Interesting reading while I’m home sick
Interesting reading while I’m home sick. Just can’t seem to shake this cold. (Besides I got extra sick days, I hate to carry them over. *L*)
Dave Winer’s Scripting News Awards Nominees
Today’s Lockergnome , check out the SoapBox article, it’s very interesting. I’m not sure I agree 100% with it, but I think it’s an interesting perspective, and I agree with alot of it.
Cam on fighting spam. Some good ideas here, but some that are difficult when you run a website. Personally I want to give people a way to reach me, so I have an email address on the site. But I’m monitoring it closely to see if it becomes a problem. If it does, I guess you’ll just have to leave a comment, eh? 🙂
And off topic but interesting, Rafe on civilian casualties in Afghanistan. You know, the interesting thing is that, if you remember your Rousseau from back in school, it was his theory that all governments exist at the will of the governed. That is, even a Hitler or Stalin was in charge because the people who they ruled over wanted it that way, or were at least not willing to do anything about it. So according to that theory, I think, Afghans who stayed there while the Taliban were ruling, and who did not try and change anything, had given their consent to the Taliban in their support of bin Laden. Thusly, because the Taliban and bin Laden ruled “by the consent of the governed” (Rousseau’s term), any war they entered into, or had thrust upon them, is a war against the civilians of Afghanistan. It’s an interesting idea, one that should be discussed more. We like to see ourselves as more enlightened and only at war with armies and military targets, but there really is no such thing in a war. If you’re at war with a country or a government, you are at war with everyone who supports that government.
I’ll probably get flamed for saying it, but I haven’t seen anything that changes that truth. The question we should be asking, is are we at war with Afghanistan? If we are, then civilian casualties come with the territory, and if we aren’t, then what has this all been about?
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