I trust no one. I can’t. I think it started when THEY shot JFK. I don’t know who THEY are. But I know THEY are out there. THEY got Reagan elected. There is no way he did that by himself. What about Clinton? THEY got him impeached for lying. “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” Remember? There was even a wagging finger. And then there was George. Seriously. There had to be a THEY to get HIM elected. And then reelected.
So who are THEY? I don’t know. All I know is that when I read the news, I get that tingling feeling along my spine. You know the one. And it’s obvious. Like when the white house put all their energies into promoting the war on Iraq. Everything was scripted. George, Condoleezza, Dick, Colin, they all repeated the same thing over and over. And then the networks, afterwards, mind you, admitted that they had “dropped the ball”. So maybe the THEY includes the Bush administration AND the news networks. I have no doubt that the THEY, in some way, includes members of the energy and armaments industries. I just don’t know who.
I have this fuzzy picture in my head of a group of powerful men. There may be one or two women. Almost everybody, if not everybody, considers himself an Aryan. It’s like an upscale meeting of the Klu Klux Klan where the sheets have been traded in for tailored suits and everybody is excruciatingly serious. THEY are deadly intent on creating a world they can control.
I have no doubt THEY will win the elections. I just don’t know who their candidate is. McCain? I like his credentials. He seems to have principles. But can THEY get to him? Bush senior has endorsed him. What does that mean? Obama? Will he make it to the finish line? What horrible revelations about him do THEY have that will be revealed at just the right moment? And Hillary? Is she one of THEM? THEY took down her husband. Did he join THEM? Did she?
Watch. THEY will appear. Something will happen. THEY wait. THEY watch. THEY act. And what about the Chinese? Where do fit in?
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Monday, February 18, 2008
Week 3
Monday’s barreling down on us like Barak Obama in the primaries and there’s nothing to do except squeeze the last drops out of Sunday afternoon before it’s back to a desk full of unfinished business and an inbox full of unwanted emails; except for this week’s scintillating review of news from around the world.
The best of the week is a story about a car that runs on compressed air. And yes, it actually works. I’m all for it. I live in a city where ten million cars start up every morning and belch out a mixture of smog and smoke and carbon monoxide, and yes, I dream of a future where I can see the horizon through the blue smoke that smothers this city.
The worst of the week is that experts – those random people the news networks call when they need a sound bite – predict that the US is sliding inexorably down the slippery slope into a serious economic depression. No more euphemisms like ‘downturn’, or ‘correction’. It’s bad. Get your money out quick and throw it into China whose trade surplus for January was a whopping 22 billion dollars. The US trade deficit, in contrast, was a terrifying 58.8 billion dollars. I’m no economist, but I can do some math. If I’m spending 58 billion dollars more than I’m earning, I’m going to land somewhere nasty, sometime soon.
But it’s not all rosy in the land of the long stone wall. Where does all that money come from? It’s like that guy who lives down on the corner and who never works, but somehow has the best clothes, drives the most expensive car, and always buys everything cash. You know he’s not kosher. One of the places China buys its oil is Sudan. The oil’s cheap. Beijing pays in AK47s and nice roads in the north and east of the country. But at what cost? Human rights groups want China to use its influence to force Sudan to resolve the crisis in Darfur. Even the 'right honorable' Steven Spielberg resigned his post as artistic adviser for the Beijing Olympics in protest. “Hell no,” say the Chinese. “We want our cheap oil. Do not meddle in the affairs of the sovereign state of China.” It’s a bitch dealing with an errant superpower, especially if it isn’t us anymore.
While on the subject of death and suffering, Israel released its latest grades. In ‘Air Strikes 101’ it scored 75%. The most recent air strike killed 4 people. 3 were militants. Sorry about the other guy, though. Wrong place. Wrong time. An unfortunate casualty of war. Still, 3 out of 4 aint bad. The sixteen wounded don’t count. They’re kinda like bonus questions on a pop quiz. But I don’t mean to be flippant.
There is always Afghanistan where photographer Tim Hetherington won the 2007 World Press Photo Award. Remember mission accomplished? Democratic elections? A brave new world? But out there in the Hindu Kush Mountains it’s very messy, and they still haven’t got the 27 million dollar man, Osama Bin Laden.
But they got the next best thing. An explosion in Beirut killed Imad Mughniyeh, one of Hezbollah’s top leaders and the man responsible for killing more Americans than anyone except Osama. Surprisingly enough, the US had nothing to do with his death. US intelligence chief, Mike McConnel, said that it was probably rival Hezbollah groups, or maybe Syria, that got him. We believe him, of course, although he didn’t elaborate on what their motives might be. Hezbollah blames Israel. But who would believe Hezbollah. They blame Israel for everything, right?
