Topper's Travels

Topper Kain's blog. Topper Kain is a world-famous kazoo player and traditional norwegian food chef. He wants you to use the comments.

Monday, February 12, 2007

Is Harvard having a female president really news? The Ivies already have a 50/50 gender split, and the Claremonts are 80% women. Is it really news that a woman can be a university president?

And really, doesn't it seem creepy that the first women president of Harvard is named "Dr. Faust?"

.: posted by Topper 11:45 AM

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

On the Watada trail: Lt. Watada should be convicted and punished. While I'm the last one to say a person should leave their morals at the door when volunteering for military duty what Lt. Watada is doing is wrong.

While the legality of the war of the 2003 war is still debated (I think the US did not need UN authorization to attack, and even if it did, the US was still authorized under the 1990 Desert Storm resolution), the legality of the occupation should not be. The UN authorized the US and the UK as occupying powers in October 2003 (http://www.casi.org.uk/info/scriraq.html).

Thus, the US occupation of Iraq is undoubtably legal under international law. This does not mean that the US has free reign in Iraq. Indeed, the conduct of some US forces in the Iraq occupation has been illegal, under both domestic and international laws. However, Lt. Watada is not claiming that sexual humilating prisoners is an illegal order, he is claiming that going to Iraq in general is an illegal order.

As I said before, I don't believe a soldier should hang up his conscious for the duration. However, allowing soldiers to refuse orders must be done very, very carefully. I don't think many Americans (or even westerners, for that matter) realize how truly amazing our system of civilian control of the military is. Every time a soldier refuses an order from a civilian (as is essentially the case with Lt. Watada), Americans should be wary. While it is quite possible for a civilian to issue an illegal order (I believe some in the civilian government have already), the military must err on the side of executing the order when in doubt, lest our military men become too used to ignoring the civilians.

.: posted by Topper 10:34 PM

Friday, February 02, 2007

On the whole aqua teen hunger force thing in Boston:

Just out of curiousity, why on earth would islamo-fascist terrorists place bombs that blinking space aliens flicking people off? Wouldn't they, you know, place the bombs in normal looking pieces of trash or maybe bags and then blow them up killing people? If they were to advertise their bomb, wouldn't it at least have a reference to Islam?

Seriously, this is retarded. Just fine Turner for litttering or something, move on, and tell them next time to leave contact information on the glowing thingies.

.: posted by Topper 2:49 AM

Crappy links thingie