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Showing posts from January 27, 2008

This is home?

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No, Mitch. That's not the point, man. Wait a minute, wait a minute.... I think somebody may be reading what I'm typing into my stupid blog. Hold on... Yeah, I posted it. Sorry, Mitch - I'll call you back. Bye. Hi, everybody... it's your old pal Bozo. Did I say Bozo ? I meant Joe . Beg your pardon, I'm all farmisht . Just spent the last half-hour on the phone to Mitch Macaphee, inventor of Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who has taken up residence in a relatively comfy treehouse outside of Buenos Aires for the summer. (Just to be clear, Mitch is in the treehouse, not Marvin. Marvin is the one who fell out of a tree.) I hate to treat so distinguished a mad scientist as some kind of cheap tech support, but damn it, we're desperate... desperate , I tell you! (Phew!) No, no... not life or death. Marvin's on the fritz, that's all, and it's proving to be a bit of an inconvenience. It happened just after we crashed back home last week. As you know, B

Our favorite general.

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Last year it was Pinochet. This year, Suharto meets his maker, though what demon fashioned him I shudder to speculate on. More than mass murder and dictatorship united them; they also share the posthumous praise of pundits and political leaders the world over, some of whom have every reason to know better. One can only assume these apologists hold a cynical appreciate of the blood-soaked Indonesian general's ability to provide wealthy westerners with favorable investment opportunities in what was once seen as the super-domino of U.S. southeast Asia policy. Whatever the truth may be, news articles about Suharto's passing referred to him as a "modernizer" who brought his country into the global market, though with some level of brutality. His rule was "controversial" due in part to his having eliminated as many as 1 million "alleged communists" during his 35-year rule (not to mention the perhaps 200,000 killed in East Timor). This, according to new A