Author Archives: Hue White

Arms exports to Saudi Arabia I knew about. But it’s leading to some bipartisan action in Congress, of all places, and, in conjunction with the previously noted bill to permit 9/11 families to sue Saudi Arabia, it could be more strain on our allies in the Middle East. Julian Pecquet in AL Monitor documents the particulars:

The State Department requests — and Congress approves — a token $10,000 in military training every year, but the heart of the relationship is America’s massive weapons trade with Saudi Arabia: a record-shattering $115 billion approved and pending arms deals under Obama, according to a new report by the nonprofit Security Assistance Monitor. …

[Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif] has been leading the charge in Congress to stop a pending sale of tanks, guns and ammunition to Riyadh for its war against the Iran-backed Houthis. Saudi Arabia denies accusations that it has deliberately targeted civilians or acted recklessly in Yemen.

The vote suggests the kingdom’s influence in Congress has taken a plunge as voters on both sides of the aisle increasingly reject taking sides in what they see as proxy wars between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran for control of the region. At the same time, the recent release of 28 pages of previously classified inquiries into alleged, but unproven, ties between Saudi officials and the Sept. 11 hijackers has also rekindled public distrust of Riyadh.

Congressional resistance would likely only increase if the Saudis were to lose in court and then refuse to pay the victims’ families, as they’ve already indicated is their intention. Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir personally told lawmakers this spring that Riyadh would sell as much as $750 billion in treasury securities and other US assets rather than risk seeing them frozen by a US court. …

The day before the 9/11 bill vote, a bipartisan group of four senators — Rand Paul, R-Ky.; Chris Murphy, D-Conn.; Al Franken, D-Minn.; and Mike Lee, R-Utah — introduced legislation to block the proposed sale of $1.15 billion in tanks, guns and ammunition to Riyadh. And 64 House members signed on to a Lieu-led letter to Obama last month urging him to delay the sale.

Paul and Lee are certainly far-right, while Franken certainly leans left – so this is really bipartisan, and an interesting commentary on how the stock of the Saudis has fallen recently. Of course, it would be interesting to trace out how a fall in munitions exports would impact the American companies manufacturing them – and where they’re located. Members of Congress are notorious for protecting programs that require work by companies located in their districts / states. Are these four merely fortunate to not have impacted companies in their districts? The report from Security Assistance Monitor referenced by Julian includes this nugget:

Since taking office in January 2009, the Obama administration has offered over $115 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia in 42 separate deals, more than any U.S. administration in the history of the U.S.-Saudi relationship. The majority of this equipment is still in the pipeline, and could tie the United States to the Saudi military for years to come.

U.S. arms offers to Saudi Arabia since 2009 have covered the full range of military equipment, from small arms and ammunition, to howitzers, to tanks and other armored vehicles, to attack helicopters and combat aircraft, to bombs and air-to-ground missiles, to missile defense systems, to combat ships.  The United States also provides billions in services, including maintenance and training, to Saudi security forces.  For example, Vinnell Arabia, a division of Northrop Grumman, is involved in a $4 billion effort to train and equip the Saudi Arabian National Guard (SANG), which, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, has played a key role in the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen. [references deleted by me]

A note clarifies the situation:

Of the more than $100 billion in offers reported to Congress, $57 billion have been translated into formal sales agreements.  The U.S. has delivered $14 billion worth of weaponry to between 2009 and 2015.  The gap between orders and deliveries reflects the fact that for deals involving major equipment like fighter aircraft, attack helicopters, armored vehicles and combat ships there can be a considerable lag time due to various factors …

The gap between delivered and on offer is the carrot for American defense companies to attempt to influence Congress to moderate its stance concerning Saudi Arabia.

This must be a little tough for Congress as Iran remains one of the more detested countries in the world, and Saudi Arabia is fighting a proxy war with them in Yemen. Perhaps we’ll see the anti-Saudi sentiment wane as this year’s 9/11 anniversary fades away; or perhaps more evidence will arise tying the Saudi royal family to the attack. How would the Saudis react if we were to demand the extradition of a royal family member? If they refused, would the matter be smoothed over – or would we eject them from our “valued allies” list?

