La Cucaracha, la cucaracha, 
                  ya no puede gobernar

The hypocritical cretins running Mexico want others to do what they themselves will NOT. Instead of fixing the chronic problems that compel their citizens to sneak into the United States, they simply let rampant corruption, crime, drugs, and the poor distribution of oil wealth to go on and on. They make plenty of cash on oil, but it's concentrated on a select minority of the well-connected. Year after year, they do nothing to improve the shitty standard of living that makes their people head north. They're PO'd that the USA doesn't just fast-track all their illegals to citizenship, and that the US military has been deployed to the border to help stem the flow of jumpers. 

Mexico thinks it's an insult that the USA wants to tighten our common border. But their own border with Guatemala, for example, is VERY tightly policed.

But how does MEXICO deal with illegal immigrants from Central America? They put them in jail, for up to two years. Out of millions of immigrants, they've granted only a few thousand resident status. They look the other way while armed gangs and their own corrupt police beat those immigrants and rob them. They stick them on work farms where they toil for less than slave wages AND have to pay rent for the privilege. And when they're all used up, they ship them back to Guatemala or wherever they came from.

So Mexico and its hypocritical gummint have no room to talk about border security and the treatment of immigrants. Mexican immigrants to the USA, including the ILLEGAL ONES, complain they can't get drivers' licenses. But in Mexico, you CANNOT DRIVE unless you're a citizen. No immigrants PERIOD can drive there.

Roberto Madrazo, a senior member of the ruling party for many years, lost a humiliating presidential race in 2006. He had faked a kidnapping back in the mid-90's, probably to distract attention from an investigation that revealed he'd spent tens of millions more than legally allowed for his governor's race in Tabasco in 1994. So now after getting burned running for president, he decided to regain some glory running in the Berlin marathon in September 2007. But too many things didn't add up. First off, he crossed the finish line, seemingly winning the men's age-55 slot, wearing pants, a windbreaker, and a hat, which tipped off photographers and officials that something was funky. Second, a digital chip indicated he had skipped a couple of checkpoints. Third, the chip also indicated that he'd covered nine miles in only 21 minutes, which is faster than anybody can run. Finally, he beat his previous best for a marathon by MORE THAN AN HOUR. And so he was disqualified.

These guys in Saudi Arabia would hate it if we packed up and left our expensive air base there.  We kept their asses safe from Saddam Hussein.  In the meantime, they produced Osama Bin Laden and at least 15 of the 19 hijackers responsible for the horrendous mess on 9/11.  They took forever denouncing Bin Laden, make our troops very uncomfortable, and are more afraid of assserting themselves among their fellow Arabs than of insulting the USA.  They wouldn't let the US military stage any attacks on the evil Taliban from their soil.  So screw them.  Let them save their OWN asses from Hussein next time.

To get an idea of how f___g stupid people can be in this bass-ackard country, check out the way their religious police caused the deaths of fourteen young girls.

In March 2002, the Saudis floated a phony-baloney peace plan which says that the Palestinians should recognize Israel's right to exist, in exchange for Israel rolling back their borders to pre-1967 lines.  They know that'll never happen, and it only gave more credibility to Arafat.  It was a DOA plan.  Everybody pretended to go along with it for a short time, but it died.

White guys in charge, black guys in charge, they're all stupid

South African prez Thabo Mbeki continues to be a moron about AIDS.  He won't make drugs available, dislikes education programs about it, denies all the medical data known about AIDS (deciding that he, a politician, knows better than the scientists), announced his opinion that widely accepted treatments are "toxic," and in December 2001 is challenging a Pretoria High Court order to facilitate access to nevirapine, an AIDS drug which lessens transmission from mother to child.  One out of nine South Africans is infected.  Rape is rampant, including "baby rape."   Two-thirds of all HIV infections in the world are on the continent of Africa.

Mbeki is an imbecile.  He's in deep denial on obvious issues while his people are getting sick and dying. 

The United Nations decided they would screw with the USA (probably owing to American movements lately on global warming and missile defense, plus our reluctance to foot the damn bill all the time) by voting the US off the U.N. Human Rights Commission.  Who's been added in our place?

Sierra Leone, where the military has hacked the limbs off women and children.
Sudan, where they officially condone slavery, forced labor, and drafting children as soldiers.

Who's keeping their memberships?

Pakistan, where the police still kill people they can't convict legally.
China, which regularly imprisons people for years,  based on their political stance.
Syria, which has a history of wiping out whole villages whose leaders disagree with policy.
Cuba, which also imprisons people for many, many years based on political opinions.
Libya, which officially sponsors terrorism.

These dummies are going back to the bad old policies of the 1970's, when communist-led nations regularly tried to keep the USA from important posts in the U.N.  The USA is the one consistent voice of reason speaking out about human rights abuses in countries around the world, including in member nations of the commission.  And the idiots at the U.N. decided to keep the USA off the Human Rights group just as Congress was about to bring the USA up to date on its dues.
 

May 2002: The U.N. wanted to send an inspection team into the Palestinian camp Jenin, following the brief Israeli occupation.  Yes, the Jews went nuts wrecking the place, but were exceedingly careful about limiting civilian casualties.  After the UN team initially called it a "massacre," going along with Arafat's claims that many, many Arabs were killed, a few more logical types, including from Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders checked it out, and said there was no sign of a massacre.  The mass graves or heaps of bodies they were predicting simply did not materialize.  So instead of helping, the UN helped inflame the situation.
 

Ja, Sven, der message ain't too clear, ja

Dumpkopf  Geroge W. went on a trip to Europe, to try to sell the EU on his idiotic missile defense plan, June 2001.  In Sweden, foes of globalization nuclear weapons, and whatever else protesters bitch about, gathered to protest Bush's every move.  Problem is, they got totally out of hand, started fires, broke windows, trashed buildings, destroyed cars, the usual mob mayhem.  Now their message is lost to the winds.  All the world knows is, they have mobs in Sweden just like every other place on earth. If they had something to say, nobody heard it.

Hey, Yassir, nice car, whatcha got under the hood?
               "Oh, about ten pounds of plastique."

One quick note about the Palestinians ...... in 1948, the UN mandated a partitioned Palestine, with the Arabs getting most of it.  The Arabs rejected this, attacked the Jews, and lost.  They lost in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973.  Arafat laughed off the Oslo accords, and blew off a Clinton-brokered deal, and later a very generous offer from Ehud Barak, any one of which could have given him the homeland he says he wants.  In other words, he blew every damn chance he had.  In the meantime, the Syrians have screwed the Palestinians over, keeping them in camps, and not allowing them to assimilate, because it keeps the pressure on the Israelis. It's obvious that the only way anything was going to budge was when Arafat was stone dead. 

The Palestinians have also missed an important point: the Israelis aren't going anywhere. You have to learn to live with them. So stop blowing shit up. They will RETALIATE. They don't start stuff, but they sure as hell finish it.

Darfur, Rwanda, a whole bunch of other places have suffered what could easily be called genocide. But hardly anybody says anything. Then the Israelis knock off literally a few DOZEN guys, and it's called "genocide." The reaction to their actions is always disproportionate.

