"The Cookie Monster" by Vernor Vinge is an online short story that's up for a Hugo award. I had to read it, thought it kept me up late. Vinge is one of the smartest and deepest thinkers I know of.
There's an insider aside in the story. One of his characters recites a list of some of the most interesting "simulation" science fiction -- stories that explore the absurd and ridiculous idea that entities just like us would be living in a simulation (the Matrix popularized this theme.) Typically these simulations have odd properties that give them away -- such as a universe that's empty except for single sentient species.
That led me to think of a variant theme. In this theme the protagonists is reviewing data indicating not only a rising incidence of autism, but also increasingly stupid political leaders that are being consistently reelected -- irregardless of performance. She (of course) plots the data against population and notices a disturbing trend -- average world IQ is becoming inversely correlated to population. It's as though aggregate global sentience were limited by the processing capacity of a single incomprehensibly powerful computer, and population growth had run up against the limits of the machine. She begins to discover domains where contrained processing capability is causing the simulation to break down. Either population will crash or the simulation will end. Which will it be? As she begins to communicate her fears she disappears from the (short) story.
Science fiction is harmless fun, even though it's prone to silliness.
Thursday, May 13, 2004
Wednesday, May 12, 2004
The corporation as psychopath
Economist.com | Face value
My Canopy Economics post connects with this. Corporations do behave like entities with their own self interestes. So do bureaucracies and other bounded collections of interacting humans. Understanding the relationships & interactions between these "meta-entities" is key to understanding Canopy Economics. (Shades of psychohistory! :-).
The Economist article is actually pretty weak in a fashion that's increasingly common in that once formidable publication. After conceding that the thesis of "corporation as psychopath" is surprisingly persuasive, the article concludes with a sniffy dismissal of the idea because "state bureaucracies are worse". The two statements are, of course, not mutually exclusive -- but the editor couldn't allow the article to conclude -- "corporations are psychopathic, but we don't know of a better alternative". Alas, the Economist is now what it once was.
Update 10/2/2010: The Economist review is now inaccessible, but it's reprinted here and I've copied it below. The 2004 book is still available on Amazon.
Unlike much of the soggy thinking peddled by too many anti-globalisers, “The Corporation” is a surprisingly rational and coherent attack on capitalism's most important institution...
My Canopy Economics post connects with this. Corporations do behave like entities with their own self interestes. So do bureaucracies and other bounded collections of interacting humans. Understanding the relationships & interactions between these "meta-entities" is key to understanding Canopy Economics. (Shades of psychohistory! :-).
The Economist article is actually pretty weak in a fashion that's increasingly common in that once formidable publication. After conceding that the thesis of "corporation as psychopath" is surprisingly persuasive, the article concludes with a sniffy dismissal of the idea because "state bureaucracies are worse". The two statements are, of course, not mutually exclusive -- but the editor couldn't allow the article to conclude -- "corporations are psychopathic, but we don't know of a better alternative". Alas, the Economist is now what it once was.
Update 10/2/2010: The Economist review is now inaccessible, but it's reprinted here and I've copied it below. The 2004 book is still available on Amazon.
To the anti-globalisers, the corporation is a devilish instrument of environmental destruction, class oppression and imperial conquest. But is it also pathologically insane? That is the provocative conclusion of an award-winning documentary film, called "The Corporation", coming soon to a cinema near you. People on both sides of the globalisation debate should pay attention. Unlike much of the soggy thinking peddled by too many anti-globalisers, "The Corporation" is a surprisingly rational and coherent attack on capitalism's most important institution.
It begins with a potted history of the company's legal form in America, noting the key 19th-century legal innovation that led to treating companies as persons under law. By bestowing on them the rights and protections that people enjoy, this legal innovation gave the company the freedom to flourish. So if the corporation is a person, ask the film's three Canadian co-creators, Mark Achbar, Joel Bakan and Jennifer Abbott, what sort of person is it?
The answer, elicited over two-and-a-half hours of interviews with left-wing intellectuals, right-wing captains of industry, economists, psychologists and philosophers, is that the corporation is a psychopath. Like all psychopaths, the firm is singularly self-interested: its purpose is to create wealth for its shareholders. And, like all psychopaths, the firm is irresponsible, because it puts others at risk to satisfy its profit-maximising goal, harming employees and customers, and damaging the environment. The corporation manipulates everything. It is grandiose, always insisting that it is the best, or number one. It has no empathy, refuses to accept responsibility for its actions and feels no remorse. It relates to others only superficially, via make-believe versions of itself manufactured by public-relations consultants and marketing men. In short, if the metaphor of the firm as person is a valid one, then the corporation is clinically insane.
There is a tendency among anti-globalisers to demonise captains of industry. But according to "The Corporation", the problem with companies does not lie with the people who run them. Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, a former boss of Shell, comes across in the film as a sympathetic and human character. At one point, he and his wife greet protesters camped on the front lawn of their English cottage with offers of a cup of tea and apologies for the lack of soya milk for the vegans among them. The film gives Sam Gibara, boss of Goodyear, time to air his opinions, which are given a reasonably neutral edit. Ray Anderson, boss of Interface (which claims, with psychopathic grandiosity, to be the world's largest commercial carpetmaker) is given the hero treatment. Having experienced an "epiphany" about the destructive and unsustainable nature of modern capitalism, Mr Anderson has donned the preacher's cloth to spread the religion of environmental sustainability among his peers.
