Epiphenomenon

Epiphenomenon (pronounced ep-uh-fuh-nom-uh-non or ep-uh-fuh-nom-uh-nuhn)

(1) In medicine, unexpected or atypical symptom or complication arising during the course of a disease (ie something historically or literally not connected to the disease).

(2) An activity, process, or state that is the result of another; a by-product, a consequence.

(3) In philosophy and psychology, a mental process or state that is an incidental by-product of physiological events in the brain or nervous system.

1706: The construct was epi- + phenomenon.  The epi- prefix was from the Ancient Greek ἐπί (epí) (on top of; in addition to (in a special use in chemistry, it denotes an epimeric form)).  Phenomenon was from the Late Latin phaenomenon (appearance), from the Latin phaenomenon (attested only in the plural form phaenomena), from the Ancient Greek φαινόμενον (phainómenon) (that which appears in one’s view; appearance; phenomenon), a noun use of the neuter singular form of φαινόμενος (phainómenos), the present middle or passive participle of φαίνω (phaínō) (to cause to appear; to reveal, show, uncover; to expound), from the primitive Indo-European beh- (to glow with light, to shine).  The alternative forms are epiphaenomenon (rare and apparently used only by some pathology journals and epiphænomenon (extinct except when cited in historic texts).  Epiphenomenon, epiphenomenalist & epiphenomenalism are nouns, epiphenomenalize is a verb, epiphenomenal, epiphenomenological & epiphenomenalistic are adjectives, and epiphenomenally & epiphenomenalistically are adverbs; the noun plural is epiphenomena or epiphenomenons.  A need to coin the nouns epiphenomenalization & epiphenomenalizationism seems not to have arisen but there’s still time.

In psychology an epiphenomenon is defined as a mere by-product of a process that has no effect on the process itself and within the discipline is most often used to refer to mental events considered as products of brain processes, the idea explored being the matter of an event secondary or incidental to another primary phenomenon (ie something that occurs as a byproduct or consequence of something else, without having any causal influence on the primary phenomenon).  In the abstract, consciousness or subjective experience is seen as an epiphenomenon of the brain's activity, meaning that it does not play an active role in influencing or causing physical events.  In both the clinical sciences and philosophy, the concept is often applied to a construct of pain, the argument being that the subjective experience of pain is an epiphenomenon of neural processes that are primarily responsible for generating behavioral responses to potential threats or injuries; the conscious experience of pain not directly contributing to behavior but instead accompanying it.  That doesn’t imply mental events are not real, just that they are not real in the sense of biological states and events.

In medicine, the word is used to describe symptoms or complications not directly causative of the relevant disease but occurring as a result of the underlying condition.  For example a patient suffering a chronic autoimmune disease may for a number of reasons be afflicted with inflammation in the joints and the casual relationship between the two is direct.  However, were the patient to react to the inflammation by lapsing into depression, this would be regarded as epiphenomenal because the symptoms are not the primary cause of the disease but arising as a consequence of the physiological and psychological impacts of living with a chronic illness.

Historians and social scientists use the word in the tradition of behaviorism.  In his controversial best-seller Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (1996), then Harvard academic Daniel Jonah Goldhagen (b 1959) argued the “eliminationist antisemitism” which characterized the Nazi state (1933-1945) and culminated in the genocide of the Holocaust was not a product merely of the particular circumstances of the Third Reich but instead of a centuries-old virulent form of antisemitism which was uniquely and specifically German.  His point too was it was something almost endemic among non-Jewish Germans which necessitated him constructing a framework to explain the bulk of what criticism by Germans there was of the persecution of Jews.  This he did by suggesting the criticism… “was overwhelmingly directed at but certain aspects of the persecution [and] was epiphenomenal… in the sense that the criticism did not emanate from (and therefore does not signify) Germans’ departure from the two fundamental bedrock features relevant to the fate of the Jews at the hands of the Germans during the Nazi period, namely eliminationist antisemitism and its practical consequences”.  Goldhagen’s internal logic was of course perfect but it’s easy to see why the work was so controversial.  A best seller, it was well reviewed although there were professional historians who found fault with the scholarship and identified a number of technical issues but the author wasn’t discouraged and has in the years since published extensively in the same vein.

The word is not part of the Western legal vocabulary but it is related to the concepts of causation and foreseeability, both essential elements in determining liability in matters of negligence, their interaction a relatively recent development in common law.  For liability to be found, there must be (1) a causal relationship between the negligence and the injury suffered and (2) it must have been reasonably foreseeable that the negligent act might cause the injury suffered.  There’s no mathematical test to determine these things and each case is decided on the basis of the facts presented and even then a judge might find one way, their decision might be reversed 2-1 on appeal and then decided finally 4-3 by the highest appellate court.  So the scorecard of eleven eminent legal minds working with the same facts, in the same tradition can be 6-5 but that’s how the common law evolves.

Known as "The Twisted Tower", the the 28-storey PwC building in Midland, Johannesburg, South Africa, was designed by LYT Architecture.

