> I couldn't find any mention of a "community based and supported
> occupation". Shag
I can't remember. I think it's embedded in Louis P's blog somewhere about how to go about these things with more planning and development.
It could also be just in my brain, since I am working on such a thing for wheelchairs (well people in wheelchairs).
I've had a great couple of days.
An Iraqi engineer (post polio) has been hanging around doing some volunteer work and it has been great to get to know him.
He told me an interesting thing. Up until the invasion, boys who passed their exams went into engineering, hence Iraq was filled to the gills with engineers. Judging from my experience with him, he is one smart son of bitch, with a whole other side devoted to human services. A rare combo in the US.
We had a good laugh over my impression of Iraq was full of back yard mechanics, who could design and build an IED in their sleep from military trash laying around all over the place.
S went from engineering to a stringer for western media. He was perfect for the job. He looks like a typical street cripple (in the third world), which means he could go almost anywhere. But it got too dangerous. S is smart, trained, and articulate. I thought, shit, dude, the US military jocks had no idea what they were up against when they invaded Baghdad---a city roughly the size of LA. Rumsfeld's 160,000 was a joke.
We mused on the probable fate of Riverbend. He thought she probably got killed. I was hoping she just went underground once she got to Syria.
We had a great old tech-dick-swing this afternoon on inertial navigation systems, robotics, neuro-science, the kinematic world of equations, navigation, and the human body (hard core biophysics). I asked him about Euler Angles and he said, you probably don't need all that, as long as you model the gravity sensors on bone joints. (This is a vast reduction of inputs in a computer model...)
They teach this shit in Iraq? These were the people we were blowing up? As an American, wow was I blown away. The breath and depth of our ignorance of other people is astonishing.
Reflecting on Iran... If Iran is anything like Iraq, forget the whole US-Israeli axis of evil Together we could not kill enough Iranians to make a different outcome to a total disaster.
If the Iranians haven't built a nuclear bomb, it is only because they don't really want to. It is complete arrogance to believe the Manhatten Project was unique to American genius. The Russians duplicated uranium fission in two or three years and moved on to hydrogen fusion in six years.