72. Crime without Punishment – the journey from means to ends

Means&Ends1.jpg

Sooner or later every­one – indi­vid­u­als, gov­ern­ments, com­pa­nies – has to make choices about whether to put aside cer­tain val­ues to achieve a desired end. Michael Pas­coe, an Aus­tralian finan­cial jour­nal­ist, has recently dis­cussed this at http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/business/comment-and-analysis/abandon-principles-and-pay-the-price-20140331-35tz4.html


Image credit: Hugh Macleod @ http://www.gapingvoidart.com/ 


Pref­ace: This is a dis­cus­sion paper, not a researched aca­d­e­mic doc­u­ment. The read­ing list at the end is a col­lec­tion of con­tem­po­rary links from the Inter­net and pretty acci­den­tal, not edited for qual­ity. The author is a prin­ci­pal orga­nizer for a Bris­bane, Aus­tralia, dis­cus­sion group whose mem­bers come from diverse back­grounds, and which deals with an eclec­tic col­lec­tion of top­ics. Where a topic is of broad gen­eral inter­est I have adopted the prac­tice of post­ing dis­cus­sion starters like the present one on Academia.edu in the hope that oth­ers might also find them worth think­ing about.


1. Actual Vs hypo­thet­i­cal choices of ends and means

 

In the real world of events, as opposed to philo­soph­i­cal state­ments of “should”, deci­sions about ends and means always come down to who, if any­body, is respon­si­ble for con­se­quences. Where con­se­quences are not clear for actors, and espe­cially if con­se­quences are not per­sonal, almost any ends can be argued for, and almost any means might be ratio­nal­ized. For this rea­son, the read­ing list at the end of these notes is slanted towards a focus on real world sit­u­a­tions.

 

2. The spec­trum of human actions used to achieve ends

 

Action affect­ing other peo­ple can be use­fully put in a means=>end frame.  That is, how do means (actions) which the actor(s) ini­ti­ates con­tribute to some end, and what are the con­se­quences for other peo­ple? The range of actions avail­able usu­ally depends upon the rela­tion­ship between the actor(s) and the affected party (or par­ties), and also whether that party is the main tar­get of the action, or merely a col­lat­eral par­tic­i­pant. Of course, not all actions are intended to affect other peo­ple, but they usu­ally do in some way. Human tar­geted actions to achieve some end can be seen as a con­tin­uum rang­ing from coop­er­a­tion > direc­tive > co-option > cor­rup­tion > intim­i­da­tion > coer­cion > extor­tion >vio­lence.

 

3. The dis­place­ment of respon­si­bil­ity when peo­ple act in groups

 

As indi­vid­u­als most of us (but not all of us) prefer to dwell at the gen­tler end of the con­tin­uum of tar­geted actions. As we move up the scale towards vio­lence, our ratio­nale for action becomes more dif­fi­cult to jus­tify to our­selves and to oth­ers. How­ever, humans also act as groups, del­e­gat­ing respon­si­bil­ity and cul­pa­bil­ity for their actions to lead­ers, or even to abstrac­tions like reg­u­la­tions and laws. The groups might be quite inti­mate, they might be mobs, they might be reli­gious, related to employ­ment, or devolved to gov­ern­ments at var­i­ous lev­els, or even trans-national orga­ni­za­tions. As these groups become more abstracted from the indi­vid­ual, most peo­ple feel much less dif­fi­culty in jus­ti­fy­ing actions which they per­haps could not con­tem­plate as indi­vid­u­als. This is because they gen­er­ally become less respon­si­ble for con­se­quences, less likely to be pun­ished for poor judge­ment, and are quite likely to have no per­sonal acquain­tance with the peo­ple who will be affected by their actions. 

