:: Porkchop Serum ::

:: Wednesday, July 23, 2003 ::

GAHHH!!! October 14th 2003 according to gamespot. DAMN YOU!!! We gonna play the shit out of it, thats what!!!

:: sandy 4:00 PM [+] ::
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I definitely dont have a rosy view of government. Case in point is currently doing its thing. Political retribution is part of the game, I agree. Using your position for personal retribution (if thats the case here) is where you step over the line. Yeah, people may have gotten away with it in the past but that still doesnt make it right now.

How come you're so sure that you'd succumb to the pressure and become a "regular politician". I think you could survive a mayoral election no problem.

:: sandy 2:24 PM [+] ::
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would you?

Don't you think that the President and his administration should be able to show enough restraint to NOT exact the kind of retribution (or the least recklessness) that was shown when releasing the name of Wilson's wife to Novak? What was done is blatently and patently illegal (hello? future lawyer?), i.e. should be brought up on federal charges. Not only that but exposing Valerie Plame as a covert operative of the CIA puts HER life at risk and the lives or her assets. BESIDES the fact that who ever decided to leak the info essentially weakened our national security for the purposes of sending a message. Of course, there is always the chance that these "senior administration officials" didn't know that blowing someones cover was against the law, but in that case, we have incompetants running the country.

:: sandy 1:27 PM [+] ::
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Bush is a cock because of this link

:: sandy 6:59 PM [+] ::
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Do you ever notice that every now and then, you're sitting at your desk at work or wherever and all of the sudden you are FUCKING TIRED! It's all you can do to hold your eyes open.. if only you could get a quick nap. So you close your eyes for like 10 seconds and then.. BAM! You're back to normal. That is so bizarre. Maybe you're tricking your brain in to thinking you're yielding to it's pressure to sleep. BUT NO, just kidding. Curious how there seem to be two brains. One that we are conscience of and manipulate and one that controls us.

:: sandy 2:14 PM [+] ::
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I'll make this short because I think she talk about something less serious, like our personal observations on booting.

The perceived benefits of joining the union would be monetary, i.e. free trade among member countries. I suppose the best policy is not so much to pre-judge countries, instead having them sign union membership treaties. Violate the treaty and you face retribution, in some sense. In such a construction you could create a state/federal government system, perhaps a bicameral legislative branch and perhaps all the all pieces of the American system. That way each country is free to govern itself internally and remain true to it's individual culture and traditions yet is bound financially and perhaps strategically to staying a member in good standing within the larger union.

Maybe i'm being too idealistic. I envision, for example, 5 nations forming a union called AshFicker. Two of the five nations are industrial players on the world stage but dont have much in the way of natural resources, instead possessing the know-how and the business/technical/managerial skill. The other three are poor nations rife with natural resources but lack the industrial base to take advantage. Together, these five nations could help each other and in the end, the union is more powerful and capable than the previous 5 nations combined. I think its a cool vision of the future.

:: sandy 1:09 PM [+] ::
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definitely.. Matt is a pathetic excuse for a human

:: sandy 10:03 AM [+] ::
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Well, maybe Rees isn't totally wrong. If you look around the world, we see countries combining forces into unions. EU, APEC, FTAA, Mercosur, OAS, ASEAN.. i'm sure there are others. One benefit of these unions is to make it easier to do business with your immediate neighbors. It would also turn 10 or so countries which can't deal with a power house like the US into a union that could. And wouldnt that be more ideal? instead of 140 or so nations of widely varing levels of development and economic capabilities, you had 10 or so STRONG nations/unions. US, EU, China, India, African Unions (maybe one big one), Japan, Southeast Asian Union, Latin American, South American, etc.. With the major unions, US, EU, and Japan having strong democratic traditions, trade between unions could essentially hinge on the degree to which each union promoted the democratic ideals and traditions. Individual countries could even be forced from or not allowed to join unions based on their behavior. Just an idea.

:: sandy 8:50 PM [+] ::
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Without having the benefit of hearing it from his mouth with all its nuances, Rees' "America as a Model" policy is retarded. I keep falling back on the differences between casting off an oppressive colonizer like England and trying to change the political landscape from within. Take our previous topic of Burma. Burma was ruled by a military junta when Aung San Suu Kyi joined a pro-democracy movement that pushed for social and political reforms. She was arrested after making a impassioned speech at a National League for Democracy gathering before half a million people. Even though she was in prison, her party won the parliamentary elections in 1990 by a landslide. The Junta, however, deemed Burma not ready for democracy and the NLD wasn't allowed to assume power. And what were the people to do? Suu Kyi won a Nobel Peace Price for her work but as of today, she again languishes in a Burmese prison. So they had the idea's, the leaders and the people's support but it still didnt work out. They gots the gun, the power, and they aint goin nowhere.

Another topic: I have ALWAYS thought that politicians are IDIOTS when they talk about converting a country like Iraq into an American style democracy. First of all, thats horribly unrealistic and VERY insincere. If you give a people like the Iraqis the power to govern themselves, they may DEMOCRATICALLY decide to form an Islamic style theocracy like in Iran. Given that the vast majority of Iraq is Shi'ite, who knows, they may actually want it even though it's proving to be a bad idea from what we see in Iran.

And what would Bush do if Iraq congealed into Iran II? Scold Iraq like a little child who keeps coloring on the walls until he stops? I feel like unless we totally rethink this whole nation-building approach, we're going to have essentially wasted the lives of the soldiers who died in the sense that the outcome won't be to our liking. (perhaps we need to reexamine what is to our liking)

So, what the president actually would like is Iraq to form itself into a country which is friendly to the US. Friendly in the sense that the majority of the population doesn't wish harm upon the US. This would be the "public" definition. Friendly also in the sense that Iraq would be open to US imports (the "private" definition). And, of course, you can't underestimate the dream of US-friendly oil fields pumping their hearts out. This is where the disingenuousness comes out. Over and over, what comes out of Bush's mouth is the phrase, "Iraqi people will determine the future of Iraq". Just as long as the choose the same option that we do.

For all of the criticism that Tony Blair is receiving these days, the thoughts expressed in his recent address before Congress are spot on. I wonder if Bush was paying attention:

The virus is terrorism whose intent to inflict destruction is unconstrained by human feeling and whose capacity to inflict it is enlarged by technology. This is a battle that can't be fought or won only by armies. We are so much more powerful in all conventional ways than the terrorists, yet even in all our might, we are taught humility. In the end, it is not our power alone that will defeat this evil. Our ultimate weapon is not our guns, but our beliefs.

:: sandy 8:33 PM [+] ::
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Where is the Matty Boom Blaaty? I miss his incessant hyper-meta-psycho-thoughts.

It is depressing sometimes thinking back to the olden days of the American revolution where peoples minds were less clouded with "extra" shit than nowadays. Right and Wrong were a little easier to delineate methinks. Countries are so damn intertwined and the needs of a modern or semi-modern country are far more complex. Where do we get our food? What about our fossil fuels? What about our WATER for god sakes? America was bountiful and the colonists would have zero problem making a live from themselves without the help of Europe.

BTW, something we forget and is just so hard to grasp sometimes is the HUGE amount of time that passed between say for instance Jamestown days (early 1600s) and Independence day. almost a HUNDRED and EIGHTY YEARS!! I dont know why that impresses on me so. I should re read American history.. I forget sometimes how awesome a story it is. Do you have any suggestions, Sean?

:: sandy 4:08 PM [+] ::
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