New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

On Orcs and Cultural Genocide

So Nine does not simply insist that the collective in question adds material and symbolic value to the land and is in turn shaped by its ways of dealing with the land. While land-use patterns are important, what matters is that these land-use patterns are geared towards the establishment of just communities. To illustrate, in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, the evil Orcs build a sophisticated underground system of dungeons and mines in preparation for future misdeeds. When the Ents (tree-like beings that keep the forest) flood and thereby destroy these structures during the Battle of Isengard, they are disrupting established land-use patterns. But since the Orcs did not build this system to advance justice, no loss of moral value occurs.--From this review by Mathias Risse of Cara Nine, Global Justice and Territory.

 From Risse's description it is not entirely clear if the example is in Nine's book (a quick search suggests not). Let's stipulate (a) that the Ents waged a just war in self-defense and (b) that as a matter of fact the Orcs' land-use patterns do not advance justice (regardless of the Orcs' views on such matters). I am, however, troubled by the final claim that "no loss of moral value occurs." For it seems that cultural genocide is endorsed in the example. (Quite a few, unnarmed Orc laborers also die--most of the Orc warriors of Saruman were fighting elsewhere.) Here are three reasons for concern: first, we should not be blind to Tolkien's racialized stereotypes--the Orcs are dark-skinned 'others.'

The Weberian criterion of sovereignty and military training

Max Weber defines political sovereignty as the monopoly on the legitimate use of force within a territory. But there is a problem: how to unleash yet control the killing potential of the forces of order, the army and the police? The problem is especially acute in the crucial point of counter-revolution: will the army fire on “the people”? Plato saw this problem clearly in his analysis of the character of the guardians, who had to be kind to friends yet fierce to enemies (Republic, 375c).

Interestingly enough, the problem is more on the “unleashing” side than on the “controlling” side, for killing is less easy than it might seem for those raised with a Hobbesian outlook in which the ability to kill is assumed to be widespread. We should recall here the way Hobbes emphasizes the role of fear in the state of nature in prompting the agreement to form the civil state—and fear of a return to the state of nature once in such a state. The reason we must be afraid in – and of – the the state of nature is the widespread ability of people to kill each other; while asleep, even the strongest can be killed by the weakest.

Erik Loomis's "This Day in Labor History" series

It would be unjust to allow Erik Loomis's presence in the blogosphere to be defined only as someone to whom those concerned with free speech rallied when he was attacked in the wake of the Newtown massacre. For Loomis is also the author of an extraordinary series of posts at Lawyers, Guns, and Money entitled "This Day in Labor History." 

Today's post begins: 

On January 25, 1941, A. Philip Randolph, head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and the most important civil rights leader of the World War II era, called for a March on Washington to protest discrimination in defense industry work. The success of this movement in convincing the government to act on employment discrimination both opened unprecedented economic opportunities for African-Americans during the war and helped lay the groundwork for the modern civil rights movement after the war. 

One of the key insights:

Roosevelt was desperate to avoid the embarrassment of a nation preparing to fight fascism having its own caste system publicized before the world.

You should do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.

Social integration and brain chemistry approaches to treating PTSD

This NYT article (h/t Greg Downey on FB; check out his Neuroanthropology blog) lays out research on the effects of social conditions (isolation vs integration) on PTSD. Greg excerpted this quote: 

It turns out that most trauma victims — even survivors of combat, torture or concentration camps — rebound to live full, normal lives. That has given rise to a more nuanced view of trauma — less a poison than an infectious agent, a challenge that most people overcome but that may defeat those weakened by past traumas, genetics or other factors. Now, a significant body of work suggests that even this view is too narrow — that the environment just after the event, particularly other people’s responses, may be just as crucial as the event itself.

I thought this one about Nepalese ex-child soldiers provided a good concrete example: 

But in villages that readily and happily reintegrated them (usually via rituals or conventions specifically designed to do so), they experienced no more mental distress than did peers who had never gone to war. The lasting harm of being a child soldier, it seemed, arose not from the war but from social isolation and conflict afterward.