 

4. The indus­tri­al­iza­tion of remote and offi­cial actions tar­get­ing indi­vid­u­als

 

The dis­place­ment of respon­si­bil­ity to groups has always existed in human soci­eties. How­ever, the 20th Cen­tury saw an “advance” in the removal of per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity with the emer­gence of mass polit­i­cal move­ments, and then total war­fare. The early 21st Cen­tury has seen another omi­nous “advance” of this kind. What­ever the depre­da­tions of ear­lier mass abuses, they tended to be some­what uneven because of the sheer inef­fi­ciency, not to say the stu­pid­ity of indi­vid­ual agents within orga­ni­za­tions. World War II gave rise to an expres­sive acronym: SNAFU => sit­u­a­tion nor­mal, all fucked up. In the 21st Cen­tury this acci­den­tally benev­o­lent incom­pe­tence has been dras­ti­cally reduced though the relent­less pen­e­tra­tion of com­put­ing and the Inter­net into all of our lives. That is, com­put­ing has auto­mated mil­lions of actions which used to depend upon rou­tine but unre­li­able human inter­ven­tion.

On the other hand, the num­ber of peo­ple rapidly affected by sin­gle acts of incom­pe­tence or mal­ice has expo­nen­tially increased. A sim­ple exam­ple would be a com­puter virus with which one rogue oper­a­tor can affect mil­lions of peo­ple. When the rogue oper­a­tor is an orga­ni­za­tion or gov­ern­ment, the out­comes can be cat­a­strophic. That is, group actions, espe­cially at the worst end of the spec­trum, have been indus­tri­al­ized, while neg­a­tive con­se­quences for the actors are almost elim­i­nated. Even war­fare is con­ducted as a com­puter game remote from indi­vid­u­als who are tar­geted to be assas­si­nated by aerial drones. Our pri­vacy, our per­sonal free­doms and our pow­ers to react to abuse are tee­ter­ing on extinc­tion. The pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion has not really grasped the nature or extent of this loss. 

These notes will look first at the com­pro­mises which we all make between means and ends. It will go on to out­line and doc­u­ment the increas­ing sub­or­di­na­tion of ends we think we are pur­su­ing by orga­ni­za­tional agen­cies mind­lessly pur­su­ing means with indus­trial effi­ciency while evad­ing all respon­si­bil­ity for the car­nage result­ing from their actions. 

 

5. Mary-Lou and the pitch for a rich guy

 

Mary-Lou has decided to pitch for a rich guy. Really, she doesn’t love the rich guy, and in fact there is not much to love about him. On the other hand he can provide the mate­rial life to which she aspires, and even if things fall apart, she can walk away with enough gold coins to keep her in com­fort for life. For that mat­ter, the rich guy thinks he is get­ting a tro­phy wife and a sex slave in one pack­age. That is, at least for a while, both par­ties are sat­is­fied that their per­sonal objec­tives jus­tify a (sham?) pub­lic mar­riage. Means jus­tify the ends. OK, this sce­nario is a cliché – or is it? Pick your scan­dal story of the hour. Per­haps Wendi Deng and Rupert Mur­doch. Or even find the Inter­net site to help it all hap­pen. In Aus­tralia in 2013, through the web­site SeekingArrangement.com, “… accord­ing to com­pany fig­ures, there are roughly 7680 sugar babies in Queens­land seek­ing var­i­ous types of arrange­ments, and 530 “sugar dad­dies” and “sugar mom­mies” will­ing to offer their sup­port.  The num­bers were far greater in Syd­ney, where there were 14,500 sugar babies, 800 sugar dad­dies and mom­mies last year. Mel­bourne had 9210 sugar babies, and 640 sugar dad­dies and mom­mies….  Com­pany spokes­woman Jen­nifer Gwynn said that … these “sugar babies” stood to receive approx­i­mately $3000 a month in allowances and gifts from a will­ing Sugar Daddy to help cover tuition and liv­ing expenses…. But she said it was not pros­ti­tu­tion” (Feeney, 2013). Yes, quite. But what­ever we think of Mary-Lou and her sugar daddy, it is a per­sonal com­pro­mise between con­sent­ing adults. As far as we can tell, nobody else is going to get hurt. 

