Jack Bauer and Our Torture Problem

In Day of Reckoning, Peter Finn discusses the Fox show 24 and particularly its portrayal of torture. Jane Mayer's piece in the New Yorker Whatever It Takes is a deep look at 24 that is a longer, but worthwhile read.

I like 24. I yell at the TV every time someone else acts like a "Stupid Kim." There are always a few Stupid Kims every year, so I get to yell once or twice each episode.

Another major device the producers use to keep things moving along is torture. Any time some good person needs information from a bad person, they use physical coercion to get answers. Punches are thrown. Guns are pushed into temples. Oxygen tubes are blocked. Torture is always tried and it almost always works.

This plot device is part of the problem with torture. I know that if you put a gun to my head and asked me for any information that would save my family or that would save my life without endangering my family, I would sing like a bird. I'm weak, so it's easy to imagine that everyone is weak. I would sing. Bad guys on 24 sing. It's clear: torture is effective. The only debate should be about when and how this last resort should be used.

There are two problems with this:

• First, the baddest of the bad guys are not weak. They are willing to kill and be killed (maybe at the same time) for their cause. The bad guys can deal with torture and their zealotry helps them endure whatever their enemies want to dish out. They can even lie to the torturers just to point them in a wasteful direction.
  
• Second, not everyone who is tortured has the information the torturer wants from them. This won't stop them from confessing just to end the torture, but doesn't make any information gleaned from such sessions helpful.

In 24, the bad guys are just about always weak and they always have the information. Torture and coercion work on 24 and that is part of our torture problem.

An Israeli Joins Me in Pessimism

Tom Segev's article Peace Is no Longer in Sight is a short piece that is in sync with my own pessimism. I'm not sure when it was that I lost hope for peace in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, but I no longer can see a way to long-term peace.

You give folks enough money and you can overcome economic differences. You give folks enough peace keepers and you can make them feel safer. There is no way around deeply-held religious views that are in direct conflict with each other.

Some Israelis imagine that they can bludgeon the Palestinians into being peaceful, but that is hard for me to imagine. Some Palestinians imagine that if they make the Israelis feel insecure, then the Israelis will give the Palestinians what they want. Both sides are wrong, but I don't have a better answer that can work for both sides.

Music Monday: My X-mas Music

For X-mas, I got lots of music. Here are some of the highlights:

Fleetwood Mac: Tusk (video: Tusk)
The album is good. The song is great. Check out Don't Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow) and Go Your Own Way from that same concert (mixtube playlist). Really nice, fresh versions of these classics.

Beastie Boys: Check Your Head (video: So What'cha Want)
It starts out with a sample from Cheap Trick Live at Budokan, so that's a great, great start. This album has a harder punk edge than most other BB albums, but it's an edge that works.

Nat Adderley: Work Song (video: Work Song)
Wes Montgomery plays guitar on this album and the two of them fit together well. "Sack O' Woe" is a tremendous song (but I couldn't find a YouTube link for their version of it).

Stevie Wonder: Songs In the Key of Life (video: Isn't She Lovely)
This album is absolutely legendary and for good reason. If you don't smile when you listen to "Sir Duke", "I Wish", or "Isn't She Lovely", then you have serious problems. Still, the album is far greater than just the sum of its hit songs.

Are Palistinians Hobbled but United?

One of my biggest problems with the U.S. "War on Terror" is that I feel it ultimately will make us less safe. As I recall, Bin Laden's biggest beef with us is that we support corrupt regimes in the Middle East. Attacking Iraq brought down a terrible, vicious ruler, but it also has helped al Qaida recruit more fanatics.

Now, Israel is bombing the heck out of the Palestinians. I understand that Hamas started this by firing missiles at Israel, but this response reminds me of a press conference I heard around the time of the first Iraq war in which John Shalikashvili said that if Iraq violated the no-fly zone, the U.S. military response would be swift, brutal, and disproportionate.

