5. Official: Ukraine sold nuclear-capable missiles to Iran, China

"A senior lawmaker yesterday called for Ukraine's prosecutor-general to investigate alleged sales of nuclear-capable cruise missiles to Iran and China in violation of international nonproliferation treaties. ... In his letter to [President Viktor] Yushchenko, [Hrihory] Omelchenko said an investigation launched last summer 'proved that some 20 air-launched Kh-55 and Kh-55M cruise missiles with nuclear capability were exported to third countries' in
violation of international treaties." [editor's note: the Kh55 is an air-to-surface missile with a range of up to 3,000 kilometers and the ability to deliver a 200-kiloton nuclear warhead - TLK] (02/03/05)

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002168929_ukraine03.html

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I have frequently described to friends a fascinating scenerio where bio-engineering will enable us to create plants that grow into useful objects while still living. Imaging planting a living habitat, a small bulbous tree that regulates its internal temperature and climate while you live inside it. And interesting small step in that direction follows:

23. Chinese man grows his own chairs

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A Chinese man has patented his technique for growing his own wooden chairs. Mr Wu, from Liaoning City, Shengyang province, moulds branches into shape while the tree is still growing. He uses elm trees which are pliant and do not break easily, reports the China
Morning Business View. Mr Wu, who's in his 60s, says it takes him about five years to grow a tree chair, from saplings to the finished article."

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1268332.html

----------------------

On the differences between Iraq and Vietnam

9. The quagmire on Slothnor

National Review
by Jonah Goldberg

"The year is 2456. The human colonies on Mars have been invaded by giant, laser-visioned tree sloths bent on crushing humanity and forcing the survivors to work as slaves in the massive dung mines of the planet Slothnor. In a last-ditch effort to save our species from
extinction, the brave humans launch a counterattack on the Sloths' home world. Le New York Times (headquartered in Paris since 2018) blares in a bold holo-headline 'Disturbing Echoes of Vietnam Conjured by Earth Aggression.' O.K., I'm kidding. It would probably take a few
weeks before the Times actually invoked Vietnam." (02/02/05)

http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg200502021105.asp

> So. There are no such things as *right* or *wrong* actions. There are,
> however, *smart* and *stupid* action. and I am conceding that in some
> circumstances fighting back is the only smart thing to do. But please
> let's fight back WITHOUT THE FUCKING LECTURE. Self defense is the
> obvious thing to do when one is attacked, there is no need to justify
> it with nebulous and unverifiable abstract concepts such as "objective
> morality".

How exactly are 'right' and 'wrong' really that much different than 'smart' and 'stupid' If you concede that fighting back is the 'only thing to do' are you not acknowledging that it is also right? Self defense is not obvious to everyone as justifiable and self defense can mean many different things. For instance, does one have to wait until a gun has been fired directly at them to act in self defense? Or is it enough for someone to be acting maliciously toward you while also waiving the gun around a firing. What if someone were shooting everyone in a line, one person at a time, and you were last in that line. Can you act in 'self defense' then? He has not harmed you, he has not pointed a gun in your direction, he has not acted in a malicious or belligerent manner toward you.

> Also, it would be practically dangerous. If you work yourself into a blind > belief that only your viewpoint is "objectively valid"

Is the only manner in which one can believe he is right be based on 'blind belief' (read: faith) Faith is belief without evidence, or belief AS evidence. Can I have evidence that suggests my morality is *right*? If I cant, if no one can ever know such things, what guides your actions? Surely you must suspect, at least, that your actions are right, in someway, somehow. Yet our descriptions of reality get ever more accurate.

> As you well
> know quantum physics followed to its conclusions makes one question
> the very meaning of "reality" and "truth",

Not at all true, there are no aspects of Quantum Mechanics that directly imply, as a simplest explanation to observed phenomena, that reality is to be questioned and that the universe is a figment of our imagination. This is all hogwash, arbitrary interpretations that happen to fit current experimental evidence and presented as conceivable by the very scientists who have built their careers on parsimony, occam's razor, and hume's maxim, all of which they wantonly disregard when making such absurd comments about quantum mechanics.

> but here the pragmatic
> engineer would say, I don't need to know what is true, I just need to
> know how to design a semiconductor device, and quantum physics permits
> doing that.

