Justice prevails?

This week the military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay finally have started. The first to appear in front of the court is David Hicks, the "Australian Al-Quaida Terrorist". Whereas these tribunals were supposed to demonstrate to the world the justice of the US war on terror and open up the eyes of those sympathetic to the detainees, the effect (at least on me) seems to be rather reversed. First, from all I can see, Hicks is a total looser and absolutely small fry. Why he had to be detained in Guantanamo for five years and interrogated so harshly is completely beyond me.

The man has entered a guilty plea so as to be able to return to Australia, be it behind bars. I am sure that if I had been interrogated for five years in Guantanamo, I would plea guilty to just about anything, including flying both planes into the twin towers single-handedly, being the secret lover of the queen and setting up the Bid Bad Wolf to eat Little Red Riding Hood. Especially, if this would look like a way to be able to escape the US guards and interrogators. I will not go into the complaints voiced by Hicks' father that since being captured in Afghanistan he has suffered beatings, rape and forced injections in American custody, but I don't doubt for a minute that military interrogation is painful, humiliating and degrading.

Add to all this the complaints Mr. Hicks' lawyers had about their facilities to prepare a decent defense (two of his civilian lawyers were barred from the hearing on March 26) and the case against his military council, and NO WAY this is justice served.

Finally, given that only five of the approximately 500 inmates will be appearing before this court I dare to predict that these trials will only serve to anger those already leaning towards Al Quaida and will not convince those who need convincing that these are dangerous people. It will not do anything to regain the sympathy and support the USA enjoyed right after 9/11.

What a crock!

Quirky Genes

In an excellent piece submitted to the Australian, philosopher Paul Griffiths explains one of the reasons why we are finding genes for just about everything, from stupidity to obesity, from aggression to depression, from religion to intelligence. The reason is that when molecular biologists talk about 'genes' they can mean quite a number of different things -- even (and this was an eye opener to me) when they are referring to bits of DNA.

This underscores my claims made a couple of postings ago that we should be very careful and precise when we use these concepts in talk of evolution. Just because something is inherited or replicated does not make it into a gene; similarly, just because something inherited or replicated can be located on the DNA does not make it into a gene either!

I have tried to upload the text of Griffiths' article on blogger, but so far no success, so you'll have to get it here.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

Last week transcripts from the interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were released. Apparently, Mr. Mohammed confessed to being guilty to being the mastermind behind the attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993 and 2001, as well as being the one who beheaded Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter. In addition, Mr. Mohammed claimed to be involved in a good 29 other terrorist attacks and planned attacks.

I am sure Mr. Mohammed is not an innocent lamb, a falafel vendor in the wrong place at the wrong time as it were, but how credible are these confessions? How can we be sure he is not also guilty of the troubles in Iraq; the Taliban resistance; the attacks in Madrid or Global Warming as well?!? After all, most of these confessions were gotten with the "assistance" of Pakistani and Egyptian security forces.

It seems to me that the Time is right on the money: this guy is making things up!

Students discussing

An actual conversation between three freshmen which I overheard the
other day. What the topic of conversation was I don't know, but I had
heard them talking loudly and fanatically for some time already.

Student #1: "Really, I have no idea what you are talking about. What do you mean?!?"
Student #2: "Yes, #3, what do you mean?"
Student #3: "Now how come you two are like that? Everytime one of you says something, I can understand perfectly well what you mean! But whenever I say something neither of you understand me?!? Surely, you see how unreasonable that is!"

Somehow I don't think #3 will be with us much longer...

The Patriot Act

I read a most interesting article in this weekend's NRC Handelsblad -- one of the few, if not the only, remotely decent newspaper in Holland. The journalist in question had interviewed the head of the organisation responsible for controlling laws, rules and regulations in the area of (personal) privacy, Mr. Jacob Kohnstamm.

The article starts out with a comparison. I will reword it a bit, so as to make you see the point. Suppose that a terrorist attack on two metro stations in Madrid kills 191 persons, wounds several more and causes an awful lot of damage. The Spanish government, supported by its parliament, is outraged and vows to hunt down those responsible where ever they are. Three months later they adopt a law which entitles them to claim (claim -- not ask) all information they want about any international financial transaction from any bank in any country. Don't laugh, because it turns out that they can as the main branch of THRIFT, the company that has the monopoly on the hard- and software for these international transactions is in Madrid. All banks in the world use THRIFT and they do not want to jeopardize their good relations with the management of DRIFT as it would seriously impede business. The management of THRIFT is under extreme pressure of the Spanish government, so they decide to cooperate. They tell all their clients that they should give up all the details on any financial transaction that the Spanish authorities demand, or else THRIFT will be forced to exclude that bank from doing business with them. Within weeks, the first requests from the Spanish authorities for information on the banking details of clients in Mexico, the USA, Canada and what have you come in. Mind you, the authorities of these countries have not been asked to cooperate, nor have the banks in these countries been asked: they have been told. Wouldn't that bother you? And what is such requests came from Poland? Or Russia?

