live by the sword, and die by it

All the best battlefield commanders of our generation are in Africa. All the West’s haughty generals and admirals are only good for losing wars for the last 20 years while simultaneously running their hallowed institutions into the ground.

Perhaps the absolute best battlefield commander alive on the planet is Paul Kagame, Dictator & Overlord of Rwanda, Teddy Bear Darling of the International Development Community, If You Like Your Teddy Bear to be Really Stabby, Stranglee, and Shootee.

Another is Idriss Deby of Chad. Deby lasted over three decades and probably woke up every single one of those days wondering who was trying to kill him or who he was trying to kill. Photographs can tell quite the story. Just get a load of this photo, this was not a man you messed with:

Chad’s army on both paper and in photographs looks like a bunch of kook losers.

Don’t be fooled. Chad’s army is one of the most base lethal on the planet and it’s because of Deby and the fact he’s kept them at war for 30 years straight.

Well, now his luck has finally run out. Apparently Deby was killed on the very day of his sixth presidential “election” up in Chad’s north by the 427th round of rebellion against him. The details are very vague and strange and I’m super skeptical here. It just doesn’t make sense. Personally, I think somebody inside his own circle did him in, but I’m just straight guessing. If his battle death was legit, it would be super appropriate and a proper end to Deby’s life if he died on his 1,317th completely meaningless skirmish.

Now all the generals have rallied around Deby’s son, who is in his late 30’s and happens to be a four star general (I wonder why). I don’t know anything about this guy, he could be awesome on the battlefield too. But just look at this photo, I can’t make up my mind:

I can’t decide whether this photo is of a subdued, calm killing machine, or of a little man who will struggle all his life to replace his Father. It’s probably both.

Meanwhile, after three decades of Deby’s rule, Chad remains mostly destitute, with grinding, unspeakable poverty for at least 1/5 to 1/2 of the population. Granted, Chad is on the Sahel, and so not all of this was Deby’s fault. But after three decades in power anything that happens to your country is your fault.

Deby was a brilliant general, but a terrible president. Now, onto the son. It’s positively medieval.

meet your future master

Nature’s awesome, I get a kick out of it when I’m not enslaved by a square screen that masters my life via my jobs. One of my jobs called me last night a 3:17 am. It was my boss, he had a hanky over the receiver at an inner city pay phone so he sounded like a drunk Vader, he screamed profanity at me for 39 seconds, then said in a normal voice, “See you tomorrow. We know you won’t quit.”, and then hung up. This is a pretty routine occurrence, so I just drifted back to sleep until the alarm woke me.

I often wonder why I don’t watch more nature television. It’s probably because I don’t have cable or a streaming service subscription. But I was at my Ma’s a few months ago and stumbled on an hour long program on Japan’s southern islands narrated by the Downton Abbey beauty and I was enthralled.

Anyways, it must have been a quasi religious experience if you were the first person to document [insert any new animal, fish or plant here]. I’m sure there’s a whole bunch of stuff in the rainforest we’ve yet to find, but it’ll be some new fern or insect or whatever. This is cool, and important, but not quite the same. Nobody’s ever going to find a brand new hippo sized creature on Earth. We’ll have to wait until we colonize other planets to find such new things, and then get on with destroying their biome too.

This one’s neat, it’s the “smallest reptile on Earth“. “The male Brookesia nana, or nano-chameleon, has a body of just 13.5mm.” He lives in Madagascar.

Just get a load of this surly little asshole. Look at him, it’s too good. He’s so, utterly, uninterested in mankind. His face just screams a whispered, “Fuck you.” Before he very slowly, lazily walks away to eat more mites.

By the year 2090, when humanity is done mutilating itself by some means, this little guy will be all that’s left. The radiation from the bombs or the impact of the end game pandemic will transform him from the smallest reptile into a godzilla sized monster. He’ll be the size of the building, but still a surly asshole. He’ll stare down at the last human alive, he’ll be smoking a cigarette, and wryly say in his booming but quiet voice, “Our turn now. Bye.”

why can’t this man just die?

It’s generally poor form and not beneficial to your soul and the future of the human race to wish an early expiration date upon your fellow man.  But some people are so far over the line I really don’t have a problem with it.  I thus give you the ongoing saga of how serial child slave trafficker, rapist, lunatic, murderer, Dallas Cowboys fan, and apocalyptic fanatic Abubakar Shekau is somehow still alive?  Why can’t this man just die?

