Ponder's Politics

Politics... A common misconception. It is of course polytics

poly: More than one; many; much; more than usual; excessive; abnormal.

tic: An involuntary compulsive, repetitive, stereotyped movement, resembling a purposeful movement.

Polytics often become dangerous when combined with relygoon!

Rely: To place or have faith or confidence
Goon: A thug hired to intimidate or harm opponents

Sometimes you get fanatics!

Fan: An ardent devotee; an enthusiast.
a: Used before nouns and noun phrases that denote a single but unspecified person or thing.
tic: see above.

ok, howsabout lebanon situation.
I think that its a little disgraceful that administrations (note to any americans that I did not criticise your country rather the people that run it!) such as America can stand by and support the actions of Israel as it counters the kidnapping of just 2 SOLDIERS with the killing of over 350 innocent lebanese civilians. What Israel has done is punish the actions of the individual (i.e. the people belonging to the group hizbollah which has unjustifiably done these terrible things) by punishing the entire state which should not be held responsible in such a way. There is a political wing of this faction, but it is no more powerful than say a group like sienn fein in GB/N.I. and we aren't invading N.I. when it is attacked. Similarly for ETA, as when eta carries out attacks the spanish gov't does not just go into the catalan region and kill 10 times as many people and claim that this is a proportionate response...
anyway, rant over! Any opinions?

Typical situation when you mix polytics with polygoons. One side say "My goon is the only goon!". The other side answers "Yeah, right! Your goon doesn't even exist. Look what our goon can do to you!" BOOM! "Our goon is with us!" BOOM!
This can fairly quickly turn into boombasstic.

Boom: A deep resonant sound, as of an explosion.
bass: A low-pitched sound or tone.
tic: see above.

That seems to be a hard tic to end. Maybe they turn tone-deaf from all the booms and then it's hard to tone down.

Tone-deaf: Unable to distinguish differences in pitch.
Tone down: To make less vivid, harsh, or violent; moderate.

And maybe you even get rhythmtic!
Rhythm: The pattern of development produced in a dramatic work by repetition of elements such as words, phrases, incidents, themes, images, and symbols.
tic: see above.

It's dangerous to try conflicks on somebody who are tone-deaf.

con: A swindle.
flicks: To touch or hit with a light quick blow.

And trying to get lots of women for just two soliders is clearly a swindle! Women are both prettier and more usefull than soldiers! It isn't without reason soldiers are camouflaged. If the soldiers are female though, that would at least improve the offer of exchange... Women in uniforms can be quite attractive! Not as attractive as women without uniforms or other kinds of obstructive garments of course. Anyway, forever adding booms is not a solution to end a situation that has turned boombasstic.

Hmmm, politics; a game I actually know something about. I believe your example is interesting but fails due to the underlying presuppositions. 1) the conflicts you ennumerate are internecine, not intergovernmental (Hizbullah is a part of the Lebanese gov't and has several ministers ). 2) They also don't equate with the situation in Southern Lebanon in proportionality. To wit, firstly a more salient example would be a situation in which a reunited Northern and Southern Ireland included Sinn Fein in its governmentt and the IRA began blowing up a couple of English and Scottish towns a week. When international pressure and UN resolutions finally came to bear to force the IRA to disarm and disband with finality, they kidnapped British soldiers from Scotland and began firing missiles and detonating bombs in indiscriminate civilian areas at the rate of 10 per hour (more if the population proportionality is taken into account). Given this situation, any British parliamentary party that didn't react in a disproportionate way would find itself out of gov't for the next 100 years (rather like the Liberals).

Furthermore, the only governments in the region that agree with your standpoint are Iran with its apocalyptic revivalist president and Syria who wants back into Lebanon. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Yemen, Jordan, the UAE and Oman have all condemned Hizbullah for their actions in precipitating the current events. Israels disproportionate response is to end the thing once and for all, not to respond to the situation in and of itself. this has been going on since the 70's*. I believe, despite public opinion, that in this case, Pres Bush and Prime Minister Blair are correct in their assessment. This does not confer on them any aura of competence with regards to other political or military "projects" in the area.

Interestingly, there is no clear religious cast to this conflict: on one side are Christians, Israelis (inlcuding atheists, liberal and orthodox and other Jews, Arabs, Ba'Hais, etc.), Sunni and Hanafi muslims; the other side is mostly, but not confined to, Shia muslims (many, particularly the leaders, are of the apocalyptic Hojjatieh sect) and a few Syrian Christian Ba'athists (again, mostly in leadership positions). Religion is a red herring in Lebanon in the same way as in N. Ireland.