 

6. Dag­wood wants a pro­mo­tion

 

The high school debat­ing hero brim­ming with ide­als is usu­ally a very dif­fer­ent indi­vid­ual from his rein­car­na­tion at 30, now with a wife and child, a mort­gage, and his feet on the pro­mo­tion esca­la­tor which nour­ishes career ambi­tion. In other words, the for the teen the prime end of his actions and expressed opin­ions was peer respect and female admi­ra­tion. With those ends in mind he had every incen­tive to pose as some­thing which the ide­als of his peer group would share. Dis­placed to a war sit­u­a­tion, he might even rush out of his fox hole to col­lect either a bul­let or a medal for brav­ery.

 

As a 30 year old orga­ni­za­tion-man, our ex-teenage hero is trapped in lay­ered insti­tu­tional agen­das over which he has lit­tle con­trol. He finds him­self being required to do things which affect strangers out­side of the com­pany, and per­haps do them dam­age. He learns not to think too hard about this. He per­ceives a road map to higher earn­ings, higher sta­tus and, he tells him­self, one day he will have the actual power to do things as his teenage alter ego thought they should be done. How­ever there are obsta­cles, and they mostly take the form of other peo­ple in his work­place. His peers are now his com­peti­tors, and his stu­pid supe­ri­ors are per­sons of influ­ence to be cul­ti­vated. Dag­wood knows that Axlerod, whom he went to school with, is his only seri­ous com­peti­tor for the upcom­ing line manager’s job. He has the dirt on Axlerod; they used to be friends. It is so easy to let slip a lit­tle inter­est­ing gos­sip about the guy that will surely reach HR. Nobody else needs to know where the dam­age came from. Dag­wood has taken his first slip­pery step on the long, greasy road to the top. When he finally gets there he will no longer have those teenage val­ues from long ago, but he doesn’t know this yet. Nor does he know that at 40 he will pass a hid­den red traf­fic light, and be con­sid­ered “over the hill”. It is a per­verse fact of life that the very attrib­utes and behav­iours which Dagwood’s teenage alter ego thought should be a bar­rier to achiev­ing ends – incom­pe­tence, arro­gance, ruth­less­ness and self­ish­ness, together with spine­less­ness, lag­gard­ness and drunk­en­ness – are appar­ently nec­es­sary qual­i­fi­ca­tions for achiev­ing suc­cess in most Aus­tralian orga­ni­za­tions (Colquhoun 2013).

 

7. The killing fields of invis­i­ble unem­ploy­ment

 

Smith is good at what he does, and at 45 he is at the top of his game. For twenty years he has devel­oped exper­tise for the IT needs of a large orga­ni­za­tion. He is a tech­nol­o­gist, not a politi­cian or a bean coun­ter, but he knows that with­out peo­ple like him the whole orga­ni­za­tion would grind to a halt. There­fore he was shocked when fol­low­ing a board shuf­fle nine months ago he was sent off with a redun­dancy pack­age. The new board mem­bers were con­fi­dent that out­sourcing was the way to go, would save a large chunk of oper­at­ing costs, would devolve respon­si­bil­ity for imple­men­ta­tion fail­ures to con­trac­tors, and would bur­nish their rep­u­ta­tions as hot-shot direc­tors. The sim­ple means to so many desir­able ends was a slam-dunk for them. Nine months down the track the com­pany is tee­ter­ing for a cas­cad­ing col­lec­tion of rea­sons, but the direc­tors are too insu­lated to have grasped this yet, and Smith, well he is sit­ting in his pyja­mas at home writ­ing job appli­ca­tion let­ters.

