[geeks] FYI: CompUSA is offering OS X 10.5 for $99 (after rebate)

[Shannon Hendrix]

On Nov 2, 2007, at 7:29 AM, Phil Stracchino wrote:

> Shannon Hendrix wrote:
>> Organized piracy only exists in a power vacuum.  The Ottoman military
>> fleets were no threat  by then.
>
> Point of information:  Organized piracy is alive and well to this  
> day in
> the South China Sea.  (As a matter of fact, it's been on the increase
> lately.)

Yep.

Also, did you read about the US Navy pulling out of some Asian sea  
lanes 2 years ago?

Piracy went up over 300% in just a few months.

Neat videos online of US and Danish ships working together off the  
african coast.

>> Those guys became the US Marine Corp and that's why they are still
>> called Leathernecks today.
>
> Thank you for THAT interesting point of historical information.  :)
> Semper Fi!

That's why the song says, "...to the shores of Tripoli"

> Yeah, the fuckers pretty much all condemn terrorism with one hand  
> while
> funnelling arms and money to them with the other.  The truth is a  
> lot of
> the Middle Eastern governments, including the House of Saud, hate the
> West as much as any of the terrorist groups do, they just want our  
> money
> more.

Old story.

Look at home the Hanseatic League twisted politics in the mediaeval  
period.

>> Their governments are often another story, frequently treating their
>> people like crap, so support of terrorism doesn't seem out of
>> character to me.
>
> Right.  Most of the Middle East is, in practice, effectively pretty  
> much
> still feudal under the skin.  And then there's the Horn of Africa,  
> which
> we (the West, not the US specifically) ROYALLY fucked up because we
> didn't make any effort to understand how their perfectly functional
> existing form of government worked or even that they had one, we just
> charged in as usual, secure in our God-given mission to Bring God And
> Civilization To The Benighted Heathen Fuzzy-Wuzzies, blindly certain
> that Our Way must be better.

The same thing happened in "Persia", much of Africa, etc.

Then you had the English wreaking havoc everywhere they went,  
frequently using their own variation of terrorism and insurgency to  
take pressure off of their over-extended military.

If you can't pacify an area, make them fight each other.  England  
never really had total control over their empire, so they used other  
tactics to keep any one area from rising up against them.

When that finally failed, they started collapsing quickly.

> "I have to ask," said the djinn.  "Why did you want the Golden  
> Horde to
> come and sack the three biggest cities in your own country?"
>
> "Because," said the Pole, "on their way, they marched across the whole
> of Russia ... six times."

That's interesting.



-- 
Shannon Hendrix
shannon at widomaker.com