Wikileaks video shows US gunfire on Reuters staff

Poor choice of words

Hopefully, this comment will follow my earlier one as expected, and I want to retract the words 'not sane', which I wrote somewhere above.

It was unfortunate that I implied that one would be insane, as in being in a state as if literarily ill health. Not only would this bad choice of words be interpreted as a stupid gesture for demonizing others, but it could also imply that ill health alone was categorically attributed due to making a poor choice in any context.

War as terror, part deux

@Matt Bryant

It seems like you have not bothered to really read what I wrote in my posts. Noone would deny that the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945 were mass killings. So when I wanted to point out the importance of understanding the true implications of waging war with reference to the bombing of Japan with nuclear weapons, it was in response to William Hendersons comment, who trivialized my concern about the capacity of you to being aware of the limitations with promoting acts of warfare.

When military forces are expected and allowed to pursue basicly endless means of destruction in achieving dominance or accomplishing other high-value goals like the apparant paranoiac and preemtive action for tailoring their rules of engagement to a neverending inward folding pattern so to speak, where the need for predictability in dominance and preemptive strikes is itself a precipitation based on a militaristic-political necessity of a total paranoiac and preemptive dominance. One dominate, because one has to dominate, because one has to dominate and etc. It's a total package of domination, where failure is not acceptable. The failure to conduct military operations with little or no losses, apparantly be balanced by preemptive actions, that is easily viewed as paranoiac, disproportionate, criminal, cowardly, speculativ, and given the semi-political motives one could imo view it as sports. What a disgraceful notion it would be.

The sports metaphor seem pertinent when thinking of the fuzzy link between use of military force and political agendas. Being an occupation force, the notion of necessity seem inane when it infer a (preumably) lasting tyranny, dictating unprecedented domination for sustaining very low and relatively disproportionate losses in relation to damages inflicted on others in theater of operations.

I find your latest comment insipid and I can't help thinking that you felt like rambling.

War sucks, but apparantly, others are apparantly of the opinion that war not only sucks but that war is also necessary and fortuitous, given that war is a tool for world change.

I suspect the predictable internal turmoil of Iraq post-invasion was more a challenge and an opportunity for USA, sort of making USA a part of the problem of security in the first place.

I understand the notion of war as being unpredictable, but it really doesn't make sense at all to join or even start a war without a predictable outcome, thus a claim of war being unpredictable is stupefying when trying to trivialize the consequences, even when talking about reporters. There are risks and shit may happen, but there are more things to take into concideration when bad things happen. War being hell being an ignorant tautological statement.

My impression is that the sensibility of USA for showing their concern for the local population seem to be akin to dropping flyers, telling people to move out of a entire land area or risk being outright killed on sight.

What I posted earlier is not so much moralistic as common sense. It's about accountability. With war as a privilege, accountability goes out the window.

Without having special knowledge, I would like to point out that Robert McNamara was working as Secretary of defence. Picture Rumsfeld and his way of going about things and consider the possible involvement by both of them in shaping politics and rules of engagement.

re:

"it was in response to William Hendersons comment, who trivialized my concern about the capacity of you to being aware of the limitations with promoting acts of warfare."

in no way did i attempt to trivialise any one's opinion on warfare, it's effects or their capacity for comprehension.

the a-bombing of hiroshima and nagasaki need to be viewed with regards to the prospect of having to invade the japanese mainland to secure victory and, therefor, peace and the massive casualties that were expected to result.

the american experience on okinawa and iwo jima fortold a massive loss to the allied forces, american military leaders predicted up to 3/4 million american dead and 1/2 million+ dead from other nations.

japans casualties went off the scale.

the main island was not scheduled to be invaded untill 1954.

such projections, we have no grounds to doubt given prior experiences, were not unrealistic.

therefor, the a-bombings, hideous though they were, probably saved counless lives on BOTH sides.

there are many allive today who can partly thank the use of the a-bombes for just that.

their fathers survived the war to raise families, i count my self amongst them.

War is terror, yet again

@ Matt Bryant

I don't want to have to spoon feed you guys, but I want to point out what appear to be a misreading of what I wrote:

I wrote:

When military forces are expected and allowed to pursue basicly endless means of destruction(...)

It patently means:

An accusation of the expectation and allowing of using every method for winning despite the consequences. What I wrote has nothing to with for example the attitude of "Let's maw the whole place down and see what happens.", like some US senator (Trent Lott R-Miss) explicitly voiced by his opinons about Iraq. Oh, this was weird.

