They showed ROTJ on TV here (in Australia) just before the release of AOTC - in the very last scenes, when all the fireworks are going off, they also show fireworks going off over Coruscant - did anyone else see that?
Like the scene where Anakin is working on the pod racer with all the other children around, one of the girls has braces on her teeth:) Mabye slave kids are covered by the Hutt Medical Fund...
...before they start tracking your speed and you end up getting speeding fines in the mail?
hollywood vs the truth
on
Collateral Damage
·
· Score: 1, Informative
According to the myth, the Somalia operation of 1993 was a humanitarian mission, and a shining example of New World Order morality and altruism. In fact, US and UN troops waged an undeclared war against an Islamic African populace that was hostile to foreign interests.
Also contrary to the legend, the 1993 Somalia raid was not a "Clinton foreign policy bungle." In fact, the incoming Clinton administration inherited an operation that was already in full swing -- planned and begun by outgoing President George Herbert Walker Bush, spearheaded by deputy national security adviser Jonathan Howe (who remained in charge of the UN operation after Clinton took office), and approved by Colin Powell, then head of the Joint Chiefs.
The operation had nothing to do with humanitarianism or Africa-love on the part of Bush or Clinton. Several US oil companies, including Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips were positioned to exploit Somalia's rich oil reserves. The companies had secured billion-dollar concessions to explore and drill large portions of the Somali countryside during the reign of pro-US President Mohamed Siad Barre. (In fact, Conoco's Mogadishu office housed the US embassy and military headquarters.) A "secure" Somalia also provided the West with strategic location on the coast of Arabian Sea.
UN military became necessary when Barre was overthrown by warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid, suddenly rendering Somalia inhospitable to US corporate interests.
Although the pretext for the mission was to safeguard food shipments, and stop the "evil Aidid" from stealing the food, the true UN goal was to remove Aidid from the political equation, and form a pro-Western coalition government out of the nation's warring clans. The US operation was met with "surprisingly fierce resistance" -- surprising to US officials who underestimated Somalian resolve, and even more surprising to US troops who were victims and pawns of UN policy makers.
The highly documented series by Mark Bowden of the Philadelphia Inquirer on which the film is based , focuses on the participants, and the "untenable" situation in which troops were placed. But even Bowden's gung-ho account makes no bones about provocative American attacks that ultimately led to the decisive defeat in Mogadishu.
Bowden writes: "Task Force Ranger was not in Mogadishu to feed the hungry. Over six weeks, from late August to Oct. 3, it conducted six missions, raiding locations where either Aidid or his lieutenants were believed to be meeting. The mission that resulted in the Battle of Mogadishu came less than three months after a surprise missile attack by U.S. helicopters (acting on behalf of the UN) on a meeting of Aidid clansmen. Prompted by a Somalian ambush on June 5 that killed more than 20 Pakistani soldiers, the missile attack killed 50 to 70 clan elders and intellectuals, many of them moderates seeking to reach a peaceful settlement with the United Nations. After that July 12 helicopter attack, Aidid's clan was officially at war with America -- a fact many Americans never realized."
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Somalis were killed in the course of US incursions that took place over three months. In his book The New Military Humanism, Noam Chomsky cites other under-reported facts. "In October 1993, criminal incompetence by the US military led to the slaughter of 1,000 Somalis by American firepower." Chomsky writes. "The official estimate was 6-10,000 Somali casualties in the summer of 1993 alone, two-thirds women and children. Marine Lt. Gen. Anthony Zinni, who commanded the operation, informed the press that 'I'm not counting bodies . . . I'm not interested.' Specific war crimes of US forces included direct military attacks on a hospital and on civilian gatherings. Other Western armies were implicated in serious crimes as well. Some of these were revealed at an official Canadian inquiry, not duplicated by the US or other governments."
Bowden's more forgiving account does not contradict Chomsky's in this regard:
"Official U.S. estimates of Somalian casualties at the time numbered 350 dead and 500 injured. Somalian clan leaders made claims of more than 1,000 deaths. The United Nations placed the number of dead at ``between 300 to 500.'' Doctors and intellectuals in Mogadishu not aligned with the feuding clans say that 500 dead is probably accurate.
The attack on Mogadishu was particularly vicious. Quoting Bowden: "The Task Force Ranger commander, Maj. Gen. William F. Garrison, testifying before the Senate, said that if his men had put any more ammunition into the city 'we would have sunk it.' Most soldiers interviewed said that through most of the fight they fired on crowds and eventually at anyone and anything they saw."
