=jplt5 Draft letters-to-the-editor of the JP et al; ca. 15 Jan '04 -- 24 Feb '04 (May include some re-types) (Does not include lets sent direct from Yahoo, which are on file; nor lets sent direct from the JP Internet ed, which ain't on file by me. ) Sent 15 Jan '04 That miserable blind old remnant who beguiled a 22-year-old mother with promises of paradise if she would but dismember herself and as many other young people (mostly Jewish) as possible, cannot claim to represent Islam, which always invokes Supreme Being as, primarily, 'the most Merciful, the most Compassionate'. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Sent 22 Jan '04 It won't do to drop a half-ton bomb on a blind old parapalegic who found a 22-year-old mother who had slept with someone else, and forced her to dismember herself and as many people, preferably Jewish, as possible. But he, or it, should be shut up in a place for the criminally deranged. ------------------------------------------------------------------ ================================================================= Swedish Art Flap: ---------------------------------------------------------------- Sent, JP & Newsweek They'll be telling Israeli Ambassador jokes for the next hundred years, if we and the world last that long. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Not yet sent `WHERE'S HAROLD ROSENBERG ...' ETC. [N.B.: Harold Rosenberg's book, 'The Anxious Object' was, as far as I know, the first to attempt to analyze the methodology of contemporary anti-art. He once remarked, I think it was to me, 'it's [the object is ] anxious because it doesn't know what it is'. ] An ageing Israeli expatriate red_diaper__baby pours some red dye into a kiddie wading pool, puts on it a paper boat with a newpaper photo, rips off a bit of Bach because he likes the title, & writes a sorta poem on the wall. Then critics call that conglomeration a bit of 'installation art', whatever that is (but art is ain't). The Swedes throw it a gala opening and invite the Israeli amateur ambassador who, on or off the edge of a breakdown, pisses in the pool. The 'Happening' is now complete, except for a diminishing cascade of applause. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Semt As for that Snow White poem_or_whatever, I can barely guess what it might mean, but I've read and written worse. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Sent I'm quick as Mecutio to take offense at anti-Israel media bias; but I did't even comprehend, much less resent that Snow White on a crimson sea. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ================================================================= Not sent It seems most appropriate that President Bush is going to Mars. Will he be taking Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld with him? ------------------------------------------------------------------- Sent Shortly after the USA sent a man to the moon, I stopped by the house of (Harvard Physics Professor) Ed Purcell. He favored un- manned space exploration, remarking: I don't see why they want to send the whole man to the moon; just send the eyes and hands. ================================================================= Sent, JP BUT TAKING POT-SHOTS AT BEGIN WAS "JUST FOLLOWING ORDERS" It's inappropriate to demonize Yigal Amir. Worse men have done worse things. ------------------------------------------------------------------ ================================================================== GENEVA INITIATIVE, AGAIN: ---------------------------------------------------------------- Sent This Geneva Initiative sounds like a great idea -- let's trade Jenin and Kalkilya for Geneva. But if they want Tulkarm too, we should demand a part of Basel. And Bethlehem is non-negotiable; a very distinguished Jewish philospher was born there. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Sent, with a bit of rewrite Re: JP Editorial, 16 Jan '04 "The era is past when one could ... argue that Palestinians would rather live under benign Israeli occupation than Arab despotism." Presumably that was the Age of Reason, in contrast to this neo- Feudal era. But it ain't intuitively obvious that most 'Palestinians', in contrast to most 'Israeli Arabs' would freely choose to live under the anarchic tyranny of corrupt warlords. As for 'disengagement' as an option: I once asked C.D. Rollins to explain Wittgenstein's 'Philosophical Investigations'. He replied, 'Ever try to divide an egg?'. