Thursday, April 24, 2003

What do the Crusaders mean when they talk about "liberation" of Iraq? Here is what Perry de Havilland had to say in a comment on a Samizdata post: I have no problem with imposing a form of government (rather that the actual government) on Iraq at bayonet point. If large numbers of Iraqis say "No, we will not tolerate that", then you do what the US and UK would have done in Germany circa 1946... you use force. You shoot people if you have to. De-Nazification was not done with a whole lot of 'please and thank you' either. Democracy is just a side issue and can come later, if at all. Set up some confederal system to make whoever ends up running Baghdad about as strong as the Swiss central government compared to the cantons (i.e. not very). This also reduces the chance of Islamic moonbats taking over the whole country at a later date. If the US and UK governments are willing to go to war to change the regime, it makes little sense to get squeamish about using force to keep the new government within acceptable limits. Acceptable to whom? To a basic core of western liberal values, of course. If the locals are idiotic enough to want some Islamic law, well just so long as there are enough get-out clauses for those who don't and just so long as women are not disenfranchised, and just so long as non-Muslims can opt out, and just so long as regional autonomy is respected, etc etc etc. Many sections of Iraqi society have a vested interest in not seeing Baghdad get too powerful, such as the Kurds, the Sunni minority (if the Shia's come to dominate Baghdad), secularists etc... so it is not like the US will have to make water run uphill to avoid a return to a Ba'athist style centralised state but with some Ayatollah Khomeini wannabe at the helm. If some of the locals do not like that, tough shit... just remind them who has the bigger stick. It makes little sense to go to all this trouble and then just let the Islamofascists replace the Ba'athist Socialists. 8:12:04 PM    comment () Product announcement.  The slick Windows interface for Radio from Social DynamX (a partner of UserLand) is now available for download.  It should be up in the store soon.  It offers the following: 1) Spell check. 2) A slick Windows editing surface. 3) Tabbed browsing. 4) Outlook style news aggregation. 5) Simple image insertion. Here is a screenshot:     [John Robb's Radio Weblog] This looks like a very interesting idea, but unfortunately it requires Radio to be running on the same system. That doesn't work for me, since I run Radio on my Mac laptop so that I can use it both at home and at work. I do access it from my desktop PC when at home, and it would be nice if this app could access the copy of Radio on my Mac from my PC. 7:31:19 PM    comment () Philip Greenspun asks:  Should we break up Iraq if so many inside the country hate each other?  What are the pros and cons of breaking up Iraq into three regions?  A big reason to do this is that smaller nations would be more likely to become dependent on the US and easier to control.   It would also reward the Kurds for their loyalty.  A con is that many of the nations in the region would get mad at us for doing it (however, they are already mad at us so the downside is limited).  What do you think? [John Robb's Radio Weblog] We should let the Iraqis decide. Also, it's a bad idea to refer to the Kurds' "loyalty." They aren't our employees or slaves, they are independent people and as such are loyal to themselves. If people start thinking someone is loyal to them, they'll just be disappointed and angry when that someone starts to act independently. This phenomenon can be seen in the attitude of Crusaders towards the French for having the nerve to act like a sovereign nation. 7:15:41 PM    comment () Journalist Celebrates Freedom.... ...by looting Iraq. Boston Herald reporter Jules Crittenden busted with five-foot painting taken from one of Saddam's palaces. No word on whether it was that velvet sword-and-sorcery babe spotted in Uday's apartment. [Hit & Run] From the article in the Boston Globe (presumably a competitor: US Customs officials confiscated a large painting that a Boston Herald reporter, Jules Crittenden, brought back as a souvenir from the war in Iraq, but the artwork is not valuable enough to merit prosecution, a law enforcement official said yesterday Maybe someone should ask the Iraqis what they think of that? After all, he committed a crime in Iraq, not the United States. 5:49:30 PM    comment () Africa 'needs better malaria drugs'. Health campaigners are calling for more effective, but more expensive, antimalarial drugs to be made available across Africa. [BBC News | Front Page | UK Edition] Naturally the "health campaigners" are interested only in drugs to treat malaria (which would be paid for by people in other countries) and not at all in eradicating malaria so that treatment isn't required. That's not surprising because the way to get rid of malaria is to use DDT to kill the mosquitos that carry it. Unfortunately the "health campaigners" are almost always socialists, and being an ecofreak has become an integral part of the socialist dogma. Despite their pretense of concern, groups like the World Health Organization would rather bankrupt nations and see millions of children die rather than promote the use of an evil chemical. 5:43:45 PM    comment () Wakamaru Bot at Your Service. Wakamaru, a robot that is intelligent enough to assist patients at home, is designed to provide assistance to Japan's growing population of seniors. Elisa Batista reports from the Embedded Systems Conference in San Francisco. [Wired News] An interesting idea, but if they make a robotic bed I'll start to worry. 9:06:45 AM    comment ()

© Copyright 2006 Ken Hagler. Last update: 2/15/2006; 1:53:39 PM.