Category Archives: Violence

Mar 17 2013

Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and More

Our foreign policy is bankrupting us, poisoning the minds of our children, and turning the world against us.

Iraq:  We have so far spent $1.7T on war in Iraq and will pay $490B more in benefits to veterans, according to the Costs of War Project at Brown University.  The rationale that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction was false.  The results are a traumatized Iraqi society, reinvigorated Islamist militants throughout the region, and we destroyed Iran’s only military rival.

Afghanistan:  The combined cost of our wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan is almost $4T.  The estimated death toll from the three wars is 330,000.  The rationale was to make Afghanistan a well ordered democracy that could no longer be used as a refuge by Al Queda.   But unless we remain there permanently, the Taliban will regain control.

Pakistan:  The UN terrorism and human rights envoy just issued a statement that our drone strikes in Pakistan violate international law.  “The position of the government of Pakistan is quite clear,” he said.  “It does not consent to the use of drones by the United States on its territory and it considers this to be a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”.  See here for a table and map of our drone strikes inside Pakistan.

Libya:  After we supported the French-led overthrow of Gaddafi, his Tuareg supporters allied with Islamist militants to fight for the independence of northern Mali.  A French-led force is now pushing them back but they can return temporarily to Libya, or just as easily go to Algeria, Niger or Mauritania.  Throughout North Africa the driving force is not nation states set up in the relatively recent past by France and other European conquerors but milennia of tribal rivalry.

Yemen:  Bordering Saudi Arabia and major oil shipping lanes, Yemen was almost brought to civil war last year by southern separatists and northern rebels.  They sabotaged its major oil pipeline for long enough to shut down Yemen’s main refinery.  They blew it up again a couple of weeks ago.  Meanwhile, we’ve made 65 drone attacks in southern Yemen, mostly in the last 15 months, according to this report.

Syria:  Secretary of State Kerry recently promised aid to fighters against the Syrian government.   Because there is little real separation between them, the al-Nusra Front and others we say are terrorists, some of our aid will inevitably get to the terrorists.

Iran:  We say Iran is developing nuclear weapons and threaten whatever it takes to stop them.   Late last year former Secretary of Defense (2006-2011) Robert Gates said: “The results of an American or Israeli military strike on Iran could, in my view, prove catastrophic, haunting us for generations … An attack would make a nuclear-armed Iran inevitable.  They would just bury the program deeper and make it more covert.”  The US Director of National Intelligence told the Senate this week that Iran is not enriching to weapons grade and we could quickly detect it if they do.  Inspectors at the International Atomic Energy Agency who monitor Iran’s nuclear sites say the same thing.

Insanity:  But, stupefyingly,  Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) recently introduced “for himself, Mr. Menendez, Ms. Ayotte, Mr. Schumer, Mr. Cornyn, Mrs. Boxer, Mr. Rubio, Mr. Casey, Mr. Hoeven, Mrs. Gillibrand, Mr. Kirk, Mr. Blumenthal, Mr. Crapo, Mr. Cardin, Ms. Collins, Mr. Begich, Mr. Blunt, Mr. Brown, Mr. Wyden, Mr. Portman, Mr. Manchin, and Mr. Lautenberg” Senate resolution 65 which “urges that, if the Government of Israel is compelled to take military action in self-defense, the United States Government should stand with Israel and provide diplomatic, military, and economic support to the Government of Israel in its defense of its territory, people, and existence.” 

S.Res.65 means:  It would not be our President but Israel’s who decides whether or not to invade Iran.  S.Res.65 ends: “Nothing in this resolution shall be construed as an authorization for the use of force or a declaration of war”.  That is, however, exactly what it does do.

I will not say more in this post about the cost or counter-productiveness of our invasions of Iraq or Afghanistan.  I will just highlight again Secretary Gates’ warning: “a military strike on Iran could … haunt us for generations” and say why drones are not the answer.