The Israelis gave back the Gaza strip. So what do the Palestinian terrorists do? Launch rockets. The Palestinians will never have peace, because they don't deserve it. Shut down the bomb-builders, stop the rockets, recognize Israel (cuz it ain't going anywhere), and take what you're given.

Sept 2006: Hezbollah is a bunch of scumbags who only care about themselves, not the people they claim to defend. Their idiot leader even admitted that, had he known how Israel would react, he wouldn't have ordered the kidnapping of Jewish soldiers. What Hezbollah did was goad Israel into bombing the snot out of Lebanon, destroying much of its infrastructure, and THEN the terrorist group claimed victory. Israel actually held back, blowing up radio towers and bridges when they could have annihilated the power grid. There's plenty of stuff to put back up, but Israel COULD have put Lebanon back into the stone age, or even just the post-civil war age. Hezbollah accomplished nothing except getting many of its fighters killed, and totallly f*cking over its hosts. Many Arab countries are backing away from these guys again, especially since they don't trust Hezbollah's biggest backer, Iran.
 

July 2006: Israel is pounding the snot out of Hezbollah. This means pummeling parts of Lebanon and Gaza, unfortunately, but what the hell. These morons never stop with the rocket launches. GIVE IT A BREAK.  Even other Arabs, including the Saudis, are saying that Hezbollah is a bunch of morons. Israel ain't goin' anywhere. You're stuck with them. So learn to live with them. Otherwise, they get pissed and they bomb the crap out of your hosts, and YOU.

The Palestinians are nitwits.  Do their people think their leaders are all holy men or something?  Papers captured in July 2002 from these guys indicated all sorts of adultery and wild partying.   AND they spied on each other, for later use in a post-Arafat power struggle.

May 2002, the Israeli army went into the camp at Jenin, to root out what they identified as bad elements.  They went a little nutty tearing the place up.  But Arafat and his cohorts called it a massacre, and at one point said the Israelis had killed up to 3000.  Well, try a few dozen.  The Israelis even went door to door, warning people to evacuate before they blew stuff up.  They lost soldiers trying to be more cautious about civilians.  And Arafat bullshitted about the whole thing. 

Of course, Arafat was ALWAYS full of shit. He would tell the whole world he wanted peace and would stop the endless suicide bombings.  But he gave speeches to live crowds and on Palestinian radio calling for "jihad" and saying they will send "martyrs" into the streets of Jerusalem.  Can't have it both ways, picnic-table-head.

The Palestinians are nitwits.  They've allowed themselves to be used by the Syrians for years.  If everybody had just accepted the inevitable and gone along with the United Nations action that created the Israeli state in 1948, a whole lotta people would still be breathing.   And when it seems that Israel is willing to part with land it rightfully captured in two successive wars with its Arab neighbors, wars that those Arab neighbors admittedly and foolishly started and lost, the Palestinians continue to set off bombs, throw rocks, and in general act like imbeciles.  The stronger guys are willing to cede some issues and property to the weaker guys, and are getting kicked in the teeth for it. 

October 2000:  The Palestinians are nitwits.  Two Israeli soldiers take a wrong turn, get dragged into a Palestinian police station, where they're beaten and stomped, then one is thrown out a window, and is stomped further.  Both bodies were beaten beyond recognition, and one total jackass jubilantly showed his bloody hands to the crowd.  The Israelis did what I would have done: they blew the joint up, and in a surprise raid, gathered up eight of the beating suspects, including the moron with the bloody palms.  Think he'll be home for Ramadan?  Don't bet on it. 

One accommodating note: Ariel Sharon is an idiot for visiting what the Arabs consider a holy site, protecting himself with hundreds of policemen, and aggravating the Palestinians to start with.  But that's no excuse for flinging rocks for the next umpteen weeks.

Lyin' in Damascus

Hafez Assad, the late president of Syria, was trying to portray himself as a helluva guy in his last coupla years.  Born quite low on the totem pole, he later changed his name to "Assad," meaning "lion," and therefore became known as "The Lion of Damascus."  Then he made it look like he's wanted peace with Israel, to the point of absorbing the bad P.R. in the Arab world, so that his son and successor could have a cleaner reign.  But Assad never had the cleanest or smartest record himself.

As defense minister of his country, he was on watch when Israel took the Golan Heights and pretty much decimated Syria's air force, in 1967, and (after a military coup) was in charge in 1973 when the Arabs repeated their ill-advised attack on Israel and once again got their asses kicked.  For three decades he nurtured various terrorist organizations, he tortured and killed thousands of his own dissenting citizens, he gutted Lebanon by supporting the Hezbollah, and was likely involved in the downing of the Pan Am flight over Scotland.  The truck which blew up 241 U.S. Marines in 1983 passed two Syrian guardhouses on the way to its deadly duty.

Over 10,000 Syrians were massacred in 1982, in the village of Hama.  They apparently pissed Assad off.  His economic policies kept his country in Third World status. 

Syria, like other Arab countries, shits on Israel for their treatment of Palestinians.  But y'know what?  The Palestinians who previously fled to Syria were treated like shit and run out, just like in Jordan. Many are still kept in camps, just like in Israeli territory. Syria has never allowed them to assimilate themselves, join the government, become citizeins, NOTHING.

Syria has had its hand up Lebanon's ass for years. They essentially ran the place. But they pushed their luck when they arranged for the assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister Rafik Hariri. They got run out of the country. Now the U.N. is kicking them in the ass. September 2007, yet another anti-Syrian leader in Lebanon got blown up. Syria and its proxies are shameless and lethal in their attempts to subvert a democratically-elected government.

Maybe I'll get a management job in HELL

General Augusto Pinochet, responsible for a reign of terror when he ruled Chile, made sure that when he retired, he got a Parliamentary seat and immunity from possible future prosecution.  He was grabbed for a year  in the UK (where he was dumb enough to visit), for possible extradition to Spain or other countries that wanted to try him for the deaths of their nationals in Chile.  Ultimately, he was let go, for international relation reasons, and also claiming he was far too ill to stand trial.  Of course, once he got home, he was up and about, greeted by a military honor guard, yet another slap in the face to the many whose friends or family were one of the many "disappeared" dissidents of the 1970's.  Y'know, the ones who were tortured, buried secretly, or literally tied up and dumped out of planes into the ocean.

He was finally stripped by a Chilean court of the aforementioned immunity.  He'll either get it in court here, assuming the old murdering bastard survives a trial, or in Hades, where he'll have a seat short wait for a hot lead enema.  August 2000, the decision on immunity was upheld, and tens of thousands flooded the streets when the decision was announced. He's pulling the old "I'm too sick to go on trial" routine, the one he pulled in the UK, leavaing in a wheelchair, then easily walking across the tarmac after flying home. November 2005, he's under house arrest. Hopefully he'll die in jail. It's barely justice, but it'll have to do.
 

