Hating social networking sites as I do, I don’t see what the appeal is. Gotta say though, when the Limerick gangsta young fellas join the rest of youth of Ireland on Bebo with Al Capone skins, I took notice.

WE ARE COOL KID COZ WER 4M WESTON FUCK GARRYOWEN ND DA ISLAND FIELD

Who uses the word negro these days? This is just strange.

[15:01:08] naz: erm
[15:01:18] naz: do you see the ad on the right?
[15:01:37] Bluegerm: what about it?
[15:01:53] naz: the uncf one?
[15:02:08] Bluegerm: fight global warming
[15:02:19] naz: oh right different ad then
[15:02:31] naz: ill show you, its a bit weird
[15:02:32] Bluegerm: i got unicef students now
[15:02:57] Bluegerm: the rockets from the kids head
[15:03:08] naz: yea
[15:03:13] Bluegerm: he could be a rocket scientist you know
[15:03:16] naz: isnt it the weirdest thing ever
[15:03:28] naz: united negro college fund?
[15:03:29] Bluegerm: or his head will explode
[15:03:33] naz: wtf is that
[15:04:21] Bluegerm: College scholarshps for black people
[15:04:35] Bluegerm: funded by rich black people?
[15:04:39] naz: paid for by launching satellite from the students skulls
[15:04:43] Bluegerm: hence united
[15:04:47] naz: tiny satellites
[15:04:52] naz: to monitor the hood
[15:04:56] naz: from outer space
[15:05:04] Bluegerm: it’s the ad on the side of the rocket that makes
the money
[15:05:17] Bluegerm: NIKE
[15:05:19] naz: bizarre

It’s March, must be pontificating bullshit time!

I recall the justifications evolved something like this. (Justification is important, who wants to support an unjust war except extreme nationalists & armchair generals?)

1) Arabs did 9/11. Saddam is Arab. Arabs are bad. Saddam is bad. Ipso facto, lets invade. All this equated to the administration drawing a line connecting the secular baath regime which regularly tortured citizens that prayed too much and the jihadists. It held water in the U.S but not really outside the U.S and it’s generally been refuted since. The U.S needed some help, and Tony Blair knew the British are too clued by their evil liberal media and their interest in the world outside their own borders to swallow it.

2) WMD. The grand poohbah! A complete and utter farce. I feel most sorry for Colin Powell for his part in this. I remember watching the UNSC meeting where he outlined a massive weapons program that turned out to be bullshit feed to him by the scumbags pushing the war, who hated him anyway. That’s his defining moment in history now. I heard a quote attributed to him from the night before I’m not reading this, this is bullshit. Should have stuck with his gut and resigned there and then. He would have been horribly vilified initially, but completely vindicated by now.

So it was complete crap and we all know it now. The cynic in me tells me that the U.S already knew there was nothing or next to nothing before they sent in the troops. Why? Because if there was a significant deterrent, the U.S would have taken significant casualities, tens of thousands. Untenable, especially with an election the next year. That’s speculation.

Regardless, the genuine situations with North Korea and Iran WMD programs were completely glossed over and this showed to me that the U.S had settled on WMD as a classic strawman in the argument for the Iraq war. I was arguing with Sinner about it at the time about the ins and outs of it and he came out with this statement:

Iraq constitutes a direct threat to me and my family and so we need to neutralise the threat (paraphrasing)

He lives in the center of Canada for christ’s sake. Time has proven that the fear drummed up by the hawks public pronouncements, mushroom cloud imagery by the Veep etc, was just plain silly. It was fairly obvious then too. But trying to argue against WMD before the war made it seem like like you were appeasing a potent military force who was plotting to kill you and yours. As the race to Baghdad showed, you could have blown over the Iraqi military.

3) Saddam threatened his neighbours. Oh yeah Iran. The US was really upset about that :P. Kuwait? Saudi Arabia? The Gulf War, sanctions and the no-fly zones effectively ended Iraq’s ability to project power outside it’s borders, it couldn’t even reconquer Iraqi Kurdistan. Easily refuted at the time and the ease of the ground war underlined that.

