The Fog of War

Heard the news today that Robert McNamara has passed away.  By coincidence, Marc and I just saw The Fog of War two days ago. I would describe the movie as “chilling.” Robert McNamara is clearly a thoughtful, intelligent, reasonable person.  Yet in the movie he describes his involvement with fire-bombings in WWII – actions he admits would be “war crimes” if the U.S. had lost. He is the secretary of defense during the Vietnam war, and oversees the escalation there.

Overall, you get the picture of someone who is caught up in larger events and is unable to wrestle with them. The larger machinations of nations, and the prejudices and assumptions that go unchallenged, seem to carry him along with them.

I find it scary.  I may be naive, but I have always hoped that with small steps towards rationality, every generation will get better at peaceful conflict resolution.  Yet, the mistakes and thinking that he reveals are so simple.  “Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning” is one of his lessons.  Don’t we know this?  Shouldn’t people in power have checks and balances on how they make decisions?

It’s all very scary.  I hope that McNamara’s legacy is for future leaders to learn from his mistakes, but I don’t know how likely that is.

Global Village

I heard about this website called Kiva.org that allows you to make really small loans ($25) to help businesses in the developing world get going. I love this website because one the the biggest problems in the developing world that maintains the cycle of poverty is that no one can get a loan. Can you imagine having nothing and having to scrimp and save to grow your business? If you’re fighting for food, you’d never be able to do it.

The other good thing about this website is that it’s personal. You pick a business and through journal updates, you learn all about how that business is doing.

The other day, I was checking out the journals and saw this entry.

They dragged Onunga out of the bed and begun hitting him with the iron bars. He pleaded with them but instead they hit him with a sword right on forehead inflicting a deep cut. Onunga fell down in pain as blood gashed from his forehead. Two gang members then tuned to Maurine and begun tearing her clothes down. When they started undressing Onunga knew that they wanted to rape her!

I had heard about the unrest in Kenya, but hearing a personal story nearly brought me to tears. The best part is the reaction from all the people on the site offering to lend to him as soon the situation ends.

This is totally the future of international aid.

Let’s Use Our Brains Here Folks

I’m constantly amazed at the way people need rules – especially myself. I find the most frightening situations are the ones where I have no precedent of what to do. There are just too many variables to consider and unless I’ve seen someone else make a decision in a similar situation, I often find myself grinding my gears for a while before I can act.

That said. Even I am not this stupid.

Exam supervisors at a German university stuck to rules so rigidly that a man with a bladder dysfunction had to urinate in a bottle in front of 120 fellow students because they would not let him go to the toilet.

This is definitely off the deep-end, but there was another slightly less ridiculous incidence of failing to use common sense in Canada recently.

Five young teams from across Canada walked out of a Quebec soccer tournament Sunday because a young Muslim girl was ejected for wearing a hijab.

Seriously people, let’s all take a step back from the letter of the law. Yes it’s important, yes we need rules and guidelines to help us make good judgement, but in the end of the day they’re there to inform our judgement not decide it for us. That’s why we have courts and judges! No laws are ever absolute.

U of T Philosophy Professor

Holy Crap!  This is Doug Hutchison, a philosophy professor at U of T and a total pot head!  This guy got himself a pot-smoking room, all to himself, in the basement of Trinity College.  There’s an article in Maclean’s about it.  It’s short, but he comes off like he’s cocky and proud of what he got.  I think it’s pretty pathetic.  This guys smokes up 10 times a day.   I think anyone who is proud of an addiction is just really, really addicted.

I’m for legalization of marijuana, but not glorification.

Oh, and I’m glad I never took the inro to philosphy course that he taught.