[thechat] Fighter plane's laser may blind civilians

Martin Burns martin at easyweb.co.uk
Tue Jul 30 09:29:05 CDT 2002


On Tue, 30 Jul 2002, rudy wrote:

> > some people would rather see funds diverted from
> > self-perpetuating money pits
>
> troll
>
> although i happen to be on your side on this one
>
> here in canada, redistribution of wealth is explicit government policy
>
> the arts, the lazy, the favoured industries, the social services, the
> lawyers...

You seem to be equating poor people with those groups - they're not
congruent.

> not to mention paying farmers not to farm and similar idiocies

Not sure of the situation in Canada, but in many industries, such
subsidies tend to reflect that either
1) over-production has damaged the resource (a similar policy may have
ensured that Canada retained Atlantic fishing grounds, rather than fishing
them out)
2) A natural resource isn't viable right now, but by killing the industry,
you'll make it nigh-impossible to make it so in the future. Think
'mothballing'

> but when it comes to blowing things up, you may have a point
>
> your enemies are really stupid if they keep doing that
>
> what they'll do next, therefore, will be something even more insidious

Yup - the US may be able to win battles in the conventional sense, but
when someone rewrites the rules, it's tricky to adapt the entire structure
built on modernist principles of scale.

I mean - what an imaginative leap: If you can't get bombs onto the planes,
then why not use the entire plane as your weapon.

Cheers
Martin
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