Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

It's a simple fact: getting high power weaponry into place isn't hard. Manufacturing high power weaponry isn't hard — nor is stealing it. The fact is that if terrorists decide to blow something up, if they're willing to sacrifice a few of their loyalists in the process, the attack will happen, and it will happen successfully. So address the root of the problem, not the symptoms.

I'm going to give some excerpts in a second, but I highly recommend Counterpunch's When the War Hits Home: U.S. Plans for Martial Law, Tele-Governance, and the Suspension of Elections.

Well, at least I'm not the only kook out there pointing out there's a good chance that there won't be another election in America.

I have enormous respect for soldiers that fight for their nations to protect their homes, and I also feel, as a pacifist, that a person absolutely has the right to raise arms to protect their own (although I strongly disagree with standing armies; I feel a nation needs a well-armed populace, coupled with a small number of elite strike forces). But what I can't say I think highly of is people who join the military because it's a job with good perks. First, people going in with that thinking make poor soldiers when the shit hits the fan (as we've seen), and second, because it's morally wrong. It's no better than becoming a hit man for the mafia “because the pay is good”.

Killing is an extreme act, and should only be sanctioned in the most dire of circumstances. That should be obvious to any decent person.

Goodbye gun sales in Jersey!

As the Heineken ad points out, we've already forgotten about Enron (the giant financial scam the administration was recently caught up in, remember?). Most corporate executives seem to be predicting hard times… Unless of course you're in the arms business. If you're up to it, here's a giant report on The Role of the Arms Lobby In the Bush Administration's Radical Reversal of Two Decades of U.S. Nuclear Policy. Some excerpts (it's really long and rather dry):

The report is very long, but if you think you're up to it, do bookmark it for later reading. It's absolutely exhaustive and rather damning of (through being revealing into) everything that's going on right now. Remember — Forbes just named murdering bastards Northrop Grumman “Company of the Year”. If you're not sure who they are, they builld the B2, the F-18, the X-47, the JSF, and so on. They also (publicly) handed nearly ten million dollars to politicians to make things happen. Not only that, but they're totally tied in with the government; the secretary of the Air Force is a former NG president.

When you cast your vote in elections, are you just deciding who's gonna get the bribes? Because that sure is what it seems like from up here…

Now let's point out why the above is particularly scary: Rumsfield is already planning the next war, saying the US is “perfectly capable” of launching military action against North Korea, clearly the greater threat, at the same time as Iraq. North Korea continues to enhance its nuclear weapons program, all the while making threats to “vaporize” cities like Los Angeles and Anchorage. Pat Buchanan's prediction for 2003: a year of wars:

Buchanan goes on to quote retired US General Barry McCaffery:

And don't forget about China, that overpowerful giant that grows stronger every day, and has the sense to keep its mouth shut and mind its own business. What happens when the US eventually butts heads with China? It's only a matter of time.

Missile defence: it's all about speed. If you are going to build a missile that shoots down another missile, your missile has to dramatically outperform (speed and maneuverability) your enemy's. Which, by definition, means that any nation that has a functioning missile defence shield also has weapons that can penetrate any other nation. Which in turn means that they will be forced to develop similar weapons, which in turn means that shortly after deploying the missile defence shield, it becomes useless and the spiral into madness repeats.

Lasers would work, but realistically it would mean massive space-based lasers and insane targeting systems. But lasers would work — so the end result of “missile defence” is a world where the terrible eye above can instantly convert anyone walking the surface of the earth into a small pile of ash. Do you trust your leaders enough to give them this power?

PS. Am I writing these entries for my health?

First of all, sorry about all the password emails last night, I have no idea what happened and I'm getting to the bottom of it now. Some kind of delayed Y2K thing probably (what I'm saying is it was totally unexpected). Anyway, it's being dealt with now.

A supreme court judge in Mississipi just said that gays and lesbians should be institutionalised. The exact and shocking quote, from a letter to the editor he wrote earlier this year regarding gay and lesbian partners being able to sue in wrongful death cases, not just an off-the-cuff comment, is:

Now, I think it's important to now go and read that verse — it's where it gets scary.

