Hammer Mill Days

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...

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...