In the 1930's, a group of South American intellectuals and economists cooked up an economic recovery theory that was designed to be applied to poor, underdeveloped countries. This plan was called, "Import Substituted Industrialization." The theory was subsequently applied to some South American countries and was found to work.....for awhile. After about two or three decades, all economic systems relying on this theory either met with crisis or saw crisis to be inevitable. Okay, so whats my point?

A contingency of this plan was government-funded protection of infant industries. In other words, if a young industry in a particular country started experiencing life-threatening financial upset, the government would step in with money and sometimes conditionality clauses attached to that money which would act as aid to bring that industry back to its feet. Now does anything about this sound familiar?

If you guessed "welfare state" then you are correct.

Now let me tell you why Import Substituted Industrialization doesnt work.

When an inndustry or firm is guaranteed a government bailout, when its employees know they will never be out of work and when the CEO's know they will never go broke, they all tend to lose interest in competiveness. Why invest all the hard labor, time, and money on something that really doesnt need to accomplish anything? Infant industries in these nations employing Import Substituted Industrialization never became competitive; and any industrialization that did occur in these regions was limited.

The same idea, rather than expand itself, narrows itself to the phenomena of the individual. After all, is it not individuals that create industries and firms? Is it not also true that the behavior of industry and firms reflects the behavior of individuals? Now I have reached my point. Welfare must simply be a bad idea, and I must admit it despite my unwillingness to do so. However, in the face of such clear reason, I have no choice but to affirm.

So the military bombs the shit out of an Afgan wedding where hundreds of innocents were alleged to be celebrating and perhaps in the rhasphodies of joyfulness, firing AK-47's into the air which subsequently led to the tragedy in the first place. Lets not forget that the bomb employed as part of this military "mistake" was not a free-falling "dumb-bomb," but a laser guided, GPS-controlled "smart-bomb." A costly and extremely accurate warfare device. Notice anything at all wrong yet?

Well, if you dont then lets start with the Pentagon's story. They claim that some airplanes doing routine patrolling had come about some nasty "anti-aircraft" fire that was in reality the rounds of AK-47 discharge sourced from the wedding below. Thinking they had stumbled upon a large bit of Taliban forces out in the open, plain to be seen and assembled en masse, they responded by dropping an extremely expensive, precision guided smart-bomb.

Anyone with even a layperson's general knowledge of munitions knows anti-aircraft fire is quite dis-similair of fully-automatic machine gun fire. Anti-aircraft shells are large and explode in the air, producing flak, or shards of metal, intended on ripping the engines of airplanes apart. How could highly trained military pilots become confused? How could they make such an unlikely mistake of discernment?

Now, remember that Gulf War footage of smart bombs flying down stairwells and negotiating ventilation shafts so that they could hit a target "right between the eyes?" Of course this is an exaggeration but my point is still clear. These are highly accurate--and EXPENSIVE weapons that, since the Gulf War, have had over a decade of improvements made on them--most notably communications and guidance with GPS resources. A malfunction is possible, but out in the open, where cheaper options are available, why use such costly tactics when so many cheaper options are readily available?

Ill tell you why. The military MEANT to hit this wedding, and now they are employing the spin doctors to convince American, European, and Middle Eastern folks that it was all just a tragic accident.

Now, the military does not go about just killing civilians for reasons of race or any otherwise arbitrary reason. Im not going to posit that. Instead, this was a large Afgan wedding. Many, many people were there. The military thought that Bin Laden, or one of his co-horts was present, and knew this was the easiest way to terminate him (them). No large amount of thought is required to see this scenario as the much more logical one. The military used a costly smart bomb because it wanted to ensure the bomb would NOT miss the wedding. Everything surrounding the circumstances points to what I conclude, all that is required is a degree of scrutiny, and the willingness to see that Pentagon, and governmental press releases in general, do not always reflect the truth of motive and/or cause leading up to and causing some sets of events.

I support the idea that all creatures on earth are biological machines. This propositions simplifies everything and takes out the "mystic" in human interaction. When love and sadness can be quantified as the direct result of chemical reactions in the brain, then that makes emotion both real and creates a sort of unaccountability for the individual that feels the emotion. Perhaps that idea could extend even further to include the way people react to their emotions. Imagine for a moment a world where these ideas are embraced. Scary isnt it? I think a good deal of the fear people feel when they imagine such a world is a result of the ego and its desire to preserve itself. In the interest of human preservation religions exist, and emotions like "love" are assigned a mystical implication. I agree, it is much more romantic to tell someone, "I love you" rather than, "Your facial symmetry and they way our past expieriences have altered my brain chemistry lead me to say I have unusually high levels of seratonin running about in my brain; something which could be replicated by eating large quantities of chocolate."

Yes, it is scary to think that the words, "I love you" are meaningless in the romantic sense. It is scary to think that any emotion we feel is meaningless because it is the logical and direct result of an altered state of mind.

Now what would happen if we strove to acheive and unaltered state of mind? This would be emotion-free living. This makes me entertain notions of a logically motivated "Vulcan-esque" society. A nightmare to some, a dream to others. There would exist no longer the arts as we know them. Interesting.

Anyhow my family is here and talking which is distracting me more than I was previously so I will have to continue this later.