Note: More Israelis died in any given 3 month period of 2004 than ETA has killed in its entire campaign. Hizbullah has killed almost as many Israelis firing indiscriminate missiles with impunity across the border into civilian areas than ETA has killed in its entire campaign.

* The first non-battlefield suicide bombing killed 220 US Marines in Beirut in 1982. The Marines were there, amongst other things, to guard Yasser Arafat.

There are far better sources of information than British newspapers and television.

HV- MMVI

British newspapers just drive me crazy! you can read 3 of them and they will have opposit views on the exact same thing and proclaim them to be fact? which one i hear you cry! well the jury is out on that one i find.

and how about the whole nuclear power fiasco! WE NEED NUCLEAR POWER! there is no other way to say this. Its something i feel extreemly strongly about.

anyhoo

I believe you are misinterpreting the derivation of the word "politics" ("Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage." - Ambrose Bierce, Devil's dictionary) .

Like the "TeleVision", the word is the bastard child of two languages.

Poli - greek roots, from "polis". The people. See "polis", "metropolis", "megapolis", etc.

"Tick" - the whole word has been shortened in recent years, and seen only in words such as "politicking". Middle English tyke, teke; akin to Middle High German zeche, Armenian tiz. "any of a superfamily (Ixodoidea) of bloodsucking acarid arachnids that are larger than the related mites, attach themselves to warm-blooded vertebrates to feed, and include important vectors of infectious diseases" [qv m-w.com]

In short, "politics" means "fat, infectious, coldblooded, spineless bloodsucking parasites, who sap the lifeblood of the people".

Patrician-much of what you say is fair - but I feel it still a little harsh to compare me with Iran! I wasn't trying to say that Hizbollah were not linked with the government but although saying that they have ministers is true, you cannot really say that Lebannon is responsible to the extent Israel have punished them for hizbollah actions as they are still a minority voice in the government. I was also not trying to support Hizbollah's actions as I do not have any love for Hizbollah, and even if I did you would need some1 far better at PR than me to spin them into the right. However, I would suggest that your analysis of Hizbollah's attacks on Israel to be chronologically incorrect. The Israeli invasion (killing over 350 civilians and rising) was a response not to hizbollah rocketing but the kidknap of 2 israeli soldiers. While obviously wrong, I feel we can argue that the capture or even death of 2 soldiers is not equal to the death of 2 civilians (irrespective of nationality) as, although a harsh assesment, a soldier knows that he is risking his safety when being employed such and can be said to represent the administration of the country that he serves, whereas a civilian cannot be thought of in the same way. Thus I feel it unfair that Israel has invaded Lebannon in such a way over this issue as the Israeli government knows there are going to be civilian casualties and these casualties are likely to cause greater unhappiness than the possible happiness caused by the release of only two soldiers.

I also think that your statistics concerning Hizbollah Missile strikes to be misleading as although probably true in terms of the rate of fire, it does not mean that an equivalent amount of civilians have been killed. so far over 350 lebanese have been killed and about 35 Israelis have been killed. Although there may be some error in these statistics it is clear that for roughly every Israeli killed, 10 Lebanese are killed. Hardly Lex Talonis...
Even the statistics of 34 Israelis killed is misleading as about (I am not quite as sure of the statistics as you) half of these are military deaths. Thus the civilian death ratio comes in at more like 20:1 Israeli : Lebanese deaths.
From this we can at least gather that it is a disproprtionate response.

To counter your argument in terms of proprtionate action making Olmeret unelectable I suggest that it is somewhat flimsy. This is so because it is in effect conceding that what he has done is wrong but is legitimate in the circumstances because of the pressure exerted upon him. This does not make him right as it effectively means he is saving his political career by carrying out a morally reprehensible invasion and killing hundreds of innocent lebanese civilians. Perhaps we should be comparing people such as him to Iranian dictators, rather than me! The main way in which he is wrong is he is punishing the innocent majority for the actions of the vociferous and militant minority. Another thing that annoys me about all this is that countries like the U.S. proclaim that democracy should be brought to all countries in the middle east but when they find that their allies Israel have cause such a lowering of the quality of life in the Palestinian territories (which I have lived in for 4 years) that the Palestinian people are willing to vote for organisations like Hamas, they become hypocrites by punishing Palestinians for exercising their supposed democratic rights by taking away their financial aid which they need because of the occupation of their ally Israel (who, by the way, are the world's largest aid receipients - Would a sane person give aid to the person living in a mansion charity or the beggar outside, apparently G.W.B would give it to the the mansion owner). I do not support Hamas one jot and am more annoyed with the U.S. because they are punishing them for voting for Hamas but they did so out of anger at the corruption in the previous admins, rather than supporting its terrorist policies. Depriving them of aid will make it all the more easy for Hamas to convert people to its aims...

