All Hank, all the time.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield


Evolution is the only solution to the Arab Street.

Economic growth will cure all these problems (however, I am sure I didn't need to say that for all of you to know that this was my opinion).

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Dude, you can't take them all out for good. I'm with you. I think there's a malignant sector of the Arab world you can do nothing with but kill.

But you can't "take them out." There are too many, and the act of taking them out just creates more of them.

The best we can do is contain them with strongmen. We have Libya under control... We need to get back to installing dictators. You can't let these nuts pick their own govts.

Until we somehow educate these people and give them money, they'll be Islamic nuts, and nothing we can do with them. Nukes wouldn't even work. The fuckers aren't advanced enough to respond sensibly, like the Japanese. They're still tribal over there. Break the leader and you get a million cockroaches running all over the place, fighting one and another and only uniting to fight us.

Evolution is the only solution to the Arab Street.

Where were you two weeks ago when I was advocating this?

[Spanky]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
I used to agree with you. However, the 9/11 attackers are a perfect example. They all came from middle to upper class families and were extemely well educated.

Many of the so-called leaders of the Islamist movement are the better-educated among the throngs.

The old thought that "Westernization" would win them over isn't playing out

The leaders of any zany movement come from the middle or upper classes (Lenin, Mao, Trotsky, Ho Chi Minh etc). However, they only get support from the masses if things are really screwed up. These oil autorcracies aren't really developed economies, they are just large welfare states.

BTW: there is one of those huge jack rabbits sitting outside my window right now. With his ears he must be three feet tall. It scared all the cats inside. These things give me the creeps.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Since Penske wonders what John Quiggin is up to:

• I’ve been reading Steven Poole’s Unspeak and he observes that having introduced a five-level color coded terror alert, the government has never used the top level (red) or the bottom two levels (blue and green). The obvious reason is that a red alert would require some specific action, while a move to a blue or green level would imply that there was some prospect of the War on Terror actually ending.
  
  I’ve noticed much the same phenomenon with 5-point grading scales for worker performance, such as those used in the Australian Public Service for a while. A top score suggests a requirement for some kind of substantial reward, so these are rare, while a score of 4 or 5 implies a need for counselling and a possibility of dismissal. So just about everyone gets a 2 or a 3, yielding, in effect, a two-point scale.

link

DHS have everyone feeling safe yet?

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by taxwonk
Where were you two weeks ago when I was advocating this?

Masturbating.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Masturbating.

I like wonk's posts too, but not like that.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Spanky
Economic growth will cure all these problems (however, I am sure I didn't need to say that for all of you to know that this was my opinion).

I agree, but that's a bit of a leap... say, like colonizing Pluto. I said evolution is the only solution because until they have the ability to master their opposable thumbs to do something other than aim their prayer rugs at Mecca and fire rockets, economic growth is a fantasy.

These people are cavemen. They need to be treated the way the British used to do it. Best way to do that these days is with a strongman.

Don't gimme no "that's heartless" shit. Ask any Arab with sense. The nuts only understand the stick.

We should have left Saddam alone. Hell, we should have normalized ties with him and used him as a hedge against these nuts. The man was secular, buyable. Instead, we chucked him for a pack of people who jack off to the Koran.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I like wonk's posts too, but not like that.

Oh, I was masturbating to a magazine, not Wonk's stuff.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Oh, I was masturbating to a magazine, not Wonk's stuff.

nikki?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Since Penske wonders what John Quiggin is up to:

• I’ve been reading Steven Poole’s Unspeak and he observes that having introduced a five-level color coded terror alert, the government has never used the top level (red) or the bottom two levels (blue and green). The obvious reason is that a red alert would require some specific action, while a move to a blue or green level would imply that there was some prospect of the War on Terror actually ending.
  
  I’ve noticed much the same phenomenon with 5-point grading scales for worker performance, such as those used in the Australian Public Service for a while. A top score suggests a requirement for some kind of substantial reward, so these are rare, while a score of 4 or 5 implies a need for counselling and a possibility of dismissal. So just about everyone gets a 2 or a 3, yielding, in effect, a two-point scale.

link

DHS have everyone feeling safe yet?

do you think a lot of these differences between us and you flow from you seeing 9/11 as a a crime where we should try to identify the guilty few, and the rest of us seeing it as an act of war?

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
nikki?

Arizona Highways.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Funny story - Bechtel apparently has offices in our building.

Today, a bunch of losers with nothing better to do (i.e. typical SF protestors) blockcaded both our front and back doors - protesting Bush and the war - such that everyone couldn't leave for lunch.

Quite surreal actually - about 20 hippies, as many cops, keeping about 200 hungry office workers from grabbing a sandwich and milling about the lobby.

Finally, the cops arrested a few and we were able to escape to the salad place. I might even be on the news tonight, excoriating the lead hippie to "get a damn job" while she was being interviewed, standing in the doorway, with an upside-down flag

in Detroit that shit wouldn't have gone over. bust teeth- eat lunch. no offense.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
do you think a lot of these differences between us and you flow from you seeing 9/11 as a a crime where we should try to identify the guilty few, and the rest of us seeing it as an act of war?

No. Although the war analogy only goes so far.

Do you feel safer knowing that DHS is protecting you?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Lieberman just fired his entire campaign staff, an odd thing to do for a guy who's running in the November election.

eta: One of the comments to that post says that some of the staffers were going to resign in protest if Lieberman stayed in the race, so maybe he was just getting out ahead of that there possibility.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield


We should have left Saddam alone. Hell, we should have normalized ties with him and used him as a hedge against these nuts. The man was secular, buyable. Instead, we chucked him for a pack of people who jack off to the Koran.

I would agree with you if Saddam had been more like Pinochet or Lee Kuan Yew (sp?) of Singapore. However, he was running a kleptocracy. He was driving Iraq into the ground (kind of like the dictators of Burma, or Hugo Chaves if he keeps on the same path) and therefore pushing Iraq farther and farther away from becoming a stable country. The longer he was in power the farther back Iraq was sinking into the mire.

Even with the morass that it is in, Iraq has a growing economy and the per capita income is much higher than it ever was under Saddam. We may have to split it into three countrys, but three countries with growing economies is much better than one moving backwards.