Say Anything Blog

Original here. You really should read the whole thing.

VLADIMIR PUTIN: And I am also against an arms race. I am opposed to any kind of arms race but I would like to quickly draw your attention to something I said in last year’s Address. We have learned from the Soviet Union’s experience and we will not be drawn into an arms race that anyone imposes on us. We will not respond symmetrically, we will respond with other methods and means that are no less effective. This is called an asymmetrical response.

The United States are building a huge and costly missile defence system which will cost dozens and dozens of billions of dollars. We said: “no, we are not going to be pulled into this race. We will construct systems that will be much cheaper yet effective enough to overcome the missile defence system and therefore maintain the balance of power in the world.” And we are going to proceed this way in the future.

Moreover, I want to draw your attention to the fact that, despite our retaliatory measures, the volume of our defence expenditures as a percentage of GDP is not growing. They were 2,7 percent of GDP and will remain so. We are planning the same amount of defence spending for the next 5 to 10 years. This is fully in line with the average expenditures of NATO countries. This amount is not more than their average defence expenditures and in some cases it is even lower than that of NATO member countries. And we can use our competitive advantages which include quite advanced military-industrial capabilities and the intellectual capacities of those who work in our military complex. There are good results and good people. In any case, much of this has been preserved, and we will do everything possible in order not only to maintain but also to develop this potential.

Assymetrical warfare… AKA terrorism. What is Putin getting at here? Joel, got any bigoted anti-Russian propaganda in your valise? Now might be a good time…

The original article is here. I posted earlier on the pending trial of this youngster, and now it appears as if the tribunal judge in charge has sided with me and what I view as an appropriate application of justice.

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - The military judge presiding at Omar Khadr’s war crimes tribunal dismissed all the charges against the young Canadian on Monday, saying he did not meet the definition of those subject to trial under a new law.

Army Col. Peter Brownback said a military review board had labeled Khadr an “enemy combatant” during a 2004 hearing in Guantanamo.

But the Military Commissions Act adopted by the U.S. Congress in 2006 said only “unlawful enemy combatants” could be tried in the Guantanamo tribunals. Brownback said Khadr did not meet that strict definition.

This was the latest setback for the Bush government’s efforts to put the Guantanamo detainees through some form of judicial process. It was forced to rewrite the rules last year after the U.S. Supreme Court deemed the old tribunals illegal.

Brownback dismissed the charges, but left open the possibility that charges could be refiled if Khadr went back before a review board and was formally classified as an “unlawful enemy combatant.”

Khadr, who was captured in a firefight in Afghanistan at age 15, was accused of killing a U.S. soldier with a grenade and wounding another in a battle at a suspected al Qaeda compound in Afghanistan in 2002.

He was also charged with conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism along murder, attempted murder and spying, for allegedly conducting surveillance of U.S. military convoys in Afghanistan.

I agree with the result, but not the rationale. IMO, even if this young man can be reclassified as an, “unlawful enemy combatant”, he should remain unable to be tried as an adult.
For an individual to be guilty, there must be responsibility for the acts in question. While a 15 year old is able to have causal responsibility (insofar as he is actually the one who committed the crimes), a 15 year old is not old enough to be found morally responsible for their actions to a degree that warrants life in prison, capital punishment, or any other type of punishment beyond juvenile hall or an analogue. Mr. Khadr, in addition only being 15 when he was captured in Afghanistan, was also brainwashed by his jihadist father.

Several of Mr Khadr’s family members have been accused of ties to Islamist extremists. His Egyptian-born father, Ahmad Said al-Khadr, was killed in Pakistan in 2003 alongside senior al-Qaida operatives and Canada is holding Mr Khadr’s brother Abdullah on a US extradition warrant accusing him of supplying weapons to al-Qaida.

