Grounding a bloody tyrant

Are there any instances where it is okay for limited military intervention based purely on humanitarian grounds? If so, then where could such actions be acceptable?

The short answer is yes, and one very obvious place would have been the country formerly known as Yugoslavia. For much of its history, Yugoslavia was a communist state led by Marshall Josef Broz Tito. Yugoslavia was comprised of formerly independent republics whose history with each other was often less than friendly. Only Tito was able to forge a government that all of its different nationalities recognized. After Tito’s death in 1980, the ties that once bound the nation slowly began to unravel. Eventually by 1990, the country began to dissolve in a bloody civil war.

There were more than enough war crimes committed during this period, but one in particular stands out. In the city of Srebinica, in July 1995, some 8000 Bosnian males were herded to a place outside the city when it fell to the Army of the Serbian Republic, where they were all summarily executed. This was said to be the largest act of mass murder in Europe since World War Two.

When that particular massacre took place, the war had been ongoing for some five years. Funny thing, despite the so-called New World Order that President George H. W. Bush proclaimed after Desert Storm, nothing was done to halt these atrocities. Prior to the incident in Srebinica, war criminals and war crimes were everywhere. The guilty were found on all sides, but no one, the U N, the Europeans nor the U. S. seem inclined to intervene.

The most vexing question was why there were so few active voices advocating intervention in this war-torn country. War crimes were being documented on a daily basis, ethnic cleansing was taking place pretty much everywhere and the death toll in that country was considerably higher than it needed to be had the world acted more quickly and forcibly to stop those later charged with war crimes before the war crimes were actually committed.

A similar situation is now unfolding in the African country of Libya. Its longtime leader, the despot Muammar Gaddafi, is facing the very real possibility that his regime’s days may be numbered. Rebels have already taken up arms against him, but he has responded in kind. His military was pressing a bold attack against those who hope to see a more democratic Libya. And Gaddafi promised to make everyone who’d stood up in opposition to him pay with their lives.

So, because he promised a bloodbath, and because he has a history of keeping such promises, the world has acted quickly in concert to keep this madman from engaging in mass murder. Whereas the United Nations took over a year to okay action in Yugoslavia, in Libya's case, this was done in less than a month. A no-fly zone was declared and a resolution passed so that it might be enforced.

Here the world is acting together in time to stop a massacre. And unlike the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, the U. S. military will not be bogged down in a ground war. In fact, the U. S. has allies that are already taking the lead in this effort to protect those whose hopes are simply for democracy.

It’s déjà vu all over again

I’m still wild from having seen one of the most fantastic comebacks ever in college basketball. Pikeville College, aka da Bears, were playing in the semi-finals against a very talented Tennessee Martin Methodist team, and, despite having already gained a reputation in this tournament for some spirited rallies, it really looked like the tank had finally run dry. But an 18-0 run sealed the fate of yet another highly-ranked team and da Bears are now batting .500 in NAIA semis.

After the game was over, my mind went back to the U K game against those hated Duke Blue Devils in 1998. Here, a team also known as the Comeback Kids were down 19 in the second half, and against one of the best coaches in the business. I have to admit I gave up on them, but the thing was like a car wreck, too terrible to look away from. So I watched on.

Well, we all know our history don’t we? Coach Tubby Smith turned in one of his best performances ever, and out-coached Coach K. With a significant amount of time left, Coach K had no time-outs, and U K started in on those Devils like a lumberjack will do to a tall tree. That’s what the Cats did to Durham’s finest. Just cut them down to size and with an inside out three pointer by Scott Padgett in the waning moments of the game, U K had the Devils on the ropes, and promptly exorcised them.

In my mind that made up for another U K vs. Duke game which took place in 1992, wherein He Who Shall Remain Nameless made a last second shot that sent the Unforgettables packing. You can feel bad about such an experience, but you can also atone for your mistakes later, as truly the Big Blue did.

Then it occurred to me that Pikeville also had their “we’d-really-rather-forget-it moment” in the NAIA Big Dance that took place in 2001. What a year that was for da Bears; two local coaches and an underdog team that was over-performing in every game. And then came Faulkner.

