"Cuba? It was great, says boys freed from US prison camp," goes the headline of this article in the UK Guardian (most surprisingly!). "Asadullah strives to make his point, switching to English lest there be any mistaking him. 'I am lucky I went there, and now I miss it. Cuba was great,' said the 14-year-old... He spent a typical day watching movies, going to class and playing football. He was fascinated to learn about the solar system, and now enjoys reciting the names of the planets, starting with Earth."
Here's what we do: we set up an iterative timeline in which we capture portions of the population of the Third World, send them to Guantanamo Bay, educate them, then send them back home. We do this until every one of them can recite the names of the planets, starting with Earth. We force feed them a Copernican Revolution, and then let the snowball roll from there. Maybe we drop pamphlets with little astronomy lessons printed on them. Maybe they'll volunteer for reeducation then. All they really need is a change of perspective. That's got to cost less in the long run than conquest....
"If I could be anywhere," Asadullah says, "I would be in America. I would like to be a doctor, an engineer -- or an American soldier."Related to the Huns in the para-history of group (mis)classification during wartime are the Hessians. Like the Huns, these were also actually Germans, called Hessians because more than half of the 30,000 troops sent to the American Colonies (in revolt at the time) were from the German state of Hesse-Kassel. As British auxiliaries they fought all the way from the Battle of Long Island to Yorktown, although were less of a force after Washington beat their asses at Trenton (Christmas Eve, 1776 -- look it up, it's famous). Around 17k made it back home, ~8k died, and ~5k settled (most of them deserters or criminals that their commanders didn't want anymore).
Why all the different names for Germans? Because up until fairly recently, Germany wasn't really a country. History refers to German-speaking regions or German principalities (around 300 at times) or the Holy Roman Empire (aka the "First Reich"), or the Habsburgs, or the German Confederation, or the German Empire (aka the "Second Reich"), or the Weimar Republic, or the "Third Reich" (viz Nazis), or the German Democratic Republic (aka East Germany), or the Federal Republic of Germany (aka West Germany), which is what they call it now (or the EU?). But for how long...? A-and they were often thought of as barbarian hoards, so were derogatorily labeled Huns.
Don't (mis)understand me though: German cultures produced Wagner, Beethoven, Mozart, Nietzsche, Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Kafka, Mann, Goethe, Schiller, Einstein, Planck, Born, Copernicus, Heisenberg, von Braun, Oberth, Freud, Jung, Adler, Lang, Murnau, Dix, Kokoschka, Klimt, the Mausers, Heckler, Koch, Sauer -- and that's just from the stuff that *I* like. That's a lot of stuff. Compare to French cultures....Check out Philip Roth writing SF now. It's an alt history scheme where Charles Lindbergh defeats FDR in the 1940 presidential election. Roth maintains this would have been "bad for the Jews" as Lindbergh tries to appease Hitler. Which sounds pro-war to me, but maybe I've muddled the... er... message. Lindbergh typically gets a bad rap wrt preferring isolationism and neutrality in the War, but those rappers seem to forget that he flew over 50 combat missions in the Pacific war (as a civilian), and consulted to aviation companies (along with Robert Heinlein) to improve our fighters and bombers. But such is the strategy post-structure: all heroes will eventually be destroyed by manufactured ignominy.
"Every man that flies the ocean ... will always be just an imitation of Lindbergh."The House passed their indecency bill today (H.R.3717). It increases the penalties for "indecent" language in broadcast media by 18 times, up to $1/2 million per violation, and gives the FCC the ability to fine the offenders personally -- in parallel to the companies they work for. If those companies receive three violations the FCC will have the authority to revoke their licenses. Voting against the bill were only 26 Democrats and a single Republican (my hero Ron Paul of course, who is actually a Libertarian in an elephant costume). Both Pat Toomey and Curt Weldon from my own state were cosponsors of the bill. I will not be voting for them this year. The bill must still pass the Senate, and it almost certainly will. GWB has promised to sign it.
Perhaps it's worth noting that two of the greatest novels of the 20th century -- Ulysses and Lolita -- were both considered "indecent" or "obscene" when they were published. Imagine if governments had slapped financially crippling fines on Joyce and Nabokov for their work. There probably would have been no Finnegans Wake, no Pale Fire. That's what I call obscene.
Write your friggin Senators now!I've been practicing my barbering skills. Two weeks ago the Hair Snips franchise in the strip mall was stolen from the map. It will now be necessary for us to cut our own hair, or to conscript whoever shows some talent for it into service as the new Hair Snips franchise. We have been forced to resort to such measures in the past -- it's regrettable, but necessity spawns its own children, as the wise ones say.
Meanwhile, work in the Map Room has been set back. I had recently begun constructing a fantasy about political abandonment and social isolation, as well as assisting Dr. Jones in the creation of a poker playing robot, but these recent map disappearances became too great a distraction. First it was the courthouse and its adjacent police station; I assumed some error of representation, perhaps an optical illusion or a scaling error, but after measuring relative distances and weighing opposing volumes it became clear that that portion of the map had been removed: there was no longer a courthouse or a police station to be found. (This proved a great source of consternation for Beefy Lou since he had been scheduled for jury duty that week. "Won't they come and arrest for me not showing up?" he worried. Then I reminded him about the police station.)
Several days later, and no closer to finding an answer, I was visited by the hippies from the apartment next door, their normally chipper smiles and sparkling eyes grown weary and dim as they complained of being unable to locate their school. After that it was the movie theater on the south side of the river. Then it was the entire south side of the river. Clearly something terrible was happening. People would get into their automobiles to drive to work only to find that their places of employment had vanished. Some of them, having driven off the map, never returned. Television and radio signal transmitters disappeared, cell sites and relay stations, satellite and cable providers, all went off the map. Accident and illness victims were unable to locate hospitals or clinics and went untreated; pregnant women in need of delivery or abortion remained pregnant; senior citizens were left with Medicare funds at the end of the month. Even unemployment checks stopped showing up, along with the rest of the mail.
Blame was then tossed around as if it were mashed potato in the cafeteria of a rowdy high school where all the football players drag all the chess players into the bathrooms to drown -- most of it landing on me. My own suspicion was that Dr. Jones must have something to do with it, he being the only Evil Scientist around, and presumably the only one capable of such foul deeds. But he pleaded innocence based on motive: where was he to purchase solenoids and zinc without a convenience store? And something had better be done before the liquor store disappeared, he assured me.
We have adapted, and continue to seek a solution, but the situation is not pleasant. Just when we were getting used to life without walls surrounding us....