As predicted, the Kurds in Iraq are asserting their right to a state. And since the USA has occupied Iraq for six years or so it does rather mean that it is inevitable that they will leave the country with a displaced people, a people who have difficulty or who are conflicted with government that works against their own interests. We hope this is not a recipe for disaster. We hope that the Iraq Kurds gradually increase integration with other peoples peacefully but where religious feudalism seems to define things political pressures build. Cultural blurring requires religious openness. The non-acceptance of the beliefs of the “other” maintains the barriers between communities. Ultimately cultural assimiliation – the continental drift that redefines societies and corrodes empires – will change the boundaries not just of Kurdistan, but of the entire Middle East. So what. It is the lives of the people who live now that are restricted or affected in ways that they can not agree with, how do you solve that? It becomes the same question as any displaced people. It is the sharing of art, aesthetics and stories that ultimately dissolves cultural barriers.

People sharing admiration is like religious belief – it is cohesive. We do not share religious beliefs so there has to be a better common ground as religious sensitivity dictates the maintenance of barriers between people. These barriers do melt ultimately. When political questions are settled by death, it is hard to maintain political objectivity.

The world requires a path for displaced people towards self rule. Persecution due to the barriers between peoples just means that people suffer. The United Nations has been said to lack teeth. That is only because it does not wholeheartedly exist in the minds of the Governments of the largest countries. Kurdistan is an ethnic region rather than a political entity. It covers border areas of Iraq, Iran, plus about a third of Turkey and a little Syria as well and some of Turkmenistan.

In these countries Kurds do not dictate their own destiny. A country of 20 million displaced people that Turkey will not allow to form a political entity. A victim of war.

See NY Times

Kurdistan historical site

stuff.co.nz has published an article about parents who speak up about how they bring up their children without smacking. And this prompted me to write this.

Despite a broken home, our daughter was brought up without smacking and although things were not perfect she grew up as a contributor who accepts responsibility.

When she did something wrong (which became rare) treating her like a small person rather than a small zombie terrorist worked. Gently, clearly explaining what was wrong and understanding why, it worked.

Understanding her field of response and exercising her acceptance of it. It is important that there is a decision and that the child progresses to learns to make choices over time.

Smacking takes away that opportunity to form bonds of connective response. It trains the child to be irresponsible and solve problems with hitting out and frustration rather than thought and smart action. It trains the child to be bored and stupid.

Early development of bonds that associate rationality with action, as opposed to fear with inaction has long term benefits.

Smacking actually is a crime because it changes the destiny of the child. And that is what a crime is, something that takes away the advantages in life especially for another.

People who defend the right to smack seem to have already conditioned in simple Pavlovian mechanisms to control behaviour. Criminalising these parents would be heartless, pointless and ultimately silly. Failing to criminalize anyone who strikes children causing injury would be totally wrong.

Therefore only really serious smacking should be criminalised. The law as it stands seems the right balance.

A security breach (guessed email password) exposed the founder of Twitter (and Blogger, also) Ev Stone to some very evil infiltrations as someone guessed an employee’s email password. Information sharing meant that the hacker got instant access to their google apps as well as email. In the immediate future, it sounds like terrible PR for his enterprises. But in the long run, may be very beneficial to Google. Let me explain.

It is disturbing that his online Gmail account and Google apps were hacked – to all other Google users, how can you be sure someone is not hacking your Google account right now? The great thing about owning your own computer hardware is that if something goes horribly wrong, you can at least turn it off.

The great thing about criminals stealing data online and hacking the high profile accounts of business leaders who have sold companies to google is that it, Google, is big enough and ugly enough to employ its own data security measures and find anyone who perpetrates such crimes. Regardless of fake or cancelled IP addresses, the perpetrators have left physical (electronic) records of their deeds and CAN BE CAUGHT if someone is motivated enough to find them.

Biz Stone has talked about this openly on a blog, probably hosted by blogger (which was mysteriously down when I wrote this) his own security breach is to show why Google Wave is needed.