That is, this Supreme Court Judge is actually advocating the death sentence for gays and lesbians. People regularly say to me, “Oh, Shannon, you shouldn't complain so much about these legal things — there's a system of checks whereby if a lower court violates civil rights, appeals to higher courts can fix the mistake.”

His statement was made in March. While a state commission on Friday recommended that he be given a $150 fine. And that's just a recommendation. So here's the deal: if a Supreme Court Judge advocates the death penalty for gays and homosexuals, they might get a fine that's less than an hour's pay. Yeah, I'm sure that'll stop them. Good going, checks and balances.

A judge that publicly states that they are unable to think rationally regarding ten to twenty percent of the population should be immediately removed from office. Come on! What if he'd said, “blacks are not human, and as such be put to death if they commit a crime?”

Why is this tolerable?

But then again, it seems to be hard to find a Republican, at least a Republican politician that's not a racist. Dunno why. For all I know it's the same for the Democrats as well; thanks to Lott though, the Republicans are getting all their bigoted skeletons dragged out of the closet. (There are more stories on this subject on sites like cursor.org)

I'm not entirely sure where I stand on this story. Basically, the US government just intervened to stop inexpensive drugs from getting to third world nations. As a result, millions of people will probably die horribly because they can't afford treatments. However, the core issue is international patent protection; the US is left with two choices on this:

1. Relax patent laws, allow drugs to be copied in certain developing nations. Save a lot of lives, but make no significant extra profit.
2. Don't relax patent laws, don't allow drugs to be copied in these nations. No lives saved, no profit made either.

However, the second example isn't entirely true, as it ignores international aid. The US government sends massive amounts of aid to foreign countries, and the above gives you a peek into why. Let's assume that the US continues to stick with the second policy (which it is). That means that any aid group fighting HIV, malaria, TB, etc. in Africa has to buy the drugs at full commercial markup, using taxpayer money and donations.

It's just another policy that works best for big business, and worst for the people of this planet. At the same time though, I'm not sure if we should be able to force companies to hand over their research just because it's in the general good… The question is, how much freedom is lost by not protecting the freedom to make evil choices? (I certainly don't have an answer for that.)

I'll mention now that one of the many reasons most of my news regards the US government is because the US is “cutting edge” when it comes to defining the new corporate run world and rides at least ten to twenty years ahead on the corruption wave. What's happening in the US right now will happen in Canada and then the rest of the West as well. It is an inevitable conclusion of a system that allows the existence of large corporate bodies.

To get another angle on how a government manages to enact such misguided policies, take a look at how Bush chooses his scientific advisors. Basically, the primary screening is political and ideological, rather than scientific. That is, poor science is chosen over good science if it serves the political goals of the administration. Which in the long run equates to no science at all — which equates to a short sighted and dangerous foundation.

There's an interesting new study over at the Pew Research Center. I downloaded the complete report; here are “some” of the numbers that struck me (sorry, it's longer than it should be, just scroll over it if you get bored):

