Suicide Bombing: Just Another Kind of Bombing?

So I was listening to CBC this morning and the Current was continuing a discussion (it's mail day) about suicide bombing: causes, etc. Some comments I agreed with, some I didn't. But what struck me was how odd it is that we spend so much time analyzing the technique of suicide bombing (remember I do think it is a rational tactic). Why do we treat it so differently than, say, aerial bombing, such as by the US in Iraq or Israel in the Occupied Territories?

Well, lets think about this for a moment. (And of course, first I need to make the requisite disclaimer: I do not condone suicide bombing, or civilian-targeting violence on the part of either terrorists or governments.)

What is the difference between a bomb that falls from the airplane of a conventional army and a bomb that is meant to explode while still attached to a body? Why does the second attract such complete and vehement denunciation (just watch what kind of comments this post gets) while the first elicits barely a comment?

Here are some possibilities:
A) Certainty of death. The person responsible for exploding the bomb will only maybe die in the first case, but will almost surely die in the second. Does this explain the completely different responses? I think not. After all, both are equally willing to kill for their causes. And if someone is willing to die for a cause (which is nothing new), that's his or her business, is it not?

B) Type of perpetrators. A soldier employed by the state in a conventional army is clearly different than a fighter in an unconventional force, so the violence perpetrated by the former must be treated differently than the latter. I think this is partially true, but is not a sufficient explanation. See, if it is not the technique that matters, but the actors, then any techniques employed by any non-state actors should be denounced as vociferously as suicide bombing. There are enough examples in recent history to prove that this is plainly not the case. (Not to mention that it is crazy to think that violence committed by a state is somehow more justifiable than violence committed by non-state actors, especially when you consider a state with no legitimacy - Iraq, Afghanistan - or no state at all - Palestine?)

C) Type of victims. We are often reminded that suicide bombers often kill civilians, something completely worthy of censure. But aerial bombardment is so efficient at killing civilians, it is a bit ridiculous to even raise this point.

D) Or is it that suicide bombing is nearly the only weapon left among certain dispossessed groups, who have almost no other techniques left at their disposal? For instance, the Palestinians have tried nonviolence, they have tried political solutions, and without an army or weapons, there are few military options, aside from rock throwing or homemade bombs with low-tech means of delivery. In other words, these people can't opt for airstrikes and other high-tech forms of killing. Unfortunately for the imperial powers and colonial occupiers who wish for the end of resistance (as of course all imperial powers do), it turns out to be a weapon that is nearly impossible to prevent from being used. In some situations, like the Palestinian/Israeli situation, I think this explanation has some validity.

I think a lot of it has also to be blamed on propaganda, perpetuated by an uncritical media that has bought into the clash of civilizations model. We (of the rational, normal, enlightened West) would never consider strapping bombs to our bodies and setting them off in a public place (we pay people to do our killing for us). Therefore, there must be something pathological about their culture/religion/part of the world.

I'm mostly just thinking out loud here. I'd be curious to hear other thoughts on this. Preferably non-frothing-at-the-mouth types.

Happy Birthday to Gitmo: An astrological reading

Wow. I feel so honoured to share my birthday (yesterday) with Guantanamo Bay.
Indymedia:

JANUARY 11, 2008 -- On the day six years ago that the first prisoners began arriving at the U.S. torture camp at Guantánamo, protests were staged across the country and around the world demanding that Guantanamo be shut down. Prisoners are kept in Guantanamo under horrific conditions for years without trial.

That makes good old Gitmo a Capricorn, just like me. I think I'd like to offer an astrological reading, modified from wikipedia, which informs us that "According to astrological beliefs, celestial phenomena reflect or govern human activity on the principle of 'as above, so below', so that the twelve signs at the same time are held to represent twelve basic personality types or characteristic modes of expression."

Celestial phenomena say that Gitmo is ambitious, and hard-working. (After all, those dang prisoners won't torture themselves.) It is methodical and focused, businesslike and persevering - if Gitmo all of a sudden discovered it was at the top of a cliff, it wouldn't flip flop or turn around. Nope, it would keep on going. That's just the kind of place it is. It is so dedicated it won't stop, not even waterboarding, unless prisoners manage to commit suicide.

