On October 17, Louis Vitale and Stephen Kelly, two priests arrested for trespassing as they sought to deliver a letter protesting U.S. violations of the Geneva Convention in relation to torture, were sentenced to five months in prison. Fr. Vitale is 75 years old.
On November 19, 2006, Vitale and Kelly had tried to give their protest letter to Major General Barbara Fast, then-commandant of Fort Huachuca Army Base, and previously intelligence chief for the U.S. command in Baghdad during the period the worst abuses took place at Abu Ghraib. Fort Huachuca itself is the site for the U.S. Army Intelligence Center and School. It is alleged that torture techniques are taught at the school. See my article “Torture on Trial in Arizona Desert” for more on the trial and on Ft. Huachuca. Most notable was the judge’s refusal in the case to allow any evidence about U.S. use of torture or “the morality or immorality of the government’s use of interrogation techniques…”
The “If-Then”: Natural Language vs. Formal Logic Philosophy of The Conditional
The five part EXCITING, and LIMITED, and WHATNOT series on ancient
philosopher occurs at 9am PDT, or whatever o’clock your time zone, every
Tuesday and I’m really hurt you haven’t noticed. There are to be five schools
and here the list. Something said to unify the approach to philosophy in
antiquity, that it was to live a good life, well, and sometimes represented
as a state of calmness or tranquility:
School of Epicurus
the good life is the simple pleasures, freindships, good meals, walks
at sunset, I add: if willing to endure hardship, add more extreme
pleasures like surfing.
The Stoics
the good life, and ataraxia, follows from living a virtuous life, such
that one becomes indifferent to hardship, and this is considered serene
virtue
INTERMISSION
Homemade Conditional
is being served in the lobby
??
???
????
free bonus if you act now:
???
?????
(by pyrrho for publishing jointly at MLW and DocuDharma)
Logic vs Natural Language
Ok, this is a strange thing. I put it in a video, because I want to. But I
know many of you are written word junkies, and believe, I mean that
literally, and in the kindest but also you-may-need-help way, so I will
explain my brief point.
The logical form of the “if-then”, such as “if A then B”, is The
Conditional, and it’s a fundamental part of and a basic building blocks of
formal logic, and for that matter, informal logic, and il-logic. But it is
defined in a way that is very different and strange when compared to the
natural language conditional.
A –> B is a way of saying “if A then B”.
A strange thing in logic is that “A –> B” is untrue, false, when A is
true, and B is false. So that leads to two strange things about the
conditional used in formal logic.
Firstly, it means that if both A and B are false, then then A –> B is
true… we wouldn’t think that in natural language. “If bananas are blue then
oceans are made of ginger ale” is true? Maybe, on the theory also supported
in logic that with nonsense you can prove any other nonsense.
Secondly, and what I address in the short video below, meant to either
relax or stimulate you, either way, is the fact that if B is true, then it
doesn’t matter if A is true or false. Contrary to that in natural language it
matters that A is related to B somehow, regardless of the truth value, as
they call it, of A and B.
The example from the video:
If I have viable orange seeds, then I can grow an orange tree.
A = I have viable orange seeds.
B : I can grow an orange tree.
In the historical mainstream of formal logic A–>B here is true because
“I can grow an orange tree” is true. In natural language, it’s also true,
but not for that reason, it’s true because both A and be both mention
oranges, and thus have a relationship, which happens to be true, because
orange trees come from orange seeds.
In logic, this is also true “if I have a puppy, then I can grow an orange
tree”. In natural language that is not true, unless there is some link
between the puppy and the orange tree.
I love logic, but it’s a tool, and I think this is a very serious issue in
terms of what the limitations are for logic as we understand it right now in
terms of applicability to the natural world. It is possibly this logic
holding us back from abstract gains in knowledge in fields other than
physics, due to small errors in ancient logical tools meant, really, to
codify our true thoughts on “if then”.
Brian Beutler has a terrific run down of what went wrong tactically with the Democratic Congress last week (S-CHIP, FISA, etc.) But Beutler still is looking at the tactical picture and looking at a Congress that he wants to do something. The problem is that, and this is true, they do not have the votes to do something in contested areas like S-CHIP, Iraq funding and FISA. This mistaken focus is exemplified here:
There is no hypothetical package of enticements the Democrats can offer a Republican that outweigh the price that that Republican will pay within his own party. He'll only be treated leniently when his party bosses realize that, if they don't let him vote with the opposition, he might lose his seat. At some point the Republicans realized something crucial: That, for now anyhow, upholding the veto is politically neutral. . . .
What does this mean? It means that even on issues as politically popular as S-CHIP, Bush can stop all Democratic initiatives. The question is then what can the Democrats do? Simply this, END all the Bush travesties. Iraq, FISA, etc. By using the power of the purse and NOT funding them. More.
In case you thought all the recent bad news about Blackwater might be curtailing the market for private military contractors, two new reports suggest otherwise. Given the Bush Administration’s obsessive efforts to privatize our entire government, it should come as no surprise that Blackwater may be, in fact, as have so many Bush cronies, failing upward. What they have done to Iraq, they may soon have the opportunity to do on our own border.
First, the New York Times reports that the privatization of security in Iraq has been acknowledged to be a mess and a disaster. This according to an internal State Department report, and an audit by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.
