I typically follow basketball more consistently than other sports. This season promises to be very interesting for several reasons. Several teams are tanking for highly regarded draft picks. A few teams are rising and presume to be competing for playoff spots after several (or more) years of mediocrity. And then there isn't quite as clear a contender for the championship but several very good teams (Miami is still probably the favorite, but they have more competition and looked exposed by the Spurs).
First off. I always set up a fantasy basketball team in a roto league. I don't do this for baseball because I keep a historical all-star league with normalised statistics with players going back to 1876 (and including major-minor leagues like the negro national league). I find it way more fun to draft Willie Mays than current players. I don't do this for football because I have no interest in following it any further than as a casual observer and because football fantasy leagues are much more like gambling than basketball. Basketball it is really easy to predict how good a player might be the next year. Which makes the having to adjust rosters more often factor pretty easy to compensate for. I typically compete for winning any league I'm in. Rondo's injury last year really hurt my chances. I was in first most of the year, and fell to third in the last month as I couldn't make up the assists and steals with PG by committee.
This is my team (I picked 8th).
PF Kevin Love
PG Deron Williams
C Brook Lopez
F Josh Smith
PF Ryan Anderson
G/F Andre Iguodala
C Marcin Gortat (the trade to Washington is great)
SG OJ Mayo
PG Isaiah Thomas
SF Michael Kidd-Gilchrist
G Brandon Knight
C Nerlens Noel (stashed for blocks).
PF Elton Brand
I expect I should be doing pretty well in assists and threes and percentage stats. I'm worried about points and rebounds a bit. I think blocks or steals will be okay.
So actual teams. Over/Unders will be after the team followed by statgeek projections. Plus would be whether I think they're an over, minus for unders.
Eastern Conference
Atlantic Division
Brooklyn (52.5+) I'd say will actually be somewhat worse regular season than projected as they rest the starters (they seem to be around 55 wins). But probably still around 52-54 wins and a tough out for Miami or Chicago. This is now my team with KG on it. Probably the 3 or 4 seed.
New York (48.5-): Projects around 47. I think this is also high. I think they have chemistry issues and fall to around 43, but if Chandler stays healthy, 47 is also quite possible. This is not a team that I'd expect to win a first round series.
Toronto (36.5-): Depends on the impending Rudy Gay trade (DeRozan might also be traded). Projects around 38. I'd say 33. If they get a good haul for these trades, it will mostly be in picks or younger players.
Boston (27.5=): Depends on how quickly Rondo comes back. Projects to 27. This is probably about right. Even if they are trying to tank, there's a lot of bad teams.
Philadelphia (16.5-): I don't think they are in any danger in breaking the worst league record. But. Getting to 19 (projected), not so much.
Central Division
Chicago (56.5+): Projects to 52. I think this is low. I put them around 58. Probably second to Miami for title contention. Their defense should be insane. A couple of trades are out there that could push them past Miami (Boozer or Deng could be dealt).
Indiana (54.5-): Projects to 52. Sounds about right. They upgraded their bench. I think their ceiling is 55. They seem to be one of the most consistent projections. Defense should still be very, very good.
Detroit (40.5+): Projects to 41. Probably low. But it depends a lot on how the new pieces mesh (and if Monroe and Drummond can play together). I think this is a playoff team at least in the East and around 45 wins. Will block a lot of shots.
Cleveland (40.5-): Projects to 40. Really depends if they get more than 80 games from Andy and Bynum combined and Kyrie plays a full season finally (I'm doubtful). I do not at all like the Bennett pick. So. Probably 40 is fine. They're not going to be much better than that even if healthy though. Ceiling looks like 45. I'm not expecting much defense (even with the coaching chance, nobody on this team has a history of playing D) and Mike Brown is just a dreadful offensive coach. Which is not good with a team that has some weapons that need plays.
Milwaukee (28.5+): Projects to 31. Again, probably low. But not by much. This or Cleveland look like the 8th seed (with the Cavs a little better). Probably 36 wins.
SouthEast
Miami (61.5-): Projects at 59. About right. They did get some size in Oden maybe to help out with Hibbert or Chicago/Brooklyn in the playoffs. Assuming he is healthy. The loss of Miller hurts. Still probably the favorite to win it all though.
Atlanta (39.5-): Projects at 41. Probably not a lock. Because I think they are breaking up the team and trading Horford or Millsap. They have the talent for 45 win team or so right now. But it's not going anywhere either with these pieces. If they do blow it up, they will do it early and tank to 30 or so wins. If they start out hot, they probably won't blow it up but won't go anywhere.
Washington (40.5+): Projects at 37. I think this team is better, with the Gortat trade and a healthy Wall. Probably 6-7th seed in the East. I like them a lot for around 44 wins.
Charlotte (26.5=): Projects at 28. Probably a little high, I'd say closer to 25. Kemba and Al might be worth something at least though.
Playoff Teams
Miami
Chicago
Indiana
Brooklyn
New York
Washington
Detroit
Cleveland
Western Conference
Northwest
Oklahoma City (52.5+): Projects around 54. Depends on how soon Westbrook is back to being Westbrook. They have some major holes that require a trade or two to compensate for. Durant should have a monster first half.
Denver (45.5=). Projects at 45. I think this is about right. They made some very dumb moves offseason. Koufos trade was lame. Iggy's gone. Their defence is major league downgraded. Gallinari is hurt to start the year. All bad things.
Minnesota (41.5+): Projects to 43. If healthy, this could be a 46-48 win team. Their D is still troubled, but they will score.
Portland (38.5+): HUGE upgrades to their horrible bench last year. I'm not sure why they only project at 38. They won 33 last year with injuries late to key players and no bench. I don't think they're much better than 42-44 wins, but they shouldn't be only 5 wins better than last year with this roster.
Utah (25.5+): Tanking. Somehow projects to 30 anyway. They have still some good size players and Burke could be good. Hard to project how they will do because they have the highest turnover in minutes from last year and a lot of rather useless vets and young players with high potential but no track record. I think they're good for 27.
Pacific
Clippers (56.5=), Projects at 56. Probably will have the best offense in the league. Not sure how their D will do. Weak upfront too. 56 looks fine.
Golden State (51.5-), Projects at 46. I think they're good for at least 48. Too many injury prone players. They have a high ceiling but I don't think that ceiling gets them much over 50. Iggy is a great addition though.
Lakers (36.5-), projects at 32. I'd be surprised if they win more than 32. Gasol is probably getting traded. Kobe has to come back in some kind of playable shape to get past 36. The rest of the team is basically useless or old.
Sacramento (31.5-), projects at 31. They have a weird roster still even with Evans and Robinson gone.
Phoenix (19.5-). Projects at 22. Gortat trade pushes them below. I think they win 17-18.
Southwest
San Antonio (55.5=), Projects at 55. Sounds right. Duncan will drop off a bit, but the younger guys should be better too.
Houston (54.5-) Projects at 54. I don't think they do so well at mixing Howard and Harden. Kind of an odd combo. But they have so much talent that 50 wins is a no brainer.
Memphis (50.5=) Projects to 50. Has a pretty high ceiling but they have some weaknesses that were exposed last year too.
Dallas (43.5+) Projects to 43. I think they win around 47-48. Dirk wasn't healthy last year. Calderon is a good point guard. I don't like Monte Ellis (he has no point on the court he can make shots from consistently).
New Orleans (39.5=) (Pellies!). Projects to 39. Probably needs to trade Gordon. Should be solid at 39. I don't like Holiday and Evans and Gordon as a backcourt. I love Davis and he should be very good this year.
Playoffs
Clippers
San Antonio
OKC
Houston
Memphis
Golden State
Dallas
Minnesota (or Denver)
I would see OKC coming out of the west at this point. Their defence is pretty good and the Durant-Westbrook combo is just devastating to most teams out west. A couple of these teams would leap past them with some moves though. Clippers need a big guy. Houston needs probably a shooter/stretch four, Memphis needs shooters of any kind, and San Antonio is still dangerous even with the team they have.
29 October 2013
01 October 2013
Shutdown city USA
I have many thoughts on this.
There are actual people, many thousands of them, who are presently out of work because of this. I share a general distaste for the government employing millions of people in the first place, but there are far better ways to trim the rolls and most of the people out of work are not the sort that are doing things I would more strongly disapprove of having in the first place (such as DEA agents, the TSA, the various NSA personnel doing dragnet surveillance on Americans, and most foreign deployed Army forces). It's mostly civilian contractors for defence programmes and some agencies that do "less essential" things, only some of which would fall into those categories of unsavory occupations. Some of these are people who could be in some agency that could be partially or fully privatized and their jobs less subject to partisan budget haggles (some national parks or most of NASA's operations for instance), but that isn't' the state of affairs as yet. And isn't a likely consequence of this whole kerfuffle either. While I think there's some disdain for civilian workers, these are people who were hired under contract to do a job and are largely being dismissed in a haphazard and foolish way, even if only temporarily. This is a form of pain and suffering inflicted on people, and imposes costs for starting and stopping various operations unexpectedly, hiring and training potential replacements if it lasts any appreciable duration, creates unemployment concerns, and so on. The sequester had some similar pain and suffering inflicted but was largely overlooked as this was mostly (but not entirely) impacting poor people. These are mostly middle class professionals now getting hammered. That changes the political impact.
That said, the political impact is that people will hate Congress. But they already hate Congress. A lot. And they had an opportunity to do something about this not long ago, and for the most part, did not. People hate Congress, but mostly think their man in Washington (and it's usually a man) is doing fine. The chances of this are slim in reality, but occur mostly because people have been segregated by years of movement, personal affiliation, and gerrymandering into strong partisan camps for Congressional races. They don't see the problem with their guy because he mostly says things they want to hear, and that's easier to do because they want to hear fewer conflicting things tailored to separate camps (albeit, still plenty of conflicting nonsense is necessary, such as "Medicare shouldn't be cut but deficits are bad"). Republican grassroots backers seem fine with shutting down the government even if the only thing they deign necessary to turn it back on is some concession on ObamaCare. Which isn't a political possibility, and isn't even an effect of shutting down the government.
In general, ObamaCare represents a shift in the economy, but it is not a significant shift in the status quo of health care markets in the US. I don't like all its particulars and would support overturning it, if it were replaced with something more like Wyden-Bennett for instance. But in and of itself, it really isn't that different from what we had before (yet anyway, it could prove more unpredictable, but it's more likely to end up looking like Massachusetts than the UK). So. I'm not really sure why it is the pillar that either party wants to stand and die on. There are more significant deficit busting things the Republicans could have picked in order to be credible on that issue (including, say, the farm subsidies that they voted to increase, but also entitlement reform negotiations or tax reforms, or reductions in defence spending). Portions of the ACA are broadly popular (price transparency, insurance of pre-existing conditions, leaving children on adult insurance longer, etc) and would likely have to be part of any new deal to replace it. So simply getting rid of it will likely turn out less popular than the public imagines for this reason and will not actually be a very effective and popular move for the party that does so. While this idea of tying a delay or a kill it effect to the ACA bill has been floating around a while, the sales job for the general public, rather than the conservative base who already champions the idea, has been very slow in coming around. This makes picking it as a fighting point a very strange move politically. It had zero chance of success, it isn't likely to make the Democrats look like the bad guys to the general public, and so on. There's a possibility of it, simply because this bill isn't that popular either. But the general public wanted a deal, not a shutdown. And that deal wasn't "kill or delay this silly health care law too", it might be some other concession, but something smaller more likely. As a further problem, the bill on the table wasn't even a deal that would solve this problem for a year or two. It was for a few weeks where we would just be back at this same point around Thanksgiving or Christmas. Hurrah for that.
I'm curious what happens now with the default limit in a few weeks. I think most Republican backers (of substantial wealth anyway), are probably okay with a shutdown, if not happy about it. I doubt most of them are okay with a default risk. The business types are in fact, probably pissed about the prospect. I suspect this reflects the division within the Republican party over what to do over the last few months, with party elites trying to push for simple moves to get things over and done with and move on to meaningless symbolic votes against ObamaCare and the like, and the base understanding those symbolic votes won't amount to anything but not understanding that actual votes probably won't either.
In general, I am greatly annoyed that a meaningless potential intrusion into Syria and the government's inability to play together have destroyed the public attention span for the NSA scandals, still ongoing in their revelations. For instance that the NSA decided it may use "enrichment" data without restraint drawn from social media sites, credit cards, insurance records, as part of their investigations and dragnets into American citizens. I don't like having to pay attention to furloughing of civilian workers while the NSA continues unimpeded. It is a distraction from the real business of actual deficit controls and necessary reforms therein, and from the expansion of executive and government power into the lives of ordinary people to have fights over things that do very little of either.
