This meme's taken form pretty solidly by now. Nothing we do, no matter what, to include giving our entire Gross National Product to the effected countries, will be enough. A year from now, when the bodies have all been buried and the stench is gone away and the areas are being rebuilt with American money but without American participation because that would offend Muslim sensibilities, it'll be common knowledge that the U.S. kicked in a pittance, for mere form's sake, while the rest of the world, under the far-sighted leadership of the UN, rolled up its sleeve and went to work. You read it here first.
What makes a great person great? My uncle asked me once, and then volunteered an answer: To act great. You can't lead if you only push. You need to set a good example for people to follow. There will be occasions when only the great ones can make a stand, a lead, and a difference. It is not easy, simple or free. You pay to be great. Stands cost you, setting examples tax you, and leading a crowd requires time, intelligence and effort. You can't be a leader, even by force, if you are selfish. Sometimes you must sacrifice your own interests for those you lead.
Not all people are up to it and can afford it, but those who do deserve our utmost love, trust and respect. They earn our loyalty and obedience. They are the best. People recognize greatness when they see it in deeds, more than in words. Even the simple ones can distinguish the great ones from the bullies; the righteous from the false, the selfless from the selfish, those who care for them, and those who only care for themselves. I used to argue that sometimes people could be fooled. Satan has the greatest following. Hitler persuaded his people and led them to disaster. Stalin and Mao pushed them to catastrophe. Castro, Nasser and Saddam fooled and pushed their way to "greatness". Not all great ones are great after all, and there is more than an ideal way to be one.
Uncle was adamant, I thought then: You can fool some people all the time, or all people sometime, but you cannot fool all people all the time. All your examples, Khaled, are of leaders who either stole their status or faked it. History exposed and put them in the black lists of great disasters. My uncle is dead now. I wish he waited a little longer. I wanted to tell him how right he was. Weeks after his departure, tsunami hit and put our great ones on trial. Few proved themselves worthy of greatness; most were caught naked.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: tipper ||
01/09/2005 9:36:38 AM ||
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#6
"Japan, the No. 2 economic powerhouse donated $500 million to Americaâs $350 million"
May I ask what your oil-rich monarchy threw in?
Just what we need -- a lecture on charity and world government from Saudi Arabia. A country that supplied us most of the 9/11 terrorists, routinely abuses women and non-Muslims, does not offer aid to non-Muslims, and is not even close to being a democracy.
"We need a system that is free from self-interests"
Agreed -- I am increasingly convinced that the world needs to be freed of Islamic fundamentalist self-interests. Time is running out for peaceful and tolerant Muslims to bring Islam to peace and tolerance. If there is not a reformation before some further large provocation of the West, then there will be a sudden and brutal retaliation that will make the war in Afghanistan look like a boy scout camp-out and will be the abrupt end of the centers of Islam.
Posted by: Tom ||
01/09/2005 12:08 Comments ||
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#7
What an asshat! I like the way all these discussions about money ignore the aircraft carrier and other naval assets the US provided.
#9
Nothing we do, no matter what...will be enough.
I'm surprised it took you this long to conclude this, Fred. I discovered it only a few days after 9/11, when the letters to the Sydney Morning Herald informed me that anything the US had ever done, or failed to do, was wrong.
If the US takes action (e.g. Iraq), that's wrong. If the US fails to take action (e.g. East Timor), that's also wrong. The US alone has the luxury of action; other powers only move in reaction to US actions. This makes the US responsible for the wrongs of any power, any where. For example, the US is responsible for all the wrongs of Saudi Arabia, since we "support" that regime, but it's also responsible for the wrongs of North Korea, since we oppose it.
This article from last April is by Elinor Burkett, an American teaching in Kyrgyzstan. She started teaching in August, 2001. Scroll down a bit to read her experiences after 9/11. Muslims don't attack other Muslims. America is always attacking Muslims. The Russians, on the other hand, are our brothers. America got what it deserved for meddling, but if we are attacked, America must defend us.
There's much more. Burkett ends up blaming the government-controlled press in that region for disinformation. But a glance at the free Western press shows that a government is not necessary to obscure the truth.
Dead giveaway for major self-loathing issues. If Satan (or whatever other superstitious label you wish to give misfortune) really did prevail in this universe, we would all be dead by now. This is the same exact twisted mindset that brought you Original Sin and all the other forms of pessimistic mind death.
Good, as a life-giving force, continues to predominate precisely because it is good and promotes abundance. Claiming that evil actually prevails is merely a self-indictment of personal cowardice in fighting inhumanity wherever it surfaces.