If Mr. Khadr had reached the age of 18, widely acknowledged as a legal age of consent and adulthood, when he committed these heinous acts; perhaps his responsibility for the crimes in question would make him more deserving of being tried as an adult, but he was only 15. In conducting these legally ambiguous tribunals that have previously been deemed illegal and modified to conform to law, it is of utmost importance to maintain a coherent and transparent variety of justice. As the world superpower, it is our responsibility to lead by example and trying 15 year olds is not the example we should enact.

Concurrently posted at The Arbuckle Institute

Yea. Its kinda funny, I guess…

Here’s my favorites of the Federalist Papers: #51, #55, and #56. Read ‘em. Do it slow like. They’re great and there is some real fodder for the anti-leftard fires in those. If you have a fav, let me know what it is. Those articles are fucking brilliant, BTW. Its why we are the best, IMO. Oh, and here’s a link to them all. Enjoy!

I’m leaving in a week for the current murder capital of the country and, well, I couldn’t be happier. I’d rather risk death than remain in this corrupt shithole full of union mafia and faux Republican wankers.

We had a temporary medical marijuana program for about a year or two. It went pretty well, with minor exceptions. Now the legislature is about to make it permanent and the Republican governor is readying his ‘veto pen’. I heard him on the radio today saying, “well, its a federal crime”. The guy is a effing Republican!!! Who cares if its a federal crime? That’s all he’s got? Give me a effing break!!! Ever heard of the 10th amendment Don Carcieri? Grow some cohones you fed-strengthening little pantywaste!

120°F outside? Stuck in the middle of the desert in Dubai? Wanna go skiing? No problem:

Note the palm trees, dwarfed in the foreground.

Original here.

Under the bill, couples eager to marry who attend a state-approved premarital counseling course will have the state’s marriage license fee—which would double from $30 to $60—waived. Couples who receive counseling will also dodge the state’s 72-hour mandatory marriage waiting period.
....
Chisum has been married to his wife, Omega, for 50 years in October. He is the president of the Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute, which promotes bedrock conservative policy, including limited government, free enterprise and, of course, family values.

Marriages today, Chisum said, fall apart too often—“the first time they hit a bump in the road.” His bill will force couples to at least acknowledge that there are issues they should discuss that are critical to achieving a healthy marriage.
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The state would also offer its own generic course, lasting eight hours, and make grants available to couples who want to take the state-run class but don’t have money to enroll.

While Chisum said he expects many of the counseling locations will be associated with Texas churches, he said the law would apply to all denominations.

Texas conservatives, all for limiting government but not government spending, or the government’s enforcement of Christian-derived laws. Asinine.

Concurrently posted at The Arbuckle Institute
Hee hee hee. Some young contributer over at HuffPo is absolutely trashing on Hilldog‘s newest effort to reinvent herself with hollow, bullshit rhetoric. I love it when even the libs can’t stomach their own bullshit:

Senator Hillary Clinton is about to unleash a whole new version of herself. Again. This one is going to be a Hillary thinking outside of the box (!), thinking laterally (!!), and using innovation to find the way forward to the path of tomorrow where success isn’t a secret, but a global promise (!!!).

Nothing grates on nerves quite like corporate-speak. It’s the lingo of Type A suits everywhere, proselytizing to the inspirationally challenged while exploiting their own clip-art fetishes. Senator Clinton was thinking synergistically when she hired “serial innovator” John Kao (pronounced “Kao") as part of her senatorial campaign, and paid him $70,000 to show her that with can-do attitude she will flow with jazz magic.

Kao is now on Clinton’s presidential campaign (working pro bono) and his “Innovation Manifesto” is making the rounds in the bullpens.

....

The "Innovation Manifesto" is built on "The 20 Statements," which I believe were until now, a secret known only to Mr. Kao, derived from vanished golden tablets buried in his backyard that were only readable through magic glasses sent from God. These incredibly mysterious, deep statements run the gamut from, "Innovation is an expression of an organized culture," to my favorite "Ideation instigates innovation." Apparently, alliterative assholes assume adults appreciate this kind of adolescent absurdity.