Gitmo can also be calculating, suspicious, cold, and sometimes displays a lack of emotional depth. It believes in self-reliance, preferring to keep prisoners isolated and in sensory deprivation. It is possessive (certainly doesn't want to let Canada get Omar Khadr) and controlling. It is narrow-minded, vindictive by nature, and truly lacking hope.

Likes: Force feeding prisoners on hunger strikes, Making long term relationship plans (Khadr has been there 5 1/2 years), Unquestioning Loyalty, Dick Cheney, Rummy.

Dislikes: Human rights

Yup, me and Gitmo, two capricorns in a pod.

Rabbit of Seville

This piece of nostalgia found via Torontoist: Everything Bugs Bunny Didn't Teach You About Opera

Top Ten Most Underreported Humanitarian Stories of 2007

From Chechnya to the Central African Republic, from Sri Lanka to Zimbabwe, the countries and contexts highlighted by MSF on this year's list accounted for just 18 minutes of coverage on the three major U.S. television networks' nightly newscasts from January through November 2007.

For example:

Graciela and her family are a few of the millions of Colombians who have had to flee their homes to escape fighting between government, rebel, and paramilitary forces.

Armed groups fighting for territorial control have a stranglehold on many rural areas of Colombia, depriving civilians of access to health care by making roads impassable, forcibly conscripting children into militias, and murdering those suspected of collaborating with rivals.

See the top ten most underreported humanitarian stories of 2007 in Images and text.

Africa: Talking about "Tribe": Moving from Stereotypes to Analysis

I have to say that overall the reporting of the crisis in Kenya has lacked depth and understanding. One particularly damaging word that was constantly in use was "tribal". This word has been used uncritically, perpetuating misleading stereotypes about Africans. Would we say that Europe is made up of tribes? Or that the English-French tensions within Canada is tribal conflict? Why not? It's about as sensible as assuming that Africa is made up of tribes. Well, apparently I'm not the only one irritated by this:

The Kenyan election, wrote Jeffrey Gettleman for the New York Times in his December 31 dispatch from Nairobi, "seems to have tapped into an atavistic vein of tribal tension that always lay beneath the surface in Kenya but until now had not provoked widespread mayhem." Gettleman was not exceptional among those covering the post-election violence in his stress on "tribe." But his terminology was unusually explicit in revealing the assumption that such divisions are rooted in unchanging and presumably primitive identities.

Here's an interesting article: 'Talking about "Tribe": Moving from Stereotypes to Analysis,' Africa Policy Information Center (APIC), November, 1997:

For most people in Western countries, Africa immediately calls up the word "tribe." The idea of tribe is ingrained, powerful, and expected. Few readers question a news story describing an African individual as a tribesman or tribeswoman, or the depiction of an African's motives as tribal. Many Africans themselves use the word "tribe" when speaking or writing in English about community, ethnicity or identity in African states.

Yet today most scholars who study African states and societies--both African and non-African--agree that the idea of tribe promotes misleading stereotypes. The term "tribe" has no consistent meaning. It carries misleading historical and cultural assumptions. It blocks accurate views of African realities. At best, any interpretation of African events that relies on the idea of tribe contributes no understanding of specific issues in specific countries. At worst, it perpetuates the idea that African identities and conflicts are in some way more "primitive" than those in other parts of the world. Such misunderstanding may lead to disastrously inappropriate policies.

In this paper we argue that anyone concerned with truth and accuracy should avoid the term "tribe" in characterizing African ethnic groups or cultures. This is not a matter of political correctness. Nor is it an attempt to deny that cultural identities throughout Africa are powerful, significant and sometimes linked to deadly conflicts. It is simply to say that using the term "tribe" does not contribute to understanding these identities or the conflicts sometimes tied to them. There are, moreover, many less loaded and more helpful alternative words to use. Depending on context, people, ethnic group, nationality, community, village, chiefdom, or kin-group might be appropriate. Whatever the term one uses, it is essential to understand that identities in Africa are as diverse, ambiguous, complex, modern, and changing as anywhere else in the world.
<The rest>

An argument against essentialist modes of thinking

From Typecasting: On the Arts and Sciences of Human Inequality*:

Despite its aura of certitude, classification is never a neutral act. Naming is a form of exercising power, and the ways that things are named often reflect the outlook of the namer.