... areas are being rebuilt with American money but without American participation because that would offend Muslim sensibilities ...
If accepting American aid offends their "Muslim sensibilities" I say make their dreams come true and let them rot without it. This crap has got to end. No more taking our money and then spitting on us.
If people want to take American aid and then conspire against us, it should cost them their lives. Those who accept our help only so that they may turn it against us deserve death. The time is long overdue to teach these ingrates that they cannot have it both ways. If all they're going to do is breed up more ingrates like themselves, then let them all die.
We no longer have the luxury of thinking that our military might can protect us from those duplictous individuals or cultures who accept our assistance only so that they may use the leisure it buys them to unleash atrocities against us. Weapons of mass destruction have forever changed the formula of power.
We must quickly adopt a more prudent approach to dealing with hostile cultures. Facilitating the recovery of those who would just as soon kill us all is tantamount to suicide. This world can do without societies who are unwilling to coexist peacefully in a pluralistic world.
If any of these disaster-stricken countries cannot bring themselves to pledge an oath of tolerance for other cultures, they can rot in hell.
The concept of religious "tolerance" seems to be warping apace these days. Brace yourselves for an astonishing degree of common sense. You've been warned!
BY LIONEL SHRIVER [WSJ Op-Ed]
On the 18th of this month, 1,000 enraged Sikhs stormed the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, throwing eggs, smashing windows, injuring three police officers, attempting to climb onto the stage, and successfully halting the production after it had played for 20 minutes. "Behzti," Punjabi for "dishonor," had aroused the mob's ire because the playwright, Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, had placed its rape scene in a Sikh temple. Ms. Bhatti, herself a British-born Sikh, had resisted local pressure to move the incendiary action to a religiously neutral setting like a community center. What'll they put on next, "Murder in the Cathedral"?
The upshot: Score one for yahooism, zero for law. Reluctantly, the Birmingham Rep canceled the run, for neither the theater nor the police could guarantee the safety of audience and staff. Determined to defend free speech, a second Birmingham company volunteered to stage the play instead, only to withdraw the offer at the request of the playwright, now in hiding after receiving several death threats.
Even more distressing than the triumph of shattered plate glass is the rhetoric to which this conflict has given rise--and not only from conservative Sikhs, but from leaders of the Catholic Church. The views of Harmander Singh, spokesman for a Sikh advocacy group, were echoed by numerous British television news guests for days: "We are not against freedom of speech, but there's no right to offend."
Oh, but indeed there is.
Freedom of speech that does not embrace the right to offend is a farce. The stipulation that you may say whatever you like so long as you don't hurt anyone's feelings canonizes the milquetoast homily, "If you can't say anything nice. . . ." Since rare is the sentiment that does not incense someone, rest assured that in that instance you don't say anything at all. The concept of religious "tolerance" seems to be warping apace these days, and we appear to forget that commonly one tolerates through gritted teeth. It is rapidly becoming accepted social cant that to "tolerate" other people's religions is to accord them respect. In fact, respect for one's beliefs is gradually achieving the status of a hallowed "human right."
I am under no obligation to respect your beliefs. Respect is earned; it is not an entitlement. I may regard creationists as plain wrong, which would make holding their beliefs in high regard nonsensical. In kind, if I proclaim on a street corner that a certain Japanese beetle in my back garden is the new Messiah, you are also within your rights to ridicule me as a fruitcake.
The fact that we have to be free to outrage one another is potentially in conflict with a law that soon will be put to the Commons that would add "incitement to religious hatred"--punishable by seven years in prison--to the equally dubious legislation already on the British books banning "incitement to racial hatred." Laws that prohibit incitement to illegal action seem defensible enough. But with this and similar "hate crime" legislation, are we not on the way to classifying hatred itself as a crime? And while we are at it, should we not then criminalize envy and narcissism for also being antisocial states of mind? Moreover, what is the difference between "incitement to hatred" and "incitement to fierce dislike"? Or "incitement to mockery"?
The spokesman for the Roman Catholic Bishop of Birmingham applauded the cancellation of "Behzti" last week, intoning that "with freedom of speech and artistic license must come responsibility." But the familiar "with rights come responsibilities" line is standard-issue blarney for, "It's all very well to hold rights in theory, so long as you don't choose to exercise them." Making this case all the more pointed, even the right of a woman to criticize her own religion has been trammeled.
Apparently contemporary "tolerance" does not merely allow others to practice whatever goofy or incomprehensible religion they like--and sometimes with a rolled eye--but surrounds any faith with a hands-off halo of sanctity, so that whatever is sacred to you must also be sacred to me. Which is precisely where my own concerns about the Bush administration's overemphasis upon religiosity enter the equation.
