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ebonlockWe interrupt your regularly scheduled Ellie babble for this important bit of gloating. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mallen, this one's for you.
Syracuse paints the town orange
Syracuse 81, Kansas 78
For more images of Syracuse's glorious victory, just go here, it is a true thing of beauty. And for the full gorgeous stats, you can check this out. NCAA title champions, say it with me now, mmm, doesn't that feel good? And how does victory taste? Why a lot like Afghan food, as it so happens. I'm eagerly looking forward to that dinner,mallen, that is after you're quite finished crying over Kansas' defeat.
End gloating.
And for everyone who thinks I'm a bit overenthusiastic in my loathing of cockroaches: Hong Kong Health Officials Eye Cockroaches as Possible Carriers of SARS
See? They are disgusting little disease-ridden vermin. *shudder*
Not much to say about yesterday, it was a good day, passed by quickly, and class was as fantastic as always. For some strange reason my zill playing was complete shit last night. I'd like to blame it on my wrist, but that seems to have stabilized and working it every week is definitely strengthening it, so no good. Just an off night I guess, but on the plus side I seem to have gotten most of the footwork and that's something. More practice, practice, practice!
From my "What the fuck?" file:
Three foreign journalists killed in Baghdad
A US missile crashed into the offices of Al-Jazeera in downtown Baghdad, killing Tareq Ayub, a correspondent with the Arabic news channel, and wounding one of its cameramen.
Taras Protsyuk, a Ukranian cameraman with the Reuters news agency, and Jose Couso, who worked for Telecinco Spanish televison, died after a US tank fired on the Palestine Hotel, where the foreign media are based. Three other Reuter staffers were injured.
Uh, guys, we're winning, remember? We don't have to just plow in and blow shit up indiscriminately. Aim, then fire, it works much better. This isn't a Playstation 2 game, for gods' sake.
And let's not even talk about how many of our allies we've already killed, particularly Kurds, it's just too depressing.
A question I've been pondering pretty seriously these days is what the hell are we going to do once we kill (and let's be honest about this, we have no other intentions regarding Saddam Hussein at this point) Iraq's current leadership? Unfortunately while the President's "we'll set up a democracy that will like us and be friendly towards Israel and help us fight terrorists" plan doesn't strike me as all that realistic. An interesting Op-Ed piece you might want to check out that posits a lot of these questions rather nicely is Messy Democracy:
First, democracy does not come about when external powers anoint personal favorites. It is produced by the creation of new political processes and institutions that foster ongoing bargaining, compromise and consensus among all the major domestic forces. Any new political arrangement built on external fiat rather than on an inclusive domestic consensus will not last long once the military occupation ends.
Second, dividing the country's political elites into neat categories of democrat and non-democrat, and excluding the latter, would be a mistake. Today's self-declared democrats often turn out to be something different down the road. And apparent non-democrats can play a constructive role if they are built into the system. Undemocratic though its history certainly was, the Russian Communist Party has played a valid role in Russia's new democracy since 1991. El Salvador's former Marxist-Leninist guerrilla movement is today a democratic political party.
Third, new constitutions should not be imposed. The greatest value of a new constitution in a democratic transition is the quality of the negotiations and consensus-building that go into it. The administration should back off its incipient plans to slap a quickly written Iraqi constitution into place and should instead encourage wide, genuine participation in the writing and approval process.
Fourth, elections should not be rushed. In societies riven by ethnic or religious divisions, and where experience with democracy is absent, early elections are often perceived as a winner-take-all process and can aggravate rather than resolve political conflict. The administration should nurture a period of growing pluralism and participation in which the contending Iraqi groups have time to learn to work with each other in new institutions rooted in compromise and openness. In difficult political transitions, national elections are often best put off for at least several years.
Finally, democratic transitions are usually messy. Military planning can, at least sometimes, be a precise art. Democracy planning can never be. In dozens of countries during the past 20 years, democratization has been chaotic, improvisational and plagued with setbacks and shortcomings. But it is still better than the alternative of reemergent authoritarianism.
mallen, this one's for you.Syracuse paints the town orange
Syracuse 81, Kansas 78
For more images of Syracuse's glorious victory, just go here, it is a true thing of beauty. And for the full gorgeous stats, you can check this out. NCAA title champions, say it with me now, mmm, doesn't that feel good? And how does victory taste? Why a lot like Afghan food, as it so happens. I'm eagerly looking forward to that dinner,
mallen, that is after you're quite finished crying over Kansas' defeat.End gloating.
And for everyone who thinks I'm a bit overenthusiastic in my loathing of cockroaches: Hong Kong Health Officials Eye Cockroaches as Possible Carriers of SARS
See? They are disgusting little disease-ridden vermin. *shudder*
Not much to say about yesterday, it was a good day, passed by quickly, and class was as fantastic as always. For some strange reason my zill playing was complete shit last night. I'd like to blame it on my wrist, but that seems to have stabilized and working it every week is definitely strengthening it, so no good. Just an off night I guess, but on the plus side I seem to have gotten most of the footwork and that's something. More practice, practice, practice!
