What the heck is the U.S. in the United Nations for?

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43089

Okay, so the United Nations has a history going back to World War II, and it was pretty much created by the United States. Their headquarters is in New York City, the "Big 5" (alphabetically, China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States) had reason at the time to want the entity to be installed, and apparently 45 other countries were part of the original signatory nations. Basically, from what I can tell, it was the clubhouse for the victorious nations from World War II to hang out in and discuss international policies.

The United Nations has a neat listing of its big "accomplishments", basically a top 50. http://www.un.org/aboutun/achieve.htm

Obviously they don't go into their shortcomings or failings on their own website (at least not that I could find with a brief perusal).

Here's an interesting little commentary that is prety Anti United Nations, and points out some interesting policies that the United Nations appears to be championing

http://www.americanpolicy.org/un/main.htm

A right wing position paper of course.

Here's a paper with some more interesting commentary.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/776336/posts


I always kind of suspected that the majority of United Nations members were less than democratic. Here's the actual list of member States (sadly, it doesn't include the state's political structure).

http://www.un.org/Overview/unmember.html

While I can't really say who's there, or why, there are some interesting notes. Bosnia and Herzegovina were admitted in 1992, which as I recall is just promptly before they had to be bombed in a peacekeeping effort. Afghanistan (and therefore I guess the Taliban) is a member as well as of 1946. I guess once you are in, it doesn't matter how your government changes, you stay in.

The Axis of evil (DPRK, Iran, and Iraq) are all members. So is Somalia.

So, how do I get to be a part of the United nations?

1. Membership in the United Nations is open to a other peace-loving states
which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the
judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these
obligations.
2. The admission of any such state to membership in the
Nations
will be effected by a decision of the General Assembly upon the
recommendation
of the Security Council.

Taken from article four of the charter found here:

http://www.icj-cij.org/icjwww/ibasicdocuments/ibasictext/ibasicunchart.htm

There are rules for being kicked out, but it seems to me from the list and my knowledge of the member states that being kicked out is pretty darn rare. I couldn't find any comments on any nation being expelled.

I understand the purpose of the United Nations on a philosophical level. But given what it does seem to actually do, and how it operates, I continue to quetion why it is the United States, or for that matter, any government that tries to uphold the ideals that the United Nations claims to enshrine would want to be a member.

Maybe I'm missing something

Global Warming - Another Denial of God

http://www.globalwarming.org/science.php

Once upon a time, people believed in God/Gods, and attributed unfortunate circumstances to it/them. The weather was a particularly common fact of life that was attributed to it/them. As science has improved, and we have gained a greater understanding of the mechanics of the way the world works, we came to control more and more of the world around us. Of course, this didn't start with the age of science. Irrigation was important to early societies in order to regulate water flow to their crops, basically an attempt to control drought (flooding of course was another problem).

But in the modern world, there is definitely a bias against a belief in god. Acts of God still exist in insurance policies though (at least as far as I know).

What seems interesting to me is that VERY often in the modern world, bad things that would have been considered Acts of God in the past (drought, earthquake, global warming) are invariably tied to actions of Western Civilization, and very little of the good that Western Civilization has brought to the world is seen as being positive. When bad things happen, people seem to be looking to blame Western Civilization, and most particularly, the United States.

Now, this isn't to say that I don't believe that there are quite real problems caused by modern society. We could also find ways to more efficiently use our resources, even as they do exist. Also, our responses to disaster's around the world could probably be better managed, the United Nations seems to be a terrible manager for such events, but they are what we've got.

As we come to understand our world better and better, the idea of "Act of God" will certainly have to change. Lightning strikes were acts of god, but then lightning rods came into the equation, and they became manageable events.

For now, I just don't follow the theories of global warming enough to accept them as good science. The globe is warming up, that is a measureable observation. Human activity is almost certainly affecting the general weather patterns of the world. However, it seems just as likely that our activity is delaying a warming trend in the world as opposed to speeding it up. Here's my theory. Blacktop on roads and houses (roofing tar) absorbs more heat rather than reflecting it back into the atmosphere, thus resulting in net atmospheric cooling when compared to the amount of heat energy reflected into the atmosphere by native flora.

I would love to see some testable, observable data that fits a theory of global warming (particularly when it comes to Greenhouse gasses). One thing that is clear from complex systems is that they tend to move towards a state of equilibrium. Equilibrium doesn't mean nothing is going on of course, but overall, it means that things are probably pretty dull. The sky isn't falling, and the proper course of action to take has to be evaluated based on a variety of criteria. For now, I think that the weather around the globe still falls under the purview of unknown forces, aka God.