I win, and now we'll all starve together

Robert Mugabe, idiot president of Zimbabwe, was getting clobbered in regional elections in 2000, so he decided to let a whole bunch of mobs, claiming to be veterans of the war for independence from the late 70's and early 80's, to seize farms owned by whites.  The British even coughed up a bunch of cash to let Mugabe buy the white-owned farms properly and hand them over to the landless blacks.  Well, Mugabe had twenty years to do so, and instead spent his time getting rich and screwing off.  Now he's just letting squatters kill people, including many black employees of the white-owned farms.  Since he's losing at the polls, he's trying to buy love.  Many of the so-called veterans aren't old enough to have fought in the war in the first place, so this is a  big scam.  Nelson Mandela and several other African leaders have called for Mugabe to shape out or just plain quit.  As of August 2000, he's continuing his "resettlement" plan, installing blacks on white-owned farms.  Many of the farms have gone under, with workers deserting for lack of a paycheck.

Mugabe has had opposition leaders arrested, beaten, tortured, killed.  He's even had teachers pulled from class and smacked around.  He's rigged elections, used troops to prop up corrupt neighbors, and tried to make his nephew the leading businessman in the whole country.  His administration has been ostracized by the international community.  The IMF needs to stop giving him money.  Forget "constructive engagement."  Try "carrot and stick."  Be good, you get a loan.  Be bad, you get nothing.

May 2002: Mugabe stole the election, as everyone predicted.  And his police have everyone so scared, rounding up anybody who dissents, that he's hung on, unlike Milosevic.  He's destroyed the economy and frightened all legit opposition into inaction.

April 2005: Mugabe stole yet another election, and threatened to do all sorts of nasty stuff to the opposition. he's a crook, a thief, a murderer, a usurper. South Africa could do something about it, but doesn't try too hard any more. In the meantime, Mugabe controls all the food imports, and uses that power to control the starving population.

Later in the year, he started bulldozing the homes of the poor, driving them into the streets. He's creating more and more unbelievable misery. This guy is the poster child for righteous assassination.

May 2006: After wrecking the whole farm system and creating mass starvation (because his old cronies and thugs don't know how to grow shit), Mugabe was forced to invite all the farmers he ran out of the country to come back and run their old farms. What a dumbass !!!!

Stinco de Mayo

It's hard to put Fidel Castro of Cuba on the wrong side ofthe Elian Gonzalez case, since the kid should have been back with his dad from the beginning, knucklehead Miami relatives notwithstanding.  BUT ..... all those so-called spontaneous demonstrations for Elian and his dad were nothing more than the usual commie empty-the-factories kind of protests in which the broken-down supply-side Cuban manufacturing machine supplied bodies to wave signs, as they did all through the sixties and seventies.  Fidel still runs the place like a benign prison.  Yeah, we should probably end the embargo; he's certainly no threat.  But he really ought to give up the "Revolution."  It has long since failed.  Fine, we've got an embargo.  But we're not the only trading partner in the world.  There are plenty of others, and therefore no excuse to have a shithole for a country anymore.
 

The Ayatollah KHAmenei, not to be confused with KHOmenei (who precedes the new guy into hell (for ordering all those ten-year-olds to the front in their fruitless, decade-long war with Iraq) ), the big shot in Iran, started the New Year with a bang, declaring to a worshipping throng that the way to fix all the problems of the Mideast is to destroy Israel.

Reformers pretty much crushed the hardline, hand-chopping crowd in late-'99 elections.  But the fundamentalists don't like this democratic-freedoms thing, so in April 2000, they started shutting down opposition newspapers, killing off the reformers' best outlet for getting out the truth.  They've also started creating bogus charges that the elections were rigged.

They're still shutting down reformist newspapers, and keep throwing populists in jail.  These fundamentalist clowns are so paranoid, they refuse to allow any kind of opposition.

September 2007: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to the USA, and shit all over the USA and the UN. This was pretty damn stupid. He's got American military on either side of him back home, he's really freaking unpopular at home with the bulk of the population as well as the mullahs who really run the place, and he's just plain strange.

April 2007: The Iranian supreme court let off a bunch of admitted serial killers, who offed at least 18 people, because those people had been engaged in "anti-Islamic activities." By Islamic law, they could be killed as long as they were warned at least twice. Some of the victims were stoned, some were suffocated, and at least one was buried alive. Holy shit! And these f____g goofballs wonder why so many moderate Muslims don't want sharia in their backyard.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a nutjob. He's done nothing but piss off everybody from other countries as well as his own people. His approval rating at one point was SIX PERCENT. He claims not to be a religious rival of the Grand Ayatollah, but he keeps hinting that he's the "Hidden Imam" who will one day signal the return of Mohammed. He's been pulling a North Korea by going along with the international community on nuclear power, then saying he's going to produce a bomb, then saying he only wants nukes for electric power, then saying he's getting as many centrifuges as he can get to build bombs, and back and forth. he's freaking daffy.
 

October 2005: The new Iranian president called for Israel to be "wiped off the map of the Islamic world," then joined an anti-Israeli parade. Leaders of tons of countries joined in condemning this dumbass. Nothing like joining the international community. Two months later, he says the Holocaust never happened, triggering massive calls around the world for sanctions, and calls internally for him to shut the hell up. But he's going the nuclear route, and scaring the piss out of everybody, and Bush is doing nothing about it except flapping his spindly arms.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is JUST LIKE GEORGE W. BUSH.

• He was a rowdy asshole in college.

 
• His critics, including those in his own party, say he is hurting his country at home and abroad. Sound familiar?

 
• The middle class, which pays the most taxes, hates him, because he's done nothing for them, while pandering to his fundamentalist base. This exact same line describes Bush.

 
• The hard-liners are the only ones still supporting him. Even the GOP has bailed on Bush's entire agenda.

 
• A conservative Iranian writer says, "Mahmoud's behavior has annoyed many fellow conservatives. That he doesn't like to consult with anybody outside his small circle of old friends is a reality."  Bush is so insulated, his aides had to make him a DVD of hurricane news coverage so he'd know what was happening in New Orleans.

 
• "He doesn't consult even with knowledgeable people in his own camp." Hmmm, sounds like Bush and Colin Powell.

 
• Got rid of moderates, and purged pragmatists with more militant types. Like Colin Powell. Like Lawrence Lindsay, who said the war would cost $200 million, and was fired, even though it's now far more than that. Like General Shinseki, who said the USA needed more troops in Iraq to keep the peace, and was forced out.

 
• Filled various posts with inexperienced religious conservatives. Like Bush with almost every single cabinet post, including FEMA.

 
• Several of his appointees were so repulsive to even Mahmoud's allies, they were rejected by the legislature. Like Harriett Miers.

 
• He has declared the Holocaust to be a myth. Likewise, Bush fails to recognize the rule of law, global warming, or the consequences of deficit spending.