Drones:  See this excellent piece on the legality, morality and practicality of drones:  “[they] provide a highly efficient way to destroy key enemy targets with very little risk.  But they also allow the enemy to draw the United States into additional theaters of operation … in the jihadists’ estimate, the broader the engagement, the greater the perception of U.S. hostility to Islam, the easier the recruitment until the jihadist forces reach a size that can’t be dealt with by isolated airstrikes.”

Islam:  It’s not just that drone attacks make other people believe we are hostile to Islam.  A teacher friend tells me our relentlessly sensational media reporting has made our own children believe Muslims hate us.

What we must do:  Stop trying to control the world.  In particular, stop threatening Iran.  They do not have nuclear weapons.   Fearing they would attack with them is foolish because Iran would be destroyed if they did.  Therefore, they will not.  Never again go to war to destroy weapons that do not exist or make wars that cannot be won.  Scuttle Senate Resolution 65.

Mar 15 2013

Seeing, Feeling, Thinking and Blogging

Last November I lost my glasses in Kathmandu.  I was taking classes and couldn’t hold texts far enough away to read, so I bought drugstore reading glasses.  With them what’s close is clear but all else is blurred.  Without them only what’s distant is clear.  The new prescription glasses I got yesterday should make everything clear but the optician said: “It will take you a couple of days to learn where things are”.

Seeing:  I’d never thought about it in that way.  I hadn’t noticed the feedback loop where my brain directs my eye muscles to change focus between what’s close and more distant.  It happens fast so I imagined everything is always in focus.  I’d have realized it’s not if I’d thought about it, but there never was a reason to.  With the new glasses I must learn to tip my head up and down so my eyes see through the right part of the lens.  That requires practice.

Feeling:  Last night I finished the first book I’ve read by Ron Rash, “The Cove”.  I intend now to read everything he ever wrote.  I knew early on how the story must end, not the specific outcome but what the situation makes inevitable.  Half way through, I wanted to stop.  I was feeling what the protagonists feel, knowing I’d do the same as those I liked, and that I share the weaknesses of those who would do harm.  The story is sadder even than I anticipated, and utterly convincing.  Why choose to experience such feelings?  Because I understand a little more.

Thinking:  Yesterday, I heard on the radio about the Ku Klux Klan in Maine in the 1920s.  I thought it was all about white supremacy and only in the South.  In fact, it was strong here, too, but with a different target, Catholics.  There were violent anti-Catholic riots here in the 1850s.  A mob inflamed by a street-preacher calling himself “The Angel Gabriel” burned a Catholic church, a Catholic priest was tarred and feathered, and there was much more.  In the 1920s, the Klan arose.  They whipped up the ongoing conflict between descendants of the English and the Irish and French-Canadian Catholics who came later.  Klan members were elected by many towns, as State representatives and one even became Governor.  There were daylight hooded marches, cross-burnings and Catholic homes were burned.  It was unsafe to speak French in public.  The Klan fizzled within a decade but their Governor later was elected to the US Senate and became a close ally of Senator Joe McCarthy.  How can anyone think it’s OK to do such things?

Blogging:  A day or two ago, a friend said: ” I like your posts about tax.  It must take a lot of work.  Why are you doing it?”  I always enjoyed the challenge of understanding things and the elation when understanding dawns.  Our society is not functioning well and the tax system is one important factor so I want to know what big impacts it has and how it could be changed to help society work better.  “Articulating what I think I understand is my best way to test if I do understand.  That’s why I write,”  I told my friend.  “But it’s not helpful if I don’t tell anyone when I see something important that isn’t generally understood.  That’s why I publish what I write.”

Jan 30 2013

Not Ribbit, ‘Scuse Me and a 2 by 4

Half of your EVERY income tax dollar gets spent on death and destruction!

Maybe as a semi-wrathful frog I should start by flailing a 2 by 4?  Would a grabber like “Half your EVERY Dollar!”  be better than the eyelid-closing title of my previous post, which everyone should read and think about, “Military-Industrial Complex”?

In any case, I must do a better job with Categories so it’s easier to find posts.  Inciting y’all to read the posts in the first place is not the same as helping you find potentially interesting ones from the past.  Already, I’m having trouble finding posts about specific topics from the fairly recent past.  I’ve forgotten what content went with some titles.

