h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

To clarify, the reason I brought up the subject of where he was from was to point out the way in which he chose to be a "good little American" until America turned on him for his actions, then claimed allegiance to a different country in the hope they had the resources to defend him against the country he had chosen as his home. I wasn't implying that American or British lives have an intrinsicly higher or lower value.

Many people in many countries think that Osama Bin Laden should die for what he has done; while I don't agree with the death penalty I can at least respect America's consistency in applying the same standards to the taking of a single life as they do to the taking of thousands.

PS - Did anyone mention Bill Bryson yet?

Bill Bryson
Ralph Nader
Mark Twain
George Lucas
Stephen Jay Gould
Tom Robbins
Carl Sagan
Lynn Margulis
Rachel Carson

To name but a few.

"Many people in many countries think that Osama Bin Laden should die for what he has done; while I don't agree with the death penalty I can at least respect America's consistency in applying the same standards to the taking of a single life as they do to the taking of thousands."

Hhhmm. Consistency is one thing, but the death of innocents rather pulls the moral rug from under one's feet, don't you think? And anyway, at the risk of raking over old coals, I'd imagine a lot of Afghanis wanted Clinton dead when he ordered 48 cruise missiles to be fired into Afghanistan in '98. None of them hit their target, unless a mosque full of Muslims at prayer counts. So retribution never ends. Look at what's left of Palestine. They've been at it 2000 years in the name of a man who's message was not to kill.

A bit longer than that. His impact on the region was just a blip on the radar compared to the number of times that part of the world has been trashed.

Some things I have been thinking about today:
1. The number of church burnings in the US between 1990 and 2000.
The United Methodist list alone is eight pages of incidents in 28 states.
2. The number of 'friendly' enemies that the US and Britain took under their wings after WWII when they turned from fighting fascism to fighting the 'communists'. Nazis, scientists, SS men, intelligence operatives, criminals (of a police nature) and opportunists.
3. Nuristan and it's history. The Afghanis landed on them like a ton of bricks in 1895 and forcibly converted them to Islam. In 1978 they were the first ethnic group (according to my admittedly scanty reading today) to successfully fight the Soviets.
4. The successive waves of conquerers and regimes that have swept back and forth across Afghanistan for as far back as we can unreliably go in their history. Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists, Islamics...
5. The Rolex robbers getting life with parole while convicted murderer's executions are protested.
6. The fact that the British military executed hundreds of their own men during the Great War but the Australians refused to execute their men because they were all volunteers.
7. The fact that everywhere military men are stationed for a few months they use women. Babies and prostitution. The one benefit to prostitution is that it does not leave behind hostages. Babies, half native babies, left behind because although it is convenient for a trained and loyal military man to satisfy himself, it is not convenient for him to behave as a gentleman. I can't even to begin to deal with the matter of the women here.
8. The fact that I am spinning in circles thinking about these things.

sorry, just thought I'd do a little dumping....

This is of course all true (as far as truth goes). But nearly all of it lies in the past. Rather than indulging in retribution (as I myself was doing), could we not do something about the present behaviour of our seperate cultures? After all, H2G2 forms a pretty large think tank/potential protest group.
Or is that just horribly naive? Does the notion of doing something, as opposed to complaining and cataloguing fault after fault, have no place here?





ps - we *had* to shoot our own men in WW1 - the Americand hadn't joined in by then

Oh, yuck!
"The best minds of our generation have turned to mud..."

In the first place, 'doing something' might mean logging off and turning off the computer and actually leaving the house...a frightening concept for me.

A morning perusal of what the BBC news in Scotland and Wales offered strongly inclines me toward the idea that the cultures might not be as separate as one might wish to believe.

The past is what is supposed to influence us. But, too often, the glare of what is right before us prevents us from seeing the shadows of the past. Human stupidity and meanness is everywhere and it knows no nationality or religion or era.

It is difficult to nursemaid the world when you can't find the right formula for the pablum.

There were those of us that hoped that the Towers incident would shock Americans out of their complacency and false sense of superiority. But it is too ingrained. They live it, eat it, breath it.
And it has grown.

And as for the President, well, he found himself picking up the traces on someone else's horse. And the one thing his experience with Texas politics should have taught him was how to deal with congenital idiots in the legislature.... Because I assure you, in many ways, he is the pick of the litter.

The Untied States commits more terrorist acts than any other nation on Earth: Beirut, 1985- the CIA innitated car bombing that killed 250; Cuba, 1887, the industrial plant bombing that killed 400. The list goes on. Four words define U.S. policy: Western Advance/Eastern Retreat. Before George Bush took office he needed to relinquish his interests in the KeFee Corp. The aformentioned holding the largest food serving contract w/ the Federal Penitentiary system. He sold his interests to mum. In other words, the more incarcerated, the greater the family profit. Do you know where 90% of the chemicals used to manufacture Columbian cocaine comes from? That's right, the United States. America will condemn the Golden Triangle for export of heroin at the threatening trade sanctions if China doesn't import our tobacco. What is wrong w/ America? America is a bully. We still have the Death Penalty fer Chrissakes! We are a land of royalty. I forget who said it: "The East has Buddism & Enlightenment; the West, Christianity and Lotto". Welcome to the Holy Church of our Suffering Mother & the Almighty Dollar...

We should take heart in the fact that this can only ever be a temporary state of affairs. This blue/green orb has been rolling around for approximately 4.6 billion years. Life, it seems, appeared a soon as the planet's surface was cool enough to support liquid water. The first recorded life is bacteria. These formed domes (stromatolites) or algal mats. This expression of nature remained virtually unchanged for nearl 3.5 billion years. Interestingly, it was all symbiosis during this period - no such thing as predation or battles revolving around who has sex with who. This didn't occur until multi-cellular organisms arose - seemingly by accident, when certain ameoba didn't seperate properly when dividing. Since then it's been kill or be killed.
So don't get too depressed, at the end of the day, when it all comes down to it, violence and predation is a blip, and we are a smaller blip within that blip. The sun (without checking) appears to be about half-way through it's life-span. There's a long way to go yet.
If it helps, humanity can be seen as an awkward phase a bunch of ameoba are going through.

Frogbit.

oOPS. I've been playing with ML all day.

I've been playing with My Leg all day too.

ML Torme.....

ML shook up
ML ting (Wich's demise at the end of Wizard of Oz)

ML eaving, on a jet-plane.

MLple syrup...

MLtiple personalities...

MLfeasance...

Miss MLple...

ML ong haired lover from liverpool
ML ittle tired now
ML ingering
ML oitering
ML ost and ML ucinating.

ML ion in winter
ML ost without you
ML osing faith

ML llion love songs later

ML osing my marbles.

MLba toast

ML tuckered out. G'night Tonsil.
ps - that clown smiley looks like a surgeon dressed to operate. To me.