Russian for the bathroom Boris Yeltsin. This drunk and a half couldn't even attend a funeral (King Hussein of Jordan) without needing to lean on somebody and leave early. Hopefully he didn't puke in the potted plant in the king's lobby. He kept telling us what we're not supposed to do, like bomb Iraq or Serbia, but never managed to talk the OTHER guys out of what THEY shouldn't be doing, such as blowing the snot out of their own people, or screwing with UN inspectors.  Yeltsin didn't seem to care that Milosevic in Serbia killed more of his own people than Hussein had in Iraq.  Aftetr we righteously bombed Serbia, the otherwise impotent Russian army  plowed into Pristina early, after all the bombing had stopped, and nabbed the airport. They wanted to look good to the Serbs, while in fact all they did was sit on the sidelines and do nothing while we bombed the crap outta Milosevic.

Here's old Boris,  trying to get the  bartender's attention.

Boris went through five prime ministers in eighteen months, at one point in his batty reign. He sold submarines with missile capabilites to the Chinese. He let mobsters siphon billions from his economy. They defaulted on multiple IMF loans. When he resigned, he got a house in the country, and immunity from prosecution. Um, prosecution for what? Obviously there was something there, but nobody will ever know.
 

PUTIN

Vladimir Putin is an ex-KGB operative who prosecuted a brutal  war against Chechnya.  Chechnyan forces are no saints, having made their reputation by kidnapping natives of Dagestan, and blowing up scores of innocent people, including a school full of kids.  But the Russians slaughtered civilians and dumped their bodies in holes, and were caught on film by a German TV company.  Many of the bodies had  been tied up.  The Russians claimed that these people had been killed in battle and tied up for easier transport, and were only put in the hole temporarily while they searched for next of kin.  Right, and all those times Boris was sick, he had the flu.

Here's another good one: we offered them a bunch of cash to help convert military nuclear reactors to civilian use.  The Russkies decided to back out of the deal, but still wanted the cash.

August 2000:  The Russians conduct naval exercises, and one of their subs goes down .  The claim it collided with another vessel, probably American, but evidence actually points to an internal explosion, most likely one torpedo blowing up, setting off at least one more.  Two distinct explosions were recorded on American and Scandinavian sonar.  Sub sinks like a rock.  Russians claim they've got signals from the mariners, but then that turns into only tapping noises from inside.  This later turns out to be utter bullshit. They refuse all offers of aid from other countries.  After nine days, they're no closer to getting anybody out.  So they finally accept help.  Too late.  The Russians kept giving the Brits and Norwegians bogus information, resulting in the Norwegians almost splitting on them.  In less than 24 hours, the Norwegians were able to get into one of the hatches, discover a body, and inform the world that the whole sub's flooded, all 118 aboard are dead.  The Russians stuck to the story of the collision, changing the story to say  it was a British vessel which hit theirs.  The Brits say, that's crap, show us the evidence or withdraw your wacky allegations.  Vladimir Putin stays on vacation throughout most of this mess, then finally shows up to say how sorry he is.   These idiots still stick to a Cold War mentality, even when a bunch of their own might be dying.  The Russians then switch back to the original story, saying it was an American sub that collided, demanding an inspection of a particular American sub to back themselves up.  Naturally, the USA says nyet, and the Russkies say that only proves their point.

2003: Putin jailed the head of a giant energy conglomerate, and seized his company's assets. he's putting him on trial. It all looks very dirty.

April 2005: Putin just went to Israel. So, he sells missile and other technology to Iran, then goes to Israel and wants them to like him. WHY would they like him? They were utterly unconvinced, and now he's going to be a non-player in the Mideast. Putin also laments the fall of the Soviet Union, calling it the biggest European tragedy of the last hundred years. Here and I thought the Soviet Union itself was the tragedy.

We perfected slavery and greasy food and sheep-humping -- 
now we're great at uninformed whining, too

Summer 2007: Despite all the advice and pressure in the world, these idiots have never figured out how to manage their public land, including all their forests and open spaces. So when wildfires erupted this past year, half the damn country burned, and they seemed powerless to fight back. 

Spring 2005: A final audit revealed that the Olympics did indeed lose plenty of cash, despite earlier, rosier predictions. Much of these losses were blamed on the government's slow pace in preparations, which the whole rest of the world seemed to notice while the Greeks kept right on loitering.

Summer 2004:  The Olympics went off without too many security problems, although enough security types were able to smuggle fake bombs into enough venues. Luckily the real thing didn't happen. They still didn't have various facilities completely ready. Two of their athletes faked a traffic accident to weasel out of a drug test, but got caught, and got booted from competition. The Greek athletic officials cleared them of wrongdoing, but that doesn't mean they'll be competing internationally any time soon. The cost overruns for the Olympics, the incompetency, the intransigence, all pretty much guarantee that the Olympic authorities won't be coming back any time soon either. And Athens is still a squalid, polluted hellhole ( I know, I've been there ), 

Ever wonder why it took them over a hundred years to get the Olympics back?  Because nobody trusted them to pull it off.   Their ass-backward country is a haven for terrorists.  People get blown up all the time.  All sorts of Arab terrorists have winter homes in Athens itself.  2007 Olympic update: American track star Marion Jones, who finally copped to steroid cheating, gave back her Olympic medals from 2000. The beneficiary should have been a Greek sprinter, but THAT lady has already been banned for doping as well.

May 2001:  The Pope, John Paul II, visited Greece, among other countries.  The idiot Greeks protested his coming, ringing funeral bells.  They claimed he was responsible for massive genocide. To what were they referring?  To actions of the Church during The Crusades.  Apparently these ninnies can't do basic math, and think that the Pope was around then.  He might be old, but he ain't that old. You wanna go back a ways, you could also say that the Byzantine Empire, based in Greece in those days, also pulled some nasty shit (I just got through reading a book on the subject).  They weren't above atrocities, murder, slavery, and the like.  They also double-crossed their allies during the Crusades, more than once, and gained a reputation for being untrustworthy.  And if you wanna go back even further, at the height of their so-called Golden Age, the Greeks had the acquisition and distribution of slaves down to a science.  So I'm watching the CBS News, and there's this butt-ugly Greek chick yelling "Go away, Pope.  He is keeler, he is keeler!" and I'm thinking, DUMMY.
 

October 2000 : These clowns in Greece  can't make up their minds. They protested the hell out of the USA when we nailed Serbian forces inside Kosovo. But when Milosevic got canned, they told him he wasn't welcome. Do you like him or not, you goat-loving simpletons?

The Greeks sided with the Serbians during their police action in Kosovo. They claim a common Orthodox religion. That same branch of Christianity which condones the rape and pillage of innocent villagers, the burning of their houses, the ravaging of their women, the slaughter of their men, the theft of their identity papers, the mining of their roads. Yeah, that branch of Orthodoxy. Greek television didn't much cover the plight of the million or so refugees created by the Serbian army. Early June '99, they suddenly denied US Marines landing rights so they could go start up the peacekeeping force. And when the Marines did get ashore a couple of days later, they were met by a gaggle of goofy Greeks holding up a huge banner calling them murderers.

NEVER MIND that Serbian soldiers in the midst of a pullout dug up the mass graves they filled with Albanians, so they could burn the bodies and try to cover up evidence of horrendous atrocities committed against unarmed civilians. NEVER MIND that thousands of Albanians were TRULY murdered and many more forced from their homes, which have been burned so they can't return. NEVER MIND that even as they pulled out of Kosovo in defeat, the Serbian soldiers continued burning villages and killing livestock (they've been caught on videotape). The Greeks don't have time for details, apparently.