… then you just have to quote them and admire them. In the print-only article, “The Better Angels of Our Nature vs the Internet“, Skeptical Inquirer, September/October 2016, p. 56, David J. Helfand (professor of astronomy, Columbia University, etc) describes how our evolved nature clashes with the Internet:

Thus, I see the Internet as a qualitatively different kind of threat than the printing press or television. It is a powerful, free, global channel for propagating misinformation and disinformation. The devious tribesman who led his kin away from food supplies so he could have them all to himself was soon ignored or dispatched. Today, the climate change denier, homeopathic practitioner, or presidential candidate can easily, quickly, and cheaply raise armies of the uninformed, the gullible, and the disenchanted by providing their echo chambers with any endless diet of self-reinforcing nonsense. This undercuts any possibility that consumers can make informed personal decisions, and it poisons the climate for the creation of effective public policy. [typos my fault]

Thus everyone has a right to an opinion – but not everyone’s opinion is right.

I didn’t write anything about the tragedy of 9/11, mostly because I was ill, and otherwise because nothing reminded me of it, nor would I have been particularly motivated. Fortunately, the big reminder for me was this post of Jim Wright of Stonekettle Station, who manages to say what I would have said with more authority – and more flamboyance – than I could have summoned up.

You’re expecting some kind of obligatory 9-11 post, aren’t you?

Here it is, but you’re not gonna like it.

15 years ago today 19 shitheads attacked America.

They killed 3000 of us.

And then … America got its revenge for 9-11.

Yes we did. Many times over. We killed them. We killed them all. We killed their families. We killed their wives and their kids and all their neighbors. We killed whole nations that weren’t even involved just to make goddamned sure. We bombed their cities into rubble. We burned down their countries.

They killed 3000 of us, we killed 300,000 of them or more.

8000 of us came home in body bags, but we got our revenge. Yes we did.

We’re still here. They aren’t.

We win. USA! USA! USA!

Right?

You goddamned right. We. Win.

Except…

Every year on this day we bathe in the blood of that day yet again. We watch the towers fall over and over. It’s been 15 goddamned years, but we just can’t get enough. We’ve just got to watch it again and again.

& etc. Perhaps a bit prolix, but excellent nonetheless.

[9/13/2001 – h/t Tim Foreman]

NewScientist (3 September 2016) reports on some n=1 science:

WHAT an awakening. A man has been roused from a minimally conscious state by stimulating his brain with ultrasound.

The 25-year-old man, who had suffered a severe brain injury after a road traffic accident, progressed from having only a fleeting awareness of the outside world to being able to answer questions and attempting to walk.

He was the first person to undergo an experimental procedure that stimulates the thalamus area using pulses of ultrasound. “It’s extremely exciting,” says Martin Monti at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Fascinating!

Completing a troika of food-poisoning-fueled movie reviews, we saw Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964) last night, and found it mystifying. Between the ghosts of Martian survivors who fled to Earth eons ago when Ghidorah destroyed their civilization, fairy-humans who can talk to Mothra and Mothra’s child, Mothra’s child whose diplomatic skills cannot bring Rodan and Godzilla into a coordinated front against Ghidorah, a subplot in which a beautiful Himalayan princess is the target of assassins who manage to ignore rampaging monsters in their devotion to their profession, this movie lacks focus and theme, and consequently is only compelling in answering that common and morbid question, What could possibly rescue this hodge-podge from those who began it? Sadly, the answer to that question is neither good nor satisfying, and I would not recommend this movie even for a lazy Sunday afternoon in January.

Continuing this thread, on Lawfare Gabriella Blum, Dustin Lewis, and Naz Modirzadeh discuss a purported new concept – war algorithms:

How should policymakers, technologists, armed forces, lawyers, and others conceptualize accountability for technical autonomy in relation to war? In a recently-published briefing report from the Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict, we devise a new concept: war algorithms. We define a war algorithm as any algorithm that is expressed in computer code, that is effectuated through a constructed system, and that is capable of operating in relation to armed conflict.

Gilda (1946) is a tense, dialog-driven film illustrating at least two woes – soured love and greed – and how they can ruin the lives of those whose decisions lead to such woes. Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, and George Macready lead a great cast, sometimes luxuriating in lines with a double meaning, sometimes spitting them out in frustration and rage, as Ballin (Macready) rescues Johnny (Ford) from a hold-up in Buenos Aires, and offers him a job on the spot at his casino. Johnny works his way up the ladder to right-hand man, until one day Ballin goes away and returns with a wife, Gilda (Hayworth).

Johnny becomes a little sour, but nothing like Gilda, who’s a spitfire with poison for bullets. Ballin stands in the background, taking it all in, while juggling the management of the (illegal) casino which is actually a cover for another, vastly more important, operation. As events force characters to choose allegiances, both they and the audience entertain paranoid interpretations. Revenge on soured love leads our anti-heroes down paths better never trodden, until a climax which surprises us with its force and choice.

