Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Middle East

 * This blog, EthicsBlackHole, was started in 2007 (when I learned about blogging) to protest our criminal invasion of Iraq.  Below are 23 protests of our Middle-East meddling:
0701 Iraq-War Decision
0701 World better sans Saddam
0701 Just-war theory
0701 Naive Iraq Plan
0701 Iraq-war runup
0702 Iraq Peace
0702 US-Iranian Relations
0702 Guantanamo detainees
0703 Mistakes were made
0704 Female oppression
0710 No more preemptive wars please
0801 Iraq War Cost
0901 Israel / Gaza
1302 My Dick Cheney Ramblings
1305 Conventional wisdom from both sides
1312 Israeli security
1402 Less harmful coercion
1409 Arab spring
1503 Appeal of Jihad to Western Muslims
1503 Of cells, people, tribes, nations and tumors
1507 What about Iran
1509 Migration Dynamics
1509 US Middle-East Policy
 * Last week, Vladimir Putin announced Russia’s plan to take the government’s side in the Syrian civil war.  One can see in several of the above entries that I agree with Putin’s characterization of the Arab Spring and Syrian Civil War.  We should have stayed out of those conflicts.  Obama, Clinton and Kerry still fail to understand the factors preventing democratic rule in those countries, as did Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the conservative think tanks.

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

US Middle-East Policy

 *    A nation's foreign policy is supposed to advance its interests in terms of prosperity and security.  Much of our policy in the Middle East has been to assure oil availability, to limit Soviet influence, to protect allies.
 *   Since 1948, our actions have harmed Palestinians, Iranians, Iraqis, Libyans and Syrians.  I wonder what the Middle East would be like today had we not recognized Israel, deposed Iran's elected leader, blitzkrieged Iraq twice, facilitated Gaddafi 's murder, encouraged Syrian rebels.  Would the affected populations be more satisfied and peaceful or less?
 *   Much as I like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, I believe that their cheering for the Arab spring was harmful, especially their condemnation of al-Assad.  It is naive to believe that gentle democratic rule could have succeeded in Syria, a country with arbitrary and porous borders, with mutually incompatible tribes and religions within those borders and outside them, with negative agricultural reserve, with historic drought, with insufficient industrial capacity, with clan-based society, having been overrun by millions of Iraqi refugees for several years.  Had al-Assad capitulated, millions of minority subjects (including Christians) would have been dispossessed by Sunnis or butchered by ISIS.
 *   Putin's Russia is bringing the needed forces to Syria, and we should adjust our actions and rhetoric to be compatible with their agenda.  Syria's problems need definitive ruthlessness that we cannot provide.

Thursday, September 24, 2015

David Hume’s moral philosophy

David Hume sought to build a moral philosophy from a few objectively defensible principles.
It is described in:      http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/
under:
   7. Moral Philosophy
7.1 Moral Rationalism: Critical Phase in the Treatise
7.2 Sentimentalism: Constructive Phase
7.3 Self-Interest Theories: Critical Phase in the Enquiry
7.4 Justice: Constructive Phase

Republican mythology

Re: TENNESSEAN Sep 21 Opinion/Voices, Glen Casada, Democrats abandon long-held beliefs:  
     Before the mid 1960s, political white supremacists in Southern States were in the Democratic Party, the south having been defeated by the north under Republican leadership a century earlier.  Casada misses fondly that good-old-boy Democratic party.
     After the Civil-Rights and Voting-Rights acts nurtured by the Kennedy/Johnson administration, white supremacists jumped to the Republican Party.  Casada abhors the supremacist-depleted Democratic party.
     Casada faults the Democratic Party for no longer reflecting the beliefs of its conservative founders.  Both exploited slaves -- one raped his 15-year-old slave girl and enslaved their issue, the other dispossessed whole tribes of native Americans, murdering thousands in the process.
     The Reagan code -- conservatism, low taxes, small government, personal responsibility, trickle-down job creation, welfare cheat, market forces -- is about perpetual white advantage.

Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Migration Dynamics

 *  Migration evokes sentiments in destination nations and in onlookers.  What sentiments are justified, instinctive, ethical, practical, enlightening?  Worry or despair might qualify for all of these.
 *  After WWII, European nations implemented reforms to reduce the chance of war among themselves and to restrain racism, eventually uniting economically.  They committed to protecting refugees, contrary to their tradition and to tribal drives instinctive to us all.  Several European leaders recently sought to help thousands of immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East, but this required an ability to distribute migrants rationally among European countries, a plan that was rejected by most countries.  Because of this and the overwhelming numbers, several of the initially welcoming countries now try to stop the flow.  A refugee-distribution plan might be doomed by visa-free travel among European countries.
 *  I believe that civilization will be better with Europeans than with Moslems controlling Europe.  If so, Europe needs to stem the immigrant flow upstream – destroying smuggler's boats, supporting governments faced with rebellion, helping failed countries achieve economic balance, promoting birth control worldwide.
 *  What about the justice and ethics of stemming immigration?  Perhaps Europeans deserve  the immigration as punishment for their(our) crimes against all non-Europeans, centuries of stealing lands, resources and lives of non-Europeans in all continents but Antarctica.  As a product and beneficiary of such crimes, I would deserve such punishment but can't wish for it.  A just and omnipotent observer might very well encourage and facilitate the migration we are witnessing, unless she sees something valuable and irreplaceable in European culture -- for example, a half century of reason, fairness and responsibility, earlier Shakespeare, Vivaldi and Beethoven.  They(we) might be partially forgiven, since it seems impossible for tribes with more communication, organization and technology to resist dominating and exploiting tribes with less.
 *  Considering how much Europeans have harmed and exploited non-Europeans for centuries, we should at least recognize a debt to the descendants of the harmed and exploited.  Can we help the latter in some way that partially discharges that debt, short of welcoming them to over-run Europe and lands now dominated by Eurotypes?
 *  Migration pressure spiked this year due to conflicts in the source countries, but that pressure has been high and rising for decades and is becoming explosive due to unconstrained reproductive drive, as argued in an earlier essay:  Of cells, people, tribes, nations and tumors .
 *  Actual fertility rates of various countries are listed in the Table below.  Those countries with fertility rates above 3 are irresponsibly setting the stage for an exploding Population Bomb.  Every country with a fertility rate below 3 should band together to exclude migration from and economic aid to the exploding regions that do nothing to bridle their fertility.  Note the insanely high rates in arid regions and middle Africa.  How much of that is due to the Reagan/Republican gag rule?
 *  The idea that a country with a fertility rate < 2 needs immigrants is simple minded.  There are plenty of ways for reproductively responsible nations to achieve prosperous steady states.  Unbridled free-trade capitalism isn't one of them.
 *  Consider the tar-baby character of foreign conflicts.  As a world-entangled nation, we are expected to and feel compelled to pass judgement on combatants, to stick our noses in where benign neglect would be better.  We often side with ignorant populations against greedy leaders, encouraging rebellion where stability would be better for all.  Perhaps we did too little of this in Latin America over the past century,  but we probably did too much of it at the end of the cold war.  I postulate that the the west and the Arab states would be better off had we kept our hands and mouths out of Arab politics after 1991.  Iraq is a cauldron of ISIS toxins.  Tunisia is suffering increased Islamist crimes and is cultivating ISIS soldiers.  Egypt illegitimately returned to military rule rightly fearing duly elected Islamist rulers.  Libya now hosts an endless struggle among clans and militias.  The Syrian rebellion created ISIS, as al-Assad warned.  We couldn't resist meddling in these conflicts on the side of destruction.
 *  Syrian rebels are guilty of massive and widespread harm, and we are guilty of encouraging them.  Those wishing to condemn al-Assad should consider the impossibility of governing a nation with permeable borders overrun by Iraqi refugees, with several irreconcilable tribes/religions, with an unprecedented global-warming drought and with few marketable resources.  We revere Abraham Lincoln, who mobilized all deadly weapons available against our rebellion.
 *  Plausibly leaders cling to power in Arab and African countries because they fear retribution for tyrannical rule, and/or they are of a tribe or clan that would be oppressed after losing control of the police and military.  More stable countries like us could help such countries transfer power peacefully by providing attractive retirement packages for their leaders.