There are actual people, many thousands of them, who are presently out of work because of this. I share a general distaste for the government employing millions of people in the first place, but there are far better ways to trim the rolls and most of the people out of work are not the sort that are doing things I would more strongly disapprove of having in the first place (such as DEA agents, the TSA, the various NSA personnel doing dragnet surveillance on Americans, and most foreign deployed Army forces). It's mostly civilian contractors for defence programmes and some agencies that do "less essential" things, only some of which would fall into those categories of unsavory occupations. Some of these are people who could be in some agency that could be partially or fully privatized and their jobs less subject to partisan budget haggles (some national parks or most of NASA's operations for instance), but that isn't' the state of affairs as yet. And isn't a likely consequence of this whole kerfuffle either. While I think there's some disdain for civilian workers, these are people who were hired under contract to do a job and are largely being dismissed in a haphazard and foolish way, even if only temporarily. This is a form of pain and suffering inflicted on people, and imposes costs for starting and stopping various operations unexpectedly, hiring and training potential replacements if it lasts any appreciable duration, creates unemployment concerns, and so on. The sequester had some similar pain and suffering inflicted but was largely overlooked as this was mostly (but not entirely) impacting poor people. These are mostly middle class professionals now getting hammered. That changes the political impact.
That said, the political impact is that people will hate Congress. But they already hate Congress. A lot. And they had an opportunity to do something about this not long ago, and for the most part, did not. People hate Congress, but mostly think their man in Washington (and it's usually a man) is doing fine. The chances of this are slim in reality, but occur mostly because people have been segregated by years of movement, personal affiliation, and gerrymandering into strong partisan camps for Congressional races. They don't see the problem with their guy because he mostly says things they want to hear, and that's easier to do because they want to hear fewer conflicting things tailored to separate camps (albeit, still plenty of conflicting nonsense is necessary, such as "Medicare shouldn't be cut but deficits are bad"). Republican grassroots backers seem fine with shutting down the government even if the only thing they deign necessary to turn it back on is some concession on ObamaCare. Which isn't a political possibility, and isn't even an effect of shutting down the government.
In general, ObamaCare represents a shift in the economy, but it is not a significant shift in the status quo of health care markets in the US. I don't like all its particulars and would support overturning it, if it were replaced with something more like Wyden-Bennett for instance. But in and of itself, it really isn't that different from what we had before (yet anyway, it could prove more unpredictable, but it's more likely to end up looking like Massachusetts than the UK). So. I'm not really sure why it is the pillar that either party wants to stand and die on. There are more significant deficit busting things the Republicans could have picked in order to be credible on that issue (including, say, the farm subsidies that they voted to increase, but also entitlement reform negotiations or tax reforms, or reductions in defence spending). Portions of the ACA are broadly popular (price transparency, insurance of pre-existing conditions, leaving children on adult insurance longer, etc) and would likely have to be part of any new deal to replace it. So simply getting rid of it will likely turn out less popular than the public imagines for this reason and will not actually be a very effective and popular move for the party that does so. While this idea of tying a delay or a kill it effect to the ACA bill has been floating around a while, the sales job for the general public, rather than the conservative base who already champions the idea, has been very slow in coming around. This makes picking it as a fighting point a very strange move politically. It had zero chance of success, it isn't likely to make the Democrats look like the bad guys to the general public, and so on. There's a possibility of it, simply because this bill isn't that popular either. But the general public wanted a deal, not a shutdown. And that deal wasn't "kill or delay this silly health care law too", it might be some other concession, but something smaller more likely. As a further problem, the bill on the table wasn't even a deal that would solve this problem for a year or two. It was for a few weeks where we would just be back at this same point around Thanksgiving or Christmas. Hurrah for that.
I'm curious what happens now with the default limit in a few weeks. I think most Republican backers (of substantial wealth anyway), are probably okay with a shutdown, if not happy about it. I doubt most of them are okay with a default risk. The business types are in fact, probably pissed about the prospect. I suspect this reflects the division within the Republican party over what to do over the last few months, with party elites trying to push for simple moves to get things over and done with and move on to meaningless symbolic votes against ObamaCare and the like, and the base understanding those symbolic votes won't amount to anything but not understanding that actual votes probably won't either.
In general, I am greatly annoyed that a meaningless potential intrusion into Syria and the government's inability to play together have destroyed the public attention span for the NSA scandals, still ongoing in their revelations. For instance that the NSA decided it may use "enrichment" data without restraint drawn from social media sites, credit cards, insurance records, as part of their investigations and dragnets into American citizens. I don't like having to pay attention to furloughing of civilian workers while the NSA continues unimpeded. It is a distraction from the real business of actual deficit controls and necessary reforms therein, and from the expansion of executive and government power into the lives of ordinary people to have fights over things that do very little of either.
23 September 2013
And now back to the CRA debate
As a general rule, societies are probably going to be better off in the long-run using markets to establish whether discrimination is worthwhile or costly than to impose it as a requirement that it not exist. What happens is mostly that people withdraw from the market under those circumstances that they not practice it, rather than amend any discriminatory market behaviors. Or they go somewhere else where they don't have to. Under the former system, they may continue to operate, but new players may emerge who will not practice such tactics and strategies as refusing to serve particular people on whatever basis. They can then gain market share by serving the people who are turned away, perhaps allowing them to charge lower rates on everyone if they wish and drive out the bigots anyway.
Still. I'm not entirely comfortable with a world where someone can decide they don't want to serve someone as a customer on the basis of "who" they are or what they represent rather than other more personal understandings of their (potential) customer. I'm not sure that anti-discrimination laws are the best way to achieve avoiding that world. It might be that loosing licensing laws for starting many kinds of businesses might be a better option in many cases. Anti-gay discrimination while still prominent, is not so widely spread that there would be many businesses that could long afford refuse it as with Jim Crow (where there were both rigid discrimination laws and centuries of culture in place to do so). From the story, the public as polled broadly opposed to laws allowing businesses to make those discriminatory practices legal. This was probably not the case in the South, or even significant portions of the North in the 1950s and 60s.
The net result of that approach doesn't seem to be appreciated by either proponents of anti-discrimination laws or the people presuming to be attacked by them, that the types of businesses that would discriminate against particular groups of people on some class basis (and not because the customer was some sort of aggrieved asshole personally), can only persist in an environment where discrimination against particular groups of people is a more popular action than not discriminating and thereby not subject to demonstration and protest via popular concern or via competitive market entries. I think there's a case for that with homosexuality, but it's not as strong as Jim Crow was. In part because we've had anti-discrimination laws from Jim Crow era in place preventing people from segregating lunch counters and buses and the like, it seems intuitive to our generation that a photographer shouldn't get the same privilege to segregate what weddings they might do. Might they claim they wouldn't do inter-racial weddings, and how would we interpret that as a behavior? People share a certain discomfort with those still as well as they might with homosexual couples. What this suggests to me is that the type of laws preventing such behaviors are also generally unnecessary, because the public backlash against the businesses that do so could be significant in most cases.
I am unclear on what one's private religious beliefs have to do with photography or floral arrangements that they should deny service of those skills on religious grounds and that this is in fact some variety of religious freedom argument rather than a position of entitled privilege that has finally shifted culturally against traditional practices of discrimination to make those practices now unacceptable rather than tolerated common practice. If one doesn't believe homosexual people should get married on religious grounds, they can find churches and other religious assemblies who share that interpretation and will not perform such ceremonies, and it might even be possible to perform these associated private services like photography or floral arrangements on some contract with those assemblies. But I'm also unclear why it wasn't possible to contract with someone else of equal skill and aplomb to conduct those services locally for the discriminated couples, or to contract with someone who might have more enthusiasm for the task requested and perform it with less disturbance and perhaps a better outcome than someone with private religious misgivings that they express as a basis for their refusal to participate.
I suspect there is a point somewhere in between rigid application of religious principles that I don't understand how they apply under these circumstances and a question about how easy it might be to perform these services professionally to compete against such applications and drive them out of business (or nearly so). That point is very likely some variety of market failure, and some variety of social and perhaps even government response is warranted to correct a social injustice caused by widespread biases and prejudices. I'm not comfortable with the approaches being made available, but I'm also not comfortable with people trying to hide behind "religion" to justify certain market commons behaviors. I think there needs to be some social response to that behavior, and that social response could take the form of protest and economic boycotts, negative reviews, and market competition instead of compulsory laws.
The net result of that approach doesn't seem to be appreciated by either proponents of anti-discrimination laws or the people presuming to be attacked by them, that the types of businesses that would discriminate against particular groups of people on some class basis (and not because the customer was some sort of aggrieved asshole personally), can only persist in an environment where discrimination against particular groups of people is a more popular action than not discriminating and thereby not subject to demonstration and protest via popular concern or via competitive market entries. I think there's a case for that with homosexuality, but it's not as strong as Jim Crow was. In part because we've had anti-discrimination laws from Jim Crow era in place preventing people from segregating lunch counters and buses and the like, it seems intuitive to our generation that a photographer shouldn't get the same privilege to segregate what weddings they might do. Might they claim they wouldn't do inter-racial weddings, and how would we interpret that as a behavior? People share a certain discomfort with those still as well as they might with homosexual couples. What this suggests to me is that the type of laws preventing such behaviors are also generally unnecessary, because the public backlash against the businesses that do so could be significant in most cases.
I am unclear on what one's private religious beliefs have to do with photography or floral arrangements that they should deny service of those skills on religious grounds and that this is in fact some variety of religious freedom argument rather than a position of entitled privilege that has finally shifted culturally against traditional practices of discrimination to make those practices now unacceptable rather than tolerated common practice. If one doesn't believe homosexual people should get married on religious grounds, they can find churches and other religious assemblies who share that interpretation and will not perform such ceremonies, and it might even be possible to perform these associated private services like photography or floral arrangements on some contract with those assemblies. But I'm also unclear why it wasn't possible to contract with someone else of equal skill and aplomb to conduct those services locally for the discriminated couples, or to contract with someone who might have more enthusiasm for the task requested and perform it with less disturbance and perhaps a better outcome than someone with private religious misgivings that they express as a basis for their refusal to participate.
I suspect there is a point somewhere in between rigid application of religious principles that I don't understand how they apply under these circumstances and a question about how easy it might be to perform these services professionally to compete against such applications and drive them out of business (or nearly so). That point is very likely some variety of market failure, and some variety of social and perhaps even government response is warranted to correct a social injustice caused by widespread biases and prejudices. I'm not comfortable with the approaches being made available, but I'm also not comfortable with people trying to hide behind "religion" to justify certain market commons behaviors. I think there needs to be some social response to that behavior, and that social response could take the form of protest and economic boycotts, negative reviews, and market competition instead of compulsory laws.
A brief bit of culture
I have attended... probably a dozen too many films this summer. Some notes.
1) Iron Man 3 so far is still the "best" film throughout this year. Which is weak praise and a low bar. The best part of Wolverine was the end-cap introducing the next X-Men film (next year).
2) The World's End was a modest quasi Monty Python film (mostly because of the ending), and the various spoofs it involved. I would confidently say this is the most enjoyable film I've seen.
3) I haven't caught as many independent films yet (Fruitvale might be on the list so far). And I see a few decent-looking films coming out for Oscar bait. I expect the films will improve, but haven't been impressed so far by anything.
4) There's been several civil rights oriented films (42, Fruitvale, Butler, etc). A note on those on a moment.
5) Most of the historical/biopic style films have been a mess as films, but with interesting moments. Jobs was a mess (the story of Jobs interests people, but the movie was all over the place). The Butler was all over the place and didn't seem to settle into "the Butler" as a story so much as "whatever it is white people are supposed to feel bad about, which at least most of which we/they probably should". 42 was more about our worship and reverence of Jackie than the man and the player (though it did some credit to his play, which I was refreshed by).
6) Man of Steel was terrible and gets worse with every thought related to it (whoops there goes another building with hundreds of civilians, oh well, back to punching the bad guy even though that doesn't seem to be accomplishing anything). I skipped Star Trek. It doesn't sound like I missed much.
