Transnational Law Blog

The U.S. Military's Contemplated Use of the Blogosphere

While I was perusing the blogosphere about a week ago, I came across a post on Opinio Juris that caught my attention entitled, US Military Thought About Recruiting-- or Hiring-- Bloggers, which discusses a 2006 report for the Joint Special Operations University that suggests using bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message. The Opinio Juris post cited an article from the Wired Blog's Danger Room entitled, Military Report: Secretly 'Recruit or Hire Bloggers', that republished the following paragraph from the report:

Information strategists can consider clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers or other persons of prominence... to pass the U.S. message. In this way, the U.S. can overleap the entrenched inequalities and make use of preexisting intellectual and social capital. Sometimes numbers can be effective; hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering. On the other hand, such operations can have a blowback effect, as witnessed by the public reaction following revelations that the U.S. military had paid journalists to publish stories in the Iraqi press under their own names. People do not like to be deceived, and the price of being exposed is lost credibility and trust.

Other than an interesting story about Big Brother, I didn't think much of the two posts until I got an email from the Washington Post asking me to check out their new national security blog called Intel Dump. The author of the Opinio Juris post, Kevin Jon Heller, made a point of saying, "I hereby pledge that, as a blogger, I have not been recruited, purchased, or 'made' by the US military (or the mafia, for that matter)." I wonder if the author of Intel Dump, Phillip Carter, can make the same claim? Carter is an attorney in NY, working for McKenna, Long, and Aldridge, and he served on active and reserve duty for nine years in the U.S. Army as a military police and civil affairs officer. I am not saying there is any connection between Carter and the military report, but he does seem like the perfect candidate to accomplish the military's objectives as outlined in the report.

Frankly, I don't have a problem with the military recruiting or hiring or simply using bloggers to disseminate their message or attack someone in the blogosphere, and I don't care if they do it openly or in secret. The military doesn't quite understand the blogosphere. The report asks more than once, "How could (to paraphrase CBS’ Klein) 'some guys in pajamas writing at home' succeed in influencing not just the careers of prominent journalists, producers and media executives, but also potentially the course of an entire election or public opinion about a war?" What is unique about the blogosphere is not the infinite amount of information but the dialogue that occurs between different blogs and between bloggers and their readers. The military report argues that if the blogger and his blog were prominent enough, then the information posted on it would influence the rest of the blogosphere.

As previously observed, blog influence can be affected by the structure of the blogosphere, in particular, the network of hyperlinks connecting one blog to another. To illustrate, imagine starting at any random blog. By following a series of links from one blog to another, one is likely to hit one of the top blogs within a few hops. Moreover, information on that top blog may have propagated out to some of the blogs that linked to it, and so on from there, perhaps even reaching the blog from whence one started. Thus, even if one is not initially aware of a particular blog, one may end up there or being exposed to information posted on it. Overall, one is more likely to encounter a well-connected blog, or information posted on it, than one that is not.

Just because a blog links to a post does not necessarily mean that the blogger agrees with it. The writer of a blog (speaking from experience) links to posts he has an opinion about and he links to it because he wants to share his opinion about it. Often times, the opinion shared is contrary to the opinion in the original post. Plus, the readers of blogs does not take what they read at face value, and they generally formulate their own opinions by comparing the different opinions of several bloggers.

The users of blogs are not stuck with the editorial agenda of their local newspaper's publisher. Unlike the paper version of the Washington Post, a reader of blogs can freely move from one source of information to the next, comparing the information and filtering out absurdities. The information can be tested by reading other blogs or by questioning the blogger. This is the real threat to any sort of hegemonic information system. Even if the military inserted clandestine bloggers to disseminate their "message", it would not automatically be accepted as truth because it would be subject to the criticism and judgment of the entire blogosphere. This is why I invite the military to join in the discussion! The more people involved, the better the discussion is going to be-- even if someone is just trying to add misinformation.

It should also be noted that the report doesn't really state whether the military plans to hire bloggers to disseminate their message in the USA or in other countries. However, after a closer read, it appears the military is considering using bloggers in other countries.