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Maybe a third-world 'autonomy' (with no obvious economic base but an exploitable labour pool which can be drawn upon for disposable terrorists) hosted by a first-world nation will co-exist with it as an amicable parasite; but it seems more likely to survive as a pirate mini-state in chronic hostility. It will likely remain a warlord anarchy supporting an elite by crime, by foreign extortion backed by the demonstrated threat of terrorism, and by a chronic low-grade warfae of exceptional hrutality, aimed at incremental gains of territory, money, and power. Israel, with a morality so exemplary it verges on national if not collective suicide, is presumably the first nation to try such an altruistic experiment. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Netanyahu, with his warmed over Reagan Voodoo Economics, castigates 'social parasites' -- a class which, as a professional well-paid public servant, he more precisely exemplifies than identifies. The term surely does not apply to those ("haredim") who preserve the intellectual tradition of religious Judaism. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Netanyahu missed his cue: given his policies as Minister of Finance, he should have responded to Olmert's decontrol of the price of trash-bread with the statement: "Let them eat cake." ----------------------------------------------------------------- Ref: JP Editorial: "Israel never planned to absorb the entire Palestinian population; within Isreal there is no erason why the current [demographic] blance cannot be roughly maintained." If, as the Post editorial style implites, the state of Israel ends at the Green Line, I'd better renew my passport before taking the bus to Jerusalem. ------------------------------------------------------------------ ================================================================= On 2 Feb '04 the IHT published a tendentious misleadingly editted excerpt from a short letter I had submitted in opposition to the French proposed ban of schoolgirls' headscarves. That letter was intended as a gesture of support, from within the Jewish community, for continued freedom of religious expression for French Muslims, Jews, and of course Christians. As printed, it appears to be merely a crude anti-Catholic slur; for which I stand chagrined. As printed, the edited letter read (in entirety): "If France wants to ban supposedly ostentatious religious display, let in turn the Cathedral of Notre Dame into a shopping mall." The letter I submitted read (in entirety): "Chirac's crusade against schoolgirls' headscarves is astoundingly stupid. "It violates the human rights to freedom of religious expression and to freedom of sexual decorum. "It is also blatantly discriminatory, primarily against Muslims, secondarily against orthodox and ultra-orthodox Jews. "It makes a sort of pseudo-religion of secularism, beyond the follies of Marist-Leninism. "If France wants to ban supposedly ostentatious religious display, let it turn the Cathedral of Notre Dame into a shopping mall (heaven forfend)." (Signed) Steve Amdur, Moshav Mevo Modi'in, 73122 Israel ================================================================== THE PORNOGRAPHY OF VIOLENCE, VOLUME III Maybe the Foreign Ministry should privatize itself, subcontract hasbara to a PR firm, and raise capital by making snuff movies. It is indecent to publish "graphic" pictures of the victims of a terrorist attack. Most of us would rather not appear in public that way; and would rather not meet anyone inclined to gaze at such spectacles. Including the half-million world-wide couch potatoes who clicked on to the FM's uncensored footage of the prisoner-swap car-bomb. It is preposterous apologetics to suppose that this will build international public, much less quaisi-judicial, support for the present administration's inept arguments in defense of the 'security fence'. Sharon gives new dimension to the term 'lame duck'. First of all, that 'security fence' is an outrageously expensive political boondoggle aimed at gaining short-term electoral support from an imagined 'middle-Israel', at the sacrifice of 'settlers' abandoned on the wrong side of it. It is also tantamount to surrendering Judea-Samaria-Gaza to the first official international terrorist mini-state. Obviously it will make perpetration of terrorist attacks more difficult; but it seems unlikely to reduce their frequency, much less intensity. There are too many imaginable work-arounds. And to claim that the 29 Jan bus-bomb would have been prevented had the security fence been then in place, is trivial methodology. An individual disposable Palestinian youth from PLO-administered Bethlehem would have been blocked, but the well- financed professional terrorists with whom Israel is conducting 'peace negotiations' could have found another way to dismember Israelis. ================================================================= IRAN COULD SURELY AFFORD IT: Sharon & Netanyahu are quite right: Israel does not need Gaza, and should divest it. It would make an excellent terrorist mini- state; comes complete with airport and seaport, and a large low- cost labor