What the fuck, Iraq´s got the rest of today for diplomacy and then Bush is gonna start killing more Iraqis. What seems more weird than anything out of this is that with any other war it´s always widely known what our enemies have done to deserve us killing them, be it the blowing up of that ship in Havana´s port to start the Spanish-American war, Pearl Harbor to draw us into world war two, the Gulf of Tonkin incident (yea, I know, it didn´t really happen but you get the point) in Vietnam; this whole thing with weapons disarmament is kept so secretive, like if Bush´s mafia looks and talks seriously enough we´ll actually believe them that the problem´s big enough to require war. Yes, Iraq has weapons. How do we know? We fucking gave them to him 20 years ago to kill Iranians. According to the Bowling for Columbine website, some of the chemical weapons found by the UN weapons inspectors have exactly matched those given to him in the Iraq-Iran conflict. I was reading the paper on the flight home from Punta Arenas yesterday and one of the cover stories made a big stink about Jacque Chirac´s former friendship with Saddam Hussein. They had a vintage photo from 1975. Wasn´t Rumsfeld still dealing with Hussein as late as 1986 or so? Why do so few people know about this? Before my weeklong vacation started last week I was in history class and Patricio my wonderful professor told us about a social-political phenomena that is so clear and makes so much sense I was surprised at myself for how taken aback I was by it. It´s about the correlation between governmental legitimacy and public interest: the less the general population trusts or believes what the government says and does, the less likely they are to get involved and let it be known when the government does something they don´t agree with. It´s this shitty feeling of helplessness, like what´s the point of screaming if you know nobody´s listening. And the fact that so many people around the world are screaming NO! while Bush and his hoodlums don´t give a fuck just goes to show how much of a voice we really have in this dead fucking so called democracy.
I used to joke that with all the corporate sponsorships on every single action in a sporting event such as the AT@T call to the bullpen in a baseball game or Mcdonalds sponsoring goals in Costa Rican soccer that the next events all the companies are going to make advertising contracts over will be natural disasters. It sounds stupid, but honestly ask yourself how surprised you´d really be if the Pepsi Hurricane came sweeping through North Carolina. Not very much, or at least not enough. Now I can imagine sponsorship deals on particular weapons we´ll be using to kill Iraqis, like "This scud missile explosion has been brought to you by Lays Potato Chips. Bet you can´t eat just one!"
Lastly, I´ve discovered that when you add war fever to smart-ass cynical punks, you get great humor, the perfect example being Get Your War On. This said, I´m going to try my hand at this whole Satire website business. My main cohorts on this one will hopefully be Dan and Andrew. I´m working on a couple up in the ol´ brain as I write this (I´m multitasking!) and with some effort over the next few weeks we might be bringing everyone the latest in bullshit comedy. Wish us luck.
Oh yea, this morning I discovered that there´s a skatepark all of five blocks from my house. How fucking cool is that? And in honor of Saint Patty´s Day today and the bleak outlook on the future I´m rallying up the troops tonight to go to the local Irish pub and have some pitchers over this mad, mad world.