From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Tue 29 Apr 2003 - 16:41:13 GMT
> > I do believe that the
> > honest position of all true liberals is to embrace the root of the
> > word (liberty), not just for themselves, but for others as well, >
> especially when those others are being murdered and dominated by >
> fascist totalitarianisms and denied a democratic voice in their own >
> and their countries' affairs.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------
>
> From News in Brief @ www.theonion.com (satirical)
>
> Tortured Ugandan Political Prisoner Wishes Uganda Had Oil
>
> KAMPALA, UGANDA. A day after having his hands amputated by soldiers
> backing President Yoweri Museveni's brutal regime, Ugandan political
> prisoner Otobo Ankole expressed regret Monday over Uganda's lack of
> oil reserves. "I dream of the U.S. one day fighting for the liberation
> of the oppressed Ugandan people," said Ankole as he nursed his bloody
> stumps. "But, alas, our number-one natural resource is sugar cane."
> Ankole, whose wife, parents, and five children were among the 4,000
> slaughtered in Uganda's ethnic killings of 2002, then bowed his head
> and said a prayer for petroleum.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------
>
> Single instances make for bad precedents. We gonna free the world now?
>
> There are several indisputably guilty as hell child-killing perverts
> in prison that I'd happily execute, but I am against a death penalty.
> It is indefensible in principle and, especially, in practice. No
> exceptions.
>
> Chris.
>
There are indeed many places, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Iran, Syria, Libya,
the Sudan and North Korea prominent among them, where people are
denied basic human rights and political representation. We should
indeed be in favor of doing what we can to help them achieve these. Of
course, different situations with different countries are amenable to
differing means, but there are many worse and less altruistic ambitions
one can have than the ambition of working to liberate the oppressed
and enslaved of the world, to be free to choose the course of their own
lives and the selection of their own preferred memes from a free
personal and informational market of alternatives.
Oh, yes: Haiti had no oil, but now Duvalier is gone. Serbia and Bosnia
had no oil but now Milosevic is gone and Karadzic and Mladic are out of
power and in hiding. And if you had a gun to the head of Hitler in 1935
and knew what the next ten years would bring if you didn't pull the
trigger, how would you explain your principled nonaction to the families
of all the Holocaust dead? There are always exceptions to rules: these
exceptions do not PROVE rules (that is a misquote of Aristotle), but
PROBE the scope and parameters of rules by means of their status as
exceptions.
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Chris Taylor (chris@bioinf.man.ac.uk)
> http://bioinf.man.ac.uk/ »people»chris
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>
> ===============================================================
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>
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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