March 2011
89 posts
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No release for Nebraska man serving life →
The case of a man convincted of murder more than thirty years ago went before the Nebraska Board of Pardons recently and the decision was that the man — who was 16 at the time of the crime — should remain in prison for the rest of his life.
Reading about this case, a friend mentioned that this indicates that there is simply no such thing as life imprisonment without the possibility of...
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Nebraska Inmate Questions Drug for Lethal... →
And so begins the process of allowing the death penalty to cost taxpayers an arm and a leg. Good thing we’re flush, eh Nebraska?
A Nebraska inmate expected to be the first to be executed in the state through lethal injection is questioning the validity of one of the drugs obtained for the proceeding.
A motion filed with the state Supreme Court on behalf of Carey Dean Moore’s attorney...
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Maybe You Want A Different Word? →
Over at the Bleeding Heart Libertarian blog, which I’ve been reading regularly since it burst onto the scene a few weeks ago, Fernando Tesón offers the following insight:
It is prima facie wrong to live off the productive efforts of others. That is, other things being equal, being productive is a virtue, while being unproductive while enjoying what others produce is a vice. Let us call this...
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David Foster Wallace, Philosopher →
Ships as far as the eye can see. The rising sun glittering on the Aegean. Wind rippling the sails, water lapping the bows, fear, excitement, vengeance, glory, the favor of the gods, the order contemplated, the order given.
Or, expressed differently:
Since obviously under any analysis I have to do either O or O´ (since O´ is not-O), that is, since □(O v O´); and since by (I-4) it is either not...
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Facebook Removes Group Calling for Intifada
To update to an interesting New York Times article on social networking sites and protest movements that I wrote a bit about yesterday:
Facebook on Tuesday removed a page calling on Palestinians to take up arms against Israel, following a high-profile Israeli appeal to the popular social-networking site.
The page, titled “Third Palestinian Intifada,” had more than 350,000 fans before it was...
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“Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always...”
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Haruki Murakami, The Novelist in Wartime: a short speech in which Murakami explains his decision to accept a literary prize in Jerusalem during Israel’s military operation in Gaza…and why we need to fight the System. Worth reading in full.
This is an old quote from an old article (published by...
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Power: Obama gave 'meaning and content' to human... →
Samantha Power, a senior director on the National Security Council best known for her human rights advocacy before she entered the White House, spoke at Columbia University in New York City two hours before the president’s planned speech in Libya tonight.
Obama “has used his pulpit and a number of speeches … to kind of clear the brush that had gathered around the norms in...
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Social Networking and Protest Movements →
The New York Times has an interesting piece today about the puzzle faced by social networking sites as users are turning them into sites of protest.
The central issues raised in the article are things like whether or not some users should be able to upload photos to Flickr that they didn’t take themselves, a violation of the site’s rules, as well as whether or not Facebook should shut...
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Libya, Rwanda, and the Future of R2P →
Jon Western has the following to say about Libya and the responsibility to protect civilians:
It strikes me that Libya on March 17 and 18 was about as clear as it gets in real world situations to evidence (prior to the fact) of an imminent threat to civilian populations to invoke R2P. The fact that this is challenged doesn’t bode well for the future of R2P.
If you’ve been reading any of...
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Ex-Khmer Rouge prison chief appeals sentence →
Cambodian lawyers for Duch, a former Khmer Rouge prison chief, have begun an appeal against his 35-year jail sentence for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
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Prosecutors are seeking a harsher sentence against Duch. But his lawyers are calling for his release, saying he was only following orders. They argue that the case falls outside the court’s jurisdiction.
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Juan Cole's Open Letter to the Left on Libya
I would like to urge the Left to learn to chew gum and walk at the same time. It is possible to reason our way through, on a case-by-case basis, to an ethical progressive position that supports the ordinary folk in their travails in places like Libya. If we just don’t care if the people of Benghazi are subjected to murder and repression on a vast scale, we aren’t people of the Left.
The post,...
