War - Weiye Loh on Diigo

Mar

26

2012

Philosophy & Technology, Volume 25, Number 1 - SpringerLink

This paper focuses on Information Warfare—the warfare characterised by the use of information and communication technologies. This is a fast growing phenomenon, which poses a number of issues ranging from the military use of such technologies to its political and ethical implications. The paper presents a conceptual analysis of this phenomenon with the goal of investigating its nature. Such an analysis is deemed to be necessary in order to lay the groundwork for future investigations into this topic, addressing the ethical problems engendered by this kind of warfare. The conceptual analysis is developed in three parts. First, it delineates the relation between Information Warfare and the Information revolution. It then focuses attention on the effects that the diffusion of this phenomenon has on the concepts of war. On the basis of this analysis, a definition of Information Warfare is provided as a phenomenon not necessarily sanguinary and violent, and rather transversal concerning the environment in which it is waged, the way it is waged and the ontological and social status of its agents. The paper concludes by taking into consideration the Just War Theory and the problems arising from its application to the case of Information Warfare.

www.springerlink.com/...8x0q6w3r224624l7

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War Technology Ethics Information New Media Traditional Media

Cyber and Drone Attacks May Change Warfare More Than the Machine Gun - Ross Andersen - Technology - The Atlantic

From state-sponsored cyber attacks to autonomous robotic weapons, twenty-first century war is increasingly disembodied. Our wars are being fought in the ether and by machines. And yet our ethics of war are stuck in the pre-digital age.

We're used to thinking of war as a physical phenomenon, as an outbreak of destructive violence that takes place in the physical world. Bullets fly, bombs explode, tanks roll, people collapse. Despite the tremendous changes in the technology of warfare, it remained a contest of human bodies. But as the drone wars have shown, that's no longer true, at least for one side of the battle.

www.theatlantic.com/...254540

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War Technology Ethics Information New Media Traditional Media

What might the ability to launch casualty-free wars do to the political barriers that stand between peace and conflict? In today's democracies politicians are obligated to explain, at regular intervals, why a military action requires the blood of a nation's young people. Wars waged by machines might not encounter much skepticism in the public sphere.
t information warfare, warfare pursued with information technologies, distorts concepts like "necessity" and "civilian" in ways that challenge these ethical frameworks. An attack on another nation's information infrastructure, for instance, would surely count as an act of war. But what if it reduced the risk of future bloodshed? Should we really only consider it as a last resort? The use of robots further complicates things. It's not yet clear who should be held responsible if and when an autonomous military robot kills a civilian.
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- a good definition of information warfare is "the use of information communication technologies within a military strategy that is endorsed by a state."
- Interesting, but do I understand you correctly that you distinguish this new kind of information warfare from pre-internet information technologies like the radio and the telegraph?
  
  Taddeo: Well those are certainly information technologies, and to some extent information has always been an important part of warfare, because we have always wanted to communicate and to destroy our enemies' information structures and communication capabilities. What we want to distinguish here is the use of these new kinds of information communication technologies, because they have proved to be much more revolutionary in their effects on warfare than previous technologies like telegraphs or telephones or radios or walkie-talkies.
- What's revolutionary about them is that they have restructured the very reality in which we perceive ourselves as living in, and the way in which we think about the concepts of warfare or the state. Take for example the concept of the state: we currently define a state as a political unit that exercises power over a certain physical territory. But when you consider that states are now trying to also dominate certain parts of cyberspace, our definition becomes problematic because cyberspace doesn't have a defined territory. The information revolution is shuffling these concepts around in really interesting ways from a philosophical perspective, and more specifically, from an ethical perspective.
- There are several ways that the political decisions to endorse or deploy these machines are encouraged by the nature of these technologies. For one they are quite a bit cheaper than traditional weapons, but more importantly they bypass the need for political actors to confront media and public opinion about sending young men and women abroad to risk their lives. These machines enable the contemplation of military operations that would have previously been considered too dangerous for humans to undertake. From a political and military perspective, the advantages of these weapons outweigh the disadvantages quite heavily.
- when you have robots fighting a war in a foreign country, the population of that country is going to be slow to gain trust, which can make occupation or even just persuasion quite difficult.
- robotic weapon, the SGR-A1,
- The main difference is that this machine doesn't necessarily have a human operator, or a "man in the loop" as some have phrased it. It can autonomously decide to fire on a target without having to wait for a signal from a remote operator. In the past drones have been tele-operated, or if not, they didn't possess firing ability, and so there was no immediate risk that one of these machines could autonomously harm a human being. The fact that weapons like the SGR-A1 now exist tells us that there are questions that we need to confront. It's wonderful that we're able to save human lives on one side, our side, of a conflict, but the issues of responsibility, the issue of who is responsible for the actions of these semi-autonomous machines remain to be addressed.
- Information warfare is one way that you can see the increasing importance of this non-physical domain. For example, we are now using this non-physical space to prove the power of our states---we are no longer only concerned with demonstrating the authority of our states only in the physical world.
- ethical framework called Information Ethics, mainly developed by Luciano Floridi. Information Ethics ascribes a moral stance to all existing things. It does not have an ontological bias, that is to say it doesn't privilege certain sorts of beings. This does not mean that according to Information Ethics all things have the 'same' moral value but rather that they 'share' some common minimal rights and deserve some minimal respect. Here, the moral value of a particular entity would be proportional to its contributions to the information environment. So a white paper with one dot on it would have less moral value than say a book of poems, or a human being. That's one way of thinking about this.

