http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html

to make sure it wasn’t published April 1.

The gist of it is that the US government say they discovered about a Trillion dollars worth of mineral deposits in Afghanistan. There is so much valuable minerals there that Afghanistan could turn into the biggest mining center in the world.

On some level, I suppose this shouldn’t be entirely unexpected. Afghanistan is, on one level, just a bunch of rocks, so it shouldn’t be too surprising that some of them are valuable.

What’s worrysome is how the US government seems to be reacting to this find. They seem to be under the impression that money, for lack of a better word, is good, money is right, and that money will solve all your problems, whatever they might be. They act as if winning the lottery is a guaranteed good thing.

And I just thought I’d point out that about a third of all lottery winners declare bankruptcy within five years.

http://www.milwaukeemagazine.com/currentIssue/full_feature_story.asp?NewMessageID=13120

I’d also point out that one country famous for its mineral deposits is South Africa and much of those riches helped keep the unjust apartheid system in place there. The Shah ruled Iran from 1953 to 1979 while his country was one of the biggest oil producers in the world. The Shah’s government was also considered one of the most cruel governments in the world. His secret police snatched people off the street and might torture a person for years without any kind of due process.

Meanwhile power in Afghanistan is currently split between a weak and ineffectual central government that may very well win the award for “Most Corrupt 2001-2011″ on one side, numerous local warlords who make all their money growing opium on another side, and a group of religiously motivated war lords also known as the Taliban on the third side.

Throw a trillion dollar lottery ticket into that totally dysfunctional family and, really, what could possibly go wrong?

There are two main problems associated with the central government in Afghanistan: It is totally corrupt and it is totally useless.

One of the reasons the locals do not support the central government is simply because supporting the central government offers them nothing in return. The government is too poor and ineffectual to provide infrastructure like roads, schools, medical care, what have you. And on top of that, the central government is corrupt, so supporting them means you’ve got to support a corrupt system. So most locals just keep to their own.

A trillion dollar lottery ticket could change at least one part of the dynamic. It could give the central government enough cash that they could start paying for infrastructure throughout the rest of the country. Roads. Schools. Hospitals. Water. What have you.

The problem though is that for that to happen, you’ve got to get rid of the corruption in the central government. If you don’t, what’s more likely to happen is that the locals will see a corrupt central government taking an unfair piece of the pie to enrich themselves, and the locals might just decide to try and take it back.

Before, there really wasn’t anything to fight over. Most warlords simply wanted to maintain whatever power they had, and they funded their military by growing opium.

Now, there’s a huge chunk of money to fight over, and apparently its spread throughought several different regions of Afghanistan, meaning the locals aren’t going to be too happy if they see the central government come in, take all their minerals and keep the money for themselves.

At which point, the warlords might decide there’s something worth fighting over.

I would hope that the US government sees that giving a Trillion dollar lottery ticket to such a dysfunctional family as Afghanistan may only make things much worse.

And since the central government is seen as a puppet of the US, any abuses and misuses committed by the central government over this money will be seen as abuse and misuse by the US.

We can either let a corrupt government abuse its power and take all the wealth for itself while screwing the locals and possibly have an Afghanistan Revolution like the Iranian Revolution of 1979 that overthrew the Shah, or we can clean up our puppet government in Afghanistan and maybe, just maybe, this wealth will transform Afghanistan into a peaceful family.

Where’s the Invisible Hand of Capitalism to clean up this mess?

Above is a good video called “How to tell people they sound racist” by Jay Smooth. You can see his thread about it here:

http://www.illdoctrine.com/2008/07/how_to_tell_people_they_sound.html

I like it because it makes an important distinction between dealing with what someone said and dealing with their internal motivations. The lesson of the video is that it’s far easier to say “That thing you said about the watermelon was racist” than it is to say “You have the heart and soul of a racist”. Hearts and souls are hard to measure. Words are a little bit easier.

This post is sort of in that same spirit of choosing how to fight for equality by choosing tactics that are easier to win and avoiding tactics that get you bogged down into a quagmire with no exit strategy other than to shut down the thread.

The quagmire comes when you say “It sounds to me like you’re saying” (or some variation) and then insert the most extreme discrimitory thing that you can imagine, something so evil that it would make Darth Vader pause, before he’d remind himself of how his poor mother was a slave and murdered by sand people, and then choke hold someone.

“It sounds to me” is really nothing more than a round about, back door approach, to saying “I think you’re a racist” but trying to soften it and dilute it by saying “it sounds that way to me”. What you’re saying is just an indirect way of saying “It is my opinion that you are a racist”. And as Jay Smooth points out in his video, saying “you’re a racist” is a whole lot more likely to derail than dealing with specificaly what the person actually said.

Focus on what they said, not on what you think they said or what you want to interpret them as having said. And for pete’s sake, don’t invent quotes attributed to the person if they didn’t actually say it. Focus on their actual words.

Part of what is behind “it seems to me that you’re saying (insert horrible evil)” is an assumption of bad faith, that the person’s words or actions must have behind them the worst possible intentions of anyone who ever said those same words or did those same actions.

But, for example, not every cop who arrests a black man is racist. So, you cannot take one phrase/action and assume the worst intent of anyone who has ever said/done that.

I’m not saying you have to assume good faith either. You don’t have to poly-anna their intentions. It’s best to avoid intentions altogether. But definitely don’t take their words or actions and find the worst possible intention behind them and then try to weasel a round about accusation about their intents by couching it in “It seems to me that you’re saying (evil)”, when all you’re really doing is saying “It is my personal opinion that you’re a racist”.

“It seems to me that you’re a racist” is just one level of indirection above what Jay Smooth’s admonition to avoid saying “you’re a racist”.

