Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Terry Jones And His Warm, Furry God, CIA Out Of Pakistan, Freakolitics

Eugene Robinson
Paul Krugman

"I blame the Democrats for not passing a budget last year, when they were supposed to, while they still had big majorities in both houses of Congress. I blame Republicans for their ever-changing demands, which seem to be coming from a caucus of 2-year-olds. But the point isn’t who’s responsible. The point is that in the larger sense, nobody’s responsible." - Eugene Robinson
"And let’s hope Charlie Sheen keeps his tiger blood and Adonis DNA out of politics." - Eugene Robinson


I apologize for not posting much lately, I spent last week in the hospital trying to recover from the effects of a diabetic lifestyle. It's possible that I could have my legs chopped off if the tissue doesn't recover, or that I will be hooked up to an oxygen tank for the rest of my life. No big news compared to what is going on in the world, but something I must pay attention to, nonetheless... Because of my situation, I won't be posting five times a week, but I do hope three or four will be Ok. Hopefully, I'll be funnier...
So, what are you doing after the funeral?

Last week some mullahs in Afghanistan stirred up the old anti-American stewpot by relating the burning of a copy of the Koran by the "preacher" in Florida, Terry Jones. Pictures from the protests show some awfully well-fed leaders doing their best to incite the crowds. Not only are these guys not from around these parts, but, well, don't their actions look rather GAY? Maybe that's what NATO needs to do to defeat the Taliban - spread the word that their leaders are homosexual and let them be dealt with by Sharia law. Hey, if it works in South Carolina and Texas, why not Afghanistan? The story of the burning was ignored by the media, the only way someone would know that it happened is if they read about it in some small blog like this one, well, er, never mind...

As for Mr Jones, he's sorry people were killed in these protests, but that's life when yer spreading the Word: “Did our action provoke them?” the pastor asked. “Of course. Is it a provocation that can be justified? Is it a provocation that should lead to death? When lawyers provoke me, when banks provoke me, when reporters provoke me, I can’t kill them. That would not fly.” Needless to say, Mr Jones makes more money selling fake antiques on ebay than donations from the congregation...

Then, the leaders in Southeast Asia sure don't need to worry much over what some failing Floridian self-proclaimed preacher thinks of them, they are having enough headaches from the US banking industry and the CIA, which may just be one organization after all. Hamid Karzal and his buddies had their personal money spigot turned off after it was discovered that Kabul Bank was giving the money away for free at the expense its depositors... Millions of dollars going out the backdoor, and not one penny being stolen by a US bank, a situation that has just been remedied with the IMF putting it into receivership, or at least making an angry face and threatening to... According to Hamid, good old US ingenuity was involved in another bank fraud after all: "At a news conference, Mr. Karzai, while reassuring the public that their deposits in Kabul Bank were safe, said that foreign firms should be prosecuted along with those shareholders who took illegal loans and did not repay them.


“International organizations and foreign entities, who have been recruited and paid hundreds of millions of dollars of Afghanistan’s money to improve Afghanistan’s banking system, perform strong audits, and improve and build capacity for us, have not done their job,” Mr. Karzai said. “They provided the Central Bank with inaccurate information, they deceived Afghanistan’s government and its economic and financial regulatory bodies,” he said.Three firms were mentioned specifically: Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Deloitte and Bearing Point..." With old plot-lines reminiscent of when we stripped Russia's treasury bare once the Communist government fell, only this time we did it to friends, even if they are heathens...

Speaking of old plot-lines, the Pakistanis are pissed at us again, this time after one of our mercenaries shot and killed two men in the back who were trying to rob him, and he got arrested by the local police, and it got reported in the local newspapers. Of course, the US Consul acted in a typical stupid and insensitive mode, by sending a van of more mercenaries out to rescue our guy, only to hit and kill another pedestrian, and they had to turn back to the Embassy and flown out of the country. Then, our brain-dead consul tries a softer approach, by demanding our guy's release because he has diplomatic immunity, even though his name doesn't appear on any list handed to the Pakistani government.

Water under the bridge, right? The day after our guy gets arrested, one of our drones screws up again and kills a bunch of innocent civilians, a too common occurrence with the things, just ask any Libyan... The head of Pakistani intelligence is now demanding that all contracted mercenaries leave Pakistan, and over 1000 CIA grunts leave, too, and he wants to limit drone activity to the original area OK'ed, North Waziristan... The paranoid conspiracy story for the US's incursions are that we want their nuclear arsenal, and they are right. We'd rather trust our own right wing tea party paranoids to guard nuclear weapons than some right wing maybe fanatical Muslim in some faraway country, now that we can no longer count on Japan...

Finally, striking another blow against the Empire, the Egyptian military dictatorship just sentenced a 25 year old blogger to three years in jail for writing material that was critical of the military. Add this to creating a law making demonstrations illegal, and the new government is smoothly sailing towards democracy - NOT!!! Now that Mubarak has checked himself into Egypt's equivalent of celebrity rehab, I'm sure that he has the last laugh with Field Marshall Tantawi...

Here at home, I find out that my President, Barack Obama is too easily enamored and led by the Pentagon brass, despite warnings from his Secretary of Defense. Maybe it's all those bright, glittery medals... It also seems that economics is Obama's weakest subject, and we are going to have to pay for the behavior of petulant Republicans. Good thing that things didn't shut down without any pre-planning, and that we are safe for another few years... Actually, I got rather pissed off myself, and plan on writing something nasty on the web page of my local tea party. I'll let you know if things heat up and escalate... I've decided to call my brand of ranting FREAKOLITICS. If it works for the authors on freakanomics, maybe it will work for me...

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