Cawnpore

http://www.geocities.com/Broadway/Alley/5443/indmut4.htm

Fascinating the sort of thing you can find when you surf the internet. Little tidbits of history, revealing just how ugly things were in the past. I kind of wonder what the insurgents were thinking here. And then, the simple bloodthirstiness of the common folk.

The surviving men back at what later became known as the 'Massacre Ghat' were
immediately put to the sword. The women and children were led away to the
aptly named Bibi-Ghar ( the house of the women) a former residence of a
British officer's Indian mistress. On July 15th, a group of men, including
the town butchers, entered the Bibi-Ghar armed with knives and hatchets and
hacked all the women and children to pieces. Their bodies were thrown down a
well.

What good could they have thought would come of that?

The "civilized" Victorian Brits did come back, and regained control. Modern American sensibilities would be horrified at the British reaction.

The seeming treachery of Nana Sahib at the massacre ghat was nought when
measured against the unspeakable atrocities of the Bibi-Ghar. Vengeance was
required and even more stern-faced than the Old Testament judges of the Bible,
the British wanted more than just an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
When the British later pushed up the valley of the Ganges and Cawnpore once more
fell into their hands, they took their sepoy prisoners to the Bibi-Ghar and
forced them to lick the blood-encrusted floors clean. Then they were taken out
and hanged.

Those who do not learn from history...

On a side note, I was told by someone today that being an American stationed in Iraq is safer than being an American in a major metropolitan city. The numbers (completely unverified, but I am curious now) I was quoted was that at this point 3 in 100,000 deaths occur per month, which is lower than the death rate in a major American City (say New York or Los Angeles). I do want to check this out.

Egyptian Bombings

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=586&e=1&u=/nm/20050725/wl_nm/egypt_explosions_dc

One thing I don't follow is why people link the war in Iraq with terrorist activity abroad (or lets call it Militant Islamic Terrorism). The United States was not involved in miliraty operations in the middle east prior to 9-11. Yes, we supported Israel, but boots were not on the ground (at least as far as I know).

Now, whether we should have attacked Iraq or not remains a point of contention between Bush supporters and detractors. I am ambivalent about the attack actually. Given my understanding of information available at the time, I would say that it was justified, but I think that there was more to it than simply WMD, as was advertised at the time. I think it was mishandled though, and I wonder if there is a level of naivete that was ideological in nature that led the planners to believe that the soil in Iraq was ready for Democracy to take root.

All that aside, apart for "business as usual," the attacks on 9-11 had no specific provocation. The same thing seems to be case with the recent bombings in Egypt. The list of terrorist attacks throughout the world tends to have no specific provocation, other than a simple dissatisfaction with "business as usual." So now, there's a more obvious "excuse," or "cause." Now there may have been terrorist attacks in Iraq under Saddam's rule, hard to know. Saddam was ruthless in dealing with opposition, and so if there were, we can be sure that people suffered over it, likely guilty and innocent. Now, the current war in Iraq, inasmuch as it is a war (I don't think it really is, but that's another issue) may be recruiting more terrorists. It may be stepping up attacks against Americans (at least American troops), but if this leads to the leadership, or escalates the conflict to the point where people need to take sides (this goes to the Muslim world more specifically), then at least the lines are drawn, and let's face it, Saddam was pretty much evil by any measure.

I think people need to remember what war, real war, is like. I think that this might in fact work against us in Iraq and Afghanistan, because our troops do NOT act like warriors in the traditional sense, which makes them look a lot more like occupiers. Obviously we want a political regime that is friendly to the United States though, and that can make the government we support look like a puppet government, and in fact it is a puppet government. It can't stand on its own, and that is a quandary. It's not a government that is evolving out of, or based on the real "WILL" of the people, as evidenced by their desire to fight for their future (although granted not all of them can fight very well. Then again, bands of warlords aren't really a great model either, but that is probably the stage they are at. Tha'ts pretty much how Afghanistan wound up with the Taliban to begin with.

Now, if the U.S. can succeed in dragging Afghanistan and Iraq into the 20th century as an ally of the West, that will shake a lot of the middle east quite dramatically. If anything, that seems to me to be a big reason that the other governments in the area would prefer for this mission to fail. Time will tell if we succeed. But one thing seems pretty clear. The terrorists are striking everywhere, and have been for years. The real question is what qualifies as victory in the war on terror? I don't know what sort of criteria will qualify for "Victory," and I really wish this would be clarified. However, I suspect that if it was clarified, most people would feel that it can't be won. Even so, doesn't mean that it shouldn't be fought.

Terrorists do have a view of their victory conditions. When you consider what they consider victory, you might re-evaluate whether they would ever stop attacking those that disagree with them. I don't buy that it's about the War in Iraq. I do think that it gives them something of a cause celebre, but they would continue their terrorist actions either way. The war in Iraq is simply a high profile event that they can use as a banner, and a geographically convenient location to directly strike at Americans.

