A true story of a new nation that had:
Capital lost to enemy twice
New form of government adopted twice
Two major wars
Several minor wars
Six rebellions
in first four decades. This story shows us it is very difficult to establish and maintain a liberal democracy. In comparison, tyranny is easy to impose and maintain.
Liberty is universal human right. No abstract concepts can deny one’s liberty.
I have contempt for anyone who says that country’s sovereignty must be “respected” if that country’s regime represses their own citizens. Tyrannies have no legitimacy to govern. Every democracy has moral obligation to end tyrannies over the world by force if necessary.
Yesterday marked 20 th anniversary of late US president Roland Reagan’s famous “tear down the wall” speech.
Full speech can be found here
There are many walls to be torn down today.
President Bush delivered one of the best speech at Democracy and Security conference. Bush gets it what is at stake for freedom unlike rest of world, and our government.
Read the full speech here
If standing for liberty in the world makes me a dissident, I wear that title with pride.
It was described in Natan Sharansky’s book that in meeting with President Bush to discuss about Sharansky’s book. It was Sharasnsky that he told and explained to Bush that he was “dissident president”.
The world needs more dissident leaders like him.
Can you tell me what’s wrong with this picture taken this morning?
Why do this certain segment of population rate 10 out of 10 for a game that has not even been released yet? Exhibit A
Exhibit B is even worse.
Those people views and opinions are worse than worthless.
In fact, “Rings” devotees may wish to avoid “300,” because after seeing Frank Miller’s widescreen illustrations come to life and start moving, leaping, hacking, gouging, tearing and bleeding all over their neighborhood IMAX, the Tolkien trilogy will be reduced to little more than the very long story of a schizophrenic Muppet and his curiously affectionate companions. And I love those movies!
Review of upcoming movie 300.
Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire, a novel dramaziation of Battle of Thermopylae , is recommended.
Tom Hollard’s Persian Fire is on my desk waiting to be read. His book on Roman Republic, Rubicon, is excellent and best introduction into Roman history.
I cannot even think about the scenario of world looks like today if Xerxes prevailed, especially at Salamis , and conquered Greece and rest of Europe.
Too bad we do not have Starbucks outlet locally. Seattle Coffee Co is the closest we have got.
Starbucks as business model is great, like Coca Cola. mostly about water and charge premium.
The coffee from Starbucks are medicore at best and overpriced. I wasn’t impressed. Oh yes, Blue Mountain blend, the real deal from Jamaica, is overrated too, weak as tea. I was led to believe that it was best smooth blend that money could buy. Maybe I must give it second try when I get that blend again. I prefer smooth coffee than strong and bitter ones.
I recommend Vida e Caffe instead. I was pleasantly surprised how good their coffee are. Their stores are bright and stylish, compared to dark and dank competitors’ stores. Their coffees are excellent for franchised coffee. You’d be surprised where this coffee chain is from.
Is there clash of civilization? I say no. There isn’t one.
It’s clash between civilization and barbarism as Daniel Pipes explains.
The despicable mayor of London had debated with Daniel Pipes recently in debate of “A World Civilisation or a Clash of Civilisations” There are plenty of blogs detailing about this debate event which MSM ignored.
There is Daniel Pipe’s transcript which I want to highlight:
Let me start with my position on the question of world civilization or clash of civilizations. One: I am for world civilization, and I reject the ‘clash of civilization’ argument. Two: The problem is not so much a clash of civilizations, but a clash of civilization and barbarism.
[...]
But yes, there can be a world civilization if one defines it differently. Civilization can be the opposite of barbarism. And civilization in this sense has a long history. In the Bible, there is a passage, “And ye shall… proclaim liberty throughout all the lands and unto all the inhabitants thereof.” In the Koran, “you are the best community ever raised among mankind, you advocate righteousness and forbid evil, and believe in God.” The American byword is ‘the pursuit of happiness’, the French is “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité “ Winston Churchill in 1898, writing about the Sudan, said that civilization is “sympathetic, merciful, tolerant, ready to discuss or argue, eager to avoid violence, to submit to law, to effect compromise.”
So the question is, can this state of being, of being civilized, can it exist on a world level?