The civil rights issue interests me. This is the first generation of Americans without a major civil rights era moment to fight over. Gay rights is a civil rights issue, but it is distinct from the more momentous historical era of repression for blacks and the fights and fits to oppose it in the form of repression. This isn't the same as saying that racism is now defeated. Or that racist election strategies don't still try to pass laws restricting black votes (or Latino votes). But we also don't have fire hoses and dogs out and firebombing and beatings of men and women just fighting for those recognitions. I think therefore between Lincoln (and Django sort of) last year and 42, Butler, and Fruitvale, there's some basis for having these films out. People do need the dramatic impact and power of the stories of our past. Both to remind us that there were serious issues at stake, not that long ago, and that they were, at least in there more serious levels, overcome or can be. The problem with these as films tends to be that they very rarely humanize the figures involved very well and examine their motives and motivations. They function too often as "see, look how evolved we are today!" back-patting moments rather than enlightening portraits into the mixtures and multitudes that human beings contain and are. Racists today are jerks and complete assholes. Racists 50 years ago were, well basically everybody and everyone. There are and were decent people, who are otherwise sensible and capable, but who contain the presence of prejudices. Our prejudices and biases are subtle and insidious and not easily captured by screaming racial epithets at each other. I haven't really seen that covered, that hate is common and can be redeemed in some way more than that hate is stupid. Which it is, but that's kind of a boring film at this point.
Another cultural note:
Why is that shows have trouble ending? Writers can create books that end the story. Sometimes it takes a couple of books to do it, but it can be done. Why do shows have this issue? I've seen very few series terminate in a way that felt sensible, both as a series and as a last season. It's not limited to shows, as movies often have these formulaic battle sequences that get annoying to see with 30 minutes left of just special effects and explosions (even very good effects and explosions are more of "let's see what we can top here" than a good story conclusion).
Some examples:
Sopranos ending seems to have annoyed everyone (I actually liked it, but I also wasn't a huge fan of the show), but it's probably a low point for the series that people are confused if their TV is broken for a minute.
Wire's 5th season is still good, but nowhere near as good as the rest of the series. I never watch it other than a couple of episodes (Omar-Marlo feud coming to a fluky end, Mike killing Snoop, and the finale). Even the 2nd season I will watch on occasion well before sinking into the 5th. I expect part of the reason people keep wanting a 6th season is because 5 was kind of lame relative to expectations. (The 3rd and 4th seasons are still the top sequence of TV show for me, which is why 5 looks so bad in comparison. I've had trouble getting fully into Breaking Bad, but it has had some contention for high expectations on writing and story. And Firefly didn't continue beyond one season and could be the other contender except it worked more like a sci-fi setup and didn't always have a major plot point per episode to keep the writing tighter at times.)
Dexter's 6th and final seasons are a complete mess. The end itself was quite lame really. The show really came off the rails around the beginning of season 6, possibly because Dex stopped killing people as much and mostly because he didn't really have the distractions of "work-life-secret-life" balance. Which was the big part of the story interest of the show was how he concealed himself from those close around him. 7 was okay for that simple reason that he had to reveal and balance himself again.
Mad Men stopped being relevant a couple seasons ago.. and hasn't ended yet.
Homeland started off okay but since the show didn't kill the mole/terrorist as in the original series at the end of season 1, they charted off into 24 territory of absurdity-driven events. Which never ends well, since 24 was pathetic as a story-driven object.
Lost's ending pissed off everyone who followed the show. I didn't follow it since it was a JJ Abrams vehicle, which means it should have been pretty clear after the first couple of seasons that the writers didn't know where they were going. But still, the bad ending has basically dropped the show from the major following it had developed years ago to people just having no interest in it again.
Which is why the Breaking Bad ending seems to have been carried off pretty well.
I'm not sure why this is that challenging to write an ending to a story. Perhaps the problem is that TV shows don't always know this IS the last season, on the expectation that they could be picked up for another if this one does well. This is less of a problem now however for HBO/Showtime/AMC series that seem to have pretty steady control over when they will end, how long or short the series is per season, and so on, so I don't buy this as a full explanation.
I think the better explanation is that a lot of the fairly good series really work more like very extended films to explore a particular universe and its interactions. There's a first season which mostly works to set up the major characters and the universe they populate. A second to flesh them out and introduce new obstacles and characters, and a third or fourth to hit stride in writing and plot (and possibly kill off some people or write them out). It's not impossible to carry the tune out longer if it is working, but it seems like they start experimenting too much with pushing boundaries of the show rather than recognizing the limitations they've created in the universe of characters and working within those with some new twists and challenges that haven't been explored yet.
1) Iron Man 3 so far is still the "best" film throughout this year. Which is weak praise and a low bar. The best part of Wolverine was the end-cap introducing the next X-Men film (next year).
2) The World's End was a modest quasi Monty Python film (mostly because of the ending), and the various spoofs it involved. I would confidently say this is the most enjoyable film I've seen.
3) I haven't caught as many independent films yet (Fruitvale might be on the list so far). And I see a few decent-looking films coming out for Oscar bait. I expect the films will improve, but haven't been impressed so far by anything.
4) There's been several civil rights oriented films (42, Fruitvale, Butler, etc). A note on those on a moment.
5) Most of the historical/biopic style films have been a mess as films, but with interesting moments. Jobs was a mess (the story of Jobs interests people, but the movie was all over the place). The Butler was all over the place and didn't seem to settle into "the Butler" as a story so much as "whatever it is white people are supposed to feel bad about, which at least most of which we/they probably should". 42 was more about our worship and reverence of Jackie than the man and the player (though it did some credit to his play, which I was refreshed by).
6) Man of Steel was terrible and gets worse with every thought related to it (whoops there goes another building with hundreds of civilians, oh well, back to punching the bad guy even though that doesn't seem to be accomplishing anything). I skipped Star Trek. It doesn't sound like I missed much.
The civil rights issue interests me. This is the first generation of Americans without a major civil rights era moment to fight over. Gay rights is a civil rights issue, but it is distinct from the more momentous historical era of repression for blacks and the fights and fits to oppose it in the form of repression. This isn't the same as saying that racism is now defeated. Or that racist election strategies don't still try to pass laws restricting black votes (or Latino votes). But we also don't have fire hoses and dogs out and firebombing and beatings of men and women just fighting for those recognitions. I think therefore between Lincoln (and Django sort of) last year and 42, Butler, and Fruitvale, there's some basis for having these films out. People do need the dramatic impact and power of the stories of our past. Both to remind us that there were serious issues at stake, not that long ago, and that they were, at least in there more serious levels, overcome or can be. The problem with these as films tends to be that they very rarely humanize the figures involved very well and examine their motives and motivations. They function too often as "see, look how evolved we are today!" back-patting moments rather than enlightening portraits into the mixtures and multitudes that human beings contain and are. Racists today are jerks and complete assholes. Racists 50 years ago were, well basically everybody and everyone. There are and were decent people, who are otherwise sensible and capable, but who contain the presence of prejudices. Our prejudices and biases are subtle and insidious and not easily captured by screaming racial epithets at each other. I haven't really seen that covered, that hate is common and can be redeemed in some way more than that hate is stupid. Which it is, but that's kind of a boring film at this point.
Another cultural note:
Why is that shows have trouble ending? Writers can create books that end the story. Sometimes it takes a couple of books to do it, but it can be done. Why do shows have this issue? I've seen very few series terminate in a way that felt sensible, both as a series and as a last season. It's not limited to shows, as movies often have these formulaic battle sequences that get annoying to see with 30 minutes left of just special effects and explosions (even very good effects and explosions are more of "let's see what we can top here" than a good story conclusion).
Some examples:
Sopranos ending seems to have annoyed everyone (I actually liked it, but I also wasn't a huge fan of the show), but it's probably a low point for the series that people are confused if their TV is broken for a minute.
Wire's 5th season is still good, but nowhere near as good as the rest of the series. I never watch it other than a couple of episodes (Omar-Marlo feud coming to a fluky end, Mike killing Snoop, and the finale). Even the 2nd season I will watch on occasion well before sinking into the 5th. I expect part of the reason people keep wanting a 6th season is because 5 was kind of lame relative to expectations. (The 3rd and 4th seasons are still the top sequence of TV show for me, which is why 5 looks so bad in comparison. I've had trouble getting fully into Breaking Bad, but it has had some contention for high expectations on writing and story. And Firefly didn't continue beyond one season and could be the other contender except it worked more like a sci-fi setup and didn't always have a major plot point per episode to keep the writing tighter at times.)
Dexter's 6th and final seasons are a complete mess. The end itself was quite lame really. The show really came off the rails around the beginning of season 6, possibly because Dex stopped killing people as much and mostly because he didn't really have the distractions of "work-life-secret-life" balance. Which was the big part of the story interest of the show was how he concealed himself from those close around him. 7 was okay for that simple reason that he had to reveal and balance himself again.
Mad Men stopped being relevant a couple seasons ago.. and hasn't ended yet.
Homeland started off okay but since the show didn't kill the mole/terrorist as in the original series at the end of season 1, they charted off into 24 territory of absurdity-driven events. Which never ends well, since 24 was pathetic as a story-driven object.
Lost's ending pissed off everyone who followed the show. I didn't follow it since it was a JJ Abrams vehicle, which means it should have been pretty clear after the first couple of seasons that the writers didn't know where they were going. But still, the bad ending has basically dropped the show from the major following it had developed years ago to people just having no interest in it again.
Which is why the Breaking Bad ending seems to have been carried off pretty well.
I'm not sure why this is that challenging to write an ending to a story. Perhaps the problem is that TV shows don't always know this IS the last season, on the expectation that they could be picked up for another if this one does well. This is less of a problem now however for HBO/Showtime/AMC series that seem to have pretty steady control over when they will end, how long or short the series is per season, and so on, so I don't buy this as a full explanation.
I think the better explanation is that a lot of the fairly good series really work more like very extended films to explore a particular universe and its interactions. There's a first season which mostly works to set up the major characters and the universe they populate. A second to flesh them out and introduce new obstacles and characters, and a third or fourth to hit stride in writing and plot (and possibly kill off some people or write them out). It's not impossible to carry the tune out longer if it is working, but it seems like they start experimenting too much with pushing boundaries of the show rather than recognizing the limitations they've created in the universe of characters and working within those with some new twists and challenges that haven't been explored yet.
19 June 2013
A series of complaints and grievances
I've been following the various scandals and revelations and developments in our government with a dual experience of almost triumphant "I told you so" moments followed by the enormous disappointment that whomever I told in the first place probably still isn't listening.
As a general rule, libertarians are ignored, at best tolerated, and at worst decried as traitors or heartless bastards and their concerns, even when shared, become publicly as easily dismissed as those of claims for moon landing conspirators. This attitude becomes worse for wear when it appears as though some of these concerns and claims are shared, however rhetorically or for naked political ends, by the major mainstream political figures and the polities that back them. Democrats, in some part due to overreach by the Bush administration and in large part to due to backlash against the Iraq War, had shown promising signs of wanting to push back against the security state and the security theater measures we installed in the panicked days of post 9-11. This was promising enough as a platform that they even nominated an anti-Iraq War constitutional lawyer who had made sympathetic noises about the need for proper due process and oversight for the actions of the executive in the conduct of "keeping America safe", with the notion most clearly expressed that there was no need to trade liberty for security in a false effort.
It was not surprising that not all of this promise was delivered upon. What was surprising is how little, and how much more expansive rather than contracting, the security state has become.
As a general rule, I vote for Presidents on several issues that the general public ignores.
1) Foreign policy. I found Obama's presentation at least preferable to the distasteful overtures of Romney and McCain, but I disagreed strongly with his plans for Afghanistan during the 08 campaign. And subsequent actions in Libya, an apparently haphazardly expanded drone programme in Pakistan and elsewhere, mixed results with Russia and Iran, general failures with Israel (from whatever perspective you want to apply to it), have to be counter-balanced with the death of bin Laden, dealings with Somali pirates, and a partial success in securing offshoring alliances with regional players in East Asia (Myanmar, Japan, Indonesia, Australia, India, Vietnam), helped largely by China's antagonizing postures or existing relationships with many of these nations. In general, the promising but mixed overtones of his election and campaign did not meet up with a) the absurdity of his Nobel Peace Prize award, b) the general Clintonian nature of his foreign policy as an extension of liberal internationalism/hawkishness. This might overall be preferrable to neoconservative hawkishness and the apparent need for endless foreign adventures, conquests and defence funding, but it offered little to assuage my concerns over the endless security state brought on through the war on terror, even if it was now no longer to be called that, and still did only marginal work to remove some of our needless and costly adventures abroad. (Note: I am a realist, not an isolationist. Give me a war worth fighting, and I'll help pay for the bombs and talk strategy and tactics. We haven't had one of those in a while except for the initial incursions into Afghanistan back in 2002, and possibly the First Gulf War. Pretty much everywhere else in my lifetime we've sent rockets, bombs, and troops has been a bloody mess or a waste of effort in my view, and one could go back further still and see pointless waste in Vietnam, potentially Korea, and definitely WW1 in the last century).