Of late, causation, reasonable foreseeability and the epiphenomenological have been on the minds of some conspiracy theorists pondering revelations one of the arms of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC, one of the “Big Four” accounting companies (the others KPMG, EY & Deloitte) while acting as consultants to the Australian government in the development of legislation designed to ensure certain multi-national corporations would no longer be able to avoid paying tax on revenue generated within Australia, passed the relevant information to the PwC arm which was consulting with those very companies to design the legal and accounting mechanisms to avoid paying tax.  For PwC, this synergy (vertical integration taken to its logical conclusion) was an extraordinary example of efficiency and apparently a type of high-dollar insider trading which, depending on the chain of events, could disclose all sorts of potential wrongdoing, the obvious conflict of interest perhaps the least serious if it can be proven any involved personally gained from improper conduct.  That will play out, perhaps over years, but what intrigues the conspiracy theorists is whether it was reasonable foreseeable that if one hires the company working for the corporations one wishes to prevent avoiding tax and asks them to help develop a tax code to ensure that tax is paid, that the consultants might be tempted to exchange facts.  In other words, given that such a thing would appear to be reasonably foreseeable, what were the motives of the politicians in putting temptation in the way of PwC?  Theories have included (1) an ideological commitment to support global capitalism in ensuring big corporations pay as little tax as possible while appear to make every attempt to pursue them and (2) it being an example of crony-capitalism whereby politicians ensure big corporations aren’t too troubled by taxes in exchange for a nice sinecure upon retirement from the tiresome business of politics.  The cover of course would be the construct that the ongoing ability of multi-nationals to avoid tax would be something epiphenomenological rather than the reasonably foreseeable consequence of hiring the same accountancy firm as that hired by the multi-nationals.  There has been much muttering about Dracula & the blood-bank but after all, Dracula will do what Dracula does and the more interesting matter is the thoughts of those who thought it a good idea to hand him the keys.

Watched approvingly by comrade Joseph Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) and Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Nazi foreign minister 1938-1945), comrade Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986; Soviet foreign minister 1939-1949 & 1953-1956) signs the Nazi-Soviet Pact with its secret protocol, Moscow, August 1939 (left) and Dr HV Evatt (1894–1965; Australian attorney-general & foreign minister 1941-1949, and leader of opposition 1951-1960) with Winston Churchill (1975-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955), Downing Street, London, May 1942 (right).

Perhaps also of interest is that PwC has dozens of contracts with the Australian Department of Defence, generating in excess of Aus$200 million in revenue for the company.  There may be reasons that situation should anyway be reviewed but following recent revelations, the fact that PwC operates in the People's Republic of China (PRC) adds a layer of concern.  As the sharing of confidential information about tax matters indicates, whatever claims PwC make about the robustness of their "Chinese walls", it is clear that in at least some cases, once data is in the hands of PwC, there's no guarantee it will be kept confidential.  Whether PwC has contracts with the Chinese military might be an interesting question to ask but even if it does not, few would doubt that were the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to ask PwC to obtain what they could, cooperation would be forthcoming.  PwC make much of their operation being a collection of "independent" entities but given the company is often as opaque as the CCP, people should make of that what they will.  Still, when asked during Senate Estimates (a process whereby senators can ask questions of ministers and senior public servants) if he still had sufficient confidence in PwC for them to remain as his department's internal auditors (ie advising him, inter-alia, on matters of governance), the head of the Treasury indicated he was on the basis that PwC auditors has assured him of their integrity.  It recalled the moment in October 1955 when Dr HV Evatt, then leader of the opposition, informed the house all members could be assured a certain Russian document about spying was a forgery because he'd written to the Soviet foreign minister to ask and comrade Molotov had replied confirming it was.  Those reporting the exchange were either too polite to draw the comparison or, as seems the case with journalists these days, lacked knowledge of anything which happened more than ten years ago.

Glabella

Glabella (pronounced gluh-bel-uh)

(1) In human anatomy, a smooth elevation of the frontal bone just above the bridge of the nose: a reference point (as the craniometric point) in physical anthropology or craniometry; the most forward projecting point of the forehead in the midline of the supraorbital ridges; known also as the mesophryon.

(2) In zoology, the axial protuberance on the cephalon of certain arthropods (especially trilobites).

1590s: From the New Latin, either feminine singular or neuter plural of the adjective glabellus (without hair; smooth) from the Latin glaber (smooth, bald), from the Proto-Italic ɣlaðros, from the primitive Indo-European gladh (smooth).  The construct was glaber (without hair, smooth) + -lus, the diminutive adjective and noun suffix.  Use in medicine and pathology began in the 1820s, the use in zoology began with the study of the trilobite in 1849.  Glabella is a noun and glabellar is an adjective; the "correct" noun plural is glabellae but the more common modern alternative is glabellas.

#freckles: Lindsay Lohan’s glabella.

Egregious

Egregious (pronounced ih-gree-juhs)

(1) Extraordinary in some bad way; glaring; flagrant.

(2) Extraordinary in some good way; distinguished or eminent (archaic).

