~ georgia senator zell miller compares the opposition of democrats to the nomination of conservative black woman to the dc circuit court of appeals to a lynching, and he catches hell from his own opposition/party. jermaine jackson refers to the arrest of his brother on child molestation charges as a ‘modern day lynching’, and people in rome hold a candlelight vigil for him. we have failed to draw parallels between these situations, because it is difficult to understand why zell miller has been so intent on towing the republican line or to understand michael jackson.

~ we were pretty relieved when the danger status was turned down to yellow this week, but the recent headlines from the cote d’ivoire have left us feeling unsure of our protectors at the pentagon: “French troops save American children held in Ivory Coast”. We understand that the USMC was busy ‘training’ in djibouti, and the USN was occupied with that los angeleno stranded off costa rica, but weren’t there just a few members of delta force who are not in a north carolina prison for killing their wives to whom you could have loaded onto some john deeres? at least, suffer us not the humiliation of having french troops save american consumers in manhattan.

~ parents of west harlem: please inform your inarticulate street urchins that not every bald vegan is named ‘moby’.

~ make that 3-to-1.

dear d.o.d.,

when you told the country to be ready for a ‘dangerous’ period in which we could expect american casualties, americans bravely steeled themselves and said they were ready for the deaths of someone else’s sons and daughters. however, no one foresaw that the american deaths you were warning about were going to be caused by other Americans, or at least their reliance on errant smart bombs. so far, the ‘evil ones’ have killed one (1) and wounded one(1) of the american troops (if the truth is being told), while errant bombs have killed two (2) and wounded twenty-five (25). sure, two deaths isn’t something that you carpet-knights worry about, but the 2-to-1 odds are pretty crummy. we sure hope you do not kill or incarcerate two (2) american civilians for every civilian that al-queda killed on september 11. please have your business partners at raytheon [w] and general dynamics [w] get their asses in gear, and smarten up these bombs before you start invading iraq.

-one concerned citizen

ps. though the northern alliance are scum, if they are u.s. allies, it is not the best policy to be killing them, also. not yet, anyway, right?

~ from the angry red planet outbox:

To: “kron” < xxxxx@xxxxxx.xxxx >
Subject: Re: wtf!!!

At 11:24 AM 12/4/2001, you wrote:
> ‘Lindh said would like to hug his son and kick his butt
> for not getting permission to go to Afghanistan.’
>
> are we supposed to feel touched that this family has
> found their lost bastard son? sure he turned out to have

> been hanging out with obladen, but at least he is ok,
> now lets just let the [family] reunite and be cool.

i’m pretty sure that there are a lot of
 yemeni and arab kids in afghanistan who’d
  like to just get off with just a
 ‘kick in the butt’ right now

but i wager the u.s. special forces
 don’t take it so easily on them…

-saucemaster

* may have been edited in retransmission

~ dear united nations,

we have decided to decline your gracious offer of a peacekeeping force within the borders of afghanistan. while we will continue to hold talks concerning the future administration of the country, at least until international help is no longer needed to oust the taliban, we will not be needing any escorts or supervisors for the food, blankets, or medical supplies that we expect you to provide. we are grateful for your thoughtfulness concerning our security, but we find that the security of our intentions are most efficiently executed by our own armed and restless hordes. for example, after analyzing the data from a case study at a personnel holding facility outside of mazar-e-sharif, we have determined that our standard operations of shooting prisoners whose arms are bound behind the back are best facilitated without the interference or observation of others. in fact, it turned out to be quite a hindrance to have our soldiers stop their scavenging in order to cut the corpses’ bonds before the red cross was allowed to bury them. regardless of possible future events, please accept our gratitude today!

sincerely,

the northern alliance

ps. u.s. and british warplanes are still allowed to bomb targets for us.

~ the northern alliance is claiming that 40 commanders and 1,200 fighters have defected from the taliban. just last week, these ‘defectors’ were defending a regime that has systematically destroyed human rights and sponsors a network of terrorists. have they suddenly had an epiphany, awakening to the error of their ways? or are they just running to the side that currently is not being pounded by the united states air force and navy?

if the northern alliance can cozy up to the fanatics who defended that breed of scum so quickly, how can they be expected to be cool when it is time to construct a new system of ordering society?

if the northern alliance wants to topple the taliban, more power to them; that makes more sense to me than having the u.s. or russia meddling – since i doubt either of these powers seem like they would work strongly for the ‘establishment’ of anarcho-syndicalism [w]. but if they are going to turn out to be as big of a group of assholes to the afghan people, as rawa [w] seems to indicate, i would rather they didn’t do it with the help of u.s. funding, troops, and training. i know that the u.s. needs to team up with some local forces in order to facilitate operations and to ensure the safety of u.s. soldiers, but it would be a whole lot cooler if the northern alliance is not just intent on making a deal of trading osama and some of his cronies in exchange for u.s. support of their own military regime.

~ remember: fight war, not wars…

~ if photographs are considered idolatry by the taliban, why is osama bin laden allowed to have his face printed on the t-shirts peddled by taliban supporters? for that matter, since teaching english is also forbidden, why are the t-shirt slogans written in english? maybe the assumption is that only infidels will be looking at the shirts. since afghanistan has a literacy rate of 30%, it is safe to assume that 2/3 of the taliban cops will not realize this. or, perhaps the t-shirt hawkers are secretly thankful they live in the liberal state of pakistan, because the guys they are praising would bust their chops if they caught them breaking the rules.

~ are americans supposed to be offended by a burning u.s. flag? we can do that here if we want to, for pete’s sake. let’s see some ‘militants’ with the balls to burn their own flag.

~ sigh…when do we get back to the class war?

~ ‘have you seen the news about timothy mcveigh’s execution?’
   ‘i’m familiar with it; could you be more specific?’
   ‘well, all the hotel rooms in town are booked and people are selling t-shirts and american flags for the execution.’

   ‘it reminds one of what they used to do in the south, after lynching a black man for some reason or other…selling body parts and lining up for photos with the corpse hanging…’
   ‘doesn’t it make you sad that regular people could so easily get excited about someone being executed?’
   ‘no…because they’re the sick fucks who need to be worrying…anyone who wants to watch someone executed or somehow derives pleasure from just being in the town where it happens has more problems in the than mr. mcveigh could be supposed to have. we can’t worry about the issues these people must carry; we can only scorn them from our positions of moral superiority.’

~ though it has been a couple of days, we are still tired of hearing the question of whether or not the grammy awards are given to acknowledge important contributions to music or just to acknowledge a high volume of sales. yearly, this question appears, in every corporate awards show; yearly, the people posing it feel as though they have discovered an original viewpoint. however, in a study unscientifically conducted by the angry red planet, it has been determined that the people who actually give a durn about the grammy awards – either watching them, worrying about them, talking about them – are exactly the same people that value the music that brings in lots of money. it is amazing that anyone is surprised when drollery wins awards, considering the award show itself is drollery. anyone who thinks that a freaking television show somehow should set higher standards are the biggest fools, because the show itself is an aspect of the low standards of entertainment. regardless, eminem is a punk-ass piece of crap.