2) The protection of civil liberties and the appointment of judges to carry this out. Obama's had all kinds of problems appointing federal judges, and some of that isn't entirely his fault. Republicans have blocked or delayed numerous appointments, but he also hasn't appointed at a rapid enough pace to fill vacancies. Sotomayor on the Supreme Court has mostly been a pleasant surprise in defending criminal rights for trials and detentions to his credit (though she's often been in dissent sadly rather than in the majority), but the overall character of civil liberties as an issue has taken a severe beating over the last decade and has shown limited signs of improving. The government now maintains, expands, or defends powers to a) use drug dog searches as probable cause despite substantial evidence that they are heavily flawed (eg, racist) if not useless, b) stop and frisk people with no probable cause in major cities, c) stop and frisk pretty much anyone getting on an airplane with no probable cause, and to seize a considerable quantity of non-lethal property from those persons, d) deploy deadly force against US citizens abroad without trial or due process, e) prevent people from even getting aboard airplanes with minimal due process f) claim and scan through the records of media companies, credit card companies, and telecommunications companies as to the activities of their consumers and clients, with minimal oversight and a limited due process (that is, that these searches may violate the 4th amendment by the decision of the courts required to oversee them, but we don't know for sure because we can't read the secret decisions of that court), g) places overbroad secrecy claims upon the activities of government agencies and officials, to the point of prosecuting leaks by whistleblowers concerned about the legality or efficacy or cost of such agencies and officials, as treasonous actions of espionage, h) potentially tortures said whistleblowers while in detention. i) detain, interrogate, torture, and force-feed people, even who are declared to pose no threat to national security by our own government, indefinitely with minimal recourse to the judicial system to overturn these determinations, j) seize the DNA of arrested persons without need for a warrant.
I have long tired of the supposition that these are defensible requirements necessary for our safety and well-being. The risk of terrorism in a modern democratic nation-state is very low. This allows public officials to claim reasonably that xyz policies have kept us safe. This is akin to saying that xyz policies keep away evil spirits or giants. And since we haven't seen any evil spirits or giants, then obviously they must be working.
Terrorism is exceptional as a criminal or military tactic. It is exceedingly rare to experience outside of a regional conflict between uneven powers as a deployment of asymmetric warfare. It is reasonable to take steps to make it far less common still in stable environments of far-away nation-states, as the tactics often involve significant loss of life and grief to those who suffer for lost loved ones, substantial debilitating injuries, and significant damage to property and commerce in the disruption of daily life for others, just as other major crimes can do (murder, rape, assault, theft, riots, etc). It could be considered quite foolish to presume that a nation-state should do nothing in the face of such action to respond, investigate, and hopefully deter violent acts of terror and mayhem. But it is equally foolish to accept at face-value the claims of that nation-state and its officials that its tactics and stratagems in response are necessary and effective. If our tactics are ineffective, we are expending valuable effort and money and time upon fruitless endeavours for security in an action of inscrutable theater rather than the transparently fair provision of law and order. If our tactics are unnecessary we may tread upon the private affairs of citizens and residents and the wants of potential allies here or abroad for no purposeful gain. A common libertarian refrain in viewing government policy is to say "We need to do something, this is something, therefore we should do it" is a method used to considerable effect by public officials. The wake of national or local public tragedies is easily exploited to do meaningless symbolic things or, worse, damaging things to our liberties and well-being with no benefit at all to our security, prosperity or happiness as a people. "We" thus advise caution in such moments to ask for careful analysis of what things will be necessary, who will be effected, and what benefits we will all be provided, and if these things do not come to pass, that we reform, and change course to do other things (or even nothing) instead.
There are several common attempts to defend the responses of our authorities and appointed representatives to these problems. Most of these defences are unsuccessful. The most foremost in the wake of the revelations of broad surveillance programmes is that "I have nothing to hide". But there are a number of problems with that yawning response. Significant among them is the false belief that what the government actually uses these powers for is the prevention and detention of terrorists. PATRIOT act powers and NSA wiretaps have been used for anything from counter-terrorism as intended, to essentially entrapment of "terrorism" by the FBI, to anti-drug investigations, to more mundane local criminal activities. It is not sufficient to simply not be a terrorist to not attract undue attention in this way. A second problem is the lack of understanding of how broad and inclusive our criminal codes at the federal, state, and local level have become. All manner of even commonly engaged activity is punishable by law, with often absurdly high maximum penalties of prison terms. All that is required is a petty functionary in public service to view your activities with suspicion or any personally annoyed prosecutor or judge to carry out these penalties upon anyone they wish. What this claim of "I have nothing to hide" really means is: "I have no enemies in power willing to punish me". And we see immediately that the trust belied by this claim will shift when the party in power shifts to suggest that people quickly see (delusionally or accurately or not) that they may indeed have enemies in office willing to punish them for being "liberal" or "conservative" and outspoken in those views through whatever means available to them.
A further problem with the security provisions is the expansion of military power upon the civilian sector. It was common during the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing to see military gear clad and equipped Boston PD roaming around. In fairness to the city of Boston, Boston is a large metropolitan area with historical significance easily accessible to various groups who might wish to attack or make a political statement via terrorism, as might be the case in Washington DC or New York or Los Angeles or Chicago or Philadelphia say. It might thus have been reasonable to apportion some funds to that purpose (I do not necessarily agree, but this is at least an argument worth having). But how likely is a similarly low but modest risk to apply to any random town in Alabama or Ohio or Wisconsin or Oregon? And how much funding has been disposed upon those random towns to ostensibly fight terrorism (or more likely, unarmed drug dealers and consumers) and make available heavy equipment, often with minimal training, to local police forces who will have essentially zero risk of terrorism. Is this an effective use of our efforts, to blanket our country with military equipment to chase down terrorist suspects? Likewise, a similar question could apply to the distribution of funds and equipment to other agencies of the federal government, other than our armies and FBI/CIA/Homeland Security style agencies.
Of all the things that developed over the last few weeks, the overbroad surveillance disclosures of data mining by the government, the IRS scandals, the needless involvement into the Syrian conflict, the Supreme Court ruling that police interrogations (of a non-arrest manner) need not require proper Mirandizing, the most disturbing to me was the idea that the government can, upon arrest, compel DNA from a arrested suspect. Supposedly this is to be limited to the most violent actions and suspicions, but we are likely to see this to be a push for a very broad use as an investigative tool by governments and already an arrest is commonly enough an abuse of authority by police to take in people who annoyed or displeased them, failed to comply with "commands", and that there are any number of relatively harmless things that are criminalized and arrest-able (drug possession in many states for example, prostitution, etc). It isn't necessary that people will only be arrested for murder and rape and general mayhem, and it will likely not remain necessary that DNA will only be taken for those arrests. The claims that this is somehow an identification tool are rendered as a challenging argument to make where the processing of DNA still takes weeks and months versus fingerprints or facial recognition of drivers licenses and so on. It already seems a dangerous slope to permit it without a warrant and simply upon arrest even in the case of supposedly dangerous criminals as it would be simple enough to compel DNA as part of any written warrant for arrest in such cases. I have trouble seeing what legal use it has beyond that. It appears it's primary use is not identity, but rather to say, we have this person in custody, let's find out if maybe they are guilty of something. Usually something else, and not the crimes that we have detained them for. This is not a sensible way to investigate individuals for their crimes, even if the investigation of serious crimes (like rape or murder) is a pressing and serious matter worth the investment in DNA testing.
As a general rule, libertarians are ignored, at best tolerated, and at worst decried as traitors or heartless bastards and their concerns, even when shared, become publicly as easily dismissed as those of claims for moon landing conspirators. This attitude becomes worse for wear when it appears as though some of these concerns and claims are shared, however rhetorically or for naked political ends, by the major mainstream political figures and the polities that back them. Democrats, in some part due to overreach by the Bush administration and in large part to due to backlash against the Iraq War, had shown promising signs of wanting to push back against the security state and the security theater measures we installed in the panicked days of post 9-11. This was promising enough as a platform that they even nominated an anti-Iraq War constitutional lawyer who had made sympathetic noises about the need for proper due process and oversight for the actions of the executive in the conduct of "keeping America safe", with the notion most clearly expressed that there was no need to trade liberty for security in a false effort.
It was not surprising that not all of this promise was delivered upon. What was surprising is how little, and how much more expansive rather than contracting, the security state has become.
As a general rule, I vote for Presidents on several issues that the general public ignores.
1) Foreign policy. I found Obama's presentation at least preferable to the distasteful overtures of Romney and McCain, but I disagreed strongly with his plans for Afghanistan during the 08 campaign. And subsequent actions in Libya, an apparently haphazardly expanded drone programme in Pakistan and elsewhere, mixed results with Russia and Iran, general failures with Israel (from whatever perspective you want to apply to it), have to be counter-balanced with the death of bin Laden, dealings with Somali pirates, and a partial success in securing offshoring alliances with regional players in East Asia (Myanmar, Japan, Indonesia, Australia, India, Vietnam), helped largely by China's antagonizing postures or existing relationships with many of these nations. In general, the promising but mixed overtones of his election and campaign did not meet up with a) the absurdity of his Nobel Peace Prize award, b) the general Clintonian nature of his foreign policy as an extension of liberal internationalism/hawkishness. This might overall be preferrable to neoconservative hawkishness and the apparent need for endless foreign adventures, conquests and defence funding, but it offered little to assuage my concerns over the endless security state brought on through the war on terror, even if it was now no longer to be called that, and still did only marginal work to remove some of our needless and costly adventures abroad. (Note: I am a realist, not an isolationist. Give me a war worth fighting, and I'll help pay for the bombs and talk strategy and tactics. We haven't had one of those in a while except for the initial incursions into Afghanistan back in 2002, and possibly the First Gulf War. Pretty much everywhere else in my lifetime we've sent rockets, bombs, and troops has been a bloody mess or a waste of effort in my view, and one could go back further still and see pointless waste in Vietnam, potentially Korea, and definitely WW1 in the last century).
2) The protection of civil liberties and the appointment of judges to carry this out. Obama's had all kinds of problems appointing federal judges, and some of that isn't entirely his fault. Republicans have blocked or delayed numerous appointments, but he also hasn't appointed at a rapid enough pace to fill vacancies. Sotomayor on the Supreme Court has mostly been a pleasant surprise in defending criminal rights for trials and detentions to his credit (though she's often been in dissent sadly rather than in the majority), but the overall character of civil liberties as an issue has taken a severe beating over the last decade and has shown limited signs of improving. The government now maintains, expands, or defends powers to a) use drug dog searches as probable cause despite substantial evidence that they are heavily flawed (eg, racist) if not useless, b) stop and frisk people with no probable cause in major cities, c) stop and frisk pretty much anyone getting on an airplane with no probable cause, and to seize a considerable quantity of non-lethal property from those persons, d) deploy deadly force against US citizens abroad without trial or due process, e) prevent people from even getting aboard airplanes with minimal due process f) claim and scan through the records of media companies, credit card companies, and telecommunications companies as to the activities of their consumers and clients, with minimal oversight and a limited due process (that is, that these searches may violate the 4th amendment by the decision of the courts required to oversee them, but we don't know for sure because we can't read the secret decisions of that court), g) places overbroad secrecy claims upon the activities of government agencies and officials, to the point of prosecuting leaks by whistleblowers concerned about the legality or efficacy or cost of such agencies and officials, as treasonous actions of espionage, h) potentially tortures said whistleblowers while in detention. i) detain, interrogate, torture, and force-feed people, even who are declared to pose no threat to national security by our own government, indefinitely with minimal recourse to the judicial system to overturn these determinations, j) seize the DNA of arrested persons without need for a warrant.
I have long tired of the supposition that these are defensible requirements necessary for our safety and well-being. The risk of terrorism in a modern democratic nation-state is very low. This allows public officials to claim reasonably that xyz policies have kept us safe. This is akin to saying that xyz policies keep away evil spirits or giants. And since we haven't seen any evil spirits or giants, then obviously they must be working.
Terrorism is exceptional as a criminal or military tactic. It is exceedingly rare to experience outside of a regional conflict between uneven powers as a deployment of asymmetric warfare. It is reasonable to take steps to make it far less common still in stable environments of far-away nation-states, as the tactics often involve significant loss of life and grief to those who suffer for lost loved ones, substantial debilitating injuries, and significant damage to property and commerce in the disruption of daily life for others, just as other major crimes can do (murder, rape, assault, theft, riots, etc). It could be considered quite foolish to presume that a nation-state should do nothing in the face of such action to respond, investigate, and hopefully deter violent acts of terror and mayhem. But it is equally foolish to accept at face-value the claims of that nation-state and its officials that its tactics and stratagems in response are necessary and effective. If our tactics are ineffective, we are expending valuable effort and money and time upon fruitless endeavours for security in an action of inscrutable theater rather than the transparently fair provision of law and order. If our tactics are unnecessary we may tread upon the private affairs of citizens and residents and the wants of potential allies here or abroad for no purposeful gain. A common libertarian refrain in viewing government policy is to say "We need to do something, this is something, therefore we should do it" is a method used to considerable effect by public officials. The wake of national or local public tragedies is easily exploited to do meaningless symbolic things or, worse, damaging things to our liberties and well-being with no benefit at all to our security, prosperity or happiness as a people. "We" thus advise caution in such moments to ask for careful analysis of what things will be necessary, who will be effected, and what benefits we will all be provided, and if these things do not come to pass, that we reform, and change course to do other things (or even nothing) instead.