This makes me think of Foucault's The Order of Things which contains an anecdote that I think well illustrates how our seemingly neutral and sensible methods of classification really are sort of odd and arbitrary:

This passage quotes a "certain Chinese encyclopaedia" in which it is written that "animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camel hair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies". In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of though, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that.

Why can't we think that? Does it make any less sense than our own essentialist system of biological classification, which was invented in the 18th Century by a notable racist and based on the then-normal ideal of stratification?

If Lennaeus's method created a tool for modern science, it still used the metaphor of monarchy as a way of framing the order of things. Plants and animals constituted two natural kingdoms (regna naturae). Within these kingdoms, a hierarchy of classes, orders, genera, and species provided categories by which all life forms, plant and animal, were classified. In a world where many still saw hierarchy and inequality as natural, taxonomy provided a tangible ratification of this belief.
[...]
Not only did monarchy supply a defining imagery for understanding nature, but the Linnaean system also validated prevailing inequalities of gender... Even though many plants are hermaphroditic and do not conform to customary definitions of gender, Linnaeus emphatically described plants in terms of their male and female parts, with so-called dominant parts designated male, submissive parts female.

Interesting that this is the same basic system of taxonomy that we learn in school today.

Stephen Jay Gould (yay!) argues that this essentialist paradigm needs to be reexamined, not only because it is incorrect and misleading, but also because of its negative impact on our social organization - for instance the reemerging field of scientific racism (beloved of intellectual bedfellows SDA and IQ fetishist Richard Lynn among others - recently discussed here). He says "Nature comes to us as continua, not discrete objects with clear boundaries".

Essentialism establishes criteria for judgement and worth: individual objects that lie close to their essence are good; those that depart are bad, if not unreal... Antiessentialist thinking forces us to view the world differently. We must accept shadings and continua as fundamental...

The taxonomic essentialist scoops up a handful of fossil snails in a single species, tries to abstract an essence, and rates his snails by their match to this average. The antiessentialist sees something entirely different in his hand -- a range of irreducible variation defining the species, some variants more frequent than others, but all perfectly good snails.

We know what the previous outcomes were of scientific racism: the Atlantic slave trade, the Nazi's "final solution", South African apartheid... certainly these were not the most noble moments in our human history. So why are these theories rearing their ugly heads again?

*By the way, this is a fascinating book. There are several cheap copies at the fantastically huge BMV on Bloor St in Toronto - I got mine for only $4.99

This Week in Intelligence

And I don't meant the secret CIA kind - I mean the part of I.Q. that comes before "quotient".

It's been a busy week for intelligence.

To sum up:

Men don't like intelligent women. This is, of course, the fault of teh feminists. (We pencilled the plan in our agendas, right after "Destroy the Family".)

Also, Stupidity is the best defense against the left's pesky rationality

But of course, I shouldn't worry my pretty little head about all of this, because my pretty little head holds a pretty little brain, which due to its cute and womanly IQ cannot possibly think about anything but shoes and lipstick. But fortunately I was born in Canada, where we have a respectable "national IQ". That almost makes up for the fact of my womanhood. Because can you imagine if I was born in, say, Kenya or Rwanda? Not that I can draw that conclusion by myself. Being a woman and all.

Don't you just feel smarter already?

American Electoral Politics - Mortal Kombat Style

Considering how the media covers elections (much like a horse race), this cool flash game is probably better for exploring the real issues. Watch the intro, it's pretty funny.

Unfortunately I keep losing. Damn Hillary is too slow. Her Bill Clinton attack is cool though - like a big blue ghost. Next up - I'm going to play as McCain.

Via Neatorama

Other political video games