My final point in showing what is currently going on in Lebannon (and to an extent what the Israeli's normally do in Gaza- collective punishment, bulldozing of civilian's houses, killing of peace activists E.G. Racheal Corrie) to be wrong is to quote the U.N, a body which does not have voters to serve and is therefore effectively independent:
From the BBC:

Mr Egeland, the UN's emergency relief chief, described the destruction as "horrific" as he toured the city.

and....:

A visibly moved Mr Egeland expressed shock that "block after block" of buildings had been levelled.

He said the "disproportionate response" by Israel was a "violation of international humanitarian law".

The rest of that can be seen at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5207478.stm

On a more light hearted matter, I agreee with Ponder that we have to go nuke, as it is a powerful energy source, safe in terms of a terrorist attack contrary to popular belief (I have seen a video of a test plane slamming into the same material as that of those nuclear power plants and the material surviving with hardly a scratch) with waste that does not contribute to global warming and for those who remind us of chernobyl: I say to you 1) We are Brit scientists with greater funding and care than the ukranians and 2) I'm too young to remember!

Hope this contributes to vibrant debate....my hands hurt....

1) so were the scientists in Three Mile Island
2) I'm not!

How about a power plant that can suck the heat out of political and religious discussions on the net, and turn it into electricity? Or even better, suck up the energy people put into conflicts and wars? That would be a very powerfull and environment friendly power plant

you really shouldn't of suggested that! now someones going to make one and you will not get a penny. shame . it would be a marvelous thing though it has to be said, for is it not written "there is too much damn tom foolery these days" im sure it is. but not sure where...

sorry for my heinously long post all!! My hands still bleed and cry to me at night, like that finger of the kid in the shining "red rum, red rum"!!!!
Fair riposte oograh, but if it is the best solution at the mo too makin gus more enviro-friendly. I had an idea about ionising air in front of cars with some little machine thingy and then shoving it out the way with an electro magnet to reduce the energy taken up by cars, but I'm sure it's not workable/already been thought of. Also, I'm sure that it would result in some dangerous, albeit humourous, side-effects (e.g. instead of being run over bystander is ionised, ripped apart by magnet and then the contents of cutlery draws nearby impale them!) and would be v. power consuming itself, though it would mean that you didn't have to use fossil fuels to power the car, so just shove one on one of those toyotas and let the green love seep to all!!
I think I changed the tone of the website for the bad so every1 back to talk of llamas, squirrels and the best way to confuse/occupy a troll (give it a cup saying "turn me" and an arrow pointing it one way)

Ponder - Love you like a brother but mate I have to respond to my inner anal retentive on the Uranium/Energy issue thing.

It's a pretty big issue here in Ecks Ecks Ecks Ecks at the moment, Especially in sunny Queensland where I live. Couple of things to remember: -

1) Queensland has enough black coal (not brown coal, brown coal is even dirtier) to last for 300 years at projected energy consumption rates. Coal mining is a very large industry here in Australia and so it is a big issue, should we be using this coal, or looking for greener alternatives?

2) Australia has ~lots~ of Uranium - more than any other country in the world, but we also have at present a 3 mine policy, only three mines in Australia are allowed to sell uranium. We don't use it ourselves, we just sell it to others. (this may be changing the main political challenger to this policy has just backflipped).

3) We are also very inventive in terms of green energy doing such things as:-

Creating thermal cells - like solar cells buts converts waste heat directly into electricity - hey lets make your coal or nuclear power station MORE efficient by about 35%. Lets also make your hybrid car get a thousand km's to a litre of petrol/ ethanol blend from the waste heat generated by your engine.