1525–1535: From the Middle English, from the Latin ēgregius (preeminent; outstanding, literally “standing out from the herd”), the construct being ē- (out (and in Latin an alternative to ex-)) + greg-, stem of grēx (flock, herd) + -ius.  Grēx was from the primitive Indo-European hzger- (to assemble, gather together) which influenced also the Spanish grey (flock, crowd), the Lithuanian gurguole (mass, crowd) and gurgulys (chaos, confusion), the Old Church Slavonic гроусти (grusti) (handful), the Sanskrit गण (gaṇá) (flock, troop, group) and ग्राम (grā́ma) (troop, collection, multitude; village, tribe), and the Ancient Greek ἀγείρω (ageírō) (I gather, collect) (from whence came ἀγορά (agorá)).  The link to the Proto-Germanic kruppaz (lump, round mass, body, crop) is contested.  The English –ous was a Middle English borrowing from the Old French -ous and –eux from the Latin -ōsus (full, full of) and is as doublet of -ose in unstressed position; it was used to form adjectives from nouns and to denote possession or presence of a quality in any degree, most commonly in abundance.  Egregious is an adjective, egregiously is an adverb and egregiousness is a noun; the noun plural is the delicious egregiousnesses.

Meaning adaptation & shift

There are many words in English where meaning has in some way or to some degree shifted but egregious is one of the rarities which now means the opposite of what it once did.  There are others such as nice which used to mean “silly, foolish, simple”; silly which morphed from referring to things “worthy or blessed” to meaning “weak and vulnerable” before assuming its modern sense; awful which used to describe something “worthy of awe” and decimate, once a Roman military term to describe a death-rate around 10% whereas it implies now a survival rate about that number.  In English, upon its sixteenth century adoption from Latin, egregious was a compliment, a way to suggest someone was distinguished or eminent.  That egregiously clever English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was flattering a colleague when he remarked, "I am not so egregious a mathematician as you are…" which would today be thought an insult.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) notes that in 1534, egregious unambiguously meant "remarkable, in a good sense" but as early as 1573, people were also using it to mean "remarkable, in a bad sense."  The documentary evidence appears sparse but the OED speculates the meaning started to switch because people were using the word sarcastically or at least with some gentle irony.  In the linguistically democratic manner in which English evolves, the latter prevailed, presumably because people felt there were quite enough ways to compliment others but were anxious always to add another insult to the lexicon.  Shakespeare, with his ear for the vernacular, perhaps helped.  Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) employed it in the older sense in his Tamburlaine (1590), writing of “egregious viceroys of these eastern parts…” but within a generation, William Shakespeare (1564–1616) has Posthumus condemn himself in Cymbeline (1611) in the newer condemnatory sense: “egregious murderer”, echoing his earlier use in All's Well That Ends Well (1605).  Both meanings appear to have operated in parallel until the eighteenth century which must have hurt a few feelings or perhaps, in an age of dueling, something more severe.

Imogen Sleeping (from Shakespeare's Cymbeline), circa 1899 by Norman Mills Price (1877–1951).

In southern Europe however, the bard’s words failed to seduce the Romance languages.  The Italian formal salutation egregio is entirely reverential, as are the both the Spanish and Portuguese cognates, egregio and egrégio.

Cardigan

Cardigan (pronounced kahr-di-guhn)

(1) A usually collarless knitted sweater or jacket that opens down the front, usually with buttons (sometimes a zip); in some places also called a cardigan sweater or cardigan jacket.

(2) The larger variety of corgi, having a long tail.

1868: Adopted as the name for a close-fitting knitted woolen jacket or waistcoat, named after James Thomas Brudenell (1797-1868), seventh Earl of Cardigan, the English general who led the charge of the Light Brigade (1854) at Balaklava during the Crimean War (1853-1856) although the account of him wearing such a garment during the charge is certainly apocryphal.  The place name Cardigan is an English variation of the Welsh Ceredigion, (literally “Ceredig's land”, named after an inhabitant of the fifth century).  The most usual contraction is now cardi displacing the earlier cardie (cardy the rarely seen alternative). Cardigan is a noun; the noun plural is cardigans.

The cardigan is said to be modelled after the knitted wool waistcoat worn by British officers during the Crimean war but the origin of the design is contested, one story being it was an invention of Brudenell inspired by him noticing the tails of his coat had been accidentally burnt off in a fireplace although the more common version is it was simply something to keep soldiers warm in the depths of a Crimean winter.  Cardigans usually have buttons but zips are not unknown and there are modern (post-war) variations which have no buttons, hanging open by design and reaching sometimes to the knees.  These sometimes have a tie at the waist and the fashion industry usually lists them as robes but customers seem to continue to call them cardigans.  From its military origins, the term originally referred only to a knitted sleeveless vest, the use extending to more familiar garments only in the twentieth century.  Coco Chanel (1883-1971) popularized them for women, noting they could be worn, unlike a pullover, without messing the hair.

Lindsay Lohan in twinset cardigan, Los Angeles, January 2012.

Twinset is the term used when a cardigan is worn with a matching sleeveless or short-sleeved pullover sweater.  Historians note that although the twinset, attributed to both Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli (1890–1973), was a fashion innovation first seen during the 1920s, it didn’t achieve widespread popularity until the early post-war years.  The mildly disparaging term twinset and pearls references both the perceived social class and conservatism of those characterised as especially fond of the combination though it has been reclaimed and is now often worn without any sense of irony.  Fashion advisors note also that the classic mix of twinset and skirt can be leveraged: One set of the garments provides one outfit but if one buys two of each in suitability sympathetic colors, then six distinct combinations are produced while if another skirt and twinset is added, suddenly one's wardrobe contains eighteen.  It's the joy of math.