Google not only can catch the crooks, they also need to provide a very much more secure software environment. If anyone can provide truly remote security, a Google hosted environment is probably the best bet. Even the NSA has been hacked. What a market.

The article I read talks about how Sarah Palin’s passwords were compromised. Sorry, could not resist – the USA does not want short circuited intellect running things.

“It can be trivial to guess someone’s passwords, as former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin found out during the election, when her personal email was hacked and screenshots were posted online.”

“The attacker sneaked in by accurately guessing the answer’s to Palin’s security questions, based on information about her and her family that was already online.”

See also:
NZ Herald

Sarah Palin just publically tweeted:

this records concerns w/threat of NKorea attack & questions military cuts;we must be more than baffled by Fed’s priorities; must take action
about 5 hours ago from TwitterBerry

I’m signing HJR12 Ground-Based Midcourse Defense System reso;AK’s system the only operational sys defending against long range ballistics…
about 5 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Her recognisable language shines through, yes, this is the real Sarah Palin The Governor of Alaska Who Quit to Become Presidente in 2012.

“we must be more than baffled” – must we?

Now, apart from perhaps Kim Jong Il being a little annoyed that someone is competing with him in the “stopped making sense” stakes, Alaska may be easier to reach than Washington with nukes, but is it a strategic target?

Maybe in some Cold War Paranoia guide called What We Fear (there are probably many such pamphlets, if you look) the idea of the Russian Army advancing and Ms Palin sitting there on her verandah protectin’ America with a shotgun is feasible but it is hardly likely. Or the Chinese? I think far more likely they would prefer to buy California.

The trouble with invasion by nukes is that it spoils the landscape. As does using up and pumping into the air all the natural carbon deposits God left us.

North Korea’s game plan, if it came to that, would not start by dropping a nuke on Sarah Palin. Alaskans do not really need greater military protection than others. Palin seems to think that they do.

It is an oldish question but is “privilege” really that permissible? Missile defense is very hit and miss. Diplomacy is far safer.

And that is the concern, how would this woman do on the world stage? Her Tweets were firing out at a rate of 1 per hour. She has 100,000 followers. John McCain has over a million.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard appear to be a super-structure possibly running the Government after the last election/coup. Authoritarian governments that lack democracy are generally a threat to World Peace. They become unpopular as they seek to spread their message that enslavement of the people of a once great country is power.

Once they have sorted out and made the people of Iran comply with their needs, they will seek others to control. Such is the problem with Authoritarian Government by the Military. It is a good excuse to get the CIA infiltrating it, or perhaps that is what happened at this 130,000 headed army is the result.

Military dictatorships are not a particularly new arrangement, nor is it necessarily a danger yet. Will it become one? Will Ahmadejimibad turn into a great dictator who directs this supra government to invade other countries once they have grown their new found nuclear teeth? Somehow it seems a tad unlikely, unless Iraq was the goal.

To claim theological grounds for nuclear arms always seemed a tad uncomfortable, but an industrial military complex, much more their thing. Invading and domination, rigging elections, all those ways to defeat the will of the people seem to fit better with the black leather gloved iron fist than the white robes and soft beards of senescent sages.

See also:
NY Times

Furthermore, Iran authorities now seek to gain censorship of what the public and read and write on the internet by requiring all ISPs to hold records for three months of every keystroke of every Iran citizen. Total control of what citizens think is a power that only a fanatic would claim.

Al Jazeera

Sarah Palin has been published in the Washington Post criticizing Barack Obama’s “Cap and Tax” energy policy. This appears to be an early evidence of why she resigned her appointment as Governor of Alaska. To take over the role of “Leader of the Opposition” as the now disheveled GOP Republican Party seems to have nobody but the ineligible Dick Cheney to foster its support base? That certainly seems the case, or Dick would have been less assailable in the media. Sarah Palin fares no better.

