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Today's Fortune: |
   
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Friday, February 15, 2002
Beth sent me a pretty funny Valentine's ecard yesterday, but this one is even funnier.
.: posted by andy 2/15/2002
Thursday, February 14, 2002
Some interesting news that didn't make the front page.
.: posted by andy 2/14/2002
Wednesday, February 13, 2002
Waylon Jennings died. So far, 2002 really sucks.
.: posted by andy 2/13/2002
And if I was gonna make a list, France and Quebec would be right at the top. The Norman Race is a parasite on the world. They invented bourgeoisie and existentialism and Brie. They can't understand simple linguistic transistions like 'cheeseburger'. Quebec is preventing the rest of Canada from joining the US. Everyone knows that they'd be happier being the 51st state. As the Colonel in Full Metal Jacket said; "inside every gook is an American, trying to get out." Ditto for the Canadians.
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 2/13/2002
Having Cuba on our enemies list IS a joke. Cuba would probably be the best little red vacation site in the world if not for Scarface and all his ex-pat criminal buddies in Miami who happen to be issue-voters. If re-establishing relations with cuba wouldn't immediately lose a candidate 2 million votes, I could probably be having Pina Coladas with no salt in Havana in May. As it is I have to go through Canada now to do that. Anyway, I guess this is one stupid foreign policy that you can thank our wonderful psuedo-democracy for.
.: posted by Jeremy 2/13/2002
The idea of calling any violent act other than immediate self-defense "fighting evil" is oxymoronic. Labelling countries and groups as evil because they are viewed by the more fascist members of Congress and the populace as our enemies is myopic and xenophobic. We should protect ourselves, but name-calling and trying to make enemies does us no good. Lets run down the shitlist:
Cuba. Is this a friggin' joke? When Kruschev was sending nukes to Cuba, they were an immediate danger. Over half of the population of the US wasn't even alive during the Cuban missile crisis. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba couldn't even afford oil. Even so, they managed to give every child on the island access to schools, and are in the process of putting computers in every school as well. Most other third world countries can't even approach that. Some may not like the method of government, but all in all Castro's done well by his country. If you want to talk about human rights abuses, you should look at America's human rights scorecard, and at the bloody dictatorships we've propped up all over the world, with Pinochet and the most recent Peruvian government coming immediately to mind.
North Korea. They started the war, trying to overtake South Korea. We step in and almost completely overtake North Korea. China comes in and pushes us back to close to the original line. In the process, we try very hard to use it as an excuse to nuke China. Why do they hate us? Mainly because we've been arming their enemies and outright attacking them since 1949. Who bombed the large network of dams holding most of the country's drinking water, and during a drought no less; at the same time drowning entire cities? That would be us.
Iran. I'm not actually sure what the story is behind them. I know we propped up an unpopular regime and supported their longtime enemy, Iraq. Beyond that I defer to Andy.
Saddam. Lessee, another one of our puppet dictators getting too out of control, so we have to step in and correct it. Of course we don't do what we did in Haiti or Panama, and it prolly wouldn't have worked anyway, coz Saddam had a real army. Now we sit with basically an occupying army in Saudi Arabia, and a dictator that probably has another 20 years to go before he dies of a heart attack.
Taliban. Other than supporting moslem sociopaths, the Taliban was a step up in most ways from the warlords. They actually had a set of laws, and for the most part followed them. They hard on women and nonmoslems and especially moslems that didn't stand up and fly right, but they managed to almost completely halt Opium production. I for one didn't like them so much coz I always liked the idea of Afghanistan as some exotic land that was anarchy, still like the ancient tribes on the asian steppes from which Genghis Khan came.
Can't think of any others right now, and all of these have reasons to be on the list; but there a many more countries that need to be there just as badly. This jingoist "makin' a list" crap, and calling countries evil coz they do the same thing that we do, or that regimes we support do, only on the other side, is bullshit. Using moral terms to begin with, unless you're a zealot, is right out. Noam Chomsky said long ago that the US was the only modern and advanced fundamentalist country on earth. Guess G.W. demonstrates that pretty well.
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 2/13/2002
Tuesday, February 12, 2002
Ze Germans are not necessarily behind the whole "Axis of Evil" thing. They say the US doesn't need to bust out any unilateralism. I think they're right. I've started several long posts about how maybe we should just chill out, now, instead of looking for other teeth to kick. I never post them, though, coz I just feel like it's a waste of time.
I just can't get behind this rhetoric about the so-called War on Terrorism being a war against evil. It's pretty straightforward that the folks who blew up the WTC were evil, or at least not very good. For that matter, North Korea isn't too hot. But I wouldn't call it evil. Backward, maybe, and certainly anti-American, but I don't think they're sponsoring terrorism, and I doubt they're going to attack the US at any point in the near future. I don't think Iraq is that bad, either. Maybe if our policy toward Iraq had any sort of goal or direction in the last 12 years, they wouldn't be on our list now. In other words, I think that's a bed we made and now have to lie in.
I don't think the Iranians should be on our list, either, and I think Bush is an idiot for saying that. Maybe he knows something I don't, but it sure seemed like Khatami was a moderate who was making tentative offers of reconciliation to the US, until Bush called the Iranians evil. Now they're back to "the Great Satan this" and "the Great Satan that". Way to fucking go.
Why the hell is Bush so hot for a big war? Where's he going with this whole thing? Are we going to wipe out all the nations that don't agree with us? We've got Afghanistan, and everyone agrees that's ok. Next maybe we'll attack Somalia, and most people probably won't have a big problem with that. Then Iran, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and France! All of Europe will be ours! We'll invade North Africa! We'll come up with a Final Solution to the Arab Question!
"Mein Hund hat keine Nase!
Wo ist deine Mutti?
Iran! LIEB MICH!!"
.: posted by andy 2/12/2002
Barry White is doing for sharks the thing he does so well for humans.
.: posted by Jeremy 2/12/2002
Monday, February 11, 2002
$6.5 million dollars stolen at Heathrow Airport. I'm a big fan of this sort of nonviolent crime. One driver was thrown on the ground, and that's the extent of the assaulting that took place. No guns were seen in use.
I think this has to be an inside job, for two reasons:
1)The robbers were able to enter a "secure" area without raising suspicion. They most likely have legitimate security passes.
2)The robbers must have known there was a large shipment of cash in transit. The money came from Bahrain and was on its way to New York City. It was being transported in what I'm assuming was an unarmored vehicle, most likely a regular courier van. That means the robbers had to know when, where, and how much.
Exciting stuff, I'm telling you.
.: posted by andy 2/11/2002
Remember Iridium, the satelite phone system that went bankrupt, cost Motorola $billions and was going to have all of it's satelites "deorbited" by the end of 2001? Deorbited. What a cool word. Talk about a euphamism.
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 2/11/2002
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