Just as during World War II, the military recruited the top Hollywood directors and studios to produce films about the war (in effect conducting domestic influence campaigns in the name of maintaining the national morale and support for the war effort), waging the war against terrorism and its underlying causes, as spelled out in the National Security Strategy, may require recruiting the prominent among the digirati (probably those native to the target region) to help in any Web-based campaign. The importance of credibility and reputation to blog influence must be taken into account when considering using a blog as a vehicle for information operations. This is especially critical given the apparent poor image and reputation of the U.S. government in countries we want to influence.

But what is said by a blogger in one country, can quickly become the subject matter of a blog in another country. The media has been relying on bloggers in Tibet to get information about the unrest there, and a blogger secretly working for the US government could potentially provide false data that would then be disseminated throughout the blogosphere here in the US. However, I still believe the blogosphere and the average blog reader would be able to deal with that kind of information and weigh its legitimacy by comparing it to other sources of information.

The study also had a very interesting analysis of the blogosphere and bloggers, which is worth a read. I particularly liked the section summarizing who most bloggers are:

Nearly 75 percent of Americans use the Internet regularly, and those who use it most regularly tend to be young, male, have some degree of college education and generally are in or from the middle to upper-middle income brackets. These are the people who tend to be the most politically active, as well. Blog creators follow this trend, being generally young, affluent, educated males with broadband access and at least six years’ experience online.

Wow! That pretty much sums me up!

No Holiday After Fidel

Foreign Policy Passport Blog has a good list of articles discussing Fidel Castro's stepping down in a post called After Fidel.  An interesting post at the Disinformation Blog (a Myspace blog) entitled, Farewell Fidel! But We Forgot Our Detainees at Guantanamo Bay, reminds us that the ever controversial Cuba is also home to the infamous Navy base.  The post features an excerpt from Martin Cohen's new travel book No Holiday: 80 Places You Don't Want To Visit, which I've taken the liberty of republishing below:

NO HOLIDAY 32: Guantánamo Bay, Cuba

The most famous of all the Cuban bays

How to get there

For years and years you used to be able to just wander in and out of the US Navy Camp on the South Eastern tip of Cuba. But that all changed after the Revolution. Nowadays Americans are not even allowed to visit any part of the island—at the risk of a $10,000 fine. Those who really want to see Cuba have to employ a "roundabout route" (like maybe fly to Pakistan and join the Taliban). But for non-Americans, the easiest way to see Camp Delta is still to go to Havana and then down to Guantánamo Town, notable for its French-style architecture. There, for a couple of US dollars, they can hire a driver for the day, and be driven up a steep rough road to the Loma Malones observation point. This is a little rock shelter under a canopy, complete with a tourist-standard public telescope.

What to see

And from the little observation refuge, it should be possible to see far below, set amongst one of the wildest and least hospitable landscapes of Cuba, a kind of Wild West fort, complete with wooden stockades and watchtowers flying the Stars and Stripes. If you're lucky, through the telescope you may also see US soldiers frog-marching prisoners, clad in their famous orangey-red jump-suits, from their cells to the interrogation rooms.

The land surrounding the bay is dry and baked by the sun, and there is a fringe of cacti to the northwest, a relic of Fidel Castro's attempts, in the early 1960s, to discourage Cubans from fleeing to capitalism. The inhabitants of the base call this the Cactus Curtain, a sly reference to the more famous Iron one. Their idea was that on one side there were people living in perpetual fear and misery, whilst on the other was a world of freedom: singing, drinking and laughter in the bright sunshine. (Only it is not clear if they appreciated then which side of the curtain they were living on.)

One American student at the lookout, who had sneaked into the country by her own roundabout route, gives the flavor. "It looks so boring," she complains, "just like Los Alamos."

Boring, yes. But "Guantánamo has become an icon of lawlessness... dangerous to us all," as Amnesty International said in a statement marking the third year of Guantánomo's new role as a concentration camp and torture center. For that reason alone, it is well worth stopping off, if you're in Cuba, for a look.