Still I did not suggest that US pursue endless destruction as such as you perhaps imply, if one read my sentence carefully. So this covers use of nuclear bombs past and future, chemical weapons in Fallujah which afaik is an accepted version of events among the US military, and then there is also the sporadic use of torture, an attitude throughout the ranks that I think nobody is doubting, despite it perhaps not being a systemic policy.

I am not a pacifist (and I am not really a regular intellectual either, more so a philosopher if it makes any sense), but I want to relate to things in a sensible way. And in this case with the war in Iraq there are things, systemic things, that I find simply unacceptable with common sense.

At two ends, there ought to be no war with its predictable horrors, and in the other end so to speak, it seem dignified that they take a bullet to the head than to go about securing an area by means of paranoic rules of engagement that focuses on swift measures that are all to convenient.

Concider the following please: If someone were to attempt to rob someone by explicitly stating this, and threatening him with a weapon, like a soldier in a war, the soldier really would be best off by just killing the victim, because just like a soldier in war, the threat of violent opposision must be expected, and be found unacceptable. So by robbing someone, the victim himself is a clear and present danger this way, like anyone suspected, accused or believed to being a member of the opposition.

@ william henderson 1

You too seem to have misread what I wrote:

What I wrote:

"(...)it was in response to William Hendersons comment, who trivialized my concern about the capacity of you to being aware of the limitations with promoting acts of warfare."

What it meant:

I wanted to make about about 'limitations' unfortunately without having specified what I meant by this. I assumed that my prior engagement in laying forth my concerns about the understanding of moral and ethical questions, would be rather obvious when pointing out 'limitations' by promoting acts of warfare.

Using atomic bombs doesn't really make sense for advocating an swift end to the war, US forces were clearly superior, and the Japanese forces were afaik clearly inferior. Afaik they even wanted to surrender, but US insisted on an unconditional surrender. And as such war was a privilege. Then with the firebombing prior to the use of atomic bombs, it seem that a total threat of extermination in cojunction with a non negotiable peace (or the ending of a war, if you really cared for the soldiers) cannot possibly be justified. And imagine how absurd it would be to perchance claim the importance that my 24" Eizo computer screen is really only a reality because of US targeting and killing civilians in 1945.

Oopsie

My browser ate my initial attempt at a response.

...

@ william henderson 1

You admit that there were dissidence among the Japanese and this implication goes to show that the bombing of Japan with nuclear weapons was not really necessary.

I don't think you will find a psychologist anywhere that will agree to 'killing', ever at all, as being the right thing to do.

War as terror, 1/2

I wonder, what did you intend to have it mean for you and/or for me, by characterizing incidents as 'tragic'?

Did you, or do you mean 'tragic' here to be understood as 'saddening' for you yourself on a personal self-relating level? (I believe this is called empathy) Or perhaps not, by simply stating the fact of it being 'tragic' as a characterization of something categorically being avoidable on behalf of a stack of dead people or a group of people suffering? (partly sympathetic)

Could it perhaps mean that 'tragic' here was playing off the fact of something being categorically unavoidable and thus saddening for you or for others given the predictability of the outcome? (speculative)

Or does 'tragic' alone or in combination with the above mean that people being hurt or killed are to be understood as merely objects of pity for others void of any personal emotional involvement from you? (possibly masochistic?)

Asking me how psychologists would have combatted the Japanese is simply stupid, as I have not suggested or implied such. I mentioned the psychologists to hint at the inrinsic limitations of our motivations, a default effect being stupid or what can be understood as adhering to beliefs perchance patently 'delusional' which is primarily a characterization of something being detrimental (as such) , or simply subscribing to motivations of ill will. Yes, here is a rub. It would make sense to understand this limitation of our so called motives and motivations, given that one either is aware of what one is doing as a pure intellectual activity (known for us as consciousness), or that you are not aware of this.

Because being reflexive (here also meaning interpretive) about our actions (primarily our own ofc) merely in hindsight is not something that has a status of accountability (glossing over or rewriting history entirely) and just goes to show how important it is to have some sense of critical understanding when supporting or promoting acts of warfare.

Even a common notion like 'self defence' doesn't make good sense beyond some point.

