Youth for Christ Building

It is almost guaranteed that City Hall will come up with an idea that will cost lots of money, appear to have to no planning behind it and that requires an instant decision. And so it goes with the Youth For Christ building that is planned for Higgins and Main.

There has been some debate about all of this in the last days but I have to agree with what many people have said: Where is the process? Quite honestly, there isn't one. Expect to see more of these sudden announcements because there is in plan ay City Hall.

Now...on to the design of the building. Ew. It looks like a new victim for taggers to paint their names on. It is not in the least friendly to Main Street. A mugging can happen outside the fortress walls and no one would know since the building is inward looking rather than outward looking.



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Burton Albion FC

Burton Albion 0 Rotherham United 1 - Football League Two

Burton-on-Trent or simply Burton, is a large town straddling the River Trent in the east of Staffordshire. It originally grew up around Burton-on-Trent Abbey, the monastery of Saint Modwen, and had grown into a busy market town by the early modern period. For centuries, Burton has been associated with the brewing industry. This is due to the quality of the local water, which contains a high proportion of dissolved salts, predominantly caused by the gypsum in the surrounding hills. This allowed a greater proportion of hops, a natural preservative, to be included in the beer, thereby allowing the beer to be shipped further afield. Much of the open land within and around the town is protected from chemical treatment to help preserve this water quality. Rob McElwee, BBC's long-serving weather forecaster was born in the town.

The town of Burton has had a chequered history of football clubs, partly due to the area's main sport traditionally in the past being rugby union. Many former Burton teams have struggled financially. Albion can claim lineage from Burton Swifts, Burton Town, Burton United, and Burton Wanderers, who were all defunct football clubs in the town. Burton Albion FC was formed in 1950, and joined the Birmingham & District League. Albion began life at the Lloyds Foundry ground on Wellington Street, but high attendances meant that the club quickly searched for a more suitable home. Eton Park was built off Derby Road and officially opened on 20 September 1958, coinciding with their promotion to the Southern League. From then until its demolition in 2005, the Brewers played all of their home games at Eton Park.

Eton Park was dismantled to make way for housing, as the club had just completed a new stadium, at a cost of £7.2 million. It is situated directly opposite Eton Park and was named the Pirelli Stadium, situated as it was a short distance from Pirelli's factory in Burton. The stadium has an increased capacity, firstly set at 6,200, but then later raised to 6,912. Having secured bargain priced tickets from London to Birmingham the onward journey from Birmingham to Burton on Trent was relatively straightforward, with a half-hourly service taking half an hour. On reaching Burton we headed straight for the Pirelli Stadium, purchasing seat tickets for the main stand from the club shop.

We were now free to seek the appropriate liquid refreshment in a town that boasts to be the home of the brewing industry. Not a problem you might think. It was 11:00am and the nearby Beech Hotel was our first port of call. However, the rather unsympathetic barman at that hostelry informed us that he was not opening until midday. This was probably a blessing in disguise as the Great Northern (Burton Bridge Brewery) and probably slightly nearer to the ground (over the railway bridge – Ed) serves a fine pint of Bridge Bitter (4.2%). Although this pub also is scheduled to open at midday, the door was open at about 11:45. Many visiting Rotherham United fans were also frequenting this establishment and there was a good friendly atmosphere.

The Pirelli Stadium is a decent enough new build which, although lacking in character, certainly has all the requisite facilities. It affords a good view from all areas. The only available seating is in the main stand; the remaining 3 areas of the ground are terraced and covered. Should the club progress there appears to be scope to increase the capacity and upgrade the facilities of the stadium.

As for the match, Burton edged the first half but rarely troubled Andy Warrington in between the sticks for the Millers. During the second period, the rain, which had held off before the match, got heavier. The deadlock was broken when Warrington took a long free kick that skidded off the head of Burton’s Tom Parkes. League Two’s top marksman Adam Le Fondre, was able to get a faint touch to get the goal that was to settle this contest. After this the visitors were by far the stronger team and should have added to their tally.

After the match we headed back towards the station (just over a mile) and en route took refreshment at another Burton Bridge hostelry, The Alfred, another friendly pub with an impressive selection of real ale. Apart from Bridge Bitter, I also enjoyed Golden Delicious (3.8%). It was here that I also bumped into Duncan Adams, the man behind the Football Ground Guide. Although we had not met previously, by coincidence Duncan had emailed me a couple of days before. A fine day out was compounded by a brief pit stop near Birmingham New Street station before heading back to the metropolis.

Attendance: 3,568
Admission: Seated £15-00
Programme: £2-50
Train: £7-00 each way London - Birmingham £9-30 CDR Birmingham - Burton


Photographic Archive

The new realism

We who hold that nonviolence is a better way to manage conflict than is violence are often labeled touchingly naive, dewy-eyed idealists who don't understand how power works. Get real, is the curt dismissal.

Exactly.

So, how's that violence workin' out for ya?

Our economy is in shambles after pouring such enormous amounts of money into that model. We seem unable to counter the power of the lobby we've both given in to and grown by increasing spending on war.

Our ecology is trashed daily by the war machine in multiple ways, not the least of which is global climate change. The single largest consumer of fossil fuel on Earth is the Pentagon. The single largest source of Superfund sites is the Pentagon and its contractors. The single largest consumer of many strategic metals and other valuable nonrenewable resources is the war machine.

Violence is literally and figuratively a dead-end. It wins few friends and produces millions of enemies.

Gandhi's method looks more and more like the new realism. Did he make mistakes? Lots of them. Did his method take a long while? Yes. Did it produce a virtual nirvana for the people of India once they were an independent nation? Not at all.

And yet, in balance, and by asking the counterfactual and comparing to other struggles, we can see his method offers humankind a practical alternative to violence.

One of Gandhi's greatest discoveries was hartal, the cessation of work. When this is done on a mass scale, with commitment, it is even more effective than a strike, since it actively courts the opponent toward friendship and good faith rather than making an effort to crush him. He gave it up just when it was working because some of his people were starting to use violence. This was an error. Gandhi was pure, yet expecting that purity from millions across a diverse land suffering under oppressive and exploitive occupation was his flirtation with dysfunctional unrealistic demands.

As a nonviolent leader, Gandhi should have condemned the violence and declared the perpetrators as independent actors and not as allies or fellow liberation fighters. Then he should have redoubled his call for hartal across the land, and he should have done that with an attitude of great optimism. Had he done that, India would likely have achieved independence more than 20 years before it actually did.

