Philosophy of Language-Video;The Impressionist Teleology of a Language

Gary C. Gibson reads a philosophy of language essay in his philosophy blog about words. Voice-over video of S.E. Alaska the context is existential analysis in reference to absolute truth (The Lord Jesus Christ) as well as the impressionist teleology of a language-Universe where words are pointillist, statistical configurations of meaning.

Senate Democrat Foreign Relations Comm. Vote For Starting (Limited) War

Just three Republicans voted for a military attack on Syria in the vote by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. They were Senators Flake, McCain and Corker. The largely partisan vote had loads of hawkish Democrats voting to roll the dice on expanding the conflict and chaos in Syria. Those Democrats were Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Sens.  Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) , Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Christopher Coons (D-Del.), Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.) and Richard Durbin (D-Ill.). 

Evidently with the war scheduled to wind down in Afghanistan for the U.S. military in 2014 the Democrats are looking for another place to beginning spending billions of dollars for war. Consistent with Obama policy of enriching the rich on Wall Street in order to concentrate wealth and develop a better, more effective global plutocracy, increasing the public debt and letting the plutocracy pull the strings on federal budget priorities can be serviced through foreign wars that don't produce much of benefit to Americans.

When the U.S. electorate is a sycophant of a government effectively bought and paid for by the Plutocracy the military can be exploited as a tool for implementing plutocratic global policy objectives. Secretary of State (Heinz) Kerry could not possibly even seek war crimes charges against the Assad regime instead of U.S. vigilante action, because that might not bring a regime change sought by his Plutocrat confreres.

Language Philosophy; Truth, Falsehood, Half-Truths and Statistical Strings

Words are like statistics; symbols in sounds and scratches in order conveying impressions and meaning to-others and for-one-self. A good post-modern for the philosophy of language and truth values context still has room for the existence of truth phenomenally though letters, phonemes, morphemes, and larger language structures are regarded as statistical structures with appearances in discrete orders conveying phenomenally associated meaning.

If language is like a realm of statistical, existential tools for data transfer it's values for users are comparable to statistics and data used by scientists in order to describe experience, perception and functions of systems. Also as in science data values have meaning in relation to the construction where they occur. The meanings vary in relation to the context of the application.

The value of language isn't found within an implicit truth or falsehood of words but in the art of their use and construction. The Lord Jesus Christ may be the Truth-in-itself yet that can't be said of anything else. While liars will not inherit the kingdom of God implicitly failing to understand the Truth in their unbelief, in the secular world there isn't a Platonic truth-in-itself that can be perceived or not inherently in word-objects.

Each user of language is a word artist experiencing a vast impressionist four-dimensional lexicon that is malleable and particularized with the user's own values and understanding. Yet like a scientist the user of language need be always aware that his or her use of language is their own responsibility and for-themselves they must determine the use and value of words as true or false in relation to suppositions given about them. A scientist needs to test and verity data and test the criterion of use of the data and so must language users have an implicit skepticism about the validity of words. At the least, words can be used in non-unique contexts with different values, can be interpreted by differing users with differing meaning and inevitably remain a phenomenal tool for the art of communication.

Words have no inherent capacity for harm. Words may be used harmfully yet generally one of two conditions needs to prevail for that to occur. One is the intent of some real individual to do harm to another or others; in that case it is the bad will that is the cause of harm and the words simply a device for getting that done.  The second source of harm done through words is just misunderstanding by the user interpreting word meaning.

For an example if a paragraph has description of how to deploy a lifeboat and escape global warming and one that reads the instruction in a second language misinterpreting the instructions thinking it says to scuttle the boat instead of launch it, following the instructions would result in harm.

Jean Paul Sartre wrote a tome named The Critique of Dialectical Reason in which he elaborated upon a theme in Being and Nothingness where the social dialectic of interaction among factory workers was considered from the point of view of several individuals experiencing the existential context. Language too is a social dialectic to which each individual has the ability to say No to anything. Mumbo Jumbo, god of the Congo may put a hoo-do on you, yet it is the ill will and actions rather than words that do the harm.

