<I note that some of your rants seem to focus on the US. >
S100, the USA is the biggest show in town, apart from numbers of people [China and India - which is why I give them a lot of attention too]. The USA is already effectively the Rome of the Roman Empire or the Britain of the British Empire. While the USA doesn't actually have direct rule over the rest of the world, the difference is academic.
Japan tried direct rule, but that didn't work out at all well. So they got to work, built a huge economy and got out their chequebook. Now they have colonized a lot of places economically. A chequebook is much more effect to rule people than a gun. A chequebook gets co-operation. A gun gets opposition. The pen is mightier than the sword, so is the pixel, but mightier still is the dollar. The USA has the biggest chequebook in town.
What's really cunning, is that the USA uses my chequebook and millions of other's around the world and we send our money to San Diego, Redmond etc either as investors or customers and the USA is empowered by that alien money. So of course the USA is the main focus of much of the world outside their own little place.
Also, the people in SI are mostly American and while I'm sure they are fascinated by Eketahuna, I suspect there is a smidgeon of narcissism if not rabid jingoist patriotic xenophobia among the crowd, so topics 'USA' are of interest.
Also, like most people, I tend to hold myself, friends and family to a higher standard than those I think are beyond the pale. So, it's a kind of back-handed compliment that I give the USA the honour of my criticism. Most places [AIDS-infested criminal South Africa and Zimbabwe] are so bad that there is no point in picking out some arbitrary defect list. Why bother? They are at best an afterthought, a bit like New Zealand from the point of view of the wider world. I would like to see a new Colinisation [Powell's job] and Condominium [Condoleezza's job] of much of the world by and with the USA [or a revamped UN with a US-style Federal constitution].
Many countries are so disgusting, criminal and foul for the people that they would do better with a colonial power such as the USA or UN to stop the internecine conflict. Rwanda should have simply been invaded by the USA or UN and declared to be a country owned by the UN. So should some of Yugoslavia - rather than have the pathetic Dutch UN troops be pushed out of the way and 10,000 people murdered in Srebenica. motherjones.com But there needs to be a constitution first rather than the muck of weak nonsense the UN has at the moment.
I hope you don't misunderstand my comments about Kent State. To me a rock, bullet or ICBM are all the same - if they hit the right spot they kill. So, if somebody is attacking somebody with a rock, I think it's fair enough to kill them if there is some actual risk that they will succeed with the rock. Usually, I don't think stone-throwing would justify a shooting in retaliation, but I have been on the receiving end of thrown rocks and as people stoned to death know, it can be fatal. I can imagine circumstances when I'd shoot somebody attacking me with rocks. I don't see why police should be expected to accept a rock in the face. My point is more that the police in Tienanmen Square weren't dealing with a Sunday School choir either and there were a lot of serious police injuries [and I think deaths]. The Chinese weren't good at handling riots so treated it like a military operation, which, as dirt bulldozed over the Iraqis in trenches in Iraq showed, can be fatal.
Re your comment, 'get a sat instead of an outstanding', apparently a lot of soldiers in wars tend to deliberately miss when shooting! Which I suppose would depend on the circumstances, but a lot of people don't feel all that comfortable shooting bullets into people. I'd never heard of that [until a couple of years ago].
If I was surrounded by a baying, rock throwing mob, on a grassy knoll, as you describe, I think I'd be inclined to use my gun to keep them at their distance. The Darwin awards are not likely to run out of candidates any time soon.
Mqurice |
