2007-07-27
Cold-blooded Australian
The other day I was discussing the Iraq war with an anti-war Australian. Originally he came up with the usual list of excuses for opposing liberating the war, but in the end he finally admitted the truth, and openly admitted that he didn't care about the Iraqis. I asked him if they were the wrong race, the wrong religion, or what? He said they were too far away. I told him the UK was even further away, did he care about them? He didn't answer that question. Man, I really hope that one day the Iraqis can forgive Australia for producing such monsters, and not hold all Australians responsible for these arseholes. I have been chatting to a Labor supporter recently who has said that he is proud of the Australian military fighting for freedom in Iraq. It's so nice to find a decent Labor supporter. Sure, he still wants to steal from the rich and fuck up Australia's economy, but at least he can recognize the value of human freedom.
I was talking to a Taiwanese too, who was surprised when he found out that I would vote for the "Democrats" rather than "Republicans" if the Democrats supported the Iraq war while the Republicans opposed it. Yep, I'm not going to sacrifice 27 million people just to get a more efficient economy. Unless that more efficient economy would result in us being able to free more people, so that I would have to make that tough trade-off.
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I was talking to a Taiwanese too, who was surprised when he found out that I would vote for the "Democrats" rather than "Republicans" if the Democrats supported the Iraq war while the Republicans opposed it. Yep, I'm not going to sacrifice 27 million people just to get a more efficient economy. Unless that more efficient economy would result in us being able to free more people, so that I would have to make that tough trade-off.
2007-07-13
New Front Opens
Some months ago I was investigating the spread of the English language. I can't remember exactly why. It might have been to investigate why there was a chronic lack of non-Anglophones on the Iraqi blogs, but I really don't know. I have an idea now that it would be great to combine the 70% penetration rate of the internet with near-universal English language knowledge to produce a global debate amongst citizenry so that we can resolve our differences.
I stumbled across somewhere that said that there is a massive shortage of native English speakers, and that if you were a native, there was a place for you. And somewhere along the line I realised that if I had the appropriate qualifications (which are a degree plus a CELTA certificate), I could effectively work anywhere in the world, except for English-speaking countries such as America, where my services are not required. A new form of freedom in fact. I now have that CELTA certificate.
I had zeroed in on Taiwan as the place to go. The reason for this is that this is the final confrontation. All the enemies of the free world can be overthrown with minimal fuss, militarily, except for China. So the end game that I envision is the entire world in NATO, and NATO in Taiwan, letting China know that if it wants to conquer Taiwan, it has to do it over our dead bodies. And then basically wage a Cold War against China.
But it would help bolster the cause if we could have some Taiwanese telling the world that freedom isn't just for white people, and that whites should be taking an active interest in Taiwan's freedom. I wanted to know why the only thing we got from Taiwan was silence. I wanted to go to Taiwan and get Taiwanese to start English-language blogs and be active participants in this ideological war.
However, I decided to see if I could get work in Sydney. And to my surprise, I finished my CELTA course on a Saturday, one of the other students recommended a particular job website on Wednesday. I went there Wednesday night, fired off an email, was rung on Thursday morning, interview on Thursday afternoon, was offered a week's work starting on Monday, with the option of observing a class on Friday unpaid, which I did. That was two weeks ago.
In Friday's observation, the subject was "special occasions", and the 4th of July came up. The teacher explained that independence was when you got your freedom. So on Monday, I corrected that, and gave 3 definitions of freedom - "independence", "democracy" and "not subjugated". I explained that for some people, Iraq was free under Saddam (independent), while for others they got their freedom as soon as the statue fell, because they were no longer subjugated (in their opinion), while for others it came when Iraq had democratic elections.
I have suggested to my students that they should practise English by talking to strangers on the bus/train, and to use IRC, and to start their own blog. I hope I will learn what is motivating these people. I had to present some songs too, and presented John Lennon's song "Imagine". I told the students that a lot of people thought that we could have world peace if America would stop fighting. Did they want America to stop fighting? Yes! I told them that that's exactly what happened, and the North Vietnamese rolled over the south. And would the South Korean students be happy if the North Koreans rolled over the south and reunited Korea? No, they didn't want that. Hopefully I planted a seed. I don't think they have well-formed political opinions, and it's inappropriate to insist they come up with something! Hell, in one class, I wrote up "world peace" and "world freedom" and asked which was most important, and one person said they were the same!
I'm having a ball at this job. A Japanese girl was having trouble answering the question "do you speak more than 2 languages?". I asked her how many languages she spoke, and she said "one". I asked her if English was the only language she knew, and she said "yes". I asked the person sitting next to her if she thought that this Japanese girl was telling me the truth. "No". The next day I asked her the same question, and she still reckoned English was the only language she knew. So I wrote the question on the board, and asked again. Still "yes". I asked her to ask her fellow students the same question. When I came back, I asked her if English was the only language she knew, and she said "no". Apparently she speaks Japanese too! I suspected all along that her parents had probably taught her that.
In an exam the students did (and I stayed up till 00:30 one night and 01:00 another night marking - I wake up at 06:30), they had to combine two sentences using "but", "so", "then" or "because". One student combined "I felt fed up" and "The weather was bad" into "I felt fed up so the weather was bad". I thought it was really great knowing people whose mood changed the weather. Forget the American Indians with their stupid rain dances. Go to Thailand for real inspiration!
After that exam, I recommended 5 students go up a level. One of the students actually spoke to the Director of Studies saying that he wanted to stay at this level. He said he liked the class. But when the Director asked him why he liked the class, he said it was because the teacher was soft, while he knew that the teacher at the next level was hard. The Director talked him out of it. Soft teacher? Good grief. I really hope I can help these people.
I gave my first week's paycheck (plus some extra) to Waheed (Afghan Warrior) to pay for his internet expenses so that he could chat to some of his "Muslim brothers" to find out just how little they cared about his freedom and human rights. Negative "care" in fact. They only see him as a useful tool to hurt America. I want him to see that, and then formulate a plan on what to do about it. And I am seeing if I can use my second week's paycheck to get some more Afghan bloggers online. I'll see what eventuates out of that. Unfortunately the South Korean guy who served 2 years in the South Korean Marines is one of the ones moving up, before I had an opportunity to extract his ideology from him.
Oh, and all this, plus the fact that I've made contact with Taiwanese via an alternate method and am chatting at length to one in particular, to extract his genetic information, means that I've given up participating in the blog comments, at least for now. It's not really productive. There's no new arguments coming up that need to be countered.
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I stumbled across somewhere that said that there is a massive shortage of native English speakers, and that if you were a native, there was a place for you. And somewhere along the line I realised that if I had the appropriate qualifications (which are a degree plus a CELTA certificate), I could effectively work anywhere in the world, except for English-speaking countries such as America, where my services are not required. A new form of freedom in fact. I now have that CELTA certificate.
I had zeroed in on Taiwan as the place to go. The reason for this is that this is the final confrontation. All the enemies of the free world can be overthrown with minimal fuss, militarily, except for China. So the end game that I envision is the entire world in NATO, and NATO in Taiwan, letting China know that if it wants to conquer Taiwan, it has to do it over our dead bodies. And then basically wage a Cold War against China.
But it would help bolster the cause if we could have some Taiwanese telling the world that freedom isn't just for white people, and that whites should be taking an active interest in Taiwan's freedom. I wanted to know why the only thing we got from Taiwan was silence. I wanted to go to Taiwan and get Taiwanese to start English-language blogs and be active participants in this ideological war.
However, I decided to see if I could get work in Sydney. And to my surprise, I finished my CELTA course on a Saturday, one of the other students recommended a particular job website on Wednesday. I went there Wednesday night, fired off an email, was rung on Thursday morning, interview on Thursday afternoon, was offered a week's work starting on Monday, with the option of observing a class on Friday unpaid, which I did. That was two weeks ago.
In Friday's observation, the subject was "special occasions", and the 4th of July came up. The teacher explained that independence was when you got your freedom. So on Monday, I corrected that, and gave 3 definitions of freedom - "independence", "democracy" and "not subjugated". I explained that for some people, Iraq was free under Saddam (independent), while for others they got their freedom as soon as the statue fell, because they were no longer subjugated (in their opinion), while for others it came when Iraq had democratic elections.
I have suggested to my students that they should practise English by talking to strangers on the bus/train, and to use IRC, and to start their own blog. I hope I will learn what is motivating these people. I had to present some songs too, and presented John Lennon's song "Imagine". I told the students that a lot of people thought that we could have world peace if America would stop fighting. Did they want America to stop fighting? Yes! I told them that that's exactly what happened, and the North Vietnamese rolled over the south. And would the South Korean students be happy if the North Koreans rolled over the south and reunited Korea? No, they didn't want that. Hopefully I planted a seed. I don't think they have well-formed political opinions, and it's inappropriate to insist they come up with something! Hell, in one class, I wrote up "world peace" and "world freedom" and asked which was most important, and one person said they were the same!
I'm having a ball at this job. A Japanese girl was having trouble answering the question "do you speak more than 2 languages?". I asked her how many languages she spoke, and she said "one". I asked her if English was the only language she knew, and she said "yes". I asked the person sitting next to her if she thought that this Japanese girl was telling me the truth. "No". The next day I asked her the same question, and she still reckoned English was the only language she knew. So I wrote the question on the board, and asked again. Still "yes". I asked her to ask her fellow students the same question. When I came back, I asked her if English was the only language she knew, and she said "no". Apparently she speaks Japanese too! I suspected all along that her parents had probably taught her that.
In an exam the students did (and I stayed up till 00:30 one night and 01:00 another night marking - I wake up at 06:30), they had to combine two sentences using "but", "so", "then" or "because". One student combined "I felt fed up" and "The weather was bad" into "I felt fed up so the weather was bad". I thought it was really great knowing people whose mood changed the weather. Forget the American Indians with their stupid rain dances. Go to Thailand for real inspiration!
After that exam, I recommended 5 students go up a level. One of the students actually spoke to the Director of Studies saying that he wanted to stay at this level. He said he liked the class. But when the Director asked him why he liked the class, he said it was because the teacher was soft, while he knew that the teacher at the next level was hard. The Director talked him out of it. Soft teacher? Good grief. I really hope I can help these people.
I gave my first week's paycheck (plus some extra) to Waheed (Afghan Warrior) to pay for his internet expenses so that he could chat to some of his "Muslim brothers" to find out just how little they cared about his freedom and human rights. Negative "care" in fact. They only see him as a useful tool to hurt America. I want him to see that, and then formulate a plan on what to do about it. And I am seeing if I can use my second week's paycheck to get some more Afghan bloggers online. I'll see what eventuates out of that. Unfortunately the South Korean guy who served 2 years in the South Korean Marines is one of the ones moving up, before I had an opportunity to extract his ideology from him.
Oh, and all this, plus the fact that I've made contact with Taiwanese via an alternate method and am chatting at length to one in particular, to extract his genetic information, means that I've given up participating in the blog comments, at least for now. It's not really productive. There's no new arguments coming up that need to be countered.
2007-07-07
Brave Iraqis
There is a great article here. And the comments are good too. First the article:
"But then a strange thing happened, one that never got the attention it deserved. Despite all the terror attacks, people kept joining the police and army."
And this is indeed the most obvious thing. With brave Iraqis standing up to be counted, victory was assured. These VOLUNTEERS are the most beautiful people on the planet. Whenever I see pictures of these beautiful soldiers, my heart is touched. You can see a picture of one of them here. These are the people who don't judge us by our skin colour or religion. Instead they put their life on the line to protect us. Obviously our own soldiers do so as well, but it is nowhere near as touching to be defended by your own race/religion/nationality as it is to be protected by a complete stranger. It is THESE men, not Hizbullah and Hamas, that are indeed, "God's Army".
Now let's move on to the comments:
"Iraq was the first member of the so called axis of evil attacked because they were the most vulnerable, and a ready made causus belli existed - Iraq's non-compliance with the 1991 cease-fire accords."
Exactly. For obvious reasons, the government can't blurt this out, but the truth is sitting there staring at your face, and blindingly obvious to some, at least.
Unfortunately, he goes off the rails from there:
"Iran is a larger and stronger country than Iraq was even in 1991."
So? Iraq was a pushover. We've heard all this crap so many times. I'm sure when we get to Zimbabwe we'll be hearing "Zimbabwe is not Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon or Sudan". Regardless, ableiter confirmed that my prediction of 3.5 weeks and 100 allied casualties was probably going to be correct.
"It has significant internal divisions, but the bast way to resolve them would be to attack Iran."
The hell it is. We've heard this crap before too. Afghanistan was split 85/15 in our favour. Iraq was split 50/50. Where the hell do you get the idea that it is going to be 100/0 against us in Iran? However, this is exactly why we need to keep these liberations going. To get the scientific data about human behaviour on this crucial topic. So that we can analyze the results.
"In short, Iraq was first because it was do-able."
Correct.
"The results of the preemptive war are still undetermined."
The important scientific data has already been obtained. There is still long-term data to be collected, specifically what effect freedom of speech, democracy, the internet, a modern education and affluence have on at least one group of Arab Muslims. The scope of the required genocide is dependent on this data, unless we're impatient.
"We are rid of the dangerous saddamite regime, but we are stuck in a volatile political situation that could end up throwing the game for us."
Certainly if the Democrats start barracking for the terrorists, like they did the commies, we would have a disaster.
"It is also a situation that is consuming a huge portion of the administration’s foreign policy bandwidth."
That's unfortunately true. Iraq is taking a hell of a lot longer than hoped for, and pushing back the whole program of liberation. However, it is a once-off cost, and there is just enough time to do the bulk of the work if Bush has the balls to do the right thing.
Then we have this funny comment from someone else:
"Iran isn't even the right sect of our enemies to even accuse them of helping AQ.
I mean Iraq with a Sunni leadership "never helped AQ" according to the left, and now you want to tell them the WOT against AQ has something to do with Iran?"
Yes, the left must be getting exasperated by the right. We necessarily need to throw out a long list of excuses about why we need to invade "just one more country", and for a pacifist that doesn't want to invade any countries at all, they must be tearing their hair out. :-) Yeah, yeah. Just one more. :-) For now. :-) That's why I asked Howard to issue a declaration of war on Iran only and say "no comment" about all the other dictators in the world.
Anyway, I look forward to the day when those beautiful, brave, Iraqi soldiers are taking part in NATO missions!
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"But then a strange thing happened, one that never got the attention it deserved. Despite all the terror attacks, people kept joining the police and army."
And this is indeed the most obvious thing. With brave Iraqis standing up to be counted, victory was assured. These VOLUNTEERS are the most beautiful people on the planet. Whenever I see pictures of these beautiful soldiers, my heart is touched. You can see a picture of one of them here. These are the people who don't judge us by our skin colour or religion. Instead they put their life on the line to protect us. Obviously our own soldiers do so as well, but it is nowhere near as touching to be defended by your own race/religion/nationality as it is to be protected by a complete stranger. It is THESE men, not Hizbullah and Hamas, that are indeed, "God's Army".
Now let's move on to the comments:
"Iraq was the first member of the so called axis of evil attacked because they were the most vulnerable, and a ready made causus belli existed - Iraq's non-compliance with the 1991 cease-fire accords."
Exactly. For obvious reasons, the government can't blurt this out, but the truth is sitting there staring at your face, and blindingly obvious to some, at least.
Unfortunately, he goes off the rails from there:
"Iran is a larger and stronger country than Iraq was even in 1991."
So? Iraq was a pushover. We've heard all this crap so many times. I'm sure when we get to Zimbabwe we'll be hearing "Zimbabwe is not Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon or Sudan". Regardless, ableiter confirmed that my prediction of 3.5 weeks and 100 allied casualties was probably going to be correct.
"It has significant internal divisions, but the bast way to resolve them would be to attack Iran."
The hell it is. We've heard this crap before too. Afghanistan was split 85/15 in our favour. Iraq was split 50/50. Where the hell do you get the idea that it is going to be 100/0 against us in Iran? However, this is exactly why we need to keep these liberations going. To get the scientific data about human behaviour on this crucial topic. So that we can analyze the results.
"In short, Iraq was first because it was do-able."
Correct.
"The results of the preemptive war are still undetermined."
The important scientific data has already been obtained. There is still long-term data to be collected, specifically what effect freedom of speech, democracy, the internet, a modern education and affluence have on at least one group of Arab Muslims. The scope of the required genocide is dependent on this data, unless we're impatient.
"We are rid of the dangerous saddamite regime, but we are stuck in a volatile political situation that could end up throwing the game for us."
Certainly if the Democrats start barracking for the terrorists, like they did the commies, we would have a disaster.
"It is also a situation that is consuming a huge portion of the administration’s foreign policy bandwidth."
That's unfortunately true. Iraq is taking a hell of a lot longer than hoped for, and pushing back the whole program of liberation. However, it is a once-off cost, and there is just enough time to do the bulk of the work if Bush has the balls to do the right thing.
Then we have this funny comment from someone else:
"Iran isn't even the right sect of our enemies to even accuse them of helping AQ.
I mean Iraq with a Sunni leadership "never helped AQ" according to the left, and now you want to tell them the WOT against AQ has something to do with Iran?"
Yes, the left must be getting exasperated by the right. We necessarily need to throw out a long list of excuses about why we need to invade "just one more country", and for a pacifist that doesn't want to invade any countries at all, they must be tearing their hair out. :-) Yeah, yeah. Just one more. :-) For now. :-) That's why I asked Howard to issue a declaration of war on Iran only and say "no comment" about all the other dictators in the world.
Anyway, I look forward to the day when those beautiful, brave, Iraqi soldiers are taking part in NATO missions!
2007-07-03
Death in Perspective
To tell you the truth, I still cringe whenever I see numbers like 330 US soldiers died in the last month, which is the highest month ever. I know how valuable those troops are, not just to their family, but to the whole world. Those troops could be being used to liberate Iran. It only took 100 troops to liberate Iraq, so one month's toll is actually the liberation of 3 countries.
However, I normally put it into perspective by reminding myself that 3000 Americans die every month on the roads, just so that they could visit granny quickly. If anything is a waste, it's that. Why not just videoconference with granny while the war is on, so that the overall US death toll doesn't change?
I thought what would be good would be if whenever the US military toll in Iraq was published each month, that the deaths from training accidents were also published, the road toll was also published, and the deaths from cancer etc were also published, so that we could keep things in perspective all the time. Then I thought there was no particular need to do that, we can simply look at the yearly tolls that are published. So I went looking for them. I came across this.
It is quite fascinating. Traffic fatalities registeres in the "perceived causes of death", but it is absent from the actual. Also there is an "also ran" (5%) of "unintentional injuries", which may include car crashes. But more than that, we can see the effects of the "world hunger" scam. Starvation/hunger is shown as the second-most common cause of deaths outside the US (Aids is number 1). But in the actual deaths, starvation/hunger doesn't get a mention. Aids does, and so does road traffic injuries. Basically, instead of the gullible Americans being sucked in to donating more and more money for the supposedly starving people out there, we should instead be campaigning for them to bomb the roads to stop those damn foreigners from driving cars and killing all those innocent motorists, especially the poor innocent children.
Honestly, this is the crux of my philosophy. There is a limited amount of charity people are willing to give. Whether that is 1% of someone's income, or 0.01% of it, whatever it is, needs to be spent wisely, as it is the most valuable thing we've got to work with, if we're going to fix this crap planet. That is why I want to channel it into wars of liberation, where we suddenly empower people to help themselves, instead of pouring water into sand. And if there was any justice in the world, the liberated country would in turn pay back the cost of liberation by funding the next liberation. Of course, there is no justice in the world, and everyone returns to suck at America's teat. Even me unfortunately. These people pulling off the "world hunger" scam are some of the most evil scumbags to walk the planet. They are draining a scarce resource that could actually be used to make a difference. The glorification of Mother Theresa falls into the same boat. How the hell does drinking people's saliva make the world a better place? If she campaigned against Catholicism, explaining that the directives against birth control are creating poverty, she would have been doing something useful. Instead, by identifying with Catholicism she helped make the world a worse place. Disgraceful. And you can add all these rock stars to the list too. When I see them campaigning for capitalism and good governance, including first-world oversight, I'll know they're genuinely interested in helping. They're not. They're only interested in their pathetic image. One day they will be held to account for what they did. One day.
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However, I normally put it into perspective by reminding myself that 3000 Americans die every month on the roads, just so that they could visit granny quickly. If anything is a waste, it's that. Why not just videoconference with granny while the war is on, so that the overall US death toll doesn't change?
I thought what would be good would be if whenever the US military toll in Iraq was published each month, that the deaths from training accidents were also published, the road toll was also published, and the deaths from cancer etc were also published, so that we could keep things in perspective all the time. Then I thought there was no particular need to do that, we can simply look at the yearly tolls that are published. So I went looking for them. I came across this.
It is quite fascinating. Traffic fatalities registeres in the "perceived causes of death", but it is absent from the actual. Also there is an "also ran" (5%) of "unintentional injuries", which may include car crashes. But more than that, we can see the effects of the "world hunger" scam. Starvation/hunger is shown as the second-most common cause of deaths outside the US (Aids is number 1). But in the actual deaths, starvation/hunger doesn't get a mention. Aids does, and so does road traffic injuries. Basically, instead of the gullible Americans being sucked in to donating more and more money for the supposedly starving people out there, we should instead be campaigning for them to bomb the roads to stop those damn foreigners from driving cars and killing all those innocent motorists, especially the poor innocent children.
Honestly, this is the crux of my philosophy. There is a limited amount of charity people are willing to give. Whether that is 1% of someone's income, or 0.01% of it, whatever it is, needs to be spent wisely, as it is the most valuable thing we've got to work with, if we're going to fix this crap planet. That is why I want to channel it into wars of liberation, where we suddenly empower people to help themselves, instead of pouring water into sand. And if there was any justice in the world, the liberated country would in turn pay back the cost of liberation by funding the next liberation. Of course, there is no justice in the world, and everyone returns to suck at America's teat. Even me unfortunately. These people pulling off the "world hunger" scam are some of the most evil scumbags to walk the planet. They are draining a scarce resource that could actually be used to make a difference. The glorification of Mother Theresa falls into the same boat. How the hell does drinking people's saliva make the world a better place? If she campaigned against Catholicism, explaining that the directives against birth control are creating poverty, she would have been doing something useful. Instead, by identifying with Catholicism she helped make the world a worse place. Disgraceful. And you can add all these rock stars to the list too. When I see them campaigning for capitalism and good governance, including first-world oversight, I'll know they're genuinely interested in helping. They're not. They're only interested in their pathetic image. One day they will be held to account for what they did. One day.