When she says (and I quote):

“In addition to immediately increasing unemployment in the energy sector, even more American jobs will be threatened by the rising cost of doing business under the cap-and-tax plan. For example, the cost of farming will certainly increase, driving down farm incomes while driving up grocery prices. The costs of manufacturing, warehousing and transportation will also increase.”

“The ironic beauty in this plan? Soon, even the most ardent liberal will understand supply-side economics.”

If it is tempting to swim not against the stream of this logic – maybe if we understood supply-side economics or not seems to be an idea solved by education rather than conversion.

Her next statement widens the gaffe. Skip the bit where she attacks Obama as she rightfully should, providing more than a pipsqueak of embarrassed opposition – at least she is willing to take a lead in actually arguing against ardently liberal policies. Ignoring any actual effect but instead a fiction of safety wrapped nuclear and predictable oil outcomes as sources of cheap energy that is the right of every American (ignoring any future).

She goes on:

“We must move in a new direction. We are ripe for economic growth and energy independence if we responsibly tap the resources that God created right underfoot on American soil. Just as important, we have more desire and ability to protect the environment than any foreign nation from which we purchase energy today.”

If God created the energy underfoot, then in her idea of the world that was created 6000 years ago – there is an end date and the popular belief of her brand of this philosophy appears to think that it is our birthright (and probably, duty) to expend all the energy (or, God may be offended). Ignoring science, as science is not clear. If we ignore science, the enforcement of “end times” upon the language of culture can be glossed over and missed.

It only makes sense to continue along the path of global destruction if you believe in no future for far future generations. If however you disagree with “end time” thinking, and see a future that potentially goes on for millions of generations of humanity – then you find this sort of faith rather dispiriting, as it limits the future to a desolate struggle for dwindling resources and polluted air. Who wants that?

It is not that we can not use oil. But using all the God-given oil means polluting our atmosphere to such an extent that all humans would die as the food chain is no longer supported. All life depends on the light of the sun reaching the ground.

But humans will die before trees. The winds from temperature imbalances will be more destructive in ensuing centuries. The floods will be far more devastating. When major cities become consistently drenched, the costs will be outlandish. And Sarah Palin will quote the Bible saying that will happen and then do everything in her power to make darn sure she is right.

Her logic reeks of judgmental aggression that tilts more liberally minded people over the edge into ardency.

But is she correct? Is Obama’s Cap and Tax policy going to consign America to being owned by China, Russia and Saudi Arabia? How so? Is not the goal to reduce energy reliance upon oil, not to increase it?

Sarah Palin’s policy is wrong as it creates infrastructure that is dependent upon oil and requires the consumption of oil to support it. It is like keeping a heart patient alive by forcing blood through their veins.

The patient etherized on the table is not the economy, that has proven how resilient it is to profound shocks. If the international economy could absorb Bernie Madoff much less Bear Sterns much less Lehman Brothers then the structures of the economy are more profoundly elastic and solid than we may have believed.

The thing that democracy got right is the constant ability to adapt to overcorrection. Obama’s policy is designed to reduce the stimulus to produce oil and increase expenditure on sustainable means that the US can export for hundreds of years.

Sarah Palin needs to review the long term economics. Her plan has immediate benefits over the medium term and long term excessive costs. There comes a stage in the future when the costs will outweigh the benefits.

Obama’s plan reduces returns for carrying on with oil, encourages investment and progress in other sources of energy. Without that innovation, oil will remain the currency of power.

I predict instead that within ten years water or hydrogen energy sources, or solar energy collection or something we have yet to find will provide plenty of free energy and the new currency will be technology. The real economic risk for the USA is that someone else gets there first.

Sarah Palin’s Washington Post article

In a lunge toward democracy New Zealand instituted the Citizens Initiated Referendum.

