Of War and Murder

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy
The following joke is attributed to Hermann Göring who was at the time on trial in Nuremberg, charged with conspiracy to commit crimes against peace; planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression; war-crimes; and crimes against humanity:

One Englishman --an idiot; Two Englishmen --a club; Three Englishmen --an empire!
One German --a scholar; Two Germans --an army; Three Germans --a war!

A mere joke, in bad taste! But consider the source. It is also a simple, if simple-minded, analysis of data. It even hints at the science of emergent properties but I seriously doubt Herr Göring had that in mind.

Across the English Channel – before Herr Göring would have the opportunity to expose the world to his brilliant wit, Lewis Fry Richardson, a brilliant theoretician and mathematician whose work inspired the science of fractals and war gaming, dared to ask: is war inevitable? can it be predicted? can it be prevented? why do we go to war? do war and murder differ?
These are hard questions which resist reduction to number. Richardson himself may have had William Butler Yeats in mind when he observed that wars merge and split, or have no clear beginning or end; he said of them: “Thinginess fails.”
Nevertheless, when Richardson reduced war to data he concluded:

1. War and murder are equivalent – differing only in magnitude.
2. Wars may be categorized logarithmically like hurricanes and earthquakes.
3. Arms races leading to wars may be modeled with differential equations.
4. The occurrences of war may be plotted in a Poisson distribution –like cancer clusters and tornado touchdowns.

Richardson was not the first to explore these possibilities and mathematical models have been refined since. Arguably, however, Richardson himself developed his hypotheses much further and in many ways went off in different directions. His work is still available in journal articles, pamphlets, two posthumous volumes from 1960, and a two-volume Collected Papers of 1993. His work on arms races may be found in Arms and Insecurity and his statistical studies are published in Statistics of Deadly Quarrels.
Other writers claim that Richardson's decision to lump together murder and war was deliberately provocative. Richardson's retort must be considered in the historical context: “One can find cases of homicide which one large group of people condemned as murder, while another large group condoned or praised them as legitimate war. Such things went on in Ireland in 1921 and are going on now in Palestine.” His remarks are as true today as when first uttered over 50 years ago.

Richardson categorized war logarithmically –magnitude one, two, three and so forth –as determined by total deaths. It was an idea borrowed from Astronomy. In a war of magnitude one, 100,000 people will die. Both World Wars I and II exceeded magnitude seven, recording deaths in the tens of millions. Ten or so deaths equals magnitude one; a single murder is magnitude zero. Interestingly, the two World Wars are the only magnitude seven conflicts. However, the number of conflicts of any given magnitude rises exponentially as the magnitude decreases. There are, for example, some ten million conflicts of magnitude zero and the number of deaths by murder is roughly equal to the number of deaths by world war. Richardson listed seven megadeath conflicts in tier two, i.e, magnitude six. They are, in chronological order:

1. Taiping Rebellion (1851–1864)
2. North AmericanCivil War (1861–1865)
3. Great War in La Plata (1865–1870)
4. Sequel to the Bolshevik Revolution (1918–1920)
5. First Chinese-Communist War (1927–1936)
6. Spanish Civil War (1936–1939)
7. Communal riots in the Indian Peninsula (1946–1948)

Richardson had hoped that by understanding war, it might be prevented. He ultimately concluded that war –like hurricanes, tornadoes, and cancer clusters –is remarkably random and inevitable. Richardson modeled a “death spiral”, an escalating arms-race in which nations respond to one another by adding armaments to its arsenal. Such an arms race may stabilize if and only if the “fatigue and expense” becomes greater than perceived threats.
Richardson had hoped that by tracking armament expenditures, wars could be predicted like the weather. Other conclusions –no more optimistic –are based on statistical correlations:

1. Richardson found evidence of “contagion”; an ongoing war increases the probability that a new war will start.
2. Richardson drew upon Graph Theory and Topology to determine those nations most likely to go to war.
3. He found that of 94 world conflicts, only 12 were between combatants which shared no border. The inevitable conclusion: war is a “neighborhood affair”.
4. Religion is clearly a factor. Nations of differing religion are more likely to fight than nations sharing a single religion. In Richardson's study, Christian nations, for example, seemed more bellicose and engaged in a disproportionate number of wars.

