Ford trying to see if he can do some paperwork shuffling (a new company that he and his older son would create) to redirect the work at Leevor, the last surviving customer of Zero. I've already done some work for the new EONS season, at least the preparatory stuff - checking that my importer generator works etc. The point of that generator is that it checks for the set of fields which are present and churns code to deal with those columns, instead of the previous version where it would check for presence of each column in each row (even if it would check for it only once, it would stil have to check for the result of that first check). I've calculated that this saves an average of about 40.000 if/endifs per import, and the speed gain was between 1 and 2 (orders of magnitude). He said to just keep the stuff warmed up while he negotiates with someone from the bank.
Yesterday's day was lost for any negotiations, the whole country spent it glued to their tv tubes. Seems to be there are many sets in the office as well - allegedly in the Pentagon itself the evacuation was ordered but everybody dragged their feet, staying to watch news from NYC.
(... 55 words...)
This on UA, to a guy who was frustrated with what he saw yesterday:
This is all very reasonable and understandable. The only thing I'm objecting to is 'dealing with countries', because it'll be people like you and me who will suffer, and the actual perpetrators will most probably go unharmed, being trained for warfare, having intelligence information etc. One may argue that it's not the countries, it's their governments, and any nation has exactly the government it deserves. But then, the same logic can be applied to the terrorists' actions - they don't care how many civilians get killed because this is a retaliation for the actions of their government, ergo deserved. This 'blame the government, kill the people' logic was seen in action too often in the last decade, from all imaginable sides. Most of the war frenzy in my country was fueled by this sort of logic, and the only ones who weren't losing were the warlords and their camarilla.
And also this, in response to something that Paige wrote:
Apart from the usual suspects that Evan listed, don't forget the oil companies. No matter what OPEC does, Shell, BP, and others will make money on it. Even in the '73 crisis, the bulk of the profit on gas shortage and subsequent gas price race did not flow into the hands of those who produced this oil, but into the pocket of the "Seven sisters" (common name for the seven major oil companies).They have the feeling they're exploited, and yet blamed by the whole world for each rise of oil prices.
Another possible reason could be the overly agressive approach of various sales agents of the West in general, who went pushing Western lifestyle, probably believing they're bringing enlightment and education, but which shattered their traditional lifestyle. They may feel they were on a way of losing identity - this may be one of the explanations of the Iran case.
Last but not least, the IMF and World Bank had their hands in ruining several economies and getting several countries deeply in debt. I've read extensively on this account and while opinions as to the plausibility of this may differ, the evidence available is very convincing, and it's quite possible that many third world countries may feel not only cheated, but robbed and thoroughly screwed by these two institutions. In case of Arab countries, this may only add up on the aforementioned possibilities. With US being the major hand in both, it's also quite probable that any bad feeling against them could extend to US.
How does any, or all of this taken together, get to the degree of hatred and suicidal action, is beyond me. From what I've seen, I know that war doesn't create better people, in most cases, and that some give in to their uncivilized side, gaining the feeling that anything is allowed and that any form of revenge is allowed. With America being perceived as the the enemy (of Iraq, Iran), or protector of the enemy (Israel), it can be expected that a certain number of individuals will take this path. Perceiving themselves as freedom fighters, and having seen their family killed, they probably feel a heaven-sent right to any retaliation is given to them.
Take into account that I gave up reading on this sort of stuff quite a while ago. I am writing this only to bring up some past issues which may be fogged by the current ones - hopefully to add width to the discussion.
From email from mom and dad:
When other countries were fighting terrorism that was disrespect for human rights.
From email to mom and dad:
Yesterday in the first hours there were many comments from the common people that they fear that GWB may do something fast not quite thought throuh. Then the media got their act together and this kind of comment vanished.The logic that they will have to deal with whole countries is probably targeted against Afghanistan, but then the problem there is that they themselves have invented and aided the taliban. And the logic that the whole people is responsible for what the guys on top do is exactly what the terrorists did, and what they did themselves when they bombed us, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Vietnam and whever else. The same care for the civilians who get killed along the way was taken on both sides.
15-I-2015 - 31-X-2025