Saturday, December 16, 2006

Political Science Part. 0.125

I think we're all obligated to be gestalt idealists regarding world affairs. World peace, one love, imagine.mp3. Actually, I like possessions, for example my John Lennon CDs, but anyway. If we have any friends who do not share the basic ideals we should be careful to put other friends before them. Anyway again, the way to achieve these goals is through ruthless shrewdness, niggardly politiking, and good PR work.
My right wing friends seem to share my ideals (ergo they're not bad people) but misunderstand how to get things done. As a short softie with a penchant for drunkenly hurling racial epithets at exactly the wrong people but who has never, ever gotten off anything other than unscathed (not to mention other things) I feel more qualified than the average 21-year old about talking my way out of difficult situations. Heavy-handed threats of violence do nothing to inspire confidence, much less admiration. Violence itself is as empty as threats when you're dealing with hundreds of sovereign nations that think your neurons fire slower than theirs because you were violent. The neo-cons knew less about the world than Rob Babcock knew about Alonzo Mourning, and Bill Kristol's pontifications, though good for erections, are tough to trust when he's been consistently wrong for years.
I hope Kristol, David Horowitz, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Jeane Kirkpatrick and the rest of their ilk are happy knowing that they'll be recorded in history as vainglorious failures whose poor judgement helped cause hundreds of thousands of deaths. The only joy in watching their policies fail is knowing that, unlike the enemies in Dylan's "Hurricane" they will live to see in their martinis reflections of their legacies as followers of the wrong path.
Moving right along, the way out of this Western mess is to forge a society of allies. Canada has done a remarkable job of this; we have embassies in Iran and Syria. The United States needs to realize why and how it has a long-standing friendship with Saudi Arabia, and apply this reasoning to every other country that both likes and hates them. Let's not shit ourselves: pragmatism to fulfill idealism.

Worrysome Aspects

1. My friends and I are on poor footing. We men are mice. DT, AD and I have all been single for forever. JR and AE are in long-term relationships they're not really happy with but don't have the willpower to break off, probably because they're afraid of being like people like me right now. It's a strange sort of ice age that's enveloping the majority of my good friends and it's unsettling. Particularly because we're all at a similar stage (nearing graduation) when change should be something we're expecting. What I'm saying is obvious so I don't think I need to go on.
Even more unsettling is how I'm getting farther away from my friends who are actually doing things with their lives. And by "getting farther away from" I mean calling them less and less, and it tends to be on my watch that communication gets disconnected, often for months. I don't really know what ED, BC, and LS are up to, and I especially don't like that those are supposed to be my three closest girl friends. Of course, they're all somewhat disconnected from me spatially (literally), so it's understandable, and probably a better conclusion is that I still don't really know how to manage friends of the opposite sex. At least not nearly as well as I manage my fellow men.
The burden of the past isn't so much the issue of remembering the past so much as it is being part of the "the past" schema. I doubt YZ and I will ever be the blood-brother-esque (not the band unfortunately) best friends we were back in the day, and I think it's because we are "back in the day" to each other. We reek like long distance relationships and parental conflicts and cultural confusion can when you know those things aren't going to matter again. What use am I to a burgeoning diplomat at an ivy league school? I foresee many, many years of increasingly infrequent (and they're already quite uncommon) get-togethers for drinks, reminiscing, and vague disapproval.

2. My brothers, who for forever was quite popular, told me tonight that he essentially has no friends. It was, like the above, unsettling. It looks as though there's this structure of friends that everyone has in their lives through high school and university that dissolves afterwards into a mess of everymanforhimselfselp. I've said for quite a while that the unspoken appeal of shows like Friends (for twenty-somethings) and Seinfeld (for thirty-somethings) is the continued existence of the social life. That when we're older we really will have friends instead of just going drinking with our fellow doctors every Friday and a barbecue with the old crowd every time someone has a birthday. Watching as our friends, one by one, get married off and die alone for all we care with how offended we are by it. Because I think that's the second biggest lie of those shows: that all these people stay single for so long, or at least remain loyal primarily to their friends. Not going to happen.

Saturday, December 02, 2006

Press Release

Party for the Animals gains 2 parliamentary seats in the Netherlands


Amsterdam, 11/23/2006 – On Wednesday, November 22, the Dutch political Party of the Animals gained 2 seats in the 150-member legislature in The Netherlands. This makes the Netherlands the first country in the world in which a party for animal welfare is elected into a representative body of the people.

“We are thrilled with such a wonderful result of our campaign”, says party leader Marianne Thieme. “Finally we can start realizing our party’s highest priority, namely ending all animal suffering. We want a constitutional amendment, guaranteeing animals the right to freedom from pain, fear and stress caused by humans. Let’s begin with easing the suffering of the hundreds of millions of cows, pigs and chickens stuck in factory farming”, she said. Thieme feels success in the Netherlands could help the movement elsewhere. One of the party’s purposes is to be an inspiration for other countries and animal rights activists.

A growing number of Dutch people are wondering why it is necessary to have economic interests prevail over ethical considerations when it comes to animal welfare and the interests of nature and the environment. “The Party for the Animals expresses this concern that so many Dutch have”, says Esther Ouwehand, number two on the party list, explaining the party’s victory.

The party and viewpoints of party leader Marianne Thieme received a great deal of media attention. After law school and a brief corporate career, she decided to enter politics as an advocate for all animals and founded the Party for the Animals. A large number of well known Dutch authors such as Jan Wolkers, Kees van Kooten, Maarten ’t Hart and Harry Mulisch have joined the Party for the Animals. 20 of the party’s 30 candidates are opinion leaders in the Netherlands. Also a number of business people have contributed large sums of money to the Party for the Animals, allowing for a full-fledged political campaign.

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Not saying anything, just saying.