And just when you thought you couldn’t take it anymore, when the world couldn’t get any worse, Zimbabwe announces a world first: inflation of 66 000% And that’s the official rate. Unofficial rates are double that amount. Cue some more amateur economics: That’s a monthly inflation rate of around 5500%, which means a daily inflation rate of about 180%, which means a 1-dollar loaf of bread today will cost around 3 dollars tomorrow. By the end of the week you’ll need to pay in installments.
And I leave you with an interesting human rights dilemma. Health officials on Mud Island intend to impose a smoking license on the general populace. Yes, if you are a slave to your nicotine cravings, you will have to own a license to buy cigarettes. What’s next? A license to have sex?
The best of the week is a story about a car that runs on compressed air. And yes, it actually works. I’m all for it. I live in a city where ten million cars start up every morning and belch out a mixture of smog and smoke and carbon monoxide, and yes, I dream of a future where I can see the horizon through the blue smoke that smothers this city.
The worst of the week is that experts – those random people the news networks call when they need a sound bite – predict that the US is sliding inexorably down the slippery slope into a serious economic depression. No more euphemisms like ‘downturn’, or ‘correction’. It’s bad. Get your money out quick and throw it into China whose trade surplus for January was a whopping 22 billion dollars. The US trade deficit, in contrast, was a terrifying 58.8 billion dollars. I’m no economist, but I can do some math. If I’m spending 58 billion dollars more than I’m earning, I’m going to land somewhere nasty, sometime soon.
But it’s not all rosy in the land of the long stone wall. Where does all that money come from? It’s like that guy who lives down on the corner and who never works, but somehow has the best clothes, drives the most expensive car, and always buys everything cash. You know he’s not kosher. One of the places China buys its oil is Sudan. The oil’s cheap. Beijing pays in AK47s and nice roads in the north and east of the country. But at what cost? Human rights groups want China to use its influence to force Sudan to resolve the crisis in Darfur. Even the 'right honorable' Steven Spielberg resigned his post as artistic adviser for the Beijing Olympics in protest. “Hell no,” say the Chinese. “We want our cheap oil. Do not meddle in the affairs of the sovereign state of China.” It’s a bitch dealing with an errant superpower, especially if it isn’t us anymore.
While on the subject of death and suffering, Israel released its latest grades. In ‘Air Strikes 101’ it scored 75%. The most recent air strike killed 4 people. 3 were militants. Sorry about the other guy, though. Wrong place. Wrong time. An unfortunate casualty of war. Still, 3 out of 4 aint bad. The sixteen wounded don’t count. They’re kinda like bonus questions on a pop quiz. But I don’t mean to be flippant.
There is always Afghanistan where photographer Tim Hetherington won the 2007 World Press Photo Award. Remember mission accomplished? Democratic elections? A brave new world? But out there in the Hindu Kush Mountains it’s very messy, and they still haven’t got the 27 million dollar man, Osama Bin Laden.
But they got the next best thing. An explosion in Beirut killed Imad Mughniyeh, one of Hezbollah’s top leaders and the man responsible for killing more Americans than anyone except Osama. Surprisingly enough, the US had nothing to do with his death. US intelligence chief, Mike McConnel, said that it was probably rival Hezbollah groups, or maybe Syria, that got him. We believe him, of course, although he didn’t elaborate on what their motives might be. Hezbollah blames Israel. But who would believe Hezbollah. They blame Israel for everything, right?
And just when you thought you couldn’t take it anymore, when the world couldn’t get any worse, Zimbabwe announces a world first: inflation of 66 000% And that’s the official rate. Unofficial rates are double that amount. Cue some more amateur economics: That’s a monthly inflation rate of around 5500%, which means a daily inflation rate of about 180%, which means a 1-dollar loaf of bread today will cost around 3 dollars tomorrow. By the end of the week you’ll need to pay in installments.
And I leave you with an interesting human rights dilemma. Health officials on Mud Island intend to impose a smoking license on the general populace. Yes, if you are a slave to your nicotine cravings, you will have to own a license to buy cigarettes. What’s next? A license to have sex?
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Week 2
Swooping deep into mid-February, with Valentine’s Day bearing down upon us like a horde of rabid wolves, the serious news is speckled with reports about love, sex and chocolate. Sex is good for you claims the BBC – like we needed them to tell us that. And, hey, if you don’t have time for exercise in your day, one hour of passion burns 300 calories. Even better, the endorphins released during orgasm make your hair shine and wrinkles disappear. So forget Butox and gym, sex is cheaper – most of the time – and much, much more fun.
