~ with the price of 'soothing and cooling' aloe gel at an exorbitant $5.99, even for the store brand, it would cheaper to purchase sunblock in advance and avoid the sunburn all together. at these prices, it looks like we will be stuck with treatment of the medicinal properties of water and air.

~ john edwards has a toothy smile, we are agreed, but can we lay off the condescending predictions that all southerners are going to swoon and rise for this guy just because he has an accent, as though we can not study speeches and debates before making a decision? who are the southerners who voted for clinton? were they all transplants from up north? where will these characterizations lead? that every woman will vote for hillary clinton and elizabeth dole, even if they were opponents? or that every black person would vote for al sharpton and vernon robinson, the latter billing himself as the ‘black jesse helms’? maybe this is all true, and southerners will vote for someone who is ‘one of us’, after all many of them were duped by a 'texan' from connecticut, if so, this country, tragically, is more of a cartoon than we had feared.

~ concerning iraq’s new national security laws, from the washington post:

The country’s human rights minister, Baktiar Amin, compared the new Iraqi law to the U.S.A. Patriot Act, the U.S. law enacted after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that gives broader powers to law enforcement authorities in pursuit of suspected terrorists.

christ, is that really something about which to brag? or is mr. amin rubbing the patriot act in our face? could law be any more martial than it is when enforced by 130,000 foreign troops? if so, well done!

~ note: this rant was actually composed on independence day, but our office’s internet connection was severed, due to our inability to pay the bills, before we could post it. we are going to use our phones for further posts, at least until our phone is also disconnected:

elanor clift in newsweek:

“Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is a former Baath Party member who turned against Saddam Hussein and has longstanding ties to the CIA. He is a potential dictator – a Saddam Lite, if you will. ‘But he’s ours,’ says Kemp. The Iraqi people want security restored far more than they care about western fruits of democracy like civil liberties.”

the chilling hints of ‘our man in baghdad’ notwithstanding, let us take this fourth of july – which is not actually the birth of our country, as the declaration of independence is unrelated to the 1787 conception of the united states or its birth two years later, but as there is a time to pick nits and a time to watch explosions in the sky to the soundtrack of don mclean, we will let this rest for now – to reflect on how freedom is defined in the united states. since the erosion of our civil liberties commenced immediately after september 11, 2001, with twisted assaults on our rights such as the patriot act and its sequel, a day has not gone by that one does not hear a butchered misquote of benjamin franklin’s statement concerning liberty and security. if the information in the above excerpt is to be believed, that would make iraqis the complete opposite of americans, in that they are more afraid of someone shooting up their car than they are of being shoved around by cops when they speak their minds. on the other hand, fearless amercians like ben franklin are long dead, and when the people who have taken their place watch a cop hitting someone in the head with a flashlight, it is only on television, and it is just for a few seconds, and maybe they will hear about it when there is a hearing or panel or some shit about police brutality five years later, while iraqis seem to have no problems with burning down police stations when cops act like assholes. has this whole mess been worth anything, when in the end, the americans who are in charge of iraq are going to resort to the same kind of jackass who was running the show before the invasion? have we learned that iraqis are just like americans, because we would both exchange our rights for uninterrupted cable service and protection from ethnic strife? or have we learned that we are totally different, because iraqis want to be sheltered and have their hands held, while americans are ready to fend for themselves, crawling – unshowered – through the mountains with daggers in their teeth, while the terrorists and killers continue to bring it on? is michael moore less of an american because he wastes his time asking whether or not we could have an executive administration that is more concerned with regular folks, if not like him, then at least like us, when moore easily could buy a pad in paris and bitch from afar, like that guy from ‘edward scissorhands’? are there any cooler fireworks than those that burst white for a second, then disappear, then come back as red or green or blue? does every american have the right to bike to the local fireworks display and to weave between the frozen sea of cars and vans, free from being screamed at by the drivers who can not navigate the streets and have to listen to the show they are missing while their kids cry in the back seat?

in any event, ‘civil liberties’ do not spring forth as ‘fruits’ from democracy, as the excerpt implies; they are writ in the same document that also defines that the republic will governed by a democracy. democracy is a civil liberty, not the progenitor of them

~ also, despite our use of the term ‘american’ for inhabitants of the united states, we are aware that there is no ‘america’, there is no ‘american flag’, and no ‘’americans’. we use the term to communicate with our base readers, but we do not accept it.

~ putting the ‘red’ back into the angry red planet, can be interpreted literally, if one considers the milky pink of a 2nd degree sunburn to be a shade of ‘red’.

~ when listing the superhuman features, such as elongated femurs and an enormous heart, with which lance armstrong has been blessed, perhaps one could also consider that he has a melanin content of 1000%, or however it is measured and however high it can be for a white guy from texas. or maybe he wears sunblock all the way from atlanta to stone mountain and back — whilst laughing and not vomiting.