Contrast* the social integration approach to an individual pathology approach, using cognitive behavioral therapy and / or SSRIs to handle symptoms or beta-blockers to intervene in memory formation (another h/t to Greg Downey for this link). 

Veterans Day Poppy

(In remembrance of, among others, Captain Beefheart.)

It may well be that the conception of well-marked generations got its impetus from the world wars, now usually called One and Two. The first, once simply The Great War, was the war of my grandparents; the second, that of my parents. That distinction was clear, easy to remember, soundly based in events.

RIP, Vidal Sassoon, anti-fascist street fighter

Link. Quote: 

It was a rather strange situation because the war was over. Before the war there was quite a strong fascist party led by Oswald Mosley and he and his cohorts were put in detention (jail) during the war by Churchill. After the war they came out and immediately started up again with their anti-Semitism and running through the streets and having meetings, it was quite ridiculous. Many truly brave Jewish ex-servicemen started the “43 Group” because there were 43 people at the first meeting they had. These were tough men who had been through the war. Of course volunteers were needed, I was 16 or 17 at the time, most of my friends joined the 43 Group and there were quite a few hundred of us. Truly the fascists were smashed in the streets and yes if you were scared at times because it was scary. But after we saw the pictures that came out and the whole story of the Holocaust, there was actually no way we could allow fascists to run through the streets. I was arrested one night and put in jail, the following day the judge told me ‘to be a good boy’ and let me go. That was our life in those days, we decided that we were absolutely not going to allow what happened pre-war when Jews were just beat up indiscriminately in the streets. It worked beautifully because of mainly the tough Jewish characters that were in the British armed forces during the war, they were the people that did it. But also there were quite a few gentiles who had seen the camps, the horror of Europe and fought with us.

You owe it to yourself to watch the video (below the fold):

Sunday political affect news: new fronts in the War on Terror

Criminalizing desire: 

[I]n his opening statement to the jury one prosecutor suggested that “it’s not illegal to watch something on the television. It is illegal, however, to watch something in order to cultivate your desire, your ideology.”

Stimulating PTSD:

But there is another factor that might be playing a role in the increasing rates of the disorder, one that has escaped attention: the military’s use of stimulant medications, like Ritalin and Adderall, in our troops.

Time to get out

From a New York Times story on responses to the recent murders in Afghanistan of sixteen civilians by a US soldier:

Many observers say the Americans have had a lot of practice at apologizing for carnage, accidental and otherwise, and have gotten better at doing it quickly and convincingly.

This is the good news in a story that does its best to give a positive spin to the current situation. See Glenn Greenwald for more.

Histories of Violence multi-media project

Histories of Violence is a multi-media project directed by Brad Evans of Leeds University. The project is "dedicated to exploring the theoretical, empirical and aesthetic dimensions to violence." From the home page of the project:

This trans-disciplinary project provides an open access platform for the specific purposes of academic and public engagement; knowledge transfer; political discussion; philosophical reflection; along with exhibiting works which directly engage the perennial problem afflicting human life. Amongst the sites key features include:

• Dedicated filmed symposia by international scholars
• Introductory lectures to key canonical thinkers
• Comprehensive author-specific resource hub
• Selected interviews
• Short films & Creative Reflections
• Online exhibitions/filmed readings by renowned artists, writers, and creative visionaries

A contemporary artistic interpretation of the Siege of Leiden (1574)

Yesterday I visited the Lakenhal museum in Leiden, which by chance was hosting the last day of an exhibition on the Siege and Relief of Leiden (1574), a major episode in Dutch history. The background were the religious and political disputes between the catholic Spanish rulers and the large protestant population, led by charismatic leaders such as William of Orange (who then went on to become the first Dutch king [CORRECTION: See E. Schliesser's comment below]). The Spanish were determined to conquest the rebel areas by force, and had already violently subjugated the cities of Naarden and Haarlem. But after an unsuccessful campaign in Alkmaar, the Spanish rulers opted for a different approach, and began a siege of the city of Leiden in 1573. For the first siege, the city was well-prepared and could withstand the siege, which was then terminated after a few months. But in May 1574 a second siege began, and this time Leiden was not prepared , in particular with no special food supplies.