force suitable for occasional use as disposable human bombs. But we shouldn't give Gaza away to those inept crooks and thugs who make up the PLO; it should be opened to international competitive bidding, with professional management preferred. And Israel should then try to insist that Free Gaza offer us a 99-year lease on whatever we have left. Preferably renewable. ================================================================== "WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE" [On an IHT editorial cartoon (11 Feb '04), showing Settlers being moved within the Green Line, to the dismay of a typical Israeli couple who remark, I liked them better on the other side of it. The former are depicted derisively, the latter are depicted sympathetically. The man wears a kippa sruga, the women is in a stylishly short and tight dress. ] Only someone who has taken a very fast tour of Isreal cold have made an editorial cartoon, as Chappette did (IHT 11 Feb '04) that gets so many things wrong. ---------------------------------------------------------------- ================================================================= DRAFT ESSAYS Not yet sent [JP Let limit: 250 words: word=5 chars, LL=60 chars, so 250 words = 20 lines @ LL=60, 19 lines @ LL=65 Erik Schechter's article on the ethics of torturing suspected terrorists is useful but rather bad. The title, "Tortuous Dilemma" is one of those apt but atrocious word-plays that should have been buried with Henry Luce) There seems to be unnecessary detail of the techniques of torture; the more so in what used to be regarded by some as family newspaper that the naive could read on Shabat. It is appropriate to inform the citizens of a democracy of the details of interrogation techniques used by their police, armed forces, and security services; though this information must be shown in context. In the good old days of "the grandeur that was Rome", it is said that a Stoic once passed a man dying in crucifixtion (a rather common form of political dialogue under Pax Romana). The Stoic could not forebear from gazing at this torture, and so tore his eyes out, saying, "Here, look your fill." Or so it is said. That point is: there is a 'pornography of violence', and it is more degrading to the spectator (not to mention the purchased object_ified human being) than the pornography of (diverted and even perverted) sexual procreation; thanatophilic not erotic. Erik Schechter writes, as a journalist, of the apparent justifiability of torture within the model of Utilitarian ethics. (A similar argument could be made for the justifiability of terrorism within the model of utilitarian ethics; assuming, of course, that the goals of those who practice terrorism are a summum bonum for all significant beings in one's domain.) Others have noted this: Aldous Huxley had one of his discursive characters ask: if you could bring the world happiness by torturing to death one innocent child, could you ethically forbear from doing so. (Dostoievski and Tolstoy may also have considered this; the Russian winter nurtures such gloomy thoughts.) And in Coppolla's movie 'Apocalypse Now!' Marlin Brando's character 'Colonel Kurtz', gone mad in the 'Heart of Darkness' that was the USA's Vietnam War, speaks with admiration of the (actual or propogandized) dispassionate use of random torture by the Leninist anti-Colonial insurrection. That brings up several points. Methodologically: as Wittgenstein showed in 'Philosophical Investigations', models (eg in mathematics, at least some science, epistemologic theory of meaning, and ethics) are always provisional and are invalidated [ie, shown non-tautologic ] but not falsified [ as truly descriptive of much experience ] when shown to entail, under extra-ordinary instantiation, unacceptable conclusions. When that occurs, one tries to craft a more comprehensive theoretic model; but meanwhile keeps the old model, with added reservations (eg, Newtonian mechanics). Models are essential to mathematics, and (I suppose) indispensable in physics. But their applicability to real-time aggregates of human beings is more limited. Human beings are both multi-determinative and (at best, as Spinoza so poignantly showed) somewhat free. They will not be confined to the closed systems of theory; like Heisenberg's touchy particles, they resent and upset the certainty of their would-be investigator. Models are appropriate to abstract entities (mathematics), or at least to presumably uniform entities ( periodic theory of elements); less so to individualized entities (human beings). Another problem trying to draw politea-cal conclusions about human beings on the basis of models, is that each person is likelly to 'colour' , instantiate, the model somewhat differently, based on his (not to mention her) personal experience. So we live in a comic-book