~ we’ve made the history of atlanta available in the right column.

~ we would like to hear from our visitors in mumbai, contact us today!

~ the only thing more annoying than blogs is hearing the unschooled refer to a site that is not a blog as a ‘blog’!

~ happy free comic book day! [w]

~ some terms to add to our list of words whose sudden prevalence is annoying: snarky

~ like the rest of the world, we at the angry red planet don’t talk about africa very often, but as the media is falling over themselves to be the first to say that everyone but them has been ignoring the crisis in the sudan, we have noticed a couple of absurd statements, both in the bbc:…

“One is the pressure from right-wing Christian groups in the US, who have taken up the cause of their fellow Christians in Sudan.

Their nagging – on the issues of slavery and the forcible imposition of Sharia law – helped get sanctions imposed on Sudan in 1997.”

‘nagging’. we know that the british media is expected to appeal to its audience by being testy and salacious, but to refer to warnings of slavery and violent religious laws as ‘nagging’ might be one of the reasons why many of their american cousins think they are full of shit.

…and the washington post:

“We should avoid the situations where we allow member states to hide behind the secretary general, use him as an alibi for their own inaction,” Annan told the Addis Tribune in Addis Ababa, the capital of neighboring Ethiopia.

in the midst of his whining – referring to himself in the third person – that people are calling him out for presiding over a second failure to act against ethnic cleansing, is kofi annan suggesting that ‘member states’ of the united nations should stop calling him lazy and start taking their own actions in sudan? is not this anathema to the purpose of the united nations? is not this type of unilateral action what he and everyone else – apart from the americans’ british cousins – bitched about when the united states decided to invade iraq?

~ according to be new england journal of medicine, one in six of servicemen/women returning from iraq are suffering from psychological damage. only 20% of these people are seeking help. between these guys walking the streets, housewives in fort bragg being killed, and the return of soldiers who are easily coerced into torturing prisoners, it might be safer to move to tikrit for the summer.

~ happy anniversary to our national motto: “bring ’em on!”

~ the amazing era of jrjr. has ended; he is already missed!

~ here is a million dollar idea for google or some capable programmers out there: let us have a site that scans every piece of reporting and journalism and editorial in order to track the increased appearance of certain words, namely words that appear in over 10,000 articles each month after not appearing in a total ten articles over the past five years. here are some to get you started: vetted, parsed, wonk.

~ from cnn:

“Shortly after his disappearance, Hassoun’s family was notified he was missing, but there was no public announcement, the Pentagon official said, because the military did not want to signal insurgents that a Marine might be out in the countryside unprotected.”

…or the military was hoping that he already had been killed quietly and anonymously somewhere, so that he wouldn’t show up on television with a bunch of insurgents behind him who are threatening to cut off his head, thereby presenting the american public with more unpleasantries on the eve of the ‘reign’ of freedom in iraq.

~ few things could interest us less than the prospect of a televised trial for saddam hussein. watching a rerun of the 1978 superbowl would probably have a bigger surprise of an ending.

~ we are mystified by that ‘let freedom reign!’ tag that gwb left on condi rice’s note. is he deliberately being cynical, or is he truly that naive? does he believe that americans have been duped into thinking that there is participatory democracy in iraq, or are his handlers still letting gwb believe it himself? strange!

~ fear not, we are not abandoning this project. despite our declaration that there will be no more posts – long time readers know how likely that is to be true – we still intend to maintain a presence here. we have spent the past five years in a schizophrenic state, as we have never reached an agreement on the purpose of this site. to make a cat move forward, you pull back its tail; we have found that we move in whichever direction our tail is pulled, such as the expense of a week on building a database for the work images only to cast it aside and write instead some snide remark about how shitty police officers are. this incongruity has arrested our development.

lately, our internet time is taken up with sophisticating sisyphean.com [w] and a new enterprise that is in development. we hope that a new structure will allow us to separate the wheat from the chaff, the style from the content, and allow all endeavours to blossom unhindered. there is no consensus on the content of the future, but we have learnt its nature; while we still intend to bring you features such as the '’history of atlanta', our goal is the return of the angry and the red to 'the angry red planet'.