“Racists do this. You’re doing this. You must be a racist. Wait, Jay Smooth told me not to say that. It sounds to me like you’re saying you want to be a racist. Yeah, yeah, that’s the ticket.”

Uhm. No.

I would suggest not making any assumptions about intent at all. Don’t assume good faith. Don’t assume bad faith. Instead of “It seems to me that you’re saying (evil)”, what you might consider doing is saying something along the lines of this:

“Racists have used this phrase, or done this action, as a way to commit camouflaged racism. They want to continue to be racists, so they find indirect ways of doing and saying racist things. The thing you just said/did is one of those things they do/say as camoflaged racism. When you do/say this thing, whether you intend it to be racist or not, it will end up hurting some people because racists say/do that exact same thing to hurt people.”

This is a bit of a mouthful, but it’s a hell of a lot shorter than a flamewar.

Another way some people try to defend assuming bad faith is by asserting “The meaning of your communication is the response you get.” Or some variation thereof. How it gets applied in a totally derailed flamewar is this: “Your communication hurt me, you must have meant to hurt me.”

But that’s taking things all the way back to intent again. And focusing the conversation on intent is the quagmire that Jay Smooth warns about. “You *are* a racist.” “You *meant* to hurt me.” These are comments about the person’s soul. And they’ll derail it in a heartbeat.

The part that is true about that whole “the meaning of your communication is the response you get” concept is how you felt about the communication.

And for pete’s sake, don’t start saying “It *feels* like you’re saying (evil)”. Speaking truthfully about your feelings would mean saying something like “that hurt” or “that makes me sad” and so on. Talking about feelings doesn’t mean “I felt like you meant to hurt me” is now an acceptable way to indirectly make accusations of intent. No. You know the truth about *your* feelings, you know your soul, you know your heart. Report it. But keep the report to your heart, your soul, your feelings. Don’t say “now that we’re talking about feelings, let me say what I feel your intentions were.”

If you’re in a conversation and someone says/does something that lands as racists or sexists or whatever, it’s going to hurt. And if you want to hold the person accountable for what they said or did, then let them know the effects of their words and actions. Their intent becomes irrelevant.

“That hurt. Racists use those words/actions to hurt people. Regardless of what your intentions were, when you use those words/actions, you will end up hurting people who have had to deal with racism.”

Give it a try.

“Going John Galt” has become a meme that means threatening to leave if you don’t get exactly your way.

And then I was thinking about the God that Objectivists worship: The Invisible Hand of capitalism.

Objectivists will argue that if you have a completely unregulated market, then the Invisible Hand will step in and nudge the individual actors towards the best possible solution, the most efficient solution for everyone involved.

But what struck me was that the Invisible Hand has the exact same personality as John Galt. If you have even the slightest amount of regulations on the market, the Invisible Hand takes its ball and goes home.

Many would say that the reason behind the recent economic crash was because regulations had been relaxed and investors and companies started taking gambles that they really couldn’t afford, but were too short-sighted and greedy to turn down. And when the market started to crash, everyone realized they were in over their heads. And the solution to prevent this from happening again, therefore, is to reinstate market regulation.

But that’s not how the Objectivists see it. That’s not how they see the hand of their God operating in this world. Objectivists wil tell you that the reason the market crashed was because even though we had removed a bunch of regulations there were still *some* regulations left. And they will then explain to you that those regulations interfered with the natural process of the market’s self-correction capabilities.

And what I realized is that they are basically saying that their god, the Invisible Hand, saw that there were some regulations on its market, didn’t like that, and decided to take its ball and go home. And then the market crashed because there was no Invisible Hand, and boy, won’t we all be sorry we had worshipped at the false idol that is market regulation.

The Invisible Hand went John Galt and that’s what caused the market crash.

And then I realized that it made perfect sense for Objectivists to create their God in their own image.

Footage from an Apache gun camera as the crew kills a dozen civilians standing in the streets of Iraq, including two Reuters photographers. The US military claimed the civilians died in a battle between US forces and insurgents.

“Coalition forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force.” –LtCol Scott Bleichwehl

Reuters demanded an investigation into the killings. The military concluded that the crew had acted in accordance with the rules of engagement. August 2007, Reuters used the Freedom of Information Act to request a copy of the video evidence taken from the Apache. The military would not release the video.

The video has shown up on wikileaks.net

The Apache first attacks the photographers and several civilians, killing most of them, leaving one photographer wounded. A civilian van stops and two civilians get out and carry the photographer to the van. Then the Apache crew destroys the van. US ground forces show up on the scene and find two children inside the van who are wounded but still alive. The military decides to send the wounded children to an Iraqi hospital rather than providing care at a US military hospital.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/04/201045123449200569.html

This is the reality of war. Innocent civilians get killed by the “good” guys.

This is the sort of thing that can be expected during a real war. It doesn’t mean every man and woman in uniform is a bloodthirsty murderer.

What it means is that war is evil, even when fought by the good guys. And for good people to do something evil, it must be because those good people looked at the option of NOT doing something and found it was even MORE EVIL.

War isn’t good, it is the lesser of two evils.

And in the case of Iraq, the test fails. The evil caused by invading far outweighs the evil that would have been to NOT invade. There were no WMD’s, there were no connections between Al Queda and Iraq, there were no major evils that would have occurred if America had NOT invaded Iraq. But this video shows the very real evils that are occurring because we DID invade. Innocent people are being killed by American soldiers.

Even if the American soldiers who pulled the trigger or dropped the bomb is doing so because of a misunderstanding, through no wrong-doing of their own, even if they followed all the rules of engagement correctly, an evil has still been done in the world. Innocent people were killed by Americans. Road to hell, good intentions, and all that.

