pretzel logic

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

 ° last night i heard the historian dan diner talking on tv about the changes  
 in us-politics: for the first time in history, diner said, the streamings of 
 'isolationism' and 'interventionism', during the 19th and 20th century 
 antagonists in american foreign politics, are flowing together. yes, i guess   
 one could say so. in policy fields like public international law or  
 climate-change (very relevant again over here since middle europe's recent  
 flood-catastrophy) the bush-administration does not give a fuck for the rest of 
 the world. as bush sr. once put it: "our life-style is not debatable". yesyes, 
 and human rights are exclusively violated by "evil-doers", eh? more and more i 
 understand what sloterdijk means when he says that, unlike europe, the usa are 
 still caught in a dark imperialistic dream (btw: will cuba after fidel's death 
 become a state of the us?) which makes them, in a certain sense, unreachable  
 for rational argumentation. brutal realpolitik covered with phony rhetorics.... 
 when we talk about the dangers of terrorism and about 9/11, the first country  
 to blame would of course be saudi-arabia: that's where money, (most) people and 
 this specific brand of dshihad-terrorism do come from! but of course - airbases 
 & oil make partners in crime - this will never happen. where's saddam's threat 
 to the us? i mean, it's touching that the bush-administration cares about    
 southern europe and even - big bitter laugh! - the kurds, but that's hardly a  
 reason to send the boys abroad.... (by the way, condie, i guess it's overdoing 
 it a little to say that "america sent her sons to free the german people from 
 hitler".... it weren't so much - think of the morgenthau-boys and their plans - 
 the german people america wanted to free: this was an accepted side-effect but 
 certainly not on the list of priorities). and if saddam really is so stupid to 
 attack israel, sharon, as he confirmed recently more than once, will drop  
 nuclear bombs on bagdad immediately. so where's the beef? sure, iraq still has 
 biological and chemical weapons, but not half as much as they had in the late  
 1980s. and when yesterday's oh so substancial 'blair-paper' (this "45 minutes" 
 -formulation is, i have to admit, kinda catchy....) says that saddam can get a 
 working bomb in 2 years, then this is,  i'm sorry to tell you, not very  
 impressive: taken today's market-situation many countries could do this.  
 (personally i worry more about the nuclear weapons of pakistan but this nation 
 is, as we all know, a close friend from the coalition against terror....)  
 perhaps this coming war is still stoppable, perhaps.... and if so, germany (now 
 again a player on the political world-stage) will perhaps play the role the  
 magic mountain wants her to play: a mediator between the east and the west.... 
 but don't worry: existing law-regulations (this was the prize for america's  
 support of the german re-unification) allow the us-army to use its german  
 airbases any time they like. so when the war starts the german people, chewing 
 on peanutbutter-sandwiches ("barney's best: crunchy"), will raise their heads  
 to the sky and sing:

 "hear the scream, hear the scream...."


                                                      später, kai °°°