That was easy. Second-guessing 90 years later is exceedingly easy. But it's also helpful in several ways.

One, it suggests that Gandhi was so effective with hartal that it had more power than we now credit it.

Two, it follows Gandhi's call for a review of his experiments, much easier to do at our great remove.

Three, it says that Gandhi was realistic and almost succeeded. His method won many smaller and more local campaigns and would have likely won India's independence by the mid-1920s had he continued it and also developed other prongs to his campaign.

Four, it gives us a tool and some lessons about it now. We can use it to greater effect if we understand how it succeeded and failed in the past.



References
Wolpert, Stanley (2001). Gandhi’s passion: The life and legacy of Mahatma Gandhi. New York: Oxford University Press.

Second-guessing Gandhi the flinty-eyed idealist

We who hold that nonviolence is a better way to manage conflict than is violence are often labeled touchingly naive, dewy-eyed idealists who don't understand how power works. Get real, is the curt dismissal.

Exactly.

So, how's that violence workin' out for ya?

Our economy is in shambles after pouring such enormous amounts of money into that model. We seem unable to counter the power of the lobby we've both given in to and grown by increasing spending on war.

Our ecology is trashed daily by the war machine in multiple ways, not the least of which is global climate change. The single largest consumer of fossil fuel on Earth is the Pentagon. The single largest source of Superfund sites is the Pentagon and its contractors. The single largest consumer of many strategic metals and other valuable nonrenewable resources is the war machine.

Violence is literally and figuratively a dead-end. It wins few friends and produces millions of enemies.

Chernus (2004) writes about the alternative in the US: "Since the 1960s, scarcely a day has gone by in which a nonviolence movement did not play a significant role" (p. x). Gandhi's method looks more and more like the new realism. Did he make mistakes? Lots of them. Did his method take a long while? Yes. Did it produce a virtual nirvana for the people of India once they were an independent nation? Not at all.

And yet, in balance, and by asking the counterfactual and comparing to other struggles, we can see his method offers humankind a practical alternative to violence.

One of Gandhi's greatest discoveries was hartal, the cessation of work. When this is done on a mass scale, with commitment, it is even more effective than a strike, since it actively courts the opponent toward friendship and good faith rather than making an effort to crush him. He gave it up just when it was working because some of his people were starting to use violence. This was an error. Gandhi was pure, yet expecting that purity from millions across a diverse land suffering under oppressive and exploitive occupation was his flirtation with dysfunctional unrealistic demands.

As a nonviolent leader, Gandhi should have condemned the violence and declared the perpetrators as independent actors and not as allies or fellow liberation fighters. Then he should have redoubled his call for hartal across the land, and he should have done that with an attitude of great optimism. Had he done that, India would likely have achieved independence more than 20 years before it actually did.

That was easy. Second-guessing 90 years later is exceedingly easy. But it's also helpful in several ways.

One, it suggests that Gandhi was so effective with hartal that it had more power than we now credit it.

Two, it follows Gandhi's call for a review of his experiments, much easier to do at our great remove.

Three, it says that Gandhi was realistic and almost succeeded. His method won many smaller and more local campaigns and would have likely won India's independence by the mid-1920s had he continued it and also developed other prongs to his campaign.

Four, it gives us a tool and some lessons about it now. We can use it to greater effect if we understand how it succeeded and failed in the past.

Back in the day it was thought best by Quakers to be nice, to be nonviolent, and to not fight back. The Dukobars, the various other Anabaptists, some strains of Islam, some sects of Buddhism and some pockets of philosophical pacifists just took it, suffered for their ahimsa, and presumably prepared for heavenly reward later. Then Gandhi put teeth into pacifism and muscle into nonviolence. It has taken us 100 years or so, but we now begin to see that it is the force of the future. Reviewing Gandhi and others and trying to learn how to do it better in the days to come will make the method more and more effective. Second-guessing Gandhi is now a part of Security Studies almost as much as it is Peace Studies. Good. A dose of Gandhi realpolitik is what those dewy-eyed naive violent warriors need. Soon.

References
Chernus, I. (2004). American nonviolence: The history of an idea. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.

Using children as human shields

Aside from the deliberate targeting of a children-rich environment by terrorists--hitting the Murrah Building in Oklahoma (by a US Gulf War vet) with its daycare center, hitting a school, blowing up a pizza parlor or a wedding--there is no more despised practice in war than using children as a human shield. When Hamas or al Qa'ida does so, they are condemned roundly and loudly.

And yet here in the US we have Starbase, the Pentagon program that brings little children, as young as five, to military bases from their schools. Seriously, the military goes into the grade schools and abducts the children and takes them to military bases.

In Uganda, Joseph Kony abducted school children to serve in his Lord's Resistance Army. He's a war criminal and the world is aghast at his practices.

In Guatemala, during the civil war, the military bombed villages full of children and then came around on forced conscription drives, just taking boys and young men for the army. The world was horrified (of course much of it was funded by the US during Reagan's regime, so our connections grow).

Starbase is funded by the military recruitment budget and is plainly a path to indoctrinate children, to saturate their impressionable consciousnesses with a militarism so pervasive it's like fish looking for water--they don't see it because they live in it. We live in a militarized culture and we say we hope for peace. We live in a society that funds the largest global network of military bases in human history and we say we want to bring peace to the world. We teach our children to resolve problems with negotiation and conflict resolution and then we allow the military access to these children and we allow them to take the children to their bases.

Am I exaggerating? Do I ascribe diabolical intentions to those who have only good intentions toward our children?

In one sense, yes. We have no Joseph Kony-style operations in the US. I use his example as a hair-raising end-of-the-road fright, to illustrate the bottom of a slippery slope.

But I adamantly and correctly challenge us to stand up--for once--to the increasing militarization of our culture, of our society, of the very institutions we associate with peace, such as our elementary schools. When Osama bin Laden explained to the world how he could justify targeting US civilians in the World Trade Center he said all US civilians were targets because we all pay for the military that he perceives as attacking Islam. Hold that thought.

When the US military attacks terrorist training camps, do we include madrassas identified as jihadist indoctrination centers? Are there times when we've bombed schools that we have decided teach anti-American messages to young Muslims? If it comes to light that we've done that, is that defensible to Americans? What if those students turned out to be a mixed group with some quite young?

