Liberals are in a self righteous tizzy over "torture" this week. Because torture is just plain wrong, right?
Here: check out this cartoon that totally proves it through the scientific approach of "Flippant Mockery". Let me know when you are back. (Click the links for a big readable version.)
http://images.salon.com/comics/tomo/2007/11/19/tomo/story.jpg
http://images.salon.com/comics/tomo/2007/11/19/tomo/story.jpg
The logic portrayed in this cartoon is preposterous. The only good thing is that it's as good a way as any to tackle the simplicity of anti-"torture" arguments. And no - it isn't just the cartoon. The cartoon is simply indicative of positions held quite widely. And wrongly.
Panels 1 and 2 can basically be summed up as "man, we live in darker times." Well, yes, we do. Liberals may like to roll their eyes at invoking 9/11, but it happened. Really really really. And it wasn't George W. Bush who planned it. Under the Clinton administration a vast terrorist network had been allowed to flourish overseas and within self-segregated Muslim ethnic communities within the western world. The idea of democrats had been to treat it as a law enforcement issue. These attempts were proving relatively unsuccessful. An extremist Wahhabi/Salafist Islamist organizatin of activists became increasingly emboldened and was interested in creating terrorist attacks that were on a grander attack than had previously been seen. 9/11 occurred because it was not detected in time. The lesson of 9/11 was the importance of gathering actionable intelligence in order to greater ensure citizen safety. If you do not believe this to be fact and think the Bush administration planned 9/11 please leave my blog and don't bother visiting anymore. We have nothing to talk about.
Panel 2 and 3 take a very reasonable point about whether waterboarding is terror and conflates it with medieval torture like the rack and thumbscrews. But the initial point is not actually countered. There is clearly a progression of torture. If no torture is ever allowed then I should go to jail for tickling my girlfriend. Some would argue that Michael Bolton,Vanilla Ice and Barry Manilow should all be in jail. And while that last sentence was a joke, what isn't a joke is that heavy metal music was used to encourage Manuel Noriega to leave his Panama compound and come peacefully. This was indeed a form of torture as broadly defined. The real question is whether there is a difference between waterboarding and the rack. The answer: of course there is. Waterboarding has a low probability of leaving lasting physical harm. The rack is designed to inflict irreversible pain AND damage which is a precursor to execution. One procedure is grotesque, the other is extemely unpleasant. Conflating the two is fallacious.
Panels 4 and 5 purport to dismiss the ticking time bomb as a one in a million scenario. Dershowitz does the same thing in his article by talking about the imminent threat. Personally if the threat is truly THAT dire then by all means bring out the rack if you need to. But that isn't what we are really talking about.
The simple fact is this: Unpleasantness in interrogations is completely useless in extracting a confession from someone of a past crime committed that cannot be corroborated. A signed confession from a tortured person is useless. However unpleasant interrogation - from long periods of exhausting questioning to, yes, waterboarding if necessary - are very useful if one can corroborate the evidence. That can include berating a suspect until he tells you where the body is buried, or waterboarding someone until he gives provable actionable intelligence about his contacts in a terrorist cell. Any suggestion that one can learn nothing useful from torture is patently stupid. A person raising this line of argument is simply opposed to torture, period.
The fact is that a threat like Al Queda IS a constantly ticking time bomb. Uncovering it's cells and breaking it's organisation was and remains crucial to citizen safety. The judicious use of enhanced interrogation up to and including waterboarding is a distasteful but a potentially necessary step. If you wish to say it is unnecessary I will demand your proof, I will disagree, and I will accuse you of simply finding it morally objectionable. I can respect your moral objection, since in many ways I share it, but in this part of the argument you are simply kidding yourself.
Panel 5 contains the opposite of the Nazi fallacy. This is interesting. Normally one proposes something, someone else pipes up with "that sounds like something Hitler would do" and everyone falls into awkward silence until someone, wisely, punches the Hitler invoker in the face like a good civilised debater.
The cartoon's rejection of Dershowitz is essentially an inverted version of the same. Dershowitz is invoking an example from history of evidence that torture works. The retort is a non sequitur. It is saying that if Nazis did something we shouldn't do it. This is fallacious of course. Nazis made the volkswagon and the autobahn. Whether we should do what Nazis did depends on whether it is morally justifiable and effective not on whether or not they did it. So again, this is a childish rejoinder.
And finally in panel six, the democrats are accused of being mealy mouthed on the issue. And on this point he's right. The reason is simple though. The next President of the United States is probably going to need to torture somebody.
