Yet There Is Method In It

I reread Chomsky and Achcar’s Perious Power. The format of the book is a dialogue between these two intellectuals, which was subsequently polished and with addition of references to sources. It is a wide reaching examination of the middle east situation and international policy. Chomsky’s usual method is applied: examine a leaders rhetoric and then their actual actions to see if there is any discrepancy. He argues that the stated goals of western powers to bring democracy and human rights to the middle east is contradicted by a long history of hypocrisy in that regard. Of course, this continues today with various countries bullying Iran. Chomsky returns to a recurring topic: the most obvious definition of terrorism implies that the US and allies are the worst terrorist states. For example, Iran might have significant human rights problems and possibly threatening to use military power (although this was probably political grandstanding, not actual policy) but compare that to the US, UK, Israel who go far beyond threats and actually are militarily aggressive and have an overall appalling human rights record. The list of specific instances is too long for me to detail – just read this book! (or The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein). Until the US cleans up its act in human rights and military aggression, and its allies stop being accomplices to this acts, I place very little stock in the current US/UK military adventures.

Here are a few general ideas, they might want to consider to actually get back on track:

• Military forces should be used as the last resort. The democratic route should be preferred. The rhetoric states this is policy, but clearly it isn’t.
• Don’t perform military actions in other countries or kidnap people across boarders (“rendition”) – this undermines the rule of law. Drone bombings are extra-judicial killings. (US 14th Amendment – due process and all that)
• Highlight human rights abuses then they are conducted by our “allies” (Saudi Arabia, Israel, Russia, Pakistan) and not just by our “enemies” (Cuba, Iran, China). (Remember when Canada listed the US as a country that practices torture? The truth hurts.)
• Replace military forces in occupied countries, particularly if against the popular will, (Iraq, Afghanistan, Tibet) with a UN force or withdraw completely.
• Stop support (military, economic, diplomatic) to countries that occupy territory by force or use disproportionate force (Israel by US, North Korea by China)
• Prosecute people who order or perform torture. (This applies to all countries, and it is where Obama’s credibility evaporated from my perspective.)
• Encourage resolution of occupied territories – this could be achieved in Palestine by the US if they had the will. (See the US record on UN resolutions with respect to Israel)
• Pay reparations to countries that you messed up with military action, supporting coups, etc. (Most colonial powers and the US would have a long list of candidates here.)
• Don’t use collective punishment on countries using sanctions or military action (did someone say “war crime”?). (US on Cuba, US on Iran, US on just about everyone, Israel on Palestine.) This is taken to an extreme when countries elect the “wrong” government and are punished in consequence. Don’t ignore governments with popular support just because they are distasteful. (Hamas)
• Prisoners are to have fair trials in civilian courts or the Geneva Conventions apply. Also the UDHR applies. In all cases, coercion should not be used.
• Ban nukes.
• In short, cut the double think and hypocrisy.

Oddly, most of these are already law or have been discussed many times at the UN. Unfortunately very little will be done until other issues are resolved: dependence on oil, the influence of businesses on politics and reduction of propaganda. I also read Media Control, which is more of an introduction to all of the above. It is very short – more pamphlet length than book length and not hard to read (in fact a bit too light compared to his other works).

Anti Citizen One

PS Chomsky always gets me in the mood for Rage Against the Machine: “I am the Nina, The Pinta, The Santa Maria”!

I certain news item prompted me to think about the role of institutions with respect to knowledge. The Northen-Irish Culture minister privately wrote to the Ulster Museum, calling for minority opinions to be represented in exhibits. This letter was leaked. The letter’s intent is fairly questionable: what does the minister know about running a museum? On the other hand, the minister claims it is a “human rights” issue. I am not sure that representation of public opinion, even of minority groups, in museums is a human right. Human rights protect individuals, not groups. However, cultural rights protect groups, but this concept is half baked IMHO. The minister included creationism as one of the minority views that should be represented. For many people, this makes his intellectual credibility self destruct. He has called for “reasonable discussion” of the issue, but refused to personally enter into further debate on creationism – which seems contradictory to me. But this raises an interesting question, who determines what is called “truth” at museums and institutions?