It’s difficult to fault any facet of the movie. Perhaps Johnny could have been more complex, and yet Ford’s few hints at just a character that I wonder if I just missed more hints. Hayworth, on the other hand, glories in her part, until my Arts Editor muttered, “She’s what we call poison!” Macready is more than adequate, concealing important clues until just the right moment to drop them. Even so, the mysteries of his backstory tantalize and leave the audience wanting more.

Strongly recommended.

Surely Professor Carl Jones, a conservation biologist who often clashes with fellow environmentalists, felt at least a twinge of the old schadenfreude as he describes some of his conservation work on Mauritius:

Aldabra Giant Tortoise

The original grazers had been giant tortoises, until they went extinct. So I figured we should introduce Aldabra giant tortoises. They were a different species, but it seemed to me they would do the same job. When I talked to my friends about this, they all thought I was mad. “How do you know they will be an exact fit?” they asked. Botanists were literally purple with rage, saying the tortoises would eat critically endangered plants. I said: “Sure, that’s the idea. Your plants won’t survive unless tortoises graze on them.”

We conducted some studies that showed tortoises would do far more good than harm. It turned out that the seeds of endemic plants that passed through a tortoise’s gut germinated far better than if they hadn’t. After the [Mauritian Wildlife Foundation] restored the tortoises, the native plants started to come back.

“Kestrel manoeuvres in the dark,” NewScientist (3 September 2016)

Perhaps viewing Godzilla’s Revenge (1969, aka All Monsters Attack, aka Gojira-Minira-Gabara: Ōru Kaijū Daishingeki, which translates to Godzilla, Minilla, and Gabara: All Monsters Attack) is the cause of my current gastrointestinal distress. Aimed at children, a little boy, Ishiro, is menaced by the local gang of slightly older children, and he retreats to fantasies about an island where monsters such as Godzilla, Gabara, and others appear to be in constant fighting practice, including Godzilla’s son, Minilla, who has his own fears inhibiting his attempts to live up to his father’s expectations. Reality then ups the ante as two bank robbers, apparently the inspiration for the burglars in the comedy Home Alone (1990), kidnap him as he stumbles across one of their driver license cards. Eventually, Minilla inspires Ishiro to escape, leading the robbers on a bumbling chase while the cops close in and finally capture them.

From horrid special effects to a drearily predictable story, monsters with no purpose but to inspire a little boy, and dubious acting, I can only think fast-forwarding through the more dreadful parts of this movie has upset my equilibrium; or, I didn’t use the fast forward feature enough, allowing myself to be overcome by pursuing bad taste.

In either case, this cannot be recommended, even to Godzilla completists.

NewScientist‘s Anil Ananthaswamy covers the broad topic of consciousness (3 September 2016, paywall). This caught my eye:

But how [does the brain give rise to consciousness]? That is a raging debate. At its heart is what philosopher David Chalmers at New York University termed the “hard problem” of consciousness: how can physical networks of neurons produce experiences that appear to fall outside the material world? As Thomas Nagel, also at New York University, put it in the 1970s: you could know every detail of the physical workings of a bat’s brain, but still not know what it is like to be a bat.

Broadly speaking, those trying to solve the hard problem fall into two camps, according to psychologist and philosopher Nicholas Humphrey. There are those who think that consciousness is something real and those who say it’s a mirage, and so dismiss the problem entirely. …

Those [in the latter camp] say the hard problem creates one where there is none. “It’s an unsolvable mystery, because the problem is ill posed,” says neuroscientist Michael Graziano of Princeton University. He argues that consciousness is nothing but a trick of the mind. What’s more, the brain doesn’t just create the illusion of consciousness but also the feeling that there is a separate, immaterial “I” having a conscious experience. In other words: there is no need to explain strange interactions between material and immaterial things because the immaterial things don’t really exist.

From my limited perspective, I begin to wonder if the terms of the debate are ill-defined. I wonder if the question, What attributes typify consciousness, would elicit very different answers from the two camps?

panpsychism:

Is this aware?

… panpsychism, the view that all matter – even inanimate objects like rocks – is imbued with some degree of consciousness.

– Anil Ananthaswamy in “Metaphysics special: What is consciousness?”, NewScientist (3 September 2016, paywall)

We can see the success of the invaders here.

Stealthily coming over the garage roof

Leaving soldiers wherever it goes.

A hapless victim.

A reader wanders off-topic concerning long distance suits:

Are they going to allow the American airline companies that trained some of these terrorists how to fly the airliners and allow the families to sue them too? Seems to me that is what I had read shortly after 9/11. That may be next?

I have not heard of such a step. I’m nothing near a lawyer, but it seems to me that if gun shops cannot be sued for selling guns used in mass shootings, it seems unlikely that a flight training school could be sued for offering flight training.

