He Lucky I’m A Christian
Rachel Jeantel, the friend of Trayvon Martin, gave a television interview recently. She said, referring to defense attorney Don West, “He lucky I’m a christian.” (5:26 in interview) It is tough to understand what she meant. An outburst, in a courtroom full of armed guards, would not have hurt Mr. West. Such an outburst would have done even more damage to the state’s case against George Zimmerman.
This comment brought PG back to an incident at Redo Blue. There was a person there, known here as the Bully For Jesus (BFJ.) This man had a hair trigger temper, and would use Jesus to hurt people. After seven years working closely with BFJ, PG sees Jesus as a source of abuse.
In this incident, BFJ heard PG say something to the store manager. “Does anyone adjusting the thermostat ask if their neighbor is comfortable?” BFJ was offended, and went off on PG. “You should thank G-d for Jesus. If it wasn’t for Jesus, I would have hurt you.”
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
Bulwer-Lytton 2013
It is time for the 2013 edition of The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. This is a competition for bad writing. It is not known when the “winners” were announced. It was possibly announced in the dark of night, with hopes that no one would notice. PG has written about TBLFC twice before. If you want the history of this shameful display, you can read one of those posts.
Today, we are going directly into the slush pile. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”. Out of kindness to the reader, this is an pruned parcel of pasty pastel prose. There is nobody from Georgia. We can begin with The worst of the worst.
She strutted into my office wearing a dress that clung to her like Saran Wrap to a sloppily butchered pork knuckle, bone and sinew jutting and lurching asymmetrically beneath its folds, the tightness exaggerating the granularity of the suet and causing what little palatable meat there was to sweat, its transparency the thief of imagination. — Chris Wieloch, Brookfield, WI
The Chamblee54 report on TBLFC does not overlook the contestants with funny names. One hopes that these are pen names. Randal Pilz, Milton, FL ~ Thor F. Carden, Madison, TN ~ Helen Grainge, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario ~ Ward Willats, Felton, CA ~ Jessica Sashihara, Martinsville, NJ ~ Aishia Trueman, Canberra, ACT, Australia ~ Linda Boatright, Omaha, NE ~ Amy Torchinsky, Greensboro, NC ~ Kevin Hogg, Cranbrook, BC ~ Shethra Jones-Hoopes, Conestoga, PA ~ Jackie Fuchs, Los Angeles, CA
As the sun dropped below the horizon, the safari guide confirmed the approaching cape buffaloes were herbivores, which calmed everyone in the group, except for Herb, of course. —
Ron D Smith, Louisville, KY
Even though Letitia had brushed her teeth, Draco could still smell her garlicky breath, but assuming her blood would at least be toxin free, if not particularly appetizing – because of the antibiotic properties of the garlic’s allicin, an organosulfur compound – he gleefully plunged his incisors into her throbbing jugular vein. — Maggie Lyons, Callao, VA
Count Glandula’s castle flickered with eerie lights, where the immortal villain slaked his evil thirst in the dungeons with innocent victims – two moldy old peasants because the virtuous maidens had all been taken by the hot teenaged vampires down the road whose breath wasn’t so icky. —
Janine Beacham, Busselton, WA, Australia
Before they met, his heart was a frozen block of ice, scarred by the skate blades of broken relationships, then she came along and like a beautiful Zamboni flooded his heart with warmth, scraped away the ugly slushy bits, and dumped them in the empty parking lot of his soul. — Howie McLennon, Ottawa, ON
Hotel exhibitionist looking for a voyeur. visiting one night, have the urge for a man/guy that is into peeping thru the window and watching me naked…got to be discreet. handsome/cleancut/bi guy, away from family, tall six ft w/m hwp one eighties 50 years old. must be discreet.