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Neighborliness, Decency and Mutual Respect →
If you’ve been following what’s been going on in Wisconsin of late, I recommend the following post on some interesting unpleasantness brought to you by my good friend Michael Tofias:
The turmoil in Wisconsin is not only about bargaining rights or the pension payments of public employees. It is about transparency and openness. It is about neighborliness, decency and mutual respect.
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Human Rights By Consensus
In the second part of this on-going series of posts about human rights and human dignity, I pointed to what I take to be the central problem for Matthew Mitchell — who authored a recent review essay [gated] about my book — as well as for theorists like Michael Perry or Ronald Dworkin:
They want “a way to effectively respond to someone who has listened to our stories about human...
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Reconciliation in Rwanda
My newest article — co-authored with two former students, Michael Zanchelli and Levi Drake — has just been published and, thanks to the magic of Digital Commons, is now available for you to download, free of charge.
The article is titled “Personal and Political Reconciliation in Rwanda.” Here’s the abstract to whet your appetite:
The majority of scholarly research...
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Further Thoughts on Israel, Gaza, and Bombings
Three people have taken the time to respond to yesterday’s post about the complete silence on Tumblr with regard to the Jerusalem bus stop bombing and the persistent rocket attacks from Gaza.[1]
The answers are nearly uniform, interestingly, and what they effectively amount to is the following position:
“We don’t like what this government does, we don’t recognize its...
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“As we inaugurate this new international observance, let us recognize the...”
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On 21 December 2010, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 24 March as the International Day for the Right to the Truth concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims. The purpose of the Day is to:
Honour the memory of victims of gross and systematic human...
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On Israel, Gaza, and Bombings
My most recent post noted that Palestinian police have arrested two members of Islamic Jihad in connection with yesterday’s bombing in Jerusalem. It also notes that Hamas failed to condemn the bombing and is readying for an Israeli response to the recent rocket attacks against Israeli civilians.
One of the more fascinating things, to me, is that no one on Tumblr seems to be particularly...
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What's Wrong With Our Society, 3.6
In the most recent episode of MTV’s “Jersey Shore” (recent to me, that is; I’m at least six episodes behind at this point), Pauly D and Danielle establish a truce.
When they first met, during Season One, this happened:
Pauly D meets Danielle, who is from Israel. She invites him to come back to Israel with her. She says, “Come eat kosher food. It’s good.” He says, “I...
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Not like Iraq or Rwanda, but More Like Rwanda than...
Over at the Squashed blog, Dan has again thoughtfully responded to my thoughts on the intervention in Libya. With each successive response, I actually think our positions get closer to one another … and this is demonstrated at least somewhat by the fact that it’s getting more and more difficult to tell whether those who reblog our exchange agree with me or with Dan.
When I say that we...
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Transitional Justice in the Middle East, Made in... →
Modern German has characteristically long words such as Geschichtsaufarbeitung and Vergangenheitsbewältigung to describe this complex process of dealing with, working through and even (the latter implies) “overcoming” the past. Using skills and methods developed to deal with the Nazi legacy, and honed on the Stasi one, no one has done it better. Just as there are the famous DIN standards –...
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Israel Agrees to Reinstatement of Anti-Incitement... →
Israel ”has no problem” with the re-creation of a joint Israeli-Palestinian-American working committee to deal with incitement and has relayed this message to the US Administration, a senior government official said Tuesday, signaling that Israel has reversed its position on the matter.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas, in an interview last week on Israel Radio following the murders in...
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Intervention and the Threshold of Violence
In a short piece over at Dissent, Michael Walzer asserts that
There would have been a cruel repression after a Qaddafi victory, and it would have been necessary to help rebels and dissidents escape and to make sure that they had a place to go. Watching the repression wouldn’t be easy (though we seem to be having no difficulty doing that in Bahrain and Yemen). But the overthrow of tyrants and the...
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Hamas protests UN plans to teach Gazans about the... →
“Playing with the education of our children in the Gaza Strip is a red line,” Hamas Education Minister, Mohammed Asqoul told a website of the group. He said Hamas will block attempts to teach the Holocaust regardless of the price.
The uproar erupted after a UN official told a Jordanian daily in February that UNRWA, the main UN agency serving Palestinian refugees, would introduce a...