....

Over all, this “manifesto” uses the word innovation upwards of sixty times, defined by Kao as “creativity applied with intention to create value.” I think that means attempting to co-opt everything that’s great, wring whatever money is possible out of it, and then move on to the next fad like a swarm of well-tailored locusts.

....

The whole packet is filled with these empty phrases: statements like "We are in the midst of a profound change from a logic of business based on economies of scale to economies of discovery," which I guess is like the more douchey version of saying that talking about music is now like dancing about architecture. After four pages of this tripe, my head begins to ache. Should you tilt towards towards the masochistic, you can click here [pdf] to read it for yourself.

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“The Innovation Manifesto” reads like the bits that weren’t good enough to get into L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics, and since that reads like a barely literate attempt at Bible fan fiction, that’s saying a lot. It’s entirely possible that copies of this lame attempt at “punk” corporate talk, landed in the Clinton staff’s trash cans, but that this sort of faux-inspirational babble has gotten anywhere near a presidential campaign is alarming.

The HuffPo article is here.

“He alone is great and happy who requires neither to command nor to obey in order to secure his being of some importance in the world.”
-Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Concurrently posted at The Arbuckle Institute.

This one is quite a read. It was brought about by an argument or two with some lib friends about the morality of any state. It is consistent with Knee-high-man’s accusation that I am merely a ‘shit disturbing anarchist’ (), however I do believe in the need for the minimal state. In what follows I merely prove that there is no moral transition from the state of nature to the minimal state. In addition, I grant Nozick and the ‘individualist anarchists’ certain natural rights which there may or may not be issues with. The girl (brilliant and beautiful without equal), as always, helped at various junctures. Enjoy. I couldn’t figure out how to do footnotes, so I have included the footnotes in the *X* format. They can all be found at the end of the piece, ‘below the fold’. Also, let me add, that I am grateful for the audience. These extended posts are sweet for keeping my research and theory skills up while I’m on hiatus from more formal studies.

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The libertarian Nozick *1*, in his book Anarchy, State and Utopia, sets out to demonstrate that only a minimal state *2*, and nothing more extensive, can be morally justified (Miller 10). In response to Locke’s arguments against anarchy, Nozick feels that Locke dismissed the anarchist position too quickly and gives it a more thorough analysis (Wolff 42). The first part of Nozick’s book is geared toward the individualist anarchists, and he spends this portion of the book answering their moral objections to a state. Individual anarchists, such as Benjamin Tucker (who Nozick names), start with the same premise as Nozick, namely that individuals have inviolable rights to life, liberty, and property (16). Since both the individualist anarchists and Nozick share this theoretical ground, he finds himself obligated to answer their objections against the state. Nozick puts forth a theory that purports to show that the minimal state can arise from an ideal form of the state of nature by morally permissible means, and claims that it does so by not violating the natural rights of life, liberty, and property that Nozick believes all individuals have (later in his theory he adds the natural rights of self-defense and punishment) (Nozick 10). Nozick’s view on rights takes the form of Lockean natural rights that are negative in form, meaning that they act as moral side constraints on other’s actions towards you, rather than positive rights that are obligations others owe you. Nozick believes natural rights to be absolute and inviolable since each person’s life is separate and no one individual or his rights may be sacrificed for other considerations *3*. Nozick adopts the Kantian categorical imperative in his view of what individuals may rightfully do to one another. The Kantian view holds that people may only be treated as ends and not only as means since they are capable of having a life that is meaningful *4* (50). After introducing his view on natural rights, Nozick adds that all individuals have the non-natural and non-absolute right to a reliable procedure of justice (Wolff 63).