Profiting from software bugs continues:

Right. I think the current legal definition of insider trading involves only people inside a company whose stock is being traded, or maybe it includes people in a company about to buy another company or similar deal. But to me, an insider is someone who knows something the general public does not. Making book, er, stock trades on that knowledge, especially when it is harmful and vital knowledge, and you’ve taken steps to keep it that way until you profit, seems like it ought to be illegal. It’s at least heinous in this case.

So how to compensate a hacker who finds a bug? I think I agree that this particular effort seems unethical, although I’m a little concerned that I’m applying an engineering ethical system to a private sector transaction, but it seems proper to do so since we’re basically talking about engineering, even if it’s enabled by the private sector’s funding.

And if it gets valid results, that’s not bad. The latest subject, which I ran across a month ago and forgot about, is the identification of new species via iNaturalist, as reported by npr.org:

Sam Kieschnick, an urban biologist with Texas Parks and Wildlife, says an individual photo might not be groundbreaking — and true, you’re not getting any PokéCoins or other rewards — but each observation adds to our understanding of biodiversity, like a mosaic or pointillist painting.

“It’s just a single dot if you look up close, but when you start to take a step back, you can get to see these patterns that start to develop,” Kieschnick says.

There have been major discoveries as a result of photo sharing on iNaturalist.

In 2013, for example, a man in Colombia uploaded a photo of a bright red and black frog. A poison frog expert in Washington, D.C., spotted it and eventually determined it was a brand-new species. The pair co-authored the results in the peer-reviewed journal Zootaxa.

One of the developers behind iNaturalist is Scott Loarie. He says when he partnered with naturalist Ken-ichi Ueda, the initial idea was to use it as a tool to get people engaged with nature, and later, as a tool for science.

Making things fun seems to be the way, at least in Western culture. It’d be interesting to know how well this approach works in other cultures.

Oscar Brown….

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dheVr7Wdrro

Sally Adee reports in NewScientist (3 September 2016) on the surprising lack of support for the idea of using fake babies to discourage teenage pregnancy – and what happened when the idea was tested:

Now a study of more than 2800 girls at 57 schools has found that those who cared for a doll may have higher rates of pregnancy and abortion than those who didn’t. Behind the alluring narrative of the off-putting doll was a more complex reality. Giving these girls a cute, fun doll to take home for a weekend is not an accurate reflection of parenthood. Then there was the positive attention that the dolls create. The study isn’t without its flaws, but no one disputes its main finding – that the dolls didn’t work.

This cautionary tale is not an unusual one. Many common-sense interventions crumble under the slightest probing, especially in medicine. The baby simulator is just the most recent example of how social policy can go unexpectedly wrong.

For Sally this is a story with wider applicability – simple solutions are often not solutions. But I’m left wondering about the analysis of why this didn’t work – and what it would take to make it work? Give the girls a fake baby for a month? A year? It seems like this is merely a visceral discouragement, which, as noted, also had its advantages. How do you teach the girls that, once burdened with a baby, higher education becomes much harder for both parents – if the guy even hangs around?

If the Virtual Reality can add time compression to their contraptions then they might have a solution.

Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956) is a vastly silly name for a movie that is only half-silly. Raymond Burr stars as an American journalist who happens to stop in Japan just after the United States test fires the first hydrogen bomb. Ships begin to disappear near one of the Japanese islands, survivors are burned and don’t survive very long – and then one night, a big something comes ashore and knocks over some residences.

Burr lends a certain gravitas to the movie as he calmly reports on the monster so large that it brings its own storm systems with it. The next night the monster is known to be in Tokyo Bay, and preparations are made to defend the city. However, despite the best efforts, a terrible rampage begins and only random chance spares a few.

And this is where we might best understand the movie, for we see not only soldiers, but women with children suffer and die from the fury that is Godzilla. Even those who survive the initial attack may be dead before the next night: many register positive for lethal doses of radiation. This is the serious core of the movie, as this incomprehensible monster destroys all in its path, virtually salts the earth behind it, making land, the most precious resource in Japan, unusable in its wake. This is what nuclear weapons will do, it says, making even those who come afterwards into monsters – if they’re not monsters already. So would be the bomb-droppers, who by creating and using the most powerful and indiscriminate destructive man-made power in history, not only ruin those in the moment of its dropping, ruin many others with nothing more than casual malice – blighting the virtuous simple workers, the good-hearted women, all who’s greatest sin was being too close.