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Learning from the Japanese Example—What Makes... →
In an interview that’s tangentially related to the unfolding crisis in Japan, Phil Zimbardo notes the following:
There’s not much research yet that identifies what qualities make someone into a hero. There are reactive heroes, like Wesley Autrey who jumps onto the subway track to save a guy. And then there are people who stand up to injustice like Erin Brockovich, obviously those...
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I Am Not A Pacifist
Yesterday, my friend Dan — over at the Squashed blog — reblogged a post of mine and added his thoughts (and a whole host of expletives) in order to “encourage a robust and honest dialogue.”
I won’t repost the entirety of what he wrote, but you should feel free to read it here.
He begins thusly:
As I have mentioned before, I am not a very good pacifist. I’ve ...
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Arendt and Scholem, Generally Agreeing to Disagree →
There is a new book that collects together nearly thirty years of letters exchanged betweetn Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem (though, sadly, it’s only available in German at the moment). The review looks at their friendship, their philosophical commitments, and, especially, their disagreements.
For all that drew the two thinkers together, their ultimate interests and goals diverged. Arendt...
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The Broken Machinery of Death →
Strong words from the New York Times today:
The death penalty is capricious, discriminatory and barbaric. The shortage of sodium thiopental has stripped what Justice Harry Blackmun called “the machinery of death” of even a cloak of scientifically based reliability.
But will that — along with all of the problems with the lethal injection drugs (detailed in the opinion piece) — be...
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Further Thoughts on Libya
Over the course of the day, I’ve been keeping an eye on reactions to the imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya and now to President Obama’s short update on the situation.
And I have to admit that the reactions aren’t at all what I expected. In particular, I’ve been surprised to see that people are saddened or horrified that the U.S. would get involved in the unfolding...
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Libya Accepts No-Fly Zone, Declares Cease-Fire →
In declaring a cease-fire a few hours after the UN imposition of a No-Fly Zone, “Libyan Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa said Libya is ‘obliged to accept the Security Council resolution that permits the use of force to protect the civilian population.’”
And then here’s the part that simply makes no sense at all, but that is pretty much guaranteed whenever an authoritarian regime has been...
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Rival Palestinian Leaders Agree to Meet in Gaza →
President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, who leads the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, said Wednesday that he was ready to go to Gaza and meet with Ismail Haniya, the leader of the Hamas government who on Tuesday had invited Mr. Abbas and Fatah to resume unity talks. Mr. Abbas said the purpose would be to reach agreement on the formation of a new government that could prepare for Palestinian...
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Georgia Execution Drugs Seized by DEA →
We’re pretty desperate to kill people in this country (despite all of the pro-life rhetoric that’s been thrown around of late). Now, though, at least one federal agency doesn’t seem to like the way we’re going about it.
To wit:
Yesterday, the DEA seized Georgia’s supply of sodium thiopental, the anesthetic most states use as the first drug in a three drug cocktail to...
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The Good Life According to Dworkin (now with 100%... →
I’m pretty excited to read Ronald Dworkin’s new book — and have been since reading an adapted excerpt a few months ago. Now there’s a thoughtful book review that cuts right to the heart of Dworkin’s project … so you can get excited and read the book too!
“The truth about living well and being good and what is wonderful is not only coherent and...
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Michael Tofias' Late Night iPad Magazine Rant
My friend Michael Tofias recently posted the following (very well-worded) paragraph as part of a self-described rant about iPad reading apps and the newspaper/magazine business (that, as someone who knows him well, wasn’t really a rant):
The fact that Marco Arment, the developer of Instapaper, has partnered up with Readability instead of the New York Times strikes me as a failure of...
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Marco Arment on the Future of the iPad
As someone who just bought a bluetooth keyboard/stand combo on Friday in an effort to boost the amount that I use my iPad as opposed to my MacBook, it feels like Marco Arment has been reading my mind. I recommend reading his blog post in its entirety, but here’s the conclusion:
I still don’t think Apple has found the sweet spot for the iPad’s usage: the ideal role it fills in personal...
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