30 September, 2009
23 September, 2009
Col. Gaddafi's UN Speech
This morning I switched on the television just in time to catch Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi's big speech to the United Nations General Assembly. In case you're unaware, Libya holds this year's Presidency of the General Assembly, the man being Ali Abdussalam Treki. This picture from the Daily Mail in the UK should sum up the day for you:
The man high up on the top o' the rostrum is Treki, and the goofy bastard down there is Gaddafi. I also suggest that you see the rest of the photos in the Mail's report. They really are something.
Things were cleared for insanity when Gaddafi's speech was delayed by some sort of protest on the General Assembly floor, which cameras refused to show or give the details of. When he finally got up to the podium, decorum dictates that heads of state would have 15 minutes for their speech.
1 hour, 36 minutes later I had no fucking clue what had just happened. The man went just about everywhere in his meandering oration. He waxed poetic about jet lag, suggested renaming the UN Security council "the terror council," and shat upon the UN charter (not literally, fortunately. I'd have shot myself if I had to see him lift his spiffy Bedouin robes to do that). He had such little bits of wisdom as "why not fish flu?" when talking about the swine flu (or as the USDA urges us for the sake of the pork industry, only to call it H1N1), then going on to suggest that it was engineered by Capitalists to sell medication. Then, to cap it all off, he gave us the laughable "No, we love the Jews!" line of babble.
*Whew* About half way through, his translators had to tag off because the first guy was exhausted. By the end, the hall was barely half-empty. But the speech wasn't the only source of asininity in the Gaddafi story.
Because of the release of the Lockerbie bomber earlier this summer by Scottish authorities, US interests have been really, really dickish with his accommodations. Traditionally, visiting dignitaries to the UN are given lodging within 15 minutes of the UN building in NYC. Because of the fuss we've been putting up to this tinpot weirdo, he was more than 40 miles away in a pitched Bedouin tent on some property in Bedford owned by Donald Trump. Town officials in Bedford basically had him evicted because people had complained - if only they had granted him his original request to pitch the tent in Central Park!
This is the same guy who filed a motion for today's session to have Switzerland abolished and divided between France, Germany and Italy, after his son Hannibal was arrested in a Swiss hotel. The abolition motion was just part of an overall vendetta with the Swiss over the matter, including closing Swiss owned businesses and expelling their diplomats.
This man as a single entity rivals Nikita Khrushchev's shoe-pounding incident in 1960 in its absolute hilarity. Regardless of my low opinion of the UN, at least we'll have an entertaining year.
The man high up on the top o' the rostrum is Treki, and the goofy bastard down there is Gaddafi. I also suggest that you see the rest of the photos in the Mail's report. They really are something.
Things were cleared for insanity when Gaddafi's speech was delayed by some sort of protest on the General Assembly floor, which cameras refused to show or give the details of. When he finally got up to the podium, decorum dictates that heads of state would have 15 minutes for their speech.
1 hour, 36 minutes later I had no fucking clue what had just happened. The man went just about everywhere in his meandering oration. He waxed poetic about jet lag, suggested renaming the UN Security council "the terror council," and shat upon the UN charter (not literally, fortunately. I'd have shot myself if I had to see him lift his spiffy Bedouin robes to do that). He had such little bits of wisdom as "why not fish flu?" when talking about the swine flu (or as the USDA urges us for the sake of the pork industry, only to call it H1N1), then going on to suggest that it was engineered by Capitalists to sell medication. Then, to cap it all off, he gave us the laughable "No, we love the Jews!" line of babble.
*Whew* About half way through, his translators had to tag off because the first guy was exhausted. By the end, the hall was barely half-empty. But the speech wasn't the only source of asininity in the Gaddafi story.
Because of the release of the Lockerbie bomber earlier this summer by Scottish authorities, US interests have been really, really dickish with his accommodations. Traditionally, visiting dignitaries to the UN are given lodging within 15 minutes of the UN building in NYC. Because of the fuss we've been putting up to this tinpot weirdo, he was more than 40 miles away in a pitched Bedouin tent on some property in Bedford owned by Donald Trump. Town officials in Bedford basically had him evicted because people had complained - if only they had granted him his original request to pitch the tent in Central Park!
This is the same guy who filed a motion for today's session to have Switzerland abolished and divided between France, Germany and Italy, after his son Hannibal was arrested in a Swiss hotel. The abolition motion was just part of an overall vendetta with the Swiss over the matter, including closing Swiss owned businesses and expelling their diplomats.
This man as a single entity rivals Nikita Khrushchev's shoe-pounding incident in 1960 in its absolute hilarity. Regardless of my low opinion of the UN, at least we'll have an entertaining year.
15 September, 2009
Fading Stars
14 September marks just yet another example of truly great human beings dying, only to be overshadowed by a big name doing the same.
You probably have heard that actor Patrick Swayze lost a fight with cancer earlier today. Because of this, you may not have noticed that a man more important and consequential than a man who held film superstar status during the 1980s also passed on to the great hereafter. In fact, you probably had never heard of him.
Nobel Laureate and scientist, Norman Borlaug, died hours before. The man made massive inroads in genetic engineering, leading to his development of a highly productive strain of wheat. While bloviating opportunists were blowing hot air about starvation around the globe, especially on the continent of Africa, Borlaug was in the laboratory doing something about it. His brilliance and hard work saved easily millions of people from wasting away through long, painful deaths from starvation, and when he was given the Nobel Peace Prize it was thought that the lives he saved were upwards of 1,000,000,000 (for the numerically challenged, that's one billion.)
Even as groups like Greenpeace whipped up the winds of sensationalism to stoke the fire of political opportunism to destroy genetically modified foods in favor of idealistic, utopian and cripplingly inefficient and unreliable organic farming methods, Borlaug soldiered on. No one in my recent memory has done more for the human cause than Norman Borlaug (1914-2009).
Even if Red Dawn was a great action-propaganda film, Borlaug trumps Swayze. However, I bid them both requiescat in pace.
You probably have heard that actor Patrick Swayze lost a fight with cancer earlier today. Because of this, you may not have noticed that a man more important and consequential than a man who held film superstar status during the 1980s also passed on to the great hereafter. In fact, you probably had never heard of him.
Nobel Laureate and scientist, Norman Borlaug, died hours before. The man made massive inroads in genetic engineering, leading to his development of a highly productive strain of wheat. While bloviating opportunists were blowing hot air about starvation around the globe, especially on the continent of Africa, Borlaug was in the laboratory doing something about it. His brilliance and hard work saved easily millions of people from wasting away through long, painful deaths from starvation, and when he was given the Nobel Peace Prize it was thought that the lives he saved were upwards of 1,000,000,000 (for the numerically challenged, that's one billion.)
Even as groups like Greenpeace whipped up the winds of sensationalism to stoke the fire of political opportunism to destroy genetically modified foods in favor of idealistic, utopian and cripplingly inefficient and unreliable organic farming methods, Borlaug soldiered on. No one in my recent memory has done more for the human cause than Norman Borlaug (1914-2009).
Even if Red Dawn was a great action-propaganda film, Borlaug trumps Swayze. However, I bid them both requiescat in pace.
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