No war banner

[Christoph Mathys]

I'm a simple (and relatively recent) user of GnuPG and have only 
subscribed to make these few remarks about the controversial NO WAR 
banner. I take the reference to your discussion thread on the main page 
as an implicit invitation - if that's wrong, please excuse and ignore me.

I've been visiting www.gnupg.org often in recent weeks, as I've been 
learning about GnuPG and installing it on various systems. It was always 
a huge joy to see the NO WAR banner, and Werner has my fullest and 
warmest support for putting it there.

The arguments in the thread against it are weak at best - at worst, they 
border on the deranged. A weak argument is the one about this not being 
a political website. Choosing not to speak up against armed agression is 
a political decision too. And speak up is the least we can do.

 > But as you all know (or not) I live in Israel !!!
 > And we suffered from Iraqi _SCUDS_ !!! (Iraqi missiles fired at Israel
 > in the first gulf war - not far from where I live)

In my book, that would make you more likely to understand what the 
people of Baghdad are going through right now. I don't get your logic.

 > I'm not (and I'm sure Werner is not) supporting Saddam Hussein with
 > that NO to the war. We're only supporting the international

Who ever suggested anything of the kind? Phrasing it like that almost 
lets one think you suspect Werner (or even yourself) of supporting Saddam.

 > international community. And always is a bad idea to let one person or
 > country impose his/its ideas. That applies the same to Werner than to
 > the U.S.A. The difference is that Werner doesn't use to do things on

Is it only me, or is this completely over the top? I like the parallel 
between somebody who puts a banner on a website without having asked 
everybody else who might have an opinion on the matter (thereby not 
imposing anything on anybody) - and somebody who spends $75bn and kills 
thousands to impose foreign rule on a virtually defenceless third-world 
country, after having supported the brutal dictator of that country for 
over twenty years, first by huge arms shipments and then by a murderous 
sanctions regime that had the effect of killing the population and 
strengthening the dictator.

Christoph Mathys <christoph@ch-mathys.ch>