On Sep 12, 2006, at 5:29 AM, Alberto Monteiro wrote:
Jonathan Gibson wrote:
Nuclear Islamic Terrorism is far more dangerous than Nuclear
Communism. They had something to lose, while the islamic fanatics
don't - not even if the retaliation would reduce every sacred
islamic place to radioactive dust.
Nonesense. Why do the puppetmasters pushing suicide bombers have
less to lose than the soviet aparatchniks did? There are any number
off technical, political, cultural, etc, reasons for a ffoolish
leadership to intentionally, or by blender, trigger nuclear bombs.
The scale of mistakes is obviously much worse under the old Cold
War than an isolated nuke going off here or there. Losing Morder,
er Washington DC, to an attack would be bad, but nothing compared to
globe-straddling nuclear winter after a typical US-v-USSR script.
The scale is obvious and one you don't address.
Of course it's hard to estimate probabilies of future events,
and even harder to estimate probabilities of alternate-history
events [what was the chance, from 1945-1990, of an all-scale
nuclear war? Of a limited nuclear war? Since it didn't happen,
the probability is zero! :-P], but I was thinking, above, about
a single individual risk.
[OTOH, I don't believe that when the next A-bomb explodes
killing millions of civilians, it will be an act of war by
a nation against another nation. Most likely it will be terrorism,
blackmail by international crime, students playing with
things they don't know, or students doing it for fun].
Y.
It's a minor background condition of the wee novel I hack away at. I
make the point in context of a global defense system in orbit that has
cost America a huge chunk of her treasure and is left impoverished. A
nuke is slipped in by tramp steamer or 18-wheeler {now that the NAFTA
superHWY is being built} and America is left with nobody to exact
revenge against and the high tech crown does no good.
But what is the solution to North Korea's problem? There's no
simple solution. Not even starving the kp-ians to death does
any good. Maybe offering a huge bribe to kp's dictator, making
sure he will spend the rest of his life in some tropical
paradise and nobody will ever touch him or his fortune could
solve that problem, but this would establish a predecent that
would make every dictator try to get the same "bonus".
Well, invading Iraq certainly didn't slow them down now did it?
I don't know. Khaddaffi [whatever its spelling] seems quite tame
now.
That actually begun under Clinton and one of the few negotiated deals
this administration followed through on.
I feel for you and yours. Your agitation for action is
understandable.
I advocate drying up the weaponry funds by taking out the profits.
They lost some drug profits, not because drugs are legal, but because
they don't control the synthetic drug trade - from what I've heard,
we will remember with nostalgia the good old days when teens smoked
marijuana and snorted coke: these new drugs are one level more evil
than MC.
[I think this message has reached the highest Echelon count:
nukes, drugs, terrorism, Iraq, KP... Did we miss anything?]
Hey, I'll take any victory we can.
Clearly the "war on drugs" as it has been waged since... Nixon {!}
are failing whereas Holland has an actual working system that
minimizes harm.
I will do the minimal thing; there's an election in a month, and I
will probably vote for those that have these ideas.
BTW, I didn't have data when I wrote, but this Sunday's newpaper
had a study showing that the drug dealers are losing income from
Coke and Marijuana, and they are compensating it with bank robbery
and flash kidnappings - just as I said.
Well, then the correct procedure is to harden those areas and beef
up enforcement.
Easy to say, hard to implement. The police system takes a huge
share of the drug trade.
My wife brought home Man On Fire with Denzel Washington last night so I
had a vivid reminder of just what you describe. Fantastic movie.
Maddening, all that vice and corruption.
If the poverty was equalled out the crime wouldn't be as harsh and
prevalent. That's the Achilles Heel of Latin America.
Wishing you well,
- Jonathan -
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