Time to take a walk on the real side; admit the bastards beat us?

Thanks to our "liberal Democrat" president, revocation of the Magna Carta is now permanent.  Would it be too much to ask that people wake the hell up and take this seriously?
Details here

Sadly, I think the answer to that question is "yes".  And so I'm allowing myself a day of wallowing - exemplified by my title, which refers to this bit of brilliant despair - I'll no doubt come around to something more positive in a bit.  

(I also know that "Political Music Friday" has begun to function like "Holy Roman Empire" but it is not dead, just resting.)

More hyphens please!

 

I usually start this talk with a joke that the title page needs more hyphens, since I'm really talking about "geo-bio-neuro-political-techno-affective assemblages." The slides are here. The text of the paper is here. My thanks to Andrew Marzoni, Joe Hughes, and everyone with the Literary Theory Reading Group at the University of Minnesota for the invitation.

Blackwater, Immunity, and the US troop withdrawal from Iraq

From the very interesting blog We Meant Well, ex-State Department Foreign Service member Peter van Buren provides an excellent analysis of an important reason behind the decision to withdraw US troops from Iraq by the end of this year. Briefly put, the Iraq government refused to extend the SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement) that basically grants immunity to Iraqi law for US personnel serving there. Without a SOFA, the military will not operate in a "host" country, so Obama's decision was forced.

Why did the Iraqi government refuse a new SOFA? Van Buren argues that the 2007 massacre of Baghdad civilians by Blackwater mercenaries was a prime motive. The horrible irony? The State Department will employ 5000 mercenaries for security purposes beginning January 1, 2012, and they don't need a SOFA, as they will have diplomatic immunity!

People interested in real life implementations of Roberto Esposito's concept of immunity will want to read the whole thing.

Also of interest for thinking about political affect is this piece by van Buren, "Warrior Pundits and War Pornographers," which is less about war porn than about the way an affective bond between soldiers and embedded journalists is produced by daily acts of helping the newbie cope and even simply survive.

Pinker: 'Humans are less violent than ever'

I’m just back from an extremely enjoyable family vacation in sunny Fuerteventura, which also means that I am swamped by a zillion work-related things that need to be attended to asap. I also want to resume blogging, and have a few posts already lined up in my head (in particular, one on the ‘climate for women’ discussion which has re-emerged), but where do I find time for all this? (One almost regrets going on holiday and forgetting about it all for a while, given the harsh conditions upon return!)

But anyway, today I came across two interesting links, via the New Scientist twitter feed, and thought it might be a good topic to resume blogging. As it turns out, Steven Pinker’s most recent interest is the history of violence, which he takes to be a privileged window for his long-standing interest in human nature (broadly construed). In his new book The Better Angels of our Nature, he claims that there has been a significant decrease in homicides and violent deaths over the centuries: ‘Humans are less violent than ever’. This becomes particularly clear if the death tolls of historical occurrences of horror are estimated on the basis of the human population at the time, and what the proportion would mean in terms of the current human population in the world. This was done by finding the per-capita death rate at the midpoint of the event's range of years, based on population estimates from McEvedy and Jones.

Happy Genocide Day

Today the US celebrates, by way of a national holiday, the man who launched one of the most significant genocides of human history.  This celebration is a small but non-trivial part of the extraordinary erasure from history of the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas.  For those who need a refresher on the man whose day it is in the US, here is the classic chapter from Howard Zinn.

How did the al-Awlaki killing come about?

Below I pose a definitional question, "what is post-Westphalian war?" Definitions look for essences, a finite list of necessary and sufficient conditions for membership in a class. A provisional defintion would then be defeated by a counterexample, a case that fits the proposed conditions but does not (seem) to belong to the class, or which is an accepted member of the class but does not meet the proposed conditions. [UPDATE: Catarina's post earlier today discusses essential definitions as well.]