What the title of this post tries to suggest is first, especially when I’m in semi-wrathful frog mode, I always try to write something more worth reading than “ribbit”.  There’s so much non-fact-based, not-thought-through ribbiting around.  I try hard not to add more.  The third part of the title, “2 by 4”, I already explained.  “Scuse me” refers to the culture in which I was raised where 2 by 4s were frowned upon.  If you had something worth saying, the expectation was that in most circumstances you would have the grace to keep it to yourself.  If it really had to be said, you should do so with minimal fuss.  So, as an example, here’s a true story from a Brit friend.

Early one morning when my friend was playing in a nearby gravel pit, he found a metal canister.  It looked quite old.  What could it be?  He broke off some of the corrosion with a rock and exposed a plate with strange writing.  Maybe his dad would know what it was?  He took it home.  “I don’t know,” said his dad.  “I have to go to work in a minute but give it here, I’ll take it in the shed and buff it up a bit.”  Dad went out and had a go with his grindstone.  After he got home from work that afternoon and had his tea, he put the canister in a cardboard box, strapped it on the back of his bicycle and peddled off then waited patiently in line with the box under his arm until it was his turn.  When it was, he said: “Erm… ‘Scuse me…” to the policeman on the other side of the counter, “My boy found this.  Looks like German writing.  Thought it might be an old bomb, like.  Thought I’d best bring it here.”

Jan 27 2013

The 2nd and 3rd Amendments

We should periodically review assumptions that direct our beliefs.  The world may have changed so they are no longer accurate.  We may need to make structural changes to direct new behavior.

Businesses that don’t update their assumptions fail.  My 1980s minicomputer consulting clients no longer exist.  They were ex-pioneers who imagined their competition was still each other.  They were aware of networked microprocessor-based systems but not the implications of a competing technology with a cost advantage that was already tenfold.  Their customers were little harmed because they could simply switch to new suppliers.

A nation’s customers, its citizens, can be greatly harmed, however, because it’s not easy to switch to a new one.  Nations keep going where they’re headed like giant cruise ships whose passengers were happy enough for long enough so the captain assumes they always will be happy.  He’s still happy.  He doesn’t notice the passengers’ distress now they’re in Antarctic waters in summer clothes.

Just as businesses degenerate slowly then collapse when their structure is not kept up to date, so it is with nations and empires.  The structure of GM, for example, where each brand (Chevy, Buick, Cadillac, etc) was targeted to a distinct market segment within which it battled competitors later ossified into baronies whose leaders fought each other.  Our Congress in the USA has similarly degenerated into warring factions whose eyes are closed to new realities.

The problem is in part institutional.  Our direction is governed by a Constitution established two and a half centuries ago with no requirement for periodic update.  Let’s consider two Constitutional Amendments to illustrate this issue.

The 3rd Amendment decrees that: “No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”  That is just about as useful today as prohibiting an elephant from being quartered in our house without our consent.  Citizens once needed such protection.  We no longer do.  This Amendment is now so completely irrelevant that must people are unaware it even exists.

The USA 3rd Amendment echoed the English Bill of Rights 1689 that prohibited the monarch from “raising and keeping a standing army within this kingdom in time of peace without consent of Parliament, and quartering soldiers contrary to law”  and was in response to 1760s and ’70s British Quartering Acts that required American colonies to pay the costs of British soldiers here and colonists to provide space for them to live.

The English Bill of Rights was passed when Protestant William and Mary were invited by parliament to replace Roman Catholic King James II and become joint sovereigns of England.  It set limits on the powers of the crown and among other things reestablished the right of Protestants to own firearms.  James II had tried to disarm Protestants and maintain a standing army.  Civilians were at that time required to help suppress riots.

So the English Bill of Rights was also the basis for the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution as one of our Bill of Rights which decrees that: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”  It was adopted on December 15, 1791, along with the rest of the Bill of Rights and, interestingly, is the only amendment to the Constitution that states a purpose.

