arrrrrrr

So a few months ago when that Ukranian ship with dozens of Russian Tanks was hijacked by pirates off of Somalia, I posited that Blackwater et al. should get into the business of privateering.  Now, in this article about Africa being the new hotspot for private security firms a Blackwater executive discusses seeing great, “‘opportunity [...]

how could I forget

as me and emma were walking down market from the apple store (I sense an iphone in my near/immediate-future) the tall, impeccably-suited man in front of us shook a hand proffered by another passerby and in doing so turned halfway, revealing his identity to be none other than Gavin Newsom, mayor of the foggy city [...]

this is getting ridiculous

A suspected pirate ship was sunk on Nov. 18 in the Gulf of Aden by the Indian Navy. The ship now appears to have been a Thai fishing trawler, according to a report.
11/25/2008 NYTimes
I guess the ocean is the last real lawless territory that is regularly traversed by people we (western postindustrial societies) are [...]

Fucking cowboys

“‘It just seemed incredibly stupid,’ he wrote. ‘The only thing we could figure out was for some reason, one of them figured that CS would somehow clear traffic.’”
Blackwater employees used riot-control gas on Iraqi civilians and US soldiers with no apparent provocation. Even if it was an “accident,” which is the company line, [...]

walking a fine line

so Obama prides himself on running a “clean” campaign, and so far has seemed to do so—last year there was a widely-circulated 1984 parody in which Big Brother was replaced with Hilary Clinton, and was created by someone who worked for a Obama campaign subcontractor, but he admitted that it was solely his own creation—but [...]

back in santa cruz

cold, rainy, grey, but I’m glad to be back.  cleaned my room last night, cuz I’m an edgy motherfucker.  haven’t done much else, I need to get books today, and get brian a roll of quarters (or three) to repay him for all the times I’ve used his laundry money, the last time being about [...]

Take that, IMF/World Bank

There’s an article in today’s NYTimes that makes me very happy.
Instead of sitting quietly and accepting the trade liberalization and “free market is your savior, trust us” policies that make up the backbone of the IMF/World Bank’s financial assistance policies, the small African country Malawi, “decided to follow what the West practiced, not what it [...]

who’s scared of a vegetarian muslim?

 
“It’s staggering that this most elementary principle of journalism is not merely violated by so many of our establishment journalists, but is explicitly rejected by them.”
An neat little indictment of the journalism establishment, using the Washington Post’s “coverage” of Obama’s religion and a NY Times article on Giuliani’s exuberant (and questionable) use of statistics to [...]

what am I supposed to call my trill ass nigga ride now?

So apparently a LA City Councilman proposed a “symbolic” ban on the N-word in Los Angeles.  Really, that’s a nice gesture, but aren’t there more important things to get done?  He states…
The N-word “connotes a lazy person with no self-respect or regard for family, a person who is ignorant, stupid, slow moving, does not speak [...]

you almost feel bad for rudolph…

first his south carolina campaign co-chair thinks it’s just the pinnacle of humor to call the NAACP the, “National Association for Retarded People,” among other various slurs and general douchebaggery (my new favorite descriptive-word), and now, his Southern US campaign chairman is revealed to have indulged in some of man’s baser pleasures. That’s actually [...]