The main message of the film is that, through their psychopathic pursuit of profit, firms make good people do bad things. Lucy Hughes of Initiative Media, an advertising consultancy, is shown musing about the ethics of designing marketing strategies that exploit the tendency of children to nag parents to buy things, before comforting herself with the thought that she is merely performing her proper role in society. Mark Barry, a "competitive intelligence professional", disguises himself as a headhunter to extract information for his corporate clients from rivals, while telling the camera that he would never behave so deceitfully in his private life. Human values and morality survive the onslaught of corporate pathology only via a carefully cultivated schizophrenia: the tobacco boss goes home, hugs his kids and feels a little less bad about spreading cancer. Company executives and foot soldiers alike will identify instantly with this analysis, because it is accurate. But it is also incomplete.
The greater insanity
Although the moviemakers claim ownership of the company-as-psychopath idea, it predates them by a century, and rightfully belongs, in its full form, to Max Weber, the German sociologist. For Weber, the key form of social organisation defining the modern age was bureaucracy. Bureaucracies have flourished because their efficient and rational division and application of labour is powerful. But a cost attends this power. As cogs in a larger, purposeful machine, people become alienated from the traditional morals that guide human relationships as they pursue the goal of the collective organisation. There is, in Weber's famous phrase, a "parcelling-out of the soul".
For Weber, the greater potential tyranny lay not with the economic bureaucracies of capitalism, but the state bureaucracies of socialism. The psychopathic national socialism of Nazi Germany, communism of Stalinist Soviet rule and fascism of imperial Japan (whose oppressive bureaucratic machinery has survived well into the modern era) surely bear Weber out. Infinitely more powerful than firms and far less accountable for its actions, the modern state has the capacity to behave even in evolved western democracies as a more dangerous psychopath than any corporation can ever hope to become: witness the environmental destruction wreaked by Japan's construction ministry.
The makers of "The Corporation" counter that the state was not the subject of their film. Fair point. But they have done more than produce a thought-provoking account of the firm. Their film also invites its audience to weigh up the benefits of privatisation versus public ownership. It dwells on the familiar problem of the corporate corruption of politics and regulatory agencies that weakens public oversight of privately owned firms charged with delivering public goods. But that is only half the story. The film has nothing to say about the immense damage that can also flow from state ownership. Instead, there is a misty-eyed alignment of the state with the public interest. Run that one past the people of, say, North Korea.
Tuesday, May 11, 2004
The Washington Post digs deep into the CIA and military prisoner facilities.
Secret World of U.S. Interrogation (washingtonpost.com)
I still expect that most of this will be tragically forgotten, but the Washington Post is doing a great job of journalism. They may be compensating for neglecting to cover the early story.
The connection between these practices, and abuses that are common in American jails, has not yet been fully drawn.
All told, more than 9,000 people are held by U.S. authorities overseas, according to Pentagon figures and estimates by intelligence experts, the vast majority under military control. The detainees have no conventional legal rights: no access to a lawyer; no chance for an impartial hearing; and, at least in the case of prisoners held in cellblock 1A at Abu Ghraib, no apparent guarantee of humane treatment accorded prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions or civilians in U.S. jails.
Although some of those held by the military in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo have had visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross, some of the CIA's detainees have, in effect, disappeared, according to interviews with former and current national security officials and to the Army's report of abuses at Abu Ghraib.
The CIA's "ghost detainees," as they were called by members of the 800th MP Brigade, were routinely held by the soldier-guards at Abu Ghraib "without accounting for them, knowing their identities, or even the reason for their detention," the report says. These phantom captives were "moved around within the facility to hide them" from Red Cross teams, a tactic that was "deceptive, contrary to Army doctrine, and in violation of international law."
CIA employees are under investigation by the Justice Department and the CIA inspector general's office in connection with the death of three captives in the past six months, two who died while under interrogation in Iraq, and a third who was being questioned by a CIA contract interrogator in Afghanistan. A CIA spokesman said the hiding of detainees was inappropriate. He declined to comment further.
I still expect that most of this will be tragically forgotten, but the Washington Post is doing a great job of journalism. They may be compensating for neglecting to cover the early story.
The connection between these practices, and abuses that are common in American jails, has not yet been fully drawn.
Sunday, May 09, 2004
Al Ghraib: There are heroes still ...
Soldiers' warnings ignore
These men are my heroes. Their peers are a select breed -- far more selective than the Delta Force. They will not receive honors or decorations in earth, save in the memory of historians. Throughout history there have been men and women, perhaps 1 in a thousand, who choose honor in the face of great pressure.
They speak up, while others remain silent. There were "bad apples" at Al Ghraib, but there was a lot of rot around them. Rot that extends to the very top.
By Todd Richissin, Baltimore Sun Foreign Staff
May 9, 2004
WIESBADEN, Germany - The two military intelligence soldiers, assigned interrogation duties at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, were young, relatively new to the Army and had only one day of training on how to pry information from high-value prisoners.
But almost immediately on their arrival in Iraq, say the two members of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, they recognized that what was happening around them was wrong, morally and legally.
They said in interviews Friday and yesterday that the abuses were not caused by a handful of rogue soldiers poorly supervised and lacking morals but resulted from failures that went beyond the low-ranking military police charged with abuse.
The beatings, the two soldiers said, were meted out with the full knowledge of intelligence interrogators, who let military police know which prisoners were cooperating with them and which were not.