The Greeks always pick the wrong side of an argument, anyway. They got ticked when the province of Macedonia broke away from Yugoslavia, and wanted to call itself, whaddaya know, Macedonia. The Greeks figured this indicated the Macedonians' desire to usurp the Greeks' ancient name for their land, and perhaps absorb northern Greece. Duh. So now the Macedonians have to go by the name The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, or FYROM. Perhaps the Greeks should go by the name Bunch of Greasy Uneducated Slobs, or BOGUS.

The Greeks also have possibly the MOST polluted capital of any civilized nation. Athens is a pit of foul air and grime. They blame it all on America, of course. They claim that the Marshall Plan, which helped them rebuild after the war AND fight communism, FORCED upon them an industrialized economy, bringing with it smoke-belching factories. Uh, guys, the Marshall Plan is looooooooong frigging gone. Of course, you can still find books in Greece which claim that they invented or lent some kind of intellectual capital to the Airplane and the Atom Bomb.

When I visited the place some years back, I also noted that the BIG fad at the time was the books of Erich Van Daniken, of Chariots of the Gods fame. I was taken to a hill on an island, on top of which were some very smooth boulders. The locals as well as the government had concluded that the only possible explanation for the presence of these very smooth rocks was the work of aliens. Oy.

Greeks are fairly racist. They don't like blacks, and they HATE gypsies. And if you honk your horn in traffic, chances are the honkee will yell back at you, "that is the noise your ass makes when you screw." Two thousand years of culture, and that's the best they can come up with.

They were hiding the leader of the Kurdish rebels, who, like the Greeks, have been fighting the Turks for ages. But when they were pressured, I think by a stiff breeze, they sold him out, big-time, and he now faces a hanging in Turkey. Nice friends to have.

November '99 : Once again, these olive-eating ninnies couldn't make up their minds.  Their president, who was friendly with the U.S., was soaring in popularity, but as President Clinton tried to visit (and they can't complain about HIS affairs, since Papandreou was once banging an airline stewardess while he was married), they rioted, and burned stores owned by their fellow Greeks, because they were still protesting our actions against the MURDEROUS Serbians.

The European Union is sorry they let the Greeks in.  They're virtually left out of the common currency deal, because their economy was a wreck.  It has been for yeeeeeeeears, because inherently they're a lazy bunch.   They blame everybody else for their Cypriot problems, but in fact that whole mess was started in the early 70's because of rioting Greeks.  It's never their fault, is it?
 
 

Mr. Milosevic, I'd like you to meet Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson

March 2006 update: Milosevic has ignominiously died while in his cell in the Hague, where he'd been on trial for genocide. His buddies were sneaking him drugs and booze, which contradicted the medication he was on for blood pressure. He is now righteously IN HELL. While we sat around yelling nasty stuff at Slobodan Milosevic, he murdered a whole bunch more Kosovars, and basically dared us to act. If we'd acted sooner there, or in several other situations, we wouldn't have needed to blow his shit up THIS time. But finally we blew up his evil (and that is an understatement) forces, and the dumbshits of the world objected. This guy sets himself up as the leader of the Serbs, but the fact is, he sold out the Bosnian Serbs when he no longer needed them, and he took their land. He regularly showed up at negotiations, such as the Dayton accords, DRUNK. He gave  and took bits of land in these negotiations like  a board game, ignoring the fact that real people were involved. He  started and lost four wars while in power.

September 2000: Slobo goofed in announcing new elections. Polls showed him running WAY behind his nearest rival.  Suddenly figuring this out, his designated mouthpiece reminded everyone that no matter who wins, Slobo would be president until mid-2001, in an obvious attempt to scare everybody who might oppose him.  The Bosnian Serb Prime Minister, Milorad Dodik, issued Slobo an open letter, telling him to leave.  "It is time for you to leave, Slobodan ...,,What is left?  What will we remember you for?  Wars? Hyper inflation?  The loss of Kosovo?  Turning Serbs into a refugee tribe on tractors?  Graves, ruins?  These are, Slobodan, the monuments of your rule......If there is strength, sense of honor, repentance and shame in you, choose repentance, ask for forgiveness from your nation and go."

In October 2000, the Serbs got sick of his crap, ignored the rubber-stampo Parliament which invalidated the election, burned government buildings, and sent the dummy running for his life.  The new guy, Kostunica, took over.  Slobo was arrested at this house finally, after refusing to shut up and lay low.

In September 2001, he ended up at the Hague, being tried for crimes against humanity.  He recognized the world tribunal when it suited his purposes, but now he claims he doesn't recognize them as a legit court.  Too bad, they've got his ass. 
 

Idiot supporters

Late March '99, I'm at a customer's building in Chicago, overlooking Daley Plaza, where a whole bunch of delusional fools were protesting the NATO bombing of Serbian forces. I ended up passing a load of them, carrying misinformed signs reading "STOP NATO AGGRESSION" and the like. Some of these freaking hypocrites were crossing themselves, praying aloud for the U.S. and NATO to leave their boy alone.

The boneheads protesting in Athens and Moscow claimed they have ancestry and RELIGION in common with the Serbians.  Okay, so which branch of Christianity says we should knock down people's houses, slaughter them, take them out in the woods and shoot them in the back of the head, rape their women and children, and drive whoever's left away from the homes they and their ancestors have known for centuries?  The night of March 28, 1999, a batty young lady marching through Greektown in Chicago claims that NATO is killing innocent women and children. HELLO, you dumb broad, NATO went out of its way to nail only military targets, whilst Serbian forces attacked only a civilian population. 

In Toronto, a bunch of ninnies protested at the American embassy. The Greeks, whose quaking typically rivals that of the French, protested in Athens (apparently they only have balls when protesting people who can'd defend themselves, conveniently forgetting how quickly they coughed up the leader of the Kurdish rebels, whom they were "protecting"). Of course, the Greeks were mostly against the NATO action, even though a Serbian victory in this struggle would have greatly destabilized the region just north of Greece, and threaten their own interests, if not their border. But they're too damn dumb to realize this. Their TV coverage virtually ignored the plight of the 1.5 million refugees created, not by NATO, but by Milosevic's thugs.

A bunch of wimp Serbs in Macedonia slowly worked up the courage to throw rocks at unoccupied cars belonging to NATO. Even against empty cars, these spineless chumps took over an hour to creep up and start flinging debris.

What all these dolts missed the point on IS: why is it okay for Milosevic to start four wars in ten years, wipe out loads of his own people, drive hundreds of thousands from their homes, etc., but it's NOT okay for the world to clunk him on the head for it? His police  rounded up dissidents, whose only weapons were words. In the town of Godin, his police rounded up the occupants of a primary school, then shot the staff (principal and teachers) in front of the children. This is a bloodthirsty scumbag.