Feb

29

2012

America’s Islamic Blind Spots - Naomi Wolf - Project Syndicate

So, while Obama should continue to apologize for the Koran burnings, we must understand that Afghans’ rage is a response to an even deeper, rawer wound. Obama should also apologize for kidnapping Afghans; for holding them at Bagram without due process of law; for forcing them into cages, each reportedly holding up to 30 prisoners; for denying them Red Cross/Red Crescent visits; for illegally confiscating family letters; for torturing and sexually abusing them; and for casting a pall of fear over the country.

The Koran forbids that kind of injustice and cruelty. So does the Bible.

www.project-syndicate.org/...English

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United States Koran Book Biblioclasm Libricide War

One is that of the US media, whose coverage simply underscores – and amplifies – the stunning cluelessness that triggered the protests in the first place. Professional journalists are obliged to answer five questions: who, what, where, why, and how. But, reading reports from The Associated Press, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, among others, I searched exhaustively before I could form any picture of what had actually been done to the Korans in question. Not only did accounts conflict; none offered a clear notion of who had allegedly done what, let alone why or how.

Were Korans burned, as one US report had it, under the oversight of US military officials? Or were they brought by soldiers for incineration, as another version maintained, as part of a haul of “extremist literature” and prisoners’ personal communications, with Afghan workers alerting others at the base to the nature of the material?

These murky accounts – with no clear subjects or actions (The New York Times, incredibly, managed not to describe the burning at all) – reflect what happens when major news outlets appear simply to take dictation from the Pentagon.
The second US blind spot is the politicization of this terrible affront. Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has called Obama’s apology a “surrender,” while another Republican contender, Rick Santorum, is offended that anyone is suggesting that the US should bear any “blame.”
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- Abrahamic religion, Judaism, which shares strong roots with Islam. In both faiths, sacred texts are treated as if they are, in a sense, living beings. Jews, too, give them “burials’ when they are too old to use, and treat them ritualistically while they are “alive,” using silver pointers to avoid profaning them with human hands, dressing them in velvet jackets, and kissing them when they fall to the ground.
- Burning a conquered people’s sacred texts sends an unmistakable message: you can do anything to these people. As Heinrich Heine put it, referring to the Spanish Inquisition's burning of the Koran, “Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human beings.” Jews understand that very well: from the Inquisition to Cossack massacres to Kristallnacht, the aggressors destroyed Torahs as a logical and well-understood precursor to destroying Jews.
- The third blind spot is almost too painful to bear having to address – which, on a charitable interpretation, might explain why not one mainstream US media report has done so: the burnings were not carried out on some street in Kabul, but at Bagram. That is, Korans were burned at a US facility that meets the dictionary definition of a concentration camp.

Feb

23

2012

Counting deaths: war as a statistical problem | plus.maths.org

How many people died? It's one of the first questions asked in a war or violent conflict but it's one of the hardest to answer. In the chaos of war many deaths go unrecorded and all sides have an interest in distorting the figures.

The best we can do is come up with estimates but the trouble is that different statistical methods for doing this can produce vastly different results — see the Plus article Body count which reported on controversy surrounding the death toll of the last Iraq war. Statisticians know how well different methods do in theory and under ideal assumptions, but wars rarely adhere to these. And we can't concoct a war in the lab to see which method does best.

But recently a unique document has helped throw some light on the question of how to count the dead.

plus.maths.org/...g-dead-war-statistical-probelm

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War Death Model Assumption Statistics Facts Uncertainty

two methods that are commonly used. One is based on household surveys: a random sample of households from around the region are asked to name their dead and statisticians estimate the total figure from the responses, much like an opinion poll gauges the mood of the nation from the opinions of a random sample of people.