"I was told, 'Don't worry about it - they probably deserved it,'" one of the soldiers said in an interview, referring to complaints he made while trying to persuade the Army to investigate. "I was appalled."
The two soldiers are the first from a military intelligence unit known to speak publicly about what happened at Abu Ghraib, and they are the first from such a unit to contend publicly that some interrogators were complicit in the abuses. The soldiers stressed that not all interrogators were involved.
The soldiers were interviewed together Friday in person and then separately yesterday by telephone. They said they had alerted superiors at Abu Ghraib and the Army's Criminal Investigations Division by November or early December of prisoners being beaten, stripped naked and paraded in front of other inmates.
Parts of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade were in Iraq from the start of the war, handling such duties as signal interceptions and identifying targets to be bombed. Only after the war did some members of the brigade end up as interrogators at Abu Ghraib.
What the soldiers spoke of, they know first-hand. They were inside the cramped wooden booths at the prison while Iraqis were interrogated, and they lived at the prison last fall and winter, when the worst abuses are thought to have occurred.
Their description of the prison and of the circumstances that helped it get that way indicate that troops stationed at Abu Ghraib were severely undertrained and were pressed into highly sensitive duties for which they had never prepared. Contributing to the problems at the prison, in their view, was the lack of soldiers to keep order and manage prisoners.
"We would see prisoners who had been sitting for months without being interrogated," one of the soldiers said. "We just didn't have anybody who could get to them, to get them out of there."
"There was like a big disconnect at every level," said the other. "Guys were given jobs they had never done, contractors [working as interrogators] are in there acting like they're in the movies. The whole operation was like a chicken with its head cut off."
The soldiers spoke on the condition that they not be identified because of concern that their military careers would be ruined, and because their unit was given a written directive not to speak to the press.
The Department of the Army at the Pentagon referred requests for comment on the military intelligence unit to Central Command in Baghdad. A person who answered the telephone there said nobody was available to comment.
"Everybody knew what was going on, but when we complained, we were ignored," said one of the soldiers. "We knew some [military police] were getting some blame, but what we were complaining about went way beyond them."
"We weren't at the other holding areas, so I don't want to say for sure the same thing was going on at them," said the other soldier, both of whom are in their 20s. "But it was going on there. The guys doing the interrogating, the MPs, they were all the same guys, going one place to the other. We were the standard on how to treat the prisoners."
The two soldiers hold the relatively low rank of specialist, which is more a reflection of their time in the Army - less than three years.
Though they entered Iraq with no training in interrogation, they were assigned to extract information from prisoners considered of high intelligence value - ranking Baath Party members and suspected insurgents, for example - and report on their findings.
They had access to prisoner files, they said, and interviewed several Iraqis who claimed they had been beaten by military police after being told by intelligence interrogators that they would be punished for their lack of cooperation.
"There would be the handoff from MI [Military Intelligence] to the MPs, and the word would be, 'Here you go, here's one who's not cooperating,'" one of the soldiers said. "Then - What do you know? - that prisoner ends up beaten or paraded around naked."...
"I have an obligation to the Army, and I have an obligation to follow my orders," one of the soldiers said. "I also have an obligation to be a decent person and do what's right and to do what I can to get the truth out."
The soldiers interviewed estimate that about 3,000 Iraqis were held by the U.S. military at Abu Ghraib prison, the most notorious of Saddam Hussein's torture facilities.
In the days after the fall of Baghdad, the prison was accessible to anybody, and former prisoners of the deposed regime visited their old cells, walked through the execution chamber where two nooses still dangled above open trapdoors.
Then the Army took over the facility, in part because soldiers had nowhere else to detain hundreds of looters being arrested on the streets.
The Iraqi prisoners were divided into two main categories: common criminals and "MI Hold," military shorthand for those designated as potential sources of intelligence information.
The MI Hold section, where it is believed many of the naked and abused Iraqis were photographed, was subdivided into two camps, Camp Vigilant and Isolation.
Procedure dictated that prisoners in MI Hold had to be interrogated at least three times before being released, though the soldiers interviewed for this article said they quickly determined that at least 25 percent of those locked in this section had done nothing wrong and even fewer were of any intelligence value.
For months, though, prisoners languished, contributing to unrest at Abu Ghraib, which led to riots and the killing of several Iraqis by the Army.
"Some of these guys didn't even have paperwork or files for me to read before I could get them in the [interrogation] booth," one of the soldiers said. "I'm sorry if it sounds mean, but I wasn't there to do humanitarian work, so I wasn't going to take someone in just so I could get him released. There were other prisoners we thought had information that would help us save lives, so they were our priority. Those were the guys we took in the booth."
About 800 Iraqis were in the section the two soldiers were assigned to. To interview all of those prisoners, only about 20 two-person teams of interrogators - called "Tiger Teams" - were available, and they had access to even fewer interpreters.
Interrogations typically lasted three hours, often more, which led to the backup of prisoners.
"We were working 12-hour days, sometimes more, six days a week - and then catching up on the seventh day," one of the soldiers said. "It's not like we weren't working. We just didn't have enough guys."
As described by the soldiers, military intelligence was under enormous pressure to get "actionable intelligence" during this time. The soldiers were working from two lists of tactics to get Iraqis to talk.
The "A" list included directly asking for information as well as relatively mild interrogation techniques, such as becoming angry with the prisoner or threatening to withhold meals - but not actually doing so. The interrogators were free to use these techniques at their will.