A NATO missile hits a hospital, and Milosevic invites journalists to see the damage. Oops, but what's this? There are tanks and fuel depots and armored vehicles parked literally next to the hospital, and between the hospital and neighboring houses. So Milosevic's army goons are using hospitals and houses to "protect" their military hardware. Oops. And after they spend all sorts of time blaming the deaths of Kosovars on the NATO bombing, one of their ministers is on TV, being confronted with lines of bodies with bullet holes in their foreheads, something that can't be explained by cruise missiles. The minister is dumbfounded, and can't explain himself out of that one. So essentially the Serbian officials are all lying bastards.

They literally gouged out the eyes of ethnic Albanians, driving the women and children to the borders.  The idiots in Macedonia bemoaned the NATO bombing, even as they themselves were dealing with the stream of refugees created by Milosevic's goons.  These people were fleeing over the borders for months, well predating the NATO action.  So don't blame that on the USA.

Serbia lost this contest because they DESERVED to lose. The whole civilized world, and here I don't count the Russians, saw what was happening, and for the most part they recognize the evil that is Milosevic. There will be no international aid for Serbia while the idiot is in power. 

If you supported Serbia, if you protested NATO's actions, you are a piece of turd. Am I sugar-coating it too much? I hope not.
 

January 2000  : The murdering paramilitary swine and noted mobster Zeljko Raznatovic (aka Arkan) was assassinated in the lobby of a downtown Belgrade hotel.  People on the street tell reporters that he was a gangster, and got what he deserved.  Smuggling, kidnapping, extortion, you name it.  And this guy was a trusted aide of Milosevic.  Arkan had a group of mercenaries he took through Kosovo, and before that Bosnia, murdering villagers and torching their homes.  He was married to a loudmouth broad who's a well-known singer. He regularly taunted U.S. forces by giving interviews from the back seats of U.S.-made cars.  And now he's been shot through the eyeball.  Burning in hell, now, most likely.  One story has it that he was been working with the Hague tribunal, which had indicted him for war crimes, to give damning info on Milosevic himself, and others, with an immunity deal in the works.  So Milosevic let him be killed by his underworld enemies.  Such a crook shouldn't have been walking the streets a free man to begin with.  Which shows what a scumbag Milosevic was.  Good night, Arkan.  Tell Stalin and Hitler I said hi.

With a billion people, we can afford to waste a few

The Chinese  are a bunch of lying, hypocritical oafs.  April 2001, they send their fighters to once again harass a U.S. plane flying over international waters.  They've done it before almost fifty times, each time getting closer and closer.  This time, one of their jets collided with our plane, with the Chinese pilot wrecking his own plane and DYING.  Our folks managed to land, albeit unannounced, on a Chinese island.  The Chinese board the plane with armed soldiers, pull everybody off, and hold them for ten days.  They don't return the plane.  But when they did the same thing in 1993, landing unannounced on an Alaskan island, without benefit of one of our jets ramming them, we refueled the plane for them, let them do their thing, then take off, without charge or incident.  The videos of prevoius engagements with suicidal Chinese pilots show clearly that this was a Chinese screwup.

Their dishonest leadership  jumped up and down about our accidental bombing of their embassy in Belgrade, and yes, that was a goof, and a tragic one. But it was an accident. Unlike their rampant spying (and our rampant stupidity in letting them get away with it). They've been exporting deadly missile technology for many years. The Iranians and the Iraqis, as well as the highly unstable North Koreans, have all benefited from China's idiotic arms trading. We sell guns too, but not to lunatic states with histories of starting wars or crises, like Iraq and Iran and North Korea. If anything ever stops traffic in the Persian Gulf, for example, it would be the Chinese-made Silkworm missiles they sold Iran.

In the meantime, they let their crooks copy software and movies for resale, and do little about it, they pirate all sorts of other technology, they spy for what they're too dumb to figure out themselves, and while they're at it, they roast the shit out of their own dissidents. They don't allow you to talk bad over there. Bad as in, about human rights. No no, can't have any of this human rights nonsense. When it looked like democracy was actually rearing its ugly head, in Tianneman Square a decade ago, they mowed down their own young with tanks and rifles. They regularly jail critics without benefit of trial. They can now look back and say Mao was a blowhard and an idiot and an autocrat. But how much has really changed?

They didn't like the bombing of Serbia? Well, gee whiz, tyrants need to stick together, right? The Chinese don't like international meddling in their affairs either, since their record on human rights reeks. So they jumped to defend what the Serbians are doing within THEIR borders. 

The Chinese need to lay off. Their economy ain't all that great. They need the World Trade Organization more than it needs them. With a whole lotta Chinese banks technically insolvent, and the four largest sitting on 200 billion dollars worth of bad loans, and unemployment skyrocketing, they should just shut the hell up and start doing business.

August '99, the Chinese  decided that Falun Gong, an exercise and meditation movement, is a major threat to their stability, and have outlawed the group.  Leaders have been jailed or sent to "re-education camps."   Many have been literally tortured to DEATH.  So a cult of personality is a good thing, unless the personality isn't on the approved list.

Spring 2005: The Chinese are getting all belligerent with Taipei again. They've essentially said that if Taiwan declares official independence, the Red Army will attack. Nothing like a little charm, huh?

The Chinese also regularly wimp out when it comes to spanking Kim Jung Il, the wacko leader of North Korea. They supply most of his oil and a whole bunch of other aid. But what I think these scumbags are doing is simply letting him annoy the shit out of the USA. If we could find a more compelling reason to get the Chinese to like us more than they enjoy our pain, they'd lean on the little asshole a bit more. May 2005, and the Chinese say they won't sanction the Koreans to make them blink. WIMPS.
 

If not for the canal, we'd all be eating tree bark

In case you've been living in a cave, we're jerks here

• A few years ago, some of their border guards along the DMZ came charging out and beat to death two American servicemen who were trimming a tree. The tree was later chopped down.

 
• The idiot running the place is the son of the previous idiot running the place.  The kid once arranged to kidnap a South Korean starlet he admired, and he held her prisoner for months, until she was able to get away.  And now he runs a country with one of the world's largest armies.

 
• May 2001: The new idiot's own kid, Kim Jong Nam,  tried to sneak into Japan with a fake passport from the Dominican Republic, and under the false name Pang Xiong.  Oh yeah, this Korean guy treid to sneak into an Asian country posing as an islander from the Western Hemisphere.  He said he wanted to enter Japan to visit Tokyo Disneyland.

 
• Spring '99, they've been invading southern waters with fishing boats, then blaming the South Koreans. The presence of the fishing boats indicates the seriousness of their famine. The South Koreans fire little warning shots, then ram the Northern boats, and the North Koreans shamble back home and point fingers. Apparently they don't understand this 38th Parallel thing.

 
• They've been tunnelling into the side of a mountain, presumably for some kind of weapons stash or nuclear program. We've told them repeatedly, we'll stop sending food if they keep digging, or don't let us inspect. They finally allowed inspectors to check the thing out. Meanwhile, millions of their people are starving to death, because they don't know how to grow things, and they're so frigging paranoid, they'll only allow outsiders to help if they just chuck the food over the border without asking a lot of questions.