There are several common attempts to defend the responses of our authorities and appointed representatives to these problems. Most of these defences are unsuccessful. The most foremost in the wake of the revelations of broad surveillance programmes is that "I have nothing to hide". But there are a number of problems with that yawning response. Significant among them is the false belief that what the government actually uses these powers for is the prevention and detention of terrorists. PATRIOT act powers and NSA wiretaps have been used for anything from counter-terrorism as intended, to essentially entrapment of "terrorism" by the FBI, to anti-drug investigations, to more mundane local criminal activities. It is not sufficient to simply not be a terrorist to not attract undue attention in this way. A second problem is the lack of understanding of how broad and inclusive our criminal codes at the federal, state, and local level have become. All manner of even commonly engaged activity is punishable by law, with often absurdly high maximum penalties of prison terms. All that is required is a petty functionary in public service to view your activities with suspicion or any personally annoyed prosecutor or judge to carry out these penalties upon anyone they wish. What this claim of "I have nothing to hide" really means is: "I have no enemies in power willing to punish me". And we see immediately that the trust belied by this claim will shift when the party in power shifts to suggest that people quickly see (delusionally or accurately or not) that they may indeed have enemies in office willing to punish them for being "liberal" or "conservative" and outspoken in those views through whatever means available to them.
A further problem with the security provisions is the expansion of military power upon the civilian sector. It was common during the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing to see military gear clad and equipped Boston PD roaming around. In fairness to the city of Boston, Boston is a large metropolitan area with historical significance easily accessible to various groups who might wish to attack or make a political statement via terrorism, as might be the case in Washington DC or New York or Los Angeles or Chicago or Philadelphia say. It might thus have been reasonable to apportion some funds to that purpose (I do not necessarily agree, but this is at least an argument worth having). But how likely is a similarly low but modest risk to apply to any random town in Alabama or Ohio or Wisconsin or Oregon? And how much funding has been disposed upon those random towns to ostensibly fight terrorism (or more likely, unarmed drug dealers and consumers) and make available heavy equipment, often with minimal training, to local police forces who will have essentially zero risk of terrorism. Is this an effective use of our efforts, to blanket our country with military equipment to chase down terrorist suspects? Likewise, a similar question could apply to the distribution of funds and equipment to other agencies of the federal government, other than our armies and FBI/CIA/Homeland Security style agencies.
Of all the things that developed over the last few weeks, the overbroad surveillance disclosures of data mining by the government, the IRS scandals, the needless involvement into the Syrian conflict, the Supreme Court ruling that police interrogations (of a non-arrest manner) need not require proper Mirandizing, the most disturbing to me was the idea that the government can, upon arrest, compel DNA from a arrested suspect. Supposedly this is to be limited to the most violent actions and suspicions, but we are likely to see this to be a push for a very broad use as an investigative tool by governments and already an arrest is commonly enough an abuse of authority by police to take in people who annoyed or displeased them, failed to comply with "commands", and that there are any number of relatively harmless things that are criminalized and arrest-able (drug possession in many states for example, prostitution, etc). It isn't necessary that people will only be arrested for murder and rape and general mayhem, and it will likely not remain necessary that DNA will only be taken for those arrests. The claims that this is somehow an identification tool are rendered as a challenging argument to make where the processing of DNA still takes weeks and months versus fingerprints or facial recognition of drivers licenses and so on. It already seems a dangerous slope to permit it without a warrant and simply upon arrest even in the case of supposedly dangerous criminals as it would be simple enough to compel DNA as part of any written warrant for arrest in such cases. I have trouble seeing what legal use it has beyond that. It appears it's primary use is not identity, but rather to say, we have this person in custody, let's find out if maybe they are guilty of something. Usually something else, and not the crimes that we have detained them for. This is not a sensible way to investigate individuals for their crimes, even if the investigation of serious crimes (like rape or murder) is a pressing and serious matter worth the investment in DNA testing.
30 April 2013
NBA, fantastic. Also now a social controversy.
1) The NBA and NBA affiliated athletes have been sort of at an unusually high place for things like diversity and tolerance for a while now (for instance, by starting the unwatchable but equally available WNBA, and obviously being a bastion of support for Obama's candidacy and Presidency), so the idea that an NBA player would be the first male athlete to come out as gay while still active, more or less, is not all that surprising. There were numerous signs this would probably be the case, from stories like Kenneth Faried's two moms, Magic Johnson's son, and so on.
2) I understand some, maybe most, of the public kerfuffle surrounding and attacking Chris Broussard's comments on OTL when ESPN (finally) got around to covering the Collins story. I'm not sure I agree with most of it though. I don't think it was hate speech to declare his beliefs, he made no overt political suggestion (regarding his views on gay marriage for example), and he clarified, as he had before, that he didn't think it should disqualify a player from playing in the NBA. I think it is fine to disagree that his interpretation of the Christian faith should apply to other Christians, or to people who are gay and Christian, and so forth. I'm not sure he rises to being a bigot on the basis that he thinks something that some other people do is a sin however. Lots of people presumably believe adultery is a sin under a Christian interpretation. They are not bigots for believing this to be a serious flaw of people who are unfaithful in their marriages. People in other faiths or with different interpretations of Christianity think alcohol or pork or working on Sundays are sins too. Again, these are not bigotry based associations for alcoholics or bacon lovers or football players. It could rise to that level if, according to that belief, one felt they should discriminate against athletes and work to prevent their ability to play in a professional league (as it would if they discriminated against someone who was black or Jewish or Muslim or Christian, or a bacon loving alcoholic for that matter), and to some extent if they believed public policy should share their personal religious beliefs and discriminate against homosexual couples, or people who are unfaithful in marriages or who consume alcohol, or whatever else is classified as mortally wrong by some religious text and its interpreters.
But so far as I can tell, Broussard made no such statement, and mostly repeated something he had already said sometime before. To be honest, if there is anyone to be mad at here, it is ESPN for putting him on to say something that didn't contribute to the conversation significantly. Certainly there may be NBA players of a devout and particular religious interpretation would will be uncomfortable around a homosexual player. I don't think we needed Broussard to tell us that. Collins or Granderson could have said as much just as easily, and he had already said this himself some time ago. In general however, I do not think they needed to deny him a platform, that they should fire him, or that anything he said rises affirmatively to the level of some variety of hate speech. So I don't get the level of ire that was involved in him saying something unpopular. It was unpopular and unpleasant and it was from a strain of Christianity and beliefs associated therein. And that's pretty much all he said.
3) That said, when someone says something unpopular and is publicly castigated for doing so, this is not equal to the levels of repression involved or the difficulty and emotional turmoil and anguish involved in say, someone coming out publicly as gay. There are still significant parts of the country where this is not greeted warmly and matter-of-factly, where there are parents who may disown or shun their own children or (former) friends, where there are churches who will not admit someone for worship, and where there are schools and communities where one may be ostracized, beaten, or even killed, for such an admission as "I am a gay man". There are not, in general, such communities in the United States, or Western educated, industrialised societies as a whole that would do so for an admission like "I am a Christian and this is what I believe". There are places in the world where such an admission may be dangerous in those ways, and pose a particular hardship, but such places generally share an aversion both for Christians and for homosexuals (say, Iran or Egypt) and are matched by places where the STATE, not merely the extralegal use of repression by violently bigoted people as with honor killings in Brazil for example, may kill and detain and punish people for homosexuality in ways that it would not for Christians. Many of these on the strict basis of Christian teachings (say, Uganda).
I already have long tired of the mythological rantings of Christians as a persecuted minority in a nation where they assemble into an overwhelming majority of the public, and by this impose all manner of public policy upon the lot of us (blue laws, various vice laws, various forms of censorship, etc). But this latest incident of such claims of how hard it is to be "a Christian" is flatly ridiculous. There are particular views of some Christians that are commonly ridiculed, or attacked as unfair and unethical, or as unfounded or otherwise unsettled for debate in theological scholarship. I would agree this happens, but I'm not sure it is oppressive to state disagreement with these views or that these views are not held by others, or that there are theological interpretations and scholars that differ widely as to the appropriateness of those views. Likewise, there are particular groups of Christians with very strict or peculiar interpretations (say the WBC as one of the extremes, or the KKK) who are attacked for their expression of these unpopular perspectives. But being called names and being offended by the popular representation of oneself in culture is hardly a new experience when someone has had something unpopular or unpleasant to say, nor a basis for thinking one to be oppressed. These are not true hardships or emblems of persecution for other people to disagree emotionally and strongly with your beliefs, to call them bigoted, prejudiced, or ignorant.
It is a form of coercion, yes. But it is not required that one must be welcome at a NYC or San Francisco cocktail party of moderate and liberal elites in order to be free to spout opinions, facts, or even total nonsense as an American. It is not required that people agree with you for your freedom of conscience and belief to be respected and your speech unimpeded when expressing it. It is not even required that people do not socially discriminate against views they find repugnant for these things to happen. Indeed, for the coercion to have any effect, it must first cause us to reexamine these unpopular notions and beliefs, look for better more convincing or socially acceptable ways to express them, and ultimately chill our speech and expression with self censorship if we cannot do so or do not evolve in our ways. I see no evidence even that this process is mandated upon Christians as it might be for say, racists. No one is forcing a change in Christian theology and dogma upon Christians on this point.
4) Look. Christians. If you want to understand real oppression. Try being an atheist in your society here in America. Very nearly HALF of the population would not want someone like me to marry their daughter. Half of you automatically dismiss me in one of the more meaningful ways a human being can want to be (not that I'd want to marry a religious woman anyway and am quite comfortable around secularists and atheists personally for such things as surround my sex life and intimate attachments, but it's not like I'd automatically dismiss the proposition if someone were to have been otherwise suitable). A third of the population would not want to hire an atheist as a waiter or waitress, over half as a teacher, and two thirds wouldn't want one as a child care worker. Employment discrimination continues as much as possible as a result. Numerous states still have on their law books (if unenforceable and unconstitutional) religious tests preventing atheists from public service positions, and precious few public officials are elected as atheists or secularists. All while large quantities of evangelicals, Catholics, and so on continue to be elected and re-elected. To be sure, one wouldn't expect a first-past-the-post electoral system to elect many non-Christians in a society where almost 80% of the population evinces a Judeo-Christian ethic. To be sure, atheists have advantages over Muslims in that we have few obvious and open associations from which to be base a coercive system of surveillance and police profiling. To be sure atheists have precious advantages over many oppressed minorities in this society, in that their lack of belief need only never be openly expressed while racial intolerance needs only eyes, or a homosexual (or perceived so) need only appear in the company of their same-sex affectionately in any public manner. Nevertheless, this is a community of people that is told, repeatedly, that it is not trusted, unworthy, is openly disliked, and even openly discriminated against. That is not the community of Christianity, or even evangelical Christianity.
Let me know when Christianity reaches that point in America, where half the public won't trust a young Christian man with their daughter or large percentages of people won't trust someone wearing a cross necklace to serve them food in a restaurant or won't hire such a person in the first place. Or even, where we reach a point where that seems like a plausible future for our children or grandchildren to grow up into. There is no evidence such a society is likely, even with a growing number of disaffected young people from organised religions. At worst, a moderately secularist future where traditional religions are tolerated and respected private institutions as in Europe is your future. And not a society where native Christians are hunted down, beaten, cast out of society as might be arguably the case in parts of Egypt. Much less the society atheists observe for themselves today.
So. Until then, I don't want to hear it. Go fuck yourself with your sense of entitlement.
