Timor Troubles, Linux News, Ratty Year

[tcpip]

East Timor's President José Ramos-Horta was wounded today in a half-baked coup attempt led by criminal fugative Alfredo Reinhado. If memory serves me correctly this is Ramos-Horta's home where the attack occurred early this morning. Whilst on occassion he has been frustrating to me, I do hold the President in high regard, a friend even. I was very happy when last year he adopted a tax policy I had recommended to him some months prior (I also suggested that he get a second opinion - which evidently he did). José is apparently in a stable condition and I wish him the speediest recovery.

In Linux news there's a cool little exploit which has made sysadmins worldwide run around and patch the problem within hours. Which is an example par excellence of the ability of open source operating systems to find and repair problems. In other Linux news I presented an update last Tuesday at Linux Users Victoria, where Sarah Bond (Microsoft) spoke on their OpenXML standard and Damien Miller (Google) spoke on OpenSSH development. I had just purchased some fencing foils and suggested that they engage in a friendly duel for Yahoo! The gathering was quite polite although critical of Microsoft's previous actions and intentions, but it was friendly. In more trivial news I successfully googlwhacked "dispensationalists" and "ununoctium". But check the brilliant article.

Attended the Year of the Rat celebrations in the city on Sunday with caseopaya, ser_pounce and hathhalla, which is very appropriate as Rogue Rat will be celebrating his third birthday in a couple of days (that's 90 in human scale). Like most mass entertainment events, the celebrations were loud, crowded an anonymous which is not to my liking. I managed however to find and secure a perfect spot in front of the Chinese Museum in Cohen Place, where the impressive 50+m dragon and assorted friends ventured from. After that made it to what will be my final ever AD&D1e game, running a necessarily modified version of module Q1: Queen of the Demonweb Pits.

Comments

[greylock.livejournal.com]

After that made it to what will be my final ever AD&D1e game.

Why's that then? I'm still extremely fond of first edition.
But I'm also fond of the Basic-Expert-GreenOneWhatEscapesMeChampion?-Master line.

[ironed_orchid]

East Timor's President José Ramos-Horta was wounded today in a half-baked coup attempt led by criminal fugative Alfredo Reinhado.

That sucks.

[slowlight.livejournal.com]

On the 7.30 Report just now they said he was critical, and in a medically induced coma. I hope that sounds worse than it really is.

[angel80.livejournal.com]

The only good bit out of this is that Reinado's rebellion is now likely to be over. I hope anyway that it was the final hurrah.

JRH is now in Darwin. I think the stomach location is very bad. Infection is easy. However, the Darwin hospital says:
"He's not fighting for his life but his injuries are extremely serious." They expect a full recovery. Phew!!!

Lucky the Oz military are there with modern technology for war wounds!!!

[autobeast.livejournal.com]

I often wonder if East Timor will ever stop being shit-on by various criminal and international elements.

[zey.livejournal.com]

Some more info on José Ramos-Horta. It staggers me that both security was so lax, and, that it took half an hour to evacuate him for treatment.

[zey.livejournal.com]

After that made it to what will be my final ever AD&D1e game

I don't think I ever played that one, but, I do recall the legendary story of the 120 foot dragon squished inside a 10x10 foot room ;-).

[amazinggoatgirl.livejournal.com]

But check the brilliant article.

Bwahahahahahahaha. Ha.

What you said

[erudito.livejournal.com]

As you said on Timor Leste and Ramos-Horta. And good tax policy suggestion.

Timor's greatest danger is, however, "the resource curse". Having all that oil and gas makes for a lovely seizable asset. In the words of a recent study: economic characteristics – dependence on primary commodity exports, low average incomes, slow growth, and large diasporas – are all significant and powerful predictors of civil war. Rebellions either have the objective of natural resource predation, or are critically dependent upon natural resource predation in order to pursue other objectives. The would be coup fits the pattern.

It is also a reason to ignore the interests of anyone else (apart from buying off those you need to). It is the most important single reason why Arab/Iranian politics are so fucked, as Iranian journalist Akbar Ganji explains.