2007-03-24
Internet Usage
There is a very interesting list of countries here, showing what percentage of the population uses the internet. Australia has 70% penetration. Not bad! I would like to see 100% penetration, but I'm not sure that you can force the remaining stalwarts to get online.
I consider the internet, especially broadband, to be a major conceptual change. With so much of the world online, we can basically chat directly with our enemies, as the Israelis and Lebanese did during the recent war. The thousands of years of conflict in the world have reached the point where we can at least find out where we stand, and see where the other person is coming from. This has enabled us to identify exactly who our enemies are, so we can now begin the process of executing the final war to see which ideology wins. And then we need to maintain that victory by being in perpetual war, waiting to see when an enemy ideology (basically the latest dogmatic dictatorship) raises its ugly head so we can smash it. The price of freedom is eternal vigilence. Once again, this is not even something I made up. I'm just implementing well-known policy.
I think we should make a serious international effort to get the world connected up to the internet so that everyone can talk to everyone else, so that we can clear up the various misconceptions. Especially the world media has made whites out to be racist, and the only racists, on the planet, when the complete opposite is the case (in fact, I didn't even know I'd been fooled by the media until the Iraqi bloggers came online and I could see the Iraqis talking in racial terms). And ditto about the Christians being the religious bigots, when I know that as an atheist, no-one in Australia gave a damn about my religion, or lack thereof.
Quite frankly, I think internet access is coming pretty close to being a human right. I think everyone should be able to be part of the world, which is what this essentially is. It's almost part of freedom of speech. What's the point of freedom of speech if you can't even get your opinion to at least be accessible via a blog? I know right-wing people will have a heart attack about me wanting to have government-funded internet access, but that is why in those questionairres I come out as a centrist, not right-wing. I believe in a rational approach to the economy - ie using capitalism, the only system known to actually work - but I do think we have a collective duty to protect others, and to do research, things like that. So long as we don't endanger our economy, and so long as the burden is not too great. It should also work hand-in-hand with private charities. Basically social standing should be dependent on people working hard in the capitalist system and then using that money to help others, as Bill Gates etc do. Although I question where he is actually directing his money.
And it's not just a human right, but it's an integral part of our security. We need to increase contacts with the rest of the world so that people eventually realise that America is not trying to enslave the world. Although the number of people who hold onto their dogmatic opinions in spite of the evidence in front of them may mean that this is a forlorn hope. But at least we should try our best. It's exasperating when we try our best and that still isn't good enough, but nevermind. We can mostly work around this problem (e.g. by vacating Iraq at the end of the year and see if that stops the conspiracy theories). We will need everyone to be able to speak English for this to work though, but fortunately that seems to be happening.
Words can not express how happy I am to see the world come online and express themselves freely. Especially the Afghans and Iraqis. That is just so amazingly beautiful. If only I could get the other 50% of Australia to see that beauty. I don't really care if people don't have high-speed access. So long as they can access chat rooms, instant messaging, email and blogs, which don't require high speed, and hopefully be permanently connected, I am happy. Then let the wonderful free marketplace of ideas do its stuff!
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I consider the internet, especially broadband, to be a major conceptual change. With so much of the world online, we can basically chat directly with our enemies, as the Israelis and Lebanese did during the recent war. The thousands of years of conflict in the world have reached the point where we can at least find out where we stand, and see where the other person is coming from. This has enabled us to identify exactly who our enemies are, so we can now begin the process of executing the final war to see which ideology wins. And then we need to maintain that victory by being in perpetual war, waiting to see when an enemy ideology (basically the latest dogmatic dictatorship) raises its ugly head so we can smash it. The price of freedom is eternal vigilence. Once again, this is not even something I made up. I'm just implementing well-known policy.
I think we should make a serious international effort to get the world connected up to the internet so that everyone can talk to everyone else, so that we can clear up the various misconceptions. Especially the world media has made whites out to be racist, and the only racists, on the planet, when the complete opposite is the case (in fact, I didn't even know I'd been fooled by the media until the Iraqi bloggers came online and I could see the Iraqis talking in racial terms). And ditto about the Christians being the religious bigots, when I know that as an atheist, no-one in Australia gave a damn about my religion, or lack thereof.
Quite frankly, I think internet access is coming pretty close to being a human right. I think everyone should be able to be part of the world, which is what this essentially is. It's almost part of freedom of speech. What's the point of freedom of speech if you can't even get your opinion to at least be accessible via a blog? I know right-wing people will have a heart attack about me wanting to have government-funded internet access, but that is why in those questionairres I come out as a centrist, not right-wing. I believe in a rational approach to the economy - ie using capitalism, the only system known to actually work - but I do think we have a collective duty to protect others, and to do research, things like that. So long as we don't endanger our economy, and so long as the burden is not too great. It should also work hand-in-hand with private charities. Basically social standing should be dependent on people working hard in the capitalist system and then using that money to help others, as Bill Gates etc do. Although I question where he is actually directing his money.
And it's not just a human right, but it's an integral part of our security. We need to increase contacts with the rest of the world so that people eventually realise that America is not trying to enslave the world. Although the number of people who hold onto their dogmatic opinions in spite of the evidence in front of them may mean that this is a forlorn hope. But at least we should try our best. It's exasperating when we try our best and that still isn't good enough, but nevermind. We can mostly work around this problem (e.g. by vacating Iraq at the end of the year and see if that stops the conspiracy theories). We will need everyone to be able to speak English for this to work though, but fortunately that seems to be happening.
Words can not express how happy I am to see the world come online and express themselves freely. Especially the Afghans and Iraqis. That is just so amazingly beautiful. If only I could get the other 50% of Australia to see that beauty. I don't really care if people don't have high-speed access. So long as they can access chat rooms, instant messaging, email and blogs, which don't require high speed, and hopefully be permanently connected, I am happy. Then let the wonderful free marketplace of ideas do its stuff!
# posted by Paul Edwards @ 15:15 
2007-03-23
War Costs
A lot of people have tried to say that this war is expensive. Well here are the numbers. WWII cost nearly 50% of GDP while the combined Afghan and Iraqi wars are costing 1% of GDP. If our ancestors could see us now they would be rolling in their graves. Come to think of it, shouldn't they still be alive? Maybe we should ask them to roll about in their beds or something? These are all American figures.
I was doing some research into Australia's economy. There is a great graph here showing where our money comes from and goes to. Over the course of this conservative government (11 years), they have just managed to get rid of our net debt. I'm really pleased about that. We have an approximately $1 trillion dollar economy and the government gets about 20% of that in tax. Our population is 20 million, so about 1/15 that of the US. Defence spending is $18 billion. Now if we could just direct that $18 billion into something useful, like deploying soldiers overseas instead of buying planes which we wouldn't require if we asked the US nicely to station some planes here (either that or we preemptively wipe out Indonesia's air force!!!). You can see the ridiculous number of planes that the US has here. I guess New Zealand did the right thing after all by essentially getting rid of its air force. Maybe we can lean on them to take over peacekeeping duties in East Timor so that our troops are freed up for duty in Iraq?
Honestly, I'm really impressed by our economies and our governments. They've both done a damn good job. So much has been achieved in Afghanistan and Iraq for so little. We're finally giving some foreign aid that isn't just pouring water into sand. Instead, it's the best bang per buck available anywhere on the planet. The gift that keeps on giving. Even ignoring the end of institutionalized human rights abuses and the absolute joy of seeing people with purple fingers and parliamentary debate etc etc. Honestly, we're all set up for the future. What we need to do now is export what we've already got to the rest of the world. Now if only we can get 50+% of the Australian population to see that and agree with it and demand a continuation of current policy. Before we disappear up our own arses trashing our beautiful secular capitalist liberal democracies.
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I was doing some research into Australia's economy. There is a great graph here showing where our money comes from and goes to. Over the course of this conservative government (11 years), they have just managed to get rid of our net debt. I'm really pleased about that. We have an approximately $1 trillion dollar economy and the government gets about 20% of that in tax. Our population is 20 million, so about 1/15 that of the US. Defence spending is $18 billion. Now if we could just direct that $18 billion into something useful, like deploying soldiers overseas instead of buying planes which we wouldn't require if we asked the US nicely to station some planes here (either that or we preemptively wipe out Indonesia's air force!!!). You can see the ridiculous number of planes that the US has here. I guess New Zealand did the right thing after all by essentially getting rid of its air force. Maybe we can lean on them to take over peacekeeping duties in East Timor so that our troops are freed up for duty in Iraq?
Honestly, I'm really impressed by our economies and our governments. They've both done a damn good job. So much has been achieved in Afghanistan and Iraq for so little. We're finally giving some foreign aid that isn't just pouring water into sand. Instead, it's the best bang per buck available anywhere on the planet. The gift that keeps on giving. Even ignoring the end of institutionalized human rights abuses and the absolute joy of seeing people with purple fingers and parliamentary debate etc etc. Honestly, we're all set up for the future. What we need to do now is export what we've already got to the rest of the world. Now if only we can get 50+% of the Australian population to see that and agree with it and demand a continuation of current policy. Before we disappear up our own arses trashing our beautiful secular capitalist liberal democracies.
# posted by Paul Edwards @ 21:53
2007-03-20
Afghan and Iraqi Polls
There is a poll just out in Iraq, which has some disturbing results in it.
47% think the war was right versus 53% who think it was wrong.
Back in 2004 the results were 49% versus 39%.
A whopping 59% think the US controls the country versus 34% who think the Iraqi government does.
Back in 2005 the results were 24% and 44% - ie totally reversed.
A whopping 78% oppose the presence of coalition forces. That means forget about bases. Get out as quickly as possible. Although thanks to the schizophrenic Iraqis, only 35% say they want the coalition to leave immediately, despite the fact that 69% think the security is worse with the US forces present. Honestly, we need to get out before we accidentally get into a war with the Iraqi people.
The Iraqis are evenly divided on whether it is OK to attack the people who brought them freedom! But the great news is that 88% disapprove of attacking the Iraqi government forces versus 12% who think it is acceptable. That's all we need. All we need is for the Iraqis to support their own forces. The coalition can get out faster than you can say "is it December 2007 yet?".
I hope that when the US forces have gone that people will stop thinking that they are being controlled by the US. I wonder if there is anything Maliki can do to let the people know that he is not being told what to do by the US? Although the Iraqis already acknowledge that the Iraqi security forces are in charge of security, so I'm not sure removing the US forces entirely will make any difference.
One good thing is that 94% think separation on sectarian lines is bad.
Another good thing is that there are no people refusing to answer the poll questions, so they obviously realise they are free to express their opinion.
Now compare all that to the polls in Afghanistan. From this one we find:
88% support the current government versus 3% supporting the Taliban.
88% versus 11% think it was good that the US arrived.
And only 5% support Osama Bin Laden.
And from this one we find:
87% trust the Afghan National Army
86% trust the Afghan National Police.
86% support equality regardless of gender/ethnicity/religion.
