Memorial Day reminder

As our leaders, media, and propagandists try to guilt trip us into remembering and appreciating veterans this season (they bled so we can BBQ - which is just a silly claim all around), let's also remember how stupid some of our leaders were in getting us into and mismanaging certain wars. Many paid the ultimate price for the mistakes of a few. Each year when the president lays a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, they should also burn a past leader in effigy (plenty to choose from: Nixon, Bush, Cheney, Westmoreland, Custer, MacArthur, etc.).

In the vain pursuit of glory, power, legacy, etc., they eagerly put pen to paper (with little care about consequences and how to care for the wounded after the war), and changed the fates of millions of families - usually for the worse. At least in the olden days, the "best and brightest" would offer their sons to the military as noblesse oblige and expectations of their class. But with the advent of industrialized warfare where anyone could be killed suddenly (and en masse) by flying hot metal, all that changed. And with global capitalism, the powerful could grow their empires commercially, making physical conquest (and all its risks) obsolete. The 1% sent their kids to the Ivy League as the future champions of industry/politics, and the poor did the fighting and dying instead.

http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201505051000

"My younger brother, a Vietnam vet, recently died. He was haunted to the end by memories of what he witnessed in the war and of "well-meaning" friends and relatives who called him a baby killer when he returned.
Now, my grandson is fighting to recover from PTSD, hearing loss, and memories of what he witnessed during 3 tours in Iraq.
Will it never end?"

The staggering social costs of gun violence in the US

This was a good interview about a Mother Jones article on the indirect costs of US gun violence: http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201504300930

The author's team performed an established economic analysis to estimate the total costs of gun violence - not just the direct costs of law enf., ER visit, and justice/penal system processing, but also lost productivity and diminished quality of life from long-term disability, incarceration, and death (affecting not just the victim but their family, workplace, and community). The article estimates that of the ~30K gun murders each year, on average it costs America $500K each. Add to that the ~80K cases/year of serious injuries from guns, and the total price tag is over $200B/year. That is 1/3 the value of Apple's stock, and more than US medicine spends on obesity each year. It's freaking huge.

But we're not talking about this because the NRA and others make the data so hard to access. And if people do try to study it (like the CDC and Harvard School of Public Health and Obama's recent nominee for Sgn. General), the gun lobby paints them as gun-control activists with a political agenda. Conservatives want to cut waste and spending left and right (social programs, research, etc.), but somehow the military and guns are exempt?

BTW - the study also found a correlation between states with weak gun laws and higher gun violence costs per capita (LA, WY are the worst, while HI and MA are some of the best - also with stricter gun laws). It's a no-brainer to us, but the 2nd Amendment crowd clings to the myth that more guns make you safer. They might also argue - what about the economic savings from all the crimes prevented by conscientious citizens with guns? Well there's just no data to support that claim, if it's even true (which is doubtful). You're much more likely to hurt yourself or a loved one than prevent a crime with your gun.

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This is pretty heartbreaking stuff about the effects of violence on Oakland's youth:

http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2015/04/29/violence-causes-ripple-effects-for-thousands-of-oakland-students

For a kid who turned 18 this year in Oakland, he or she lived through 111 kids getting killed in that city, not to mention the trauma that caused for everyone else. At least Alameda County is deploying more mental health resources for them now - but really this is an issue that no kid should have to deal with. Especially if they're under 10, children often can't deal with the difficult emotions generated from experiencing violence, so their ability to learn is impaired and they may lash out in negative ways.

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NPR did a story based on this article and the most persuasive outcome, to me, was that there needs to be science and data applied to this stuff.  One of the guests was talking about the idea that if you even ask for data you are anti gun.  That there is this all or nothing approach.  Why wouldn't the dates show all the loves being saved if guns are great?  Couldn't we also find that, for example, people with lots of gun training have better outcomes related to fun violence?  It seems weird to assume data can only be anti gun.

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Agreed. I guess it's like climate change and cop racism issues - if one side of the argument is confident in their position, they should have no problems whatsoever with full data transparency. When you are "trying to hide something" and suppressing info, that is a tell-tale sign that your argument has a problem. Actually if those folks really love gun rights and "freedom", then they should welcome data transparency to help improve gun use and gun culture in America (like a majority of NRA members favor better background checks, but NRA leaders don't). Or do they think that everything is OK? Don't they know that the most successful (legit) companies and gov'ts in the last 50 years are obsessed with data to help them succeed and improve?

Bottom line, the gun industry/lobby's only goal is to sell more product. Gun ownership in the US (as % of households) is on a huge decline since WWII, partly driven by urbanization, less interest in hunting, and I would like to believe social progress. But the # of guns in circulation may have gone up, so someone is buying them. There are fewer gun owners now, but they own more guns (and more deadly ones) per capita. Police departments upgrade their guns more frequently, and lord knows where their used guns go (I think there are accounts of cartels/gangs using former US police firearms).

So to accomplish their goal, the gun lobby has to oppose anything that would potentially hurt sales, and of course social costs data is a big threat. And when the costs are so obvious (even without hard data), they pull the freedom and liberty card. Sure guns are destructive, but the costs are "worth it" because we have to sacrifice to keep the communists from taking our freedoms. We have to tolerate the side-effects of guns because I need to protect my family from the bad guys. And when it's poor/black people shouldering most of the costs, it's easier to ignore - until incidents like Columbine and Sandy Hook happen, which affected affluent whites and jarred the nation.

