| GREG-STRANGE.COM |
"If you haven't found something strange during the
day, it hasn't been much of a day." -- John A. Wheeler
day, it hasn't been much of a day." -- John A. Wheeler
PROVIDING SUBSTANTIVE COMMENTARY ON THE
PEOPLE, POLITICS, EVENTS AND ABSURDITIES OF
OUR TIME. SERVED UP WITH ACERBIC WIT, YOU
SHOULD FIND IT QUITE SATISFYING.
PEOPLE, POLITICS, EVENTS AND ABSURDITIES OF
OUR TIME. SERVED UP WITH ACERBIC WIT, YOU
SHOULD FIND IT QUITE SATISFYING.
How About A UN For Decent Countries Only
Back in 2004 during the weeks leading up to the U.S.
presidential election, a columnist by the name of Charlie
Brooker, who wrote for the British newspaper the Guardian
Unlimited, voiced two lamentations in one of his columns.
First, he lamented that Bush would probably win despite the
prayers of “the entire civilized world.” And second, he
lamented, in a manner of speaking, when he asked the
question: “John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald and John
Hinckley Jr. -- where are you now that we need you?”
Such a clever but not-so-subtle way of saying that he’d like to
see the American cowboy president get offed rather than for the
world to have to “endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance
and unwarranted bloodshed.” The Guardian later apologized
for Brooker’s “flippant and tasteless” comments which were
intended as “an ironic joke, not as a call to action.”
On the other hand, back in 1989 when Iran’s supreme leader,
the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a death warrant on
Salman Rushdie for alleged blasphemy in his novel “The
Satanic Verses,” it was indeed a call to action and definitely
not an ironic joke. When those guys talk about offing someone,
they’re not kidding around. Which is why “the entire civilized
world” that was referenced in Charlie Brooker’s
aforementioned column might want to take seriously the words
of current Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is on
record saying that Israel needs to be wiped off the map.
The easiest way to do the wiping would be with a nuclear
weapon and gosh darn it if Iran isn’t frantically working to gain
such a weapon even as it insists to the world that all it wants is
peaceful nuclear energy. Yeah, right. In one of the most oil
rich nations on earth. If they can just get electricity that is
generated by nuclear power, then everything in that Islamic
dictatorship will be hunky-dory.
In reality, of course, nuclear-generated electricity would not
be the key ingredient to Iranian hunky-doriness. For insight
into the real key, one need only consider a recent speech by
Ahmadgenocide (gee, did I misspell his name?) in which he
said that “the basic problem in the Islamic world is the
existence of the Zionist regime.” It would appear to be pretty
obvious that removing the thorn of Israel from the Islamic
world’s side is the primary focus of the mad hatters running
Iran, which brings us back to the issue of it seeking nuclear
weapons.
Besides having the obsessive belief that Israel is the source of
all Islamic problems, Ahmadgenocide also happens to be a true
believer in imminent apocalyptic occurrences based on his
particular brand of Islam. By “imminent” I mean as soon as
any day now, but certainly within his lifetime. It’s all about the
return of the 12th Imam, Muhammad ibn Hasan, who is
purported to be the righteous descendant of the Prophet
Muhammad. And guess what? His return will be preceded by
cosmic chaos, war and pestilence. How convenient is that
when you’re looking for an excuse to start a nuclear war with
the Zionist regime that is the supposed source of all your
problems?
All of which leads us to the issue of the bloated and
thoroughly corrupt organization known as the United Nations,
which recently provided a world stage for the bizarre, beady-
eyed Ahmadgenocide. The question is why -- why lend this
obvious kook and Holocaust denier even a modicum of
legitimacy by allowing him to speak at the UN and basically
giving him equal billing with the world’s more sensible
leaders?
Well, maybe it’s because the UN doesn’t view him as being
particularly weird or radical, just another perfectly legitimate
world leader speaking truth to the American hyperpower. Or
maybe it’s because it doesn’t want to make any offensive value
judgments about any particular leader because that might put
a lie to the whole concept that the world’s nations can come
together and do what’s best for the world rather than act
exclusively in their own selfish self-interests like most of them
actually do.
