Way to subvert from within. The man must clank when he walks; nonetheless, it's good to see.
I find this nugget more than a little heartening; my personal experience from attending a US school was that while most Americans are the same decent people you find most everywhere in the world, they're woefully underinformed about the world outside. Which isn't too surprising on one level; they don't need to be. It's worrying for the rest of us. So the idea that a noticeable number of Americans - even if it's a small number in the overall pictures - are smelling the bullshit of thier local reportage and looking further afield has to be a win.
Why France? They could always defect to New Zealand, since we're a lot closer. Admittedly, we don't have a nuclear arsenal or permanent seat on the UN Security Council, but surely proximity carries some privileges?
A well written and rather stirring comment; unfortunately it also sums up the malaise that sets in from contemplating the disconnect between what most folks want in their lives and the way the world seems to be run; it's a line of thinking that can all too easily become defeatest (jus' leave me alone!).
A “lost article” on Oskar Schindler, prepared shortly after the war, but rejected for publication across North America.
I've worked helpdesk duties myself in the past, and have an ongoing professional life that involves what others may laughingly refer to as third level support, but inrelaity involves ill-trained front line monkeys punting anything harder than a Windows reboot to the guys that write the apps and look after the servers. This means that I have considerable sympathy for BOFH stories, TechTales, and the man and varied kvetching forums for people on the recieving end of what happens when the untrained and uninterested are let loose on complex systems. I have plenty of anecdotes relating to people who are too lazy to learn how to make things work.
But, of course, it's always worth remembering that the general public often don't carry away a very posisitive impression of the folks at the other end of the phone. And tonight I had a reminder why: calling Saturn to ask why my TV picture was resembling nothing to much as muddy goo, I detailed the symptoms, only to be told that such a problem cannot and never has occurred with Saturn equipment. After patiently jumping through the hoops supplied by the poorly shaved baboon at the other end (yes, I do connect the cable TV box direct to the TV, no, not through a switchbox, etc, etc) he reluctantly shuffled off to ask a tech about the problem. Lo and behold! It emerges that the cable TV boxes overheat if they're put in a hi-fi cabinet, kind of like the one mine is in. So perhaps I should leave it in the open.
While the aesthetics aren't too flash, I'll give it a try. But perhaps my heavily accented friend ought to contemplate that he'll look less like a collosal idiot if he leaves the assertions until after the diagnosis is complete...
It's times like this that I hope I'm wrong.
I'd dearly love to be wrong. I crave the “I told you so!”, because that would mean all manner of bad things wouldn't have come to pass. I would love it if, for example, a war in Iraq is short; if hapless conscripts surrender, and instead of being incinerated in convoys or buried alive, they're rounded up, stuck somewhere in accordance with the Geneva Convention's rules on the treatment of prisoners.
I'll be delighted if smart bombs and cruise missiles suddenly start living up to their press, taking out millitary targets, causing millitary casualties, and missing civilians. If the people killed are the willing and enthusiastic supporters of a tyrant. Overjoyed, me.
A short war. A short war in which the Turkish and Iranian armies don't roll into Northern Iraq to massacre Kurds as a lesson to their own ethnic minorities. In which the Turks fail to sieze Northern Iraqi oil fields over a pile of innocent corpses.
A short war followed by a smart peace, presided over by General Franks; where Franks shows the wisdom of a Marshall or Eisenhower in his millitary administration that allows for a generous rebuilding of Iraq; a rehabilitation, that like the ones of West Germany or Japan, creates a functional, more peaceful society. A federation, perhaps, where Kurdish, Shi'ite, and Sunni interests are balanced and can co-exisit. A Switzerland of the Middle East, if you will. A renewed Iraqi civilisation which is left to a self-determination which proceeds along a peaceful path. I'd like to be wrong about the idea that Franks will remain in power only so long as is required to appoint one of Saddam's old generals, or some other dictator whose mandate will be to keep the Kurds and Sunni Moslems down. I'd like to be wrong about that.
I'd like to see my fears about the Perle-Wolfowitz lead cabal be proven a nonsense; to see Iraq, liberated, renewed, to be the end of US millitary action in the area; to see attention come to tidying up Israel and Palestine, and the pressing problem of North Korea. I'd love it if Iraq does not become a millitary base for strikes into Syria, Iran, and Egypt, or for the US armed forces to be used to solve the problems of Sharon by creating a Greater Israel, as Perle so desperately wants.
Ahh, to be wrong.
Go Helen. A pity Bill English appears to have missed the Pope (Bill's a Catholic, remember) declaring that supporters of war would be answerable to God.