 

If Smith was shocked by the per­verse behav­iour of his employ­ers, he has been demor­al­ized to find that the large num­ber of very well-pay­ing posi­tions adver­tised for some­one with just his skills have actu­ally evap­o­rated when it came down to the nitty-gritty of apply­ing for them. Smith has even obtained pro­fes­sional assis­tance to pol­ish his CV. Regard­less, com­pa­nies and employ­ment agen­cies have demanded exten­sive, time-con­sum­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion to come with any appli­ca­tion. They have demanded the con­tacts of ref­er­ees, a depre­ci­at­ing resource if they are con­tacted too often. In spite of jump­ing through all the hoops, Smith has received only a hand­ful of responses to many appli­ca­tions. Sev­eral agen­cies have told him can­didly that he is “too hold”, and a cou­ple of oth­ers that his is “overqual­i­fied”, what­ever that means. He did man­age to get a cou­ple of inter­views, only to real­ize that the inter­view­ing pan­els not only had not read his CV, but that they were treat­ing him as a fill-in to jus­tify the hir­ing process for an insider they had already selected. At last, sad­der but wiser, he researched the mar­ket and learned that the major­ity of adver­tised posi­tions were fakes. Gov­ern­ment depart­ments and uni­ver­si­ties with their elab­o­rate com­pli­ance reg­u­la­tions were the worst offend­ers in this fake job cha­rade. The means to an end for them was to tick the boxes they needed to tick before fol­low­ing their true inten­tion. The employ­ment agen­cies were indis­tin­guish­able in their meth­ods from real estate agen­cies. For such busi­nesses, the means for putting up a pub­lic front of enor­mous demand and activ­ity was to churn adver­tise­ments for obso­lete job vacan­cies con­stantly.  The needs of the long suf­fer­ing unem­ployed who had the least avail­able resources, fig­ured nowhere in the cal­cu­la­tions of busi­nesses, agen­cies or gov­ern­ments (Feath­er­ston 2014, “How Many Job Ads Are Fake?”).

 

8. The killing fields of invis­i­ble ene­mies

 

This sec­tion looks at the 9/11 Attack and the ensu­ing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as exam­ples of the extreme cor­rup­tion of ends and means in human behav­iour. Count­less other exam­ples could have been cho­sen, but these par­tic­u­lar wars are famil­iar to many read­ers from the con­tem­po­rary polit­i­cal nar­ra­tive.

 

Wikipedia tells us that “”The Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks (also referred to as Sep­tem­ber 11, Sep­tem­ber 11th, or 9/11) were a series of four coor­di­nated ter­ror­ist attacks launched by the Islamic ter­ror­ist group al-Qaeda upon the United States in New York City and the Wash­ing­ton, D.C. met­ro­pol­i­tan area on Tues­day, Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001” (Wikipedia 2014, “Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks”). The world has not been the same since. The real ori­gins of the 9/11 attacks have been hotly dis­puted (Wikipedia 2014 “0/11 Con­spir­acy The­o­ries”). I am per­son­ally agnos­tic about whether the events were purely an Al Qaeda oper­a­tion, and it will prob­a­bly take a gen­er­a­tion to learn the whole story (or maybe never). What is beyond doubt how­ever is that 9/11 set in train a cor­nu­copia of agen­das within Amer­ica and beyond it. If Osama bin Laden set out to dis­rupt the pre­vail­ing cul­tures of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion he suc­ceeded beyond his wildest dreams, not from Al Qaeda’s actions per se,  but by the self-destruc­tion of America’s claimed val­ues through Amer­i­can responses, both nation­ally and inter­na­tion­ally.

 

Of all human behav­iours war­fare always engages the most advanced tech­nol­ogy of the age at the ser­vice of the most prim­i­tive instincts. It is a cliché that the first casu­alty of war is the truth. This is a way of say­ing that pub­licly announced ends become tac­ti­cal lies, altered to jus­tify the employed means of destruc­tion. The 9/11 attacks gave rise to two wars against sov­er­eign nations, Iraq and Afghanistan, by the United States. Nei­ther of those states were paragons of good gov­ern­ment, but nei­ther were either of them a sig­nif­i­cant threat to the United States. War was declared against them by the United States in the name of crush­ing Al Qaeda. The over­whelm­ing source for Al Qaeda recruits, Saudi Ara­bia received no sanc­tion at all. Indeed its lead­ers deep­ened their inti­macy with the Amer­i­can pres­i­dent of the day. 