There was at that time substantial public opposition to a standing army from both Anti-Federalists and Federalists.  On May 8, 1792, Congress passed an Act decreeing that:  “every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective States, resident therein, who is or shall be of age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years […] shall severally and respectively be enrolled in the militia…[and] every citizen so enrolled and notified, shall, within six months thereafter, provide himself with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch with a box therein to contain not less than twenty-four cartridges [and etc] and shall appear, so armed, accoutred and provided, when called out to exercise, or into service”.

The purpose of the 2nd Amendment, to provide for “the security of a free state“, has for many years been met in a different way.  We now have a standing militia armed with weapons whose power could never have been imagined in the days of muskets and firelocks.  Unlike the 3rd Amendment, however, its provisions are still relevant but are applied to a different purpose.

It would be better to retire both the 2nd and 3rd Amendments and draft new legislation suited to the purpose today.

People still want successors to muskets and firelocks for some of the same reasons left unstated in the 2nd Amendment, to hunt animals for food, defend themselves if police are unavailable, or just recreation.  It would be far easier to establish broadly acceptable legislation specifying who could own what firearms if we were now drafting legislation specifically for that purpose.

Dec 31 2012

“A Flash of Light, a Clink of Steel,

two pounds of potatoes and a small brown loaf.”  Maybe this line from “The Goon Show” was heralding democratization of the aristocratic warrior code.  The glint of sunlight on a knight’s armor and the clink of his trusty sword were now on the grocery list along with bread and potatoes.  Or maybe it’s not because we have such romantic ideas.  Whatever, we do have a lot of guns, and they do a lot of harm.

We 315M Americans who already possess 310M firearms spend on average $20 a year on firearms and ammunition, a total annual spend of $6B.  That’s much less than we spend on bread and potatoes but it adds up.  Much of the ammo is consumed but the firearms bought in previous years remain in service.  In 1994 we owned 192M guns, one for every two people.  Today’s average is almost one to one.  Some of us have several guns, 47% of us have at least one gun in our home.

The total economic impact of the firearms industry including gun shop rent, utilities and wages, sales taxes and etc. is around $32B but that’s still only $100 per person per year.  Maybe we should also consider a different cost.  In 2009, the latest for which we have CDC statistics, we had a total of 31,347 firearm deaths.  Our overall rate of deaths by firearm was 10.2 per 100K.  Homicides were 40% of that total, suicides 60%.

First and foremost, then, firearms are used for suicide.  Looking inside the 6.1 overall rate for firearm suicide rates and 5.9 by other means, we find 12.3 per 100K for firearm suicide by white males, 4.8 for black males and 7.6 for male American Indian or Alaska Natives.   The suicide rate by other means was 9.3 for white males and 3.8 for black males. That says white males are significantly the most likely to commit suicide and their preferred method is a firearm.  The next highest suicide rate is 10.3 for American Indian or Alaska Natives using other means.

Turning to homicides, inside the 3.7 per 100K overall rate for firearm homicides and 1.7 by other means, we find the firearm homicide rate was 3.1 for white males, 0.9 for white females, 28.4 for black males and 5.2 for American Indian or Alaska Natives.  The homicide rate by other means was 1.8 for white males and 5.8 for both black males and American Indian or Alaska Natives.

Black males are almost eight times more likely than average to be killed by firearm homicide.  White males and females are less likely than average to be killed by firearm homicide.  So, if you’re black you are right to fear being killed by a firearm, if you’re white you have much less to fear.  These statistics do not indicate the demographics of who shot the black males or any other group.

Why do people want guns?  In answer to a recent survey, 67% said for self-defense, 58% for hunting and 66% for target shooting.  Nobody said because guns are cool.  Nobody said for suicide.

Do people think society would be safer if fewer guns were around?  In the wake of the Newtown massacre, 58% of those surveyed in the most recent Gallup Poll said they favor stricter gun control laws.  That’s up significantly from 43% in October 2011.  What surprised me, however, is 51% are against any law making it illegal to manufacture, sell, or possess “semi-automatic guns known as assault rifles” vs 44% who favor such a restriction.  I was only a little less surprised that a very large majority, 74%, opposes any greater restrictions on the possession of handguns vs 24% who do favor more restrictions.

