On July 16, 1945, the Atomic Age began, as the old cliché goes. Hundreds
of modern alchemists journeyed to an occult gathering in the New Mexico
desert to conjure up a fantastical, mysterious force in the early hours
of the morning. The famously unclear origins of the code name for the
project, “Trinity,” only adds to the lore.
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Thursday, July 18, 2013
Preemptive Legitimate Defense: When a Movement of Your Body Can Kill You
From The Funambulist:
Whether we talk about the war in Iraq or the murder of Trayvon Martin, there seems to emerge a legal means of justification for a country to invade another or for a white man to kill a black boy. I call this means “preemptive legitimate defense” insisting on its oxymoronic character that demonstrates its ethical and legal absurdity. Such a claim is revealing the contradictions of our era, what Slavoj Zizek denounces in the marketing inventions of decaffeinated coffee and beer without alcohol and their geopolitical equivalent: wars for peace. These contradictions emerge from the necessity for a majority of people in the Western World to maintain their way of life and to obtain an ethical justification for their political positioning. The notion of legitimate is therefore important: it involves a narrative whose consistency should be sufficient to be self-persuasive (the kind that makes us say that we should not give money to a beggar because (s)he is probably part of a larger network that is abusing her or him). The notion of preemptive also implies a narrative: an anticipated one — and therefore a fictional or speculative one — that would retroactively justify the defense. We find the paradox of Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report here: if you know that someone is going to commit a crime you can arrest him (her) before (s)he commits it; yet, if you do arrest him (her) the crime has not been committed and therefore this person cannot be legitimately punished. The justification of a “preemptive legitimate defense” — of course, this is never presented that explicitely — is therefore always either hypocritical or delusional.
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Whether we talk about the war in Iraq or the murder of Trayvon Martin, there seems to emerge a legal means of justification for a country to invade another or for a white man to kill a black boy. I call this means “preemptive legitimate defense” insisting on its oxymoronic character that demonstrates its ethical and legal absurdity. Such a claim is revealing the contradictions of our era, what Slavoj Zizek denounces in the marketing inventions of decaffeinated coffee and beer without alcohol and their geopolitical equivalent: wars for peace. These contradictions emerge from the necessity for a majority of people in the Western World to maintain their way of life and to obtain an ethical justification for their political positioning. The notion of legitimate is therefore important: it involves a narrative whose consistency should be sufficient to be self-persuasive (the kind that makes us say that we should not give money to a beggar because (s)he is probably part of a larger network that is abusing her or him). The notion of preemptive also implies a narrative: an anticipated one — and therefore a fictional or speculative one — that would retroactively justify the defense. We find the paradox of Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report here: if you know that someone is going to commit a crime you can arrest him (her) before (s)he commits it; yet, if you do arrest him (her) the crime has not been committed and therefore this person cannot be legitimately punished. The justification of a “preemptive legitimate defense” — of course, this is never presented that explicitely — is therefore always either hypocritical or delusional.
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Decolonial Strategies and Dialogue in the Human Rights Field
José-Manuel Barreto, Critical Legal Thinking :
...A dog trained to attack the flesh, and torture, kill, and gorge a man and a child in front of the mother connects Fernando Botero’s Abu Grahib with Bartolomé de las Casas’ Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. In this scenario of colonial wars a dog is turned into a beast—a torture dog or a war dog—by the inhumanity of conquistadors and invaders. The dog becomes a powerful machine for terrorizing and destroying the body, and for dehumanizing the colonized—and the colonizer. Five hundred years apart these two images or stories are bound together by their origin: the history of the advance of modern imperialism, and the sensibility of their authors for the suffering of the victims. The violence and dread of these events resonates in the global consciousness and moral sentiment of our times
[ ... ]
Modernity cannot be identified exclusively with emancipation, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, but it is also historically evident that colonialism was another of its central foundations. The conventional conception of modernity needs to be revisited to accommodate the legacy of modern imperialism: the conquest and colonization of the world—a vast enterprise of domination marshaled through wars of aggression, genocides, slavery, plunder and exploitation.
[ ... ]
The history of modern ideas—modern rationality itself, conceptions of the state, even Marxist and other critiques of capitalism—runs interrelated to the history of modern imperialism. For a geopolitical analysis of knowledge, the cultural colonization of world civilizations, rationalities and intellectual disciplines ended in the crucial assumption according to which the origin of legitimate thinking is confined to a certain geopolitical location, Europe, excluding the existence of other sites of knowledge generation...
More...
...A dog trained to attack the flesh, and torture, kill, and gorge a man and a child in front of the mother connects Fernando Botero’s Abu Grahib with Bartolomé de las Casas’ Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. In this scenario of colonial wars a dog is turned into a beast—a torture dog or a war dog—by the inhumanity of conquistadors and invaders. The dog becomes a powerful machine for terrorizing and destroying the body, and for dehumanizing the colonized—and the colonizer. Five hundred years apart these two images or stories are bound together by their origin: the history of the advance of modern imperialism, and the sensibility of their authors for the suffering of the victims. The violence and dread of these events resonates in the global consciousness and moral sentiment of our times
[ ... ]
Modernity cannot be identified exclusively with emancipation, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, but it is also historically evident that colonialism was another of its central foundations. The conventional conception of modernity needs to be revisited to accommodate the legacy of modern imperialism: the conquest and colonization of the world—a vast enterprise of domination marshaled through wars of aggression, genocides, slavery, plunder and exploitation.