THAT HAVING BEEN SAID, HOWEVER...
This is not to suggest that torture should be used as a matter of course.
It is barbaric and generally completely unnecessary.
The potential for abuse is vast.
The spectre of Maher Arar is not long past.
The need to consider enhanced interrogation, water boarding, sleep deprivation, temperature extremes and so forth is awful. It's disgusting. If it doesn't disturb you it should.
I personally am very afraid of a world where waterboarding could be used to extract a verifiable confession from suspects in murder cases. Particularly since the police often don't know the suspect is guilty. Torturing someone to find out if they are guilty of something when you aren't sure is profoundly disturbing to me on a number of levels, and should never occur. There are lines and limits that transcend even our physical safety. Because if the government does such a thing, it has become at least as great a threat as any terrorist.
Our discomfort at the use of torture, and this debate, is important and necessary. The appropriate type of interrogation must be balanced against the threat. The use of any enhanced technique goes against the entire idea of liberty and security of the person. It requires the punishment of people before trial, without proof beyond a reasonable doubt in a manner that shocks the conscience. In short it goes against everything that we as a society believe in, and everything that has made western civilization an oasis in a desert of human arbitrary brutality the world over.
So any use of enhanced interrogation techniques. Any use of "torture" if you want to call it that, must be vigorously debated and aggressively challenged. And any found necessary - which might end up being none (but I doubt it) - MUST carefully monitored, regulated and approved. Accountability should exist.
But pretending there is absolutely place for it in a post 9/11 world, as an a priori starting point, is patently naive. Responding to the arguments in the flippant fallacious way in that cartoon above is even worse. It's deliberately disingenuous and if there are arguments against it, they aren't being made therein.
This is a complex issue. It deserves real discussion. It can't just be sneered away.
Adam Daifallah wrote a great column in the National Post on Friday. He argues that Conservative Parties in Canada have a bad habit of electing some leaders who will be non-threatening to the centrists and who will run and get elected on their personalities while eschewing conservative principles. Daifallah argues that this almost always ends badly for said Conservatives. You can read it yourself here. Highly recommended. My usual neutrality disclaimers about Ontario politics apply.
QFT as the internet kids say... which means Quoted For Truth... which means I agree... which means...oh just go read this link.
No not here. HERE. www.Dailyshow.com has gone live with a video archive of the entire history of the show. Look at it. Love it. Live it!
We've actually - for real - found a second earth. Go look.
I thought people that look at this blog might enjoy this. It is an interview and open forum with Stephen Colbert at the Kennedy School of Government. He is out of character and gives some candid insight into a lot of aspects of doing his character/show. It's google video. It's more lighthearted than the 60 minutes piece and less awkward than the Larry King piece from the other night where he seemed to be ducking in and out of character all the time.
Funny stuff. What great times we live in.
A comment in an earlier post made reference to an in depth Vanity Fair Article on the Clinton vs. Gore rivalry. I dug it up. You can read it here.
Yep it's true.
Told ya so.
Edit: Interesting side note - This morning after learning about Al Gore's win 7 times in a half hour on CNN, I turned on Fox News to see what their take on the story would be. They aren't reporting it. At all.
So I don't want to say much about the Ontario election - and certainly nothing that could be construed as partisan. But there are a few safe thoughts I feel I can appropriately share:
1. On the MMP referendum: I predicted it wouldn't pass, and it didn't. But then, who didn't. Everyone knew it wouldnt pass. A lot of people argue a lot of reasons why that is but here's how I see it - people are good at bottom lining. they thought like this: "so if I vote for this who benefits? oh. that's not who I support." vote against. Sorry NDP and Green Party.
2. On the election itself - ... hmmm... on second thought... nah. Better not.
Just once for posterity. I know, I know, it's last month's news:
"Don't tase me, bro"
Whew. There. That feels better.
Classic.
Bjorn Lumborg wrote The Skeptical Environmentalist in 2001. Needless to say, I consider myself a fan of the man's process. If you follow this link you'll read a short article excerpting some of Lumborg's thoughts on how we can best prepare for a globally warmed future. Hint: It isn't about cutting CO2 emissions.
Regardless of where you stand on this issue, reading Lumborg is important because of the honest problem solving approach he employs.
Enjoy.
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Hello to the non-partisan bloggers alliance. Welcome to my little corner of teh interwebs.
I am not posting all that much because my thoughts are focused where the action is - the Ontario general election and the MMP referendum. But because I work for Ontario government, I won't post on those topics.