Politically Inconvenient: Everyone Including Russia Knows the War in Iraq is About Oil

An interesting post at China Confidential entitled, Russian Leaders See Iraq War as US Oil Grab, analyzes Russia's motives for not adopting the Bush administration's hard line on Iran. According to China Confidential, Russia's political and military leaders view the US invasion of Iraq as a move to steal Iraq's vast oil reserves. The post gives the following explication:

The Russian view is that the "Great Oil Grab" was the brainchild of the first Bush administration's neo-conservative faction that included deputy defense secretary, Paul Wolfowitz; Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of state for defense; and Lewis Libby, the chief of staff for Vice President Cheney (whom many Russians regard as the de-facto president). As Moscow sees it, the neo-cons planned to first privatize (or "piratize," as some Russian analysts put it) and then substantially increase Iraqi oil production and exploration in order to flood the world oil market and drive prices below $15 a barrel. The Russians speculate that the Americans believed that an oil crash would cause the collapse of OPEC--and the domino-like fall of anti-democratic, oil-rich regimes--while strengthening the economies of the US and its oil-importing allies.

Iraq has approximately 112 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, which could theoretically be doubled or perhaps even tripled through exploration, surpassing Saudi Arabia's proven reserves of 245 billion barrels.

Russia's resurgence is based on escalating energy prices. The country is using its immense oil and gas resources to advance a geopolitical agenda in opposition to the US (which, under President Bush, seems to have gone out of its way to antagonize the Kremlin and push it closer to its former Communist rival, China).

The fact that the alleged neocon oil plot (like the democracy promotion project) obviously backfired--Iraq plunged into anarchy and proved impossible to control, Iranian influence increased, Iraqi oil production decreased, and the price of oil rose instead of fell and is now approaching the $100 landmark--does not make Moscow more inclined to help the US to peacefully resolve the Iranian nuclear issue. Having established itself atop the world's largest pool of oil, in a position to potentially control its exploitation, Russian leaders suspect, the US now plots to put an end to the Islamist regime in Tehran and ultimately win control of Iranian oil reserves. Another "oil war" is in the making, the Russians assert.

They believe that their suspicions have ironically been confirmed by prominent personalities in the US, including former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, whose recently published memoir states: "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."

Asked to comment, Gen. John Abizaid, former CENTCOM commander who oversaw three and a half years of the US occupation of Iraq, agreed. "Of course it's about oil, we can't really deny that," he said during a discussion at Stanford University.

When Will China Invade Taiwan?

Despite support from Ozzy Osbourne (see here), Taiwan's bid for United Nations admission has been rejected, again, making this the fifteenth time Taiwan has been denied since it began its attempts for UN membership in 1993. As mentioned in a previous post, the UN charter says that "Membership in the United Nations is open to all other [non-founding] peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations." There is no doubt that Taiwan is a peace-loving state, willing to accept the obligations that would be put upon it by the UN if membership was granted. However, the authoritarian China has once again bullied the rest of the world into refusing democratic Taiwan's bid for membership.

In a recent interview, Taiwan President Chen Shui-Bian said, "The Chinese government is trying to push us up against a wall. We are not part of the UN because Beijing does not recognize us as a sovereign state. Besides, Beijing insists on its One China policy, and Beijing oppresses us by claiming that we are merely a local government. This demeans us and weakens our position. But 23 million Taiwanese know that Taiwan is a sovereign state and that under no circumstances do we belong to China."

Whether China will invade Taiwan is slowly transforming into simply a question of when, and the general opinion seems to be that China will not invade before the 2008 Olympic Games. Taiwan President Chen said, "Western countries should not overlook the fact that the Chinese threaten Taiwan militarily. They had about 200 missiles pointed at us in 2000. Today it's 988. Beijing has increased its military budget by a double-digit percentage each year since 1989. An anti-secession law was adopted in 2005, creating a legal basis for an attack on Taiwan. The Chinese military is expected to be capable of attacking Taiwan by 2010, and conquering the entire island in a single strike by 2015. The world should not ignore these facts."

The United States is obligated by the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 to defend Taiwan from military aggressors, including China. However, since 9/11, China has become an indispensable ally of the US, who needs China to diplomatically handle the threats of North Korea and Iran. The US is too bogged down in the war in the Middle East to defend Taiwan from an invasion by China. Consequently, the Bush administration is opposed to either country unilaterally disturbing the status quo.