Disquietingly, this halo in Britain may be enshrined into law. Worse, today's exaggeratedly deferent brand of tolerance is driven by a darker force than mere let's-all-get-along multiculturalism, and that is fear. In the post-9/11 world, we are arriving at an unspoken understanding that zealots in our midst must not be offended, lest in their indignation they do something horrible. Which makes a fine case against zealots of every stripe, be they Islamic, Christian or whatever.
In Birmingham this month, "they" did do something horrible, vandalizing private property, issuing death threats, and bullying a theater director of integrity into violating his own beliefs--which, being secular, apparently count for little. Meanwhile, Britain's Channel Four has promoted its "Shameless Christmas Special" with billboards parodying "The Last Supper," in which Jesus, if you'll pardon the expression, is drunk as a lord. Some Christians find the ads in poor taste. I may admire the campaign as droll; the pious may pontificate about how much they deplore it. Now, that is free speech.
EMPHASIS ADDED
I suppose now wouldn't be the right time to bring up the "Jerry Springer Opera."
"I suppose now wouldnât be the right time to bring up the "Jerry Springer Opera."
If you hadn't, I was ready to.
It's always OK to piss off the Christians, since they've got a thing called Christian charity... Plus they're not a "protected group."
Posted by: Old Grouch ||
01/09/2005 17:02 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Complete, utter horseshit. Of course anyone in Britain can, and does, and will, say the most offensive, vile and nasty things about jews and evangelicals. When that Oxford idiotarian poet is sentenced for expressing his wish to slaughter "Zionist" settlers, we'll know this law is more than just a slimy, bad-faith effort at appeasing jihadists and nonwhite religious types.
#3
The upshot: Score one for yahooism, zero for law. Reluctantly, the Birmingham Rep canceled the run, for neither the theater nor the police could guarantee the safety of audience and staff.
I wonder, has Adnan Pachachi been following this? Seems he's going down the same appeasement route.
Krugman, channeling Dowd, takes us on one of his meandering faux-intellectual excursions, under the thin lame pretense he's considering writing a political novel. But he should check with Stephen Green, before he embarks - Green's got his number and shows us Krugman is, in sum, less than zero.
Excerpt:
In my bad novel, crusaders for moral values will be driven by strange obsessions. One senator's diatribe against gay marriage will link it to "man on dog" sex. Another will rant about the dangers of lesbians in high school bathrooms.
Let's not stop there. Let's include a married governor, of a state from where you could watch the Twin Towers burn and fall, who put his gay lover in charge of state-level homeland security, in an office conveniently close to the governor's mansion. Is that far enough? No? Then how about gay activists who hate the President, even though he ended a regime that used to topple stone walls onto gay men? Your faux-novel should R.I.P., Kruggie. It's a bridge too far. So is your column, but hey, you work for a fool moonbat, so you're safe for a moment or two longer. Stick to being an asshat. You've got that one nailed.
Posted by: .com ||
01/09/2005 2:04:56 AM ||
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Thought for the day, from a gloomy party member on the Democratic Underground Web site: ''Reality sucks. That's the problem. We want another reality.''
Well, they're doing a grand job of creating their alternative universe. At midday Thursday, as George W. Bush was about to be confirmed formally as the winner of the presidential election, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, described by Agence France-Presse as the ''Democratic former presidential hopeful,'' led 400 other Democrats in a protest outside Congress. Presidential-wise, they may be former but they're still hopeful. So they were wearing orange, the color of the election protesters in Ukraine, who overturned their own stolen election with an ''orange revolution.''
Now, on the one hand it's very brave for the Rhymin' Reverend to lead an orange protest. There is no rhyme for the word ''orange.'' Irving Berlin tried and the best he could manage was ''door-hinge,'' which just about works in certain boroughs of New York but would make an unreliable jingle for the Rhymin' Rev to bellow at Bush from outside the White House:
''We're here, we're orange
We're pushing at your door-hinge . . .''
snip
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
01/09/2005 11:13:37 AM ||
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#1
Your link does not work for
"Steyn: Election protest shows why Dems donât count"
www.suntimes.com
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I dunno whether to say "whew," "hmph" or "thank you" ...
