Blogging the Bookshelf » Philosophy

Means and Ends – “The Trial of Henry Kissinger” – Christopher Hitchens

Tim — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 23:40:06 +0000

If one can demonstrate that there was such a plan (to remove the President of Cypress), and that Kissinger knew about it in advance, then it follows logically and naturally that he was not ostensibly looking for a crisis – as he self-pityingly asks us to believe – but for a solution. The fact that he got a crisis, which was also a hideous calamity for Cyprus and the region, does not change the equation or under the syllogism. It is attributable to the other observable fact that the scheme to remove Makarios, on which the ‘solution’ depended, was in practice a failure. But those who willed the means and wished the ends are not absolved from guilt by the refusal of reality to match their schemes.

I found this to be an interesting quote, given that the last sentence in particular could be equally used to condemn Hitchen’s position on the Iraq War…

Through a Trapdoor at the end of a rope – “The Trial of Henry Kissinger” – Christopher Hitchens

Tim — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 04:30:05 +0000

Some statements are too blunt for everyday, consensual discourse. In national ‘debate’, it is the smoother pebbles that are customarily gathered from the stream, and used as projectiles. They leave less of a scar, even when they hit. Occasionally, however, a single hard-edged remark will inflict a deep and jagged wound, a gash so ugly that it must be cauterised at once. In January 1971, General Telford Taylor, who had been chief prosecuting counsel at the Nuremberg trials, made a considered statement. Reviewing the legal and moral basis of those hearings, and also the Tokyo trials of Japanese war criminals and the Manila trial of Emperor Hirohito’s chief militarist, General Tomoyuki Yamashita, Taylor said that if the standards of Nuremberg and Manila were applied evenly, and applied to the American statesmen and bureaucrats who designed the war in Vietnam, then ‘there would be a very strong possibility that they would come to the same end [Yamashita] did.’ It is not every day that a senior American solider and jurist delivers the opinion that a large portion of his country’s political class should probably be hooded and blindfolded and dropped through a trapdoor at the end of a rope.

Groaning Wounded – “Fromelles” – Patrick Lindsay

Tim — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 23:30:05 +0000

The reality was that, from midnight on the day of the battle, the flow of casualties had swamped the capacity of the medical staff and the stretcher-bearers and the front-line trenches were chock full of the wounded and dying… While the front lines were a confusion of wounded and dying, many more still lay exposed in no-man’s land. … Bean, who had rushed to Fromelles from the Somme when he heard about the battle, was greatly moved:

“Especially in front of the 15th Brigade, around the Laies, the wounded could be seen raising their limbs in pain or turning hopelessly, hour after hour, from one side to the other …

There followed a stillness never again experienced by the 5th Division in the front trenches. The sight of the wounded lying tortured and helpless in no-man’s land, within a stone’s throw of safety but apparently without hope of it, made so strong an appeal that more than one Australian, taking his life in his hands, went out to tend them.”

The Diggers organised rescue parties, and once darkness fell they crept out on their hands and knees and scoured no-man’s land to try to find and bring back those who were still alive. The sheer numbers of the wounded mean that they quickly ran out of stretchers and were forced to carry the rescued on their backs. Hugh Knyvett was one of them:

“One lad, who looked about fifteen, called to me: ‘Don’t leave me sir’. I said: ‘I will come back for you sonny’, as I had a man on my back at the time. In that waste of dead one wounded man was like a gem in sawdust – just as hard to find.

Four trips I made before I found him, then it was as if I had found my young brother. Both of his legs had been broken, and he was only a schoolboy, one of those overgrown lads who had added a couple of years in declaring his age to get into the army. But the circumstances brought out his youth, and he clung to me as though I were his father. Nothing I have ever done has given me the joy that the rescuing of that lad did, and I do not even know his name.”

At one stage Knyvett heard a groan. Unbelievably, he claimed this was a rarity. For, despite their terrible injuries, the wounded tried everything they could not to cry out:

“Why. Some had gritted teeth on bayonets, others had stuffed their tunics in their mouths, lest they should groan. Someone had written of the Australian soldier, in the early part of thw war, that, ‘they never groan’ and these men who had read that would rather die than not live up to the reputation that some newspaper correspondent had given them.”

The Long Term Survival of the Human Species – “The Origins of AIDS” – Jacques Pepin

Tim — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 04:31:06 +0000

This is a reminder that the most dangerous threat to the long-term survival of the human species is the human race itself. Of course, this has been obvious for some time. My generation and the one before us grew up with the fear of a nuclear holocaust. Even though the number of nuclear missiles has been reduced, the list of countries possessing this technology has grown, and with it the probability that one day somebody will push the button. My children’s generation has grown up with the threat of global warming, a process whose consequences could be as destructive, albeit much slower. The human race is not very quick to understand novel threats. Just a few years ago, the president of the United States refused to ratify the Kyoto protocol on the basis that the ‘American way of life is not negotiable’, as if the core of American civilisation and values were the four-wheel drive vehicles produced by three large corporations that barely survived the end of this president’s term in office.