Starbase violates what should be a blood-brain barrier between children and the military. No matter how groovy their curricula, no matter how chipper their instructors, no matter how sensitive and gender-inclusive their website, it still is an unacceptable relationship. Get the military out of the schools, especially for heavens sake the elementary schools, and absolutely keep the children off the military bases, period.

To learn much more about this, please join the Facebook group Communities for Alternatives to Starbase Education.

bipartisan warmongering

So many liberals were so excited to elect Barack Obama. Even if we don't get it all fixed, at least we'll be starting to clean up the mess and we'll be going in the right direction.

More than a year out, it's looking like Bush in blackface, Cheney only charismatic instead of Darth Vaderish, like the Al Jolson version of Rummy the demanding warmonger. No, Barack Obama is not making a personal fortune off the war machine, as did Cheney and Rumsfeld, two of the lowest public officials to ever disgrace the national scene. And no, he's not manufacturing lies to gin up more wars--so far. But in all important indices, Obama is failing.

Environmentally, he's cleaning up fewer Superfund sites (21 per year) than did George W-Is-For-Waste Bush (38 per year).

Afghanistan has gone from a mucked-up minor debacle into the hellhole that is consuming Americans and Afghans alike.

The military budget is on the rise instead of dropping--indeed, much higher than the Bush record levels, now up to $1.03 trillion.

The bankers were paid off first and Goldman Sachs got the last remaining riches with the astonishing $12.2 trillion aggregate stimulus and bailout.

Job creation has come last and the working class is hit harder than ever. There is nothing left.

Nuclear power--dead and gone--has just gotten CPR from Obama.

His health care plan isn't passed and it wouldn't cover all Americans.

How many other ways could he possibly anger his base?

What base? Who is left? African Americans? They are 12.4 percent of the population.

Obama's only hope for re-election is Sarah Palin or some other know nothing whose idiocy may be so profound that voting for Obama is purely defensive against something so putrid it cannot be thinkable.

Is this the country so worth defending it takes more money than any military ever has in history? It seems the less there is to defend, the more the Pentagon demands--and gets--to defend it, whatever it may be. Indeed, that is the correlative that ought to be telling us something.

Sy Hersh seemed to think last week that if Obama decides not to run for another term, we will see some actual political courage. Hope he makes his move soon. There is no more peace dividend. Jobs cannot be created with nothing but debt and thin air. He can look under every picnic table but he's not likely to find the clean up money needed to begin to address the stacked-up Superfund sites. We will not leave either Iraq or Afghanistan on terms favorable to the US. I doubt the decision about one or two terms is still Obama's to make. I think his policies and political spinelessness have made his choices for him.

One of the principles in the field in which I teach is that you prepare to compromise on everything--except principle. Give away material things. Give away prestige. But don't violate your tenets or you'll start to lose big. This is what has happened to Obama. He may still have a fun time as president, but I doubt it.

It's going to be a long way back and he is not the person for the job--I'd love to see Barbara Lee or Dennis Kucinich. With Obama's bailout for nuclear industries he's finished off that chapter. If he would understand that he's one term he might try to do a few things right.

Followership, fun, and the forces of evil

Stephanie Van Hook shared this video about leadership.

Thanks, Stephanie!

The basic lessons from this enjoyable video are:
1. Don't be afraid to do what you think is worth doing.

2. Don't be afraid to join someone doing something unpopular but worthy.

3. If someone joins you, embrace them.

4. Encourage others to join you.

5. Treat everyone as equals.

6. Don't glorify leadership.

7. Feel good about following.

When the Berrigan brothers burned draft cards, it came out of a new paradigm. They had a few followers--seven of them--and when they went into the Catonsville, Maryland draft board on 17 May 1968 they did an action so bold, so exciting, so new and so powerful, that they went from lone nuts to leadership.

Dozens of other individuals or groups across the US emulated them. Their model became known as the draft board raids. The Minnesota Seven, the Milwaukee Fourteen, the Camden 28, and many more groups piled on, helping to grind the Selective Service to a crawl.

Phil was the team captain, square-jawed and athletic, a nonviolent John Brown battling the forces of evil with uncompromising good, on the offensive and then standing resolute and ready to take the consequences. I just called him the Sargent Rock of the movement. No Fear. Never Back Down.

Daniel was the pixie literati, adroit and playfully prayerful, offering metaphor and perspective, the leader who transformed the model to poetry and used language like the nonviolent rapier. It was he who best told us why all of them took their actions.

Together they complemented each other and offered an invitation that so many could not resist.

Twelve years later, they did it again, on a different expression (nuclear weapons) of the same evil (war and militarism), when they went into a bomb factory in Pennsylvania and hammered on the nosecone of a warhead, hammering that nuclear sword into a plowshare. It was real and it was symbolic and it was a metaphor, once again, we could all understand.

The Plowshares Eight

There have now been more than 100 Plowshares actions around the world, but more importantly, those actions have themselves often started or enhanced mass movements that really have made progress in fighting war and the weapons of war. One of my favorites was Stephen Hancock's at Molesworth AFB in England, when he wore Micky Mouse ears "to present a friendly silhouette."

"If I can't dance," said Emma Goldman, "I don't want to be part of your revolution."

The dance for peace and justice continues...


Phil kept up the beat until his 2002 death at 79.

Nonviolent competencies: Eliciting co-leadership

My friend Carie Fox is one of the top transportation/environmental public policy mediators in the country. She came to my class one evening and brought along one of the top Oregon Department of Transportation officials. Carie put a set of sticky notes all across the front wall of the class, and each one was one piece of the process by which decisions were made at ODOT. She and the official explained the process, which was based in part on the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act.

Then Carie explained how that command-and-control process generated resentment, opposition, lawsuits and a contentious process.

Then as she talked she started rearranging the sticky notes, taking the public input elements and putting them into the line much earlier, telling us why at each stage.

When she was finished, the ODOT official said that now ODOT decisions seem to start slower, but actually finish faster, and with good results, since the public is involved meaningfully much earlier. "The best move I ever made was to hire Carie Fox to consult," said the official. "I hired her for one problem, but she immediately said the real problem was our order of decisionmaking, and she redid it for us. That fixed many of our problems, not just the one I hired her to troubleshoot."