The individualist anarchists put forth two main moral objections to the formation of a state. Nozick takes these objections seriously, since both share the same premise that individuals have rights that are inviolable. Nozick aims to show that a minimal state can arise from the state of nature and preserve the individual’s inviolable rights each step of the way. It is his hope that he can answer the individual anarchist’s objections with his theory of the minimal state. The first of the individual anarchists’ objections concerns the state’s monopoly on the use of force (Nozick 51). When a state monopolizes the use of force within a geographical territory, the individual anarchists claim that it does so by punishing those who wish to defend their own rights by allowing the state to protect and enforce rights on their behalf. In the individual anarchists’ view, this is immoral since it violates the absolute right an individual has to self-defense and hence, the state is rights-violating and immoral. The second objection the individual anarchists’ put forth concerns the immoral forceful redistribution of property done by the state. When a state holds a monopoly over the use of force, and some individuals do not voluntarily allow the state to protect its rights, the state must somehow include them within its sphere of protection. Through the inclusion of the “independents”, whom would rather self-enforce their right to self-defense, the other individuals who voluntarily allowed the state to protect its rights must now pay for the protection of these “independents” by the state. The anarchists hold that the state has violated the right to property all individuals have when it forcefully makes the individuals, already within the state, pay for the “independents’” protection. Therefore, the individual anarchists conclude, the state is immoral and cannot be justified. Nozick now has the burden, in his defense of the minimal state, to first show that the dominant protection agency (to be explained later in this paper) is justified in protecting “independents” who want to defend their own rights (Paul 68). Second, Nozick must show the anarchists that forceful redistribution does not take place, but rather that it is an act of compensation as morally required by the principle of compensation. Unfortunately, Nozick fails to satisfactorily answer both objections, and due to his strict moral framework of inviolable rights, he is unable to make the theoretical moves he attempts to make while at the same time proving that the minimal state arises by a rights-preserving process. The individual anarchists’ complaints, in the end, are left unanswered and Nozick’s minimal state, by way of his and the individual anarchists’ own requirements, is left unjustified and proves to be immoral. (more...)

The Mighty Fallen: Our Nation’s Greatest War Memorials has recently been released by Collins and the Smithsonian. Its 150 pages of glossy images and narrative describing battles of the past, those who fought, the memorials, and the history of the memorials. Its pretty frickin’ awesome and its only twenty-something bucks, a fair price for a nice coffee table book. I recommend it and know most, if not all of you, will get a big kick out of it. In addition, I did 80-90% of the scanning and pre-press work for the book, so check page 144 for the acknowledgments and credits and see if you can figure out who I am.
**Oh, and I already got paid in full months ago, so I ain't just trying to line my pockets.**

This weekend the New York Times gave Philip K Dick the writeup he deserves, at long last. While I could ramble about Dick, as I love good sci fi and he is one of the pulp kings of sci fi, I would rather introduce a little disturbing mindf**k that comes about when one marries two of my interests, analytic philosophy & sci fi. The other day there was a post about killing evil figures of yesteryear that got me thinking about time travel and logical paradoxes. Here’s what I came up with:

I have been thinking about the grandfather paradox, a logical paradox about time travel, famously explored in David Lewis‘s paper, The Paradoxes of Time Travel. The paradox employs a basic modus tollens form that allows the negation of the statement, “time travel is possible”. It is based around the simple principle that it can never be the case that grandfather both lives until a certain date, say 1957, and does not live until 1957. The argument that backs up the idea that no time traveler can kill his grandfather is an argument based around counterfactuals. (click on either of the arguments for the pdf they are taken from) The important thing to note at this point is that, no matter how one feels with respect to whether or not they can kill grandfather, “In no sense of ‘can’ is there something [one] can do, such that if [one] had done it, contradictions would have been true.”