world. Popular media offer us pre-colored models. These are Plato's doxa (opinions), "idols of the marketplace". As Wittgenstein said (of theory of meaning, but with much awareness of the political follies of his time), "a picture held us captive". As Erik Schechter notes, the small cruel minds of petty tyrants will gain some information by force, ruthlessly degrading and destroying the human beings they have captured; but the "good cop" and less-dehumanized rulers realize that more may be gained, though likely more slowly, by at least ostensibly acknowleging and appealing to the humanity of their prisoners. (Amnesty International, originally primarily its Urgent Action network, takes this approach in appealing to the residual humanity of some very unpleasant tyrants.) And as Erik Schechter notes, short-term policies have long-term effects, rather unpredictable if not unforseeable. The classic objection to pacifism is that it yields the field to tyranny. As Churchill noted, Chamberlin's appeasement seems to have done much to precipitate World War II. But at least in some cases, maybe mostly individual not political, appeasement, if not a demonstration of spiritually-based pacifism, may bring about a non-violent resolution of a conflict. Dogs know this; but human beings are far more cruel than wolves. Again: as Godel showed for mathematics, any 'model' or 'system' (of rules, as Wittgenstein showed for theory of meaning) can under extra-ordinary circumsances ('instantiation') entail a false or otherwise unacceptable conclusion. So until one crafts a more sophisticated model, sufficient to entail the additional desired conclusions, one must deal with these exceptions ad hoc, intuitively. (As Wittgenstein put it, with typical obscurity if not paradoxicality: 'My reasons will come to end. And then I will act, without reasons.') Tolstoy made this point when confronted with the classic challenge to (absolute) pacifism. Someone asked him, What would you do if you met a lion on your walk home. He replied, Do the best you can, it happens rarely. Mike Dukakis failed to make a similar point, and lost a Presidential election to the USA right-wing; with disasterous consequences for the world if not the USA. A dedicated opponent of capital punishment (and so doing tchuva for Massachusetts for the disgrace of the judicial murder of Sacco & Vanzetti), he was ambushed at a press conference with the question, What would you do if someone raped your wife. He insisted on considering that hypothetic problem dispassionately; a virtue in a CEO, but unhelpful to a candidate for King of the High-School Prom. Before forcibly exporting democracy, the USA might try, as Tom Hayden suggested in the '60's, to import it (from Monticello, maybe). So the paradigm for the utilitarian-model justification of interrogative torture must be statistic, not particular; and long- term, not short-term. A government, or at least its better apologists and propogandists, must acknowlege that the interrogative techniques it allows will victimize and traumatize, to some extent irreperably, some innocent prisoners. The utilitarian justifications of terrorism and of torture are similar. In terrorism, the victims are almost certainly innocent; in torture, quite likely guilty. [X ]. Tho(?) it is practically certain that some are guilty and some are innocent. IN both bvases the end is taken to justify the [ as an end, admittedly unjustifiable] means. That X [here, terrorism, or, torture ] is not justifiable as an end entails that one who takes pleasure in it may be deemed 'indecent'. But one who does not take pleasure in it, and who believes it justified as a means [or accepts the judgement of others that it is so justifiable ] may not be deemed 'indecent'. So I come down to saying: Not all 'ethically justifiable' possible acts are 'acceptable'; an act may be ethically justifiable yet unacceptable because it is 'indecent'. ================================================================= [Earlier draft of the preceeding essay:] In an article titled "Tortuous dilemma" ( one of those apt but atrocious word-plays that should have been buried with Henry Luce) Erik Schchter writes "Both criminal and military law prohibits the mistreatement of prsoners. But the terrorist poses a unique challenge to both systems of justice because he combines the weapons and resolve of a soldier with the X of a common criminal." [ Of course that's bad logic: If all A's are q, and all B's are q, then if x has attributes of both A and B, x is q too. ] Schechter also writes: "But as a combatant the terrorist is in violation of the Hague Convention because he does not wear a distinctive badge, openly carry arms or limit his attacks to soldiers." But of course one would say the same of many soldiers on special missions; and of most members of