Building consensus by a facilitative and elicitive model is hard, but worth it in so many cases. It is one of the nonviolent skills that can help prevent conflict in the first place, and better resolve it with a transformational model once it does break out.

Sheroes for peace

Men have fought wars for thousands of years, acting as if it were legitimate. There have always been women questioning and opposing such a destructive method of managing human conflict.

Men who make war have been valorized and held up as our heroes--history books are skewed heavily toward them. Women who make peace or stand in opposition to war have been brushed aside, or, if they couldn't be dismissed immediately, were ignored by history books written by men.

This is to offer some small note of appreciation for just a few of these sheroes for peace.

Jane Addams, founder, Hull House, president of Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, pacifist, Nobel Peace Laureate

Joan Baez, singer for peace and justice, promoter of nonviolence

Elise Boulding, co-founder International Peace Research Association, peace activist, led Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, created Inventing a World Without Weapons

Helen Caldicott, founder, Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament

Dorothy Day, pacifist, founder of Catholic Worker movement, jailed many times for peace

Carrie Dann, Shoshone nonviolent Native rights activist

Barbara Deming, peace writer and activist

Mary Dyer, Quaker martyr for nonviolent assertion of freedom of religion

Randall Forsberg, Mother of the Nuclear Freeze

Emma Goldman, anarchist and convert to nonviolence

Jean Gump, Plowshare resister

Julia Butterfly Hill, treesitter and the largest war tax resistance ever

Dolores Huerta, co-founder, United Farmworkers Union, co-leader of immigrant and farmworker's rights nonviolent movement

Kathy Kelly, founder, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, pacifist prisoner for peace

Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese leader for nonviolent liberation, Nobel Peace Laureate

Barbara Lee, Congresswoman who alone voted for peace after 9.11.01

Wangaari Mathai, Nobel Peace Laureate synthesized environmentalism, women's rights, peace

Elizabeth McAlister, co-founder, Jonah House and Atlantic Life Community

Margaret Mead, anthropologist, challenged notion that war is our only natural option

Sr. Anne Montgomery, Plowshare resister many times, accompaniment activist for children in hot conflict regions

Lucretia Mott, abolitionist advocate for nonviolence and women's rights

Alva Myrdal, disarmament proponent, Nobel Peace Laureate

Michele Naar-Boertje Obed, Plowshares resister, Christian Peacemaker Teams

Diane Nash, co-founder, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Civil Rights leader

Alice Paul, nonviolent resister for women's suffrage

Rosa Parks, Civil Rights nonviolent resister, inspired the 1955-1965 nonviolent Civil Rights movement

Jeannette Rankin, only Congressperson to vote against entering WWI and WWII

Jodi Williams, Nobel Peace Laureate for her leadership banning landmines

Helen Woodson, Plowshare resister

This list is a barebones beginning and could go on for a good long while. Please add your own.

References

Green, Monica. Women in the antinuclear movement. 2007. In Stassen, Glen Harold & Wittner, Lawrence S. (Eds.) Peace action: Past, present, and future. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. 89-100.

On civil disobedience

"Civil disobedience is the active refusal to obey certain laws, demands and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. It is one of the primary methods of nonviolent resistance."
--Wikipedia

The following (without corrections) are from the Quote Garden:
Dare to do things worthy of imprisonment if you mean to be of consequence. ~Juvenal


Laws control the lesser man. Right conduct controls the greater one. ~Chinese Proverb


Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it. ~Albert Einstein


No radical change on the plane of history is possible without crime. ~Hermann Keyserling


When leaders act contrary to conscience, we must act contrary to leaders. ~Veterans Fast for Life


It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong. ~Voltaire


If... the machine of government... is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. ~Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobediance, 1849


You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it. ~Malcolm X


Human history begins with man's act of disobedience which is at the very same time the beginning of his freedom and development of his reason. ~Erich Fromm, Psychoanalysis and Religion


Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may. ~Mark Twain


Integrity has no need of rules. ~Albert Camus


If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable. ~Louis D. Brandeis


Laws are only words written on paper, words that change on society's whim and are interpreted differently daily by politicians, lawyers, judges, and policemen. Anyone who believes that all laws should always be obeyed would have made a fine slave catcher. Anyone who believes that all laws are applied equally, despite race, religion, or economic status, is a fool. ~John J. Miller, And Hope to Die


Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices. ~George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists


Every actual state is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." ~Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Why We Can't Wait, 1963


We cannot, by total reliance on law, escape the duty to judge right and wrong.... There are good laws and there are occasionally bad laws, and it conforms to the highest traditions of a free society to offer resistance to bad laws, and to disobey them. ~Alexander Bickel


It is necessary to distinguish between the virtue and the vice of obedience. ~Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays, 1911


I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not so desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. ~Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849 (photo below)














As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever. ~Clarence Darrow


It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do. ~Edmund Burke, Second Speech on Conciliation, 1775


I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. ~Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress


Ordinarily, a person leaving a courtroom with a conviction behind him would wear a somber face. But I left with a smile. I knew that I was a convicted criminal, but I was proud of my crime. ~Martin Luther King, Jr., March 22, 1956


If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality. ~Bishop Desmond Tutu


It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders. ~Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And a few others I believe should be learned:

Upon leaving court, just convicted for the act of burning Selective Service files taken outside from the Catonsville, Maryland draft office on 17 May 1968:

"Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise."
--Daniel Berrigan, SJ (photo of Dan and his brother Phil burning files of young men going to be drafted to fight in Vietnam)







Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.
--Mohandas Gandhi (1938 photo)

The Unforeseen Surprise On Ice

The above line was a joke I threw at a couple people last night, because while the media wants to believe U.S. Hockey's 5-3 win over Team Canada last night was a 2nd Miracle on Ice, it wasn't.

- Olympic Hockey did not allow professional players to compete until the 1990's, and the team that U.S. Hockey fielded in 1980 was a group of amateurs, mostly college players.

- However, the Soviets, much like communist Cuba does today with their baseball team, did not formally allow players to emigrate to America to play pro sports. Thus the Soviet team was comprised of players good enough to play professionally and it showed: They had won 8 of the last 9 Olympic gold medals and hadn't lost a single game in 12 years to that point. Part of the reason the Soviets didn't allow emigration was to get a leg up in Olympic sports: They were, in terms of talent, head and shoulders above everyone else in the World.