The other involves taking two independent samples of deaths recorded throughout the region and comparing them. If the overlap between the two samples is large — if many deaths appear in both — then chances are that the overall number is relatively small, as you've managed to "catch" many deaths twice. Conversely, if the overlap is small, then the overall number is probably large. There are mathematical equations that make this intuition rigorous and give you an estimate of the total number. The method was initially developed for ecologists trying to estimate the number of animals that live in an area. It's called capture/recapture, as in this case the method works by capturing a number of animals, tagging them, releasing them back, and then capturing another sample to see how many animals got caught twice.
numbers are essential in establishing truth. It's important to get them right. Exhaustive approaches like the Kosovo Memory Book take years to complete and, in the absence of complete information, all you're left with is a statistical approach.
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- There can be few applications of statistics that present as many difficulties as this one. Simply collecting information on the ground is hampered by all sorts of problems. How do you make sure you get a good sample of households for your survey when many homes are not listed anywhere and areas may be too remote or dangerous to venture into? How do you know whether William Smith, Bill Smith and Will Smith are different people or one and the same? How do you account for the fact that the deaths of people with a large surviving family are more likely to be recorded than the deaths in the massacre of a whole village, which leaves no witnesses?
- These aren't just practical problems to do with how information is collected. Statistical methods depend on assumptions — in the capture/recapture method for example, a basic approach assumes that each death has the same probability of being recorded. If these assumptions aren't met, then you need to tweak your theory to match reality. So this is a challenge not just to the people on the ground, but also for the statisticians who analyse the data.
- Politicians, the media and the public want hard figures, but hard figures are something that even the best statisticians can't deliver. And neither do they pretend that they can. In addition to a single number estimate statisticians always give a range of values, a confidence interval, together with a percentage reflecting their confidence that the true number they're trying to estimate lies within that range
- Such intervals aren't very satisfying and they rarely get reported. Even when they are people are easily stumped by their meaning and quick to suspect foul play. This is what happened in controversies surrounding the death toll of the last war in Iraq.
- Statistics can indeed be treacherous and parts of it hard to understand when you first come across them. But so are many other concepts that are part of public discourse. If we're going to make the best of the power of statistics and protect ourselves against its misuses, then it's time that the public are trusted to come to grips with the subtler issues surrounding uncertainty.

Sep

13

2011

Why did Japan surrender? - The Boston Globe

Tsuyoshi Hasegawa - a highly respected historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara - has marshaled compelling evidence that it was the Soviet entry into the Pacific conflict, not Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that forced Japan's surrender. His interpretation could force a new accounting of the moral meaning of the atomic attack. It also raises provocative questions about nuclear deterrence, a foundation stone of military strategy in the postwar period. And it suggests that we could be headed towards an utterly different understanding of how, and why, the Second World War came to its conclusion.

www.boston.com/...why_did_japan_surrender

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WWII War Japan Atomic Bomb History

On Aug. 6, the United States marks the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing’s mixed legacy. The leader of our democracy purposefully executed civilians on a mass scale. Yet the bombing also ended the deadliest conflict in human history.
President Truman’s decision to go nuclear has long been a source of controversy. Many, of course, have argued that attacking civilians can never be justified. Then, in the 1960s, a “revisionist school” of historians suggested that Japan was in fact close to surrendering before Hiroshima - that the bombing was not necessary, and that Truman gave the go-ahead primarily to intimidate the Soviet Union with our new power.
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- Hasegawa - who was born in Japan and has taught in the United States since 1990, and who reads English, Japanese, and Russian - rejects both the traditional and revisionist positions. According to his close examination of the evidence, Japan was not poised to surrender before Hiroshima, as the revisionists argued, nor was it ready to give in immediately after the atomic bomb, as traditionalists have always seen it. Instead, it took the Soviet declaration of war on Japan, several days after Hiroshima, to bring the capitulation.
- Measured against the decades of serious and settled thinking about World War II, Hasegawa’s scholarship feels radical. But another reason, Wilson argues, is that to look at history in this new light is to entertain what seem like shocking ideas. That the destruction of cities does not sway leaders. That what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not overly remarkable. And, strangest of all: That nuclear explosives may not be particularly effective weapons of war.
- Hasegawa and other historians have shown that Japan’s leaders were in fact quite savvy, well aware of their difficult position, and holding out for strategic reasons. Their concern was not so much whether to end the conflict, but how to end it while holding onto territory, avoiding war crimes trials, and preserving the imperial system. The Japanese could still inflict heavy casualties on any invader, and they hoped to convince the Soviet Union, still neutral in the Asian theater, to mediate a settlement with the Americans. Stalin, they calculated, might negotiate more favorable terms in exchange for territory in Asia. It was a long shot, but it made strategic sense.
- How is it possible that the Japanese leadership did not react more strongly to many tens of thousands of its citizens being obliterated?
  One answer is that the Japanese leaders were not greatly troubled by civilian causalities. As the Allies loomed, the Japanese people were instructed to sharpen bamboo sticks and prepare to meet the Marines at the beach.
  Yet it was more than callousness. The bomb - horrific as it was - was not as special as Americans have always imagined. In early March, several hundred B-29 Super Fortress bombers dropped incendiary bombs on downtown Tokyo. Some argue that more died in the resulting firestorm than at Hiroshima. People were boiled in the canals. The photos of charred Tokyo and charred Hiroshima are indistinguishable.
- To us, then, Hiroshima was unique, and the move to atomic weaponry was a great leap, military and moral. But Hasegawa argues the change was incremental. “Once we had accepted strategic bombing as an acceptable weapon of war, the atomic bomb was a very small step,” he says. To Japan’s leaders, Hiroshima was yet another population center leveled, albeit in a novel way. If they didn’t surrender after Tokyo, they weren’t going to after Hiroshima.
- Hasegawa’s work is an important new entry into the scholarly conversation, reconstructing the conflicting perspectives of Russians, Americans, and Japanese, and concluding that the bomb played a secondary role. Barton Bernstein, a professor of history emeritus at Stanford University, is the unofficial dean of American atomic bomb scholarship and counts himself as both a fan and a critic of Hasegawa. Hasegawa’s ability to read three languages, Bernstein says, gives him a unique advantage over other scholars. Hasegawa spent years working through primary documents, with a deep understanding of linguistic and cultural nuance. His knowledge was especially valuable because historians of the period face such fragmentary and contradictory evidence, in part because the Japanese destroyed many documents.
  But therein lies the weakness of the Hasegawa interpretation as well, Bernstein says. After a long war and in the space of a few days, the Japanese leadership was hit with two extraordinary events - Hiroshima and the Soviet invasion - and sorting out cause and effect, based on incomplete documentation, may prove impossible.
- Yet Bernstein, Hasegawa, and many historians agree on one startling point. The public view that the atomic bomb was the decisive event that ended World War II is not supported by the facts.
- What happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki has framed the world’s thinking about nuclear weapons. Those days in August remain the only instance of nuclear war. The sheer horrors of the destruction, and the lingering poison of radioactivity, inform what has come to be called nuclear deterrence
- Hasegawa’s scholarship disturbs this simple logic. If the atomic bomb alone could not compel the Japanese to submit, then perhaps the nuclear deterrent is not as strong as it seems. In fact, Wilson argues, history suggests that leveling population centers, by whatever method, does not force surrender. The Allied firebombing of Dresden in February of 1945 killed many people, but the Germans did not capitulate. The long-range German bombing of London did not push Churchill towards acquiescence. And it is nearly impossible to imagine that a bomb detonated on American soil, even one that immolated a large city, would prompt the nation to bow in surrender.
- As a child, Hasegawa watched the Tokyo firebombing from his roof, and he can still recall the eerie orange glow on the horizon. Growing up, he felt anger at the Japanese government for bringing the conflict onto its people. Later, working as a scholar in America, he accepted the position that the atomic bombing was necessary to end the war. Today he views America’s bombings of Japan’s cities - Hiroshima and Tokyo included - as war crimes. Yet, he adds, they are crimes America should not apologize for until Japan comes to terms with war crimes of its own. These are the evolving views of a man who has mustered the courage to look at an ugly period of history without flinching - something that most people, Americans and Japanese alike, have found themselves unable to do.

