Democracy Now has the interview Intercept Report Reveals Senate Ignored Federal Court Employees Willing to Testify Against Kavanaugh.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, explain Kavanaugh’s relationship with Judge Kozinski.

RYAN GRIM: Right, it’s very tight. So, not only was he his clerk in the early ’90s, he became close friends with him afterwards. And he and Kozinski vetted the clerks that went to Anthony Kennedy in the Supreme Court, which is one of the most powerful positions in the legal world, to vet Supreme Court justices. Kavanaugh’s own clerk last year was Kozinski’s middle son. So these are very close people. And so—

AMY GOODMAN: And Kavanaugh was recommended to be Anthony Kennedy’s clerk, which he was, by Judge Kozinski.

RYAN GRIM: Yes. And then Kennedy recommended to Trump that Kavanaugh be his replacement. Without Kozinski, you don’t have Kavanaugh. And so, he has distanced himself, in testimony and in public statements, from Kozinski’s behavior. Interestingly, Mazie Hirono followed up to him in written questions—

AMY GOODMAN: The senator from Hawaii.

RYAN GRIM: Senator Mazie Hirono said, “Please search your email and check to see if you got any sexually inappropriate emails from Kozinski, because to know him for 20 years like this and to not have is very strange.” His [Kavanaugh’s] reply was—instead of the wall of denial that he gave in his testimony, his reply to that was “I do not remember receiving any sexually inappropriate emails.” And that’s the end of his written reply.

And so, now, according to Sanai, there are employers who would say, “That’s nonsense. I know firsthand that Kavanaugh was a witness to…”—not that Kavanaugh approved of the behavior, but that he’s lying about this. And his credibility is now central to the accusation of the attempted rape.

There is much more damning information in this video than suggested by the excerpt and the headline.

What strikes me about Kavanaugh’s situation with his alleged attempted rape victim is that he has ruined his chance of using the excuse that he was so young when it happened. If he had admitted to the incident, apologized profusely, and said something like he has looked back at that incident in shame ever since and was so sorry that the incident had such a significant impact on the victim’s life, he might have gotten a pass. If it turns out that it can be proven that his denials are false, then his initial attitude to the accusation should disqualify him.

This interview seems to provide evidence that his behavior long after he became adult shows insensitivity to the issue of sexual discrimination and harassment. His credibility on this issue is destroyed. The unwillingness of the Republicans on the committee to entertain the idea of listening to other witnesses to his adult behavior completely destroys their credibility, too.

If the Democrats on the committee allow this to solely revolve around the he said, she said issue between Ford and Kavanaugh, then they ought to be as ashamed of themselves to the degree

In my reading of Pentagon Papers up to this point it has been all about the blunders of the French and Americans. However, I have now come to a reference to some problems on the North Vietnam side.

It starts with something that Eisenhower said.

President Eisenhower is widely quoted to the effect that in 1954 as many as 80% of the Vietnamese people would have voted for Ho Chi Minh, as the popular hero of their liberation, in an election against Bao Dai. In October 1955, Diem ran against Bao Dai in a referendum and won—by a dubiously overwhelming vote, but he plainly won nevertheless. It is almost certain that by 1956 the proportion which might have voted for Ho—in a free election against Diem—would have been much smaller than 80%.

The explanation for the smaller vote for Ho Chi Minh comes in this excerpt.

The North Vietnamese themselves furnished damning descriptions of conditions within the DRV in 1955 and 1956. Vo Nguyen Giap, in a public statement to his communist party colleagues, admitted in autumn, 1956, that:

“We made too many deviations and executed too many honest people. We attacked on too large a front and, seeing enemies everywhere, resorted to terror, which became far too widespread. . . . Whilst carrying out our land reform program we failed to respect the principles of freedom of faith and worship in many areas . . . in regions inhabited by minority tribes we have attacked tribal chiefs too strongly, thus injuring, instead of respecting, local customs and manners. . . . When reorganizing the party, we paid too much importance to the notion of social class instead of adhering firmly to political qualifications alone. Instead of recognizing education to be the first essential, we resorted exclusively to organizational measures such as disciplinary punishments, expulsion from the party, executions, dissolution of party branches and calls. Worse still, torture came to be regarded as a normal practice during party reorganization.”

I remember back to a book that I had read around 2009. (See my previous post War Fever at the Times: A Five-Day Log). In this post, I talk about the book Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter and Vietnamese Communist Agent.

Another thing that I learned from this book. When you see a local government figure carrying out policies that are clearly antithetical to the cause, maybe you don’t understand what cause the person is working for.