• Over 75% of Americans think they are better off today or the same as they were five years ago (which is clearly insane given that the economy has plummeted in the last five years and civil rights have been slashed). Americans also almost universally stated that in five years again things would be even better. However, 55% said they were dissatisfied with the way the country is going (hello doublethink).
• That said, only a very small amount of other countries state marked improvement in the last five years: Nigeria and Ghana. Many African nations reported that in the future they believed they'd be great nations. South America and Asia reported the same, whereas Europe pretty universally identified itself as a dying continent.
• 74% of North Americans said they were satisfied or very satisfied with their household income.
• No country said that they were happier with their income than their family life, so that's good I think. The only countries to rank their family satisfaction below 50% were Ghana and Uganda.
• Only two countries stated that they felt they were satisfied with their country's actions today: Uzbekistan and Canada. Every other country interviewed citizen's reported overall dissatisfaction, with notable lows being Argentina (3%), Bulgaria (4%), Turkey (4%), and India (9%).
• When asked about general satisfaction with the world, most countries report about an 80% dissatisfaction level. Several countries ranked lower because of the bulk of “I don't know” answers such as China, and only Pakistan reported a significantly higher rate, with almost double the world satisfaction of other nations.
• When asked what the greatest threat to the world is, US citizens mostly said nuclear weapons. While many countries agreed, other leaders included bigotry (Canada, UK and most of Europe, and many others), AIDS and disease (Egypt and much of Africa and South America), and pollution (a couple Asian countries). Only Eastern Europe and Argentina named the rich/poor gap as a leading threat.
• 50% of Americans and 23% of Britain citizens consider terrorism a very big problem. Of all Western countries, Canadians, who listed their biggest problem (of the options presented) as political corruption and disease, are least concerned with terrorism.
• Of all countires excluding African nations, America is dramatically the most happy with its military.
• The only country in the world to be very happy with its immigrants is Canada.
• Americans are happier with Bush (himself) than they are with both the government as a whole or their religious leaders.
• Africans still get most of their news from radio, whereas TV is dominant in the rest of the world.
• TV leads newspapers by a dramatic margin in most of the world for general news, but when it comes to international news, newspapers dominate. Only Bangladesh gets most of its international news from TV.
• 78% of Canadians have a favorable opinion of Americans, with Europe falling between 63% and 83% (about the same). Notable lows include Egypt (13%) and Pakistan (17%).
• Americans believe that America almost always take into account the interests of other countries when acting internationally. Very few countries agree, but there are a few that do, surprisingly including Vietnam.
• Every country surveyed agreed that having a second superpower equivalent to America would make the world more dangerous. This question was not asked in China for obvious reasons.
• While nearly four in five Americans said other countries would be better off if they adopted American ideals, the only countries to agree with that statement were the Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and the Philippines.
• That said, almost every country on the planet said they like US movies, TV, and music, with Canada liking it more than any other Western country (including the US!). Notable haters of US media culture include Bolivia, Russia, Bangladesh, Egypt, Jordan, and Pakistan (bottom of the list, with only 4% saying they like it).
• Every country except Pakistan and Russia said it admired the US for its technological innovation.
• Of Western countries, Canada most objected to the war on terror. Agentina, Senegal, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Turkey all significantly opposed it.
• Americans are the least travelled citizens of any Western nation, and know the least people in other nations.
• Europeans report the least personal financial difficulties, followed closely by North America. The rest of the world is not doing so well, to put it lightly. America has the poorest citizens of all Western nations, although this number is skewed by medical costs being much higher in America.

Damn, I just wasted way too much time reading that. Oh, and those are based on about a thousand interviews in each nation. For a more anecdotal version of the above, here's a story about Pakistan.

The UN is already making plans to clean up the mess the US is about to make in Iraq: 900,000 refugees, plus a potential ecological disaster. A pack of lies and strange omissions designed not to fight terror, but to fuel the defense industry and guarantee this planet is covered with weapons that have the potential to destroy it.

Which means that when (if) Korea goes through with reunification we're back to a cold war mutually assured destruction standoff. Are you really looking forward to drug addicted pilots dropping fire on a nuclear nation lead by a genuine madman?

Anyway, to finish with a precis of Charley Reese's colum today, Anti-War Not The Same As Anti-Defense, (click his name to read the whole thing):

PS. This just came in via ServMe: Coffee, Tea, or Should We Feel Your Pregnant Wifes Breasts Before Throwing You in a Cell at the Airport and Then Lying About Why We Put You There?. Yes, it's what it sounds like. Now to “fight terror”, airline officials are forcing pregnant women to take their clothes off in public to prove that they're really pregnant, not just wearing a body suit.

Yay for freedom!

Anyway, I'm off to do more year-end work for BME right now (thanks to help from PluR and Vanilla) so it's not just more of the same-old. Sorry this entry was so long, I just got wrapped up in that survey!

Oh, and the new lense should get here today (thanks Phil) so I'll post some shots from it when it does…