Nelson Lowhim's Blog, page 111

On Je Suis etc... I Will Not Remain Silent.

Just another point on the Brussels Attacks: There are some saying that those of us who immediately worry about the backlash, or about other matters that are part of the context are only adding fuel to fire, that we're not bringing anyone to our side. 

The same thing happened with regard to the whole Je Suis matter. Now, I don't agree with those who decided not to show when PEN decided to honor the victims of the Hebdo massacre for what they had written. But I do see where they're coming from: that in a world where there are many many actions against free speech, to choose this one is to dance for the iniquities of the day. For any hyperbole about that attack serves to play into the hands of those who want to wage war and cover our eyes. To say other wise is foolish at best. 
And with the current massacre I say the same thing: no I will not be silent because someone has to face off the mob violence that will stem from it, even if it stems from the barrel of state-sponsored terrorism. Platitudes I hear, and once again, I fear for the innocents of the world. [3]



[1] You know, where the sand niggers live. Because there are always excuses for those: well it's collateral is the biggest one. I doubt they would sing the same tune if ISIS suddenly decided to use the same cover: saying that the attacks were meant to target a few military people and the rest were collateral wouldn't assuage them, would it?
[2] Be a Good German, I imagine, is the leading thought here, for no one never declined to express sympathy for the victims, but merely to add context to the situation since being silent in the face of calls for revenge is the same as allowing that status quo to live on.

[3] When elephants fight, only the grass is trampled and all that. Also, the halls of power are always quick to set limits on freedom of speech. No, only in certain places do they go about shooting those who say the wrong thing, but for others, the freedom to starve is still held as a knife above free speech.
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Thoughts go out to Brussels & Everywhere Innocents are Being Killed.

A sad day, today. The attacks in Brussels , that is. But I personally worry more about what will follow . So my next posts will contend with all these matters. Of course, I'm not  surprised as to what has happened in Brussels. For this is only another link in the chain of violence being carried out all over the world [1]. In the end, only the innocent will suffer while those who are the cause of the violence will remain largely untouched [2].

But that is what worries me. Again without any ability to see the bigger picture, again with all the platitudes being thrown about, I only sense that the little rational thought that has entered the public sphere will only evaporate within seconds. Leaders we have none. Visionaries even fewer.[3]
What it comes down to is a blame game which only excites people already amped up on fear and further allows them to write blank checks on their freedoms and wallets. Less seen is a full picture on how to get rid of the underlying problem. Hence the childishness.
I keep using the word childishness despite my own want to try to keep the conversation civil. And yet I have no choice. You see yesterday, at my favorite cafe, I was interrupted in my work when some random stranger opened up a discussion with the barista. It was a beautiful show of unthinking, but at some point the offender said that Reagan would rid us of ISIS; that what we had to do was bomb them all. 
Right. This is the sort of thinking that goes on in most comments sections, but it's interesting to hear it first hand. [4]
I had to interject, and I did. I pointed out that wanting to eliminate a section of the world was Nazism at best. She claimed no, only ISIS targets. If only it were that easy. Is this how people really see the world? Am I missing something? I talked about solving underlying grievances and using those around ISIS to help bring them down. But this was a face to face discussion and I don't think I changed her mind. I'm sure that today's acts only served to reinforce her views on the world.
And my view? Not to take talks of revenge seriously. Well, not in terms of intellectualism, though certainly in terms of consequences. And to take such talk even less seriously when those in our halls of power say the same, for they don't care about justice and the slaughter of innocents. Until we get some level of international view on revisiting injustices, we will keep being tribal, internationally speaking, and we will at best have the skewed security council that will only keep the great powers off each other's throats [5]. 
Meanwhile I hope the platitudes I'm hearing won't cause Europe to take its eye of its real problems and focus on this minor one of terrorism. Definitely not by committing more terrorism, even if it is state-sanctioned. Once again, the refugee crisis has only shown Europe to be a place with many problems. It is no bastion of liberalism. But it has strands of that liberalism in her population, and the hope is that those brave souls will prevail. Given the state of their economies and how that strengthens the right and the fear amongst them, I won't hold my breath. 
Once again, I fear for the innocent, because the platitudes have begun in full, and it appears that the people are looking for just that.
Update: Some more points here: That Islam is currently the group carrying out the most "terrorism" is a question I hear a lot. Mainly from those without a frontal lobe. A more interesting question is not to accept the framework of state vs non-state violence and then do the calculation. Trust me, Islam is no where near the front and would probably be considered an amateur.