To categorically act upon justification for self defence ought to be a clear example of the inappropriateness, which I believe psychologists would point out by virtue of how obvious and injustifiable it is by itself as 'categorical'. If one is aware that one donesn't know what one is talking about, then it should be (oddly enough) obvious that there is no sound justification prevalent, and one might very well argue that there never could be one either, unless there perchance was some clear and present desperate situation that called for neccessary measures of unequivocal self defence.

And with this I believe I have explained my points earlier about the horror and terror of acting out on rightousness impulses or motivations if you will, when waging in acts of warfare in this case. I want to stress something important, that I think is worth mentioning for those reading this text. While one ought to make points while also explaining them, it make sense that explanations being so called points in themselves are 'concomitant'. This way, 'it' being subordinate, for the obvious reason of being well.. reasonable (no pun intended, really) in the sense that it is particularily an action of rationality. And conversely, projecting some kind of explanation without a clear point, can also be said to be concomitant. This way, it being incidental and unfortunately wide open for interpretations regarding meaning, content, form, actualization and realization,

For anyone inclined to being interested in philosophy as it is loosely known and whom are reading this, I want to say in short that it ought to be fair to assume that by common sense one should assume that there is no 'ding-an-sich' that would 'by itself' (claimed as valid, despite being an obvious proposition awaiting acceptance) really justify anything, so people please don't argue with me here when I seem to talk about limitations of sense and rationalization, while also using what one commonly know as precisely this sense of rationality. Of course, given the complex set of relations in which us humans have come to aquire so called 'knowledge' and probably affinity in relation to stuff in general, after thousands of years where one can't help but becoming either oblivious, directly ignorant or involved in the ways of speaking various forms of languages by which we try to communicate with eachother, then given the complex set of relations, some form of education, opportunity, time, and last but not least, a real and personal interest, is probably necessary to understand exactly the limitatons by our understanding.

There is a paradox in this, which sort of show its own point so to speak, but there is no contradiction unless one of course want to or feel like objecting to it. The paradox here as I want to explain, being the simple idea, or the notion if you will, that one somehow *believe* to be thinking whatever one understands in the same process. It has been said or written that "Life must be lived forwards, but it can only be understood backwards." It seem like one is better off trying to acknowledge the fact that the action of thinking is a oneway forward'ish process, if there ever were directions in time to choose from. We do believe of a past, present and a future, but surely noone with common sense would keep holding on to the belief that they are sort of thinking the very same thoughts from last week that they are thinking today, knowing how all-too-convenient it is to subscribe to such a way of attributing meaning to thoughts. As if thoughts as we know them are as material as a piece of cake somewhere.

With the dilemma of what came first of the chicken and the egg, with that obvious notion that they both are a product of the other. I am sure that anyone after reading the paradox I wrote about above prior to the chickend and the egg, will have had stopped and gotten confused and then been trying to re-read the sentence several times over again. This sentence I wrote about believing that what one is thinking is what one understands. It would be true if one believes one understands what one was thinking, but it should be obvious that this belief in understanding ones thoughts is not the very same thought process that one is thinking it. And I will then (pun intended, preemptively) finally raise a question of how can know what I must have meant by the word *belief* in this context regarding cognitive processes. My answer would be, that I cannot really offer a answer with measures or quality of truth values, other than pointing out something obvious, that the tautological characterization of actually answering, being an answer insofar as it is the act of replying as such.

Still, I would argue that one might with good reason suspect that one somehow either choose *how* and *when* to think about things when one is doing some thinking. (Oddly enough, the how and when seem as intrinsic to peoples attempts at wanting to create representations of the world with language.) Simply because belief with this very simple term, is what I suspect can be conceptually be thought of as recognizable patterns which really only can be understood as being constitutive with a reflexive turn, which you by necessity, always-already-knew. Whoah I think I connected some dots here, that Schlavoijy Zchizeck guy has some weird take on things. I think I learned something here that I couldn't make sense of earlier when I read about things. Time will tell if this epiphany make as much sense to me next week as now, or when I wrote the text some moments earlier.

Being a so called 'layman' or 'internet person' if you will, I am of course willing to in due time, to rethink the conceptual implications which I might still remember later on or that which I have come to have believed to have misunderstood in part or entirely.

And here is another point I want to make, that any ensuing confusion, recognized as a doubly disposition with a both break and the introduction of something else into a thought process, an ensuing confusion despite being something that seem to be a trivial break for when reading a text for example, can be said to be characterized as a concomitant event that paradoxically would make sense, despite the apparant failure or closure/ending.