FORT HOOD, Texas - The 10 men picked as jurors in the first Abu Ghraib prison abuse trial have all served in either Iraq or Afghanistan. The four officers and six enlisted soldiers will hear opening statements Monday in the court-martial of Spc. Charles Graner Jr., the reputed ringleader of the scandal. All are also stationed at Fort Hood. They will determine whether Graner, 36, of Uniontown, Pa., was illegally beating inmates or following orders to soften up the detainees for interrogation. "This case involves terrorists and insurgents and the war on terrorism," defense attorney Guy Womack said. "We could not pick a truer jury of peers than to have a combat veteran tried by combat veterans."
Posted by: Edward Yee ||
01/09/2005 12:55:46 AM ||
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#1
...Let me explain how this will work: The officers are likely to all be Major and higher, and every one of the enlisted guys will very senior ones. Graner will wish like hell he'd taken a plea.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
01/09/2005 1:32 Comments ||
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#2
... I didn't say I wanted Graner off the hook ...
Posted by: Edward Yee ||
01/09/2005 1:43 Comments ||
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#3
They will determine whether Graner, 36, of Uniontown, Pa., was illegally beating inmates or following orders to soften up the detainees for interrogation.
I always felt this was an issue of what sort of orders were given, how specific they were, and how well they were followed.
#4
Graner himself had to request the enlisted on the Court Martial. Having sat on such boards, its not really a good choice. He's going to end up with Regulars in that enlisted group who are more likely to take unkindly to the rogue behavior he and his cohorts exhibited that tarnished the reputation of all members of the Army, than the commissioned officers. The enlisted members are even less likely to buy into the "somebody told me to do it" if the defense doesn't name specific individuals and get an effective examination of said individuals on the witness stand. While troops know when the officers are BS'ing them, they also know when their fellow soldiers are trying to pull a fast one too.
Posted by: Don ||
01/09/2005 7:24 Comments ||
Top||
#5
Don, I fully agree with your comments. The folks tarnished by the juvenille behavior was Graner's peers. They are the ones who have to explain to their relatives and friends why what happened at Abu Ghraib doesn't reflect upon them or others in service.
Posted by: Captain America ||
01/09/2005 8:46 Comments ||
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#6
First time I had seen that he was from Uniontown. It will be interesting to see if the prosecution can find a way to point out that this is the hometown of George C. Marshall. That could seal it.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
01/09/2005 9:04 Comments ||
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#7
The *real* defense should *not* be that they were "just following orders", but that there was "a breakdown in the NCO chain of command", leaving these junior personnel unsupervised. Senior NCOs get very agitated and unforgiving at the thought of soldiers left to their own devices, and would see such soldiers as victims, rather than violators.
#8
But I thought the soldiers, including the slut, had repeatedly snuck out against orders to play. Must Sr. NCOs guard against deliberate, against-orders behaviour, too?
#9
trailing wife: It depends. If officers are ordering privates around, the system is broken and NCOs *assume* that the privates will screw up, and with some justification. But if privates are under the management of E-4s, E-5s, E-6s, and an E-7 and/or above, there should be FOUR sets of eyes keeping each private in line and doing his job and not screwing up. And, the FIRST time the private screws up, the 4, 5, and 6 are standing in front of the 7 and/or above *having* to explain *why* the private screwed up. This is a VERY effective system to keep privates from screwing up more than a minimal number of times. But in a unit so dysfunctional that there has been "a breakdown in the NCO chain of command", it is just a miracle if its privates don't screw up royally and repeatedly--and it is NOT their fault--or so NCOs generally believe. A good analogy would be of a jury of good parents with well disciplined children, trying bad small children for a crime, although those children had been abandoned by *their* parents, and left to fend for themselves. What parents would blame those kids for misbehaving?
#10
Anonymoose: Being a retired NCO, I partly agree with what you say. I retired from the Air Force, so it's a little different, but in our chain of command, if anybody screws up, EVERYBODY in the chain gets called on the carpet. As an E-7, I would speak very unkindly to my E-4s, E-5s and E-6s, who would in turn speak very unkindly to the people who screwed up. I would also expect a butt-chewing from my Officer in Charge, and another one from my Commander. Been there, done that, on more than one occasion. Luckily for me, I had very few people screw up, and the screw-ups were known quantities that we were just looking to get rid of anyway. Still, it's EVERY supervisor's responsibility that such things don't happen. When they do, the problem is a one-time deal, or the breakdown is usually in more than one level of the chain.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
01/09/2005 23:09 Comments ||
Top||
INTEL researchers have constructed an all-silicon laser pushing the company a step closer to using light waves, rather than electric currents to process data. Currently, lasers that power fast optical networks require exotic - and expensive - materials and are mainly used in vast communications networks. Intel hopes Silicon lasers also could be mass produced, using the same equipment on which standard chips are made. "Once you have silicon as an optical material, then you can take advantage of this enormous (silicon) infrastructure that exists around the world," Mario Paniccia, director of Intel's photonics lab said. "You can imagine starting to 'siliconise' photonic devices, and maybe integrate photonics and electronics."