Thus the Americans in that game were huge underdogs, akin in some way to, say, UNLV's basketball team playing the L.A. Lakers with both teams at full strength in a 48 minute game. For them to win that game in 1980 was indeed a miracle. It was a group of college kids basically beating a pro team.

That is not to say last night's U.S. win wasn't an upset and shouldn't be enjoyed. They were definitely underdogs in that game, and goalie Ryan Miller had to stop 42 shots, meaning his defense was getting outplayed and he had to rise above. But both teams in last night's match consisted of NHL players. Ryan Miller wasn't facing a squad that played at a level over his head. He was playing against a caliber of competition he sees several times a week, against star players he sees several times a year.

Last night's game was a fine upset, but it wasn't a Miracle on Ice. This, which happened 30 years ago today, was a Miracle on Ice:

We are all targets now

The news analysis these days is filled with embedded war reporters from Afghanistan whining incessantly on behalf of the soldiers there who are laboring under rules of engagement so strictly designed to protect civilians that 'our' warriors are hampered. The effects of being embedded are so clear. The reluctance with which any value is placed on the bodies that house the hearts and minds that we claim to be winning is telling. The Pentagon's propaganda machine is switched On 24-7.

What? Propaganda emanating from our own armed forces? Isn't their business to defend the country?

Actually, as many have noted, we've had a military takeover occurring in slow-mo for a long time. The funds spent on military propaganda in 2009 alone ranged about $4.7 billion repeat Billion, according to the Washington Post, 5 February 2009. This is more money than the Pentagon sends to our perennial major military aid recipient, Israel. We should expect mainstream media to be increasingly warped by this pressure, and we see that.





One exception is Seymour Hersh, mainstream media writer for The New Yorker, with breaking stories to his credit that go back to exposing the massacre at My Lai in Vietnam, first telling us about the torture at Abu Ghraib prison, and much more.



We heard him speak in Portland the other night and, sure enough, a military PR flak burst out at the end of his talk with whatever version of Tourette syndrome they are trained to have. He started with laying out his fighting man cred--tours in Iraq and Afghanistan--so that we were all in awe of his willingness to serve freedom. Then he needled Hersh for not reporting on the "good" being done by the military who have invaded, slaughtered, occupied and installed puppet governments in the Middle East and Central Asia. Hersh defended himself a bit but never mentioned that this Pentagon propaganda mill is Out There, infecting and affecting public discourse.

Your heart and your mind are targets of this background blitz that blogs, embeds, writes op-eds, fetes and profiles and manipulates reporters, leans on editors, steers experts and advertises long and hard in movie theaters and on billboards. Your children are prime targets, high value hearts and minds, and everyone on Earth is now in their propaganda crosshairs.

Do not let them invade, occupy and colonize our hearts and minds. Defend us. We are all targets and thus we are all on this battlefield. We can all be warriors for nonviolence, putting the light of hope on the harsh glare of violent attack.

I refuse to use violence, but I do not cede any words or phrases to the military. This is my language, words are my only weapons, and they do not own the concept of "warrior," nor "battle," nor least of all "defend." Indeed, I offer a synthesis of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., as a slogan that we might consider:

By any nonviolent means necessary.

Nonviolence unplugged

Suffer the little children. This is a poor child born with radiation-induced birth defects from the Chernobyl power plant accident in Ukraine in 1986. The Soviet government was willing to bet that its nukes would work well enough. It was a poor bet.

There is a debate now raging about the virtues of nuclear power; some see president Obama's new nuclear power plant funding as a good bet because it will reduce carbon consumption and give the US more energy independence. It is a bet we cannot afford to make.

From a nonviolence point of view, the entire nuclear cycle from uranium mining through production of nuclear electricity production or bombmaking through managing the transuranic and depleted uranium wastes for thousands of years is violent indeed.

Solar electricity is nonviolent. If the government would lend me $25,000, interest-free for the first 10 years, I could afford to install enough photovoltaic solar panels and the other requisite hardware to drastically reduce my electric dependence on the grid. Otherwise, I cannot afford it, and I suspect many homeowners are in that position. Where I live in Oregon the utility allows us to pay a bit more for a higher percentage of our electricity from renewables, which of course I do, and I've contacted the citizens' utility board asking if Pacific Gas and Electric is honest about this. Supposedly, they are. I'd rather see the panels on my roof, wouldn't you? I cannot currently afford it.

But we cannot afford more nuclear gambling either.

Nuclear power is so dangerous that no utility would build a single power plant until the government agreed to mandate a very low limit on utility liability in the event of catastrophic accident. It was called the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act, passed in 1957 and updated since. Otherwise, nuclear power plants are completely uninsurable and corporations require insurance or a law granting them immunity from civil and all legal prosecution for their muck-ups. Once again, we find an industry operating with immunity and impunity, only avoiding the sloppiness that produces nuclear disaster because disasters mean that utility customers aren't sending in their payments.



There is a reason Chernobyl is referred to as the final warning. That 1986 meltdown in Ukraine took the life of a river to save the lives of the citizens, and it took 28 lives from acute radiation poisoning immediately and identifiably, many of whom were treated by Dr. Peter Gale, the American leukemia specialist who volunteered to go help and who wrote a book about it after.

















Had there been epidemiological studies done after it might have been possible to place numbers on the mid-term and long-term excess deaths attributable to that accident. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the terrible Ukraine economy this simply didn't happen, to my knowledge. Did hundreds more die? Thousands? Was the health of tens of thousands affected, or millions? After all, the radiation readings in Sweden spiked and that is the only reason the USSR admitted that the catastrophic accident even occurred. Radiation wafts on the winds. The atomic poison pie is easily cut into millions of servings as it becomes airborne and waterborne.

Look at the histories of uranium mining and the places chosen to store nuclear waste--never mind the places chosen by the nuclear weapons countries to test bombs. Indigenous peoples are the usual hosts. Dump it near the reservations, where they are demographically weak and where we can kill babies with less public concern. Pueblo, Navajo, Pima, Yakima, Lakota and other tribes have disproportionally borne the environmental human health costs of our anti-life experiment with nuclear power.

So, what is the nonviolent solution?

First, nonviolent resistance to nuclear power. A mass movement will be required, and it needs to be a mass movement prepared to commit mass civil resistance.