I use data to put food on the table, so I'd like to think that I have some sense of "data ethics" and best practices. When the pro-gun side decides to actually use data in their arguments, I can honestly say that they are the worst in terms of ethics and rigor. Total intellectual dishonesty (or maybe ignorance). I have not read any NRA white papers (if there are any non-laughable ones), so I am basing my judgment mostly on the sound bites you hear in the gun debate.

Examples:

• "Chicago has strict gun laws, but they still have plenty of gang violence and murders, so gun laws don't work!" Because we don't have borders. Thugs just have to buy a gun 30 miles away in easier places like Indiana, and then drive back to the city to shoot someone.
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• "Since the Brady Bill/Assault Weapons Ban expired, there have been fewer mass shootings, so assault weapons in the hands of 'the good guys' is an effective deterrent." Not enough sample size to assess a trend, and what defines a "mass shooting"? Public mass shootings are fortunately still pretty rare (it's much more common for someone to slaughter their family in a private residence). But Mother Jones and Harvard ran a statistical analysis to handle rare events, and they concluded that mass shootings are actually more frequent after the loosening of gun laws. Of course correlation is not causation, but it invalidates the pro-gun claim.
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• "Guns don't kill people; people kill people - address the mental health and anger issues instead." But guns kill people A LOT more effectively than a knife or bare hands. Yes there will always be a baseline level of violence and murder intent in any society, but if you restrict access to the murder tools, people won't be able to carry them out as effectively. Look at AUS/UK vs. US. Fairly similar culture, demos, etc., but we have all the guns and murders. Canada is an exception (many guns, few murders), but there will always be outliers.

"What ISIS really wants"

http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201502251000

This Yale prof and Atlantic editor, Grame Woods, studied comms from ISIS and interviewed experts to try to understand the group better in order to recommend the best strategy to defeat them.

As before with the communists and the Axis of Evil, the US gov't and mainstream media (mostly FNC) have totally mischaracterized what ISIS is (and the actual threat they pose), which has led to some calls for stupid escalations. Fortunately we haven't gone off the deep end like with the 2003 Iraq invasion, but who knows what the future will hold?

I am not knowledgeable enough to really vet the author's conclusions, but from his interview he came off as extremely cogent and fair-minded on the issue. Basically, for Obama and some Muslim groups to dismiss ISIS as "un-Islamic" is a disservice to the cause of defeating them. In fact they are fanatically Islamic, and their playbook almost perfectly follows some Koranic verses about the end of times (or course they practice extremely militant/strict interpretations of Islam that most Muslims have eschewed). It's like if a fundamentalist Christian cult took over some land in Israel to try to bring about the events in Revelations. By trying to be PC and un-bigoted, these voices are ignoring a strategic opportunity that we can use against ISIS: if we know what they want and how they propose to get it according to their dogma, we can better deprive them of it.

It's also wrong to dismiss ISIS as just a bunch of murder and torture junkies who believe in nothing more than that. Yes they engage in those crimes, but that is not what motivates them (they are means to an end). Those atrocities are part of their larger vision for how to deal with the enemies of Islam (including "bad Muslims") and bring about the Apocalypse and afterlife rewards. Purge the Middle East, topple Rome, and bring about the end of days when the Crusaders fight back (and I guess Allah intervenes, vanquishes them, and rewards his loyal jihadists).

ISIS is not really a state (they don't care about land and political power), but more like a prolonged jihad (similar to the early days of Islam, historically). In fact they govern horribly (like most regimes in that region), and have promised recruits/residents a righteous welfare state that they can't possibly hope to deliver. The Taliban govern much better than them. They succeed through propaganda and battlefield exploits. As long as they are advancing, scaring the heretics, and struggling heroically, they look good. In fact the author compares them most similarly to the Nazis of the 1930s (the righteous chosen people are suffering due to the treachery of evil inferior oppressors, so they must rise up and settle the score). Western societies dangle the promise of freedom and a good life (but in order for some to have that life, many other poorer people in the world must suffer). Reactionary groups like the Nazis and ISIS sell the righteous struggle instead. They romanticize the hard life because it is worth it to fight the Crusaders/Zionists/apostates, and your reward for your sacrifice will be eternal glory. For marginalized, frustrated, and impoverished people in the Middle East (and some in the West), they are more likely to embrace that goal versus the democratic capitalist ideal that seems more foreign and unattainable to them than Star Trek.

So how do you beat them? Let their hollow and fragile marketing pitch blow up in their faces, and eventually their subjects and recruits will see through them and shun them. Take away their true strength, which is their propaganda built on their blitzkrieg victories and "mein kampf" narrative of righteous struggle against evil. "Contain, degrade, and wait it out" may be the best we can do. Halt their expansion, cut off their funding, and diminish their war capacity, similar to Obama's initial military response. It's even better if we help local moderate Muslim forces defeat them (well, if you can call the Syrian, Jordanian, and Iraqi regimes moderate). The worst thing we can do is fight conventionally, as that plays into their narrative of resistance against Crusader oppression. They can't wait to die fighting against Americans and Jews, as that could be used as glorious recruiting material.

America is not that good at waiting patiently, and unfortunately many innocents could die within ISIS lands while we wait for them to fail. But it is the least bad option of the ones we have in front of us. Or does anyone have a better idea? Clearly we could bomb their forces to the Stone Age if we wanted, but then what? We'd leave a vacuum in 2 nations facing civil war and lack of governance. The traces of ISIS would just return later, even more motivated because of our violent campaign against their predecessors. Remember that ISIS more or less emerged out of the ashes of the Ba'athists and Al-Qaeda in Iraq. They waited years for their chance, and they took it. We can't afford to give them another.