Making Solar towers - basically its a tall spire encased in glass and makes the greenhouse effect work for you - air inside the spire heats up, rises and turns the turbines up the top. Stick it in the desert - and it'll run and run and run and run - It is pretty big though 1km high and 8 km wide at the base. But hey it's projected to produce enough electricity to supply Adelaide - a city of over 1M people. Kinda spoil the skyline in the middle of London no doubt, but throw it in the middle of the Simpson desert (which they are planning on doing), and there is no-one but kangaroos and emu's to complain.

Wave energy - Chuck the wave generator in the ocean and kinetic forces of the waves create electricity, not much electricty, but once again, it'll run and run and run. You can even link the things up and have several kilometres of wave energy turbines running. - No good for landlocked countries but can't win them all

Wind turbines - No not the big clunky ones that look like airplane props, the ones that look like pyramids on their side that create vacuum energy to turn lots of small turbines hidden behind the edge and will run in 1km/hour winds or 150km/h winds. (as opposed to current turbines that have to feather the blades in high winds or they break off, and don't work below about 15km/h winds, meaning they only work about 60% of the time.)

etc biomass etc biodiesel etc ethanol fuels etc solar screens etc air cars etc biogas etc. CSM etc tidal generators etc hydro electric etc geothermal etc and the list goes on.

But the question becomes if all these things are so great and wonderful and green and good why are they not in massive commercial production supplanting the energy demand from Coal?

Because coal is cheap. Coal is also very very efficient. Coal is scaleable to an extent that most other energy sources cannot match. It is easily transported, and doesn't lose energy by doing so. It is BIG industry and can meet our energy requirements. Yes I know uranium can too but Uranium even from fast breeder reactors still has a half-life of a thousand years. And I don't want that stuff on the same continent as me. (No I don't work for a coal company)

Because for every unit of energy you put into coal you get 80 units of energy out. This is only beaten by nuclear energy - but nuclear energy has it's own difficulties. So which is it to be, continue to put CO2 into the atmosphere and hope that in the future we can "lock" carbon away. Or have lot's of uranium waste that will create no-go zones. My preference is for coal. Frankly Australia in my opinion can sell all it's uranium, just don't ask us to store your waste as well!

I'd prefer to rely on our great black coal that is more effecient than any other coal in the world and wait for our green technologies to get properly commercialised. In reality the shift to greener technologies will only occur when people are prepared to ~pay~ for it. Could you happily accept a four to tenfold increase in your energy bills (don't forget the weekly petrol bill!). I would; but no company is yet in a position to offer me a completely green energy source. So I am realist enough to know that the world's energy needs will continually get bigger and bigger and there are limited choices we can make. Coal, Uranium, Fast breeder reactors. it's a tightrope of how much green energy we can produce versus how much energy can we limit ourselves to without having populations freeze in winter and get heat stroke in summer.

So I do my bit for the environment and I will be having a solar powered hot water system (yes it even works on cloudy days), a bigass solar panel on the roof with a conversion box to put power back into the grid. A rainwater tank, gas powered appliances, Biomass and greywater system and any other green technolgy that I can think of when I build my house next year, and predominantly use public transportation. Do I think it will do any good? Is Australia doomed to use Nuclear power in the future....probably, Do I want it? NO!

Rant over.

BTW if any of you want to know about any of the above technologies let me kow by PM and I'll send you links.

If nuclear power isn't safe enough to put next to your capital, it isn't safe enough to use. If the prime minister/president don't feel safe looking at the nuclear power plant through his bedroom window, he/she shouldn't go for it.

I'm still not sure, and since I'm not sure, that means no. Can't say I will never say yes, but I am old enough to remember Chernobyl, and to know that the meat suddenly was safe with ten (or was it a hundred) times as much of something that had to do with radioactivity was not fun. Even with the raised limits, they still had to move lots of sheep/reindeer to other places for a time before killing them. And Norway is a long distance from Ukraina...

erm... love you to! lol!

also the thing with solar cells is they are too damn expensive and aint that great when you build them. I love the idea of the "solar tower" jobbies. wish we had some over here as they sound quite a spectacle.

Also i hear you on the wave power generator front - we are (uk) surrounded by bloody sea which makes waves! and we have hardly any wave generators! there is logic somewhere but i have yet to find it.

As for coal, yes its ok for now but it will run out and is very damaging indeed, same with gas and oil and all the fossil fuels.