Think Again: War - By Joshua S. Goldstein | Foreign Policy

www.foreignpolicy.com/...think_again_war

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War Democracy

In fact, the last decade has seen fewer war deaths than any decade in the past 100 years, based on data compiled by researchers Bethany Lacina and Nils Petter Gleditsch of the Peace Research Institute Oslo. Worldwide, deaths caused directly by war-related violence in the new century have averaged about 55,000 per year, just over half of what they were in the 1990s (100,000 a year), a third of what they were during the Cold War (180,000 a year from 1950 to 1989), and a hundredth of what they were in World War II. If you factor in the growing global population, which has nearly quadrupled in the last century, the decrease is even sharper. Far from being an age of killer anarchy, the 20 years since the Cold War ended have been an era of rapid progress toward peace.
The well-worn observation that real democracies almost never fight each other is historically correct, but it's also true that democracies have always been perfectly willing to fight non-democracies. In fact, democracy can heighten conflict by amplifying ethnic and nationalist forces, pushing leaders to appease belligerent sentiment in order to stay in power. Thomas Paine and Immanuel Kant both believed that selfish autocrats caused wars, whereas the common people, who bear the costs, would be loath to fight. But try telling that to the leaders of authoritarian China, who are struggling to hold in check, not inflame, a popular undercurrent of nationalism against Japanese and American historical enemies. Public opinion in tentatively democratic Egypt is far more hostile toward Israel than the authoritarian government of Hosni Mubarak ever was (though being hostile and actually going to war are quite different things).
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- As the University of Chicago's Charles Lipson once quipped about the notion of a democratic peace, "We know it works in practice. Now we have to see if it works in theory!" The best explanation is that of political scientists Bruce Russett and John Oneal, who argue that three elements -- democracy, economic interdependence (especially trade), and the growth of international organizations -- are mutually supportive of each other and of peace within the community of democratic countries. Democratic leaders, then, see themselves as having less to lose in going to war with autocracies.

Jul

6

2011

Climate change will increase threat of war, Chris Huhne to warn | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Climate change will lead to an increased threat of wars, violence and military action against the UK, and risks reversing the progress of civilisation, the energy and climate secretary Chris Huhne will say on Thursday, in his strongest warning yet that the lack of progress on greenhouse gas emission cuts would damage the UK's national interests.

