http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/28/first.lady/index.html
most people would read that article and think how great it is. But not me. I'm happy that Indian Women are inspired, I guess. And happy that they no longer think they're ugly because of Michelle Obama. But the problem with that is it shows us that this world is still engaged in Identity Politics. People, the globe over, rarely judge people by what say or do or how they think. They judge you by who you are perceived to be. Michelle Obama allows these young women a world away to feel beautiful not because she is smart, funny or accomplished, but because she is the first lady and she has two daughters. Both of those things are out of her control. The message this article sends to me is that women are trying to make their way through the world passively, in terms of what other people judge them to be based on their looks. "Its OK to have dark skin", or its "OK to have two daughters" or "Its good if an ambitious harvard educated lawyer is interested in you". Women should be outraged by this idea.
But its not just women in India. Take a look at the most recent presidential campaign. The democratic party is traditionally one of highly educated lawyers. And the democratic party is also the one known for being friendly to minorities. Who were the two candidates from that party, a women and a black man, both minorities and both Ivy League educated lawyers. The republican party base has recently been: the military, big business and religion. Who were the three candidates for their nomination: John McCain (military family), Mitt Romney (2nd generation multi-millionaire) and Mike Huckabee (ordained minister). The point is not whether I found these candidates worthy, but the point is that it wouldn't really have mattered. We still view people for what they represent and/or look like and not who they are and what they say. When the young Indian Woman feel encouraged by Michelle Obama because of her stance on some important issue and not for how she looks, I'll start to be encouraged.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Friday, April 24, 2009
-"studies" and blame
I listened to an interview recently of a right learning historian named Victor Davis Hanson. He is a professor of classics at Stanford University I believe. He was asked what he thought it meant to study the Classics, why people don't study them as much and what are he consequences. His answer fascinated me in a non-pc way that only a conservative military historian could. He said that the Classics aren't about learning facts, but they are about learning how to think. When you study Ancient Greek and Roman texts, there are no preconceived notions about right or wrong. That is probably because it is so long ago that we have no moral bias as we might if we were studying Nazi Germany (my point, not his). So modern education has become more fact based. But thats not the interesting point. The thing he said that struck me cold in my tracks was that the Classics died as soon as Universities started offering departments and majors that end in the word "studies". For example, environmental studies, women's studies, asian studies, african-american studies, etc. The problem with these types of programs, he claims, is that the start off with a prejudiced blame, inherent in the teachings. The entire basis of environmental studies is that Man has done something to the globe to ruin it. At the base of all women's stuidies as well as any other "culture-studies" is that white, european men did something wrong or evil, which created their current situation.
I'm not nearly as interested in whether or not white man did ruin the globe or ruin other cultures, that is a complicated question. But what is interesting is how accurate his statement of those new age departments really is. Those types of classes do have, at their core, the belief that somebody did something wrong and created a screwed up situation in the world. Is it a good idea to send off college graduates with the idea that someone is to blame? If you look at American Society, we love to lay blame. It is at the heart of everything we do. Our society is as over-litigious as ever. Every car accident has to have someone to blame, even thought its very name, "accident", implies that there is no blame. I think we would be doing ourselves a favor if we stopped trying to post blame every time something in our world is wrong and started to try to understand things better, purely for understanding's sake.
I'm not nearly as interested in whether or not white man did ruin the globe or ruin other cultures, that is a complicated question. But what is interesting is how accurate his statement of those new age departments really is. Those types of classes do have, at their core, the belief that somebody did something wrong and created a screwed up situation in the world. Is it a good idea to send off college graduates with the idea that someone is to blame? If you look at American Society, we love to lay blame. It is at the heart of everything we do. Our society is as over-litigious as ever. Every car accident has to have someone to blame, even thought its very name, "accident", implies that there is no blame. I think we would be doing ourselves a favor if we stopped trying to post blame every time something in our world is wrong and started to try to understand things better, purely for understanding's sake.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
You are what you care about (aka..why our economy is crashing)
I read a very interesting article from wired magazine today.
http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/17-04/ff_perfectmemory?currentPage=3.