A State Department review of its own security practices in Iraq assails the department for poor coordination, communication, oversight and accountability involving armed security companies like Blackwater USA, according to people who have been briefed on the report. In addition to Blackwater, the State Department’s two other security contractors in Iraq are DynCorp International and Triple Canopy.
At the same time, a government audit expected to be released Tuesday says that records documenting the work of DynCorp, the State Department’s largest contractor, are in such disarray that the department cannot say “specifically what it received” for most of the $1.2 billion it has paid the company since 2004 to train the police officers in Iraq.
The review was ordered last month by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and did not include the recent massacre of seventeen Iraqi civilians by Blackwater “guards.” The FBI gets to investigate that one.
But in presenting its recommendations to Ms. Rice in a 45-minute briefing on Monday, the four-member panel found serious fault with virtually every aspect of the department’s security practices, especially in and around Baghdad, where Blackwater has responsibility.
Not much new, in that. Virtually every aspect of everything the Bush Administration has done in Iraq has been found to be at serious fault. If the words “serious fault” can somehow encapsulate mass murder, torture, and a humanitarian crisis that has created more than 4,000,000 refugees.
The report also urged the department to work with the Pentagon to develop a strict set of rules on how to deal with the families of Iraqi civilians who are killed or wounded by armed contractors, and to improve coordination between American contractors and security guards employed by agencies, like various Iraqi ministries.
Strict rules would be nice for a lot of things, in Iraq, but this borders on the surreal. Strict rules for dealing with the families of civilians who are killed and wounded?
“Oops. Sorry. Have some money, and we’ll try not to kill anyone else. Today.”
How about some strict rules in pursuance of the goal of not killing or wounding civilians?
Elements of the PKK based in the Kurdish northern part of Iraq recently conducted a cross-border raid into Turkey and took, they claim, eight Turkish soldiers hostage.
What follows is a speculation about why they did that. I have not read this speculation in the traditional media, which strikes me as a reason to believe that it’s correct. If it is, then the Bush Admistration has a bigger problem, even, than they are letting on. The White House has been performing an extremely unstable balancing act with Baghdad and the Kurdish Regional Government vis-a-vis Kirkuk. The PKK move, I suspect, has blown it up.
I speculate that the PKK is holding the eight Turkish soldiers it claims to have captured, hostage, in order to pressure Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki and the Bush Administration into allowing the Kirkuk referendum to go through this year, as required by article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution.
So the PKK has taken eight Turkish soldiers as hostages.
The news out of Iraq just keeps getting worse. Now Turkey is threatening to send troops across the border to wipe out Kurdish rebel bases, after guerrillas killed at least a dozen Turkish soldiers. This latest crisis should have come as no surprise. But it is one more widely predicted problem the Bush administration failed to plan for before its misguided invasion – and one more problem it urgently needs to deal with as part of a swift and orderly exit from Iraq.
Turkey’s anger is understandable. Guerrillas from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., have been striking from bases in Iraqi Kurdistan with growing impunity and effect, using plastic explosives, mines and arms that are far too readily accessible in Iraq. The death toll for Turkish military forces is mounting.
The muses are ancient. The inspirations for our stories were said to be born from them. Muses of song and dance, or poetry and prose, of comedy and tragedy, of the inward and the outward. In one version they are Calliope, Euterpe and Terpsichore, Erato and Clio, Thalia and Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Urania.
It has also been traditional to name a tenth muse. Plato declared Sappho to be the tenth muse, the muse of women poets. Others have been suggested throughout the centuries. I don’t have a name for one, but I do think there should be a muse for the graphical arts. And maybe there should be many more.
Please join us inside to celebrate our various muses…
If anything defines the thrust of my postings here, it is a repeated exhortation both to myself and to others to think about things differently. To me, this is of upmost importance. Far too often, we are limited in our thinking by predefined boundaries or conceptions. This has the result of limiting our answer set to the various questions we ask ourselves, often without our even knowing it.
Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut said the special inspector general has shown, once again, “how vulnerable the federal government is to waste when it doesn’t invest up front in proper contract oversight.” He added, “This scenario is far too frequent across the federal government: we spend billions of dollars for goods and services with no oversight plans in place and hope and pray that an audit will identify any mistakes later.”
For any southern Californians, or friends or loved ones of southern Californians, who need a place to talk, commiserate, or check in, please use this as an open thread. Our thoughts are with all of you.
Tonight was billed as “An Evening with Governor Howard Dean”, held at the Benson Hotel in Portland, Oregon. The food was pretty good! Salmon, crab cakes, chicken-kabobs, grilled vegetables, cheese, fruit…mm yum! We spent the first half hour or so eating buffet style, getting to know other Democrats.
The first speaker was former Governor Barbara Roberts and she gave us one of her patented pep talks, reminding us to vote for Measures 49 and 50. She was followed by Meredith Wood Smith, chairman of the Oregon Democratic Party. Besides pumping us up for Gov. Dean’s upcoming talk she also introduced a few of our local candidates. To my surprise, one is an old friend who’ll make a terrific member of the State House. I met up with him later and signed on to his campaign.
Meredith finished up her remarks and introduced Gov. Dean, who entered from the side door like a rock star. That’s when I started taking notes.