Furthermore, there still is an element of tribalism or in/out group views playing a role on all sides; let not one side act too sanctimonious: for us, we view "terrorist" attacks on the other as less tragic as when it happens to people near us, culturally speaking. Again, for cities we've visited, and those that have much in common, this is to be expected. But what's not to be expected and cannot be condoned is expecting saintly actions from those we bomb while expecting no restraint from those around us. Also is the media's coverage of one over the other. No, the extra amount of time spent on Paris (as opposed to Nairobi) is to be expected, as hideous as it ultimately is, but to write about them in two different ways is not. The former has an over emphasis on empathy and individuals, the other takes a broad view of an entire situation, providing only a number for the deaths. This difference is increased when dealing with the deaths carried out by our allies (oh yes, by those innocent Europeans as well).

Finally, terrorism is only a tactic. We use it (state-sponsored), they use it. We are much better and have much to answer for. Stop being so naive and so enthralled with the mainstream narrative to not see that. Stop being so fearful of a just God.

[1] Except that now it's less about some nationalism (let's say the PLO etc) and a little more global. That injustice is now perceived as a global issue is positive, if the reaction has so far been negative. It could be the logical result of certain ideologies and it could be that the media in the internet is what allows this.
[2] Once again, it's a matter of those up top privatizing any gains from the fear they stoke while socializing any losses (in this case, the violence). This, of course, is for our side. I'm guessing collective punishment will be used against "them" as it has in the past because we're also looking at the powerless striking out against the powerful. Interestingly enough, no one here seems to have the brains or empathy to see the hypocrisy of wanting to act worse than ISIS does. 
[3] A few times one gets someone who can react without emotion, but talk only becomes one of military tactics and nothing more. Or perhaps something about WWII and how Dresden and Tokyo were templates to follow, etc etc. Rarely do we get a real expert to point out that this is merely a tactic for the deployment of a weapon. It's effective, but it doesn't do half the damage that one of our bombs do.
[4] I still understand that many people have this view. Trump and Cruz aren't pulling the masses, they are most likely following their lead. Most people have been thought to think that there's nothing a good bombing won't solve (you know, Dresden, Tokyo).
[5] No small feat, I'll admit.



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Robots do Art

Art imitating life? Check out this article on robots that take in images and spit out art. Of course the idea of creative robots is out there, as with  this story of mine with hints at a robotic arm helping to create my favorite artist's large pieces. So what to say about the ability of machines to create something beautiful? Compared to board games [1] and other recently fallen mile markers, AI doesn't seem to have mastered art yet... has it?

As interesting as many of these pieces of art seem, I am under the impression that they aren't all that beautiful. But that's in the eye of the beholder [2]. That being said, I will wait to see the artistic robot that takes over for Picasso. In Labyrinth of Souls , my latest book, the robot in the book takes on art as a measurement for how human it an be. A cool thought, though in the end the art he creates is only to test humans' reactions and in fact it only serves to drive them away from him.
Nothing so sinister in real life. The book also looks at an AI that tells the perfect story with complete knowledge of human events and literature. Something a single human is unable to do. So it goes. We still haven't seen that capability from robots. What would be interesting is how the combination of AI (in terms of scraping and rearranging data) and different storytelling medium will change writing and other forms of storytelling. 
Once again, I can't wait. 
[1] Well, the advocates of go would claim that it's indeed a beautiful game, and one that requires a good bit of creativity; nevertheless that final frontier has fallen. 
[2] And as I've said before, I'm a pleb in such matters. I walk into most modern art museums and don't find much beauty...
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Our Guernica

Spent a little time wondering about whether or not there was an equivalent to our Guernica out there. The story of that amazing painting's creation is something to behold. The story of how it was covered up during the run up to the Iraq war is more than fitting. But that the Bush administration found it necessary to cover it only speaks to the power of the painting and art in general.

