Emptybottle.org

There’s this and then there’s this. I’m too tired to care anymore. How stupid do they think we are?

Mike points me to Douglas Ord’s piece ‘It Weren’t Just Hockey’, a timely link indeed for me, coming as it does hard on the heels of the recent Daypop-fueled kafuffle over Canuck Robert MacDougall’s rant about America. I think it illuminates quite ably some of the anger and resentment many Canadians feel towards America, by dwelling on the specifics of some events of which I was only vaguely aware. Much as the “Canada sux, d00d!” meme has taken over among the Youth Of America, fueled mostly, I think, by the Blame Canada! silliness in the South Park movie, lifted out of context and taken at face value, there seems to be little awareness in America of the reciprocal strength of real ill-will in many parts of Canadian society towards the 800-pound gorilla to the south. And if conjoined siblings are at odds, to a degree where some sort of ritualized catharsis is necessary, what of the rest of the world?

But the Toronto – New York series had an especially nasty edge, with the question widely asked as to whether hockey had reached a new low.
The series went a full seven games, & was ultimately won by the Maple Leafs on home ice, four games to three.
It also featured bizarre anomalies.
Among them was persistent booing of the Canadian national anthem in New York, even as the US national anthem was cheered in Toronto.
The booing in New York only got louder as the series went on, notwithstanding that the night before the series began on April 18th, four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan had been killed, & eight wounded, by a laser-guided bomb dropped by a US F-16 fighter plane.

[image found at the ‘pile]

In fact the entire period of the series, from April 18th to 30th, was one of confused national mourning in Canada, on account of the killing of the four soldiers, who were the first Canadian combat casualties in nearly fifty years, & who were victims of the US Air Force.
Nevertheless, it has now emerged that for the sixth game of the series, & the last in New York, the audience there did more than just loudly boo the Canadian national anthem.
According to Bruce Arthur in the May 2nd National Post, a paper I don’t much like but that sometimes has interesting tidbits, the opera student who had sung both national anthems in Toronto for an earlier game got a surprise when he arrived in New York for the sixth one:
“Days after being cheered as he sang the Canadian and American anthems before an NHL playoff game in Toronto, Robert Pomakov watched, horrified, as unruly New York hockey fans burned his Canadian flag in the parking lot of Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum.
“Mr. Pomakov, an opera singer, saw both his Canadian and his Toronto Maple Leaf flags torn from his car and set on fire by a crowd chanting ‘USA! USA!’ in the moments before Sunday’s Game 6 between the Leafs and the New York Islanders.
“‘We lost four of our soldiers and they were basically defending these idiots,’ an outraged Mr. Pomakov said. “If patriotism is what drives these people and their ignorance, then I am ashamed to have our soldiers defending them… There’s a line that needs to be drawn, and this was just so far across.”
What Pomakov did not mention, of course, was that the Canadian soldiers were not just killed while implicitly defending American citizens from “terrorist attack.” They were killed by an American fighter pilot, and are the only Canadians to be killed, or even wounded, in the war in Afghanistan.
Nor, it should be noted, did the American mob shout “New York! New York!” or “Islanders! Islanders!” while burning the Canadian flag.
Instead they chanted “USA! USA!”.
This being the chant which accompanied George W. Bush’s first visit to the ruins of the World Trade Centre in that same New York City, & which has become the semi-official vocal accompaniment to the “war on terror.”
[more…]

If you haven’t had enough of America bashing, peruse this and this, and get back to me. For the record, I’m in almost complete agreement with the authors of these pieces, and wonder how much longer it can go on before the American people wake up and rise up.

Japanese researchers have found film footage in Pyongyang indicating the United States conducted germ warfare against China and North Korea during the Korean War.
Pretzelboy, of course, would never mention America’s role in the proliferation of this kind of evil while stumbling over the phonetically-spelled gradeschool-bully scripts his handlers have him mouth.
The wiggly lines emanating from my eyes indicate rage, contempt and hatred.
Edit : Now let me get this straight. Iraq’s use of gas has been repeatedly cited by President Bush and by his national security advisor as justification for ”regime change” in Iraq. But the New York Times is quoting ‘senior military officers’ as saying that “there was a covert U.S. program during the Reagan administration to provide Iraq with battle planning assistance at a time when intelligence agencies knew Iraqi commanders would use chemical weapons in waging the decisive battles of the Iran-Iraq war”.
That’s funny, isn’t it? Speaking of “regime change“….

Inspired by Shelley and Jonathan, who said :

I did about 3 minutes worth of research to bring you some lists of those prominent Americans who avoided military service but are now, unsurprisingly, waggling their thanato-erotic weenies around with the most vigor.
Here’s a good list, and here, a more partisan one, but still informative.
A sampler :

I also noticed that one of the warbloggers with whom Bb has been debating (in an admirably reasonable, evenhanded fashion, I must admit), has said that the epithet ‘warblogger’ is no longer fashionable.
In light of this, and my strong suspicion that most if not all of these armchair wannabe warriors would detumesce and piss their pants the first time they saw a human corpse up close and personal, I’d like to submit for your consideration some possible new names for them :

Item 1 : An international human rights group files a lawsuit against the ExxonMobil oil company, accusing it of actively abetting human rights abuses in Indonesia, and complicity in the murder, torture and sexual abuse of the local population, including supplying the Indonesian military with equipment to dig mass graves, as well as building interrogation and torture centres.
Item 2 : The US State Department urges the federal court to dismiss the lawsuit and declares that pursuit of the case would hinder Washington’s war on terror.
Item 3 : Top industry contributors to Bush/Cheney election campaign :

Item 4 : The Financial Times doesn’t even attempt embroidery : “Washington says, the lawsuit could discourage foreign investment in Indonesia, particularly in the energy and mining industries. ”
I am moved, as I have been at other times, to say f–k the Bush administration, f–k them in the eye with a dead donkey’s wasabi-dipped dick. They are pure evil. I am daily more and more of the opinion that it is the responsibility of every ethical person, American or otherwise, to oppose these filthy bastards to the full extent of their powers, by every legal means at your disposal.

And as for you bloodthirsty little father-figure worshipping lickspittles collectively known as ‘warbloggers’? Well, we all know the root cause of your infantile needs to invade, overwhelm and subjugate, don’t we?
How’s that for debate?