Second, massive conservation. From the Thich Nhat Hanh admonition to mind our daily activities and become less supportive of violence to insistence on massive investments in electric conservation measures (e.g. affordable installation of insulation in millions of homes and buildings that now waste electric heat or air conditioning), conserve and reduce consumption.

Third, commit to mass purchase of safe and clean electricity that doesn't include 'clean coal' or nuclear. Essentially, drive down costs by driving up scale of production by safe means.

Fourth, get new laws that remove subsidies from nukes. No more Price-Anderson. No more taxpayer-funded storage of the waste that is produced at every stage. Internalizing all costs in all forms of energy production would suddenly make solar and wind the cheapest of all.

I suspect getting any of this done would require a citizenry prepared to engage in mass nonviolent action. This doesn't mean running out to get arrested, necessarily, but paying attention to votes by politicians, instituting measures in our homes and businesses, and education of ourselves and others. Right now, the nuclear industry is using our mainstream media as a weapon of mass deception and our obligation is to counter that.

References

Robert Peter Gale and Thomas Hauser (1988). FINAL WARNING The Legacy of Chernobyl. New York: Warner Books.

http://www-pub.naz.edu:9000/~menglis6/Chernobyl.htm

Who needs old age when there are many other ways for Chone Figgins to slow down?

In my extended research on batter trends I've worked on trying to project stolen bases, which is a function of how many times you get on base as well as the frequency of your stolen bag attempts. A simple metric I developed for this purpose is steal rate, where you divide the total number of attempts (SB + CS) by the number of times a hitter gets on base ((PA x OBP)-HR). The 2009 AL average was .078.

Chone Figgins last year had a .205 steal rate. Good, right? However, I looked at past years and discovered a discouraging trend:

Steal rates by year:

2009: .208
2008: .247
2007: .272
Career: .260

The first thing that comes to mind is that, at age 31, Chone may be slowing down. However, last year with the Angels he also logged the most PA's he's ever had in a season, as he slid into a full time role at 3B. Could fatigue have also been a factor?

Steal rate by month for Chone Figgins in 2009:

April: .333
May: .240
June: .149
July: .250
August: .190
Sep/Oct: .130

Uh, yikes. Research turns up no data on anything in June 2009 that might have slowed him down. He didn't miss any significant time with injuries, and like all other 2009 starts he batted leadoff. And his career rates indicate that this isn't a typical pattern.

Career steal rates by month:

April: .268
May: .284
June: .248
July: .262
August: .240
Sep/Oct: .268

However, his career accuracy rates do tell:

April: 83.7%
May: 83.6%
June: 71.0%
July: 70.0%
August: 69.6%
Sep/Oct: 73.2%

Notice the sharp drop after a couple months, right down around and below the baseline success rate you need to make stealing worthwhile.

Whether it was a decision by Chone himself or the Angels management and coaches, could there have been an active awareness of Chone's declining success rate as the season progressed, and an according ease of steal attempts as the season wore on, especially considering that Chone is getting older and could lose a little bit of speed?

I can't confirm that. But if that was the case, it may not have worked: Chone only nailed about 71% of his steal attempts in 2009, so even as he dialed down those attempts, he was getting caught enough that the overall value of his base stealing was close to zero runs, possibly even below water. If we use Tom Tango's Markov derived run values (which TBH are a bit outdated), Chone roughly cost the Angels about half a run overall with his base stealing. That ignores the run expectancy context of his attempts, granted, but even adjusting for current data, it's likely Chone Figgins' baserunning is not at the level where he can make 60 stolen base attempts and help his team by doing so.

In a sense, batting Chone behind Ichiro may make sense as having Ichiro in front of him will a) block him from a few opportunities to steal and perhaps naturally reduce the number of times he attempts to steal and b) help provide a double distraction as a baserunner, create more pressure situations and perhaps improve the chances of some of his steal opportunities.

I don't expect Chone to steal 40 bases in Seattle. If nothing else, the average #2 AL hitter attempts 58% of the steals that the leadoff hitter attempts, and even given that the average 2-hitter isn't a base stealer, the fact that Chone will have someone in front of him roughly 35% of the time and will be on base with the Mariners' best hitters at bat far more often (which will dissuade steal attempts) will stunt Chone's opportunities to steal accordingly. So batting 2nd will take away some of the opportunities Chone would have had. In fact, it's likely he won't make more that 30-35 attempts this season. But the combination of circumstances along with a more selective approach should help improve his success rate, and 23-25 stolen bags certainly isn't out of the question.

From Adolph, with hate

From a journal of Edvard Brakstad, a Norwegian teacher exiled to the worst Arctic workcamp with about 500 others as punishment for refusing to teach Nazism to children.


Yeah, your nonviolence can work sometimes, but what about the Nazis? Or, as Ho Chi Minh claimed about Gandhi, if he would have offered nonviolent resistance to the French he could have met his God much earlier.

The facts in these cases are counterintuitive. Nonviolence really did pretty well against the Nazis. Not perfectly--but then violence didn't work perfectly either. The Soviets offered nothing but violent resistance and lost more than 14 percent of their entire population, even though they never lost their government. Norwegians mostly offered nonviolent resistance, lost their government and lost .32 percent--that is for every thousand Soviets alive in 1939, 140 were killed in the war. For every thousand Norwegians alive in 1939, 32 were killed. Raw numbers are ghastly: 23,954,000 Soviets and 9,500 Norwegians.

Norwegian religious leadership was supplanted by the Nazi puppet regime of Vidkun Quisling, eponymous with traitor ever since. The Norwegian religious leaders treated the Nazis and quislings with civility and civil disobedience, simply ignoring Nazi ecclesiastic leaders.





Teachers refused to teach the mandated Nazi curricula, the Supreme Court resigned, sports coaches ignored the Nazi values and symbology, even though the Nazis had assumed that Norwegians were pure Aryan and would naturally accept Nazism (Jameson & Sharp, 1963). But Norwegians had been at peace with the world for more than 220 years and had no interest in the hate-filled violence brought in by the invaders. They had no particular desire to kill Germans for invading either, and for more than three years practiced mass nonviolent noncooperation, from 1940-1943, losing very few to the Nazis. Later in the war the Norwegians undertook more violent resistance and casualties mounted.