 

The case for war was fab­ri­cated, and later shown to be entirely based on lies. There were no con­se­quences for actors in the Amer­i­can admin­is­tra­tion, but civil soci­ety in Iraq was destroyed and esti­mates of death from the con­flict range from 110,600 to over a mil­lion (Wikipedia 2014, “Casu­alties of the Iraq War”), entirely dwarf­ing the 3,000 lost in the 9/11 attack. All of this for a pop­u­la­tion which had no con­nec­tion what­so­ever with Al Qaeda’s oper­a­tions. In Afghanistan, tens of thou­sands of peo­ple have become casu­alties in an inde­fen­si­ble war (Wikipedia 2014 “Civil­ian casu­alties in the War in Afghanistan (2001–present)”.  Amer­ica has not won these wars, nor achieved strate­gic objec­tives even using the blood and iron ratio­nale of empire build­ing. By any rea­son­able met­ric, these wars were vast Amer­i­can war crimes, yet this is a ver­dict unac­cept­able to the Amer­i­can public’s self-image. 

 

Have the wars in fact reduced ter­ror­ist threats in con­ti­nen­tal Amer­ica or world­wide? No, they have ampli­fied the threats by recruit­ing whole pop­u­la­tions now antag­o­nis­tic to Amer­ica, and domes­ti­cally they have led to the emas­cu­la­tion of so-called Amer­i­can free­doms in the name of the Patriot Act, as well as the growth of an out-of-con­trol sur­veil­lance cul­ture through the NSA – spy­ing on all the per­sonal com­mu­ni­ca­tions of ordi­nary Amer­i­cans, the cit­i­zens of other nations world­wide, and even mem­bers of Con­gress in Wash­ing­ton. That is, actions in the name of secu­rity have gen­er­ated ever greater inse­cu­rity for every­one.  

 

If we fol­low the money of course, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have depleted the pub­lic Trea­sury of the United States, almost fatally, but immea­sur­ably enriched an elite group of arms man­u­fac­tur­ers, con­trac­tors, and their camp fol­low­ers of pros­ti­tuted politi­cians.

 

For our dis­cus­sion pur­poses here, war­fare of the kind just described poses a puz­zle for any assump­tion of defen­si­ble ends and ratio­nal means. It is only explic­a­ble, to me at least, by rec­og­niz­ing that many thou­sands of indi­vid­u­als act­ing within the shell of orga­ni­za­tions, have aban­doned per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity for the ways that their behav­iour has impacted upon strangers with whom they have no con­nec­tion except through a nar­ra­tive of imag­i­nary ter­ror. They have learned to fear fear itself, and in attack­ing their night­mares have wreaked havoc upon inno­cent oth­ers.

 


 

Read­ing List

 

Axestop­per, Pete (14 Octo­ber 2013) “Means VsEnds”. Asexuality.org web­site, online @ http://www.asexuality.org/en/topic/93799-means-vs-ends/

Bain­bridge, Stephen M. (Feb­ru­ary 2002) “Direc­tor Pri­macy: The Means and Ends of Cor­po­rate Gov­er­nance”. Social Sci­ence Research Net­work web­site, online @ http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=300860

Colquhoun, Steve (Octo­ber 22, 2013) “Is our work­place cul­ture bro­ken?”. Bris­bane Times online @ http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/executive-style/management/comment-is-our-workplace-culture-broken-20131022-2vxhe.html#ixzz2iOvigpFw

Feath­er­ston, Tony (April 10, 2014) “How many job ads are fake?”. [rec­om­mended arti­cle, espe­cially the com­ments] Bris­bane Times online @ http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/small-business/managing/blogs/the-venture/how-many-job-ads-are-fake-20140409-36crh.html#ixzz2yTOBWmJy

Feeney, Cather­ine (Feb­ru­ary 1, 2013) “‘Sugar dad­dies’ a learn­ing expe­ri­ence for stu­dents”. Bris­bane Times online @ http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/sugar-daddies-a-learning-experience-for-students-20130130-2dk7z.html#ixzz2Jn460xAv

Goodreads (2014) “Quotes about Means and Ends”. Goodreads web­site, online @ http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/means-and-ends