The article is about a woman who has been interviewed all over the main stream media because of an apparent perfect memory. Every time the main stream media interviews her, they make her out to be a walking hard drive, that can never get anything wrong. And of course, this makes her out to be somewhat of a sensation. It seems, she should be someone that is idolized. I mean, there is a whole industry of people selling you products that are going to increase your memory so you can be better at work. And this story, is a clear example of why scientists don't get to be featured in the main stream media very often, because they have very keen bull shit sensors. And thats not to say that this woman doesn't have an incredible memory (google "jill price and you can see her recollection abilities), she can recall exact dates of things that happened 20-30 years ago. She can recall exact dates of airplane crashes, TV shows, or where she was when something happened or even what the weather was when it happened.
But that is why the psychologist that does this piece is great. There's a line in his story where he talks about how everyone seems to know someone with a "photographic memory" but there is never any indication. Its kind of like telepathic powers, its bullshit, undocumented, urban legend. His point could've been made much clearer than he did (because he was being nice), there is no such thing as photographic memory!!!
Wait a second, you might say if you read up on Jill Price. She really can remember those dates, this in not a hoax! No, but you have to dig a deeper. The question is not what CAN she remember, but what can't she. So this psychologist gives her a series of tests, "what year was the magna carta signed, read back to me a list of these words, etc." When given these types of things, Jill Price's memory is no different than anyone else. She is unable to remember the list of 7 and even adds some words that weren't on the list (this is apparently very common). She has no idea when the magna carta was signed (neither do I).
To explain why, one needs to digress and talk a bit about memory. You do not store things in your brain the same way a computer does. There is no one place for a specific memory as there is on a computer hard drive. Furthermore, there is no difference in the human (or animal for that matter) brain between learning something and remembering something. To remember something is to learn it all over again. You remember things by repeated learning. That is to say, your brain, molecularly speaking, has to continually go through the process of relearning something to make it stick. The more times you recall it, the more times its likely to stick. This is why you can remember your pin, passwords, addresses, etc. And you can't remember something by taking one good look at it and just really really wanting to remember it. You have to say it aloud a few times, either in your head or aloud.
So why does this woman have such a remarkable memory, well, basically because a) she does not seem to get out much and b) all she does is ruminate about her own past. She is pretty self-absorbed it seems. And when they look at brain scans of her, it appears that the only thing even remotely different about her brain is that it is similar to people afflicted with OCD. She obsesses about her own past and thus she can remember anything that happened during her life with computer-like precision. Its really no big deal. This woman should be pitied, not held on a pedestal.
Now, how in the world can I compare this to troubled US economy. The answer has to do with the difference between truly understanding what is going on by asking a couple extra questions or just looking at something with a quick glance and concluding that it contains some crazy secret to success or almost other-worldly grace. Companies treated the real estate market and investment models as if it would go up forever. People thought that they could live off of refinancing their homes because their value would go up forever. People who were smart enough to make millions of dollars and then hand it over to someone else to watch while they retired at 40 or 50, were stupid enough to think that it was normal or sustainable to be receiving the EXACT same sum of money each month from investors like Bernie Madoff. The connection with Jill Price is that people will watch her on 20/20 or the like and conclude that there is some genetic component to learning or memory and use that as an excuse for their lot in life. And further down the road, someone might use Jill Price to separate some fool from his money in a scheme to enhance your memory that you may remember things like Jill Price. The person who should be getting interviews from 20/20, and be going on non-stop press junkets isn't Jill Price(she needs a hobby)its the psychologist/journalist who wrote the story; so he can teach Americans a thing or two about thinking and analysis that might prevent some simpleton from thinking he/she/it just found out about the next big thing.
http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/17-04/ff_perfectmemory?currentPage=3.
The article is about a woman who has been interviewed all over the main stream media because of an apparent perfect memory. Every time the main stream media interviews her, they make her out to be a walking hard drive, that can never get anything wrong. And of course, this makes her out to be somewhat of a sensation. It seems, she should be someone that is idolized. I mean, there is a whole industry of people selling you products that are going to increase your memory so you can be better at work. And this story, is a clear example of why scientists don't get to be featured in the main stream media very often, because they have very keen bull shit sensors. And thats not to say that this woman doesn't have an incredible memory (google "jill price and you can see her recollection abilities), she can recall exact dates of things that happened 20-30 years ago. She can recall exact dates of airplane crashes, TV shows, or where she was when something happened or even what the weather was when it happened.
