From: Charlie Stross (charlie@antipope.org)
Date: Thu Dec 26 2002 - 03:55:50 MST
On Tue, Dec 24, 2002 at 06:37:23PM -0800, spike66 wrote:
>
> Regardless of what it does, society will have a
> 3 sigma element whose fantasy is to slay as many
> as possible.
And a similar element whose fantasy is to exert total control over
as many as possible. And *they* seem to be attracted to the political
process like wasps to a honeypot.
The headache I've got with the whole Iraq mess -- speaking as a
non-American -- is that the planned US invasion of Iraq is clearly an
attempt to gain a choke-hold on the remaining unexploited oil fields, and
looks like a first step towards establishing an imperial hegemony. (And
it's being really badly managed, in terms of PR directed at the rest of
the world; from over here, the sabre-rattling emanating from the White
House is distastefully reminiscent of the noises coming out of Germany in
Summer 1939 with respect to Poland.) If it succeeds it's going to breed
festering hatred in the middle east and extreme distrust in Europe,
where people have a somewhat more acute sense of paranoia about such
goings-on -- for good historical reasons.
I'm not a libertarian, but even so, a planetary imperial hegemony does
not strike me as being a good thing for personal freedom. Nor is
pursuing primacy through the political tools of the nineteenth century
a good idea for the twenty-first.
-- Charlie
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