24 years old - Jesus is the Way

2008-12-22T15:41:00.000-08:00

An amateur review about the demo of Command and Conquer Red Alert 3

I started gaming only some years after the release of CNC Generals and loved the game. I have played the original game plus expansion plus mods plus custom maps, both single and multiplayer, ever since. (I think something is wrong either with the style or grammar of the previous sentence.) CNC Generals, though, was never part of the official CNC lore/universe. I never played the original Red Alert, or 2, or the original Tiberium and am most unfamiliar with the units or the atmosphere of the CNC universe. I tried a few early levels of Red Alert 2 on a website that allows 1-hour trial-download of some antiquated games of the previous decade and lost interest after a few levels. It was perhaps because of the cartoonish graphics, which look like caricatures compared to the models in CNC Generals. Or perhaps because I never grew up hearing or knowing much about the Soviet Union, so I don't have this sensational concept of it as an empire or a powerful entity at all, though I knew while growing up that it had a large area on the map. But there were other countries with large areas on the map that I grew up equally ignorant of.

Perhaps it's because I played CNC Generals for years and then Battle for Middle Earth, which uses the same engine, whenever I download a new CNC demo I either expect the gameplay to be similar to Generals or uses it as the criteria of comparison. I only vaguely remember the demo of Tiberium Wars by now. Though it had better 3D graphics than Generals, something was missing in the gameplay though I don't remember what.

I tried the demo of RA3 yesterday. It did not have the "Generals" effect of "this game is a must have". For reference, here are the best RTS according to me, in my very limited gaming experience. There are more RTS games that I like after having tried the demo that should be on this list, but I rather not add a game to my benchmark list if I only played the demo.

Act of War: Direct Action
CNC Generals
Company of Heroes
Joint Task Force
Sudden Strike

These games have the combination of gameplay, graphics and game design and play factor (atmosphere, I don't know how to describe it) in RTS from my limited experience. Starcraft isn't even on the list because I haven't even finished the Terran campaign, when I last played/tried Starcraft I played till I was with the Ghost on a level with a lot of deployed Siege Tanks and the Ghost is supposed to get into that base. I think there were still many more missions after that. I tried maybe one Protoss campaign mission and haven't played Zergs at all. I haven't played much Starcraft, hence my limited experience.

Out of the ones I listed, JTF and Sudden Strike do not involve gathering of resources. CoH involves the gathering of multiple resources. So only AoW is comparable with RA3. I did notice that RA3 uses the AoW engine, when I saw how the building was built on grids and could only be rotated at 90 degree angles. RA3 also tried to copy AoW's revolutionary style of including actor-filmed action-sequences in between game levels. Whereas AoW had utterly gripping gameplay, RA3 did not achieve something comparable. The hiring of beautiful Gemma Atkinson and Gina Carano does indeed keep the attention riveted when they appear, but more is required in a videogame than well-made loading videos.

I will make a few comments: the graphics, the gameplay, the user interface and the atmosphere. Since I mentioned the loading video characters though, I'll talk about that first, and it does also involve comments about graphics.

I don't remember much from my trying of RA2 by now, though I do remember the somewhat cartoonish graphics. In looks of the units, RA3 seems to be the 3-D graphics port of RA2 and some of the buildings are even reminders of a 3-D graphics port of Warcraft2.

My comment is this: when fans follow a series, they may be nostalgic about the game universe or the gameplay, but when the graphics have evolved from 2-D to 3-D to excellent textured 3-D, the fans of a series would not be nostalgic about the original graphics style.
RA2 had the graphics style of Starcraft and Warcraft and "that cartoony" look. It was drawn that way because that was the limitation of graphics back then. Back then it was probably considered the most realistic drawing/depiction of units on a computer screen, a bit like how Contra was probably considered the most realistic drawing/depiction of units on a console screen. Except, games have evolved from 2-D Contra to 3-D Medal of Honor and Call of Duty.

RA2 probably had funny/humorous conversations, but the cartoon-style of graphics back then was probably considered the usual standard of realism. So I deduce the game had a good mixture of humor and make-believe realism. I can deduce this from playing CNC Generals, which had a good mixture of humor (some really funny lines from units, and the way some units are designed) and make-believe realism. The units, some of whom humorously designed, do look very close to the real thing. When I move Generals units on the battlefield, the treads or wheel marks they leave on the road, the dust cloud, and especially the look of the units, I really felt like I was moving tanks and humvees, or T-55s and APCs, or ZSUs and pick-up trucks. The humor was a nice seasoning, but the main course (or main excitement) were the graphics of the units and gameplay.

RA3 has done the humor tradition very well; however, in 3D-porting the 2D graphics of RA2, it made a world of cartoony or semi-cartoony buildings and units that also look humorous without intending to.

So that there wasn't enough satisfaction moving the units around or interacting with them. I felt like I was moving little toy soldiers and little toy cars. That's not the impression you'd want in an RTS. Maybe that could even be the impression people wanted in the time of RA2, maybe not, I didn't game till mid-college so I wouldn't know. It's definitely not the impression people want in an RTS now, after CNC Generals.

That same impression is made more displayed by the disparity between the look of the characters in the loading videos and the look of the characters on the game map. After watching Natasha speak, I get to see her in-game. Unfortunately it wasn't some Lara Croft or Aeon Flux seen from a distance, it was some cartoon portrayal that was about as real as Black Lotus in Generals. Now, the Generals hero characters were limited by the number of graphics polygon at that time. RA3 definitely isn't limited by that.

Here is a look at some screens of Act of War, the game whose engine was used by RA3, and what it could have looked like:

In-game look of a basic unit (and this is graphics from 2006 or 2005, which means RA3 could have had even more):

In-game graphics zoomed in:

Continued later, with a picture of what these loading-video people look like as in-game units.

2008-12-14T01:28:00.000-08:00

This is the heroïne of the new computer game Mirror's Edge (and since it doesn't involve precise aiming, like HALO, it would play very well on console). I hope there will be customization options on what the character looks like. I remember reading the preview of a game called Star Trek Elite Force, and people could customize the main character to be of their gender. The current game called Mount and Blade allows for extensive customization of what the character looks like in gender, ethnicity as well as looks.

I love what I have seen of the game so very much; this would be the first game that would be centered around running and I love it. The opportunity of jumping from roof to roof is also utterly fascinating. When I first saw the trailer though (and it was utterly breathtaking) I didn't know the main character would have a face. I though it'd be like HALO where everyone can be the main character. Hopefully the look could be somewhat customized. If it's an attempt to make an Asian version of this:

(Charlize Theron in "Aeon Flux")

then the attempt is less than successful. The girl looks anemic compared to Charlize Theron and it's not due to skin color. She seems less alive. Thankfully at least she doesn't look like a corpse like the current "Versace"-style of models , the dead and dying photographs of whom they manage to waste entire magazine on (compare with same person, actually alive). But the perverted fashion "standard", of course, isn't quite what guys would want a girl to look like. Real girls look more like Cortana from HALO or Alyx Vance from Half Life II.

Having tried a free version of Red Alert II (and that's of course, many years after its publication, hence it was available on a legitimate website for free) I remember the character of Tania (or Tanya) who once in a while said "Yeah, baby" almost in a sexual kind of way. And I am glad that girls have gone from sexual objects to girl friends and girlfriends in videogame design, meaning Cortana and Alyx are people to go into action-adventure with, in addition to being attractive girls (but not in the porn-type of way, because then people could just go look at that; in gaming there has to be something different because sex is not the reason people play videogames).
When referring to Cortana, I meant Cortana in HALO II, that is. I haven't yet tried HALO III, and I am not sure about that semi-naked figure (and, sexual-object-ing Cortana who has thus far been a great character in HALO I and II) in a game clearly meant to be played by a lot of under-18 people.

I am not sure whether it's the sparkle in the eye or what, but both of these seem more alive than the Asian girl.

OK, put it another way. Were there some kind of ODST operation like in the beginning of "Delta HALO" level of HALO II, or that landing scene in Starship Troopers, I'd jump headfirst into the atmosphere with Starbuck, or fly into the midst of a Cylon attack wave with Starbuck (I somehow think landing from a hundred mile high is more dangerous than flying a Viper Mark II)

And if I had to go through a city under enemy occupation with snipers everywhere and minimum provision and maximum danger, I would go with Boomer.

As an Asian face of action-adventure, she is far more lively and better-looking and more real-person looking that the Asian girl of Mirror's Edge. I would jump into jungle/space/wind/ocean/cities and climb mountains and ford rivers and explore wilderness with all these girls pictured and know they'd be by my side. (adding Angelina Jolie in both Lara Croft movies, adding Miranda Keyes in HALO II, adding Aishwarya Rai in "The Last Legion", adding Coen in Splinter Cell I, adding Juno Eclipse in "The Force Unleashed", adding "The Ghost" (2:19-2:34 5:30-5:34 5:52-5:55) in "Starcraft Ghost" which they should make!) I have some difficulty in make-believing the same with the Mirror's Edge girl, who despite the in-game content portraying her as athletic and roof-to-roof leaping, and therefore exceptionally courageous and brave, looks like a repressed Asian girl of some stereotype who wouldn't think on her own. (Compare her with Sharon Valerii or "Boomer")

So, I am sure the in-game content, physics, level design, graphics, concept art, atmosphere, storyline and gameplay is all very high quality. There just seemed to be a parallel divergence between the visual expression (that's much more than facial expression) of the main character, and the visual expression of everything that the main character does in-game plus the gameplay plus the environment, etc.

A bit more bold (not pissed-off, not serious; bold) look would be great. There are girls who can look bold and adventurous even when smiling. In the few pictures on Google, the Mirror's Edge girl looks from repressed to spooky. Miranda Keyes portrays a military person in uniform and she looks more lively than this. If the character inspiration of the Asian girl is from some Japanese anime, well the Japanese anime aren't the best source for visual expression of people in actual life. The slant-eye make-up is quite a bit much and she looks like she doesn't speak English. Since the game premise is about the every-day high school and college-age people identifying with the main character (since everyone can be a "runner"), perhaps it's better to make a girl that girls can identify with (how about a late-teen Asian athlete) and guys would want to be around.

It is my hope that people could identify with the main character and more people would actually be inspire to run in real life, thereby increasing the fitness level of the average people. It's so good to see a videogame centered around running and not around gunfire.

2008-12-09T00:03:00.000-08:00

The actress who doesn't care about the Hollywood fashion that requests women to be as thin as possible has, apparently, a problem though: she is being paranoid about her height.

At least that's what she confessed, speaking to the New York Post:
"One time I was in a ladies room. In the stall. And two women were talking at the sink.
One said: "'Is that Scarlett Johansson? Oh my God, she's so short!"
I began to get a complex. Because I was also in a restaurant in New York and a waiter said how short I was.
I told him: 'Good things come in small packages.'"

Well, if she ever worries too much about her height (5' 4'' or 1.63m), Scarlet may at any time apply her red lipstick.
The 'Lost in Translation' star has recently confessed that, whenever she's feeling lost in sadness, she uses a trick that proved efficient so far.
"If I am feeling glum... I like to apply red lipstick; then, for the whole day I feel better," she revealed.

Dear Scarlett, it's not so much that people think you are short by comparing with some "normal" height, it's people comparing your height with the expected height they had in mind. It's due to movies/TV and magazines showing all the celebrities to be of the same height, or just about. And since there is no way to tell how tall people are on screen, most people (me included) expect all the actors to be six feet tall or just about, and actresses to be five feet ten (half a face shorter than the "expected" male height) or just about. There is also the factor of people projecting the 'height' in social status with the expectation of a corresponding physical height, therefore people expect a celebrity to be most likely taller than them even though it does not make sense. So anytime you hear "she's so short...", there is the unspoken part of "compared with what I imagined by celebrity stereotype", rather than "compared to some 'standard' height".

2008-12-05T11:44:00.000-08:00

The automobile-making human and technological resources will survive, definitely. The status quo of dispersing them thin among so many brands as to result in many mediocre products and nearly no innovation (except in looks) probably won't. And even if temporarily, it still won't after a while.

2008-11-21T21:15:00.000-08:00

November 21st, 2008

An esquire of the Lord

Here a few words to my brother and friend
Now that by knowledge I better understand
The many facets of words and their complication
In the fickle spoken ways of the American nation

The skilled steering with one hand upon the bridle
The other spurring speed through low, high and middle
The expertise with smithwork from faraway states
Are altogether very dashing and admirable traits

Bravely clad in the helm of Christ the Grand Master
In hauberk and clean washed tabard of alabaster
Through stormwind by the Lord's side rides His esquire
Unfurling shining Words from the standard of fire

Thou having been born in chivalrous name twice
Serve in faith the true King amid men and mice
And abide in cultivating your given talent
God delights in each and not one equivalent

This written, because by randomly remembering past events, some of the things I said probably had negative double meanings, though I only spoke the overt meaning of words and at that time in everyday conversations did not think in the double meaning dimension.
Also, I don't know whether someone ever made fun of your name, since it has been pronounced in a clearly negative context.
So I wrote this in practice of writing skills, in expression of friendship, and in better speaking ways than I used to. Hope it inspires your Life in God.

2008-11-20T20:59:00.000-08:00

Since King Leopold messed up Congo when the Belgians made it their colony and the exploitation and enslavement of the natives there was horrible, Belgium (though people from there would hardly like this) has quite some responsibility in making things better in that region.

The proposal of EU military intervention is good. However, this is definitely not a situation where war is fought for the sake of war. Were Americans to run this, mostly the Cold War generation, they would start planning the details of war-fighting and not think about where it's leading. (Afghanistan is an example. The US didn't think about what to do after taking down the Taliban)

A better way would be a clear grand objective/panoramic that is non-military, and the military is used to support this objective.

For example, the people in that region are so ethnically militant against each other. Race killing race. I think it's probably because the Europeans, when they occupied Africa in the 19th century, didn't care about the boundaries of the different African tribes but drew arbitrary lines on the African continent to carve out colonial pieces, and the those colonial borders ran in the middle of ethnic demography, randomly enclosing parts of several populations to form a "country".

Even though in the "West" people are loath to speak of race and usually pretend it doesn't exist, it is very much a factor in people's lives. And in Congo it seems to be a very important concern. A good long-term solution would be a solution that views the concerns of the region in the local (and not Euro-centric "race is politically incorrect" context) context and addresses the local concerns.

Thus I propose that Congo be dissolved, and some of the neighboring African countries also be dissolved, because those were merely arbitrary lines drawn by foreigners, putting together fragments of ethnic population (just like in the Middle East) that were never historically united in a "country", through all the millenia. And new ethnic nations should be made. A Hutu nation, a Tutsi nation, and whatever other main race there is there. And new borders be drawn.

It's of course, easy to write this. But this is the only long-term peace solution. Within the current "countries" throughout much of Africa, people will continue to kill each other. So, if there is a way to get all those factions to agree to make new, ethnic countries, each according to their historical tribal lands, then it'd be great to deploy the EU military in support of the accomplishment of this grand objective, almost like a security force.

Otherwise, the societies are very messed up in the current (arbitrary) borders, and I hardly see the long-term benefit of picking a side and using EU soldiers as reinforcement. Because of the political/cultural/ethnic climate in that region (because of the European colonial arbitrary carving of Africa), any faction stronger than others is likely to bully/kill people from the other factions. That means, with the current atmosphere, even propping up a losing side would eventually result in that side becoming the aggressor itself, within years, decades, or century, etc.

So, if the current borders are to be kept, it would be better if EU and UN made massive country-improving works in Congo, like FDR's New Deals, and got everyone in Congo to work rather than in militias. Paving roads, for instance, or building dams, or digging irrigation canals and clearing farmlands, and building other kinds of infrastructure. It would require resources on the level of an army intervention, but it would have so much better results.

So:
- Best solution: dissolve Congo and remake countries of ethnic-nations, possibly incorporating neighboring countries as well.
- If Congo is to be kept with current borders: better to put all the Congolese to work (massive New Deal like FDR) and not in militias, rather than intervening as part of a war
- After the country get industrialized, or at least, infrastructure gets built, people's outlook will be somewhat better and can decide on partitioning of Congo or not (like how Belgium has the Wallons on the West side, and the Flemish on the East side, and Bruxellois in the middle) so that every tribe gets its own zone.

This is written with no knowledge of Congo other than a few paragraphs here and there. Barely know the name of the capital city, have no idea what languages are spoken. Before today, didn't even know there were Hutu and Tutsi in Congo. Thought that was only Rwanda. In other words, this is written by an ignorant person whose proposal might not fit the situation.

2008-11-19T16:27:00.001-08:00

διακονεω I wait/serve at table
διακονια service
διακονος table-attendant; table-servant; waiter; steward; transliterated as "deacon", but not translated. Were it translated, no one would have made it into some imposing title.

2008-11-17T17:49:00.000-08:00

http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/promos/wirepicks/story/540051.html

The U.S. military has barred Iraqi interpreters working with American troops in Baghdad from wearing ski masks to disguise themselves....
Many interpreters employed by the U.S. government and Western companies in Iraq do everything they can to avoid being recognized because extremists have tortured and killed Iraqis (working for Americans).
....
“We are a professional Army and professional units don’t conceal their identity by wearing masks,” Lt. Col. Steve Stover, a spokesman for the U.S. military, wrote in an e-mail.

Obviously, this Lieutenant Colonel has been promoted by shuffling papers (or maybe even by peddling politics). The half-colonel (or, whoever ordered him to "spoke" what he spoke) should never have been put in charge of people(human beings), including being a spokesperson who talks about people. He should have only been managing machines/items, perhaps the guy who make sure all the supply items are being shipped and stacked, or all the reports are well written and categorized, even a very high-ranking manager of items.

He probably sits in the "Green Zone" all the time and Iraq is that outside world about as far away as the other side of the planet. Imperial Life in the Emerald City. They built an entire replica of the United States in the Green Zone, with fast food (not allowed to eat Iraqi food -!-), readily available entertainment, the point is as far removed from Iraq as possible and as close a simulation of "back home" as possible. I am extremely doubtful if the "spokesman" or whoever orders the "spokesman" to "spoke", ever set foot in the residential districts where the Arabs live, or go on the evening stroll with the heavily packed soldiers.

Put it simply, the "spokesman" or whoever orders the spokesman, values PR more than he values people's lives as human beings. Perhaps the colonel or his superiors should:

- move their entire families, that means wife, sons and daughters, and relatives, into the neighborhood of Baghdad. That means living among the Sunni (actually more something like "Sanna") and the Shia. Pick your neighborhood, but all the neighbors are Arabs, and the house is the same as everyone else's.

- their families have to live permanently in Baghdad, and everyone knows their husband/dad is an American military-person, or assists the American military in some way.

- by the nature of Arab society, everyone in several street blocks around knows who lives where, what's their name and what their family does. And even people from half a city away (that could mean, Jaish Al-Mahdi, Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, people of different tribes/clans, criminals and extortioners common in every urban society) can find out who lives where.

- their kids have to go to school with everyone else, and have to walk to school by themselves everyday

- When their day of 9-to-5 is done, the "spokesman" and his superiors have to leave the Green Zone and go home, driving by themselves, and go live in their house in urban Baghdad.

Maybe the colonel and his superiors got spoiled from their abundance of consumer goods, air-conditioned offices so remotely separated from the Arab street that they might as well be living in suburban America, food segregation so they might as well be eating at McDonald and Pizza Hut at the mall every day, and the only Arabs they interact with are the ones doing maintenance, whom they don't really care whether they live or die anyway, as long as the carpet is clean and the ethernet ports are connected and the soda machine is working.

You forget that you take the ability to sleep in the Green Zone without getting kidnapped or having your throat slit at night, is an anomaly in Baghdad. At the most the Green Zone gets a few mortar shells. But that is less than 0.01% of Baghdad. In 99.99% of Baghdad, people have to sleep in regular houses, without the luxury of a fortress perimeter around their simple houses, without the luxury of having their wives and children and parents and relatives on the other side of the planet, isolated by the Atlantic and the Pacific from all the bloody killers in Baghdad. With their faces showing, any Iraqi interpreter going on mission in which there is firing and some Baghdad-person gets killed or even bullet-wounded, that person's tribal group, or guerilla group, or neighborhood clan, or direct family, or merely themselves are very likely to try to get back at the Americans. And since the Americans are so well armored and retreat into their barracks at night, it's so much easier to vent their rage on the Iraqis whom they see helping the Americans, even if the interpreter doesn't fire one round.

Since you aren't moving your families and yourselves into Baghdad (and I mean, NOT the Green Zone, but the real Baghdad where the Iraqis live), since you aren't going home to a regular Baghdad neighborhood, you have no place to call "unprofessional" the Iraqis who try to protect the lives of their families and their own lives.

And, seriously, if you don't understand this, or think that American PR (means, personal prestige) is more valuable than Iraqi lives, then you shouldn't have intruded upon someone else's country in the first place, since the official Army stance is to consider Iraqi lives as worth less than that of Americans.

How can you fight for someone's freedom, or put up a slogan about fighting for someone's freedom, when you don't even see them as worth as much as you are as a human being?

--------
on a more lighter comment, since the purpose of the ski masks are to camouflage the person's face, they don't have to wear black masks. They could be allowed to use their full creativity to paint their masks with smilies, or other colors. There is also those things where there is a huge portrait of a person, only with a circular hole by the face, and you can put your face there and take a picture. So on the picture you could see some celebrity or movie character's body, combined with your face. The same thing can be done with the facemasks. Ski masks can be produced to have the replica of a person's face, head, hair, all around, but painted on the ski mask. Only the part of the eyes and the mouth would have holes, and those would be the real person's eyes showing, and mouth showing. So, in other words, some random Arab face could be printed on the face mask, with three holes for the eyes and mouth of the person wearing it. Even at a close distance it would l0ok really real, and it would not look like a mask at all. This proposal would satisfy PR and safeguard lives, and I really don't think it costs anything, about as much as making a custom-made T-shirt.
People's lives should come first, then the fashion prestige of the Americans.

2008-11-16T23:42:00.000-08:00

Queen Sofía of Spain:
"The immense majority of families are normal," she said. "I can understand, accept and respect that there are people with other sexual tendencies - but being proud to be gay, getting on to a float and joining a parade? If all of us who weren't gay went on a parade, the traffic would be chaos in every city."

2008-11-16T23:11:00.000-08:00

Where are all the people who "Support the Troops" during slogan shouting, and political PR speaking? Or, that was "Support the use of troops".
Whoever supports the troops should care about them as human beings, and consider their life worth something (other than how useful/expendable in achieving political/military objectives). So since the government ordered them to poison themselves, the government should also be responsible to them. First in honesty, then in restitution. That means listening to the Congress requests as in second paragraph here quoted. It's important for the restoring of the damaged lives, and the saving of future lives. Again, if the pesticides and other toxic substance were used by the US government in schools, corporations (say, Wall Street and investment banks), senior homes, hospitals, city streets, public transportation, etc., and 1 out of every 4 became physically damaged, there would be no attempt at dissimulating information. Somehow, despite the recruiting ads, etc., the Pentagon and certain part of the government think that merely because military-people follow orders and sometimes have a higher mortality rate because of war, that their lives are worth so much less, and have no more human rights or value than expendable furniture or supplies.

This is especially unfair because the soldiers were ordered to get exposed to toxins in the middle of a war. And they were carrying out orders at the government's bidding. They were not given choice to be exposed or not be exposed to the toxins. Whoever exerts the power to order people should also take responsibility for the consequence of those orders.

http://news.mywebpal.com/partners/680/public/news936004.html

WASHINGTON - At least one in four U.S. veterans of the 1991 Gulf War suffers from a multi-symptom illness caused by exposure to toxic chemicals during the conflict, a congressionally mandated report being released Monday found.
...
It recommends that the Department of Veterans Affairs order a re-do of past Gulf War and Health reports, calling them “skewed” because they did not include evaluations of toxic exposure studies in lab animals, as Congress had requested.
...
The report also faults the Pentagon, saying it clearly recognized scientific evidence substantiating Gulf War illness in 2001 but did not acknowledge it publicly.
It said that Acting Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Gulf War illnesses Lt. Gen. Dale Vesser remarked that year that although Saddam Hussein didn’t use nuclear, biological, or chemical agents against coalition forces during the war -- an assertion still debated -- “It never dawned on us ././. that we may have done it to ourselves.”
...
About half of Gulf War personnel are believed to have taken PB tablets during deployment, with the greatest use among ground troops and those in forward positions.
Many veterans say they were forced to take the pills, which had not been approved by the FDA, and some said they immediately became sickened.
“Many of us got sick from the pills,” said retired Staff Sgt. Anthony Hardie, a Wisconsin native who was with a multinational unit that crossed from Saudi Arabia into Kuwait and then Iraq.
He said he was required to take them for several weeks and soon suffered from watery eyes and vision problems, diarrhea, muscle twitching and a runny nose. A fellow Special Forces officer, he said, lost about 20 pounds in short order. “All of us had concerns at the time.”
To ward off swarms of sand flies in Kuwait City and the eastern Saudi province of Dhahran, Hardie said trucks would come through at 3 a.m. and spray “clouds” of pesticides.
Fly strips that smelled toxic hung “everywhere,” especially near food. “The pesticide use was far and away (more) than what you’d see in daily life,” he said.
...
Several soldiers interviewed said they were ordered to dunk their uniforms in the pesticide DEET and to spray pesticide routinely on exposed skin and in their boots to ward off scorpions.
...
The federal panel added that it also could not rule out an association between Gulf War illness and the prolonged exposure to oil fires, as well as low-level exposures to nerve agents, injections of many vaccines and combinations of neurotoxic exposures

...100,000 U.S. troops who were potentially exposed to low-levels of Sarin gas, a nerve agent, as a result of large-scale U.S. demolitions of Iraqi munitions near Khamisiyah, Iraq, in 1991.

Troops who were downwind from the demolitions have died from brain cancer at twice the rate of other Gulf War veterans, the report stated.

2008-11-16T23:04:00.000-08:00

This is horrible. Department of Homeland Insecurity is not deporting illegal-immigrants committing crimes (after entering the country). Shouldn't the illegal immigrants committing crimes be deported first?

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6115223.html

2008-11-16T22:57:00.000-08:00

I love Europe!

The Europeans are so much more humane, and civilized, than the Americans.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/16/technology/google17.php
almost five years into its expansion into Europe - where it has a headquarters in Dublin, large facilities in Zurich and London and smaller centers in Denmark, Russia and Poland, among other countries - Google is beginning to bump up against a web of privacy laws

Swiss privacy law prohibits the unauthorized use of personal images or property.
In Germany, where Street View is also not available, the simple process of taking photographs for the service violates privacy laws.

A panel of EU national regulators called the Article 29 Working Party wants Google - as well as Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN Search - to purge the records after six months.

The data protection agency Edõb is also in talks with Google because a Swiss law that took effect Jan. 1 requires all companies in Switzerland that maintain databases on individuals - as Google does - to disclose to the agency how they manage the information.

In Germany, opposition to Street View is more visible. In Kiel, a town on the Baltic Sea coast, data protection officials are threatening Google with fines and are distributing stickers for homeowners to display advising Google's photographers against making pictures of their property for Street View.

"What Google is doing with Street View violates German law," said Marit Hansen, deputy director of the Unabhängiges Landeszentrum für Datenschutz in Schleswig-Holstein, the state in which Kiel is located. "It's not enough that Google's Street View is not yet available in Germany. The simple photographing is in itself a violation."

2008-11-14T19:48:00.000-08:00

ρεβεκκα, it may happen, as it certainly does, that church services become a diplomatic function with meticulous machinations and adjustments in words and gestures, in the most minute millimeter and degrees, to please people. There is some of that in every human interaction and situation; the more infinitesimal the percentage thereof, the more the interaction or situation adheres to the original intent of the event. Since such people-pleasing take vast amount of energy and attention span, some church services may become more about pleasing people than pleasing God. And that is no God-near-ness, and very far away from it.

Therefore I recommend the reading of "Puritan Sermons", and the sermons of these people: Charles Spurgeon, David Brainerd, George Whitfield, Henry Beecher, John&Charles Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, A.W. Tozer, and any of their contemporaries of renowned piousness. The especially succulent ones are the ones quoting the Bible with Roman numerals for chapter and Arabic numeral for verses, as such: Matthew xiii. 47. You shall/would find the reading thereof to be more invigorating and life-breathing than any church services (at least, in the 21st-century United States), and more lively than any entertainment.

I dare say (and it's not "I venture to say", which is a matter of tentative dabble in probability, but "I dare say", which is a matter of courage) that many prominent Christians are fallen, as with many who are ministers or pastors or those of that profession. Some of them falls the further away from Christ the more advanced they are in their careers, not increasing in the knowledge of God, but accumulating experience in human (and earthly: Iacob iii 15) wisdom and treachery of advancing one's skill in rhetorics and liturgy about God while all the more using it as a cloak for evil deeds, oppression and dishonesty.

