| | A Joke
Amidst the total barbarism of what Israel continues to do in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, as well as the lethal reprisals by Hezbollah and the further radicalization of countless Muslims (which will lead to tomorrow's Bin Ladens -- remember he said he first decided to wage war against the West when he saw "the burning towers" of Beirut when the Israelis crushed it the first time), there are some places on this global force we call the net that have a way of dealing with such cruelty and despair: satire.
From www.whitehouse.org:
Dear Brother and Sisters in Tingly Apocalyptic Anticipation:
Well, goodness me, it looks as if Israel
came up with a cagey trick that eluded even the imminently tricky, soon
to be caged, Halliburton. It seems that the quickest way to spend
billions of dollars to make sure that Iraq's infrastructure is no longer the worst in the region is to bomb all the airports, roads and bridges in Lebanon.
Yes, if you heard the bombs falling, you'll know that democracy is on the march in the Middle East!
And, from the looks of things, it is apparently wearing rather clumsy
boots and not sticking to any designated crosswalks. If you ask me,
it's more like democrazy! But no matter what you call what we've sold to the world, America is clearly undergoing some acute seller's remorse now that both Iraq and Lebanon have used this whole "voting" thing to willfully elect crazy Islamic fundamentalists who hate America and Israel.
Yes,
the unwanted gift (secular democracy) from an uninvited guest (U.S.
Marines) is perversely being used to bring about a surprisingly
un-American result (majority rule). With mischievous ingratitude, Arabs
are capitalizing on the purported mechanisms of "one person one vote"
democracy to fill the seats of their local parliaments and condominium
associates with more crazed, intolerant religious zealots than are
ordinarily seen outside of the United States House of Representatives.
As
anyone who has suffered my icy regard after watching me unwrap an
ill-conceived hostess gift can attest, present giving can be a rather
dicey undertaking. As such, America really should have devoted slightly more attention to the type
of democracy she was unloading on those fanatical, yelping heathens
before showing up on their dusty doorstep, unannounced, with it.
It
is clear to me the cause of this disastrous mix-up. Without thinking,
as is his leitmotif, President Bush bundled up and exported Democracy 1776, a version of government made obsolete when the Supreme Court unveiled a beta version of Democracy 2000 on December 12, 2000.
As
some of you with fetishes for picturesque, historical chestnuts may
recall, Democracy Version 1776 included something known by nostalgia
addicts as a "Constitution," but more presciently referred to by George
W. Bush as "just a goddamned piece of paper." Gotta match?
More
to the point, Democracy Version 1776 was also a rather quaint type of
government wherein citizens underwent the tedious, charmless task of
actually tallying the votes cast. Such laborious counting can, of
course, lead to inconvenient results. This is precisely why America
wisely dispensed with being subjected to the unpredictable vicissitudes
of voters' actual preferences by making so many polling stations
Democracy 2000 compliant after installing Diebold Vote Correcting
Machines™.
You
see, American Democracy Version 2000 is all about pushing placebo
screens, rather than the anal, wholly superfluous preoccupation with
memorializing those quixotic stabs at LCD pixels. If we had only
thought to bundle up a few container ships with Diebold Vote Correcting
Machines™ and sent them to Lebanon, the same software that allowed our handsome President to win Ohio, would have ensured that Hezbollah was trounced by a number of votes roughly equivalent to 400 times the population of Beirut. Instead, Islamic extremists are gaining power, making a trigger-happy Israel mail-order a few thousand more triggers. Oh, snap!
Whereas
Truman adopted the Marshall Plan as the centerpiece of American foreign
policy, our current president has adopted a more universal concept. It
is called the Law of Unintended Consequences. To wit, President Bush
made Iran powerful by destroying Afghanistan and Iraq. And since Iran has had the temerity to fill the vacuum we created, they must be punished. Of course, we have no troops to even keep New Orleans safe, much less make Tehran unsafe. So America's new war with Iran has been outsourced to Israel
and Hezbollah, who are respectively, if not respectfully, pushing the
buttons on our bombs. And Condoleezza Rice is left to turn shuttle
diplomacy into scuttle diplomacy. In a stroke of inspiration, Condi
has appropriated her method of brokering peace from Paris Hilton and
Nicole Richie by regarding America's two biggest threats (Iran and North Korea) with a snarling, "I'm not talking to her! She knows what she did."