It can, in so far as those who are civilized confront those who are not civilized. The world civilization consists of civilized elements in every culture banding together to protect ethics, liberty and mutual respect. The real clash is between them and the barbarians.
Now what do I mean by barbarians? I do not mean people of a lower economic standing. What I mean by barbarians – and I think all of us mean by barbarians in the past two centuries – are ideological barbarians. This is what emerged in the French revolution in the late 18th century. And the great examples of ideological barbarism are fascism and Marxist Leninism – they, in their course of their histories have killed tens of millions of people.
But today it’s a third, a third totalitarian movement, a third barbarian movement, namely that of radical Islam. It is an extremist utopian version of Islam. I am not speaking of Islam the religion, I am speaking of a very unusual and modern reading of Islam. It has inflicted misery (as I mentioned Algeria and Darfur, before), there is suicide terrorism, tyrannical and brutal governments, there is the oppression of women, and non-Muslims.
It threatens the whole world:. Morocco, Turkey, Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, you name it, Afghanistan, Tunisia, and not just the traditional Muslim world, but also Russia, France, Sweden, and I daresay, the United Kingdom.
Ex NYC mayor, Rudy Giuliani has now joining in 2008 US presidential race.
Compared to current crop of declared and not declared candidates, Giuliani is the best one that I would like to see elected.
I admire Giuliani’s uncompromising ejection of that monster Arafat from concert event. And Giuliani rejected $10m donation from Saudi prince because of Saudi’s nonsense remarks that USA policies contributed to 9/11.
There are few men like Giuliani that stand up and speak out what’s right and wrong instead of appeasing.
And of course, Giuliani fixed NYC up so that it was one of my best and memorable visit to the city a while ago.
In other words, the concept itself of individualism which through the teachings imparted to us by the philosophers of classical antiquity then of Christianity then of Renaissance then of the Enlightenment have made us what we are. Socialism is based on collectivism. Collectivism denies individualism. And anyone who denies individualism denies western civilization
F A Hayek – The Road to Serfdom
Today’s parts of country electrical outage, is classic example why central state planning is horrible idea.
If there was liberalised electricity market with private providers, then we will not have this frequent outages. It is in company interest to provide reliable supply of electricity to generate income.
I’ve observed a peculiar human trait.
We drive that makes Formula 1 driver shake their heads in disgust.
We “powerwalk” everywhere from point A to B, and like vehicle traffic, we like to cut in others.
But!
We take sweet time to do anything in job or task. We put off things until very last second.
DStv has 24/7 news channels, like BBC News, CNN, SkyNEWS, and some assorted financial channels, CNBC, Bloombery et al.
While channel hopping, I discovered that Multichoice has added new channels. One is CCTV9 (ch 106) and RT (ch 108), and Euronews (ch 61)
CCTV9 is English news channel from China.
RT is Russia Today, a English news channel from Russia.
Euronews is a sad European attempt to challenge CNN. In true European fashion, it comes in numerous languages.
I’ve sent an email to Multichoice asking them to add another channel to counter the obvious bias of those channels. The channel in question is FOX News. I am still awaiting for them to get back to me.
The odds are in favour to alJhiad al-Jazeera English channel being added to DStv line up than FOX News.
There is no conservative daily or weekly newspaper in South Africa. That’s very unfortunate. Never mind about those TV news channels.
Local e-tailer has now priced Playstation3 at credit card limit busting of R6400. More than 6 grand for a piece of gaming console, no sorry, I mean a home entertainment hardware? You gotta kidding me.
XBOX 360 comes more reasonable R3700 But still ripoff.
PS3 has hidden cost of at least R15000 for 720p HDTV to enyoy next gen games. Unlike PS3, XBOX 360 lets you connect to a PC monitor which is more appealing to me.
Come to think of it, I paid about R2000 for Playstation 2 (slimline model).
I’ll stick to PS2 for now, looking forward to God of War 2 game this quarter!
I am not going to disappear off the face of the earth.
Yes, this blog was down during late Dec 2006 and early Jan 2007. To cut the story short1, the webserver that hosts this blog has met its demise. And that time I was on annual end of year holidays which had no chance for my undivided attention giving the webserver a defibrillator treatment.
With my 1337 mad skilz, this blog is back online and I hope I get swing back to regular blogging.
1 In other words, I couldn’t be arsed to explain in detail.