Wind farms are an ace idea and they look well cool - having got 5 HUGE ones about 4 miles away from my house. the only problem is they cost millions of pounds each and they don't produce much energy. we also get the problem of people not wanting them near their houses as we live up in the yorkshire dales and, supposeably, its a nice pretty area and we don't want to spoil it. i would like to see more wind farms

but nuclear is still the answer!!! have at you!
Its cheap (to run anyway), its just about renewable, its safe (no matter what any one says - ok there has been a terrible terrible accident, but this is one case in hundreds of plants. then there is the alleged threat from terrorists - i can tell you trying to nick uranium/plutonium from places like that is harder than breathing water whilst singing "we love you baby" (available at all good record stores)

Just my thoughts. im impressed i managed to type this long without my hands falling off..

I do believe it IS spelt politics as POLIS=city (Police) and necroPOLIS.

to Windle Poons
Most of the eastern coast of Australia IS coal underground yes, and just think what would happen if it all went into the atmosphere. It's a big industry granted but I'm sick and Tired of hearing Howard (john, current third term PM of Australia) hide behind that. ENERGY PRODUCTION is a big industry no matter what the source. And let's not forget all the dangers inherent in Coal mining, I'm sure blacklung is gone but the air can't be safe there and the cave ins that happen when they don't leave enough coal to support the earth above. Nochdazu Australia already has a reactor in Lucas heights (as I'm sure you know) which proves that the capability for nuclear power is there. I read a segment in AmericanScientist recently about alternate energy sources and a new* but totally different fusion is in development and we'll all have to switch to that eventually as fusion would be a VERY cheap source of energy putting others out of business soon enough. But the wind power and hydro power type ideas while realistic and very good in their own way would be very expensive to set up and maintain, the power would be nearly free but the auxillary costs make it less plausible.
Chernobyl/chernobil was a big f**k up granted but the fact that they were told about the problem by the finnish government who noticed radiation level rises at home before the Ukranians noticed it in their own reactor is a testament to the low qulity machinery and possible innexperience. I don't know enough about 3mile island to comment.
Also recently a material called synthrock was developed at ANU in Canberra which could be cheaply made and safely store nuclear waste but the government seems to refuse using it even though they now want to become an international nuclear waste dump.
and exactly what part of the nuclear reaction releases CO2? (I'm serious, we learnt nuclear reactions but not in detail)
that and if it's the radiation you're afraid of think of it this way. IT'S ALREADY ON THE SAME CONTINENT AS YOU. all they do is take out the weaker stuff from the general Uranium "ores" and move that to the reactor so there isn't any extra uranium radiation. And I don;t knwo if you're away but the a coal burning plant puts out moe radiation than annuclear one. A While C-12 is traditional carbon C-13 and C-14 are rather common isotopes and there is enough C-14 in coal to cause the smoke from a plant to me more radiation hazardous than the steam comming out of a nuclear reactor by far.
Kuedos on your green house but did you know that four cows will produce enough gas to meet the energy demands of an average household. Also I don't know how long ago you posted this but while I was in Canberra 2 wks ago I heard an ad telling me to call this company who would sell me green energy so already it has begun. I feel the green revolution has started and in maybe 20yrs fusion will be the staple energy source of the world.

I await your rebuttle with anticipation

*by which I mean the first idea but that was disregarded

you should have been in cape town when we had problems with our nuclear power station.we had blackouts for about 3 months on and off.it eventually got soo bad that the city allocated different areas' power to go off at different times to regulate usage,it's really kak having a cold supper when 2 blocks down the road people are chowing down on nice warm food and zoning out in front of the TV

but that could happen to any station not just nuclear.
but that would suck

i'd hate to see another chernobyl in my lifetime,not that i was around during that time,i was just saying....