Therefore, those who think they are standing firm should be vigilant, lest they fall. (1 Cor x 12) Be vigilant and alert about your spiritual life, in the midst of such an evil generation, lest you also become like the children of Eli, who in the midst of doing holy deeds (and very likely, speeches) towards God, were contrary to God. That thing which, or that person whom, anyone should call "Lord" or refer to as "God" or "Jesus", even in half-spoken hint, that is their god and what they worship in life. Beware of those who do not worship (and therefore love) Lord Jesus Christ (and God), by this you know who/what their god is. Even doing it once is enough. For any real Christian or son/daughter of God would not even think of such an abomination. It takes very deep and dramatic falling away in the spiritual life to even get near the point where such thing can be uttered. It is the spirit of the anti-Christ, and should you esteem your spiritual life, you'd do well to not partake of it or do as what you see others do. Whom you marry is highly irrelevant compared to the death or life or liveliness of spiritual life, and that is also what I think now pertaining to myself. If you were to do as others do, it'd be as if you strike yourself upon the head with a hammer or hard object, after once or a few times you will not be sensible to the Holy Spirit anymore and won't even know between mortal danger and mere existence. Not a perfect example but it gets the point across.

There is no one better to cultivate your spiritual life than Jesus Christ. Anything said/written in Christian language in the 21st century should be taken very carefully, since many keep their spots and blemishes, many are like grounds of thorns and thistles, many endure only for a while and fall away in actually following Jesus, and some follow after Satan. There is no amount of spiritual knowledge I can pepper in here that would last any more than a few moments, without you cultivating life with Jesus on your own. No one else can do it for you. And since I am myself rather agonizing after drops of God-knowledge from heaven, it's not like I have that much advanced knowledge to spare. The proven saints, whom I mentioned above, are loyal vines in the garden of the Lord and left the imprints of their faith upon papers. These can be relied upon, much more so than live people, however godly works they are reputed to have done. The era is evil and people easily become fickle and they love the approval of the era above Lord Jesus. Following an MP3 series of any bodily-alive pastor may be of a little help, depending on the person, but it is all like thin spread-out soup with some bits of vegetables floating in it. Depending on the scoop (that is, the day), you may get thin soup on most days, and thin soup with some morsels in it on other days. It may have the taste (that is, the familiar vocabulary), but not much or no fortification of the Christian spiritual life. If anything, you may find dead creeping things in it. That's if you are vigilant. If you are not vigilant, you'll intake well-camouflaged poison without knowing it. Also, there are those who presume to be counselors, but they are even less wise and know even less about life than any random person who merely seeks after the Lord. With skillfulness of words they seek to make people lean on their yoke, for that purpose even skewing the walk of the upright, ensuring a steady income.

The Puritan sermons and the sermons of the proven (and unchanging) saints may be found in any library of a school that was built as a trainer of Christian disciples. That means any school that is built more than 100 years ago. Such sermons can certainly be found in any specifically theological libraries, such as seminaries of any Christian denomination. There should be a lot of those around. It's likely that in all those places they aren't often read. You shall find the liveliness of the content most delightful. May you stand in the faith of Jesus and cultivate your spiritual life and not fall away. I have written more than enough, and I must stop, lest with the faintest bit of humidity in the ink I distract/detract you from the wide expanse of the clear lake of the proven saints, and the living Jesus, of whom there is no end.

2008-11-13T14:30:00.000-08:00

4位来自该县国保大队地警察突然袭击，并称因为该教会接待外来传道人教导圣经，该聚会为“非法邪教聚会”。该教会已在政府和“三自爱国会”登记。

侵爱的胡锦涛主袭，

因为中国共产党从开创到革命到长征向来接待外来的共产主义思想家教导和接受俄罗斯和苏联的资金援助，该党为“非法邪教聚会”。毕竟胡主袭的党是洋毛子那里来的，洋毛子又是俄罗斯那里教的。
所以，按中国司法机关的如此执行，马克思列宁主义为邪教，共产党为“非法邪教聚会”。

奉词暂时到这里

2008-11-09T22:51:00.000-08:00

Accursed and sons of the Devil are those who call me "Joseph" as in referring to Joseph husband of Mary and father of Joshua Hamashiach.

If you are Jews, well, having crucified the Lord once, or participated in the crucifying of the Lord once, you wish you could do it again? Your ancestors having seen and heard God-Himself, and refused to acknowledge Him as God and son-of-God, you (in lunacy) wish to see this God in the flesh (a second Jesus?!) while rejecting Him in the Spirit everyday. Or you'd believe in Jesus/Joshua and (add: if you are Christians, then you would) know God face to face and not take part in such abominations. Abominations, such as denying that the Resurrection happened, that Death has been conquered, that humanity's Sins have been redeemed/paid for in Jesus/Joshua's blood, that He already took all the death sentences upon Himself. Abomination, to wish for another Jesus, as if none of these things happened.

Sons of the Devil, servants of Satan, who think that I am something more than a person, and someone is supposed to descend from me. And if you are "Christian", the more involved your "Christian life", the more Bible you carry around, the more God you mention in your speakings, the more fierce the Judgment fire you are heaping upon yourself! Do not think that this is anything trifling. You have denied the Lord's Existence. I don't know how to describe the depth and abyss of it. If, before reading this, this "Joseph" thing made perfect sense to you and you found nothing whatsoever within you to see the evil of it, then you never were acquainted or knew Our Lord (Jesus, Joshua, however you want to pronounce the name) the Savior, or the Trinity God, or Father Son and Holy Ghost. Perhaps you were acquainted with activities having a Christian theme, or with Christian vocabularies, or how to make yourself popular and build yourself a public image using those.
It is not possible to claim to know the Lord, and not know anything about what He did to mankind, and the significance thereof. And if you claimed frequently to know the Lord, then that is some other Jesus, that Paul and Peter did not preach. (don't know by instant memory which epistle that is in)
And if it's part of your religious tenet that my intellect is somehow superior to others ("Joseph", or perhaps, "alien", according to *****tology morons who worship at the sacred TV/DVD altar), then seriously, you need to cease your pointless religion, go read, and stop poisoning the youth of the country (or the world) with your venom. The reading ability of the 9th year student in Canada is about that of 12th year in US. Trigonometry is taught in 7th year in China. Everybody, no exceptions. One fifth of the world population. Who told you to measure everything by the average American norm, and make that into a religion?

2008-11-04T10:31:00.001-08:00

President (for the moment) Bush, I just read now, your use of "Unitary Executive" concept, mentioned 95 times. The Wikipedia article about it, is like a false advertisement and a lying definition. You have used "unitary executive" to decide what is law, and what is not law: the laws passed by Congress that YOU have to follow as well, and your job description is to carry out the laws passed by Congress.

The Congress makes laws. And the President lives by those laws. If you want to decide the constitutionality of a law, you have to go through the Supreme Court. Any high schooler who went through "We the People" class (and every high schooler should take it, it's a Constitution class at the high school level) can demolish all the fake arguments made up by your aides (they merely spew out a pile of non-widely-used English words to make it sound sophisticated and therefore giving it a false impression of being a well-studied truth, when in reality it's a well-crafted lie *), there is just no way around the Constitution on that point.

* The popular misconception is that, if something is written in scholarly language, or seem to have some thought put into it, then it must be "smart" and therefore well-informed and true.
That is a popular misconception.
Any lie can also be written in scholarly language, and have thoughts put into it. And these days, more lies than truths, are written in scholarly language. And people just don't bother to think while reading, tragically assuming that a collection of some literary or "educated" words must mean it's true and/or honest.

Your "signing statements" are also unconstitutional. That means, Congress passing a law, and while signing it, you add a statement that even though you sign it into law and everyone else has to follow it, you promise to personally disregard the law anytime you feel like it.

Your "unitary executive" is imperial, and not Constitutional. I think the fake Christians (especially the ones running megachurches, but their fetid culture of claiming themselves to be kings is affecting even little churches who try to emulate these "kings") acclaiming anyone in any kind of office as "king" really got to you. You can't even quote one person from the First Generation to support this "unitary executive" thing, or the "signing statement". Because, they fought against that King George, for their liberty and that of the posterity. That's exactly why the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were written, so there wouldn't be a "unitary executive" and "signing statements". Did you not think that King George had legislators and judges? Of course he did, but as king and despot he ignored the legislators and judges anytime he liked. Bad company corrupts good character. Perhaps you were more pious when you started Presidency, I don't know. If so, you have been badly affected by the greed of the multitude of the counselors around you, whose souls are depravedly bent upon acquisition of power, personal and clique-power.

Congress and the Supreme Court has every constitutional right and duty to impeach you of contempt of the Constitution, and to restore the function of Presidency to its appropriate place within the constitutional framework.

You should be impeached on the "signing statements" alone. This is even without knowing about the "unitary executive".
You may be commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, but they also took oath to defend the Constitution of the United States against domestic enemies. You may be in the executive branch, but you put into execution what Congress tells you to, not your whims.

2008-11-03T13:18:00.000-08:00

Anybody who is going to vote: if you have the option of voting early, and voting on the voting day, then it's better to vote early. Lines will be long (hours) in lots of places, from reading about previous elections.

And if you can, don't use the machine/electronic voting. It can be easily hacked and modified. The machines have been forcefully implemented by one private company in Alabama (not a federal organization) who doesn't even let auditors look at how they compile the results.
Use papers (and look carefully so the bubble/mark matches the name, especially on the presidential voting).

2008-10-30T14:24:00.001-07:00

23% of Texans think Obama is Muslim

Until the number of idiots in Texas decrease, and the Texans' critical thinking and research ability improve,
don't ever let a Texan be the President again.

2008-10-27T00:52:00.001-07:00

A US citizen is a US citizen, is the People of the United States, and can vote on voting day (with passport and birth certificate). And they should pressure their representatives to guarantee this right.

2008-10-26T22:43:00.000-07:00

The old person at First Presbyterian, though you have a crown of gray hair yet in this you have not wisdom: somehow you think that leading a Christian ceremony exempts you from Christian living.

Anyone pretending to be speaking to the person of Christ while having all attention put upon some other person, may refer to description of such doing, in Roman 2. For they knew God, yet did not honor Him...

Anyone pretending to refer to Christ while referring to someone else, is doing abomination unto the Lord. Whoever cannot appreciate how much the Lord abhor such fiery iniquity, that person doesn't know, the Lord as a person, only as a name pronounce-able in English but the actual meaning thereof they do not know; or that person doesn't continue in knowing the Lord and how he should be, but like a man observing his face in a mirror, he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. (Jacob 1:23-24)

The woman, who spoke of the office of Presidency as "who will have power and authority" overly emphasize the top-down imperial view, and the erroneous application of Old Testament "king". In the Old Testament, the king of Israel was king over all the people of God (who could only be Israelites by nationality). In the New Testament, the equivalent is Jesus Christ. (Otherwise the understanding of the resurrection is incomplete) The Presidency of the United States is not the position of a king, nor even a ruler, though many pagans would like to make it so. This is what the pious Founding generation went to war against. All speech and attitude of veneration normally reserved for God (power and authority) applied to a "king" that is not Jesus, is idolatry, and destructive temptation for that person (in this case, the people who want the Presidency seat) to set themselves up as gods. Suggest a thorough reading of the Constitution and the Federalist (and they were more pious Christians and intellectuals than just about everyone in 20th/21st century), before you make comments about the Presidency again.

And, the old man at the door before the ceremony started, kept loudly saying "communication" "talking" "how would he know?" "how would you know?", concerning double speaking. It's obvious that God (YehovahElohim, Jesus, Holy Spirit) hasn't had a place in this man's heart in a long time, for as a matter of reflex, he thinks of the world without the existence of God, a world of people only. Anyone living with God, even if sinning occasionally, is utterly aware of God's existence and never think of a world without God, where the only measure of doing evil is whether people knows it or not. Since no one was outraged around the person, the faithfulness of the gathered people towards Jesus (more than the decorum of the activity) can be estimated.

This leads to the conclusion that the spoken worship will not honor the Lord, or not honor the Lord fully, compared to the singing worship.

2008-10-25T16:24:00.001-07:00

The US government-sponsored conspiracy theory says that:
The WTC collapsed as the top section fell into the lower floor, and the floors were destroyed one after another.

Leaving aside that the destruction of each floor would have caused delay and resistance (and the WTC fell at vacuum speed as if each floor instantaneously disintegrated, which is not possible unless each floor was demolished a fraction of second in advance before the top weight crashed into it, which is not a natural collapse but explosive-coordinated):

The US government-sponsored conspiracy story is only possible if each floor was existing in its own universe, separate from all the other floors.
So when the top 16 floors of North Tower hit the 94th floor, all the impact only hit 94th floor and didn't affect the other floors at all. So the 94th floor alone had to withstand the weight of the impact, and because it's weight of 16 to 1, it collapsed. Then the top 16 floors plus the collapsed 94th, hit the 93rd floor, and now it's weight of 17 to 1. And so on.

But all the steel columns in WTC were connected.
The floors were not separate entities. Only in an explosive demolition do separate things happen to each floor. The building is made of 110-floor high columns, and when something falls on the 94th floor, the weight isn't just carried by the 94th floor, but also by the 93rd, 92nd, 91st, 90th, 89th, 88th, 87th, 86th, 85th, 84th, 83rd, 82nd, 81st, 80th, and so on, all the floors underneath.

So it was not 16 floors compressing one floor at a time, but 16 floors trying to compress a way more sturdy mass of 94 floors interconnected. The weight of 16 floors would not have overwhelmed the tower one floor at a time, because the weight would have been distributed throughout all the 94 floors, and not concentrated on one. 94 floors carrying an extra 16 floors would mean the columns of each floor carrying an extra weight of 17%. That's very little for a furniture and very little for a column. The WTC columns were designed to carry an extra 2000% before collapsing.

The US government-sponsored conspiracy lies and ignore the Physics Law of Conservation of Momentum. Surely the laws of physics were not changed on 9/11
According to the US government, the momentum of the falling 16 stories affects only one floor at a time, when in reality, because the floors are connected, the momentum is distributed in all floors at the same time. Any collision results in loss of momentum and therefore speed. The top 16 floors could not have kept falling at the same speed, as if there were no resistance. And it would have come to a stop against 94 floors, because the momentum would have been absorbed by all the other floors at the same time, not one at a time.

Anyone having taking first year of physics would understand Scottish engineer Gordon Ross' paper, he is a much more eloquent explainer.

2008-10-25T11:05:00.000-07:00

Here is a sure way to scientifically verify whether the WTC or any building can collapse through jet fuel burning (which doesn't melt steel, nor weaken it to collapse)

Jet Engine components melt at the melting point of steel, or even easier than steel. Yet they constantly burn with jet fuel fire (that's what happens in an engine), and are not "weakened" or "melted".

- Building a miniature version of the World Trade Center
This shouldn't be very hard, and the government should fund this. There are remote-controlled-planes these days, they could be filled with jet-fuel. So build a World Trade Center with a remote-controlled Boeing UAV at the same scale, with the same measurement and mass proportions. Also, the correct mass proportion of steel in the structure, with each floor made of thin concrete. The correct proportion of jet fuel to UAV size. And same standard of steel as WTC steel. (no aluminum or plastic, please)

And the security for the miniature WTC should be guarded by a collection of different organizations, and not only the cousin of the President.
And the construction should be webcam-ed and anyone, like Wikipedia, can see it live, so liars don't build it in plastic or paper.

And fly the UAV into the miniature WTC (110 yard high, 1 yard per floor), with a little fire to ignite the jet fuel if necessary, but no explosives. The remote-controlled Boeing should be a little over 11 yards in length. And see if the building collapses.

This is the most scientific way, and completely in-line with the Sir Roger Bacon's 5-step scientific method, universally accepted by all scientists and researchers. Without doing this, the government's 9/11 Commission Report can only be considered political polemics, and not a scientific document. (this is not even mentioning all the obvious lies in the 9/11 Commission Report. This is merely mentioning ONE thing, the buildings' collapse, supposedly by jet-fuel fire, and the scientific method way of verifying it. WTC7, by the way, collapsed without anything burning or hitting it, and 9/11 Commission Report omitted mentioning it. So build a 47 yard high WTC7, and see if a slight tremor causes the building to collapse with floors stacking each other.)

The whole project would only cost a few hundred thousand dollars (less than one million). It would cost less than 10 Humvees. That's a penny in government budget. They just spent 700000 millions like it was nothing. and over 1000 millions per month in Iraq. I think a lot of government people are extremely afraid to do this, which is exactly why it should be done and needs to be done.

2008-10-22T14:03:00.000-07:00

恐怖
http://www.ipart.cn/
美国的消费企业和其他的大企业从五十年代后丧失道德已经到了视人为牛马的地步，好比中央情报局和联邦调查局的屠夫一样，你学着他们干什么？
败坏内涵，追求外表和形式。

写给中国人，在中国的中国人

先开始的时候广告是声明哪里有东西卖。现在美国的恶人多，越有势的越恶。现在广告成了攻击和勒索人的大规模空袭。其目的是要立自己的商品在人的生活里为神像，要它的商品成为人生活的对象和在世存在的意义。但是商品只能满足外表的需求，缺乏商品广告满足人生的假许诺，商品企业的第二个勒索就是不断的推出下一个牌子的商品（加另一轮以专门学习勒索语言的心理学家凑合成的广告），在广泛看广告不思想的人的心里栽培错觉，就是：这个商品买了以后满足不了生活是因为它不够好，下一个牌子会给完全的满足。还有一个勒索方式就是用普遍的画面和声响，来在人心里创造原来没有的也不需要的需求。你真的需要喝可口可乐吗? 还是喝水就解渴了? 渴乐, 大部分化学物质需要融在血液里, 喝了更渴. 果子汁比汽水有营养, 补养生体提高免御系统, 还没有汽水的大量防腐剂,色素和酸侵蚀牙齿和磨耗生体. 你真的需要新一代牌子的手提电话吗? 要是真的有那么多朋友讲话, 那么多互相亲善和通情达事的交往, 怎么需要用网路来跟陌生人凑合?

居然连丧失面对面社交,巴着消费商品为朋友,在噪声中无思想, 在人群中孤单, 在用商品追求自满的时候没有自理和自己作主张的内涵基础, 彼此渺视自己和别人为商品上的画幕(画幕上写朋友, 但比可以亲身抚摸的狗和猫, 牛和羊还异类) , 以大规模的表面和虚无缥缈的接触来代替友谊, 在大量的话语和信息(包括花再多时间和精力和心血在个人网页和论坛和电子游戏世界里的表面接触) 中没有认识-珍贵-信赖-自己的人
居然连这都学美国人了!

可见得, 如此大规模的人类面对面交往的饥荒, 至少是有人要以此牟利, 以广告将人交往和接触的欲望都转移到有表面交往滋味但无人心接触和与人间生活苦难隔绝的各样的网页和电子屏幕. 好比可口可乐. 喝得再多, 渴地更厉害.

中国人什么时候学这个的? 尤其是我年龄的, 西方在堕落, 中国在昂起, 你们是世界的未来.

2008-10-21T16:22:00.000-07:00

- 上帝来是来改变人的本质, 武力可以在外表上逼迫人, 但是连势力和武力都是在外表的那一层, 就像用工具来控制水
火并不改变水火的本质. 耶稣基督与台风比不了, 耶稣可以改变人从种子到结果子的树, 这是武力和控制(加摧毁)力办不到的. 人的本质是爱坏的东西, 好比指南针(不是讲台湾)不管再大的台风, 吹完了还是会回到原来. 这就是为什么从1911年搞到2008年中国还基本上是皇帝封建政权. 说句不好听的, 那各地贪污的, 不管是党机构的, 省市部门的, 还是做大买卖的, 那持权犯法的利用地位来把肮脏的作为藏起来的, 那不就是朝代帝国的地方君王吗? 独宰着手下的政权生意物资和人民(以这个顺序排列重要性), 时刻想着扩张和保持势力, 每年向京城的城门献贡. **

大部分人没有耶稣的智慧. 这是与知识不同的, 知识是书上看; 智慧是怎样用知识, 和用知识来思维和看世界.
耶稣是生活．是活力．　政治势力只是生活的表皮的一部分．　人的本质是活了，皮也活了．　不认识耶稣的人是以人间生活的自然惯性（水往下流）来看事，顾表面和形式，认识耶稣的人是渴望变为耶稣（上帝）的本质和思想：上帝看人是先顾本质的．所以认识耶稣的人也是先顾本质的．

台湾不是中国的目标．美国也不是中国的目标．中国的目标应该是中国人人本（加起来就是社会）和生活都比台湾和欧美的好，清华和北大在世界上拥有十九世纪牛津剑桥和二十世纪哈福耶鲁的地位．台湾巴不得要成为中华省。要是拿台湾或美国或《西方》的处境来当测量文明道德智慧先进的极限，恐怕是志气和眼光太小了吧。

**(美国已经达到或接近如此地步, 是在二次世界大战后五十年代的繁荣里腐败的, 六十年代开始的. 但美国的黑势力是金融势力和政治军火集团, 地区政府和国家政府毕竟有开国领袖的宪法昂制势力集中，保持政权在一般人手里．美国开国领袖写了，他们创起的民主是只能在大多数人有文明道德的社会里才可以）　中国现在有地方黑社会持权加一切美国的东西，但是好在中国人对让欧美社会先进的精华的学习上是越来越有长进的．光盲目学美国外国的东西是错的，它的文明和道德不是恒久一致的，因为文明道德不是以欧洲或美国的人的本质和文化而来，西方的文明道德和智慧先进是由耶稣来的．并不是欧美人生下来就有文明道德智慧先进，二是因为他们把文明建立在耶稣上．西方现在大多数人放弃耶稣，他们也就越来越失去文化道德，这是可以观察的到的．　没有了耶稣的智慧，他们也就渐渐的丢掉先进的地位．美国需要每年几十万H1B护照的非美国高科技工程师来维持它的高科技企业和研究，美国本地人比十九世纪美国人的思维和学习能力差远了．)

2008-10-20T22:10:00.000-07:00

The FBI is classifying people like machines, or different species, and expect to micromanage people's lives, and determine what is "normal" and what is "not normal" for people. And based on these, add them to an enemy list. Since when could other people tell me that taking notes is suspicious? Who are they to interfere in my life? Since when could other people define what is suspicious and what is not suspicious?

http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12295455

2008-10-20T20:40:00.000-07:00

I have started reading http://www.wanttoknow.info/911information#911summaries
and it's most difficult reading.

2008-10-20T14:14:00.000-07:00

The monitoring of the voting process is a great idea.

On the one hand, it should guarantee that votes are accurately counted.

On the other hand, only citizens of the United States of America can vote. The Constitution is the Supreme Law of the land. So people need to show US citizenship proof, before casting vote.

Either way is vote fraud, and should be prosecuted, and the frauded number corrected.

No trucking/busing/sneaking thousands of Mexicans over the border to pretend to be Americans of Latin race. This will be an excellent opportunity to bust illegal immigrants. Exercising American political power is, by the Supreme Law of the land, reserved for American citizens only. It's not something cheap to be prostituted and shared with anybody.

The Patriot Act should have gone into supervision of people who commit the crime of pretending to be American citizens, and voting. That is about as serious as breaking into the White House and signing things in the name of the President. By the Patriot Act, there is enough mobilizing power to check identification at all voting places. That is patriotic action. Spying on Americans is not patriotic action, and it's against the Constitution. Fulfilling the Constitution (especially that paragraph about voting!) on voting day, that is patriotic action.

It should be done by Federal entities, and not local. Currently, many places do not check IDs, and people can be smuggled over from other countries (Mexico!) and pretend to be Americans, and exercise American political power. This execrable practice must be prosecuted most severely.

2008-10-19T21:58:00.000-07:00

All that it takes to frame someone with brain-scanning is over and over again making clear to the person what criminal thought(s) you expect him to think.

Contrary to the freedom of politeness, where reminding oneself to not do something results in etiquette

In the ease of framing with brain-scanning, reminding oneself to not think a thought results in thinking it. Therefore, all that is required to the "evidence" of guilt from some person is to repeatedly frame him with maximum pressure and accusation, till he is preoccupied with being framed with a crime, and how he is expected of being such a criminal. Then, even thinking about being falsely accused, especially given the twisted and demonic nature of such a situation, results in thinking the very thought the person is accused of thinking, but doesn't want to think. But the very act of not wanting to think, thinks it. Because the mind is very unlike the hands and arms. There is utterly no effort, or control over thoughts. And, not all thoughts are of the person.

Without moral foundation and strong abiding in Jesus Christ, you'd be amazed at how easy it is to have people succumb to the demonic torture of going along with their tormentors, and accuse themselves of whatever crime their tormentors want to hear. It's somewhat difficult verbally. But it's extremely easy in the thoughts. As described above.

This is what the CIA/FBI depend on, this is what they meant by "breaking him", meaning the destruction of a person, so they'd accuse themselves to satisfy the whims of the torturer.

And, of course, this goes against First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments, and/or the principles thereof.
And, I suppose this comes from the execrable practice of watching people through cameras and screens, so that human beings are reduced merely to the level of pixels. And people want to control the pixels like how they use programs on the computer. They think people are machines.
People aren't. For one thing, a programmed machine will go on to execute its program. People aren't so programmed. To quote that horrible movie, Minority Report, even if people had intents, that doesn't mean they wouldn't have changed intent in the next moment, every second, up until they fulfill the intent. Therefore, the first crime that the PreCrime unit stopped, the intent could have stopped a millisecond later. And it would have been something else.

Maybe that wasn't clear enough. Now, I don't know any criminals, so I'll give the most relevant example. Anyone going through high school (and in life, really) would have heard at least some person mention how they tried or wanted to kill themselves, but then didn't do it. I don't think it's that rare of a story. So, there was clearly intent, but people are not machines, and even if an intent is formed, the intent can be freely changed by people later, up till a millisecond before the fulfillment. Because, people aren't machines/robots, and the brain is not a machine, people are not robots giving themselves self-commands, and once the switch is flipped, that's it. It's absurd. There are many people, probably at least one person in any person's acquaintance, who, by life experience, can show that a formed intent does not make it fulfilled.

A combination of sci-fi shows, plus a prevalent phenomenon of seeing people through their pixel-image representation (therefore making persons part of a machine), is very dangerous if not thinking at the same time.
After the invention of the TV in the 1950s, people started meeting face to face less and less, probably. Were people still interacting with people and seeing people face to face just like the pre-TV world, this kind of madness idea would not have happened.

2008-10-19T19:18:00.001-07:00

I read on San Francisco Chronicle that "conservative" outlook is wrong (less government regulations) and the opposite is right (a lot of government regulations).

I can only represent this by comparing it to a pizza, with one pepperoni, and another pepperoni. Each pepperoni changes details once in a while, and try to keep opposite of each other, in nearly all the details.
That's all the things/ideas that people can think about, the country, the world, the events, etc.
And the Democrat camp, and the Republican camp. Each so busy in PR-ing itself and anti-PR-ing the other, that it's more about being a peer pressure group, and who can make the most headlines and embarrass the other side the most. People rarely think.

To say/write something rather not too fun to read, the American people (99%) seem to think everything happening in life is because of government (that 1% who work in government), and never think about themselves (the 95%).

The country is founded as government by the people for the people. One of the founders, I forgot which one, wrote that a Gospel-believing/living people is necessary for the governing of the US, and the Constitution can only work with that kind of population.

In practical terms, this means, the people have the responsibility of being responsible and honest, as much as possible.
That means, to not live beyond what people can afford, and not spend money you don't have. So when I read (on the Atlantic, or Time magazine, or maybe articles from both) that the average American is $17000 in debt of credit cards, that's really horrible.
There wouldn't have been a mortgage crisis (and I am talking about mortgage, that means wildly borrowing money to buy houses without expecting to pay it back), if all or even most of 300 million Americans were responsible in not overspending, and not getting in credit debt. This happened because way too many people were doing it, and Wall Street is only part of the whole. In the Atlantic article there was a description of how people used to save a higher percentage of their income, then things got really consumerist and people made this culture that a person should express himself/herself in the amount of things they buy. And mothers could buy bags/shirts with "born to shop" for their kids. So people's saving first were double digits, then went into the single digits, and then wildly borrowing money became the fad, so people's savings went into negative percentages, and kept spending money they didn't have.

This is ridiculous.

Then the person writing the article in Time, wrote that President Bush never advocated being thrifty as a virtue. And it's from reading that line that I wanted to write this.
The point is, President Bush is elected to run the macro of the country, a President is not supposed to be in people's living rooms, bedrooms and bathrooms telling them how to live. If people wastes money or wildly (should I say, immorally) borrow money they don't have, it's not the President's job as people's nanny to come to their doors and tell them to be financially more responsible.

That's each person's individual responsibility, about as important as the much-talked about Bill of Rights. People seem to only talk about their rights, and never talk about their responsibilities. And it's ridiculous to expect the President (though I am sure the author was thinking him as symbol of the US government) to supervise everyone in their personal responsibilities. That's not something that can be blamed on the government.

So, when individual people are financially immoral in a widespread fashion, it's not like more or less government regulation is that relevant.

The American people are rather fast at blaming the government, and never themselves, even when the mortgage (and specifically I am talking about people, in their personal lives, pretending they have money they don't) and credit card debt was widely done by the most average person.

-----------------------
and, on a completely unrelated thing, the beginning of Time magazine mentioned Finland make more gun control laws. The problem is, a criminal will just steal one (it's likely very easy in Finland), or get from black market. So teachers should be armed in schools, like Southern states are doing in the U.S. That would really end the issue.

