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NewsPro Archive



November 2002

Telling it straight Posted Tuesday, November 26, 2002 by wlofie
From HD 2002-11-25

Svenljunga municipality (Sweden) wants to solve the lack of available daycare places by putting 4 year olds in normal school. Swedish news TV-4 reporter asked the logical question to the responsible politician: "Have you asked what the parents teachers and children think about this idea?" and was answered "How absurd! It is us politicians that decide."

sometimes truths can be gotten without hidden cameras.

----ED-NOTE----
What ever happened to the swedish constitution, the part about "all power emanates from the people" ooops
Back to where you belong little politician, 1945 and Berlin.
----END ED NOTE----

Translated and Commented by
wlofie

What is it with politicians and "war against X"??? (Editorial) Posted Tuesday, November 12, 2002 by wlofie
What is it with politicians and "war against X"??? (Editorial)

It has been and is:


Now taking them in order:

Heathens, well the other religion are always heathens and yours always has the true believers and children of "GOD". So basically "heathen" is you sitting in judgement and calling someone else "not a true believer" because they don't prefer your idea of how to worship.

Communism, communism is a political idea, and however much i may not like it, and however not working it may have proved itself in certain locations of the worlds, it is still an idea.

Drugs are chemicals or bio-organic materials taken to alter or enhance reality. It is the users idea that taking these will make the world better for him (dull the pain, increase performance, what ever), it's still an idea (an idea that will get you addicted to something) but never the less an idea.

Crime, in human nature there are some people who will see it as more economical to take something rather than pay for it, the profit margin is much greater, this is an idea that is in some cases part of human nature, so war on crime is war on human nature and ideas.

Disease, actually fighting a war on bacteria? Bacteria are more mutable than humans (i.e., they mutate easier, well actually they don't mutate easier, but they have less possibility statistically of being extreme-negative mutations (die from the mutation) which comes from being a simpler (less complex) organism than humans are) thus bacteria are more likely to change, and since humans don't control the entire planet the best any war on disease can hope for is a temporary withdrawal while the bacteria mutates (regroups).

Poverty is a state of economics, or lack there of. How can you wage a war on that? War per definition takes resources. It has to be a one sided war in that case, the poor sure can't fund a war. Educating the impoverished, and since education won't stick when you are worried about where your (or your kids) next meal will come from "Educating and feeding the poor", possibly subtitled "the steps to self sufficiency"

There is an old saying that goes "give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and he'll invite you over to dinner next week". I've always taken that expression to mean "help to self help", sometimes a person needs just a boost in the right direction, a helping hand over that "bump" in the road, or the education to get a foundation on which to build. Education is like a pyramid being built and seen from a distance, the bottom takes a lot of time to make, and doesn't look much, but without the bottom, the top would never get built. The bottom is learning to read, write, do math, and the most important, learning to learn and that you CAN learn, no matter how old, how poor or how stupid you have been told you are.

Ideally feeding the poor shouldn't be done on a "ongoing basis" it should be done on a "till they can make ends meet", ideally a society in which ends won't meet is not one that exists, but we don't live in an ideal society so we will have to try to do what we can to educate people enough that they can make ends meet. Never the less, it is not a war.

Terror, well Merriam Webster defines terror as below:


Main Entry: ter·ror 
Pronunciation: 'ter-&r
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French terreur, from Latin terror,
 from terrEre to frighten; akin to Greek trein to be afraid,
 flee, tremein to tremble -- more at TREMBLE
Date: 14th century
1 : a state of intense fear
2 a : one that inspires fear : SCOURGE b : a frightening aspect (the terrors
 of invasion) c : a cause of anxiety : WORRY d : an appalling
 person or thing; especially : BRAT
3 : REIGN OF TERROR
4 : violence (as bombing) committed by groups in order to intimidate a population
 or government into granting their demands (insurrection
 and revolutionary terror)
synonym see FEAR
- ter·ror·less  /-l&s/ adjective

Now, looking through that, i see that it comes from frighten, to be afraid, to cause fear, as well as 4, but 4 is a key piece here:

4 : violence (as bombing) committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands (insurrection and revolutionary terror)

Does this sound like the idea that violence will change the ideas of another people? You are right, it does! And I'll return to that later.

The M-W definition for war is:


Main Entry: war 
Pronunciation: 'wor
Function: noun
Usage: often attributive
Etymology: Middle English werre, from Old North French, of Germanic origin;
 akin to Old High German werra strife; akin to Old High German werran to confuse
Date: 12th century
1 a (1) : a state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations 
(2) : a period of such armed conflict 
(3) : STATE OF WAR b : the art or science of warfare c (1) obsolete :
 weapons and equipment for war (2) archaic : soldiers armed and equipped for war
2 a : a state of hostility, conflict, or antagonism b 
: a struggle or competition between opposing forces or for a particular end
 (a class war) (a war against disease) 
c : VARIANCE, ODDS 3
- war·less  /-l&s/ adjective

A state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations.
Well that didn't fit into "war on terror" did it? Terror isn't a nation or state.
Ok how about this one:
A state of hostility, conflict or antagonism hmmmm yes that fits better.