Fantastic Four - Saw it today, and it was amusing, and would probably have been considered really cool five years ago. It was an entertaining, fun film that did a decent job of making a movie out of a comic book story that has been going for over 40 years now. Nothing deep or thoughtful about it, just some escapist entertainment.

No deep thoughts on my mind right now, but figured I'd make a not of the movie.

The Jetsons Vs. The Flintstones

The middle east is, by modern standards, a basket case, on life support provided by oil and foreign aid. Corrupt leaderships and a society that is still living a life that is much closer to the stone age than the modern age creates a population that probably simply isn't ready for democracy.

There are a few Western crazy ideas, and one of them, that seems to have become rather dogmatic in recent years, is that Democracy is the panacea to the world's ills. Thing is, it took centuries for most cultures to manage to reach a state of Democracy, and as a general rule, it was a bloody path to dem0cracy, filled with missteps. France tried it after America, had a really bloody revolution, and then installed an emperor when they didn't like it. Germany and Italy tried it, and then moved on to Fascism, England's monarchy lurched into it, with the monarchy only giving up its traditional power after plenty of bloodshed. Russia tried it, and promptly moved to totalitarianism (or if you prefer, communism).

So, why do we think that Democracy can manage to survive in Afghanistan or Iraq? What does democracy offer the people?

Prosperity seems to be rather directly linked to the success of Democracy in most cases. Democracies seem to work best when you have a lot of shopkeepers that are interested in building wealth. When you have lots of poor folks that are interested in eating dinner, Democracy has trouble. The middle east has lots of poor folks.

To make matters worse though, Western society tends to belittle poor folk. So, the question is what opportunity do the dirt farmers really see in their future? What do they even want?

In modern Western Society, there is a sense of striving to improve on the past. A future that is brighter and shinier than the present is the goal. Western economies, and interest, is a foundation of that principle. But life wasn't always that way. There was a time when the goal was to live a life like dear old dad's. Same place, same thing was a way of life, and THE way of life to come.

The problem really is that if the flintstones didn't know better, they would slowly move their way along their own cultural evolutionary path, have famines, riots, wars, etc. But unfortunately for them, the modern world is out there, and it doesn't want them to go through all that. Famine, genocide, civil war, and other sociological growing pains are frowned upon by wealthy nations. Of course, "helping" them out doesn't let them really work it out either. And often, as Somalia shows, will lead to the people being helped resenting those that attempt to help them.

The big fish in the little pond are going to resent the whale, they always have. At this moment in history, America is the biggest fish. If it wasn't for Oil, the entire middle east would be a bloody little sandbox that holds no interest for the United States at all, much like Africa IS at this point in history.

An interesting little paradox might be that Saddam, who wanted to bring the Middle East to the table of the modern world under his control may have been the right man for the job of modernizing and stamping out fundamentalist fervor. The United States doesn't have the will to cause the sort of bloodshed that such a transition will require. And for that matter, the rewards to be had from such a conquest, at least for the United States, just aren't worth the cost. What the United States is attempting is a sort of assimilation to democracy, acting almost like an ideological "Borg" state seeking to impose Western democracy on a state in order to give said state an American stamp of approval. But there is not much of a carrot associated with Democracy, and neither is there a lot of "stick" for not going along with it.

Poverty can lead to despair, and the middle eastern leaders have done a good job of channeling that despair against Israel and the United States. There is certainly a religious overtone to it, and current religious dogma from a fundamentalist view is something that modern Westerners have turned away from, and so can't really understand very well. It is clear that the armies of the middle east really have no chance against the West. They couldn't take on Israel when they banded together, they haven't a prayer against the United States. So, if they can't die valiantly on a battlefield, if a suicide bomber can inflict equal, or greater casualties (assuming you make no distinction between civilian and military) than a battlefield scenario, the only question at that point is whether you can get enough suicide bombers to achieve your objective.

Personally, I'm wondering what will happen when suicide bombers take the more western approach to this, and decide to go on shooting sprees. They could always blow themselves up when they run out of ammo, or even have a timer on themselves in case they get too wounded to push the button themselves.

Fortunately, it seems that there really aren't all that many protestors willing to blow themselves up, and whoever is exhorting/training them hasn't really gone and evaluated how to best use the resources they do have.

I can see where this sort of thing can become a home for complaints about life in general. Also gives you an idea of how fast time flies by, and I think that for a lot of people, a lot of our time isn't really our own.