2008-10-18T19:19:00.001-07:00

If Barack Obama supports giving Driver's License to illegal immigrants

(when they show documents and get their photos taken, if not legal immigrants, they should get arrested on the spot. That would rather short-circuit the issuing process, which is a legal process. So, if a legally issued Driver's license deliberately violate the immigration law, then one of these laws/regulations have to go. Either issuing Driver's license to illegal immigrants -and smugglers- is wrong, or, the national borders are wrong and it's actually OK for Mexicans to sneak over the border.
If national borders are wrong, then Mexico is 51st state without its star on the US flag and Mexico needs to pay property tax, income tax, banking tax, and whatever other taxes to the US. If Mexico refuses to pay tax like a US state would, then troops need to be sent and go to war with Mexico like how Sherman marched to the sea.)

then he also needs to legislatively agree to anybody breaking into houses randomly and staying there, any house in the U.S., including his own house.

2008-10-18T19:03:00.000-07:00

May sound odd, but if the Eiffel Tower, got LED lights (less watts for same brightness) instead of lightbulbs, and install solar panels

- on some of the beams of the Eiffel Tower structure, to collect electricity during the day to use at night
- somewhere in the nearby streets, to collect sunlight during the day and city-light during the night :D
- and if there are elevators, have a dynamo attached to the cable system so that the energy of the moving cabin, and movement of the cables, generates electricity (this was seen in an article about the newest energy-saving building designs).

Then it would save even more energy, because it likely won't need any electricity supply anymore.

2008-10-18T18:45:00.000-07:00

A guy named Dmitriy Guzner did denial-of-service on the cult of Scientologist, which had nothing to do with science or any kind of -ology. It's fine enough to watch sci-fi for entertainment, but to make a sci-fi novel plot into a religion is the thing of idiots. Why didn't they pick a more popular sci-fi universe like Star Wars or Star Trek?

Now, the thing is, it's not worth it to do denial of service attack on the Scientology website, because it's highly unlikely that people randomly go to their website, then get their life sucked up into it. No, this cult works like the mafia, and recruits the most powerful and rich possible, as priority. Hence visible people in Hollywood, hence the ranks of IRS and other money-related organizations, which I read somewhere. Even the CIA and similar organization must have been deceived by their BS, because CIA and similar organization, by nature of their work, probably don't have a foundation of truth in Christ, and thus solid knowledge about the universe and beyond, and can be swayed into the most paranoid and strangest fabrications.

So, if you want to stop the Scientologists, preach and spread the word of Jesus. In other words, counter lies with the power of the truth, and making the spiritual reality of the Universe known to people is much more effective, because it's Reality-centered. To focus on "countering" Scientology, however defined, is Lie-centered, and is really counterproductive. It's like, it's far better to point out what is good, than to merely point out the bad.

2008-10-17T00:32:00.000-07:00

Apparently there are fools from the Anglo-speaking countries (I really don't care which one) saying that China (the country in East Asia) is the origin of the financial crisis.

Look, that's just lying-doublespeaking gone amuck. The financial crisis comes from:

1 - The Federal Reserve Bank established starting 1913, US currency not backed up by gold/silver starting 1971, but merely floating on speculation. Federal Reserve Bank borrows money from thin air and fabricates it by the trillions. And, since the money is not backed up by gold/silver, money can just be "made" on the spot and numbers wantonly increased.

2 - Morons, and evildoers, combined, framing me who never had more than ten thousand dollars ever (I think for a short while after college I had perhaps $5000 or higher in the bank account, when I had my first full-time job), framing me as having, first two hundred thousand dollars, then it went into the millions and billions and trillions.
But, that's just done in the tradition of the Federal Reserve Bank. The American economic system of these days (utterly treacherous to the Founding Generation's intent) has been "making up money at will" and made it seem normal and acceptable.

It wasn't even because of me. Nor any cliques that could be associated with me, whether my nationality, or my religion, or anything.

In other words, there is a 95 year (or 37 year, depending on when you want to start it) financial bubble of lies about money value, and there is a 1.5 year lie about imagining extra money in the world.

Neither China the country nor any Chinese person started it.

The 95 (or 37) year financial bubble of lies about money value has been pioneered by Woodrow Wilson administration (The Creature from Jekyll Island) and exacerbated by the Richard Nixon administration.

The 1.5 year lie about imagining millions/billions/trillions (or perhaps even higher?) money out there in the world was started by a paranoid pastor, and Christian talkshow people and the Department of Homeland Insecurity, and everyone who loves to spread rumors and then, when they hear the rumors bounce back to them, take that as confirmation of fact.

In neither case did China, or any Chinese person, start the events. Some Chinese persons definitely have participated in the 1.5 year Big Imagination, when it reached people of Chinese ethnicity in the US, and Chinese people in China, but they didn't start it. In fact, the United States of America, especially various instruments of the Department of Homeland Insecurity, have been the most persistent and the most devious/deviant in urging the propagation and the belief that there is supposedly substantial amount of money associated with me, and that I am supposedly some kind of special person, and that I am supposedly lying about myself. When neither of these are true. The United States of America, as in the government, have provided pay, equipment and bent all the laws backward in order to assist the Department of Insecurity in expanding the hype and making entertainment out of it.

Neither China, nor any other non-US country have pressured or lobbied the US government in doing so. Nor did any Chinese person pressure or lobby the US government in doing so, especially the person concerned.

So, back to the first paragraph. If that is meant as serious statement, then it's rather way off the accuracy. If that is meant as double-speaking, then it's the lamest double speaking I've ever seen, and even the double-speaking is off the mark. The correct double speaking would have been, the US 's one-sided brutal treatment and framing and "containment" and invasion and occupation and devastation and looting of China as a country and attempt to kidnap/enslave all its intellectuals and annex anything of use to the United States, and constantly asking the Chinese to tell the Americans that China is actually some other country on the map, and constantly asking the Chinese to admit that they are some kind of kings or powerful person, and constantly asking the Chinese to admit that their given name is actually not theirs, that the Americans know them better than they, and constantly trampling the streets of China and kicking doors expecting the streets and houses to suddenly be made with dollar bills with the next trampling/kicking, has led to the financial crisis.

And, just to point out: the banks are being bought with make-believe money borrowed from nowhere. So, as long as the American money isn't backed up by preci0us metal, as long as other countries try to imitate this immoral practice, good luck trying to prop up the castles built in the air by pumping more air. Whether it delays it by a day, a week, a month, a year or a decade, it's only temporary. And I just want people to stop imagining vile things about me (the 1.5 year already) and I want my life. The 95 (or 37) year bubble is totally something else, and it might even be a year or ten years in the future. But I really think there are "laws of physics" with money as well, and you can't just generate a lot of numbers and expect to prop them up in the air. I really would like the 1.5 year mini-imagination-bubble to be publicly talked about and done. It has something to do with me, of course, because I am the one being imagined about. But I didn't start the imagination-bubble, others did, despite me asking them not to, just about everyday. The 95 (or 37) year bubble really has nothing to do with me, either way counting, it started before I was born. And I know little of economics so I really don't know what to say, except that making up money numbers based on nothing, it's called dishonesty and lying.
But I just want the mini one affecting my life to be done with. The big one, started by other people but not interfering with my life, other people (who choose to make their living in that dishonest way) can live with it, and go with it, when it goes. I hardly think the mini one affected the market at all. After all, imagining a few millions/billions (I really don't think people were foolish enough to go into trillions) on someone, doesn't affect the market that much. Market is so much bigger than that. I think some of the market trouble is from the sustained long-term effect of the fake banking system, and as long as it's fake, it's big trouble. The mini-imagination-bubble merely "reminded" of the huge fake system, but it's independent from it.

2008-10-12T17:10:00.001-07:00

Talking about pirating. Game companies should just put all their games on Valve, or have a few more game-interfaces like that. Valve games are rarely pirated (and therefore, also are cheaper priced. I love Valve).

PC is the only platform for RTS, if it's a realistic RTS with detailed user interface. There just isn't enough buttons on XBOX/PS3/Nintendo console controllers. On the keyboard, there are alphanumeric keys (26 + 10) plus Function keys (12) plus Tab, Caps Lock, Shift, Ctrl, Alt, Enter, Backspace, Spacebar, Insert, Home, PageUp, Delete, End, Pagedown. And tilda ~
And the point-and-click of the mouse.

I really can't imagine playing an RTS with the XBOX/PS3/Nintendo interface, unless it's squad-based like Full Spectrum Warrior, which is not an RTS, but has only a few units to cycle through. Any epic RTS would not play well on console.

And as for FPS, PC is better for the realistic ones. The graphics is always more detailed on PC, and the point-and-click of the mouse matches the fast reaction time. In order to play FPS on a console, not only does the AI's aiming skill has to be toned down (playing Rainbow Six III and Medal of Honor on console was horrible, AI rifle fire from 10 yards away couldn't hit), the player is also given "HALO shield" to compensate for the console controller's much less accurate movement and crouching/aiming skill.

HALO is great for console because there wasn't that much aiming. Pointing the cursor near an enemy (including the Plasma Rifle) and it will hit. But for Rainbow Six, Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, and other realistic FPS, the slow aiming of the console control (and compensation by dumbing AI and superman-ing player) is just awkward. And having HALO shield in a WWII FPS is just strange. And while writing this, I realized, that the first non-HALO FPS with HALO shield was Call of Duty II, which, incidentally, was also the first Call of Duty to be released both on PC and console. So I realize, now, that the HALO-shield feature (abysmally, also added to Splinter Cell, that archetype of realism) was added to non-sci-fi FPS as part of console-control awkwardness compensation. Normally, a player with the awkwardness of console control would never survive in an FPS, which are made for the fine-point control of PC. So the survival gap is bridged by dumbing the AI, which breaks the realism. Then some console developer came up with the (ridiculous) idea, that the gap can be bridged by dumbing the AI some, and superman-ing the player some, with HALO shield, in 20th century.

Console is great for FPS like
HALO (not much aiming), and plausible rechargeable-shield
Prince of Persia series (not much aiming, except what direction to face),
Splinter Cell series (not much aiming, since most is about movement of sneaking around), simulators (car racing, airplane flying, spaceship flying)

But all FPS that require aiming and quick crouching, are made for PC.
Perhaps HALO shields are made to help console players survive an FPS environment that they wouldn't otherwise survive due to the awkwardness of the console control, but the PC version of the FPS shouldn't have the over-compensating HALO shields, except if the game is HALO or some sci-fi game.

Having HALO shield in Splinter Cell (and I can imagine, the latest Rainbow Six as well) and WWII FPS like Call of Duty totally ruined it. Not even arcade side-scrollers simulated bullets like that. Plus, computers have the quicksave function, which the console machines don't have. So computer FPS can be played with much better realism, and don't need the console-compensation of HALO shields.
The med pack system in MOHAA (easy level = many medpacks, hard level = fewer medpacks) was great.
So is the very-realistic system in Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon (before everyone got MJOLNIR armor from the 26th century) : one round = either death or injury and difficult aim/movement more than one round = death

2008-10-12T16:05:00.000-07:00

So, I am going to write a short commentary, and people probably won't like reading this one.

Debt is whittling away U.S. economic power, from International Herald Tribune:
...Debt helped create the housing bubble and has now left almost one of every six homeowners with a mortgage larger than the value of their home...

Mortgage is using money that you don't have. Like, buying a house that cost a hundred thousand dollars, and only having ten thousand, so mortgage would be using ninety thousand dollars that people don't have. Supposedly, this crisis is only about the housing market, with everyone borrowing and using money they don't have.

However, that's the micro.
At least the people borrowing from banks are borrowing money that exists.
The banks depend on the Federal Reserve Bank. The Federal Reserve Bank, created since 1913, also borrows and uses money it doesn't have, but from nowhere. So the people borrowing mortgage depends on banks, the banks depend on the Federal Reserve Bank, the Federal Reserve Bank rests on nothing, except the make-believe that all the money created out of thin air is worth something.

There is no policy, in a few days, or few months, that can mend nearly one hundred years of lying. And whoever imitated the US system in making a central bank that creates make-believe money, will go through the same difficulties (understatement) as the United States.

2008-10-07T01:06:00.000-07:00

Why aren't any US or EU media in Souther Sudan, only Al-Jazeera?

Al-Jazeera reports it like a civil war, as if both sides are equal. It isn't. Omar Al-Bashir's Sudanese government (North) has been doing genocide against South Sudanese since years, sponsoring Janjaweed militia to massacre people in Darfur. And the North have a vastly more powerful military and land surface. It's the Muslim Arabs in the North against the ethnic African Christians and native animists in the South, the many Muslims doing genocide against the minority.
It's more like Saddam against the Shia of Basra or the Serbs against the Bosnians. And Al-Jazeera favors the Sudanese government because they are Arabs and Muslims.

Why aren't BBC and CNN and NBC/CBS/ABC and Der Spiegel and France 1/2 and Telegraph and The Guardian and NYT and Wall Street Journal and Washington Post in Southern Sudan (Darfur is part of it) ? Why is the media of the developed world staying out of it?

2008-10-07T00:40:00.000-07:00

Russian rap video soldier sent to Siberia

A young soldier in Russia who made a rap video about poor conditions in his barracks has been sent to Siberia.

By Alastair Jamieson
Last Updated: 9:16AM BST 02 Oct 2008

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/3120395/Russian-rap-video-soldier-sent-to-Siberia.html

Lieutenant Vitaly Efremov took the modern approach to complaining after becoming frustrated with the state of his accommodation near St Petersburg.

His video incurred the wrath of army leaders after it was posted on RuTube – the Russian version of YouTube – and he has now been posted to Ussuriysk, a windswept Siberian town best known for its production of vodka, mink fur skins, coal and soap.

Lieut Efremov made his video in the style of US rapper Eminem's letter to a frustrated fan, Stan.

His version is a letter to the Russian defence minister, Anatoly Serdyakov, in which he complains about everything from broken showers and dilapidated barrack rooms to faulty equipment and poor pay.

In between Lieut Efremov's list of woes, there are bursts of Dido's Thank You. The British singer appeared as Stan's long-suffering girlfriend in Eminem's video of the song.

Lieut Efremov's rap complains that no progress has been made on granting cheap credits to professional soldiers who want to buy their own home.

The Russian Army has shrunk from a Soviet-era level of 4 million to 1.2 million, with conscript service cut from 18 months to a year. It is increasingly dependent on professionals who sign up for fixed-term contracts, but they are more demanding, insisting on better conditions, wages and pensions.

The video has attracted comments deriding Efremov as a bit of a whiner, but the army has long been under-resourced and bullying is rife: every year there are hundreds of suicides and desertions.

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Well, I have to say the conditions of the housing looked rather like what gulags look like in my imagination (having never been in a gulag). The walls have cracked paint and the tap water's spigot moves around wildly, as if it'll pop out at any instant. No shower water in the middle of showering.

Assigning someone to Siberia is mildly better than assigning someone to Chechnya. Still, it's a rather barbaric answer to the problem that the lieutenant highlighted. He is a lieutenant who gets paid 9500 roubles per year, and he needs 600 roubles per month to eat. That's rather impressively little pay to live on, and he is a lieutenant. That means, the rank-and-file soldiers get paid even less.

I did notice that the "Urrah Urrah Urrah" at the parade sounded more demoralized than patriotic. Perhaps because the soldiers aren't quite treated like human beings? The US military, by the way, allow their soldiers to make videos and as far as I read, the troops opinions are listened to by the superiors. During the Iraq war, the troops noticed many defects with the existing equipment, and found alternatives that they could get from the Internet, and the officers immediately allowed the alternatives. The US military is better because it's doesn't treat people as mindless cannon fodder (CIA/FBI though, are totally different).

Perhaps less funds should be spent on parades and shiny parade uniforms (that have no other practical use) and more on actual living conditions, and troops pay adjusted for the living index (which means inflation, so 1 rouble many years ago isn't worth the same as 1 rouble now).

2008-10-05T22:52:00.000-07:00

Stop bombing Afghans' wedding parties.

There is nothing for me to write, except that, if the US doesn't start treating Afghans' lives as the same worth as American lives, the US will be driven out of Afghanistan just like the Soviets were.

The Beast of War, an American-made movie about how evil and murderous the Soviets were in Afghanistan. Congratulations on living up to the standard of your own propaganda, about the Communists. After all, who knows whether the Special Forces themselves are being trained in the image of the Stalinist CIA, and all their wrongful killings merely classified. As far as I know, the C-130 "Spooky" (though I thought it was called "Spectre") is a Special Forces support aircraft, just like the Pave Low MH-53J helicopter.

While the Soviets were in Afghanistan, doing this (0:36 till 3:20) is considered "Evil Empire".
Almighty God, not the United States, did away with the Soviets.
The Americans seem to not be outraged about the Stalinist CIA, nor do they seem to want to consider other people's lives worth as much as the Americans. Freedom to be inferior is not freedom at all, though it can certainly be endured.
Till Almighty God does away with the United States as well, should it continue in such despicable deeds.

2008-10-05T21:58:00.000-07:00

Nation-state is an European invention of the 19th century nationalism, in areas of rather unified language, race and religion. I am certain that as far as just about all Afghans are concerned, they never think of themselves as Afghans. I wonder what word is used to say "Afghan" in their local languages. They probably see themselves as this-tribe living in this mountain, and that-tribe living on that mountain. And that tribe is in Kabul, but the tribal territory is only around Kabul. Elsewhere is the territory of other tribes. I think only on Euro-US-thinking is there a country called Afghanistan with the borders, and everyone in there thinking himself an Afghan, like how New York city has a definite border and everyone there think themselves New Yorkers.

In an area that never had (much of) centralized rule, or people even thinking themselves the same people, anyone ever thought of looking at how it was done in the past several thousand years, and maybe make something like the Iroquois Confederation or the Aetolian League? Of course it'd be more like the former, the latter having had a rather different level of generalized education and civic virtue. A 'dictator' can only happen in a somewhat industrialized nation-state where people at least think themselves as part of a country, rather than thinking of the capital city as the territory of a tribe owing that one city. Also, not to deliberately sound shocking, but looking at how Persia did the satrapy system would be good as well. Even Alexander, having overrun the Persian Empire, did not enforce the central rule and identity upon the various satrapies. He either left the existing Persian satraps in place or appointed new ones, but did not try to homogenize the Persian Empire.

And, it would be good to ask a college professor (Near Eastern Studies, History, plus Anthropology), and not the CIA about this, or any other secret-society-cults.

2008-10-05T21:26:00.000-07:00

They don't belong in battle, by John D. Eisenhower, on October 3, 2008

As the only living presidential son to serve in combat while his father was in office, I feel an obligation to express my concern that both of the current vice presidential candidates, Governor Sarah Palin and Senator Joseph Biden, have sons in U.S. Army units on orders for duty in Iraq. In addition, the Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, has a son who is in the Marine Corps and subject to a second deployment to Iraq at any time.......

With all due respect for your combat in that-very-difficult-war and the eminence of your father's leadership and political (here meant as a compliment) skills in orchestrating and keeping together a wild bunch of squabbling general staff and war ministers through a world war without desintegration.....

I disagree with you that there should be an aristocracy in the United States that doesn't go through whatever everyone else goes through. If Van Fleet's son did it, if Patton's son did it, and every other citizens' son did it, then surely Palin, Biden and McCain's sons can do it. George Washington, by the way, slept in the snow and had the same as all his men had.

Just a sidenote, in the very war that you fought as the son of a President nominee (and later, son of the President), the son of the Chairman of China (the butchery is another topic) also served in the same war, as a Russian translator attached to the Chinese "Volunteers" HQ. Mao An-Ying/毛岸英, the only talented and decent son of Mao (all others are eat and drink and gangster type), was killed in 1952 in a USAF napalm strike.

Seriously, people shouldn't be insulated in the White House or Capitol Hill or anywhere, from the consequences of any p0licy they carry out. And your suggestion that the lives of some soldiers should be worth more than others is absurd. If the President or vice-president, or any leader of men, think only his/her son's life to be worthy, while all the others are expendable, then the person should not be President, or vice-president, or leader.

2008-09-06T21:13:00.000-07:00

Greetings to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak:

There are hundreds of thousands of Egyptian troops sitting in the country doing nothing, when there are hundreds of dying people so near the capital city, buried under the rubble. If the Egyptians can build the Aswan Dam, achieve the complex large-scale maneuver of combat crossing the Suez Canal, and achieve large scale construction of urban high-rise buildings from Cairo to Giza, then I am certain that the Egyptian army can mobilize and rescue so many dying people. And they aren't even in a remote place. They are near the capital city. Where are all the heavy vehicles that are probably on display during "patriotic" days? Egypt used to set the example for all the other Arab nations, because Egypt was the most advanced in industry, economy, military and culture.

2008-09-06T19:22:00.000-07:00

INA'LIENABLE, a. [L. alieno, alienus.]

Unalienable; that cannot be legally or justly alienated or transferred to another. The dominions of a king are inalienable. All men have certain natural rights which are inalienable. The estate of a minor is inalienable, without a reservation of the right of redemption, or the authority of the legislature.

Sorry to disappoint, Mr. Abbas, but Syria-Palestina was a province of the Roman Empire. After the Roman Empire collapsed, all its subjects are no longer under the Roman Empire's jurisdiction.

The Palestinian Arabs (and mind you, Palestinian Jews) lived in historical Israel, as subjects of the Roman Empire, then Palmyrene Empire, then Roman Empire, then Umayyad Caliphate, then Abbasid Caliphate, then Fatimid Dynasty, then Abbasid Caliphate, then IIkhanate, then the Ottoman Empire from the Middle Ages till 1918. My history is not very good, so I may have missed some more rulers.

The point is, Arabs living in present day Israel and Jordan, well they have been living in the region as subject of all those empires. Once those empires dissolve, their subjects can no longer claim legitimacy of living there because of those empires.

As long as the Ottoman Empire exist, a Ottoman imperial subject can have the inalienable right to live somewhere within the empire by the authority of the Ottoman Empire. But once the Ottoman Empire is dissolved, then people can be moved around.

So, Mr. Abbas, when you say that the Palestinian Arabs have the *inalienable* right to live everywhere in Israel where they lived in 1948, what legitimacy makes you say that? Is is as subject of the Roman Empire? Is is as a subject of the Ottoman Turks Empire? Is it as a colonized subject of the British Empire? Because until 1918, then until 1948, these are the Empires that gave the legitimacy for Arabs to live in the imperial province of "Palestine".

To be really straightforward, and really rude, even though you Arabs like to refer to some area of land as "Palestine", there is no "Palestine" anymore. It was a province of the Roman Empire, then all the successive Empires. As those empires collapsed, so did their imperial provinces. There is no more Armorica, Lugdinensis, Aquitania and Narbonensis, those were Roman provinces, it's now called France. In the same way, nobody even remember the subdivisions of the Mongol Empire, they disappeared when the Mongol Empire collapsed. There is no more Hindustan. That's when the Hindustanis were subjects of the British Empire. It's now called India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. None of those people still call themselves Hindustani, as if they were still a province of some empire.

The British Empire is no more, either. Since, Mr. Abbas is rather insistent about still being subjects of the British Empire, then please remember that British Mandate (colony) of Palestine includes the territory of Israel and Jordan. And all Israelis and Jordanians are Palestinians as well, not just Arabs, and not just the refugees of 1948.

Any saying of "inalienable" should present what legitimacy you are laying claim on.
If there is no other legitimacy than "used to live there", then the Jews have even earlier and more tangible claim, on the exact same grounds. The Jews lived in JUDEA since Abraham, the first Hebrew. It was the pagan Romans who renamed Judea into "Syria-Palestina" and expelled just about all the Jews, after AD 70. The Jews have inalienable rights to return to where they lived before AD 70, and that include all of Israel back then. (and, by the same sorry logic, the Arabs have the inalienable right to return to Arabia, where they lived before AD 700)

Seriously, I don't even think you are pressing for Jerusalem or "right of return" at all, you are trying to preserve your position and hopefully upgrade it as complete leader of the Palestinian Arabs, so you'd rather the state be formed in your turf, rather than anywhere outside your turf. And the Hamas faction is trying to get the same thing, they want the state to be formed in their turf, and hope Hamas to be the complete leader of the Palestinian Arabs.

When a Palestinian Arab state is formed, there will be a recombining of the populations, and a complete new (and regular) election. This is so that power is spread out among the people, and not permanently concentrated in the hands of a few. Any attempt at consolidating power now is ridiculous. And that's completely not a democratic thinking, it's almost as if both factions were planning to be dictator for life or something. I totally don't relish the idea of the Palestinian Arabs getting themselves "Mexicanned" - that means, "freeing" themselves from foreign rule, only to put their own native elites at the top, with a nominal democracy, but most of the people dirt poor and serving the whims of the top fews. So it's just natives colonizing natives, only the people at the top changed. A typical pattern in developing countries. I know that a first name of "Mohammed" and a last name that is spelled like the Abbasid Caliphate may sound rather glorious to yourself, but the very idea is really dangerous, the idea of 99% of the people subservient to the top 1%. And, a country is rarely made by a name, it takes character and it takes caring about the people as well. And a democracy's leader is better named "Average Arab-Peasant" or something like that, than "Mohammed King".

2008-09-05T19:49:00.001-07:00

I had another idea. Since Olmert was going to cede Golan Height, and Syria didn't want Israel to have Golan Height, another alternative for the Palestinian Arab state would be:

Golan Height + purchasing of the Irbid province from Jordan

Or, I was thinking of a Daleth shaped (or, Resh shaped) region that includes a corridor to the Mediterranean (maybe from the border of Lebanon till but not including Akko?) + Golan Height + purchasing of Irbid province from Jordan.

The corridor is so that the Sunni Palestinian Arabs would be between the Shia Hizballah and Israel, to put it frankly.
If Olmert wants to cede Golan, then he shouldn't make the Sinai mistake. When Israel had Sinai, it should have made it the Palestinian Arab state, or part of it, rather than cede all of it to Egypt.
As for the Irbid province of Jordan, well, here is the thing, the west side of Jordan should have been Palestinian Jewish homeland, so no Palestinian Arab state should be formed with Israeli land *only* (and by Israeli land, I mean all land under Israeli jurisdiction including West Bank), at most half Israeli land, the other half by purchase.

Should the Palestinian Arab state be established in this way, then Israel would get Gaza and West Bank (without needing to constantly patrol, etc.) Israel would end up with a clean rectangular border on top, clean parallel border in the middle and the triangular Negev on the bottom.

The other idea would be purchasing part of Sinai from Egypt, or all of Sinai, and adding Gaza.

The idea of mirror image of West Bank on the other side of Jordan river, I am not sure how well it would work, because it would include Jordanian capital city of Amman, or really close to it. And I can't imagine the Jordanians very happy with that. If the Jordanians are OK with purchasing an "East Bank of Jordan" of a different shape, it would also be great.

No Palestinian Arab state should include Gaza and West Bank at the same time, maybe one of them (and in this latest idea, none of them). And, ceding West Bank in its current shape is out of question. Israel would look like a bottle opener, or wrench, and the borders are indefensible. Recent Israeli history should be considered. I am of course referring to 1973.

P.S. I also had an unrelated idea, of Syria annexing Southern Lebanon, so Syria would gain a coast, and increase the welfare and opportunity of the Shia who live there, so they won't need Hizballah anymore. Besides, Syria always wanted a Greater Syria. The area that I thought, and this is without knowing any local geography at all, can be visualized by drawing a horizontal line starting at Damascus until it meets the (vertical beginning of) Litani River, and then following the Litani River all the way to the ocean.

2008-09-05T12:37:00.000-07:00

A few comments:

I have a much better impression of McCain-Palin team, than Obama-Biden team, and even if Biden has more experience than Obama, US doesn't quite work like Russia. I still have to read more on Biden. So far the only shortcoming I saw of McCain and Palin is that McCain didn't actively press on the Darfur issue as much as both Obama and Biden. Palin and Biden are about level on emphasis on education, an area that by now I care more than military or any war. Otherwise, Palin rates way higher as a person, even with Governor governing, than all candidates combined.

Read more news about Iran. Here is something that I would like to add: as far as I know, Israel has never ever attacked Iran. Nor has Israel even supported Iran's enemies, such as Iraq during the First (actual First) Persian Gulf War of 1980-1988 between Iraq and Iran. Just about every industrialized country in the world, except Israel, gave support to Iraq when it fought Iran.
So, even though Israel has never attacked Iran in any way, Iran has been attacking Israel through Hizb-Allah, even arming it with long range rockets. I don't suppose they need *long* range rockets to hit opposing factions in Lebanon, no, it's meant for Israel.

So, merely based on the fact that Israel never attacked Iran, yet Iran continually attacked Israel through Hizb-Allah, Israel can legitimately strike at Iran anytime. Even without the nuclear issue.

Oprah, if there has been that many requests to host Sarah Palin on your show, and you don't want to do it for politics, then what happened to you wanting to be an example to women? Isn't Sarah Palin an exemplary woman who achieved success by going to college and then working her way up? And she did it by her own excellence and studying and campaigning, without coming from an "aristocratic" family who is already involved in power. Isn't that the kind of success you are trying to encourage among women and girls, and especially African American girls?
Or, do you want to send a message of: it's OK to exclude people, even very successful people, if they are of the wrong race/beliefs?
Isn't that exactly you have been fighting against, including the establishment of your show and most of your life? Please, don't undo a lifetime activism of equal-opportunity.