But that is why the psychologist that does this piece is great. There's a line in his story where he talks about how everyone seems to know someone with a "photographic memory" but there is never any indication. Its kind of like telepathic powers, its bullshit, undocumented, urban legend. His point could've been made much clearer than he did (because he was being nice), there is no such thing as photographic memory!!!
Wait a second, you might say if you read up on Jill Price. She really can remember those dates, this in not a hoax! No, but you have to dig a deeper. The question is not what CAN she remember, but what can't she. So this psychologist gives her a series of tests, "what year was the magna carta signed, read back to me a list of these words, etc." When given these types of things, Jill Price's memory is no different than anyone else. She is unable to remember the list of 7 and even adds some words that weren't on the list (this is apparently very common). She has no idea when the magna carta was signed (neither do I).
To explain why, one needs to digress and talk a bit about memory. You do not store things in your brain the same way a computer does. There is no one place for a specific memory as there is on a computer hard drive. Furthermore, there is no difference in the human (or animal for that matter) brain between learning something and remembering something. To remember something is to learn it all over again. You remember things by repeated learning. That is to say, your brain, molecularly speaking, has to continually go through the process of relearning something to make it stick. The more times you recall it, the more times its likely to stick. This is why you can remember your pin, passwords, addresses, etc. And you can't remember something by taking one good look at it and just really really wanting to remember it. You have to say it aloud a few times, either in your head or aloud.
So why does this woman have such a remarkable memory, well, basically because a) she does not seem to get out much and b) all she does is ruminate about her own past. She is pretty self-absorbed it seems. And when they look at brain scans of her, it appears that the only thing even remotely different about her brain is that it is similar to people afflicted with OCD. She obsesses about her own past and thus she can remember anything that happened during her life with computer-like precision. Its really no big deal. This woman should be pitied, not held on a pedestal.
Now, how in the world can I compare this to troubled US economy. The answer has to do with the difference between truly understanding what is going on by asking a couple extra questions or just looking at something with a quick glance and concluding that it contains some crazy secret to success or almost other-worldly grace. Companies treated the real estate market and investment models as if it would go up forever. People thought that they could live off of refinancing their homes because their value would go up forever. People who were smart enough to make millions of dollars and then hand it over to someone else to watch while they retired at 40 or 50, were stupid enough to think that it was normal or sustainable to be receiving the EXACT same sum of money each month from investors like Bernie Madoff. The connection with Jill Price is that people will watch her on 20/20 or the like and conclude that there is some genetic component to learning or memory and use that as an excuse for their lot in life. And further down the road, someone might use Jill Price to separate some fool from his money in a scheme to enhance your memory that you may remember things like Jill Price. The person who should be getting interviews from 20/20, and be going on non-stop press junkets isn't Jill Price(she needs a hobby)its the psychologist/journalist who wrote the story; so he can teach Americans a thing or two about thinking and analysis that might prevent some simpleton from thinking he/she/it just found out about the next big thing.
Monday, April 13, 2009
why I'm not a liberal
I definitely lean to the left. But when I see a column like the one below from the Huffington Post,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-scahill/will-obama-prosecute-the_b_186135.html
I am reminded why I would never call myself a liberal.
I see how the Right can label the left as pacifists and use that against them. There absolutely is a time to use military force, and those annoying pirates are a great example. Thomas Jefferson used military force on pirates in almost the exact same region 200 years ago and then fought a war against them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_pirates#19th_century.2C_United_States-Barbary_wars
This journalist is trying to make a story here, and he is clearly trying to connect it to the prisoners at Gitmo. That is not a story. The legal scholars he quotes in his own piece clearly say that everything the US did is perfectly legal. Furthermore, Obama has already laid out his plans to close Gitmo. So why is this guy grinding that axe? I have no idea.
The tone is clearly not celebrating Obama's decision to use force and free the captain. He continually uses quotes when referring to the pirates, obviously suggesting that they aren't really pirates. They may not sail massive ships, have names like Red Beard, carry a parrot on their shoulder, search for buried treasure or any other stereotypical pirate references, but they do capture peaceful boats and hold them for ransom. They also kill people at sea. And that is definitely a pirate. Why does this guy have such a problem with our Navy killing those guys? I'm very proud today. The journalist even goes as far as to rationalize why they are pirates in the first place. As if its O.K. to hold people for ransom so long as you have a good reason. That is just wimpy, crappy, non-sense. So you are allowed to hold up a bank if you were unfairly fired from your job? Any apologies for these Pirates is just moral relevancy bull crap.