the Department of Defense. The dual kamikaze destruction of the New York City World Trade Center was a terrorist tour-de-force; to which the USA reacted with hysteria stoked and channeled by an exceptionally right-wing administration. Some have argued for the legitimation of the use of torture in interrogating suspected terrorists; and have argued that a terrorist is morally worse than a soldier and than a criminal. Of course torture can be justified on utilitarian criteria; but so can the torture of an innocent child. (Aldous Huxley made that point in one of his discursive novels; asking, as a 'thought- experiment': if you could bring happiness to a million people by torturing to death one innocent child, would you do so. And Marlon Brando's "Colonel Kurtz" character in Copolla's 'Apocalypse Now' dramatizes it. The question is not whether the use of torture is justifiable; but whether it is tolerable; whether it is compatible with our notion of a civilized society. Argument in terms of hypothetic models is inadequate; it addresses a temporal question 'sub specie eternitas'. It says next-to- nothing to say: If by torturing X I can extract information that will prevent a terrorist attack that would have killed many people, is that act of torture justified. Because in the temporal context, it is not known whether or not X is a terrorist, or has such information. That utilitarianism can justify atrocious acts says something about the limitations of utlitarianism as a model for ethical acts; it does not say something about the utilitarian philsophers, who cannot be supposed to have forseen and endorsed all possible entailments of their system. ================================================================= Arguments against the legality in international law of the 'security fence' are quite unclear. Insofar a nation has the right to occupy territory, it has the right to act in that territory, consistent with 'human rights' but not necessarily with 'civil liberties'. 'Human rights' are unconditional; 'civil liberties' are a condition of citizenship. ----------------------------------------------------------------- The Bushie's are quite right; the meaning of 'marriage' is: a judicially-enforceable pre-packaged contractural arrangement between a man and a woman. By common sense (the criteria of which are common usage), which is the basis (as underlying intent) of common law, the purpose of marriage is to safeguard the man's wife and her children during child-raising. (By courtesy, senior citizens are also allowed to marry; and clergy are allowed to officate. In Jewish Israel, judicial enforcement is delegated to the religious establishment.) Determination of the meaning of 'marriage' is a matter of conceptual analysis (mostly within philosophy of law); hence it is properly determined by the judiciary. To stipulate its meaning by constitutional ammendment would be quite problematic. For starters, it would be a clear violation of the constitutional principle of states' rights: that all rights not explicitly granted to the federal government are reserved to the people, or at least to their state governments. Also, it is not clear how a constitutional ammendment can rationally redefine the meaning of a term ('marriage') in common usage. To do so would, for one thing, ignore the principle that the meaning of a law is determined by legislative intent, and taht legislative intent is determined consistent with the ordinary meaning of terms, and not necessarily with their extrapolation into extra-ordinary contexts. As noted, 'marriage', in the ordinary sense of the term, is between a mature man and a mature woman; although for reasons of state, greed, and lust it has been extended in many societies to pre-pubertal children, mostly girls. 'Marriage' between a man and a another man, or between a person and a bunny rabbit of either sex, (heaven, or at least the Bible, forbad), or with one or more pet rocks or possibly the Empire State Building ( none of which are explicitly nor implicitly forbidden, but may not therefore be inferred to be permissable, much less intended). [ I'm fumbling here; a more precise articulation seems possible.] As Wittgenstein noted, the ordinary meaning of a term is determined by an empathetic exegesis of its ordinary use. The meaning of a term, unlike the implications of a theorem in geometry, is not in general determinable by deductive extrapolation from its ordinary use into extra-ordinary contexts. That often leads to absurdities; and hence shows, not that "the law is an ass" (as one of Shakespeare's clowns concludes, not without much justification), but that realword meaning #l2 (as distinct from meaning in formal systems, eg logic, mathematics, and computer programs, #l3 though not games #l4 (as Lewis Carroll points out with his fantasizeable game