 
• The North Koreans keep testing their missiles by launching them over Japanese air space. This understandably makes the Japanese quite nervous. It just exemplifies something the North Koreans just don't seem to get: nobody needs anything from them, but they need all the help in the world.  Japan has warned the North Koreans, as of August '99, that they will withhold the money sent to Korea by their Japanese expatriates (approx. $1 billion a year) if another missile goes off.

 

Zut alours! Stop zat, Pierre, you are breaking ze sweat, oui ?

It vaguely reminds me of the Greeks, who go in late, work a while, sort of, then take a long lunch, then go back to work, then take a nap in the afternoon, then finish up a long, lazy day. If not for tourism, they'd all be eating their children to survive.

The USA and Canada are leaving the Europeans behind when it comes to building new businesses, taking risks and making them pay off. We work hard and reap the benefits of being able to buy four-slice toasters, big fat cars, and, go figure, European vacations. One day, we might just figure out that souffles and Evian water are big fat scams, and we'll start sending them back. And maybe we'll throw in Jerry Lewis for good measure. They haven't figured that one out, either.

In September 2000, French farmers / workers / truck drivers blocked roads with their vehicles and piles of their produce.  That's how they protest there: they make life miserable for everybody else. 

The kids don't wanna work either.March 2006, the French gummint proposed loosening the laws that make it just about impossible to fire somebody from a job. These kinds of socialist rules mean that employers are often skittish about hiring people, since they can’t later get rid of them. It stifles  business owners who might want to take a chanced on building something, but don’t want to get stuck with ridiculous payrolls wen things don’t go perfectly. 

I’ve seen it myself, having hired several employees in socialist Canada. You practically have to get somebody on videotape killing their own grandma with an axe handle before you can get rid of them. I’ve hired two excellent guys up there. I also hired a guy who was, plain and simple, an asshole who insulted customers, and another guy who was a drug addict.  The first guy made it unbelievably difficult to get rid of him, after he refused to change his foul manners. The other guy actually made it easier by simply forgetting to show up for things,, including his own legal events.

Students in France have gone nuts, rioting, looting, and basically insulting the memory of their predecessors who, in 1968, actually STOOD for some noble causes and changed the gumint there. These new brats want a job for life, not taking the time to realize that by imposing mandatory job security, they’re aggravating their own massive unemployment.
 

We got things covered, just keep sending money

Samuel Sheinbein, 19, of Maryland, along with a buddy, killed another teenager, then together they dismembered the body and burned it. They were caught. Saying he feared his son might kill himself, Sheinbein's dad shipped his murderous ofspring off to Israel. How convenient. The kid claimed Israeli citizenship, since his dad was born there. That means he can't be sent back to the USA for trial. Whenever he appeared in Israeli court, Sheinbein was caught smirking for the cameras. Israel's supreme court confirmed their non-extradition in this case, but promised to try him there. Sheinbein promised that if tried in Israel, he'd plead guilty. Surprise surprise, he pleaded NOT guilty, although he admitted helping destroy the body.

Prisons in Israel for non-political prisoners are actually kinda nice, and he could get out in 20 years, meaning he could be free before he's forty. It's wrong. US legislators have threatened to hold up over three billion dollars in aid for Israel.  The Israeli administration and foreign service wanted the kid booted, but their supreme court let him stay.  They've since changed their laws on this point, but it's too late to affect Sheinbein's case.

Israel needs to remember who its friends are, and act accordingly. This was cold-blooded murder, and so far has gone unpunished. Sheinbein's father helped his murderous son escape justice, and the kid is obviously an unrepentant, arrogant piece of shit. Israel needs to send him back, if not to be tried, at least to serve his sentence HERE.

August '99 update : Sheinbein's dad is over there now as well, since he's wanted in Maryland for obstruction.  He and his kid are obviously both scumbags.  The kid has pleaded guilty, and admits to the murder finally.  He got 24 years, which means he could get parole in 14 years.  It's a joke.

Fall 2000: Idiot Ariel Sharon irritates the Palestinians at a sensitive time, proving his right to visit a site considered holy by both sides while protected by a thousand cops.  It starts two months of rock-throwing and shooting and dying.

January 2002: The intifada started by Sharon's very stupid provocation continues.  At this point, you can't really blame him anymore for the Palestinians' ongoing violence, but really, he started it.  Really dumb. 

March 2002: Quit building settlements already!  All it does is further inflame the Palestianians. These settlements are being built in the very space proposed for a Palestinian homeland.  Just brilliant.

May 2002: The Israeli army went into Jenin to root out bad guys.  But in doing so, they dug up electric and water lines, destroyed the shops and other businesses, and left the place totally trashed. 

Thanks for saving our asses from Saddam in '91, now screw you

Spring 2005: Polio is running rampant in Muslim countries. Medical authorities are trying to raise $250 million to inoculate and educate. So far, they've gotten a measly $3 million out of Arab gulf states. These clowns will do their best, even hold telethons, to raise money for the families of suicide bombers. But they won't dig too damn deep to save Muslim children. These guys are totally ass-backward.
 

July '99, Saudi Arabia has discovered and cut off donations from various Saudi and other Persian Gulf businessmen that were headed for Osama Ben Laden, noted terrorist who has declared war on the United States. This guy has blown up all sorts of people because he thinks we're somehow polluting his part of the world. Apparently he'd rather have Saddam Hussein walking through the streets of Riyadh.

Never mind that we went in there and saved Kuwait, and kept Saddam Hussein out of Saudi territory. We're still scum. WHAT THE HELL ARE THESE PEOPLE THINKING? We saved their butts, and they're giving money to a frigging terrorist !!!!!! The Saudis should beat the living goddamn hell out of these guys caught doing this. Or better yet, let ME do it. Yeah, that's it, let ME beat the hell out of them.

Spring 2000, they've cut oil production, and prices are all jacked up.  Let those freaking people STARVE, or let them save their own asses next time a Hussein or Khomeini goes nuts.

Fall 2001 : A Saudi national, Osama Bin Laden, has struck again, killing thousands.  His idiot followers who personally caused the destruction and death were also mostly Saudi.  But these knuckleheaded wimps have to be pushed and pulled into backing us in the war against their own criminal.  With all that oil money, you'd think these clowns could afford a SPINE.

Let's get one thing straight: Bin Laden and other Arabs prattle on about how the US is responsible for thousands of Iraqi deaths in the Gulf war.  Well, YEAH.  We blew the snot out of the bad guys, the evil invaders of Kuwait.  Civilians got hit, and that's awful, but that's due to two factors: that's kinda how war goes, unfortunately, and Hussein deliberately put military assets next to civilian areas, just like Milosevic did in Serbia, so that his enemies would be les likely to go after those assets, and so if somebody DID hit those assets, civilians would be killed and the enemy would get blamed.  It's a sleazy tactic.
        But why weren't the Saudis and other Arabs ragging on Hussein while he was starving his own people and denying medicine to children, while still blowing wads of cash on palaces for himself? After the embargoes were in place, he went nuts building new summer homes. For that matter, why didn't they rag on Hussein and Khomeini when they fought a war for ten years, even putting children on the front line because they ran low on troops?
 