These are very positive numbers. I'm so glad that Afghanistan was liberated rather than nuked. We can work with these people. But we can't have permanent bases there either. Only 5% of the Afghans support that. Let's see if Iran is more open to that. But only after they've held elections without any US forces present. I don't think bases are particular important in these countries though. We can get air strikes in Iraq from either Kuwait or Turkey, and we can get air strikes in Afghanistan from Kyrgyzstan or Uzbekistan. More options would be nice, but not necessary, and we certainly don't want to force these people to do anything. It is extremely important to get out ASAP so that people know we're not invading any of these countries. That will give the subsequent countries that are liberated more confidence so that they know they can trust us and defect. It's a pity Iran needs to be liberated faster than we can get troops out of Afghanistan or Iraq, but that's the way the wars went.
Anyway, things could have been a hell of a lot worse than this. As it is, the essentials we need are already there, in both countries. They support their security forces and they voted in large numbers for their government. All we need to do is get out of their hair as soon as possible. No problem! We should train up locals with laser designators so that we don't even need to provide special forces, and they can instead call in air strikes from other countries. And the next step after that is setting them up with a minimal air force so that they can drop their own bombs. But they should still have the ability to call in US air strikes in case their own air force has been caught up in a military coup or something. It's all happening. The forces are nearly in place. Probably the locals should go overseas if they want the US or coalition to train them as well. Unless the polls change so that the locals are happy to have foreign troops in their country. But even if the local government wants the troops but the local people don't, I think we need to seek alternate arrangements. We can't risk sparking a pointless war with the locals when we're not trying to force them to do anything.
P.S. Afghan and Iraqi polls can now be found here.
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47% think the war was right versus 53% who think it was wrong.
Back in 2004 the results were 49% versus 39%.
A whopping 59% think the US controls the country versus 34% who think the Iraqi government does.
Back in 2005 the results were 24% and 44% - ie totally reversed.
A whopping 78% oppose the presence of coalition forces. That means forget about bases. Get out as quickly as possible. Although thanks to the schizophrenic Iraqis, only 35% say they want the coalition to leave immediately, despite the fact that 69% think the security is worse with the US forces present. Honestly, we need to get out before we accidentally get into a war with the Iraqi people.
The Iraqis are evenly divided on whether it is OK to attack the people who brought them freedom! But the great news is that 88% disapprove of attacking the Iraqi government forces versus 12% who think it is acceptable. That's all we need. All we need is for the Iraqis to support their own forces. The coalition can get out faster than you can say "is it December 2007 yet?".
I hope that when the US forces have gone that people will stop thinking that they are being controlled by the US. I wonder if there is anything Maliki can do to let the people know that he is not being told what to do by the US? Although the Iraqis already acknowledge that the Iraqi security forces are in charge of security, so I'm not sure removing the US forces entirely will make any difference.
One good thing is that 94% think separation on sectarian lines is bad.
Another good thing is that there are no people refusing to answer the poll questions, so they obviously realise they are free to express their opinion.
Now compare all that to the polls in Afghanistan. From this one we find:
88% support the current government versus 3% supporting the Taliban.
88% versus 11% think it was good that the US arrived.
And only 5% support Osama Bin Laden.
And from this one we find:
87% trust the Afghan National Army
86% trust the Afghan National Police.
86% support equality regardless of gender/ethnicity/religion.
These are very positive numbers. I'm so glad that Afghanistan was liberated rather than nuked. We can work with these people. But we can't have permanent bases there either. Only 5% of the Afghans support that. Let's see if Iran is more open to that. But only after they've held elections without any US forces present. I don't think bases are particular important in these countries though. We can get air strikes in Iraq from either Kuwait or Turkey, and we can get air strikes in Afghanistan from Kyrgyzstan or Uzbekistan. More options would be nice, but not necessary, and we certainly don't want to force these people to do anything. It is extremely important to get out ASAP so that people know we're not invading any of these countries. That will give the subsequent countries that are liberated more confidence so that they know they can trust us and defect. It's a pity Iran needs to be liberated faster than we can get troops out of Afghanistan or Iraq, but that's the way the wars went.
Anyway, things could have been a hell of a lot worse than this. As it is, the essentials we need are already there, in both countries. They support their security forces and they voted in large numbers for their government. All we need to do is get out of their hair as soon as possible. No problem! We should train up locals with laser designators so that we don't even need to provide special forces, and they can instead call in air strikes from other countries. And the next step after that is setting them up with a minimal air force so that they can drop their own bombs. But they should still have the ability to call in US air strikes in case their own air force has been caught up in a military coup or something. It's all happening. The forces are nearly in place. Probably the locals should go overseas if they want the US or coalition to train them as well. Unless the polls change so that the locals are happy to have foreign troops in their country. But even if the local government wants the troops but the local people don't, I think we need to seek alternate arrangements. We can't risk sparking a pointless war with the locals when we're not trying to force them to do anything.
P.S. Afghan and Iraqi polls can now be found here.
# posted by Paul Edwards @ 19:35
2007-03-19
Marked for Death
You damned lefties make me sick. Take a look at this. A little over halfway down there is a picture of a happy Iraqi woman showing her purple finger. A free woman. An ally. Our ally. An ally of the free world. And the caption says that she is marked for death if we cut and run now. Which is exactly what happened to our South Vietnamese allies. How can you people do this? How can you have exactly zero compassion for these poor people? Or even negative compassion. Maybe you want her dead because she's one of Bush's allies?
Just like Obama called John Howard one of George Bush's allies. Rather than Australia being a longstanding ally of America, Australia is of no value to Obama, and Australia can go jump in the lake as far as he's concerned. Right on Obama. You'll make a great president I'm sure. Meanwhile he's busy sucking up to the Palestinians.
Well, the good thing is at least our respective loyalties are at least out in the open. Me, I want to protect that Iraqi woman as Australia's highest national priority. That woman risked her life because she trusted us. To betray her is a sin like no other. I'd rather the Indonesian terrorists blew up another night club full of Australians than betray this woman. At least the night club deaths are not our fault or responsibility. But that woman is our direct responsibility. She did what we asked her to do - take her freedom by defying the terrorists. Now we need to ensure that Iraqi law is not changed - either via military coup or external invasion (or by some freak of nature if all the Iraqi security forces died of food poisoning and the terrorists were somehow able to seize power) - so that that woman has the entire Iraqi state protecting her rights.
I can't believe we did this to the South Vietnamese already. I was actually alive when that was happening. I was 8 years old. Even after I was an adult I was still carrying around the lies about how we were the bad guys in Vietnam, killing the Vietnamese people for no reason at all. It was many years later before I finally found out that I'd been lied to. Just one lone voice here and there and I realised that I was living in an Orwellian world. Since I am a rationalist I am willing to question every piece of information in my brain, so I discarded this popular mythology the same way that the Tooth Fairy was discarded.
For God's sake, can't we at least get an agreement from the left that they will at least provide air support and special forces, the same as was given to the Northern Alliance? And a commitment to use them in case of military coup or external invasion. Is that too much to ask for? I know if that woman is abandoned it will be the left who does it, not the right (of which I am a part), but I'm not looking for a personal excuse, I'm looking for protection of a human. A beautiful human. I wish there were more nations in the coalition with majority support, so that even if US/UK/Australia abandon Iraq, someone else with basic morality would step in to make up for our gross immorality and negligence. But unfortunately we're the last line of defense. There's no-one left to turn to, unless Canada were to come to the rescue. But if it were going to do that, it should be doing so already. What a desperate situation.
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Just like Obama called John Howard one of George Bush's allies. Rather than Australia being a longstanding ally of America, Australia is of no value to Obama, and Australia can go jump in the lake as far as he's concerned. Right on Obama. You'll make a great president I'm sure. Meanwhile he's busy sucking up to the Palestinians.
Well, the good thing is at least our respective loyalties are at least out in the open. Me, I want to protect that Iraqi woman as Australia's highest national priority. That woman risked her life because she trusted us. To betray her is a sin like no other. I'd rather the Indonesian terrorists blew up another night club full of Australians than betray this woman. At least the night club deaths are not our fault or responsibility. But that woman is our direct responsibility. She did what we asked her to do - take her freedom by defying the terrorists. Now we need to ensure that Iraqi law is not changed - either via military coup or external invasion (or by some freak of nature if all the Iraqi security forces died of food poisoning and the terrorists were somehow able to seize power) - so that that woman has the entire Iraqi state protecting her rights.
I can't believe we did this to the South Vietnamese already. I was actually alive when that was happening. I was 8 years old. Even after I was an adult I was still carrying around the lies about how we were the bad guys in Vietnam, killing the Vietnamese people for no reason at all. It was many years later before I finally found out that I'd been lied to. Just one lone voice here and there and I realised that I was living in an Orwellian world. Since I am a rationalist I am willing to question every piece of information in my brain, so I discarded this popular mythology the same way that the Tooth Fairy was discarded.
For God's sake, can't we at least get an agreement from the left that they will at least provide air support and special forces, the same as was given to the Northern Alliance? And a commitment to use them in case of military coup or external invasion. Is that too much to ask for? I know if that woman is abandoned it will be the left who does it, not the right (of which I am a part), but I'm not looking for a personal excuse, I'm looking for protection of a human. A beautiful human. I wish there were more nations in the coalition with majority support, so that even if US/UK/Australia abandon Iraq, someone else with basic morality would step in to make up for our gross immorality and negligence. But unfortunately we're the last line of defense. There's no-one left to turn to, unless Canada were to come to the rescue. But if it were going to do that, it should be doing so already. What a desperate situation.
# posted by Paul Edwards @ 14:51
2007-03-16
Dhimmi Revolution
There is an interesting article here about organizing a revolution of Dhimmis (second-class non-Muslim citizens in a Muslim country). What I like most is the way Westerners work. Given an environment of freedom, we sit down and start INVESTIGATING and DEBATING. This article says that the time of the individual is over and it is time to form groups, meeting face to face, lobbying politicians, swamping lettors to the editor, that sort of thing.
I really fail to see how meeting face to face is any better than electronic communication. Electronic communication is superior in that you actually get to keep a record of the conversation. I think we need to reassess what we're actually trying to achieve. I don't think we're even going to agree on what the problem is. Is the problem Islam or is it dictatorship or is it Nazism or is it all of them, or is that just the tip of the iceberg? In my opinion it is just the tip of the iceberg. Identifying "Islam" as the enemy is a missed opportunity to list all of our enemies (racists, religious bigots, non-humanist, dogma etc).
I think we instead need to get a petition going along the following lines:
We, the undersigned, request the following:
University courses must be opened up to Middle East studies that don't whitewash Arab/Islamic history/culture. Things such as rampant racism amongst Arabs, rampant religious bigotry amongst Muslims, slavery, imperialism, brutality, Nazism must be explained and discussed. A non-whitewashed explanation of what is in the Koran and Mohammed's behaviour should be provided.
Iran should be liberated, if for no other reason than to provide more feedback from free Muslims as to what they really think about the West. Do they support the government's "Death to America" slogan or not? What are their main gripes and are they reasoned?
A project, much like the Manhattan Project, designed to list all the threats to America and Western Civilization in general, and propose solutions to them. With special emphasis on where Islam fits in to that. The project must not be restrained by political correctness, and every issue raised should come with a consensus opinion followed by any counter-opinions. The consensus opinion should be updated to include any counters to the counter-opinions.
Answers to the following questions (plus any others anyone can think of) must be provided by the project:
1. Should Islam be treated like Nazism?
2. If Hitler had added "God says" to the front of "Mein Kampf" would it be treated as a respectable religion?
3. Why are Christians not following the bit of the bible that says to stone your own children to death if they are disobedient, and does this provide a solution for Islam?