of croquet, logically consistent with the rules, but quite absurd). #l1 has its borders set #l2 (as needed, not by an a priori 'definition'; #l3 (realworld definitions, notably in a dictionary, are in general useable approximate models of realworld usage) #l2 but as needed, with reference to ordinary usage. (All that is just a gloss on Wittgenstein's remark, in Philosophical Investigations, that (apr. quote) 'in many, though not all contexts, it is more useful to ask, not for the meaning, but of the use.) #l1 Constitutional ammendments ordinary deal in terms of unquestioned meaning, to extend or delimit their applicablility. Eg, extending freedom from involuntary servitude to all residents, not merely citizens; extending enfranchisement to all citizens, not merely men, extending prohibition of private use to alcoholic beverages, not merely currency; restricting the right to be elected President to two terms where hitherto no need for restriction had been explicitly imagined (although consitutional intent was clearly to prohibit the unlimited reign of a Chief Executive Officer through monarchy). Again: marriage is not a right, nor a sacrament; it is a state-enforced standard contractual arrangement. Or better: There is a religious marriage, which is a sacrament under the sole jurisdiction of religious authorities; and there is civil marriage, which is a state-enforced standard contractual arrangement. Israel recognizes both (although civil marriage may only be performed outside Israel; and the state cedes to the religious establishment quaisi-judicial powers regarding marriage and divorce; although only very limited powerfs of enforcement. It is a human right of free adults to live with any other adult or adults one chooses, without restriction on sexual activity, provided that one does not thereby unduly endanger others, including infants begot in such a union. The main features of marriage are alimony and child-support; and (formerly) the Wasserman test. ------------------------------------------------------------------ To the Editor, Jlem Post: Long letter or short article. Immediately upon release, Vanunnu should be forbidden any uncensored contact with the media, direct or indirect, upon pain of immediate re-incarceration, hopefully under relatively civilized conditions. To do so would be a problematic violation of civil liberties; so some sort of extention of an Official Secrets Act would seem necessary. And a re-articulation of the obligations of citizenship, although intellectually perilous, might be appropriate. The issue is not whether Vanunnu has unobsolete technical information that he may wish to divulge. Modern warfare is multi- dimensional: media relations are a large component of it. The issue is also ethically problematic. In principle, from an ideal perspective, Vanunnu showed and has shown a certain nobility, however unrealistic. The use by military or para-military professionals of 'weapons of mass destruction' (ie, the use against civilians of nuclear, chemical, and/or biological weapons) is not merely unchivalrous but immoral; although (as an act) it is only quantitatively more so than a teenage boy slinging a rock through the windshield of a passing automobile. So much for pure ethics; one is now drawn by this dicussion into political philosophy. The possession of weapons of mass destruction is not immoral per se, nor is the more or less implicit threat of their deployment; but it does tend to increase the risk of committing an immoral act. But that is strategically and hence ethically complex; such possession may serve as a deterrent and thus decrease the risk than an immoral act will be committed by a nation's opponents, while increasing the risk that one's own nation may commit such an act. Or it may not; as Satre said, to be a statesman is to have ethically 'dirty hands' -- to make well-intentioned decisions in realtime, knowing that they may do more harm than good. Factoring in the dimensions of diplomacy and media relations, a policy of 'deliberate ambiguity' comes into play. A nation must always keep in mind the need of its opponents to 'save face'; a tyrant's survival depends upon it. And most of Israel's opponents are petty tyrants (though no less dangerous, and more spiritually injust, for their triviality). Ethically, there is no mitigation in letting one's opponent strike the first blow; a soldier or statesman bears the guilt of those killed on his own side through inaction, no less than the guilt of those killed on the enemy side through over-reaction. Existentially: when the ethical calculus is balanced, one's obligation is first to one's family, oneself, and one's people. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Steve Amdur, Mevo Modi'in, 1 March '04 ---------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------