Kendall Jenner (b 1995), Paris, March 2023.

Few motifs draw the fashionista's eye like asymmetry and in March 2023, model Kendall Jenner (b 1995) wore an all-gray ensemble which combined the functionality of a cardigan, dress, skirt & sweater.   Designed by Ann Demeulemeester (b 1959) and fashioned in a wool knit with a draped neckline and an asymmetrical leg slit, it was worn with a pair of the Row’s Italian-made Lady stretch napa leather tall boots with 2½” (65 mm) stiletto heels.  Despite the extent of the exposed skin, the cut means it possible still to wrap for warmth and being a wool knit, it’s a remarkably practical garment.

Glasnost & Perestroika

Glasnost (pronounced glaz-nost, glahz‐nost or glahs-nuhst (Russian))

Openness in the context of politics.

1985 (English adoption): A modern English borrowing from the Russian гла́сность (glásnost) literally meaning “publicity” or “fact of being public” but usually translated as “openness” or something in the vein of what is now referred to as “transparency”.  Although entering English use in 1985, the word had been in the Russian language for centuries and appears in the earliest Russian dictionaries.  Glasnost is a noun, the adjectival forms are glasnostian & glasnostic.

Among Kremlinologists in the West, the word had been familiar since the Glasnost Rally, staged by the embryonic Soviet civil rights movement in December 1965 and appeared in 1972 in reference to a 1969 letter by dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.  The word is ultimately from the Old Church Slavonic glasu (voice) from the primitive Indo-European galso-, from the root gal- (to call, shout).  It was first used in a socio-political sense by Lenin and popularized in English after Mikhail Gorbachev used it several times in his speech in March 1985, accepting the post of General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (USSR).

Perestroika (pronounced per-uh-stroi-kuh or pyi-ryi-stroi-kuh (Russian))

Structural economic reform.

1985 (English adoption): A modern English borrowing from the Russian Перестройка (perestróĭka) literally meaning “rebuilding”, “reconstruction” or “reorganization” and gaining currency as an expression of an intent by government to initiate structural economic reform.  Perestroika is a noun, the other noun (and adjectival) form being perestrokian.  It also begat Salinastroika (a blend of Salinas- +‎ -(peres)troika, which referred to the programme of liberalization (which didn’t end well) under Carlos Salinas de Gortari, President of Mexico (1988-1994).

Perestroika is an ancient Russian word but was rare and in only technical use until the 1980s.  It was constructed from pere- (re-) from Old Russian pere- (around, again) from the Proto-Slavic per- from the primitive Indo-European root per- (forward) (hence "through, around, against”) + stroika (building, construction) from the Old Russian stroji (order) from the primitive Indo-European stroi-, from the root stere- (to spread).  Entering general use in English in 1985, in the USSR, use in the now familiar context actually pre-dated the Gorbachev era, being discussed during the twenty-sixth Party Congress in 1981.

Decline and fall, 1953-1991

After comrade Stalin's (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) death in 1953, the USSR entered a period of economic stagnation relative to the West, a situation not wholly understood at the time, disguised as it was by secrecy, Sputnik and the (often over-estimated) strength of the Soviet nuclear arsenal.  After the decade-long, idiosyncratic rule of Comrade Khrushchev (1894–1971; Soviet leader 1953-1964) gave way to twenty years of increasingly geriatric government, in 1985, the relatively youthful comrade Gorbachev (1931–2022; Soviet leader 1985-1991) assumed the leadership.  He announced to the party and the world that the USSR’s society and economy were in dire need of reform, the words he chose to describe the necessary processes were respectively glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring).

Glasnost under the gaze of comrade Lenin (1870–1924; head of government of Russia or the Soviet Union 1917-1924).  One of the fruits of reform was that in 1988, the USSR staged its first ever government-approved beauty contest, the Miss Moscow title won by sixteen year-old Maria Kalinina (b 1971) who was later crowned Miss USSR.

Glasnost & perestroika captured imaginations in the West and comrade Gorbachev became something of a political rock star but while the reforms had profound geopolitical consequences, they weren’t what had been intended, the forces unleashed destabilizing the USSR and its satellite states.  In 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall triggered a chain-reaction of political upheaval which saw the overthrow of the Moscow-aligned régimes of the Warsaw Pact and in 1991 the USSR was itself dissolved, ending both the cold war and an empire which had endured almost four decades after comrade Stalin’s death.

After glasnost, during Putin: Lindsay Lohan in Moscow, June 2015.

The era of glasnost & perestroika was followed by the frequently chaotic years of the 1990s during which the old Soviet empire fragmented into its historic component states and Russian society and its economy what transformed into what is usually understood as "capitalism with Russian characteristics" with much of what that implies.  However, the 1990s were genuinely a period of glasnost (openness) and in those years Western historians were granted their first access to the Soviet archives and some long held suppositions were confirmed while others were overturned and many books were updated, the revised editions including for the first time original source documents from Moscow.  It was a brief opening of the vault which didn't long stay ajar and what Russia has become under (former) comrade Vladimir Putin (b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999) represents his view that what Gorbachev did was a mistake and handled differently, the USSR might well have endured to this day.  Mr Putin was under no illusions about the failure of the Soviet economic model and he would have preferred the reforms of the 1980s to have moved towards the Chinese model of state capitalism under the supervision of the Communist Party.