On Georgia, well, and this is a serious and well-meant comment. Israel didn't stay Israel by merely establishing democracy, and establish relations with the U.S.
Everyone is trained for war in Israel. In order to be "Israel" anywhere, that essential quality has to be present as well.
I would like to invoke a bit of history. The hundred thousand American and more Filipino troops who fought to the death on Corregidor and Bataan, FDR let them die. Please read up on it. I mean, those were Allies plus American citizen-soldiers.
So, next time, don't assume U.S. support on anything, the U.S. often like to invoke its 18th and 19th century honorable image as PR, while in practice it does the contradiction of, and many people in high power (often non-visible powerful people) are only interested in being more adept at crooking people. Next time join NATO first, before doing anything that would require NATO or US support. And even then (even with a treaty), if not 100% of Georgian are trained for war and armed, then make sure a NATO base or an American airbase is built in Georgia, with perhaps 100 NATO soldiers in the base, then you can assume NATO/US support.

If you want to dissuade Russia from invading again,
-arm each Georgian with a rifle, plus a bayonet,
-monthly live firing practice, each Georgian citizen a marksman (able to hit a dime at 300 yards)
-one anti-tank rocket and one anti-air rocket per household (say, one Javelin and one Stinger)
-instruct each city block and each village on how to booby-trap everything, plus ambush techniques on Russian convoys (for example, let a Russian convoy pass through the middle of the village or city street, then fire a rocket at the lead vehicle, fire a rocket at the trail vehicle, trapping the convoy in between, and pour in the fire)
-Plenty supply of Molotov cocktail, and how to make them
-each citizen pledge to kill at least 10 Russian before he/she is killed

That, plus the established democracy and US relations, would make Georgia the "Israel of the Caucasus". There is a reason the Arabs haven't invaded Israel since 1973, and it's not because of laziness.

And, I add, Georgians, next time, don't play "Top Gun" and "Full Metal Jacket" on TV. Just because it's American (especially American way of war) doesn't mean it's good. For one thing, Russia will always outnumber you in airplanes, that's for sure. So it's much better to be bristling with anti-air missiles. And then, Vietnam War was U.S. dumbly fighting a war by industrial capacity and lost it anyway.

Here are the movies you should be playing, and in peacetime, so that by wartime you'll be used to it. Well, first I'd like to mention a few countries.
In WWII, there is only one country USSR didn't dare invade, or should I say, didn't dare invade beyond the borderlands. It's Finland. The Winter War of 1939-1940, Finland did spectacularly, with a tiny groups of soldiers stopping nearly the entire Red Army, inflicting several hundred thousand casualties, for tens of thousands of their own.
In WWII, Hitler didn't invade Spain, though he wanted to. Hitler didn't invade Switzerland, though twice there were plans to do it. Because the Spaniards fought most ferociously, including "Division Azul" the Blue Division, on the Eastern Front. The Swiss, though a tiny little country, has each citizen armed and trained, with firearm in the house at all times.
Finland, Spain, Switzerland, none of those country had nukes.

So, here are the movies I recommend on Georgian TV:
Jesus (any of the Jesus movie, important for meaning in life, and spiritual strength =)
300
The 300 Spartans
Talvisota (Finn, 1989, Among top 5 best war movies I've ever seen, most intense battle scenes, way better than either Top Gun or Full Metal Jacket, can be translated in Georgian)
Tali-Ihantala 1944 (Finn, 2007, lavishly made war movie about Finland's Continuation War/WWII against USSR, with extremely detailed historical realism, and even more intense than Talvisota)
Letters from Iwo Jima
Red Dawn
Black Hawk Down
The Predator (it has to do with mud triumphing over a high-tech beast)
The Beast of War (a U.S.-made war movie about Russians in Afghanistan)
9 ROTA (9th Company, a Russian-made war movie about Russians in Afghanistan)
Animal Farm (if it has been made into a movie, it's a parody of Soviet Communism)
Any Eastern Europe movie about fighting Soviets or Communism

You are a small country without the industries of the U.S. or the trade of Israel, so don't expect to fight like in the U.S. movies. Russia can, you can't.

There is a reason (already mentioned) Germany didn't invade Switzerland, and it was neither because of its democracy, nor because there was an American embassy there. And Switzerland didn't have nuclear weapons.

2008-09-03T14:55:00.000-07:00

And, not kidding, it'd be great if the Palestinian Arab state gets established in Sinai+Gaza, if not all then some or most of Gaza, with a joint Arab and Israel project of terraforming of desert into arable land, experience and expertise would be very useful in all Arab countries. And it'd also be great if a second Suez Canal were dug as a Friendship Canal, it would about twice as long as the Suez, but I read somewhere that Suez is by now getting narrow for certain ships since it was built in the previous century and ships have gotten bigger. So a wider canal than the Suez, that links the Mediterranean with the Gulf of Aqaba, it would greatly facilitate world shipping, with ships of Suez width going through the Suez Canal, and ships of more than Suez width going through the Arab Israeli Friendship Canal. It would provide a steady income in the Palestinian Arab state since they will own and run it. It would also help the growth of a major Palestinian Arab port on the Mediterranean coast as well as on the Gulf of Aqaba/Indian Ocean coast, and provide many jobs for Palestinian Arabs, both during the construction, and the operating of the completed project plus the commercial shipping on both sides.

2008-09-03T14:45:00.001-07:00

There is something rather important. It’s to point out that
Palestine = Israel + Jordan.
And Israel is the homeland of the Jews and Jordan homeland of the Arabs. And it should have been so back then. Plus Israel needs a defensible border because of all the recent history.
All Palestinian Arabs can legitimately be expelled into Jordan (with a “resettlement” humanitarian package per person, which would be way above and beyond what the expelled Jews got from Arab countries in 1948).
Israel (hopefully) creates a Palestinian Arab state so that they don’t just become cheap labor for the other Arab tribes/groups, who look down on them as expendable cannon fodder, their Arab-ness only invoked in common opposition to Israel (and common blinding of the Arab population to internal corruption in Arab countries), otherwise their Arab-ness is snobbed upon.
The Palestinian Arabs need to recognize Israel’s right to exist, and they aren’t returning to where they lived in 1948 or before by default, else the Ottoman Turks can return everywhere in the Middle East including Egypt. The Jews and Arabs fought in 1948; that means either Jews get driven into the sea, or the Jews keep the lands they get. That’s like the default war agreement when you go to war, especially an annihilation war.
Besides, the Arabs already got all the rest of the Ottoman territory as Arab homeland. The combination of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman, Yemen, Jordan, Syria, Egypt and part of Lebanon. Most of the Palestine Mandate has already been taken by Arabs (The Hashemite Kingdom of Trans-Jordan, or abbreviation: Jordan). The Cis-Jordan (the west-side of Jordan river) should be homeland of the Jews, while Trans-Jordan (the east-side of Jordan river) should be homeland of Arabs.
The reason for which I don’t quite recommend merely adding Palestinian Arabs into another Arab country, is because of the mutual racisms among Arabs tribes/groups. That’s why it’s better to purchase Sinai from Egypt, or mirror-WestBank from Jordan+at least-one-port-so-it's-not-landlocked, with viable economic development, so the country doesn’t remain poor and then get Hezbollah-ed. Best if it becomes as great success as a homeland of Arabs as Israel's success as homeland of the Jews. Like, with the great trade economy and intellectual development of some successful places in East Asia (and I am thinking, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taiwan), none of these countries have significant natural resources (neither does Israel, really), yet they developed. Apparently they emphasize education and higher education and science/tech knowledge first, rather than weapons first. And hopefully once the Palestinian Arab state gets created that's what they'll be geared towards, with much assistance from Israel and other Arab countries.

2008-09-03T14:07:00.000-07:00

After an actual reading of the article, I'd add: in that situation, the Israelis decide to give them passage or not. If given passage, then the blockade is about no other ship entering the port, so the ships can be moored to something, like a fixed floating thing, or temporarily docked in Haifa. And the people + humanitarian supplies get loaded on an Israeli ship, and the Israeli ship drop them off in Gaza. If not given passage, then only the humanitarian supplies get loaded on the Israeli ship, and these get distributed.

The whole point, is that when it's blockade you don't let other ships through. That's been done by every country. If you let something through, then it's to be carried by the blockading fleet.

And before they leave, give the organizers of the trip a naval navigation map of the Northeast corner of Mediterranean, plus the navigational charts of the Dardanelles/Bosphorus and the charts of the Black Sea, with detailed coastline of Georgia, where people are in way worse conditions and Palestinian Arabs by comparison are well-off. And encourage, (and film it, to see their reaction) these activists to sail to Georgia as well, with some items for Georgians deafened by Russian rockets and artillery, and see how Russians do their blockades. Their human-itarian concerns, I assume, should be extended to all of human-ity and not just some.

2008-09-03T13:50:00.000-07:00

Greetings to the Israeli cabinet and Israel Defence Forces:

Solomon/Shlomo was the wisest ruler of men on earth in ancient times and the people of Israel still achieve greatness in many intellectual areas, in higher proportions than their population proportion in the world. Sometimes, I feel I should add: if other people can think “outside the box”, then you can do the same.
Before I mention the latest Hamas situation, I would like to make clear that whereas I support either a Palestinian Arab state in Sinai –part, most or all of it- and Gaza, which would gets the Palestinian Arabs about the same land area as Israel, or a similar state made of the mirror image of West Bank on the eastern side of Jordan – the Arab part of the Palestine Mandate, or even part of Sinai, part of the southern West Bank and part of Southern Israel –though I think that option probably appeals the least - it doesn’t not mean I support one Palestinian Arab faction over another. I think they should be like Republicans and Democrats in the U.S., and do separation of powers by Parliament, Prime Minister and President. Supposing 100 members of Parliament, the number of reps from each party should be determined by the percentage of popular leaning towards the Fatah/Hamas parties. But that’s something for the future. First either part of all of Sinai, or the mirror image of West Bank, would have to be purchased, like Alaska or Lousiana Purchase, from the neighboring states of Egypt and Jordan.
So here I would like to comment on the Hamas situation: and please encourage original thinking, rather than imitating the Americans in everything, and that makes things very inflexible.
Supposing the Hamas boat was carrying only humanitarian supplies, all the Israeli Navy has to do is to mobilize a cargo ship alongside. Have Navy soldiers (Marines?) or even commandos –but regular soldiers is better just in case like in the movies they detonate the ship – board and temporarily seize the ship. Because otherwise what is the meaning of a blockade?

For PR purposes, do some historical research on how other nations (especially the “western” nations) did blockades in the past. As far as I remember, France didn’t flinch one moment to send a commando team to seize a Greenpeace ship that was going through the French naval ships when they were doing some kind of weapon testing. And that was some international organization. Also, I really doubt when the United States fought the First Gulf War, or during the combat phase of Second Gulf War, would any random ship would have gotten through the naval blockade. There are probably many more examples. Even better would be Arab operations to blockade Israeli ports, did they let any random ship through. And with all the research, compile it into a video, or even a music video, and other people will view it and probably pass it around.

To continue with my commentary, get a cargo ship, get a military ship, like a destroyer, to “block” the Hamas ship. As long as the military ship can carry a few infantry soldiers with rifles and some less-than-lethal (there is no such thing as “non-lethal”) weapons, and the ship can carry a boarding boat, it works. If the side of the Hamas ship is high over the waters like an oil tanker, then use a helicopter since it’s really close to the coast.
After boarding the ship, you temporarily seize it without imprisoning the crew. Any humanitarian supplies will be transferred over unto the Israeli cargo ship. The Israelis will then either distribute it ASAP themselves (all the better with the population), or give to the Red Cross or UN and they distribute it. Of course, filming the whole process so that there will be no troublemakers saying that IDF stole humanitarian supplies, etc.
Search the crew like how Americans would do, by now, at any large port. Perhaps by hand-held metal detector, this is to make sure that no crew is holding some kind of detonator. Any weapons and/or explosives will be confiscated (and I actually don’t know what happens after that, because the books, movies and newspapers never mention it) and disposed or used, unless the “one AK-47 per household” rule apply, but of course I am thinking of Katyusha and C-4 and landmines and RPGs and loads of ammo. And, since random things do happen, in the eventuality that a Hamas person detonates the ship, well that’s why the crew and ship gets secured first, or the ship gets boarded by helicopter. But if they do that, then the “humanitarian aid” PR wouldn’t work.
Or, the ship could be temporarily seized and towed to a neutral port to unload the humanitarian supplies, then the supplies gets shipped to Gaza by the Israelis.
The point is, if it’s a matter of humanitarian supplies, then it doesn’t matter who distributes it, as long as it gets to the recipients.
In terms of the often biased “Israel would look bad” (well, IDF sometimes does bad things, but it’s often unfairly biased against Israel, as can be seen in the unbalanced frequency of UN Resolutions), it’s only a matter of mentioning how “western” countries do things and/or did things.
Should there be need to fight another Lebanon War, merely ask PBS and/or BBC for a documentary of the US invasion of Mexico, including the search for Pancho Villa. Also a proportional population casualty of Israel from northern rocket attacks, compared to proportional population casualty of U.S. from Taliban/Al-Qaeda attack, and compare it with the subsequent U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.
So, U.S. population is 300 million. Israel population is 6 million.
So by population percentage, 300 is one-millionth of U.S. population , and 6 is one-millionth of Israel population. 300 American dead is in percentage equivalent to 6 Israeli dead.

3000 Americans dead on 9/11. Adding to that the Kenya and Tanzania deaths (maybe 100 Americans), adding the USS Cole (maybe 20 or 30), and the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 (nearly nobody died), so added that up doesn’t surpass 4000 dead, total, by Al-Qaeda/Taliban, before the Afghanistan invasion. That’s about 0.0013% of the U.S. population dead before the U.S. did Afghanistan war.
That means 80 Israeli dead is enough for Israel to invade Afghanistan-style as well. After all, the U.S. sets the example.
So you should set an Israeli death counter. Every 80 dead Israelis there should be a massive invasion toppling the government. But instead of occupying the country, leave it up to the UN. Then reset the counter to zero.

I am most desiring that a Palestinian Arab state be established either in the mirror image of West Bank or the Sinai+Gaza, and that a final peace treaty be signed with Israel and Palestinian Arab country recognizing each other’s existence, and that Israel and all Arab states help the economic development of the Palestinian Arab nations, building roads, ports, (and parts of Sinai would be excellent for windmill and solar panels, they may even export electricity) etc, my videogaming way of how-to-develop-a-country is rather limited.
I am also most desiring that somehow HizbAllah disarm and that all the rocket expenditure gets used to build the impoverished Shia’s lives in Southern Lebanon. (I have thought since last week and perhaps the week before, that Hizballah is deliberatedly not doing that, so people’s lives stay terrible in S. Lebanon so that Hizballah exploits that for recruiting and for consolidation of faction power/grip, that all good things and services be coming through Hizballah and the people can’t develop themselves, so that all goods be associated with Hizballah, a personality cult of the militant group, not just the leader)
It would start with the purchasing of the mirror image of the West Bank, or the Sinai, or most of Sinai. The aim is a defensible border (the last annihilation war happened about 30 years ago, it’s rather recent), plus an economically developing Palestinian Arab nation (so preferably not landlocked), else it might end up another S. Lebanon in terms of poverty and cult takeover by a militant group.
Research on that laser-zapping-missile thing should be accelerated, maybe jointly done with DARPA, since they have a lot of money to waste and they seem to be spending it on everything, including brainscanning me. So they might as well help out with the development of an actual weapon system that is necessary and not frivolous, since it’s something the U.S. would also find extremely useful. Installation of a few of those on the Gaza border, which is not all that long, would neutralize all missiles fired. It really would minimize the disruption in Israeli life in the Southern part of Israel, and also minimize the need of retaliation (which can be Hizballah-ed/Hezbollah-ed into faction grip).

In other words, the blockade should be continued and humanitarian supplies, if any, should be seized and distributed. But this should not be seen as long-term solutions. Seriously, military attacks in both fronts (Hizballah in Lebanon and Palestinian Arabs) are like hair cuts, and should be recognized as such. As long as the root issues aren’t deal with, no battle is decisive, and it will happen again and again and again.
This is why I hope all sides seriously consider the creation of the Palestinian Arab state in either Sinai-Gaza, or mirrored-West Bank, with as little of historical Jewish homeland as possible included, with massive help in building economy and infrastructure (this is different from humanitarian supplies, that’s just for “getting by in daily life”. In order to make a country that can develop and prosper, even into the parallel success of Israel as a country, in living standards and prosperity and intellectual achievement, the infrastructure/development aid will be more necessary than humanitarian aid, when the Palestinian Arab state is created.’’
And I also hope that the Hizballah gets to be developing S. Lebanon, and an internal-Lebanon political thing, rather than trying to be a state. But that involves the country of Lebanon, and it also involves Iran and Syria. So comparatively, the Palestinian Arab state is actually easier. And in order of long-term resolution (and by that, I of course mean eventual development of the population), the recommended chronological order would be Palestinian Arab State in purchased Sinai-Gaza or mirrored-West-Bank, then Southern Lebanon.

2008-09-03T12:23:00.000-07:00

By now I cease to address anybody as "excellent" or "honorable" because these traits belong to God, and people get them by being good people cleaving to God and not getting these traits by defaults merely because they are of a certain social status. That's some lame remainder of the imperial traditions, of usurping religion to justify social positions, and of assigning whole groups of people (whether races/nationalities or social layers or geographical regions) as either good/noble or bad, as if "noble" trait can be acquired by default. Absolutely not, people are "noble" by living in a certain way and not by social positions. Same with "honorable" and "excellent". I might perhaps say these as formality of titles when personally meeting and addressing someone, when etiquette demands it, but from now on, people will either be written here as their name, or their career name, that's it.

This has to do with my upgraded/increased/clearer view of "kings" and "empires" and power structures, and how eternal/moral attributes have been usurped by every kingdom/empire/nation on earth to refer to the national interest with all the greatest attributes by default, and all that is not national interest with all the worst attributes by default. This was not always done and not pervasively done, but done by every country (and before that kingdoms and empires), and even in certain ways by non-national subgroups of people.

2008-08-30T16:42:00.000-07:00

Just so people aren't wishwishing any random things concerning my beliefs or my person:

I utterly oppose homosexual people associating themselves with marriage. They may call it something else if they like. The only reason I am not pushing for a Constitutional Amendment defining marriage in the actual definition (btw a man and a woman), is not because I support or condone the association of homosexual people with the concept of marriage, but because I do not want a mushroom-like Federal government, which is not in the Original Intent of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

The Federal government is currently like the top of a mushroom, spreading itself everywhere and doing everything (and running all the powers) at the top, and the states mere little filaments/stem supporting the giant mushroom top.

The United States of America is no longer a Union of 50 states, as intended by the Founding Generation as separation of powers, lest power be concentrated in one area and easily leading to tyranny, because the Founding Generation knew well what was in a person.

The United States of America is now one state, of 50 provinces. Big difference.

The reason the Founding Fathers wanted a Congress and a Senate made from reps of 50 states is so that the power of governing would be distributed among the State governments and the Federal government.

Now, not only the Federal government has expanded way beyond proportion and is lording over the states, with power siphoned away from the states and concentrated in one spot: DC even in DC, within the Federal government, power has been inordinately concentrated in the office of the Presidency, at the expense of the legislative and judicial branch.

At some point, perhaps after the Civil War, the Federal government started unconstitutionally expanding its power at the expense of the States.

At some point, perhaps during and after FDR, the Presidency started unconstitutionally expanding its power at the expense of the legislative and judicial. And each successive President tried to expand the power of Presidency beyond what his predecessor had.

It hasn't been helped by the fact that mainstream (much of it a sludge of retardation and twisted God-view) Christianity of the United States wants to unbiblically view the Presidency as the king of the Old Testament, a throne that only Christ can be on after 33 AD.

It also hasn't been helped that certain Christians seem to think that only visible progress count as "success" in the Kingdom of Heaven, taking the model of American enterprises and applying to the spiritual realm. So, much effort is concentrated in the visible "progress" of legislating morality top down, and less effort is done in the much less visible progress of advancing the Word of Christ in people's hearts.

Whereas the Founding Generation knew, and wrote, though I don't remember the exact quote, that the Constitution (Supreme Law of the Land) alone can't govern the people, without the moral structure and support of the Word of God and the good/moral living that happen as a result.

Should I paraphrase it, I'd say that corruption and all the troubles of society are like floodwaters and the Constitution and Word of God are like the levee holding it back and keeping safe the City. The Word of God is like the concrete/cement, and the Constitution like the steel grid/girdles/structure. By itself, only by the power of law, the Constitution can never hold back corruption. People will try to distort the letter of the Constitution far beyond the spirit (intent/meaning) of the Constitution. It must be combined with a conscientious people who govern their own actions without needing external coercion.

And that's only possible with the Word of God thriving in people's hearts.

I personally think there would be less homosexuality if there were less broken homes, failed interaction among people, domestic violence, less wickedness destroying people's lives especially at young age (falsehood, that people are born homosexual, there are no babies born homosexual, just like there are no babies born pre-destined with certain lifestyles, they choose during the formation of their lives), and most importantly, knowing the reality of Jesus Christ, so they don't see every choice as equal.

It is taken for granted that there is a choice of putting one's hand in the fire, and a choice of not to, and it's never questioned, merely because people don't see it as equal choice. Or the choice of eating good food, and the choice of eating raw sewage or dust/soil, and people don't see it as equal choice. But when the regular and God-given ways of seeking and receiving love are destroyed by wickedness in the world, then like in a massive starvation, people would turn to anything that would sustain them.

In other words, all the brokenness of society are either directly or indirectly contributing to the spreading of homosexuality. It is not very different from people going to cocaine or heroine. Except there is no excuse of chemical substance addiction, and it's a lifestyle guaranteed to lead to death and eternal separation from God, and not being able to "eat from the Tree of Life" at the center of the paradise of God.

And, I would be in total support, in principle and in person, of a Constitutional Amendment giving the definition of marriage. Because that's exactly true.

The Founding Generation never wrote that as an Amendment because they never even envisioned the need of ever doing so. The Constitution is like the "last line of holding things back". Like successive firewalls, the Constitution is like the last layer, the Word of God growing among the people should have resolved the marriage view from bottom up.

I would like to give the example of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendment of the Constitution. These were passed by the Congress and ratified by the States at the end of the Civil War. Around that time, as I read in "America's Providential History", there was even unconstitutional expansion of power by the Federal government over the States. I need to re-read it, and I don't know whether it was related to these Amendments or not. Either way, around that time there started the practice of preferring to concentrate power in the Federal government, and legislate from top down.

However, even though the 13th, 14th, 15th Amendments in the 1860s established structures that people were supposed to follow, (Abolishing slave, giving people equal citizenship and voting) the people in the Southern states essentially cut all kinds of corner to not fulfill the intent of these Amendments, until 100 years later in the 1960s with the agitations of Martin Luther King. By the 1960s, there was enough actual agreement in all the States with the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, and thus they actually came into effect.

This is the difference between legislating from top down and changing people from bottom up.

So this is why I'd support the Marriage-Amendment in principle (because of what I believe) and in person (because of who I am), but I rather it be done by the States. Lest doing it through the Federal government encourages the current, erroneous, thought that Federal government is "king" over the States, and Presidency is "king" over the Congress and Supreme Court.

The dual separation of power between Federal and State,

the triple separation of power between Executive, Legislative and Judiciary,

these are two sets of different situations, but unconstitutional centralization in one of these two sets also encourage the unconstitutional centralization in the other set, because it adds unto the overall erroneous (and perhaps mostly unthought, but reflected in political momentum and trend) centralization, if not done for the sake of expanding power, then done for the expediency of getting some policy passed, whatever it takes.

---------------

In summary, I don't like the idea of passing a policy that I agree with

-when the top-down effectiveness of doing-so is not that much on people's life-view/world-view without bottom up spreading of the Word of God so that people govern themselves. So that's in practice not going by the Constitution of people governing themselves.

-and when doing-so would accelerate the attitude of dismissing the separation of powers, (which are "firewalls" the Founding Generation put in place so tyranny wouldn't happen), and doing-so would feed the unconstitutional tendency/habit/trend of concentrating power in Washington D.C.

So that's in structure, not going by the Constitution of people governing themselves.

In other words, the habit of doing everything from D.C., practically and structurally deprives people of their right and responsibility of self-governance, and like a drug habit that wastes away people's health or Ebola virus that wastes away people's physical body, it encourages the trend of people participating as little as possible, taking as little responsibility as possible, ceding away more and more of their rights and responsibilities, which the Founding Generation set in place to have separation of powers, while a few people decide everything from top down, and people "participate" in the running of their lives one day every four years. But the Founding Generation did not want concentration of power in the hands of a few, that's why the United States was established in the first place.

Washington refused to be king of the United States in the late 1700s, even though the army officers (e.g. those who had the most power at that time) really wanted it. Because he didn't want to centralize power, like all the other countries in the world. I am rather sure Washington would be terribly unpleased to see that some 300 years after he refused to be king, 90% of the power in the country is concentrated in Washington D.C. (should only be half, the other half distributed among the States), and the Presidency is seen as some kind of de-facto king. (each President expanded upon the previous one)

I could have just started writing after the "-----", but all the previous explanations and elaborations were needed to clarify what I was trying to say.

Speaking with people has been made exceedingly difficult because of the devilry of thought-reading, but that equally apply to anyone. And by the abundance of the grace of God I can withstand anything in this life.

So, I speak with homosexuals as I'd speak with heterosexuals. I get along much better with female homosexuals because they wouldn't hit on me. Any male homosexual thinking that I am like them is an automatic insult. Now, when I talk with people I just talk with people as human beings, I don't start doing some kind of political campaign or yell at their lifestyle (even if I disapprove) like they would imagine what a "conservative" Christian would do to them in the stereotypes. Even if I talk about Jesus, it'd be very different way from what they'd expect (they probably think it'd be like how Republicans speak with Democrats). I can speak with people whose political or any viewpoint is completely different from mine, and I like to listen to different people talk how they see life and what they learned. Without the camera and all the stalking, people usually don't know that my points differ from them, because I mostly see it much more valuable that I learn how people see things. Just because I speak with anyone doesn't mean I am part of their category/clique or think their category/clique is better than others. People keep assuming that, just because most people only disdain to speak with people of their own clique or category. It's rather horrible.

2008-08-21T06:13:00.000-07:00

John McCain should get Condoleeza Rice as VP.

2008-08-17T13:06:00.000-07:00

raid on illegal immigrants in Midwest: link

Whereas a few months ago I would have jumped up and down with joy at this, because I was all about "the greatness of the American nation" because I not only thought the American ideas of freedom were the same as their 20th/21st century implementation (or, lip-service, but actual implementation of national interest), I also thought that nationalist devotion to a country, a good country's ideas, was the most noble thing on earth.

I was so damn mistaken. (damn not as a swear word here, but as in "going to hell mistaken")

Now, I oppose this on humanitarian reasons.

And I think that, after Iraq is done and wrapped up, the next country the U.S. should invade and do a "freedom" war on, is Mexico.

There is oil in Mexico.

But more than that, its governing culture (not that there aren't good people, leaders, etc, in Mexico, there are, but it's the structure I am talking about, and even good people placed in a rotting structure can't do much) is really hopelessly corrupt. And millions of Mexicans come to the U.S. because life was so bad and there is no development in Mexico in the first place. What's that movie, the movie with Denzel Washington and the kidnapped little girl. There are some hundreds of kidnappings in Mexico City every week or every month, or something like that.

So instead of invading far-away countries, we should invade nearby countries. It's cheaper to do, and has more immediate good consequences on the long-term immigration. Invade Mexico, it'd probably be a repeat of the war of 1830s/1840s, only this time, no annexation of territory. Do a regime change, and upgrade the Mexican infrastructure and education and human development structure, then pull out. Because if Mexico was a decent place to live, the Mexicans wouldn't be fleeing their country like the plague.

France's genius President is, at least in announced theory, I am not sure he has started in practice, resolve France's illegal immigration crisis (all the North Africans fleeing their country into France, because Algeria, Morocca, Libya and Tunisia aren't great places to live compared to France, apparently) by increasing the economic development of those countries, so they are better places to live and less people would illegally immigrate into France. It's an extremely good idea, that I never thought of because in my hitherto narrow "nationalist" mode, I could only think of beating people down with armies, etc., and never thought of the long-term solutions, and what's worse, I was locking myself in the view that the "West" countries were superior to the others, and I actually didn't really want to treat the other people equally. I have had personal reasons, because of how someone wanted me to live according to Chinese culture and I hated it.

Not anymore the fundamental assumption that the countries or peoples of the "West" are superior though. I was "Americanized" even in that attitude, or I chose to adopt that unspoken attitude. Not anymore.

So, the U.S. should do what France is doing (has announced, I am not sure how it'd be done) in the illegal-immigration countries. And Mexico takes the bulk of it.
Unless it's to the U.S. "National Interest" that Mexico be kept poorly developed, so they would have to buy high-end industrial/technology made in the U.S., with Mexican raw material that U.S. can get cheap. The illegal immigration to the U.S. wouldn't happen if Mexico had low crime rates, less drastically different standard of living per the U.S. population, access to development opportunities, and ability to manufacture made-in-Mexico industrial/tech items so that they can accomplish the previously mentioned three items on their own.

