Port 80

Thanks to Best of the Web, I came across this interesting piece
today.

What about the Iraqi people who have been taken hostage by a megalomaniacal dictator for so long? Why is nobody thinking about the immense suffering of the nation of Iraq? If one negotiates or yields to the demands of this hostage-taker Saddam Hussein, he will only be emboldened to increase his demands. He might even take more hostages. In any event, it is only the hostages [the Iraqi people] who will suffer further loss and injury…. If Saddam Hussein is allowed to finesse his way out of this crisis, he may take the entire region as hostage in the near future….

Moreover, someone should ask these antiwar protesters…if they realize how truly terrifying it is to live near a deranged and demented ruler such as Saddam Hussein, who has already invaded two of his neighbors?… Where were these protesters when Saddam Hussein was killing hundreds of thousands of citizens with conventional and unconventional weapons? …

In conclusion, the same high and mighty Western powers who created the monster that is Saddam Hussein owe a debt of honor to the people of Iraq, as well as to the people of the entire region, to disarm and remove him from power
now.

By all counts, a strongly worded editorial - especially when you consider that it was run in the reformist Iran News (and translated by the World Press Review.)

Certainly, this article presents a very different view on the arguments that the United States armed Saddam in the first place, arguing not that “we have no business intervening” but that “we have an obligation to intervene.” It’s certainly the first non-Anglo-American editorial which I have seen demanding that the United States go to war due to a moral obligation to correct the situation. But then again, I haven’t seen any editorials from Israel or Kuwait recently.

After putting a counter on this page yesterday and realizing that it was loaded within a day by three people who didn’t happen to be me, I feel vaguely obligated to place some new content here, if only for those three individuals who came to this page despite the fact that this page doesn’t appear in the search results from Google yet. Fortunately, I happen to have an item I came across which I felt deserved to be posted.

Thanks to Slashdot, I have just come across a piece from Paul Graham entitled “Why Nerds Are Unpopular”. It’s actually not just an analysis of “nerds”, but a fairly well-thought out perspective on the origin of the social dynamics that occur from junior high through the end of high school. It’s an interesting read - I highly recommend it if you have some time. It’s certainly not the standard perspective you will hear coming from an entrenched educational institution.

Of course, it is also possible that this page was visited three times by search robots. In that case, I hope they have the good sense to note the above link. Mr. Graham deserves an aftershock of Slashdotting for writing such a well-thought out piece.