The "B" list included harsher techniques, such as sleep deprivation and withholding meals.
These techniques were considered acceptable, but because they were also considered close to the line of abuse, the interrogators could not use them without permission from their commanding officer, Col. Thomas Pappas, or his designate.
Around November, with casualties among U.S. troops rising, Saddam Hussein still in hiding and solid intelligence becoming more urgent, Pappas issued an order that broadened acceptable interrogation methods.
"I think he was referring to any techniques on the A and B lists," the soldier said. "But there was kind of the third list, the unofficial list. Guys called that the 'made-up list.'"
'Wild, wild west'
The made-up list spawned a couple of other terms, the soldiers said: "going cowboy" and "wild, wild west."
"I don't know where they got this from, but the MPs would say it all the time," one of the soldiers said. "MI would drop off a guy who wasn't talking, and the MP would say, 'So looks like I'll be going cowboy on him' or 'Looks like he needs some wild, wild west.'"
The terms meant beatings, they said, and the military intelligence interrogators and private contractors did nothing to discourage them.
They do not believe, the soldiers said, that Pappas realized the extent of the abuses. A Pentagon source last week said that Pappas had received a severe letter of reprimand, which will most likely end his career. The letter was a result of an investigation by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba.
Pappas did not return several phone messages and an e-mail seeking comment.
The soldiers said they had nothing against the colonel and, in fact, that they feel sorry for him. Pappas, they said, was rarely seen in the prison; however, through orders by the American ground command, headed by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, he was assigned responsibility for Abu Ghraib.
"We never saw him," one of the soldiers said. "He ate, worked and slept in one room. So it's like nobody's in charge, but these guys didn't need someone in charge to tell them not to do the things they were doing."
Many of the military intelligence interrogators were paired with private contractors from CACI International and with linguists from Titan Inc. The soldiers said most of those employees seemed to operate with autonomy, seemingly answerable to nobody in the command.
"They would say it right out, that 'we don't answer to you,'" one of the soldiers said. The Taguba report recommended that two of the contractors employed by CACI be dismissed.
Yet another investigation by the Army, at least the fourth involving the abuses at Abu Ghraib, is now under way. It is being conducted by Maj. Gen George Fay, who is in Iraq interviewing some of those involved.
He is expected in Wiesbaden within the next couple of weeks.
"Here's my point," one of the soldiers said. "All this that's going on? All these pictures all over the place, the whole world hating even more the United States? If two specialists could see how serious it was, how come nobody else could?"
These men are my heroes. Their peers are a select breed -- far more selective than the Delta Force. They will not receive honors or decorations in earth, save in the memory of historians. Throughout history there have been men and women, perhaps 1 in a thousand, who choose honor in the face of great pressure.
They speak up, while others remain silent. There were "bad apples" at Al Ghraib, but there was a lot of rot around them. Rot that extends to the very top.
Lurching towards wisdom: neurodiversity and the morality of abnormality
The New York Times > Week in Review > Neurodiversity Forever: The Disability Movement Turns to Brains
Although the text of this article is reasonably respectful, there's scornfulness in the titles, subtitles, and surrounding text. That's not surprising. This logic leads to some directions that will be challenging for most of humanity.
In the 1970s, if not earlier, psychiatrists, noting how common "neuroses" were, introduced the idea that perhaps "normal" was a statistical concept (which it is) rather than a categorization. Now we're studying neurophysiology and rediscovering the same idea.
It will take some time for this meme to propagate. Once upon a time Leprosy was a "moral diagnosis" -- the physical expression of depravity. In a just universe only the evil could be so accursed; the alternative was the acceptance of the universe as fundamentally "unjust" -- not a palatable prospect. In the 20th century we struggled to reframe schizophrenia as a disorder rather than a sin. In the 21st century will we one day see sociopaths and pedophiles as disabled?
Physicians, especially internists, who've grown up with the idea of critical diagnostic categories, will have a hard time getting their heads around a continuum of traits with variable degrees of adaptive advantage. This article falls into a similar trap by using the language of "disability". In truth disability is only meaningful in relation to environment. A blind person is disabled in the light, but may be more than able in darkness (relative to most sighted persons). A bit of autism may be a competitive advantage for an electrical engineer. Many writers are easily distracted, flitting from idea to idea. Schizophrenia is probably maladaptive in any conceivable environment, but I suspect the related genes are adaptive in some settings (Shamans and Saints?).
Some readers will intuitively recognize a slippery slope. The more we connect genetics and physiology to behavior, the more we struggle to redefine the closely related concepts of "free will" and "responsibility", and the more we would question our approaches to child rearing, "justice", and punishment. There are already some of us who think "responsibility", like "race", is a social rather than fundamental construction.
Alternatively, if one believes in souls, such research bounds or constrains that which is explained outside the soul; it narrows the range of unique "soulhood".
On the other hand, wisdom is perhaps the art of knowing oneself truly, and then applying one's strengths, friends, family and community to balancing internal weaknesses with internal and external strengths. Those of us who are prone to distraction learn to "work the plan" and "plan the day", we keep task lists and review tactics and strategies. Those who focus relentlessly keep few lists, but ought to set aside time to force exploration of new domains -- less they grow stale and dull.
Lastly, I have long felt that the human brain is a rather feeble construct; a patchwork of hacks and artifacts that barely sustains a shoddy sort of consciousness. If we begin to tweak the hacks, to refactor the cruftiest code, we may produce a qualitatively different entity.
