Archive for September, 2003
Don’t forget about the toy drive for Iraqi children. I’ve seen tons of posts about it. I hope that people follow through. I’m adding a button on the sidebar that leads to Cheif Wiggles’ post.
U.S. trains ‘shrine police’ to patrol holy sites
I’ve written before about the need to get more Iraqis involved in securing their country. I went so far as to suggest that perhaps the Badr Brigade, a large anti-Saddam militia that threatened to take matters into their own hands after the mosque bombing in Najaf, should be put to work.
Now it appears that they are.
U.S. authorities and Iraqi police decided to allow armed bands of Shiites to patrol their holy sites.The U.S.-led coalition has even offered quick training sessions for Shiite volunteers – including some militia members – and nicknamed them the “shrine police.”
I think that this is a big step in the right direction. If we can get these “shrine police” to play by the rules and provide effective security, everyone is better off. We won’t need to devote so many resources to the shrines ourselves, and the Iraqi people will have security forces that they respect and admire more than the outsiders occupying their land.
The shrine police are loosely under coalition control and report to Najaf civil authorities. In general, the local tribal council chooses them.The volunteers receive 14 days of training from the American military, including how to summon an ambulance, some emergency medical care and proper use of weapons.
There is, of course, the potential for trouble. The Badr Brigade, some members of which are part of the shrine police, has ties to Iran and may be acting on its behalf in Iraq.
This is dangerous ground, but the opportunity for good shouldn’t be overlooked.
Farm subsidies and import regulations have come up in several conversations I’ve been in on recently, and now Steven Den Beste at USS Clueless has a post on the subject. He writes about sugar import quotas:
After Marcos was finally kicked out of the Philippines, some American lawmakers visited and asked what kind of aid they’d like from us. The response was that they didn’t want any aid, what they wanted was for us to stop limiting their exports of sugar to us.
The American market for sugar (sucrose produced from cane or beets) is artificially controlled in the US, mostly through import quotas to limit supply and drive prices up. But that isn’t because sugar producers are particularly influential, or that they represent a vital part of our economy. It’s because Archer Daniels Midland wants the price of sugar to be held artificially high enough so that it’s cheaper for soft drink producers and other manufacturers of processed food to use corn sweetener instead of sugar.
Although I’m opposed to subsidies on principle, I’m not totally opposed to them in all cases. For instance, if small farmers benefited from them, I’d be willing to discuss them. But I don’t need to be an agricultural expert to know that ADM isn’t hanging onto the family farm by its fingertips. Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp don’t have benefit concerts to save the property owned by ADM’s board of directors.
SDB points to an Environmental Working Group study that notes that two-thirds of subsidies went to the top 10% of recipients. In fact, this chart shows that 86% of payments went to 20% of recipients. That leaves just 14% of the money for the remaining 80%. Tell me how that is going to save the little guys, who are the ones marched out when the lobbyists beg for more of our dollars. People are willing to cough up a little cash when it’s some poor, weathered, family struggling to carry on the tradition of its forebears. We are moved when we hear of foreclosures putting some of the hardest working Americans on welfare. We know that those folks represent some of the best that America has to offer. But in the end, it’s the suits at the mega-sized agricultural corporations that benefit.
Directly related to how our regulations hurt the little guy and keep faceless agribusiness in power is the plight of farmers overseas who are also hurt by our subsidies. Although we are able to sell some of our surplus grain to these countries cheaply, we are not making many friends with our policies. We would be far better served by allowing, if not directly encouraging, farmers in poorer nations to increase their production.
If they can grow enough to export, so much the better. But I think the key is helping them become more self-sufficient. High-tech production lines and factories can’t just spring up from wishes, but farming is a good possibility in most poorer regions of the planet. And if people are well-fed and generally happy, they aren’t nearly as willing to blow themselves up or attack other people.
The people in many nations see themselves in a deliberately created economic trap, from which our policies permit no escape. They were largely released from direct slavery under the colonial system but seem to have traded legal slavery for a more indirect form of external ownership. When they were colonies their wealth was directly plundered by the nations which owned them. Now they are free, and are permitted to “voluntarily” offer the same tribute — for debt service.
It’s the people with empty stomachs, starving children, and nothing to lose that we have to worry about. They will listen to the fundamentalist preachings of hate and terror. They will buy into a system that promises eternal rewards for suicidal attacks against civilians. They are motivated to lash out in any way they can against those they perceive to be their oppressors.
(That’s us.)