Last year, the Government voted to repeal Section 59 of the Crimes act that has allowed cases of child abuse to be dismissed due to a clause that allowed parental violence to be excused when it was given as “reasonable punishment”. The effective outlawing of parental violence met with an 80 – 90% disapproval rating promoted by a group that dubbed the Section 59 repeal the “Anti Smacking Law”. Clearly the fact that some parents choose smacking as a form of discipline was a “right” that some felt needed to be protected or enshrined in law.

I agree, parents should make their own decisions about how they bring up their children. Within limits. Endorsing smacking as a viable means of discipline however, is a terrible mistake.

The referendum has an extremely ill considered question “Should a smack as part of good parental correction be considered a criminal offence in New Zealand”.

Why are New Zealanders wasting their valuable democratic rights asking a question that makes no sense? There is no current law that makes a smack into a crime. There is absolutely no need to advocate that parents use smacking as part of “good parental correction” when it can be easily observed that striking your child damages the parental bond of ultimate trust.

A parent attacking their offspring damages the child. Bullying of any sort must be shunned. If we saw a parent animal swatting its offspring in a zoo, would we tolerate it? No. Parents who use any sort of violence on a growing creature is both disgusting and repulsive.

Parents should be free to never smack their children without all the raised eyebrows of those who are less successful with their parenting.

Children who are treated with violence in my limited experience turn out to be criminals. It is the best way to strike back at parents. Cowed by the imbalance of power, these children find ways during their teens to pay back.

Violence does not build a happy person. Mild discipline may not be seen as the same thing to the parent, but to the child it still breaks the parental bonds of trust to be lashed out at by parents. How many parents who want to smack their children have asked themselves if they were smacked as children? Many I think. It is a case of that which defeats you becomes what you believe in. Parents have quite a bit of sway with their offspring.

At school I stood up and asked for corporal punishment to be ended. They were whipping kids in front of the entire class to “make an example”. The image of a sadistic teacher thumping this kid and having to put up with the same kid’s behavioral distortions following this has convinced me that it is abhorrent to strike a child and inevitably causes an increase in social violence down the line.

Survey our jails, our school children and real people to discover the truth or not about the effects of smacking, before trying to enshrine it in New Zealand law.

This referendum does nothing for the rights of parents, and does nothing for the well being of New Zealand children. It leaves the person answering it in a moral quandry – “I want to suggest to parents that they avoid smacking as a punishment as I know it will lead to more problems. I never want to imply that a parent is a criminal for looking after their children, or trying to stop their child from hurting themselves.”

But a culture of smacking? Is this what we want? Children who grow up with a belief that to love someone you have to hit them? Kids who fail and then bury their feelings with drug addiction?

I think smacking is a precursor to more violence in the home, and I would like to see it outlawed.

I feel compelled to vote YES as I personally believe that if smacking children is the line that is going to be drawn, then let it be drawn there.

It is better that parents think it is better NOT to smack their children. I know that my view is not popular. It is the very definition of criminal, stopping someone from being able to lead a constructive life (and an acceptance of parental violence will lead to an increase of damaged people who act out).

I accept that I have an unusual view, but if I am correct then New Zealand’s first citizens initiated referendum may cause parents to feel self righteous and respond to the suggestion that they are right to smack their children in response to this propaganda.

NZ Herald: Children “outsmart” law on smacking

NZ Herald: Leader of the Opposition says won’t vote in referendum as it does not make any sense.

The need for culture to define itself in terms of relative values interferes with rightful progress. As we carry past solutions to now non-existent problems, our culture is subsumed by a need for tradition – the tired old call of parents too confused by their offspring to do much else but bark orders to limit action. We exceed our parents as we start where they left off.

There is no real notion of a skill level of the passing on of traits be they genetic or otherwise – but influence by parents may channel a level of safety and simply by being and acting do they manifest a “magnetism of motion” that defines “a field of influence” in which offspring develop. A sort of family magnetism. A web of cohesion. Social politics binds us and tears us, but family bonds remain despite efforts to annul them – they still exist.