After 18 US Special Forces soldiers were killed in the final Mogadishu firefight, which included the downing of a US helicopter, television screens filled with the scene of a dead US soldier being dragged through the streets by jubilant Somalis. Clinton immediately called off the operation. US forces left Somalia in disgrace. Some 19,000 UN troops remained for a short period, but eventually left in futility.
The Somalia defeat elicited howls of protest and rage from the military brass, congressional hawks, and right-wing provocateurs itching for an excuse to declare political war on the "liberal" Clinton administration.
The "Somalia syndrome" would dog Clinton throughout his presidency, and mar every military mission during his tenure.
Today, as right-wing extremist George W. Bush occupies the White House, surrounded by his father's operatives, and many of the architects of the original raid, military fanaticism is all the rage. A global war "without end" has just begun.
What a perfect opportunity to "clean up" the past.
Why not come up with a new naming convention for web purposes that sits on top of the current DNS archictecture.
For example I could go to my browser and type #MICROSOFT or something and it would then resolve to host1888333.microsoft.com or even multiple servers that can be anything available to those providing web services.
This way the competition for domain names, driven by the web, would cease.
I think the Linux community is shooting itself in the foot by trying to play catchup with MS on the GUI front.
Take a look at any corporation and see what OS they are running on their desktops. That is not going to change, no matter how pretty you can make your window manager! Definitely Linux's most potential is on the server "backoffice" side but instead of developing that potential we have fallen into the trap of trying to compete with Microsoft on the GUI front, while in the meantime Microsoft is pumping out more and more server tools that are shaping the protocols that will be used in future! I shudder to think of the wasted energy going into gnome/kde/whatever instead of optimising Linux as a product that can easily fit into a business's computing environment. Sure there are packages that go some way there, but there is still a lot of work to be done. It's no good arguing about front ends when the basic functionality is not as good as it could be!
I like Linux. I like UNIX. Not because it has the potential to be a "better windows than windows" but because it is flexible, stable, and has fine grained control over resources. Forget about taking over the world. Let's just focus on getting our foot in the door of businesses, so we can keep the protocols and standards as Open as possible.
Slashdot Mirror
They showed ROTJ on TV here (in Australia) just before the release of AOTC - in the very last scenes, when all the fireworks are going off, they also show fireworks going off over Coruscant - did anyone else see that?
If we all had that attitude then we probably wouldnt have TV, or even the computers we are sitting in front of right now.
I bet the viewers of the first TV sets, with their round screens and flickering display, thought the same thing.
Most of the great technologies that we are using nowadays started off as expensive prototypes with poor performance. Look how far we've come tho.
You notice more of the details
Like the scene where Anakin is working on the pod racer with all the other children around, one of the girls has braces on her teeth
None. So what - it's still a POS..
Or just put it as a piece of Spyware in the next version of Morpheous...
...before they start tracking your speed and you end up getting speeding fines in the mail?
According to the myth, the Somalia operation of 1993 was a humanitarian mission, and a shining example of New World Order morality and altruism. In fact, US and UN troops waged an undeclared war against an Islamic African populace that was hostile to foreign interests.
Also contrary to the legend, the 1993 Somalia raid was not a "Clinton foreign policy bungle." In fact, the incoming Clinton administration inherited an operation that was already in full swing -- planned and begun by outgoing President George Herbert Walker Bush, spearheaded by deputy national security adviser Jonathan Howe (who remained in charge of the UN operation after Clinton took office), and approved by Colin Powell, then head of the Joint Chiefs.
The operation had nothing to do with humanitarianism or Africa-love on the part of Bush or Clinton. Several US oil companies, including Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips were positioned to exploit Somalia's rich oil reserves. The companies had secured billion-dollar concessions to explore and drill large portions of the Somali countryside during the reign of pro-US President Mohamed Siad Barre. (In fact, Conoco's Mogadishu office housed the US embassy and military headquarters.) A "secure" Somalia also provided the West with strategic location on the coast of Arabian Sea.
UN military became necessary when Barre was overthrown by warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid, suddenly rendering Somalia inhospitable to US corporate interests.
Although the pretext for the mission was to safeguard food shipments, and stop the "evil Aidid" from stealing the food, the true UN goal was to remove Aidid from the political equation, and form a pro-Western coalition government out of the nation's warring clans. The US operation was met with "surprisingly fierce resistance" -- surprising to US officials who underestimated Somalian resolve, and even more surprising to US troops who were victims and pawns of UN policy makers.
The highly documented series by Mark Bowden of the Philadelphia Inquirer on which the film is based , focuses on the participants, and the "untenable" situation in which troops were placed. But even Bowden's gung-ho account makes no bones about provocative American attacks that ultimately led to the decisive defeat in Mogadishu.