I can say that I am currently surprised at where we are in Federal politics. This is my first time as an adult living through a minority government era, and oh my non-existent lord, it is messy. I am astonished that we are heading toward an election that nobody wants. I am particularly embarrassed at the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois. They have decided to make demands with respect to the Throne Speech that they know to be impossible. I understand all the Machiavellian reasons why they need to do this, but I have to say I'm disappointed in the whole mess of it. It seems so crass, dishonest, and insulting to the intelligence of voters. If you ever go in and say "we want all federal spending in areas of provincial jurisdiction to stop" or "we want an immediate withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan" or you won't support the throne speech, you are never allowed to pretend you care about "making Parliament work for Canadians, ever, ever again. Honestly, you make me need to plug my nose.
I'm also amused to see the Liberal party behaving like Tories used to behave for years. I have a dear friend, who I love, but who gets most excited when there is a party leader to depose. I have told this friend that this is the way eternal opposition parties behave. They can't win the big fight so they focus their energies on fights they can.
Personally I don't think a party should depose a leader unless they have someone better waiting. The Liberals don't. They ended up with Dion because of the absolute antipathy certain camps have for each other. Rae and Ignatieff are both widely loathed carpet baggers. Kennedy is still unknown outside of Ontario. Of course, a lot of Dion's leadership rivals and their supporters think their man is best and want to see Dion fail. That kind of personal ambition, in and of itself, is a recipe for a lengthy stay in opposition. Just ask the Tories.
I have some free advice for the Liberal party: Keep Stephane Dion. Go into an election. You'll lose the election but your focus in the campaign should be on introducing Dion to Canadians. He should make a speech about how he wishes he didn't have to fight an election now but he can't support the Throne Speech for obvious reasons. He's official opposition. He has the credibility for this. Discuss his disappointment on how the other opposition parties are behaving and go into the election on message looking relaxed and talking about the things he's good at: Trudeau Federalism and the Environment. Showcase his intelligence and, most of all, his compassion. Let him do a lot of interviews in Quebec where he is unapologetically federalist. He needs to win that fight on his own terms with the vision he believes in in his heart. He doesn't need to win over the ardent nationalists. He needs to win over the moderates.
After this election... keep Stephane Dion. I predict that two or four years later, he'll be Prime Minister of Canada. (albeit most probably in a slim minority government of his own). The media will all talk about how Dion turned it around, and Harper's fall. All the errors of arrogance or what have you that the Harper government has made.
If you dump Dion, you will set the party back one election cycle and I suspect will have to do the whole re-introduction thing all over again.
This, by the way, is exactly what I said about Stephen Harper a few years ago. When I worked for the Liberals, we sat around talking about what the Tories should do. At the time Martin was up and Harper was down and the general consensus at the table was that Harper had to be replaced by someone more charismatic who would resonate with voters - a Danny Williams, perhaps. I said keep Harper. They said I was crazy. Likewise, When my aforementioned friend was trying to dump Harper I told that friend that that friend was being ridiculous.
And who is the Prime Minister now? Uh huh. Oh yeah. Oh snap.
I am sooooooooooo smart.
S-M-R-T.
smart.
(and, apparently, insufferably smug. ;-) )
A Christopher Hitchens article that speculates on whether Al Gore will run for president after he wins the Nobel prize on October 12th. How could I not post this? With apologies. Enjoy.
Just a little disagreement from...oh... 500 scientists or so. You know the kind that publish papers in top journals.
To be honest though, I see a lot of potentially good side effects from combatting this problem even if it isn't real. For example, dealing with man made climate change has the side effect of providing incentives to create technologies that help us with that itsy bitsy running out of (inexpensive and easy to retrieve) oil problem.
Also keep this to yourself please. Al Gore still needs to win a nobel prize and run for president.
I found this at the top of www.reddit.com so you may have seen it already, but it's a brilliant policy juxtaposition exercise. I'd say more but I'd hate to spoil the surprise.
You aren't making yourself look very good, Brian. But then you always were terrible at public relations.
Here is an excellent long form article in Vanity Fair that you should check out. It focusses on the press coverage Al Gore received duing the 2000 election. It's good evidence of the self-flagellation that the United States is currently putting itself through over the Bush vs. Gore decision. Here's a few random thoughts to accompany the link:
Anyway, as I said, just some random thoughts. Go read the article. It's a good one.
p.s. Sighing heavily is a perfectly reasonable response to listening to George Bush talk about issues. It's someone not sighing that should concern you.
This "Digg" news story is just one example of the ongoing war between the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry of America, and their customers/thieves.