Wouldn't it bother you even more if your bank never told you that it will hand over information on your financial transactions should the Spanish/Polish/Russian authorities happen to ask for it?

And yet this is precisely what has happened in NL, where banks have supplied such details to the US intelligence agencies in more than190 cases for the last four years (see here). Mr. Kohnstamm announced that all banks should explicitly inform their customers if they cannot avoid participating in the world-wide investigation into terrorist financial streams and was also quite outraged that this is happening in the first place. He announced that the NL banks can look forward to some hefty fines if they do not do so asap. He was also very "disappointed" with the Dutch National Bank and the financial authorities because he had been asking them to do this for months. The DNB first played down the impact of the Patriot Act on the Dutch banking system and then flatly refused to cooperate -- which explains why Mr. Kohnstamm has sought publicity for this matter.

I don't know what to think of all this, but Mr. Kohnstamm has a point that the Dutch banks have delivered the issue of privacy protection of your and my finances to the discretion of the CIA without warning their customers that this was happening.

Doesn't that bother you? It does bother me....

Self-assessment/self-effacement

It is hard to come to grips with, but I have to face facts. At the age of 45, I think it is safe to say that I am not a good philosopher.

There are several reasons for this harsh self-assessment.

1. I average one publication a year.

In the business, that is not enough. You should average more to count as an even remotely satisfactory philosopher. The reason, primarily, is that I hate the last stage of publishing. I work hard on a paper, go through several versions before I am satisfied and send it off to a journal. However, after that, I usually loose interest in the think that I wrote. I usually get good reviews and editors encourage me to revise and resubmit, but somehow it takes me forever to do so and often it never happens. I have a stack of such 'R&Rs' with comments that I could easily incorporate -- yet somehow I don't. I am done thinking about the particular thing I investigated in the paper and know what to say. I hate pleasing referees who have different pet peeves than mine, just so as to get my stuff in print.

2. I am lazy.

Now, I think all philosophers are lazy. Laziness is the very thing that characterizes intellectuals. Too lazy to be bothered with the business at hand, we invent ways to get around it. This is why mathematicians are what they are -- too lazy to do tedious arithmetic -- so they invent calculus, and it holds for philosophers as well. However, my laziness is worse. I can get lost in very strange different things. I love to chat about philosophy, but I often am the only one, so instead I write e-mails to the many discussion lists I participate in, or write in my blog, or play tic-tac-toe on the computer, or mess around with my iPod.

3. I don't think I ever had a really original thought.

Again, this is not unusual, but it contributes that to the fact that I am not up there with the stas in heaven. I usually find myself picking up ideas from others and rewording them and see where that gets me. Most philosophers do, including some very good ones, but it is part of my self-assessment.

4. I am not a nerd.

The 'real' philosophers, people who are good at it and are recognized as such, are... well, basically, they are nerds. They are the sort of people who take one small infinitisemal small idea and blow it up and play with it to such an extent that it looks like something. There are exceptions. David Lewis, for example, is a hero of mine (from what I know of his work). But, let's face it, he too was a nerd. And though I am nerdish, I am not like that. I cannot loose myself completely in something and like an autistic Rainman go through it until it seems like something.

So what is on the positive side?

I think I am a decent teacher. I think I can explain things (once I understand them) much better than most philosophers. The reasons are the same that make me a bad philosopher: I am not idiosyncratically obsessed with things that I subsequently, without any introduction or motivation, 'present' to the world, like the 9 year old who tells his dad of this really cool piece of mud he just found (...). I try to explain people why it is important what I am to explain. I enjoy the look on the faces of students when all of a sudden they get 'it' or they see 'it'. This also explains, why I get bored reading philosophy, but love to hear people presenting their views or discussing their view.

So have I found my place in the world? Perhaps, only time will tell. Have I failed. I often think so: I failed at what really is my largest ambition, to become a really good philosopher. All I am is a decent one. Does this bother me? Yes, it does. It really does....

Finally some good news from Iraq!

This just in from Doyle Redland:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/58654