Chocolate prices are on the rise. It appears the nice men and women at Nestle, Mars and Kraft connived to fix the price of chocolate, candy and all things sweet. A sudden, inexplicable, across-the-board increase in chocolate prices tipped regulators off. Spokespeople for the chocolate companies claimed it was all coincidence and blamed it on the rising price of Cacao. Luckily we trust big business about as much as we trust the Japanese with whale research.
More intrigue and skullduggery from the wheeling-dealing world of high finance as Microsoft offer over $40bn in a bid to takeover Yahoo. “No,” say Yahoo, alleviating the fears of millions of yahoo account holders whom had already started planning their move over to Google. Anything to get away from the Windows Vista experience…
And on the subject of Terrorism, the Paris Dakar Rally has moved as far away from Paris and Dakar as possible: to Argentina and Chile. The horn of Africa was just too unstable and terrorism too rampant. It seems they forgot about FARC and Hugo Chavez. But that’s narco-terrorism, or petro-terrorism, which are a little different from the self-exploding, religious version. With narco- and petro-terrorists you can negotiate, if you have enough money, oil, or cocaine.
And, after effectively sidestepping due process for the last five years, prosecutors in the US will seek the death penalty for the six Guantanamo prisoners allegedly involved in the September 11 attacks. Human rights advocates are concerned that the Military Tribunal – no civil trial for terrorists, remember – will steamroll over the rights of the accused. Families and friends of those killed in the attacks don’t care. Revenge, in all its forms, is sweet. At least the Secretary of Homeland security has promised them a fair trial; just like the chocolate guys and the Japanese.
Then there is Clinton and Obama, neck and neck, tooth and nail, hammer and tongs. If they can say the same thing over and over in different words, so can I. Not much more to say really. Compared to them McCain is a breath of fresh air, even if you don’t agree with his politics.
And while all this was happening the most read stories on the CNN website were: Reasons you’re not having sex and: Ex-prison boss says: Orgies were common.
That’s all until next week. And remember to ask yourself, “Who stands to gain most from Valentine’s day?”
Chocolate prices are on the rise. It appears the nice men and women at Nestle, Mars and Kraft connived to fix the price of chocolate, candy and all things sweet. A sudden, inexplicable, across-the-board increase in chocolate prices tipped regulators off. Spokespeople for the chocolate companies claimed it was all coincidence and blamed it on the rising price of Cacao. Luckily we trust big business about as much as we trust the Japanese with whale research.
More intrigue and skullduggery from the wheeling-dealing world of high finance as Microsoft offer over $40bn in a bid to takeover Yahoo. “No,” say Yahoo, alleviating the fears of millions of yahoo account holders whom had already started planning their move over to Google. Anything to get away from the Windows Vista experience…
And on the subject of Terrorism, the Paris Dakar Rally has moved as far away from Paris and Dakar as possible: to Argentina and Chile. The horn of Africa was just too unstable and terrorism too rampant. It seems they forgot about FARC and Hugo Chavez. But that’s narco-terrorism, or petro-terrorism, which are a little different from the self-exploding, religious version. With narco- and petro-terrorists you can negotiate, if you have enough money, oil, or cocaine.
And, after effectively sidestepping due process for the last five years, prosecutors in the US will seek the death penalty for the six Guantanamo prisoners allegedly involved in the September 11 attacks. Human rights advocates are concerned that the Military Tribunal – no civil trial for terrorists, remember – will steamroll over the rights of the accused. Families and friends of those killed in the attacks don’t care. Revenge, in all its forms, is sweet. At least the Secretary of Homeland security has promised them a fair trial; just like the chocolate guys and the Japanese.
Then there is Clinton and Obama, neck and neck, tooth and nail, hammer and tongs. If they can say the same thing over and over in different words, so can I. Not much more to say really. Compared to them McCain is a breath of fresh air, even if you don’t agree with his politics.
And while all this was happening the most read stories on the CNN website were: Reasons you’re not having sex and: Ex-prison boss says: Orgies were common.
That’s all until next week. And remember to ask yourself, “Who stands to gain most from Valentine’s day?”
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Week 1
Without further ado we charge on into a new week. In the land of plenty the donkeys and the elephants (couldn’t they have chosen more exiting animals as political symbols – who wants to vote for a donkey?) partied hard on Super-Tuesday and nothing changed. The democrats still can’t decide if they like the new kid on the block – who’s black, which is a big deal there, if you didn’t know – and the grand old lady of Arkansas – who’s a woman, which is also a big deal. The land of the free and the home of the brave has never had a woman president or a black president. Hmmm. Makes you wonder. But there are still the republicans, and there is nothing like an ex-POW to melt your heart. Better than the guy who skipped out of the army reserves. And he was president twice!
