Three cups of respectful shootings and bribery

Joshua Foust, former Army Afghanistan analyst on the repercussions of alleged "Three Cups of Tea" fraud:

“I think it would be a shame to abandon the idea of trying to respect the people you’re trying to reform with guns and money just because one of the people promoting the concept is shown to be a fraud.”

silly Arab League

Me, at Wendy's: "I'll take a super healthy burger prepared with love by well-compensated cooks."

Arab League: "We'll take some western intervention, please. Hold the civilian killings."

attack bad dictators with steel, good dictators with rhetoric

I've seen worse NYT articles than this kindly Kristoff piece, but this:

"Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton rightly deplored the violence in Bahrain, and the administration as a whole should speak out forcefully."

...is rendered ludicrous by this:

"In October the Department of Defense, which administers sales to foreign countries, finally announced an arms package worth some $60 billion, including 70 Apache attack helicopters, also made by Boeing, and the fleet of F-15s [to Saudi Arabia]."

You know, instead of speaking out forcefully -- gettin all up in their grill and shit -- how about telling the Saudi/Bahrain bosses "if you beat down protesters, we won't sell you arms"? But that would assume a different political reality in which the Peacemonger-in-Chief and his ilk are significantly motivated by humanitarian concerns.

Most Americans, meanwhile, are unaware that Washington actively pushes these arms on preferred tyrants. Differences between the worthy victims of Libya and the semi-worthy victims of Bahrain are conjured up to justify official policy on humanitarian grounds. For starters: "All this is tragic because the ruling al-Khalifa family can be justly proud of what it has built in Bahrain..."

On the one hand, the establishment justification for using lethal force in Libya is that it's ruled by a tyrant who crushes dissent. On the other, establishment little-guy protectors like Kristof at most urge speaking out forcefully against Saudi Arabia/Bahrain because they're also ruled by tyrants who crush dissent with the world's finest dissent-crushing machines, sold to them by the...U.S.A!! U.S.A.!! Exporting freedom for over two centuries, baby. 

consumer choice

If there's a perfect hypothetical to test the limits of one's committment to free consumer choice, it's this: What if I offer your newborn a cocaine-laced milk bottle? I'll come back the next day and offer two bottles, one with a yellow stripe around the top, one with a red stripe. The one with the red stripe is laced; the other is normal breast milk. Then I'll come back every day for the next year with the same choices for your cocaine-addicted baby. Free market, anyone?

As for the question of how to prevent this scenario--an analogue to what corporations like McDonald's actually do in targeting children with advertising and addicting them with chemicals--the kneejerk reaction among progressives tends to be government action. Anything that hurts the McDonald'ses helps the world. A non-government-dependent way to address the problem is to boycott the worst companies when possible, support local businesses, reduce your overall consumption, continually educate yourself, and insist on talking politics as much as possible in your everyday life, on facebook, email, etc.

I'd argue against Death if I could, but I'll settle for the case against death. A longer life for a Pakistanian, 30 years that woulda been stolen by drones saved by bloggin?* Sure, give that woman her life back! Excellent. Maybe they'll be good years. How should I know? The people who would take them are proven hyprocrites of the lowest order. You haven't shown yourself to me as a hypocrite, Ms. Pakistanian. Please live. Proven hypocrites, please stop being like that.

*Anti-imperialist (and other) arguments by Devin Lenda have no effect on anything.

Facebook status updates on Tribal Signalling Day

Everybody get inside, even you queers and Hispanics! Please grab a flag as you come in. They're by the door. We've smashed all the mirrors so you don't have to worry about how horrible you look. We've tinted the windows "scary" so you'll think twice about leaving.

(The good guys are inside, are you?)

Making judgments under the guise of objectivity

Q: How do you use a hammer?

A: You grab it by the handle and swing thusly, bringing the head into contact, at speed, with an object such as a nail...

Is the answer a normative or descriptive statement? It may sound descriptive, and indeed it describes. But notice how the answer doesn't mention taking the hammer by the head and digging in the sand with it. It also doesn't mention eating the hammer, another plausible use. The answer contains a judgment about the proper use of the hammer. The question was interpreted as "how should I use a hammer?," that is, "what's the correct way to use a hammer?" It would be fair to say that the statement is both normative and descriptive but where the question is whether or not the answerer is passing judgment on hammer use, the answer is most definitely "yes." It's an implicit affirmation of a particular way of using a hammer at the expense of all other possible ways. It's a normative claim.

The desired result (or purpose) informs the technique. The technique cannot be understood in isolation from the desired result. Hammers don't make sense without things to hit.

Q: How should I take care of this hammer?

A: Keep it in a dry place, don't throw it in a blast furnace...

Obviously a normative answer. The word "should" is a giveaway. But a different question arises from this exchange that expands the lesson from the first exchange. Why does the answerer only make recommendations that protect the hammer's integrity while making none that harm it? It's assumed that the questioner wants to know how best to preserve the hammer so that he can use it in the way that hammers are generally used. So as long as we're talking about the hammer, as philosophers say, qua hammer, all claims are normative unless they're bracketed, as in "people say..." or "most people think..." In other words, it's not my normative claim, it's theirs.

If you're talking about a hammer as metal or wood, on the other hand, descriptions of technique may refer to some other end, such as chemical decomposition, and the same analysis will show that technique and purpose remain inseparable.

Recently, a non-anarchist anarchist who goes by "IOZ" posted an article criticizing the vocal technique of 10 year-old opera singer Jackie Evancho, lamenting that "she can't breathe, she doesn't support, she doesn't know how to open her mouth, and she doesn't actually know how to sing the notes she's pretending to sing. Now, as an antidote, here is Montserrat Caballé, from 1975, when she was still near her vocal peak."

According to commenters responding to my response to the article, I'm to believe this was a non-normative statement since it was about "technique." According to one commenter, IOZ is merely concerned about poor Evancho's voice.

The technique, of course, must be just so, in order to sing like Montserrat Caballé, who was at "her vocal peak." But "vocal peak" has nothing to do with the beauty of her voice, only its health, as if the term makes any sense outside the context of singing for the purpose of creating beauty. "Doctor, I'm a mechanic and I have a big problem. My voice isn't at its peak!"

If the issue were the girl's voice, as it relates to being able to speak without pain later in life, I'd grant the point. Her voice is the metal as it relates to chemical decomposition. But it's clearly about more than that and anyone who can read the above quote and interpret it as merely descriptive has failed to grasp the meaning of the word "normative."