Yuan Jing-Dong, professor of international policy studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, said the following in an excellent article entitled, China, US delicately Juggle Taiwan:

The Sino-US relationship has evolved into one characterized as cooperative, constructive and candid or, to quote President Bush, "complex". Beijing and Washington cooperate on a whole range of issues, from the North Korean and Iranian nuclear challenges, to the environment and global warming, to the "global war on terrorism". China and the US have become ever more interdependent economically, with bilateral trade surpassing US$300 billion this year.

Both have come to recognize the importance of handling the delicate Taiwan issue. Washington seeks to maintain the status quo so it can stay focused on its "war on terrorism" and on combating the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Beijing recognizes the role that the US can play in reining in Taiwanese independence even as it continues its military preparation to deter and respond to such a scenario.

It is my opinion that the only possible way the US can invade Iran is if it sells out Taiwan. Despite its obligations to the US and the UN, China has been selling weapons, missile technology, and nuclear technology to Iran, which are used to bolster Iran's military as well as the military forces of its allies that are in Afghanistan and Iraq (see here). Obviously China realizes that if the US ever wants to defeat its enemies in the Middle East, it will have to make a deal with China, and the US's best bargaining chip is the island of Taiwan.       

The Ridiculous Remarks of Iran's President at Columbia University

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, spoke at Columbia University yesterday and fortunately there were no reports of anyone being tasered.  Ahmadinejad claimed that there are no homosexuals in Iran and the Holocaust is more theory than fact (see the NY Times). Iranian Truth ran a post debunking Ahmadinejad's absurd assertion that there are no homosexuals in Iran by pointing out that Iran's president obviously hasn't seen the CBC special entitled, Inside Iran's Secret Gay World.

The assertion about the Holocaust being more theory than fact is simply ridiculous. The President of Columbia University, Lee Bollinger, had this to say in his opening remarks about Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust:

In a December 2005 state television broadcast, you described the Holocaust as "a fabricated legend." One year later, you held a two-day conference of Holocaust deniers. For the illiterate and ignorant, this is dangerous propaganda.

When you have come to a place like this, this makes you, quite simply, ridiculous. You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated. You should know -- (applause) -- please -- you should know that Columbia is the world center of Jewish studies -- us a world center, and now in partnership with the -- Institute of Holocaust Studies.

Since the 1930s, we provided an intellectual home for countless Holocaust refugees and survivors and their children and grandchildren. The truth is that the Holocaust is the most documented event in human history. Because of this, and for many other reasons, your absurd comments about the debate over the Holocaust both defy historical truth and make all of us who continue to fear humanity's capacity for evil shudder at this closure of memory, which is always virtue's first line of defense. Will you cease this outrage?

A transcript of Bollinger's opening remarks can be found here.

Who Has Jurisdiction Over Civilian Security Contractors in Iraq?

This past Sunday, independent security contractors employed by Blackwater, a North Carolina based State Department private security contractor, were accused by the Iraqi government of opening fire--unprovoked--on a group of civilians, killing eight of them, and wounding thirteen. At the time the security personnel opened fire, they were escorting US State Department officials. There was, reportedly, an explosion near the convoy, and an unnamed embassy official is reported as saying that the contractors merely "escalated force to defend themselves." The Iraqi government, however, maintained that "the security company contractors opened fire randomly on the civilians," announcing, "[w]e consider this act a crime."

The Iraqi government has since revoked Blackwater's license to operate in Iraq, forcing the withdrawal of Blackwater's remaining 1,000-1,500 employees stationed there. However, a spokesperson for the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior--Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf--announced Iraqi government's further intent to prosecute the specific Blackwater employees involved in the incident. According to the NY Times, "[t]he deaths struck a nerve with Iraqis, who say that private security firms are often quick to shoot and are rarely held responsible for their actions."