"Climate change is a threat multiplier. It will make unstable states more unstable, poor nations poorer, inequality more pronounced, and conflict more likely," Huhne is expected to say in a speech to defence experts. "And the areas of most geopolitical risk are also most at risk of climate change."

www.guardian.co.uk/...climate-change-war-chris-huhne

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Climate Change War Politics Apocalyptic

Jun

29

2011

Do More Democracies Mean More Wars? | The Utopianist - Think Bigger

how would it really play out if all of the countries in the world became democracies? According Professor Mark Harrison from the University of Warwick, it might mean more war.
Harrison explains that as large superpowers like the USSR have fragmented into smaller democracies wars become more likely for the simple reason that there are more countries that might come in conflict with one another. Also, it is cheaper now than it ever has been to fight a war.

utopianist.com/...ore-democracies-mean-more-wars

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Democracy War

Harrison explains the crux of his argument in the abstract to his paper The Frequency of Wars:

Wars are increasingly frequent, and the trend has been steadily upward since 1870. The main tradition of Western political and philosophical thought suggests that extensive economic globalization and democratization over this period should have reduced appetites for war far below their current level.

art and allusion

nigelwarburton.typepad.com/art_and_allusion

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Art Illusion Politics War

Jun

18

2011

allAfrica.com: Libya: Motives and the Politics of Pretexts

Western elites are quite committed in presenting their own motives as compassionate by definition, and the stinking Western executed brutality descending from the Libyan skies is being pushed down our throats as the salvation for Libyans - not the savage destruction of livelihoods the intervention is.

allafrica.com/...201106160608.html

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Post-Colonialism Elitism War International Relations

allAfrica.com: Libya: Motives and the Politics of Pretexts (Page 2 of 3)

allafrica.com/...201106160608.html

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Post-Colonialism Elitism War International Relations

It is not entirely correct to assert that oil is the sole factor behind Western Middle East policy, although it surely provides a significant guideline. It is the same Middle East that illustrates to us that in an oil-rich country, a reliable dictator is granted virtual free reign by the West.
This is why the US and its Western allies had absolutely no reaction when the Saudi dictatorship used massive force to prevent any sign of protest in the Kingdom.

When small demonstrations started in Kuwait, they were instantly crushed in a very ruthless manner and the West remained deafeningly silent.
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- Obama did not make a presidential address calling for military intervention to "protect the people" of Bahrain from "tyrants who declare no mercy on their own people".
  
  He could not do that because Bahrain hosts the US Fifth Fleet, by far the most powerful military force in the Gulf region. If one adds to this the fact that neighbouring Eastern Saudi Arabia is also Shiite, and that it has most of the Kingdom's oil reserves, then it becomes easy to understand Obama's reticence. If there is anything Western planners do not want to encounter, it is the prospect of a Shiite alliance in the Middle East.
- "When a favoured dictator is in trouble; support him as long as possible, and when that cannot be done, issue ringing declarations of love of democracy and human rights, and then try to salvage as much of the regime as possible."
- The US cannot do much in Syria because there is no known ready puppet to replace the otherwise unwanted regime. Yemen and Iran are a morass and the United States simply cannot predict the outcome should they rush into any form of military intervention.

Mar

3

2011

The Free Speech Blog: Official blog of Index on Censorship » Thank God for the Goats

The US Supreme Court ruled yesterday by an 8-1 vote that the bizarre anti-gay funeral picketers belonging to the Westboro Baptist Church have a First Amendment right to free speech. Rev Fred Phelps and his crew have been waving placards with messages such as “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” and “AIDS Cures Fags” at military funerals to promote their belief that God is punishing the US for accepting homosexuality.

blog.indexoncensorship.org/...thank-god-for-the-goats

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Freedom of Speech Religion War

The US Supreme Court ruled yesterday by an 8-1 vote that the bizarre anti-gay funeral picketers belonging to the Westboro Baptist Church have a First Amendment right to free speech. Rev Fred Phelps and his crew have been waving placards with messages such as “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” and “AIDS Cures Fags” at military funerals to promote their belief that God is punishing the US for accepting homosexuality.
The Supreme Court decision (see below) overruled a previous award of over $10 million (reduced on appeal to $5 million) to the family of Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder in relation to a protest at his funeral.
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- First, undoubtedly debate about war, its causes and casualties is important. This was “speech” in a public place on an issue of public concern, even though the particular hypothesis is ridiculous and offensive. Free speech protection can’t, however, just be for views already presumed to be true.
  
  Secondly, protestors were scrupulous about staying within the letter of the law. They knew that they had to remain 1,000 feet from the funeral, for instance, and did not shout or otherwise disrupt the service. Preventing such orderly protests on issues of importance would have been a serious attack on civil liberties, even though the protestors displayed gross insensitivity to those mourning.
- we should welcome this decision even though it protects bigots of limited reasoning ability about cause and effect who are indifferent to the feelings of the recently bereaved. The best response to hateful speech is surely counter-speech. At many recent military funerals, counter-protestors have arrived early in their thousands and occupied the prime spaces in the surrounding area. That is a far better reaction than a legal gagging order.