4. Why did 50% of Iraqis feel liberated while 50% felt humiliated?
5. Why did non-Iraqis see Saddam as an Arab hero while only 5% of Iraqis support him?
6. Why did 50% of Americans support liberating Iraq while 50% opposed?
7. Why did the vast majority of continental Europeans oppose the Iraq war instead of being split 50/50 like the Anglophone countries?
8. Why do the Afghans strongly support foreign troops on their soil while Iraqis strongly oppose it (if you can believe the polls).
9. Why is there a large insurgency in Iraq compared to Afghanistan? Feedback from Iran would be helpful too.
10. Is indoctrinating a child with hatred child abuse?
11. Why were feminist groups silent on Saddam's institutionalized rape?
12. Why are there documentaries and films on the horrors of Nazism, but not of Communism or Saddam's regime?
13. Why did the media cover up John Kerry's "Christmas in Cambodia" lie and fail to investigate the Swiftvets claims?
14. What is Western Civilization actually based on? Judeo-Christian principles (which are what exactly?), or Aristotle's Golden Rule, or the Englightenment? What are Japan and Taiwan's liberal democracies based on and are they the same as American/Europeans? And how do Afghanistan and Iraq's democracies measure up?
15. Is the communal violence in Northern Ireland similar to the communal violence in Iraq?
16. When Al Sadr said that any British women captured would become sex slaves, why did no-one at all condemn him, and he still managed to win seats in parliament?
17. Why does Sistani's official website list "kaffirs" (non-Muslims) alongside such things as "faeces" as "najis" (filthy, untouchable). Why has this not caused outrage in the world, with the Iraqis falling over themselves trying to distance themselves from Sistani?
18. Why are there large numbers of Russians revering Stalin who caused enormous suffering to Russians, let alone others? Why do we not have this problem with Germans regarding Hitler? Are there any lessons here for Muslims reverence of Mohammed?
All of these things need to be combined into a comprehensive explanation of the variations in human psychology, especially evolutionary psychology.
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I really fail to see how meeting face to face is any better than electronic communication. Electronic communication is superior in that you actually get to keep a record of the conversation. I think we need to reassess what we're actually trying to achieve. I don't think we're even going to agree on what the problem is. Is the problem Islam or is it dictatorship or is it Nazism or is it all of them, or is that just the tip of the iceberg? In my opinion it is just the tip of the iceberg. Identifying "Islam" as the enemy is a missed opportunity to list all of our enemies (racists, religious bigots, non-humanist, dogma etc).
I think we instead need to get a petition going along the following lines:
We, the undersigned, request the following:
University courses must be opened up to Middle East studies that don't whitewash Arab/Islamic history/culture. Things such as rampant racism amongst Arabs, rampant religious bigotry amongst Muslims, slavery, imperialism, brutality, Nazism must be explained and discussed. A non-whitewashed explanation of what is in the Koran and Mohammed's behaviour should be provided.
Iran should be liberated, if for no other reason than to provide more feedback from free Muslims as to what they really think about the West. Do they support the government's "Death to America" slogan or not? What are their main gripes and are they reasoned?
A project, much like the Manhattan Project, designed to list all the threats to America and Western Civilization in general, and propose solutions to them. With special emphasis on where Islam fits in to that. The project must not be restrained by political correctness, and every issue raised should come with a consensus opinion followed by any counter-opinions. The consensus opinion should be updated to include any counters to the counter-opinions.
Answers to the following questions (plus any others anyone can think of) must be provided by the project:
1. Should Islam be treated like Nazism?
2. If Hitler had added "God says" to the front of "Mein Kampf" would it be treated as a respectable religion?
3. Why are Christians not following the bit of the bible that says to stone your own children to death if they are disobedient, and does this provide a solution for Islam?
4. Why did 50% of Iraqis feel liberated while 50% felt humiliated?
5. Why did non-Iraqis see Saddam as an Arab hero while only 5% of Iraqis support him?
6. Why did 50% of Americans support liberating Iraq while 50% opposed?
7. Why did the vast majority of continental Europeans oppose the Iraq war instead of being split 50/50 like the Anglophone countries?
8. Why do the Afghans strongly support foreign troops on their soil while Iraqis strongly oppose it (if you can believe the polls).
9. Why is there a large insurgency in Iraq compared to Afghanistan? Feedback from Iran would be helpful too.
10. Is indoctrinating a child with hatred child abuse?
11. Why were feminist groups silent on Saddam's institutionalized rape?
12. Why are there documentaries and films on the horrors of Nazism, but not of Communism or Saddam's regime?
13. Why did the media cover up John Kerry's "Christmas in Cambodia" lie and fail to investigate the Swiftvets claims?
14. What is Western Civilization actually based on? Judeo-Christian principles (which are what exactly?), or Aristotle's Golden Rule, or the Englightenment? What are Japan and Taiwan's liberal democracies based on and are they the same as American/Europeans? And how do Afghanistan and Iraq's democracies measure up?
15. Is the communal violence in Northern Ireland similar to the communal violence in Iraq?
16. When Al Sadr said that any British women captured would become sex slaves, why did no-one at all condemn him, and he still managed to win seats in parliament?
17. Why does Sistani's official website list "kaffirs" (non-Muslims) alongside such things as "faeces" as "najis" (filthy, untouchable). Why has this not caused outrage in the world, with the Iraqis falling over themselves trying to distance themselves from Sistani?
18. Why are there large numbers of Russians revering Stalin who caused enormous suffering to Russians, let alone others? Why do we not have this problem with Germans regarding Hitler? Are there any lessons here for Muslims reverence of Mohammed?
All of these things need to be combined into a comprehensive explanation of the variations in human psychology, especially evolutionary psychology.
# posted by Paul Edwards @ 09:27
2007-03-15
Islamic Slavery
There is an interesting article here about some of the Islamic literature. In particular there is this phrase:
"To say I'm going to have two or three children and that's it -- that's not allowed. The way we overcome the people is through our numbers."
Note that word "overcome". That's what is planned for the non-Muslims. Basically some sort of domination/subjugation/slavery. Note that this is not something new. It was only 70 years ago that we had "Deutschland uber alles" - "Germany over all". This is an intrinsic part of human nature. The inherent desire to rule/enslave/subjugate others. It's hard-wired in our genes. Slavery is as natural as breathing. It was practiced all over the world, including by blacks. Racist blacks like to make themselves out as eternal victims of slavery, without ever acknowledging that they were just as guilty of it themselves, and without acknowledging that it was whites who finally came to the conclusion that slavery was wrong and went about and stopped everyone else from doing it. Moses never thought to outlaw slavery in the 10 commandments. Indeed, you can find in the bible that slavery is actually authorized (Leviticus 25:44). Jesus didn't think to point out that slavery was abhorrent, and merely said "God loves slaves". No attempt was made to correct the 10 commandments. This ommision has caused a lot of human suffering, which is exactly why the bible shouldn't be treated as the word of God - because it implies that if God had wanted to abolish slavery he would have explicitly said so. Quite apart from the apparent mystery of why God would get a human to write the bible instead of just zapping one up himself. Or preferably a thousand such books, in every language, so there are no translation errors. Etc, etc, etc. The absurdities pile up. There is a rational explanation as to why God did it this way though. But to understand it you need to be rational in the first place.
It is also hard-wired in our genes to protect our lives. But even something as basic as that can be overridden so that we saw Japanese kamikaze and we see Muslim suicide bombers. What that demonstrates is that it is possible to override our genes via indoctrination. The indoctrination wins out. Hands down.
All that remains is to decide what to indoctrinate people WITH. One thing we must always be sure of is that we indoctrinate people with the desire to QUESTION everything they were indoctrinated with! Just in case we've indoctrinated them with the wrong thing, even though we did our best. Maybe there's a good reason for slavery that we haven't thought of. Maybe sacrificing virgins really does make the sun rise. Who knows? So this is the most important thing to do. In short, teach people to FIGHT DOGMA. Any idea, no matter how absurd, must be allowed to be raised. And then CHALLENGED, CHALLENGED and then CHALLENGED AGAIN.
Next, we must address this genetic desire to enslave. It's more general than that. I don't think the Germans wanted to start buying and selling Poles at the local slave market. Slavery is the wrong word to be using. If you use it, it will confuse people. You can see this confusion here:
"Equality, then, was a well-understood principle, but what about the other word Bonaparte mentioned -- "liberty," or freedom? This term caused some puzzlement among the Egyptians. In Arabic usage at that time and for some time after, the word "freedom" -- hurriyya -- was in no sense a political term. It was a legal term. One was free if one was not a slave."
So you first of all need to get the right word, before we can even BEGIN the conversation. And that right word is SUBJUGATE. Slavery is just one particular form of SUBJUGATION. It is SUBJUGATION that is hard-wired into our genes. Subjugating your children, your wife, your animals. The Germans have overcome their desire to subjugate by being told that it is bad to conquer others, and that we should respect people's human rights, and not be racist. Things like this. This is a complicated way of doing it, and it is fraught with danger, as it is not addressing what is actually in their genes.
Instead of being taught that "war is bad", the Anglophones, or at least seemingly half of them, have been taught (one way or another) that fighting for freedom is good. But the Americans define freedom as "independence from Britain". And then they see that all these sadistic dictators are independent from Britain so they get confused - maybe those countries are already free??? Add to that confusion the fact that Australians have been taught that we were the oppressors in Vietnam, stopping the Vietnamese from being free. And now everyone is confused about what the hell are we supposed to do?
Actually, I was partially confused too, but I at least knew enough that women shouldn't be raped, men shouldn't have their tongues cut out, and everyone should have freedom of speech so that they can tell us what they want, so that we can begin to figure out how (or if) we should help. It took a hell of a lot of effort for me to finally arrive at the all-important word "subjugate".
So now finally we can address the confusion that those Egyptians had. The best the Egyptians could come up with was:
"When the French talk about freedom, he says, what they mean is what we Muslims call justice."
A totally different concept.
But what the Egyptian was really looking for is this:
"mouharabeet al isti3bad"
which means "fight subjugation".
How that Egyptian was able to get his incorrect message out to people, while I have completely and utterly failed to get the correct message out to people, despite more than 2 years of trying, is another story. I need to discuss this with the "appropriate authorities" but haven't been able to get them to return my emails. If I was a woman I could claim that it was because of sex discrimination. If I was black I could claim it was because of racial discrimination. As a white male I have nothing to fall back on. It's almost like there's a worldwide anti-rational conspiracy designed to stop the whole world giving in to rational thought and making the world a really boring place. Maybe that's a good thing? It does have the effect of making me continually try to calculate a way out of this conundrum. Which provides for unlimited entertainment as I try to figure out how to end the human rights abuses and state-slavery that have at its heart subjugation.
And closer to home, how to avoid being "overcome" by the likes of Abdul Raheem Green and his breeding machine. I hope the Australian government legalizes euthanasia so that I can escape from this before I end up as one of Green's slaves. I had my tonsils removed and I know what it's like to be knocked out via a general anaesthetic. It's totally benign. Instead of authorizing them to cut out part of my body, I want to be able to authorize them to lop off my head, or anything else that is quick and painless. I think it is vital to have this escape route available before Green gets to me. It should be available all over the world. Afghan women shouldn't have to set themselves on fire to get out of a marriage. If the government isn't going to protect them, then they need a painless way of dying until such time as the Afghan government is shamed into protecting them. The Afghan government should merely be questioning people why they are choosing euthanasia (one of their human rights not mentioned in the US Bill of Rights), and seeing if it can stem the numbers by changing policies.
