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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (78122)	2/27/2003 4:21:31 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

The common man's plea for peace By Harold Williamson Editorial The Chicago Tribune Published February 26, 2003 In 1946 Albert Einstein sent a telegram to prominent Americans warning of the peril we face if our wisdom does not keep apace of our technology. It said: "The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe." More recent technological advancements in chemistry and biology make Einstein's admonition more prescient than ever. A terrorized world is in agreement to force Saddam Hussein to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, but there is a political, legal, and moral dilemma as to how this should be done. On Feb. 14, Secretary of State Colin Powell advised the United Nations Security Council that, "The threat of force must remain. Force should always be a last resort . . . . But it must be a resort." In this case, Powell's "force" means "preemptive war." Violence begets more violence. It always has and it always will. Like it or not, it is human nature. Human history is a chronology of eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth, and the only thing that war can preempt is peace. Mohandas Gandhi freed the entire subcontinent of India from colonial repression without firing a shot. He was prepared to die for his cause, yet there was no cause for which he would kill. Gandhi stated, "Victory attained by violence is tantamount to defeat, for it is momentary." Unfortunately, for every Gandhi there are hundreds of political opportunists who mask their ambitions with populist rhetoric to incite the masses to war. Gandhi said, "You must be the change you wish to make in the world." He observed that if Christians had practiced what they preached, all of India would have been Christian as a result. Is a doctrine of preemptive war the change that the Bush administration would wish to make in today's world? It was Einstein's opinion that, "Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem to characterize our age." Since Osama bin Laden has resurfaced, it doesn't make sense that our resources should fuel a juggernaut in a desert while our infrastructure at home remains vulnerable to terrorism. Al Qaeda must be rejoicing with this good fortune. Iraq is not the cause of global terrorism, and a preemptive war with Iraq is not its solution. There has not been a shred of evidence that proves the Iraqi regime has supplied Al Qaeda with weapons. Saddam Hussein is indeed a brutal dictator, but this is the wrong war, at the wrong time, with the wrong enemy. Uncertainties inherent in modern warfare kill the wrong people. The fact that it is accidental is no absolution. We know that there is an effective and peaceful alternative that will contain Iraq's ability to wage war. Inspectors for the United Nations have scrapped more of Iraq's weaponry than was destroyed by military means during the gulf war. Let the inspectors continue indefinitely if that is what it takes. In the meantime, Iraqi children can go to school without fearing for their lives. Our sapience, the ability to think wisely, distinguishes Homo sapiens from the rest of animate creation that is red in tooth and claw. We must use this innate ability and change our modes of thinking. President Bush must have the courage to step back from the brink for fear that any prospect of a peaceful world for our generation will fade into oblivion. Only a handful of leaders have heeded the biblical words of Isaiah: "nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." So who am I to think that what a common citizen has to say is anything more than a whisper in a whirlwind. ________________________________________ Harold Williamson lives in the Chicago area. Copyright © 2003, Chicago Tribune chicagotribune.com

To: JohnM who wrote (78122)	2/27/2003 6:30:49 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

>>Which is not apropos anything I wrote.<< Yes, it is. Over on Free Republic, they "freep" liberal causes, attempting to overwhelm the message, and they were freeping the virtual demonstation, and the virtual demonstrators were doing it right back, although they don't call it freeping. Not sure what they call it, but I lurk Democratic Underground and I've seen them talking about it. So a million messages doesn't mean that a million people were involved. It's sort of like pump-n-dump with stock. A group of people working together can make themselves appear very much larger using the Internet.

To: JohnM who wrote (78122)	2/27/2003 6:49:59 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

>>9 Virtual March Protesters were just relieved of their jobs here at my company. Posted on 02/26/2003 4:15 PM EST by SirFishalot LMAO. I just got out of an emergency meeting with the sales manager here at work. He told us that he just fired 9 people in his department because he caught them participating in that farce today using company time and equipment. That is considered theft and thus leads to immediate termination at my company. He is able to monitor all of their keystrokes, pageviews, faxes, and phonecalls and they know it yet the dummies still did it. Here are some of the highlights he gave us for just todays traffic. -There were a total of around 1200 phone calls to Washington DC numbers today. We average 5 per day. -One employee alone was responsible for over 300 of them. -One lady faxed over 400 faxes to Washington numbers. -There was over 5000 emails to .gov addresses from just that group. -2 of them were caught actually running websites from here that are devoted to the protest today. -3 of them hadn't even made one work related call today. It was actually pretty funny to watch the guy walk them out because he walked in the office with two guys I've never seen before and asked for the following employees to stand up, then read off there names. He asked them to follow him up to the lunchroom for a meeting. The two guys followed them all up. A little later, one of those guys comes back with a supervisor and our IT guy. They took the personal effects from each of the cubes and put them on a cart. The IT guy took the hard drive from each of their computers also. He told us in the meeting that the two guys were police officers who basically documented everything and escorted them off of the property with the warning that they would be charged with trespassing if they step foot back on the property. Looks they will have lots of time to protest now. LOL Dummies.<< freerepublic.com A long followup post: freerepublic.com Can't think of clearer proof of my point. These people, particularly the leader, were using the Internet to pretend to be a large group of people protesting the war. How cynical can you get? But they weren't paid activists, I'll grant you that. Looks like that's the next job for them. Paid activist jobs pay maybe $8-$10 an hour last I looked.