What the hawks want to do is focus on the fact that the soldiers did no wrong, and they want to portray everyone who is talking about this and pointing to this as if they hate the troops. I’m not saying that these US troops are evil, I’m saying an evil was committed because innocent civilians were killed. And that evil isn’t the lesser of two evils. The evil of NOT invading would have been the better choice, the choice that “good” people would have taken had they approached war with the assumption that evils like this one would happen.

And for all the talk about whether this is an “abberation” or not, it isn’t. This is a normal part of war. The hawks will twist that into calling US troops bloodthirsty killers, but that’s not the case. This is not abberation, it is an expected part of war.

Expecting to go to war without your troops getting involved in the death of civilians or friendly fire incidents is like expecting to go to the Indy 500 and not see a single car crash.

This is the War Handwavium score for the PS3 video game “Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 2″ (Mw2), specifically the online multiplayer game.

Approximate score: 1 million points

MW2 has two different modes, single player and multiplayer.

In single player, the player plays against AI’s run by the computer and the player progresses through different challenges with a thin backdrop of a “storyline”. The story is pretty thin, and pretty outrageous, and by itself would score pretty high on the War Handwavium scale. For example, in one chapter in the game, Russians have invaded the US in a sneak attack and the player must fight them in the streets of an American suburb. That chapter is titled “Wolverines” in reference to the movie “Red Dawn”. And both the game and the movie are pretty outrageous.

In multiplayer mode, the player must connect their game system to the internet and play against other human beings. There isn’t any “story” backdrop between games like there is single player mode. There are a bunch of different maps upon which the multiplayer games take place. And in multiplayer, you get to choose your character “class”, choosing what weapons you want to carry, what “perks” you want, and so on, compared to the single-player game where you’re cast into a fixed character depending on where you are in the game.

Although the multiplayer games don’t have an overlying story between games like single-player, the multiplayer games do have different mission goals depending on which game you decide to play. In “Team Deathmatch”, you and your team must kill the other players as often as possible. I say “as often as possible” because once you kill an opponent, the computer recycles that player to a new location and enters the game again. To win the game, your team must kill the other team players more than the other team kills your team players. Other games include “Domination” which is a capture the flag game. Your team wins the game by maintaining ownership of three flags on the map. The only way to gain control of a flag, though, is to sit on it for ten seconds, which means the opposing team will try to kill you while you’re a sitting duck on the flag, which means, in the end, even “Domination” ends up having as its ultimate goal to kill as many opponents as possible.

There is no storyline in multiplayer to interconnect the individual games. Instead, the player gets to “level up” as they accumulate more experience points. The higher up in levels you are, the more weapons and perks that are available to you as a player. There are 70 levels in MW2. And once you reach 70, you can enter “prestige mode” and reset back to level 1. Entering prestige mode means you lose all your level weapons and perks and start at level 1 again. But you get to keep any “accolades” and titles and medals you received. The only functional advantage of Prestige mode is that you get to create an extra character class for every 2 levels of prestige that you complete. There are a total of 10 prestige levels in MW2.

I originally planned on scoring MW2 multiplayer by going all the way to prestige level 10, but I realized that it was taking far too long to get there and by the time I hit prestige 5, the game had grown stale for me and I believe all the war handwavium relating to the game had become apparent to me (more on this later). So, I got to level 70, prestige 5 (halfway through the game) and decided that was a good point to approximate what it would take to get to level 70, prestige 10.

First the numbers. At the point I reached level 70, prestige 5, I had the following statistics:

experience points 2.5 million
rank: commander
Number of players I killed: 30,000
longest kill streak: 24
times I died: 33,000
time played: 14 days

Luckily the game counted all the stats for me. And time played of 14 days was actual playing time at the controls, not how long I had the game installed on my PS3. So, 14 days means I was playing the game for 20,000 minutes.

The things I do for my readers.

So, the first question is, how do I calculate the war handwavium score from these statistics?

Paper targets: I killed 30,000 opponents, which translates into a score of +90,000. And the times I died? The interesting thing about MW2 is that while almost all your rewards are based off of killing opponents, there are almost no negative consequences for dying. When you die, just hit a button and you start playing in the same game with full ammo and full health. The only thing is the location where you’ll start is random. But even that isn’t entirely true because at a certain level, you can start using something called “Tactical insertion” which allows you to light a flare and place it where you want to respawn if you die.

When you create a character class, you start off with a small selection of weapons. An M4 assault rifle, for example. The rifle has a bunch of possible attachements, such as a grenade launcher, thermal scope, etc. But you can’t get any of those attachments at first. The only way to get a grenade launcher attachment for your M4 is to use the M4 in a game and kill 10 opponents with the weapon. The only way to get an ACOG sight for your M4 is to use the M4 in a game and kill 150 opponents.

The attachments you win are specific to the weapon you win them for. Once you have a thermal sight for your M4, you can’t mount the thermal sight on any other weapon. It only mounts on your M4. If you want a thermal sight on another weapon, say, an M16, then you have to use the M16 and kill 170 opponents with the M16.

But the important point is this: Killing opponents directly correlates to player rewards. Dying has almost no disadvantages.

White hat deaths: Dying in MW2 multiplayer has almost no disadvantages.

Dying takes no advantages away from the player. You get experience points for killing opponents. You don’t lose any experience points when you die. You get weapon attachments when you kill opponents. You don’t lose any of those attachments because you died too many times.

This actually affects game play in fundamental ways.

Since there is almost no cost to dying, players often charge around out in the open, spraying and praying, hoping to rack up some kills to unlock weapons and get experience points, and these people suffer no consequences when their characters die.

