Posts by Juha Saarinen
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"This view is frequently borne out by Iraqi bloggers: this degree of sectarian violence, or even sectarian hatred, is unfamiliar to them."
Maybe it was Saddam's dictatorship controlling all the information channels, or maybe said Iraqi bloggers didn't want to know, but sectarian violence and even genocide is not new to Iraq.
We just didn't care about it back then.
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I do have a del.icio.us account but it's fallen fallow and barren and what have you. Not heaps useful.
The Premium SMS Moderation Service (PSMSMS) has wings though... I'm not being greedy here. Honest.
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Oh, OpenId perhaps?
Not in the Freudian sense of course.
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And don't forget the blutters! Won't someone think of the blutters?!?!
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Needs two-factor authentication... so here's what we'll do: before you can post, you need to send a message with a random combination of alphanumeric characters, let's say 30 or so to make it secure, to Love... erm, Public Address.
The moderator will then receive notification and check out your comment. If it's OK, he'll hit a button and a response SMS will go out with an authorisation code to entered by the comment poster.
To deter abusers, the system will operate through one of my Premium SMS lines, and be charged at the low rate of $5 per message to offset some of the inevitable costs of providing a free service to the public.
Quite all right, no need to thank me; pleased to be of service, etc.
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Ahem ahem! May I refocus your attention on the subject of David's (the other one) post?
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What did you pitch at them? Something sticky and smelly?
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"Are you saying the US invaded Iraq to enable sharia law?"
That's less far-fetched than it sounds, actually. The US has no objections to such things in Saudi Arabia for instance. It's not like they US is actively supporting a democratic movement there or anything.
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I think Iraq is a shocking mess and one that the US should be ashamed of forever - it's not the first such overseas catastrophe it has created either. Wasn't the Philippines the first?
Saddam and sons seemed to me as misogynist as the clerics, so I'm struggling to say anything further than things aren't getting better for women in Iraq. Saying it was better during Saddam is borderline offensive surely?
Measuring the degree of awfulness like MADRE does is also fraught with difficulty because who knows what went on in Iraq during Saddam's regime? The violence against women that MADRE describes is sadly a grand old tradition in that part of the world so where's the evidence that Saddam gave a damn about it, bogus constitution notwithstanding?
Having said all the above, I can well imagine that women and gays are not anywhere near the neo-Con list of priorities. If they could be used to fill up large SUVs they would be, perhaps.
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Sorry, was Cohen just proven right there? Or did I misunderstand?