Although the text of this article is reasonably respectful, there's scornfulness in the titles, subtitles, and surrounding text. That's not surprising. This logic leads to some directions that will be challenging for most of humanity.
NEURODIVERSITY FOREVER
The Disability Movement Turns to Brains
By AMY HARMON
No sooner was Peter Alan Harper, 53, given the diagnosis of attention deficit disorder last year than some of his family members began rolling their eyes.
To him, the diagnosis explained the sense of disorganization that caused him to lose track of projects and kept him from completing even minor personal chores like reading his mail. But to others, said Mr. Harper, a retired journalist in Manhattan, it seems like one more excuse for his inability to "take care of business."...
But in a new kind of disabilities movement, many of those who deviate from the shrinking subset of neurologically "normal" want tolerance, not just of their diagnoses, but of their behavioral quirks. They say brain differences, like body differences, should be embraced, and argue for an acceptance of "neurodiversity."
And as psychiatrists and neurologists uncover an ever-wider variety of brain wiring, the norm, many agree, may increasingly be deviance.
... Science is beginning to clear up such questions, said Dr. Antonio Damasio, a neurologist at the University of Iowa Medical Center, by identifying distinct brain patterns and connecting them to behavior. But, he added, only society can decide whether to accommodate the differences.
"What all of our efforts in neuroscience are demonstrating is that you have many peculiar ways of arranging a human brain and there are all sorts of varieties of creative, successful human beings," Dr. Damasio said. "For a while it is going to be a rather relentless process as there are more and more discoveries of people that have something that could be called a defect and yet have immense talents in one way or another."
For example, when adults with A.D.D. look at the word "yellow" written in blue and are asked what the color is and then what the word is, they use an entirely different part of the brain than a normal adult. And when people with Asperger's look at faces, they use a part of the brain typically engaged when looking at objects.
... For patients, being given a name and a biological basis for their difficulties represents a shift from a "moral diagnosis" that centers on shame, to a medical one, said Dr. Ratey, who is the author of "Shadow Syndromes," which argues that virtually all people have brain differences they need to be aware of to help guide them through life...
In the 1970s, if not earlier, psychiatrists, noting how common "neuroses" were, introduced the idea that perhaps "normal" was a statistical concept (which it is) rather than a categorization. Now we're studying neurophysiology and rediscovering the same idea.
It will take some time for this meme to propagate. Once upon a time Leprosy was a "moral diagnosis" -- the physical expression of depravity. In a just universe only the evil could be so accursed; the alternative was the acceptance of the universe as fundamentally "unjust" -- not a palatable prospect. In the 20th century we struggled to reframe schizophrenia as a disorder rather than a sin. In the 21st century will we one day see sociopaths and pedophiles as disabled?
Physicians, especially internists, who've grown up with the idea of critical diagnostic categories, will have a hard time getting their heads around a continuum of traits with variable degrees of adaptive advantage. This article falls into a similar trap by using the language of "disability". In truth disability is only meaningful in relation to environment. A blind person is disabled in the light, but may be more than able in darkness (relative to most sighted persons). A bit of autism may be a competitive advantage for an electrical engineer. Many writers are easily distracted, flitting from idea to idea. Schizophrenia is probably maladaptive in any conceivable environment, but I suspect the related genes are adaptive in some settings (Shamans and Saints?).
Some readers will intuitively recognize a slippery slope. The more we connect genetics and physiology to behavior, the more we struggle to redefine the closely related concepts of "free will" and "responsibility", and the more we would question our approaches to child rearing, "justice", and punishment. There are already some of us who think "responsibility", like "race", is a social rather than fundamental construction.
Alternatively, if one believes in souls, such research bounds or constrains that which is explained outside the soul; it narrows the range of unique "soulhood".
On the other hand, wisdom is perhaps the art of knowing oneself truly, and then applying one's strengths, friends, family and community to balancing internal weaknesses with internal and external strengths. Those of us who are prone to distraction learn to "work the plan" and "plan the day", we keep task lists and review tactics and strategies. Those who focus relentlessly keep few lists, but ought to set aside time to force exploration of new domains -- less they grow stale and dull.
Lastly, I have long felt that the human brain is a rather feeble construct; a patchwork of hacks and artifacts that barely sustains a shoddy sort of consciousness. If we begin to tweak the hacks, to refactor the cruftiest code, we may produce a qualitatively different entity.
Now this may make Rove worry ...
Dissension Grows In Senior Ranks On War Strategy (washingtonpost.com)
Karl Rove isn't worried about the Iraqi POW scandal; he can tell from monitoring right wing radio and listening to the sweet sounds of fundagelical silence (fundamentalists always excel at hypocrisy) that Bush's reelection is on track. They won't even have to dump Rumsfeld before term 2.
On the other hand, murmurings from the military are worrisome. If Kerry could leverage that theme he'd be attacking "the base".
'I lost my brother in Vietnam,' added Hughes, a veteran Army strategist who is involved in formulating Iraq policy. 'I promised myself, when I came on active duty, that I would do everything in my power to prevent that [sort of strategic loss] from happening again. Here I am, 30 years later, thinking we will win every fight and lose the war, because we don't understand the war we're in.'
Karl Rove isn't worried about the Iraqi POW scandal; he can tell from monitoring right wing radio and listening to the sweet sounds of fundagelical silence (fundamentalists always excel at hypocrisy) that Bush's reelection is on track. They won't even have to dump Rumsfeld before term 2.