~ opensecrets.org [w]

~ what’s the big deal about the d-day anniversary? we doubt that this nation of consumers, who have no purpose in life but to choose the one of the five colors of mini ipods that best represents their identities or, when they fail to shed their obesity, file lawsuits against people who offer diet plans, who are watching this week’s romantic and pompous d-day flash animations on the news, pieced between jennifer lopez’s third marriage to a wealthy celebrity and the list of who might get ‘whacked’ on the season finale of ‘the sopranos’, really know the difference between pointe-du-hoc and pegasus bridge.

our country is now involved in a war that is based upon a foundation of dubious moral certitude; it is a war that we chose to begin, full of self-righteousness and disregard of our neighbors’ skepticism and wariness. In order for Amercians to be kept in line and to keep their faith, we need to believe that the united states is a beacon of justice, equality, and freedom. Unfortunately, when americans seek to reassure themselves of this notion, we apparently can not find any contemporary evidence of its veracity; we are forced to look sixty years into the past to find an example of this country’s ability to triumph over an enormous danger and to do so with a magnanimity that proves us to be a ‘good’ people. Regardless of political persuasions, americans occasionally must pay solemn yet treacly lip service to its veterans, in the belief that some connection with them will build credibility for the nation today.

while the fortitude and valor of the men who rushed from the sea or leapt from the skies into france of 1944 is indisputable, it is crucial that americans realize that the accomplishments of those men are three and four generations in the past. The flags that are waving today over suburban homes, mcdonald’s parking lots, and cable talking heads represent more than just that single accomplishment . The flag symbolizes every moment of the nation’s history, both the glory and the stains: every racist cop that has shot an unarmed kid in new york, every family without health care in ohio, every man or woman sleeping in a box under a bridge in atlanta, every my lai and wounded knee and abu ghirab. A few moments of victory does not outshine the multitude of failures. if americans want that flag to be worthy of respect in the future, and if they want to honestly claim an inheritance of the heroism of its past, they should try summoning the titanic forces of toil and ingenuity of the young men, including my grandfather, who charged through fascist steel and flame 60 years ago, and apply them to the injustices and inequities of today. There is no reason that our descendants should not be able to look at today with the same awe and respect for peaceful accomplishments that we lavish on our ancestors for their accomplishments in war.

Otherwise, Regardless of what we can buy or what we drive, our lives are so empty and our claim to democracy so tenuous that we must derive a vicarious honor by repeatedly making grasps at the only movement in our nation’s history that is universally accepted as unquestionably noble. To you well fed fucks, this is our last post.

~ we aren’t about to pull that ‘going green’ shit that some of y’all might remember from four years ago, for reasons not least of which is that ralph nader [w] has not been nominated by the green party [w], but if any of you question whether we are any less smitten by the man, your answer will be given by this bit of wordsmithery:

Plunging our nation into war on what is now a very well-documented platform of fabrications, deceptions and prevarications, to me, rises to the level of a high crime and misdemeanor, and warrants impeachment proceedings to be initiated in the House of Representatives. It’s hard to conceive of a more capable candidate for the invocation of the impeachment authority reposited in Congress by our Founding Fathers. -ralph nader

~ at the time of our latest inventory, we have noted eight (8) empty salsa jars in the office refrigerator.

~ we were pretty excited to hear that the leading candidate in south dakota’s u.s. representative election is a 33-year old woman from the democratic party, as we thought it might be interesting to have some fresh ideas from a congressperson who isn’t an old fuck. however, she has stated her support for the war in iraq and the patriot act. it was fun while it lasted.

~ the new myebay layout is candyassed and quite lame. we just want to quickly reload the list of flea remedies that we are monitoring, not wait for nu-icons of flags and soccer balls.

~ granted, we agree that it is wrong for the u.s. to be swaggering around iraq, even though we own the place, body-searching anyone in the street and storming into little kids’ bedrooms in the middle of the night to check for weapons, but who doesn’t at least smirk when seeing Ahmad Chalabi fuming because he is being treated like everyone else? with so much going badly to all the wrong people in iraq, let us at least cheer ourselves with thoughts of chalabi watching helplessly a silver urn of duck sauce is toppled onto a silk rug while a rolex is shattered under the butt of an m4. “that’s a five hundred dollar camel’s hair coat!!”

~ we have not made the rounds of though the boortz/hannity sites yet, but we are sure that they are as grievously outraged over this as they were over the death of nick berg, because they used the opportunity of his decapitation to display so vociferously their aversion to the needless death of innocents; they would not let something like this pass without demands for the people responsible to be held accountable for this error.

“Associated Press Television News footage showed a truck containing bloodied bodies, many wrapped in blankets, piled one atop the other. Several were children, one of whom was decapitated. The body of a girl who appeared to be less than 5 years of age lay in a white sheet, her legs riddled with wounds and her dress soaked in blood.” -ap

how long does it take to kill 40 people? unless you are using one of those daisy cutters, or unless the wedding you are attacking is being held in a space so confined that every shot hits a mark, one would think that at some point during the assault, the u.s. would have realized that no one was shooting back, or that they were shooting at a bunch of little kids and people in dresses. i guess, though, just like the prison guards, they are ‘following orders’, and we can’t expect them to protest when told to do something fucked up.