When Nazi lecturers gave classes at the University, no one attended. When coaches refused to train with Nazi methods, most athletes boycotted events and sports leagues dissolved. 12,000 of the 14,000 teachers in the country refused to teach Nazism and 1,300 were sent to camps. 500 more were sent to brutal camps in the far northern frozen region. They maintained solidarity. For the first three years, Norwegian mortalities were kept astonishingly low, to about 100. Only when violence started did casualties really begin.

So Hitler hate met Norwegian nice and was nicely defeated, at least until the Norwegians had been taught to hate too. When humankind learns to maintain nonviolence even in the face of violent hatred, we will learn how to more surely overcome it.


References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

http://www.infonorway.com/?norway=essay/war/diary

Jameson, A. K. & Sharp, Gene. 1963. “Non-violent resistance and the Nazis: The case of Norway.” In, Sibley, Mulford Q. (Ed.). The quiet battle: Writings on the theory and practice of non-violent resistance. Boston: Beacon Press.

Bracket Buster Weekend: Which Conference Benefits Most

Over the last few seasons ESPN has promoted a Bracket Buster weekend slate of non-conference college basketball games, intended to help mid-major teams in undercovered conferences gain exposure in relatively high profile games. To ensure that at least a handful of worthwhile matchups result, ESPN scheduled 98 of these games between teams from a variety of conferences, including the Horizon (key teams include Butler and Cleveland State), MAC (Kent State), Missouri Valley (Creighton, Missouri State), Colonial (VCU, George Mason) and Ohio Valley (Murray State). Other smaller conferences are featured as well this time around.

To be honest, many of the participating teams have flopped this season and are playing out the string. Most of the better teams are far, far away from the NCAA Tournament bubble. Most have Sagarin ratings around the low 100's, which might not even be enough for an NIT bid. Some are legitimately in the hunt for at-large bids, though, like Butler and Utah State.

Mid majors in the hunt, however, even have a stake in games they're not involved in, because each win by one of their conference's teams can boost that conference's strength of schedule ratings, not to mention their own ratings, which in turn boosts the ratings of every team in that conference since these teams all play each other and thus factor into each respective strength of schedule. Obviously, if your conference gets hammered this weekend, that's not going to help your chances, while your conference doing well bolsters your chances even if you don't play this weekend, or your game was an easy win over a poor non-con foe.

Looking at current Sagarin ratings and utilizing probability methods, I determined the expected wins and expected losses for each conference based on the probability of each Bracket Buster game. For example, if a team has an 85% chance of winning their game, I gave that team and their respective conference 0.85 Expected Wins (E.W.) and 0.15 Expected Losses (E.L.). The underdog of course would get 0.15 E.W. and 0.85 E.L.

Here are the Expected Wins and Losses for each conference in this Saturday's games:

Expected Wins and Losses by Conference for Bracket Buster Saturday
Conference	Rank (Out of) (33 Conferences)	Exp.Win	Exp.Loss
MISSOURI VALLEY	9	5.15	3.85
WAC	11	5.11	3.89
COLONIAL	12	5.44	4.56
HORIZON	14	5.60	4.40
METRO ATLANTIC	15	4.26	4.74
MAC	16	5.90	6.10
BIG SKY	17	.58	.42
BIG WEST	18	3.83	4.17
SOUTHERN	19	1.84	1.16
SUN BELT	20	.16	.84
OHIO VALLEY	21	4.58	5.42
SUMMIT LEAGUE	23	.45	.55
AMERICA EAST	26	1.37	1.63
BIG SOUTH	28	1.34	2.66
MEAC	30	.38	1.62

The MAC, which is having a down year, is the most involved of the conferences, and while they're expected to pick up the most wins, they're also expected to pick up the most losses. The Ohio Valley has involved themselves quite a bit as well, but is looking to take a hit with more losses than wins. The top four participating conferences, however, are counting on a boost and expected to win more than they lose. In the case of limited participants, the Southern Conference has a fair chance at winning 2 of their 3 games, but the Big South is likely to take a beating and possibly lose 3 of 4.

It's likely that, outside of the Siena-Butler game, we don't flesh out any serious contenders from this bunch. The best of the lot have ratings in the 70's and are playing teams close in level to them. A win looks nice but proves little. However, it can help the conference a lot, plus could be the difference between a 14 seed and a 13 seed, which can always help your chances for an upset.

Gopher Broke: Can they do it for Bria Carter?

As Jeff Eisenberg noted, Minnesota recently paid tribute to teammate Paul Carter's cancer stricken sister by shaving their heads as a team before their 68-52 home upset against Wisconsin last night.

Eisenberg makes another key point: At 15-10 (with much of that record being buoyed by an easy non-con schedule) and being underwater at 6-7 in the Big 10, Minnesota's chances at the NCAA Tournament are dim. Stricken by arrests, academic issues and star recruit Royce White getting in trouble before bailing on the team for good... the Gophers under veteran coach Tubby Smith have had enough issues this year to make Tiger Woods' problems look mild in comparison.

Home losses to unhearalded Portland and a lowly Michigan team as well as a road loss to lowly Indiana and an 18 point pwnage by Ohio State is part of Minnesota's recycle-bin worthy 2009-2010 resume. Jeff Sagarin's ratings have the Gophers at 59th overall, with the bubble usually being around the low 40's... and that #59 ranking comes after the emphatic win over 13th rated Wisconsin.

All hope is not lost for a tournament bid, however. Minnesota can do more to pay tribute to Bria Carter than just shave their heads and steal a late season game from the Badgers. The good news is that despite their losses and middling rank in the Big 10, the win over Wisconsin wasn't so much of an inspired fluke: they can actually hang with the top teams in the conference. Sagarin's Predictor rating, different from their official rating in that it factors in margin of victory and is more accurate at gauging a team's chances vs other teams, rates them at 85.24, good for 25th overall in the nation. Compare that to top Big 10 teams Purdue (89.73) and the team they just beat at home, Wisconsin (89.14).