What bothers me about this fight isn't so much that people are stealing movies and music. Full disclosure: I've done it. I remember way back as a kid pressing record on the tape deck so that I could tape songs off the radio. Bad sound. But good times.
No. What bothers me is the idea that some people, like the people in that DIGG thread, are starting to think that aren't doing anything wrong if they download. This is nonsense. It is theft. Look, we all do bad things. Everyone. If I was the pope, I'd forgive you. But the record and movie companies have every moral right to try to sell the product that they spend money creating. They are being very forward thinking in doing so, by the way. Convergence is upon us. It is already possible to download a first run movie while it is still in theatres and watch it on your holy-shit sized television. It just isn't perfectly easy. But better quality and ease of use is coming in all areas of that chain.
This isn't like open source software either. I mean it could be. If you and your Internet friends want to get together and create open source free movies to compete with the Hollywood studios, go right ahead. Same with music. Just don't make me watch or listen to them.
Pirate Bay - the new big thing in thievin' - sees itself as the anti-hero. It sees itself as the heir to pirate radio. But there are two things wrong with that. First, pirate radio wasn't justified either. It's perfectly acceptable for the government to regulate the amount of limited FM bandwidth there is. But secondly, even if you disagree with the first point, this isn't someone ranting and saying expletives on the airwaves. This is people choosing that someone else's hard work should be enjoyed for free against the wishes of the person or people who did the hard work. Charming.
You'll notice that I'm not getting into statistics like the ones that say that more digital media is bought by the downloaders and that business has never been better. It's because I don't care. That information is in the hands of the relevant service providers. It is theirs to do with, tactically, as they wish. My guess is that they don't think that's a situation that will continue indefinitely. But again, deciding what to do with that information is their prerogative. They are the creators.
I also know that the existence of this phenomenon is spurring changes and innovations in the industry. Great. But smallpox spurred innovations in medicine. It doesn't mean I need to send it a thank you card.
In any event, I know we'll still steal some. We often can't afford all the music we would like. The ability to do it is there. And it is hardly the worst of all crimes. The market is not going to stop being the market - free stuff will beat out low or high price.
But if you are doing it don't be smug about it. You're no hero.
Some friends of mine are being playground bullied in a libel suit. This is an important issue to anyone that cares about freedom of expression and the ability to have your say on the internet. If you blog or use online forums this means you. Check out this story from the National. If you can throw a few dimes towards their legal defense fund, even better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXsc3gFGIpA
Incidentally, hopefully at some point the person launching the lawsuits will figure out that launching the lawsuits has been worse for his reputation than the initial unflattering comments, and he'll go... sue... himself.
...I've now written and trashed THREE blog articles that I didn't think were worth reading.
I know you've probably heard nothing about this (ha!), but the new Harry Potter book comes out today. As a voracious reader of magazines and newspapers this means I am once again being inundated with stories about what the success of Harry Potter meaaaaaaans.
Of course I shouldn't be surprised. Here's the curse of being a writer: Ya gotta publish if ya wanna eat. Want to have a magazine or a newspaper? Be prepared to fill those column inches with content. Every day or every month. Over and over and over again. The same thing is true, by the way, with social science journal articles. It is my controversial opinion that entire fields of study exist solely because of the "Publish or Perish" rule.
In either case, Academia or journalism, scholarly journal or daily column, the fact is that what you write doesn't have to be true. It just has to be interesting. As a result, all manner of...well... to just say it nicely... nonsense... is espoused.
These perverse incentives lead to consequences much more dire than any related to the latest Harry Potter book, of course, but I'm still on summer vacation so it's Potter I'm going with.(The Sudan is just gonna have to solve itself for awhile. Sorry.)
Here's the thing: The Success of Harry Potter doesn't meeeeean anything. Nothing new anyway. I'm gonna tell you why the books are so popular right here and right now. This is the word of god from the gospel, people. Take it as such:
Check this out. People in Hong Kong Gym Generate Electricity While Exercising! In other news, my sleep schedule is way out of whack. Pray for Cicero to survive his Monday!!
Got this in my email today. Love this guy. And yes - it won't be long now. My bile is rebuilding and work is cooling off. :)
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Dear Mr. Pants:
As I sit here, in anguish, on yet another mindless conference call discussing the politics of climate change, and the poor decision making ability of those who have introduced yet another mindless form of carbon tax on manufacturers, I am dismayed – no angered – by the lack of new content on your site. Admittedly, I use you as a distraction as my colleagues in the industry mindlessly pontificate on the inside knowledge they profess to have. Like so many others, I know for a fact that the decision making chicken at the PMO doesn't cluck his insights to anyone before he clicks the panel for the seed.