Put real people in the same situation where real guns are involved and getting shot means you’re dead and not respawning somewhere, and those real people will act much more differently. They’ll keep their head down. They’ll stay behind cover. They’ll try to remain concealed. They won’t go charging out into the open when they don’t know where the opponents are.

There is a concept of “killstreak” in MW2 multiplayer. If you can kill a certain number of opponents without dying, then you can call in various killstreak rewards. This includes stuff like airstrikes and attack helicopters, among others. So, dying means you don’t get a killstreak reward, but the only way to get a killstreak reward is to kill without dying, so again, it rewards and reinforces the notion of war without cost. Kill 25 people without dying and you get to call in a tactical nuke that kills everyone and you and your team *win* the game.

Because there is no significant cost to dying in MW2, there is no reason that player deaths should count as negative points against the War Handwavium score.

Also, I feel I should note that I played MW2 with a goal of getting through the levels as quickly as possible. Therefore, I usually tried to gain experience points not just by killing opposing players but by getting experience points by unlocking weapon attachments and perks and other features. I seldom played MW2 with a weapon that had all the weapon attachments unlocked. Once I unlocked all of a weapons attachments, I’d start using another weapon. Sometimes this meant I’d stop using a “good” weapon and start using a not-so-good weapon. But the goal was experience points and gaining levels.

Someone playing the game simply for play might stick with the same weapon even after all the attachments were unlocked, at which point, they’d have to kill more opposing players to gain the same number of levels. Which is a long winded way of saying that my kill count of 90k is probably a minimum count. If you played without focusing on achieving levels, by the time you reached Prestige 5, you might have a lot more kills than I did.

There are some other parts to MW2 that affect its score:

No Friendly Fire: Most games in MW2 multiplayer do not have friendly fire. There are a couple, called “Hardcore”, which do have friendly fire, but players are not compelled to play hardcore for any reason. All levels and weapons and equipment, basically all player *rewards*, can be achieved without playing hardcore. You can get medals and titles and badges by playing hardcore, but those don’t directly affect game play in any functional way.

Because players never have to deal with friendly fire, I’m adjusting the War Handwavium score with a multiplier of 1.5

No Civilians: There are 16 maps in the MW2 game (4 additional maps are available in a “pack” that players can purchase for extra money). Out of the 16 maps, 14 of them take place in setting one would normally expect civilians. (the two maps that would not expect civilians are “Wasteland” (an area that features trenches and bunkers) and “Sub Base” (a submarine base). A number of maps are placed in urban or suburban areas (Favela, Highrise, Invasion, Karachi, Rundown, Skidrow, Terminal, Underpass). A couple take place at industrial sites that would normally have civilian workers (Derail, Quarry, Rust, Scrapyard).

Yet for all these urban, suburban, and industrial locations, there are zero civilians in the multiplayer game.

In the single-player game there are a couple of challenges which involve shooting bad guys while there are civilians running around in the same area. But there are no civilians AI’s in multiplayer.

As a player, if you get enough kills without dying you can call in a B2 airstrike that can pretty much wipe out every opponent on the map. But most of the maps you’re bombing are civilian areas. And there are no civilian AI’s in these areas. So, you don’t have to worry about your bombs hitting civilians. This is a major concern for real military operations. It is nonexistent for MW2 multplayer.

Because there are no civilian AI’s in MW2, but 14 of 16 maps are civilian maps, I’m adjusting the War Handwavium score by a multiplier of 1.5.

Wolverine Level Healing Powers: If you get injured in MW2 but don’t die, you will automatically start healing yourself. I’m not sure about the exact time frame, but I think if you were down to one-percent health, I would guess that you could be fully healed again in maybe 30 seconds or less. No medics, no first aid, no bandages, no surgery, no nothing. You just magically heal.

I’m sure it was done for game-play, to make the game more fun, to allow people to keep playing. But it reinforces the idea of War Handwavium myth of war: That war isn’t dangerous.

For Wolverine healing powers, I’m adjusting the War Handwavium score by 1.25.

Nerf weapons: Once you play MW2 long enough, and once you start playing with all the different weapons available, you start noticing that all the weapons in MW2 basically do the same approximate amount of damage. Almost all weapons require at least two shots to kill a player. Even a Barett fifty caliber sniper rifle, which in real life is used by the Coast Guard to stop boat, and can take out an engine block with a single shot, can penetrate most brick and cinder block walls and still kill a person behind it, in MW2, you’ve got to shoot someone twice with a basic Barett .50 to kill them. True, you can get one shot kills in MW2 if you use “stopping power” or if you get a headshot, but a 50 cal round to the torso would kill any human being, and a 50 cal round to an appendage would amputate the appendage.

Another example of nerf weapons is MW2 version of claymore mines. Real claymore mines have an effective range of 50 meters. (meaning they can be expected to kill any human within 50 meters of the mine) In the MW2 game, claymores are a joke. They have an effective range that I would estimate to be something like 2 yards. Any further away and you live.

I can understand why the makers of MW2 did this: It makes the game easier to play. People can run around and get shot and keep playing, rather than have to die and deal with all the sucky negative consequences of dying.

And MW2 multiplayer does have more realistic weapon effects when you play “Hardcore” modes, but you can get all the level advancements you want without playing hardcore.

For nerf weapons, I’m adjusting the war handwavium score by 1.25.

Absurd Marksmanship: MW2 multiplayer has some absurd marksmanship models. weapons in MW2 do have different accuracy models based of of their mechanical abilities. For example, the AK47 is less accurate than the M16. The effect player actions has on marksmanship makes me wonder if the people who designed the game ever fired a real weapon in their lives.

