Month: July 2009

The Weak Man Argument

Julian Sanchez names a pet peeve:

With a “weak man,” you don’t actually fabricate a position, but rather pick the weakest of the arguments actually offered up by people on the other side and treat it as the best or only one they have. As Steve notes, this is hardly illegitimate all the time, because sometimes the weaker argument is actually the prevalent one. Maybe the best arguments for Christianity are offered up by Thomas Aquinas or St. Augustine, but I doubt there are very many people who are believers because they read On Christian Doctrine. Probably this will be the case with some frequency, if only because the less complex or sophisticated an argument is, the easier it is for lots of people to be familiar with it. On any topic of interest, a three-sentence argument is unlikely to be very good, but it’s a lot more likely to spread.


–PA

Kill First, Find Guilt Later

Nico passes along a great anecdote:

Student Leader: In Iran we always use this joke to describe this situation: they say that a group sees a fox that is running away, they ask him, "Why are you running away?" The fox says, "The ruler has ordered that all foxes that have three testicles be killed." They note, "But you have two testicles," and the fox responds, "But first they kill and then they count."

This is exactly the situation activists in Iran are facing. Any crisis is an excuse to suppress them; their crimes have been decided beforehand.

Much like "intelligence" is decided before torture begins.

— CB

Waterboarding In Iran, Ctd

A reader writes:

How is Cheney's torture any more justifiable than Iran's?  In each case, the torturer is coercing the confession they want to hear.  Is admitting to collaborating with foreign agents to create internal unrest that different than admitting to joining Al-Qaeda and planning attacks against America (whether falsely or truthfully, we can't know)?  The main difference I can see is that we can comprehend Cheney's actions as an extremely misguided attempt to protect Americans.  That may make his torture more understandable, but it doesn't make it more justifiable.

Sure, "understandable" may be more suitable, but the point remains: Khamenei torture is on a different level than Cheney torture. For the crime of getting caught on camera holding a bloody shirt, Ahmand Batebi was whipped with cables, beat in the genitals, and basically waterboarded in human excrement.  But more to the point: he and his fellow students were tortured for their political beliefs, not their perceived ties to terrorism. The regime then, and now, sought names and false confessions to maintain its political power, not to protect its citizens. So yes, "creating internal unrest" is much different than "planning attacks" on civilians, particularly when that unrest is in response to a bogus election.

That still doesn't justify Cheney and Co., of course – for all the reasons that Andrew has exhaustively laid out.  Misguided torture is still torture. And in a way, US methods were even more insidious, since they were sanitized enough to court the conservative mainstream and bureaucratized enough to trickle down the chain of command to the likes of Lynndie England. Iran's motive and methods, on the other hand, are so blatant that they would never garner the support of the American center-right. (The far-right, on the other hand, is another question.)

— CB

The “Ballots” In The “Election,” Ctd.

A reader writes:

You write: "As one of Nico's readers notes, you will notice that the name Ahmadinejad is written on the ballots in exactly the same handwriting on many of them."  I don't speak Persian, but I do know Arabic, which uses the same script.  I can see differences in the names found in the three boxes, so much so that you can't say they are "exactly the same handwriting." 

Look at the name Ahmadi, especially the letter combination Haa + miim and the position of the yaa relative to the daal.  In the right hand box, the large Haa looks closed, and it is distinctly higher than the miim.  The yaa is much higher than the daal.  In the top left box, the Haa is open, and the yaa is at the same level as the daal.  In the bottom left box, the Haa is written extremely small and is scrunched into the miim.  Moreover, the yaa is on the same level or slightly above the daal, and very close to it; it also has a much less defined curve. 

Going beyond the handwriting, each of these three ballots has something different before the name Ahmadinejad.  In the top left, it is maHmuud; in the bottom left, it is something like 'aaqaay; and in the right, it looks like duktur (?) maHmuud.

I don't think these were written by the same person.  The handwriting is distinct, and if you were going to write out a lot of ballots with the same name, it would be difficult to vary the first names or titles that you are writing.

–PA

Outing Iran: Western Sports

Iran_women_rugby

First baseball and softball, now rugby.

As a bonus, another reader forwards this badass photo of Iranian women practicing archery:

Archery

Photographer Alexandra Boulat captions:

Young Iranian girls doing archery at the Governmental Iranian Organization for Sport Training in Tehran. For these young ladies, sports may be an opportunity to travel outside Iran during international championships.

— CB

Things That Make You Go Hmmm, Ctd

A reader writes:

I agree wholeheartedly with Patrick that conspiracies are generally hard to contain, and this one, if true and being orchestrated by Sarah Palin, would have very little chance of staying contained. Having said that, it’s also just as implausible that Palin gave a speech in Texas with amniotic fluid leaking, then flew for several hours, changed planes, then traveled some more, before giving birth to a special needs child 18 hours later. 

So what really happened?  Here’s my guess, using Occam’s Razor as my guide.  Andrew has proven, without a doubt, that Palin has an unnatural propensity for lying.  And not just lying, but odd lies that are easily refutable, and often unnecessary to advance her cause (i.e., they’re more a pathology than used to advance her cause, whatever it may be).  I think he’s up to 30 of these “odd lies”, and that doesn’t include the whoppers from this article.

So let’s assume that Trig is her kid, and she gave birth to him.  Isn’t a simpler explanation to say that, in fact, Palin’s water didn’t break in Texas, that when she flew home she wasn’t in labor, and that she soon went into labor thereafter and gave birth rather quickly after her water (eventually) broke, maybe in the plane to Alaska or car ride to Wasilla?  (it would also comport with my experience with my wife and her friends, which is that the more kids a woman gives birth to, the faster her subsequent labors are).  And if Palin, being Palin, felt a pathological need to embellish this story to say that her water broke in Texas, and she bravely gave a speech with amniotic fluid leaking out of her, and then did that whole flight home, wouldn’t that fit right into Andrew’s other construct he has for Palin, which is that she lies for little or no reason, and often about things that are easily and verifiability refutable?  Wouldn’t that also explain why Palin refuses to answer any questions about this part of her story, or let her doctor answer any questions, because it would expose this “lie”?  And the lie is not a grand conspiracy about Trig’s birth mother, but a rather mundane lie (for her, anyway) regarding why she felt the need to embellish her birthing story to such an absurd extent.  It exposes her, and in a way that she would probably find horrifying (based on the e-mails from that CBS news story, above), and that as much as anything else would explain her stonewalling on this. 

In fairness to Andrew, I don’t think his credibility is at issue because he’s never said what he believes to have occurred definitively – only that there are legitimate questions left unanswered.  Based on what Andrew has proven on 30 separate occasions (Palin’s propensity to lie unnecessarily about things that are fairly easily refutable), it seems most logical that her story about her water breaking and the subsequent travels while in labor are the lie here, not who the birth mother is.

–PA

Yglesias Award Nominee

"It is perfectly legitimate to argue that the House cap-and-trade system is flawed beyond redemption — so complex and confusing that it only benefits regulators and the lobbyists who outwit them — and that Congress should start over with a carbon tax. It is also legitimate to contend that, while the cap-and-trade system is flawed, it is better than inaction and necessary to spur innovation. And for eight House Republicans who took this stand at great political risk, it is not only legitimate — it is admirable," – Michael Gerson, yesterday's Washington Post.

–PA