I suppose it’s the modern times that we live in that makes the difference, but in 2001, there was no television coverage of that semifinal game. So I had to watch it on the radio. (LOL) No, seriously, that’s how I watched all the contests this year until Monday night, but I digress.

Back in 2001, when da Bears got into that team, man, it was one of the most painful games I ever listened to. Not only was the team getting the worst end of a lop-sided score, a dream was going to die with it. And I wanted the thing to end with a little dignity.

Well, it did. Da Bears decided to mount a rally in that game, too. No, I don’t remember all the details, but I know this, they got within spitting distance. Well, in my mind, the game that took place this year more than makes up for that loss, and I think we can all rest easy now, especially since U K won the whole bloomin’ onion after their game of redemption, just as I expect da Bears will do on Tues. evening.

The eve of destruction

Sometimes you find yourself an unwitting spectator to unfolding events so fantastic that even as you’re watching them, you still have trouble grasping just exactly what it is you are a witness to. That’s the way I felt as I was channel surfing at around 2 in the morning on Fri. and stopped on CNN to see that this venerable news station was covering what it called a major earthquake that had just struck off the northern coast of Japan.

The quake, said to have registered 7.8 on the Richter scale, had just hit and we were viewing live shots of areas close to the epicenter. Eventually we saw from a distance what appeared to be a freeway bridge, an underpass, and to the left of the underpass, what looked to be a parking lot that was full of water and there were floating vehicles everywhere. 
The CNN anchor even wondered why there were all those vehicles floating around.  In the meantime, traffic on the overpass bridge was turning around and heading back in the direction from which it’d come. In fact, at least two cars were on the road beneath the overpass, where they drove through and disappeared.

It didn’t seem like it was all that much later, but suddenly we were seeing a second tsunami wave washing along that same area. This time there were large boats, more vehicles, and all sorts of debris being pushed through the underpass that had had traffic on it only minutes before.

After that, everything got surreal. Suddenly you started seeing waves filled with all sorts of debris. They washed over what looked like farm land, then through housing complexes, and over highways that had traffic on them right up to the time that the waves hit them. Traffic seemed to give way to the tsunami, but beyond on roads that the tsunami had not yet reached was more traffic seemingly unaware of what was rushing towards them.

Before too long, the quake was upgraded to an incredible 8.9. One expert explained that meant that the quake was a thousand times stronger than initially thought. It has since been upgraded again, to a number almost unheard of, a staggering 9.0. This number is likely to be upgraded again as time goes on.

The number of victims is also going to go up. By Mon. evening, the official count was over 6000, but there were whole towns that were razed, and it’s unknown how many victims are still uncounted. On MSN’s website, there are 21 aerial photos that show the amount of damage done in interactive before and after pictures. From these, it’s possible to see how much was just washed away to sea.

And that is only the beginning. In what looks like Chernobyl on steroids, there are at least three nuclear reactors heavily damaged when their cooling systems failed, causing at least a partial meltdown in one.

One estimate on the amount of damage done was set at around $180 billion. Yes, this is a very preliminary figure, but if the scale of damage, said by some in Japan as the most extensive since WW2, is any indication, this figure, like the size of the earthquake, will likely have to be upgraded to a far higher figure.

Trading Places with Europe

Hollywood has very little to do with day-to-day life. Here you get mainly fairy tale scenarios that could only take place in the movies; the Chicago Cubs in the World Series and actually winning it, for example. Still, when the story line isn’t believable-i. e., “Trading Places”, wherein the rich and powerful are bankrupted-the central plots can sometimes be based loosely on factual information.

Take that venerable movie we just mentioned. In “Trading Places”, Mortimer and Randolph Duke using what they thought was inside information, are planning on cornering the market in frozen orange juice futures. None of what happens in the movie approaches reality, except the insanity on the trading floor that is the real climax of the whole movie. To see it explained in some detail, see http://www.dangerouslogic.com/trading_places.html.

Futures exchanges can play havoc in real life, and it is just as difficult to understand or explain. Take the unrest in Libya. Because of it, we are seeing immediate increases in the price of petroleum products in the U. S., even though we don’t import oil from Libya. Most of Libya’s oil, in fact, goes to Europe. So why is the price of gasoline increasing here so quickly? Well, that’s just as hard to understand as the events in “Trading Places”. To explain it completely would take far more space than is allotted this column, but if you go to a couple of web sites, you might be able to understand what’s going on.