Billigung

Billigung (pronounced bill-a-ghin)

(1) To approve.

(2) To acquiesce.

(3) Tacitly to accept; not to oppose.

(4) "Looking the other way" from something one would not wish to admit knowledge of; a means of creating a defense of plausible deniability; a self-denial of knowledge.

1300s: A Modern German form from the Old High German billīh (appropriate), from the Proto-Germanic biliz (merciful, kind, decent, fair), the variant being Billigung (approval; acceptance), the construct being billig(en) +‎ -ung (from the Middle High German -ung & -unge, from the Old High German -unga, from the Proto-Germanic -ungō; it was used to forms nouns from verbs, usually describing either an event in which an action is carried out, or the result of that action).  The third-person singular & simple present tense is billigt, the past tense is billigte, the past participle is gebilligt and the auxiliary haben.  In German, bein a noun there's always an initial capital but when used in English as a general descriptor (sepecially in a legal context), it usually all in lower-case.  Billigung is a noun and in German, there's no plural form although in English-language texts it might appear as "billigungs" for the sake of clarity. 

When wishing not to know, look the other way

The German Billigung is not so much hard to translate as able to be translated in a number of senses; context is everything.  The way it is used to mean “looking away; avoiding specific knowledge of something which one knows or suspects is happening” was clarified in 1977.  Albert Speer (1905-1981, Reich Minister for Armaments 1942-1945), the convicted war criminal, had always denied any knowledge of the holocaust and was displeased when sent the English translation of a profile to be published in Die Zeit magazine in which Billigung had been rendered as his “...tacit consent...” of the final solution.  This he corrected, explaining Billigung in this context meant “looking away”.  This meant he averted his gaze from the worst crime of the criminal régime he served in order to be able to deny he knew of it.  Speer, predictably, was able to summon a word to explain this too: Ahnumg (the sensing of something without quite knowing exactly what).  He did at least concede the implication of his translation “...is as grave…” as the original, one biographer noting that had Speer said as much at his trial “…he would have been hanged.”  Other historians and some lawyers disagreed with that but it was an assertion the author was unable to pursue.  When she tried to nudge Speer a little further, pointing out that for one to look away from something, one must first know it's there, he didn’t deny what he’d earlier said but added they “…must never speak of it again".  The moment passed and within weeks he would be dead, dying "on the job" in police slang.  Some have noted the feeling Speer conveyed of always somehow longing to confess his knowledge of the holocaust.  He so often came so close to admitting he knew what he'd always denied, as if the last great act of his life would have been to admit worst of the the guilt he convinced himself (and some others) he'd evaded when the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at the first Nuremberg  Trial (1945-1946) convicted him of war crimes & crimes against humanity (counts 3 & 4) and sentenced him to twenty years imprisonment.

Albert Speer in conversation with his lawyer Dr Hans Flächsner (1896-dod unrecorded) and a legal associate, Nuremburg, 1945.

Looking the other way.

In what he described as a “...leadership failure...", former Australian cricket captain Steve Smith (b 1989) has admitted he "didn't want to know about it" when he became aware “something” was being planned after seeing team mates in a dressing room discussion.  Their talks he witnessed were about ball-tampering, a form of cheating which came to be known as sandpapergate.  Billigung is one of those useful German creations (zeitgeist, schadenfreude etc) which in one word conveys what might in English take a dozen or more.  Operating somewhere on the spectrum of plausible deniability, Billigung is where someone hears of or perhaps “senses” something of which they’d prefer there be no admissible evidence of their knowledge; they “look the other way”.

Gladys Berejiklian (b 1970; Premier (Liberal) of New South Wales 2017-2021) & Daryl Maguire (b 1959, MLA (Liberal) for Wagga Wagga 1999-2018).

For some, Billigung might have come to mind when pondering the recording of a telephone call between then New South Wales (Australia) Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Daryl Maguire, another member of the same parliament with whom she was in an intimate relationship, a man forced to resign as an MP as a result of an (ongoing)  investigation by the NSW Independent Commission against Corruption (ICAC) for allegedly using his political influence in business activities.  Of interest was the premier’s use of the phrase "I don't need to know about that bit" when the former member began to tell her some details of his dubious deals.  To that pertinent observation, Mr Maguire replied "No, you don't".  The suggestion is the premier failed to declare a conflict of interest when dealing with the allocation of taxpayer funds which would be to the benefit of her then lover.  The words used by the then premier: "I don't need to know about that bit" may be compared with how Speer described his response in mid-1944 to being warned by a friend "never, under any circumstances" "to accept an invitation to inspect a concentration camp in Upper Silesia".  Speer's friend explained that at that place he'd "...seen something there which he was not permitted to describe and moreover could not describe".  Having received what he claimed was his first knowledge of Auschwitz, Speer asked no questions of anyone, later admitting: "I did not want to know what was happening there".  That was what he later called Billigung.     

