December 26, 2003

• Isn't that what [b]terrorist[/b] literally means?
• Aargh.. monkey miss bracket!
• that's what i mean... are they succeeding just because they're scaring the crap out of us? or have they done this one too many times? do you guys take notice when they issue a threat like this, or just think, bah, they've said this before and nothing happened...
• I try to avoid news and current events as much as possible. I quit reading FARK because (among other things) it was just too much local news. Terror alerts have the potential to be their own Onion article (sorry couldn't find the actual article) but they change airport security and in my case building security when they're issued.
• Here's a good piece on fear and alerts for Christmas: How The Ridge Stole Christmas!
• Def Con Alerts
• I've practiced phrenology on myself, raising bumps in those areas related to memory. I can't remember yesterday and thus no action has consequences lasting longer than a day. Ah, sweet sweet ignorance.
• So what's to worry about?
• That boy has cried wolf so often that I don't know a single American who gives it a moment's credence anymore. Terrorist Risk Level Magenta, indeed. The farce groweth, especially in light of the apparent success with which our recent activities abroad have diminished the capabilities of the more name-brand terrorist organizations, who have taken to alternately bombing the Red Cross, Italian peacekeepers, and their own apartment buildings - what next, Brownie Troop 56? That's Count Floyd terror, there. Osama by Easter. You heard it here first. Also: Merry Christmas, monkeys! Here's wishing you all got lots of bananas under the tree, and that you all have a healthy and profitable new year.
• Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd. —Bertrand Russell
• Osama by Easter. You heard it here first. Care to elaborate on this?
• Just blue-skying. But I'm thinking, with Saddam in the tank, we might be able to free up more high level attention on the Pakistani border. And I am apparently one helluva optimist, despite my protestations to pragmatism :)
• My prediction: the head of Osama bin Laden will miracilously be found during the White House Easter Egg hunt, having been placed there the night before after being transported with great secrecy from the freezer at Bagram Air Base where it is currently being stored.
• with Saddam in the tank, we might be able to free up more high level attention on the Pakistani border. Possible, possible. Irony-free question: is democracy the best system for Pakistan?
• What's the old saying, democracy is the worst system of government ever invented, except for all the others? Call me a nut, but I think that Democracy is the best system for everyone - even Pakistan. The difficulty, however, is allowing them the opprtunity to go through all the abominable growing pains it takes to get to the point, however situationally dubious, in the democracy learning curve that the US and most of the West is at. That takes time, and a lot of eggs get broken in the process. They did here in a America - there's no reason to believe that Pakistan, Afghanistan, or any historically democracy-free state can just make the governmental, cultural and cognitive leap to social-contract democracy overnight. But I think that the longer a country like Pakistan, a country like Afghanistan, is in contact - trade-wise, politically, socially - with democracies like ours (and yours, for that matter), the faster they'll approach it themselves. One can view this process as a cultural process as well - American culture has benefitted from contacts with other states much like it has from a liberal immigration policy and a diverse population, because our culture (the same one that periodically prompts French farmers to dump loads of manure in the parking lots of Parisian McDonalds') is able to select the best parts of other cultures and inculcate them into our own, while less diverse, more monolithic cultures cannot. So in the marketplace of cultures, ours tends to appeal to younger, freedom-oriented generations (see: Iranian Gen-X'ers versus the Mullahs). So, Time + Proximity will eventually = Pakistan beginning to mimic, to appropriate, parts of American culture, and that includes democracy. *nods sagely to homonculus*
• *smacks head with book, nods to homunculus*
• I completely agree with you, Fes, but the question was posed purely on historical grounds. Bhutto or Musharraf? (To put it in an unforgivably broadbrush manner.) )(Disclaimer: not Pakistani.)
• I like this )( thing. What does it do?
• For now, and probably for a while, Musharraf. Pakistan is rather beset just lately, politically and militarily. On one side, you have a destabilized Afghanistan trying to recover from the Taliban and their fall whom you actively supported during their term in power AND who continue to have strong support amongst your populace AND who are probably hiding bin Laden, et al. That border is both porous and troublesome. One the other side, you have the Indian question, and by "question" I mean near a billion people who hate your guts because they think your the worst combination of rebel and terrorist AND who have nukes AND who want to annex you back into their country, preferably by eliminating all your people and just moving the border back to where they think it bleongs. And at the meta level, you have your old enemies/new friends the Americans, who have basically said help us with our al Quaeda hunt or we'll throw buckets of cash and a lot of "moral support" (to wit: cold war era dirty tricks professionals who are currently bored shitless and looking for trouble) at those neighbors with nukes and/or arrange for someone to take your job (which in Pakistan is spelled "coup d'etat" and there aren't any retirement homes for your kind, Pervez) who is a bit more... amiable. Which is not to say that Bhutto's place is not important. It's VITALLY important, because while Musharraf is dealing with the day to day realpolitik of the region, it's Bhutto's job to build, block by block, the institutions and culture upon which a Pakistani parliamentary democracy will rest. It's dangerous times in that region, and that means people who are used to dealing with dangerous situations are needed, and that means Musharraf - for now. Once the situation in that area has stabilized, Bhutto's day will come, and with luck she'll have been working diligently behind the scenes building the political infrastructure necessary for the transition from de facto military dictatorship to functional democracy. *slugs gin, wipes brow* I like )( ! It has a certain something-something.
• I will never listen to me again.
• Osama by Easter. You heard it here first. Care to try again?
• Wait - Iraq didn't have nukyular weapons?? Well then WTF are we doing there?? I'm voting for late summer - August-ish. That way it's time enough to boost for the election, and you've got a good two or three weeks to plan a major Sept. 11 event to crow about it
• And we're still waiting. I'm thinking he's providing some really good compost out there in Pakistan somewhere.