Month: February 2002

Is democracy overrated?. It seems fashionable to assume axiomatically that democracy is an end in itself, an inherently good thing. Is it not a little simplistic to just accept such a complex idea without questioning? [kuro5hin.org]

Democracy is just Greek for “mob rule.” That’s why America was created with a Constitution that imposed very strict limits on what the government could and couldn’t do. Unfortunately, the government hasn’t paid any attention to the Constitution for many years.

Palestinians storm Hebron jail. Hundreds of people overrun a West Bank jail and free at least 10
Palestinian prisoners, after dozens are injured by Israeli air raids
on Gaza. [BBC News: world]

So hundreds of terrorists or terrorist sympathizers came out in the open in a dense grouping? If Ariel Sharon was as bad as, say, any Arab leader, he’d have ordered the mob bombed too.

Crackdown Hurts Afghan Opium Market. Opium vendors shut their open-air market Monday under what they said were U.S. military orders

I saw a sign on a taxi cab:

bq. Mike Schmier
Attorney General Dem. March 5
Affordable Justice

His motto is unusually honest!

Kevin Altis: “It is difficult to manually read a WSDL description of a SOAP web service and figure out which parts you need for your programming language and SOAP library of choice.”  [Scripting News]

I noticed this when I was trying to get various web services working this weekend. One things that helps is that XMethods has a WDSL parser that produces semi-readable descriptions. However, as Kevin also discovered, sometimes the services just don’t work with Radio.

Milosevic Optimistic Ahead of Trial. Slobodan Milosevic is in “a very good mood” and ready for his landmark war crimes trial by a U.N. tribunal, his legal advisers said Monday. [AP World News]

His optimism is severely misplaced. He seems to think that all he has to do is point out that the “tribunal” is a kangaroo court and he will be set free. Kangaroo courts don’t work that way. Instead, he’ll be imprisoned or executed–which he deserves anyway, but he should be tried in Serbia for crimes committed in Serbia, and not just for the “crime” of losing a war with NATO.

Rare Croatian coral reef damaged. A rare coral reef on an Adriatic island is found to have been damaged
by human activity. [BBC News: sci/tech]

A more accurate summary of this story might be, “Communists ‘damage the environment,’ nobody notices for 40 years.”

I spotted this post about what free trade actually means, and I thought it went well with the two reports from the investors visiting Somalia.

bq. So the European Union, having stopped Africans making a respectable living as producers and traders by denying them access to us, then bestows a lesser largesse via ‘Third World Aid’. Adding insult to injury, the EU then expects gratitude from the very people they have discriminated against. Of course what happens is that Africans, now being dependent on largesse rather than their own efforts, take on the character of beggars, whiny when desperate and sullen when temporarily a little better fed. We in our turn take on the character of patronising social workers-cum-lords of the manor. What a pity, when we could be interacting as equals and fellow human beings.

‘Fish protection’ debunked as motive for bankrupting Oregon
farmers. Vin Suprynowicz –

‘Fish protection’ debunked as motive for bankrupting Oregon
farmers – part of The Libertarian series. Now that the
scientific studies have been done, it turns out that there were no
endangered Sucker Fish above the Klamath Basin Dam. I wish the folks
who destroyed all those farms were an endangered species. That’s one
extinction about which I could cheer.
bq.
The Klamath Valley abomination has never been about saving fish —
it’s been about the antigrowth agenda of radical environmental groups
like the Oregon Natural Resources Council, whose spokesmen hate the
region’s very lushness because it’s artificial. Such groups
forthrightly state their goal is to force farmers off the land. In
this case, the Oregon “greens” drafted a plan which calls for the
federal government to buy much of the basin’s farmland, turning a lush
and verdant valley which feeds hundreds of thousands of Americans back
into as a “desert preserve.” [End the War on Freedom]

I’m not surprised. In fact, after the discovery of the planted lynx fur, I’d be suspicious even if the study had supported the ecofreaks’ claims.

I ran across interesting reports of two trips to Somalia in 1998 and 2000 by representatives of a company looking for investment opportunities. They present a very different view of modern Somalia than the doom and gloom articles written for the mainstream media by people who have never been within 1000 miles of the country.