 A quick look around the web gets us a few heartbreaking pieces. To include an anti-war gallery here. Yet nothing that would compare to Guernica. Or was Guernica only a painting that grew in stature over time? Or is the current world too fragmented for that to ever occur again? Hard to say, but I would like to find something out there.

Update (minutes later): Well, here's a decent answer to my question by the good people at nytimes. Some sites they recommend: One and Two . And a book, on Art and Activism that I hope to be reading soon.

Though it's about museums, the article still speaks to the art environment which exists today. Here are some nice takeaways from the article:

"Yet even in a museum like the Met, whose globe-spanning collections are rich and deep enough to yield many narratives, and opportunities to revise, correct and expand these narratives, very little attempt at exploratory truth-telling can be found."

"But as generators of life lessons, shapers of moral thinking, explainers of history, they no longer matter, because they’re not asking people to look for any of that."

It's very possible that the outcomes of the past few decades has led to the museum being less worried about the truth—or, as others have said before, being trophy cases for the rich—and more interested in simply getting people inside. But that there's at least a push away from this and towards a more activist view of the world makes it more likely that we'll get a Guernica (if I'm not already missing it).
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Cool. Free Audio Book

All right. Free Cleanse the Soul audiobooks at Audible. But it's through a coupon and there are only a few left. Here's the deal: for those who haven't signed up for the email newsletter, do it for the chance to win a coupon to use for the free audiobook. For those already on the list, email me from your list email for your chance to win (first come first serve for both people). So get it while you have a chance. 


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Learning Lessons

"It is perfectly true, as the philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards." — Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
That life must be understood backwards is something of a platitude, but when it comes to things like our foreign policy, is it even true? We may know what happened before (to some extent) and not know what follows, but to say the past is understood seems a little cocky to me [1]. What do you think? I've already talked about Iraq and the lessons we learned (or didn't really learn) from that war. In that post, there's the specter of Vietnam hanging above our latest (ongoing) adventure.

Coming out of Iraq, the lessons were not so obvious. Sure, at home Bush lost elections because of the war, but that was more about the war going wrong than anything about the war. Even the likes of Obama didn't say that such a war was morally wrong, but that it was a strategic mistake. So what is the lesson learned in Iraq? This is important, mind you, because it affects the next argument about a war (and the remote wars, most likely to proliferate, since those are politically easy sells).
On the right there's already the idea that, like Vietnam, Iraq was a victory that was lost because, you know, peaceniks. Right. Forever the people with a hammer in search of a nail, the current theory du jour on that side of argument is that if Obama had only left 10,000 troops in Baghdad, things would have been different. How, they don't say. 
They say even less about the fact that having 100,000 troops did nothing for stability in the country and that a surge and political concessions had to be made for anything like a peace to break out. The less said about that peace the better. But it was more than a Sunni Shia rift. And even with troops there, hardly any moves were being made to a lasting peace (if that were possible at all). 
And once again, I see the same thing with this new war on ISIS and the war in Syria [3]. Those on the right are claiming that we can bomb our way to glory, while blaming those on the real left for any atrocity ever happening [4]. Details details. 
But it does put to lie the idea that people are understanding the past. More likely it's using the past to selectively reaffirm their current faith (secular as it may be). And the powers that be use this to profit themselves. Not a hard task when people are so tribal. [5]
My question, however, is do I do this? Am I guilty of this heuristic? 