On page 148, “… Thao operated as one of the most trusted aides to Diem and was generally hailed as one of the South’s most successful anti-Communist crusaders. …”

On page 149, “Thao became one of the strongest advocates for agrovilles, self-contained modern villages aimed at separating insurgents from the rural population by moving peasants into large, well-defended villages that would allow the government to protect them. Thao knew the program would alienate peasants, and that is why he became its strongest proponent. The peasants hated agrovilles for many reasons, beginning with the fact that they were required to help build them and then move from their homes. The program produced protests and alienation toward Diem. When it was disbanded, Thao focused on strategic hamlets, convincing Diem to move quickly rather than slowly, which would elevate hostility and alienate the peasants. …”

How could Thao do that, you ask? Here is the part that I left out. On page 148, “Perhaps the most intriguing case of espionage involved Colonel Pham Ngoc Thao, whose mission was to destabilize the anti-Communist government of South Vietnam. …”

What I didn’t know about when I read this book was the quote above from General Giap from the Pentagon Papers. Perhaps the idea for the use of agrovilles by Diem in the south was born of what the spy learned from mistakes that were made in the north. By the way, I do not think that the authors of the Pentagon Papers had access to the information about the spy Colonel Pham Ngoc Thao.

Naked Capitalism has the article Why Piketty is s Defender of Neoclassical Economics and an Enemy of Egalitarianism. I quote the article in its entirety below, and then show the video around which the article revolved.

Yanis Varoufakis, in an interview by Andrew Mazzone, offers a cogent, damning criticism of Thomas Piketty’s theory, such as it is, of inequality. Varoufakis contends that not only is Piketty’s theory (as opposed to his empirical work) weak and unworkable, it also ignores the true drivers of inequality in a capitalist system, such as differences in bargaining power. Varoufakis contends that Piketty was more interested in coming up with an explanation that would fit a neoclassical framework and thus be well received by mainstream economists than one that would help make the world better by providing real insight into the problem. The inadequate theory leaves Piketty with redistribution as his only possible solution, and he suggests a sketchy,poorly conceived a wealth tax.

The is a lively and provocative talk.

Going back to read the words in the article, I do agree with the value of what the article highlights. However, my impression of the interview by the time I came to the end was the following:

The value of this talk was in the last three minutes or so. What was important was the idea that the process needed to be fair, but the outcome was not something you could control in detail. The rest of it was frustrating because of the generality of it. For instance there was a discussion of three points made by Piketty, the first was deemed a tautology, the second was of some value, and the third was also dismissed. There was no discussion of what the three points were and why their description of them was true. I have read the entire book, but I cannot recall what were the three points they were talking about.

The discussion in the last few minutes of how Nozick destroyed Rawls’ thesis by asking a simple question was very informative. The fear that the same thing would happen to Piketty as what happened to Rawls was also a lesson well worth learning. I also valued the insight by Varoufakis of what was right and what was wrong with Libertarian philosophy. In essence the focus on process is right, the thought that unfettered capitalism was a fair process was wrong.

Much of the rest of the discussion was useless to me. I can’t pass judgment on how useful it was to anybody else, because I cannot know what prior knowledge someone else brings to listening to this discussion.

I cannot predict how you might view this 36 minute talk, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you were wondering what was so lively and provocative about most of it.

Moneynews.com has the article Billionaires Dumping Stocks, Economist Knows Why.

I’ll pick out a few quotes so that you get the idea of what this story is about.

So why are these billionaires dumping their shares of U.S. companies?

It’s very likely that these professional investors are aware of specific research that points toward a massive market correction, as much as 90%.

One such person publishing this research is Robert Wiedemer, an esteemed economist and author of the New York Times best-selling book Aftershock.

So how do your know this article is a come-on?  This article is full of teasers for Wiedener, but the one thing that is totally absent from the article is any hint of where these billionaires are putting the money they reaped from dumping their shares.

Of course the following quotes are probably even more damning to the credibility of the article.

Wiedemer’s video interview also contains a comprehensive blueprint for economic survival that’s really commanding global attention.

Now viewed over 40 million times, it was initially screened for a relatively small, private audience. But the overwhelming amount of feedback from viewers who felt the interview should be widely publicized came with consequences, as various online networks repeatedly shut it down and affiliates refused to house the content.

Quick, get in on the secret that only 40,000,000 people know.  This secret has a conspiracy that is trying to suppress it.  Act on this secret news while you can still be the 40,000,001 person who gets in on the ground floor of this secret.

This information is commanding global attention that only you can be privy too.  Sounds like the maxim attributed to Yogi Berra about a restaurant in New York, “Nobody goes there anymore because it is too crowded.”  This information can’t be getting global attention and still be much of a secret.