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Safe Harbour for Terrorists
No, not Iraq. Florida.
The Bush administration [created] an international incident … by harboring a notorious group of international terrorists on U.S. soil. Earlier this month, three anti-Castro Cuban exiles flew to Miami from Panama after serving four years in prison for endangering public safety” … The release of these terrorists from Panamaordered by its outgoing presidenthas caused a furor in Central America. Venezuela recalled its ambassador and Cuba severed diplomatic relations with Panama. Honduras also protested. I will . . . demand that the United States and Panama explain how Posada Carriles used a false U.S. passport, declared Honduran President Ricardo Maduro. How did that airplane leave Panama with Posada Carriles, reach Honduras, and wind up in the United States? … We know were dealing with important international influences”.
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Amazon has launched a new Google competitor search service: A9. Amazon is also giving away a discount bonus for using the search.
1. Navigate to A9.
2. Ensure you are logged in using your Amazon username.
3. Do a search.
4. Navigate to Amazon.com.
5. Click on the Pi/2 % icon on the top-centre navbar.
6. It adds a discount to future purchases, apparently.
The Will to Power
The United States is more powerful than any country in history
I hear this kind of blanket profundity a lot these days. But isn’t it just yet another example of the persistent narcissistic tendency for blithe US exceptionalism?
Power is a process, not a potential. It is realised only through execution and results. The US can barely maintain a tenuous hold over Iraq – a rather small country with an infrastructure largely devastated after more than a decade of seige.
I think the Umayyad/Abbasid Persians managed Iraq rather better in their day. That, to me, was a projection of power, an exercise in control, with results that lasted centuries.
It’s notable that for all its posturing, the US these days generally picks fights only with crappy developing nations or tiny island states with minimal defences. And its track record in producing long-term favourable changes within the local environment is rather hit and miss.
The current desperate attempts to avoid a conflict with North Korea at all costs reminds us of how leery the US war planners must be when it comes to confronting this undeafeated enemy once again.
For all this talk about “pacifist” Europe, let’s not forget that Germany, which in 1930 had been reduced through economics and treaties, to a low state of military strength, managed within a decade to re-arm to such a degree that it took the combined “Power” of much of the rest of the world to defeat it utterly.
That’s a small nation around only slightly larger than California fighting the rest of the world to a standstill for years. And almost winning.
Germany, or any other similar advanced, developed, wealthy European country, could once again pose such a threat, were it expedient. However, within today’s Europe the amazingly effective expansionist EU ideology is proving eerily effective at drawing more and more of the continent’s resources within its purview. It stretches almost from the Atlantic to the goddam Urals these days!
This alliance of France, Germany, and Italy has proved more effective at exerting dominance over more and more of the richest, most prosperous part of the world than any recent military Empire. And they didn’t even have to fire a single shot or spend a penny. Between the expanding empires of the EU and China, the diminishing Russian Empire is being slowly carved up by a process that reminds me of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the assimilation of its vassal states by other rising world Powers of that era. It too is bereft of a unifying ideology, riven by separatist and nationalist movements, and drifting into feedback mechanism of militant yet ineffectual autocratic kleptocracy.
Tell me again what is meant by “Power”?
Sunlight
What do you know, there *is* free WiFi access in Washington Square Park!
Comments!
Comments are back
Prevention
This is right up there with ‘we had to destroy the village in order to save it‘. Some rebels blow up a US vehicle in Baghdad. Afterwards, some pretty desperate people are swarming over the burning remains, presumably looking for scrap to sell. An Arab-language TV crew is reporting from the scene. A US helicopter gunship comes along and launches an aerial bombardment of the burning remains, in the process killing around a score of people (including some of the TV crew who were broadcasting the attack) and wounding dozens.
Now, it’s a pretty safe bet that none of the rebels who destroyed that vehicle were in the immediate vicinity – they are far too smart for that. The soldier passengers had earlier escaped. One more (or less) burning hulk in Baghdad is really not going to make any difference in the grand scheme of things. The people who are both dumb and desperate enough to crawl over the hazardous remains obviously present no immediate threat to the US occupation. So why fire on it and the crowd, further alienating (if that is even possible!) the Baghdad citizens?
“After evacuating the wounded, air support destroyed the Bradley fighting vehicle to prevent looting and harm to the Iraqi people,” the U.S. military said in a statement.
Obviously, the military types are pissed off at the harshest seige yet of the Western enclave within central Baghdad. But of course, with that kind of approach to crowd control, I expect further harm prevention measures will prove even more productive than the Pentagon’s recent efforts.
The Tao of Poo
I wish I got sweets every time I had a poo.
Down With The Kids
SO it was my first day back in school. In the 500-odd freshie Chemistry class this morning I was the oldest person by far. I bet they thought I was working for “The Man”. Or that I was perhaps “The Man”. Maybe these days “The Man” is in fact “The Person”, or “The Gender Unspecified”?
At any rate, one big difference I noticed between lectures now and way back then is that in the old days when people got out they would spend some time hanging around, chatting, making friends, all that annoying stuff. Now they can all just get out and straight onto their mobile phones and avoid that damn socializing. Many if not most of the people exiting class walked away quickly in little cell phone auto-chat bubbles.
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