And speaking of Purdue, the Boilermakers are coming to Minnesota next Wednesday (2-24-10). Factoring in the home court bonus, Minnesota is literally a 50-50 shot against the current Big 10 leader. The rest of their schedule has nothing but winnable games, plus there's the Big 10 Tournament and its automatic NCAA Tournament bid for the winner. But it's possible for the Gophers to pad their strength of schedule enough to sneak into the tournament at-large. Their five remaining games: Indiana, Purdue, at Illinois, at Michigan and Iowa. The Selection Committee does show a bias towards late season charges by power conference teams, and Minnesota could net themselves a tourney spot given the following:

1. They need to beat Indiana, Michigan and Iowa.

These three teams, once-proud Big 10 powers, are now conference dogs, and Minnesota cannot afford a loss to any of them if they want to sneak in at-large. The sloppiness has to end now: Minnesota has to win these games. The home game with Indiana should be an easy win (92.3% chance of victory). Going to Ann Arbor will be much tougher since Michigan can to some extent play with the big boys (80.08 Predictor rating) but the Gophers are still a slight favorite (57.0%). The closer with Iowa is, like the Indiana game, an easy game (92.5%). The Michigan game will be a tough out, but they've got to win it, and of course there's no excuse for losing to Indiana and Iowa at this point.

Chances of beating all three: 48.7%
Chances of at least beating Indiana and Iowa: 85.4%

2. A win in Illinois with the three wins above would be nice, but if they lose to Michigan they must beat Illinois.

At #58 Sagarin, Illinois is roughly Minnesota's Big 10 equal, both in terms of rank and disappointment. Illinois is only a slight favorite at home (52.1%) so this is certainly a winnable game for Minnesota. It's not imperative that they beat Illinois, but at worst, between this and the Michigan game, they absolutely need to win at least one and at worst take a close, non-sloppy loss in the other. Winning both really helps, though doesn't necessarily make, their chances. Given a choice, Minnesota would much rather take a loss to Illinois and beat Michigan than the other way around.

Chances of beating all four: 23.3%
Chances of beating Indiana, Illinois and Iowa: 40.2%

3. Play Purdue close, at the least.

As mentioned, Minnesota has a real chance of beating Purdue at home (50.0%). But for selection's sake it is in their best interests to, at worst, keep this sort of close and, if they have to lose, to make sure it's in single digits. A close loss with 3-4 wins and Item #4 to come can be enough to indicate that Minnesota's worthy of an at-large spot. If they lose and the final margin's in double digits, however, that plus the Ohio State loss can well seal their at-large fate, even if they run the table in the other four games. This can't be a laid egg: Minnesota has to repeat their effort vs Wisconsin. Another upset win would be huge, and probably enough with 3-4 wins down the stretch to get them in on its own. But a close loss and a strong resume around it could be enough as well.

Chances of Minnesota running the table in their last 5 games: 7.6 to 1 (11.7%)
Chances of beating Indiana/Iowa/Illinois/Purdue: 20.1%
Indiana/Iowa/Michigan/Purdue: 20.4%

4. Get to the Big 10 Conference Tournament Semis.

This is going to be the biggest hurdle as, since Minnesota is likely going to be a #6 seed, the Gophers will need to pull at least one upset. Beating lowly Penn State in the opening round (80.9%) should be easy. It's beating Purdue again (35.8% on the neutral court), or avenging their ugly loss to Ohio State (39.4%), that's going to be tough. But they have to do it, or they're probably not getting in unless there are no upsets and a bunch of other bubble teams stumble themselves down the stretch.

Obviously, winning the tournament nets a guaranteed invite, but their chances of doing so are fairly slim. Assuming no upsets, their chances of doing that are somewhere around 18 to 1. Anything beyond making the semis (like, say, winning that semifinal game and hanging tough in the Big 10 Final) is in itself a bonus to their chances, but fairly remote.

Chances of making the semis: 30.4%
Chances of making the finals: 11.4% (8 to 1)
Chances of likely 7 seed Michigan helping Minnesota with a quarterfinal upset of Purdue or Ohio State: 20.3%

******

Minnesota's kind homage to Paul Carter's sister led to an inspired upset of highly rated Wisconsin, but Minnesota's moment in the sun doesn't need to end there. They've got a chance to undo much of the season's trashy mistakes and make more of this season than an NIT appearance without having to win the Big 10 Tournament. They can get into the tournament with at least 3-4 more regular season wins and a couple of Big 10 Tournament wins.

You can do it, Gophers. Get six more wins and get yourself into the Big Dance. If nothing else, do it for Bria Carter.

Jobs, morals, and warbots

"The U.S. military is by far the biggest designer and purchaser of weapons in the world. But it is also the most inefficient."
--P.W. Singer, Brookings Institute, Wired for war: The robotics revolution and conflict in the 21st century. (p. 256)

We are supposedly heading down the rabbit hole into a future of warbots waging destruction on all US enemies all over the world without endangering any more Americans. All we have to do is fork over all our money and accept far fewer jobs created per $B spent on security and, oh yes, ignore human rights and the rules of war.

Warbots are one extremely naive and touchingly simplistic science fiction. Meanwhile, they are generating massive funding for the rich elites who have been gorging at the bloody war trough all along.

Ethics, morals and unenforceable rules of warfare as understood by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the International Court of Justice or the International Criminal Court--in other words, the closest thing humanity has to a consensus on when it is permissible engage in war and how war must be conducted--all these are avoided or assuaged by the corporate and research profiteers because they interfere with business.

As Cicero noted back in the day, in war, the law is silent. We make these laws, but when the Predator and Reaper warbots attack targets and kill civilians, no one is held accountable under any law. We may proclaim from the margins, but in fact there are no bodies willing or able to enforce the rules of war on...what...the 'pilots' 7,000 miles away? The commanders? Centcom? President Obama?

Civilians--many utterly innocent, many children--are killed with these godawful things. Jane Mayer in an Oct 26, 2009 story in The New Yorker, reported that in one instance in Pakistan, "a drone targeted the wrong house, hitting the residence of a pro-government tribal leader six miles outside the town of Wana, in South Waziristan. The blast killed the tribal leader’s entire family, including three children, one of them five years old. In keeping with U.S. policy, there was no official acknowledgment."

Science fiction holds that we can digitize human rights, ethics, even emotions and morals. Let's see that in benign civilian applications long before we test it out on poor tribespeople in Central Asia or the Middle East. If we cannot get robots working productively and making moral choices and legally correct choices in the US doing good civilian work, we cannot morally set them loose with weapons.



















References

Jane Mayer (26 October 2009). The Predator War: What are the risks of the C.I.A.’s covert drone program? The New Yorker.

Singer, P. W. (2009). Wired for war: The robotics revolution and conflict in the 21st century. New York: Penguin.