So, to be brief, I've been dealing with the general annoyances of my own life. Home annoyance, schoolwork annoyance, and had some time inconveniently sucked away by Coast Tickets too. Last course had a heavily backloaded final week, which just started to put time pressure on me. Poker also gave me a heavy beating, the kind that has me slowing down a lot, and re-evaluating. High variance games can be dangerous in the short term of course.

Heat wave is hitting here too, with humidity attached, can't really help things.

Oh well, don't want this to become a whine, so I'll conclude this post here, noting that I do understand the desire to whine, and the trick is making it constructive, not being a passive whiner, but taking advantage of the process to consider how to get out of the things that annoy us in life.

Is Osama Bin Laden the new Emmanuel Goldstein?

Does anyone even know who I am talking about?

Goldstein's face was "a lean Jewish face, with a great fuzzy aureole of white hair and a small goattee beard -- a clever face, and yet somehow inherently despicable, with a kind of senile silliness in the long thin nose, near the end of which a pair of spectacles was perched."

Not too far from Osama's face. Osama's face is a lean, middle eastern face, always turbaned with graying hair trailing down his face to becom a pair of sideburns, and a full beard and mustache in accordance with the customs of his religon. I think Osama's face looks more grandfatherly, with a hint of menace to it, which may be more about his mystique than anything innate in his looks. Few images of Bin Laden show any spectacles, although for some reason I think there are one or two floating out there.

Okay, now I'm going to give the game away with the next description. If you don't recognize where Emmanuel Goldstein was described, if you've read the book at all, this passage will give it away.

"Goldstein was the renegade and backslider who once, long ago (how long ago, nobody quite remembered), had been one of the leading figures of the Party, almost on a level with Big Brother himself, and then had engaged in counter-revolutionary activities, had been condemned to death, and had mysteriously escaped and disappeared. The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party's purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters, perhapse even -- so it was occasionally rumoured -- in some hiding-place in Oceania itself."


So, how close is Osama to Emmanuel in this? Well, Osama was once a heroic fighter against the evil empire. An idealistic young mujahedeen who struggled to free Afghanistan from the oppression of Soviet Tyranny. The mujahedeen were supported by American/British bankrolling and weaponry [http://www.larouchepub.com/other/1995/2241_mujahideen_control.html] (rather in the tradition of proxy wars going back hundreds if not thousands of years, a classic one Americans should recognize would be French support of American rebels against their British sovereigns). Osama is the son of one of the wealthiest men in the Middle East, and of course, the Bin Laden Family is on good terms with our own modern political dynasty, the Bush family. But as for what Osama is doing, he is out there, somewhere or other, hatching more plots against the civilized world. I don't think that there are many people claiming that Osama is hiding out in the United States though.

Now honestly, I don't think we quite fit into the "Orwellian" fascist state, which is more reminiscent of Stalins' Russia. But given that the U.S., at least in theory, can't manage to bring in public enemy number one for the last nearly 4 years, I kind of question how serious the effort has been. On the other hand, I do admit that such a state of affairs is at least feasible given that we don't use "any means" necessary, U.S. compassion probably hampers our hunt.

Still, does seem to me that Osama is cut of the same cloth as Emmanuel.

Just a bit of pondering about the wonderful Supreme Court ruling on private property. I always thought those "Militiamen" who were worried about the government coming out to take away our property were kind of crazy. I guess they were right. There probably is something to be considered by a government entity seeking to use eminent domain on behalf of developers when they know that the land in question is owned by a group of gun toting survivalists that are willing to die for their land before handing it over so some developers can put in a new mini mall. It's one thing when there is a willing buyer and seller, but when the government forces a sale, and dictates a price, well, I guess we might all be well served to see what else our fellow citizens are worried about, especially the gun toting ones that are worried about the government doing things we don't approve of.

Decided to finally create one of these, especially after seeing a few other hosting sites who's TOS seemed to imply they would gain the rights to an author's written work. While I question the actual legal standing of such an agreement, that sort of thing simply made it clear that I shouldn't even bother with them.

There is a lot going on the world of late. The Supreme Court says that the government can take land for private development. Soon we'll have a new Supreme nominated (boy, that fight will be interesting). Al Quaeda took a poke at London. Other fun things, the Chinese are looking to buy Unocal and of course, now it sounds like the Government wants to remove the sunset clause on the patriot act, and make it all permanent.

On a personal note, just got the Jack La Lanne Power Juicer at Target yesterday, when the Oster one took a dive. At Target it cost $99 (+ tax of course), and I must say that is is FAR superior to the Oster version, and while I haven't done any comparison testing with any bot those two models (and the Oster version was kind of old), I question how much better a more expensive model could be. Nice to know that Jack is lending his name to Quality.

Well, thus ends my first post, we'll see how it looks.