At the time the recording was made public, the former premier denied any wrongdoing beyond having appalling taste in men.  Apart from the men in her life (and not a few women would ruefully admit to having "had a Daryl"), she probably was unlucky.  Billigung has long been a part of that essential tactic of political survival: "plausible deniability".  Actually, as practiced these days, because standards of accountability seem to have declined a bit, denials needs no longer be plausible, just not actually disproven by a publicly available audio tape or film clip.  Others, beyond NSW, might be taking interest, especially those south of the border intimately involved in party machines who, apparently for decades, didn't notice certain things going on around them.     

On 1 October 2021, the NSW ICAC announced certain investigations into the former premier's conduct in office.  Specifically, ICAC is focusing on the period between 2012-2018 and her her involvement in the circumstances in which public money was given to a shooting club and a conservatorium of music and whether that conduct was “...liable to allow or encourage the occurrence of corrupt conduct by Mr Maguire”.  The ICAC will explore whether the conduct constituted a “breach of public trust” by placing the former premier in a position where a conflict of interest existed between her public duties and private interests “...as a person who was in a personal relationship” with Mr Maguire.  The commission will also investigate whether she failed to report what could be defined as reasonable suspicions that “...concerned or may concern corrupt conduct in relation to the conduct of Mr Maguire”.  As a point of law, the ICAC is concerned with actual substantive conduct and conflicts of interest.  It is not the test of "apprehended bias" applied to the judiciary where judgements can be set aside if a court finds there could have been a "reasonable perception" of bias or conflict of interest in some way involving a judge.  To the ICAC, any degree of perception, reasonable or not, is not relevant, their findings must be based on actual conduct.

On 1 October 2021, Berejiklian announced her resignation from both the premiership and the legislative assembly.  There are critics of the NSW ICAC who oppose the public hearings and feel its rules permit an exercise of powers rather too much like the Court of Star Chamber which they say it too closely resembles.  However, the former premier can reflect that unlike the IMT at Nuremberg, neither the Star Chamber nor the ICAC were vested with capital jurisdiction so there’s that.

Dieselgate and implausible deniability

Former Audi CEO Rupert Stadler (b 1963, right) with his lawyers Ulrike Thole-Groll (left) & Thilo Pfordte (centre) during his trial, Munich District Court, May 2023.

The billigung defense is still heard in German courts and if not always exculpatory, lawyers still appreciate its effectiveness in mitigation.  Rupert Stadler began his career with Audi AG (a subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group) in 1990 and between 2010-2018 was Audi’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO).  The scandal which came to be known as “dieselgate” involved companies in the Volkswagen group (and others) installing “cheat” software in diesel-powered vehicles so excessive exhaust emissions wouldn’t be detected during official testing and, after years of obfuscation, Volkswagen in 2015 admitted that was what exactly they’d done.  Civil and criminal proceedings in a number of jurisdictions ensued and thus far the fines alone have cost the group well over €34 million.  There have also been jail sentences imposed, something which presumably would have been in Herr Stadler’s thoughts when, in March 2018, Munich prosecutors named him as a suspect in their investigations.  A week later, he was arrested and held in an Augsburg prison, apparently as a precautionary move because it was claimed he was tampering with evidence by making a telephone call in which he suggested putting a witness “on leave”.  After a month, he was released on bail, subject to certain conditions.

In September 2020, Herr Stadler’s trial on charges of fraud began and for years (proceedings now take rather longer than in 1945-1946) he denied all wrongdoing until, in May 2023, he accepted a plea deal offered by Judge Stefan Weickert which would require him to admit guilt.  To date, he’s the highest-ranking executive to confess, tempted apparently by (1) the preponderance of evidence before the court which made it clear he was guilty as sin and (2) the deal limiting his punishment to a €1.1 million fine and a suspended sentence which would not see him jailed, an attractive alternative to the long term of imprisonment he otherwise faced upon conviction.  As confessions go however, it was among the more nuanced.  His lawyer read a statement saying the defendant (1) did not know that vehicles had been manipulated and buyers had been harmed, but (2) he acknowledged it was a possibility and accepted that, adding that in his case (3) there was a need for more care.  A classic piece of billigung, was the line (4) “I didn't know, but I recognized it as possible and accepted that the properties of diesel engines might not meet legal approval requirements” while the statement (5) “I have to admit the allegations overall” had an echo of Speer’s admission of “a general responsibility” while denying personal guilt.  Still, it must have conformed with the terms of the plea bargain because it was accepted by the judge.  His lawyer read the statement, apparently because he couldn’t bring himself personally to utter it but when asked by the judge if the words were his own, Herr Stadler replied (5) “Ja”.

Lindsay Lohan with Audi A5 cabriolet, Los Angeles, May 2011.  Ms Lohan apparently avoided being affected by the dieselgate scandal, all the photographs of her driving Audis have featured gasoline (petrol) powered cars.

Outside the court, his lawyer was a little more expansive, admitting her client had allowed vehicles equipped with manipulating software to remain on sale even after learning of the scam.  “In the course of addressing the diesel issue" after the revelations became public, Stadler “neglected” to inform business partners that cars with so-called defeat devices were still going on the market, meaning he was “accepting that vehicles equipped with the illegal software would go on sale” she said.  Although it may have been stating the obvious, she added Herr Stadler regretted he’d been unable to “resolve the crisis”.  The carefully composed text may however have averted another crisis, lawyers noting the cryptic nature of some of his comments might be explained by a desire not to create grounds for additional claims by consumers for financial compensation.

