Imagine a situation in which Mexico finally gets serious about their war on drug trafficking. They arrest public officials and criminals who have been running rampant, they throw into jail people who are only marginally involved in the enterprise, and they set up a prison somewhere in the Caribbean to handle those who they don't feel can be tried in the courts for various reasons, chiefly that whatever information that would come to light during a trial would be embarrassing to those who are in charge.
But then the Mexican authorities decide to go further. In the interest of their own national security and the freedom and liberty of all its citizens, they decide to go after drug traffickers wherever they may be. And because many of the drugs passing through Mexico end up in the United States, they decide that they're within their rights to go after people within US borders. They send in troops who are forever snooping around San Diego and El Paso, they arrest American citizens and whisk them off to their Caribbean jail, and finally they launch drones that continually patrol the American sky looking for potential drug activity and occasionally reign Hellfire missiles onto unsuspecting bad guys. Unfortunately, they occasionally make 'mistakes' and innocent people get killed. Actually, it's not really occasionally...eventually the death toll would climb into the hundreds, with many more thousands of people getting hurt or having their property destroyed.
So, how do you think we'd feel about that in our country? Think we'd be a bit pissed off?
Change the cause for the war (drug trafficking to terrorism) and the location of the war (the United States to Pakistan or Yemen) and this is what is happening, according to reports from Human Rights Watch (Yemen) and Amnesty International (Pakistan). Here's an excerpt of the second: "According to NGO and Pakistan government sources the USA has launched some 330 to 374 drone strikes in Pakistan between 2004 and September 2013. Amnesty International is not in a position to endorse these figures, but according to these sources, between 400 and 900 civilians have been killed in these attacks and at least 600 people seriously injured." Hundreds of people being killed in Pakistan, and we act like we have a right to do what we want, all in the name of 9/11.
Now, let's say these figures are a bit overblown. Most objections to these reports are couched in the language of a)we can't verify that all these deaths come directly from drone strikes and b)they didn't ask the US for their side of the story, but only the baddies. Nobody is denying that the drone attacks on another country's sovereign soil takes place, but let's assume that we can cut down the number of kill strikes by 2/3.
Does this still make it OK? How many deaths and injuries of innocent foreigners are 'acceptable' losses? How long do these attacks continue?
For over 12 years now, through both Republican and Democratic administrations, the game plan has been the same: "Because of terrorism, we have a right to be doing these incursions, we have the right to ignore the sovereignty of another nation, one who supposedly has been our ally most of the time the past 50 years, because we still think there are a few al-Qaeda terrorists up in the hills."
After all the stories about the government spying on its own citizens, with all the failures we have encountered in trying to export western civilization to the middle east, with all the fear and money and lives expended to try to 'fix' the crazies of this world, we have to ask...who are the real terrorists?
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Saturday, October 19, 2013
"It seemed like a good idea at the time..."
So tonight I watched the 2012 movie "This Means War" with the ever-hot Reese Witherspoon and a few random dudes.
Movies like this that combine action, sex, and supposedly a few laughs are getting tiresome for me in my middle age, as they are so predictable and dull and without any common sense, but once in awhile I watch if it's free at the library. Maybe I'll be surprised, I think. But not this one...I ended up rating it a 5 on IMDB, and was thinking of going lower by the end. Amazingly, Wikipedia says it made $156 million.
Here's the reason for this post: 2 CIA agents are trying to date the same woman and use every available CIA resource at their disposal. They wiretap her house, follow her everywhere, and not just from one team, but two teams of agents working against each other. Likely, millions of dollars of federal dollars are used to track this woman so that each agent can get an advantage. Sound familiar?
It's really not a good movie, but I couldn't help watching this movie through the lens of all that NSA mess not long ago, in which the federal government is basically watching everything we do and say and post on the internet. What was meant in this movie to be Good Clean Harmless Fun is in fact that which has exposed much malfeasance on the part of the government. It's can't be GCHF anymore, because we're all just sick and tired of what they may know about us. And so in the end, why on earth would Reese Witherspoon decide to stick with random dude #2? Any woman who learned what she learned about him in the end, why would she stick with such a moral generate? C'mon, Reese, you're much hotter than that.
A movie like this could never get made in today's climate because of all the spying stuff. But it should never have been made in the first place because it just really wasn't very good to begin with.
Movies like this that combine action, sex, and supposedly a few laughs are getting tiresome for me in my middle age, as they are so predictable and dull and without any common sense, but once in awhile I watch if it's free at the library. Maybe I'll be surprised, I think. But not this one...I ended up rating it a 5 on IMDB, and was thinking of going lower by the end. Amazingly, Wikipedia says it made $156 million.