Got Ques­tions Min­istries (2014) “Do the ends jus­tify the means?”. [Chris­tian Bible site], Got Ques­tions Min­istries web­site online @ http://www.gotquestions.org/ends-justify-means.html

Gov­er­nor, James (25 Sep­tem­ber 2009) “It’s easy to spot a purist”. James Governor’s Monkchips blog, online @ http://redmonk.com/jgovernor/2009/09/25/its-easy-to-spot-a-purist/

Gre­gory, Robin et.al (2012) “Sep­a­rat­ing Means from Ends”. Struc­tured Deci­sion Mak­ing web­site, online @ http://www.structureddecisionmaking.org/steps/objectives/objectives2b/

Grin­stein, Gidi (04/15/2014) “The Essen­tial Archi­tec­ture of Small-Scale Net­works”. Huff­in­g­ton Post online @ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gidi-grinstein/jewish-adaptability_b_5154302.html?utm_hp_ref=world

Griffin, Rebecca(April 8, 2014) “I hope Dianne Fein­stein is emo­tional about tor­ture”.
Of Means and Ends blog – an organizer’s take on pro­gres­sive pol­i­tics and strat­egy, web­site online @ http://ofmeansandends.com/

Hoare, Barry (n.d.) “Ends ‘n Means Comic”. End­sn­Means blog, online @ http://www.endsnmeans.com/update-the-first/ 

Hux­ley, Aldous (1946) Ends and Means [novel]. Full text at Archive.org web­site, online @ http://archive.org/stream/endsandmeans035237mbp/endsandmeans035237mbp_djvu.txt

Jarche, Harold (2007) “Con­fus­ing Means and Ends”. Harold Jarche blog, online @ http://www.jarche.com/2007/07/confusing-means-and-ends/

Macleod, Hugh (n.d.) Gap­ingVoid Gallery web­site @ http://www.gapingvoidart.com/

May, Thor (1998) “Find­ing Truth: The Human Mind as an Error-Check­ing Mech­a­nism”. The Pas­sion­ate Skep­tic web­site, online @ http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/errorcheck.html

May, Thor (29 Jan­u­ary 2001) “Why Grasshop­pers Don’t Have A Prob­lem”. The Pas­sion­ate Skep­tic web­site, online @ http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/hownessofwhy.html

May, Thor (26 March 2001) “Stu­dent Activism : Truth and False Prophets”. The Pas­sion­ate Skep­tic web­site, online @ http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/student.html

May, Thor (2003) “The Case for Favoritism”. The Pas­sion­ate Skep­tic web­site, online @ http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/favoritism.html

May, Thor (2008) “Cor­rup­tion and Other Dis­tor­tions as Vari­ables in Lan­guage Edu­ca­tion” ; TESOL Law Jour­nal, Vol.2 March 2008; ( also on thormay.net and academia.edu) online @ http://thormay.net/lxesl/corruptioninlxed.html

May, Thor (28 March, 2010) “Some­body Else’s Prob­lem – Deci­sion Mak­ing in China”. Thor’s New China Diary, online @ http://thormay.net/ChinaDiary2/somebody-elses-problem

May, Thor (13 July 2011) “Why Write A PhD?”. The Pas­sion­ate Skep­tic web­site, online @ http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/whywriteaphd.html

May, Thor (12 April 2012) “Déjà Vu and Wicked Sto­ries”. The Pas­sion­ate Skep­tic web­site, online @ http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/dejavu.htm

May, Thor (August 2013) “The Free­dom Enter­prise and Other Yarns”. The Pas­sion­ate Skep­tic web­site, online @ http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/Freedom-enterprise.htm

Mises, Lud­wig von (n.d.) “Chap­ter IV. A First Analy­sis of the Cat­e­gory of Action – 1. Ends and Means”. Lud­wig von Mises Insti­tute web­site, online @ https://mises.org/humanaction/chap4sec1.asp

Pas­coe, Michael (April 1, 2014) “Aban­don prin­ci­ples and pay the price”. Bris­bane Times online @ http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/business/comment-and-analysis/abandon-principles-and-pay-the-price-20140331-35tz4.html

