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Showing posts from August 19, 2007

Sign off.

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Okay, now where does the signature go? Ah, yes - the line which is dotted. Okay, okay. Right, now... where is that dotted line? Sure, sure... on the con tract, sure... Oh, hi blog-o-files (or perhaps merely ultra-patient Big Green -o-files). You're probably thinking you may have stumbled in on some kind of trade negotiation, perhaps the latest upgrade of NAFTA. Not so, though it is coercive, expropriative, and downright nasty, so I can understand the confusion. Yes, indeed... after several days (or was it weeks?) in the back of some grimy delivery van, bound and gagged by belligerent strangers, we arrived at our destination. T'was a strange and lifeless place, cold as the grave, its chalky brick facade crumbling beneath the groaning burden of decades of neglect and abandonment. This was the grim place our captors had intended for us to see when our blindfolds were removed. The abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill - just as I pictured it! I know what you're thinking. What the hell a...

Mr. history.

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I feel like Rip Van Winkle in reverse; like I've awoken years in the past instead of years in the future. Dubya Bush going from VFW to military academy assembly selling the Iraq war. Democrats hedging their positions, hoping to land on the winning side. Pro-war ad campaigns funded by arch-reactionary swift-boaters. Improbably optimistic National Intelligence Estimates, at least in their highly redacted declassified form. What is this, 2002? Are we starting from scratch yet again? This is the product of our political culture's "ballgame" approach to foreign policy adventures, wherein the central question becomes "will it succeed?" Is this the question we ask when someone commits murder and holds a family hostage? Do we console our consciences with the notion that, well, he did kill that old man and that baby, but at least he's finally got that household under control? (Right - before someone jumps all over my shit, let me make it clear that I don't ...