So, even after the completion of the border fence, even permanently activating the National Guards of the border states, that's short-term solution. Long term solution is to make illegal immigration not necessary in the first place. Why aren't Canadians sneaking across the border in droves? Because life is already good in Canada, it has low crime rate, access to development opportunities, low corruption, good standard of living for the general population and, it actually probably import most of American things, but the important thing is that it has the former mentioned items and the country has good standard of life without needing to sneak over the border.

And in fact, if there were all that in Mexico, plus enough and decent job opportunities, they'd move back to Mexico by themselves.

I don't like the idea of putting bracelets on people who work many days on lower-than-minimum-wage. If it's merely doing it by short-term force (rather than long-term development), then where were you at the border? Where are your UAV? Why are there only some 10000 border guards for thousands of miles of border space?

Why are you in remote Iowa? Why aren't you raiding every street in San Diego, most of the neighborhoods in Los Angeles? Why aren't you raiding Dallas, Houston and Austin? Why aren't you raiding Phoenix, Arizona? Why aren't you raiding in New Mexico?
It's clear, by distance and percentage of population, that the vast majority of illegal Mexican immigrants are in those cities. Probably 90% of all illegal Mexican immigrants are in Socal, south Texas and south Arizona. Especially in Southern California.

Or, you aren't raiding in California, Texas and Arizona, because the politics aren't favorable. There are big names from the latter states, and in California there are too many "liberals". The big names don't want raids to happen in their states while they want to collectively gather Latino votes at the same time. So you'd rather do raids in faraway Midwest where the local politics are more favorable, even though probably only 1% of illegal immigrants do there, and about 90% are in the border states.

And why hasn't anyone thought of the France solution, what President Sarkozy is planning for North Africa, and apply it to Mexico, for complete and long-term solution to illegal immigration?

2008-08-17T12:58:00.000-07:00

Excellent.
Teachers can now carry guns in Texas to prevent school shootings
except, they don't need it in Texas as much as they do in big cities with troubles in certain sections like New York, Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, New Orleans, Oakland. Should be implemented in those areas as well.

2008-08-17T12:41:00.001-07:00

I am most inordinately sad that new ways of doing destruction to human life has been created because of what's done to me, even though I didn't participate or support its/their development in anyway.

The next world war, if it happens, will be the most destructive, perhaps a large fraction of the world population wiped out, rather than merely fraction of national populations as in WWII. I can see the beginning of what a one-world tyranny can be enforced, and what the "mark of the beast" would be. Though it might just be things beyond what I can guess.

2008-08-17T12:01:00.000-07:00

Misleading headline from AP, as if Georgia had troops in South Ossetia, the content of the article is absolutely opposite:

Headline says "Georgians force to clean streets in South Ossetia", as if a force of Georgians were cleaning streets
article is about Georgian civilians forced to clean streets by Russians
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080816/D92JK85G1.html

Sloppy journalism writing:

Poland was carved in two by Germany and the Soviet Union when they were allies at the beginning of World War II. After the war, Poland and the other east European countries became Soviet satellites for some 40 years.

Since many or most people are history morons these days, the average American (and who knows the state of education in West Europe, probably better than the US though) reading this would have thought Poland and Germany were allies, or Poland was allied with Germany and USSR. Any decent writer would have written "when the latter countries were allies", or "Germany, with its ally Soviet Union, carved Poland in two at the beginning of World War II".

2008-08-17T11:49:00.000-07:00

Interesting, why do you plan to mass arrest people doing First Amendment in the first place?
http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=97741&catid=188

"The public was never going to view this place, it was just found out," Spagnuolo said. "They got caught with this place. They told our lawyers in negotiations that this place didn't even exist."

"This was never a secret site," said Undersheriff Bill Lovingier, the city's director of corrections.

B.S. Then why it "didn't exist"?

"This center is designed as an arrest processing site," Lovinger said. "There will be no housing or long-term detentions."

"We've provided for restroom facilities, water, medical assistance," Lovingier said. "We tried to mirror in this facility what we do every day in our city jail."

The word "long-term", means there will be "short-term" detentions, and that could range from an hour to a year, because police or Patriot Act thugs did not legislate the meaning of "long" and "short".

2008-08-14T16:48:00.000-07:00

Really excited that Russell Crowe is going to be in an action movie again, and that Ridley Scott will be directing another historical action movie.
Not excited that Russell Crowe is going to be in the role of the bad guy, in Nottingham.
Read commentary on the script here, and agree that if the F word is used in the script of a pre-20th-century movie, then they might as well make the billboard's top 10 pop and rap and whatever music as the movie soundtrack, and have people eat burgers and have soda advertisement on the castle ramparts in the background. The other thing is, hopefully the plan of Russell Crowe showing his butt in the movie will not be the main selling point. Because if the movie depended on that, then it won't be like Gladiator, which didn't need to depend on that to get Oscars.

Maximus! Maximus! Maximus!

2008-08-12T16:32:00.000-07:00

Praying for rain during Barack Obama's speech is not different from praying he hiccups or burps or farts during it. It makes absolute no difference whatever in the content of people's speeches or beliefs, whether the speaker or the audience.

Not only that, but no amount of pro-life legislation would change people's beliefs either. Legislation, and all kinds of politics, are downstream from people's beliefs and view on life, not the other way around.

So, really, praying for rain during someone's speech as a pro-life thing is about as effective as wanting to change the country's moral landscape (inner) through legislation (outer). It doesn't affect or change people's inner content, only the outside government of behavior and actions.

And, that's the limited, natural way of the world. In fact, it's of the same nature (just different degree of application) as how natural rulers of this world dealt with political and/or power nuisances. Applying efforts on the outer. It's how Nero dealt with Christians. Strange then to see Christians take up this method/priority, in dealing with the world.

2008-08-11T13:34:00.000-07:00

Though this totally distracts from a war going on, hiding behind the attention focused on the Olympics.

Zalid Khalilzad, the US ambassador to the UN, asked his Russian counterpart Vitali Churkin: "Is the goal of the Russian Federation to change the leadership of Georgia?" Churkin replied: "There are leaders who become an obstacle. Sometimes those leaders need to contemplate how useful they have become to their people."

In a series of media interviews, Saakashvili sought to bring the United States fully behind him. After speaking to Bush by phone, he told Germany's Rhein-Zeitung newspaper: "[Bush] understands that it's not really about Georgia but in a certain sense it's also an aggression against America. The Russians want the whole of Georgia. The Russians need control over energy routes from central Asia and the Caspian Sea. In addition, they want to get rid of us, they want regime change. Every democratic movement in this neighbouring region must be got rid of," he was quoted as saying.

The Russians (and after 2003, any country wanting to invade another) are using the U.S. rhetorics and reasons of invading Iraq, and the U.S. support of establish Kosovo as a country, minus the WMD part.

That, unfortunately, is rather likely what Russian PM Putin (I thought it was a second-man position, and Dmitriy Medvedev was above him) is telling the President of the United States at the Olympics.
And who knows whether the decision over what to do about Georgia consists of some Sykes-Picot agreement, as applied to dividing the oil resources of the world.

Whether the U.S. helps Georgia and in what ways will be remembered (even though American memories last about as long as the next TV episode or the next day's headlines) throughout the world as to what happens to a country when it embarks on either an alliance or some kind of enterprise with the U.S.

It's also a clear demonstration of just how much the U.S. really cares about "Freedom", or its real priority is American national interests.

Hey, this is similar to Iraq invading Kuwait, except by historical reasoning, Saddam is more justified for annexing Kuwait than Russia invading Georgia.
Why is the U.S. not reacting other than some lip service?
In 1991 the U.S. sailed nearly its entire army halfway around the world to drive back the Iraqi Army from Kuwait and re-establish a non-democratic emirate or sheikdom in Kuwait. It was neither for freedom or democracy, but to ensure the flow of oil (one of the main component of the financial structure in the 20th and 21st century).

This time, Georgia has a democratically elected government. It's invaded by Russia which doesn't have free elections. The "civic morality" contrast is rather clear, if the American policies were identical with America's advertisement of itself.
However, the U.S. isn't doing a thing. But I thought the U.S. fought for democracy and freedom?

Georgia also sent a significant amount of its armed forces in a relatively unpopular war, alongside the U.S.

O, wait, none of that matters. American PR talks about freedom and/or democracy, but when it comes to practice, there is no American oil interest or financial interest in Georgia or in the Caucasus.
So why pretend about freedom and democracy with PR? All of that is America's past history, noble and glorious, but past. America of now, is trying to do the nasty and brutal power struggle that every country (or pre-19th century, every kingdom/empire) has been doing, to get at the top of the world or top of the region and maintain it so. It's no longer the nobler-than-other-countries America founded by the Founding Generation. It just happen to mention all its nobler history, while at the same time in practice doing the same things as the other countries.

sad.

2008-08-11T13:17:00.000-07:00

Hi Guardian.co.uk:

whereas the quality of the other reports seem OK or good, this one is utterly misleading, or lying, really. These are Falun-Gong protesters and they say so.
They are protesting about a rather occult religion that involves rotating some kind of "wheel" in your belly, based on Buddhism. And it has nothing to do with Christians.
So to "report" or "title" the video as "Christian protesters" when they are protesting about another religion, is utterly misleading, and/or lying.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2008/aug/07/christian.protest.china

If this is an attempt of cutting corners by saying the protesters' personal beliefs are Christian, or nominally Christian (they don't speak like Christians, they speak like A.N.S.W.E.R. and code-pink kind of activists), well then, why has Guardian.co.uk never had a headline saying: Methodist President George W. Bush visits this-place, or Orthodox Russian plane firing on Orthodox Georgian towns.
Or, leaving aside these outlandish examples, how about the more reasonable "Muslim suicide bomber"? Why say "terrorist" to wipe out the origin?

It is clear that Guardian.co.uk never has a tradition of referring to people by their personal beliefs in the headlines. So this is a clear attempt at using the familiarity of the word "Christian" to refer to the Falun-gong movement, when it's totally not. And you shouldn't usurp the "Christian" word, nor title a video different from its content, and still try to appear as a "neutral" news media and not a tabloid. Either one or the other. Either title the video exactly as its content "Falun-gong protesters dragged from Tian-an-men square", or title the videos in a misleading way but put a tabloid disclaimer before the videos.

2008-08-10T15:51:00.000-07:00

This is about "Thanks to the American soldiers, because they fight for freedom". There was a limited amount of words in the commentary section.

I agree about honoring them, because they are brave, most of them.
Yes, the Westboro "church" are morons, and no church at all.

The soldiers don't quite fight for "freedom", it's just too general of a word. In practice, the soldiers fight for United States national interest. They are sworn to fight for "The Constitution", and not the country. But in practice, they are drilled and trained in boot camp and peer pressure, to do exactly as they are told by their superiors. Their ultimate superiors are the generals, then Department of Defense, then national leaders. The superiors of the soldiers care about American national interests, and not "freedom" first.
In 1776, American national interest was identical with Freedom.
Not in the 20th and 21st century. The United States' national interest has led to decisions that prop-ed up both tyrants and freedom-movements of every kind. In the case of Saddam, the United States supported him with arms throughout 1980s, then beat him down in the 1990s and early 2000s. But it was the same Saddam Hussein with the same policies towards the Iraqis.

No, our (and I am not yet American) soldiers don't fight for "freedom", not always, that is. They fight for freedom when it's aligned with United States national interests. When the United States national interests are not aligned with freedom, then the soldiers' superiors can order them around accordingly, and they fight not for freedom but for other things.

The United States national interest is to make the United States the top country in the world, whether in development, or research or technology, or military might, or economic power or PR image.

That is the national interest of every country. Every country strives for that.

The United States has done many vile things, honestly, to climb to the top and try to beat down everyone else to preserve that position. "Freedom" has been forgotten long time ago as a priority. Now, national strength (military power + political power + financial power of the country) is the priority.

The uniformed soldiers are only overt soldiers. The CIA/FBI kind of people kill as well, they only do it not overtly. They are also soldiers in service of the United States. And all sorts of evil must be done to preserve a top position.

This is not to say that other countries are better than the U.S. No, not at all.
Any country at the top of the world do the exact same thing. The Roman Empire did it. Then Spain. Then Britain. Then France/Germany/Russia half-way there. These came before the United States.

It's a "clever" PR tactic that is easily refuted (if people think a little bit), to say this country embodies the ideal of 1776 America, while in practice do things contrary to it. Not always contrary, because America doesn't deliberatedly try to be evil, but whenever the choice is between "national interest" or "freedom" (or Jesus, or whatever nice and good words that people want to label their country with), the United States (or any group of people in power in any country) will always choose "national interest" first, while blabbering about how it's totally aligned with whatever ideals of the country, regardless of how contrary it is.

2008-08-05T16:15:00.001-07:00

All Singapore judges, I insult you.

2008-08-05T15:43:00.000-07:00

It's most excellent that Colorado Christian University can receive financial aid, because that's exactly how Harvard, Princeton, Yale, College of William and Mary, Rutgers and other were established, at or before 1776. And it has been constitutional for the 1776 generation and the generation after that, and the generation after that.

quote from "America's Providential History" by Mark A. Beliles and Stephen K. McDowell
Reverend John Harvard gave half his property and his entire library to start this Congregational institution. "For Christ and the Church" is its official motto. Ten of its twelve presidents up the Revolution were clergymen. The governing rules required both the president and the professors to "open and explain the Scriptures to the pupils with integrity and faithfulness, according to the best light God shall give him... so that, through the blessing of God it may be conducive to their establishment in the principles of the Christian Protestant religion."

The following report on Harvard College, from "New England's First Fruits" published in 1643, reveals the purpose for its establishment:

"After God had carried us safe to New England, and wee had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our liveli-hood, rear'd convenient places for Gods worship, and settled the Civil Government: one of the next things we longed for, and looked after was to advance Learning, and perpetuate it to Posterity, dreading to leave an illiterate Ministry to the Churches, when our present Ministers shall lie in the Dust."

Following are a few of the "rules and precepts" that were "observed in the College":

"Let every Student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the maine end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life, (John 17:3), and therefore to lay Christ in the bottome, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and Learning."

"And seeing the Lord only giveth wisedome, Let every one seriously set himselfe by prayer in secret to seeke it of him (Prov. 2:3)"

Yale University official charter: "for the liberal and religious education of suitable youth...to propagate in this wilderness, the blessed reformed Protestant religion...."

Yales' Rules were modeled after Harvard's: "Seeing God is the giver of all wisdom, every scholar, besides private or secret prayer, where all we are bound to ask wisdom, shall be present morning and evening at public prayer in the hall at the accustomed hour..."

One hundred and six of the first one hundred and eight colleges in America were founded on the Christian faith. College presidents were almost always clergymen until around 1900. They started with the intent of seminaries, to ensure the central purpose of perpetuating a learned clergy.

And by the way, the naturalist/materialist approach that is in many schools is also sectarian. The unofficial oath to Darwinism that most people in the field of biology or much of science have to take is also sectarian, even against evidence (the fluctuation of carbon-14 level in the atmosphere for instance, invalidating all carbon dating that extrapolates more than a few thousand years, because they all depend upon assuming a stable and constant level of carbon-14 in the atmosphere during all those "millions of years") It's just sectarian way of teaching materialism and naturalism, that matter is all that there is.

2008-08-05T02:23:00.000-07:00

Dear Greg Koukl:

You are right that there isn't ever a new movement of the Spirit, nor is there ever a "fad" of the Spirit. In fact, any "new movement" is a new movement of folly and most-shallow consumerism, and even the vocabulary has been borne of such. All the old stuff (by which you mean the written Word) is the right stuff. From that it can also be read that none of the blessings from God are unconditional, and God's previous pattern of deal with nations that are righteous or wicked, and it's easy and Word-evident to state so.

2008-08-04T20:37:00.000-07:00

Tom Cruise is an excellent actor.

2008-08-04T19:13:00.000-07:00

I have been unsuccessfully trying to find a picture that is a modern equivalent of the Balian of Ibelin at Kerak.

It would be a combination of a soldier in a helmet, or beret, I prefer the idea of a beret worn slanted ever since I read about it, looks very dashing,

and the face similar to that common circulated picture of a Wehrmacht soldier with belts of ammunition slung over his shoulder

and a bayonet upon the tip of a rifle, held vertically.

Ideally the face would be nearly the entire picture, and the bayonet beside it, with the soldier looking either directly facing the picture, or looking to one side in the distance.

I found a picture of a soldier that I could crop, but the expression is so lame that it is a parody of my ideal picture.

Meanwhile, the accursed FBI/IRS and similarly related agencies are still trying to frame, else they wouldn't have a living. Propagating my person in the form of media, and then equating my person with any media I give attention to, whether books, or movies, or websites, or games, or anything. Latest book I have been reading is History of the mid-late Roman Empire, by A.A. Vasiliev, who ignorantly uses the word Byzantine. Last night I decided to listen to a Napoleonic imperial march, and in the sidescrolling of youtube on the right side, I saw Russian imperial march, which I never heard ever, so I clicked on it, and it displayed a double-headed eagle much like the Habsburg eagle, looking both East and West, because incidentally both the Habsburg and the Russians took it from the Roman Empire. So today some character wore just that, walking ahead of me.

I suppose they decide that it's the discovery of the century, that I randomly clicked on a youtube link. Well, if the Russian imperial eagle, something that I haven't seen till yesterday, was related to me, then what the Lucifer have all these devil-driven agents been doing the other 365 days between April 2007 and April 2008, plus the 31 days in May 2008, 30 days in June 2008, 31 days in July 2008 and 4 days till now in August 2008, with both monitoring every second of me in camera and monitoring my central nervous system by various diabolical devices?

And with the next book I read, they'll just shift to the topic of that book, like the wandering evil spirit in the Gospel of Matthew.

Therefore, the diabolic drama will go on, till God puts an end to their machinations. Whether it be the collapse of the economy, or something else. First framing me with money, then fearing and paganly-worshiping "my" imaginary money at the same time, God will smite them as He smote the Egyptians in all things that they worship.

2008-08-02T21:05:00.000-07:00

Your Excellency Honorable President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

Maybe it's become less a matter of electricity and more a matter of national prestige, and political prestige, of already having said that you'd achieve something. A compromise, and that's a suggestion that is unthinkable to just about everybody, is to ask for permission to buy one, just one, nuke from Pakistan, and keep it in a known place, so that Iran has nuclear capability, and not seek Iran's own capability and industrial means of making more.

2008-08-02T20:01:00.000-07:00

Dear morons of the U.S. Army:

I only need to read the first and second paragraph:
"...self-inflicted gunshot wounds"
Who would shoot themselves multiple times in order to kill themselves?

The murderers are found already, they are just covered up, and must be revealed, and no excuses about them having skills indispensable to the squad/platoon/company/battalion/regiment/brigade/division/corps/army. If you can discharge homosexuals regardless of skill, then you can punish in whichever way, including execution, people who murder.

And while you are at it, subpoena President Clinton and whoever voted to have men and women together in the military, and those wanting to put women on the frontlines. Or, have Congress re-segregate the military by gender.

"....There was a blood trail from outside a contractor’s tent to inside the tent..."
It's almost certain that innumerable crimes have been committed by contractors, who are just armed people with guns and skills of killing, without the obligation and restraint of being in the military system. If this one crime involved a contractor's tent, and the previous one involved contractors (Jamie Leigh), and these are leaked or reported/trickled through the media, then there are probably ten times more unreported and successfully covered up.

This was covered up as suicide by the Army.

2008-07-31T19:15:00.000-07:00

Your Excellency Honorable President of China 胡锦涛,

I know very little about car designs, but the Germans (precision + good engineering) and the Japanese (fuel economy and durability) design the best everyday cars. Italians are good at designing luxury cars like Lamborghini and Ferrari, but in everyday cars I think the Volkswagen and BMW/Mercedes and Toyota/Mazda/Honda are better designed than Fiat.
Italians and French seem to be good in designing mini-cars.
Overall for the building of a car design industry, it is good to hire German and Japanese engineers and designers as well.

2008-07-31T18:50:00.000-07:00

There are still over twenty thousand Iraqis detained by the American forces near the Kuwaiti-Iraqi border, most of them Sunni. And the Iraqi security forces are mostly Shia/Shi'ite.

Since within the borders of the United States of America, Americans have detained me for no reason and clearly false reason, and Americans are OK with it, I question by what criteria these Iraqis have been detained.

For instance, I read on forums that troops when looking out for IED ambushes, considers someone who runs away after an IED explosion to be a terrorist. The line of reasoning is that a "terrorist", or actually "militant-fighting-for-some-cause-other-than-American", would stay near the IED to detonate it by wire or remote, and when it explodes they run like hell. Some of the "terrorist" -filmed videos downloadable online confirm this. However, what if it's just some random Iraqis near the IED explosion and they run away as well? Who would not run away if something just exploded?

So, the troops would capture "suspected insurgents", sometimes on random suspicion. And I suppose the "Patriot Act" is permanent in Iraq, since there hasn't been a Bill of Right there anyway, so anyone can be rounded up on the most random whim of an American soldier. Then, they are locked up.
Once they are locked up, everyone is automatically considered a Bin Laden, doesn't matter if they were only detained because of suspicion. Being detained by the Americans become "evidence" of guilt, even if the Americans can just round up anybody.
Just like how you morons treated me by detaining me as schizophrenic, because freedom and truth is imaginary, but U.S. Government-backed lying is real. And once detained, that was "evidence" that the person need to be detained, doesn't matter how brutally or treacherously or randomly the person was hauled in, in the first place.

Are the Americans going to turn these Sunni (and sure there are insurgents among them, but there are also random people, I can guarantee that, from observation of how Americans do things in their own country. If Americans do things unrighteously in their own country, am I supposed to think they'd treat people of some other country better?) over to the still-forming mostly-Shia soldiers, cause they might just end up in mass graves for no reason at all, especially when Shia are getting bombed for no reason during some religious holidays (saw the headlines, didn't read the article). Or are the Americans going to detain them indefinitely as well?

2008-07-31T18:19:00.000-07:00

Commentary on "Code of Honor 2" demo.

Never having been in the military or other state/government serving entities (though morons across the world wish I ever had), -student job in state university doesn't count-, I can still comment, from history books and from common sense, that in the demo mission, it's strange that some commandos/legionnaires land on the beach on an assault mission, and get their mission explained after they land. Shouldn't they know their mission before actually executing the mission? Like, on D-Day, I am sure the soldiers are briefed first, then land on the beach knowing where to go, etc.

There is an invisible wall right at the waterline, so that you can hear and see the surf but not step into it.

The FAMAS customization idea is great. However, when scoped in with sniper scope and pressing "M", the screen still shows the sniper scope view, while the sound of the character *removing* the sniper scope is heard, then the screen suddenly show a FAMAS with close-quarter scope.

Grenade can explode a few yards away and do nothing. HKMP5-SD5, having "used" it in both Rainbow Six II and III, is portrayed like it has a range of a few yards only in this game.

Other than that the gameplay is good, but the Chrome engine, for that's what I assume the game is modded from, has been stretched to its graphical maximum already. Now it's better to make games from, at least, the Call of Duty 1 engine, or the Call of Duty 2 engine, or the Rainbow Six III engine, if not the Far Cry engine.

2008-07-29T06:34:00.001-07:00

http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=140403

Haven't watched it yet. But I would like people to be suspended over "Proud to be Black" and "Proud to be Latino"/"La Raza" as well, and proud to be all other racial groups. Otherwise don't suspend people who are "Proud to be White".

2008-07-29T05:32:00.000-07:00

I am amazed that evildoers are taping me 24/7, and recording the thoughts somehow, at least some of the thoughts, and yet are still morons on spreading what I write.

I wrote "Olympic athletes village opens under cloud of smog (deliberatedly trying to add something negative)", because the article mentions smog only once, essentially a repeat of the title. Now, when an article is titled like that, you'd expect at least one paragraph to be dedicated to the smog issue, the concentration level, how smog would affect athletic performance, whether smog was an issue in the previous Athens Olympic in comparison (and there wasn't), etc. But no, even though it was mentioned in the *title* as the topic. Therefore it's plain to conclude that it was deliberately added, and the author just didn't want to write "Olympic village opens" and wanted to add something negative. If it was in the title as a topic, there would have been at least a paragraph about it.
And that's exactly what I thought. I suppose it's difficult to map or evildoer-ize all millions of my neurons and synapses. Or, thoughts are half in the spiritual realm and it's totally possible that some don't register physically.

Now, that was a specific comment related to that article, and that article only. It is absolutely inappropriate to take something I wrote about something specific, and expand it to other things, such as "don't say anything negative". Is that what I wrote or expressed? No, totally not.

People just do that way too often, with so many things.

Amnesty said that journalists working from Beijing's Olympic press centre were unable to access the group's website, as well as those of the BBC, Germany's Deutsche Welle, Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily, and Taiwan newspaper Liberty Times.

That's more or less a scandal.

Also, immediately after singing the national anthem, which start with the words "rise/arise, people who do not want to be enslaved", telling the athletes by loudspeakers to "sit down", that's also more or less a scandal. Even in elementary school from what I remember that was never done after singing the national anthem (but we also always sang it standing in the courtyard).

And, if out of the athletes dropped for 'political reasons', it's because this one

's name rhyme with Sky Dawning (like some apocalyptic thing), or that the guy's family name (Tian), combined with his girlfriend's family name (Guo), rhymes with Heavenly Kingdom, which reminds you of that peasant rebellion that took over half the country in the late Qing Dynasty, after which every Chinese ruler feared Christianity, then whoever did the banning were really stupid pigs (or sows, depending on gender).
And if you really understood Christianity (like, how it's totally different from Hitler's NSDAP, or communist peasant movements), you wouldn't fear it at all, because it is not of this world, and you can't politicize real Christianity to use for political purposes even if you wanted to. And to be not even afraid of that, but mere words that rhyme with historical connotations, verges on censorship gone amuck.

"....Tian, 28, was kicked off the national team in 2005 for unashamedly endorsing everything from wooden floors to seafood snacks. "He was producing a negative influence on the preparation for the 2008 Olympics," said a sports official....."

Interesting, an athlete prominently featured in commercials is negative influence for the Olympics? I think any country would clamor for athletes to be so popular in the days leading up to the Olympics. Unless, it's a country that does not allow, and fear, anybody getting popular who is not communist-party-leader; and that's the only person allowed to be popular, or "popular". Perhaps taking a page and learning from this country (Iran in July banned sports and movie stars from appearing in commercial advertisements), or it that country learning from China in its techniques of internal repression?

This person, by the way, is one of the few presentable athletic Chinese youth. Most of the Chinese, I see in the U.S. anyway, are the opposite, short and with glasses one way or another and rather ugly and cannot represent the country (or their race) as a recruiting poster of male athlete.

2008-07-29T01:14:00.000-07:00

This is, by far, the best idea I have ever heard anyone propose.

That actually would bring peace. A Palestinian Arab state would not, seriously, because there is nothing else to expect than a militia-run state. It would become a militia scuffle with official titles in name only. Living standards would be terrible. Jordan is already a successful Arab state and already has extensive and well-run state infrastructure, with good education, health-care, personal and social development opportunities, things that a new Palestinian state would not be able to offer.
Palestinian Arabs choosing to not move are diplomatically protected by being citizens of Jordan, they can still live and work in Israel with dignity. There'd be no more need to fire rockets and fight for a homeland, because not only Palestinian Arabs get Jordan as their homeland, they also get to work and live in Israel everywhere as Jordanians. And there'll be no more need of militarization of the region. All Palestinian Arabs would cease being refugees and get official recognition and a country. With living standards sharply climbing, Hamas and Fatah militia ranks would decrease dramatically because people have better to do than finding dignity in an AK, or need-of-sense-of-belonging in the ranks of a militia.
This would only work if Jordanian citizenship comes with permanent permission to work in Jordan, with work permit in Israel easy to apply.

This is something that would bring peace. And it's seriously infinitely better than a Palestinian Arab state, for all people concerned. If this was the topic of the Annapolis Conference, I'd have been all over it.

2008-07-27T16:21:00.000-07:00

South Koreans shamelessly rewrite history.
A bit like North Korea's propaganda (though I have yet to see/hear it actually, rather than only read descriptions of it), only in a democracy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riCTb8TsAUQ
caption says it's about the Battle of Seoul in 1945. I have to assume it's battle around Seoul, because there is no urban setting at all in the video segment.

At 2:16-2:19 and throughout the video, there are displays of Chinese national flag, designed in 1949. Isn't the battle supposed to be in 1945?

From 1910(?) until 1945 when the American troops landed and liberated the Southern half of Korea, the entire Korean peninsula was occupied by the Japanese Armies.

In other words, from 1910 till 1945, the only armed soldiers in Korea were Japanese soldiers. Any armed Koreans would be some kind of guerilla with captured Japanese rifles, and definitely NOT wearing American-helmet, American-uniform, carrying American rifles and even American heavy weapons.

In 1945 the USSR entered Korea from the northern border and the US Army landed from the south. Both armies fought the Japanese till end of war. USSR took northern half and established North Korea. US took southern half and established South Korea.