2) I understand some, maybe most, of the public kerfuffle surrounding and attacking Chris Broussard's comments on OTL when ESPN (finally) got around to covering the Collins story. I'm not sure I agree with most of it though. I don't think it was hate speech to declare his beliefs, he made no overt political suggestion (regarding his views on gay marriage for example), and he clarified, as he had before, that he didn't think it should disqualify a player from playing in the NBA. I think it is fine to disagree that his interpretation of the Christian faith should apply to other Christians, or to people who are gay and Christian, and so forth. I'm not sure he rises to being a bigot on the basis that he thinks something that some other people do is a sin however. Lots of people presumably believe adultery is a sin under a Christian interpretation. They are not bigots for believing this to be a serious flaw of people who are unfaithful in their marriages. People in other faiths or with different interpretations of Christianity think alcohol or pork or working on Sundays are sins too. Again, these are not bigotry based associations for alcoholics or bacon lovers or football players. It could rise to that level if, according to that belief, one felt they should discriminate against athletes and work to prevent their ability to play in a professional league (as it would if they discriminated against someone who was black or Jewish or Muslim or Christian, or a bacon loving alcoholic for that matter), and to some extent if they believed public policy should share their personal religious beliefs and discriminate against homosexual couples, or people who are unfaithful in marriages or who consume alcohol, or whatever else is classified as mortally wrong by some religious text and its interpreters.
But so far as I can tell, Broussard made no such statement, and mostly repeated something he had already said sometime before. To be honest, if there is anyone to be mad at here, it is ESPN for putting him on to say something that didn't contribute to the conversation significantly. Certainly there may be NBA players of a devout and particular religious interpretation would will be uncomfortable around a homosexual player. I don't think we needed Broussard to tell us that. Collins or Granderson could have said as much just as easily, and he had already said this himself some time ago. In general however, I do not think they needed to deny him a platform, that they should fire him, or that anything he said rises affirmatively to the level of some variety of hate speech. So I don't get the level of ire that was involved in him saying something unpopular. It was unpopular and unpleasant and it was from a strain of Christianity and beliefs associated therein. And that's pretty much all he said.
3) That said, when someone says something unpopular and is publicly castigated for doing so, this is not equal to the levels of repression involved or the difficulty and emotional turmoil and anguish involved in say, someone coming out publicly as gay. There are still significant parts of the country where this is not greeted warmly and matter-of-factly, where there are parents who may disown or shun their own children or (former) friends, where there are churches who will not admit someone for worship, and where there are schools and communities where one may be ostracized, beaten, or even killed, for such an admission as "I am a gay man". There are not, in general, such communities in the United States, or Western educated, industrialised societies as a whole that would do so for an admission like "I am a Christian and this is what I believe". There are places in the world where such an admission may be dangerous in those ways, and pose a particular hardship, but such places generally share an aversion both for Christians and for homosexuals (say, Iran or Egypt) and are matched by places where the STATE, not merely the extralegal use of repression by violently bigoted people as with honor killings in Brazil for example, may kill and detain and punish people for homosexuality in ways that it would not for Christians. Many of these on the strict basis of Christian teachings (say, Uganda).
I already have long tired of the mythological rantings of Christians as a persecuted minority in a nation where they assemble into an overwhelming majority of the public, and by this impose all manner of public policy upon the lot of us (blue laws, various vice laws, various forms of censorship, etc). But this latest incident of such claims of how hard it is to be "a Christian" is flatly ridiculous. There are particular views of some Christians that are commonly ridiculed, or attacked as unfair and unethical, or as unfounded or otherwise unsettled for debate in theological scholarship. I would agree this happens, but I'm not sure it is oppressive to state disagreement with these views or that these views are not held by others, or that there are theological interpretations and scholars that differ widely as to the appropriateness of those views. Likewise, there are particular groups of Christians with very strict or peculiar interpretations (say the WBC as one of the extremes, or the KKK) who are attacked for their expression of these unpopular perspectives. But being called names and being offended by the popular representation of oneself in culture is hardly a new experience when someone has had something unpopular or unpleasant to say, nor a basis for thinking one to be oppressed. These are not true hardships or emblems of persecution for other people to disagree emotionally and strongly with your beliefs, to call them bigoted, prejudiced, or ignorant.
It is a form of coercion, yes. But it is not required that one must be welcome at a NYC or San Francisco cocktail party of moderate and liberal elites in order to be free to spout opinions, facts, or even total nonsense as an American. It is not required that people agree with you for your freedom of conscience and belief to be respected and your speech unimpeded when expressing it. It is not even required that people do not socially discriminate against views they find repugnant for these things to happen. Indeed, for the coercion to have any effect, it must first cause us to reexamine these unpopular notions and beliefs, look for better more convincing or socially acceptable ways to express them, and ultimately chill our speech and expression with self censorship if we cannot do so or do not evolve in our ways. I see no evidence even that this process is mandated upon Christians as it might be for say, racists. No one is forcing a change in Christian theology and dogma upon Christians on this point.
4) Look. Christians. If you want to understand real oppression. Try being an atheist in your society here in America. Very nearly HALF of the population would not want someone like me to marry their daughter. Half of you automatically dismiss me in one of the more meaningful ways a human being can want to be (not that I'd want to marry a religious woman anyway and am quite comfortable around secularists and atheists personally for such things as surround my sex life and intimate attachments, but it's not like I'd automatically dismiss the proposition if someone were to have been otherwise suitable). A third of the population would not want to hire an atheist as a waiter or waitress, over half as a teacher, and two thirds wouldn't want one as a child care worker. Employment discrimination continues as much as possible as a result. Numerous states still have on their law books (if unenforceable and unconstitutional) religious tests preventing atheists from public service positions, and precious few public officials are elected as atheists or secularists. All while large quantities of evangelicals, Catholics, and so on continue to be elected and re-elected. To be sure, one wouldn't expect a first-past-the-post electoral system to elect many non-Christians in a society where almost 80% of the population evinces a Judeo-Christian ethic. To be sure, atheists have advantages over Muslims in that we have few obvious and open associations from which to be base a coercive system of surveillance and police profiling. To be sure atheists have precious advantages over many oppressed minorities in this society, in that their lack of belief need only never be openly expressed while racial intolerance needs only eyes, or a homosexual (or perceived so) need only appear in the company of their same-sex affectionately in any public manner. Nevertheless, this is a community of people that is told, repeatedly, that it is not trusted, unworthy, is openly disliked, and even openly discriminated against. That is not the community of Christianity, or even evangelical Christianity.
Let me know when Christianity reaches that point in America, where half the public won't trust a young Christian man with their daughter or large percentages of people won't trust someone wearing a cross necklace to serve them food in a restaurant or won't hire such a person in the first place. Or even, where we reach a point where that seems like a plausible future for our children or grandchildren to grow up into. There is no evidence such a society is likely, even with a growing number of disaffected young people from organised religions. At worst, a moderately secularist future where traditional religions are tolerated and respected private institutions as in Europe is your future. And not a society where native Christians are hunted down, beaten, cast out of society as might be arguably the case in parts of Egypt. Much less the society atheists observe for themselves today.
So. Until then, I don't want to hear it. Go fuck yourself with your sense of entitlement.
20 April 2013
NBA Playoffs, a distraction useful?
I'll be surprised if it isn't Miami versus Oklahoma City, and surprised if it isn't Miami in 6 (will take a significant injury to LeBron basically).
East is pretty lame except for the NY-Boston first round matchup and the question of how many games Miami loses on the way the to the finals. Boston if healthy could be a spoiler here just because they're a bad matchup for New York (excellent perimeter defence, and a good jump shooting team themselves to negate Chandler). But I'm not sure how healthy Garnett is. Chicago could make things interesting if Rose were to come back, but given the day-to-day injury to Noah already, I'm doubtful they'd let him back in. Even to play against the Heat. And they'd have to get past the Nets. Without Rose, their offence consists entirely of shots from 12-23 feet. Which I would not trust against the Nets' offensive firepower, even though they're weak defensively.
Later rounds, Indiana presents the most likely team to win more than one game against Miami, but I'm skeptical they could get past New York (would beat Boston and Atlanta though). Although I think Melo is better than the stat community tends to look at him, he's also not enough to win more than one game against the Heat, and even him with Tyson isn't either. I don't trust JR Smith in that series.
The West is much more interesting matchup wise. Harden versus Durant/Westbrook in round one. The injury riddled Spurs versus the Kobe-less Lakers (actually a pretty boring series I think, other than to see who gets healthy regarding Parker especially), the injury riddled Nuggets with their home court high octane high altitude games against the upstart Warriors, and then the Clippers-Grizz rematch. Only the Grizz would worry me as upset potential, indeed, I'd probably favor them mostly because I think del Negro is terrible as a coach and dropping Rudy Gay I think actually very much helped that team. I'm somewhat worried about their crunch time potential, but I'm also not persuaded that they can't attack Jordan and Griffin inside enough.
Both of those teams would also be trouble for the Thunder in round two. I don't like the Nuggets matchup with the Spurs, if healthy for either team, but I could see the Nuggets stretching it to 7 game series. A Spurs-Thunder rematch seems likely, but I also don't see anything from the Spurs that suggests their role players are about to play any better than they did last year, while the Thunder have shown their guys will show up enough. A Nuggets-Thunder matchup would be messier for Oklahoma City. Should they lose in round two, I'd trust the Grizzlies more than the Clippers to keep advancing, as they are a bad matchup for the Spurs, and play very slow in the opposite method from Denver.
East is pretty lame except for the NY-Boston first round matchup and the question of how many games Miami loses on the way the to the finals. Boston if healthy could be a spoiler here just because they're a bad matchup for New York (excellent perimeter defence, and a good jump shooting team themselves to negate Chandler). But I'm not sure how healthy Garnett is. Chicago could make things interesting if Rose were to come back, but given the day-to-day injury to Noah already, I'm doubtful they'd let him back in. Even to play against the Heat. And they'd have to get past the Nets. Without Rose, their offence consists entirely of shots from 12-23 feet. Which I would not trust against the Nets' offensive firepower, even though they're weak defensively.
Later rounds, Indiana presents the most likely team to win more than one game against Miami, but I'm skeptical they could get past New York (would beat Boston and Atlanta though). Although I think Melo is better than the stat community tends to look at him, he's also not enough to win more than one game against the Heat, and even him with Tyson isn't either. I don't trust JR Smith in that series.
The West is much more interesting matchup wise. Harden versus Durant/Westbrook in round one. The injury riddled Spurs versus the Kobe-less Lakers (actually a pretty boring series I think, other than to see who gets healthy regarding Parker especially), the injury riddled Nuggets with their home court high octane high altitude games against the upstart Warriors, and then the Clippers-Grizz rematch. Only the Grizz would worry me as upset potential, indeed, I'd probably favor them mostly because I think del Negro is terrible as a coach and dropping Rudy Gay I think actually very much helped that team. I'm somewhat worried about their crunch time potential, but I'm also not persuaded that they can't attack Jordan and Griffin inside enough.
Both of those teams would also be trouble for the Thunder in round two. I don't like the Nuggets matchup with the Spurs, if healthy for either team, but I could see the Nuggets stretching it to 7 game series. A Spurs-Thunder rematch seems likely, but I also don't see anything from the Spurs that suggests their role players are about to play any better than they did last year, while the Thunder have shown their guys will show up enough. A Nuggets-Thunder matchup would be messier for Oklahoma City. Should they lose in round two, I'd trust the Grizzlies more than the Clippers to keep advancing, as they are a bad matchup for the Spurs, and play very slow in the opposite method from Denver.
19 April 2013
A series of general rants and thoughts on the events of an early morning
1) Technology is amazing. People were effectively streaming the Boston area PD scanners on the internet. I'm not sure that's actually a good thing if they're actively pursuing someone who has a modest knowledge of the internet (but then again, all they really would need is a police scanner of their own). It is however, an interesting age. Reddit also managed to identify all kinds of apparel from rather fuzzy FBI photos. I also finally discovered a modest use for twitter this morning.
2) Technology is also horrible. Within the span of a few days, people and media have made all kinds of wild and unfounded accusations toward innocent people. Including a guy who has been missing for about a month. And an uncle who doesn't sound too pleased with his nephews has had his address blasted on CNN (joining a series of disjointed half-assed coverage on these series of events worthy of the total dismissal it receives on social media networks, especially twitter). These accusations were then accompanied by streams of people from all over the country, if not the world, releasing their hate and fear upon them on social media, reporters harassing said people, and so on.
3) I have a rather jaded perspective* of law enforcement I imagine from the popular view. But when people start tweeting that it looks like Call of Duty out there, and it's just SWAT wandering down the streets of Watertown, MA, looking for the fleeing suspect and any accomplices, I'm not all that surprised. The military and federal government have made all kinds of loans and guarantees to put military hardware and gear in the hands of local police forces. They've been militarizing their force for over a decade. APCs and belt-fed machine guns can be had, and have been used, at the high end of this absurdity. Somewhat unfortunate for my concerns on this issue, the actual National Guard was being deployed also this morning after a few hours of police work. This will make it unlikely that the casual onlooker will identify the police as police. And which may be unfortunate for all kinds of reasons (a rather dubious assumption that the "army" is needed to fight terrorism for example is given more force).
