There is a common view in medical ethics that the patient's right to be informed entails, as well, a correlative right not to be informed, i.e., to waive one's right to information. This paper argues, from a consideration of the concept of autonomy as the foundation for rights, that there can be no such ‘right’ to refuse relevant information, and that the claims for such a right are inconsistent with both deontological and utilitarian ethics. Further, the right to be informed (...) is shown to be a mandatory right (though not a welfare right); persons are thus seen to have both a right and a duty to be informed. Finally, the consequences of this view are addressed: since the way in which we conceptualize our problems tends to determine the actions we take to resolve them, it is important properly to conceptualize patients' requests not to be informed. There may be many reasons for acting in accord with such a request, but it is a mistake to conceptualize one's act as ‘respecting a right possessed by persons’. Keywords: medical ethics, informed consent, autonomy, information-waivers, rights, obligations CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

In most academic research on politics, emotions are deemed important only to the realm of subjects or citizens, not to power. Emotions are presented as a problem power has to deal with, not something with which power is itself intimately involved. This article discusses recent attempts to reintroduce emotions into political analysis and argue that they are incomplete insofar as they look only at opposition social movements, not at mainstream parties. With a nod to Carl Schmitt, I argue that anger (...) is not something that only occasionally bursts onto the political scene, but is central to ‘normal’ politics as well. Anger is central to politics both as a diffuse, untargeted sentiment citizens experience, usually economically, and as the emotion political organizers need to capture and channel, which they do by offering up an ‘enemy’ they identify as the source of the problem. Opposition movements and parties of power alike succeed when they persuade people to accept the enemy they propose. (shrink)

ExcerptVictor Zaslavsky has written a moving and powerful short book that is less about the actual events of the horrendous crimes of Katyn than about the mechanisms that produced them and about the cover-ups—both inside the Soviet Union and in much of the rest of the world—that followed. The crimes themselves, which are still poorly known in the world outside of Poland, took place in March 1940, both in the Katyn forests in Russia and in other camps in the Soviet (...) Union where Polish prisoners were being held. The Soviets had taken the prisoners during and immediately after their invasion…. (shrink)

The plethora of tripartite bodies in postcommunist countries seems to suggest the emergence of an East European corporatism. Analysis of arrangements in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland indicates instead the prevalence of illusory corporatism. Token negotiations, nonbinding agreements, and exclusion of the private sector demonstrate that tripartite procedures are deployed to introduce neoliberal, not social democratic, outcomes. A path-dependent argument stressing labor's weak class identity best explains these outcomes. East European labor, unlike historic Western counterparts, is marked by (...) a weak sense of class interests, disinclination to organize the private sector, and declining support from the workforce, making it unable to emerge as a strong force. It is not labor but the new elites that seek tripartism, hoping thereby to share burdens, conform to European norms, and demonstrate responsiveness to society. Formal tripartism also follows from the legacy of state socialism, giving symbolic voice to the formerly included now headed for exclusion. In the end, tripartism helps secure labor's acceptance of its own marginalization. (shrink)

The first part of a rebuttal to Hugh Murray must be ad hominem, since Murray himself argues ad hominem whenever he can. Murray is a very angry man. He feels he has been discriminated against because he is white. It seems to be the key factor shaping his ideas, informing all his writings. “My mother graduated from eighth grade,” writes Murray, “my father quit school after the third. I was the first in the family to attend the university. And while (...) I have taught at universities and published in countless journals, whenever I apply for a teaching post, the main questions come down to my race, my gender…. Story after story, I am denied work because I am white and male.”. (shrink)