First, local news. My good friend michael rosenstock lost the election. The details: he, farnoush and cathy were running as a slate for p,vpss,andvpa of a local university students union. farnoush and cathy won, michael lost. Thankfully, we had all gone to cousins, gotten quite drunk, and gotten the news at about 4am at Larissa's nearby. I have to say: i feel for michael. I've never seen him so disappointed. Oh well, i guess that puts me 0 for 2 on elections this year (long story, nother time).

I made a good point to my mom yesterday, about the war. As i wrote previously, i've been torn between being pro-iraq-war, and being against it. I'm a pacifist, yet at the same time i'm absolutely horrified by what happened in rwanda. My mom was going on and on about how they deserve it (in iraq), that people die there and its normal, etc, etc. She gets scared by the whole terrorist thing. So i pointed something out to her. I asked her how she felt on sept 11/2001. How chilled and terrified she was that people nearby were dying. Then i asked her to imagine if that was happening for weeks and months on end, not just in one place, but all over the country. No where to run. I think i drove home the point. As for me, i guess i realized that people dying is wrong. regardless of motive. period. people are people, and people shouldn't be dying.

As for this weekend, two things: homework and truck shopping. I have lots of studying to catch up on, and i wanna push ahead with this truck shopping thing. More later.

Well, here i am again. Will i write for long? Who knows... but here goes.

First off, like everyone else, i have to talk about this war that our american neighbors just started. First, i'm a pacifist. I feel that circumstances never exist that allow someone to hit someone else over the head with a stick. That said, i have one sticky exception to my rule that i haven't reconciled: genocide. I say sticky because genocide is a rather loose term, in that it works well in hindsight. We hear about survivors of the holocaust all the time. We hear less of other massacres. The one that bothers me most is Rwanda.

In 100 days in 1994, 700,000 Tutsis were slaughtered by the Hutu militia. The only people on the ground were a small UN peacekeeping force lead by a Canadian (whom i've met; he's a personal hero of mine) named Romeo Dallaire. Dallaire was literally the only person standing up to the slaughter. Despite phone calls by Dallaire to the Canadian Govt, the UN, and US govt, no one answers his plees. The US specifically rewwrites a security council resolution, removing the word "genocide" so they don't have to get involved. They feel that american lives aren't worth risking after 14 americans died in Etheopia the previous year. By the time it's all over, 700,000 people are dead.

Rwanda is a perfect example of where i feel that no matter what the cost, western powers must intervene, with the immediate prioroty of stopping the killing. Hussein is thought to be responsible for upwards of 1million iraqui deaths over the past 25 years. That's why my position is sticky: down the road, what he's done may be called genocide. Now, it's hard to say.

I suppose it comes down to motives. On the one hand, as Georgy said, the americans are liberating iraq from it's cruel regime. I talked with an iraqui living here, who said that people just disappear after saying the wrong thing. That daily survival from the regime is a challenge. And if doing another germany or japan is the objective, then i applaud it. The reason i'm skeptical is three fold:

1) US motives include oil. There is no use lying about it. The "hawks" in the bush admin all have stakes in energy companies. The US needs cheap oil to support its economy. Just no 2 ways about it. And as a quasi-environmentalist, i just have to say that blood and oil don't mix.
2) The US admin has equated iraq with al queda. Apparently half of americans belive that saddam was responsible for sept 11. A brillian piece of propoganda, but do dictator would ever allow islamic fundamentalists into his country: they'd undermine him. It it were about terror and evil-axi, the US should be going after Iran and North Korea. Why aren't they? Probably because iraq is an easily-winnable example for everyone else. That, and the brainwashed fundamentalists in those two countries would exact heavy tolls on american troops. The US public won't stand for another vietnam so soon.

3) Aftermath. The US abandoned afganistan after they toppled the taliban. Granted, that's what they said they'd do, it still isn't right. The US has to realize that they can't go around bullying people. The troubles they face now grew from seeds sown 20 years ago in the Kissenger/Nixon era. When you play regimes one against another, with the people of these countries being ignored, people start to hate you. The US will have to spend trillions on iraq alone to rebuild, and regain the confidence of the people there.

Anyways, that's about as much as i can write. I have to go and finish studying (yeah, at 4am) for my math midterm tomorrow, even though i'm gonna fail. But that's a story for next time.

MR

Permanent record, eh?

Well, i decided to pick up my blog/journal. I had one running on my webserver, but since its ip changes all the time (another rant for another day), i decided i'd have one here. Partially, i wanna be able to save links from random computers at random hours, partially i wanna vent and squabble, and partially i wanna keep a record of whats going on in my small corner of the world. For now, though, links.

http://www.e3.com.au/
More later.
-M

Hehe... permanent record...

Anyways, i saw someone else who uses this feature, and actually submits stories to himself (kinda cool). I thought i'd give it a whirl. I actually have another journal here running my own custom php shtuff. I'm considering switching my server to slashcode, but haven't decided. My older journal from this spring was erased when a hacker got into my box :-(.