stop the translation

STOPTHETRANSLATION says: play with the bounceicles. click them, drag them, bump them around. they're crazy!

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Big Country, Small Country – The new imperialism cover up

There’s a new game in town, a political one, exclusively political. Just like all the games of this nature it will end up on a dusty shelf, unused and eventually recycled. But it’s a fun game to play. Unlike Monopoly, where being the Bank is a bit boring unless you have a knack for financial martyrdom, this new adult form of entertainment gives you deeper chills only if you choose to play the part of Big Country. Although something tells me you don’t get to pick a role. Not really.
It’s been a long time now since the US established itself as the standard for both Big Country and big power. Desperately trying to keep up with the trend, the big old countries and powers of Europe sheepishly decided to form an acronymic disaster called EU. Oddly enough, their decision regarded, involved and included, but never asked for approval from, the entire continent!? The Small Country never had a say in this, taking it to the chin the old fashion way by keeping it quiet. Or did it? When there’s a big all encompassing plan there’s always a smaller one that’s better and more likely to succeed. Even a “no plan at all” plan or a “follow the crowd” plan can have a rosier ending than that. I mean, where did this infatuation with territorial bonding come from? In Europe? Come on, imperialism never stood a chance there. Unless of course you look back instead of blindly running forward, trying to catch a modern chimera called…Big Country.
Some small Arab countries are trying to flex their muscles against an overpowering Big Country? Forget it. And forget the UN. I doubt they have anything potent to come up with towards the Muslim world and just like another ubiquitous organization of the same proportions and futility, the UNICEF, it barely stays afloat trying to justify its ancient rules and inflated budgets and members. And as far as the British involvement is concerned, well, it’s only a common language and a bland second grade mentality that’s keeping that alliance alive. How about some leverage? Is it possible that some nations have simply forgotten their own history? There is not going to be a World War III and nobody’s going to push “the button”. Nuclear bombs, oil, freedom of speech and occupied territories are, one way or another, obsolete. Either you open the closed door and walk into the future or you stand proud in front of it and wait for the little people to open it for you so you can march in with defiance. Well, it’s not going to happen because the little people are already in.
But, basically, Big Country is marred in delusion. The thought that one day all nations under God will be divided in no more than two or three united territories of international culture and language gives salivating dreams to all the self proclaimed commander-in-chiefs. It also gives any reasonable human being a long yawn. The disintegration of the yet to be alive EU and the failure of an impossible task that US has burdened itself with, that of defining the imaginary borders of a so called Free World, are both inevitable and refreshing. Disintegration and failure, that doesn’t sound like fun, does it? I’ll take the Small Country. Let’s begin.

P.S. If you ever wanted to be a political commentator or a journalist of any kind, you couldn’t possibly miss Mike Wallace’s last interview. Hopefully it was his last one and hopefully you had a chance to see the unedited ninety minutes of it, as shown on CSPAN. All we could see throughout Mike’s mumblings, his drunken gestures, his senile reactions, his utter lack of thought and most of all his strident impunity was a thoughtful, well-intended, realistic and honest president of a country that, in the eyes of everybody who takes their history lesson via local media, is fervently harboring terrorism. And I’m not even sure that’s true. But it certainly looked like that. Bye bye, Wally!

Signing off, STOPTHETRANSLATION.

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