4) I suspect this will perhaps weaken the push for immigration reforms. This is despite that both brothers appear to have been here legally, and for a substantial duration. In general, I wasn't likely to find everything that will end up in a final bill proposal to be that agreeable, but the broad strokes of increasing access to foreign college graduates, high skilled immigrant visas, and work-visas were at least modest steps in a positive direction for more open borders, and a more focused enforcement on actual criminals of some variety trying to migrate here. I'm hopeful that crushing the (mostly stupid or ineffective in my view) gun laws will be sufficient demonstration of power for the right that they'll forget to be bigots as well, but I'm not counting on it. They were already whipping up demonstrations against any immigration reforms before this happened. One possible hope is that the confusion of Caucasians (in the quite literal sense) who are also Muslims should put to rest some of the demands for profiling.
*5) I tend to view law enforcement with suspicion. I do not think they're there to protect myself and my legal rights, but rather that I have to do that myself. Around them. I do think most cops are doing a difficult job, and trying to do it reasonably well. I do think we could help them by being reasonably cooperative at times (as in Boston today, with an effectively martial law system in place to catch the fugitive bombers). But there's really no reason to do so if a sufficient number of both themselves and other forces in our justice system seem more interested in body counts of arrests and detentions than in enforcing laws, or in enforcing anything like a just society and rather more interested in making people obey them rather than seeing themselves as servants of our collective demands for justice, order, and peace.
Brutality, error, and violence are oppressive enough. But then there's all the systematic factors like racism, profiling (of Arab/Muslims for example, which these two should start to call into question the wisdom of, as with the weird ricin guy), stop and frisk, and the show of force power surrounding drug laws and various other causes (immigration in some communities for example). I live in a suburban society and the most likely "oppression" I will suffer personally is a speeding ticket from a cop who didn't bother to use his radar and just eyeballed my speed, and possibly an absurd interest in whether or not I was drinking if driving at a later hour or (much less likely) whether any drugs are in my vehicle. My concern isn't for myself. It's for the millions of people who don't have the luxury of being white and middle-class and up.
In fairness to cops, if I think they are assholes (unfairly at times), they're not alone. I think that of most people. The only difference is that I'm pretty sure the cop is well-armed in all cases, and only partly sure of other people.
2) Technology is also horrible. Within the span of a few days, people and media have made all kinds of wild and unfounded accusations toward innocent people. Including a guy who has been missing for about a month. And an uncle who doesn't sound too pleased with his nephews has had his address blasted on CNN (joining a series of disjointed half-assed coverage on these series of events worthy of the total dismissal it receives on social media networks, especially twitter). These accusations were then accompanied by streams of people from all over the country, if not the world, releasing their hate and fear upon them on social media, reporters harassing said people, and so on.
3) I have a rather jaded perspective* of law enforcement I imagine from the popular view. But when people start tweeting that it looks like Call of Duty out there, and it's just SWAT wandering down the streets of Watertown, MA, looking for the fleeing suspect and any accomplices, I'm not all that surprised. The military and federal government have made all kinds of loans and guarantees to put military hardware and gear in the hands of local police forces. They've been militarizing their force for over a decade. APCs and belt-fed machine guns can be had, and have been used, at the high end of this absurdity. Somewhat unfortunate for my concerns on this issue, the actual National Guard was being deployed also this morning after a few hours of police work. This will make it unlikely that the casual onlooker will identify the police as police. And which may be unfortunate for all kinds of reasons (a rather dubious assumption that the "army" is needed to fight terrorism for example is given more force).
4) I suspect this will perhaps weaken the push for immigration reforms. This is despite that both brothers appear to have been here legally, and for a substantial duration. In general, I wasn't likely to find everything that will end up in a final bill proposal to be that agreeable, but the broad strokes of increasing access to foreign college graduates, high skilled immigrant visas, and work-visas were at least modest steps in a positive direction for more open borders, and a more focused enforcement on actual criminals of some variety trying to migrate here. I'm hopeful that crushing the (mostly stupid or ineffective in my view) gun laws will be sufficient demonstration of power for the right that they'll forget to be bigots as well, but I'm not counting on it. They were already whipping up demonstrations against any immigration reforms before this happened. One possible hope is that the confusion of Caucasians (in the quite literal sense) who are also Muslims should put to rest some of the demands for profiling.
*5) I tend to view law enforcement with suspicion. I do not think they're there to protect myself and my legal rights, but rather that I have to do that myself. Around them. I do think most cops are doing a difficult job, and trying to do it reasonably well. I do think we could help them by being reasonably cooperative at times (as in Boston today, with an effectively martial law system in place to catch the fugitive bombers). But there's really no reason to do so if a sufficient number of both themselves and other forces in our justice system seem more interested in body counts of arrests and detentions than in enforcing laws, or in enforcing anything like a just society and rather more interested in making people obey them rather than seeing themselves as servants of our collective demands for justice, order, and peace.
Brutality, error, and violence are oppressive enough. But then there's all the systematic factors like racism, profiling (of Arab/Muslims for example, which these two should start to call into question the wisdom of, as with the weird ricin guy), stop and frisk, and the show of force power surrounding drug laws and various other causes (immigration in some communities for example). I live in a suburban society and the most likely "oppression" I will suffer personally is a speeding ticket from a cop who didn't bother to use his radar and just eyeballed my speed, and possibly an absurd interest in whether or not I was drinking if driving at a later hour or (much less likely) whether any drugs are in my vehicle. My concern isn't for myself. It's for the millions of people who don't have the luxury of being white and middle-class and up.
In fairness to cops, if I think they are assholes (unfairly at times), they're not alone. I think that of most people. The only difference is that I'm pretty sure the cop is well-armed in all cases, and only partly sure of other people.
17 April 2013
Again with the torture. Still getting worse.
Key points:
Perhaps the most important or notable finding of this panel is that it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture.
The second notable conclusion of the Task Force is that the nation’s highest officials bear some responsibility for allowing and contributing to the spread of torture.
"The SERE program was developed to help U.S. troops resist interrogation techniques that had been used to extract false confessions from downed U.S. airmen during the Korean War. Its promoters had no experience in interrogation, the ability to extract truthful and usable information from captives."
"To deal with the regime of laws and treaties designed to prohibit and prevent torture, the lawyers provided novel, if not acrobatic interpretations to allow the mistreatment of prisoners....
Those early memoranda that defined torture narrowly would engender widespread and withering criticism once they became public. The successors of those government lawyers would eventually move to overturn those legal memoranda. "
"Following the September 11 attacks, the immediate responsibility for action fell appropriately on the executive branch, which has direct control of the vast machinery of the government. It encompasses not only the nation’s military might but the president himself as the embodiment of the nation’s leadership and thus the individual best positioned to articulate the nation’s anger, grief and considered response....
....Decisions ultimately handed down by the Supreme Court overturned some of the basic premises of the administration in establishing its detention regime. Officials had counted on courts accepting that the U.S. Naval base at Guantánamo, Cuba, was outside the legal jurisdiction of the United States. As such, the officials also reasoned that detainees there would have no access to the right of habeas corpus, that is, the ability to petition courts to investigate and judge the sufficiency of reasons for detention." (the report goes to some lengths to make note of the pressures involved, but does not suggest this abdicates the duty of elected officials to follow existing laws and norms under some new special circumstance at their convenience, without that they should then amend those laws and norms in an official and accountable capacity, and goes to some length to catalogue the variety of ways they were shown to be incorrect, illegal, or unaccountable).
"Task Force investigators and members believe it is difficult to overstate the effect of the Abu Ghraib disclosures on the direction of U.S. policies on detainee treatment." - Basically the sunlight here on one particular place of abuse was unpleasant enough to require a change in policy finally, but not enough to start asking how that abuse came to be.
"If presumed enemy leaders—high-value targets—are killed outright by drones, the troublesome issues of how to conduct detention and interrogation operations are minimized and may even become moot." - This suggests why we now use the drones instead of the expansive indefinite detention regime of the Bush years. Which is to say, we're still avoiding and evading the question of whether the indefinite detention regime itself is justifiable and legal.
"The following techniques and treatments have both been used by the U.S. against detainees within its control and been deemed torture, abuse or cruel treatment in DOS’s annual Human Rights Reports...
Stress Positions...temperature manipulation... waterboarding... sleep deprivation... threats of harm to person, family, friends,... sensory overload (light/noise)..., sexual humiliation...., prolonged solitary confinement..., forced nudity..., confinement in small space....forced prolonged standing"
"the ICRC highlights a series of “serious violations of International Humanitarian Law,” some of which are “tantamount to torture.” The primary violations occurred largely in the beginning stages of the internment process, except for those labeled “high value,” who experienced mistreatment throughout their detention. Some of the violations... include
Brutality against protected persons upon capture and initial custody, sometimes causing death or serious injury" (a number of prisoners died worldwide from our actions, not from age, infirmity, or sickness).
"Absence of notification of arrest of the persons deprived of their liberty to their families causing distress" (an understandable notion for high value targets early on to gain tactical or strategic advantage, but not for their prolonged captivity).
"Physical or psychological coercion during interrogation to obtain information" (eg, torture).
"Prolonged solitary confinement in cells devoid of daylight"
"Excessive or disproportionate use of force against persons deprived of their liberty resulting in death or injury during their period of internment"
Other events and notable quotes:
"At Camp Bucca in Iraq, six sailors were accused of abusing detainees by means that included throwing them into a cell they had filled with pepper spray"
"The techniques included banging pots and pans to scare the detainees, blaring loud music, and severe beatings.“The sounds were meant to disorient, but also to mask the screams.” If the detainees sustained injuries during beatings, the military intelligence officers who had medical training “could stitch up or bandage injuries, avoiding a call to the medics and an entry in the logbooks that the Red Cross could read."
"In the summer of 2003, the interrogators threw a detainee against a concrete wall, punched him in the neck and gut, kicked him in the knees, threw him outside, and dragged him back in by his hair. For the entire two-hour ordeal, the prisoner wouldn't talk; Ben later found out he spoke Farsi and couldn't understand the interrogators’ English and Arabic"
"Engaging in torture damages the torturer. The starting point for torture is the dehumanization of a detainee. Those who dehumanize others corrupt themselves in the process; dehumanization of other is a paradigm shift in how two people relate to each other, and as such it has an impact on both sides of the relationship. Once the detainee’s human status no longer matters in the mind of the torturer, he or she can unleash personal, even national, aggression. The detainee is subjected to suffering and the torturer lets go of reason, one of the marks of humanity, and descends into rage"
"“The country doesn’t really understand the cost. … [O]ne JAG officer came in and said that British military captured a terrorist — not a terrorist suspect, a terrorist — in Basra and released him. They gave him 48 hours head start and only then notified American authorities. They did not have detention facilities [at that time], and they did not trust either the United States or the Iraqi forces not to abuse this individual. So rather than engage in potentially aiding and abetting criminal activity, [the British forces] thought that the least worst option was to release a terrorist back into the field.”"
"I was chained to the floor and the guards were holding my head. … [T]here were many of them, seven or six or more, they were holding me down to the floor so there was no fear of [me] fighting [back] or anything like that. Both eyes were completely open so [one of the guards] put his fingers and … started to push inside my eyes. … I could feel the coldness of his fingers [as] he was pushing hard digging into my eyes and I didn't want to scream because I didn't want to frighten the people in the other cells and then the other thing is I didn't want to give them that satisfaction of me screaming on the floor. I didn't scream, so he was pushing even harder digging inside my eyes. The officer standing was saying “More, more” and this guard was saying “I am, I am,” shouting to the officer. And then, what I know is lots of liquid coming out from both of my eyes, I couldn't see anything for three days, I think. I was thrown back into the cell and food was thrown, because [I was in] an isolation cell, the food was thrown from the bean hole and I was eating food and just sleeping. I couldn't see anything, there was lots of pain in my eyes. And then slowly one of them recovered sight. … [T]here was [no medical care] till after couple of months, a medical doctor came in and all his advice was that he would be willing to take the eye out from my head because he thought it looks really bad"
"He was held in Kandahar for 11 days and subjected to forced nudity, extreme temperatures, and beatings where guards “kicked my injured leg and I was screaming in agony, but they just laughed and danced like it was a joke.
Al-Gazzar elaborated: I was … concerned about my leg, because I had severe pain and the environment was dirty so I was worried that it might get infected. The American doctors were telling me it had to be amputated. I resisted, arguing with them about what the Pakistani surgeons had said, that they could save my leg. I even showed them the X-rays that I had kept. The Americans just laughed and said the Pakistanis didn't know anything about medicine and treatments. In the end one of them admitted that they could save my leg but the operation would cost thousands of dollars and that America was a “poor country.”
