First, sorry for the lack of updates as of late, I have been busy and also without much to say. Plus, it's hard to get anything done when every waking moment outside of work is spent fixing a computer, beit yours or someone else's. Without SSH though, I don't know where I would be; as I recompile Gentoo remotely from work.

Second, there have been a couple of updates to the backend, with more coming in the next few days. Most of it's hidden stuff, but the main addition is that of an 'Old Polls' link beneath the poll box, which allows you to see the results of all the old polls. Most everything else I'm doing is administrative related, but I'm known to randomly add features without thought or warning *cough*fortune*cough*.

Which brings us to the happenings over the past week. Two separate club incidents left a total of 118 people dead due to human stupidity. 302 people died in an Iranian plane crash, which has been grossly under-reported in the American news, while the nightclub deaths are all over. The same can be said for the at least 260 dead in an earthquake in China. Bush and Blair continued their press going to war with Iraq. Most humorous is Blair's quote: "I do not want war."

mkomitee recently called into question the significance of the UN if it were to do nothing about Iraq. To which I must ask, what gave the UN or any of it's member nations the right to force their policy on another member for no reason whatsoever? What gave the UN the right to call for crippling economic sanctions against a member, which have resulted in the deaths of over a million Iraqi civilians? When did it become the 'right' and 'humanitarian' thing to do to cause suffering and death to an untold number of innocent people? People who support their leader only for show, people who have done no wrong to the world, are being killed by this decision of the UN. And it makes me wonder - why? Why are we involved Iraq at all? Here we stand, on the brink of war with a country that has taken no aggressive action in the past 10 years, a country that we have contributed to the ruin of, and without any provocation, we are needlessly meddling in their affairs.

The UN measure calling for disarmament in Iraq has been around since 1991, but only now, on the push of George Bush against Iraq, is anything being done. The UN has shown itself to be little more than a puppet for the interests of the US government under the guise of being a humanitarian organization.

Just as the League of Nations failed because of lack of support, so shall the UN fail because it has no strength of it's own. If the US were to defy the UN, not a thing would be done to stop it, short of wasting a lot of breath talking about it. Why is Iraq different? Because they've been labeled 'evil', associated with the 9/11 terrorists in spite of no evidence of ANY connection whatsoever, and made to look like the most likely cause of another attack. Yet North Korea, who recently restarted it's nuclear program, and has publicly stated it has missiles capable of reaching the US, is ignored. I would definitely consider North Korea to be much more of a threat that Iraq, they definitely have the will and the potential to initiate a large attack on the US, whereas Iraq lacks that, having only its animosity towards the US.

I wonder, if North Korea were to attack us, would the government even notice? Or would Bush be too busy working on his smokescreen in Iraq to even notice or care?

As I've stated before, I am not opposed to war, if it's justified. If Iraq were to attack us, I would have no problem with us fighting back. What I do have a problem with, however, is an unjustified war than can only be considered a war of aggression on our part. A war of aggression, the same thing we are ostensibly trying to prevent in Iraq. Does a definite war of aggression to stop a potential war of aggression justify itself?

Turning to a rant from last week, we see the poll favors the idea that America is too commercial. No one was sure enough to vote No, though there were a number of votes for Unsure. On a related note, I have been trying to locate a copy of 'No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies', which seems to tie in a lot with the content of said rant. jmoiron pointed me to a GNN report called Coca-Karma, which makes for a very good read if you have the time.