Like John Nash (A Beautiful Mind), Richardson was nearly ignored. Others now carry on his work. Lars-Erik Cederman of Harvard University’s John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies has replicated Richardson’s results in a new computer model. (Richardson's work largely pre-dated the computer) In the new model, a state of equilibrium between nations is temporary; small disruptions may unleash a “cascading instability”. Princeton University professor Robert Gilpin is likewise studying the small events which “cascade” to chaos –the conditions in which a state of equilibrium moves to one of disequilibrium. Shades of Jurassic Park! And Vanderbilt University professor John Vasquez, likewise, explains the very size of wars in terms of cascading system instability.
It must be pointed out that statistics do not govern events; they describe them. A murderer is not likely to win acquittal by pleading that his behavior is within known statistical norms.
Are nations, then, to be absolved for merely playing out a terrible fate? Are religious wars to be tolerated simply because both sides are convinced that God is on their side? Will neighboring nations be given leave to attack across shared borders? Are we to make war lightly because we have been wronged? Are wars of pre-emption ever justified. Perhaps those questions are unanswerable!
Consider the alternative: by Richardson's scale, a war of magnitude 9.8 will leave no one behind to ask the questions. William Butler Yeats wrote the most appropriate conclusion in 1922 –a year of great disillusionment with World War I:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Notes:

1. International Military Tribunal, The Nudremberg War-Crimes Trial
2. 1945/46 (Göring was found guilty on all four counts but cheated the hangman with cyanide.)
3. Hayes, Brian, Statistics of Deadly Quarrels,
4. American Scientist, 2001, pp. 10-15.
5. Hayes, Brian Ibid. pp. 10-15. (Richardson's biggest problem was getting data.

"Richardson argued that theories of war could and should be evaluated on a scientific basis, by testing them against data on actual wars....Several lists of wars were drawn up in the early years of the 20th century, and two more war catalogs were compiled in the 1930s and 40s by the Russian-born sociologist Pitirim A. Sorokin and by Quincy Wright of the University of Chicago. Richardson began his own collection in about 1940 and continued work on it until his death in 1953. His was not the largest data set, but it was the best suited to statistical analysis.") Forrest, David, The Edge of Chaos.

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Most Distant Galaxy Disproves Palin's Young Universe Theory

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Texas astronomers have utterly disproved Sarah Palin! They have discovered the most DISTANT object in the universe, an object some 13.7 billion light years from earth. The light we see from that galaxy began its journey toward the earth some 13.7 billion years ago. Therefore, Palin's young universe of a mere 6,000 years is false and Palin is unfit to teach a grammar school, let alone, run a nation.

Palin believes that the age of the universe is but a mere 6,000 years, a figure that she (or her preacher man) may have concocted by adding up the "begats" in the Old Testament. By any method, they are wrong.

The Universe is at least 13 billion years old --give or take a month or a millienium. It takes 120,000 light years before light from across our own galaxy reaches the telescopes that astronomers have trained on it. But in Palin's universe, a mere 6,000 years old, the light from across our Milky Way has not reached us. It will not reach us for another 14,000 years! Light from the far reaches of the universe will not reach us for another 13.7 billion years.

So --how does Palin explain the fact that we can, indeed, see, photograph and study the far side of our own galaxy. It is much father away than a mere 6,000 light years.

How do we measure the diameter of the Milky Way, given the fact that we live inside of it? We measure the distance to Cepheid variable stars. These are stars whose luminosity changes in a very predictable way. They puff up and shrink. Knowing the absolute luminosity of these stars allows us to measure their distance. Think of it this way: if you know how bright a flashlight is at 10 feet from you, and how that luminosity changes over distance, when it moves further away you can calculate that distance by determining how much dimmer the flashlight is.

Universe Today, The Diameter of the Milky Way, NICHOLOS WETHINGTON

Amateur astronomers can easily disprove Palin; every time they point their telescopes at objects farther away than just 6,000 light years, they have disproved her and her "creationist/fundamentalist" movement.

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AA: "Flight 11 Did Not Fly on 911!"

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

AA Flights 11 (North Tower) and 77 (Pentagon) did not fly on 9/11. The source for the information is AA itself. WikiScanner discovered that American Airlines had changed the Wikipedia entry to state that Flights 11 and 77 were not in the air on 9/11. They could not have been hijacked by Arab "terrorists".

WikiScanner offers users a searchable database that ties millions of anonymous Wikipedia edits to organizations where those edits apparently originated, by cross-referencing the edits with data on who owns the associated block of internet IP addresses.

Although these flights were daily departures before and a month after September 11, 2001. Neither flight 11 nor 77 were scheduled on September 11, 2001. The records kept by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (www.bts.gov/gis/) do not list either flight that day.

–Wikipedia

To make the point: the source for these revisions to the WikiScanner entry is American Airlines. The story is not about Wikipedia. The story is how American Airlines corrected a Wikipedia entry. It is about the evidence that Flights 11 and 77 did not fly on 9/11 – and that this information comes from American Airlines.

Everyone logged on to the internet does so from an IP address. In this case, the IP was from American Airlines. It’s traceable. I confirmed the American Airlines IP address with a WHOIS lookup and Google search. Therefore, American Airlines itself is the source for the revisions to Wiki revealing, officially, that neither Flight 11 nor Flight 77 were in the air on 9/11.