Mess around with US merchant ship and get three snipers aiming rifles at you and putting bullets in your brain. That sounds like a fair deal to me. And by the way, how amazing is it that our snipers could hit those guys? I'm not a sniper or a marksman, I have only shot high powered rifles a handful of times, but that seems incredible. They were on a battleship that was obviously swaying within the water and shot another boat, also swaying. It seems unreal.
Will Obama Prosecute the Captured Somali 'Pirate' in a US Court?
Habeas rights have been trashed, prisoners have been tortured and held without trial for years at Gitmo and Bagram. Obama should finally show respect for the legal rights of prisoners held by the US.
The airwaves, newspapers and websites have been saturated with coverage of the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips, the US citizen who was being held by four Somali "pirates" on a small lifeboat in the Indian Ocean, following the unsuccessful attempt by the Somalis to take control of the US-flagged vessel, the Maersk Alabama, a ship owned by a Pentagon contractor.
While details are still emerging, there are definitely some serious questions looming about how the decision to use lethal military force was put into play--in particular three key questions: 1. The legality of the killing of the three Somali men; 2. The political decision to kill them in light of long term potential consequences; and, 3: The legal status of the fourth Somali "pirate" allegedly in US custody.
First the background: We are told that on Friday, President Obama gave the military the green light to use lethal force to rescue Phillips. We also know that a group of "Somali elders" believed they were negotiating with the US to try to bring about a peaceful resolution to the crisis. Reports indicate that the Somali elders asked that the four Somalis be allowed to return freely to Somalia without being prosecuted in exchange for releasing Phillips. That was reportedly rejected by the US. On Sunday, the Somalis were told the negotiations were over and that the Americans "had another action." Shortly after that, lethal force was used--with Navy SEAL snipers on board the USS Bainbridge shooting dead three of the Somali men. The Navy says the snipers took the action because they believed Phillips's life was in "imminent danger"--this allegedly came when a Somali was pointing an AK-47 at Phillips's back. A fourth Somali citizen is in custody, though it is unclear when exactly he was taken by the US. Reports indicate that he had been stabbed in the hand in the initial "pirate" raid on the Maersk Alabama and, before the Sunday raid, had voluntarily left the lifeboat holding Phillips to seek medical attention from the US warships and/or to negotiate with the US side.
I have been in touch with two well-respected legal scholars, Francis Boyle from the University of Illinois College of Law and Scott Horton, a military and constitutional law expert. Both agree that the US had legal justification to use lethal force against the "pirates." Boyle said, "Technically, piracy is a felony under US law. And deadly force can be used against someone involved in the commission of an ongoing felony."
For his part, Horton said: "The legal rule historically is that pirates on the high seas are fair game for any country's military. In this case they kidnapped a captain and threatened to kill him, so the use of lethal force against them was fine from a legal perspective. (The bigger question was whether it was a wise thing to do, of course, but that requires an assessment of the entire tactical situation, about which I don't know enough)."
On that question, Vice Admiral Bill Gortney, head of the U.S. Navy's Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet, seemed to realize that there may be significant consequences for the decision to kill the Somali men. "This could escalate violence in this part of the world, no question about it," Gortney said. As Reuters reported, "Somali pirates have generally not harmed their hostages and officials fear they could now act more violently."
As one "pirate" said, "The French and the Americans will regret starting this killing. We do not kill, but take only ransom. We shall do something to anyone we see as French or American from now." Another added, "As long as there is no just government in Somalia, we will still be the coast guard... If we get an American, we will take revenge."
On the issue of jurisdiction to prosecute the fourth Somali "pirate," Horton said, "Pirates can be tried anywhere that exercises jurisdiction. Here they attacked a US-flag vessel, which means that the United States would have criminal law jurisdiction if it chose to exercise it."