[1] I should clarify that there is much to know, but here I'll focus on the mainstream discussions of the matter.
[2] Those for the war tried all they could to not compare Iraq with Vietnam, and certainly in many ways it was different, but one couldn't help but see a revisionism coming out: whereby Vietnam was revisited and those for and against the war once again argued about its merits (and sometimes even if it could be "won"—don't laugh, I still hear some on the right say that the war was almost won , but the peaceniks grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory. Yes, this is a strongly held belief). For someone of a different generation, I will say, as I've said before, that the propaganda was strong and I had come to the belief of a different Vietnam than the one that actually happened (that it was merely a  war that was run wrong, to say nothing of the revisionism in the 1990s that had even those on the center left say that it might have been necessary because something something communism ). Again, take a look at that post on Iraq and lessons learned. The lessons learned are important. Look at the Pentagon trying again to rewrite what Vietnam was all about and the lessons learned there. It's about how one can twist any lessons into something to profit from.
[3] The war in Syria is complex beyond belief and the fact that people seem to think a handful of advisors could have made it a clean sweep shows the lack of learning any lessons.
[4] These crocodile tears, also wept by our leaders, should be ignored as it is a bait and switch of emotions for people over there with an immediate lack of concern for people over there through their own actions. Note again that it blames those who dare to stand up against power of any atrocities that happened (no matter if uncalled for). 
[5] It's also a platitude to say that those in power will use whatever moral or reflexive meme (have to fight them there rather than here etc) that benefits them to paint the past as they deem fit. 
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Bitcoin

 There's been much about bitcoin over the past few years. I'm hearing less and less about it. There is, of course, this point made over there at crookedtimber.  I know too little about digital currency to add much to the discussion. It would seem that many say that bitcoin's weakness is its limit on how many can be out there (the gold-bug aspect of it).
I would say the main strength is that it has technical constraints that are not to be trifled with by political expediency. Or is it? It could be that the constraints are not valid or worthwhile and one would need new ones. Nevertheless, the idea of any human system having a technical constraint I tinkered with when writing Labyrinth . Of course I envisioned something like an AI playing out all possible scenarios and from there choosing the best rules (with overall utility for humans maximized). Would this ever work in real life? I would have to think that sooner or later it has to be better than us apes working on the same problem.
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Fractal Fragment: Gerad's Love

Ah, that fractal story and Gerad's initially noble place has now taken a sinister turn. If he's guilty (is there guilt to be handed out?), should this be his downfall? Thing is, he took up a bull horn for the Black Lives Matter people and thus became the focal point of a government smear campaign. Thus certain emails and documents were recently leaked and we'll include them here because they might matter for what he has said. And so it goes. 


These moments bent his mind in ways he did not appreciate and in the following seconds, once they had wiped up the cum and smiled and walked in front of each other naked, their bodies no longer new to each other, there would transpire a conversation between them. A light in her eyes, an intellectual light, would flare inside his brain and he would wonder if this was the step into old age—for he had always felt that he was not of this world with these apes who'd taken over and so the vestiges of old age appearing at his age would not have shocked him—this move away from the lusting for sex and towards the intellectual. 
If so, then perhaps old age was not so bad. For that lusting was always a more short term pleasure and a more ephemeral one. Not to mention that even at this day the ways in which one could gain intellectual stimulation was far and few between.
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On Droning on

I want to add that the previous post on drones is annoying because it allows for the vast majority of our media to be completely complacent. The most recent killing is a perfect example. 150 people killed somewhere across the world and we allow our government to simply make statements (that they will never be held accountable for) without verifying them. Look, for example, into this article by Greenwald that makes many good points. 

Shouldn't we expect our media to at least question a few things that the officials in the government say? Naw, best to remain docile. Also, note that when something blows back from this,  cause, you know, people don't like being killed all the time, then you'll see those who've wrapped themselves in the flag to gain so much money dodge any consequences and socialize those losses. 

Just saying.


