New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

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.