There are certain to be calls from blood-thirsty lunatics to send this Somali man to Guantanamo or Bagram with right-wingers like Newt Gingrich and Cal Thomas wrapping this into their tired "Obama is weak on terror" narrative. As Thomas wrote last week on the Fox News website:
What will the Obama administration do if the pirates are captured alive? He won't sent them to Gitmo, which he is closing down. Will they get ACLU lawyers? Will there be testimony from a "pirates rights" group? Will they be released on a technicality after a trial in U.S. courts? If there is not as forceful a response as there was during the Jefferson administration, it will invite more of these incidents. The world's tyrants are watching to see how President Obama reacts. The message they get will determine how they respond to America and whether we will be in greater peril.
Indeed, The Wall Street Journal on Sunday called for the Somali man in custody to be "transferred to Guantanamo and held as an 'enemy combatant,' or whatever the Obama Administration prefers to call terrorists." On this point, Horton points out an interesting distinction between the Obama and Bush administration positions on "pirates," particularly as it relates to the "terrorist" label.
The big legal issue is surrounding calling them "terrorists," which the Bushies did with regularity and Obama resisted. I think that Obama and his people are correct. These people were motivated by the desire to make money, pure and simple, which makes them conventional pirates. If they were labeled "terrorists," the insurance company and the ship charter company wouldn't be able to negotiate with them or make a payment. Pirates they can still pay off, which will often be the most sensible and least costly solution.
If the US decides to pursue prosecution of the Somali "pirate" in custody in a US court, he would obviously hopefully have a right to a defense (which would clearly enrage the crazies) and the nature of that defense could well depend on what type of legal counsel he ends up with and how his lawyers present the motives of his actions, as described to them, in attempting to seize the Maersk Alabama. This could be a major test of Obama's legal interpretation of the rights of prisoners taken by the US in unusual circumstances (to put it mildly). In an era when due process has been trashed in the US and prisoners have been tortured at CIA "black sites" and held without trial for years at Guantanamo and elsewhere, Obama should allow exactly what Thomas and his ilk fear so much--respect for the legal rights of prisoners held by the US.
So what would a "pirate" defense actually look like? Remember, some Somalis--and other international observers-- do not exactly see the "pirates" as being 100% unjustified in their actions. This form of "piracy" really escalated after the 1991 collapse of the Somali government and Western ships allegedly dumping waste off the Somali coast and devastating the Somali fishing industry, a primary source of income in the Somali coastal areas where many of the "pirates" are based.
If Obama elects not to take the terrible option of sending the man to Guantanamo, it will be interesting to see if Obama elects to bring him to the US or, as has been suggested by some, prosecute him in Kenya.
As Professor Boyle pointed out, "certainly if he were tried in a United States federal district court, he could try to make the points [about dumping, etc], which is why they might send him to Kenya to avoid all of that... If i remember correctly, under the Geneva Convention definition of piracy (which is not precisely the same thing as the federal statute), the crime of piracy must be for a private purpose, not a public purpose. So he might be able to raise these issues on the question of intent--that he acted for a public purpose, not a private purpose."
Boyle later emailed me the following quote from St. Augustine:
Kingdoms without justice are similar to robber barons. And so if justice is left out, what are kingdoms except great robber bands? For what are robber bands except little kingdoms? The band also is a group of men governed by the orders of a leader, bound by a social compact, and its booty is divided according to a law agreed upon. If by repeatedly adding desperate men this plague grows to the point where it holds territory and establishes a fixed seat, seizes cities and subdues peoples, then it more conspicuously assumes the name of kingdom, and this name is now openly granted to it, not for any subtraction of cupidity, but by addition of impunity. For it was an elegant and true reply that was made to Alexander the Great by a certain pirate whom he had captured. When the king asked him what he was thinking of, that he should molest the sea, he said with defiant independence: "The same as you when you molest the world! Since I do this with a little ship I am called a pirate. You do it with a great fleet and are called an emperor."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-scahill/will-obama-prosecute-the_b_186135.html
I am reminded why I would never call myself a liberal.
I see how the Right can label the left as pacifists and use that against them. There absolutely is a time to use military force, and those annoying pirates are a great example. Thomas Jefferson used military force on pirates in almost the exact same region 200 years ago and then fought a war against them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_pirates#19th_century.2C_United_States-Barbary_wars
This journalist is trying to make a story here, and he is clearly trying to connect it to the prisoners at Gitmo. That is not a story. The legal scholars he quotes in his own piece clearly say that everything the US did is perfectly legal. Furthermore, Obama has already laid out his plans to close Gitmo. So why is this guy grinding that axe? I have no idea.