4) For freedom and democracy. Another strawman. Hate the Iraq war? You must hate the Iraqi people, they need our help. You think the U.S and U.K publics want to pay $250 billion to help Muslims after 9/11? Not that they’ve made a good job of it. It’s a civil war, forget the humming and hawing, if 10000 + Iraqis are dying a year, it’s a fucking civil war.

5) It has become the central front in the war on terror. No shit. After they invaded. No argument there. Isn’t the War on Terror supposed to reduce terrorism?

So, a lot of bullshit and lies. It’s happened before, Remember the Maine?

So what was it for, really? What has been accomplished? What’s it for now?

I’m not anti-US or anti US-military intervention per se, it was justified in the former Yugoslavia, Afganistan and prolly in Iran if the West has the stomach for it. The Iraq war, though, stinks to high heaven.

Check on it

Original:

(Slim Thug)
You need to stop playin’ ’round with all them clowns and the wangstas
Good girls gotta get down with the gangstas
Go head girl put some back and some neck up on it
While I stand up in the background and check up on it

(Beyoncé)
CHORUS
Oh, boy, you looking like you like what you see
Won’t you come over check up on it,
I’m gon’ let you work up on it
Ladies, let ‘em check up on it,
Watch it while he check up on it
Dip it, pop it, twork it, stop it
Check on me tonight

Translation:

(Slim Thug)
You need to stop spending your time with all those fools and fake gangsters
Good girls need to spend time with the real gangsters
Girl, I encourage you to dance in a sexy way
While I stand up in the background and watch you dancing

(Beyoncé)
CHORUS
Oh, boy, you look like you like what you see
Won’t you come over and watch me dance?
I’m going to let you watch me and get excited
Ladies let men watch you
Pay attention–he’s watching you
Dip your body, thrust your hips, move your buttocks against him, stop it
Watch me dance me tonight

via Oink

(posted by assorted and AMG )

Dear New Yorker:

Thanks for sending us your magazine! Gosh it is terrific, and we both love reading it and quoting from it to each other. Thank you sooo much for sending your magazine to our home address on a regular basis.

We’re just a teensy bit concerned about the other things that have begun to be sent to our home on a regular basis.

Since our subscription has begun, we’ve received poignant and well-crafted offers from other publications such as Foreign Affairs, National Geographic, some art magazine that we think is named after a river or something, and, our personal favorite so far, MoMA.

Wow! We ARE popular!

Thing is, and what we find so exceptionally charming and delightful about these offers is, we don’t actually have any money. We haven’t even paid you yet. We just subscribed and checked the “bill me later” box, and believe us, you can ask Con Ed what “bill me later” means at this house.

I’m a waitress. Mike fixes computers for rich people. Maybe he’s been to your house! We are afflicted with active minds but no ability to make money whatsoever.

This, we understand, is not a problem that afflicts your magazine. So, how do you make money? By selling your subscription list to other magazines. And, of course, museums. (And, dare we suggest, the upcoming Democratic presidential nominee?) We know that our name is being sold to these lists because no other mail comes to this house. Why? Because we’re on the run from every other entity that could possibly want money from us. As a few examples, consider the following: consumer creditors, state taxes, and, naturally, Sallie Mae.

While we appreciate your confidence in our ability to pay, we wonder: are there ulterior motives? We suspect that your business model is based on the sales of marketing lists and that your advertising rates can be raised on the basis of the number of subscribers to your magazine (whether they pay or not). With this in mind, we feel that our value as subscribers has indeed surpassed your subscription rate and actually is in danger of putting you in the red.

Not enough can be said about the contribution that your magazine has made to our household. Indeed, it would pain us greatly to feel the need to invoice you for any further solicitations. However, there have been four such offers in the past two months. And, as the latest solicitation is addressed to a misspelled surname, we can only conclude that future lists will contain increasingly erroneous information about this household (the most erroneous piece of information being, of course, our ability to afford any of these offers.)

Erroneous or not, apparently our name is valuable. As we have nothing else whatsoever, we offer our humble name and address in exchange for our continued magazine subscription service. Our phone numbers shall remain private.

Sincerely,

Mike O’Shea aka Osnea
A—– G—-

Cc: Harper’s