In the center of the screen is a crosshair suspended in midair. The size of the crosshair reflects the general level of accuracy you have at that particular moment. If you are walking fast, the crosshairs are big, because the bullets can go all over the place if you try shooting while running. If you are walking slow, the crosshairs will be smaller. And if you are standing still, the crosshairs will be even smaller, and their size will be controlled by the mechanical accuracy of the weapon. My issue is that the size of the crosshairs appears to be no different whether you’re standing still, kneeling, or shooting prone. Military marksmenship tests generally different shooting positions for different target ranges: standing at 200 yards, kneeling or sitting at 300 yards, prone at 500 yards. In MWw, the size of the crosshair is a function of the weapon and how fast you’re moving. There doesn’t appear to be any significant change in accuracy between standing, kneeling, or prone. And there doesn’t appear to be any concept of shooting from a position where your weapon is resting on something stationary, like, for example, a window sill.

By itself this wouldn’t seem to be a big deal, but it has an effect on game play if you look for it: players often run around the map, looking for opponents, and when they see an opponent, they stop dead in their tracks, the size of their crosshair drops, they shoot, they kill, and then they start running again. In real life, someone prone has a major accuracy advantage over someone shooting while standing. Which means that you have an accuracy advantage for standing still. But a lot of scenes in MW2 play out with everyone running around full speed, stopping when they see somene, shooting them, and then sprinting back to full speed again.

As part of “absurd marksmenship” there is also the issue that transitioning from standing to kneeling to prone to kneeling to standing doesn’t make your crosshairs go away. You can shoot anytime as you transition. As you transition from standing to kneeling, the size of your crosshairs should jump, once you’re kneeling, they should be smaller than they were when standing. As you transition from kneeling to prone, the crosshairs should disappear completely for a moment. You cannot shoot with any accuracy while you’re moving your body to lie down on your belly. Once on your belly, the crosshairs should be extremely small because you’ve got a lot of accuracy when prone. But body transitions, changing from one shooting position to another, should decrease accuracy during transition or make shooting impossible altogether.

I’m not sure if MW2 has absurd marksmanship models on purpose, if it makes the game more playable, or if it’s just a result of the fact that maybe the designers never fired a real weapon before in their lives.

Either way, because of the Absurd Marksmanship models in MW2, I’m adjusting the War Handwavium score by 1.25.

Absurd Hand to Hand combat:

In MW2, hand to hand combat is always a single knife attack kills the target. Always. The only way an attack doesn’t kill is if you miss the target. If you hit, they die. And in MW2, players often sprint around the field, looking for bad guys, and it can take time to stop sprinting, shoulder a weapon, aim, and fire. So, instead, what happens is the player sprints around the field, and if they encounter a bad guy at close range, they knife them and kill them in a single attack.

Compare this to the bloody reality that would be close combat using fixed bayonets, and MW becomes laughable.

Absurd hand-to-hand combat is another 1.25 multiplier.

No prisoners: The game doesn’t even support the notion of prisoners of war. You have to kill the opponents to make any progress.

Mulitpler 1.25

Paper targets: 30,000 kills => 90,000 points
White hat deaths: no negative effects, therefore no points
no friendly fire: x1.5
no civilians: x1.5
wolverine healing powers: x1.25
nerf weapons: x1.25
absurd marksmanship models: x1.25
absurd hand to hand: 1.25

That results in 90k points and a multiplier of 5.5* for a grand total of 494,384 points. Or, roughly, 500k points.

And this is for playing halfway through the prestige levels, only prestige 5 out of 10. So, estimating that the number of kills will be double that, the the final war handwavium score for playing Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 2, in Multiplayer mode, from beginning to prestige 10, is roughly one million points.

Final War Handwavium Score for Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 2, multiplayer mode: One Million points.

If the makers of Call of Duty, Modern Warfare were interested in lowering their score and making the game more realistic, here are a few comments:

The majority of the score comes from the high kill count. This could be compensated against if dying actually had some negative consequences, then I could justify counting the number of times I died against the score. But since dying has no negative consequences in the game, I’m not counting it.

Make friendly fire required for all games.

Add civilians, make killing a civilian cost experience points. Make B2 bombing runs have to worry about civilian casualties.

Get rid of the Wolverine-style healing powers. Make getting wounded an issue that has to be dealt with. Maybe have AI medics or have another player get experience points for giving first aid.

Get rid of the nerf weapons. If you don’t want the game to get lopsided because a Barett 50 in the game would grossly tilt the game in favore of whoever has a Barett 50, then remove the Barett 50 from the choice of weapons.

Make the marksmanship models more realistic. The run-and-gun playing style just reinforces the unrealistic view of war.

Absurd hand-to-hand. I don’t even know what to tell you. Drop it.

Add support for capturing prisoners. Hand to hand should not be instant kill, but a button could attempt instant prisoner. Opposing player cannot choose to not surrender. Something. But make it a player option to choose to do hand-to-hand (and not be instant death) or choose to take prisoner (and be instant prisoner).

Maybe if you try to take a prisoner and the person is wounded, then they must surrender. This might work if you didn’t have wolverine healing powers. If being wounded was a real issue then when confronted with hand to hand while wounded, you’d be more likely to surrender.

http://www.warhw.com/warhw-in-fiction/

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/012293.html#012293

Bruce discusses “guilt and responsibility”.

> One of the hardest lessons for me as an adult has been how
> little foundation there is for any of the versions of basic
> goodness that prevail in my stratum of American society
> (white, educated, home to many managers and many entrepreneurs
> and freelancers – in a word, bourgeois). All of the political
> ideologies common in this set of communities – liberal,
> conservative, libertarian, etc. – share the idea that there
> is a core of the community which, rightly understood, has
> nothing fundamentally wrong with it, and that social justice
> begins with building on that pure foundation.