The tone is clearly not celebrating Obama's decision to use force and free the captain. He continually uses quotes when referring to the pirates, obviously suggesting that they aren't really pirates. They may not sail massive ships, have names like Red Beard, carry a parrot on their shoulder, search for buried treasure or any other stereotypical pirate references, but they do capture peaceful boats and hold them for ransom. They also kill people at sea. And that is definitely a pirate. Why does this guy have such a problem with our Navy killing those guys? I'm very proud today. The journalist even goes as far as to rationalize why they are pirates in the first place. As if its O.K. to hold people for ransom so long as you have a good reason. That is just wimpy, crappy, non-sense. So you are allowed to hold up a bank if you were unfairly fired from your job? Any apologies for these Pirates is just moral relevancy bull crap.
Mess around with US merchant ship and get three snipers aiming rifles at you and putting bullets in your brain. That sounds like a fair deal to me. And by the way, how amazing is it that our snipers could hit those guys? I'm not a sniper or a marksman, I have only shot high powered rifles a handful of times, but that seems incredible. They were on a battleship that was obviously swaying within the water and shot another boat, also swaying. It seems unreal.
Will Obama Prosecute the Captured Somali 'Pirate' in a US Court?
Habeas rights have been trashed, prisoners have been tortured and held without trial for years at Gitmo and Bagram. Obama should finally show respect for the legal rights of prisoners held by the US.
The airwaves, newspapers and websites have been saturated with coverage of the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips, the US citizen who was being held by four Somali "pirates" on a small lifeboat in the Indian Ocean, following the unsuccessful attempt by the Somalis to take control of the US-flagged vessel, the Maersk Alabama, a ship owned by a Pentagon contractor.
While details are still emerging, there are definitely some serious questions looming about how the decision to use lethal military force was put into play--in particular three key questions: 1. The legality of the killing of the three Somali men; 2. The political decision to kill them in light of long term potential consequences; and, 3: The legal status of the fourth Somali "pirate" allegedly in US custody.
First the background: We are told that on Friday, President Obama gave the military the green light to use lethal force to rescue Phillips. We also know that a group of "Somali elders" believed they were negotiating with the US to try to bring about a peaceful resolution to the crisis. Reports indicate that the Somali elders asked that the four Somalis be allowed to return freely to Somalia without being prosecuted in exchange for releasing Phillips. That was reportedly rejected by the US. On Sunday, the Somalis were told the negotiations were over and that the Americans "had another action." Shortly after that, lethal force was used--with Navy SEAL snipers on board the USS Bainbridge shooting dead three of the Somali men. The Navy says the snipers took the action because they believed Phillips's life was in "imminent danger"--this allegedly came when a Somali was pointing an AK-47 at Phillips's back. A fourth Somali citizen is in custody, though it is unclear when exactly he was taken by the US. Reports indicate that he had been stabbed in the hand in the initial "pirate" raid on the Maersk Alabama and, before the Sunday raid, had voluntarily left the lifeboat holding Phillips to seek medical attention from the US warships and/or to negotiate with the US side.
I have been in touch with two well-respected legal scholars, Francis Boyle from the University of Illinois College of Law and Scott Horton, a military and constitutional law expert. Both agree that the US had legal justification to use lethal force against the "pirates." Boyle said, "Technically, piracy is a felony under US law. And deadly force can be used against someone involved in the commission of an ongoing felony."
For his part, Horton said: "The legal rule historically is that pirates on the high seas are fair game for any country's military. In this case they kidnapped a captain and threatened to kill him, so the use of lethal force against them was fine from a legal perspective. (The bigger question was whether it was a wise thing to do, of course, but that requires an assessment of the entire tactical situation, about which I don't know enough)."
On that question, Vice Admiral Bill Gortney, head of the U.S. Navy's Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet, seemed to realize that there may be significant consequences for the decision to kill the Somali men. "This could escalate violence in this part of the world, no question about it," Gortney said. As Reuters reported, "Somali pirates have generally not harmed their hostages and officials fear they could now act more violently."
As one "pirate" said, "The French and the Americans will regret starting this killing. We do not kill, but take only ransom. We shall do something to anyone we see as French or American from now." Another added, "As long as there is no just government in Somalia, we will still be the coast guard... If we get an American, we will take revenge."