We talk about spreading democracy to the rest of the world. Democracy is really just the tool. So is capitalism. What we really want to spread is wealth. What we really want to spread is a standard of living high enough that it makes death look like a bad alternative. Right now, a lot of people see a glorious death as a good option. That’s what we need to change. Poverty is the root cause of most of the hate. If oppressive post-war policies hadn’t made Germany such a poor, dishonored place after World War One, Hitler and his henchmen wouldn’t have looked like an attractive alternative to the German people.
The great question in this Fourth World War is “How do we win?”. We won’t win by conquering Iraq. We won’t win by defeating Syria or Iran or North Korea. We won’t win by ending support for international terror in places like Saudi Arabia and France. All of those are really just short-term corrective actions to the real problem. As has been pointed out many times, there is no shortage of people who are willing to fight the United States.
We won’t win until the enemy doesn’t see any benefit to carrying on the war. Our current agricultural policies, besides not doing what they should for American farmers, work against what we’re fighting for.
Israel using crack Russian snipers in the West Bank – free registration required
Strategy Page has a post today (no permalinks on SP – 9/27 post) about Russian snipers in the Israeli army. No, they’re not part of a multi-national force. They’re immigrants who previously served in the Russian army where sniping is an art.
Immigrants under 28 years old are required to serve in the Israeli military, and many who are older volunteer to do so. Russian snipers undergo instense training, sometimes lasting up to a year. Most have been hardened by experience in Chechnya. They are a welcome addition to the IDF, especially in the West Bank and Gaza.
[An Israeli] security official said they had “more patience” and better technical skills than their counterparts trained in Israel.Since the Palestinian intifada began three years ago, Israeli snipers have acquired a psychological significance out of proportion to their numbers. They have been crucial to maintaining the siege on Yasser Arafat’s Muqata compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
While searching for info on this subject, I came across this 1997 article on the Jerusalem Post about an immigrant who took over the IDF’s Sniper School. He extended the length of training at the Marksmanship School from two days to seven weeks. The article points out a lot of good things that have been done to improve the shooting skills of Israeli soldiers. Apparently, it hasn’t been enough.
4-year-old kills sister, shoots brother
A 4-year old boy found a loaded gun at home and shot his older sister and brother. The girl died. The brother is in critical condition. The parents weren’t home.
“It’s a terrible situation that probably could have been avoided,” [police spokeswoman Cpl. Diane] Richardson said.
Everyone’s initial reaction will be that this was caused by having a gun in the house. True, if the gun hadn’t been in the house, this wouldn’t have happend. Of course, if the 4-year old boy wouldn’t have been in the house, this wouldn’t have happened either. Should there be a ban on 4-year old boys?
What there should be is a ban on stupid parents. But that would leave so many kids without any.
Nationwide blackout hits Italy
Italian officials claim the blackout originated in France. France blames Switzerland. Switzerland admits that a tree may have touched a line somewhere. A tree.
Reading the story, I come to a familiar passage:
In Italy, politicians acknowledged the domestic energy system was insufficient. Some Italians have worried that new power plants could damage the environment — a position that has slowed new plant constructions.
It’s not just in the US that demand for electricity has gone up dramatically. It’s across most of the globe. And when demand outstrips supply, prices go up and reliability goes down. It’s clear that something has to be done.
A year from now, Baghdad may have better power than Rome. Or Paris. Or New York City. We’ll see.
Stefan Sharkansky had a “catastrophic hardware failure” this week, and his Shark Blog was out of action while he dealt with it. He notes that keeping good back-ups saved him, and implores everyone to back-up regularly.
It’s more important than brushing your teeth. If your teeth fall out, at least you can get dentures. If your computer dies without backups, there is no substitute product, you are perfectly hosed.
(via Instapundit)
Iranian militia seize 14,000 satellite dishes
More bad news. Either the Mullahs or the cable companies run Iran. This comes a week after 2000 dishes were seized.
‘Revolutionary’ scooters are recalled after riders fall off
Those little Segway Human Transporter one-man scooters have been recalled. All of them. It seems that when the battery runs low, the gyros that keep the unit upright may fail, spilling riders to the ground unexpectedly. A software patch fixes the scooters.
You can buy an ‘i’ Series at Amazon for $4950. Fortunately for Segway, sales haven’t been all that good, so they only have about 6,000 units to upgrade.
I tried one of these things out last month at a trade show, and I must admit that they’re fun. It took about 20-30 seconds to get up to speed with the balancing act, then I was off. Very intuitive. Loads of fun. It rates high on the ‘cool’ factor. Unfortunately, I don’t have a clue what real use they are to anyone.
