Terrorism and Crime

Crime often turns out to be the funding method used by revolutionaries and terrorists. No matter what the motivation to start the operation the crime part of it takes on a life of its own. The people who operate the fund raising wing can become more powerful than the idealist wing. Then the fund raisers have no motivation to actually end whatever stuggle they are involved in.
The warlords in Afghanistan, and rogue factions of the IRA are examples of how this happens.

I often hear people say you can't have a "war on terrorism" because terrorism is a tactic, not a group, organization or nation. A corollary to this is that terrorism at home should be treated as crime, not an act of war. This all sounds good to me, but a view I haven't heard is that making "war on terror" you are elevating the people who use that tactic to the status of a quasi-nation. We should treat terrorists for what they are; criminals. For instance, the "eco-terrorism" that happened a few years ago where some hummers were firebombed and a ski resort construction site burned should not even be elevated to the status of terrorism. It is just vandalism. The people who do it are just some bad boys and girls looking for a little excitement.

We should treat them all as mere criminals. A particularly nasty kind of criminal, but just a criminal none the less. If we view them as bad guys that just want to blow stuff up it takes some of the wind out of whatever message they are trying to make. Who is going to listen to a bunch of vandals who get a kick out of breaking windows?

Flood Insurance

Flood insurance has bothered me on several levels. I guess I have been a little self righteous about my opinion that people shouldn't live in flood zones.
I will concede that the forces that cause people to live or work in flood-prone areas are often beyond the control of the folks that live and work there. For that reason it seems like a good idea to have some form of flood insurance. It also seems reasonable that the government help to pool the risk. The government can do it on a not-for-profit basis, provide a very large pool, and guarantee payments in the face of a large incident. All this is ok with me.

The part of the policy that makes no sense is that the insurance will pay to rebuild where a flood has just happened. Flood insurance should pay out for a given location only once. The owner should be given a choice; either build again and live without insurance, or be bought out of the land entirely. Once the land is bought it can be sold for uses unaffected by flooding, and especially for flood protection.

With this policy the land that is prone to flooding is taken out of uses that will be damaged by flooding.

The problems with this idea, beside the polical impossibility, is a situation like New Orleans. There are lots of reasons why city should be able to rebuild.

A draft

I think if we are going to commit forces to combat above a certain level we should most definitely have a draft.

The reason the current administration doesn't want a draft is that it would galvanize a popular anti-war movement. If a draft was required when more than a few troops are commited to combat then we wouldn't get involved unless there was clear popular support.

If the Iraq invasion was accompanied with a draft call then support for the invasion would have been insignificant.

Science curriculum and evolution

Science curriculum should be based on the current thinking that is grounded in real evidence, not supernatural explanations for the nature of the physical world.

The discussion of "what is science" should be in a pholosophy course, not a science course.
Any discussion of explanations for natural phenomena that do not arise from physical evidence should be in a religion (or superstition) class.

more blather

I sure hope the dems can figure out how to choose their battles with bush.
I'd like to see a strong opposition, but they also need to figure out how to support stuff that isn't stupid. I think part of the malaise is because after 9/11 they rolled over everytime Ascroft said boo. It's ok to agree on something, but they need to be strong and resolute about some thing, to use an expression Mr Inflexible uses.

Post-Election Blather

After the election and listening to all the crap on the news (mostly npr) I have all this blather rolling around my head. I hope I can get a little off my chest.

Moral Values
Is this really the line that divides us? Is it code for gay marriage and abortion?

One thought that kept coming back yesterday is the the folks that voted for Bush (or against those eastern liberal types, as I think it was to some extent) are both prudish and squeamish. They don't like to think about having sex with someone of the same gender, or about having an abortion. These things are just gross. A liberal is somone who wants to remind me of these things. It comes back to basically homophobia and prudishness. Maybe that's what "Moral Values" means.

Even though Kerry carefully avoided talking about gay and abortion issues if he could the Bushies and their allies painted Kerry (and the east coast intellectual liberal elite) as people who were going to force their teenagers to have gay sex and then abortions. Of course not literally, but with code.

After a day this doesn't seem that important, but I think it's a small part of the picture.