My look up returned the following:

WHOIS -144.9.8.21
Location: United States [City: Ft. Worth, Texas]
OrgName: American Airlines Incorporated
OrgID: AMERIC-112
Address: P.O.Box 619616
Address: MD 5308
City: DFW Airport
StateProv: TX
PostalCode: 75261
Country: US
NetRange: 144.9.0.0 - 144.9.255.255
CIDR: 144.9.0.0/16
NetName: AANET
NetHandle: NET-144-9-0-0-1
Parent: NET-144-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Assignment
NameServer: DNS-P1.SABRE.COM
NameServer: DNS-P2.SABRE.COM
NameServer: DNS-P3.SABRE.COM
NameServer: DNS-P4.SABRE.COM
Comment:

RegDate: 1990-10-31
Updated: 2002-06-27
RTechHandle: OG60-ARIN
RTechName: Gelbrich, Orf
RTechPhone: +1-817-931-3145
RTechEmail: ************@aa.com
OrgTechHandle: ZW72-ARIN
OrgTechName: WARIS, ZISHAN
OrgTechPhone: +1-817-967-1242
OrgTechEmail: ************@aa.com
# ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2008-06-29 19:10

# Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN’s WHOIS database.

The Four Planes on 10 September 2001

According to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reply from the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), the last known pre-9/11 flights for three of the four aircraft involved in 9/11 took place in December 2000 -- nine months before 9/11. No pre-9/11 flight information was provided for American Airlines flight 77 (N644AA) by BTS.

Reference: http://www.wired.com/politics/online...urrentPage=all

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How Two Bushes Sold Out America

Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

China is a leech in more ways than one. By way of Wal-Mart, it has destroyed decent wages and productive job creation in the U.S. See the CIA'S own list: China is No 1 with the world's LARGEST POSITIVE Current Account Balance; the U.S. (thanks to Wal-Mart) is DEAD LAST with the World's largest NEGATIVE Current Account Balance. (formerly called the Balance of Trade Deficit

We don't have far to look for culprits. They are not hiding behind bushes. They ARE the 'Bushes". Let's take a look at the history before it gets re-written:

1. Any Democratic President has presided over greater economic growth and job creation than any Republican President since World War II.
2. When Bush Jr took office, job creation was worst under a Republican, Bush Sr, at 0.6% per year and best under a Democrat, Johnson, at 3.8% per year.
3. Economic growth under President Carter was far greater than under Reagan or Bush Sr. In fact, economic growth in general was greater under Johnson, Kennedy, Carter, and Clinton than under Reagan or Bush. Democrats always outperform a failed party: the GOP!

4. The job creation rate under Clinton was 2.4% significantly higher than Ronald Reagan's 2.1% per year.
5. The "top performing Presidents" by this standard, in order from best down, were Johnson, Carter, Clinton, and Kennedy. The "worst" (in descending order) were Nixon, Reagan, Bush.
6. Half of jobs created under Reagan were in the public sector --some 2 million jobs added to the Federal Bureaucracy. Hadn't he promised to reduce that bureaucracy?
7. Reagan, though promising to reduce government and spending, tripled the national debt and left huge deficits to his successor. Bush Jr's record will be even worse.
8. By contrast, most of the jobs created on Clinton's watch were in the private sector.

To sum it all up: any Democratic President beats any Republican President since World War II. The GOP eagerly hitched its wagon to the star of elitism. When just 1 percent owns more than the rest of us combined, it is safe to conclude that the GOP --as a viable party --is finished! Good riddance!

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Has the GOP Inspired Prejudice about Texas?

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

For some reason, millions of people who have never been to Texas persist in spreading lies, and misconceptions about the state, "dissing it" though they have never bothered to confirm their prejudices by actually visiting the state. Nevertheless --they are convinced or have convinced themselves that Texas is a horrible and backward place. How much blame must be directed at Bush for having destroyed the reputation of a state that had been Democratic/progressive for over one hundred years

The fact is, Texas is not a 'backwater'. Second only to California with a population of 26.1 million residents, it is, perhaps, the nation's most cosmopolitan state. In Houston, officially the nation's fourth largest city, you will find a population as least as diverse (perhaps even more so) than those of New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco. Having often visited all three of those cities, I suspect that that is the case.

The Houston Grand Opera is typical of the trend. Last time I checked, it was the nation's most honored Opera Company having introduced 43 world premieres and six American premieres since 1973. For its efforts, HGO has received a Tony Award, two Grammy Awards, and two Emmy Awards—the ONLY opera company in the world to have won all three honors.

Houston may very well be the nation's "greenest" large city. Large parks include the very large Memorial Park known for a network of hike and bike trails through virgin wooded forests. Hermann Park, between downtown and the Texas Medical Center, is somewhat smaller but equally green and equally popular with joggers, bikers and nature lovers.