The sharks circled the leaking life raft like a pack of rabid personal-injury attorneys at a five-car pileup, and Clarence could just taste the fear (which tasted like chicken) and wondered morbidly if he too, might taste like chicken. — Wendi Tibbets, San Jose, CA
On their first date he’d asked how much she thought Edgar Allan Poe’s toe nails would sell for on eBay, and on their second he paid for subway fair with nickels he fished out of a fountain, but he was otherwise charming and she thought that they could have a perfectly tolerable life together. —
Jessica Sashihara, Martinsville, NJ
What the Highway Department’s chief IT guy for the new computerized roadway hated most was listening to the ‘smart’ components complain about being mixed with asphalt instead of silicon and made into speed bumps instead of graceful vases, like the one today from chip J176: “I coulda had glass; I coulda been a container; I coulda been some bottle, instead of a bump, which is what I am.” —
Brian Brandt, Lansdale, PA
Niles deeply regretted bringing his own equipment to the company’s annual croquet tournament because those were his fingerprints found on the “blunt instrument” that had caused the fatal depression in his boss’s skull and now here he stood in court accused of murder, yes, murder in the first degree with mallets aforethought. — Linda Boatright, Omaha, NE
Mrs. Irene Bartlett was so taken with the account of the annihilation of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the transformational moment when Lot’s wife was miraculously turned into a pillar of salt, that she became a Shaker. — John Holmes, St. Petersburg, FL
He spotted her as he left the Mudville baseball field, a handsome young woman sipping tea on the front porch swing of her house, and, though the boos and catcalls from today’s game still rang in his ears, the Mighty Casey decided that for the first time in his life he would not at all mind being associated with a swing and a Miss. — Tom Wallace, Columbia, SC
It was a dark and stormy night when, in the course of being snoopy, I happened upon the most extraordinary dog – sitting at an old-school typewriter upon the roof of his doghouse – who grumbled that he was working for peanuts.— Amy Torchinsky, Greensboro, NC
Although it was late at night and the snow was gently falling, Martin, who had gathered the young maidens together in the village church and was now, at the stroke of midnight, leading them across the town square, responded to the town constable’s enquiry as to what he was doing by replying, “I herd the belles on Christmas Day.” — Jim Tweedie, Long Beach, WA
It wasn’t sour grapes – Clementine knew that her parents just plum disapproved of her Kiwi lover; try as she might to explain that the love between the pair was all peachy, she might as well have been comparing apples to oranges, so although she was bananas for him, and the ring was certainly no lemon, she was forced to reply to his “Honey, do you?” with a mournful “You know I just can’t elope.” — Kevin Hogg, Cranbrook, BC
The veterinarian had suggested the tasty yellow fruit as a way to cure the undiagnosed lack of appetite that was ebbing away the very life of his fluffy little friend and Mark was fraught with anguish as he kept wondering, “Will a chick eat a banana?” — Nancy Hoffman, Peaks Island, ME
Betty had eyes that said come here, lips that said kiss me, arms and torso that said hold me all night long, but the rest of her body said, “Fillet me, cover me in cornmeal, and fry me in peanut oil”; romance wasn’t easy for a mermaid. — Jordan Kaderli, Dallas, TX
Derek squeezed through the narrow entrance past irate piles at the bar and pushed deeper into the tight, dark saloon, and brushing aside a stool and settling between ornaments that hung like polyps from the ceiling, he examined the texture of the walls with his fingertips while trying to avoid the gaze of the owner; the perfect bar, he mused, for the socially awkward proctologist. — Max Walker, Bryn Mawr, PA
Daphne had thoroughly researched the subject and concluded that, by all accounts, the medical procedure for reducing the size of her ample derriere was relatively safe but – and it is a big ’but’ – she understood there is always an inherent risk involving any surgery. — Clay Wach, Winnipeg, MB
Dark and stormy was her disposition; her hair cascaded evenly onto her shoulders in torrents – except at intervening occasions, when it was checked by a violent gust of air from a huge blower (for it is in Hollywood that our scene lies), rattling along her blouse top, and fiercely agitating the scanty fabric that struggled against her implants. — Lee Martinson, Yucaipa, CA
The dark and foreboding landscape was littered with crumbling castles, collapsed crypts, and earthworks for forgotten fortresses wherein lurked those most dastardly of degenerates, whose blood curdling cries made the lives of the locals a living hell – the historical reenactment society. —
Ted Downes, Cardiff, UK
Techno For An Answer
A few minutes ago, this blog published the worst jokes from the 2011 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. As a public service, to distract readers from the circular firing squads being conducted about racism, here are the ten best jokes from the 2012 festival. The 2013 Edinburgh Festival Fringe will be held August 2-26. The winners have not been announced.
1. Stewart Francis – “You know who really gives kids a bad name? Posh and Becks.”
2. Tim Vine – “Last night me and my girlfriend watched three DVDs back to back.
Luckily I was the one facing the telly. ”
3. Will Marsh – “I was raised as an only child, which really annoyed my sister.”
4. Rob Beckett – “You know you’re working class when your TV is bigger than your book case.”
5. Chris Turner – “I’m good friends with 25 letters of the alphabet … I don’t know why.”
6. Tim Vine – “I took part in the sun tanning Olympics – I just got Bronze.”
7. George Ryegold – “Pornography is often frowned upon, but that’s only because I’m concentrating.”
8. Stewart Francis – “I saw a documentary on how ships are kept together. Riveting!”
9. Lou Sanders – “I waited an hour for my starter so I complained: ‘It’s not rocket salad.”
10. Nish Kumar – “My mum’s so pessimistic, that if there was an Olympics for pessimism …
she wouldn’t fancy her chances.”
If this does not satisfy you, here is a feature about 100 best jokes. Included is number 19. “People who like trance music are very persistent. They don’t techno for an answer.” Joel Dommett. Pictures, from Gwinnett County, probably do not include any Scottish comedians.