Or maybe it’s both of the above. In any case, it was bad
enough giving Ahmadgenocide a stage with his nefarious aura
and apocalyptic buncombe. But then they had to go and turn it
over to Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan leftist buffoon who came
off more like Don Rickles than like an actual leader of a
country. That’s because he couldn’t lay off the insulting
zingers against President Bush, particularly the ones in which
he called Bush the devil. After the fifth or sixth time the
routine had begun to lose its comedic edge, but still he kept on,
even mentioning the lingering smell of sulfur on two occasions.
His speech was an absolute classic of Yankee-imperialist,
woe-is-us, poor-downtrodden-Third-World clichés. He started
swinging right out of the box, his second sentence hawking a
book by the notorious America-hating American professor,
Noam Chomsky. It went downhill from there as he accused
America under George W. Bush of imperialism, fascism,
assassination, genocide and empire-building.
He pretty much brought the house down, or at least that part
of the house where the seats were overflowing with disgruntled
America-haters. After his speech he cleverly -- or, you might
even say, devilishly -- went to Harlem to highlight his program
of providing poor Americans with Venezuela-subsidized
heating oil. What a magnanimous philanthropist! In the
meantime, back home, half the population of his own country
is mired in intransigent poverty despite its vast oil reserves.
But as asinine as Chavez and his world view are, he did voice
one really stellar idea: “Maybe we have to put the United
Nations somewhere else; maybe a city of the south. We’ve
proposed Venezuela.”
Fantastic! Move the whole thing lock, stock and barrel to
Caracas. Incredible idea! The sooner the better!
If only.
But only in Chavez’s most delirious pipe dream. Does he
really believe that the high-falootin’ UN crowd so used to
hobnobbing in tony Manhattan would be content in a new
building a stone’s throw from the slums of Caracas in an
unstable country never more than one disgruntled
revolutionary away from a coup? But hey, let him put up a
building and see if anyone comes.
If there even has to be a United Nations, then there ought to
be one that is exclusively for the decent countries of the world.
It’s generally pretty obvious who they are, though certainly not
always (I’d love to hear the debate over whether or not to allow
France in). But this business of letting any country in, no
matter how despicable, and in the process granting them a
kind of undeserved legitimacy, does the world zero good and, it
can be argued, a whole lot of bad.
It wouldn’t mean the decent countries would have no contact
with the others. There would still be embassies and diplomats
just like always to maintain at least a perfunctory level of
contact. But there would be no more provision of a legitimacy-
endowing world stage for strutting psychos, Holocaust-denying
holocaust planners and various and sundry other rogues,
terror supporters and presidents-for-life.
It would be a beautiful thing -- and I saw it all in my most
delirious pipe dream.
Back in 2004 during the weeks leading up to the U.S.
presidential election, a columnist by the name of Charlie
Brooker, who wrote for the British newspaper the Guardian
Unlimited, voiced two lamentations in one of his columns.
First, he lamented that Bush would probably win despite the
prayers of “the entire civilized world.” And second, he
lamented, in a manner of speaking, when he asked the
question: “John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald and John
Hinckley Jr. -- where are you now that we need you?”
Such a clever but not-so-subtle way of saying that he’d like to
see the American cowboy president get offed rather than for the
world to have to “endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance
and unwarranted bloodshed.” The Guardian later apologized
for Brooker’s “flippant and tasteless” comments which were
intended as “an ironic joke, not as a call to action.”
On the other hand, back in 1989 when Iran’s supreme leader,
the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a death warrant on
Salman Rushdie for alleged blasphemy in his novel “The
Satanic Verses,” it was indeed a call to action and definitely
not an ironic joke. When those guys talk about offing someone,
they’re not kidding around. Which is why “the entire civilized
world” that was referenced in Charlie Brooker’s
aforementioned column might want to take seriously the words
of current Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is on
record saying that Israel needs to be wiped off the map.
The easiest way to do the wiping would be with a nuclear
weapon and gosh darn it if Iran isn’t frantically working to gain
such a weapon even as it insists to the world that all it wants is
peaceful nuclear energy. Yeah, right. In one of the most oil
rich nations on earth. If they can just get electricity that is
generated by nuclear power, then everything in that Islamic
dictatorship will be hunky-dory.