The Australian government is changing policies at the moment, working to ensure that immigrants are signed up to Australian values (I wonder if their test will look anything like this? :-) ). It should make sure Australians born here get taught them at school too. I'd like to see them go further though, and show immigrants quotes from the bible and the Koran authorizing slavery, and ask people whether they think these passages are the word of God and should thus be followed. If they can come up with some plausible reason why they should be ignored, or better yet, fought against, then they can get in. Anyway, at least the government is working on the problem. That's really great. It's even got bipartisan support. I just don't trust Labor, as it is vital that the overseas liberations continue if we are to solve this problem. Otherwise we are partly working blind. Quite apart from the immorality of leaving innocent people enslaved.
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"To say I'm going to have two or three children and that's it -- that's not allowed. The way we overcome the people is through our numbers."
Note that word "overcome". That's what is planned for the non-Muslims. Basically some sort of domination/subjugation/slavery. Note that this is not something new. It was only 70 years ago that we had "Deutschland uber alles" - "Germany over all". This is an intrinsic part of human nature. The inherent desire to rule/enslave/subjugate others. It's hard-wired in our genes. Slavery is as natural as breathing. It was practiced all over the world, including by blacks. Racist blacks like to make themselves out as eternal victims of slavery, without ever acknowledging that they were just as guilty of it themselves, and without acknowledging that it was whites who finally came to the conclusion that slavery was wrong and went about and stopped everyone else from doing it. Moses never thought to outlaw slavery in the 10 commandments. Indeed, you can find in the bible that slavery is actually authorized (Leviticus 25:44). Jesus didn't think to point out that slavery was abhorrent, and merely said "God loves slaves". No attempt was made to correct the 10 commandments. This ommision has caused a lot of human suffering, which is exactly why the bible shouldn't be treated as the word of God - because it implies that if God had wanted to abolish slavery he would have explicitly said so. Quite apart from the apparent mystery of why God would get a human to write the bible instead of just zapping one up himself. Or preferably a thousand such books, in every language, so there are no translation errors. Etc, etc, etc. The absurdities pile up. There is a rational explanation as to why God did it this way though. But to understand it you need to be rational in the first place.
It is also hard-wired in our genes to protect our lives. But even something as basic as that can be overridden so that we saw Japanese kamikaze and we see Muslim suicide bombers. What that demonstrates is that it is possible to override our genes via indoctrination. The indoctrination wins out. Hands down.
All that remains is to decide what to indoctrinate people WITH. One thing we must always be sure of is that we indoctrinate people with the desire to QUESTION everything they were indoctrinated with! Just in case we've indoctrinated them with the wrong thing, even though we did our best. Maybe there's a good reason for slavery that we haven't thought of. Maybe sacrificing virgins really does make the sun rise. Who knows? So this is the most important thing to do. In short, teach people to FIGHT DOGMA. Any idea, no matter how absurd, must be allowed to be raised. And then CHALLENGED, CHALLENGED and then CHALLENGED AGAIN.
Next, we must address this genetic desire to enslave. It's more general than that. I don't think the Germans wanted to start buying and selling Poles at the local slave market. Slavery is the wrong word to be using. If you use it, it will confuse people. You can see this confusion here:
"Equality, then, was a well-understood principle, but what about the other word Bonaparte mentioned -- "liberty," or freedom? This term caused some puzzlement among the Egyptians. In Arabic usage at that time and for some time after, the word "freedom" -- hurriyya -- was in no sense a political term. It was a legal term. One was free if one was not a slave."
So you first of all need to get the right word, before we can even BEGIN the conversation. And that right word is SUBJUGATE. Slavery is just one particular form of SUBJUGATION. It is SUBJUGATION that is hard-wired into our genes. Subjugating your children, your wife, your animals. The Germans have overcome their desire to subjugate by being told that it is bad to conquer others, and that we should respect people's human rights, and not be racist. Things like this. This is a complicated way of doing it, and it is fraught with danger, as it is not addressing what is actually in their genes.
Instead of being taught that "war is bad", the Anglophones, or at least seemingly half of them, have been taught (one way or another) that fighting for freedom is good. But the Americans define freedom as "independence from Britain". And then they see that all these sadistic dictators are independent from Britain so they get confused - maybe those countries are already free??? Add to that confusion the fact that Australians have been taught that we were the oppressors in Vietnam, stopping the Vietnamese from being free. And now everyone is confused about what the hell are we supposed to do?
Actually, I was partially confused too, but I at least knew enough that women shouldn't be raped, men shouldn't have their tongues cut out, and everyone should have freedom of speech so that they can tell us what they want, so that we can begin to figure out how (or if) we should help. It took a hell of a lot of effort for me to finally arrive at the all-important word "subjugate".
So now finally we can address the confusion that those Egyptians had. The best the Egyptians could come up with was:
"When the French talk about freedom, he says, what they mean is what we Muslims call justice."
A totally different concept.
But what the Egyptian was really looking for is this:
"mouharabeet al isti3bad"
which means "fight subjugation".
How that Egyptian was able to get his incorrect message out to people, while I have completely and utterly failed to get the correct message out to people, despite more than 2 years of trying, is another story. I need to discuss this with the "appropriate authorities" but haven't been able to get them to return my emails. If I was a woman I could claim that it was because of sex discrimination. If I was black I could claim it was because of racial discrimination. As a white male I have nothing to fall back on. It's almost like there's a worldwide anti-rational conspiracy designed to stop the whole world giving in to rational thought and making the world a really boring place. Maybe that's a good thing? It does have the effect of making me continually try to calculate a way out of this conundrum. Which provides for unlimited entertainment as I try to figure out how to end the human rights abuses and state-slavery that have at its heart subjugation.
And closer to home, how to avoid being "overcome" by the likes of Abdul Raheem Green and his breeding machine. I hope the Australian government legalizes euthanasia so that I can escape from this before I end up as one of Green's slaves. I had my tonsils removed and I know what it's like to be knocked out via a general anaesthetic. It's totally benign. Instead of authorizing them to cut out part of my body, I want to be able to authorize them to lop off my head, or anything else that is quick and painless. I think it is vital to have this escape route available before Green gets to me. It should be available all over the world. Afghan women shouldn't have to set themselves on fire to get out of a marriage. If the government isn't going to protect them, then they need a painless way of dying until such time as the Afghan government is shamed into protecting them. The Afghan government should merely be questioning people why they are choosing euthanasia (one of their human rights not mentioned in the US Bill of Rights), and seeing if it can stem the numbers by changing policies.
The Australian government is changing policies at the moment, working to ensure that immigrants are signed up to Australian values (I wonder if their test will look anything like this? :-) ). It should make sure Australians born here get taught them at school too. I'd like to see them go further though, and show immigrants quotes from the bible and the Koran authorizing slavery, and ask people whether they think these passages are the word of God and should thus be followed. If they can come up with some plausible reason why they should be ignored, or better yet, fought against, then they can get in. Anyway, at least the government is working on the problem. That's really great. It's even got bipartisan support. I just don't trust Labor, as it is vital that the overseas liberations continue if we are to solve this problem. Otherwise we are partly working blind. Quite apart from the immorality of leaving innocent people enslaved.
# posted by Paul Edwards @ 12:57
2007-03-10
Institutionalized Rape
Ending dictatorship was something that I have wanted to do, ever since I was a child. I didn't care if the Russians wanted to be communist, so long as they could vote on it, and debate it. I've since changed my position and recognize that minorities have a right to a rational, humanist government, which overrides the "right" of the majority to sacrifice virgins to keep the sun rising, or gas Jews etc. So I was always looking for an opportunity to spread democracy. An Arab once told me that he could understand democracy in Australia, but not in Arab countries - that Arab countries required a strong leader. I thought that was nonsense - the Arabs can vote for a strong leader if that's what they want. Another nonsense thing he told me was that it was big business who determined who would win elections in Australia. I asked him who big business was currently making him vote for. He said "Liberal or Labor - I'm not sure at the moment"!!! (Those are the right-wing and left-wing parties in Australia that always get elected).
Anyway, this idea that the Arabs can't handle democracy was something I also heard from other sources. I don't know where they were getting that idea from, since I didn't see any evidence of it actually being tested. But there was this general concept that the Arabs had a separate culture and we had no right to interfere in it. We must respect all cultures as equal. I still didn't see why that meant they couldn't have democracy. Why can't their culture democratically elect someone that represents their culture? What other method is there to actually ascertain what their culture is?
Finally an opportunity came up to spread democracy to an Arab country - Iraq - in 2003. And I found myself arguing with people who didn't believe we had a right to interfere with other "cultures". When Bush started talking about institutionalized rape, I thought that that would surely clinch the deal. Surely no-one in the world thought that rape was some sort of cultural quirk and that Iraqi women recognized that part of their culture was to be raped by their own government every now and then. But no, they were unpersuaded. I was completely stunned. I know with all the feminazi brainwashing that we're meant to believe that there are no differences between men and women, but I assumed that deep inside, men still had a basic instinct to protect women. Personally I have been an anti-feminazi ever since I was a child and found out that I was being held responsible for thousands of years of discrimination by other men against other women. But deep down I wanted to protect the weak, and women in particular. And I assumed that most men shared this same basic desire. It's not unusual. E.g. when the Titanic went down, women and children were evacuated first. This is part of our culture - protect women. And I never heard anyone say "except if the woman is foreign, or a different religion or race".
So something was going seriously wrong. For some reason these perfectly normal Australians had not even considered the fact that we would finally get a chance to liberate millions of people, and even stop Saddam from raping women. If you don't act to protect women from being raped, just what cruelty does Saddam need to do to goad you into action? You can argue that killing large numbers of men is part of a sort of civil war that Saddam was waging on those who opposed him. We've been desensitized to such killing. The commies did it too, all for the greater good of the state. It was all whitewashed by the left-wing in our own countries. But not even the commies used to rape women. No-one should have been desensitized for that. And it was a violation of the Geneva Conventions as well. Even if you think Saddam has a right to wage war against his enemies in Iraq, women should be left out of it.
So the rape of women is what I chose to concentrate on. Because if I couldn't get people to even agree that women have a right to not be raped, what chance have I of convincing them of anything else? And I thought this was a slam dunk. I didn't think it was possible to argue that Saddam had some sort of right to rape Iraqi women. And I was right. No-one has been able to come close to justifying this. People have tried various diversionary tactics. E.g. they ask me if I was a rapist and that's why I'm so obsessed with it. An ad hominem attack. My reply is that why WEREN'T they obsessed with this - were they rapists themselves so didn't see anything wrong with it? They don't reply to that.
Some have tried to argue that Bush and Bremer were lying about the rape rooms. That they've managed to say these things multiple times in public, and the entire hostile left-wing press in the entire world has for some reason chosen not to expose their lies. Reality is the press knows damn well it is true, and they don't want to dwell on it, because it undermines their worldview. It is probably for this reason that we haven't had any documentaries come out showing just how cruel Saddam was. We haven't had documentaries about the horrors of communism either, and exposing the left-wing's hand in that. I wonder why?