While Iraq is asserting the jurisdiction to try the Blackwater employees (after a "fair probe" in conjunction with US officials), it is not clear from whence it is asserting that power. According to Professor Scott Silliman, a former Air Force Judge Advocate General who now heads Duke Law School's Center of Law, Ethics and National Security, there is doubt over whether Iraq can 'lawfully' try the contractors. As he explains

Before the sovereign state of Iraq came into being, of course, we had the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) that was in charge of affairs in Baghdad. And, an order passed by the CPA in early 2004 exempted civilian contractors in Iraq from the jurisdiction of the Iraqi courts. I think the United States will argue [] that still applies, although the Iraqis might try to come back and say, 'Well, we're a sovereign nation now; we have jurisdiction.'

As Silliman also explains, US Federal Courts do have jurisdiction over the private security contractors--stemming from the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (2000)--as long as their employment supports the mission of the DOD overseas. Earlier this year, Congress also passed a law authorizing the treatment of civilian military contractors under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, although guidelines for treatment of civilian personnel under the Code have yet to be issued.

When it comes to resolving which government will actually handle any resulting trial, Silliman believes

It's going to be a diplomatic matter. The Secretary of State, obviously, is going to tell the Iraqis that we will investigate; that if a crime has been committed, we have the vehicle to bring them to prosecution. I just do not see the United States government allowing US nationals working for the US government to go before the Iraqi courts. Because, once you start down that path, then the next thing is, they'll want jurisidiction over our military personnel as well, and that's just not about to happen.

You can listen to the entire interview with Professor Silliman here.

Clear and Present Danger: University of Florida Student Tasered When he Refused to Give up the Mic

As law students we should all be very disturbed when we see a student being arrested and tasered for peacefully asking an elected representative some questions during an open mic question and answer session. Andrew Meyer, a University of Florida student, was wrestled from the microphone while he was asking Senator John Kerry some questions and he was subsequently tasered while being held on the ground by multiple police officers. Here is the video:

As you'll notice, Meyer is holding a yellow book, which has been identified as a book entitled, Armed Madhouse, written by investigative journalist Greg Palast. From this book, Meyer formulated and asked Kerry the following three questions:

1. Given that you won the 2004 election per Greg Palast's book, "Armed Madhouse", why did you concede so on the day of the election itself when there were many reports on the day of the election of disenfranchisement of black voters and corrupted vote count?
2. If you are really so opposed to the Invasion of Iraq(Iran?), why don't you urge impeachment of Bush now before he can invade Iran? Clinton was impeached for a blow job, invading Iraq/Iran is much for serious than that?
3. Were you a member of the secret society Skull & Bones in college?

Is this a dangerous book? Dangerous enough to justify tasering a student? And who is threatened by this book?

Democracy Now has a good interview with Palast about his book, which reveals how the 2000 and 2004 elections were fixed. It also delves deeply into the motives behind the Iraq war, which is about oil but not in the way most of us think. He also points out that Chavez is willing to sell the US oil at a price far cheaper than the oil the US purchases from the Middle East, and he explains why the US would rather assassinate Chavez than lower the price of gas.

We should not forget that this is not the first incident of university police tasering a student. During fall semester 2006, a UCLA student was tasered when he failed to show his student ID card (see it here on Iranian Truth).

UPDATE: FP Passport has posted an article entitled, Ahmadinejad Has More Rights Than a US College Student, which is worth reading. Here is an excerpt:

Something is seriously wrong with this picture: An American student enrolled at the University of Florida is denied his constitutionally-protected right to question an elected leader in a nonviolent way. He's tackled by a half dozen police officers, tasered, and thrown in jail. Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be given free reign to hold court before a group of students and faculty — and hordes of television cameras — at Columbia University next week.

***

What's more worrisome, however, is the realization that, while Ahmadinejad will enjoy and test the very limits of the freedoms Americans are supposed to enjoy, a U.S. citizen was denied this priviledge earlier this week. American universities, one is left to assume, value the insights of a man like Ahmadinejad more than they do those of their own students.

There is something rotten in America.

Why America is Losing the War on Terror; A Lecture by Jules Lobel at UC Hastings

UC Hastings started its lecture series this year with a lecture by Jules Lobel, who is promoting his new book Less Safe, Less Free: Why America is Losing the War on Terror, which he co-authored with David Cole. The book compares the Bush administration's preemptive strategy in fighting the war on terrorism to the science fiction short story by Philip K. Dick entitled, Minority Report, in which the Justice Department uses psychic visionaries to predict and prevent future crimes. Unlike the sci-fi story, Bush has no psychic visionaries to guide his preemptive strategy. Lobel convincingly argues that the administration's preemptive strategy has not made us safer but has in fact put us in even more danger.