Shorter: All ideologies in these bourgeois communities share the idea that there is a core of the community which is pure.

Response: All ideologies? Bruce and I must be hanging out in different bourgeois communities, cause I don’t believe my ideology starts from “we’re perfect and lets build from there”.

> But you know what? It’s not true. There isn’t any scrap of
> basically pure legacy anywhere in American society. There
> are some really good ideas, haphazardly implemented, but
> every single section of American life and practice builds
> on a foundation that includes theft, murder, pillage,
> systematic discrimination, unchecked and officially endorsed
> abuse, and other evils, right up to genocide. There’s no
> innocent heritage to recover, scrape off, and use as a
> starting point.

Shorter: There’s no innocent heritage to recover, scrape off, and use as a starting point.

Response: Yeah, that’s pretty much what I was thinking by the time I got to high school. The world is messed up.

> Anything that could be called fundamentally
> good and untainted begins ex nihilo, in explicit
> contradiction to what has come before.

The meta issue here is really about how we are defining “good”. If “good” basically means a “perfect world” where everyone is living in perfect peace and harmony and everyone has choice and everyone has food and shelter and some spare money, then we’re talking about a systemic definition of good.

But that means that an individual cannot be “good” unless the entire world is “good”, and perfectly good at that.

> Take the case of someone I know not just disapproved of
> genocide but joined in war against its practitioners: my
> dad. Dad never backed a Jim Crow law in his life, nor thought
> the Native Americans savages fit only for conversion or death,
> and raised us to believe that equal consideration for equal
> merit was crucial, and also so basically smart that anyone
> opposing it had to be making themselves that bit stupid.
> But I have the life I do now partly because, well-anchored
> studies show, guys like Dad have always gotten better terms
> on deals of all kinds than equally talented guys who aren’t
> white – better mortgages, better job offers, better promotion
> rates, and so on. So a hard-working talented black or Indian
> guy my own age and general situation has an uphill struggle
> all his life that I do not, not because I am an evil-doer
> but because this is shot through the fabric of life.

Putting my definitional question another way: Is Bruce’s dad a “good” man?

Is Bruce’s dad a “good” man because of what he did? Or is he only as “good” as the world he lives in, and the world isn’t good, so Bruce’s dad isn’t good?

I ask this because Bruce starts out citing his father’s actions as an individual, such as the fact that he fought against genocide, but Bruce ends with a list of issues of inequality that are inherent in the system.

Is Bruce’s father a “good” man in a “not good” system? Or is Bruce’s father tainted by the original sins of the systemic bias and can he only find salvation as an individual when the system as a whole is perfect?

This is not simply a linguistic exercise. Systemic racial bias is often turned into accusations of individual white privilege. The sins of the system taint all individuals. Or, at least, that’s how certain people want to preach it.

> We’re not morally responsible for life in an ecosystem with
> the legacy of extinction and survival we have,

Some indirect attempt to distinguish between systemic problems and individual morality there.

> but it matters that we live because others perished or survived
> not just because of merit, but because of luck.

Matters how? Does an imperfect system taint the individual morally? Is the individual obliged by the system to some particular action? Or are we talking about individuals having an awareness that the system is imperfect? Given that Bruce starts out saying that all bourgeois ideologies think their communities are perfect clean slates, it may be simply that Bruce is calling for an awareness that the system is imperfect, without also trying to condemn the individual.

But the lack of distinction between systemic issues and individual morality is… maddeningly familiar.

> The difference in human history, of course, is that human beings
> do have agency, and even when we’re not conspirators in great
> crimes ourselves, it’s really important to recognize that we
> do not inherit innocence or a clean slate,

Again, a lack of distinction between individual and systemic. I cannot tell if Bruce is saying that it’s important to recognize that our system, our communities, and most importantly, our *history* is built on the blood of innocents, or if he’s saying that *we* as individuals, do not inherit innocence.

So, the meta question about “guilt and responsibility” is how do we define “good”? Is it systemic and the system goodness defines the individual goodness?

I have a theory of individual morality, and it has as one cornerstone the notion that a new born baby, as an individual, is innocent. And the loss of innocence of the individual is achieved through the actions and inactions of the individual.

Those who conflate systemic problems with individual innocence/guilt can often take the existence of a systemic problem and turn it into individual guilt-by-association on the grounds that the indivual has not done enough to make the systemic issue go away.

But taken to its natural end, this means that no individual is ever innocent until the entire world is perfect. Essentially, every individual is tainted by the original sin of the system. There is no innocent individuals until the entire world is perfect.

And I have a problem with that definition of morality.

I have a problem when it’s wrapped up in the notion of “original sin” in some religious dogma, and I have the same problem when it’s wrapped up in the original sin of “white privilege”. I do not need salvation by some perfect saviour to absolve the “sin” of being born. And I do not need salvation of some perfect world to absolve me of the “sin” of white privilege.

Take original sin and white privilege and all the other systemic issues that some would try to lay on me as an individual (and using as a bat to try and get me to adopt whatever form of individual redemption they’re selling), and go stick it in a sunless place.

To punish or condemn or convict an individual for the actions of others is collective punishment, and I’ll have no part of it.

I’m not saying that Bruce is saying this. But unfortunately, I can’t tell for certain that he is NOT saying it either, or at least that he might be allowing for this individual-condemned-by-the-systemic.

Back to Bruce’s comment:

> to see what’s actually on the slate as we get it,

Is the “slate” an individual slate or a systemic slate?