Another likely event after reading what I called a paradox with the belief of thoughts and undertanding, would be to objecting to the way I have presented a general problem, with grounds of suspecting that one has been persuaded somehow. This written text is by necessity all fiction one way or another, so I wouldn't get perplexed by anyone pointing that out.

My own answer to the presumably familiar 'Chicken or the egg' causality dilemma (I was surprised by the fun of having personally come up with what I thought was an original notion about that dilemma), is that it would make sense to want to solve the dilemma by foremost understanding the dilemma of codependency as simply being a codependent process, and afterwards accept it as a perplexing problem perhaps psychologically if that is a good choice for a word here, and then maybe finally understanding it as a reocurring joke. Physicists probably go far in accepting such a belief of codependency for when working with imperceivable and theoretical work on eh four dimensional energy density occilations and the origins of the cosmic universe with the big bang and all. They also probably believe in various sorts of phenomenons because the theory and the intuition make sense and that the observations or foremost the measurements, are predictable.

End of part 1 of 2 (I had to split this up to get in all I wanted to write, I hope this doesn't cause a problem)

War as terror, 2/2

Who knows what free will and consciousness really is. I would need to write another wall of text to get opinionated about that particular topic, probably for wanting to mock anyone believing the status of a piece of cake somewhere, to be perhaps metaphysical, religious, or political. With life being practically a conundrum, with conjectural answers together with the metaphorical notion of baggage, of religious and presumably cultural indoctrinations spanning thousands of years with people practicing various forms of mysticism with the religions and what is known as science. To foremost believing yourself in trusting yourself doing it, even with that notion of mystical ways of your existence, seem to be really the primordial and sensible choice for both understanding and acting upon. I think 'personality' *as such* (forget personality types here) would be a suitable denominator for both bridging the gap between people and for understanding yourself. Surely you as yourself (anyone reading this), are not your job, your family, your religion or your car. It would be concidered stupid and abysmally idotic to acknowledge that you are not yourself (your-self), or by denouncing that you are not yourself being or expressing yourself.

Though, one could perhaps start using the word youreself (you-are-self) to plow new fields of understanding, hinting at a case of an un-authentic cognitive process with "not youreself" for when something directly were to interfere with the cognitive process, like with lab-rats wired to computers. Iirc, someone claimed that scientists are known for already working on functioning equipement that is to interfere with the natural occurrance of brainwaves, presumably by ways of electromagnetism, to induce a state of terror and anguish. What a failed riot tool that would be, transforming a bunch of disgruntled people into going beserk instead, or perhaps it could be a way to overload the sensory system and inducing unconsciousness?

Given that I suspect our cognitive process is a synesthetic process, I doubt scientists will be able to really interpret anything other than other earlier interpretations. I suppose I could imagine there being a similar version of a 'gaia theory' where everything may be playing an influencial part in some grand process, but this then foremost limited to the body of a person being a closed neurological system. And then there is the obvious connection to other people by various forms of social interactions, and interactions with the environment.

No doubt that scientists and academics will take the opportunity to study their interpretations of this ultimately biological process and make use of that to re-interpret it categorically for pure convenience. Well this is what I can imagine anyway. Since my text here has sidetracked, I might as well quickly juice this text up further by saying that I doubt anyone will want to work for setting up a new world order government, but I do not doubt that organizations will want to eventually lay forth the basic notion of such in part, as if it was a good idea to view it as perhaps necessary, in order to simply maintain business as usual and to legitimize the current way of going about things. One could imagine that there is an supposed common interest, as if people as such really are deciding things, but it seem obvious that noone is to be allowed for contributing at all.

It took me about ten years to become somewhat comfortable in trying to understand the ways of relating to things that otherwise surely are rather isoteric with all the various terms that somehow seem to be related to eachother in one or across several topical fields. So this was ten years of somewhat tedious and random set of events, probably because I was basicly alone having only the internet without studying at academia. I guess that other people might very well learn the same stuff in a much shorter timespan, though their personality *as such* of going about things would not only be different by virtue of being some other individual, but they will probably relate to and focus on different parts in some more or less biased manner.