I cannot fathom why the majority of those polled want more people to have “semi-automatic guns known as assault rifles”?

What restrictions are favored?  Background checks?  The number of firearms manufactured in the US is 5.5M per year, the number of gun registrations is 3.2M.  That means a very large number of guns are sold every year to people we don’t want to have them.  And remember, the guns used in the Newtown massacre were purchased legally.  The owner whose son killed her with one of them bought those guns at least in part for self-defense, a tragic mistake.

I once bought a gun.  It was when we were raising our forty sheep and a pair of dogs leaped the fence one day and attacked our prize rams.  I heard their barking and, flooded with adrenalin, managed to chase them off before they did any lasting harm.  It was very hard, I was very scared for my sheep, and I was very angry.  “Next time,” I raged, “I’ll shoot the bastards!”  So I bought a .22 rifle and did some target practice.  As it happened, the story ended happily because we sold all the sheep a few years later before any more dogs came.  I’m lucky I was never in a situation where I’d have used the gun.  It could only have led to suffering.

So what should we do?  First, what we should not do.  Killing other beings for pleasure harms us but I don’t want to ban it because some people do it for food and, anyway, I have no right to dictate other folks’ pleasures.  I have no objection to target shooting and have had fun doing it myself.  Although having firearms for self-defense is a mistake because few of us could disable an attacker who was already set to fire, and a firearm in the house is more likely to be used for suicide or cause accidental death, I wouldn’t ban them because gun ownership is part of our culture.  I hope that will change but in that hope I’m in the minority.

What I would do is make civilian possession of semi-automatic and other such weapons illegal and enforce it rigorously with heavy penalties.  I would buy and destroy those weapons.  Mark, in a comment on “The Massacre in My Home Town”, writes more about what weapons are OK and not OK to own.  Defining that has some challenges but so do all laws.  We’re capable of writing good ones.

Background checks are good but gun shows too often evade them and too many weapons I would ban are already in the hands of criminals. That’s why I would rigorously enforce possession.  I would also mount a campaign like the one against smoking to make everyone aware of the real dangers of gun ownership.

It would take many years to remove even 80% of the banned weapons from civilian ownership.  It would take many years before significant numbers voluntarily gave up guns the law allowed them to keep but whose danger they had come to recognize. So?  There is, pardon the expression, no silver bullet in this case.  The fact that there’s no immediate fix is unfortunate.  We need to accept that and get started.

Our culture is different from nations with tighter gun control and correspondingly lower firearm death rates.  We can learn a little from their experience but our path will be different.  As practical people, we need not explore the cultural origins of our very high rate of gun ownership.  We only need to recognize it results in too many preventable deaths.  Then we can take positive action.

Dec 23 2012

The Massacre in My Home Town

Twenty young children were shot to death last week in Newtown CT where I lived for 35 years.  Setting aside the emotion, why do these things happen and what can we do?  The NRA says we should place armed guards in every school.  Others say we should ban guns, we need more religion, we should ban violent video games.   What do the statistics suggest?

The following table of UN data shows our results in the context of  some other countries for the past decade.  We average around 5 homicides (intentional killings) per one hundred thousand people per year.   Because there are more than 300 million of us that means we have around 15,000 homicides per year.  Because Canada’s 35 million population is only about a tenth of ours and their homicide rate is one third of ours, they have only 550 homicides per year.  Our other neighbor, Mexico, has a population of 115 million.  Because their homicide rate was twice as high as ours at the start of the decade and is now over four times as high, they have over twice as many homicides as we do, 27,000 last year.

Homicide Statistics

The rate in the UK was one third as high as ours, about the same as Canada’s, at the start of the decade and is now only a quarter.  China’s rate is about the same as the UK’s and has dropped in the same way.  Switzerland has a much lower rate, around one seventh of ours.  Japan has by far the lowest.  It is stable at around one tenth of ours per capita.