On the issue of jurisdiction to prosecute the fourth Somali "pirate," Horton said, "Pirates can be tried anywhere that exercises jurisdiction. Here they attacked a US-flag vessel, which means that the United States would have criminal law jurisdiction if it chose to exercise it."
There are certain to be calls from blood-thirsty lunatics to send this Somali man to Guantanamo or Bagram with right-wingers like Newt Gingrich and Cal Thomas wrapping this into their tired "Obama is weak on terror" narrative. As Thomas wrote last week on the Fox News website:
What will the Obama administration do if the pirates are captured alive? He won't sent them to Gitmo, which he is closing down. Will they get ACLU lawyers? Will there be testimony from a "pirates rights" group? Will they be released on a technicality after a trial in U.S. courts? If there is not as forceful a response as there was during the Jefferson administration, it will invite more of these incidents. The world's tyrants are watching to see how President Obama reacts. The message they get will determine how they respond to America and whether we will be in greater peril.
Indeed, The Wall Street Journal on Sunday called for the Somali man in custody to be "transferred to Guantanamo and held as an 'enemy combatant,' or whatever the Obama Administration prefers to call terrorists." On this point, Horton points out an interesting distinction between the Obama and Bush administration positions on "pirates," particularly as it relates to the "terrorist" label.
The big legal issue is surrounding calling them "terrorists," which the Bushies did with regularity and Obama resisted. I think that Obama and his people are correct. These people were motivated by the desire to make money, pure and simple, which makes them conventional pirates. If they were labeled "terrorists," the insurance company and the ship charter company wouldn't be able to negotiate with them or make a payment. Pirates they can still pay off, which will often be the most sensible and least costly solution.
If the US decides to pursue prosecution of the Somali "pirate" in custody in a US court, he would obviously hopefully have a right to a defense (which would clearly enrage the crazies) and the nature of that defense could well depend on what type of legal counsel he ends up with and how his lawyers present the motives of his actions, as described to them, in attempting to seize the Maersk Alabama. This could be a major test of Obama's legal interpretation of the rights of prisoners taken by the US in unusual circumstances (to put it mildly). In an era when due process has been trashed in the US and prisoners have been tortured at CIA "black sites" and held without trial for years at Guantanamo and elsewhere, Obama should allow exactly what Thomas and his ilk fear so much--respect for the legal rights of prisoners held by the US.
So what would a "pirate" defense actually look like? Remember, some Somalis--and other international observers-- do not exactly see the "pirates" as being 100% unjustified in their actions. This form of "piracy" really escalated after the 1991 collapse of the Somali government and Western ships allegedly dumping waste off the Somali coast and devastating the Somali fishing industry, a primary source of income in the Somali coastal areas where many of the "pirates" are based.
If Obama elects not to take the terrible option of sending the man to Guantanamo, it will be interesting to see if Obama elects to bring him to the US or, as has been suggested by some, prosecute him in Kenya.
As Professor Boyle pointed out, "certainly if he were tried in a United States federal district court, he could try to make the points [about dumping, etc], which is why they might send him to Kenya to avoid all of that... If i remember correctly, under the Geneva Convention definition of piracy (which is not precisely the same thing as the federal statute), the crime of piracy must be for a private purpose, not a public purpose. So he might be able to raise these issues on the question of intent--that he acted for a public purpose, not a private purpose."
Boyle later emailed me the following quote from St. Augustine:
Kingdoms without justice are similar to robber barons. And so if justice is left out, what are kingdoms except great robber bands? For what are robber bands except little kingdoms? The band also is a group of men governed by the orders of a leader, bound by a social compact, and its booty is divided according to a law agreed upon. If by repeatedly adding desperate men this plague grows to the point where it holds territory and establishes a fixed seat, seizes cities and subdues peoples, then it more conspicuously assumes the name of kingdom, and this name is now openly granted to it, not for any subtraction of cupidity, but by addition of impunity. For it was an elegant and true reply that was made to Alexander the Great by a certain pirate whom he had captured. When the king asked him what he was thinking of, that he should molest the sea, he said with defiant independence: "The same as you when you molest the world! Since I do this with a little ship I am called a pirate. You do it with a great fleet and are called an emperor."