His lecture was very insightful. His comments about extraordinary rendition were particularly interesting, and to illustrate his points he told the story of Maher Arar, one of his clients. Arar was arrested in the US while he was traveling from Europe to his home in Canada. He never even entered the US, he was merely transferring from one flight to another. He was detained by the US government for 12 days before he was deported to Syria, a rogue nation, where he was tortured for more than a year.

The audio includes an introduction by Evan Lee, a Hastings professor of law. Lobel's lecture can be downloaded here (it's about an hour long): Download Lobel.mp3

Or play the audio here:

Impending Iraq Pullback?

The NY Times is reporting that the Bush administration, amid further Republican defections in congress and the President's tanking approval rating, may soon announce plans for an Iraq pullback strategy. The article quotes a senior administration official as stating, "When you count up the votes that we've lost and the votes we're likely to lose over the next few weeks, it looks pretty grim." Stay tuned, folks. Maybe Cindy Sheehan is finally making a difference (though it appears she is not giving up anytime soon).

This American Attention Whore

Since the National Law Journal has just posted an article about TLB, I figured this is a good opportunity for a time-out from the serious law talk, which has occupied this forum for most of the month of June, and talk about some of the stuff that probably isn't mentioned often enough around here. A little levity always helps this kind of situation get going and so I'm going to quote from a post entitled, In Defense of Paris Hilton, by comedian, and talking monkey, Joe Rogan:

Paris Hilton is a guilty pleasure bordering on a national obsession.

What’s the deal? I understand that seeing her everywhere can be annoying, and that she’s got no discernible talent, and all that good shit… but I really don’t understand all the hate. The day she got out of jail a friend of mine who is normally very rational and intelligent was actually angry. Really fucking pissed. “Why the fuck should she get out of jail early? She gets home confinement in her fucking mansion? I’m sorry, but that’s bullshit!”

Meanwhile, across the world horrific drama goes on every minute of the day and gets relatively little attention. Bombs drop, and IED’s explode, people die… Cool, fun loving people that will be sorely missed by their loved ones vanish from the earth every day, but on the news it’s marginalized to a number. “13 US soldiers lost their lives in battle this weekend, making this one of the deadliest months on record.” Reduced to a number. A 1 in 13. A part of Monday’s update on the weekend’s action for those that went fishing and want to keep up on the count.

But Paris Hilton is BREAKING fucking news. Even when they’re talking about other shit they’ve got a Paris Hilton update scrolling across the bottom of the screen. “Paris Hilton hasn’t eaten or slept in days!” Larry King actually devoted at least two entire shows to Paris, and had people that were friends of Paris on. He asked CRAZY questions, like “Is Paris down to earth?”

“Really?” I was watching it and that was all I could think. Just “really?”

This whole scenario just seemed like a funny scene in a Judd Apatow movie or something. Just wow… how fucking weird are we? This is what we care about most while we’re in the middle of this crazy modern day holy war? I’ve actually heard a conservative talk show host say that if the media concentrated on each and every death and went into detail about it people would lose their taste for the war. He went on to say that the American people, especially the young just don’t understand the sacrifice it takes to keep this great land free.

Joe Rogan is one of the best comedians performing today simply because he's honest, and straight honesty is so horrifying you have to laugh or you'll completely freak out. Well, right now, I'm not laughing, and I think we should all be very freaked out-- not panicked-- just freaked out. It's good for the heart to get a little freaked out every now and then. It hopefully snaps you out of your drone-like complacency and you ask, "Yeah, who are those guys that died in some foreign land over the weekend?"

I don't know who they are. Do you? I'm all the way in China and I know Paris got out of jail (again) but I have no idea what's happening in Iraq. That troubles me, and I wonder what I'm going to do about it like some fat couch-potato wondering what he's going to do about his gut. Is the answer the same for both situations? Get off my ass? The couch-potato knows he has to go to the gym and eat better, but what do I do about the men and women that died over the weekend?