Author Archives: Peter

Re: Why I Do Criticize Israel – A respectful reply

A few weeks back I was delighted to open my email and see a reply that someone had sent me in regards to a previous post (which itself was a reply to Sam Harris) called Why I Do Criticize Israel – A Response to Sam Harris. After apologizing for the obscene amount of time it took to get around to sending the sender a reply, he gave me permission to quote his criticisms and address them on my blog (if you haven’t listened to my reply to Harris, it is below).

Thus, quoted below verbatim, are the criticism I shall be addressing:

A few points you neglected in your talk which I would like to comment on:

1)  Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, so your expansionist claims in respect to Gaza, are incorrect. There is no occupation in Gaza. Gazans were given complete autonomy as to who their elected leaders would be. They chose Hamas.

2) Your stated claim that Hamas has a 40% approval rating is for economic reasons. (It has increased since the recent conflict) Hamas has used aid money to build tunnels instead of the welfare of it people. They have turned Gaza into a military camp instead of a thriving community. The tunnels into Israel are for offensive purposes only. Israel was justified in destroying them.

3) I agree with you on these points: I’m against the occupation, I condemn religious extremists on both sides and I’m against new appropriation of land for Israeli settlements. I believe a two-state solution to the conflict is necessary. I didn’t hear your opinion on what the resolution should be in your talk.

4) You claim that Israel’s aim, for prolonging the conflict, is to expand its territory. Actually, just the opposite is true. Israel has offered Palestinian leadership their own state several times as recently as 2001. Hamas will never accept a Palestinian state as long as there is a Jewish one. But, it even goes deeper than that. Not only do they not want a Jewish state, but they don’t want a Jewish /presence/ in the area. Harris is correct. There would be genocide on a monumental scale if the military power was reversed.

Thanks for reading,

Dan

I want to thank Dan for his comments, and my reply shall follow after the jump!

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Climate Denial and the Death of Rationality – Part 2

It always makes me sad when I have to write these posts again because it means that more and more public stupidity is on display, and this time it’s people in real power. Post November 4th midterm elections, the United States now has a slew of non-scientists in positions where scientific decisions are made. For example, the Chairman of the Environmental Committee is a fine individual who blatantly ignores all the evidence to the contrary.

In this short post, I just want to provide a brief update to the article I wrote a couple months ago called “Climate Denial and the Death of Rationality” because some new and very interesting data have come out that brings the hammer down even harder. So join me after the jump! Until then, enjoy some Colbert.

 

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‘Hostis’ vs. ‘Inimicus’ – An Etymological Analysis

This post will be of a little different flavor than my usual posts because here, I won’t strictly be advocating anything, rather I will be tracing the history of two words and their Latin equivalents as used in Schmittian theory and misused in post-Schmittian theory.

The two words are “enemy” and “foe”, or “hostis” and “inimicus”.

To spare any of my blog’s casual readers, the etymological analysis will be after the jump.

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Thoughts: Homosexuality and the Myth of Mental Illness

This post will differ a bit from what I usually write in that I don’t have a fully developed opinion on any of this yet, rather this is just a collection of ideas that, at somepoint (ie. after reading more Foucault and Szaz), I would like to expand upon and make into a full argument. Additionally, this post is, more a less, a stream of consciousness in that I’m not really revising it, rather I’m just getting my ideas out there. So take it as you will.

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Ferguson as a Datapoint – The Trend of Police Militarization

It’s no secret that the situation in Ferguson, Missouri at the moment is a mess, to say the least. It’s also no secret that race has played a huge role in the escalation of a tragic instance of police violence into pseudo-martial law in a small town. What has been kept under the radar, for the most part, until a week ago was the slowly expanding and militarizing police force.

I want to take the events in Ferguson and step back for a moment and analyze the broader picture. You see, to be frank, I don’t care about the killing of Michael Brown anymore than I do about the killing of Keith Koster. I don’t care about the killing of Kenneth Chamberlain Sr. anymore than I do about the killing of Troy Geske. Why? Because these are four people amidst the over 400 who are killed annually. In fact, new studies indicate that the number of people killed by police, not only may be much higher annually, but in the past decade has surpassed all the Americans who died in Iraq (evidently, police kill 8 times more people than terrorists do).

When I turn on the TV or log on to the internet, I don’t see individual instances, rather a growing trend towards militarization and unwarranted aggression, and it is this trend, not any racial or socioeconomic element, that I want to explore after the jump.

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