Now most people who has experienced war, as civilians or combatants (ED note "enemy combatant" is a legal word that doesn't exist, the only definition of an armed person in combat is "combatant" enemy or friendly doesn't matter) will agree that war is scary, it's something one is afraid of, one might say one lives in terror during a war.

A state of hostility, conflict or antagonism (causing terror in people) on violence (as bombing) committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands (insurrection and revolutionary terror)

Wow that's a mouthful!

Basically "terror on terror" is what "war on terror" means.

Still I'm not here to nitpick semantics.

Terror is the belief that violence will change an idea, that it will cause someone to rethink to join the cause of the other party.

War is the same. Terrorism is low frequency high impact war on mostly soft targets. Terrorism and Guerrilla warfare are the same, they also both break every rule in the Geneva Convention, in fact any war that targets soft targets or "civilian population critical" places, like water supply, sanitation, hospitals, electricity plants and so forth are against the Geneva Convention (and thus considered as guerrilla or terror warfare).

Now, if i were to hold a gun to your head, point to a green wall and say, that wall is lilac, isn't IT!?
you would most likely agree verbally with me, but would you THINK it was lilac? No, not unless you were more colour-blind than I am.

So what changed? The idea? Nopes! Your opinion? I don't know, I didn't ask for your opinion, I threatened with violence unless you agreed (or seemed to agree) with my opinion.

Here is a small fact that all politicians and other "phrase makers" should learn.
War on anything that is an idea, doesn't work, you can't kill an idea, you can't take an idea POW, or draw and quarter it, you can't even (if the followers are fanatical enough) CHANGE their minds about the idea!

You can only kill the current crop of followers, but being an idea, it will get new followers, sooner or later, and in using violence against a people that is largely innocent, you cause hatred, that leads to the idea of striking back against you and changing your ways with (yes violence).

You can't fight a war on organisms like bacteria, not until the control of our planet is such that every cubic inch of the planet (and oceans and atmosphere and soil and rocks and mountains) and every human being can be examined for the contaminant. You can fight a standstill, or a draw, or even push the organism back, but the organism is alive, it will eventually mutate, to something either less dangerous, or more dangerous.

Using the phrase may sound good, I'm sure it sounded good to the Macedonians/Greeks under Alexander, the Mongols under Djengis Khan, the Romans under Julius Caesar, the Britons under the Imperial expansion days. I'm sure it sounded just as good to some of the Germans under Hitler, the Italians under Mussolini, the Russians under Stalin, and I'm sure it sounds good to some(less than the "some" in Germany) Americans under Bush.

Notice the some? Or did you get too pissed off at the thought that Potus (president of the United States) Bush might be named in the company of Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin? The "some" is there because of one thing. Literacy and National recession (unemployment).

Germany had a relatively high level of Literacy for that time and age, USA has a good level of literacy (97% according to CIA world fact book ) Germany however had a recession with a big unemployment problem, a big poverty problem, and a lot of people feeling mistreated by the years of punishment after WWI. USA did not have a recession at the start of 2000, it didn't have THAT much of a unemployment problem and nor are they really being locked down by anyone.

Most importantly though, is literacy. Literacy is a key point in any free people, if you can't read it's harder to get information, to criticize, to say "hey this don't make sense!". Another key point is reading an even spread of information, not just the local papers, not just one of the local papers, read at least 2 from opposing political fractions, read at least 2 more from elsewhere in the world, NOW you are getting a closer image of what might...just might, be the truth.

Literacy is why Hitler was so all fired up about burning "subversive propaganda". the multiple news idea is why he outlawed pretty much all radio stations outside German control (ok there was of course allied propaganda being transmitted too, but the allies took a pretty wild approach, the German propaganda was over the top, so the allies toned theirs down a bit, good idea at the time).

You can kill the believers of the idea, you can kill the supporters of the idea, but the idea lives on, until no person with memory of the idea or no books about that idea lives, that idea still lives, even if it lives in the mind of someone who is negative towards the idea and even if you kill off all the people with memories of it and burn all the books, ideas have a way of resurfacing.

wlofie
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Secretly wiretapped received bill Posted Friday, November 1, 2002 by wlofie
Berlin(TT)
Not only were they secretly wiretapped. They also had to pay for it. So when the bill came, the police and spies taperecorders weren't as secret anymore. The German intelligence and police personel are upset, angry even and at the telecom company O2 they are deeply unhappy about the incident.

The clients of the company, whose phones were secretly wiretapped, got their October bills, nicely printed with detailed and exact information of when, and for how long they had been wiretapped, as well as the cost
---
wlofie