"After transfer to Guantánamo, Al-Gazzar again tried to explain to the doctors at Camp X-Ray that his leg could be saved. I got the same as answer as I’d had in Kandahar: Pakistanis didn't know anything, the leg had to go. As the days passed the pain increased and the colour of my leg started to turn grey — almost black. I asked them to clean the wound, and to change the dressing every day and night but they wouldn't do it. When I asked them in the morning for a new dressing they said they will do it in the afternoon, and in the afternoon they said they will do it in the morning, like that. … The wound was open and big — without any kind of treatment besides basic dressings. They forced us to take showers so the wound got wet many times — the pain became almost unbearable. … [M]ost of the other prisoners advised me correctly that I had no option but to accept the amputation as it had passed the stage of being saved and had become gangrenous and could spread higher up the leg the longer it was left. I finally gave in."
The report also wrestles with the question, left unanswered for all the classification still involved, of just how useful this stuff was for information. (For the most part, this question is entirely addressed at the CIA's use on a very select grouping, and not the broader abuses conducted by the CIA, what willing allies we had in this, or the military. Only a very small sliver of which has been held accountable in the US).
"There is no firm or persuasive evidence that the widespread use of harsh interrogation techniques by U.S. forces produced significant information of value. There is substantial evidence that much of the information adduced from the use of such techniques was not useful or reliable.
There are, nonetheless, strong assertions by some former senior government officials that the use of those techniques did, in fact, yield valuable intelligence that resulted in operational and strategic successes. But those officials say that the evidence of such success may not be disclosed for reasons of national security.
The Task Force appreciates this concern and understands it must be taken into account in attempting to resolve this question. Nonetheless, the Task Force believes those who make this argument still bear the burden of demonstrating its factual basis. History shows that the American people have a right to be skeptical of such claims, and to decline to accept any resolution of this issue based largely on the exhortations of former officials who say, in essence, “Trust us” or “If you knew what we know but cannot tell you.”
In addition, those who make the argument in favor of the efficacy of coercive interrogations face some inherent credibility issues. One of the most significant is that they generally include those people who authorized and implemented the very practices that they now assert to have been valuable tools in fighting terrorism. As the techniques were and remain highly controversial, it is reasonable to note that those former officials have a substantial reputational stake in their claim being accepted. Were it to be shown that the United States gained little or no benefit from practices that arguably violated domestic and international law, history would render a harsh verdict on those who set us on that course."
On the question as to whether coercive interrogation techniques were valuable in locating Osama bin Laden, the Task Force is inclined to accept the assertions of leading members of the Senate Intelligence Committee that their examination of the largest body of classified documents relating to this shows that there was no noteworthy connection between information gained from such interrogations and the finding of Osama bin Laden.
The Task Force does not take any unequivocal position on the efficacy of torture because of the limits of its knowledge about classified information. But the Task Force believes it is important to recognize that to say torture is ineffective does not require a belief that it never works; a person subjected to torture might well divulge useful information.
The argument that torture is ineffective as an interrogation technique also rests on other factors. One is the idea that it also produces false information and it is difficult and time-consuming for interrogators and analysts to distinguish what may be true and usable from that which is false and misleading.
The other element in the argument as to torture’s ineffectiveness is that there may be superior methods of extracting reliable information from subjects, specifically the rapport-building techniques that were favored by some. It cannot be said that torture always produces truthful information, just as it cannot be said that it will never produce untruthful information. The centuries-old history of torture provides example of each, as well as many instances where torture victims submit to death rather than confess to anything, and there are such instances in the American experience since 2001.
The Task Force has found no clear evidence in the public record that torture produced more useful intelligence than conventional methods of interrogation, or that it saved lives. Conventional, lawful interrogation methods have been used successfully by the United States throughout its history and the Task Force has seen no evidence that continued reliance on them would have jeopardized national security thereafter."
There was not unequivocal support for modifying the indefinite detention regime centered on Guantanamo, a separate matter studied in this report, though a majority of the study's (bipartisan) commission were in favor of severe steps to change it. Several findings were also issued regarding the conduct and lack of transparency of the OLC, as well as the conduct (non-ethical) of the medical professionals who participated in the monitoring, if not carrying out, of torturous methods.
This is probably the most disheartening statement: "No CIA personnel have been convicted or even charged for numerous instances of torture in CIA custody — including cases where interrogators exceeded what was authorized by the Office of Legal Counsel, and cases where detainees were tortured to death. Many acts of unauthorized torture by military forces have also been inadequately investigated or prosecuted."
As a side note, this even has implications, unsettlingly, for Libya:
"This is what occurred when the perception of Libya’s ruler, Muammar el-Gaddafi, shifted in the West; he went from being regarded as a dangerous and unstable despot to someone who was to be courted as a valuable ally in the war against terrorism and an example of a leader renouncing dangerous weapons. Then, when he tried to crush a rebellion, the view of him shifted again as he was regarded once more as a dangerous tyrant whose overthrow we were proud to have aided.
During the course of these changes, several leaders of the principal nationalist Libyan movement were abused in U.S. custody — and in some cases, their wives were as well. One of the detainees was even subjected to waterboarding by U.S. forces. Then, in an effort to reward el-Gaddafi during the time he was in favor with the West, they were secretly handed over to his regime, where they faced further abuse. One of the detainees, Sada Hadium Abdulsalam al-Drake, estimated that about a dozen members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), were handed over to Libya by the Americans and British authorities during the period the West was trying to improve relations with el-Gaddafi. .....
Within a few years, those same Libyan nationalists who suffered under allied detention and rendition to el-Gaddafi became figures of some importance to the United States. They were even regarded as heroic democratic examples in the West as they toppled el-Gaddafi. There is a deep and unsettling irony in this as the United States would soon become instrumental in the NATO effort to help Libyans overthrow el-Gaddafi, and that meant depending on those same individuals who had been rendered and abused (some by U.S. forces)... "
....the leaders of the revolt that overthrew el-Gaddafi expressed surprisingly little bitterness or even anger toward America. (Their attitude toward Britain is a different story.)" ...
"...Al-Shoroeiya was not one of the three people the CIA has acknowledged waterboarding." "
“It wasn’t the idea of killing me,” he said through a translator. “You know the person doesn’t want to kill you. But the torture is harder than death.”
"Belhadj told the Task Force interviewer that he bore no continuing anger toward the United States, but noted that it has been especially difficult for him to reach that view because of how his wife was treated. “What happened to my wife is beyond belief,” he said through a translator. She was not part of his political life, he said, and “what my wife went through doubled my pain.”
"she was 4½ months pregnant. She said they were taken to a secret prison near the Bangkok airport where they were separated. “They took me to a cell and they chained my left wrist to the wall and both my ankles to the floor,” she told the Guardian. She was given water but no food over the next five days.
At the end of that period, she was forced to lie on a stretcher and was wrapped tightly from head to toe with tape. When they got to her head, she said, she made the mistake of keeping one eye open and it was taped in that position. It remained that way for the duration of a long flight to Libya, later determined to have lasted about 17 hours. “It was agony,” she said"
Bits and pieces of the weeks past, and future.
1) Watching the Final Four, I was rather disappointed with the talent level. Michigan had maybe 3 first rounders (Burke, Robinson, McGeary), Louisville had maybe 2 (Dieng, although he's old, and Smith, as a second rounder), and that's it. That was at least a quality final until about the last 3 minutes (and Burke's 3rd foul was bullshit, that was a clean block). I would say the officiating was really weird.
2) Mike D'Antoni is still a terrible coach. Took him months to figure out his roster had two excellent post players and use them together, and still didn't trust that option to give Kobe any rest, so he was run aground with enormous minutes use for his age and experience (several games down the stretch at 47-48). Or alternatively, he had no power to make Kobe rest. Which is absurd, because clearly every other coach in the league rests even their best players extensively (Rivers and Popovich and Carlisle are among the best at this).
3) 42 was a decent sports movie, which is to say it's not a great film. I think it relies too much on the "we who are enlightened now find this behavior repugnant" problem of how Americans think about (our) history, rather than as placing the context. That said, at least they included the repugnant behavior as something being overcome and confronted. I was also pleased to see Robinson's actual dynamic play being pushed to the front as part of the "legend".
4) I don't have anything new to offer as commentary or consolation for the Boston marathon bombing. I will say that I have been (very) impressed by the reaction of Boston in the face of a horrific event, and marginally impressed (tentatively) with the rest of the country not panicking and overreacting, as it is wont to do. With a few exceptions.
5) We tortured. Semi-officially this time. (That calls for its own post).
A note on this: I write about torture occasionally for a variety of reasons. But foremost is that while I am a "realist" in foreign policy, much of that basis is pragmatic approaches to the reality of chaotic international relationships. One way realists may approach this chaotic environment is to establish and practice and try to enforce reliable norms upon the international stage, like "not torturing prisoners" (among others like "don't spread weapons of mass destruction to other states"). Not torturing prisoners has a number of practical benefits in international relationships, among which that other states which adhere to it will more readily cooperate in any necessary warfare operations with the other states which do not, and that states which rely more easily upon diplomatic methods rather than open warfare where their subjects are not subjected to abuse and detention without appropriate legal protections. Since the variety of non-torturing states is largely American allies in our hegemonic operations, it's immensely practical not to violate the norms which we agreed to and have often attempted to impose. It's also immensely practical not to start fighting wars with everyone out there who might have harboured or hosted enemies of the international order or even mere American interests (such as terrorists or accused terrorists), as wars are rather costly of blood and treasure for all sides and should be reserved for essential purposes and interests (such as self-defence or perhaps punishing very poor international actors, such as those who invade or terrorize their neighbours).
This is true even before considering the moral basis of permissive regimes of aggressive or cruelty in interrogation (including torture), or in evaluating the efficacy of those regimes vis a vis standard interrogation techniques, the ability of American courts to prosecute or adjudicate claims of guilt or association with terrorist organisations and plans upon verifiable evidence and proper legal treatment, and so on.
2) Mike D'Antoni is still a terrible coach. Took him months to figure out his roster had two excellent post players and use them together, and still didn't trust that option to give Kobe any rest, so he was run aground with enormous minutes use for his age and experience (several games down the stretch at 47-48). Or alternatively, he had no power to make Kobe rest. Which is absurd, because clearly every other coach in the league rests even their best players extensively (Rivers and Popovich and Carlisle are among the best at this).
3) 42 was a decent sports movie, which is to say it's not a great film. I think it relies too much on the "we who are enlightened now find this behavior repugnant" problem of how Americans think about (our) history, rather than as placing the context. That said, at least they included the repugnant behavior as something being overcome and confronted. I was also pleased to see Robinson's actual dynamic play being pushed to the front as part of the "legend".
4) I don't have anything new to offer as commentary or consolation for the Boston marathon bombing. I will say that I have been (very) impressed by the reaction of Boston in the face of a horrific event, and marginally impressed (tentatively) with the rest of the country not panicking and overreacting, as it is wont to do. With a few exceptions.
5) We tortured. Semi-officially this time. (That calls for its own post).
A note on this: I write about torture occasionally for a variety of reasons. But foremost is that while I am a "realist" in foreign policy, much of that basis is pragmatic approaches to the reality of chaotic international relationships. One way realists may approach this chaotic environment is to establish and practice and try to enforce reliable norms upon the international stage, like "not torturing prisoners" (among others like "don't spread weapons of mass destruction to other states"). Not torturing prisoners has a number of practical benefits in international relationships, among which that other states which adhere to it will more readily cooperate in any necessary warfare operations with the other states which do not, and that states which rely more easily upon diplomatic methods rather than open warfare where their subjects are not subjected to abuse and detention without appropriate legal protections. Since the variety of non-torturing states is largely American allies in our hegemonic operations, it's immensely practical not to violate the norms which we agreed to and have often attempted to impose. It's also immensely practical not to start fighting wars with everyone out there who might have harboured or hosted enemies of the international order or even mere American interests (such as terrorists or accused terrorists), as wars are rather costly of blood and treasure for all sides and should be reserved for essential purposes and interests (such as self-defence or perhaps punishing very poor international actors, such as those who invade or terrorize their neighbours).
This is true even before considering the moral basis of permissive regimes of aggressive or cruelty in interrogation (including torture), or in evaluating the efficacy of those regimes vis a vis standard interrogation techniques, the ability of American courts to prosecute or adjudicate claims of guilt or association with terrorist organisations and plans upon verifiable evidence and proper legal treatment, and so on.
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