How about homicides specifically by firearms?  Are the rates of  those homicides correlated with gun ownership, religious practice or video game spending?  The following table combines statistics from several well respected sources.  The data are not all from the same year (the range is 2007 to 2011) and the number who practice religion is self-reported census data so it should be taken with a grain of salt.  Nonetheless, the data are dependable enough to support some conclusions.  One thing that stands out is our very high rate of homicides by firearm, almost 300 times as high as the rate in Japan.

Firearm Homicides

Our rate of firearm ownership is also by far the highest.  Our 270,000 thousand firearms in civilian possession means we have almost 90% as many firearms as people.  The most interesting statistic in this column is Switzerland’s 46% rate.  Switzerland has no standing army, only a peoples’ militia for its national defense, the vast majority of men between the ages of 20 and 30 undergo military training, including weapons training, and their weapons are kept at home as part of their military obligations.  Their gun ownership rate is half ours, their percentage of homicides by firearm is similar to ours, but their firearm homicide rate is one quarter of ours.  Even so, it is twice as high as Canada’s and enormously higher than the rates in the UK and Japan.

These firearm-related statistics show that a higher rate of gun ownership is correlated with a higher percentage of homicides by firearm and that tighter gun control legislation, e.g., Switzerland’s vs ours, leads to a relatively lower rate.  The first table shows that there is from country to country a much wider range of homicides by all causes.  The rate in Mexico, for example, is 40 to 50 times as high as in Japan while ours is 10 times as high.   Those big differences must result from a combination of situational and cultural factors.  Criminalization of our insatiable appetite for drugs, for example, which makes smuggling so profitable, is one cause of Mexico’s violence.

Is religious instruction a way to reduce violence?  The statistics say otherwise.  Two thirds of Americans report themselves as religious practitioners, significantly more than other countries.  Only 29% of Japanese identify themselves as followers of a religion despite their very low homicide rate.

Violent video games and movies are also blamed but again the statistics say otherwise.  The nations with the lowest firearm homicide rates, Japan and the UK, are among the highest spenders on video games.

So what does the data suggest we should do?  While the data tells us we cannot eliminate homicide, we know we can eliminate the kind of homicide in my home town last week by banning civilian possession of automatic weapons, the only weapons making that kind of massacre possible.  As noted in my previous post, the writers of the 2nd Amendment gave us the right to bear the arms of their time, single shot firearms.  They did not intend for civilians to have grenades or automatic firearms.  We don’t claim a right to bear grenades.  We should not claim a right to bear other such weaponry.

The second table shows a clear correlation between the number of firearms in civilian hands and the rate of homicides by firearms.  While Switzerland’s overall homicide rate is lower than relatively peaceful China, Canada and the UK, a high percentage of them is by firearms.  Only Japan has a significantly lower overall homicide rate than Switzerland.  This says we could significantly cut our overall homicide rate by implementing tougher gun control as Switzerland does, and cut it even more with stricter control as in Japan.  More religion or less video games are not indicated.  Better mental healthcare is indicated although I have not assembled the stats.

Statistics alone can not show us how to cut our homicide rate tenfold or even further.  They give us a first answer to “why do these things happen and what can we do?” but shed no light on the root cause of homicide.  Why, for example, do so many of us feel the need for weapons?  My Swedish classmate Peter asks us about Buddhist practitioners who, when they go alone deep into the jungle to meditate, take a weapon.  “What if I’m attacked by a robber or a bear” they think?  They hope their meditation practice will in the end remove the cause of their fears.  They expect their fear of attack while meditating will make it less effective and hope a weapon in the meantime will help them focus.  More dramatically, my American friend Sean pretends to propose a Federal program to arm every schoolchild with an automatic weapon for self-defense.  We can (I hope)  all agree that would be a crazy response to our fears.  Maybe we can reflect and find some of our own crazy ideas that make us all vulnerable to causing violence.

But we can in any case see what to do to make an immediate big difference.  We must update our approach to gun control.  With well written and well enforced legislation we could eliminate the Newtown type of massacre altogether and cut our overall homicide rate by at least half.  There is no benefit to society in not doing that.