Wednesday, November 26, 2003


Source: How to Save the World

TERRORISM IS A REACTION, NOT AN ACTION.

peaceThere has been a lot of pleading lately, from people across the political spectrum, for Democrats and liberals to 'develop a real policy to deal with terrorism'. In the absence of this, the argument goes, every terrorist act plays into the hands of the Republicans and the neocons, giving them 'I told you so' justification for their 'anti-terrorist' actions (at least in the minds of the 50% of Americans who still buy the Bush con that unilaterally attacking Iraq had something to do with fighting terrorism). And in such an atmosphere, irresponsible idiots like Tommy Franks are advising terrorists that if they want to turn the US into a paranoid police state, the answer is simple: just pay one wacko in the US to detonate one dirty bomb anywhere in the country.

If the Bush regime is struggling next year to get re-elected, the best shot in the arm they could get would be more terrorism. In fact the Republicans now are almost fully invested (politically, and, with taxpayer money, financially) in the exaggerated and inept "war on terrorism". No wonder, then, that the bozo 'president' says "bring it on".

The point he's missing, which most of the mainstream media are too lazy to bring up, and which the Democrats are either too timid or too disorganized to articulate, is that in a free country in the 21st century there is no defense against terrorism. The laughably inadequate, ill-thought out Bush-Ashcroft 'security measures' are a complete joke, easily circumvented by a terrorist group with even a small modicum of intelligence. I can think of half a dozen terrorist acts that would put Tommy Franks' ideas to shame, and probably cost less, and which all the security measures implemented and promised in future freedom-erasing Patriot Acts don't even begin to address. But unlike Franks, I'm not about to sell them to a magazine for terrorists to read. The concentration of power in the West automatically brings with it enormous vulnerabilities (as the incompetents in the Ohio power industry demonstrated clearly to twenty million of us in two countries last summer).

Quite simply: If someone wants to kill three thousand or three million Americans, in spectacular fashion, they can and will find a way to do it, any time they damn well please. The technology is available and inexpensive and all the 'security measures' in the world cannot stop it. It is simply naive wishful thinking to believe otherwise. This is what conservatives, fueled into a rage by 9/11 and armed with the muddle-headed thinking of 'eye for an eye' religious teachings that simply don't work in a modern, global society, can't and won't accept. Cowboy analogies just don't apply any more: Just because the answer to armed desperados in the Old West was a strong police and military presence and every citizen armed to the teeth, doesn't mean the answer to armed terrorists in the New West (terrorists armed largely with technologies we sold to them, or which they stole from us) is an endless, bankrupting, freedom-sacrificing series of wars, overseen by a police state with Orwellian surveillance of everything and everyone and Star Wars and mini-nukes to 'out-gun' the bad guys. But this is exactly what Bush and the neocons are prepared to turn the West into, and they're furious with 'treasonous' individuals and countries that don't share their zeal.

Yes, the Democrats and liberals do need a policy to deal with terrorism. If we don't have one, any major terrorist act in 2004 guarantees a Bush re-election. But our policy needs to recognize that terrorism is a reaction, not an action. People who attack the West, and Western forces, ideas and institutions are reacting to our actions and ideas that to them are absolutely abhorrent -- the invasion of their countries, militarily, culturally, and economically, by Western troops, moral depravity, crass consumerism, spiritual sacrilege, and the power of money over man. It's not our 'freedom' that they hate, it's the imposition of Western culture that overwhelms them in their own countries and threatens everything they believe in. They don't really care what Americans do in their own country, which is the real reason so few terrorist acts are carried out on American soil.

There is no defense against terrorism, but there is a viable policy to deal with it. Problem is, it's a hot potato: no one really wants to adopt it, because it looks weak and it costs a lot. That policy is to stop attacking countries that don't espouse Western values, and leave them to evolve in their own way at their own rate. That policy is to invest the billions that the US is now spending on arms, to instead provide those countries with humanitarian aid -- money and supplies for education, infrastructure-building, medicines, and civilian technologies and training in how to use them. No strings attached except that we need to be able to audit to ensure the money and technologies are used for their intended purposes. Nothing to be paid back. In fact, for countries whose foreign debt to us is crushing them, making them economic slaves to us, we need to write that debt off. Goodwill is the only dividend we need.

If we did this, there would be nothing for terrorists to react to. And while there will always be a few deranged minds in the world who will blow up government buildings and commit other dreadful acts, and while under the auspices of the UN we may still need to intervene together to deal with leaders who inflict genocide or other massive cruelty on their own people or their neighbours, for the most part such a policy of incessant investment in nation-building will inevitably produce a world that is more peaceful, less harsh, and yes, safer and more secure for all of us than the one we live in today.
[How to Save the World]
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Source: GotDotNet: Workspaces

IGo : IBuySpy Goes OleDB. Also annoyed that the IBuySpy portal only works on SQL Server? Want to use IBS on your site, but you are only allowed to use MS Access databases? Well, it's IGo to the rescue then: our mission is to make IBS portal available with two main changes: - Use OleDB in stead of SQLClient - Use only SQL-queries and no stored procedures or views [GotDotNet: Workspaces]


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