Deleuze proposed replacing "what is" questions -- essential definitions -- with "who" or "how" questions -- the search for "dramatizations" or actualizations of a virtual multiplicity, that is, the patterns of a set of dynamic processes linked in such a way so that when the relations of the processes hit a threshold a qualitative change in the system occurs. In my favorite example, events are hurricanes: they should not be seen as instanciations of a form or members of a species but as singular integrations of a differential field of processes whose patterns form a multiplicity. That is, when linked air and water currents hit a threshold in their relation, a qualitatively novel system, the hurricane, emerges. 

So the Deleuzean question in the al-Awlaki case would be "how did it come about?" What were the linked processes or conflictual forces which hit a threshold triggering the event of the drone strike? Some of them are: 

What is post-Westphalian war?

Eric links below to Glenn Greenwald on the killing-by-drone (I'm choosing a deliberately neutral term here, neither "assassination" nor "result of a military operation") of Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen. There were no legal proceedings against al-Awlaki; from what I can gather, the US government is claiming it doesn't need that 1) because loosely speaking, we are are in state of war; or 2) more technically, because of the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) of September 18, 2001. 

A point of philosophical interest, I think, is the slippage between 1 and 2 above. I'm going to take my own understanding of these issues, naive as it is, as the basis of this discussion, as part of the issue is how to sell non-judicial drone killing to the "general public."  

Here's the key: the Treaty of Westphalia gives nation-states sovereignty over the population within their borders. So, to abide by the principles laid out in the Treaty -- principles which serve as the basis for evolved international law / just war theory -- killings by agents of one nation-state within the borders of another can only be done after a declaration of war by one of the states. IOW, war is a relation between states.

But the AUMF (section 2.a) expands the legitimate targets of military force beyond nations to "organizations, or persons": 

Friday political music selection - causes of violence

Several folks - Jon, Catarina, Eric, etc - here have been running a series of music posts.  I can't compete with them for philosophical relevance, aesthetic insight, cutting edge hipness, or cultural diversity.  Though I was actually a professional musician once upon a time in a world far away - orchestral trumpet, Columbus Ohio, 1970s - I have never thought particularly hard about music, and find that mustic generally gets worse when I talk about it.  But not wanting to be left out of the game, I have decided to start posting a series of unabashedly political songs.  I'll make up a theme and throw out a few songs, usually starting with something famous and moving to things that are less well known.  I'm not going to say much - 'cause it makes it worse, right? -  just let the songs present whatever they present.

So today, we begin with the famous musical observation: "brother brother, there's far too many of you dyin'" Marvin Gaye

Which leads to the question: "Why?"

Who's smiling now?

Bullshit (and probably 'bought') Experts and their fear-mongering friends in the media

This is a very important article; the link comes from the wise Glenn Greenwald.

Hollywood and the War Machine

They filmed part of Battle: Los Angeles in Baton Rouge (thanks to the ridiculous tax breaks the Louisiana establishment gives the film industry the state loses money and gains only low-paying jobs). Roger Ebert disposes of its aesthetic merits in his lede: 

"Battle: Los Angeles" is noisy, violent, ugly and stupid. Its manufacture is a reflection of appalling cynicism on the part of its makers, who don't even try to make it more than senseless chaos.

But what's more interesting is the Hollywood / Pentagon connection. And that on two levels, before we even get into the Military-Nintendo Complex.

There's the overt propaganda level of relentlessly portraying the US military as the good guys, something examined in the documentaries linked above. There we have consciously registered images, plus whatever conscious emotions you might be in touch with.

But the other on the political physiology level. I'm speculating that the assault on the endocrine system by the fast cuts, loud explosions, and chaotic editing Ebert complains about on the aesthetic level also produce a sort of numbing effect after a while. Associating this numbing (pleasurable after the everyday tension of life in neoliberal insecurity) with the US military leads one to associate them with being saviors at a deeper level than consciously registered images, as in the traditional propaganda movie.

If readers can point me to studies of the subpersonal neuro-endocrine effects of these kinds of movies, I'd be very grateful for the leads. 

UPDATE: M 14 March 9:37 am CDT: Andrew Culp reminds me of the work of James Der Derian in this respect. 

