Ants and Anarchism

I have always found ants fascinating; why, I am not sure. When I was little, I used to spend hours in the dirt looking for ants, digging up nests to look at them, trying to start wars between ants (I inadvertently succeeded once when I spilled the cat's food across the floor, which precipitated a massive three-way war between tens of thousands of ants - our basement floor was literally covered with them), and other such things.

While most would argue, with obvious reasoning, that apes are the closest relatives to humans, I would argue that ants are our closest relatives. Not to a human being, but rather to human society. There is an enormous range of behaviors that ant colonies engage in that resemble human societal behavior: urbanization, migration, herding cattle/aphids, farming, and even taking slaves. See the WP page for more information (spec. "Types" and "Relationships between Ants and other species"). When one considers the complexity of the tasks involved, it can be truly amazing to consider.

The society of ants is somewhat misunderstood because of the misnomer given to the "queen" of the colony. This "queen" is not a queen in the sense that it is usually used; she does not give orders or make laws. Rather, ants make decisions based on some form of group consensus; how exactly is poorly understood. But what we have is a sort of anarchist-communist community; not only is decision-making based on group consensus, but all ants are guaranteed the protection and support of the community. Each ant is fed "according to her need," and works "according to her ability." While the argument can be made that ants do not have all the complicating emotions and schemes of humans that makes (human-) anarchism "unfeasible," they also do not have the reasoning ability of humans. Whether they are empathetic is unknown, though other animals have been recorded as showing empathy.

The end point here is that there is a lot we can learn from ants. Plus, they're just really cool.

Iraqi Casualties

The same people who released the Iraqi casualty study that I've been using in my previous discussions released an updated study that covered until July 2006. In their report, they found that 655,000 Iraqis died as a result of the invasion. To put this number into contrast, let me provide some comparisons:

1. 300,000: Number of Iraqis estmiated to be killed under the rule of Saddam Hussein.
2. 800,000: Estimated number of Rwandans killed in the Hutu-Tutsi massacres.
3. 267,000: Number of French civilian casualties during World War II.
4. 2,973: Number of Americans killed on September 11, 2001.

Now it must be decided whether this number is accurate. Keep in mind that the last study that was released covered a year of the war and estimated 100,000 civilian deaths. The new study's tremendous jump in casualties would mean that the death rate has more than doubled since the first year. Furthermore, 34% of respondents (~220,000 deaths) reported that coalition forces were directly responsible for the death reported. These are not light accusations; we are well aware of what happened to those responsible for the other examples listed above.

One way to guess at how high civilian casualties will be in a conflict is to look at the number of military casualties. 2,791 American soldiers have died in the war (as of 10.21.06) in over three years, less than 1,000 a year. This is not a low-intensity conflict, and the vast majority of the fighting takes place in dense urban areas, which are notorious for causing high casualties even among the best trained and equipped forces. So how has the United States' casualty level stayed so low?

One way to make urban fighting easier is to flatten things to reduce the chance of ambushes and to kill enemy soldiers hiding around corners or in buildings and such. Air power is one of the easiest ways to accomplish this. For an example of what the US military does in urban fighting, the two invasions of Fallujah are instructive. In both operations cluster bombs were dropped in residential areas, not only increasing civilian casualties at the time but also serving as killers after the offensive was over (cluster bomblets have a 30% "failure" rate, which means that 30% of them stick into the ground and act as mines to go off when stepped on/picked up/etc. later). For this reason, the use of cluster bombs are considered by many human rights organizations to be a war crime; The US also used white phosphorus in the fighting, a chemical weapon when anyone but the US uses it.

The extensive artillery and air bombardment of the city destroyed 60% of the buildings in the city and have forced 50-70% of the prewar population to settle elsewhere, often in refugee camps outside the city. Through this extensive destruction, the United States was able to keep its casualties to 51 killed. 1200 "insurgents" were declared dead by the United States, but numerous reports of civilians (including children) being killed by American snipers calls into question how many of these were actually insurgents.

So are the numbers accurate? The main criticism of the reports have been that their numbers have been far above the other estimates released. However, this doesn't actually disqualify anything about the report. All the other reports use absurd methods for counting civilian casualties, such as going to morgues and counting bodies there. Since Islamic custom is to bury the body before sunset on the day of the death, most casualties are not going to be sent to the morgue. I cannot say whether this report is accurate, but in light of the total devastation that has been unleased on Iraq, it is not surprising in the least.

P.S. Since Saddam is held up as such a monster (and rightly so), I think a short comparison is in order. In 30 years of rule, he killed 300,000 Iraqis. If the United States were to stay in Iraq for 30 years and Iraqi casualties continued at the current rate, 6.4 million Iraqis (a quarter of the population) would be dead by the time we left.

Commentary On Dining Hall Propaganda Rag

This is from a flyer in the North dining hall:



"Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important." - C.S. Lewis

[Picture of Lewis]
[Line Break]

The vast majority of people at UConn have some sort of religious background, and the majority of those people grew up in some sort of Christian environment. Yet for a lot of students, the Christian faith, and the God of the Christian faith, is merely a side note in their lives.

But Lewis points out the truth of the matter. If Christianity is false, then not only should it not be that important, it should be totally unimportant. It would be faith based on lies. But if it is true, then the central figure of human history is Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, who came to die and rise again, offering each one of us eternal life if we would place our trust in Him. And if that's true, then Christianity is of infinite importance.

[Obligatory "All the cool kids are doing it" section.]

[website]
[funding info]

Alright. See what they did there? They began by using a quote in which either of the two answers are at opposite sides of the spectrum, and the middle is removed as false. They then go forward and somewhat address the negative side of the quote. Basically, they restate it.

Then, in a very clever sleight of hand, they move to the positive side of the quote and manage to make it the truth (for the purpose of the diatribe). The "if" in the sentence becomes invisible by the weight of the grandiose statements that are being made: "the central figure of human history is Jesus of Nazareth," "offering each one of us eternal life," "Christianity is of infinite importance."

Oh, but wait...there's an "if" in there. Well, nevermind that. The next section states that "On this campus hundreds of students are opening their hearts to follow Christ and are getting involved in community with others who know Jesus." Christianity has gone from being an enormous "if" to being "it." If you replace "Christ" and "Jesus" with "Flying Spaghetti Monster" and "Christianity" with "Pastafarianism" you can understand how absurd it is that the leap from "if" to "it" was made.

And since quoting people is the name of the game today, I'll use Camus:

"Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable."

Never end anything with a quote, they say.