Anyway, there are some other reports of institutionalized rape, which you can find here, here and here. Like I said, I wish this was in a proper documentary.
You'd think all these feminazi groups who even whinge about non-existant crimes in the west regarding pay or medical treatment would be up in arms about Iraqi women being raped by Saddam. But no. It would appear that all those NGOs are simply fronts for the communists, trying to undermine our capitalist economies by hook or by crook.
So, what price should be paid to end institutionalized rape in Iraq? Is this the sort of thing that invokes the expression "to the last man"? Well, my own opinion is that I'd rather sacrifice 90% of my country than live in slavery (domestic or foreign) where my daughter can be legally raped by my own government. At the Alamo they sacrficed 100%. I'm not as hard-headed as them. Here is what a Sunni imam, Sheik Jamaleddin al-Kobeisi, preaching at al-Shawaf mosque in Baghdad's Yarmouk district had to say about rape:
"The proud among us believe that killing all of Iraq's men is easier to accept than violating the honor of one Iraqi woman,"
So that's 50% of Iraq for 1 woman. The Iraqis have not even had to pay 1% to get legal protection of their human rights, including the right to not be raped. So I assume that this Sunni imam is a very happy camper. Or he should be, anyway, by his own standards.
Actually there are worse crimes than rape. E.g. child molestation. But as far as I know, Saddam didn't do that, so I can't cite that. And I'd rather be raped than have my tongue chopped out, which is another thing that Saddam did, and should have been equal or greater incentive to go and liberate Iraq. You can see that in video here and here. Unless you want to claim that's all a CIA fake too. Even if you want to bury your head in the sand and say that because you didn't personally witness any Iraqis being killed or raped etc, it didn't happen (holocaust denial anyone?), you should AT LEAST have known that Saddam was a dictator who didn't allow multiple parties to compete in elections. THAT should have been justification enough! People have a right to not be subjugated if they haven't committed a crime!
But the saddest thing is that besides Bush and Bremer talking about the rape rooms, I've seen very few westerners actually use this in their arguments. When the Iraqi blogs started up, I watched the comments intensely, to see how the pro-war were arguing. None of them were saying that regardless of whether you think Saddam was a threat or not, you should have done it just to protect women from being raped. It's so bloody obvious. This isn't something new I invented. Protecting women is a very basic part of our culture, and our laws reflect that. I didn't make these laws up, they were already there. All I have attempted to do is extend that same legal protection of human rights across the globe.
Another dopey thing people keep on bringing up is that women in Australia get raped too, so why don't I deal with that instead of interfering in Iraq? Well, it IS being dealt with in Australia. It is ILLEGAL to rape women in Australia, and we have a police force to go and arrest rapists and jail them. That's the best technology anyone knows of. No-one knows how to stop individuals from breaking the law. All we can do is dissuade them from doing so under threat of punishment, and to punish them after the event. I don't know how people can be so stupid they can't distinguish between LEGAL and ILLEGAL.
Another attempt people have made is to claim that rape wasn't legal in Iraq either, and that Saddam was operating illegally when he was ordering women to be raped. Well, from what I read, there was actually a specific law that people were authorized to do anything they wanted if it was to protect Saddam's regime. But regardless, that's missing the point. When I talk about legal, I'm talking about the rules that the institutions (the security forces) are actually following. If you can't report a rape ordered by Saddam to your local police station and get Saddam arrested and jailed, then it means that rape is defacto legal, regardless of what is written down on paper. It's what the police are under instruction to enforce that matters. Another very obvious thing. And it's totally amazing how thick others can be. Bizarre in fact.
But this whole war is bizarre. It's basically a case of rape doesn't matter unless the media says it matters. That morality would suddenly change if we had the media and NGOs and universities and churches and marches all campaigning for Saddam's holocaust to be dealt with. How the entire western world has managed to turn its back on the most basic morality - morality which is actually entrenched in our laws already and is basically a reflection of their own supposed morality - is completely unfathomable. Why do we have these laws protecting women to the nth degree if you don't think protecting women is important? Make up your mind. Is it important or not??? Or is it important that Australian women are protected and completely unimportant if Iraqi women are protected? If this isn't schizophrenia, what is? How is it possible that the entire world is schizophrenic and doesn't respond to rational argument that is based on this very basic morality that is already entrenched in our laws and I've never even heard anyone dispute, and is not something that I made up myself?
UPDATE: Thanks to Jason at Iraqnow for the link. Jason is someone who personally put an end to these horrors. You cannot imagine how much I love these warriors who risk their own lives to protect complete strangers. There is really no-one better in this world. All these soldiers should be getting Nobel Freedom Prizes instead of giving prizes to terrorists like Mandela and Arafat. The state of the world currently is bizarre.
UPDATE 2: There is one person from the left who recognizes the complete moral bankruptcy of the left, and says (read the whole thing) "as long as we are to be ruled by capitalist states, which would you rather be ruled by: a coalition of liberal democracies that pay at least lipservice to free speech, or any number of ruthless genocidal dictatorships that want to revive the worst aspects of the Middle Ages".
UPDATE 3: here is another link.
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Anyway, this idea that the Arabs can't handle democracy was something I also heard from other sources. I don't know where they were getting that idea from, since I didn't see any evidence of it actually being tested. But there was this general concept that the Arabs had a separate culture and we had no right to interfere in it. We must respect all cultures as equal. I still didn't see why that meant they couldn't have democracy. Why can't their culture democratically elect someone that represents their culture? What other method is there to actually ascertain what their culture is?
Finally an opportunity came up to spread democracy to an Arab country - Iraq - in 2003. And I found myself arguing with people who didn't believe we had a right to interfere with other "cultures". When Bush started talking about institutionalized rape, I thought that that would surely clinch the deal. Surely no-one in the world thought that rape was some sort of cultural quirk and that Iraqi women recognized that part of their culture was to be raped by their own government every now and then. But no, they were unpersuaded. I was completely stunned. I know with all the feminazi brainwashing that we're meant to believe that there are no differences between men and women, but I assumed that deep inside, men still had a basic instinct to protect women. Personally I have been an anti-feminazi ever since I was a child and found out that I was being held responsible for thousands of years of discrimination by other men against other women. But deep down I wanted to protect the weak, and women in particular. And I assumed that most men shared this same basic desire. It's not unusual. E.g. when the Titanic went down, women and children were evacuated first. This is part of our culture - protect women. And I never heard anyone say "except if the woman is foreign, or a different religion or race".
So something was going seriously wrong. For some reason these perfectly normal Australians had not even considered the fact that we would finally get a chance to liberate millions of people, and even stop Saddam from raping women. If you don't act to protect women from being raped, just what cruelty does Saddam need to do to goad you into action? You can argue that killing large numbers of men is part of a sort of civil war that Saddam was waging on those who opposed him. We've been desensitized to such killing. The commies did it too, all for the greater good of the state. It was all whitewashed by the left-wing in our own countries. But not even the commies used to rape women. No-one should have been desensitized for that. And it was a violation of the Geneva Conventions as well. Even if you think Saddam has a right to wage war against his enemies in Iraq, women should be left out of it.
So the rape of women is what I chose to concentrate on. Because if I couldn't get people to even agree that women have a right to not be raped, what chance have I of convincing them of anything else? And I thought this was a slam dunk. I didn't think it was possible to argue that Saddam had some sort of right to rape Iraqi women. And I was right. No-one has been able to come close to justifying this. People have tried various diversionary tactics. E.g. they ask me if I was a rapist and that's why I'm so obsessed with it. An ad hominem attack. My reply is that why WEREN'T they obsessed with this - were they rapists themselves so didn't see anything wrong with it? They don't reply to that.
Some have tried to argue that Bush and Bremer were lying about the rape rooms. That they've managed to say these things multiple times in public, and the entire hostile left-wing press in the entire world has for some reason chosen not to expose their lies. Reality is the press knows damn well it is true, and they don't want to dwell on it, because it undermines their worldview. It is probably for this reason that we haven't had any documentaries come out showing just how cruel Saddam was. We haven't had documentaries about the horrors of communism either, and exposing the left-wing's hand in that. I wonder why?
Anyway, there are some other reports of institutionalized rape, which you can find here, here and here. Like I said, I wish this was in a proper documentary.
You'd think all these feminazi groups who even whinge about non-existant crimes in the west regarding pay or medical treatment would be up in arms about Iraqi women being raped by Saddam. But no. It would appear that all those NGOs are simply fronts for the communists, trying to undermine our capitalist economies by hook or by crook.
So, what price should be paid to end institutionalized rape in Iraq? Is this the sort of thing that invokes the expression "to the last man"? Well, my own opinion is that I'd rather sacrifice 90% of my country than live in slavery (domestic or foreign) where my daughter can be legally raped by my own government. At the Alamo they sacrficed 100%. I'm not as hard-headed as them. Here is what a Sunni imam, Sheik Jamaleddin al-Kobeisi, preaching at al-Shawaf mosque in Baghdad's Yarmouk district had to say about rape:
"The proud among us believe that killing all of Iraq's men is easier to accept than violating the honor of one Iraqi woman,"
So that's 50% of Iraq for 1 woman. The Iraqis have not even had to pay 1% to get legal protection of their human rights, including the right to not be raped. So I assume that this Sunni imam is a very happy camper. Or he should be, anyway, by his own standards.
Actually there are worse crimes than rape. E.g. child molestation. But as far as I know, Saddam didn't do that, so I can't cite that. And I'd rather be raped than have my tongue chopped out, which is another thing that Saddam did, and should have been equal or greater incentive to go and liberate Iraq. You can see that in video here and here. Unless you want to claim that's all a CIA fake too. Even if you want to bury your head in the sand and say that because you didn't personally witness any Iraqis being killed or raped etc, it didn't happen (holocaust denial anyone?), you should AT LEAST have known that Saddam was a dictator who didn't allow multiple parties to compete in elections. THAT should have been justification enough! People have a right to not be subjugated if they haven't committed a crime!
But the saddest thing is that besides Bush and Bremer talking about the rape rooms, I've seen very few westerners actually use this in their arguments. When the Iraqi blogs started up, I watched the comments intensely, to see how the pro-war were arguing. None of them were saying that regardless of whether you think Saddam was a threat or not, you should have done it just to protect women from being raped. It's so bloody obvious. This isn't something new I invented. Protecting women is a very basic part of our culture, and our laws reflect that. I didn't make these laws up, they were already there. All I have attempted to do is extend that same legal protection of human rights across the globe.
Another dopey thing people keep on bringing up is that women in Australia get raped too, so why don't I deal with that instead of interfering in Iraq? Well, it IS being dealt with in Australia. It is ILLEGAL to rape women in Australia, and we have a police force to go and arrest rapists and jail them. That's the best technology anyone knows of. No-one knows how to stop individuals from breaking the law. All we can do is dissuade them from doing so under threat of punishment, and to punish them after the event. I don't know how people can be so stupid they can't distinguish between LEGAL and ILLEGAL.