On the other hand, murmurings from the military are worrisome. If Kerry could leverage that theme he'd be attacking "the base".
Saturday, May 08, 2004
The Nine Ways of Being an Accessory to Another’s Sin.
Words Fail: Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal
This comes from DeLong, but Google tells me it's part of quite old Catholic doctrine.
See also my post on the two "specialists" who spoke to the Baltimore Sun. They have chosen honor.
This comes from DeLong, but Google tells me it's part of quite old Catholic doctrine.
The Nine Ways of Being an Accessory to Another’s Sin.
1. By counsel.
2. By command.
3. By consent.
4. By provocation.
5. By praise or flattery.
6. By concealment.
7. By partaking.
8. By silence.
9. By defense of the ill done.
See also my post on the two "specialists" who spoke to the Baltimore Sun. They have chosen honor.
Friday, May 07, 2004
Bush - the analysis
The Misunderestimated Man - How Bush chose stupidity. By Jacob Weisberg at Slate
But he's the people's fool. Bush reminds me somewhat of Andrew Jackson in his psychology and temperament.
As the president says, we misunderestimate him. He was not born stupid. He chose stupidity. Bush may look like a well-meaning dolt. On consideration, he's something far more dangerous: a dedicated fool.
But he's the people's fool. Bush reminds me somewhat of Andrew Jackson in his psychology and temperament.
Send a "Care Package" to any soldier
Any Soldier ... AnySoldier.US ... www.AnySoldier.US ... Care Packages
I've read some good reviews of this effort.
I've read some good reviews of this effort.
The rats are a jumpin'
The Washington Monthly
Lovely round-up! Guess who gets the Donkey's tail? Rumsfeld. Not that he doesn't deserve it.
None of this would have happened absent photos and videos, and the photos wouldn't have become so widely distributed absent digital cameras. Digital images are easy to replicate and distribute; it was the wide distribution of the visuals that made exposure inevitable. Rumsfeld, Myers et al knew roughly what was happening across the system, though Al Ghraib sounds like it was extreme even by their standards. They figured they could keep it quiet -- until the photos appeared. Look for solders to be forbidden to carry digital cameras.
Shades of Rodney King. Humans are so irrational - most of us respond to images in a completely different way than we respond to words and concepts.
BROKEN PROCESS OR OFFICIAL POLICY?....Apparently everyone's been trying to warn Bush and Rumsfeld about possible abuse of prisoners in Iraq for months now. And not just the usual bleeding hearts:
* David Kay: "I was there and I kept saying the interrogation process is broken. The prison process is broken. And no one wanted to deal with it. It was too, too distasteful. This is a known problem, and the military refuses to deal with it."
* Paul Bremer: "Bremer repeatedly raised the issue of prison conditions as early as last fall — both in one-on-one meetings with Rumsfeld and other administration leaders, and in group meetings with the president's inner circle on national security. Officials described Bremer as 'kicking and screaming' about the need to release thousands of uncharged prisoners and improve conditions for those who remained."
* Colin Powell: "According to eye witnesses to debate at the highest levels of the Administration...whenever Powell or [Richard] Armitage sought to question prisoner treatment issues, they were forced to endure what our source characterizes as 'around the table, coarse, vulgar, frat-boy bully remarks about what these tough guys would do if THEY ever got their hands on prisoners....'"
Well, maybe these folks really did try to get everyone to pay attention to this issue or maybe they're just covering their own asses after the fact. Who knows?
Lovely round-up! Guess who gets the Donkey's tail? Rumsfeld. Not that he doesn't deserve it.
None of this would have happened absent photos and videos, and the photos wouldn't have become so widely distributed absent digital cameras. Digital images are easy to replicate and distribute; it was the wide distribution of the visuals that made exposure inevitable. Rumsfeld, Myers et al knew roughly what was happening across the system, though Al Ghraib sounds like it was extreme even by their standards. They figured they could keep it quiet -- until the photos appeared. Look for solders to be forbidden to carry digital cameras.
Shades of Rodney King. Humans are so irrational - most of us respond to images in a completely different way than we respond to words and concepts.
A very different take on US reaction to the Abu Ghraib affair
The Daily Telegraph | Good ol' girl who enjoyed cruelty
Graner is the alleged ring leader. The article mentions also widespread alchohol abuse among the guards. This is so different from the NYT coverage of Appalachian reaction one wonders which journalist went there and which covered the story by phone.
As the initial shock wears off look for the apologist response to fit into one of these categories:
1. It was no worse than college hazing. Bunch of whimps. It's a tough world ...
2. It's a tough world ... you gotta play tough.
3. Just following orders ...
I'm mostly curious about how this plays with the evangelical wing of the Republican party. It will be their response that determines whether Rumsfeld goes or stays. I'm betting they decide to look the other way. Hypocrisy is a well developed art among fundamentalists of all stripes.
In Fort Ashby, in the isolated Appalachian mountains 260km west of Washington, the poor, barely-educated and almost all-white population talk openly about an active Ku Klux Klan presence.
There is little understanding of the issues in Iraq and less of why photographs showing soldiers from the 372nd Military Police Company, mostly from around Fort Ashby, abusing prisoners has caused a furore....
Like many, England signed up to make money and see the world. After her tour of duty, she planned to settle down and marry her first love, Charles Graner.
Down a dirt track at the edge of town, in the trailer where England grew up, her mother Terrie dismissed the allegations against her daughter as unfair.