For those of you who believe in conspiracy theories or conspiracy theory movies or that only fifteen families are pulling the levers of planetary power, I give you this guy.  We’re so screwed up we can’t even find and kill one single guy who really, really, really deserves it.  This is how I know that if the CIA ever teamed up with Walmart and the Illuminati to put chips into all our coffee so they could get into our brains, the plot would quickly fall apart after one of the monk bagman rear ended a street cop while texting in the rain to his boss about how he left the evil plans USB drive (unencrypted) in the changing stall at the Sears while he was buying new monk-solid-white-high-top sneakers.

I mean I get it, without credit cards, smartphone chips, a desire to drink quality beer, or any plans for the future you can fall off the grid real fast.  But you’d think that eventually we’d be able to buy off one of his buddies or spot him with a drone while he’s sitting inside his 1974 Buick Skylark outside the elementary school trying to kidnap another busload full of young girls.

You know I’ve said it many times, but there’s still something to be said about solving problems with a sledgehammer up front rather than allowing things to fester.  What if the UN had put 100K troops on the ground for a month to comb Boko Haram’s jungle paradise?  They could have stayed for a month, then left the Nigerian Army (what of it actually exists) in charge once the problem was temporarily solved and hope it somehow all worked out.  Then Abubakar Shekau and all his evil buddies would have been dead, and thus not had the ability to kidnap thousands of young boys and girls to serve as child soldiers and sex slaves.  That would have been a decade ago.  He’s still here.  Great.  But hey, at least we’ve got Twitter hashtags, so whatever, we’re good.

In the meantime, I read a few weeks ago that all the fighting has basically triggered a local famine because Boko Haram hasn’t allowed a decent crop harvest in three years.  Awesome.  Check that into the Earth win column, please.  I’m sure this issue came up last night (I kept my word and didn’t watch) as Trump and Clinton traded skilled barbs about which one has an older weathered face under $1247 of television makeup.

Uh, I need to calm down and quietly drink my coffee, I think.  I’m too cynical in my cubicle.  But at least I’m leaving this job soon.  Oh yeah, for those who have been around this degenerate blog for a long time, I’m changing jobs.  Hopefully the new one I won’t hate as much as I do this one.  But either way, in the meantime?  Abubakar Shekau, kind Sir, please just die.

Abubakar Shekau.jpg

Seriously, just fucking die.

I know what’s in Tut’s new tomb rooms

I don’t know what’s in Tut’s new tomb rooms.  Nobody does.  But hey, you never know where life’s going to take you.  There are all kinds of things that could be in there, including nothing.  So why not gamble away recklessly in the hopes we can guess it right?  After all, my Guests possess the most unbridled surveillance resources imaginable, so certainly I can figure this out.  Except that they’re usually too drunk to use them; and I also happen to be an idiot.

– Tut’s genuine Mommy in Nefertiti is in there and it’s the archeological discovery of the century

– Tut’s new tomb rooms don’t exist

– Tut’s 2011 Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen TDI with the 2.0L 4-cylinder diesel is parked in there pending investigations by the Egyptian Ministry of Transportation

– They break it open but instead of Nefertiti or Tut, it’s just Khufu sitting there in a lawn chair downing a highball glass of barley wine, and he’s like, “Fools!  I’ve stolen all of Nefertiti’s treasure and added to my stash.  You were only four-thousand years behind the power curve.  You’re fucked!  Ahahahahahahahaha!”  And then he re-ascends to Valhalla in the blink of an eye; and all they get is the lawn chair

– Tut added six-thousand amphora filled with booze in there to ensure he could get ripped in the afterlife with abandon; but then he ran out in 1134 AD and he’s been sad ever since.  The archeologists could try adding more booze filled amphorae to the stash to hook Tut up, but I don’t think it works that way

– They find completely empty rooms because they buried Tut in a hurry, after the murder and all

– Zahi Hawass shows up wielding a pair of old Yugoslavian machine pistols and holds everybody hostage, shouting at the top of his lungs to the Geraldo cameras, “Sign up for my newsletter to be first to here about my upcoming lectures and books!”  Poor, poor Zahi, dude you supported the wrong dictator, you should try and get in good with Sisi to get back in the game; you were a hoot to watch

king tut

give up your secrets ya bastard

 

math, demographics, and destiny

This seems like a relatively uncontroversial topic to wade into. Nobody’s got strong feelings on this one at all. But we’ll put our own belligerent spin on it; for that’s what we do.