We might choose institutional gatekeeper based on our intended outcome of the institution’s functioning. This raises a new problem: who determines what role institutions have? But the choices include: experts (meritocracy), central institutions (propaganda), tradition, the institution’s members (democratic) or public opinion (widely democratic). I guess that history, being written “by the winners”, has a measure of political influence, this is probably unavoidable. But when taken too far, reality is rejected in an Orwellian fashion to suite the ruling party. This occurs in many places in the world, from Texas removing inconvenient topics in text books to North Korea in cloud cuckoo land and Turkey brushing genocide under the carpet. For museums, we also don’t particularly want democratic or public opinion deciding what is historical knowledge; a history based on public opinion would be similar to mythology. I hope that experts would do better. That last statement is a bit of a tautology: I am defining “expert” as someone who can arrive at correct historical knowledge. An obvious objection is “who decides who is an expert?”. This is particularly a problem since non-experts generally don’t have the capability to evaluate who is in expert.

This question is slightly easier in science. Although the peer review system generally works, it is not the fundamental consideration in determining what is scientific knowledge, rather it is falsificationism (if we allow Popper’s view). But other domains of knowledge of networks of peer review. But just because a school of knowledge has peer review, does not necessarily imply it is not quackery. (Of course, post-modernists might claim it is all just different points of view – well they should know all about “hot air”.) What is historical knowledge? Anyway, there is probably no point in getting as pedantic as Popper can be on the answer here. I don’t think there is a philosophically satisfactory answer, beyond existentially deciding it should be X, Y or Z. Anyway, moving on from these abstract considerations…

In my view, expert historians should determine what appears in museums – not politicians or public opinion! One necessary (but not sufficient) requirement for expects is intellectual integrity. “…and what is that?” No definitive answer again. But it might include: critical thinking and not over estimating what is currently known (personally and collectively, see also “Socratic ignorance”), as well as the limitations on what is knowable. Creationism fails spectacularly on these criteria. I guess my crude definition of intellectual integrity is scepticism (remember this is just my view). Of course, believers have their own criteria – but they fail my criteria. I have less objections to fideism compared to flawed arguments from evidence. Evidence based creationists and people with intellectual integrity are two non-overlapping groups. (Sorry to friends who might be offended, but it’s my sincere view). For more information, see Hume’s good ol’ Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Finally, if we admit creationism into museums, any interpretation however ridiculous could be included in museums. To put it another way, if we include the Christian creation, why exclude the Norse creation myth? or the Flying Spaghetti Monster? If we do allow public opinion to determine historical knowledge, absurdity results. What the minister is tacitly calling for is only “serious” myths to be called history – the ones deemed “worthy” are decided by an outside force, religion and politics in this case. In other words, it is a call for propaganda to replace history.

Anti Citizen One

PS. A quote that I like, with debatable relevance:

And can you blame me, CLEANTHES, if I here imitate the prudent reserve of SIMONIDES, who, according to the noted story, being asked by HIERO, What God was? desired a day to think of it, and then two days more; and after that manner continually prolonged the term, without ever bringing in his definition or description? Could you even blame me, if I had answered at first, that I did not know, and was sensible that this subject lay vastly beyond the reach of my faculties?

Hume

Oh yeah, apparently the Conservatives and the Lib Dems are in a coalition. At least they agree on some good ideas, like political reform and abolishing ID cards. Good riddance ID cards (“and nothing of value was lost”). The list of civil rights goodies looks promising:

We will scrap the ID card scheme, the National Identity register and the ContactPoint database, and halt the next generation of biometric passports.
We will outlaw the fingerprinting of children at school without parental permission.
We will adopt the protections of the Scottish model for the DNA database.
We will review libel laws to protect freedom of speech.
We will further regulate CCTV.
We will end the storage of internet and e-mail records without good reason.
We will create a level playing field for open-source software and will enable large ICT projects to be split into smaller components.
We will create a new “right to data” so that government-held datasets can be requested and used by the public, and then published on a regular basis.

