a stool? "That would be great so that we can rest our feet," she replied. "But who's this guy doing this?"

The dust-up over the stools is the latest involving the grocery stores on this site. Two years ago, when Morton Williams, a Bronx-based chain of 10 supermarkets, replaced the University Food Market, some local residents were dismayed by the departure of a beloved if down-at-the-heels market. Morton Williams, which is decorated with black-and-white photographs of Columbia University and a sign flashing quotations of Cicero, Saki and P. J. O'Rourke ("Never serve oysters during a month that has no paycheck in it"), is open 24 hours a day and stocked with organic cheeses and fresh scallops.

In his efforts to get the cashiers seats, Mr. Kent has negotiated a deal for four 29-inch stools for $108 plus tax at University Houseware, on Broadway and 113th Street. He has also offered to chip in $10 and take up a collection if needed, and, in an e-mail to Mr. Kaner, said that he would even pick up the stools himself if not for the "problems with my back this week."

Mr. Kent also seems ready to broaden his mission. "It's not just Morton Williams," he said. "Why shouldn't every cashier have a stool to rest on?"

Apocalypse NYC?

Row of Loosely Guarded Targets Lies Just Outside New York
City
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI
Terrorism experts call a chlorine gas plant in northern New
Jersey the deadliest target in the most dangerous two miles
in the U.S.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/09/nyregion/09homeland.html?th&emc=th

Having seen the FEMA reports on us, I am all too well aware that we are a totally unguarded city that could be devastated either physically or economically with the abilities and/or equipment of any average individual or several of same determined to do us in. I am amazed that we have survived as long as we have post 9/11. On my subway trips I see those signs urging us to report to the police or MTA workers anything suspicious such as a shiny new briefcase left behind. Believe me, it is not the briefcases that worry me.

Lest I suggest a modus operandi to some nut, one need only use one's imagination to figure how to do in NYC. During WW2, so the story goes, a group of philosophers was enlisted to figure out how the Germans were able to calculate the departures of our major convoys. The team read the NY Times and suggested that the spate of wedding announcements that preceded each major sailing be omitted. It apparently at least helped. So any terrorists on the march, just keep reading such as the above and you will have your best targets identified for you. The Bush people are busy guarding Iraq and its oil, not the U.S. chemical and nuclear plants or our critical modes of transportation.

Two Birds with One Stone

States Propose Sweeping Changes to Trim Medicaid by Billions
By ROBERT PEAR
The plans provide guidance to Congress, which endorsed a
budget blueprint that would cut projected Medicaid spending
by $10 billion over the next five years.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/09/national/09medicaid.html?th&emc=th

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One has to be aware these days that far too many people are dying needlessly because they cannot afford the preventive screening that catches such things as a pre cancerous polyp in the colon:

http://digestive.niddk.nih.gov/ddiseases/pubs/colonoscopy/

that can be easily removed with the same screening procedure.

Cutting back on Medicaid will presumably rid us of millions more Americans who will not live to qualify for Social Security -- as it were killing two birds with one stone -- or should I say with Bush's economic weapons of mass murder?