That didn't take long, did it?

Evidently, I'm blogging again . . .

As you can see by my previous post about a "change in GeoCities FTP policy," I quit giving attention to this blog when GeoCities was sold (or about to be sold) to "Yahoo!" Posting by FTP became a "premium service" (meaning that you would have to pay for it), and I was in no position to self-publish at that premium. I don't know whether that will ever change, but this provides a retrospective explanation to my last posting.

It is also an interesting post "in the light of" what I called "the seemingly upcoming war," now usually called simply "Iraq." Just as religious differences were exaggerated to divide the populace in India and Ireland, the new emphasis has shifted away from the Kurdish Homeland and onto differences between Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims. It would seem, though I'm by no means an expert on political manipulation or war, that an important component of engineering a victory at war is creating a perception that this victory will solve some social problem, such as eliminating radicalism or suppressing some unreasonable fanaticism. As a general rule, dampening the unjust influence of a small subset of society is generally beneficial, but it is often difficult to sort out whether the roles of separate parties who have no distinguishable "official" membership in that "fog of war" contribute to one fanaticism or another radical and unjust influence. The attempt to arrive at a "simple truth" may even be well-meaning, but negotiations fare well among many parties while wars are waged between two sides, one of which must be awarded an historical victory (as opposed to the declared victory that the world may choose to forget).

I doubt that my observations will solve any problems, but they may provide a perspective from which some individuals may arrive at solutions that they themselves need for their own purposes. Maybe next time I'll have something to say.

Returning Ernie