The first is http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2679388/posts. This explains in some detail all the factors that affect the price of oil and the products that are refined from it. The second site looks at how oil prices are affected by speculators-the whole “Trading Places” gang. Just go to http://commoditybullmarket.blogspot.com/2011/03/march-2011-oil-price-outlook-why-libya.html . You can get to these sites by typing in certain key words; dangerous logic trading places; free republic.com focus f-news 2679388; or commodity bull market blogspot march-2011 oil price outlook why Libya.

There’s no denying the complexity of the world’s economy. This much is made very clear when looking at the overall picture when it comes to how petroleum products are priced. But there is that tacit factor that is common to all futures trading, and that is greed. Greed is the most easily understood thing about “Trading Places”. Well, greed and the so-called upper class elitism that led the Dukes to treat everyone so shabbily.

Greed or perhaps the desire to make a quick buck- as defenders of our free-market society might prefer to phrase it-plays a very important role in oil prices, and subsequently in the price of everything that makes our economy hum, or sputter, as it will no doubt do, should futures trading push the price of gasoline over $4.00 a gallon.

But there is one much needed factor that is missing and that is competition. Sadly, that is one commodity that seems to have completely disappeared from the petroleum industry. In fact, Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, British Petroleum, Chevron and ConocoPhillips constitute fully half of the ten largest corporations in the world.

They might have been looked on as trusts at one time. And they might have shared the fate of Standard Oil. Alas, times have changed, and for consumers of petroleum products, not necessarily for the better.

My best to you on my New Year’s Day

February 28th is not just another day on the calendar. It’s my personal New Year’s Eve. I came into this world on Mar. 1, 1955, which, by coincidence was also a Tuesday. Thus also ends the year where my age matched my birth year and my IQ.

Mar. 1, by the way, was New Year’s Day, briefly anyway. This was under the Roman calendar, probably before some do-gooder reformed it. Need proof? Consider the last four months of the year: September; October; November; December. These are the 9th through 12th months, but their names are derived from words that mean the 7th through 10th months-Sept-a prefix that means 7, octo-means 8th and so on. These months could only be numbers 7-10 if March were the first month, so at one time, I would have had a shot at being the first baby of the year. I could have been a new-born contender!

And now, in the words of Monty Python’s Graham Cleese, for something completely different; some thoughts about some of the really good things I’ve found on this earth in my 56 years. These aren’t anything grand, just simple things from a simple man.

The best store-bought bread, for example, in my humble opinion, can be found at Food City. It’s their Italian and French loaves, unsliced and full of goodness. It’s baked fresh at each store, and it is quite tasty. I started buying this bread to serve with my baked spaghetti, but I’ve found that it goes really well with any number of dishes. I buy the Italian style because I like the shape of the loaves. That is the only difference I can discern between them.

While you’re there, you might want to check out Natra Taste artificial sweetener. This is aspartame, a generic version of Equal. You remember Equal; this was the brand that had a patent on aspartame. For that reason, Equal was always a bit pricey. In fact, it still is, considering that there are now many generic sweeteners that contain aspartame. Natra Taste just happens to have the best price. It comes in boxes of 250 packets for a mere $3.59, and even Food City’s own brand can’t beat that.

I have my own theory as to why Natra Taste is so inexpensive. If I’m not wrong, it’s because its maker, Brooklyn Premium Corp. makes Sweet and Low, formerly the most popular artificial sweetener before Equal took top billing. Now you know that when Merisant, the maker of Equal, lost its patent, Brooklyn Premium decided to stick it to them, and so Natra Taste was born. And for them, if they’ve managed to cost Merisant some sales, you know that victory never tasted any sweeter.

Finally, the best way to live: Spend part of your life committing random acts of kindness. It’s not something you need to do on a daily basis, nor do you need go out of your way, but when you least expect it, you will find some soul in need of assistance, and you will have the means at your disposal to render aid. Do so. This is what makes life worthwhile. Heck, it might even get you out of a few minutes of purgatory in the next life.