Pruss, Alexan­der (Tues­day, August 5, 2008) “Means-end rea­son­ing”. Alexan­der Pruss’s blog, online @ http://alexanderpruss.blogspot.com.au/2008/08/means-end-reasoning.html

West, Michael (April 12, 2014) “A ban is no deter­rent for bad behav­iour”. Syd­ney Morn­ing Her­ald online @ http://www.smh.com.au/business/a-ban-is-no-deterrent-for-bad-behaviour-20140411-36ih9.html#ixzz2yeYKDQP5

Wikipedia (2014) “Means to an End”. Wikipedia online @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Means_to_an_end

Wikipedia (2014) “Sep­tem­ber 11 Attacks”. Wikipedia online @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks

Wikipedia (2014) “0/11 Con­spir­acy The­o­ries”. Wikipedia online @ http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=9/11_conspiracy_theories 

Wikipedia (2014) “Casu­alties of the Iraq War”. Wikipedia online @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

 

Wikipedia (2014) “Civil­ian casu­alties in the War in Afghanistan (2001–present)”.  Wikipedia online @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_in_the_War_in_Afghanistan_%282001%E2%80%93present%29

Wik­iquote (2014) “Means and Ends”. Wik­iquote web­site online @ http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Means_and_ends

Zinn, Howard (1991) “Machi­avel­lian Real­ism and U.S. For­eign Pol­icy: Means and Ends”. Infor­ma­tion Clear­ing House web­site, online @ http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12349.htm

 


  

The source of this doc­u­ment:

 

mee­tup group: Gen­tle Thinkers http://www.meetup.com/Gentle-Thinkers/

dis­cus­sion top­ics blog (for the list of pro­posed top­ics): http://discussiontopics.thormay.net/

top­ics already dis­cussed: http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/DiscussionTopics/DiscussionIndex.htm

 com­ments: Thor May – thormay@yahoo.com;

Thor’s own web­sites: 1. arti­cles at http://independent.academia.edu/ThorMay ;
2. main site:
http://thormay.net


 

 

Pro­fes­sional bio: Thor May has a core pro­fes­sional inter­est in cog­ni­tive lin­guis­tics, at which he has rarely suc­ceeded in mak­ing a liv­ing. He has also, per­haps fatally in a career sense, cul­ti­vated an inter­est in how things work – peo­ple, brains, sys­tems, coun­tries, machi­nes, what­ever… In the world of daily employ­ment he has mostly taught Eng­lish as a for­eign lan­guage, a stim­u­lat­ing activ­ity though rarely regarded as a pro­fes­sion by the world at large. His PhD dis­ser­ta­tion, Lan­guage Tan­gle, dealt with lan­guage teach­ing pro­duc­tiv­ity. Thor has been teach­ing Eng­lish to non-native speak­ers, train­ing teach­ers and lec­tur­ing lin­guis­tics, since 1976. This work has taken him to seven coun­tries in Ocea­nia and East Asia, mostly with ter­tiary stu­dents, but with a cou­ple of detours to teach sec­ondary stu­dents and young chil­dren. He has trained teach­ers in Aus­tralia, Fiji and South Korea. In an ear­lier life, prior to becom­ing a teacher, he had a decade of find­ing his way out of work­ing class ori­gins, through unskilled jobs in Aus­tralia, New Zealan d and finally Eng­land (after back­pack­ing across Asia in 1972). 

con­tact: http://thormay.net    thormay@yahoo.com

aca­d­e­mic repos­i­tory: Academia.edu at http://independent.academia.edu/ThorMay
dis­cus­sion: Thor’s Unwise Ideas at http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/unwisendx.html

 

 


Crime with­out Pun­ish­ment – the jour­ney from means to ends   ©  Thor May 2014

This entry was posted in competence, culture, economics, ethics, evidence, ideology, individualism, law, management, merit, motivation, politics, proportion, regulations, religion, rules, teaching, truth, value, war, wealth, work. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply