2008-12-29

 

Democracy

I was searching something on Wikipedia recently and in light of Obama's victory, I really need to ask - will democracy ever work in the US?

Let's look at some example democracies as of the most recent elections for head of state:

Australia - 94.32% turnout to choose between 8+ parties.

Iraq - 79.6% turnout to choose between over 300 parties (exact number not listed, 308 from memory).

Afghanistan - 70% turnout to choose between 18 contenders.

USA - 63% turnout to choose between 6+ contenders.

I mean - with that sort of turnout - and that limited choice - it's no wonder that even a racist immoral moonbat like Obama could get across the line.

Oh well, let's give it another 200 years and see what they come up with.

I know it's unfair to put Australia above Iraq and Afghanistan given that the latter two countries had extreme intimidation from terrorists preventing them from freely voting, but I can hardly award them an honorary 15% boost. The figures are what they are. Figures don't lie, after all.


P.S. Yes morons, I know how Australia got that figure, but not one single American does, which is all that matters for the purposes of this post.

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2008-12-28

 

Volunteers

In another case of having to explain the bleeding obvious because the bleeding obvious is apparently not obvious to some.

A recurring theme about the Iraq war is "why Iraq and not xyz country?". At first glance you might have thought that the people asking the question are really concerned about the people of xyz and were miffed that Iraq got first billing. And that they will support the liberation of country xyz at the end of the Iraq campaign. Sadly, they're not. They're merely offering xyz as a reason to do nothing about either, not as an agreement to do both.

I was speaking to an Indonesian who said that the Somalis were holding 11 Indonesians captive, and that if he were president that he would invade Somalia, but the world would stop him. I told him that was nonsense. That if anyone tried to stop Indonesia from volunteering to fix Somalia, the current US government would protect Indonesia. I doubt even Obama would attempt to stop that - the most he'd do is say some nasty words. And no-one at all made any attempt to stop Ethiopia from doing exactly that anyway. Even if it didn't produce all the hoped-for results, at least they tried!

And that really is the right-wing in a nutshell. They don't oppose anyone else who volunteers to do something good. Even if they aren't (yet) ready to do it themselves, they are happy to see others doing it. It's the left-wing that bitches and moans when the US does something good like free 27 million people from state-slavery. Interestingly, they don't oppose the Iraqi people making a stab at overthrowing the government. Nevermind that that has less chance at success (100,000 dead in 1991 when trying to do that, with zero result), nevermind that it's even bloodier, nevermind that the exact same consequences will emerge (civil war/sectarian violence/whatever) - bloody revolutions are a spectator sport to the left, as they toast their marshmallows. But having the US involved making it a completely lopsided war in favour of the revolutionaries spoils all their fun. And they trot out unsubstantiated statements that you can't hand people democracy on a platter (despite Australia - one of the world's oldest democracies - getting democracy exactly like that). Of course, rather than simply discard their unsubstantiated nonsense and agree to rethink their thought processes, they just throw some other factor in such as "unless the country starts with 'A'". So Afghanistan then? "oh, starts and ends with 'a'". So that's why Australia, Austria and Albania are all democracies? "yeah, bet you can't find any flaw with that reasoning for sure!".

I had a similar argument with my own sister. Her cause celebre was genetalia mutilation in Africa and children getting raped in Papua New Guinea. And because these atrocities were happening, that's why we shouldn't do anything about Iran. Great.

Rwanda's another one that gets trotted out. "How can you believe that the US cares about the Iraqi people when it didn't do anything about Rwanda?". "What specifically would you have liked the US to do to stop racist Hutus picking up a machete to kill their Rwandan neighbours?". (at this point they just try a different insanity instead of admitting that their worldview is just complete crap - surprise, surprise).

In an argument with an Australian on the train it was "why not Zimbabwe which was even worse than Iraq?". A complete lie. Mugabe may be a thug, but the fact that the MDC exists at all instead of all its members being fed to lions (literally), boiled in acid (literally), fed to dobermans (literally), shows the insanity of that argument. Not that I oppose liberating Zimbabwe. Far from it. I support anyone who wants to have a crack at that. Including an arsehole country like South Africa. Speaking of which, maybe that Tutu guy isn't so bad after all. See here. Ignoring his own reluctance to call a thug a thug long ago (weasely Christian clergy are fond of doing that the world over), he is correctly pointing out that his own country is acting immorally at the moment preventing the UNSC from taking the required action when it should be the one leading the way. We're still a long way from having Tutu care about the Iraqis and Iranians and urging the same action in Iran that was done in Iraq though. However, let's be grateful for the small steps. A quick google search and we're back to him being an arsehole again. Oh well, like I said, even if an arsehole leads the charge to liberate Zimbabwe, I will only applaud. Just as I applaud China's current involvement in Haiti. The first time I know of that they used their military for something good (trying to enforce rule of law in Haiti). And I applaud the Russians fighting their former partners in crime in Stalingrad too. What a nice way of saying "oops, I was wrong".

Basically, I won't look a gift horse in the mouth. If you're a thug yourself yet you do something good, I will praise the good thing you did, while reserving judgement for the bad. Contrast this with the left-wing who have a harsh judgement on those who do genuine good in the world while giving the assorted communist thugs the thumbs up. In the middle of the Cold War no less. And are yet to apologize for being so so wrong I might add. Not sure what the holdup there is. All it requires is integrity. Oh. I remember now.

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2008-12-27

 

Police State

I used the phrase "police state" while talking to a Russian recently about the Soviet Union, and wondered if Wikipedia had an article about it. They did. And the USSR wasn't listed as an example. Instead, the UK, US and Australia are mentioned. ROFL! They do have a banner that says the editors are in dispute and I spent some time reading what they had to see, looking for signs of sanity.

Actually, the sanity was there, but apparently losing the edit war. Before the edits change, here is what it says at the moment:


The United Kingdom is felt by some to be moving quickly in the direction of a police state,[7] with biometric identity cards,[8][9] continuous surveillance and long term detainment without trial all having been introduced by the government. The UK has been described as "the most surveilled country".[10] Peaceful protests within a half-mile radius of the Houses of Parliament are illegal in the UK unless authorised by the Metropolitan Police.[11] Claims of police state behaviour have been dismissed by the UK government.[12]

The United States has been accused of moving towards a police state. On June 27, 2002 U.S. Congressman Ron Paul said in the House of Representatives:

"...'Is America a Police State?' My answer is: 'Maybe not yet, but it is fast approaching.'"[13]

There has also been criticism of the US over the use of mass surveillance. Compulsory vaccinations are also in use.[


Australia isn't mentioned exactly. Instead, there is a picture of a woman holding a sign that says "NSW Police State". There are policeman standing right next to her, not taking down her sign and beating her to a pulp, but instead there protecting her right to freedom of speech. It's basically surreal that people hold signs like that. And surreal that the UK gets mentioned as a police state because it has surveillance - surveillance that is specifically designed to PROTECT citizen's human rights, not take it away!

They seemed to have a bit of trouble coming up with an objective way of determining what a police state is.

Which provides a bit of a lead-in to another discussion I had with someone. He said that the impression he got from Indonesian media was that things were fine in Iraq in 2003, and he had no idea that all these people opposed Saddam. I asked him how many political parties there were in Indonesia (about 50), and why they didn't have just one (Indonesians apparently have different opinions), and asked him why he didn't think that Iraqis might have different opinions as well, and not all be represented by the 1 party in Iraq. He said he never heard from the Iraqi people that they opposed Saddam. They weren't asking for help. I suggested to him that the fact that he could watch the news and come to such a highly erroneous conclusion would suggest that the media he is using as an information source should be ditched and replaced with something more accurate. He agreed. (It's nice to find people like that occasionally - VERY occasionally).

So I decided to have a stab at defining a police state in an objective manner myself. North Korea and the Soviet Union were the best recent examples. Let's have a go.

If a majority of the citizens are scared to express a negative opinion about their current head of government, in a public place, because they fear arrest by the instruments of the current head of government, then they are living in a police state.

In a non-police state by contrast, the majority of citizens have no fear in expressing a negative view publicly, because they can see that other people did that and didn't suffer any repercussions, so assume that it is safe for them to do likewise.

So if you can see negative opinions of the current government coming from a particular state, you can be pretty sure it isn't a police state.

However, if you cannot see negative comments of the current government coming from a police state, the reasons could be:

1. Very backward - such poor communication that people don't have the ability to get a message out of the country. Or people don't have the required vocabulary to say "bad ruler". Or people are mute (because of the black plague or some other debilitating disease). Or illiterate so they can't write down their opinion.

2. All the people in that country genuinely approve of the current head of state.

3. The country is a police state.

The left-wing often tried to pass Iraq off as number 2. I assumed number 3 and wanted to see some heads smashed in and vigorous debate to emerge. There are apparently still some tribes in South America etc that haven't yet been contacted by someone outside their tribe - so we can probably conclude that number 1 applies to them (poor communication rather than being mute etc) rather than being in a police state.


Some people (Americans) complained about Iraqis being allowed to march in Tikrit etc holding pictures of Saddam (after April 2003). I instead said that it was beautiful and important. It showed that ANY speech in Iraq was allowed, and that America clearly wasn't forcing its will onto the Iraqi people. Exactly this sort of thing was required to give the Iraqi people the confidence they needed to be able to say what they really thought without fear of having their tongue cut out.

And it was beautiful to see people speaking out without risking amputation of their tongues. What they said wasn't always beautiful. But it was beautiful that they were genuinely free - AND THEY KNEW IT. Just like that Australian woman holding a "police state" sign. She knows damn well she can say anything she wants. Just as the Iraqis knew (or at least, guessed) when they came out with their Saddam photos.

Thankfully the pro-Saddam morons played their part in opening up freedom of speech (if they didn't exist, it would almost need a CIA operation to get those pictures out there!). The Iraqi people responded by creating an unbelievable 300+ political parties. I've never seen anything like that in my life. Certainly not in Australia. And the US is even WORSE. The people opened up, and took their right to the ballot box. Imagine what position we would be in if the turnout was 5% instead of 79.6%. We would still have no idea what these people really thought.

It will also be fascinating to find out what the Iraqi people REALLY think about US troops in their country when the referendum is held on exactly that question next year. I did a search to find out what the polls showed, and this one from the BBC in March 2008 suggests that only 38% of Iraqis want the US forces to leave now (ie then). But it'll be great to see these opinion polls validated against a secret ballot. The same poll shows the normal fundamental difference between Iraqis (which reflects the rest of the world) about right and wrong. 49% think that the liberation was right, 50% thing it was wrong. The figures for 2004 are shown as well, which were 49% right, 39% wrong (13% refused to answer). Those refused to answer are interesting. We can speculate that they were anti-liberation at the time and were scared of US reprisals. Interesting that only 13% were scared of reprisals, and also interesting that a year later that dropped to 4%, and by 2007 no-one was scared to answer anymore. Although we still can't tell if some people are scared and giving a false answer (either way). Only a secret ballot will tease that information out of the Iraqi people. The opinions expressed in parliament are the closest indicator we have otherwise. But those opinions are more pro-US troops, presumably due to them being better informed, so can't be used as a judge.

One other thing. Even though Iraqis as a whole are clearly free to express different opinions as those poll results show, people in individual areas (Shia, Sunni), may be scared to give their true opinion also. The most violent people are the terrorists, so if you want to play it safe, don't say that you support the occupation. Until you have a secret ballot. :-)

What can I say? Freedom is fascinating. Imagine a world without a free Iraq. Now there's a depressing thought.

What I would really like to see is after the US troops leave, for the Iraqi government to admit that no Iraqi oil was ever stolen, the US in no way controls either them, or the oil, and never has, and the people who lied for all those years were, well, liars.

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2008-12-26

 

Cricket

I was talking to an American the other day and he was miffed at the Iraqis for having shoes thrown at his president.

