I recently went to see a speech and Q&A session by Marty Peterson, deputy executive director of the CIA. Some notes:
From the monthly archives:
September 2004
If “Matt Yglesias”:http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2004/09/blogosphere_tri.html is going to use philosophical technical jargon in political debates, he could at least try to be pedantic about it.
bq. After CBS ran the story, the conservative side of the ‘sphere came up with dozens of purported debunkings of their authenticity, almost all of which turned out to be more purported than debunking. Then after a few days of back-and-forth, traditional reporters at The Washington Post came out with a more careful, more accurate, more actually-debunking story. The folks at PowerLine and LGF are, at best, Gettier cases, they didn’t do any of the actual debunking. Instead, it was done by reporters working for major papers.
But these aren’t really Gettier cases, because Gettier cases are instances of *justified* true belief that aren’t knowledge, while the beliefs of the folks at Powerline and LGF were *unjustified* false beliefs.
Those of us who enjoy a good InstaFactCheck will delight in Scott Lemieux, on Reynolds’ attempt to eliminate the gap between Kerry and Bush on gay unions. I wish that Lemieux had an instructional videotape or something.
“Dan Hunter”:http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=586463 at the Wharton School has written a quite interesting paper arguing that the open source movement’s battle with various bits of the software and entertainment industry is a 21st century version of the Marxian revolution. There’s a lot to argue with in the piece – Hunter’s account of Marxist theory is sometimes a little more metaphoric than precise, and he perhaps overestimates the extent to which a nineteenth century thinker’s insights provide an accurate description of what is happening in open source today. But it’s nonetheless smart, funny in places (talking about the key role of “Marxist-Lessigist theory”), and valuable as an opening move in what I think is a quite important debate. Ever since listening to Patrick Nielsen Hayden and Cory Doctorow hash out the politics of the information age over breakfast this spring (I, a mere political scientist, didn’t feel qualified to intervene), I’ve been convinced that there is something really _really_ important for leftists in the open source movement, and the free culture crowd more generally. The arguments which they are developing about how collective resources provide a basis for individual creativity, and, in an important sense, individual freedom could serve as the seed of a very interesting political program. The left really needs to start paying attention to this stuff, and thinking its implications through.
Via “BoingBoing”:http://www.boingboing.net/2004/09/14/copyright_reformers_.html.
One of the tragedies of living in Houston is the knowledge that Tom DeLay has his seat here. My friend Charles Kuffner, proving again that he’s one of the few bloggers who matter, has an interview with Richard Morrison, the Democrat who is trying to defeat Tom DeLay in his suburban Houston district. He’s also written a bit of a primer about the race. Apparently the most reliable poll shows DeLay at 49% and Morrison at 39%.
Interested Americans have the option of donating to Morrison here.
Under Mr. Putin’s proposals, which he said required only legislative approval and not constitutional amendments, the governors or leaders of the country’s 89 regions would no longer be elected by popular vote but rather by local legislatures – and only after the president’s nomination. Seats in the lower house of the federal Parliament, or Duma, would be elected entirely on national party slates, eliminating district races across the country that now decide half of Parliament’s composition. In elections last December, those races accounted for all of the independents and liberals now serving in the Duma.
The Moderate Voice has a long roundup of comments and analysis about Putin’s power grab in the wake of the Chechen terrorist attack on the school in Southern Russia. (Link via Obsidian Wings). I find myself agreeing with Ogged that this may be turn out to be the most serious story of the year.
There are any number of reasons why this story is horrible news. I find it historically unlikely that central, unchecked power will improve the lives of the people of Russia. I’m concerned about the precedent, in which a major power declares that security and democracy are incompatable. He’s going to get away with it, and he won’t be the last. I’m concerned about the muscular claims that Putin is making about the right of Russian forces to fight terror (defined solely by Putin) wherever he wants. Cold War II, anyone?
More than anything, I’m concerned about Russian nukes. I’m flabbergasted at the fact that we haven’t done more to take Russian weapons out of commission, (here, too) but at least we’ve had the benefit of Russian cooperation so far in our efforts. I’m very concerned that Putin is about to say to the West, “Thanks, but we’ll handle it from here.” Russia still has the materials to make tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. What in the world could we do?
The big news on Australian screens last night was the claim by a terrorist group calling itself the Horror Brigades of the Islamic Secret Army[1] to have kidnapped two Australians near Mosul. As is more or less standard, the announcement said the hostages would be killed unless Australian troops were withdrawn from Iraq. It now appears likely that the claim was bogus, but it has certainly made Australians think about a situation that was previously only hypothetical. Coming only a few days after the Jakarta bombing, it ensures that the issue of whether the Iraq war has made us safer, and what we should do about it, is going to be central to the election campaign.