From my "What the fuck?" file:
Three foreign journalists killed in Baghdad
A US missile crashed into the offices of Al-Jazeera in downtown Baghdad, killing Tareq Ayub, a correspondent with the Arabic news channel, and wounding one of its cameramen.
Taras Protsyuk, a Ukranian cameraman with the Reuters news agency, and Jose Couso, who worked for Telecinco Spanish televison, died after a US tank fired on the Palestine Hotel, where the foreign media are based. Three other Reuter staffers were injured.
Uh, guys, we're winning, remember? We don't have to just plow in and blow shit up indiscriminately. Aim, then fire, it works much better. This isn't a Playstation 2 game, for gods' sake.
And let's not even talk about how many of our allies we've already killed, particularly Kurds, it's just too depressing.
A question I've been pondering pretty seriously these days is what the hell are we going to do once we kill (and let's be honest about this, we have no other intentions regarding Saddam Hussein at this point) Iraq's current leadership? Unfortunately while the President's "we'll set up a democracy that will like us and be friendly towards Israel and help us fight terrorists" plan doesn't strike me as all that realistic. An interesting Op-Ed piece you might want to check out that posits a lot of these questions rather nicely is Messy Democracy:
First, democracy does not come about when external powers anoint personal favorites. It is produced by the creation of new political processes and institutions that foster ongoing bargaining, compromise and consensus among all the major domestic forces. Any new political arrangement built on external fiat rather than on an inclusive domestic consensus will not last long once the military occupation ends.
Second, dividing the country's political elites into neat categories of democrat and non-democrat, and excluding the latter, would be a mistake. Today's self-declared democrats often turn out to be something different down the road. And apparent non-democrats can play a constructive role if they are built into the system. Undemocratic though its history certainly was, the Russian Communist Party has played a valid role in Russia's new democracy since 1991. El Salvador's former Marxist-Leninist guerrilla movement is today a democratic political party.
Third, new constitutions should not be imposed. The greatest value of a new constitution in a democratic transition is the quality of the negotiations and consensus-building that go into it. The administration should back off its incipient plans to slap a quickly written Iraqi constitution into place and should instead encourage wide, genuine participation in the writing and approval process.
Fourth, elections should not be rushed. In societies riven by ethnic or religious divisions, and where experience with democracy is absent, early elections are often perceived as a winner-take-all process and can aggravate rather than resolve political conflict. The administration should nurture a period of growing pluralism and participation in which the contending Iraqi groups have time to learn to work with each other in new institutions rooted in compromise and openness. In difficult political transitions, national elections are often best put off for at least several years.
Finally, democratic transitions are usually messy. Military planning can, at least sometimes, be a precise art. Democracy planning can never be. In dozens of countries during the past 20 years, democratization has been chaotic, improvisational and plagued with setbacks and shortcomings. But it is still better than the alternative of reemergent authoritarianism.
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no subject
Date: 2003-04-08 09:04 am (UTC)Also, I never thought you were overenthusiastic about loathing cockroaches. Does someone think that? Insane. Cockroaches are nasty. Exterminating them is the only way.
Re:
Date: 2003-04-08 09:08 am (UTC)Being a fan of college basketball is the law back home. If you're not an Orangeman fan you're escorted to the city limits and then warned not to show your face in those parts again.
Also, I never thought you were overenthusiastic about loathing cockroaches. Does someone think that? Insane. Cockroaches are nasty. Exterminating them is the only way.
I just like being able to point to articles like this and reassure myself that my cockroach loathing is actually quite sane and rational. It makes me feel better *G*
no subject
Date: 2003-04-08 12:31 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2003-04-08 01:08 pm (UTC)And you are entirely gracious in your defeat, dear, I like that, though I'll like the dinner even more }:)
no subject
Date: 2003-04-08 12:35 pm (UTC)1) You seem to imply that these attacks against journalists were deliberate offensive attacks. I am skeptical of this from a policy angle and a simple humanitarian angle.
2) Democracy is messy. Building a democracy in Iraq will probably be messy too. But nothing has yet happened in this arena. These things that you quote are all good things, and it remains to be seen how things progress on the ground.
Re:
Date: 2003-04-08 01:06 pm (UTC)I'm implying no such thing, indeed quite the opposite. I believe that these very obvious blunders were in fact completely accidental, and undoubtedly due to nerves, lack of proper training/experience, and the kinds of mistakes the American armed forces are becoming rather well known for.
2) Democracy is messy. Building a democracy in Iraq will probably be messy too. But nothing has yet happened in this arena. These things that you quote are all good things, and it remains to be seen how things progress on the ground.
Again I'm not quite sure that what I was trying to get across actually came out properly. I was saying that I have a lot of questions about the aftermath of the war and that I thought this particular article put them quite nicely. I also hope that Bush & Co. are giving the matter equal thought rather than the rather unrealistic, rose-tinted version I've been hearing. It would please me to no end to have underestimated our country's leader on this subject, believe me, it truly would.