Post by flying on Apr 13, 2005 0:13:38 GMT 1
Hehe, I voted "No", for the very simple reason that I think bin Laden has been dead for quite a while now...
Think about it: if you want to run a world-wide terror, er, anti-terror campaign, you need a super-villain to use as poster-boy.
After you've turned that man into a monster (in the view the public in general has of him), you can't risk it that he will change his mind and pull the rug from under your profitable campaign.
So, what better solution than kill the guy FIRST and, every now and then, just to keep the multitudes trembling, wheel-out on cue some bogus video/audio-tape with some look-alike towel-head vaguely resembling your "poster-boy"?!
BTW, Iron, I absolutely loved your story about your grandma vandalizing cars with German licence-plates, hehehehe.... Great!
As for silly spending by the Government, there is a wonderful little book of the 1960's, very hard to find nowadays, called Report from Iron Mountain.
It is an alledged report by a think-tank of the Rand Corporation (lots of people say it's a hoax), culminating a 3-year multidisciplinary study as to the Desireability and Inevitability of War. To cut a long story short, these guys come to the conclusion that war cannot be avoided, it is socially and economically desirable, and until such a time when an equally "bottomless pit" type of expensive alternative may be found (space exploration, pollution clean-up and an alien invasion are given as examples), society will do best to just spend as much as possible in war, otherwise there is the risk of social crumbling due to a variety of de-stabilizing circumstances... I found this book quite illuminating, I advise you guys to try to get your hands on a copy, perhaps at some public library.
But can you believe these guys?! "Lets spend untold billions (it is actually defined as all the surplus that can be rounded up each year, it doesn't really matter how much) on Defense, otherwise we risk losing control over the populace..."
And all of this because half-a-dozen parasites (well, a few hundred thousand, perhaps) don't want to bend their backs and get their hands dirty to grow their own potatoes...
Think about it: if you want to run a world-wide terror, er, anti-terror campaign, you need a super-villain to use as poster-boy.
After you've turned that man into a monster (in the view the public in general has of him), you can't risk it that he will change his mind and pull the rug from under your profitable campaign.
So, what better solution than kill the guy FIRST and, every now and then, just to keep the multitudes trembling, wheel-out on cue some bogus video/audio-tape with some look-alike towel-head vaguely resembling your "poster-boy"?!
BTW, Iron, I absolutely loved your story about your grandma vandalizing cars with German licence-plates, hehehehe.... Great!
As for silly spending by the Government, there is a wonderful little book of the 1960's, very hard to find nowadays, called Report from Iron Mountain.
It is an alledged report by a think-tank of the Rand Corporation (lots of people say it's a hoax), culminating a 3-year multidisciplinary study as to the Desireability and Inevitability of War. To cut a long story short, these guys come to the conclusion that war cannot be avoided, it is socially and economically desirable, and until such a time when an equally "bottomless pit" type of expensive alternative may be found (space exploration, pollution clean-up and an alien invasion are given as examples), society will do best to just spend as much as possible in war, otherwise there is the risk of social crumbling due to a variety of de-stabilizing circumstances... I found this book quite illuminating, I advise you guys to try to get your hands on a copy, perhaps at some public library.
But can you believe these guys?! "Lets spend untold billions (it is actually defined as all the surplus that can be rounded up each year, it doesn't really matter how much) on Defense, otherwise we risk losing control over the populace..."
And all of this because half-a-dozen parasites (well, a few hundred thousand, perhaps) don't want to bend their backs and get their hands dirty to grow their own potatoes...