Niger 7.6                              Egypt 2.8
Mali 6.9                                Belize 2.7
Somalia 6.7                            Morocco 2.7
Chad 6.4                               Saudi Arabia 2.7
Burundi 6.1                            Botswana 2.7
Dem Rep Congo 6.0              Kuwait 2.6
Nigeria 6.0                              Fiji 2.6
Angola 6.0                              Guyana 2.6
Uganda 6.0                             Ecuador 2.6
Gambia 5.8                            Kazakhstan 2.6
Zambia 5.7                              Nicaragua 2.5
Burkina Faso 5.7                     Uzbekistan 2.5
Malawi 5.5                              Dominican Republic 2.5
Timor-Leste 5.3                      India 2.5
Tanzania 5.3                           Panama 2.5
Mozambique 5.3                    World  Average 2.5
Afghanistan 5.1                      Peru 2.4
Republc of Congo 5.0            Mongolia 2.4
South Sudan 5.0                     Guam (US) 2.4
Guinea 5.0                              Venezuela 2.4
Guinea-Bissau 5.0                  South Africa 2.4
Senegal 5.0                             Libya 2.4
Equatorial Guinea 4.9            Seychelles 2.4
Benin 4.9                              Nepal 2.4
Côte d'Ivoire 4.9                    Indonesia 2.4
Liberia 4.9                            Turkmenistan 2.4
Cameroon 4.9                         Sri Lanka 2.3
Eritrea 4.8                              Cabo Verde 2.3
Comoros 4.8                          Colombia 2.3
Sierra Leone 4.8                    Suriname 2.3
Mauritania 4.7                       Maldives 2.3
Togo 4.7                              Jamaica 2.3
Ethiopia 4.6                            Bhutan 2.3
Rwanda 4.6                            Mexico 2.2
Madagascar 4.5                       El Salvador 2.2
Sudan 4.5                                Bangladesh 2.2
Kenya 4.5                                Curaçao (Netherlands) 2.2
Centrl Afrcn Repubc 4.5         Grenada 2.2
Samoa 4.2                                Kosovo 2.2
Yemen 4.2                               Argentina 2.2
Sao Tome & Principe 4.1        Tunisia 2.2
Gabon 4.1                                New Caledonia (France) 2.1
Solomon Islands 4.1                Antigua and Barbuda 2.1
Iraq 4.1                                   Bahrain 2.1
Gaza Strp & West Bnk 4.1      French Polynesia (France) 2.1
Ghana 3.9                                Turkey 2.1
Guatemala 3.8                         Uruguay 2.1
Papua New Guinea 3.8            New Zealand 2.1
Tajikistan 3.8                           Population Replacement 2.1
Tonga 3.8                                 Iceland 2.0
Zimbabwe 3.6                          Qatar 2.0
Djibouti 3.5                              St. Vincent and the Grenadines 2.0
Vanuatu 3.4                              Brunei 2.0
Swaziland 3.4                           Ireland 2.0
Micronesia 3.3                          France 2.0
Jordan 3.3                                 Azerbaijan 2.0
Pakistan 3.3                              North Korea 2.0
Bolivia 3.3                                Greenland (Denmark) 2.0
Haiti 3.2                                   Malaysia 2.0
Laos 3.1                                   Myanmar (Burma) 2.0
Namibia 3.1                              St. Lucia 1.9
Kyrgyzstan 3.1                         Australia 1.9
Lesotho 3.1                               Iran 1.9
Philippines 3.1                          Sweden 1.9
Honduras 3.1                            United Kingdom 1.9
Israel 3.0                                  Bahamas, The 1.9
Syria 3.0                                  United States 1.9
Kiribati 3.0                               Norway 1.9
Paraguay 2.9                             Barbados 1.8
Cambodia 2.9                           Chile 1.8
Oman 2.9                                 United Arab Emirates 1.8
Algeria 2.8                                Sint Maarten (French part) 1.8
_____________________________________________________
Georgia 1.8                               Liechtenstein 1.5
Brazil 1.8                                  Bulgaria 1.5
Costa Rica 1.8                          Lebanon 1.5
Virgin Islands (US) 1.8            Cyprus 1.5
Finland 1.8                                Moldova 1.5
Trinidad and Tobago 1.8          Cuba 1.5
Belgium 1.8                              Czech Republic 1.5
Vietnam 1.8                              Austria 1.4
Bermuda (UK) 1.8                    Latvia 1.4
Albania 1.8                               Macedonia 1.4
Armenia 1.8                              Malta 1.4
Denmark 1.7                             Mauritius 1.4
Netherlands 1.7                        Thailand 1.4
Aruba (Netherlands) 1.7           Japan 1.4
Montenegro 1.7                         Italy 1.4
China 1.7                                   Germany 1.4
Puerto Rico (US) 1.6                 Slovak Republic 1.3
Belarus 1.6                                 Greece 1.3
Canada 1.6                                 Hungary 1.3
Lithuania 1.6                              Spain 1.3
Russia 1.6                                   Serbia 1.3
Slovenia 1.6                                Poland 1.3
Luxembourg 1.6                         South Korea 1.3
Estonia 1.6                                  Singapore 1.3
Ukraine 1.5                                 Hong Kong (China) 1.3
Romania 1.5                                Portugal 1.3
Switzerland 1.5                           Bosnia and Herzegovina 1.3
Croatia 1.5                                 San Marino 1.3
Croatia 1.5                                   Macau (China) 1.1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_fertility_rate

Saturday, September 12, 2015

Problems in the GOP stable

 *  By their fruits ye shall know them (Matt 7:16).  You can't judge a book by its cover.  I have confirmed these maxims many times, seeing that the most accomplished of my colleagues showed no outward signs of it.  Yet prejudice is so natural.  We naturally judge people by their appearance or other irrelevancies: race, religion, gender, age, language, lineage, dress, cosmetics, trappings.  Visual appeal sells cars, clothes, homes, mates, entertainers and leaders.
 *  The US is lucky that Obama came along to bring previously missing contemplation and objectivity to the presidency.  That his ascendance was attended by fear and loathing among Fox-News followers before his initiatives were implemented can only be attributed to his race or other irrelevancies.
 *  I now find myself indulging in prejudice.  Since he came on the scene decades ago, I could never countenance Donald Trump's voice or face.  That was before he revealed himself to be so conceited, entitled, narcissistic, disrespectful, shallow, vulgar, dismissive, before he stiffed investors and creditors in his four bankruptcies.  It was probably my existential abhorrence of conspicuous consumption upon hearing about his gold faucets.  If Trump wins the presidency, my life will end in transcendental torment even if he leads wisely.
 *  On further reflection, though, the other GOP contenders have pledged to enrich the rich at the expense of essential social programs, so Trump might be the least subversive of the lot.  He is, however, unpredictable and impulsive, might start a war on a whim, like Bush/Cheney.