"They were just doing stupid kid things, pranks. And what the Iraqis do to our men and women are just? The rules of the Geneva Convention, do they apply to everybody or just us?" she asked.
Graner is the alleged ring leader. The article mentions also widespread alchohol abuse among the guards. This is so different from the NYT coverage of Appalachian reaction one wonders which journalist went there and which covered the story by phone.
As the initial shock wears off look for the apologist response to fit into one of these categories:
1. It was no worse than college hazing. Bunch of whimps. It's a tough world ...
2. It's a tough world ... you gotta play tough.
3. Just following orders ...
I'm mostly curious about how this plays with the evangelical wing of the Republican party. It will be their response that determines whether Rumsfeld goes or stays. I'm betting they decide to look the other way. Hypocrisy is a well developed art among fundamentalists of all stripes.
Thursday, May 06, 2004
Graner -- the solder from hell
The New York Times > National > The Prison Guards: Abuse Charges Bring Anguish in Unit's Home
At least one of the Iraqi victims knew him as "Joiner".
It is early in the investigation and the trials, but it is very likely that Graner was the wrong man to guard prisoners anywhere. A full investigation will focus on how he was accepted into the National Guard and why he wasn't stopped sooner.
As I'd noted earlier, any idiot could write a play about this -- but that won't be the end of it. This thing has legs. Americans are perfectly capable of forgetting tragedies of all sorts (anyone recall that Afghan wedding bombing?), and of overlooking crimes and atrocities, but this business has sex, degradation, violence, passion and pornography. Americans can't possibly give that up. The affair will be mined by Hollywood, playrights, magazines and the entertainment industry for years to come. Everyone involved will become a celebrity of one sort or another, including any Iraqi victims willing to appear on Oprah.
I guess that's better than ignoring the affair. No wonder Bush is furious with Rumsfeld. Bush probably won't fire Rumsfeld (Bush is too ornery to do that now), but he'll retire him come November.
May 5 — Specialist Charles A. Graner Jr. is a guard at one of Pennsylvania's most heavily secured death row prisons, accused by his former wife of violent behavior....
... Six soldiers from the 372nd, a reserve unit out of Cumberland, are expected to face courts-martial, including Specialist Graner and Sergeant Frederick.
... An internal Army report made public this week described Specialist Graner, 35, as supervising some of the abusive behavior. He also appears in several photographs, including one in which he stands with arms folded over a pile of naked Iraqi men.
Specialist Graner, who wears a Marine Corps eagle tattoo on his right arm, served in the corps from April 1988 until May 1996, when he left with the rank of corporal, according to military records. He went to work immediately at the State Correctional Institution Greene, in southwestern Pennsylvania, where he has held an entry-level corrections officer position ever since.
Two years after he arrived at Greene, the prison was at the center of an abuse scandal. Prison officials declined to say whether Specialist Graner had been disciplined in that case, citing privacy laws.
Inmates and advocates for prisoner rights asserted in 1998 that guards at the prison routinely beat and humiliated prisoners, including through a sadistic game of Simon Says in which guards struck prisoners who failed to comply with barked instructions.
After an investigation, the warden was transferred, two lieutenants were fired and about two dozen guards were reprimanded, demoted or suspended.
Specialist Graner was involved in a bitter divorce. In court papers, his wife, Staci, accused him of beating her, threatening her with guns, stalking her after they separated in 1997 and breaking into her home. Since 1997, local judges have issued at least three orders of protection against him, records show.
At least one of the Iraqi victims knew him as "Joiner".
It is early in the investigation and the trials, but it is very likely that Graner was the wrong man to guard prisoners anywhere. A full investigation will focus on how he was accepted into the National Guard and why he wasn't stopped sooner.
As I'd noted earlier, any idiot could write a play about this -- but that won't be the end of it. This thing has legs. Americans are perfectly capable of forgetting tragedies of all sorts (anyone recall that Afghan wedding bombing?), and of overlooking crimes and atrocities, but this business has sex, degradation, violence, passion and pornography. Americans can't possibly give that up. The affair will be mined by Hollywood, playrights, magazines and the entertainment industry for years to come. Everyone involved will become a celebrity of one sort or another, including any Iraqi victims willing to appear on Oprah.
I guess that's better than ignoring the affair. No wonder Bush is furious with Rumsfeld. Bush probably won't fire Rumsfeld (Bush is too ornery to do that now), but he'll retire him come November.
Wednesday, May 05, 2004
The WSJ: an ethics problem of a different order
The Washington Monthly
Read the article, it's a great story. USA Today and the NYT have been wracked by journalism scandals. WSJ hasn't been. Maybe that's because what's scandalous at the NYT and USA Today is just normal behavior at the WSJ.
Read the article, it's a great story. USA Today and the NYT have been wracked by journalism scandals. WSJ hasn't been. Maybe that's because what's scandalous at the NYT and USA Today is just normal behavior at the WSJ.
NYT interviews a key witness in the Abu Ghraib case
The New York Times > International > Middle East > Iraqi Recounts Hours of Abuse by U.S. Troops
His narrative rings true -- particularly the relatively benign course prior to the November episode. I wonder about drug abuse in the US guards. This sounds less like a planned procedure inspired by military intelligence and more like a Fellini movie. Were he to end up in a US court, a jury could make him a (justly) wealthy man.