Bowden writes: "Task Force Ranger was not in Mogadishu to feed the hungry. Over six weeks, from late August to Oct. 3, it conducted six missions, raiding locations where either Aidid or his lieutenants were believed to be meeting. The mission that resulted in the Battle of Mogadishu came less than three months after a surprise missile attack by U.S. helicopters (acting on behalf of the UN) on a meeting of Aidid clansmen. Prompted by a Somalian ambush on June 5 that killed more than 20 Pakistani soldiers, the missile attack killed 50 to 70 clan elders and intellectuals, many of them moderates seeking to reach a peaceful settlement with the United Nations. After that July 12 helicopter attack, Aidid's clan was officially at war with America -- a fact many Americans never realized."
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Somalis were killed in the course of US incursions that took place over three months. In his book The New Military Humanism, Noam Chomsky cites other under-reported facts. "In October 1993, criminal incompetence by the US military led to the slaughter of 1,000 Somalis by American firepower." Chomsky writes. "The official estimate was 6-10,000 Somali casualties in the summer of 1993 alone, two-thirds women and children. Marine Lt. Gen. Anthony Zinni, who commanded the operation, informed the press that 'I'm not counting bodies . . . I'm not interested.' Specific war crimes of US forces included direct military attacks on a hospital and on civilian gatherings. Other Western armies were implicated in serious crimes as well. Some of these were revealed at an official Canadian inquiry, not duplicated by the US or other governments."
Bowden's more forgiving account does not contradict Chomsky's in this regard:
"Official U.S. estimates of Somalian casualties at the time numbered 350 dead and 500 injured. Somalian clan leaders made claims of more than 1,000 deaths. The United Nations placed the number of dead at ``between 300 to 500.'' Doctors and intellectuals in Mogadishu not aligned with the feuding clans say that 500 dead is probably accurate.
The attack on Mogadishu was particularly vicious. Quoting Bowden: "The Task Force Ranger commander, Maj. Gen. William F. Garrison, testifying before the Senate, said that if his men had put any more ammunition into the city 'we would have sunk it.' Most soldiers interviewed said that through most of the fight they fired on crowds and eventually at anyone and anything they saw."
After 18 US Special Forces soldiers were killed in the final Mogadishu firefight, which included the downing of a US helicopter, television screens filled with the scene of a dead US soldier being dragged through the streets by jubilant Somalis. Clinton immediately called off the operation. US forces left Somalia in disgrace. Some 19,000 UN troops remained for a short period, but eventually left in futility.
The Somalia defeat elicited howls of protest and rage from the military brass, congressional hawks, and right-wing provocateurs itching for an excuse to declare political war on the "liberal" Clinton administration.
The "Somalia syndrome" would dog Clinton throughout his presidency, and mar every military mission during his tenure.
Today, as right-wing extremist George W. Bush occupies the White House, surrounded by his father's operatives, and many of the architects of the original raid, military fanaticism is all the rage. A global war "without end" has just begun.
What a perfect opportunity to "clean up" the past.
Why not come up with a new naming convention for web purposes that sits on top of the current DNS archictecture.
For example I could go to my browser and type #MICROSOFT or something and it would then resolve to host1888333.microsoft.com or even multiple servers that can be anything available to those providing web services.
This way the competition for domain names, driven by the web, would cease.
Is it just me, or does there seem to be a lack of Linux interest on Deja in general. If you go to Home >> Computing&Tech >> Software >> Operating Systems >> Discussions there seems to be a zillion MS windows forums but hardly any Linux ones!
I don't use deja, so mabye I'm just doing something wrong...
I think the Linux community is shooting itself in the foot by trying to play catchup with MS on the GUI front.
Take a look at any corporation and see what OS they are running on their desktops. That is not going to change, no matter how pretty you can make your window manager! Definitely Linux's most potential is on the server "backoffice" side but instead of developing that potential we have fallen into the trap of trying to compete with Microsoft on the GUI front, while in the meantime Microsoft is pumping out more and more server tools that are shaping the protocols that will be used in future! I shudder to think of the wasted energy going into gnome/kde/whatever instead of optimising Linux as a product that can easily fit into a business's computing environment. Sure there are packages that go some way there, but there is still a lot of work to be done. It's no good arguing about front ends when the basic functionality is not as good as it could be!
I like Linux. I like UNIX. Not because it has the potential to be a "better windows than windows" but because it is flexible, stable, and has fine grained control over resources. Forget about taking over the world. Let's just focus on getting our foot in the door of businesses, so we can keep the protocols and standards as Open as possible.