If Intel can develop the technology, the movement of data within computers would keep up with the ever-increasing speed of microprocessors, breaking through an increasingly problematic bottleneck that exists for users of complex programs, such as video editors, and large businesses and government applications. But silicon, the semiconductor that makes up computer memory and logic chips, has only recently been considered for use in photonics, or light-based technology - and it promises to revolutionise that field as it did electronics. The Intel research, co-authored by Paniccia and posted on the web site of journal Nature, involved creating a laser with a single silicon chip. Like all lasers, it emitted a focused stream of light that ultimately could be manipulated to carry vast amounts of data at high speeds. Ultimately, silicon-based lasers and other optical devices could be used to break through bottlenecks in the data paths between chips inside computers. "Our goal is to drive this technology to a point where we actually converge communications and computing," Mr Paniccia said.
Posted by: God Save The World ||
01/09/2005 10:25:19 PM ||
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#1
More, faster computing with less energy use (and an ever smaller footprint on my desk)? Glory Halleluyah! Perhaps my next computer can be a laptop after all :-D
#2
Perhaps in the future my computer won't be a good heat source during the winter anymore. I hate all the energy I am loosing as wasted heat. When you run 2 to 4 computer in a small room like I do heat is a big deal during the summer.
#3
I have seen a prototype motherboard that looks like a .5 cm thick sheet of glass, that could easily fit inside the typical laptop. I could imagine a system like that with laser bus architecture. On a side note, there is a new Linux system that can be run from a pen drive (4Gb drives now available), including OS and major software. Optimally, the OS and suite apps would be integral to the motherboard, as in a Mac, with updates, temp and data files stored to a removable HD, all peripherals WIFI'ed, fuel cell or rechargeable battery power for the motherboard, monitor, HD, DVD writer, and one USB2 port. No reason for other ports, or even A/C power.
#5
Cost could go to the point, if it's not there already, where the hardware is less than the OS and suite apps. If Corel/RedHat and Apple stay alive long enough, it could get interesting.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
01/09/2005 9:59 Comments ||
Top||
#6
Mrs. Davis:
As long as Microsoft values the user experience at the levels they have, Apple will be around...
#10
This represents a gigantic breakthrough for optical computing. Previous attempts at fabricating a microprocessor based upon light-emmiting III-V (gallium arsenide, et al) compounds have met with miserable (and incredibly power hungry) results at best. Controlling doping profiles and overcoming device power dissapation issues proved almost insurmountable. Integrated photo-emmiters utilizing monolithic silicon solves a raft of problems all at once. I worked at Intel and it gives me a tingle of pride seeing them overcome such a thorny yet critical limitation to computational throughput.
#11
Mrs. D, what's an iPod Mac? Trailing Daughter has a mini iPod, but I don't think that's what you meant. (I did google it, but only managed to thoroughly confuse myself.)
#12
The rumor mill says Apple will introduce a $500 Mac, dubbed the ipod Mac, at Macworld next week. There will be no monitor in that price and the objective is to get the customers who have bought ipods into the Mac tent with a low cost product. We'll see next week.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
01/09/2005 18:02 Comments ||
Top||
#13
It comes with 256 meg of RAM! and a geniune G4.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
What makes a great person great? My uncle asked me once, and then volunteered an answer: To act great. You can't lead if you only push. You need to set a good example for people to follow. There will be occasions when only the great ones can make a stand, a lead, and a difference. It is not easy, simple or free. You pay to be great. Stands cost you, setting examples tax you, and leading a crowd requires time, intelligence and effort. You can't be a leader, even by force, if you are selfish. Sometimes you must sacrifice your own interests for those you lead.
INTEL researchers have constructed an all-silicon laser pushing the company a step closer to using light waves, rather than electric currents to process data. Currently, lasers that power fast optical networks require exotic - and expensive - materials and are mainly used in vast communications networks. Intel hopes Silicon lasers also could be mass produced, using the same equipment on which standard chips are made. "Once you have silicon as an optical material, then you can take advantage of this enormous (silicon) infrastructure that exists around the world," Mario Paniccia, director of Intel's photonics lab said. "You can imagine starting to 'siliconise' photonic devices, and maybe integrate photonics and electronics." 