Another attempt people have made is to claim that rape wasn't legal in Iraq either, and that Saddam was operating illegally when he was ordering women to be raped. Well, from what I read, there was actually a specific law that people were authorized to do anything they wanted if it was to protect Saddam's regime. But regardless, that's missing the point. When I talk about legal, I'm talking about the rules that the institutions (the security forces) are actually following. If you can't report a rape ordered by Saddam to your local police station and get Saddam arrested and jailed, then it means that rape is defacto legal, regardless of what is written down on paper. It's what the police are under instruction to enforce that matters. Another very obvious thing. And it's totally amazing how thick others can be. Bizarre in fact.
But this whole war is bizarre. It's basically a case of rape doesn't matter unless the media says it matters. That morality would suddenly change if we had the media and NGOs and universities and churches and marches all campaigning for Saddam's holocaust to be dealt with. How the entire western world has managed to turn its back on the most basic morality - morality which is actually entrenched in our laws already and is basically a reflection of their own supposed morality - is completely unfathomable. Why do we have these laws protecting women to the nth degree if you don't think protecting women is important? Make up your mind. Is it important or not??? Or is it important that Australian women are protected and completely unimportant if Iraqi women are protected? If this isn't schizophrenia, what is? How is it possible that the entire world is schizophrenic and doesn't respond to rational argument that is based on this very basic morality that is already entrenched in our laws and I've never even heard anyone dispute, and is not something that I made up myself?
UPDATE: Thanks to Jason at Iraqnow for the link. Jason is someone who personally put an end to these horrors. You cannot imagine how much I love these warriors who risk their own lives to protect complete strangers. There is really no-one better in this world. All these soldiers should be getting Nobel Freedom Prizes instead of giving prizes to terrorists like Mandela and Arafat. The state of the world currently is bizarre.
UPDATE 2: There is one person from the left who recognizes the complete moral bankruptcy of the left, and says (read the whole thing) "as long as we are to be ruled by capitalist states, which would you rather be ruled by: a coalition of liberal democracies that pay at least lipservice to free speech, or any number of ruthless genocidal dictatorships that want to revive the worst aspects of the Middle Ages".
UPDATE 3: here is another link.
# posted by Paul Edwards @ 09:14
2007-03-07
Historical Grudges
I was watching James Bond "Goldeneye" and there was mention of a British betrayal of Cossacks in WWII. I did a bit of research and found this article from 2006 with a Cossack hating the British today. And this article explaining what happened.
A number of points here. First of all, Britain has done a hell of a lot for the free world, most recently being the 2nd largest contributor to the liberation of Iraq. People should be judging Britain by its current behaviour rather than past bad behaviour. Secondly, even the past behaviour is not so straightforward. Britain did a hell of a lot more good than bad, especially in WWII!!! Thirdly, the Cossacks should take a hard look at their own behaviour, aligning with the Nazis. They should instead have been helping to protect the free world. Fourthly, it was Stalin who executed them, not Britain. Fifthly, I wonder what religion the Cossacks are? If they're Christian, they're meant to be following "love thy enemy", let alone deliberately creating enemies out of people who have no animosity for the Cossacks at all, regardless of their alignment with the Nazis.
This is another thing that the Anglophones have in common. We judge people by their current behaviour rather than past bad behaviour. We don't hate Germans, Japanese or Turks. We are instead extremely happy that these people are our allies today. Although there's certainly room for improvement if Iraq is any indicator! It is because we don't teach children hatred that these different countries trust us, and ally with us. And that has allowed us to create an unbelievably strong alliance. One particularly helpful habit America has is that after having defeated an enemy, instead of rubbing the enemy's nose in defeat, it helps it to its feet. This is a crucial lesson that should be learnt, and that lesson can be transferred to the playground.
So the enemy is not just Muslims whinging about Christian crusaders (and at the same time not seeing wrong with all the killing done by Muslims, including Mohammed himself). The enemy is people who hold historical grudges. And it extends to the Irish whinging about the potato famine too. There's nothing anyone in Britain can do about the potato famine. The people responsible (and even that is not straightforward) died a long time ago. But this hatred is being passed on to children. These are people who pretend to be followers of Christ and "prove" their morality by outlawing abortion, thinking they're doing God's will. Meanwhile, something that actually is in the bible, "love thy enemy", is ignored, as it prevents them from being able to claim perpetual victim status. If these people were to take a look at themselves for a change, they should ask why their own country didn't lift a finger help real live Iraqi women from being raped by their own government. And this occurred in 2003, by Irish alive today, not centuries ago by people who are no longer here.
It is important that people are given a balanced view of history, noting that everyone did good and bad things, and blame should not be transferred to completely innocent people on the basis of shared race/religion/sex/nationality/eye colour/ancestry/etc. Actually it would be better if people spent more time learning about the forces in play in the current world rather than ancient history.
A good example is on relations with Russia. We want to be friends with Russia. As such we should put pressure on Eastern European NATO members to forget the past slavery by Russians, and instead point out that the Russians themselves were victims of slavery and the most recent thing the Russians did was actually WITHDRAW from Eastern Europe, not INVADE. Although CURRENT Russian nostalgia for Stalin is certainly worrying, and we simultaneously need to be securing as many countries as we can in NATO before the Stalin revivalists get back into power. We don't have the luxury of raking over historical grievances, even if we wanted to. It is vitally important for our own security to turn these former enemies into friends, so that they will help defend us instead of forming an alliance against us. All of our effort should be focussed on doing this, and that includes pressuring Eastern Europeans to try to find something nice to say about Russia, as their contribution to collective security. Hopefully the Russians will learn to adopt some self-criticism of their own one day. When they do, NATO will be waiting for them with open arms.
UPDATE: Here is a really nasty example of people holding innocent children responsible for something they never did - in Norway! Putting children in a pig sty. Unbelievable.
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A number of points here. First of all, Britain has done a hell of a lot for the free world, most recently being the 2nd largest contributor to the liberation of Iraq. People should be judging Britain by its current behaviour rather than past bad behaviour. Secondly, even the past behaviour is not so straightforward. Britain did a hell of a lot more good than bad, especially in WWII!!! Thirdly, the Cossacks should take a hard look at their own behaviour, aligning with the Nazis. They should instead have been helping to protect the free world. Fourthly, it was Stalin who executed them, not Britain. Fifthly, I wonder what religion the Cossacks are? If they're Christian, they're meant to be following "love thy enemy", let alone deliberately creating enemies out of people who have no animosity for the Cossacks at all, regardless of their alignment with the Nazis.
This is another thing that the Anglophones have in common. We judge people by their current behaviour rather than past bad behaviour. We don't hate Germans, Japanese or Turks. We are instead extremely happy that these people are our allies today. Although there's certainly room for improvement if Iraq is any indicator! It is because we don't teach children hatred that these different countries trust us, and ally with us. And that has allowed us to create an unbelievably strong alliance. One particularly helpful habit America has is that after having defeated an enemy, instead of rubbing the enemy's nose in defeat, it helps it to its feet. This is a crucial lesson that should be learnt, and that lesson can be transferred to the playground.
So the enemy is not just Muslims whinging about Christian crusaders (and at the same time not seeing wrong with all the killing done by Muslims, including Mohammed himself). The enemy is people who hold historical grudges. And it extends to the Irish whinging about the potato famine too. There's nothing anyone in Britain can do about the potato famine. The people responsible (and even that is not straightforward) died a long time ago. But this hatred is being passed on to children. These are people who pretend to be followers of Christ and "prove" their morality by outlawing abortion, thinking they're doing God's will. Meanwhile, something that actually is in the bible, "love thy enemy", is ignored, as it prevents them from being able to claim perpetual victim status. If these people were to take a look at themselves for a change, they should ask why their own country didn't lift a finger help real live Iraqi women from being raped by their own government. And this occurred in 2003, by Irish alive today, not centuries ago by people who are no longer here.
It is important that people are given a balanced view of history, noting that everyone did good and bad things, and blame should not be transferred to completely innocent people on the basis of shared race/religion/sex/nationality/eye colour/ancestry/etc. Actually it would be better if people spent more time learning about the forces in play in the current world rather than ancient history.
A good example is on relations with Russia. We want to be friends with Russia. As such we should put pressure on Eastern European NATO members to forget the past slavery by Russians, and instead point out that the Russians themselves were victims of slavery and the most recent thing the Russians did was actually WITHDRAW from Eastern Europe, not INVADE. Although CURRENT Russian nostalgia for Stalin is certainly worrying, and we simultaneously need to be securing as many countries as we can in NATO before the Stalin revivalists get back into power. We don't have the luxury of raking over historical grievances, even if we wanted to. It is vitally important for our own security to turn these former enemies into friends, so that they will help defend us instead of forming an alliance against us. All of our effort should be focussed on doing this, and that includes pressuring Eastern Europeans to try to find something nice to say about Russia, as their contribution to collective security. Hopefully the Russians will learn to adopt some self-criticism of their own one day. When they do, NATO will be waiting for them with open arms.
UPDATE: Here is a really nasty example of people holding innocent children responsible for something they never did - in Norway! Putting children in a pig sty. Unbelievable.
# posted by Paul Edwards @ 07:16
2007-03-03
Treasure Trove
I came across a treasure trove of great analysis here.
Basically all the stuff from Cubed. In particular the following:
Why Is Islam So Different? An Overview
Education and Jihad, Part 1
Education and Jihad, Part 2
Education and Jihad, Part 3
Education and Jihad, Part 4
Education and Jihad, Part 5
Education and Jihad, Part 6
Education and Jihad, Part 7
A Recipe: How to Make a Muslim (Part 8 of the Education and Jihad Series)
Especially the first and the last. I'm not sure I really agree with it all though. Basically she says this conflict is between Plato and Aristotle. Specifically between elite leadership and individual rights. I don't think it needs to be an either/or. My personal view is that what we currently have is the best I know of. We elect a government, and then the government uses science, rather than polls of ill-informed citizens, to make decisions. We still have a problem with ill-informed citizens voting though. But if we didn't have that, we wouldn't have any constraints on power. I think therefore that the government needs to do more to inform people, at least come election time. Explain the reasons for all the actions since the last elections and what needs to be done after the next elections. You could argue that they are already doing that. What do you do about an incompetent electorate more interested in American Idol than liberating and securing the world?
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Basically all the stuff from Cubed. In particular the following:
Why Is Islam So Different? An Overview
Education and Jihad, Part 1
Education and Jihad, Part 2
Education and Jihad, Part 3
Education and Jihad, Part 4
Education and Jihad, Part 5
Education and Jihad, Part 6
Education and Jihad, Part 7
A Recipe: How to Make a Muslim (Part 8 of the Education and Jihad Series)
Especially the first and the last. I'm not sure I really agree with it all though. Basically she says this conflict is between Plato and Aristotle. Specifically between elite leadership and individual rights. I don't think it needs to be an either/or. My personal view is that what we currently have is the best I know of. We elect a government, and then the government uses science, rather than polls of ill-informed citizens, to make decisions. We still have a problem with ill-informed citizens voting though. But if we didn't have that, we wouldn't have any constraints on power. I think therefore that the government needs to do more to inform people, at least come election time. Explain the reasons for all the actions since the last elections and what needs to be done after the next elections. You could argue that they are already doing that. What do you do about an incompetent electorate more interested in American Idol than liberating and securing the world?