OK, so this may be the first and last time I quote anything by Steven Den Beste with approval, but “this observation about blogging”:http://www.denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2004/08/Thanksforallthefish.shtml (and comments) struck me as right on the money.
bq. I’ve learned something interesting: if you give away ice cream, eventually a lot of people will complain about the flavors, and others will complain that you aren’t also giving away syrup and whipped cream and nuts.
(via “Dan Drezner”:http://www.danieldrezner.com/blog/ ).
Truly great stupid questions never die:
By far the most outlandish proposal, and one of the most recurrent, was the idea to use a nuclear warhead to blow a hurricane out of the water.
“Hurricanes are bad enough without being radioactive,” Willoughby [a research professor with the International Hurricane Center] said. “Put that genie back in the bottle. Nuclear weapons are more dangerous than hurricanes.”
Some people just aren’t any fun. If only Giblets were in charge of the NOAA we’d see a lot more decisive action, I can tell you that.
If you are a Democrat living in Wisconsin I’d like to encourage you to vote, tomorrow, for Tim Michels in the US Senate primary, and, if you live in the Second District, for Ron Greer in the Congressional primary. The Democratic candidates in the general election are Russ Feingold and Tammy Baldwin respectively. At present Russ Darrow seems the Republican most likely to cause trouble for Feingold; Michels is not (quite) as wealthy, has worse name recognition, and is more immoderate: I think Feingold would find it easier to beat Michels, so I’d like to see him win the primary. Greer makes Alan Keyes look like a raving pinko (in both senses of pinko). His opponent, Dave Magnum, seems fine in many ways (‘fine’ here being a relative term, in a world in which pretty much everyone is pretty awful), and is much more likely to give Baldwin a real fight. If you care about Kerry winning, by the way, a Greer candidacy is more likely to trigger lefty voter turnout in this district than Tammy alone or than Kerry himself (unless he turns out to be the Manchurian candidate).
All registered voters are allowed to vote in the Republican primaries; it’s just that in doing so you disqualify yourself from voting in the Democratic primary. In several Wisconsin congressional districts nothing is at stake in the Dem primaries, so there is no opportunity cost.
Of course, in a better electoral system parties would not allow their opponents to participate in candidate selection. But between them the Republican and Democratic Parties and the State of Wisconsin have given you this power, so I am encouraging you to use it.
I bow before the shrillitudinousness of Gary Farber, who has been blogging like a fiend. This campaign mudmeter is especially interesting. (I know it’s true because it’s on the internet.)
Ross Silverman, formerly known as the Bloviator, has moved his excellent medical policy blog to a new site, the Public Health Press. And he has managed to choke me up with only seventeen syllables.
On the subject of public health, and while I have Ross’s attention, there was some brief discussion here the other day about the scope of the role of the federal government (specifically, the National Institutes of Health) in pharmaceutical research.
I’ve done enough work with pharmaceuticals to know how much I don’t know. It’s a complicated subject, and difficult to summarize. But Derek Lowe makes a genuine contribution here. He’s a research scientist at a pharmaceutical company, and he shares his perspective on what the NIH does and doesn’t do.
I’ve been researching an article about the morality of human cloning, prompted almost entirely by Brian’s article co-written with Sarah McGrath, which is a defense of the permissibility of cloning. Prior to reading McGrath and Weatherson’s paper (or more precisely, Brian’s multiple postings here when they were writing it) I had no real intuitions about the issue, but their defense prompted me to think about what might count as good reasons to prohibit cloning. I share their dismay at the weakness of the arguments most commonly presented.
But this post isn’t directly about why cloning might be prohibited.
Atrios “says today”:http://atrios.blogspot.com/2004_09_12_atrios_archive.html#109507803280168769:
bq. So, it’s pretty much the case that we went into Fallujah because some warbloggers got excited about the video of the desecration of the dead civilian contractors.
This seems to me to be either (a) paranoid nonsense, or (b) stupid trash-talk. If there’s a third possibility, I’d like to hear it. Either Atrios is seriously claiming that warbloggers set US military policy, or he’s casting a dumb slur. Claiming that the disaster of Fallujah proves that the warbloggers were badly, horribly, wrong, is fine; it’s probably even correct. Claiming without any evidence that they were the main people responsible for the policy disaster is either tinfoil hat stuff, or Glenn Reynolds calibre scuzzy innuendo.
After a week or so of largely phoney campaigning[1] and a pause following the Jakarta bomb atrocity, the Australian election campaign kicked off in earnest on Sunday night with a debate between Liberal (=conservative) PM John Howard and Labor Opposition Leader Mark Latham. The conventional wisdom was that the bomb attack had just about finished Labor’s chances and that Latham’s only chance was to avoid the issue and stick to Labor’s strong suits, health and education.
Instead, Latham pushed a strong line against Australian involvement in the Iraq war, arguing that it had diverted resources and attention from the real dangers in our own region. Howard had been undermined earlier in the day by his own deputy, John Anderson, who conceded the fairly obvious fact that our involvement in the Iraq war might have increased, rather than reduced, the risk of terrorist attacks on Australia.