With poor governance, rampant corruption, a collapsing economy and an extremely high-strung nation, the chicken-or-the-egg theory applies. When a government is entirely incapable of providing security to its citizens, it takes up arms to protect itself, and when the going gets tough those arms are used. And now that the population is armed to the teeth, disarming it is going to be a mammoth project and one that the government is not only unprepared to undertake, it seems to see no need to do it.Why any sane person would allow themselves to be disarmed--especially under these conditions and by such a government--remains unquestioned.
The solution, of course, is freedom. Authoritarianism, by it's nature, cannot produce peace, tranquility and stability. Adding more repression into the mix will produce exactly the opposite of the intended consequences.
NOTE: For some reason, while I can access this url, Blogger will not let me embed it (I get an "illegal character" message), nor does a Tiny URL substitute work. Here it is in case you can copy and paste it into your browser and access the article that way:
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010\06\25\story_25-6-2010_pg3_2
it's their terrible URL format. they must have miserably stupid programmers. the backslashes in the date are treated as escape characters by virtually all except your web browser's address bar. as well they should; that's what they are. they don't belong in URLs.
ReplyDeleteon most terminals, even today, any character can be numerically encoded with an escape sequence, and they always start with backslash, followed by a reserved character or number denoted in octal or hexadecimal.
some were human interface controls: \b is bell, an audible sound on an old enough terminal, or in an emulator.
some are typewriter/printer controls: \x0d or \r is carriage return, as in, bring the write head (carriage) back from wherever it is, to the leftmost column. \x0a or \n is linefeed (new line), as in, bring the write head down one line, or, feed paper by one row.
the x in those is indicating to the terminal the following number is hexadecimal. a state machine rolling through the string will stop at a backslash and go from the "this is string data" state to the "this is control data" state, then finish whatever it expects next.
fascinating, really.
anyways, i changed them all from backslash to forward slash in my address bar and that still worked. so you could probably link to it like this.
Wow. This "columnist" advances the theory that government has become a parasite caring only about its own existence, recognizes that the government can't supply security for individual citizens, and then proposes disarming and prosecuting the hoi polloi who would take up arms for their own security.
ReplyDeleteTh whole thing reads like an Onion parody - but the content and styles suggests that it's not.
How in the heck did this maroon become a "columnist" with any following? Perhaps he should apply for work at The Onion. I bet they'd hire him in a New York minute.
As a friend says - you just can't make this stuff up.
I notice Dr. ISLAM lives in Ohio. Why doesn't she move to Pakistan and become part of the "solution" she recommends?
ReplyDeleteAlso, tribal people have been killing each other for thousands of years before guns were added to the equation. Now, at least, the weak have a chance to resist the strong, the isolated have a prayer against the organized. Why in the name of all gods would she want to restore ultimate supremacy to the more barbaric and amoral? Oh, she hasn't thought it through. Yet she columnizes. I bet she's never held a real job or faced a criminal or tyrant.
The problem in Pakistan is the same as in any other Muslim country - Islam.
ReplyDeleteIslam does not promote, freedom, demacrocy, or any civil rights. It is a 7th century barbaric way of life institutionalized as a religious cult. It institutionalizes violence.
So it is not surprising that the philosophy is Pakistan and other Muslim countries is -
Me and my brother against the familiy -
My family against the neighbors -
Me and my neighbors against the other towns -
My country against the non-Muslim countries.
And we're importing whole Muslim Somali villages to America, telling them that their culture (ie Islam) is to be respected.
What could go wrong?