The practical engineer says it works because it is true. The pragmatic engineer says it is true because it works. The former is capable of forming higher abstractions and recognizing larger patterns that hint toward a fundamental understanding of reality, of objective reality, and can create and anticipate new things based on that. The latter never conceives of the idea that the formulas he uses to build a bridge work because they are right, and thus never connects them to other areas and hinders his own intellectual progress in the universe. The practical engineers formulas work specifically because they are right!

Michael

> >> http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news3/nytviet.htm
> >>
> >> U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote:
> >> Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror
> >> by Peter Grose, Special to the New York Times (9/4/1967)
> >

To cite the fact that South Vietnam had an incredible election, and the fact that it is a hell hole today, completely ignores the reasons WHY it is that way today. It ignores the Soviet Union's backing of the North Vietnamese communists, a well armed but minority group who sought to force the entire population to live under their brutal system. It ignores the fact that the South Vietnamese fended off the invasions of the Soviet North for a full two years before finally being overrun, with NO help from the United States. It ignores the fact that the US Democratically led congressional abandonment of Indochina handed over the entire region, and its 120 million occupants, to Soviet communism, and millions were killed as a result. That liberals cite this as a reason to not be excited about the results of the election in Iraq is disgusting, since it is their actions that let Vietnam become the absolute hell hole it is today.

Michael

18. EU group wants hammer & sickle banned
----------
Fox News

"A group of conservative European Union lawmakers from eastern Europe called Thursday for a ban on communist symbols, including the red star and the hammer and sickle, to match a proposed EU ban on the Nazi swastika. The group from Estonia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic said the communist symbols should be included in any ban because of the suffering caused by Soviet-backed regimes in eastern Europe. 'We would like to have an equal treatment of the other evil totalitarian regime of the communist system,' said Jozsef Szajer, an Hungarian member of the European Parliament. EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini has proposed a Europe-wide ban on display of the swastikas and other Nazi symbols as part of a campaign to combat anti-Semitism and intolerance."
(02/03/05)

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,146288,00.html

Indeed, it only killed almost 10 times as many people as Nazism did. R.J. Rummel estimates Nazism to have killed about 20 million people, and communist about 170 million

R.J Rummel’s Freedom, Democide, and war home page
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23. Germany: Unemployed could be offered brothel work
----------
Washington Times

"Germany's trade union federation has warned that unemployed people can legally be asked to seek work in brothels under new welfare reforms introduced on Jan. 1 aimed at cutting mass joblessness. The reforms, the toughest package of cuts introduced by any German government since World War II, state that people out of work for more than 12 months must take on any type of work or face cuts in their benefits. Prostitution is legal in Germany and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's center-left government gave prostitutes employment protection rights in 2002. Prostitutes are now eligible for social welfare benefits." (02/03/05)

http://www.washtimes.com/world/20050202-112808-5860r.htm

-------------------------------

Freedom House has recently posted this in depth analysis of official Saudi influence on domestic Muslims. An astounding condemnation of the government of one of the most oppressive majority Arab / Muslim regimes, nearly all of which are brutal dictatorships or theocracies.

Saudi Publications on Hate Idealogy fill American Mosques

"This report is a first step in an effort to contain the destructive ideology being proliferated by the Wahhabis within the American homeland. Hopefully it will lead to the removal of tracts spreading hatred within American mosques, libraries and Islamic centers. The publications analyzed in this Report and others like them that advocate an ideology of hatred have no place in a nation founded on religious freedom and toleration"

http://www.freedomhouse.org/religion/publications/Saudi%20Report/FINAL%20FINAL.pdf

Noninterventionists to Darfurians—Drop Dead
Link and comments from Colleague
relayed from R.J. Rummel's blog, as a test post.

Here's a comforting story: ”U.N. Report Says Darfur Violence Is Not Genocide” (1/29/05—by Maggie Farley)”


UNITED NATIONS — A U.N. commission on Sudan has concluded that systematic, government-backed violence in the western region of Darfur was not genocide, but that there was evidence of crimes against humanity with an ethnic dimension.

The report documents violations of international human rights law, incidents of war crimes by militias and the rebels fighting them, and names individuals who may have acted with a "genocidal intention." But there was not sufficient evidence to indicate that Khartoum had a state policy intended to exterminate a particular racial or ethnic group, said diplomats familiar with the report.


What a crock!