> and act so as to pass it on better than we got it.

Slight red flag here. Let’s back up and include the previous bit of the sentence:

> it’s really important to recognize that we
> do not inherit innocence or a clean slate
> and act so as to pass it on better than we got it.

What, exactly, does Bruce mean by “important”?

Important as in “morally obligated”? Or important as in “it is important to see the facts for what they are”?

I don’t have a problem telling someone that they’re delusional if they think they’re living in a perfect world. But the above statement begins to lend itself to certain people to become a guilt-bat, punishing the individuals for the sins of the system as a whole. The world is broken and you are morally obligated to fix it.

> This is sometimes described as wallowing in guilt, but I don’t
> think it is any more than facing up to any other body of ignorance,
> whether it’s the grammar of any language other than our first, or
> the structure of a logical proof, or the composition of the spaces
> between stars…or how much our lives turn out to be based on
> genocide’s rewards.

This last part sounds like Bruce is talking about having an awareness of the systemic issues. Given that he starts out by saying that his experience of bourgeois ideologies is that they all seem to think they’re based on a perfect world or perfect history or perfect system, then it would be an improvement if those individuals stopped deluding themselves and start seeing that they are part of an imperfect world.

Based on this last paragraph, it seems that Bruce is generally *not* trying to turn systemic issues into individual condemnation.

But it is apparent to me that Bruce and I have quite different experiences of the world. I don’t have the experience of thinking of the world as a “clean slate”. I see it as massively flawed throughout its bloody, oppressive, history up to and including this moment right now. My government, the US government, is torturing people as you read this right now. My government has invaded nations based on lies and caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians. My government has supported ruthless dicatators. And my government is actively trying to cover up all of these activities. And all of this with the last few years. How can I possibly think I’m living in a “clean slate”?

But at the same time, I do not condemn myself because of the actions of others. I do not condemn myself because of the actions my government took against my will, against my votes, against my wishes, and against my dissent. I feel horribly about it sometimes, or as Bruce put it, I might “wallow in guilt” because of it.

But that’s my choice. That’s my own relationship to my part as an individual within the larger systemic issue. And I get to choose how I, the individual, relate to the system. And you get to choose how you relate yourself to the system.

The problem is when someone else (I’m pretty sure Bruce is not in this group, but I have encoutered real people who’ve done this) someone comes along and *they* try to tell *me* how *I* should relate to the system. They start hitting me with the guilt-bat. They start talking about how I’m stained by original sin. They start telling me that I’m “guilty” of white privilege.

They start telling me that I’ve lost my innocence because the system isn’t perfect. And they are basically telling me that *I* cannot recover my innocence until the *I* meet *their* standards.

No thanks.

This isn’t to say that I’m an Ebeneezer Scrooge. I’m not advocating prisons for the poor and unemployed. I’m not advocating death panels for the sick and elderly. I’m not advocating sociopathy.

But when Luther nailed his thesis to the door of that church, he was saying something salient to the issue of individual redemption: That individuals were meant to have a personal relationship to God, that individuals did NOT have to go through another human, for example the pope, to find salvation.

On an individual level, I have my own personal relationship to my salvation. The world isn’t perfect and I want to do my part to make it better, to save myself and save the world. But what I do is my own damn business. And I don’t appreciate people coming around and condemning me because I don’t meet *their* minimimum requirements to enter *their* version of heaven.

That’s on an individual level.

On a systemic level, I fully support the idea of using systemic solutions, like government intervention, to fix systemic problems, like racism.

But on a personal level, if you (the proverbial “you”) start coming around with some guilt bat preaching about how I’m “tainted” with whatever version of “original sin” you’re pushing, then prepare for an angry response.

On a systemic level, if you want to tell me about the facts of the system, how it is flawed, how it doesn’t work, how it isn’t a “clean slate”, if you want to talk about *facts* then by all means I would like to hear the facts if I’m misinformed.

But on a personal level, if you want to tell me how I’m tainted just because I’m white or male or whatever, then you and I have a problem. If you want to condemn me because you don’t think I’ve done *enough* to meet your standards, then you and I have a problem.

On a systemic level, if you want to discuss systemic solutions, government regulations, government programs, and private organizations that fight systemic inequities, then lets talk.

But if you insist on bringing along the individual taint of original sin because the system as a whole isn’t perfect, then we’re going to disagree at some point.

If you want to talk about how we could do more to make the world a better place, I’m listening. If you want to tell me that I haven’t done enough, then you’re going to occur like the annoying folks who knock on my door and want to preach to me about their God.

The world is what the world is, and I’m all for having people shine a light on the dark parts of the world. I’m all for discussing systemic solutions to systemic problem. But if you insist on getting in between me and my relationship to my personal salvation, then I’m nailing this proclamation to the proverbial door for you to read. You don’t get to decide whether I am saved or condemned. You don’t get to decide whether I’m guilty of sin or innocent as a lamb. You don’t get to decide whether I’m sinner or saint. You don’t get to decide whether I’ve “done enough” to get into heaven.

That’s between me and God. And who the hell are you to get between me and God?

So, is Bruce’s dad a good man? A good individual?

I think this really is a trick question. The only one who can answer that question about Bruce’s dad as an individual, is Bruce’s dad and Bruce’s god.

That doesn’t mean that we can’t have a system of government in place that decides murder is “bad” and puts murderers in jail. But that’s a systemic solution to deal with problematic individuals. And it comes with (hopefully) some kind of due process, checks and balances, and other systemic features to try and minimize the abuse that such power could give a person. And this is exactly the kind of unchecked power that an individual wants to weild when they start throwing around accusations against individuals as being “good” or “bad”.