While I generally disagree (out of habit, or out of my own self professed idiocy) with the content on your site, it has become habit forming – like the crack which is also bad for my intellect – and I mindless drift off to read it.
That said, you have an obligation to your loyal readers to continue to feed them the rich content they deserve. You cannot expect your followers to wait on your e-doorstep, hollowed by a lack of personal creativity, forced to seek out others to fill this void in their day, to continue to loyally read your tidbits, unless you actually give them something to read. Your little personal note that it is summer is of no value to those of us who don't work outside or play outside all the time – or to those of us who use their personal mobile devices to keep up with the things that they know and love. Unless this trend is immediately reversed, yours will fall out of this moderately selective category along with DEVO, Hillwatch, and Mr. Boisclair's Re-election site.
With mindless spite and vile, I wish you a good day.
Mr. Hugged.
Ive been quiet on this blog lately. Why? Well, first because work is busy and life gets fun in summer. But also largely because politics is boring the hell out of me lately.
Look. I know stuff is going on. We are all going to pillory the Defense Minister because of the Afghanistan Torture. There seems to be a race among all jurisdictions to pass the best global warming law conforming to the graph below,
and somebody knew somethin' and didnt tell somebody else in the air india disaster. And Andre "I really suck at this whole politics thing" Boisclair is leaving - shock of shocks.
But by and large, I'm still bored. And I never really want my blog to just be a "read the paper. Comment on the day" type thing. I generally try to speak up if I think I can say something that others arent quite saying (at least not in the way I would) and that cant happen when whats happening in the paper just feels like more of the same old same old. All of this is to say that
Cicero in Pants is Going in to Summer Vacation Mode!
Does this mean I won't write? No!!! It means Im going to loosen my politics and policy only rule. If Paul Wells can write about jazz and I dont care but read him, and Kinsella can write about punk and I dont care but read him, then the 30 or 40 kind souls who read my stuff every day can surely grant me some latitude. So stay tuned to hear me bitch about the transformers movie... or something. After all, I need to write. It is my hunger. ;-) I'll still write politics if something happens to turn my crank though. I promise. I'll even title it Politics: so you junkies can otherwise ignore me.
In the meantime here's some predictions to tide you over: the Tories will be in power for another year and will go to the polls after the next budget which will cut our taxes. At that point they will have closed the "loan as donation" loophole that makes the new election spending law a farce, but it won't matter because by then the liberals will have mastered the art of soliciting for small donations like the tories do (what did you think there was some kind of magic secret formula to it?) so Jason Cherniak can quit whining. And Al Gore won't announce he's running for president until after the summer. The Daily Show and Colbert are going to be less funny for a while because there isnt much to make fun of, and people will go to a lot of summer blockbuster movies and walk out saying that the script sucks!
Anyway - if you are reading this, get outside and drink some sangria on a patio. We live in Canada. You don't wanna be wasting days like this. Now shoo.
PS. Yes, Spider-man 3 was a great big jumbled clusterflick. I enjoyed it anyway. But only because I'd been warned that it was awful. And because Im the kind of guy who might just wear spider-man pajamas to the office if they let me. Just sayin'.
Its almost like I told ya so or something...
(Facebookers click through to my blog)
I am ashamed to say that my first reaction to the Virginia Tech massacre was annoyance (when walking past a tv that said school shootings - I didnt know the magnitude of carnage at that point) and following that an almost blase resignation. It isn't that I'm callous. It's that after living in a world that has shown me the Montreal massacre, 9/11, Columbine, Dawson College, the Eaton Centre gun fight, the beheading of Daniel Pearl and countless other atrocities It'll take quite a bit to shock me now. And frankly I'm a bit pissed off at that in itself, but it's a whole other story - and this blog isn't meant to be the centre of Cicerocathartic psycholanalysis.
But, given my personality, my brain won't let go of these things. It starts to see them as problems to be solved (yes I'm from Mars. let others be from Venus). But with these events the same things keeps coming back to mind.
This is called "How to Speak to a Global Warming Skeptic", which I, admittedly, am. I'm going to be reading this top to bottom. In the meantime I post it here.
What could it hurt to follow the links in this link? hmmm... ;-)
... but anyway. I was going to blog about this at some point but Joan Tintor beat me to it and did it better. Check it out. (Hint: Its called "The Apology-Lawsuit Party"... and its about the current state of the Federal Liberals.)