# posted by Paul Edwards @ 03:52
2007-03-02
Best Case Scenario
There was a post here about the US assuming the best case scenario in the Iraq war, but instead we got the worst case scenario. It inspired some great comments. Let's go through them:
"Actually the worst case scenario was hundreds of oil wells being lit on fire, Israel being pounded by long range missiles, and Baghdad being turned into some sort of Stalingrad like seige with millions of civilians being killed in a major humanitarian catastrophe."
Which is exactly right. Bush didn't assume the worst case scenario. He had no idea what to expect. We could have found 95% of Iraqis supported Saddam (after all, he was getting 100% of the vote), or we could have found 95% of the Iraqis supported being liberated. The only sensible plan was to REACT to whatever on earth was found in Iraq, rather than planning for 1000 different possibilities.
It went pretty damn well. All the things that needed to happen, did happen. A high voter turnout, a government that is not an enemy, brand new Iraqi security forces with both popular approval and plenty of recruits. And all done with an incredibly low loss of US troops. And the final milestone of Iraqis in charge of all of Iraq is due in Nov 2007. Not bad. Not bad at all. The high murder rate is militarily irrelevant and never part of the plan.
Things would have been bad if the turnout at the elections was 5%, if no-one turned up to join the new security forces, if Sistani had declared a jihad, if the Iraqis had voted for anti-American Islamic terrorists. None of this happened.
"Hate to sound like a heartless monster but::
If the Iraq phase in you guys eyes is the worst case senerio we might aswell hang it up right now we are FUBAR. The Iraq phase has been a unbelievable success historically speaking. You cannot set never acheived impossible to reach bars then cry becuase we can't reach those goals.
Examples:
Casualties-4yrs of Invading two Nations and occupying over 50million very hostile peoples in two nations for nearly 4yrs running with only about 3k casualties is not a disaster that is amazing. We lost 3X this number just crossing the river to get to Cassino Monastary in Italy WW2 were we lost a exponentially more men.
Strain on Economy- You got to be kidding me. The military is pulling what 4% GDP including the Supplementals and in the 80's the mil was pulling 5.5-6% don't even look at other war time strains you may sh*t yourself on site.
Strain on Civilian Pop- NO DRAFT, NO WAR TIME TAXES, NO RATIONING, NO NOTHING, if it wasn't for the ME doom gloom reporting every time a Iraqi kills another Iraqi in protest to the Infedels US the gen pop would not even know that we were at war.
Strain on Mill equipment- what 20+ year old equipment that was getting ready to be replaced in our FCS upgrade anyway getting to go out with a bang and most likely when we leave be sold (donated)(eternally loaned) to the Iraqi's?
The Carnage- This is the best. Is it not the most saddest thing about this whole afair that we are actually feeling like we are losing this war (thanks to our don't question there patriotism ME,LLL, Dums) becuase the enemy is killing to many of his own people? What kind of F*cking stardegy is that and why is that not anything short what it actually is (absolute 100% proof positive of how bad we are beating these brave Jihadi's that they cannot dare face US even in thier own home instead they go blow up a handfull of thier OWN people). On top of that is this insanity by our enemy not 100% evidence of why we must fight them over there? If they kill there own to protest US how will they treat our women and children what if they get some real mass killers?
It may sound evil but it was the Arab culture that bread these sick killers in the first place and the fact that they are now reaping what they sowed really doesn't gather much sympathy on my part. Mine/yours grandfathers didn't have much sympathy for the German people that allowed the sick Nazi ways to drag them into the depths of hell.
Bottom line if this Iraq phase is the limit of our ability to endure war we are f*cked. WW2, WW1 level fighting is something that we could not even imagine today, a war with China, N Korea, Russia or even Iran (they have a boat load of terrorist aka Muslim cruise missiles.) all of these senerios will be wars that will show just how minor the Iraq Phase has been in Reality."
Well said! It is amazing how people can look at a complete and utter success and call it a failure. History is going to record this as one of the most amazing campaigns in military history. It's a new style of warfare - a war of liberation instead of conquest.
Now they have been empowered to do something about their sick culture. It will help them and it will help the free world.
Although I disagree with the bit about there being 50 million very hostile people. The US has been very successful at avoiding a war with the locals. It has achieved this by not forcing one damn thing on the locals. Nothing. Not a sausage. Everything you see in Afghanistan and Iraq was totally chosen by locals. There's no reason for them to be hostile towards the US, which is simply helping enforce laws that they created themselves. Brilliant strategy. Completely and utterly brilliant. If there is a need to come back at a later date and force something down their throat, so be it. Until then it is best to just observe what they do with their newfound democracy and freedom of speech.
"First, Our Leaders didn't grasp that it has taken us 2400 years, from Aristotle to the present day, to get where we are, while Islam has had only the briefest of contacts with the Greek philosophers. Islam destroyed the Mu'tazilites and Ibn Rushd (their only chance at escaping their irrational tribal heritage); they had no Renaissance, no Enlightenment, no Industrial Revolution, and yet Our Leaders somehow believed that if we offered them an Enlightenment civilization on a silver platter, the Muslims would swoom with gratitude, and there would be Peace in Our Time.
Second, Our Leaders acted as though they didn't have a clue about the role of close consanguinous marriage in Islamic culture that makes abandoning the tribal mentality all but impossible - the ol' Hatfield and McCoy thing. Thanks to Muhammed, the tribes have gotten bigger - the Shia, Sunni, and The Others (the latter would be us, the infidels).
Third, Our Leaders have no concept of what constitutes "honor," "strength" and "self-esteem" among the Muslims, so Our Leaders fought using the Just War Theory, foolishly figuring that if we used that ethic, then the Muslims would, too.
Fourth, Our Leaders neglect the problems created with the establishment of the government school system, which permitted the postmodernists to infiltrate it and teach our kids their own PC crap, instead of the values of the Enlightenment, right from the beginning.
"Hey," around half our population wonders, "since all (values, opinions, philosophies, viewpoints) are equally valid, what difference does it make what anyone believes or who's in charge?"
The Muslims "get it," though, right from the moment Papa Muslim whispers the shahada into the ear of his newborn. By the time they are out of high school, their minds have been sucked dry - and ours aren't far behind.
Well, I sure hope Our Leaders have learned enough now that Iran is looming on the horizon. If we get into again, we'd better do it right."
I emailed the author of this comment, to get an explanation for all this. And as a result, I now have a treasure trove of information, which I will post shortly.
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"Actually the worst case scenario was hundreds of oil wells being lit on fire, Israel being pounded by long range missiles, and Baghdad being turned into some sort of Stalingrad like seige with millions of civilians being killed in a major humanitarian catastrophe."
Which is exactly right. Bush didn't assume the worst case scenario. He had no idea what to expect. We could have found 95% of Iraqis supported Saddam (after all, he was getting 100% of the vote), or we could have found 95% of the Iraqis supported being liberated. The only sensible plan was to REACT to whatever on earth was found in Iraq, rather than planning for 1000 different possibilities.
It went pretty damn well. All the things that needed to happen, did happen. A high voter turnout, a government that is not an enemy, brand new Iraqi security forces with both popular approval and plenty of recruits. And all done with an incredibly low loss of US troops. And the final milestone of Iraqis in charge of all of Iraq is due in Nov 2007. Not bad. Not bad at all. The high murder rate is militarily irrelevant and never part of the plan.
Things would have been bad if the turnout at the elections was 5%, if no-one turned up to join the new security forces, if Sistani had declared a jihad, if the Iraqis had voted for anti-American Islamic terrorists. None of this happened.
"Hate to sound like a heartless monster but::
If the Iraq phase in you guys eyes is the worst case senerio we might aswell hang it up right now we are FUBAR. The Iraq phase has been a unbelievable success historically speaking. You cannot set never acheived impossible to reach bars then cry becuase we can't reach those goals.
Examples:
Casualties-4yrs of Invading two Nations and occupying over 50million very hostile peoples in two nations for nearly 4yrs running with only about 3k casualties is not a disaster that is amazing. We lost 3X this number just crossing the river to get to Cassino Monastary in Italy WW2 were we lost a exponentially more men.
Strain on Economy- You got to be kidding me. The military is pulling what 4% GDP including the Supplementals and in the 80's the mil was pulling 5.5-6% don't even look at other war time strains you may sh*t yourself on site.
Strain on Civilian Pop- NO DRAFT, NO WAR TIME TAXES, NO RATIONING, NO NOTHING, if it wasn't for the ME doom gloom reporting every time a Iraqi kills another Iraqi in protest to the Infedels US the gen pop would not even know that we were at war.
Strain on Mill equipment- what 20+ year old equipment that was getting ready to be replaced in our FCS upgrade anyway getting to go out with a bang and most likely when we leave be sold (donated)(eternally loaned) to the Iraqi's?
The Carnage- This is the best. Is it not the most saddest thing about this whole afair that we are actually feeling like we are losing this war (thanks to our don't question there patriotism ME,LLL, Dums) becuase the enemy is killing to many of his own people? What kind of F*cking stardegy is that and why is that not anything short what it actually is (absolute 100% proof positive of how bad we are beating these brave Jihadi's that they cannot dare face US even in thier own home instead they go blow up a handfull of thier OWN people). On top of that is this insanity by our enemy not 100% evidence of why we must fight them over there? If they kill there own to protest US how will they treat our women and children what if they get some real mass killers?
It may sound evil but it was the Arab culture that bread these sick killers in the first place and the fact that they are now reaping what they sowed really doesn't gather much sympathy on my part. Mine/yours grandfathers didn't have much sympathy for the German people that allowed the sick Nazi ways to drag them into the depths of hell.
Bottom line if this Iraq phase is the limit of our ability to endure war we are f*cked. WW2, WW1 level fighting is something that we could not even imagine today, a war with China, N Korea, Russia or even Iran (they have a boat load of terrorist aka Muslim cruise missiles.) all of these senerios will be wars that will show just how minor the Iraq Phase has been in Reality."
Well said! It is amazing how people can look at a complete and utter success and call it a failure. History is going to record this as one of the most amazing campaigns in military history. It's a new style of warfare - a war of liberation instead of conquest.
Now they have been empowered to do something about their sick culture. It will help them and it will help the free world.
Although I disagree with the bit about there being 50 million very hostile people. The US has been very successful at avoiding a war with the locals. It has achieved this by not forcing one damn thing on the locals. Nothing. Not a sausage. Everything you see in Afghanistan and Iraq was totally chosen by locals. There's no reason for them to be hostile towards the US, which is simply helping enforce laws that they created themselves. Brilliant strategy. Completely and utterly brilliant. If there is a need to come back at a later date and force something down their throat, so be it. Until then it is best to just observe what they do with their newfound democracy and freedom of speech.
"First, Our Leaders didn't grasp that it has taken us 2400 years, from Aristotle to the present day, to get where we are, while Islam has had only the briefest of contacts with the Greek philosophers. Islam destroyed the Mu'tazilites and Ibn Rushd (their only chance at escaping their irrational tribal heritage); they had no Renaissance, no Enlightenment, no Industrial Revolution, and yet Our Leaders somehow believed that if we offered them an Enlightenment civilization on a silver platter, the Muslims would swoom with gratitude, and there would be Peace in Our Time.
Second, Our Leaders acted as though they didn't have a clue about the role of close consanguinous marriage in Islamic culture that makes abandoning the tribal mentality all but impossible - the ol' Hatfield and McCoy thing. Thanks to Muhammed, the tribes have gotten bigger - the Shia, Sunni, and The Others (the latter would be us, the infidels).
