Whether terrorism is wrong is a question that is often answered badly or at least inadequately, according to Walzer, who defines terrorism as the random killing of innocent people, in the hope of creating pervasive fear. “Randomness and innocence are the crucial elements in the definition,” said Walzer. “The critique of this kind of killing hangs especially on the idea of innocence, which is borrowed from ‘just war’ theory.”
Tag: reading
E-Cigarettes: Media Bury the Lede, We Get to Bury the Bodies
Nearly every national headline on the story emphasizes “vaping-related” illnesses and deaths. Nearly every first paragraph associates Walmart’s decision with those illnesses and deaths. “Burying the lede” is the journalistic malpractice of failing to mention the most important facts of a story in the first (“lead” or “lede”) paragraph. That’s what’s going on here.
The US Navy’s Attitude About Releasing UFO Videos is More Disturbing Than the UFO Videos
I don’t know, and am not going to claim to know, whether we’re being visited by extraterrestrials and if so what they’re up to while they’re here. I don’t have strong opinions on which sighting and abduction stories are true and which aren’t. I’m just exactly smart enough to understand that I don’t have the information I’d need to reach such conclusions. What I do know is that it shouldn’t be the government’s prerogative to conceal such information from the rest of us indefinitely, tell us tall tales about weather balloons and swamp gas, and offer lame “national security” excuses when caught out.
The Great Successor: Inside North Korea
I highly recommend Anna Fifield’s The Great Successor. It’s full of information about not only the life of Kim Jong Un, but what’s happened inside North Korea since his ascent to the Red Throne. Most readers will be shocked by her description of the North Korean hell-state, but that’s all old hat to me.
Federal Gun Control in America: A Historic Guide to Major Federal Gun Control Laws and Acts
For Americans, the crux of gun control laws has been how to disarm dangerous individuals without disarming the public at large. Ever-present in this quest is the question of how the perception of danger should impact guaranteed freedoms protected within the Bill of Rights.
Trump and Netanyahu: “Mutual Defense” or Just Mutual Political Back-Scratching?
On September 14, US president Donald Trump tweeted (of course) the suggestion of a US-Israel “Mutual Defense Treaty,” citing a call with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Hopefully there’s less going on here than meets the eye: The tweet may just be another mutual publicity back-scratch of the type Trump and Netanyahu frequently exchange when they find themselves in political pickles. And Netanyahu is likely in the biggest such pickle of his career.
Buddhist Anarchism and Nonviolent Communication
Here are some pieces that I wrote up for two episodes of the Anarchy Bang podcast. One episode was about buddhist anarchism and the other episode was about Nonviolent Communication & anarchism.
Election 2020: Time to Stop Pretending and Start Over
“I know what’s broken. I know how to fix it,” US Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) assured us as she applied for the job of running nearly every aspect of our lives. The other candidates, and most if not all recent presidents, display the same symptoms of — there’s really no other term for it — narcissistic megalomania.
Trump Didn’t Start the War in Afghanistan, But He Owns It
Trump can pick up his phone any time, call the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and order the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan. If his order is disobeyed, he can relieve the generals who fail to follow it and replace them with others who’ll do their jobs.
Science “Knows” Nothing
The object of the process is to make educated guesses toward future probabilities, and that those educated guesses will still, in an ongoing fashion, be the subject of splitting and clumping. A knowledge set produced by science is a transitory thing — a mass that is soon to be split and re-clumped.