Monday, June 27, 2005

Homeland security

Okay. We have this thing in the United States of America called homeland security. Well, I propose that instead of wasting all of our money on homeland security, we spend it all on giving guns to everybody above the age of 16 (I'm not 16 right now). There is a saying, "An armed society, is a polite society." And I believe that. I also believe that if someone starts shouting, "ALLAH AKABAR!" He will be shot, hopefully before the guy hits the detonator.

Well, the reason why I'm writing this, is because we have this thing in the US called homeland security. And we have this thing in schools called the lock down. For the lack of better terms, it's a bunch of bullshit. Basically, all the lights turn off, everybody gets into one corner of the room, and the door is locked. We aren't allowed to make any noises, walked out, or even go outside when the fire alarm is pulled.

Well, in the event of a true terrorist attack (though why my town I know not), keeping everybody in a corner of the room is not the best idea. What? Your going to pile the bodies which get hit first on top of you so they don't see you? No. The terrorist will just shoot the door open, walk in, and strafe everybody with an AK-47. We will be dead. Yay.

Another scenario, a terrorist plants a BOMB in the school. A teacher sees it, and pulls the fire alarm to get everybody to evacuate. Sure, some of us will die from AK-46 fire, but I'm pretty sure unless it was a full scale invasion, some of us would make it out. Well, we aren't allowed to answer the fire alarm. Bomb goes up, so to all the students.

Or, how about this. THEY LIGHT THE BUILDING ON FIRE. Yeah. That would be ironic. Though very unpleasant.

So, this got me thinking. My friend is in one of the dumber classes. The one's with super seniors, ghetto kids, etc. Well, he said, "I felt pretty safe. All those Hispanic ghetto kids who carry knives are in my class." Yeah. ARMED. Terrorist walks in with an AK, gets a hail of bullets. He dies, we live.

This isn't the first time homeland security has come up and introduced an ineffective way to protect us. For you older people, you remember those nuclear bomb drills? Get under your desk, and put your head over your head. Or get near a corner of the wall if your in the hallway. This was during the cold war. However, MAYBE if it was a bomb drill. But a nuke? You won't feel anything when it hits. It's that, or it will feel like you have drizzle on your face. And that means you'll die painfully in a week of radiation poisoning.

I say, do homeland security right. Don't do any of this, "lets hide in a room where there are WINDOWS." Issue us guns, or build a bunker to protect the students. And above all, please, please, PLEASE do not put suicide proof windows on the first floor. What the hell? Someone's going to jump out the first floor window? I think that's a GOOD way to escape.

In Post Cold War US, Dictatorships > Democracies

Containment. That one word was the entire US foreign policy around the globe. Back when communism was still a threat and the number of superpowers was even, containment was all the justification Americans needed to act anywhere around the globe. This oftentimes resulted in bad situations, such as the ones in South America, most notably Chile, where US support backed cruel dictators just so that the communist guerilla fighters wouldn't win. We even backed Saddam Hussein and his enemies in Iran, both at the same time.

That wasn't a very good policy.

Although it was an admirable effort, the effects of containment leave us today in very bad shape. It turns out that since we won, those dictators and other notorious people who at the time seemed better than communism are still in power. The United States in now in a position where the majority of the people living under those countries hate us.

Even if we hadn't backed these governments, we would have won the Cold War anyway. Simply by following Reagan's policy of outspending the USSR, we won. It wasn't through containment, it wasn't through warfare. It was through spending money. And as soon as the USSR had fallen, what do you think the communist countries would have done? They would have instantly lost their biggest trading partners and supporters, within fractions of a second.

But then, hindsight is 20/20.

So now we come to today's day and age. The dictators are still there, and we have to wage a War on Terror. Instantly, we need allies for every action. But due to an unfortunate side effect, we're now turning to the same people we supported during the Cold War.

That's right. America's valuing those dictator allies.

Why shouldn't we? It makes logical sense. We supported them in their time of need, they OWE us, don't they?

But such alliances must be made against the backdrop of morals and ethics. If we, as a nation who claims to support freedom and liberty, back countries who brutally repress people and then seek their help, what kind of message are we sending? Go ahead, oppress your people, just don't be communist?

On top of all that, we're shunning our oldest and most democratic of allies. France, Germany, and all the countries of Western Europe whom we were friends with during the Cold War are now being turned away easily. Instead, we support countries like Pakistan, a known military dictatorship, Saudi Arabia, a regime known for repressing human rights, and China, soley because US corporations make money from them.

In the future, will the United States be remembered for losing its democratic principles to side with the dictators?

Thursday, June 16, 2005

American Education

Now. I'm no big fan of affirmative action. Quite frankly, I hate affirmative action. Yes, I am the minority. Maybe not for engineering schools, but never the less, I think affirmative action should go away. Why do you ask? Especially if I am the minority? Simply because, if you didn't earn it, you don't deserve it.

For example.
We have Mike here. Mike is white. Mike got 1 480 on his SATs, comes out with a 3.8 GPA, has a good amount of community work, work experience, activites and such. No, Mike does not play sports.

