Why the hell did I write such terrible things in that poor girl's journal? Yes. She's wrong. Yes. She's hostile. But did she really deserve _that_? No! Why am I so full of bile? My mother tells me I have a good heart, but I swear the fucking thing pumps venom instead of blood.

I had meant to say something about this a long time ago. I’ve been reminded recently that I use the word “ideology” more frequently than I use personal pronouns. This seems to cause some degree of consternation among the persons who participate in these dialogues with me. I’m never positive that I’m reading people’s reactions correctly, but there ( Read more... )

The second narrative, submits that the US had the authority to invade Iraq in order to enforce it’s interpretation of pertinent Security Council resolutions. The abbreviated justification provided here, is that the United States use of preemptive military force would have been in accordance with chapter VII of the charter of the United Nations. ( Read more... )

The war convention of the United Nations charter departs from the legal nomenclature of conventional just war theory, which demarcates the legal standards to distinguish legitimate preemption. Their modern precedent is with Daniel Webster’s defense of anticipatory self defense following the British attack on the Caroline.* The war convention ( Read more... )

The charter further specifies that there must be persuasive evidence that the alleged aggression will be inevitable within that timeframe. This necessitates transparent intelligence demonstrating to the UN security council that the aggressor has not only the material means to effect such an attack, but the intention to instrument it. The material ( Read more... )

It seems a few right-political ideologues have sought a quarrel with me since November. That’s good in a way. I had started to articulate (what I think is) an interesting proposition in November’s exchange with Eric. I never really qualified any position in that thread. _I never had the chance_. Eric thought better of challenging me before I could ( Read more... )

Thesis production has deterred me from contributing much to livejournal in recent history. Maybe someday I'll actually get around to synthesizing the rest of this criticism of school privatization. It seems to me that such a critique should become part of a larger critical analysis of privatization and deregulatory trends among other industries ( Read more... )

A couple of days ago I stumbled upon a livejournal group that has been assembled to discuss transhumanist issues. I had found a couple of these in the past but was unenthused by the content I saw on them. This new one is notable because paradise engineering, David Pearce, and the Hedonistic Imperative are listed among the interests of the group. ( Read more... )

You know, I've just realized ( Read more... )

In more recent history, this foundational research which has been proposing the implementation of a privatized model has been supplemented with new research which attempts to demonstrate the effectiveness of privatization where it has been actualized in the form of school vouchers. Paul E. Peterson conducted the most ambitious randomized experiment ( Read more... )