Norman is a psychopath, just like the Hitchcock character that inspired the research team to create him.
Like so many of these projects do, the MIT researchers started out by training Norman on freely available data found on the Web. Instead of looking at the usual family-friendly Google Images fare, however, they pointed Norman toward darker imagery. Specifically, the MIT crew stuck Norman in a creepy subreddit to do his initial training.
Armed with this twisted mass of digital memories, Norman was then asked to caption a series of Rorschach inkblots. The results are predictably creepy. Let’s have a look at a couple, shall we?
The Monday after Halloween always has the same conversation … ‘I didn’t have hardly any trick or treaters, did you?’ Every year for many years, the holiday is being destroyed by the fear-mongers.
Life jacket / Public DomainMel Finnemore, a mom of four in the UK, is trying to get the government to pass a law requiring all children to wear brightly colored coats or bookbags. Her goal is to increase kids’ visibility, thus preventing accidents. To this end, she organized a parade of school children in hi-viz outerwear, telling the press, “I want to get the message across to children that it is ‘hip and happening’ to wear high visibility jackets.”
In a recent column, I noted the lack of evidence that people try to get kids high on Halloween by passing off cannabis candy as ordinary treats. The Denver Police Department’s inability to cite a single actual example of such a prank in Colorado or anywhere else has not stopped it from warning parents about the possibility, over and over again. With Halloween approaching, the department has been hyping this mythical menace on its Facebook page, building on the alarm generated by the podcast and video it produced on the subject. Recently the Pueblo Police Department joined the fear mongering.
Back in 2007, pedestrians hurried by without realizing that the busker playing at the entrance to a Washington D.C. Metro stop was none other than the Grammy-winning Joshua Bell. Gene Weingarten wrote about the Washington Post social experiment (“In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?”) and later won a Pulitzer Prize for his story.
I just want to repeat that one more time: Half of the MIT students surveyed think it’s possible to “accidently” rape someone. When you consider undergraduates alone, this rises to 67 percent.
They’ve tried monitoring students with RFID chips, video cameras, intrusive phone apps, fingerprint scanners, and demands for social media passwords. And along the road to clasping school kids in the smothering embrace of complete and total safety at every single moment (guaranteed!) public school educrats have managed something extremely impressive: they’ve freaked normal human beings
I’ve been talking about Cleon Skousen’s 45 Communist Goals for nearly a decade on the radio now. Many hosts are just getting around to it.
Albert Herong, Jr., entered The Communist Goals into the Congressional Record, as follows: “… At Mrs. Nordman’s request, I include in the RECORD, under unanimous consent, the following “Current Communist Goals,” which she identifies as an excerpt from “The Naked Communist,” by Cleon Skousen:
45 COMMUNIST GOALS
U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev’s promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
Do away with all loyalty oaths.
Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
Gain control of all student newspapers.
Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”
Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”
Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”
Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture–education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].
Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use “united force” to solve economic, political or social problems.
Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self- government.
Internationalize the Panama Canal.
Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction [over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction] over nations and individuals alike.
The debate has raged for some days now … was the killing of al-Awlaki in Yemen illegal?
Rep. Ron Paul says it was, but he says everything is illegal.
There are two primary arguments alleging the illegality of al-Awlaki’s killing.
First, he was a US citizen, and as such, was due a trial.
Second, the US violated international law by assassinating him in Yemen.
Neither argument holds up, both morally or legally.
First I’ll address international law.
Neither the Hague Convention of 1899, or the Protocol Addition to the Geneva Convention of 1949 forbid al-Awlaki’s killing by international law. Right off the get go, proponents of this argument are off to a bad start. In fact, the international law community has often taken the stance that killing an adversary can often fall within the confines of international law.
The clauses that traditionally have been construed as prohibiting “targeted killings” are far from clear prohibitions. In the Hague Convention (II) with Respect to the Laws and Customs of War on Land (29 July 1899), Article 23b states that it is prohibited “to kill or wound treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army.” Treachery is not explicitly defined, and it can be argued that using missiles to attack a car in which a target is traveling, while brutal and having a high probability of injuring bystanders, does not fall within the purview of treachery. Similarly, targeted killings can be argued to fall outside the Protocol I Article 37 prohibition on killing, injuring, or capturing “an adversary by resort to perfidy”—described as “acts inviting the confidence of an adversary to lead him to believe that he is entitled to, or is obliged to accord, protection under the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, with intent to betray that confidence.” Article 37 gives examples of perfidy including “the feigning of an intent to negotiate under a flag of truce or surrender” and “the feigning of civilian, non-combatant status.”
Basically, you can’t ‘assassinate’ under false-flag circumstances. No such circumstance existed with the al-Awlaki killing. It should be noted that this provision addresses someone belonging to a hostile nation OR army. While al-Awlaki did not belong to a hostile nation, he did belong to a hostile army. This is important later when I argue the relevance of his US citizenship.
In addition to this international law, the US has NO LAW forbidding foreign assassinations. We do, however, have a policy of not undertaking assassinations. Policy does not equal law.
The second component to this operation is that Yemen fully approved, and supported the killing of al-Awlaki. So no argument can be made that we violated the sovereignty of a foreign nation.
The other argument making its way around is that al-Awlaki’s killing was illegal because he was a US citizen. As such, an assassination order by the President of the United States would violate his constitutional right of due process. It should also be noted that al-Awlaki was not the only American killed in the attack.
Al-Awlaki’s ties to terrorism are not in dispute, his actual influence is. So can the president order his killing, or not?
8 U.S.C. § 1481 addresses the issue of US citizenship in situations like this.
(a) A person who is a national of the United States whether by birth or naturalization, shall lose his nationality by voluntarily performing any of the following acts with the intention ofrelinquishing United States nationality –
(1) obtaining naturalization in a foreign state upon his own application or upon an application filed by a duly authorized agent, after having attained the age of eighteen years; or
(2) taking an oath or making an affirmation or other formal declaration of allegiance to a foreign state or a political subdivision thereof, after having attained the age of eighteen years;
The law also addresses taking up arms against the United States in section 7. Considering al-Awlaki’s Yemeni citizenship, which does not recognize dual-citizenship, and his taking up arms against the US, it would appear that he renounced his US citizenship long ago.
Section 7 automatically revokes his citizenship because of his terrorist activities, but requires capture and tribunal. Since he was in Yemen, we revert to international law which permits his killing in order to prevent a further loss of life. More relevant is local Yemen law. Again, they assisted in the killing of al-Awlaki.
Is his killing a gray area? Only in the perpetually unrefined laws of US citizenship. Laws that most Americans agree need to be revamped, but the law nonetheless.
The only component missing to classify al-Awlaki as a non-citizen appears to be a mere formality of choreographed theater that would only serve to satisfy the selfish needs of third party citizens, not the parties directly involved. It’s pretty clear that al-Awlaki, the US, and Yemen were all on the same page.
Both al-Alwaki and Yemen agree that he is a citizen of Yemen. The US agrees that he revoked his citizenship. Who are you to swoop in and negate those facts?
The only sources of outcry appear to come from the ignorant, and those with a vested interest in ideological pacifism. Not from a position of morality or legality.
Ultimately, this is a debate that will fall upon opinion. If you think al-Awlaki’s killing was illegal, you’ll likely never change your mind. Same goes for those who think it was legally justified. Each individual will have to decide for themselves if international law, US law, or Yemeni law should reign supreme.
