Some Guy Called Fred

I have no idea who this guy is. The 'Subscribe' link doesn't work. There is no contact information. But he's brilliant. Plus, he smokes cigars.

He's at http://www.fredoneverything.net/

In regards to US foreign policy, I've yet to read anything more succinct and appropriate.

Read at your own peril.

From Fred: (should he take the helm of the nation...)

I fear that I shall have to take the helm of the nation, to see that the ship of state founder not on vast shoals of idiots. (This is a full-service column.) You may ask, “Fred, why do you think yourself competent to do this?” To which I reply, Consider what we have. Do you prefer assured disaster to a gleam of hope?

Now, to work.

The military: My first step will be to discard strategic imbecility as national policy, thus unemploying a great many strategic imbeciles. Henceforth the armed forces will concern themselves with defending the United States—not Korea, Japan, Afghanist-freaking-stan for god’s sake, nor Europe nor the back side of the moon nor the nether reaches of the Crab Nebula. Just America. You know, that place between Canada and Mexico.

Now, how much military to we need to defend America, as distinct from remote galaxies and places no one in his right mind can spell? Very little. To invade the US properly, you need a border with it, which means Canada, which doesn’t want the US, and Mexico, which doesn’t need an army to get it. The other way to invade is with a Shores of Iwo Jima fleet with some manner of John Wayne on it, being fiercely inarticulate and photogenic. No other country has, is building, or wants such a fleet, and if they did land-based aircraft would make a gorgeous barbecue out of it way the hell and gone out to sea. We don’t really need a navy at all, actually, navies being at best obsolescent and, in our case, usually getting us in trouble. These days, the fleet chiefly looks ridiculous threatening places that pay no attention to it.

Afghanistan: I would apply the exit strategy enunciated by the great James P. Coyne, who taught Clausewitz everything the old Kraut knew. The strategy is, “OK, on the plane. Now.” The simplicity is breathtaking, its effectiveness certain. We’ve got no business being there, we’re killing people who don’t need killing, and nothing good can come of it.

Iraq: See above. Further, I will withdraw from South Korea, Japan, and NATO, on the grounds that they either have no enemies or can defend themselves perfectly well. NATO in particular only involves us in disaster, or we involve it in disaster, and I see no point in continuing to breast feed it.

Next, I will give the navy three months to get anything it profoundly values out of Guantanamo, where we have no business being, and then lift the embargo, which is an expression of adolescent temper. I will then treat Cuba as what it is, an island of people no worse than any other, who do not need stupid mistreatment by a large bratty neighbor. This would improve relations with Latin America, a good idea since we are decreasingly able to behave with normal meddlesomeness.

Next, I will essay the unthinkable for American diplomacy, if it be such, namely cultivating some slight understanding of how others see things instead of always sending the Marines. I know, I know: I risk being called a commie homo prevert, and accused of hating America, and not being brainlessly truculent in the name of endocrine patriotism. But I will make this sacrifice for my country.

For example, Iran, which mysteriously seems not to like us. Why might Iranians not appreciate our enthusiasms for democracy and human rights? In 1953 the wretched CIA, always making trouble for us, overthrew the elected ruler and installed the Shah, a brutal bastard. What did we care? We were surfing at Malibu. Then we supported our good ally Saddam Hussein against Iran in a bloody war started for us by Saddam, and now we freeze Iran’s assets and threaten to bomb it, and we wreck its perfectly legal atomic program with funny viruses. How could that upset them? Baffling.

So I’ll invite their Maximum Leader Ahmadinnerjacket to the fuehrerbunker on Pennsylvania Avenue. He is a murdering, repressive thug, like most of ourallies, and deserves the same courtesies. I will sy, “Listen…Shall I call you Ahma, or do you prefer Mr. Dinnerjacket?...anyway, I can’t see any reason in all sprawling creation why Iran needs to be our enemy. Let’s stop. It’s stupid and, worse, boring. So we’ll drop these dumb-ass sanctions and quit threatening you, and if you are doing something bad, stop, and you mind your business and we’ll mind ours—I know this part is inconceivable, but we’ll do it. Is that a concept, or what?”

The principle here is that we don’t need to be enemies with most of the people we are enemies with, but if we didn’t have enemies we wouldn’t know who we were or what to do in the morning. Or how to get funding for the Five-Sided War Box.

Latin America: Here I will adopt another revolutionary principle, namely Don’t get in their faces if you don’t have to. More bluntly, under my rule we will keep our long intrusive noses out of other people’s shorts. Stop telling Bolivians they can’t chew coca leaves, which they have done forever, since it’s none of our damn business what Bolivians chew. Rocks, grass, hog entrails, it’s their call.

Now, I don’t want to go too deeply into theoretical physics here but: Recently a couple of supposed American agents of ICE, the immigration blackguards, were ambushed deep in Mexico, and one killed. Hooha erupted, and the FBI is going to investigate. The Mexican press asked the obvious question, which is Why is Mexico afflicted by so many meddlesome gringo goofballs? It’s our country, they say.

Anyway, MIT recently published an extensive peer-reviewed paper establishing that if you aren’t in Mexico, or Iraq, you can’t get killed there. It’s physics. Show me one person killed in Mexico who was somewhere else at the time. Under my rule, we will stay where we belong. Which is to say, very few places.

Finally, I will adopt the realpolitik notion of backing the right horse. American policy to date has been to support the most sordid torturing dictator it can find, while singing America the Beautiful and Koom Bah Yah and We Shall Overcome. What if, instead of engaging in almost carnal intercourse with every godawful Central American general, whose hobby is pulling fingernails off Indians for the benefit of American corporations. we insisted that the United Fruits of the world (in the botanical sense) pay a decent wage, absorbed the additional twelve cents a pound for mangos, and had the Guats or whatever love us? Smart, yes. Happen? Not under that daffy blonde and her rat pack of Neoconservative dwarves. Under my administration, watch.

I shall take my rightful power soon. As soon as I finish this bottle of Padre Kino.

Pasty Faced Anarchists Are Upon Us

From Dean Williams at DNA:

At Wadsworth prison in England, Julian Assange is moved into an isolation unit, ostensibly for his own protection. But protection from whom? Assange is not a ‘convicted’ sex criminal, nor is he a paedophile, the two crimes that virtually assure a shank in the neck in most prisons. So one can only presume that he’s being protected from outside forces hell bent on his demise.

The worst thing that could possibly happen to world governments is the murder of Assange. Death by foul means will instantly make him the world’s first digital martyr. The martyrdom of their arch-foe is the last thing cloak and dagger-loving governments need, because you see, the world is changing, and WikiLeaks has proved to be the catalyst for the cataclysm.

All across the globe, pasty-faced, anorak-clad youth are emerging from their parents’ basements and staring at the sun — their sun, not ours and it as a wrathful sun. As the Internet snakes its way into homes where just a few years ago newspapers and TV channels were the only source of, often unreliable, information the scent of anarchy — unadulterated and unflinching — is in the air.

Over the last few decades of the 20th century and the opening spasms of the 21st, anarchy in its truest sense was relegated to fiction and urban legend. Assange may not be a Fawkesian idealist with a penchant for arson, but he is an anarchist nevertheless. Christopher Hitchens hit the nail on the head when he described Assange as a megalomaniac, but which anarchist isn’t. Quite like the martyrs we love to put on pedestals and crosses, there is a smidgen of narcissism in all of them… the legacy of life in death.

The world may be modernising at a pace that would make an astronaut’s head spin, but the machines of state are creaky, and hark to a day when the diplomatic corps ran the world with a smugness that begged to be drawn and quartered. The Internet is more than just a virtual spanner in the globe’s political works, it is a highway to the truth; and as we all know, the truth hurts. Assange will soon fade, his name will become but a footnote in the pages of a history being written as we speak. His WikiLeaks has released nothing capable of bringing down governments or sending nations to war. What it has done, however, is to give the Internet and its teeming minions a route map to a future. A future where nothing is sacred, and the stench of dirty laundry hangs heavy in the air.

It is a future like nothing we can imagine — one where the old guard stands bowed against the hordes of Huns with carpal-tunnel; one where an outdated moral code is shredded to make way for an amoral universe. This world is closer than you think and thanks to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter et al, it is gaining strength every day.

To wax cliché, the winds of change are gaining hurricane strength. We must not stand in their way; rather we must open our closets and throw the skeletons out into the street. Let no government stand in our way, no politician ever decide our path for us. It is the Age of the Anarchist…rejoice, for finally, the geek shall inherit the Earth.

Mother Alberta Bans High Alcohol Beer

Dear Mother Alberta,

Your recent decision to ban high alcohol beer really makes no sense to us, but deep down we know you only did it because you care.

Even though we like to think we are all growned up now, sometimes we still like to drink beer like our Daddies did.

We remember how they would drink and then act all happy crazy and sometimes that was a bit scary. You would come and gather us up, like a hen gathers her chicks, and under your apron we would find refuge from those decadent swillers.

Now that you are making sure we can never follow their footsteps into debauchery, we are wondering when you will ban the drinks they liked; whiskey and vodka and wine, which have much higher alcohol content than the beer you forbid us to drink. Why can we still buy that at the local liquor store?

Are you sure you didn't do this because your boyfriends at Labatts and Molson don't make any good tasting high alcohol beer, but dirty, small-minded local boys do?

In our sad moments, we sometimes think those big-business boyfriends who come around to visit so often have convinced you to "do things" by giving you all those pretty gifts and cash.

But that would make you... oh, Mom. Forgive us for doubting your pure intentions.

We hope you will let us drink good beer in the future, but if you don't we know its for our own good.

Never doubting your love for us,

The Sons of Alberta

Yup

Complete idiocy.