The point it, in 1945, the only equipped and organized armies in Korea are : Japanese, and then Soviet or American.

There were no Koreans in either American or Soviet uniforms, especially whole units with American uniform and equipment. That was established after 1945 during the American making of the South Korean state. And who are the ones flying the "flag that wasn't designed till 4 years later"?

(and just a comment, the South Koreans don't acknowledge the American or the UN combat troops at all in Tae Guk Gi, creating the deluded national myth that their did it themselves, when the South Korean troops absolutely sucked in battle against either the North Koreans or the Chinese, they were only propped up by American fire support.
And I also heard that the Kims do the same in the North, not acknowledging the Chinese armies either, as if they did it themselves. Without the Chinese 志愿军, the UN combat troops would have overrrun North Korea in late 1950)

(another comment: merely shaking the camera all over the place like an epileptic and saturating the scenes with crowds of people, people flying and explosions, doesn't make the movie epic or Spielbergian. The Chinese movie titled Assembly copied the Spielbergian techniques but not the skill in the application thereof. It has to be done with style and timing and quality. Otherwise it's slightly unreal (like in Assembly) or almost comical - like in this film/TV series, whoever made it.)

2008-07-26T11:47:00.000-07:00

Dear developers of Summer Athletics 2008,

Ich don't know how to speich Deutsch yet. But I would like to say: I am rather disappointed to see that the developers don't even know that the best angle of throwing anything is 45 degrees. I know that from high school physics, and then again from Physics 7A. I have always heard that science and math education was of higher quality in Europe (to be continued later).

You had the optimal angle for throwing javelin at something other than 45 degrees. I followed the instruction and got little distance consistently. So I stopped following instructions, and nearly doubled my distance.

A game for "the whole family" should also have correct info.

Other than that the game's graphics look very fun, music good. However, please download the Mount and Blade demo for an idea of more-than-basic facial customization. In Summer Athletics the customization are rather rudimentary, and with all the variation of Asian I could not make the face look other than Indian (of India) or Negroid (and I'd add and -oid word for India if there was such a word), when India is just one of the departments od Asia and I should say most Asians are East Asians, and that facial feature was not included. Mount and Blade had a much more complete facial customization.

And, aside from the angle in javelin throw, the movement keys of mid-air posture for long jump and pole vault do not work. No matter how I press the <- and -> and the up arrow, I could not get the character to lift the legs. The demo should have been a beta release, and not a demo release (partial demonstration of finished product).

(continued:)
and especially, that Germans are very accurate and serious and efficient in work ethics, etc., and that's why German cars are so superior to the other cars. German car designs are superior to American car designs because Americans in general just don't care much about accuracy, and it's reflected in the quality of engineering designs.
Then I also hear that German car (BMW, Mercedes, VW) quality have been declining since the 1990s. Perhaps it's a reflection of loss of culture? Perhaps, the greatness of Germany is in Prussia, and as long as Soviet tanks had their barrels pointed at Germany, the Prussian-ness in Germany was kept. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Germans are trying to get rid of the core of their people as well (it's not about geographical descent, it's about culture).
In other words, the Germans are Americanizing, and that's just sad.
The anti-culture law of music should be repealed, and songs about bravery and courage allowed again. And, WWII documentary made in Germany should be about the German Army in combat.

2008-07-25T19:34:00.000-07:00

Allan Tulchin, you are an idiot and no historian.

....For example, he found legal contracts from late medieval France that referred to the term “affrèrement,” roughly translated as brotherment. Similar contracts existed elsewhere in Mediterranean Europe, Tulchin said.
In the contract, the “brothers” pledged to live together sharing “un pain, un vin, et une bourse,” (that’s French for one bread, one wine and one purse)

According to you then, about 3 million Americans in the Armed Forces are all collectively married to each other in a huge collective gay civil-union, or, each army squad, the soldiers who sleep and eat together, is some kind of civil-union?

.....the “brotherments” had to be sworn before a notary and witnesses, Tulchin explained.

You have to show (and you will not, because that wasn't how pious France viewed life) that those notary and witnesses in the swearing are acknowledging approval of sexual life between men, or anything other than some kind of communalistic (sigh, communistic?) sharing of material goods.

I also wonder whether you understand the etymology of French language at all, or French culture of the Medieval Ages (that means, Christianity practiced as basic assumption and not option), to be able to read historical records in the era's context. If you are reading with a 2008 New-Age utterly libertarian view and when reading historical records not trying to put yourself in the era's shoes, and understanding the historical record from that era's perspective, then you might as well not do history, and your freaking history degree has been wasted, if you read history that way the whole time. Utterly disconnected from history. Late medieval people do not think the same way people think in 2008, and, especially not the same way Americans think, even if they wrote in a similar language of Latin Alphabets. To read late medieval people as if they were 2008 Americans walking in medieval costumes, lol, is just idiotic. You can't even read WWII history this way (or, even current history in the non-America world), much less things from hundreds of years ago.

But, that's exactly how most Americans see the world, when they see people, they don't bother knowing a bit that isn't in their immediate surrounding (they don't even know anything about Canada), Americans just assume other people are people of American prejudices, walking in other people's clothes.

Even, blasphemously, applying modern corrupted connotation in the reading and preaching of the Holy Bible, when Moses/David/other-Israelites/-disciples/ wrote it they in no way thought in terms of English language, connotations or 20th/21st century cultural bias.

You will cease using your wasted higher education title to take advantage of the widespread un-thinking-ness of the American population. Your flimsy reasonings would make pets and pet-owners married, or adopted kid and adopting parents into some kind of marriage, or slavery-and/or-indentured servants and slave owner some kind of unequal marriage. Marriage involves procreation and sexual intercourse and the formation of a family unit -and that means reproduction-. Not just any kind of contract.

2008-07-25T17:29:00.000-07:00

Here then is my submission:

French military victories

A double standard has been used in the writing of the pamphlet.
France was counted as lost the war, if in the middle of the war it was defeated, but won eventually (WWII).
France was counted as lost the war, if in the middle of the war it won, but was defeated eventually (Napoleonic Wars).

First of all, the modern France is composed of Germanic Franks (invaded after 300AD) + native Celts (Romanized and non-Romanized Gauls) + Roman, starting from the times of Roman Empire.

Gauls are just Celts (pronounced Kelt, I have no idea who pronounced that basketball team). The Celts were called by Romans Gallae, Gallo, Gallata, etc. There were Gallaeci tribes in Iberia, Gauls in Gaul, Galatians in Galata (Celts invaded Anatolia), Celts in Britannia and Ireland. It's all from the same word, Celt, pronounced in different ways. For information and fun on Celtic history (or Classical history in general), get Rome: Total War, then the 1.5 patch, and the mod Europa Barbarorum.

Before the Roman Empire, Celts were spread all over Europe. The pre-Roman Gaul isn't the France of now, no more than the Iroquois Confederation are the United States of America. Gauls/Celts became a component of French blood later, just as Iroquois (I wonder how many were added to the Union) became a component of U.S. population later.
So putting Gallic Wars as part of French wars is inaccurate.

Frank Wars:
the Franks are the modern French, or a main component.
Frank in French is "Franc", it means "Frank the historical people", and "Frank-honest" just like in English, and before the Euro, the franc was the French currency. Franc-tireur (Frank shooters) also means guerilla in French.
Franc is also the root word of France the country, and Français the language.
In German, France is "Frankreich", the Empire of the Franks.

Merovingian Kingdom (457-751)

Frankish tribes migrated into the Roman Empire starting the 3rd century, and took the Roman provinces of Gaul in the late 400s AD. Clovis the first king of the Franks unite all Frankish tribes. From the name of Clovis comes Louis (French), Ludwig (German), Lodewijk (Dutch), and Lewis (English)

The conquest of this Merovingian kingdom (that name is more significant than just an odd character in the Matrix) are the first French military victories.
The Franks conquer the Kingdom of Soisson of the Roman general Syagrius and expel the Visigoths from southern Gaul at the Battle of Vouillé.

larger map

Carolingian Empire (751-987)

Charles Martel (Carolus Martellus in latin, Charles the Hammer) stops the Muslim invasion of Europe at Battle of Tours, 732 AD. The Umayyad outnumbered Charles Martel's army.
French military victory.

His grandson
Charles/Karol/Karl I (Karolus/Carolus Magnus in latin, or Charles the Great, or Charlemagne expand the kingdom of the Franks to a large extent, including all of modern France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, most of Germany and half of Italy, most of Czechoslovakia and part of Hungary and Croatia.
French military victories, in conquering all these.

Vikings raid the European coast during the Carolingian Empire. The people that emerged from the interactions between Vikings and the mix of Franks and Gallo-Romans became known as the Normans (Northman, Norseman, Nord-man).
"France"at that time was composed of the Frank tribes mixed with other tribes, the Normans, the Burgundy/Bourgogne, the Aquitanian, the Ligurian, the Breton,
The unified French language didn't happen till 19th century after the First Empire (of Napoleon). And even then, only gradually. Napoleon himself spoke Corsican. So for most of France's history, it was a decentralized region with different factions speaking different languages, but they were all part of France.

Wars of Medieval France

Capetian Dynasty (987-1328)

Guillaume le Conquérant (William the Conqueror, or William of Normandy) invades the British Isles and conquer the Saxons there.
French military victory. There is no "French" as we know it now till the First Empire, or perhaps the late Middle Ages at the time of Louis XIV. In early Middle Ages,
The rest, to be completed later

Hundred's Year War
won. France drove England from the continent (except tiny region of Calai) and ended up with more territory. England kept Calais (but lost it later. Calais is now in France), and the Channel Islands (still English).

See excellent animated map showing all the gains and losses and eventual win.

First Crusade
won

Thirty's Year War
won. Successful invasion of Bavaria, victory at Second Battle of Nördlingen and Truce of Ulm.

In 1648 the Swedes (commanded by Marshal Carl Gustaf Wrangel) and the French (led by Turenne and Condé) defeated the Imperial (Holy Roman Empire, or Austrian Habsburg) army at the Battle of Zusmarshausen and Lens. These results left only the Imperial territories of Austria safely in Habsburg hands.

Wars of Colonies
won
I know nearly nothing about how France got all the colonies, but it had to win the wars of conquest in order to get these colonies in the first place.
Algeria, French Guyana, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, French Indochina, and I don't even know the complete list of all the locations. Here is the map. It's quite a large chunk of the world, for a country about the size of Texas.

Colonial war in 19th-century China
won
A more or less shameful episode in my native country. French marines and French fleet (with muskets and cannons of course) carved out large spheres of influence in China, defeating the far more numerous Imperial (Chinese) armies (who, by the way, throw spears) and eventually stormed Beijing. There is a ruin in the city, some pillars and the remains of an imperial palace, that is kept as a (defeat) memorial.
That's the first French military victory I learned of in my life, because growing up as kid (in the early 1990s), all the 19th century war were repeated again and again in books, movies, TV etc.
This is also how I know that pamphlet is false.

World War I
won

World War II
won. How do you think France got one of five permanent seat on UN Security Council (the others are US Britain China and USSR-now-Russia).

Napoleonic Wars
by the pamphlet's standards, the French won the Napoleonic Wars, because they were victorious in the middle of the war. France was the first non-Greek and non-Eastern country to expand their country unto an entire continent.

France militarily defeated all the lands in green and blue, the lands in blue just weren't occupied.

And someone else compiled a long list of French military victories over the English (the traditional competitor of France). Anyone wishing to extend their historical knowledge can look up each battle and read about it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQtJpXUSHJs

1001 Val de Saire -FRENCH Victory-
Oct 1066 Hastings -FRENCH Victory-
July 1214 Bouvines -FRENCH Victory-
July 1242 Taillebourg -FRENCH Victory-
1342 Morlaix -FRENCH Victory-
1349 Lunalonge -FRENCH Victory-
1351 Ardres -FRENCH Victory-
Oct 1359 Calais -FRENCH Victory-
May 1364 Cocherel -FRENCH Victory-
March 1369 Montiel -FRENCH Victory-
Dec 1370 Pontvallain -FRENCH Victory-
June 1372 La Rochelle -FRENCH Victory-
1373 Chiset -FRENCH Victory-
March 1421 Baugé -FRENCH Victory-
Sep 1423 Brossinière -FRENCH Victory-
Oct 1428 Orléans -FRENCH Victory-
Feb 1429 J. des Harengs -FRENCH Victory-
June 1429 Jargeau -FRENCH Victory-
June 1429 Beaugency -FRENCH Victory-
June 1429 Patay -FRENCH Victory-
June 1429 Raids sur Reims -FRENCH Victory-
Oct 1430 Compiègne -FRENCH Victory-
May 1435 Gerberoy -FRENCH Victory-
Oct 1435 Dieppe -FRENCH Victory-
Oct 1444 Rouen -FRENCH Victory-
May 1745 Fontenoy -FRENCH Victory-
Oct 1746 Roucoux -FRENCH Victory-
July 1747 Lauffeldt -FRENCH Victory-
Nov 1747 Berge-op-Zoom -FRENCH Victory-
1748 Maastricht -FRENCH Victory-
July 1754 Fort Necessity FRENCH-Indian Victory -
July 1755 Monongahela River FRENCH-Indian Victory -
Aug 1756 Oswego -FRENCH Victory-
July 1757 Hastenbeck -FRENCH Victory-
Aug 1757 Fort William Henry -FRENCH Victory-
Jul 1758 Ticonderoga -FRENCH Victory-
April 1759 Bergen FRENCH-Saxon Victory -
Oct 1781 Yorktown American-FRENCH Victory -
Aug-Dec 1793 Toulon -FRENCH Victory-
6-8 Sep 1793 Hondeschoote -FRENCH Victory-
17-18 May 1794 Tourcoing -FRENCH Victory-
22 Aug 1798 Killala Bay -FRENCH Victory-
27 Aug 1798 Castlebar -FRENCH Victory-
5 Sep 1798 Callooney -FRENCH Victory-
8 Sep 1798 Ballinamuck -FRENCH Victory-
19 Sep 1799 Bergen Op Zoom -FRENCH Victory-
6 Oct 1799 Casstricum -FRENCH Victory-
16 Jan 1809 Coruna -FRENCH Victory-
27 June 1809 Casa de Salinas -FRENCH Victory-
July-Dec 1809 Walcheren -FRENCH Victory-
16-24 May 1810 Siege of Mequinenza -FRENCH Victory-
10 July 1810 Barquilla -FRENCH Victory-
24 July 1810 Coa River -FRENCH Victory-
11 Aug 1810 Villagarcia -FRENCH Victory-
27 Sep 1810 Bussaco The Brit-Portug. repelled
the assaults of French troops but were nevertheless forced to withdraw.
13 Oct 1810 Fuengirola Polish-FRENCH Victory-
April-May 1811 Blockade of Almeida -FRENCH Victory-
April-May 1811 1st Siege of Badajoz -FRENCH Victory-
16 May 1811 Albuera British commander Beresford thought he was defeated by the French. Wellington's reaction to Beresford's account was: "This won't do. Write me down a victory".
May-June 1811 3rd Siege of Badajoz -FRENCH Victory-
June 1811 Operations around Almeida -FRENCH Victory-
22 June 1811 Elvas -FRENCH Victory-
25 Sep 1811 El Bodon -FRENCH Victory-
29 Dec 1811 Membrillo -FRENCH Victory-
11 April 1812 Villagarcia -FRENCH Victory-
11 June 1812 Maguilla -FRENCH Victory-
18 July 1812 Castrejon -FRENCH Victory-
11 Aug 1812 Malajahonda -FRENCH Victory-
Sep-Oct 1812 Siege of Burgos -FRENCH Victory-
23 Oct 1812 Venta del Pozo -FRENCH Victory-
25 Oct 1812 Villa Muriel -FRENCH Victory-
28 Oct 1812 Tordesillas -FRENCH Victory-
17 Nov 1812 San Munoz -FRENCH Victory-
June 1813 Siege of Tarragona -FRENCH Victory-
24 June 1813 Villafranca -FRENCH Victory-
25 July 1813 Roncesvalles -FRENCH Victory-
25 July 1813 Maya -FRENCH Victory-
July-Aug 1813 Siege of San Sebastian FRENCH-Allies Victory -
26-28 July 1813 Sorauren FRENCH-Allies Victory -
July-Aug 1813 Blockade of Tarragona -FRENCH Victory-
2 Aug 1813 Lizaso -FRENCH Victory-
13-14 Sep 1813 skirmishes at: Ordal and Villafranca -FRENCH Victory-
7 Oct 1813 Vera -FRENCH Victory-
16 Jan 1814 Molins de Rey -FRENCH Victory-
Feb-April 1814 Siege of Bayonne -FRENCH Victory-
8 March 1814 Bergen op Zoom -FRENCH Victory-
17 March 1814 Daunia's Raid -FRENCH Victory-
19 March 1814 Vic-Bigorre -FRENCH Victory-
10 April 1814 Toulouse draw
The FRENCH call it their victory.
They lost only 3.200
The British call it their victrory.
The British-Spanish casualties 4.500
14 April 1814 Bayonne -FRENCH Victory-
16 June 1815 Quatre Bras draw ? victory ?
The French stayed on the battlefield.
They lost only 4.000
Wellington retreated after battle.
British-German-Dutch casualties 4.800.
17 June 1815 Genappe -FRENCH Victory-

Wars :

- La guerre entre les Franco Normands et les Anglo saxon(Hastings 1066)
- La guerre entre rois de France et Plantagenets( appelée aussi première guerre de cent ans) 1159 1299
- La guerre de Saint Sardos 1323 1325
- La guerre de cent ans 1337 1453
- La guerre de la ligue d'Augsbourg 1688 1697
- La guerre de succession d'Autriche 1740 1748
- La guerre d'indépendance americaine 1776-1783
- Les 2 guerres de la Révolution (1792-1802)
- Les 3 guerres Napoléoniennes suivantes.

As to this very last paragraphs, it has to do with some more wars (not just battles) the French have won. I will expand this thread later. It doesn't matter because only one French military victory is needed to make my point. And I don't like the idea of the intellectual level of American political discourse to be diluted of substance (or, to be below the quality of British discourse I have heard/read so far, if English-speaking people can think in England, why not in the U.S. as well?), so that any kind of rhetoric is taken without thinking.

I need to post something else.

2008-07-25T17:20:00.001-07:00

So, I am going to do this.
After the start of the Iraq War, there was this ahistorical online pamphlet circulating around about "French military victories" or lack thereof. Now, I read and speak French and also read history (and know war songs in French) so I knew that France fought more victories than mentioned in the pamphlets. For the sake of jokes, I went along. Now since I am in this place, and since I now think the pamphlet is lame, it's about time I rectify France's history to un-reading un-knowing Americans, lest a generation of kids grow up Googling and have a total wrong idea of France and French-speaking civilization.

The original pamphlet goes:

We are still accepting submissions from history researchers.
Last update: May 4, 2005.

- Gallic Wars
- Lost. In a war whose ending foreshadows the next 2000 years of French history, France is conquered by of all things, an Italian. [Or at ths time in history, a Roman -ed.]

- Hundred Years War
- Mostly lost, saved at last by female schizophrenic who inadvertently creates The First Rule of French Warfare; "France's armies are victorious only when not led by a Frenchman." Sainted.

- Italian Wars
- Lost. France becomes the first and only country to ever lose two wars when fighting Italians.

- Wars of Religion
- France goes 0-5-4 against the Huguenots

- Thirty Years War
- France is technically not a participant, but manages to get invaded anyway. Claims a tie on the basis that eventually the other participants started ignoring her.

- War of Revolution
- Tied. Frenchmen take to wearing red flowerpots as chapeaux.

- The Dutch War
- Tied

- War of the Augsburg League/King William's War/French and Indian War
- Lost, but claimed as a tie. Three ties in a row induces deluded Frogophiles the world over to label the period as the height of French military power.

- War of the Spanish Succession
- Lost. The War also gave the French their first taste of a Marlborough, which they have loved every since.

- American Revolution
- In a move that will become quite familiar to future Americans, France claims a win even though the English colonists saw far more action. This is later known as "de Gaulle Syndrome", and leads to the Second Rule of French Warfare; "France only wins when America does most of the fighting."

- French Revolution
- Won, primarily due the fact that the opponent was also French.

- The Napoleonic Wars
- Lost. Temporary victories (remember the First Rule!) due to leadership of a Corsican, who ended up being no match for a British footwear designer.

- The Franco-Prussian War
- Lost. Germany first plays the role of drunk Frat boy to France's ugly girl home alone on a Saturday night.

- World War I
- Tied and on the way to losing, France is saved by the United States [Entering the war late -ed.]. Thousands of French women find out what it's like to not only sleep with a winner, but one who doesn't call her "Fraulein." Sadly, widespread use of condoms by American forces forestalls any improvement in the French bloodline.

- World War II
- Lost. Conquered French liberated by the United States and Britain just as they finish learning the Horst Wessel Song.

- War in Indochina
- Lost. French forces plead sickness; take to bed with the Dien Bien Flu

- Algerian Rebellion
- Lost. Loss marks the first defeat of a western army by a Non-Turkic Muslim force since the Crusades, and produces the First Rule of Muslim Warfare; "We can always beat the French." This rule is identical to the First Rules of the Italians, Russians, Germans, English, Dutch, Spanish, Vietnamese and Esquimaux.

- War on Terrorism
- France, keeping in mind its recent history, surrenders to Germans and Muslims just to be safe. Attempts to surrender to Vietnamese ambassador fail after he takes refuge in a McDonald's.

The question for any country silly enough to count on the French should not be "Can we count on the French?", but rather "How long until France collapses?"

"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion. All you do is leave behind a lot of noisy baggage."

Or, better still, the quote from last week's Wall Street Journal: "They're there when they need you."

2008-07-25T02:38:00.000-07:00

Dear Iraqis:

The Olympics is about the athletes. What do people on the Olympic committee do? Make phone calls and arrange travel plans and get the paperwork of the athletes? What possibly important task could people on the Olympic committee do? It's the athletes who compete.

If there aren't enough people on the Olympic committee, then you can randomly take volunteers from the streets, seriously, as long as they are literate. It shouldn't take that much skill to be someone on the Olympic committee, in fact, much less skill than what it takes to be an Olympic athlete.

And if Iraqis can't fill the quota of the Olympic committee (and that's without people shooting), which is something very simple, then what's the talk about Iraqis being able to run the country (which is something very complicated) and Americans can leave, etc. Please fill the quota of the Olympic committee and send athletes to the Olympics. And you may see it, if you like, as a demonstration to the American "occupiers" that you can resolve a simple issue/task that just about all the other national governments in the world can do, without involving shooting. You can do one Sunni, one Shia, one Kurd, and again, for the ratio. Apparently the Olympic committees have very symbolic political power,

"They may nominate cities within their respective countries as candidates for future Olympic Games. NOCs also promote the development of athletes and training of coaches and officials at a national level within their countries"

If Iraqis can't even distribute such symbolic "political" power amongst themselves, it's really doubtful if they'd distribute the much more tangible oil revenue evenly amongst the Iraqi factions, or political representation of voting, or the national resources (manpower, budget, machinery) of construction and development of infrastructure on their own. Are the roads going to be better paved in one tribe's area rather than the other? Is the water going to be filtered in one tribe's area and unfiltered in the other?

So please form an Olympic committee and send athletes to the Olympics.

2008-07-24T22:50:00.000-07:00

Dear Barack Obama:

About the pictures and the crowd. Wow. Just, wow.

And, if you weren't married, you'd probably get a lot of girlfriends. That girl like, would totally jump on you.

I would like to comment about the content of the speech. The previous speech of you I listened/read, was the speech in an African-American church where you spoke at the pulpit. My recollection of that one was between 10 and 20 minutes of vague "good-words", the most repeated words were "hope" and "unity" and especially talks of unity, without ever mentioning how.
You said in that speech, and I am paraphrasing (I could go get the words verbatim, but I don't want to right now): "[President Bush's administration started this Iraq war], rather than instead, all the people just coming together in unity." The opposite of starting the Iraq war, or the solution of Iraq war, is all the people just coming together in unity? And I assume you mean all Americans in unity over Iraq issue, and/or all Americans and *all-Iraqis* together in unity Like, how.

"The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes, natives and immigrants, Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand," he said.
....
That is why we cannot afford to be divided.
...
Now is the time to build new bridges across the globe as strong as the one that bound us across the Atlantic. Now is the time to join together, through constant cooperation, strong institutions, shared sacrifice, and a global commitment to progress, to meet the challenges of the 21st century. ... we can join in a new and global partnership to dismantle the networks that have struck in Madrid and Amman; in London and Bali; in Washington and New York

I don't really know what I am going to comment, it's just there is only so much that can be accomplished through partnership and "coming together". And, that's not how Berlin Wall fell. The Berlin Wall is of a complete different nature that the other walls mentioned, and it didn't come down because West and East Germany partnered, it came down because the Soviet Union collapsed (and that a combination of war, communist mismanagement and democracy movements in East Europe). It was on a much more different plane than racial differences. The Berlin Wall wasn't erected because the West and East Germans saw each other as different people. They were the same people with different ideas, that are mutually incompatible. All the examples of walls mentioned above, the way it's said, just make it sound way too easy and simple, a grand declaration that everyone would like, but practically infeasible by national policy.

The Germans listening, some were thrilled as to say "You are my political redeemer" because the thought train of the speech was this:

1 - Berlin Wall (and this is personal experience to just about all Germans, and after a long and traumatizing national event with half the country occupied and, might I say, brainwashed, so when the Wall came down that was probably The-Whole-World-Changing! for them)
2 - Berlin Wall fell because of partnership and "coming together" and hope (there was that involved, but that wasn't the main thing at all)
3 - World issues or just about all of them, can be compared to Berlin Wall;
and resolved with partnership and "coming together";
which Barack Obama seems better at than the current President, especially by the large crowd, etc.

The first two parts of #3 are just not it. The third part of #3 is incomplete. Barack Obama is better than the current President at meeting many people, because it's easier to travel all over the place on a campaign than when there are many things to do in the White House. Partnerships are years or decades-long and much more than visiting somewhere.

- Germans, really happy in the party atmosphere of so many gathered (because probably hasn't been this many people gathered in Germany in a long time) , in-take (through how the words communicate ideas) the thesis of the speech, and by the thesis, see that all the world's issues can be solved like how the Berlin Wall fell, and that's because the determination of the German people to stand united in their common humanity/destiny, and everybody everywhere need only to "stand united in their common humanity/destiny" like the East and West Germans, then all the world's issues can be solved. Now, if I just believed all that, I'd be soaring with hope. If only the world were so.

In 1956 the Hungarians (Imre Nagy) tried to tear down their communist "wall".
In 1968 the Czech and Slovak (Alexander Dubcek; Ludwig Svoboda) tried to tear down their communist "wall".
Soviet tanks rolled in, and crushed them.

Same would have happened to the East Germans tearing their wall. Soviets would have shot them all. It wasn't the partnership and common destiny of West and East Germany that took down the wall. It was the absence of Soviet tanks that day, and that was caused by many things.
and
Partnership and common destiny were made *possible* after the wall falling and/or because the wall fell; they were not factors pre-existing *before* the wall falling causing its fall. So it's more or less odd to take the Berlin Wall as example, and then propose partnership and common destiny/humanity with all the world's issues.

If we could win a battle of ideas against the communists, we can stand with the vast majority of Muslims who reject the extremism that leads to hate instead of hope.

I am somewhat in thought as to your understanding of communism or militant Islam, at least whether you see any and all worldview-differences, whether ideological or religious, only as an adaptation or sub-category of the race-(unequal)relations of Civil Rights movement. Because implementing policies (or, try to steering the brainstorming of policies, since you don't seem to have specific policies other than a vague idea that all different and clashing peoples of the world should come together like the e.pluribus.unum-ing (finally) of the Whites and the African-Americans in the U.S.) with that perspective would be really disastrous, with of course the greatest vision and the greatest intentions and ideals, and, I really like the idea and ideals and really wish it were so, it's just, worldviews are fundamentally different from races, and things just don't work that way.
Getting people to agree that all races are created equal in common humanity is one thing.
Getting people to do the same with their worldviews (especially with religions) is more or less an incomplete understanding of what a "worldview" is.

The Soviets were never reasoned out of communism.
And other than the common-ness of being four-letter words with the same starting letter, "hate" and "hope" are not alternatives, it's not either-or. The communists had plenty of hope for a utopia, and plenty of hate for non-communists. Now changing "communist" with militant-Muslims. I wonder how, as policy, something is going to be implemented on winning the war of "ideas" against militant-Muslims when the war of ideas with communists wasn't even won. If the war of ideas with communists has been won, how come there is widespread socialism in one form or another? (I think I have little knowledge in polisci, but socialism is the stage leading to communism)

Look at Berlin, where the bullet holes in the buildings and the somber stones and pillars near the Brandenburg Gate insist that we never forget our common humanity. Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity.

I am not sure whether "common humanity" is supposed to mean the same thing, or different things in these paragraphs.

Now, I am not deliberatedly trying to throw a monkey wrench in your campaign, and I am not even a citizen and have neither constitutional nor civic obligations towards this country (I didn't oath anything to China my country of birth or Canada my second country of citizenship either because I got one at birth and the other under 18), I do however enjoy the idea of a leader who
is a bit more knowledgeable about the world's issues.