If one would agree to loosely believe in a set of issues, if you will, like war and common sense to sketch up a overly simplified example, and then sort of believing it at the same time if we simply pretend it to be so, then it shouldn't be a surprise if it one were to learn that there is was something one never understood, or maybe simply were having their priorities messed up and didn't cared for it anyway. In my view this would be what I would call something tragic. It seems a far stretch to having to perchance take pity as they say, on most of the world if one were to try to do it all at some individual level (I just can't or won't do it, it's not natural I would argue), but at least one could accept to try keeping a level head for matters that is closely related.

It is probably a prerequisite to have aquired some basic concepts about language as a way of expression, an interpretation, a practice and a theory (the possibility of achieving some kind of unequivocal communication would be disputed) for getting much out of stuff akin to for example what is talked about in the following link which leads to a superb lecture from Yale university, lecture which I found a couple of months ago on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YY4CTSQ8nY (Intro. to theory of literature, English, subtitled in English)

Children among themselves are apparantly able to foster some common sense without the drive for indoctrination. And who can't resist worrying about effecs or behavior similar to that believed to be indoctrination when talking about philosopical problems and the discussions about events shaping our world? With adults, I suspect that few people and nothing in society in general, have a genuine interest in offering people to learn stuff beyond trivial matters by general and special education.

I want to try finishing off here with a song by Bill Bailey:

<i>The categooorical imperative which compells us all to act

upon decisiiions we come to, based on a sense of duty and like the

moooral imperative which is based on material neeeds

purity of intentions confer morality on our deeeds.</i>

This is probably related to academic works by Immanuel kant and I imagine there is some the stinking cultural baggage going with it, with what for me seem to be a clever act of satire in its simplicity, which I believe show the rather obvious shallowness of human agency or anything related to holding office. The projection of intentions on some act, prior to, during, or after (way after) an event, and calling it moral or morality by some always-already necessity, a necessity that so to speak folds in on itself offering a neverending perspective.

This reminds me of something fun I saw recently, a documentary about Maurits Cornelis Escher, with his drawing "Print Gallery". I couldn't find a youtube link, but here is a link that plays this english documentary with my IE7 browser (I use Opera maybe 99,999% of the time), the subtitles are in Norwegian, but they can ofc simply be ignored. Some very short sequences with speech in other languanges are not conveniently translated this way. The illustration of the picture frame itself, of a perspective, is presented as triwling inwards towards a point beyond anything being perceivable, and the outer side of the frame is sort of nonexistent and paradoxically a real fake or a fake real.

*On a different note, having revealed that I likely am reside in Norway, I want to apologize for the fact that Jagland awarded the latest Nobel peace price, it now seem to be to be more like something of a piece price, a piece of speculative political capital and not so much a token of an esteemed appreciation of goodwill, but appreciation of something to be feared from what I thought of it.*

I might as well add more there. Did people knew that so called facts are best understood as mere 'propositions' that we all either could agree to, or that we ought to be able to agree upon by virtue of something being rather obviosunes? Truth 'value' (whatever one want to go with this) goes out the window, but I think it is fair to say that this understanding could be an acknowledgement of the limitations of human agency, and the insolence of office, and that it sort of opens up for a task of getting acquainted with the basic issues of understanding what people have been and will be facing in the future.

Since people cannot seem to agree on a common reality, the betterment for the foreseeable future might very well be an act to be delayed until later with a real consensus. Undoubtedly and unfortunately so, this is the probably the reality for governments and powerful organisations around the word, who would be but a mere flag, logo or a name if it were not for all the people depending on them presumably with the pretence that those with power are indeed right/just in doing what is right/just.

I imagine Schlavo Schijek could be pointing out the inconsistency of believing that sorting the garbage is somehow more important than the petty resolve for sorting out cultural and with this the implied issue of war and all that.

It seems to me obvious that the necessity, and the need, and the demand for 'predictable future' is for only of importance for the outmost powerful organizations for a pyramid game, whos motivations opts for folding in on itself in an act of obscene rightousness or of oblivious ignorance. Fancy words here, yet one ought to get aquainted with the use of them and more importantly what it could mean in any case.

Ops, I forgot to add the link to public Escher documentary

Ops, I forgot to add the link to the public Escher documentary shown at the website at the my national broadcast corp:

http://www1.nrk.no/nett-tv/klipp/544484

flying ....

..planes full of innocent people into buildings full of innocent people can not be justified by any kind of belief system except that held by the delusioned.

no amount of psychobabble can justify NOT persuing the perpetrators of such act, or their supporters and sponsers.

again, yet more innocent people will die in this conflict, but far fewer than if we allow the likes of bin-laden to reign supreme.