Naturally this strikes one as bizarre. It clearly seems that, upon arriving in the past and preparing appropriately for the murder, one could succeed in pulling it off. While there are certain probabilities of failure with respect to local conditions (for example a jamming of the rifle, a missed shot, a strong breeze at the last minute) governing the success of the murder attempt, there also seems to be what another philosopher, Lockwood, describes, in a term borrowed from physics, as a ‘boundary condition’. A boudary condition would be some action limiting condition that prevents Tim from persuing certain lines of action. This boundary condition involves taking different facts into account, namely facts about how long grandpa will live and facts about the impossibility of contradictions, which limit Tim’s actions by way of certain ‘global constraints’ on his actions which perhaps manifest themselves as ‘local constraints’ in the way of a gun jam et al. In fact, it seems that, no matter how many times Tim tries to kill his grandfather in 1921, he will fail at every attempt, given the fact that grandpa lives until 1957.

Truly it is bizarre to think that there may be certain logical constraints on our acts. It is difficult to admit that our actions our limited by the fact that they must be consistent with certain facts about the future, whether or not we have epistemic access, or the ability to know about, these facts. On the other hand, time travel necessarily employs a certain ‘tenseless’ concept of time, as many philosophers who have thought about it have concluded. These ideas certainly are a bull in the chinashop that is the leyman’s concept of free will, but that is another discussion. If we concern ourselves with recent advancements in physics, they tell us the following:

Physics… does have one lesson to impart to the free will debate; a lesson about the relationship between time and determinism. Recall that we noticed that the fundamental theories we are familiar with, if they are deterministic at all, are time-symmetrically deterministic. That is, earlier states of the world can be seen as fixing all later states; but equally, later states can be seen as fixing all earlier states. We tend to focus only on the former relationship, but we are not led to do so by the theories themselves

Now this is getting bizarre. It seems, on considering the forwards and backwards determined nature of particle movement, acts, and other physical events, with respect to time, that they are somehow constrained in more than just a logical sense. Tim the time traveler is not alone, you are unable to successfully perform certain acts, intuitively, due to the fact that there are certain constraints on what one can and can’t do with respect to certain facts about the future, whether or not we have any form of access to those facts. In short, its silly to say that you ‘can’ do something if it is something other than what you do, in fact, end up doing. It seems that physical ability, the laws of nature, and various other local considerations about whether or not one can treat the ability to do something as a ‘live’ or resonable option do not actually bear on whether or not that action is something that one actually ‘can’ do. It seems local constraints may only be such insofar as they must jive with ‘global constraint’ of the system one functions within.

What do you think?

Whenever a feeling of aversion comes into the heart of a good soul, it’s not without significance. Consider that intuitive wisdom to be a Divine attribute, not a vain suspicion: the light of the heart has apprehended intuitively from the Universal Tablet.

- Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi

Uribe is Bush's best buddy in South America. Unfortunately, Uribe’s party members have been dropping like flies in the wake of the capture of Jorge 40’s laptop for having big time connections to right wing paramilitary groups in Columbia who are listed in the US as terrorists and are essentially a militant wing of Uribe’s party. Uribe received praise for demilitarizing the death squads, but the laptop contained evidence that was entirely a farce.

The computer, seized by investigators, contains details of 558 murders ordered by northern Colombian paramilitary chief Rodrigo Tovar, alias Jorge 40, who is now in custody.

It is a trove of evidence showing long-suspected links between paramilitaries and authorities reaching as high as Congress. And it casts doubt on the process by which more than 30,000 paramilitaries, including Jorge 40, have turned in their guns over the last three years in exchange for reduced jail terms and other benefits.

The paramilitary demobilization is hailed as a main achievement by President Alvaro Uribe, re-elected in May for his U.S.-backed efforts at ending this Andean country's 4-decade-old guerrilla war.

But the computer files show how Jorge 40 tricked the government into believing he was dismantling his nefarious empire while in fact trying to expand it, according to police reports leaked to the media in recent weeks. They include details of cocaine smuggling routes as well as names of "friendly" police and allies in the Senate and lower house of Congress.

"This is the first hard evidence of something we all knew about but found hard to prove," said political commentator Ricardo Avila.