Conference: Living with the Past

I just came across the CFP of a very interesting conference which will take place in Johannesburg, called 'Living with the past'. A few months ago I had complained about the Netherlands' failure to deal with their colonial past, so it is with concerns of this nature in mind that I am thrilled to see this CFP. It is nowhere near my own professional expertise, but I am delighted to see that philosophy can perhaps contribute to the proper treatment of such absolutely fundamental issues of 'real life'. I've heard Lucy Allais (the sender of the CFP to philos-l) speaking on the South-African “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” once, and it was truly inspiring. Definitely a conference to keep track of!

I couldn't find a link to the conference's website, so I'm copying here the CFP as posted on philos-l:

First call for papers: Living with the past

The Philosophy Department of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, is hosting a conference on the topic ‘Living with the Past’.

Date: 3-5 June 2011

Keynote speakers:             
Howard McGary (Rutgers) 
Lionel K. McPherson (Tufts)

The rule of law in the face of 'terror'

Those are mention-quotes in the title, not scare quotes.  That is, I'm hoping to draw attention to the rule of law in the context of the word 'terror'.  A nice discussion of the way that any legal presumption of innocence has gone out the window appeared today on Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karen-j-greenberg/guilty-until-proven-guilt_b_785728.html

I've been following this case in the mainstream press, reading 5 or 6 articles in the Washington Post, a couple in the NY Times, and 5 or 6 scattered other articles.  What all have in common is the background assumption - with no argument whatsoever, but as if it is so obvious that no disagreement can be imagined - that Ahmed Ghailani is guilty of masterminding attacks.  The primary evidence for this claim seems to be the testimony - extracted under torture by investigators quite obviously trying to elicit just such testimony - of one "witness" (those are scare-quotes).  The judge in the civil trial rightly exclude this testimony and this is taken by all to indicate that while we know that he is guilty, this could not be legally demonstrated due to the loopholes of civil law.  The "debate" then turns on whether he should be tried by military courts with no scruples about using "evidence" secured by torture, or simply imprisoned permanently under absurd and criminal interpretations of the law of war.

None of this "debate" requires any consideration of the well-understood and empirically confirmed fact that such coerced testimony is epistemologically worthless.  None of it requires any reflection on what civil rights could mean in a context in which a court finding of innocence implies merely that one will be jailed under executive order. 

None of it requires even the mention of the word 'police state'. 

But as Chomsky pointed out long ago, a loud and acrimonious "debate" among two narrowly different positions, each of which presupposes all the views that matter is a far better way to manipulate public thought than a single government view that simply states those views.  The latter naturally leads folks to wonder what others think.  The former, leads them to pick one side or the other.  So, as Greenberg points out in this case, we shout back and forth between the "progressive" view that these obviously guilty people can all be convicted in civilian court, and the "conservative view" that the courts are so tilted toward the rights of the guilty that some of the obviously guilty people would be let off thereby necessitating imprisonment without trial.

And there we are.  the question is what anyone is doing about it.

Vonnegut on Armistice Day

This Vonnegut quote on Armistice Day and Veteran's Day has been widely linked. I'm stealing it from here: 

When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

Armistice Day has become Veterans’ Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ Day is not.

So I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things.

What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.

And all music is.

– Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

 

Michael Hudson on "Financial Warfare"

Michael Hudson is a very interesting writer on finance. I don't pretend to completely familiar with these arguments, but I found this article fascinating.

Opening grafs of the piece:

What is to stop U.S. banks and their customers from creating $1 trillion, $10 trillion or even $50 trillion on their computer keyboards to buy up all the bonds and stocks in the world, along with all the land and other assets for sale in the hope of making capital gains and pocketing the arbitrage spreads by debt leveraging at less than 1 per cent interest cost? This is the game that is being played today.

Finance is the new form of warfare - without the expense of a military overhead and an occupation against unwilling hosts. It is a competition in credit creation to buy foreign resources, real estate, public and privatized infrastructure, bonds and corporate stock ownership. Who needs an army when you can obtain the usual objective (monetary wealth and asset appropriation) simply by financial means? All that is required is for central banks to accept dollar credit of depreciating international value in payment for local assets. Victory promises to go to whatever economy's banking system can create the most credit, using an army of computer keyboards to appropriate the world's resources. The key is to persuade foreign central banks to accept this electronic credit.

