I wonder if it's so important for people to be seeing someone for the "well, to hell with everything!" attitude it gives them, as much as the loving or lovin'. The confidence that comes from someone you like that much thinking you're great, damn; speaking personally, it changes everything. Makes me feel devastatingly capable, and feeling capable is not generally a feature of my personality.
Anyways, enough of that. Miss P is slowing down on her research project, I'm sort of ahead of her in the workload and I was too broke to get wasted at NXNE, so over the weekend I could take a lot of time on my proposal. I've been doing background things so I don't sound like an idiot, and yesterday that led into the black market of 1940’s Germany. Imagine that mishmash of people milling around, waiting to be processed, repatriated or recompensed, staying in camp upon camp upon camp, and always hungry. In Canada we're educated about the Marshall Plan and post-war reconstruction, about how great and magnanimous it all was and how clever the United States was to get Germany back on its economic feet so fast. Fast is relative. Anyways, histories of post-war reconstruction, and how fucking boring, confusing, hungry and infuriating it must have been, always seem to be more effective then stories of mind-boggling atrocities at making me think about the sheer disrespect for the human spirit military aggression represents. It’s easier to wrap one’s head around.
For some reason that's made official comments about Guantanamo suicides more difficult to read. The divorce from psychological reality, deadly paranoia and naiveté of the notion that somebody who the state has kept in prison since he was a teen hanging himself with bed sheets is making a PR move or asymmetrical warfare provokes a very emotional response in me, so how it would make someone feel who was more engaged in the situation is hard to imagine. And it isn’t the suicides themselves; one does operate with the assumption suicide is likelier in prison and until reading those comments it was unlikely the suicides would have provoked an emotional response in me greater than that already provoked by the existence of the prison.
Fuck. If recent events are indicating the decline of the American empire, we’re going to have to not only put up with the massive social upheavals and instability but the prospect of the United States stupiding itself to death. That gives me no joy.
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Mistress La Spliffe, you blow my mind! I'm in awe of your ability to have such thoughts early Monday morning. Thanks for bringing the suicides at Gauntanamo to my attention - I had no idea.
I love the asst. secretary of defence's comment "Because as Americans, we value life, even the lives of violent terrorists who are captured waging war against our country." WHATEVER!!!
Aw, thanks - but then I don't have a baby waking me up at night, so I can usually think in the morning - in fact I'm wondering if maybe I think best in the morning. If I am, in fact, a *morning person*. That would be weird, but I can handle it.
Yeah, that comment went a bit over the top in the opposite direction, hmmm? The thing is, if he can make a comment like that to “spin” his way out of that bitch’s comments, he’s counting on the fact most Americans still assume everybody in Guantanamo is guilty, and I’m not sure he’s wrong to count on that. But everybody outside of America – especially the people who care – know that hasn’t been the case. So, well, what the fuck. Worse and worse. Stupiding themselves.
There's a cock-eyed theory that the time of day (or night) you were born is the best time for you. Would this jive with you being a morning person?
Anyway, I'm at a loss over some American's increasing hypocrisy and contradiction. They value life but they plaster al-Zarqawi's death all over their news? And surprise, surprise..approval of the war goes up 5%. I don't know..
I think I was born in the middle of the night, a few hours after then end of a football game. Does that fit in?
It's all marketing with the war in America. . . it bears remembering this is a war with limited immediate consequences for the United States - it's not like they're living in fear of an invasion, the attacks on their country 5 years ago are associated with who they're fighting now or they’re suffering consumer shortages. Their gas prices are higher and military men from the poorer and immigrant classes are getting killed – that’s all - so most people in the United States can afford to look on the war as a video game the government either plays well or poorly. Is this inhuman? I don’t think so - I think it's natural, if fucking horrible and physically disgusting.
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