I understand the Israeli position as described in this article, but I also fear this quote from this article:

Wisdom tells us that violence can only breed violence. Israel's brutality guarantees that its people will not be secure. Israel may destroy much and kill many in Hamas, but that is not the solution. Hamas was born because of the occupation .... Israel and its allies should address Palestinian grievances instead of aggravating them....

Daoud Kuttab's Washington Post op-ed Has Israel Revived Hamas? gets at the heart of my concern. By bringing out the heavy artillery and hitting so many targets, Israel buys more security in the short-term, but what will be the long-term result? I fear that these hostilities will turn Palistinian doves into hawks and unite them behind Hamas.

For Israel's sake, I hope that Robert Lieber's ideas in Hard Truths About the Conflict work out:

Egypt and Jordan have made peace with Israel...because they concluded that the effort to destroy the Jewish state had failed and that refusing to come to terms with it was harmful to their national interests. Ultimately, peace will be possible only if most Palestinians and their leaders become convinced that terrorism and violence are a dead end and that they cannot under any circumstances prevail over Israel through the use of force. If today's conflict leaves a seriously weakened and politically damaged Hamas, that result is more likely to enhance the prospects for peace than to weaken them.

But I fear the attitude voiced by a senior Hamas leader who said:

The Zionists have legitimized the killing of their children by killing our children.

I can't help the feeling that both sides' intransigence will ultimately result in more violence and less security. I hope I'm wrong and that this somehow paves the path toward a peaceful two-state solution.

Scott Adams on Capitalism

Dilbert creator Scott Adams posted The End of Capitalism and then follow-ups: Call It Phase II of Capitalism and Investing in Individual Stocks. These are interesting thought experiments about restrictions that might be placed on us. Adams isn't suggesting these changes, but is predicting that some of them might come to pass.

One of the most interesting parts of his argument is the idea that the speed of the Internet and the complexity of connections have created a financial system that can't be regulated.

The economy is now too complicated for even the regulators to know when a con or a huge mistake is happening.

This is a sobering thought, but one I think is on target. Regulatory groups need to figure out a way to design themselves for change. They can't just set up a bunch of regulations and assume they will stay relevant and helpful.

A Look Inside AIG's "Beautiful Machine"

The Post did a three-part article about the rise and fall of AIG's Financial Products group. These are the guys who brought down AIG and with it a lot of our interconnected financial system.

Part 1: The Beautiful Machine
Part 2: A Crack in the System
Part 3: Downgrades and Downfall

This series reminds me of all the stories, movies, and books about Enron after its fall. Like the guys at Enron, these people were seen as being the best and the brightest. Those who wanted to regulate them were backwards-thinking anti free market types. You can argue that the folks who started all these derivatives and intricate credit-default swaps could have handled them, but it got into the wrong hands. My point is that we need regulation because anything that complicated is bound to end up being managed by people who have an incomplete understanding of its workings and implications.

The "quants" who come up with mathematical models for risk think that if they can come up with a number for the risk, then they can control the risk. This sort of hubris will never completely go away. A brilliant mind with a ton of precise numbers can be very compelling.

There are several problems with building a business on mathematical models of risk. Here are a couple that come to mind:

• Models are built on historical data, but today's global and electronic economy is more interconnected and fast than any economy in the past. It's like making predictions about car accidents based on the number of horse-and-buggy accidents.
• Outcomes of complicated systems can't be controlled well. Just ask the guys who made Jurassic Park. Any time someone comes up with a really complex system, we should all be wary of the eventual ramifications.

It's also interesting to me that the two guys who got it all started worked at Drexel Burnham Lambert while my sister was there. She had to have known them. She knew the bubble was bound to burst, but I wonder if she knew that these former co-workers were part of the reason it went so bad.

Music Monday: I Am Now a Sara Groupie

Sara is a Japanese girl who plays the drums really, really well.

• Rush: YYZ (with a midi and in concert)
• Frank Zappa: The Black Page #2
• A song I can't place (can anyone name it?)

I hope she doesn't get burned out. That's quite a talent she has.