Have you read the rats of NIMH? there's a part in the first book I rather like when Nicodemus reads a book called the rat race. It's about a woman Mrs Jones who lives in a nice neighbourhood and one day buys a vacuum cleaner. she can now clean the house with half the effort this makes her friends jelous and they all get vacuum cleaners so they now can all clean their houses with half the effort but the powerplant now has to grow in order to supply them with the necesary electricity and so burns more coal this in turn creakes a lot of soot and smoke which covers the city making it dirty so now, Mrs Jones and her neighbours have to work twice as hard in order to get the house as clean as they did when it was done with a broom.
this can apply to many things based on coal industry CO2 and greenhouse for one not to mention the radiation and pollution. etc

it's called cause and effect,it's one of the main strategies used when it comes to politics,in fact it IS the main strategy,why do something unless you get something out of that something

exactly. and you stand to get a LOT out of nuclear power.

yeah,but with great power comes great responsibility(sound familiar?)a lot of bad things can happen because we use nuclear power,the environment takes the worst toll

In what way compadre? unranium goes in but it taked less mining to get the uranium than coal and the radiation is still less and besides all the nukes do is give out stem which will water the plants in the area and the nuclear waste COULD be stored safely. I'd make a snide comment about the government but recent laws make that a criminal offence punishable by 7 years in pison and seven years to each of my parents if they tell anyone.

i don't like prison,that's another form of politics altogether

I don't think you're meant to like prison...I think that's kinda the point

that's why they put all the bad people there,as punishment.they get free room and board,courtesy of the tax payers

and the rgular sodomy coupled with guard abuse just ads to the joys of isolation. being caged like an animal is a deep psychological torment.
and here, it's not the bad people who go, but rather the unwitting or intelligent

those are added extras,
human beings are cruel creatures

No doubt especially in war time [shivers]
hey wat happend to that idiot down there with the like three way shwastika, khaki shorts who went around talking afrikaans all the time and beating up negroes? they still there?

they're known as the boeremag,they're bloody racists who think they're better than everyone else,thank god that's past,but there're still quite a lot of racists in my country.

racism pisses me off

[Boer Men?]
Alas but I had hoped Mandella as a black president would quench those fires. I'm sure is sucha large and surely developed city as cape town though it's not a problem.
surely you have a death penalty to sort out that sort of thing?

that's pending at the moment.
boeremag is a group of white supremecists which was around over 10 years ago,before we gained our democracy.there's still talk of little groups of them meeting on their plaas in the shed having little talks about people of different colour and what they're gonna do to them.but we're trying to stamp that out.

alas,rome wasn't built in a day

but we kinda helped destroy it pretty quickly.
Well at least you don;t have to worry about black supremacists...or actually you could pit them against one another in fights to the death...you could sell tickets...genius...I get 15% for the idea

sweet,good plan,that then leaves me with 85%(sucker)

where would we hold it?

well the Rome comment leads me to the colesseum...rather ironically appropriate. It was used to entertain masses while monirities were sacrificed and now we shall use it to witness the demise of those that brought that about in the first place.
that's 85% minus postage and handling, consultation, time, electricity for the computer and internet fees the list goes on
besides I'm fair and not greedy 15% is what i'd expect the idea man to get

true,but to be fair myself i would let you take more of an important role in this project and therefore nobody can say that i wasn't fair,i'm sure that between the 2 of us we could come to an arrangement with regard to payment of general costs in this endeavour.

meaning we'll split the costs AND the profits.

listen, if we intend to rid the world of all racists then $10 a ticket and we'd be ritch beyond our wildest dreams by the time we're done. besides Id have done it to see them die.

i don't know if i could seriously agree with killing someone,or condoning the killing of someone,but $10 sounds great.put the fight in a huge stadium,like 100,000 people and get rights for tv channels to broadcast,that could be huge

*we should move this talk to the duel somehow but i don't know how to move comments*

I shall continue this talk there at any rate.

..back to coal/uranium people...

yeah,but gotta go for now,see ya

as regards killing as a punishment, who think saddam hussein's sentence is right? i personally disagree with the death penaltly no matter what.

there are certain catagories of "people" I would enjoy slaughtering like well you get the idea
but Saddam managed to maintain an uncorrupted government and distribut rations when for 10yrs the US didn't allow drinking water, medicine or food into Iraq and the whole place was a no fly zone. as far as leaders go he wasn't that bad and whatever people say he did I know the US gav has done worse on its own soldiers (radiation exposure testing ect) And while we're at it, when the us runs in blows up 2 mosques, a red cross depo and a penicilin factory, slaughters the patients in a hospital, tortures prisoners,levels babylon for a chopper landing zone, destroys the wheat stocks (an international effort to maintain all known wheat species in stores seeds so that it GM food does turn out to be the cause for all the sicvkness attributed to it we have a back up plan and part of that was in Iraq...and I do mean WAS) burnes the national library to the ground with millenia old arab scrolls, ruins the palace with centuries old architecture, paintings, furniture, treasures not to mention the THOUSANDS of innocent children and civiliand shot, burnt, blown up or crushed by fallen houses when the USM blew most of down town Iraq up and THEY HAVE THE GALL TO START HANDING OUT PUNISHMENT!? THEY SHOULD STAND TRIAL IN THE HAGUE!
So no, I don;t think it was justified.