But there are more important things happening in Freedomland. The word of the day is recession. They tried to avoid it. Bankers and economists used every synonym and euphemism they could, but it came back to bite them in their soft and flabby bits. Unfortunately it’s biting Europe, Asia and the rest of the world there, too. Stock markets are sliding inexorably south. Investment bankers are searching for somewhere, anywhere, to put their money. And even the Maharishi Yogi – remember him? The Beatles? Transcendental Meditation? Think and get rich? – checked out. He’s moved on to a better place, a higher plane, and left behind him wealth unimaginable. Not bad for a spiritual sage. Now if we could only recycle some of that moolah back into the economy, maybe we could thwart the recession?
Oh, and the CIA says that it used waterboarding, which is still denies is torture, although it says, as an addendum, that extreme measure need to be used to protect the homeland from desperate terrorists. And they only used waterboarding on three people, and that was five years ago, etc. Amnesty International is not convinced. “We must have the tools to enable the detection and disruption of terrorist plots and other threats,” said the National Intelligence Director, who included Russia and China, Iran and North Korea, and computer system vulnerabilities, as “other threats”. You can just see them waterboarding the board of directors at Microsoft because their recent offer to buy Yahoo threatens the security of the millions of computer users who have Yahoo accounts.
Yes, there is some serious shit out there. Opium production in the south of Afghanistan is expected to increase. Now we know why we went to war there. Junkies around the world look forward to better quality dope at lower prices. But if you thought it was all good news, the anti-drug lobby has just released another study – one in a long line of recent studies – showing that extensive cannabis use causes gum disease. Hah, don’t think there are no consequences for your actions. Don’t smoke weed. Your teeth will fall out. Also extensive meat eating causes heart disease. Let’s criminalize that, too. And don’t get me started on sugar.
In conclusion, and on a note rather more upbeat, the Italians have made an important contribution to medical science – fashion, too – by showing, in a medical study, that high heals improve your sex life. As if we needed a medical study for that. Love them, hate them, regardless of how you feel about squeezing your feet into a pair of five inch stilettos, you know when you put them on that you just doubled your chances of getting laid – and that goes for men, too. Apparently high heels are good for the pelvic muscles, which are good for… etc.
That’s all for this week. There will be more next week. Remember, there’s a whole lot of shit out there, and most of it we don’t get to hear about. So ask yourself, who decides what is important?
But there are more important things happening in Freedomland. The word of the day is recession. They tried to avoid it. Bankers and economists used every synonym and euphemism they could, but it came back to bite them in their soft and flabby bits. Unfortunately it’s biting Europe, Asia and the rest of the world there, too. Stock markets are sliding inexorably south. Investment bankers are searching for somewhere, anywhere, to put their money. And even the Maharishi Yogi – remember him? The Beatles? Transcendental Meditation? Think and get rich? – checked out. He’s moved on to a better place, a higher plane, and left behind him wealth unimaginable. Not bad for a spiritual sage. Now if we could only recycle some of that moolah back into the economy, maybe we could thwart the recession?
Oh, and the CIA says that it used waterboarding, which is still denies is torture, although it says, as an addendum, that extreme measure need to be used to protect the homeland from desperate terrorists. And they only used waterboarding on three people, and that was five years ago, etc. Amnesty International is not convinced. “We must have the tools to enable the detection and disruption of terrorist plots and other threats,” said the National Intelligence Director, who included Russia and China, Iran and North Korea, and computer system vulnerabilities, as “other threats”. You can just see them waterboarding the board of directors at Microsoft because their recent offer to buy Yahoo threatens the security of the millions of computer users who have Yahoo accounts.
Yes, there is some serious shit out there. Opium production in the south of Afghanistan is expected to increase. Now we know why we went to war there. Junkies around the world look forward to better quality dope at lower prices. But if you thought it was all good news, the anti-drug lobby has just released another study – one in a long line of recent studies – showing that extensive cannabis use causes gum disease. Hah, don’t think there are no consequences for your actions. Don’t smoke weed. Your teeth will fall out. Also extensive meat eating causes heart disease. Let’s criminalize that, too. And don’t get me started on sugar.
In conclusion, and on a note rather more upbeat, the Italians have made an important contribution to medical science – fashion, too – by showing, in a medical study, that high heals improve your sex life. As if we needed a medical study for that. Love them, hate them, regardless of how you feel about squeezing your feet into a pair of five inch stilettos, you know when you put them on that you just doubled your chances of getting laid – and that goes for men, too. Apparently high heels are good for the pelvic muscles, which are good for… etc.
That’s all for this week. There will be more next week. Remember, there’s a whole lot of shit out there, and most of it we don’t get to hear about. So ask yourself, who decides what is important?
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