PunkAssBlog.com

I’m off as of Monday on vacation (I’ll be back the following week with, I hope, fascinating tales of Homeland Security and the SPP protests). In the meantime, here’s some reading material:

Baghdad without water.

You know the whole “you broke it, you bought it” Iraq war theory that’s popular amongst Sensible Liberals^TM? The invasion might have been a really bad idea after all, but troops can’t withdraw because then it’ll all get worse?

Well. 6 million people in Baghdad are without water. So yes, it can get worse, obviously. But it is so utterly, unbelievably bad that we here in the empire can simply not comprehend how bad it is.

According to Article 55 of Geneva Conventions (1949) to which the U.S. government is a signatory: “To the fullest extent of the means available to it the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate.”

Article 59 states: “If the whole or part of the population of an occupied territory is inadequately supplied, the Occupying Power shall agree to relief schemes on behalf of the said population, and shall facilitate them by all the means at its disposal.”

Never mind impeachment. Get the Bush Administration to the Hague. Now.

Hooyah!

I am dying to read Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, but in the meantime, the London Review of Books has a good review of it.

A man who hires a squad of elite lawyers to fight to protect his company from liability for anyone’s death, foreign or American, anywhere overseas, despite at least one incident of Blackwater mercenaries in Iraq shooting dead an innocent man; despite the death in Fallujah of four Blackwater mercenaries to whom the company hadn’t given proper armoured vehicles, manpower, weapons, training, instructions or maps; despite the death of three US servicemen in Afghanistan at the hands of a reckless Blackwater aircrew, who also died: well, casual observers might think this would render Erik Prince a villain. Yet it would make him a villain only in some liberal, humanistic, ethical sense. In the eyes of American law, Prince has done nothing villainous; on the contrary, he is a patriot and a Christian, which is to say, a good man.

Even the libertarians, who want to privatize the air you breathe, get understandably squicked at the idea of privatizing armies. And yet, this is exactly what’s happening, from Iraq to New Orleans. And this particular band of mercenaries is run by a crazed religious nutcase. Scared yet?

Speaking of religious fanatics…

PZ Myers has another fun post about Scott Adams and his religious wankery.

Maybe I’m God. If you don’t worship me and tithe to me, I’ll send you to PZ’s Hell when you die. You should worry, because every torment in my Hell is a million times worse than the torments in the Christian Hell — every magma smoothie is a thousand degrees hotter than theirs, to every poke with a pitchfork we add an anal reaming with a hook-suckered tentacle, every hill up which you must push boulders is 15° steeper, every lake of vomit contains twice as many chunks. Obviously, the potential problem is much greater in my Hell than your pedestrian Christian Hell, therefore you should believe in Me. Donate now, or suffer.

The problem with Pascal’s Wager is that even if you understand it properly, which Adams arguably does not, it’s an incredibly easy one to refute. It doesn’t take into account the existence of multiple competing faiths (even if you take the wager and worship the Christian God, you might still end up in Hades for failure to properly worship Zeus). And, of course, there’s that other wager—if you devote your life to a faith you don’t really believe in, just to be spared in the event that there really is a literal hell, you have likely spent your earthly existence in torment for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

Prisoners’ Justice Day

Finally, here in Canada, it’s Prisoners’ Justice Day. I’ll be heading out shortly to a vigil at Toronto’s Don Jail.

Have a great week!