How that might unfold remains to be seen but on 27 June 2023 the Munich court handed down a 21 month sentence, suspended for three years, a fine of €1.1 million (US$1.2 million) also imposed; that will go to the federal government and charities, the court ruled without providing details.  Herr Stadler was the first member of the Volkswagen board member to be sentenced for his part in the scandal, the judgment coming some four years after prosecutors first laid fraud charges.  Guilty verdicts were also delivered against two former Audi executives: head of engine development Wolfgang Hatz (b 1959) and lead diesel engineer Giovanni Pamio (b 1963) who were handed suspended jail sentences of 24 months and 21 months, respectively.  Hatz was fined €400,000 (US$437,000) and Pamio €50,000 (US$55,000).  All three were guilty as sin so the verdicts were unsurprising.

Dr Angela Merkel (b 1954; chancellor of Germany 2005-2021) & Dr Martin Winterkorn (b 1947; CEO of Volkswagen AG 2007-2015).

The long-running scandal (the fines and settlements thus far ordered having cost the group some €33 billion (US$36 billion)) still has some way to run because the case against former CEO Martin Winterkorn has yet to be heard although he’s already agreed to pay VW €11.2 million (US$12.3 million) after an internal investigation found he failed properly to respond to signs the company may have been using unlawful technology which enabled its diesel engines to evade emissions testing and it's not yet clear if Dr Winterkorn will try the billigung defense.  Herr Stadler was required to pay VW €4.1 million ($US4.5 million) under terms agreed following the same investigation.  The company clearly wished to move on and in separately issued statements, Volkswagen and Audi said they were not party to Tuesday’s proceedings, which should be “viewed independently” of proceedings against the companies which had (in Germany) been finalized in 2018.  Audi seemed anxious to confirm it was now a righteous corporation, saying “Audi has made good use of the crisis as an opportunity to start over.  We have updated our systems, processes and checks to ensure compliance company-wide.”  It concluded by noting it had since “cultivated and strengthened a culture of constructive debate.”  In exchange for agreeing to pay the fines, prosecutors dropped criminal charges against Volkswagen and Audi.  

Avoirdupois

Avoirdupois (pronounced av-er-duh-poiz)

(1) As the avoirdupois system, a system of weight measurements.

(2) In informal (and usually jocular) use, excess body weight (mostly US).

(3) Merchandise (usually that sold by weight but also applied generally) (obsolete).

1650s: From the thirteenth century Middle English avoir de pois, aver de peise, haburdy poyse, haburdepays & haburdepeyse, (literally “goods of weight, property of weight”) from the Old French avoir de pois (goods, property, literally “asset of weight”), the construct being avoir (from the earlier aveir, from the Latin habēre (to have) + de (of), from the Latin dē, + pois (from the earlier peis, from the Latin pēnsum (something weighed, weight), from pendere (to weigh, weigh out).  The alternative spelling was the now obsolete averdupois.  Avoirdupois emerged in the 1650s as a misspelling (the French du displacing the original de from Latin) of the Middle English avoir-de-peise, the Norman form of the Old French avoir de pois which was the equivalent of the Medieval Latin averia ponderis), the construct being aveir (property, goods (and a noun use of aveir (have)), from the Classical Latin habere, from the primitive Indo-European root ghabh- (to give or receive) + peis (weight), from the Latin pensum, neuter of pendere (to hang, cause to hang; weigh; pay), from the primitive Indo-European root spen or pen (to draw, stretch, spin).  In the system of weights & measures, the accepted abbreviations are avdp & avoir.  Avoirdupois is a noun; the noun plural is avoirdupoises.

The oldest sense in English is the late thirteenth century “goods sold by weight” and by the late 1400s it had been partially codified as a system of weights based on the pound which contained 16 ounces or 7000 grains (453.59 grams); 100 pounds (US) or 112 pounds (UK) being equal to 1 hundredweight and 20 hundredweights equals 1 ton.  Since circa 1300 it had been the customary system in London and in legislation it was formalized as the UK’s official system in 1856, something which lasted until 1963 (the US mandated it between 1866-1959 although it remains widely used (in the form modified in 1959) to this day).  In England for hundreds of years it was used for all purposes except the measuring of precious metals, gem stones, and medicine but the apothecaries, although they had their own tables of weights & measures needed also to be acquainted with avoirdupois because why they sold their preparations in the apothecaries system, they purchased their raw ingredients in avoirdupois.

Collins English Dictionary: Avoirdupois trend of use.

As a euphemism, avoirdupois is a reputedly more polite way of saying “overweight” and etymologists note the use was historically usually jocular and a popular way to describe the state of one’s self.  At one time it was common for this to be shortened to adipose but it was from a source altogether more blunt, the Latin adeps & adipis meaning “fat” or “grease”.  Adipose found a niche in the international scientific vocabulary and was from the New Latin adipōsus, from the Latin adeps and was probably is some way related to the Umbrian ařepes (offerings of fat) (the “ř” in Umbrian regularly represents an earlier “d”).  The Collins English Dictionary traces word usage and it’s clear avoirdupois has, except for a spike during World War II when much technical documentation was circulated, been in precipitous decline since the early twentieth century, reflecting both the decline in use of it as an informal term and the adoption of the metric system in most of the English-speaking world (even in the US used widely in many sectors).