Third, Our Leaders have no concept of what constitutes "honor," "strength" and "self-esteem" among the Muslims, so Our Leaders fought using the Just War Theory, foolishly figuring that if we used that ethic, then the Muslims would, too.
Fourth, Our Leaders neglect the problems created with the establishment of the government school system, which permitted the postmodernists to infiltrate it and teach our kids their own PC crap, instead of the values of the Enlightenment, right from the beginning.
"Hey," around half our population wonders, "since all (values, opinions, philosophies, viewpoints) are equally valid, what difference does it make what anyone believes or who's in charge?"
The Muslims "get it," though, right from the moment Papa Muslim whispers the shahada into the ear of his newborn. By the time they are out of high school, their minds have been sucked dry - and ours aren't far behind.
Well, I sure hope Our Leaders have learned enough now that Iran is looming on the horizon. If we get into again, we'd better do it right."
I emailed the author of this comment, to get an explanation for all this. And as a result, I now have a treasure trove of information, which I will post shortly.
# posted by Paul Edwards @ 02:38
2007-03-01
History of the World
The Arabs seem to be taught a very myopic view of history, which needs to be corrected. No-one else seems to be stepping up to the plate so I'll do it myself.
First of all, ancient history is of little value. It was mainly dictators fighting other dictators for no ideological advance. I'll start in 1901 when Australia was formed, an example of the UK releasing her colonies with a vote, not a fight, when they were ready for self-rule. Australia's ideology was roughly secular capitalist liberal democracy, or in other terms - rational, humanist, non-subjugating government.
In 1914 World War I was started by a German dictator wanting to conquer other countries for the glory of Germany. Basically the enemy ideology was nationalism. The UK, France, Russia, Australia and others went to war against Germany, Turkey and her allies. The Russians left at half-time, and the immoral neutral US slackers turned up late (but not too late thankfully). The good guys (ie with an ideology of rational, humanist, non-subjugating government) won. Unfortunately France rubbed Germany's nose in defeat. If the US had had its way it is magnamious in victory (which has been proven to be the most strategic ideology - the best way to defeat an enemy is to convert him into a friend - and this ideology is what should be applied to fights in the schoolyard too). Casualties in WWI can be found here.
In 1939 World War II was started by Germany and Russia (both dictatorships) against the UK, France, Australia and others. The enemy was nationalism, Nazism and Communism. Unfortunately France was defeated and the UK, Australia et al were in an extremely tight spot. Once again the immoral American slackers were remaining neutral while the poor British were being pounded into the ground. Fortunately Germany decided to go to war with their partners-in-crime the Russians, and a right slugfest ensued. This made Russia an ally. Fortunately the Germans declared war on the US as well, so once again the Americans turned up to save the day. Europe and Germany was divided into West and East, the West being rational, humanist, non-subjugating governments and the East being communist dictatorships. The Russians went and raped lots of German women. This time the Americans got to run the show in the west, and were magnamious in victory, and donated lots of reconstruction money to Germany in the form of the Marshall Plan. Germans are forever grateful for being helped to their feet (yeah, right). Regardless, they've stopped shooting at us, which is a good start. Also Japan went to war with the US and was defeated. Casualties can be found here.
Then the Cold War (World War III) began, as Eastern Europe remained enslaved by the Russian/Soviet communists. America protected Western Europe via NATO. The enemy was both Russian nationalism and communism, mainly the latter. After a lot of effort, the Russians finally figured out that communism was a complete and utter failure, and they peacefully switched to capitalism (which remains the best economic system to have been demonstrated to work, despite any real or imaginary flaws). During the Cold War there were a couple of minor battles in Korea and Vietnam. The immoral British failed to turn up to the battle in Vietnam and the stupid and immoral Australians and Americans abandoned our South Vietnamese allies to communist gulags after winning a comprehensive victory. It should be noted that the Americans did the heavy lifting during WWIII and the whole world owes them a debt of gratitude.
We were still in the process of consolidating our WWIII victory (including getting the Baltics into NATO before Russian nationalists changed their mind) when 9/11 happened. This was quite a shock as it was not an attack from a nation state. The free world's fight has been largely confined to nation states - trying to win them over to our side. 9/11 forced us to fight an ideology that was not represented by a nation state but instead represented by individuals. The free world had been led to believe that all religions were basically the same, and all races were basically the same, so we needed to investigate these assumptions. We were attacked by Arab Muslims. Was the enemy Arabs or Muslims or both or neither? We basically needed to go to the Middle East and knock on a few doors, find out exactly who the enemy was, then start killing them. Only other Arab Muslims were in a position to explain to us who the enemy was. This feedback came in the form of Iraqi blogs.
Via the Iraqi blogs we were able to ascertain that the enemy wasn't Arabs, but instead an ideology of racism. And the enemy wasn't Muslims, but an ideology of religious bigotry. In more general terms, which explains all the wars since 1901, the enemy was dogma, non-humanism and subjugation. The correct ideology to counter this was anti-dogma, anti-non-humanism and anti-subjugation in order to install (at least) rational, humanist, non-subjugating governments which would in turn convert the population into the same thing. This is an ongoing process and is still a long way from completion. It is also unclear whether the governments of the free world actually understand this yet. They certainly haven't announced it.
Bush has only identified the enemy as 3 tyrants in an Axis of Evil (Iraq, Iran and North Korea), "international" terrorists and Islamofascists. Western commentators on the left have identified the enemy purely as Osama Bin Laden and they have not explained how we're actually meant to capture him (he's probably hiding in Pakistan). Do they want the US to invade Pakistan or what? Commentators on the right have identified the entire Islamic religion as the enemy, but again have not really come up with a plan on how to eliminate that. The most I have seen them propose is unleashing fury in Iraq. Which basically translates into killing lots of random civilians. ie terrorism.
The actual ideological enemy of the free world has been identified by me on Sept 11, 2004 and the strategy to eliminate it has been documented here since June 2005. The US government has been following this strategy to date, whether by design or by coincidence is unknown. It is not strategic for the US government to publicly identify the enemy at this point in world history as it will alert the enemy. It is more strategic to pick the enemy off one at a time, trotting out some excuse as to why "just this one last country" needs to be invaded.
Also, read this which I posted previously, dealing with Anglophone history.
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First of all, ancient history is of little value. It was mainly dictators fighting other dictators for no ideological advance. I'll start in 1901 when Australia was formed, an example of the UK releasing her colonies with a vote, not a fight, when they were ready for self-rule. Australia's ideology was roughly secular capitalist liberal democracy, or in other terms - rational, humanist, non-subjugating government.
In 1914 World War I was started by a German dictator wanting to conquer other countries for the glory of Germany. Basically the enemy ideology was nationalism. The UK, France, Russia, Australia and others went to war against Germany, Turkey and her allies. The Russians left at half-time, and the immoral neutral US slackers turned up late (but not too late thankfully). The good guys (ie with an ideology of rational, humanist, non-subjugating government) won. Unfortunately France rubbed Germany's nose in defeat. If the US had had its way it is magnamious in victory (which has been proven to be the most strategic ideology - the best way to defeat an enemy is to convert him into a friend - and this ideology is what should be applied to fights in the schoolyard too). Casualties in WWI can be found here.
In 1939 World War II was started by Germany and Russia (both dictatorships) against the UK, France, Australia and others. The enemy was nationalism, Nazism and Communism. Unfortunately France was defeated and the UK, Australia et al were in an extremely tight spot. Once again the immoral American slackers were remaining neutral while the poor British were being pounded into the ground. Fortunately Germany decided to go to war with their partners-in-crime the Russians, and a right slugfest ensued. This made Russia an ally. Fortunately the Germans declared war on the US as well, so once again the Americans turned up to save the day. Europe and Germany was divided into West and East, the West being rational, humanist, non-subjugating governments and the East being communist dictatorships. The Russians went and raped lots of German women. This time the Americans got to run the show in the west, and were magnamious in victory, and donated lots of reconstruction money to Germany in the form of the Marshall Plan. Germans are forever grateful for being helped to their feet (yeah, right). Regardless, they've stopped shooting at us, which is a good start. Also Japan went to war with the US and was defeated. Casualties can be found here.
Then the Cold War (World War III) began, as Eastern Europe remained enslaved by the Russian/Soviet communists. America protected Western Europe via NATO. The enemy was both Russian nationalism and communism, mainly the latter. After a lot of effort, the Russians finally figured out that communism was a complete and utter failure, and they peacefully switched to capitalism (which remains the best economic system to have been demonstrated to work, despite any real or imaginary flaws). During the Cold War there were a couple of minor battles in Korea and Vietnam. The immoral British failed to turn up to the battle in Vietnam and the stupid and immoral Australians and Americans abandoned our South Vietnamese allies to communist gulags after winning a comprehensive victory. It should be noted that the Americans did the heavy lifting during WWIII and the whole world owes them a debt of gratitude.
We were still in the process of consolidating our WWIII victory (including getting the Baltics into NATO before Russian nationalists changed their mind) when 9/11 happened. This was quite a shock as it was not an attack from a nation state. The free world's fight has been largely confined to nation states - trying to win them over to our side. 9/11 forced us to fight an ideology that was not represented by a nation state but instead represented by individuals. The free world had been led to believe that all religions were basically the same, and all races were basically the same, so we needed to investigate these assumptions. We were attacked by Arab Muslims. Was the enemy Arabs or Muslims or both or neither? We basically needed to go to the Middle East and knock on a few doors, find out exactly who the enemy was, then start killing them. Only other Arab Muslims were in a position to explain to us who the enemy was. This feedback came in the form of Iraqi blogs.
Via the Iraqi blogs we were able to ascertain that the enemy wasn't Arabs, but instead an ideology of racism. And the enemy wasn't Muslims, but an ideology of religious bigotry. In more general terms, which explains all the wars since 1901, the enemy was dogma, non-humanism and subjugation. The correct ideology to counter this was anti-dogma, anti-non-humanism and anti-subjugation in order to install (at least) rational, humanist, non-subjugating governments which would in turn convert the population into the same thing. This is an ongoing process and is still a long way from completion. It is also unclear whether the governments of the free world actually understand this yet. They certainly haven't announced it.
Bush has only identified the enemy as 3 tyrants in an Axis of Evil (Iraq, Iran and North Korea), "international" terrorists and Islamofascists. Western commentators on the left have identified the enemy purely as Osama Bin Laden and they have not explained how we're actually meant to capture him (he's probably hiding in Pakistan). Do they want the US to invade Pakistan or what? Commentators on the right have identified the entire Islamic religion as the enemy, but again have not really come up with a plan on how to eliminate that. The most I have seen them propose is unleashing fury in Iraq. Which basically translates into killing lots of random civilians. ie terrorism.
The actual ideological enemy of the free world has been identified by me on Sept 11, 2004 and the strategy to eliminate it has been documented here since June 2005. The US government has been following this strategy to date, whether by design or by coincidence is unknown. It is not strategic for the US government to publicly identify the enemy at this point in world history as it will alert the enemy. It is more strategic to pick the enemy off one at a time, trotting out some excuse as to why "just this one last country" needs to be invaded.
Also, read this which I posted previously, dealing with Anglophone history.
# posted by Paul Edwards @ 05:08