Is Bruce’s dad a good man? Only Bruce’s dad can answer that.

A lot of people were upset at this ruling. Glen Greenwald, someone I quote supportively quite a bit on warhw.com, managed to miss the forest for the trees on this one and has thrown down the gauntlet to those who are upset:

“Either the First Amendment allows these speech restrictions or it doesn’t. In general, a law that violates the Constitution can’t be upheld because the law produces good outcomes”

And just slightly later, this:

“those who want to object to the Court’s ruling need to do so on First Amendment grounds.”

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/01/22/citizens_united/index.html

Glen, for all the times I’ve quoted you and linked to your articles because of how right you are about something, never, and I mean never, have you been so wrong as you are now.

There is in your demand above an implicit premise: The notion that corporations have the right to free speech in the first place. If corporations have the right to free speech, then yes, any campaign finance law must respect that right.

But people opposing the Court’s ruling aren’t opposing it because they think the government should be able to restrict the freedom of speech, they oppose the ruling because they don’t think corporations have a right to free speech in the first place.

If corporations don’t have the right to free speech, then campaign finanace laws can restrict how corporations move their money around when it comes to political campaigns.

So, to challenge Glenn’s implicit premise, let’s take a look at all the constitutional rights and legal rights besides the right to free speech and see how many corporations have those rights.

How about the right to keep and bear arms? Should AIG be allowed to stockpile weapons so that it may become part of a well regulated militia? The idea is absurd.

The fifteenth amendment says the right to vote cannot be infringed because of color. The ninteenth amendment says the right to vote cannot be infringed because of gender. The twenty-fourth amendment says the right to vote shall not be denied by a poll tax. The twenty-six amendment says the right to vote shall not be abridged by age. So, given that voting is a right, protected by four amendments in the Constitution, should AIG be allowed to vote in an election?

This is the absurdity of granting corporations personhood: rights meant to protect humans codified in the Constitution are twisted until they become rights of corporations.

Human rights are not corporate rights.

People vote, corporations don’t.

But Glenn demands that if we disagree with the Supreme Court decision of Citizens United v. FEC must disagree “on First Amendment grounds”. Glenn forbids us to disagree with the whole idea of “corporate rights” and corporate “personhood”. He has ruled them off limits.

And, yes, if one accepts the premise that corporations are persons, and if one accepts the premise that persons have rights like free speech, then one would have to conclude that the Supreme Court made the right decision.

But the premise is flawed and the conclusion is wrong.

While I’m talking about what is and is not allowed by the Constitution, I’d like to bring up one of my favorite clauses:

Congress shall have the power to regulate Commerce.

And by regulate, I don’t mean simply that Congress can bail out banks and corporations that are too big to fail. I mean that Congress has the Power (and the responsibility and duty) to regulate the abuse of power that comes from money and monopolies.

I’m not talking about corporate welfare, golden parachutes, outrageous executive bonuses, and free money for corporations. I’m talking about Teddy Roosevelt-style trust busting, monopoly shattering, minimum wage demanding, worker safety imposing, and product safety requiring kinds of regulation.

Congress shall have the power to regulate commerce.

The thing about corporations and free speech and campaign finance is that no one is saying that the CEO of AIG can’t donate money to Bush’s campaign. What they’re saying is that AIG itself, the corporate entity that gets to hide behind the corporate veil because the law deigns it to be so that it will encourage investing and commerce, that corporation has no right mucking about in politics.

None.

The CEO of Walmart has a right to vote for whoever he wants to vote for when he walks into the voting booth. But Walmart Incorporated, the artificial entity that is headquartered in Arkansas, has NO RIGHT TO VOTE.

NONE.

Now, if Walmart Corporation sued for the right to vote and the Supreme Court, in its infinite wisdom, said that Walmart had the right to vote in political elections, and if people were upset about that decision, but Glenn Greenwald said that people must object to the ruling on 15th, 19th, 24th, and 25th ammendment grounds, well, hopefully, the absurdity of the demand would be obvious.

Corporations do not have the right to vote in political elections. Corporations do not have the right to free speech.

Humans have the right to vote and the right to free speech and all the other human rights codified in the Constitution. And I understand that people sometimes use corporations as a channel for their speech, so there is some issues with the concept of regulating corporate speech as it may regulate individual speech.

But when it comes to campaign contributions, donating money to a political campaign, that should be as obviously wrong as shouting “fire” in a movie theater and saying it is free speech.

Free Speech doesn’t give you the right to shout “fire” in a crowded theater. And the right to vote doesn’t extend to corporations. The right to contribute to political campaigns is a human right, not a corporate right.

People vote. Corporations don’t.

Not that I agree with everything Bill Maher says, or even that I agree that the all inclusive “we” is really accurate, I have to say there is some cutting-to-the-truth in this line. We love the troops the way Michael Vick loves dogs.

There is definitely a group of Americans who view war as a form of entertainment, just like there are folks who like to watch dogs kill each other. A certain kind of war, to be honest, but war. During the first Gulf War, the US news loved to show footage from cameras in laser-guided bombs fall on bridges or go through windows in buildings or hit a tank. The things were practically on infinite loops. It’s exactly the kind of war America loves. During the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the Pentagon put restrictions on the media showing images of dead american soldiers. That’s the kind of war America wants to pretend doesn’t exist.

We prefer to watch the cartoonish antics of “The A-Team” and avoiding the senseless butchery that is shown in “Apocalypse Now”.

In America, war is sport. Not everyone watches it or enjoys it, just like not everyone watches Nascar, or football, or luge, or whatever. Just like not everyone watches dog fighting. But war in America is a sport.