Uncle, when Hamas called "uncle" and arranged a 'truce', what they really meant was that we give up for now because we have had enough and lost too much and want a breather to regroup.
Maybe Israel agreed to a "truce" by simply refraining from attack while Hamas laid off, but Hamas wasn't really doing anything other than getting the next round ready.
There was no 'truce' worthy of the name. It was simply a lull in their murderous attacks. Rumour has it that a 12 year old boy has been used to hack a head of an informant [alleged]. I haven't seen it, and have no idea whether it's true, but given what Moslems do, it would not in the slightest surprise me. I would be surprised if they weren't doing such barbarities.
Any barbarity they can think of seems to be a good idea. Fortunately, their thinking is limited in scope and sophistication. On the other hand, if their thinking wasn't so limited they would probably not do what they do.
I have not yet read all that manual. Thanks for it. It's sitting in my computer waiting to be studied. So far, so good.
One comment on dopey USA military. I recall a Special Forces USA soldier in Afghanistan who had a big beard and looked pretty much like an Afghan warlord, except he looked more like a decent person. He wasn't camouflaged like one because as I recall, it was a red beard. There are not a lot of red beards in Afghanistan. I suspect just one. He had to shave it off and get a haircut and look like a regular GI Joe.
I thought he looked the right sort of bloke to do what he was doing. I thought neutering him wasn't such a bright idea.
The way to fight people like AlQ is not to look like a bunch of clones following orders but to send in a chaotic force, operating independently, which looks like anything from a rock to a chimp to a robot, regular person, priest, soldier, policeman, shop keeper, with a powerful and civilized brain and some goals and general guidelines. Group size could be anything from none [use just a transducer or web cam with a remote control booby trap IED, though not improvised] to 10,000. Groups would mix and mingle as they liked. Maybe 2 would hop on a couple of bicycles and head off somewhere.
Better still is to bribe and corrupt the ideology which underpins Al Qaeda and Islamic Jihad in general. That means changing one's own ideas if one's own ideas are part of the problem. Which, they are. The USA is trying to run a global empire, disparaging the UN which is controlled by the USA and was designed by the USA and WWII victors.
Remember, guns and bombs don't kill people. People don't kill people either. It is ideas which kill people. The best way to kill an idea is not to disassemble the brain which contains the idea, but to get the person themselves to change their idea. One need only provide them a countervailing better idea. And the great thing is that ideas are really, really cheap. Not only are they cheap, they are profitable.
Suppose that, for example, Al Qaedans were to decide "By crikey, I was up a gum tree there. That does indeed look like a MUCH better idea." They put their gun and IED on sale on trademe.co.nz or eBay or at the local market and get a job helping build some refineries in Iran, pipelines, steel mills and stuff. They see some swanky CDMA-powered phragmented photon cyberphones and buy one. QCOM pays Uncle Sam another bunch of tax, the NUN collects a royalty too, I take the profits after paying some ex-Al Qaedans salaries and bonuses for helping make good software, I buy a Lexus and a Cessna Citation and go on holiday to Iran in winter.
CDMA brings peace, light, harmony, happiness, health, prosperity, longevity, fun and love. Those who really like blowing other people up can sublimate their primal instincts on a 3D real-time game of conquest and carnage. Mostly, the real thing is not really a lot of fun for people after they have been doing it for a while. Especially when their own leg or face goes missing.
"Staying the course" is easy when you are a golf-playing president. It's more problematic when you are J6P paying his green fees, housing costs and Air Force 1, and even more so when you are the bloke wondering how many more years you are going to have to put up with carnage in another country where nobody much seems to think you are a great guy [other than your own soldier mates]. 80% opposition is a LOT of opposition. 50% thinking attacks on you are fair enough is dispiriting [if those are the real figures, which wouldn't surprise me a lot if they are].
Bring on the NUN. Bringing on Islamic Jihad hasn't been so great so far. King George II needs a better idea than "Bring 'em on!" to kill his old and faulty ideas which cause him problems in his attempts to kill the ideas he dislikes in Al Qaeda.
Saddam should have invited the UN to set up a NUN constitutional conference, funded by him, in a few of his palaces, which would have saved his bacon and a lot more besides. But the USA, having faulty ideas, would probably have vetoed such an idea anyway because they really wanted a war and to get the oil. Now the USA is learning about karma. I recommend, still, 5 years later, that the USA arrange a constitutional NUN conference. They could delegate Bill Clinton to handle it. He'd think that a LOT of fun.
I waved my UN flag to him when he visited Auckland in 1999 and during the APEC discussions he decided that the mess in East Timor wasn't so great and supported intervention to fix up the genocidal carnage which Kissinger and co supported way back in the 1970s in the same way that April supported ["No worries mate, nothing to do with us"] Saddam teaching Kuwait a lesson, namely that it was really part of Iraq. I figure Bill liked the UN ideas and thought it a good idea. There isn't a lot of flag waving in NZ [none] so it was pretty obvious. The TV people thought it worth filming and doing a little interview.
Ideas kill ideas, and unfortunately, a lot of people sometimes.
With the Shakespearian morass in the USA, it's unlikely that King George II would see fit to send Bill to get it done. But stranger things have happened. Maybe Gorby could help in his older years. I'm sure a lot of people who like sucking the taxpayer's blood would love to get in on the act. The main point is to ensure it is a Libertarian constitution, not a Big Brother monstrosity, without people voting to take other peoples' property. I am the last one to want a Big Brother NUN superseding national norms. A thieving suffocatocracy like the EU which specifies the minutiae of daily life is anathema to me.
Now there's an idea.
Mqurice |