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And
since our President is ignoring all inconvenient facts and foes, he's
freed up more time for international freshman-mixer high jinx by
becoming the Kevin Costner of global diplomacy, alarming German Chancellor Angela Merkel with a "no happy ending" massage at the G8 conference (left). And perhaps to reassure dignitaries that he, unlike his father, is able to keep food in his mouth while meeting foreigners, W showed Tony Blair
how he could talk with a buttered roll turning into slick paste between
his teeth without any of it coating Tony's lap. Although our President
did manage to let slip out of that same mouth language that would have
gotten a hefty fine from his own gloriously puritanical FCC.
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The ironic part is that this is probably far superior to his actual plan.
Some in Congress saying no to barbarity
Congressman Kucinich (D-OH) -- a steadfast fighter for the oppressed and underprivileged his entire life -- has joined with a handful of Democrats (Feingold, Kerry, Clinton, and others have all said they "unequivocally" support the IDF's continued rampage in the Occupied Territories and Lebanon) in proposing the following resolution on the House floor:
109th CONGRESS
2d Session
H. CON. RES. 450
Calling upon the President to appeal to all sides in the
current crisis in the Middle East for an immediate cessation of
violence and to commit United States diplomats to multi-party
negotiations with no preconditions.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
July 19, 2006
Mr. KUCINICH (for himself, Mr. RANGEL, Mr. ABERCROMBIE, Ms.
SLAUGHTER, Ms. KAPTUR, Mr. CONYERS, Mr. CLEAVER, Ms. LEE, Ms. WOOLSEY,
Mr. GRIJALVA, Mr. FILNER, Mr. STARK, Mr. MCDERMOTT, Mr. HINCHEY, Mr.
HONDA, Mr. DAVIS of Illinois, Ms. WATERS, Mr. MORAN of Virginia, Mr.
RUSH, Ms. BALDWIN, Ms. KILPATRICK of Michigan, Ms. MCCOLLUM of
Minnesota, Ms. SOLIS, and Mr. MEEKS of New York) submitted the
following concurrent resolution; which was referred to the Committee on
International Relations
CONCURRENT RESOLUTION
Calling upon the President to appeal to all sides in the
current crisis in the Middle East for an immediate cessation of
violence and to commit United States diplomats to multi-party
negotiations with no preconditions.
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That Congress--
(1) calls upon the President to--
(A) appeal to all sides in the current crisis in the Middle East for an immediate cessation of violence;
(B) commit United States diplomats to multi-party negotiations with no preconditions; and
(C) send a high-level diplomatic mission to the region to facilitate such multi-party negotiations;
(2) urges such multi-party negotiations to begin as
soon as possible, including delegations from the governments of Israel,
the Palestinian Authority, Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt; and
(3) supports an international peacekeeping mission to
southern Lebanon to prevent cross-border skirmishes during such
multi-party negotiations.
This is exactly what we need. The crushing of the Palestinians and the refusal to work at all with their elected government -- as well as de facto support for Israel's continued attacks and excursions in the West Bank and Gaza -- is what started this conflict in the first place, leading to the Palestinians fighting back by kidnapping Corporal Shalit and the series of reprisals and intervention of Hezbollah. This resolution calls for an immediate end to the fighting (which Bush could bring about instantly with any kind of diplomatic message to Israel) and bringing all the parties to talks (which could've prevented the brutal economic strangulation of the Palestinians following the election of the Hamas Government in the first place).
You go, Kucinich. You've always been a brave voice, more a Green than a Democrat (for better or worse).
Hope for peace,
Zaid
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