Saturday, April 11, 2009
A few questions
Firstly, I want to make a plug for a commentator that I really enjoy. His name is Dan Carlin, and his two podcasts and other aspects of his website can be found at www.dancarlin.com . He does a current events podcast called "common sense" and a history podcast called, "hardcore history". In a couple of his recent podcasts he made some points that intrigued me, but i have been unable to track down references. If anyone has any suggestions on where to find information on any of the following ideas/concepts, or any comments directly, I anxiously await.
1) Bailouts/Goverment Spending.
He claims that we are currently in the whole roughly 10 trillion dollars. He then goes on to make an effort to explain just how much money that is. He takes a handful of expensive, very big endeavors in American history, adjusts them for inflation and then adds them up. The following events all add up to about 3 trillion dollars after being adjusted for inflation: Louisiana Purchase, Marshall Plan, The New Deal, All of NASAs udget, The Savings and Loan crisis, The Iraq war (part 2) and I may be missing some. Also, all of ww2, adjusted for inflation equals about 3 trillion. So adding up all of those major events in american history add up to about 60% what we are currently in debt for. But here's the thing rthat gets me. Those other things did an awful lot, what exactly is this current debt going to accomplish? Because so far, it has done precisely nothing.
2) war coverage.
Dan carlin had some sorta mean things to say about Woodrow Wilson. Apparently you could have been tossed in jail for publicly denoucning the effort in ww1. Also, wilson apparently started the trend of making illegal the journalistic covering of the war. By the time ww2 came around, FDR thought that perhaps the lack of war coverage was distancing the american public from the war effort and so he reversed it. And, that decision had the opposite effect of what wilson thought would happen, it energized the population. Showing american troops being killed got people fired up and garnered support for the war effort. Why? Because the population thought that ww2 was a just-war and they wanted to win. Cycle ahead to Vietnam when i believe the Nixon administration took away the right to cover the war, b/c he felt like it was curtailing support.
The point of the rant was that whether or not the sight of photos/video of a war effort has a positive effect on people's views of the war has to do with the context of the war. If they feel it a just war, they will support it in spite of or perhaps increase support b/c of photos. However, if they don't like the war, the photos will have the opposite. So to me, it seems that if you wanted to be a democratic president and actually allow the people to govern, as they say we are supposed to, you would want as much coverage of the war as is realistically possible, w/o endangering troops.
My search for references on this idea is really the history of presidents and war censorship.
1) Bailouts/Goverment Spending.
He claims that we are currently in the whole roughly 10 trillion dollars. He then goes on to make an effort to explain just how much money that is. He takes a handful of expensive, very big endeavors in American history, adjusts them for inflation and then adds them up. The following events all add up to about 3 trillion dollars after being adjusted for inflation: Louisiana Purchase, Marshall Plan, The New Deal, All of NASAs udget, The Savings and Loan crisis, The Iraq war (part 2) and I may be missing some. Also, all of ww2, adjusted for inflation equals about 3 trillion. So adding up all of those major events in american history add up to about 60% what we are currently in debt for. But here's the thing rthat gets me. Those other things did an awful lot, what exactly is this current debt going to accomplish? Because so far, it has done precisely nothing.
2) war coverage.
Dan carlin had some sorta mean things to say about Woodrow Wilson. Apparently you could have been tossed in jail for publicly denoucning the effort in ww1. Also, wilson apparently started the trend of making illegal the journalistic covering of the war. By the time ww2 came around, FDR thought that perhaps the lack of war coverage was distancing the american public from the war effort and so he reversed it. And, that decision had the opposite effect of what wilson thought would happen, it energized the population. Showing american troops being killed got people fired up and garnered support for the war effort. Why? Because the population thought that ww2 was a just-war and they wanted to win. Cycle ahead to Vietnam when i believe the Nixon administration took away the right to cover the war, b/c he felt like it was curtailing support.
The point of the rant was that whether or not the sight of photos/video of a war effort has a positive effect on people's views of the war has to do with the context of the war. If they feel it a just war, they will support it in spite of or perhaps increase support b/c of photos. However, if they don't like the war, the photos will have the opposite. So to me, it seems that if you wanted to be a democratic president and actually allow the people to govern, as they say we are supposed to, you would want as much coverage of the war as is realistically possible, w/o endangering troops.
My search for references on this idea is really the history of presidents and war censorship.
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