Feb

13

2011

Sociologist Harry Collins poses as a physicist. - By Jon Lackman - Slate Magazine

www.slate.com/2150974

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Physics Science War

British sociologist Harry Collins asked a scientist who specializes in gravitational waves to answer seven questions about the physics of these waves. Collins, who has made an amateur study of this field for more than 30 years but has never actually practiced it, also answered the questions himself. Then he submitted both sets of answers to a panel of judges who are themselves gravitational-wave researchers. The judges couldn't tell the impostor from one of their own. Collins argues that he is therefore as qualified as anyone to discuss this field, even though he can't conduct experiments in it.
The journal Nature predicted that the experiment would have a broad impact, writing that Collins could help settle the "science wars of the 1990s," "when sociologists launched what scientists saw as attacks on the very nature of science, and scientists responded in kind," accusing the sociologists of misunderstanding science. More generally, it could affect "the argument about whether an outsider, such as an anthropologist, can properly understand another group, such as a remote rural community." With this comment, Nature seemed to be saying that if a sociologist can understand physics, then anyone can understand anything.
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- It will be interesting to see if Collins' results can indeed be repeated in different situations. Meanwhile, his experiment is plenty interesting in itself. Just one of the judges succeeded in distinguishing Collins' answers from those of the trained experts. One threw up his hands. And the other seven declared Collins the physicist. He didn't simply do as well as the trained specialist—he did better, even though the test questions demanded technical answers. One sample answer from Collins gives you the flavor: "Since gravitational waves change the shape of spacetime and radio waves do not, the effect on an interferometer of radio waves can only be to mimic the effects of a gravitational wave, not reproduce them." (More details can be found in this paper Collins wrote with his collaborators.)
- To be sure, a differently designed experiment would have presented more difficulty for Collins. If he'd chosen questions that involved math, they would have done him in
- But many scientists consider themselves perfectly qualified to discuss topics for which they lack the underlying mathematical skills, as Collins noted when I talked to him. "You can be a great physicist and not know any mathematics," he said.
- So, if Collins can talk gravitational waves as well as an insider, who cares if he doesn't know how to crunch the numbers?
  Alan Sokal does. The New York University physicist is famous for an experiment a decade ago that seemed to demonstrate the futility of laymen discussing science. In 1996, he tricked the top humanities journal Social Text into publishing as genuine scholarship a totally nonsensical paper that celebrated fashionable literary theory and then applied it to all manner of scientific questions. ("As Lacan suspected, there is an intimate connection between the external structure of the physical world and its inner psychological representation qua knot theory.") Sokal showed that, with a little flattery, laymen could be induced to swallow the most ridiculous of scientific canards—so why should we value their opinions on science as highly as scientists'?
- Sokal doesn't think Collins has proved otherwise. When I reached him this week, he acknowledged that you don't need to practice science in order to understand it. But he maintains, as he put it to Nature, that in many science debates, "you need a knowledge of the field that is virtually, if not fully, at the level of researchers in the field," in order to participate. He elaborated: Say there are two scientists, X and Y. If you want to argue that X's theory was embraced over Y's, even though Y's is better, because the science community is biased against Y, then you had better be able to read and evaluate their theories yourself, mathematics included (or collaborate with someone who can). He has a point. Just because mathematics features little in the work of some gravitational-wave physicists doesn't mean it's a trivial part of the subject.
- Even if Collins didn't demonstrate that he is qualified to pronounce on all of gravitational-wave physics, he did learn more of the subject than anyone may have thought possible. Sokal says he was shocked by Collins' store of knowledge: "He knows more about gravitational waves than I do!" Sokal admitted that Collins was already qualified to pronounce on a lot, and that with a bit more study, he would be the equal of a professional.

Dec

12

2010

Valerie Plame, YES! Wikileaks, NO! - English pravda.ru

english.pravda.ru/...6041-valerie_plame_wikileaks-0

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Wikileaks Politics War

n my recent article Ward Churchill: The Lie Lives On (Pravda.Ru, 11/29/2010), I discussed the following realities about America's legal "system": it is duplicitous and corrupt; it will go to any extremes to insulate from prosecution, and in many cases civil liability, persons whose crimes facilitate this duplicity and corruption; it has abdicated its responsibility to serve as a "check-and-balance" against the other two branches of government, and has instead been transformed into a weapon exploited by the wealthy, the corporations, and the politically connected to defend their criminality, conceal their corruption and promote their economic interests
it is now evident that Barack Obama, who entered the White House with optimistic messages of change and hope, is just as complicit in, and manipulative of, the legal "system's" duplicity and corruption as was his predecessor George W. Bush.
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- the Obama administration has refused to prosecute former Attorney General John Ashcroft for abusing the "material witness" statute; refused to prosecute Ashcroft's successor (and suspected perjurer) Alberto Gonzales for his role in the politically motivated firing of nine federal prosecutors; refused to prosecute Justice Department authors of the now infamous "torture memos," like John Yoo and Jay Bybee; and, more recently, refused to prosecute former CIA official Jose Rodriquez Jr. for destroying tapes that purportedly showed CIA agents torturing detainees.
- thanks to Wikileaks, the world has been enlightened to the fact that the Obama administration not only refused to prosecute these individuals itself, it also exerted pressure on the governments of Germany and Spain not to prosecute, or even indict, any of the torturers or war criminals from the Bush dictatorship.
- we see many right-wing commentators demanding that Assange be hunted down, with some even calling for his murder, on the grounds that he may have endangered lives by releasing confidential government documents.
  