Now we have Ekim. Ekim is black. Ekim got a 1340 on his SATs, comes out with a 3.3 GPA. He doesn't do alot of community, but he does have some work experience. Ekim does not play sports either.

Ekim gets into a highly respected college, because of affirmative action. See the problem? Mike is obviously a better student, but Ekim, because of his color, has an advantage. Ekim gets a full scholership, sits there for 5 years and graduates. Mike's application was thrown out. Therefore, it is not fair.

You do not scream for racial equality, when you advocate affirmative action.

Rich daddy affirmative action is worse. I have this teacher. We will call her Mrs. Smith. Her son went to Drexel uni, with low SAT scores (he filled in half the reading), respective math score, half decent grades, etc. He gets in, because a family friend phoned in and said, "Let this person in and I will donate money." Actually I think it was more along the lines of, "Let this person in, or I will not donate money." Well, the guy gets in.

Rich daddy affirmative action is seen everywhere, mostly in the Liberal Arts department because most kids can't cut an engineering/science degree. What do I propose? I think everybody should just take a freaking test to get into their schools. Many countries do this, including Japan and Taiwan.

Yes. No name, no nothing. Only address, and social security number. This way the decision will be based only on your score.

Monday, June 06, 2005

The Right Protests, Left Speaks Back

Ever seen a living member of the Right not fight? Well, if you haven't, either you've been living under a rock, or you don't know your America.

ProtestWarrior.com, a website dedicated to the political right, has very few goals. But these goals are very important to the site's members, among them: support for the conservative right, support for the war in Iraq, against government regulations, the UN, France, and Muslims.

Anyone see a problem with this message?

Of course, they should be allowed to have their own message, but only up to the point where they violate the laws of libel, and I think they've reached that with their website's posters.

Their site claims to combat the "left's" views on the world, because those views are narrow minded and don't reflect the entirety of the world.

However, just by looking at their posters, they are no different. They are much worse than the people they claim to be attacking. I guess it just comes to show that those who decide to attack their worst enemies become ever worse than those that they attacked.

These guys play off the stereotypes that they see in their limited media and use it as a weapon. They claim that all socialists are evil (without realizing that socialists only want benefits for people), and also state that 100 million people have died because of Communism, and yet fails to mention that over 75 million have been killed in wars since World War I because of involvement by the United States.

Of course, onto a more personal note: Forget the myth that the right is for minorities.

Just today, I talked with this girl who was a staunch conservative. She would have made their leaders proud, constantly talking about how "those f**king dirty liberals supported other countries besides the U.S." Ok, so I asked her, when had this happened?

Her response? "The f**king liberals supported f**king Mexico when they filed f**king lawsuits against Arizona!"

So she was mad about illegal immigrants. If you've read one of my previous columns (Look for America Needs Immigrants), you'd realize that because the US economy's working population is getting older, we need replacement workers, and the only place that we are currently gaining younger workers is from Mexico. This alone justifies allowing them across.

When I explained this to her, she cut me off, got even more mad, and said something along the lines of "those f**king dirty mexicans don't help the economy. They just take dirty, smelly jobs."

Somebody's a psycho, and I was keeping a rational voice.

She went on to a rant about how it decreased "national pride", how the mexicans were weakening our economy. I pointed out how these weren't true, but she didn't even listen. She even went on to state that America was the greatest country in the world and that it was filled with those who said bad things about it.

Remember: the very reason America was founded was because people said bad things about the British, so her view would be against the founding of the British empire. So remember: she'd be FOR Britain and against America. Americans never got anywhere by not questioning leadership, be it good or especially bad.

She also said that nobody was willing to fight for it anymore.

My response? Tell that to the 150,000 US troops in Iraq.

Sex Ed

Okay. It's not like I have been laid, I've been getting laid, or I will be getting laid in the near future, but quite frankly, this new sex ed thing just doesn't work.

So Bush plans to invest money in sex education. He advocates abstinence. This means no condoms are passed around during health class. Nothing to learn about birth control. Just abstinence. Oh, and this includes cutting some funds to AIDs because, "just don't have sex." No teen sex, no sex before marriage, etc. You get the point.

I don't care if this is just some weird protestant view, and quite truthfully, I don't care of it is. Face it people. Teenagers will always have sex. It's called hormones. Teenagers are horny. Nothing you can do about it. So the pope is against condoms, but at least he advocates some sort of birth control.

The truth is, this new sex education thing just isn't working. Yes, you do want to advocate abstinence because society looks down on pregnant teenagers. But, they are going to have sex anyways. You might as well make them use a condom. We don't want the girl pregnant now do we?

"What did we learn in class?"
"Don't have class. Oh yeah, here's come condoms."

Yes, this is basically how health class should be taught. Don't have sex. But because I can't stop you from having it, use birth control and don't get pregnant/STDs. States that only teach abstinence have a very high abortion and teenage pregnancy rate. Ironically, those are all the states who are anti-abortion. It is going up, because teens are having unprotected sex now.

Think about it. If you can't get them to not have sex. At least get them to have protected sex. If they want to go unprotected, damn. That girl has some guts.