I hope they can work together because it might be more common after voting reform for minority parties to form governments. The Conservatives got 36.1% of the popular vote, which is not much of a mandate. In 2005, labour had 35.3%, and 2001 a popular vote of 40.7%. So these previous governments can hardly be said to represent the majority view – ironic for a democracy.

Anti Citizen One

PS:

Well the UK election campaign is nearly done. Only a little while until the decision. Although I have a healthy skepticism of institutional politics (is there another kind? mmm), I urge people to look at the policies of each party.

The political compass website is excellent. It has a summary of UK parties on their scale of authoritarianism/libertarianism and left/right. I have been supporting a party, the Lib Dems (centerist, with right leanings), that is worryingly distant from my survey result position (very libertarian, quite left). Remember this is all relative (Labour and conservatives are moderate authoritarian, moderate right). Perhaps I should switch to the Green Party? They are more aligned with my views. What we really need is electoral reform, so I can vote for a party without it being lost in noise of “first past the post”.

Anti Citizen One

I have had a few recent experiences with people cherry picking evidence for arguments and I was interested in reading Dan Kahan view:

“Basically the reason that people react in a close-minded way to information is that the implications of it threaten their values,” says Dan Kahan, a law professor at Yale University and a member of The Cultural Cognition Project.

Kahan says people test new information against their preexisting view of how the world should work.

“If the implication, the outcome, can affirm your values, you think about it in a much more open-minded way,” he says.

And if the information doesn’t, you tend to reject it. NPR

AC1

The way Britain is governed has gone wrong and is in urgent need of reform, a group of former Whitehall chiefs has warned in a highly critical report.

The former civil servants paint a picture of badly trained ministers rushing through “ill thought-out” legislation to satisfy media demands. BBC

Which reminds us:

I heartily accept the motto,—“That government is best which governs least;” and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe,—“That government is best which governs not at all;” and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.

Thoreau

I was just thinking about the proportionality of beefing up airport security. With 15.1 million passengers per year flying through the major UK airports, and say it takes 10 minutes to queue and clear security, that amounts to 287 person-years of waiting (per year). Now assuming the average person has 43 years remaining to live (life expectancy 82 years, average age 39 years). So security in UK airports uses enough time to consume the time of 7 peoples remaining life spans (on average, per year).

Anti Citizen One

Update: Recent analysis of airport security on The Register is very relevant and interesting:

First: It is completely impossible to prevent terrorists from attacking airliners.

Second: This does not matter. There is no need for greater efforts on security.
[...]
Terrorism simply isn’t a visible factor in your chances of dying while flying, or indeed while doing anything else: it is insignificant, a problem that has been almost totally eliminated for Western citizens since its not-very-serious heyday in the 1970s and 80s, and you shouldn’t worry about it. It would make absolutely no noticeable difference to your or my chances of violent death/injury if terrorism was eradicated overnight. Lewis Page

‘Fake fingerprint’ Chinese woman fools Japan controls

A Chinese woman managed to enter Japan illegally by having plastic surgery to alter her fingerprints, thus fooling immigration controls, police claim. BBC

Wow, it’s amazing. So called “fool proof” technology has human ingenuity applied to break it. Very cyberpunk.

AC1

A senior British officer has told the Iraq war inquiry he urged Tony Blair to delay the invasion of the country two days before the conflict.

Maj Gen Tim Cross, who liaised with the US on reconstruction efforts before the invasion, said planning for after the conflict was “woefully thin”.

He said he briefed officials in the weeks before the war that Iraq could descend into chaos after the invasion. BBC

AC1

A agree with most of this, but not that we can ever “prevent it happening again”. That requires eternal vigilance. Oh yeah and if we gave power to the people, is that a good idea since they may be manipulated?

What I like about this video is the little heard idea that YOU HAVE THE POWER. (Well assuming a working democracy … or the possibility of political revolution.)

AC1