Hermann Park enjoys a choice location in the Museum District half-way between downtown and the Texas Medical Center, famous for having pioneered the science and art of heart transplant. The famous Howard Hughes was hurrying "home" to the Medical Center but died enroute. I covered that story and was among the press when Dr. Michael DeBakey revealed to us that Hughes had died. Texas shares an international border with the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas.

My title asked the question --has the GOP inspired prejudice about Texas? YES! Dallas suffered as a result of the JFK murder --though the city had nothing to do with it. I suspect Bush was the supervisor in the field and have good reason for believing that to have been the case. Houston has fared somewhat better though Bush Sr lived in a high rise just outside Loop 610 just north of the famous Galleria. I can only say this about Bush Sr whom I knew: he was NO Texan. Nor his idiot son!

Here's the kind of information that you might find in a guide book. I offer it for what it is worth:

Houston is the largest city in Texas and the fourth-largest in the United States, while San Antonio is the second largest in the state and seventh largest in the United States.

Dallas–Fort Worth and Greater Houston are the fourth and fifth largest United States metropolitan areas, respectively. Other major cities include El Paso and Austin—the state capital. Texas is nicknamed the Lone Star State to signify Texas as a former independent republic and as a reminder of the state's struggle for independence from Mexico. The "Lone Star" can be found on the Texas state flag and on the Texas state seal today.[9] The origin of the state name, Texas, is from the word, "Tejas", which means 'friends' in the Caddo language.[10]

Due to its size and geologic features such as the Balcones Fault, Texas contains diverse landscapes that resemble both the American South and Southwest.[11] Although Texas is popularly associated with the Southwestern deserts, less than 10 percent of the land area is desert.

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Supreme Court Justices Should Stay If They're Able To Work

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Some liberals have recently called on Ruth Bader Ginsburg to retire so that President Barack Obama can choose her replacement. At 80, she is the oldest justice on the court. Some fear that if she chooses to stay, a Republican succesor to Obama might nominate another A. Scalia. God help us! But Justice Ginsburg believes that Supreme Court justices should not be influenced by political assessments of a party's future prospects with respect to the court.

One of Ginsburg's shining moments came with the dubious ascension of one George W. BUsh to the White House. With respect to Bush v Gore, Ginsberg's decision was the best, better even than those who agreed with her. Scalia's decision was poorly written, his conclusions wrong and wrong-headed.

Not only that --Ginsberg was, I believe, outraged that the case had been "dumped" on SCOTUS. At the end of her decsion, she wrote simply: I DISSENT --not "I respectfully dissent" as is normally the practice.

Rarely has this Court rejected outright an interpretation of state law by a state high court. ...The extraordinary setting of this case has obscured the ordinary principle that dictates its proper resolution: Federal courts defer to state high courts' interpretations of their state's own law. This principle reflects the core of federalism, on which all agree. ...Notably, the Florida Supreme Court has produced two substantial opinions within 29 hours of oral argument. In sum, the Court's conclusion that a constitutionally adequate recount is impractical is a prophecy the Court's own judgment will not allow to be tested. Such an untested prophecy should not decide the Presidency of the United States.I dissent.

--Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Justice, U.S. Supreme Court (Bush v Gore)

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Jefferson, Washington and Separation of Church and State

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

There may be millions of people in the United States who do not share our founders' reverance for what Thomas Jefferson called the "wall of seperation" between church and state. Many throughout the ranks of the religious right wing, for example, are eager to court bigots and fanatics, promising them a "theocracy" in exhange for their "souls". The following excerpt is typical of a "movement" to create an American Theocracy:

If conservatives are smart, we will make the GOP a relic of the past, and will go to the polls and vote the "Jesus Christ" line...Search out the spiritual life of every candidate, and eliminate those who do not follow the one true God.Long before November, we should have all of the members of our churches and their families commit to EVERYONE voting... Done properly, the turnout should be about 10% liberal and 90% conservative/Christian/ Tea-Party/etc. It would speak very loudly to have this kind of turnout.

--John Stone, comment left on "The Batavian"

Now George Washington is reputed to have been a "man of faith". But many others were not. As many if not more are described as "deists", better described as a philosophical view of a supreme being as opposed to an organized religion.

The bottom line is this: nowhere may be found any reference to "God" or deities of any sort in the Constitution. The fact of the matter is that our founders were prominently and most often not very religious. Some were Deists, some may have been atheists, and some probably did not care. That there is no clause in the Constitution that bases our nation on an "establishment of religion" is to be expected.

The single most effective challenge to would be theocrats is Thomas Jefferson's famous letter to the Danbury (Connecticut) Baptists:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.

--Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Danbury Baptists

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