In reality, of course, nuclear-generated electricity would not
be the key ingredient to Iranian hunky-doriness. For insight
into the real key, one need only consider a recent speech by
Ahmadgenocide (gee, did I misspell his name?) in which he
said that “the basic problem in the Islamic world is the
existence of the Zionist regime.” It would appear to be pretty
obvious that removing the thorn of Israel from the Islamic
world’s side is the primary focus of the mad hatters running
Iran, which brings us back to the issue of it seeking nuclear
weapons.
Besides having the obsessive belief that Israel is the source of
all Islamic problems, Ahmadgenocide also happens to be a true
believer in imminent apocalyptic occurrences based on his
particular brand of Islam. By “imminent” I mean as soon as
any day now, but certainly within his lifetime. It’s all about the
return of the 12th Imam, Muhammad ibn Hasan, who is
purported to be the righteous descendant of the Prophet
Muhammad. And guess what? His return will be preceded by
cosmic chaos, war and pestilence. How convenient is that
when you’re looking for an excuse to start a nuclear war with
the Zionist regime that is the supposed source of all your
problems?
All of which leads us to the issue of the bloated and
thoroughly corrupt organization known as the United Nations,
which recently provided a world stage for the bizarre, beady-
eyed Ahmadgenocide. The question is why -- why lend this
obvious kook and Holocaust denier even a modicum of
legitimacy by allowing him to speak at the UN and basically
giving him equal billing with the world’s more sensible
leaders?
Well, maybe it’s because the UN doesn’t view him as being
particularly weird or radical, just another perfectly legitimate
world leader speaking truth to the American hyperpower. Or
maybe it’s because it doesn’t want to make any offensive value
judgments about any particular leader because that might put
a lie to the whole concept that the world’s nations can come
together and do what’s best for the world rather than act
exclusively in their own selfish self-interests like most of them
actually do.
Or maybe it’s both of the above. In any case, it was bad
enough giving Ahmadgenocide a stage with his nefarious aura
and apocalyptic buncombe. But then they had to go and turn it
over to Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan leftist buffoon who came
off more like Don Rickles than like an actual leader of a
country. That’s because he couldn’t lay off the insulting
zingers against President Bush, particularly the ones in which
he called Bush the devil. After the fifth or sixth time the
routine had begun to lose its comedic edge, but still he kept on,
even mentioning the lingering smell of sulfur on two occasions.
His speech was an absolute classic of Yankee-imperialist,
woe-is-us, poor-downtrodden-Third-World clichés. He started
swinging right out of the box, his second sentence hawking a
book by the notorious America-hating American professor,
Noam Chomsky. It went downhill from there as he accused
America under George W. Bush of imperialism, fascism,
assassination, genocide and empire-building.
He pretty much brought the house down, or at least that part
of the house where the seats were overflowing with disgruntled
America-haters. After his speech he cleverly -- or, you might
even say, devilishly -- went to Harlem to highlight his program
of providing poor Americans with Venezuela-subsidized
heating oil. What a magnanimous philanthropist! In the
meantime, back home, half the population of his own country
is mired in intransigent poverty despite its vast oil reserves.
But as asinine as Chavez and his world view are, he did voice
one really stellar idea: “Maybe we have to put the United
Nations somewhere else; maybe a city of the south. We’ve
proposed Venezuela.”
Fantastic! Move the whole thing lock, stock and barrel to
Caracas. Incredible idea! The sooner the better!
If only.
But only in Chavez’s most delirious pipe dream. Does he
really believe that the high-falootin’ UN crowd so used to
hobnobbing in tony Manhattan would be content in a new
building a stone’s throw from the slums of Caracas in an
unstable country never more than one disgruntled
revolutionary away from a coup? But hey, let him put up a
building and see if anyone comes.
If there even has to be a United Nations, then there ought to
be one that is exclusively for the decent countries of the world.
It’s generally pretty obvious who they are, though certainly not
always (I’d love to hear the debate over whether or not to allow
France in). But this business of letting any country in, no
matter how despicable, and in the process granting them a
kind of undeserved legitimacy, does the world zero good and, it
can be argued, a whole lot of bad.
It wouldn’t mean the decent countries would have no contact
with the others. There would still be embassies and diplomats
just like always to maintain at least a perfunctory level of
contact. But there would be no more provision of a legitimacy-
endowing world stage for strutting psychos, Holocaust-denying
holocaust planners and various and sundry other rogues,
terror supporters and presidents-for-life.
It would be a beautiful thing -- and I saw it all in my most
delirious pipe dream.