May 2002: The Saudis hold telethons for Palestinians, and raise millions, but the telethon hosts stress that lots of the money goes to the families of suicide bombers.  Nothing like encouraging the root of the problem, guys. At the same time, they refuse to raise money to help innoculate Arab kids against common diseases.

Oil for brains

April 2001, at an African conference about how to attack the AIDS epidemic on the continent, Gadafhi was supposed to just utter some words of thanks for the gathering, and instead launched a ninety-minute diatribe, claiming that the CIA manufactured AIDS in the lab and planted it in Africa.  He also said that the pharmaceutical companies already have AIDS vaccines, but won't release them yet, becuase they're trying to extort Africa for billions of dollars.

May 2001, Gadahfi imprisoned and threatened with death sentences five nurses and one doctor, all from Bulgaria, claiming they had infected almost 400 children with AIDS at a Benghazi hospital.  He hinted that he was doing this in retaliation for the prosecution of two Libyans for the bombing of the commercial jet over Lockerbie, Scotland.  What the hell do these two things have to do with each other? 

In 1984, an idiot Libyan "diplomat" fired a weapon out the window of the Libyan embassy in London, killing a female cop. The scumbag Libyan contingent was then allowed, under cover of diplomatic immunity, to walk out of Britain, carrying cases which presumably contained the weapon used. After all these years, the Libyans have FINALLY taken responsibility for the killing, and compensated the family of the slain woman.

Now the Libyans are asking for the world to lift sanctions placed upon them for their involvement with the bombing of the jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland. But they still haven't agreed to compensate the families of victims, even though they his the suspects, and have tacitly admitted that they were in on the plot from a high level.
 

August 2000: Gadahfi allegedly paid millions of dollars for the release of some hostages taken by Islamic guerrillas in the Phillippines.  They were snatched from a diving resort on a Malaysian island, back in April 2000.  Instead of letting them go home, he insisted they fly 20 hours back to Libya, with a stop-over on mattresses in an airport in the United Arab Emirates.  After being released from horrendous conditions in the jungle, in which they were shot at, bitten by scorpions and snakes, and being kept from their loved ones, they were forced to fly halfway across the world.  THEN Gadahfi put them in front of TV cameras, wearing tee shirts with his face on it, so one of Gadahfi's ministers of bullshit could tell the world how great Gadahfi is, and how the USA is responsible for all world terrorism. 

They held this little exposition next to the house where Gadahfi's adopted daughter was allegedly killed during the US bombing raid in 1986.  Forget the fact that Libya blew up a jet full of people, forget that they blew up a disco full of people in Germany, forget that they train terrorists in large camps in the Libyan desert, forget that he helped hide noted terrorists throughout the 70's, 80's, and 90's.  The USA is somehow the source of terrorism.  Huh?
 

Too many pounds, not enough ounces

Correspondent William H., from over the Pond, was kind enough to send me this one regarding Y2K expenditures over in the United Kingdom:
 

The Millennium Dome

This was to be at the centre of the governments' millennium celebrations. Costing 758 million pounds (yes, several new hospitals, schools, police stations etc) this hulking edifice was to celebrate all that is wonderful in England today.  14 zones, each celebrating a part of the human condition.  The Faith Zone, the Body Zone, the Journey Zone......all for one year only.  Come one come all. 

Except they didn't come.  At all.  What was at first even mildly amusing  moved into a comedy of errors and finally denigrated into what must rate as one of the greatest white elephant projects of all time.  What went wrong?  Where do we start??

During design, each of the zones was allocated to a particular design practice.  Pity the lead architect of the faith zone.  She had to work with the 14 major religions within the UK to produce a 'consensual and challenging' design.  Yep.  This was always going to be successful.

Let's jump ahead to the opening night.  All the VIP's the media and anyone with any connection to high society (at least those with nothing better to do) were invited to the gala event on New Years Eve.  Travel arrangements for half the VIP's were to be via the new Jubilee Line Tube (light train) Extension.  All the invited guests gathered.  Except the train didn't arrive.  It seems the Jubilee line wasn't working that night.  When the guests did get there, they couldn't get in.  And when they did, it was around 12:30am and it no longer mattered.  Then someone forgot the alcohol.  The way the media howled over the following days it was like Jack the Ripper had come back from the dead.

And then things really started to go bad for the now infamous dome. It seems its' projection of 12 million visitors for the year proved, well, 'wildly optimistic'.  In response to the poor turn out some bright spark in the govt gave schools one million free tickets for their students.  Now I am not a parent, I do not profess to know anything about raising children.  However, I always believed that theme parks' bread and butter earnings came  from reluctant parents shelling out the cash to satisfy their whinging whining offspring.  Sounds like the govt let 2 million parents off the hook and lost a potential three million paying visitors.  Whoops.

The latest on this whole sorry saga as it limps towards its' three millionth visitor is that it doesn't appear that the dome will reach years' end.  'Early Closure' is the new catch phrase attached to the dome.  After the govt has thrown another 29 million at it and pared its' operating costs back by oh, 80 million odd smackeroonies.  And talk of a govt enquiry into the whole affair.  Oh, the sponsors are thinking of trying to get their money back (another 160 million pounds).  But wait, the chief executive officer, sacked in February will be getting a 'performance bonus' of 150 000 pounds.

You'd think someone would learn something from this whole sorry mess and never anywhere at any time would someone attempt to emulate such a disaster.  Oh hello Hannover Expo 2000........ 
 

The Millennium Bridge

A bridge is an amazing thing.  It can be practical, it can be a thing of beauty, it can bring people together.  Of course it's completely useless if no one can actually walk across it.  Enter the Millennium Bridge - the 'Blade of Light'.

Designed by the Lord Foster this was to be the first bridge across the river Thames since before England last won a major sporting tournament.  And that was a very very long time ago and probably only with the help of its dominions.

Opening 5 months late, (better late than never) I quote from the Bridge's website:  The Millennium Bridge is the centrepiece of the current regeneration along the banks of the Thames. The pedestrian-only Bridge will link one of London's premier landmarks, St. Pauls Cathedral, with Shakespeare's Globe Theatre and the new Tate Gallery of Modern Art.   An estimated four million people every year will benefit from this latest link between north and south London. Away from traffic, trains and city  noise, the Bridge will offer spectacular views of London and the Thames.

After 15 minutes the bridge closed.  It seems that people were getting seasick from the bridge swaying so much.  And then the cause - and you are going to love this - repetitive step vibration.  Apparently, people merely walking across the bridge suddenly caused a 'complicated mathematical effect'  resulting in simultaneous vibrations in the structure and hence swaying.  Forgive me - but isn't a pedestrian bridge supposed to carry people?  Should it not be able to withstand a few hundred walking pedestrians?  Oh that's right my taxes paid for this disaster.  How, as a law abiding tax paying citizen, can I not be happy about a perfectly useless
lump of steel spanning the Thames?  And the remedial works?  Oh yes, that would have to be paid by me and my fellow taxpayers as well.  Oh joy.

The latest - the bridge isn't opening to the public anytime soon, however a limited number of fee paying pedestrians may be able to use it soon......