  Yet, for the right-wing, this apparently was not a concern when the late columnist Robert Novak "outed" CIA agent Valerie Plame after her husband Joseph Wilson authored an OP-ED piece in The New York Times criticizing the motivations for waging war against Iraq. Even though there was evidence of involvement within the highest echelons of the Bush dictatorship, only one person, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was indicted and convicted of "outing" Plame to Novak. And, despite the fact that this "outing" potentially endangered the lives of Plame's overseas contacts, Bush commuted Libby's thirty-month prison sentence, calling it "excessive."
- Why the disparity? The answer is simple: The Plame "outing" served the interests of the military-industrial complex and helped to conceal the Bush dictatorship's lies, tortures and war crimes, while Wikileaks not only exposed such evils, but also revealed how Obama's administration, and Obama himself, are little more than "snake oil" merchants pontificating about government accountability while undermining it at every turn.
- When the United States Constitution was being created, a conflict emerged between delegates who wanted a strong federal government (the Federalists) and those who wanted a weak federal government (the anti-Federalists).
  
  Although the Federalists won the day, one of the most distinguished anti-Federalists, George Mason, refused to sign the new Constitution, sacrificing in the process, some historians say, a revered place amongst America's founding fathers.
  
  Two of Mason's concerns were that the Constitution did not contain a Bill of Rights, and that the presidential pardon powers would allow corrupt presidents to pardon people who had committed crimes on presidential orders.
- Mason's concerns about the abuse of the pardon powers were eventually proven right when Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, when Ronald Reagan pardoned FBI agents convicted of authorizing illegal break-ins, and when George H.W. Bush pardoned six individuals involved in the Iran-Contra Affair.
- Mason was also proven right after the Federalists realized that the States would not ratify the Constitution unless a Bill of Rights was added. But this was done begrudgingly, as demonstrated by America's second president, Federalist John Adams, who essentially destroyed the right to freedom of speech via the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made it a crime to say, write or publish anything critical of the United States government.
- Most criminals break laws that others have created, and people who assist in exposing or apprehending them are usually lauded as heroes. But with the "espionage" acts, the criminals themselves have actually created laws to conceal their crimes, and exploit these laws to penalize people who expose them.
- The problem with America's system of government is that it has become too easy, and too convenient, to simply stamp "classified" on documents that reveal acts of government corruption, cover-up, mendacity and malfeasance, or to withhold them "in the interest of national security." Given this web of secrecy, is it any wonder why so many Americans are still skeptical about the "official" versions of the John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations, or the events surrounding the attacks of September 11, 2001?
- I want to believe that the Wikileaks documents will change America for the better. But what undoubtedly will happen is a repetition of the past: those who expose government crimes and cover-ups will be prosecuted or branded as criminals; new laws will be passed to silence dissent; new Liebermans will arise to intimidate the corporate-controlled media; and new ways will be found to conceal the truth.
- What Wikileaks has done is make people understand why so many Americans are politically apathetic and content to lose themselves in one or more of the addictions American culture offers, be it drugs, alcohol, the Internet, video games, celebrity gossip, text-messaging-in essence anything that serves to divert attention from the harshness of reality.
- the evils committed by those in power can be suffocating, and the sense of powerlessness that erupts from being aware of these evils can be paralyzing, especially when accentuated by the knowledge that government evildoers almost always get away with their crimes

Oct

31

2010

New Statesman - The coalition will produce a farce of fairness

The coalition will produce a farce of fairness
Posted by Sholto Byrnes - 31 October 2010 08:36
Exclusive: philosopher Ted Honderich calls for a general strike and mass disobedience to protest against a government of "petty careerists and PR men".

www.newstatesman.com/...principle-society-calls

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War Justice Fairness Public Relations Philosophy

Jul

17

2010

John Prendergast: Reforming Wall Street and Ending the World's Deadliest War: Congo

Reforming Wall Street and Ending the World's Deadliest War: Congo

www.huffingtonpost.com/...-wall-street-and_b_633352.html

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Conflict Minerals War Computer

conflict minerals are helping fuel the deadliest war in the world since World War II, the conflict in eastern Congo in which 1,100 women are raped every month, and 1,500 people die every day. The main armed groups that orchestrate the violence make hundreds of millions of dollars by trading in four minerals - the 3 Ts of tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold. These minerals are then bought by electronics and jewelry companies and are used in our cell phones, laptops, and gold necklaces.