It was the executioners of Auschwitz and the ill will of Joseph Mengele and others that did the harm rather than simply the words. Words without substantive action attached to them in some way tend to be less even than meaningless symbols. An ancient untranslated text has meaning only because of it's potential for translation and value about the culture it was produced in. Otherwise except for being an enigma it would be merely an interesting object of art even one without potential for meaningful translation generated perhaps randomly by a computer.

Users of language are recognized with a utilitarian valuation for the accuracy and meaning content value as well as for the tone and method of delivery such as one might associate with singers. Language generators with accuracy and less dissimulation than the norm are of more practical value for many and preferred in several contexts by language receivers and generators.

A language universe of words as statistical units with the potential for infinite variety of group formation and meaning values may be something like a sunrise that can be viewed by billions of people a little differently from one another with or without similar filters, points of view or space-time facts. In language however each sunrise is constructed by the language users albeit with much presumptive text and structure inserted by convention. For human beings though, the language use is always live and subjective.

Kerry & Hegel Want Punitive Preemptive Missile Attack on 'Pandora's Box' in Syria

Secretary of State Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hegel have argued further for military assault on the government forces of President Assad of Syria saying that to fail to do so would open Pandora's box (of chemical weapons, biological and nuclear weapons and so forth). One could infer thus that to attack Pandora's box will release the contents in an incinerated and contained form somewhat analogous to the Fukushima Nuclear plant containment efforts. Inn that case freezing the dirt with advanced technology placed underground will work best beside just dumping the excess radiation into the ocean that is a kind of building up global Pandora's box.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/09/03/kerry-hagel-testify-on-syria/

I am still considering the 'red line in the sand' that was crossed in Syria by the use of chemical weapons two weeks ago. One makes a red line I suppose with chalk, blood or red tide-its a little bit of an English as a second language sort of language use that American diplomats like when not using cool military jargon like 'force delivery packages'. Setting out a goal like red lines in the sand for terrorists to meet that want to draw the U.S.A. into the conflict is probably like announcing an exit date from Afghanistan enabling Taliban to better coordinate terror activities on their planner's calandars, yet at least its a nice color selection for exteriors.

Maybe if the Obama administration had said if x number opf civilians are killed with chemical weapons we will launch 100 cruise missile at 1 million dollars each at Syrian units we don't think support our Middle East agenda it would have been a better deterrent. Since the first deterrent didn't work, if it was the Assad forces that delivered the fatal Sarin nerve agent to a presumably Sunni populace killing 1500, it is not certain that the conditioned response punishment will be an effective deterrent.

The administration in Washington D.C. has yet to say why the chemical attack on Syrian Sunni civilians-if that's what they were, was militarily useful. Did it help win the battle against the rebels or was it an emotional sort of thing in an inhuman war with rebels sponsored in part by Washington D.C. for the past two years?

Sectarian vs. Government Issues in Syria, Washington D.C., Oregon

Senator McCain in arguing this morning on N.P.R. for a substantial military intervention in Syria cited President Obama's advocacy of regime change two years ago (not referring to the 2012 election in D.C.) as a reason for war. Because U.S. Presidents are not held to the standard of papal infallibility  (the Catholic Church vacated that position in self long ago) it is o.k. for them to be wrong or to change their minds occasionally. The precedent of being in agreement with something one has said before, as a rationale for war isn't terribly persuasive.

One wonders if the punish Syria extra-judicially movement has considered the problem of intervening in a religious, sectarian war in behalf of the Sunni? Repeatedly Sect. Kerry has cited the moral evil of waging chemical war on 'one's own people'. War upon anyone is bad enough, yet who are 'one's people in the case of sectarianism in Syria?