Mr. Abd, 34, is at the center of an explosive scandal over American mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners, but he remained calm in a detailed, two-hour account of his time at the fearsome Abu Ghraib prison. He claimed that he was never interrogated, and never charged with a crime. Officials at the prison said Tuesday that they could not comment on his case.
In November, when the abuse took place, few Shiite Muslims like Mr. Abd were carrying out attacks against United States forces. Nearly all the attacks were attributed to forces loyal to Saddam Hussein, mostly Sunni Muslims, and fighters from other Muslim countries.
'The truth is we were not terrorists,' he said. 'We were not insurgents. We were just ordinary people. And American intelligence knew this.'
Mr. Abd spoke with no particular anger at the American occupation, though he has seen it closer than most Iraqis. In six months in prisons run by American soldiers, in fact, he said most of them had treated him well and with respect.
'Most of the time, they wouldn't even say, `Shut up,' ' he said.
That changed in November — he does not know the exact date — when punishment for a prisoner fight at Abu Ghraib degenerated into torture. That night, he said, he and six other inmates were beaten, stripped naked (a particularly deep humiliation in the Arab world), forced to pile on top of one another, to straddle one another's backs naked, to simulate oral sex. American guards wrote words like 'rapist' on their skin with Magic Marker, he said...
...He was arrested in June at a military checkpoint, when he tried to leave the taxi he was riding in. He was taken to a detention center at the Baghdad airport, he said, and then transferred to a big military prison in Um Qasr, near the Kuwaiti border. He said he had stayed for three months and four days.
The treatment in Um Qasr, he said, "was very good," adding: "There was no problem. The American guards were nice and good people."
After the three months, he said, he was transferred to Abu Ghraib, a sprawling prison complex 20 miles west of Baghdad, where Mr. Hussein incarcerated and executed thousands of his opponents.
But after the prison fight, the victim pointed out Mr. Abd and six others to American guards, and at that moment, his time in prison turned.
Mr. Abd said he and the other men had been handcuffed and taken inside the prison to a cellblock called "the hard site," reserved for the most dangerous prisoners. There he saw, for the first time, an American soldier called "Joiner or something." (Mr. Abd does not speak English. The man he pointed out in the picture as Joiner has been identified in other reports as Specialist Charles A. Granier, of the 372nd Military Police Company.)
"In my pocket, I had three cigarettes," Mr. Abd said. "Joiner said to me, `Put them in your mouth and smoke all of them. If one falls out of your mouth, I will crush you with my boot.' "
The command came through the translator, an Egyptian known by the prisoners as Abu Hamid. In an area in front of the cells, he said, were "Joiner," the translator and two other male soldiers, one bald and one with reddish hair and complexion. He said there were two women: the one whose name he did not know, and the one with the camera, whom he knew as Miss Maya...
...About 10 days after it started, the nightly abuse ended, for no explained reason. "Joiner" just stopped coming to the cell block, and about a month later, Mr. Abd and two others among the seven were transferred to a civilian Iraqi prison in Baghdad.
Two weeks or so after that, an American military investigator came to visit him. He showed Mr. Abd the pictures and said he needed him to make a statement against the military police who had mistreated him. Mr. Abd trusted him.
"He said, `Don't be afraid. Tell us what happened. We are on your side,' " Mr. Abd remembered. " `Tell us everything they have done.' "
Mr. Abd was released in mid-April. Looking back, the only explanation he can imagine for the mistreatment is that "Joiner" had been drinking.
"Americans did not mistreat me in general," he said. "But these people must be tried."...
...About 10 days after it started, the nightly abuse ended, for no explained reason. "Joiner" just stopped coming to the cell block, and about a month later, Mr. Abd and two others among the seven were transferred to a civilian Iraqi prison in Baghdad.
Two weeks or so after that, an American military investigator came to visit him. He showed Mr. Abd the pictures and said he needed him to make a statement against the military police who had mistreated him. Mr. Abd trusted him.
"He said, `Don't be afraid. Tell us what happened. We are on your side,' " Mr. Abd remembered. " `Tell us everything they have done.' "
Mr. Abd was released in mid-April. Looking back, the only explanation he can imagine for the mistreatment is that "Joiner" had been drinking.
"Americans did not mistreat me in general," he said. "But these people must be tried."About 10 days after it started, the nightly abuse ended, for no explained reason. "Joiner" just stopped coming to the cell block, and about a month later, Mr. Abd and two others among the seven were transferred to a civilian Iraqi prison in Baghdad.
Two weeks or so after that, an American military investigator came to visit him. He showed Mr. Abd the pictures and said he needed him to make a statement against the military police who had mistreated him. Mr. Abd trusted him.
"He said, `Don't be afraid. Tell us what happened. We are on your side,' " Mr. Abd remembered. " `Tell us everything they have done.' "
Mr. Abd was released in mid-April. Looking back, the only explanation he can imagine for the mistreatment is that "Joiner" had been drinking.
"Americans did not mistreat me in general," he said. "But these people must be tried."
...On Tuesday, he said, he would travel, finally, with his family back to his home in Nasiriya, though he said he could not stay. He said he would be too ashamed. He wants the American government to pay compensation. He said he felt he needed to move out of Iraq, and despite it all, he said he would not refuse an offer to move to America.
His narrative rings true -- particularly the relatively benign course prior to the November episode. I wonder about drug abuse in the US guards. This sounds less like a planned procedure inspired by military intelligence and more like a Fellini movie. Were he to end up in a US court, a jury could make him a (justly) wealthy man.
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