Enough Campaign Against 'Conflict' Minerals in Apple MacBook and Other Electronics - ABC News

The Conversation: Congo and Your Computer
ABC's Diane Sawyer Talks with Actor/Activist Brooke Smith About Conflict Minerals

abcnews.go.com/...story

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Conflict Minerals Campaign War Capitalism Computer

Many of the smartphones, laptops, cameras and other gizmos Americans rely on every day contain metals from the Congo, where profits from these "blood" minerals pay for guns, bullets and other weapons.
Western consumers have no clue about the true costs of their gadget addition, but the people behind the Enough campaign hope to change that and push electronics companies, with help from a new web video, to do more to fight against conflict minerals
1 more annotation(s)...
- n a video spoofing Apple's famous "I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC" ads, Enough explains some of the problems caused by the minerals tantalum, tungsten and tin. The spot's sad punchline claims that Macs and PCs have at least one thing in common -- they both contain those "three T" conflict metals.

Apr

10

2010

The fog of war: The fog of war | The Economist

The fog of war
Apr 5th 2010, 22:54 by R.M. | NEW YORK

www.economist.com/...fog_war&sa_campaign=twitter

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War Machine

IN THIS week's paper we examine attempts to build ethical understanding into pilotless war planes, which would allow these machines to contribute to the decision to fire on a designated target.
he idea is to input them with information so that they can quickly evaluate the likely damage to be caused from an attack and who (civilians, insurgents, friendly forces) will be most affected. "Software conscience" is the term used to describe it
6 more annotation(s)...
- Today Andrew Sullivan (via wikileaks) flags one of the most tragic, disturbing and riveting videos I have seen out of Iraq.
- I've watched this video a couple of times now, first with outrage similar to Mr Sullivan's, then with an eye towards seeing what the pilots saw. I don't mean to turn this tragedy into a psychological experiment, but I'm reminded of this selective attention test. By way of the text and markers in the video we are prodded to see one side of the event. (The helicopter pilots do not help matters with their casual approach to killing and intermittent laughter.) But ask yourselves, would you have been able to distinguish between the journalists' cameras and the guns some of the other men were carrying? More importantly, did you see the man with the RPG? Did you see him poke around the corner and seem to aim it at the helicopter?
- Perhaps that is still not justification enough for the slaughter that ensued. I will let the Pentagon try to defend the act of firing on those helping the wounded. But I think the scene is more ambiguous than it first appears, and I think the pilots could make a case that they thought they were being engaged by armed insurgents. (We do not know why the helicopter was in the area.)
- no matter how precise our weaponry gets, no matter how much information we feed into our targeting systems, the decision to fire will always be based on incomplete information and come down to fallible human judgment.
- This is the nature of war and there is only one truly effective way to avoid such incidents.

Sep

6

2009

TODAYonline | World | The photo that's caused a stir

Journalistic Ethics

www.todayonline.com/...The-photo-thats-caused-a-stir

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War Information Censorship Family Death

The US Defence Secretary, Mr Robert Gates, condemned the decision by the news agency Associated Press (AP) to publish the picture. "I cannot imagine the pain and suffering Lance Corporal Bernard's death has caused his family. Why your organisation would purposefully defy the family's wishes, knowing full well that it will lead to yet more anguish, is beyond me,"
2 more annotation(s)...
- the picture illustrated the sacrifice and the bravery of those fighting in Afghanistan.
  
  "We feel it is our journalistic duty to show the reality of the war there, however unpleasant and brutal that sometimes is," said Mr Santiago Lyon, director of photography for AP.
- reporters had not specifically asked the family's permission to publish them and that his parents had not wanted the photographs to be used. "There was no question that the photo had news value," AP senior managing editor John Daniszewski said. "But we also were very aware the family wished for the picture not to be seen."
  
  After lengthy internal discussions, AP concluded that the photo was a part of the war they needed to convey.

Weiye Loh's Library tagged War → View Popular, Search in Google

Philosophy & Technology, Volume 25, Number 1 - SpringerLink

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Counting deaths: war as a statistical problem | plus.maths.org

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Think Again: War - By Joshua S. Goldstein | Foreign Policy

Climate change will increase threat of war, Chris Huhne to warn | Environment | guardian.co.uk

Do More Democracies Mean More Wars? | The Utopianist - Think Bigger

art and allusion

allAfrica.com: Libya: Motives and the Politics of Pretexts

allAfrica.com: Libya: Motives and the Politics of Pretexts (Page 2 of 3)

The Free Speech Blog: Official blog of Index on Censorship » Thank God for the Goats

Sociologist Harry Collins poses as a physicist. - By Jon Lackman - Slate Magazine

Valerie Plame, YES! Wikileaks, NO! - English pravda.ru

New Statesman - The coalition will produce a farce of fairness

John Prendergast: Reforming Wall Street and Ending the World's Deadliest War: Congo

Enough Campaign Against 'Conflict' Minerals in Apple MacBook and Other Electronics - ABC News

The fog of war: The fog of war | The Economist

TODAYonline | World | The photo that's caused a stir

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