Fundamentally the Shi'a-Alawite vs. Sunni is the heart of the problem. If the U.S. acts decisively in behalf of the rebels it is acting to reduce the Shi'a of Syria. Iran is the heart of the Shi'a today though Ali was killed in Iraq. The historian Arnold Toynbee remarked that religious wars are the worst and most protracted in that people will fight on and on in defense of their faith. It requires overwhelming assault to defeat popular religion, as occurred in Oregon recently at a commercial bakery because of the homosexual hostile takeover of the institution of marriage.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/09/03/todd-american-dispatch-christian-bakery-closes-after-lgbt-threats-protests/

In working to purge Syria of the Shi'a-Alawite, and it does appear to that a purge would follow a Sunni rebel victory for their are no Shi'a mosques in the Palestinian territories and few or none in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in select Sunni nations, the Obama administration would be making a fundamental change in the future of the Muslim political world, one that is most likely ill-considered in Washington D.C.

Because the Obama administration is radical and secularist on moral issue returning making changes such as developed in ancient Rome so much that Cicero took acerbic note one suspects that the drift toward perennial conflict with the Shi'a has something of a moral reform toward the decadent post-modernism that disinterpretors of the meaning of Darwinism to philosophy and religion purpose. If the U.S. Government were serious about getting along with the Iranian Shi'a it could have patched up the Khomeini revolution issues long ago.

Secretary of State Kerry and Syria; War Crimes and Deterrence Policy

U.S. Secretary of State Kerry has made statements about chemical attack and deterrence recently in order to draw in public acquiescence on a military strike against Syria. The administration seems eager to jump into the middle of a Shia/Alawite vs. Sunni conflict for 'national interest' as well as deterrence of hypothetical future chemical attacks.

Deterrence of WMD's was of course a cold war staple. The policy of mutually assured destruction seemed effective. SALT talks led to limits on nuclear weapons development and war didn't occur. The same strategies are not used by the Obama administration today.

Cold war era deterrence policy was largely bi-lateral deterrence between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. In the present circumstance wherein Syria and the United States have no conflict at all and where Syria has not presented a threat to the United States with chemical weapons the overwhelming conventional and nuclear power of the United States is regarded as the deterrent; if you use da chemical weapons we put da hit on yuse. Can America as the schoolyard enforcer be an effective deterrent to chemical weapons use by governments engaged in civil war as defenders against international terrorists and internationally sponsored rebels, some of which are supported financially and militarily by the U.S. administration?

In error Sect. Kerry enumerated heads of state that have used chemical weapons citing Adolph Hitler and Saddam Hussein. While Adolph Hitler is a convenient bad white guy blamable for about anything evil in war, he did not use chemical weapons. Adolph Hitler hated chemical weapons ending world war one in hospital in recovery from chemical weapon attack. Hitler had a no-use of chemical weapons policy for the Second World War because of fear of an attack with chemical weapons by the allies.

A better list of leaders that used chemical weapons might include Saddam Hussein, Lloyd George (British P.M.), Woodrow Wilson, the Kaiser and probably General Tojo or the Emperor for the Japanese in China. Instead of leadership deterred by the threat of conventional military attack for deterrence it is perhaps the threat of reciprocal chemical attack that defeats conventional military forces that is most effective chemical deterrent policy. The better deterrent for political leader's use against limited chemical weapons use might be assured war crimes trials and conviction.

If President Assad ordered and developed the chemical attack on a Syrian suburb killing as many as 1500 people and a court of law confirms that even if he is tried in absentia a bounty of ten or twenty million dollars and sanctions might be an effective way to secure his arrest. It is not certain that Syrian Government forces perpetrated the attack instead of unknown political p.r. martinets since its so easy to use chemical weapons without aircraft or anything more than aerosol sprayers and a weapons officer in a camouflaged chemical protection suit.

With so much of world opinion against unilateral U.S. intervention in Syria on behalf of the rebels even if the premise of punishing the Assad military for use of chemical weapons in the Damascus attack and for deterrence of future use executing a military strike could do harm to the concept of democratic populism and rule of law. Containment of the proliferation of chemical weapons attacks is important, yet the question of how that can be done most effectively isn't plain. War crimes trials can punish political criminals ordering chemical attacks, and if chemical weapons aren't of a certain scale and nature that they comprise a substantial military tactic it is dubious that intervention would reduce the potential for conflict much or prevent loss of life. With nearly 100,000 killed in the Syrian civil war so far and many of those civilians the loss of 1500 adds 1.5% more to the casualty numbers. It is all a tragic loss of life and one that the United States had the opportunity not to encourage by calling for regime change in Syria for nearly two years already.

