Morris Dovey wrote:
Robatoy wrote:
On Sep 12, 1:21 am, "Morris Dovey" wrote:

My _preferred_ weapons are keyboard and ballot.

I so wish I had a ballot.

Y'know, I was thinking about that a while back. Not your (r's)
ballot
specifically, but the notion that citizens of a country aren't the
only stakeholders in choosing that country's leaders.

It was just idle thinking, of course, because no one in any country
would be willing to give someone from another country a role in
choosing their country's leadership. Still, it's an interesting
thought - and I've wondered how things would play if the world
outside
the USA could elect one senator and one representative to our
legislature...

Probably about like they play in Puerto Rico and like they played in
the Phillippines.

That said, it does not render my views and my ability to express
them as impotent.
It's that 'forest-from-the-trees' thing, Morris.

Absolutely true - that's the "keyboard' part of the arsenal.
Discourse
/can/ bring about change when well-chosen words are spoken/written
in
a suitable context.

But only if the people with power to effect change see the words.

Well, in a manner of speaking, we're all trees in the forest - even
though we'd each like to speak our own piece and be heard as
individuals.

It's being worth listening to that's the real challenge.

Getting heard is harder than being worth listening to.

I peek over the fence and worry myself sick.

I'll be the first to admit that you have noisy neighbors who (at
least
sometimes) appear to be completely irrational. :-)

Observe - great. Worry yourself sick - please don't. As a
constructive
friend, you're highly valued - and I would prefer you stay healthy.

FWIW, before you get into deep worry mode, it makes sense to ask:
"Hey, what's going on here? Do I need to worry about you?" There are
a
couple of benefits to this: first, there may not be as much reason
to
worry as you originally thought - and second, you've stimulated your
neighbor to focus (even if just a little) more on what you see as a
problem.

A lot of my peers were on loan to Iran to build their electrical
networks. They made a lot of friends. So many Iranians we'd love to
have as neighbours. What's with the war drums?

Fear and a certain amount of bigotry. Fear that Iran will develop
nuclear weapons as powerful as those we have and fear that they'll
act
irresponsibly.

Several of nations have nuclear weapons as powerful as those we have
and are not a problem. I don't think that anyone in the US gives a
damn if the Brits or the French have nuclear weapons of any degree of
power. Iran though is run by Islamic fundamentalists, and while the
ones running Iran have not done so recently, Islamic fundies seem to
like to blow up anything they dislike and don't really seem to give
much of a damn who, including themselves, gets hurt in the process.
If it Iranians nuked a city somewhere and the whole country got paved
as a result they'd be acclaimed as gloriout martyrs to the Jihad.

That's why Iran having nuclear weapons is a bad thing. In fact
Pakistan having them is a bit scary--the current regime there seems to
be reasonable, but it doesn't even have the whole country under
control--there are places in Pakistan that the cops don't go without a
military escort, and there have been attempts to assassinate the
current leader. If the fundies take over Pakistan then it's quite
possible that Very Bad Things will follow.

I worked (and socialized) with some Irani immigrants in San Jose. I
was pleased to give 'em all the furniture I'd built for my apartment
when I returned to Iowa, and I'd be still more pleased to have them
living next door here.

Every Japanese I've met has been a good guy. So has every German.
That doesn't mean that Pearl Harbor and the Holocaust didn't happen.

It's not the man in the street that starts wars, it's the government.
In the late '30s and early '40s both countries had rather nasty
governments that didn't much care who got hurt while they pursued
their dreams of power and there was precious little that the man in
the street could do about it. A lot of good, decent Japanese and
Germans got killed either by or for those governments.

Do you really trust the Iranian government? You don't seem to trust
the US government and the US government is at least notionally
answerable to the populace, so why is the Iranian government more
trustworthy?

In order to beat the war drums, it's necessary to /ignore/ the value
of individuals. I've concluded that "hawkishness" is inversely
proportional to the number of places from which one's friends come
and
inverse-squared with one's appreciation for cultures other than
one's
own.

So which would you rather? Some of those valuable individuals die
sooner while the Iranian government is prevented from obtaining
nuclear weapons that it doesn't need, or a lot more die later when
that government uses those weapons?

Why is the Iranian government so Hell-bent on nuclear weapons anyway?
That money could be far better spent expanding the economy.

Won't you add impeachement to you arsenal of keyboard and ballot?

That's not really a solution to the problems we've created for
ourselves - for a number of reasons. For instance: How would you
feel
knowing the head of household next door had carelessly shot a
_friend_?

What does this have to do with impeachment? And how often does that
particular scenario happen anyway? That's another statistic that you
people pull up at the drop of the hat without understanding it--"shot
someone you know" is not the same as "shot a friend".

IMO, our stars never shone so brightly as when we focused our
efforts
on sharing our best with others in need - and they never dimmed so
rapidly as when our politicians changed their focus from 'help' to
'control'.

They _still_ don't have 24-hour electricity in Baghdad.

And they aren't going to until the Iraqis quit blowing each other to
Kingdom Come.

That's why the US is there right now, to try to keep the lid on until
the government is strong and stable enough to do so without help.
Now, I'm sure you're going to counter with the argument that
everything will be peachy-keen in Iraq if the US leaves. And you're
right, it will, if you define "peachy-keen" as "The Mahdi Army
overthrows the government, establishes a Shiite dominated Islamic
fundamentalist state, arrests and imprisons or executes anybody who
dissents, lines up all the troublemakers and lots of other innocents
who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and
shoots them, establishes a new secret police, and Moqtada Al-Sadr is
elected President for Life by a 110 percent majority".

--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)