(I am not certain, but I think most of the Israelis didn't do much -or shall I say, didn't mind much- the person yelling at the Western Wall, is because according to the person, he is giving Barack Obama proportional reverence according to the reverence given to Jerusalem in giving it to Arabs and, -I am not sure what they thought of the ads at the Western Wall. Now, that's Judaism. Probably same with ads on the Vatican, etc. (and non-Catholic Christianity doesn't have geographical religious identification) It would be interesting to put some on the Kabaa, and see what is the definition of "extremism" and the extent of moderate Muslims and the partnership and common destiny of humanity lol-)

Common humanity unifies the races, because "race" is a attribute of a human being.
Common humanity does not unify the worldviews (whether ideological or religious), nor the unequal nations, because religious or ideological worldviews, or self-interests of different groups, these already acknowledge a common humanity, they are not difference at the level of humanity (like different races are), they are differences of truth occurring a level above the dimension of common humanity.

Unfortunately I see better what "nations" are, and they have interests, not morality really. In 1776 the Americans tried to make a new kind of nation, a city upon a hill, example to the other nations. Now America is mostly just like any other nation, only it's several times stronger militarily than other nations and can force its way around, even bad things. With all the talks of Constitution, America is going its course despite, and not because of, the Constitution and the Spirit that wrote the Constitution. That said, nations have interests, not morality nor concern for humanity. America has started to be very different than that, but sometime in the 20th century it became that as well, I think the victory of WWII got to its head.
Nations. You might as well be telling corporations about 'common humanity' and partnerships and coming together. Corporation already acknowledge common humanity, it's just their interests override that.
Now, here is the more or less horrible condition this world is in. Partnership also requires being in some kind of conformity with the people/nation you partner with. Making speeches are nice, even speeches that are mostly just nice-sounding, but in practice, you'd have to choose between

the hope-by-common-humanity (and change) mentioned in your speeches (in other words, the-Barack-Obama-vision-withoutplans-that-is-so-different-from-the-usual-ways-of-the-world-
and-that's-why-people-think-it's-new-and-hopeful)

and
the "unity" and "coming together" mentioned in your speeches. (in other words, yoking yourself at the same level with nations that function by the usual ways of the world, not Barack Obama's ideas. Terribly unfortunately, "nations" in the previous phrase would also include the U.S. :( Like, you may make fun of President Bush sometimes, but if President you'll or 'd go through the same difficulties, and from my reading of your speeches so far, probably exacerbated in difficulty, however your views of President Bush. -here I am speaking not specific issues but general things in Presidential life that each President has to go through, such as arguing with Congress, getting bills passed, doing foreign diplomacy with national haranguing and not just as a tourist, etc.)

Because if you partner with people/nations, then you can no longer hope anything more than they don't hope for. Tough choice between the ideas that is possible to mention together in the same speech, but not practicable together in the same situation.

It's just, any great leader's speech must not only sound good, but its substance and its thesis must pass the scrutiny of very simple critical thinking. Not just the sounding-good of many good-sounding words, but the ideas communicated by the words, they have to stand as well. Pity that in an era of mass entertainment (look good, sound good, feel good), and mass advertising (what look good, sound good, feel good, is good), most Americans just stop at sounding-good and stopped thinking. Perhaps if I were more sensible I would mourn greatly, or actually weep or something. I am not in a situation where I have the luxury of feelings, because so many bad things are continually happening to me. Anyway, most Americans would just stop at sounding-good and the level of speech-writing has "adapted" by diluting/thinning down to that standard. And this speech, written to be spoken in Germany, was written to the same current American standard. When reading JFK's most famous speech (not the Berlin one, it was short - and thus could afford to be vague), it was some literary work, with much substance. This speech, frankly, hasn't been written in JFK's era, when Americans were more attentive.

2008-07-22T16:03:00.000-07:00

Dear Voice of the Martyrs,

It seems that after the death of Richard Wurmbrand (I have no idea what the newsletter or magazine writings was like before then, but I am sure it is not what it's like now, because I know how Richard Wurmbrand writes in Tortured for Christ, and that was completely politically incorrect), the Voice of the Martyrs, while supposedly writing about a faith that is more genuine than the faith in the "West" and willing to suffer for Christ, would even alter that writing for political purposes, and thus taking lightly the death and dying of Christian martyrs worldwide.

This is not such a great example, but I'll mention it anyway. And if you start trying to be politically correct etc, then perhaps you should change name, to the Christian-Martyrs-don't-have-a-voice-in-the-Western-hemisphere-and-First-World
-because-we-don't-bother-listening-to-their-preachings-anyway-because-when-
people-preach-about-Jesus-and-live-accordingly-there-isn't-compromise-with-
the-god-of-political-correctness-So-it-is-actually-not-the-Voice-of-any-Christian
-Martyrs-just-some-people-in-the-First-World-telling-stories-about-them-
either-reducing-that-to-entertainment-or-using-these-narratives-for-political
-purposes-and-the-terribleness-of-what-they-go-through-is-utterly-lost-
because-the-excrement-of-political-message-is-over-the-Bible-and-it's-rather
-difficult-to-appreciate-that-with-the-opaque-layer-of-politics-over-it

There, how about that.

Indian State Admits Few Complaints of ‘Forced' Conversions - Compass Direct News



On July 17, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Gujarat
state disclosed there were only three complaints of alleged "forcible" conversions
in the last 10 years, and only two of those concerned Christian conversions.
According to Compass Direct News, "The Gujarat State Home Department made the
embarrassing disclosure after Samson Christian, a leader of the All India Christian
Council, sought the information under the Right to Information Act of 2005. The Act
makes it mandatory for government authorities to furnish information concerning
public matters sought by any citizen. The Home Department said two of the three
complaints were concerning Christian conversions. One was filed in 2007, and others
in 1997. The BJP government's reluctant admission coincided with the notification of
the rules under the Gujarat Freedom of Religion Act of 2003 on July 10. The rules
were framed on April 1, and their notification was the last formality in the
implementation of the law." Compass added, "With three complaints of forced
conversions in 10 years, Gujarat's ‘anti-conversion' law is proving unnecessary."
Pray for believers in India who are serving Christ courageously despite laws that
seek to limit their Christian activity. Ask God to use this development as an
opportunity to spread the gospel. Pray believers will forgive their persecutors and
for their testimony to draw nonbelievers into fellowship with Him.




Philippians 4: 6, 7

You didn't even bother to write who forcibly converted whom. From reading this it's as ambiguous as Hindus forcibly converting Christians and be embarrassed about it, or Christians forcibly converting Hindus and be embarrassed about it.
lol
So what if some Indian dude is one of the prospective vice-president? So what? Why does it matter to you when people are going to hell for following Hinduism. Or how about people forcibly converted to Hinduism (I can't quite imagine the horribleness of it, though I did read about them forced to eat cow dung and drink blood sacrificed to idols). Are you throwing away the genuine-ness of your writings for the sake of appearing popular or "journalistic" by the un-biased standards of some neutral observer? Damn with the un-biased-ness. If you are Christian you clearly know that you are biased and extremely, and there is no way you are going to stay neutral about which way leads to Eternal Life.

Also, just wondering, writing about Chinese culture as I know from childhood (and gasp! seemingly writing something favorable about the Chinese nation) counts as diverging from serving the Lord, but people from the U.S. urging me to write things that favor the American nation or political factions in the U.S., and no one, no one stood up about *that* as diverging from serving the Lord.
Perhaps the habit of bowing to political pressure and political winds and political trends once a Christian ministry gets to a certain size and visibility and without a non-politically-correct person like Richard Wurmbrand to steer it, perhaps the habit makes it so that people don't see serving politics of this nation (not all of it, but definitely much of it) as diverging from serving the Lord? Why is writing something favorable about the Chinese culture or nation diverging, but doing the same about the United States of *now*, not equally diverging? The United States of *then* was a nation of the Lord. What is the United States of *now*. Putting aside the living standards, putting aside the possessions, putting aside the industrial sophistication and developed communication networks, all these are just things. Putting aside all the things and looking at the people, are the people, though mostly nominally Christian, any better (superior? or morally better inclined) than the people in China? It doesn't even flinch with the most egregious things done with the pretext of national security, because it is now about putting down people (that reminds me of that quote from the Senate Majority Leader, according to him people are accorded respect when they put down other people; also the way people would try to flatter me with "king", etc. King, who wants to be king, isn't there already a king? As if flouting an empty, and fake and hypocritical, word of "you are superior" would compensate for 24 hours a day, 60 minutes an hour of reducing me to merchandise and exotic animal -but the whole country is also getting the whole consequence of forcible lying about me, God has been making sure of that-) rather than trusting God in being secure.

2008-07-22T14:27:00.000-07:00

Dear Israelis,

Just in case some think that the least criticism of Israel, even pointing out shortcomings of practice, is equivalent to question the legitimacy of existence (totally different things), I would like to translate the lyrics of a Chinese military song here. And, even though most IDF songs aren't like that (most, seriously, don't have force in the melodies), it's unquestionable that Ben-Gurion's generation had this in their blood. That's how the Israel was made and kept.
Does Israel still have this in their blood?

Watch the video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LltltNZJaOE
The first two words that appear is 长城 (Long-City or Long-Rampart, also known in English as the Great Wall of China, piled up brick by brick upon the mountains to resist the invasion of the Mongolic/Turkic tribes). 长城 also has a specific connotation in the national anthem written in 1935 during the war with the Japanese. The lyrics of the national anthems are about the Chinese piling their bodies (our flesh and blood) to form a new Great Wall, to resist the Japanese.

Are you (Israel) going to resist or are you not? That's the reality of the Arab world towards Israel, one way or another they want to wipe Israel off the map, demographically or militarily. Are you going to resist or not?

the song's title is: 坚决打胜仗 Determined to win victory in battle

坚决打胜仗

当兵为什么
当兵为打仗
只等军令动
报国上战场
我的武艺精
我的士气壮
不让我上让谁上
杀出来的军威
拼出来的兵
一不怕苦
二不怕死
威名天下扬
刀山火海也敢闯啊
坚决打胜仗
没有二话讲
坚决打胜仗
没有二话讲

(in Chinese, much ideas can be expressed using only a few words)
拼 is a word in Chinese that means something like Thermopylae/Alamo/kamikaze combined, it means "all-out with most certainty of death"

For what purpose being-a-soldier?
Being-a-soldier is for combat
Upon the issuing of orders
Thanking/Contributing-to-the-nation and mounting upon the battlefield
My/Our martial skills is refined
My/Our military morale is sturdy
If I am not the one mounting into battle then who will go?
The army power/prowess/reputation that is built by killing/battle
Soldiers who are built through 拼-combat
(they) first don't fear bitter suffering
(they) second don't fear death
A mighty name fluttering (like a flag) under the sky
Daring to go into mountain-of-blades and sea-of-flames
"Determined to win victory in battle"
There isn't nothing else to say (literally: there is no second phrase to say)
"Determined to win victory in battle"
There isn't nothing else to say

Now, is the IDF and the rest of Israel like that? This kind of literature (I just happened to never have heard this song, had I lived in China beyond age of 10 -and 1993-I probably would have) and books/movies was plenty in China, and is one thing that determines what country I admire, really. I do really admire Ben-Gurion's Israel, surviving and winning 5 wars with all odds stacked. Now, the cultural attitude in Israel seems a bit different from what I read of those times, *even though* the cultural attitude in the Arab world (excepting a begrudged acceptance of Israel's existence) hasn't changed that much towards Israel or the Jews, so it seems, from the days of Hajj Amin al-Husseini (nothing to do with Saddam Hussein, look him up on Wikipedia). Seriously, if you expect peace after the creation of a Palestinian Arab state, lol, that's like expecting utopia and plenty equality after creating a communist state.

2008-07-21T18:11:00.000-07:00

Dear critics:

Hamas (Islamic-Resistance) Rally

Like, it's the correct move if he doesn't want to appear backing Hamas on his first tour in that region. The color may not matter to reporters but it matters to the Palestinian Arabs who use them in mass rallies, and the Israelis who get blown up by rockets.

And I would add that on his first tour there, with prominent coverage, yellow+green or just yellow would also be bad.

Hizb-Allah (Allah's Faction) rally
for those with short memories. Hezbollah/Hizb-Allah just killed two IDF soldiers after or during very prolonged captivity, plus three killed in initial attack, plus four tank crews, plus one Nahal soldier. Some Israelis are making ludicrous excuses that it would bolster the morale of the army, when any IDF soldier if kidnapped can expect is a prolonged death, with their government making a half-war without recovering the hostages. Being kidnapped alive and returned dead (likely a prolonged kind of death) in exchange for live murderers, I am sure a lot of IDF soldiers look forward to their lives being that way, and their morale soared after seeing that. Ridiculous excuse. Hamas still holds a hostage.
Anyway, Hizb-Allah rally, notice they use a salute taken from the Third Reich. The salute was around for two thousand years before Hitler, but I am sure they are specifically thinking of the Jews-extermination component of the Third Reich history, and are not thinking of Classical Romans or early French Republic when doing so:

Also one of the many reasons I loath anyone arbitrarily associating yellow with me, when I have very few things yellow. But by now, whoever started and maintained it is reaping a financial crisis. So, lol, it's done way less now.

2008-07-21T01:50:00.000-07:00

Quote: "This is a country that on the one hand is so conservative that we don't have public transportation on Saturdays, but on the other hand is so open that we sent a transsexual to the Eurovision Song Contest," says Keret. "Israel is full of contradiction. In Jerusalem, this contradiction means separation. But it doesn't in Tel Aviv."

Dear Israelis:

Honestly, by insisting you are like Europe by "modern" standards of decadence in certain areas don't earn you any more kudos point.
If you don't believe you can read it here. Hey, that's the "European Union" there.
It's more important to insist on being alike in tech/science progress/strength and Western democracy.

Ben-Gurion's generation made Israel and kept Israel five times because the emphasis was on being alike European "modern" standards of national and human development, in industry and engineering and military. Being alike in decadence gets you nowhere. And, again, honestly, though it'd probably offend a bunch of people, if you are trying to use this to attract more immigrant because of how "open" the country is in that kind of lifestyle, then you'll attract only the kind of people who won't make Israel stand, the kind who won't wear the IDF sword-palm-and-menorah, the kind who won't stay anyway if life suddenly gets different from some kind of self-indulgent pleasure paradise they were looking for, the kind of people for whom being a homosexual (or any other kind of variation combinations) comes first, and they don't come to Israel to be Israelis, for instance. That's not the kind of people Ben-Gurion made and kept Israel with. And if that's the kind of people you depend to add to Israel, neither would you keep Israel. Because that's not the kind of people Ben-Gurion made and kept Israel with. That's not IDF material either, you'd be steadily diluting Israel's national strength.

There should be battle plans already drafted and battalion or brigade-sized practice done in preparation for an attack all the way to the Litani. Whether you bomb Iran's nuclear things or not, Hezbollah will try something eventually, so it's good to be prepared. When you bomb Iran (it might just happen at least once in the 21st century when early or mid or late century), Hezbollah will definitely try something. So, if there isn't battalion or brigade-sized combat practice done in preparation for an attack (or counterattack to be more precise, -dig your own tunnels and practice the way you practice clearing rooms-) in the North, and plans to mobilize the entire *ground* army in that circumstance (one Apache is enough for all of Gaza, Egypt and Syria wouldn't invade anyway not in current times nor with nearly 200000 American troops one flight over), then, you are seriously just asking for more hostages to be taken.

2008-07-21T01:34:00.000-07:00

Upon reading this:

There is no constitutional problem because the Founding Fathers had no problem with it in their generation and they are the ones who wrote the Constitution. And the Bible has been OK in just about all the classrooms till perhaps early-mid 20th century(?), I don't know exactly. Since it has been OK with the generation that wrote the Constitution, and the one after that, etc., there is no constitutional problem.

Complaining about the Bible (i.e. the Christian book of the *Constitutional* generation) being taught in the Christian perspective is like complaining about the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence being taught from the American perspective.
lol

2008-07-21T01:12:00.000-07:00

Little Saddams already preparing themselves, and can't wait for American troops to leave. Not much else to say about that. Except that Ibrahim Al-Duri will have many competitors, all of them will have to fight each other and the national army at the same time, which ever part that isn't divide-and-conquered to side with a warlord by appealing to ethnic/religious differences. The Iraqi Army is half-decent. If they can't handle, then there is always plenty of American troops in the region anyway. It would be wise if Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal Al-Maliki and Iraqi Parliament would keep some American combat troops (aside from trainers) quartered in a remote base somewhere. A half-implemented democracy (with structures, but no freedom of development) would be like Pakistan. Worst case Lebanon or Afghanistan (though Iraq has a history of centralized rule).

2008-07-20T23:45:00.000-07:00

Your Excellency Honorable Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Gordon Brown:

The Irish lost the war in Northern Ireland and essentially admitted it, so did the Argentinians in the Falklands. It's about time the Arabs admit they lost the war in 1948, and again in 1967.

Palestine being the Roman name of Syria-Filestina, which they substituted over the original name of Judea in order to erase association of that place with Jews, the Israelis are also Palestinian. They are just Palestinian Jews. The Arabs in Palestine/Judea are Palestinian Arabs.

Everyone was either Arab or Jewish population of the Ottoman Empire till 1918. Then Winston Churchill (with many advisors) drew lines on the map and created countries out of chunks of former Ottoman lands. The British League-of-Nations mandate of Palestine was Transjordan + Cisjordan. Everyone in it was Palestinian, as much as everyone in the British League-of-Nations mandate of Iraq was Iraqi, and in the British League-of-Nations mandate of Syria, Syrian.

Transjordan became the current kingdom of Jordan, with no Jews allowed to settle there. Then I am not well-read about that time in history, but there was an agreement to divide Cisjordan between the Arabs and the Jews, and the Arabs refused, they wanted all the land and none for the Jews. So during the war of 1948, bullets settled who got what part of the land.

Jordan refused to absorb the displaced Arabs -as Jordanians- from Cisjordan. But Israel absorbed all the displaced and expelled Jews from all Arab countries, -as Israelis.

The war was Israeli-Arab war for decades. Israel against all Arab world (because, for short memories, all Arab world wanted to wipe Israel off the map). It was not Israel-"Palestinian" conflict till recent times. After the Arabs-combined lost the wars of 1948, 1956, 1967, the artillery war of late 1960s early 1970s, 1973, Egypt made peace with Israel. And that was the end of Arab unity in wiping out Israel from the map. The Arab countries concluded they couldn't destroy Israel in conventional wars with conventional armies, so they decided to use the Palestinian guerillas and other guerilla groups and terrorist groups to fight a proxy war against Israel. That's how the war became Israel-"Palestinian" conflict. The Arabs, or overall Arab resentment against Israel, merely got "outsourced" to the Palestinian Arabs to do it, with the Arab states not going to war with their armies because they know they'd be beaten.

That said, the only reason there are "Palestinian" Arabs is the categorical refusal of the Arab states to absorb them the same way Israel absorbed all displaced Jews. The Arab states want those Arabs to "return" to where the population was in 1948, to wipe out Israel from the map in a way that they couldn't do with their soldiers and (first British, then some French, then Soviet, and now American) equipment. They have more than enough oil wealth (and shortage of labor in their own countries) to take in all the displaced Arabs from Cisjordan ("this-side-of-Jordan-river, as opposed to Transjordan "that-side-of-Jordan-river"). They instead would rather import foreign workers on VISAs from as far away as Bangladesh and the Philippines, rather than take Palestinian Arab population as part of their countries, like Israel did for displaced Jews. There is also no talk from the Arabs about the return of about 1 million displaced Jews from the Arab world in or since 1948.

Now, the West Bank of Jordan, Israel took from the kingdom of Jordan in legitimate war (Israel was invaded and counterattacked), also Gaza from Egypt in legitimate war (ditto). What Israel took in war, Israel gets to keep.

All nations, and out of all Britain, has been doing so since many centuries. In fact much of the Middle East is messed up as a result of the Sykes-Picot agreement, how Britain and France carved up the lands of the Ottoman Empire after it fell, carving through ethnic and religious areas and just install kings or dictators over the whole bunch. As an example, Iraq is an artificial country pieced together with the Ottoman provinces of Basra, Baghdad (I think) and Mosul, with regards at all to ethnic or religious population areas, and imported a Saudi (Faisal) Hashemite as ruler.

Seriously, if Britain wanted to encourage national self-determination (and I don't think Britain ever did, from all history's perspective -the Tibet thing never developed till that point-), it's a bit late now that all Middle East has been messed up as a result of the carving up by the "Allies" after WWI because they didn't care a bit about nationhood etc, and

- doing so with a fictive "national group" that derive their collective identity not from nationality but from common rejection (cruelty, really) by Arab states because they don't want to admit they lost the war five times in taking Israel off the map and their soldiers and armies and whatever they do in war really suck and making war with Israel is really great at distracting from all the inept and corrupt governing in Arab countries and distracting from the fact that all the everything-wrong-with-life-is-because-of-Jews really impede the human development and society's progress and that's why with oil wealth they are still just buying everything from the West and they haven't developed talent to make much themselves and there aren't much creativity either in product or in arts/films/books or in engineering or in new discoveries -other than new suicide bombing techniques- from the overall Arab world so for these reasons or distractions the war with Israel must go on and since they decided they can't count on their armies they count on throwing human flotsam at Israel -

isn't the best way at writing a new chapter in the history of Britain or the world.

And, if Britain is serious about determining national territory by the local demographics (or by the "original" geography), then

It's really odd that Britain has a chunk of Ireland, when nearly everyone there is Irish. That part was added to Britain after a war (actually several wars). So would Britain consider removing all troops and all English (Angle + Saxon) and Scottish settlers who have been added there since then 1600s.

Also,

Kuwait was part of the Al-Basrah/Bassoura province of the Ottoman Empire. To go by "original geography", then Kuwait is part of Iraq. (woooo, that's so politically incorrect to say, I don't support the idea, but going by "original geography" I could say a lot of things about different countries) Britain fought the 1991 war, however. Britain or Europe + UnitedStatesofAmerica aren't fighting (that means, mobilizing troops) for the Darfur people, or the Kurds (much less extent than Darfur), really. Perhaps because it's good to keep several oil source in the Middle East, not only for price competition, but also to have many carved states to keep them busy haranguing each other over local differences and too busy dealing with internal population conflicts (as the result of British/French-created national borders cutting across ethnic and religious lines) and unable to effective develop into cohesive and stronger countries, lest they develop into things that alter the "balance of power". I totally think that's why the British/French carved up the Middle East so each country contain many conflicting groups, rather than forming cohesive countries by tracing the borders on the ethnic/religious/tribal demographic group lines.

2008-07-18T03:44:00.000-07:00

Your Excellency Honorable Prime Minister of Iraq Nuri Kamal Al-Maliki,

I would like to ask you, on behalf of President Bush (if President Bush ever asked such a thing, and if you ever read this and think it's OK that I ask something like that), to have the U.S. troops somewhere in Iraq on a 10 year or 5 year renewable contract; meaning, every 10 years or 5 years the Parliament would vote on whether to renew the contract or not. This would be starting after the 2009 elections of course. They don't have to be all over the place as they are now, they could be in a base in Mosul/Kirkuk area, and/or some naval base by Umm Qasr.

The Americans need to be present during the elections, because they only happened once so far and it's because of the Americans. I am not sure how many in Iraq would trust an election guarded and run and tallied only by Iraqis.

The democracy in Iraq is only half-implemented. The structure is in place, there is a Parliament, there are representatives and there are plans of elections in 2009. However, for many decades people in Iraq have been able to advance in life not based on merit or skills, but based on survival of the most dominant tribe/clan/group. The Americans may not have it perfect, but in America, advancement and accomplishment in life is much more about merit and skills, rather than belonging in a dominant tribe/clan/group. Society is not perfect but much more fair than the way Iraq had it since a long time. That's the kind of society President Bush would like Iraq to have, and that's the other part of democratic societies: civic virtue and people having equal opportunity of making a better life for themselves, not merely the equal opportunity of having a vote once every so often.

As far as I read about Saddam, or what life was like under Saddam, it was merely the defect of Iraqi society carried into its extreme. Saddam appointed people not for their skills, but for their belonging in the correct tribe/clan/group (and in his case, the Al-Tikriti clan, though it may have other names. I have not widely read about Iraq). Of course, that way of living discourages people from studying, getting ahead in life, creating new things and thinking of new ideas to make life better. Why bother trying at all if people's chance in life are pre-determined
by what tribe/clan/group that happens to be in "trend"? It's actually rather common in the Middle East, from what I read, and it severely limits the development potential of the Arab society.
I think the original idea is not only to bring the freedom to vote, but also the freedom of human development (that entails freedom of speech, ideas and getting ahead in life, which means freedom from the traditional restraints of inequality in Iraqi or Arab society overall). Freedom to vote is actually one of the most superficial freedom in a democracy society. Because a democracy does not flourish merely because of a system of institutions (a Parliament, representatives, a voting system), successful democracies flourish because people can move ahead in life by merit. Knowing that anyone can get ahead by gaining knowledge and skill, and knowing that the development of knowledge and skill are more valuable than belonging in a certain tribe/clan/group, that encourages the development of people with more knowledge and more skills throughout the country. This is something that Iraq has lacked,

and still does.
Nearly all the skilled people had to join the Baath Party or they were imprisoned/killed or left the country. And then only a minority of people, Sunnis, or Sunnis related with the Al-Tikriti clan, could get high education and training. Then Saddam picked people from those.

Now the country has been turned upside down. Most of people who joined the Baath Party have been either killed or purged. I suppose the Shia death squads did the rest. And those who could, fled the country. There aren't that many skilled people in Iraq, and there weren't many among the Shia and Kurds to start with, because of how Saddam structured the society.

Now, let's take the Iraqi Army as an example. There aren't that many videos of Iraqi Army on the internet (it's mostly the US Army), but even though those are few, they still are the most widely available videos of *Iraqis*. There just aren't that many videos from Iraq. So taking the Iraqi Army as an example. I just watched a combat video of the Iraqi Army. I was looking to see something specific, and I hoped I wouldn't see it. But I did, and I wasn't that surprised either. Video is rather recent (2007), but the Iraqi soldiers even with the most modern equipments still do "spray and pray" (and even from videogames I know that with an AK on full-auto, nothing will be hit beyond a few yards), probably after years of seeing and being taught by Americans about doing accurate single shots, and they know the American way of firing is highly effective than random spraying, yet they do it anyway.

Considering the lack of skilled and educated Iraqis in the country, and considering the centuries-old (Arab, from what I read) practice of discarding a person's skills and credentials in favor of what tribe/clan/group the person is part of, I would venture to say that most likely the inertia of doing things the (defective, worst example being Saddam) Iraqi way is too great for most Iraqis to overcome, and few could rise above such traditions and habitual worldview. I would venture to say that if an Iraqi has been put in some position of responsibility because of his or her skills and talents, it's mostly likely done because some American influenced or directly did it, and in the situations when promotions or responsibilities have been delegated by the hands of Iraqis alone, they more than likely do thing the other way around.

Some American troops are necessary in Iraq, not because of the insurgency (as life gets better and as Iraqis get more proud of their country, the insurgents will go back to normal life), but because without the other half of democracy (that of human development, not just democratic institutions) being implemented (-and that takes some influence from the Americans-), Iraq would Saddamize again within years, decades, who knows, but without the other half of democracy implemented, without equal opportunity of getting ahead in life, people will get disillusioned with only the democratic structures, (like skeletons without flesh, skeletons are necessary as backbone, but other things are needed to make a complete, functional and alive and self-sustaining body). It's entirely possible to have democratic structures in place without actual equality of social mobility. I don't have to name examples, there are plenty in the Third World. The First World countries are prosperous because they have both democratic structures and equality of upward mobility, which encourages people to work and innovate, which then drives the whole society forward in progress. Without that, and with Iraq's "traditional" way of delegating responsibility and positions, at some point people will get tired of merely democratic structures and some Saddam or Saddams will emerge again, probably not of the Al-Tikriti clan, some other clan, and it would be really sad if years or decades from now, the same old Saddam thing happen again, with the memory of having been freed from Saddam in 2003, having taken on the superficial structure of democracy without transforming the development freedom of the people.

Again, the Americans may not be perfect, but as long as they are there, they wouldn't let Iraq get Saddamed. They will also ensure fair elections. I posted a picture of an American soldier handing school supplies to Iraqi kids, in an earlier post. What I didn't mention in that comment is: the American soldiers, when not in combat or going on a raid, in other words when interacting with Iraqis as peoples and not insurgents, are *more* fair, equitable and friendly as foreign Americans towards Iraqis, than are Iraqis fair, equitable or friendly towards Iraqis. If that was written in a complicated way, I rewrite: when not in combat or assuming Iraqis to be hostile, Americans interact with Iraqis in a more fair and friendly way than Iraqis do it towards "other" Iraqis, such as Sunni-Shia, Shia-Sunni, Arab-Kurd. These probably mutually consider each other "foreign" even more than Americans consider Iraqis "foreign". This is because they are all sorts of colored-skin people in America, there are white people and brown people and black people, so Americans pretty much are used to what people look like from other parts of the world.