President Obama has given the U.S. Congress the opportunity to debate and reject or approve a mission to launch tens or hundreds of millions of dollars of cruise missiles and additional air assault delivered force packages to select Syrian targets. Nothing has been said about war crimes trials.

A German friend and mentor of Albert Einstein,  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber was the inventor of chemical weapons for the First World War. The inventor standing on a hill observing the first use against British troops was horrified by the effectiveness of chlorine gas. Even so during the First World War chemical war became the norm with deaths rolling up numbers as fast as McDonalds cheeseburgers sold. 

Politicians were happy enough to use chemical weapons or machine guns when it was necessary. As a tool of war and with war as politics through other means it is important to keep in mind with a little skepticism belief about phenomenal illegal weapons use and political string pulling for and against intervention.

G series of nerve agents were discover by Dr. Gerhard Schrader 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin

Reich minister Herman Göring said; "The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is the easy part. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

Secretary Kerry and President Obama have warned about Syrian Government chemical weapons finding their way into the hand of terrorists such that they could be a danger to the U.S.A. as a reason to intervene in the Syrian civil war. Yet it is the development of the war with U.S. support and the threat that Syrian Government chemical weapons might fall in to the hands of Sunni rebels that is the threat. Al Qaeda and most suicide bombing terror organizations for the past twenty years were generally Sunni sectarians. Like the distribution of loose nukes from former Soviet stockpiles after the fall of the Soviet Union the fall of the Assad regime might through into the middle east the Pandora's box of chemical weapons to a new generation of terrorists that have perhaps already developed plans to snag particular Sarin supplies like vultures circling over potential prey.

A better road to deterrence is simple creation of a very positive social economy and recovering ecosphere that political leaders internationally want to emulate. With the increase of the Internet access for the planet a recovering ecosphere with new economic practices reducing the concentration of wealth is a far better direction of travel than the concentration of wealth, impersonalization of a broadcast media owned by a plutocracy and authoritarians and expansion of non-renewable economic practices to the entire world. Democracy can be a better political method for enlisting full social support for individualism against the collectivism of corporate and communist assaults on free enterprise and free speech when gangs of the powerful make individual efforts futile. Limiting the size of corporations and the number of corporations anyone can invest in at three would also be a useful development course for preempting chemical weapons attacks in local civil wars by preempting the wars and dysfunctional social environment of poverty and pathos.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_indicted_in_the_International_Criminal_Court

Patriots Cut Tebow; Eagles Next Stop?

Former Heisman trophy winning quarterback Tim Tebow was cut today by the New England Patriots. That creates the prospect that the Philadelphia Eagles may sign the tough running QB to share running around or over defender duties with Michael Vick.

Looking for his fourth NFL team Tebow may find a good fit in an offense that plans to rely on injury prone running quarterback Michael Vick on every play. The task of being a running quarterback in a passing league is harder than ever before with large high speed, defenders. With two tough running quarterbacks it might work for a year or three.

http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory/ap-source-tim-tebow-cut-patriots-20126567

U.S. Vigilante Justice or War Crimes Tribunal for Syria Chemical Attack?