[ ... ]
The history of modern ideas—modern rationality itself, conceptions of the state, even Marxist and other critiques of capitalism—runs interrelated to the history of modern imperialism. For a geopolitical analysis of knowledge, the cultural colonization of world civilizations, rationalities and intellectual disciplines ended in the crucial assumption according to which the origin of legitimate thinking is confined to a certain geopolitical location, Europe, excluding the existence of other sites of knowledge generation...
More...
ABFFE Joins Campaign Against NSA Surveillance
The American Booksellers Foundation for Free
Expression (ABFFE) has joined a number of other civil liberties
organizations, including the ACLU, to protest the National Security
Administration's surveillance of Americans' Internet activity and phone
records. The recently revealed news of the NSA's actions spurred ABFFE
and the other groups to write an open letter to members of Congress.
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Authorities 'use analytics tool that recognises sarcasm'
Zoe Kleinman Technology reports for BBC News:
French company Spotter has developed an analytics tool that claims to be able to identify sarcastic comments posted online.
Spotter says its clients include the Home Office, EU Commission and Dubai Courts.
The algorithm-based analytics software generates reputation reports based on social and traditional media material.
However some experts say such tools are often inadequate because of the nuance of language.
A spokeswoman for the Home Office said she should not comment at this time.
Spotter's UK sales director Richard May said the company monitored material that was "publicly available".
Its proprietary software uses a combination of linguistics, semantics and heuristics to create algorithms that generate reports about online reputation. It says it is able to identify sentiment with up to an 80% accuracy rate.
More...
French company Spotter has developed an analytics tool that claims to be able to identify sarcastic comments posted online.
Spotter says its clients include the Home Office, EU Commission and Dubai Courts.
The algorithm-based analytics software generates reputation reports based on social and traditional media material.
However some experts say such tools are often inadequate because of the nuance of language.
A spokeswoman for the Home Office said she should not comment at this time.
Spotter's UK sales director Richard May said the company monitored material that was "publicly available".
Its proprietary software uses a combination of linguistics, semantics and heuristics to create algorithms that generate reports about online reputation. It says it is able to identify sentiment with up to an 80% accuracy rate.
More...
Federal Judge Parades Her Ignorance, Approves Torture of Guantanamo Prisoners
A U.S. District Judge not only doesn't know what torture is, she doesn't know her own history.
Judge Rosemary M. Collyer doesn't know what people have known for decades, if not centuries: force-feeding is torture. Force-feeding is torture. In fact, Judge Collyer wouldn't be sitting where she is today if dozens of American (and British) women hadn't been tortured in this way in their fight for the right to vote. Women were maimed and died because of force-feeding.
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Judge Rosemary M. Collyer doesn't know what people have known for decades, if not centuries: force-feeding is torture. Force-feeding is torture. In fact, Judge Collyer wouldn't be sitting where she is today if dozens of American (and British) women hadn't been tortured in this way in their fight for the right to vote. Women were maimed and died because of force-feeding.
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Military Industry Employee 'Throws Down Rifle' for 'Good of the World'
A five-year employee at private defense contracting corporation
General Dynamics publicly resigned Tuesday in protest of the company's
arming of US-led wars, declaring: "I have always believed that if every
foot soldier threw down his rifle war would end. I hereby throw mine
down."
Brandon Toy's General Dynamics employee badge (Photo: Brandon Toy)
Brandon Toy sent his resignation letter in an email to his immediate supervisors, coworkers, and the corporate chain of command, as well as to Common Dreams, who published the statement Tuesday.
The letter has since gone viral, racketing tens of thousands of views on social media sites as attention continues to climb.
Toy—who penned the letter in May and sat on it for months—says that when he pressed send and walked out of his office, he felt that a "giant weight had been lifted from [his] shoulders."
"I feel fantastic," he told Common Dreams. "I did the right thing. I am a little concerned about what I will do for work, but I know I will be working for the good of the world."
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Brandon Toy's General Dynamics employee badge (Photo: Brandon Toy)
Brandon Toy sent his resignation letter in an email to his immediate supervisors, coworkers, and the corporate chain of command, as well as to Common Dreams, who published the statement Tuesday.
The letter has since gone viral, racketing tens of thousands of views on social media sites as attention continues to climb.
Toy—who penned the letter in May and sat on it for months—says that when he pressed send and walked out of his office, he felt that a "giant weight had been lifted from [his] shoulders."
"I feel fantastic," he told Common Dreams. "I did the right thing. I am a little concerned about what I will do for work, but I know I will be working for the good of the world."
More...