Lindsay Lohan: Not at all avoirdupois.

Situationism

Situationism (pronounced sich-oo-ey-shuh-niz-uhm)

(1) A fork of Marxist political philosophy, a collection of (often abstract) theories used to build critiques of existing structures.  The overt political project emerged from a mid-twentieth century avant-garde art movement.  

(2) A theory in psychology which holds that personality and behavior is influenced more by external, situational factors than internal traits or motivations.

1955: A compound word: situation + ism.  Situation was from the early fifteenth century Middle English situacioun & situacion (place, position, or location), from Middle French situation, from the Old French situacion, from the Medieval Latin situationem (nominative situatio) (position, situation), the construct being situare (to locate, to place), from situs (a site, a position), thus situate +‎ -ion.  The Latin situs was from the primitive Indo-European root tkei (to settle, dwell, be home).  The meaning "state of affairs" was from 1710, extended specifically by 1803 to mean "a post of employment".  The suffix -ion was from the Middle English -ioun, from the the Old French -ion, from the Latin -iō (genitive -iōnis).  It was appended to a perfect passive participle to form a noun of action or process, or the result of an action or process.  The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, sometimes through the Latin –ismus & isma (from where English picked up ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to express a finished act or thing done).  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).  The use in political philosophy technically dates from 1955 (as situation ethics) although its origins can be traced to (at least) the nineteenth-century beginnings of sociology.  It was first seen in applied psychology in 1968 (as situational ethics) with publication of a monograph by Walter Mischel (1930-2018) who in later writings displayed some ambivalence.

The Situationist International

SI art: Ralph Rumney (1934-2002), The Change (1957).

Formed in 1957, dissolved in 1972 and eventually more a concept than a movement, the Situationist International (SI) was a trans-European, unstructured collective of artists and political thinkers.  Influenced by the criticism that philosophy had tended increasingly to fail at the moment of its actualization, the SI, although it assumed the inevitability of social revolution, always maintained many (cross-cutting) strands of expectations of the form(s) this might take.  Indeed, just as a world-revolution did not follow the Russian revolutions of 1917, the events of May, 1968 failed to realize the predicted implications; the SI can be said then to have died.  The SI’s discursive output between 1968 and 1972 may be treated either as a lifeless aftermath to an anti-climax or a bunch of bitter intellectuals serving as mourners at their own protracted funeral.

SI art: Constant Niewwenhuys (1920-2005), No Title (1975).

It's wrong to say that when formed the SI had mostly an artistic focus although there was a faction within which certainly preferred the emphasis; indeed, it was the notion of art abstracted from some purpose which was the SI's constant fault-line.  Those most influential in the early days of the SI had been much affected by the physical damage suffered by so many European cities during World War II (1939-1945) and especially the possibilities offered by re-building, thus the interest in concepts like unitary urbanism and psychogeography, essentially a response to the sociological aspects of the re-construction of those cities in the immediate post-war period.  Their work also attracted political theorists, especially those in anti-authoritarian Marxist circles who would come to position themselves as the inheritors of western political liberalism, such as the Lettrist International formed in 1952.  The SI was conceived originally as an even more radical movement which would entirely renounce any connection with high-art and deal instead with the functional business of psychogeography, dissolving rather than exploring the boundaries between life and art.  However, whatever might have been the purity of the founders' intent, the implications of the SI were inherently visual and attracted practitioners from many aspects of art.  Factions formed and any commonality of interest between the utilitarians and the artists proved insufficiently strong to maintain the SI as a unified movement and from formation to extinction, it was always fissiparous.

SI art: Asger Jorn (1914-1973), Letter to my son (1956-1957).

What ultimately coalesced as the core of situationist theory was the concept of the spectacle, an explanation of the mechanism of advanced capitalism’s modern tendency towards expression and mediation of social relations through objects.  It was beyond merely a critique of materialism and used the increasingly layered and complex language of mid-twentieth century Marxist discourse.  The definitive works of the SI were The Society of the Spectacle (1967) by Guy Debord (1931-1994) and The Revolution of Everyday Life (1968) by Raoul Vaneigem (b 1934).  In the riots of 1968, they proved influential, less as entire texts than as sources for phrases, slogans and quotes, widely used on the posters and graffiti which appeared all over French cities during the uprising.  The SI thus proved the primacy of objects in social relations, whether hegemonic or not although the SI generally held that situationism is a meaningless term, a position necessitated by their inherent rejection of ideologies, all of which they dismissed either as useless utopian myths or constructed superstructures existing only to create the social controls required to serve the economic interests of a ruling class.  Much of the history of the SI was one faction rejecting another; indeed, the SI’s transition from artistic to political movement was less organic than disruptive. 

The SI, at least in the more reductionist works, did create some genuinely interesting critiques of the post-war west and some of the early art was, if not exactly new, certainly stark and compelling.  However, it remains hard to identify enough ideas to justify the volume of text produced and phrasing it in what is surely deliberately difficult language does suggest there was an attempt to conceal the poverty and repetition of thought.

SI Propaganda