I referred him to this where Bush himself says "These journalists here were very apologetic, they were -- said, this doesn't represent the Iraqi people.". Which says more about Iraqis than that ratbag Iraqi does. Consider the largesse of those COMPLETELY INNOCENT Iraqis who are attentively listening to what a foreign head of state (who invaded their country) has to say. And after the innocent, despite the fact that they had NOTHING TO DO WITH IT, they apologized to Bush and sided with Bush, not the arsehole Iraqi. Man, I'm stoked.

Almost as stoked as when I watched the US government's abhorrence at hazing of Iraqi terrorists in Abu Graib and the subsequent prosecution of the protagonists.

In fact, it says more of Arab Muslims that the majority seems to continually talk about the relatively mild hazing of terrorists rather than Saddam's genuine brutality against innocents or more to the point - the fact that the US prosecuted those people whereas they had no desire to prosecute Saddam.

And it says more about blacks that they are quick to come out with comments about slavery but you'll never hear them praise how a shitload of whites died killing a shitload of other whites so that they could be free.

But here's the one that takes the cake.

I asked (I have to ask these really basic questions because Americans are Americans) my American friend if he knew the game of "cricket". Like soccer except you use a hockey stick? Close enough.

Anyway, I told him that in one game of cricket, the Australian public booed their own team off the field. Really? And can you guess why? They hit the ball wrong? Nope. They won the match. What??? He was unable to think of any reason why the Australian people would boo their own team off the field after they had just won a game of cricket.

The reason Australians did that? Because the Australian bowler bowled underarm (*), and although that wasn't actually against the rules, the only reason it wasn't against the rules was because they thought that no-one would be such an arsehole to actually do that. They've amended the rules since to cope with arseholes.

But it says far more about Australia's character that the majority of Australians would boo their own team after a victory than the fact that we happen to have the occasional arsehole who happens to be good at cricket. Can you imagine Argentina booing off Maradona?

And it says far more about New Zealand's character that you will never hear them mention how great the Australian people were to disown their own sporting heroes when they win immorally.

That may take the cake, but America takes the icing. Despite all the anti-Americanism emanating from arsehole countries like Australia, it never returns the abuse. By rights those arsehole Australians with their anti-American bigotry deserve nothing less than complete genocide. I know that. The Americans probably know that too. But they'll never say anything.

Frickin goody two shoes Americans showing up Australians for the relative ratbags they/we are, when we could so easily have help a hard-won position of the most moral country on the planet ever, unassailably so, given that we turned up to every damn fight for freedom we could get into, unlike everyone else who was absent for some war or another. The sole blot on our record was our current PM's premature withdrawal from Iraq. At least relative to everyone else. Vietnam was another premature withdrawal, but America was withdrawing at the same time I believe, so it was a tandem betrayal of the good people of Vietnam.

Point of note (especially for the Chinese, Arabs etc who can't understand how we manage to build societies so much better than theirs) - THIS is where our relatively decent societies come from - we don't compete on who is the richest, or who is the best conqueror - we compete on WHO IS THE MOST MORAL/DECENT/NICE! We have some debate about what actions are moral/immoral, and that causes us great consternation, but we are all competing based on this. Even the left-wing scum who think that being Robin Hood makes them more moral (and it doesn't help that we really do treat Robin Hood as a hero either!). They do their despicable acts because they think they are being moral, not so much because they're really after the $10 that they would personally get if they could decapitate Bill Gates and spread his wealth around. And when you combine that with a human trait to be violently dogmatic, and then give them a juicy dogma like communism, well, you can see what happens for yourself.


(*) P.S. This was on the last ball of the game, where New Zealand needed to hit a 6 in order to win. The underarm bowl - ball travelling on the ground - prevented that (fairly unlikely) possibility.

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2008-12-25

 

Loyalty

I watched with horror this video today. Basically Lebanese immigrants in Australia boasting about how they're at war with non-Lebanese Australians. From a purely tactical point of view, they shouldn't be letting everyone know their plans. Regardless, the solution is not the mindless "education" that various people offer as an alternative to war. They've probably all had an Australian education. Nor is it a matter of teaching people English. These are probably all native English-speakers. So what's happening?