+++You can't spell slaughter without laughter+++

War as an easy was to "punish by death penalty" thousands of people with time saving ordinances and without the cumbersom "Trial" process or even the inconvenience of having to look for a crime.

There was a short story published in a sci-fi magazine some decades ago (I only have it in hungarian) but it was called TRANAI which is a planet where it was decided that murderers should be killed but to avoid the morality of punishing murder with murder, they decide that the president shall snipe people with a rifle if they are murderers but to combabt the scenario of false execution, they decide that IF someoen was hsot by the president, thewy were BY DEFINITION a murderer and if they hadn't killed yet, they were going to.
sound familiar General Schoomaker? (US joint Cheifs of Staff)

hmmm, while saddam may have had certain good points while he led, (he even kept christian-muslim conferences, a tradition that's now been fairly well destroyed) and i certainly don't believe that a government that isn't democratic = bad, i still don't think that he should still be in power. and i think that you could say that hitler was a good leader with the same reasoning, but it depends on whether you mean efficient or good morals. but what we did, that was wrong wrong wrong. as i said before, i don't agree with the death penalty in any case, and i don't think any human actually has the right to execute another.

Hitler was a puppet but shocking as it may seem to you I have already thought about that many times and yes I admire many of the things the nazi party achieved. This is not to say I IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER approve of the holocaust. I do not. but I believe that Hittler had no particular problem with the jews but rather they fit the right shape to fit into a gap in the plan labeled "Scapegoat". However it was a cunning if truely disgusting plan and had they not attacked the soviets (by the way this may surprise the yanks but the ussr won the second world war not america. D-dayhelped but was not necessary when 20,000,000 russian troops died and stalin had no problem sending more) then they would probably have won. Rommel was a genius, the german military advancements were spectacular (todays helmets are made in the same style, they had the first pointy bullets, first assault riffle etc). The difference is as eddie izzard put it: He killed people next door. Polpot, 1.7 million Cambodians dead even more tortured, no-one lifted a finger except the brits who were their buddies at the time to send polpot aid. but he didn't go next door to kill people so it's "OK".

What Saddam did was wrong I've no argument nor any justification but to me, morality is a far second to efficiency. I respect people who have the spine to stand by their morals but I admire people who have the balls to do what needs to be done.
I hate Stalin and I truly think he was a nut job but the fact is he draged russia kicking and screaming into the industrial age. he in 20 years did what other countries spent 50 if not a hundred or more years doing. in 1917, russia was a feudalism (like Europe in say the 1500's or earlier) by 1943 they could assemble more tanks than hitler could and despite having all their airbases bombed at the begining of confontation (1941/1942) by the end (1945) they controled all the airspace over Europe and England.
I hate the man for the atrocities he commited and the cannon fodder way he used troops and the way he dispatched millions (~40 million) russians to keep everyone else on their toes, but I admire his guts and his achievements are here today to be seen and admired.
similarly I'd punish Saddam but as a leader he's good and there may coma a time where morality and efficiency stand perpendicular and then I'd rather go with efficient guy than the moral one.

hmmm i'd go with moral, because otherwise we'd get to the point where criminals are running the show and it's a downward spiral from there for the whole nation. i think a friend of mine has it right about communism; it's a fairly good idea in principal but could never ever ever be done with a human as a leader, there's no way it could work, no way it could be done right. speaking as a vegetable i try not to be speciesist, but history tends to make a good point.

HA! I was technically born into socialism. hehe
beleive America is actually at that point already [which makes decent yanks look bad] and Berrlusconi ex italian President had to pass a law saying that the president can't be charged with criminal activity to stay in power.
Marxism is what you speak of and it in fact does work but only in a community that is very small Notice in Brian Jaques' novels about REDWALL that is a marxist society and the Jewish Kibutz (I hope I spelt it right) is the same but it only work while everyoine knows everyone else such that they would be able to see and be effected by their actions if they transgress. so perhaps a lot of little such communities which interact with the broader community in the smae way that a person would to their small community.