 

Let’s start with some numbers:

– There are 81 million humans in Germany today

– Give or take a few million, there are approximately 50 million global refugees currently displaced due to armed conflict

– Give or take a few hundred-million, there are about 1 billion folks who live on about $1 a day

– A ballpark estimate says in 2050, Germany will have about 72 million people over half of which will be old folks

 

So a few belligerent observations:

– Even if Germany was populated by angels, they don’t have the bandwidth to house even a fraction of the world’s war refugees, let alone everybody’s economic migrants.

– But nobody in Germany (or in much of the rest of the developed world) has yet to crack the code on how they plan to pay for all that government spending / debt in 2050 when almost one-third of their populations are retired old folks.

– So whether anybody admits it or not, in order to stay solvent, Germany has to either let more refugees in, cut government spending by astronomical levels, or start having more German babies.

– I’m an idiot, but I’m pretty sure the German state (and all the other countries too) isn’t going to be cutting government spending or forcing women to get pregnant. So guess what option they have to take?

 

Any finally:

Germany and the rest of the modern world need to do more to tackle these problems at the source. For instance, if millions of Syrian refugees want into Germany, then we need only ask the question: Why is Bashar Assad still alive?

Europe has let Syria fester for four years. Did they think there wouldn’t ultimately be consequences given how close Syria is? How long do you think it’ll take before half of Libya tries to get in on this as well? Or what about all those folks in Cameroon living on $1.37 a day?

Solving Syria and conquering poverty are probably two of the hardest things you could ever try to do. But there are consequences to doing almost nothing in Syria and doing far, far too little to tackle global poverty. And in today’s case, those consequences are literally showing up at the West’s door.

refugees

choosing destiny for the planet

behold the irrationality and sadness of the Internet

In some circles, Walter Palmer is the most despised man on the planet today.  What a horrible guy, to shoot a lion for money.  He must have cut a deal with Satan.  And he’s just a dentist from Minnesota, so it’ll be very easy for the Internets mob to destroy him.

But I have just one questions for the haters:

 

Do you know who Robert Mugabe is and what he’s done to Zimbabwe?

 

If the answer is no?

Please, shut your mouth.

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by far, so very far, not the worst thing to happen to Zimbabwe today

Obama adds third unplanned stop to African itinerary

The Washington press pool struggled to rearrange schedules as the Obama administration announced without notice that the President will now also visit Libya’s famed Kaf Ajnoun or Mountain of Ghosts. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest explained the move as, “An appropriate means to wrap up our trip in keeping with the President’s theme of meeting with horrible human beings.”

The concluding visit to one of Satan’s known earthly dwellings will follow Obama’s forthcoming sit downs with famed war criminal Uhuru Kenyatta in Kenya and Hailemariam “The Street Sweeper” Desalegn in Ethiopia. In Addis Ababa, Obama is also scheduled to address the African Union.

Although the AU is said to be interested in rescheduling the speech’s start time due to an imminent AU vote to unanimously ratify the title of “Imperial Majesty for Life” to Burundi’s Pierre Nkurunziza, a move supported by America’s State Department. The AU is also set to reconfirm its annual stipend to Omar al-Bashir’s private aircraft corporation Speedy provided its “no notice use for all” clause remains intact.

While at Kaf Ajnoun, Obama will spend time at such key sites as The Road to Hell and The Devil’s Hill. Said Earnest, “Since he came to Washington, the President has learned the diplomatic dark arts like the best of them. He figures it’s time he paid his due respect to those who have enabled the ghoulish powers he now possesses. In fact, I’m told the State Department Bureau of African Affairs insisted on this stopover.”

Earnest also mentioned several other critical American goals during the trip including talks to get more of Angola’s oil than China, additional tank, tear gas, & piano wire sales to Egypt, and the forthcoming pool renovation contract by Halliburton of a mysteriously unknown but supposedly important villa in South Africa.

When asked by reporters if Obama worried about potential human rights protestors during his speech in Addis Ababa, Earnest wryly chuckled, “You ah, you don’t really understand how things work here, do you?”

kaf-ajnoun-ghost-mountain

Arcturus News Muster – 23 July 2015