This is a large part of what the Iraq war was about. We needed a larger body of people to try to find out what was going on. Are these Arab Muslims all numbnuts worshipping thugs like Saddam because of loyalty to skin colour? So we got to Iraq and were finally able to ask "why do you numbnuts like Saddam?". And we got our answer - "not all of us do, numbnut - only the racist left-wing in your country could believe that a population of 27 million spoke with one voice".

So we were finally able to see divergent Arab Muslim opinion. And some of them were far different from the people in that video. And that's despite decades of attempted indoctrination from the likes of Saddam. Just like the Poles who wouldn't give an honest answer about their thoughts until they had a secret ballot.

Anyway, the answer is now available for anyone who wants to solve the problem. It isn't that complicated. People have a natural tendency to coalesce by race. The trouble is - that doesn't get you very far. Any further than you get if you say you're in the human race. Because we have genetic differences right down to the individual. You're effectively a different race from your own sister. And even if you weren't, you will have disputes even with your own sister anyway. I was reading about a girl in Iraq who wasn't allowed to marry the guy she wanted to, so she turned her brother and father in to Saddam for saying anti-Saddam things.

Basically it's a fool's game. These people are pretending that they are united Lebanese. Actually if you go to Lebanon, there's no unity there either - there's an on and off civil war. And most want to escape that hell-hole. Lebanon is no more united than Australia is. The people in that video are Australians, yet they are fighting other Australians. Just as Iraqis are fighting Iraqis. The loyalty is only to the Lebanese flag so long as they're not actually IN Lebanon! Then they'll suddenly split into their respective sects etc and start fighting each other. In the Iraqi blogs I was talking to a Kurd who was explaining to me how when the Saudis come over, it's not enough to just answer "Sunni" when asked for religion. They then want to know the subset of that. And they'll keep paring that down until they find something different and then start hating you because you're the wrong religion!

I'd like to say "enter Christianity to the rescue" where Christians are meant to love even their enemy, nevermind completely innocent people who happen to be of a different religion. But of course, Christianity has no track record of that either. We can see super-Catholics in Ireland singing anti-British songs instead of kumbiyah. And during the recently Lebanon war I got to talk directly to so-called Christians asking them why they pretended to be Christian instead of admitting that they were Nazis wanting to exterminate Jews. As far as I can tell, people calling themselves Christians are only doing so because they were indoctrinated to do that as a child and are scared to be anything else. Even though they are exactly "anything else" - usually vicious animals.

There is another alternative - secular humanism. But it's not enough to channel the aggression you see in that video. That is raw male testosterone talking. They need to fight. See the guns there. The Australian education system didn't teach them that guns were glorious. It's innate. They want to subjugate. They want to prove themselves. The trick is to point them at something other than non-brown people. Point them at the Saddams of the world. Which is exactly what they are themselves. So it requires them to fight their own instinct as well. Anything else is way too late. You don't want to leave it to the police to catch them committing human rights abuses. You want them to internalize the fight against human rights abuses. Turn THEM into policemen! And do it systematically rather than just getting 27 million Iraqis and seeing how many of them turned out that way under their own steam.

Basically the philosophy that causes the Iraqi security forces to ally with Australian Diggers is the same philosophy that will solve the problem in that video. That philosophy is message 666. Solution has been available for 4 years. But no-one's particularly interested so the race war continues with people whinging and doing everything EXCEPT solving the problem. And I know from personal experience that I had no way of deriving 666 without the Iraq war. I couldn't have figured out what was in my genes that was the same as those guys on the video, but being ideologically suppressed. Without the Iraq war so that I could watch raw humanity fighting. Not America vs Iraq, where there was no genuine conflict. But Iraqi vs Iraqi. Good vs bad. Ideology vs ideology. Scary and beautiful at the same time.

P.S. Merry Christmas

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2008-12-21

 

Flying the coup

I can remember in February 1986 watching in delight as the beautiful people of the Philippines overthrew their dictator and got democracy instead. I cocked my finger with them. There you have it. Glorious revolution. So easy. Right - so easy so long as the military doesn't back the dictator!!! Otherwise, you get the 1991 slaughter in Iraq!