So, as a 24-year-old who is rather shallowly read and derive all my knowledge of the world (except China, Canada and U.S.) from reading, movies and videogames, I am not sure I have any idea what I am doing, but I would like to request that a proposal be viewed by the Iraqi Parliament concerning the possibility of an airbase in Northern Iraq (American presence for Iraq's development, "stabilizing" Kurds, and Iraq's national security in many ways), and the possibility of a basing and/or refueling station at Umm Qasr.

2008-07-18T03:28:00.000-07:00

Turns out that I am just as ignorant as a certain other person about the Joint Chief of Staff.
Because none of the few war books and war movies and videogames I've read/watched/played ever mentioned it.

Then again, that just shows how utterly even more ignorant are the people framing me, whether FBI or IRS or some other kind of organizations, that they as adults expect me to be older-than-24 and of military background merely because I know basic background info about the military.

Today, July 18th, 2008, sometime after 3 and half o'clock in the morning, I find out for the first time that the Joint Chief of Staff actually do not have command power, though the name certainly sounds like it. lol It's less comical though that Senator Obama didn't know either.

2008-07-18T02:33:00.000-07:00

This is probably the most random thing, but I am writing this to Hannah Hilton (if that's the real name),

Your eyes sparkle in the first video I ever saw of you.
Don't make a career of having sex with people, or the sparkle in your eyes will disappear and your life will be destroyed. In fact it's better if you didn't even do this kind of photography. You have the looks and you can get a career in other kind of modeling.
I would add the same, to the girl named Veronika Symon (if that's the real name).

2008-07-17T18:50:00.000-07:00

Someone today expected me to have enough money to "run off to Vegas". lol Like many since April of last year. That's also exactly where the financial crisis of the United States of America came from, and still comes from. Anyone else expecting anything similar, well, gets more financial crisis. That's true in all circumstances.

Because I have never had more than a few thousand dollars (money never more than ten thousand) and I never had money till after I turned 18, in 2001, when I started having a few dollars to BART to school every weekday.

Anyone choosing to believe otherwise, including the most intricate and stupid of make-believes, lol, bring it on, and watch the results in the economy. If no one has had enough of it since last April.

2008-07-16T22:35:00.000-07:00

I don't really want to address anyone in particular, nor is there anything excellent or honorable to write about. That's a routine formality word-group that I decided to use when I started this blog, and I could routinely tag it unto anybody of any position. It's the first time that I feel the words inappropriate for the event, mostly because, well the event is neither excellent nor honorable.

I only have a limited attention span and limited time everyday. I perhaps read a dozen new articles per day, if I have time. I am not a country, I am not a UN special mission task force that "intervenes" wherever and whenever people are in need of me writing something. I am not Superman. Just because I don't follow a certain news doesn't mean I either support or don't support whatever is going on. And, me showing compassion upon the civilians of a country Israel may consider hostile does not mean I support the policies or the persons of the said government. Also, with this kind of "influence", though only because of people lying about me (I am 24 and poor - the United States of America is currently learning the consequence of insistently lying about that), I wish I had the luxury of doing SNL skits about politicians etc., but I don't, people take whatever I say/write, or what they think/wish I would say/write, way too seriously.

The HizbAllah let the bodies decompose, why? because they probably died in excruciating circumstances. Else they'd preserve the bodies to make a propaganda show of it, about how th prisoners were well etc. The decayed bodies cover up traces of torture.

So:
3 IDF soldiers died in the initial attack, when Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were captured.
Then a Merkava enters Lebanon searching for them, and hits explosives. 4 of the tank crew are killed.
A Nahal unit goes to search for the tank crew, and 1 is killed by mortar.

3+4+1 = 8 dead, aside from Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev.
(seriously, and not to be callous, if they knew in advance they were going to die anyway, and in prolonged and excruciating way, when they were captured they should have just pulled pin on their grenades and detonated with the entire HizbAllah squad)

According to the currency, I mean, people exchange, the exchange rate is 2 dead IDF soldier for 199 dead (various) Arab fighters, plus a notorious killer live, plus 4 captured militants live.

Therefore, the IDF is still owed:
796 dead Arab fighters, 4 notorious killers captured alive and 16 militants captured alive.

They are available somewhere between the border and the Litani. And, Prime Minister and cabinet, you have set the exchange rate. Now train the brigades. Not buying more jetfighters. The infantry.

quote: The rationale for such trades was a wartime ethic seen as essential in Israel's early days to instilling loyalty and commitment from its troops.

OK then. Ethics need to be consistent in order to instill loyalty and commitment from the troops. So, if Hamas or Hezbollah kidnaps more IDF soldiers,
remember, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Vice Prime Minister Haim Ramon, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Tzipi Livni, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Ehud Barak, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Industry, Trade and Labour Eli Yishai, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Transportation Shaul Mofaz, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Shalom Simhon, Minister of Communications Ariel Atias, Minister of Construction and Housing Ze'ev Boim, Minister of Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Raleb Majadele, Minister of Education Yuli Tamir, etc..... (some of you are probably going to be Prime Ministers yourselves, like, or I heard Tzipi Livni, or perhaps Ehud Barak another time, or Shaul Mofaz)

Please remember then, that should Hamas or Hezbollah kidnap any more IDF soldiers, for each IDF soldier kidnapped, 99.5 Arab fighters need to be dead and 2.5 militants captured in order for any negotiation to start. Upon return of the kidnapped soldier, the proportionally corresponding dead bodies and captured POWs will also be returned. That's the basic exchange rate of a dead IDF soldier. (Up to Hamas now to determine the exchange rate of a live soldier, perhaps, measured in Hamas lives this time) You have set the standard now, so please remember to live up to it and be consistent.

And train the brigades.

2008-07-15T18:47:00.000-07:00

Dear Sharon Stone and Sharon Stone's lawyer,

Please live up to your last name. And do not, repeat, do not give even a penny.
I read here that a law firm named 海明 is representing 1000 of the population of the 四川-province, where the earthquake happened, and each one is asking for 1 million because you said the earthquake was karma, or something like that, and the people in 四川-province were somehow traumatized by that, so says the law firm.

I would like to point out that:
1 - Most people in China do NOT have access to CNN, or much media freedom (and I think, the further away from coastal big cities the less access to the "West". They can't possibly even know what anyone "outside" of China says or do, except if the government deliberatedly allows it to be known. Refer to the article I mentioned in an earlier post, about the censorship in China (the title is "China lets news -reporters- in for the Olympics"). Most people in China also don't speak English, especially a backwater province like 四川, not all provinces in China are the same, and 四川 is way less industrialized and has way less access to information from the "West" than a coastal city like Beijing or Shanghai.

2 - Chinese government has forbidden (perhaps by the number of rifles carried by the soldiers who are sent into 四川 on disaster relief) parents from even whimpering about their children dying when schools collapsed, and about the shoddy construction. And I am nearly certain that many buildings collapsed from shoddy construction, and there hasn't been one word about this, nor do the Chinese people have any freedom of suing their own government, or whoever built the buildings (the government?).

It's strange, that the Chinese people are not allowed to sue or even complain about what made people die, but apparently, and how strangely when most of the province don't speak English at all nor are allowed to have information about the "West", are allowed to sue for something they (was it they, or the people who selectively allowed them to get this piece of "news", to perhaps enforce some stereotype about how bad the Americans are) don't like to hear said in a language they don't understand.

Until the Chinese allow their own people to be able to sue for shoddy construction, and their own government and people in power in their own country, do not give a penny, and neither should CNN retract anything. Freedom of speech. (I don't agree with what you said but freedom of speech anyway, and that's very important) Please especially consider the censorship level of "foreign" medias in China. This feels like a scam plus a PR stunt. The people in 四川 are far more traumatized by what happens in-country that what some American most of them probably don't even know, say about them.

-------
Like if the Chinese media was great and all. I read somewhere (no longer remember where) that last time when the Secretary of State visited China, different branches of the Chinese media, especially online, called her by different epithets, including black + (some other mammal species). That can be traced since Google crawls all over the Web. If the U.S. government wanted to distract people from domestic problems without taking responsibility (all the bad people are "foreigners"), and if Americans were more propaganda-conditioned, I suppose the U.S. government could get some 1000 black people and sue for traumatized-ness from centuries of slavery.

lol More or less ridiculous.

Now, I totally don't agree with what you said. However, unless you were lying (and you weren't), I also don't like the idea of people messing with the freedom of speech when people are speaking their honest convictions (even if I really don't agree with it). That is what freedom is about, and I hate people or governments (whether U.S. or Chinese, really) who lie, or discourage other people from speaking what they really think.

So, please live up to your last name. And, don't give a penny. Neither should CNN retract anything. (the contrast between the "freedom" of having a thousand-mile lawsuit and the amount of information access and freedom people have in China itself is way ridiculous)

2008-07-14T22:13:00.000-07:00

Upon reading this, I was like ?!

An old white-haired white man talking (and thinking!) like a young (or perhaps old as well) black thug in the ghettos, that's a first. That's a first. Only thugs expect others to be thugs as well in order to fit in. So it's interesting that "taking responsibility" is appropriate for white, but not for blacks. What do you think is fit for blacks, old-white-man? Thugs and prison and drug dealing and killing people and rapping about all these? Perhaps studying isn't for blacks either, perhaps attaining the kind of social position isn't for blacks, that's exactly what you think. In fact, that's probably exactly what you think of all non-white races.

Tell you what, blatantly, your "race" has so gotten into homosexuality and abortion and non-Christian things or tacitly assenting to those, that it's depopulating everywhere, tragically, but happening. Look at Europe. Seriously either really lean on Jesus again, or just accept the inevitable (destruction of family values and units leads to depopulation and God will take the city-upon-a-hill of spreading the Gospel and all the prosperity blessing it brings away from your "race" or country and give it to another), because you can't lean on forcibly keeping people down by brute force (by the world and the flesh). This is the 21st century, not the 19th anymore. So, grow up (however you want to take this), and your racial expectations, however strange they are, are not God-ordained or intended. I am probably the most prominent example of challenging all your racial expectation about Asians. There will be others, of other races, of other nations, and peoples.

About as stupid as your kind of people expecting all Asians to be female. Or expecting kids playing videogames to be politically correct at the expense of fun. Seriously, grow up (not in height anymore at your age, but in understanding and widening the freaking narrow perspective?) or grow out.

2008-07-14T17:20:00.000-07:00

So I meet this Irish girl today, very attractive even partly hidden behind sunglasses. So after she said she was from Ireland, I asked whether she wanted to hear me sing the Irish football song. Usually that's the kind of thing I know of most countries (and paradoxically what people from other countries don't know, though the Irish are a singing and drinking race and they know their songs), and I wouldn't know what else to say. So she didn't. So I didn't know what else to say, except to ask where she was going. She was going home but going to a cafe first.
At that point I either had to decide whether I'd go to cafe with her, or not. And I never had to make such a decision. It just never happened to me. Depending on what day, sometimes my nervousness is proportional or exponentially proportional to the girl's attractiveness, but today I wasn't nervous at all though the girl is very attractive so it should have been a good occasion for making this kind of decision for the first time, except, that the idea of getting to know a girl I just met by the cafe while thousands or millions of people look on and eavesdrop every movement and every word is utterly horrendous. I also never had a sustained conversation with a girl other than in some kind of group setting, either school or some kind of common activity, so I had no idea what I would say in the cafe, especially since "A Soldier's Song" and "Ireland's Call" are the only things I know of Ireland, other than bits of common history that most people know anyway (such as St.Patrick's Day, etc.)
So I just didn't say anything at all for the next 20-30 seconds while she walked next to me, but she was going in the same direction as well. so I wasn't sure whether she was just going the same direction or she was waiting for me to say something. Eventually she asked, where I was going. So I just said, matter of factly, "I am going home not to the cafe". She then asked what did I say. So I said the same. I am not sure whether it sounded rude or not because I wasn't sure she said cafe to ask me to go there as well or she said cafe before that's where she was going; she said she was crossing the street at the intersection, and I felt rather bad when she started running in the middle of the street rather than walking.
Were life different, and much of the world not bent on framing me and stalking me, I would have gotten to know someone. Do I miss the days, the life that everyone else on earth have, when people didn't stalk me or frame me, or try to find politically ways of using any of my words or gestures, and if no meaning then they frame meaning that they can use. Random interest in things merely because it's interesting, or enjoying life at all, has been destroyed by the bloody rumormongerers. Hence God smites them. And it's well worth it, till they repent. I suppose at this very moment people are trying to frame me with money, and all the other things, when all I want is to live my life, like talking with any random person I feel like without having to think about people stalking me.
That also makes me hate the stalkers, the professional ones, the ones with vested interest in framing me, the ones God is smiting with financial crisis, even more.

2008-07-13T22:39:00.000-07:00

Just some comments about a few pictures.

Full size of the picture is here.

This is a picture of Iraqi soldiers with an American soldier, taken in 2006. If you look at the full size picture, you would see Iraqi soldiers with digital camouflage (the most modern type, even more advanced than the tiger stripes), ballistic helmet, kevlar vest, and even camouflage-painted rifles. Not even the U.S. soldiers have camouflage painted rifles. I think only the U.S Special Forces have that, at least in the videogames (I have, of course, never seen a real Special Forces person, armed or not).

Now, all that equipment of the Iraqi Army is great,
except combined with reading this:

"Lately insurgents are often stealing or obtaining equipment from poorly guarded or turn coat Iraqi National Guard depots...."
the forum where I read this is here
(if you read the whole post, it also has a very exciting proposal that should be put into application)

Now, the Iraqi Army (or National Guard, I don't know what's the difference) isn't even competent or un-corrupted enough to guard its own weapons, and helmets, and vests. That rather offsets the advantage of having good equipment, isn't it? Add that to the Iraqi officers not fair enough to distribute soldiers' pay without skimming.

And the conclusion is, the Americans are (or are growing) the roots and backbone of the Iraqi Army, not only in fighting standards but also in maintaining the Iraqi Army in one piece. Any "pull-out" can't be hurried, or it'll pull out the roots as well (and it's easy to imagine what happens with vegetation without roots, adding branches and leaves won't help. Without it the Iraqi Army will neither stay in one piece nor maintain itself up to the "modernized" standard, and all the equipments or numbers or funding won't help it.

Full size picture is here.

This is a picture of Army soldiers with Iraqi police distribution school supplies at an elementary school in Kirkuk. If you look at the full size picture, you'd notice that the Iraqi policeman without a gun is holding a cigarette between his fingers instead.
If the Iraqis do not have knowledge of second-hand smoking, please tell them. It also makes a good impression. Distributing school supplies is about caring for the kids, right? Then why have someone smoking in the same room.

Source of the picture is here
The headline says "Foreign Media picks on our Olympic....."

Considering that the entire United States of America is currently excelling at lying about the fact that it is lying, to avoid facing up to all the lies about me, I won't criticize Chinese media. (Besides, in all the comments I've read about using Segway as an infantry platform, I haven't seen comments saying it's bad, people just didn't know what to think of it, because no one in the "West" ever thought of using it as an infantry platform, it's mostly thought of as an exotic toy) I just would like to point out that there is a headline reporting on what foreign medias say, rather than allow people in China to read the foreign media themselves. These are the most interesting pictures I have seen in some hours of newsreading. I'll just find some random picture now, just so that people in China aren't offended that I put up a picture about China in the same post as pictures about Iraq.

Here is the other thing I was going to comment on. I won't need to find another picture after all.

On Breitbart.com a headline was:
Warrantless Domestic Spying results in FARC hostage freeing

O, that's just great. I suppose eliminating military bases and stationing fully armed soldiers in everybody's homes would also ensure lack of terrorism. Or perhaps, pronounce people guilty without a trial, so that guarantees that there would be no unfair trials, since there would be no trials at all. So is first egregiously violating people's rights, frame them, then label them a threat, then decide that speaking the truth rather than going along with everyone lying is called schizophrenia, because supposedly lying is the reality, whereas truth and freedom and rights are imaginary. lol

2008-07-10T23:42:00.000-07:00

PKK people:

If some of you surf the web at all, or would condescend to read what a mere college grad writes, please release the German tourists. Usually I can do nothing about this kind of things, but merely because I can write here and some people read it, so I'll write something about this as well. I read that you "fundraise" by selling drugs in France and Germany. Germany isn't likely to be very cheerful about groups that poisons its people and the resulting drug addiction and traffic also causes crimes and social problems and broken families and people. And, to be realistic, Iraq's Kurdish region is probably as large of a Kurdistan as you'll get. Because, if Turks had their way, they would like to recover all of the Ottoman Empire probably, or all the Turk land, so that would be everything between the Bosphorus and Afghanistan.

Kidnapping people also makes the group look very bad, and people are just way less likely to support groups that do kidnapping. It would decrease, and not increase, Germany (or any country)'s likeliness of supporting PKK or Kurdistan.

2008-07-10T22:34:00.000-07:00

Upon reading this article about some ex-generals suggesting the military endorses homosexuality within its ranks,

Even though I am only 24 years old, never served in the military to have experience to speak of, never went to grad school much less Command and Staff College, I have this to say:

Generals can also be wrong, especially when they step out of their generalship which is about commanding (leading?) troops in battle and maintaining the readiness of the armies for that objective, and start seeing the military as some kind of social experiment. I actually haven't read enough history books to quote examples for any situation, so for this situation I can only quote one antecedent situation, but one is enough.

In 1941-1945, U.S. soldiers with little or no war experience fought very well. There were setbacks like Bataan, Kasserine Pass and Ardennes 1944, but overall the U.S. soldiers became a world-class fighting force.

In 1950-1953, a war happened between WWII and Vietnam that for some reason most Americans don't know about, because I suppose it was considered shameful and people prefer to not talk about it. In Vietnam the U.S. at least could claim not having lost any specific battles, but not in Korea. When South Vietnam was overrun, the loss of the country could be laid upon the South Vietnamese because there was no U.S. military forces there, but the same could not be said when much of South Korea was overrun.

In the Korean War the U.S. armed forces did the longest retreat in American military history. From the river of Yalu all the way to the 37th parallel, shot at and pursued every step of the way by communist Chinese armies. That was in the autumn of 1950, merely 5 years after WWII.
An army that campaigned all over the world, defeating the highly industrialized armies of Japan and Germany, was pushed back between 300 to 350 miles by an infantry-only force with much worse equipment, few radios (mostly used bugle to communicate), mostly no air force (had to attack and march troops at night mostly) and mostly on foot.

Because during the 5 years between 1945 and 1950, the U.S. armies have deteriorated and weren't the same that (quoting T.R. Fehrenbach) chased Rommel in the North African desert or stood like steel in the Ardennes. Because training and discipline was neglected, and the armies became more like the "culture" around it rather than what makes armies armies. T.R. Fehrenbach wrote a whole chapter on it in "This Kind of War", which is the first war book I borrowed from the high school library and read it while still learning English. It's also the first long war book I read since age of 10 in China. (and the last war book I read in China -and I liked it so much one of my uncles gave it to me when I left China to go to Canada- was 抗美援朝战争回忆, by 洪学志, the second-in-command of 中国人民志愿军 in Korea. I still remember even what the tactical maps between the bookcover and the first chapter look like, the shape of the arrows etc. The writing of Chinese armies going up against the superior forces of the "American imperialists" was fascinating. For stupid Americans who don't bother knowing anything about any other countries, even though Transformers, Ninja Turtles and other shows were broadcasted in China and audio-ed in Chinese, even though the Communist Youth Pioneers newspapers (I still do remember one entry) talked about 飞毛腿 and 爱国者 during the Gulf War, the Americans were still traditional bad guys in books and movies, not as bad as the Japanese (there was this one movie where kids as well as adults cheered each time a Japanese soldier was shot. The whole movie theater -this at the same time that we kids watched the Warriors of the Zodiac on TV and had contests of flipping stickers with show characters on it by hitting it on the table with the palm), but Americans were still bad as the kids were taught so. This is the early nineties, and I was 10. The current Chinese propaganda may try to deny this kind of attitude in the early nineties, but it was.

And the last Chinese war book I read and the first American war book I read was about the same war, written from both perspectives. To this day I can quote passages from T.R. Fehrenbach's book. And the generals who would like to do social experiments in the military would do well to read that book.

Unless you attained the rank of general by political maneuvering to get quick promotions rather than out of the natural effect of serving in the military many years, or maybe there are ranks of generals for those part of the military that don't deal with people but only paperwork, and you are one of those generals. (I don't know, I have never been a military officer, or common soldier, I just know that there is difference between general and general. There are generals who are competent who care about their soldiers, and there are generals who are just there for the position, just like how in ancient history there were competent kings and kings who were just there for the position, same title different kind of people.) If you are the kind of generals like George Washington, Robert Edward Lee, Thomas Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, Zachary Taylor, John Pershing, George Patton, Omar Bradley, Dwight Eisenhower, Anthony McAuliffe, Matthew Ridgeway, Walton Walker, even Douglas MacArthur, (didn't actually read enough about Vietnam to know much about generals), adding Norman Schwarzkopf (who resigned because in 1991 he wanted and wasn't allowed to finish Saddam then, and we wouldn't have had this second war), adding all the current Iraq War generals who actually commanded troops, then you wouldn't propose matching the military to the culture around it. It makes as much sense as taking the F-16 pilots, and all the snipers, and all the people who push buttons to fire missiles (whether regular Tomahawk missiles or nuclear missiles) and have them match their attention span with the average attention span of the people in the country. Or perhaps, when training soldiers or marines, have them run slow enough to match the average attitude of people in the country towards physical exercise. Till people get killed in war because of it. Just like the 5 years between 1945 and 1950. "The troops wore brand-new uniforms and looked great to generals. But something was missing [the qualities that won WWII]" (paraphrasing from T.R. Fehrenbach's book)

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And this is off-topic, but I'll just add it here anyway. I saw on a webpage today the words "thought-controlling communists". That is historically accurate. However, why is no one having some conscience outcry against the FBI or whichever similar organization stalking and framing me? They are doing the same things I read about Stalin, only with pretexts (they -whoever they are- will have to explain how and why they decided to frame a 24-year-old of different ages and nationalities etc. And, in the meantime, I hope God collectively curses any group of people framing me, in any way, till you repent - that means a 180-degree turn change of mind - that means stopping the framing and surveillance and actually apologizing. If the FBI or any similar kind of people would rather kill rather than admitting doing wrong, well I sure in faith look to God to be the first time in history that the FBI, or any similar kind of people framing me, is held accountable for everything it does).

2008-07-10T00:55:00.000-07:00

Your Excellency Honorable Prime Minister of Iraq Nouri Al-Maliki:

I think it's great that Iraq has not allowed U.S. soldiers or contractors immunity from taking responsibility for anything that they do. That's absolutely great. I also would like to comment on some other things (like a hasty withdrawal of U.S. troops, for instance). Iraq having been a country only since 1920. Before 1920 it was part of Ottoman or Fatimid or Ayyubid or Abbasid or Umayyad empires. Between 1920 and 1932 the country was ruled by the British. Between 1932 and 1958 by the British then Iraqi Kings. Between 1958 and 1968 by a military government. Between 1968 and 2003 by a military government, probably way more strict than the previous one.
Between 2003 and 2004, by different armed people in different parts of the country.

Between 2004 till now, by democracy. (something really exceptional, in history)

I also would like to mention something I saw in a TV-series called Battlefield Vietnam. The Iraq war, except for a few things, has nothing in common with the Vietnam War. I bring this as an example because that is a demonstration of U.S. hastily leaving a place.

The South Vietnamese never had a history of non-corrupt officials, in that part of Southeast Asia it was taken for granted that a person first looked after his/her own family or clan first, then answer to the common good. I also read some books on Vietnam, and I no longer remember the specific instance, but there were (South)Vietnamese officers who would divert military things for private use and then when there were battles people got killed because equipment (or whatever else) was lacking.
Also, the Americans gave the South Vietnamese much state-of-the-art equipment when they left, but haven't yet had time to instill the same kind of maintenance skills required to maintain the equipment. When there was a national crisis (North Vietnam invading), a lot of the planes couldn't fly because there was little or no maintenance done.

This isn't to say that the North Vietnamese are like the South Vietnamese. The North Vietnamese are extremely efficient and probably had way less corruption in the officers and officials. The Vietnamese is the exact same people, with the exception that in North Vietnam under communism it was easy to get someone shot.

Now, Iraqis are much more competent that the Vietnamese. In the 1980s, the Iraqis (and only Iraqis) were able to conduct large scale offensive maneuvers involving hundreds of thousands of men, with land, sea and air combined. And did so for years, nearly 10 years. This is the kind of coordination that the Vietnamese of the South could not do (those of the North could) without American help.

However, and I am getting to my point after listing all the examples, the Iraqis did those things under Saddam, when it was easy to get someone shot (or worse). In fact, in Iraq it has always been more or less easy to get someone executed (in the sword and shield era) or shot (in the gunpowder era), because law has always been dictated either by a caliph, or a sultan, or a king, or an army officer or a Saddam. People for centuries have followed the law out of fear only, because of an absolutist non-democratical control (or oppression, however it's called).

It is true that the Iraqi Army has been doing very well in battle, and from the newest video I have seen, they are wearing the most impressive uniforms, vested in Kevlar, with the German-design type of helmet with a lower rim across the back of the head, and with camouflaged cloth draping the helmet, just like the most modern soldiers in the world, some even with sunglasses.
It is also true, and I remember reading this maybe a year and half or two years ago, that when the Iraqi army was being trained, the Iraqi soldiers wanted Americans and only Americans to be distributing their pay, because Iraqi officers would "skim" a portion for themselves and then pass it down the bureaucratic handling system, with the pay getting "skimmed" a bit at each step, and the soldiers ending up getting way less than they earned. Now, since this was a trend maybe two years ago, I hardly think it has dramatically changed since then. Iraqis also have a tradition of putting their family/clan above anyone else, and that didn't even change with the brutal ruling methods of Saddam. In fact Saddam himself was an example.

The Americans may do some very bad things, like driving down the road in the middle and running to cars of both lanes (to be fair, it's also because of suicide car bombings, and they don't care about other Iraqi cars either, just detonate in the midst of them as well), and some even just shoot randomly (that's why it's truly awesome that you refused to grant Americans immunity from prosecution, so each person should be held responsible for what they do), but the Americans also have a high standard of functional civic virtue that is essential in making a cohesive and law-abiding society without the Saddam-type of oppression motivation.

Something that Iraqis, after a 1000 years of caliph/sultan/king/army officer/Saddam (ruled without consent), and 5 years of democracy (ruling by the consent of the people), probably don't have it instilled as something natural and expected.

I hope that the country won't be like those intricately built-together jetplanes that the Americans left in South Vietnam. As long as the Americans are there, they kept up the maintenance standards. The South Vietnamese assented, but mostly because the Americans recognized it as important, not because the South Vietnamese themselves understood the importance. Then when the Americans left, some South Vietnamese, the skilled ones who learned from the Americans, had head knowledge about how to maintain airplanes, but don't share the Americans' understanding or urgency about doing so. Some South Vietnamese, the non-skilled ones, don't even have head knowledge about how to maintain airplanes, and of course they don't care about the maintenance, they just want the planes to work when they needed them to accomplish some task, whatever it took. After a while, since without the Americans there nobody cared or shared the Americans' urgency about maintaining airplanes, even the ones with head knowledge became influenced, if not by peer pressure just by gradual conformity, by the ones who just don't care. Then the planes became neglected and falling apart while still staying in one piece on the surface, perhaps repainted with great-looking colors. But when a national crisis happened, and the planes needed to work, they didn't.

Replace "plane" with "democracy", "civic virtue", "governing that thinks of the big picture first and then the clan/tribe/etc", and that's what I am trying to say.

Even if many individual Iraqi soldiers can fight at the efficiency or skill level of the American infantry (I doubt it though, the Americans can do what they do only with hard and repeated training, and from what I read, the Iraqi soldiers are not taking it as seriously, they think Americans win by gadget only and not by tough training that makes the unit operate as one, and, by the consequence of a free society that gives even low-level commanders initiative and creativity), even if many individual Iraqi soldiers can fight at the efficiency or skill level of the American infantry, the planning of things as a movement of groups of people are probably still done by Americans. It just takes years to train a low-level commander, and even more years to train generals. And upon much American (or "foreign") knowledge is depended the infrastructure of the nation.

And seriously, who knows what troubles *aren't* happening because of the presence of more than a hundred thousand heavily armed American soldiers. And the Iraqi Army, regardless of how nice-looking the uniforms and equipment, probably has ethnic + religious + tribal divergence that is not camouflaged by the uniforms. I also read that the population of Iraq trust the Army more than the Iraqi police, because it's very sectarian and more Saddam-like in looking after its own cliques first (depending on the predominant ethnic and/or religious and/or tribal component of a certain detachment), then anything else.

So suggest that at least some American soldiers be kept in the country, and definitively a group of trainers, both for the Iraqi Army and the Iraqi police. And I read that there is another election in 2009, and it's better to have sizable American military presence till then. I hope you also see my comments as coming from an independent commentator, not of the U.S. military or the politicians or the U.S. government or commercial interest. You may consider me an amateur historian, if you'd like. I just only have a B.A. watch/read a lot of books and movies about history (mostly anything war) and never went to grad school yet.