Comments on: Another Modest Proposal.

By: George

George — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 17:43:32 +0000

Can you take that math and do a similar calculation please:
When the ice caps melt, global warming will displace hundreds of millions of people, put who knows how many acres of arable and urban land under water and reak the consequent economic havok on the entire planet. Given the cost of that, how much does the rest of the world have to pay, per capita, to get the people of your country to elect leaders who give a shit about global warming?

(Please note, starting a discussion about whether global warming might or might not be happen isn’t a relevant or valid response, since a similar discussion can be had about Middle Eastern countries and their nuclear weapons and whether or not they might happen. Whether you dispute its truth, the probablity of global warming being manmade is still orders of magnitude more likely than a nuke making it to being used, let alone on American soil.)

By: Tom Strong

Tom Strong — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 04:16:16 +0000

Here’s why it won’t work: fear. You can bribe people with all the money in the world, but they’ll still be stuck with the job of making sure their kids don’t disappear overnight.

The mullahs in Iran have effectively terrorized the reformers, with brief interruptions, for three decades now. Even the Khatami government was quickly made into a sock puppet, unable to achieve any real reform.

Of course, we didn’t help them out when we could have – we’ve actually hindered them ever since Bush’s regrettable “axis of evil” speech – and that has made for a hell of a problem in the present.

I should say, contra to my otherwise identical comment at mightymiddle, that fomenting some kind of citizen uprising absolutely needs to be part of the picture.

By: Callimachus

Callimachus — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 02:00:55 +0000

You nut! Give me a month and I’ll figure out why that won’t work.

By: Bob J Young

Bob J Young — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 22:54:47 +0000

So how do we handle the payments? Paypal? The Iraqi insurgence supposedly use it all the time.

More importantly how do we get the offer past the Iranian censors.