Here's the reason for this post: 2 CIA agents are trying to date the same woman and use every available CIA resource at their disposal. They wiretap her house, follow her everywhere, and not just from one team, but two teams of agents working against each other. Likely, millions of dollars of federal dollars are used to track this woman so that each agent can get an advantage. Sound familiar?
It's really not a good movie, but I couldn't help watching this movie through the lens of all that NSA mess not long ago, in which the federal government is basically watching everything we do and say and post on the internet. What was meant in this movie to be Good Clean Harmless Fun is in fact that which has exposed much malfeasance on the part of the government. It's can't be GCHF anymore, because we're all just sick and tired of what they may know about us. And so in the end, why on earth would Reese Witherspoon decide to stick with random dude #2? Any woman who learned what she learned about him in the end, why would she stick with such a moral generate? C'mon, Reese, you're much hotter than that.
A movie like this could never get made in today's climate because of all the spying stuff. But it should never have been made in the first place because it just really wasn't very good to begin with.
Saturday, October 12, 2013
Charity guilt
Yesterday I'm with my family at Wal-Mart and as we are leaving a guy standing outside comes up to my kids and pushes a tootsie roll into their hands. Not one of the little ones, mind you, but one of the three-inch kinds that takes awhile to eat. Now, this guy wasn't like the one at Spangles the other day, an old guy with unkempt beard who came up to Jacob as he was eating ice cream, rubbed his head, and acted like something this side of a child predator. I was about ready to be forcible when he realized we were ignoring him and walked away. The guy at Wal-Mart was just an average everyday guy who was collecting for some charity. Not sure what it was...probably not Salvation Army, as it isn't that time of year yet.
The implication, however, was the same: please give. And by giving my children candy, the plea was all the stronger: I gave candy to your kids, so you ought to give to me (and my charity). In fact, not only ought you to give, you should feel guilty for receiving something and then walking away, you jerk. But we kept walking, and I'm sure he went onto somebody else and eventually collected whatever his quota was for the day.
In this week's Freakonomics podcast (almost always a good listen) they were discussing charity and altruism, the idea that how one asks often determines whether or not one gives. Basically, the two points I took out of the podcast were these: 1)Good-looking blondes have a lot better chance of getting your money than others do, and 2)People are much more likely to give if they think they derive some sort of tangible benefit from giving; in other words, you don't give necessarily to help others, you give in order to help yourself. It makes sense, really...most people are selfish and sexually motivated, so this affects their giving as much as anything else.
So the guy giving my kids tootsie rolls was obviously not an attraction to me, so what else did he have? He had candy for my children. Not a tangible benefit for me (and in fact, long-term, probably a negative, as candy makes them more wound up and less well-behaved), but something that might be thought of good for my loved ones. Shouldn't I then give? Don't I have a real obligation to give?
It's one thing, though, when I have time to think about whether or not this is a good. It's a wholly different thing when somebody forces a their 'gift' (and hence their demand) onto me or somebody else. I probably would have told my children that they didn't need anymore candy, and kept on going. In the end, his actions perhaps made me less likely to give had he simply asked for some money. I still probably would not have given, but I wouldn't have been as annoyed as in the end I was, annoyed enough to sit and write out this blog post.
I try to be generous in my life, but don't tell me that I have to be generous. If you do I'll just keep on walking.
The implication, however, was the same: please give. And by giving my children candy, the plea was all the stronger: I gave candy to your kids, so you ought to give to me (and my charity). In fact, not only ought you to give, you should feel guilty for receiving something and then walking away, you jerk. But we kept walking, and I'm sure he went onto somebody else and eventually collected whatever his quota was for the day.
In this week's Freakonomics podcast (almost always a good listen) they were discussing charity and altruism, the idea that how one asks often determines whether or not one gives. Basically, the two points I took out of the podcast were these: 1)Good-looking blondes have a lot better chance of getting your money than others do, and 2)People are much more likely to give if they think they derive some sort of tangible benefit from giving; in other words, you don't give necessarily to help others, you give in order to help yourself. It makes sense, really...most people are selfish and sexually motivated, so this affects their giving as much as anything else.
So the guy giving my kids tootsie rolls was obviously not an attraction to me, so what else did he have? He had candy for my children. Not a tangible benefit for me (and in fact, long-term, probably a negative, as candy makes them more wound up and less well-behaved), but something that might be thought of good for my loved ones. Shouldn't I then give? Don't I have a real obligation to give?
It's one thing, though, when I have time to think about whether or not this is a good. It's a wholly different thing when somebody forces a their 'gift' (and hence their demand) onto me or somebody else. I probably would have told my children that they didn't need anymore candy, and kept on going. In the end, his actions perhaps made me less likely to give had he simply asked for some money. I still probably would not have given, but I wouldn't have been as annoyed as in the end I was, annoyed enough to sit and write out this blog post.
I try to be generous in my life, but don't tell me that I have to be generous. If you do I'll just keep on walking.
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