Month: May 2007

Yesterday, a US military commander in Afghanistan, Col John Nicholson, apologized for the deaths of nineteen Afghan civilians in early March 2007. He told reporters in Washington, via a video link:

“”I stand before you today, deeply, deeply ashamed and terribly sorry that Americans have killed and wounded innocent Afghan people. The deaths and wounding of innocent Afghans at the hands of Americans is a stain on our honor and on the memory of the many Americans who have died defending Afghanistan and the Afghan people. We made official apologies on the part of the US government and payments of about $2,000 for each death.”

$2,000 per death? Well, that won’t exactly break the bank, will it?

Today, the US military managed to splatter what’s left of its honor with an even larger stain, outdoing its previous best by a count of two, when it killed at least twenty-one Afghan civilians in the Sangin district to the south of the country.

Not to be outdone by their trigger-happy colleagues in Afghanistan, the US military in Iraq yesterday managed to slaughter six young children, when one of its helicopters opened fire on a primary school in Diyala province north-east of Baghdad.

Of course, being so young, they are probably only worth about $1,000 each.

Does the US military have any honor left? Or has it ebbed away completely, leaving just one very large and ugly stain?

Filed under: Illusions

Paris Hilton believes she shouldn’t have to serve her 45 day prison sentence for driving with a suspended license due to an earlier drink/driving offense, because she:

“………provides hope for young people all over the US and the world. She provides beauty and excitement to (most of) our otherwise mundane lives”.

Excuse me?

Paris Hilton is a spoiled, pampered, immature, near brain-dead brat whose only claim to fame is being born stinking rich. If she epitomizes anything, it is the shallow, self-centered, uncaring, sod-off-everybody-I’m-all-right-Jack attitude displayed by many of the wealthier American set to which she belongs.

Personally, I don’t consider her jail term long enough. She was convicted of drunk driving, and should have been locked up for that. Caught a second time for driving without a license, she calmly complains that she knows nothing of such matters and blamed an aide for misinforming her. She promptly fired him.

In fact, Hilton was stopped on the 15th January this year and warned for driving without a license. She signed a paper declaring she understood. On the 27th February she was stopped again for speeding and not using headlights. It was on this occasion she was charged.

Contempt for the law is popular among the stinking rich. It is found in the highest offices of the land, and permeates down through the so-called “upper echelons” of society. It goes hand-in-glove with a sense of superiority over everyone outside of the “elite circle”.

Apparently, Hilton’s mother shouted at the prosecutor, calling him “pathetic”, when the sentence was read out. Earlier, she had laughed at the judge and asked for his autograph. Perhaps it’s something in the genes.

It is possible, assuming wealth doesn’t win the day and overturn Hilton’s sentence on appeal, that 45 days in the company of women a little less well-to-do than herself might just prevail upon Hilton to take a deeper, more meaningful look at her life and where it is leading.

Personally, I doubt it will.

Filed under: Pampered pests

Following intense criticism for my comparison of Vice President Dick Cheney to the dwarf, Gollum, I have been forced to issue an abject apology or be sued for defamation of character. Once again, in these pages, I will repeat how sorry I am for such a grave mistake.

Sorry, Gollum.

In fact, I could be totally wrong, but isn’t Dick Cheney just an older version of Alberich, from Richard Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen”?

                        

More HERE.

Filed under: Even more similarity