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Drone On: A Retort to the LRB and Thomas Nagel

After reading a review on the LRB about drones, I found myself shaking my head. I wondered why. I've touted the  LRB  as a great magazine to read and expand one's mind. That still stands, but one must always read with a critical eye [1]. So what was it about this review that I found so wrong-headed? [2]

To be certain, Nagel manages to review some good points: he notes that for drone operators, the mission isn't a sanitized one. Therefore, critic's complaints of killing from afar without any risk to themselves ring hollow [3]. But that isn't the only aspect of this complaint—that those doing the killing aren't suffering enough, or aren't thinking through their consequences [4]—no, the main point is that it's politically sanitized. There is limited political consequence from carrying out such a war and this leads to more of the same in the future—with even less oversight.
Another point made is that the drones are "only" killing small numbers of people and in contrast to the two wars Obama inherited this was too small a number to be bothered with [5]. One cannot argue that it is killing a smaller number of people in terms of direct kills, but for the perceived threat, is it really doing minimal damage? [6] The destabilization of these methods cannot be brushed over. Nor should the fact that this morally reprehensible "war" is creating many more enemies. 
My main point of contention with the piece is that it tries to frame the basic argument of "what can we do? we must protect ourselves" in ornate language. It provides no other context and it washes over the work of many human rights activists who have worked hard to bring a better legal framework to the international scene, to say nothing of justice or morality. I wonder if Nagel feels the same way about "protecting ourselves" when concerned with those under the terror of drones watching their loved ones killed? Of course he doesn't. [7]
The article ends with a note about how these drones could have decreased costs in Afghanistan—before the war started. It doesn't bother to explain what exactly that could have achieved, or what the consequences of that would have been. [8]
So in the end, it's an article extolling the morality of might makes right, of us vs them. The only problem is it doesn't come out and say so. Instead it talks about people (those icky, bleeding heart activists, I suppose) being okay (?!) with the death of multitudes and not with a personal kill list—the one Obama apparently curates. Yes, this borders on hagiography, for Obama, for military might. [9] 
What it doesn't come close to bordering, however, is any sort of reasonable critique or analysis of the drone war or the war on terror and its causes or the morality behind it. This (the article and the war) is measured obfuscation. There is no plan, nor is there any idea of what the end game is. There is only cheerleading and highlighting of what evil figurehead needs to be killed. 

Note:  Two years ago I wrote about drones, check it out here 
[1] Woe is me, because I really wanted a way to relax that critical eye and just read. Suppose, as my critics say, that's what fiction is for. 

[2] Mind that in any review one can take many stances—it's part of the beauty of the medium.
[3] Something that might happen when it comes to automated drones. Also note: there is ample history of this having happened in the past: those in politics wanting a more sanitized war, one with less consequences for them, will look to other ways to get what they want. Such as the bombing of Laos . 
[4] There's a running theme of good intentions throughout the article. A misplaced one, I might add.  
[5] Again, the lack of historical context is breathtaking. Many activists after the Vietnam war still took on the dirty wars in Central America and elsewhere. Numbers improving had nothing to do with it. 
[6] I noted before, in an essay, and alluded to in Ministry of Bombs , that the drone as policy is a childish and sell-serving one (with regard to those who sell it as a solution and profit from it, monetarily or politically). Note this latter profit is a win-win as our media try to frame the matter in simple numbers. Let's put aside the immorality of terrorizing entire regions for years. Let's even just focus on the efficacy of the method. What is it meant to accomplish? You'll hear no answers (other than the need for "kills" for the headlines) because there are none. 
What something like this will do is rip out the moral power of any colluding government (what little it had) and spread destabilization. It will also create more people who are willing to take arms against us. And yes, they'll go for soft targets, what do you expect? Think for a second if your region was being randomly rained upon with fire from above. What would you do? And those profits I mentioned earlier? Yup, privatized. The losses, those soft targets? Socialized. As it was, so shall it be. 
[7] Yes, I understand that post WWII international framework doesn't give any weight to such people and looks to simply maintain peace between the great powers, but let's pretend to use the same morality alluded to in the piece. 
[8] Even less is said about  possible talks with the Taliban . I know, this seems less plausible, but must be considered in the light of that administration's later lies. 
[9] I wonder if the benevolent one sleeps with the list under his pillow. I mean, who cares about that good intentioned aspect of this all?
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