"The big question is if Jorge 40 is going to tell everything when he appears before a judge. If he doesn't, he might lose his demobilization benefits. If he does, his words would have enormous political implications," Avila said.

At least 10 percent of all local government, health and public service contracts in the northern provinces of Atlantico, Magdalena and Bolivar wound up in Jorge 40's pockets, the computer files reveal.

The files include the date and place of 558 murders, most of which have gone uninvestigated.

The victims, named in the files and believed to have ended up in secret mass graves, include merchants who were late in making extortion payments, union members and people suspected of sympathizing with Marxist insurgents.

In addition, a US company, Drummond Co. Inc. is about to stand trial in the US for making a payoff to Jorge 40 in return for the murder of two coal mine union bosses.

A feared paramilitary boss has been charged with ordering the killings of two union leaders at a coal mine owned by Drummond Co. Inc., an Alabama company being tried in a U.S. court for alleged complicity in the deaths.

Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, better known as "Jorge 40," is accused of ordering hit men to kill the two men, the federal prosecutor's office said in a statement Thursday.

Former Colombian federal intelligence official Rafael Garcia has said he witnessed the president of Drummond's Colombian subsidiary deliver a briefcase full of money to paramilitaries led by Tovar to pay for the killings.

Drummond officials deny any involvement in the killings or ties to the far-right militias, and the Birmingham, Alabama-based company is not facing criminal charges in Colombia, though the investigation is continuing.

A trial of Drummond for alleged involvement in the killings of Victor Orcosia and Valmore Locarno and a third worker is set to begin July 9 in a U.S. federal court in Birmingham.

I hope this company is tried for aiding terrorists because that's exactly what they are doing.

In 2004, a rift opened up between the members of the AUC and all the leaders who opposed the AUCs disturbingly close ties to narcotraffickers were assassinated.

Paramilitary leader Carlos Mauricio Garcia alias "Doble Cero" or "Rodrigo", who since the 1980s had been a close associate of Castaño within the AUC, was found dead on May 30, 2004. He had strongly objected to what he considered an improperly close relationship between the AUC and drug traffickers, and was also opposed to the group's talks with the government. "Double Zero" had fallen into disgrace in recent years, leading to the formation of his own independent "Bloque Metro", which operated in the Antioquia area until it was exterminated by rival paramilitary commanders from the AUC mainstream.

Separately, in events which remain clouded and confusing, former AUC supreme leader Carlos Castaño, who had become relatively isolated from the organization, apparently suffered an attempt on his life on April 16, 2004, presumably at the hands of either his own bodyguards, those of rival paramilitary troops, or perhaps even other entities altogether. Acting AUC commanders claim to believe that there was an accidental exchange of gunfire between his bodyguards and a separate group of paramilitary fighters, but that he may still be alive and possibly in hiding.

Other independent sources within the group and among its dissident factions claim that he and his men were captured and tortured before being executed and then buried by order of other AUC top leaders, who have become increasingly close to narcotraffickers and their trade. Colombian investigators found a makeshift grave and an unidentified body near the supposed area of the events. Those same sources allege that the bodies of Castaño and his other companions were dug up and taken to other locations before the investigators could arrive.

This comes to no surprise to me, seeing as many of the drug czars of South America are on the Army payroll for intelligence reasons. More than likely it was US money that was used to kill the few remaining members of the AUC opposed to narcotrafficking. Indeed, CATO offers us this:

Washington has placed great confidence in the willingness of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to wage a vigorous war on drugs. But a 1991 assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that Uribe was in league with drug trafficking organizations. Indeed, the DIA concluded that Uribe himself was one of the top 100 drug traffickers.

Bush is a hypocrite for giving tons of money to a country whose right wing terrorists are heavily intertwined with the former drug czar Uribe’s ruling party.

Corpse bubbles are fine art! I take it people don’t catch these on their tongues like snowflakes! (Contact gallery for price.)