Good morning Jay. It's a beautiful sunny Sunday. So, I will reply later when I get a round tuit.
Today, it seems too nice to think of nuking multimillions of people.
I do wonder, given the great worry the USA has about nukes being sneaked into their cities, whether they might not come to appreciate Hobbitland's 1980s legislation banning nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed boats from our ports and on our land.
The USA might even enforce such legislation around the world as a good model to help avoid being nuked themselves. Nukes were a lot of fun when it was an exclusive MAD club [Mutual Assured Destruction]. Now, they are a bit more dodgy as a potential terrorist weapon at a time when a billion wacko Moslems, who believe that Allah and Mohammed [peace be upon him and me and you] want them to kill infidels, are marauding around the world. Okay, maybe they don't all agree about killing infidels in bulk, but there has been a lot of head hacking.
I do not want to enter the Guinness Book of Records as part of the "Highest Hill of Human Heads". Pol Pot made quite a stack. Hitler did a lot too, but in typical German efficient fashion, they documented them and did it in a very orderly, organized and engineered fashion. None of the wild scimitar slashing for the Germans; it's very messy.
The problem stems from bossy type trying to tell other people how to run their lives and wanting to force them to operate other than on a volitional basis.
So, we had the Soviet Union taking over Afghanistan back in 1979 [I remember it well and measuring the distance to the Indian Ocean - it wasn't a long way]. We had the USA feeding weaponry and support to the Mujahedeen and finally succeeding in getting the USSR out. As recently as a year ago, the main sympathy was with the poor head-hacking Chechens in their 'freedom fight' against Russia. Now that sentiment has changed in the USA as they understand that those freedom fighters were in cahoots with the people who destroyed the WTC. I was amazed at how slowly Americans learn - I'm sure some of them are still sending money to the IRA!! The Chechens had hacked American heads [along with Stan Shaw's, a Hobbit from Kiwiland - he was building telecommunications systems] but even so, Americans thought them the good guys and Russians the bad.
We have Israel and UN taking over from the Ottoman Empire. We have autocratic Arab countries [such as Saddam's]. A very ugly mess.
Now, the irony is that Milosevic is on trial for doing what the Americans are about to do in a very large scale [but unlike Srebenica, they might not separate the men from the rest before killing only the men]. The Milosevic trial could be quite a problem for GeorgeW. Lashing out against general populations in self-defence is not acceptable these days. It leads to prison.
Ooops, I am into a rant and the beautiful day beckons. I will choose the beautiful day right now. It might be the last. I haven't bought the Lexus yet.
Mqurice
PS: Our Prime Minister, Helen Clark, is due to meet GeorgeW in a few days and I expect that she'll explain to him some of the merits of reduced nuclear this that and the other and that NZ will not be changing our nuclear-free legislation. It's a democratic decision and I heard the USA is in favour of democracy and freedom and stuff [but they are not in favour of free trade - which she will also try to explain to them].
NZ troops have been high in the hills of Afghanistan, doing what my father did against the Nazis for 4 years - getting out in front of the front lines, identifying enemy positions and reporting back so they could be targeted. Message 13794091 I think GeorgeW appreciates that and hence NZ is not considered so bad after all. |