President Barrack Hussein Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have made it clear that the U.S. will not let Syria go unpunished for the chemical attack on a Damascus suburb that Sect. Kerry says killed more than 1400 souls. The U.S. Government seems set upon a course of cruise missile attacks of what some would regard as vigilante justice outside of the context of International War Crimes courts. Evidently the administration logic goes that Courts of Criminal Law are no justice at all and only vigilante justice by the strong can be swift and certain.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23906913

Most AMericans oppose military intervention in SYria. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/30/us-syria-crisis-usa-poll-idUSBRE97T0UO20130830 yet President Obama sems determined to pursue limited military vengenance in order that Syrian leader Assad 'can't get away with it'. One infers that the attorney-President regards judgement by an Internal War Crimes court as no justice at all so Assad would get away with it without a cruise missile attack upon his interests.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/30/us-syria-crisis-idUSBRE97K0EL20130830  Obama-Syria can't get away with it

While President Obama has just ordered the U..S. Government to no longer prosecute recreational use of ganja across the 50 states and has supported homosexual marriage recognition in federal law he has little confidence in international war crimes courts evidently. Perhaps he should seek to reinforce that institution, except of course U.S. Presidents seem to prefer to be outside the law themselves or at least not subject to its judgement on possible war crimes for-themselves.

Secret. of State Kerry said in effect that the 'who we are' point does not allow American leaders to tolerate war crimes on the innocent such that we cannot help but intervene. Starting with F.D.R. doing little to help the Jews in Germany during the Second World War through using agent orange in Vietnam and with plenty of civilian casualties from a number of causes through to modern times with hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan as the U.S. government pursued dubious policy goals and while the U.S. sat on its hands in the genocides of Cambodia, Rwanda and Darfur the ability of U.S. administrations to turn a blind eye to genocide and democide when convenient-as when 50,000 Iraqi civilians were dying annually during the Clinton era sanctions is demonstrably untroublesome. What is different about the 1400 deaths in Syria that is evident is the vast financial value of regime change with the hostile takeover value immediate.

In pursuing vigilante justice as a partisan power-for the U.S. has egged on the rebels to increase effort for two years, the U.S. administration needs to be careful not to appear to perpetrate aggressive war through proxies for-themselves. Why is it that legal means cannot be used to prosecute war criminals and vigilante remedies for war crimes are better?

Sarin Fog of War-Claims & Counter-Claims in Syrian Chemical Attack

While the British Parliament has voted not to support military reprisal against the Assad Government, the Assad Government has supporters that have produced video of rebels with alleged chemical weapons. Because VX and Sarin require only small quantities to produce fatality it is credible that anyone with access internationally to the lethal nerve agent could have used the stuff over the background of conventional rocket attacks further adding a fog of death to the fog of war.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23892783 Cameron Loses Vote to Intervene Militarily

http://www.wnd.com/2013/08/video-shows-rebels-launching-gas-attack-in-syria/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAD7Aw3VWl0 Casualties of Damascus suburb chemical war

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/29/syria-iran-retaliation-threats-not-empty/2726493/

It would be good if experts commented on such particular weapons and video yet propaganda and counter-propaganda isn't rare in war for power and public opinion. Legal means for enforcing international bans on use of chemical weapons should be resolute and enforced after the war is over as war crimes proceedings. Direct intervention to safeguard human life from theoretical additional chemical attacks probably would need to follow direct evidence of the intention to perpetrate further attacks by any protagonist in the conflict rather than as an immediate reaction to the existing historical use in a Damascus suburb.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/21/us-syria-crisis-idUSBRE97K0EL20130821

What is the Financial Value of Syria? Auction It to End the Conflict?

The question of what a country like Syria would sell for on the open market is probably relevant. One wonders if there are financial reasons why Syrian rebels and the 'Friends of Syria' are motivated to take over.

I have no idea how one would calculate the value of Syrian real estate, of the headwaters of the Euphrates and control of the flow of water, the buildings, various military assets and so forth, yet it must be a few billion dollars at least. Would the Assad regime be better off agreeing to list and auction of Syria to the highest bidder at ebay and move out if the offer meets minimum reasonable standards of appraised value?

An impartial highest bidder buyer of Syria could have international law enforcement on his side, and I suppose he might agree to lease certain properties to the Assad regime and even to provide law enforcement services. Alternatively President Assad could make Syria the first officially corporatist state and simply list the nation on the New York Stock Exchange and invite investors at the I.P.O. As a corporate state the government could be run by and for the plutocracy and civilians casualties that develop with a hodge podge of proxy terrorist actors implementing the will of global martinets might become de trop.