 

Free and hate speech; minority rights in the Netherlands

Ajan Hirsi Ali, a brave critic of female mutilation and warrior against what she calls "political Islam," treated the readers of the Wall Street Journal to a blistering attack on the trial of the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who holds the balance of power supporting the new conservative government (in Holland that means a weird combination of defense of welfare state for elderly whites, high mortgage deduction for homeowners, and go slow on bioethical changes and Sunday shopping). 

Hirsi Ali is correct that the Netherlands does have a rather heavy handed state role in free speech (even once going so far as providing state subsidies to people advocating unpopular causes). What her article fails to note is that there is no equivalent of a bill of rights and constitutional review in the Netherlands. (The only route is to European human rights courts.) Parliament is sovereign and can interpret its own laws. (See here for my account of political nature of law in the Netherlands).

This means that now that he holds the levers of power, Wilders is free to promote laws that discriminate based on religious affiliation. (Most observers expect European law to overrule, but Sarkozy's treatment of the Roma suggests that little is to be expected from there.) This is not an idle concern; the new government actively promotes religious discrimInation (in various ways some based on clothing, some based on employment practice, in attacking). In practice, in the Netherlands there has been a wavering commitment to impartial rule of law, which Wilders is attacking cleverly in his trial. It probably was a political mistake to put Wilders on trial, especially because the presiding judge has been clumsy In his handling. But Hirsi Ali fails to ask how democracies are supposed to respond to illiberal policies when there is no legal culture of minority rights.

The institutionalization of torture and the deontological demand for consequentialist arguments

There are a number of consequentialist arguments against interrogational torture. Here is a link to a good article on them (subscription required). The most prominent is that it is a waste of time and resources, as no actionable information is gained. Another one is the institutionalization argument: setting up a torture program requires professionalization, which means recruitment, training, and evaluation. Historical investigation of torture programs (South America in the 1970s and 80s, the French in Algeria, and so on), show that such a torture infrastructure cannot be contained to a small portion of the security apparatus, but spreads throughout the military and into civilian law enforcement. The harm caused by such a torture infrastructure spreads due to the alcoholism, depression, and domestic violence spread by the torturers when they go off-duty. And the suicide of those close to the torture structure, as in the article linked in this post. 

Given that deontological arguments against US torture practices don't reach a sizable percentage of the American population (see this exchange of letters for an example), I'd say this creates a demand on those deontologically committed to an anti-torture campaign to engage consequentialist arguments, like the above, since they may be effective on people for whom the deontological arguments are ineffective.

In other words, for a deontological argument to work, the party to whom it's addressed has to share the commitment to respect for the humanity of those subjected to torture. When that respect is lacking, the arguments fall on deaf ears. So if it's your duty to fight torture, then that duty compels you to use arguments that work. And for a portion of the American population, consequentialist arguments based on the harm torture does to Americans hurt by those corrupted by the practice of torture and the spread of that harm attendant to its necessary institutionalization, are more effective than deontological arguments. 

Updated 17 Sept 2010, 2:25 pm: Excellent post here on the topic by Leigh Johnson (Dr. J. in comments below). Update 2: A series of posts on torture by Johnson is available here.

Remembering US soldier who committed suicide rather than participate in torture in Iraq

Story by Greg Williams at thenation.com: http://www.thenation.com/blog/154649/us-soldier-who-committed-suicide-after-she-refused-take-part-torture

Excerpt: 

With each revelation, or court decision, on US torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and Gitmo—or the airing this month ofThe Tillman Story and Lawrence Wright's My Trip to Al-Qaeda—I am reminded of the chilling story of Alyssa Peterson, who died seven years ago this week. Appalled when ordered to take part in interrogations that, no doubt, involved what most would call torture, she refused, then killed herself a few days later, on September 15, 2003. Of course, we now know from the torture memos and the US Senate committee probe and various press reports, that the "Gitmo-izing" of Iraq was happening just at the time Alyssa got swept up in it.