Once again we had the dictator being given safe passage instead of being hung from a light pole. It's terrible that this needs to be done. But it does need to be done. I wanted to hang Gaddafi from a light pole too. But he rolled over. He's immune now. We need to let these people know that they are far safer if they simply roll over rather than making us use our military.

Anyway, now that the democratically-minded Filipinos had their democracy, they would surely never lose it again! Ouch. Now they faced a string of coup attempts. It was very discomforting seeing the freedom of tens of millions of people hanging by the flip of a coin. Why couldn't more power be added to the forces of freedom?

In December 1989 we had the first example of someone doing exactly that. The only other time since then that something similar to this has happened that I can remember is Aristide being installed in Haiti. I supported that at the time too, but now realise that he made Haiti and the world a worse place.

Anyway, in December 1989, there was a coup taking place in the Philippines, and the US rocked up with some airplanes and turned the tide of the battle:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Philippine_coup_attempt

"One of the deciding factor in the coup is the involvement of the United
States Air Force, who sent its fighter jets to aid the Armed Forces of the
Philippines."

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/1990/KMF.htm

"There have been six coup attempts, with the latest
being in December 1989. This attempt by rebel military
forces was the bloodiest coup yet. U.S. Air Force F-4 jets
out of Clark helped the Aquino government put down the coup
by flying over Manila pinning rebel aircraft on the ground
and provided an important psychological boost to loyal
troops."

http://www.hrsolidarity.net/mainfile.php/1991vol01no01/1984/

"In Dec.1989, U.S. Air Force F4 fighter planes from Clark Air Base figured
in turning the tide against rebel forces during a coup d'etat attempt."

Naturally the Soviets protested the US action at the time - interference in the internal affairs of a country, opportunity lost to create another dictatorship just like us, US victory rather than Filipino victory, blah blah blah.


There were hints earlier this year that the dopey Americans would wake up to the need for this tiny amount of force to secure hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives of effort:

http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/iraq/articles/20080128.aspx

"To that end, the Iraqis are trying to negotiate a long term treaty with the United States that would include an American promise to "coup-proof" elected Iraqi governments. That's novel, but depends on the election process remaining uncorrupted."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/26/world/main3539432.shtml

"It also would help the Iraqi government thwart any attempt to suspend or repeal a constitution drafted with U.S. help and adopted in a nationwide vote in 2005. That appeared to be a reference to any attempt to remove the government by violence or in a coup."


Well just recently the Iraqi parliament approved a SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement) and I wanted to see if it covered coups. And the good news is, it's basically there! In Article 27.

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/research/iraq/2008/status_of_forces_agreement.htm

"In the event of any external or internal threat or aggression against Iraq that would violate its sovereignty, political independence, or territorial integrity, waters, airspace, its democratic system or its elected institutions, and upon request by the Government of Iraq, the Parties shall immediately initiate strategic deliberations and, as may be mutually agreed, the United States shall take appropriate measures, including diplomatic, economic, or military measures, or any other measure, to deter such a threat."

So that "internal threat ... that would violate ... its democratic system ... the US shall take ... military measures ... to deter such a threat".

So long as any coup plotters are aware of this, that will probably be sufficient to ensure that they don't take any action in the first place. If they do, then so long as the Iraqi government hangs every damn one of them after the US puts it down, it should dissuade a second one.

There is one problem though. Article 24 says "1. All the United States Forces shall withdraw from all Iraqi territory no later than December 31, 2011."

Quite apart from the fact that Obama has the option of withdrawing earlier, or indeed, deliberately throwing the game by refusing to put down a coup. I wouldn't trust that racist prick as far as I could throw him.


However, it doesn't need to be the end of the world in Dec 2011. Even with the US troops withdrawn from Iraq, they can still put down coups from Turkey or Kuwait. Hopefully towards the end of 2011 they will come up with a memorandum of understanding and a hotline so that the democratically-elected Iraqi government (whoever that may be at the time) can call in decisive US air power any time they want.

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