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Post by Wyndham on Dec 23, 2004 6:05:47 GMT -5
Aravis, you know you'll always be number one on my list of subversives. Shocking, actually, that you, Tenarke and some of the other comrades here already aren't in detention. I'll have to wait for my turn in a boncentration bamp until we get continental policing.
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Post by Aravis on Dec 23, 2004 19:09:12 GMT -5
A boncentration bamp? ;D At any rate, consider me mollified.  |
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Post by Wyndham on Dec 23, 2004 19:38:49 GMT -5
"Boncentration Bamp" from the famous Monty Python skit. In brief: Hitler survives, and moves to Britain and sets up shop as Adolph Bitler. Assisting are Bimmler and Boering. There program is pretty much like Nazi Germany, but they disguise this by putting a 'b' in front of everything. Brits eat it up. Very like the contemporary US or, for that matter, like TRP: its not illegal detention if you can't, blast it, figure out the legal convention that applies; isn't torture, if you give it a nice name; isn't censorship -- really just a matter of respecting the unstated feelings of the silent majority.
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Post by Aravis on Dec 23, 2004 19:41:03 GMT -5
Monty Python, of course! I should have caught on sooner. :0)
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Post by Tenarke on Dec 23, 2004 23:05:46 GMT -5
Drat! An episode of Python which I obviously must have missed.
I was probably busy that night confusing my cat.
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Post by Wyndham on Dec 24, 2004 9:59:51 GMT -5
I got it wrong too. Been some time. Didn't put 'b's in front of everything, but did mess up names. Mr. Hilter running in the North Minehead by-election. Here's a link to the episode -- the same one where they have the 'upper class twit of the year award'. www.ibras.dk/montypython/episode12.htm |
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Post by Tenarke on Dec 25, 2004 19:53:32 GMT -5
Oh yes. Odd, how the memory works. I do remember the upper class twit race. Quite vivid in my memory. But the other bit quite faded out.
But then again I’ve got a 75th birthday coming up so I suppose I’m allowed.
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Post by Aravis on Dec 26, 2004 16:37:55 GMT -5
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Post by Aravis on Dec 27, 2004 4:06:58 GMT -5
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Post by Wyndham on Dec 28, 2004 10:19:53 GMT -5
Yes, very busy. Don't envy the US in Iraq right now. No matter what happens in the election in January there will be trouble. Fixing the vote to give more weight to the Sunnis (the powers that were, and economically still are) will only annoy the Shi'i and the Kurds. The Shi'i meanwhile are confident of victory, and the Kurds are emphatic -- if the Shi'i get the presidency, they want the premiership . . . but where does that leave the Sunnis?
Place is flypaper. US should have studied, and re-studied the British experience after 1918 before they went in. Once in, never out; and certainly never out with any sort of tolerably shambolic, and friendly regime in place. The best bit: five minutes after you're safely gone, your friends are hanging from hooks in the Baghdad bazaar.
So glad I live in a little town in Ontario, all the time, but sometimes more than others! Last disaster around here was the collapse of the tobacco industry, about twenty years ago. Took nearly a whole year for farmers to make the shift to soy.
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Post by RobertGraves on Dec 30, 2004 1:46:59 GMT -5
It will be interesting (but I suspect horrible) to see how the crisis unfolds in Sri Lanka, Thailand and other countries devastated by the tsunami. Disease may well kill more than the waters. I still can't believe that the biggest earthquake in 40 years didn't come with warnings from seismologists that coastal settlements were likely to be swamped. Very tragic when one considers the lives that would have been saved by an early warning - even 15 minutes more time would have saved thousands.
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Post by RobertGraves on Dec 30, 2004 1:51:46 GMT -5
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Nulla
Junior Member
Posts: 55
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Post by Nulla on Dec 30, 2004 11:24:48 GMT -5
Robert, the little I've been able to glean from the news stories is that the is no warning system in place for the Indian Ocean.... and, although seismologists in the US detected the quake they did not know whom to notify of the danger of the tsunami.... I don't know if I should cry or laugh.... either is hurtful.....
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Post by RobertGraves on Dec 30, 2004 13:52:59 GMT -5
120 000 dead should motivate someone to work out how to call an embassy in future.
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Post by RobertGraves on Dec 30, 2004 17:32:49 GMT -5
This is interesting:
"While debate continues to rage about whether the United States Government has been stingy in its reaction to the Asian tsunami, individual Americans have donated millions of dollars in aid.
Americans are responding generously to calls for private donations.
Retailer Amazon and computer-maker Apple have converted the front pages of their websites into pleas for gifts and donations.
Amazon customers have already raised more than $US6 million for the tsunami victims.
Many community groups are organising huge drives to raise more money.
Yet, the US Government continues to attract criticism for its $44 million aid contribution.
In a scathing editorial headed 'Are We Stingy? Yes', the New York Times describes the Bush administration's response as a "miserly drop in the bucket".
The influential publication scornfully says the Republican Party will spend almost that much on President Bush's inauguration next month.
The newspaper backed Democrat John Kerry in the presidential election in November.
Leading French daily Le Figaro has also taken a swipe at the United States Government, saying Washington's initial offer was "less than half the daily sales of dog and cat food in the US"."
SOURCE: ABC ONLINE JUST IN
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