Eventually, a Japanese scientist reveals and uses a new weapon, as horrible in its own way as the hydrogen bomb (think of instant-piranha), but he does not reveal the secret – and deliberately kills himself as Godzilla dies, thus ensuring no one will be able to discover this horrid weapon through him. Through this sacrifice, he becomes the role model, the martyr to peace, and by contrast the message that the powers we now command will lead to our destruction if we use them for war.

Crude, by turns serious and almost factory-like, it can be interesting if you can stand the rough spots.

OK, all that said, Wikipedia notes this is actually an example of Americanization:

The film is a heavily re-edited American adaptation, commonly referred to as an “Americanization”,^{[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]} of the Japanese film Godzilla, originally produced by Toho in 1954, which had previously been shown subtitled in the United States in Japanese community theaters only, and was not known in Europe.

For this version of Godzilla, some of the original Japanese dialogue was dubbed into English and some of the political, social, and anti-nuclear themes and overtones were removed completely, resulting in 16 minutes of footage cut from the original Japanese version and replaced with new footage shot exclusively for the film’s North American release, featuring Canadian actor Raymond Burr playing the lead role of American journalist Steve Martin, from whose perspective the film is told, mainly through flashbacks and narration. The new footage featured Burr interacting with Japanese-American actors and look-alikes to make it seem like he was part of the original Japanese production.

To tell the truth, it’s not done too badly. In some ways, those scenes with Burr are better than those without. It might be interesting to see the original and compare it to this.

For me science is the art of understanding truth and beauty; there is no more noble pursuit.

– Chris Packham (NewScientist, 3 September 2016)

Back in July, Michael Madden on 38 North noted the transition of Kim Jong-il loyalists out of the power structure:

Four senior DPRK officials with longstanding ties to late leader Kim Jong Il have been transferred to “other posts” or retired from office. Two of the retirees were Vice Marshal Ri Yong Mu[33] and General O Kuk Ryol, two former NDC senior vice chairmen who had been removed from the WPK Political Bureau during the 7th Party Congress. Now, their state positions at the top of the NDC seemingly have been abolished.[34]

Also cycled out from the DPRK leadership was Tae Jong Su,[35] a technocrat and DPRK Cabinet Vice Premier who served as the party’s boss in South Hamgyong Province since 2012. Tae was removed from the SPA Presidium and replaced with three senior officials tied to Kim Jong Un.[36] Pak Myong Chol was removed as head of the DPRK Central Court,[37] an office that for two years had made him head of the DPRK court system.[38]He was replaced by Kang Yun Sok, a DPRK attorney who has served for several years as Director-General of the SPA Legislation Department and was Chairman of the DPRK Coordinating Committee for the Implementation of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child.[39]

All four of these DPRK leadership elders remain members of the WPK Central Committee. There is a good chance that the regime is keeping them around because Kim Jong Un, and other members of their core leadership, may need their extensive career experience and advice going forward.[40]

In case you were wondering if sharia law would ever have any influence on US or US state law, Eugene Volokh of The Volokh Conspiracy reports that a Minnesota appellate court rebuffed just such a possibility. Here’s his summary after discussing the particulars:

Sometimes American law does allow the implementation of foreign legal rules, or religious legal rules. A contract might, for instance, call for applying the law of Sudan, or a will might specify that the property be distributed one-fourth to the widow, one-sixth to the parents, one-sixth each to the three brothers, and one-twelfth to the one sister (whether or not that’s the sharia-mandated split). A court may well enforce such provisions, subject to any constraints imposed by American public policy. (For instance, a contract calling for the cutting off of a person’s hand would be unenforceable; a will calling for a court to apply a legal rule that requires the court to distinguish males from females might be unenforceable, though a will calling for a court to distribute property to named parties would be enforceable.)

But there, too, the principle is simple: American courts apply American law, including when an American law principle calls on American courts to enforce a foreign judgment, to apply foreign law or to follow terms in a contract or a will that deliberately track foreign or religious law. But there has to be an American law principle calling for such application of foreign law. And in this case, there was no such principle.

In other words, the secular law of the United States trumps is supreme to all religious laws. This is really the only way to keep the peace.

It’s election season for everyone it seems, a chance to choose which way to go next. Ben Caspit writes in AL Monitor to suggest that Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu is facing a serious challenger this time around – Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapi, who came out on top of a recent poll that left Netanyahu’s Likud Party in the dust.

How did he do it? The answer is quite simple: Lapid is the new Netanyahu. He doesn’t attack Netanyahu from the left. Instead, he tries to outflank him from the right and criticize him from the center.

CNN is reporting the passage of a bill permitting 9/11 survivors to sue … Saudi Arabia.

I saw these trees in brilliant illumination for about 2 minutes last night – and then they disappeared into the dusk.