As progress is necessary or the world would have no hope, it follows then that intergenerational change is requisite. Evolution is too slow for humanity. Immediate results are sought. Evolutionary demands have become intimate, such as the need to have children at the right time, of the right kind, with the right health and the monitoring of prenatal progress and the intrusion of medical solutions to problems that are invisible to the parents. These are all evolutionary factors.

Some science fiction proposes a take over by artificial intellect that comes to the inevitable conclusion that humanity was a danger to existence and therefore must be eliminated; to accept this as logical supposes the impregnation of life into (inanimate) matter. The fashioning of a machine that can think. The mind tries to understand itself and make replicas of its very function at some mechanistic level appears to be something that can not be so replicated.

The inverse is probably far more likely. Instead of the transfer of intellect into matter, it is much easier to install metal arms, computerised lungs or mechanical hearts. Hark back to that (purely of its moment) “6 Million Dollar Man” played by Farah Fawcett’s ex-husband Lee Majors. A cheap military weapon by today’s standards, (but it was a cheap series in many ways).

The idea of nanobot installation into human skin and the addition of computer circuitry to the being is well explored in science fiction and horror, from Star Trek’s “The Borg” assimilating anything and everything they can wrap their flesh around to “Tetsuo – The Iron Man” – an effective Japanese horror film about a man whose muscles are turning into iron. The amalgamation of flesh and silicon has been going on for years. The use of electronic devices embedded in the flesh seem commonplace in fiction and in medicine.

Is this on a level with the stem cell debate – a matter of religious sensitivity? And if so, should that hold back progress for those who believe differently? Are we allowed by the laws of nature to interfere with the balances of life, or have we already gone so far overboard in that endevour that nature can no longer defend us from her inevitable wrath?

Or has our very interference with nature demanded a certain urgency for progress so we may colonialise space? Is the need to define culture as an evolutionary trait starting to overtake the need for culture as a mode of understanding our differences?

As we chip away at our grandchildren’s future with this over consumption are we evolving better faster more reliable grandchildren? It appears that is the inevitable result of our cultural imperative.

If Argentianian ants do not get there first.

Saddam Hussein and Hitler had something in common. From their point of view it was a steel resolve but as a defeated enemy theirs became the view of the discredited. However it could be argued that Hitler’s eventual fate hastened the fate of Palestine whereas Saddam’s fate has given the Kurds more political power.

Always a sensitive issue “because of Turkey” – the Kurds occupy a large area that encompass several countries of what they consider the Kurdish nation, but geopolitically dispossessed. In Iraq they are a minority. Turkey opposes a Kurdish separatist movement.

On Wikipedia this map is shown

I wonder if this zone populated by the Kurdish people was conveniently ignored when the British redrew the boundaries? It just seems likely that ignorance of the culture invaded spread over the vast tracts of lands ruled by horseback from remote colonial outposts based on cities means Western history lacks cultural relevance and colonialism thus failed.

Suppression of the Kurds by Turkey fighting a Kurdish separatist movement – one can imagine the diplomatic pressures concerning the treatment of Kurds by Saddam and the need for reparations. One can imagine with a taste of power, the Kurdish nation will assert itself.

It seems it has, in Iraq. Kurdish leaders have pushed ahead with a new constitution for their quasi-autonomous region taking the American and Iraqi leadership by surprise.

See also:
NY Times

Article concerning the final interrogation of Saddam Hussein. It leaves me with a feeling that execution of colourful people like this is itself rather unfortunate as he could have been the source of more information. Death as a sentence is damaging to the validity of the history that is then only recorded by the victor. You can not help but get the feeling upon reading Saddam’s point of view that the truth lies between what he claims and rationales and responsibility of the Bush Administration that abused it’s power going to war with Iraq, possibly more so than has previously been revealed, if some of what Saddam Hussein says is to be believed. Oh, you can not believe a leader who stoops to torture and WMD, I hear you say.

Death as a sentence is damaging to the validity of the history that is then only recorded by the victor.

The Independent (UK)