In this context, the one new message that the HIV epidemic, as chronicled in this book, should bring home is that well-intentioned human interventions can have unpredictable and disastrous microbiologic consequences. Mankind has emerged through a process of natural selection over billions of years. Apart from ourselves, there is probably no other living organism on earth that could destroy us completely, because if such organisms had existed, we would not have managed to reach our current status in the first place. But as I write these lines, there is renewed interest in sending humans on a wonderful voyage to Mars and back. The kids who watched Neil Armstrong’s small steps on the moon are now engineers, pilots, administrators and politicians. They think that their own generation also needs to push back a new frontier, that this is part of the human experience, and perhaps something that will provide an answer to perennial questions about the meaning of life. For a long time I have thought that space adventures were very unwise. What is the point of setting up a small human colony somewhere in orbit around the earth or even further away, when we are systematically destroying, day in and day out, the only planet which can sustain human life? Would it not be smarter to spend our resources and ingenuity on scientific adventures whose purpose would be to protect our earth rather than taking the risk of importing into our cherished planet a completely different form of microscopic life, perhaps not even based on DNA, and whose innocuous nature has not been proven by billions of years of natural selection and co-evolution with us?

Immigration and Race – “The Unfinished Revolution: How New Labour Changed British Politics Forever” – Philip Gould

Tim — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 04:30:05 +0000

The politics of grievance can be harsh and it is never easy moderating a group where the sole focus is immigration. But immigration, like crime, like welfare abuse, is not an issue we can avoid; we must deal with it head on. Not just because of the sense of unfairness that people hold but also because it is for many an issue of democratic involvement. Immigration has changed Britain, culturally and ethnically, and in my view for the better, but this was not a process over which the electorate felt they had sufficient control or influence. It has left many who had little power in the first place feeling yet more disempowered. So much of this is about control, insecurity and fear.

I think this holds for Australia too…

Perhaps most important, the politics of grievance is about control and empowerment and voice. If people are heard, if they have genuine influence over their communities and their lives, then they will feel less resentment. Paradoxically, the more people are empowered to act, the less extreme their opinions may be. The politics of identity and of empowerment must go hand in hand. We must hear the people on these issues, we must be tough where necessary and above all competent, but we must be confident that in the end progressive solutions will work, and conservative solutions will not. The answer to unfairness is not more unfairness; the left must win fairness back in all its various forms.

The Responsibility of Progressives – “The Unfinished Revolution: How New Labour Changed British Politics Forever” – Philip GouldIn defence of focus groups…

Tim — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 04:34:05 +0000

I believe in the ascendancy of progressive ideas and progressive values. I believe in political parties that serve the people and advance their hopes. And I believe that it is the responsibility of all of us involved in progressive politics to advance our case with the greatest skill and professionalism. The people we seek to serve would expect nothing less, and our opponents will do nothing else. There is no reason why the interests of the rich and the powerful should be advanced by the ruthlessly professional techniques of campaigning, while these are denied to the poor, the disadvantaged, and the hard-working majority. We should be proud that in Britain, and increasingly across the world, progressive parties have now established themselves as the better campaigners. Political campaigning skills are not ‘black arts’, as they have been described, but a body of expertise that has every right, probably more right, to belong to the many, and not to the few.

Hatred and History – “Disgrace” – J.M. Coetzee

Tim — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 02:11:05 +0000

Halfway home, Lucy, to his surprise, speaks. ‘It was so personal,’ she says. ‘It was done with such personal hatred. That was what stunned me more than anything. The rest was … expected. But why did they hate me so? I had never set eyes on them.’

He waits for more, but there is no more, for the moment. ‘It was history speaking through them,’ he offers at last. ‘A history of wrong. Think of it that way, if it helps. It may have seemed personal, but it wasn’t. It came down from the ancestors.’

It’s All Relative – “The Spy Who Came in From The Cold” – John LeCarre

Tim — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 00:20:05 +0000

“I mean, you’ve got to compare method with method, and ideal with ideal. I would say that since the war, our methods—ours and those of the opposition—have become much the same. I mean you can’t be less ruthless than the opposition simply because your government’s policy is benevolent, can you now?”

He laughed quietly to himself. “That would never do,” he said.

Sympathy – “The Spy Who Came in From The Cold” – John LeCarre

Tim — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 04:35:05 +0000

We have to live without sympathy, don’t we? That’s impossible of course. We act it to one another, all this hardness; but we aren’t like that really. I mean … one can’t be out in the cold all the time; one has to come in from the cold… do you see what I mean?

Better Get a Lawyer – “Columbine” – Dave Cullen

Tim — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 04:43:05 +0000

The Harrises and Klebolds both hired attorneys. They had good reason: the presumption of guilt quickly landed on their shoulders. Investigators didn’t expect to charge them, but the public did. National polls taken shortly after the attack would identify all sorts of culprits contributing to the tragedy: violent movies, video games, Goth culture, lax gun laws, bullies, and Satan. Eric did not make the list. Dylan didn’t either. They were just kids. Something or someone must have led them astray. Wayne and Kathy and Tom and Sue were the chief suspects. They dwarfed all other causes, blamed by 85 percent of the population in a Gallup poll. They had the additional advantage of being alive, to be pursued.