The Worst Jokes Of Scotland
This repost is borrowed from Twenty Two Words, who borrowed it from someone else. The pictures are from The Library of Congress. Every year, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival has a contest for the best joke. The 2011 winner was Nick Helm, aka “The Human Car Crash of Light Entertainment”.
1. Nick Helm – “The banking program needed a password eight characters long. I picked Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.”
2. Tim Vine – “Crime in multi-storey car parks. That is wrong on so many different levels.”
3. Hannibal Buress – “People say ‘I’m taking it one day at a time.’ You know what? So is everybody. That’s how time works.”
4. Tim Key – “Drive Thru McDonalds was more expensive than I thought … once you’ve hired the car …”
5. Matt Kirshen – “I was playing chess with my friend and he said, ‘Let’s make this interesting’. So we stopped playing chess.”
6. Sarah Millican – “My mother told me, you don’t have to put anything in your mouth you don’t want to. Then she made me eat broccoli, which felt like double standards.”
7. Alan Sharp – “I was in a band which we called The Prevention, because we hoped people would say we were better than The Cure.”
8. Mark Watson – “Someone asked me recently – what would I rather give up, food or sex. Neither! I’m not falling for that one again, wife.”
9. Andrew Lawrence – “I admire these phone hackers. I think they have a lot of patience. I can’t even be bothered to check my OWN voicemails.”
10. DeAnne Smith – “My friend died doing what he loved … Heroin.”
PG did a bit of value added research, and found an article in The Telegraph about the joke contest. This article has the NINE WORST JOKES from the 2011 festival.
1. Tim Vine – “Uncle Ben has died. No more Mr Rice Guy.”
2. V. McTavish – “The Lockerbie bomber put Lockerbie on the map, well he nearly took it off it too.”
3. Josh Howie – I’ve got nothing against the Chinese. Don’t get me Wong.
4. Card Ninja – “I went to see this show and the guy said ‘Hey kid do you like magic?’ And I said ‘Yeah!’ So he asked if I wanted to see a trick and I said ‘Yeah!’ So he said ‘think of a number, times it by 2 and if it’s odd …’ Oh no, he’s a MATHmagician! “
5. Tom Webb – “Due to the economy, profiteroles will now be called deficiteroles.”
6. Nathan Caton – “Postcode wars? That sounds like a really shit BBC game show.”
7. Andrew Bird – “My wife’s eating for two. She’s not pregnant, just schizophrenic.”
8. Mark Olver – “I was like a dyslexic having my back teeth removed … losing my morals.”
9. Andrew O’Neill – “Singing a song for the colour blind today: “And I think to myself … why did I become a bomb disposal expert?”
Don’t Touch My Stuff Sir
There is a video making the rounds. It supposedly proves the existence of racial profiling. The only thing this video proves is the gullibility of people.
It opens in a city park. It is a bright, sunny day. A young man is trying to break a bicycle chain. He uses a saw, and bolt cutters. He spends over an hour on the job, and a hundred people pass by. No one makes an issue about it. A reporter talks to people, and gets their reaction. No one suspects anything.
To begin with, a real thief is not going to spend an hour working on a bike. He probably won’t openly operate in a sunny city park. There probably is not a reporter nearby, asking people what they think about the affair. The bike is chained to a short road sign. It would be easy to lift the bike over the sign.
The first actor goes away, and the second actor comes in. The shadows don’t seem any different in the park. The second actor is dressed similarly to the first, except for the extra melanin. Yea, this is about how the white guy gets away with inept thievery, and the black guy gets questioned.
Soon, there is a crowd around the young black man. People are asking him whether he owns the bike. A man “whips out a cell phone, and calls 911.” He is standing next to the actor, who continues to saw.
It gets better. The actor rides off in the bike, then it is chained back to the sign. The experiment begins again. An old white man confronts the actor, and picks up the tools. What happens next? If you have ever caught a thief, you know that at this point all hell breaks loose. The thief will start yelling, or pull a knife, or start major trouble. But in this video, the bike thief actor says, politely, “Please sir, please sir, don’t touch my stuff sir”.
This video is a scripted piece of entertainment. It is a fantasy. It has nothing to do with the reality of crime and theft. It is not even very good acting. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
The Church Of The Big Chicken
PG was listening to a podcast about atheists and religion. There was a comment about how prayer … the concept of talking to G-d … is often self aggrandizing. Duh. Why should the creator of the universe care about the budget problems at your church? One thought led to another, and soon PG remembered a series of brief conversations.
For those who are new to this blog, perhaps a bit of explanation is in order. PG is a recovering Baptist. He suspects that G-d does exist, even though the world would probably be a happier place without her. Whatever her status, G-d does not write books, or engage in real estate transactions. Jesus was killed because he was a troublemaker. The reputed exit from the grave has nothing to do with what happens to people when they die. PG is under no obligation to discuss any of these items.
At the time of these conversations, PG was in his last round of working for Redo Blue. He was based in Cobb County, making pickups and deliveries. As a mobile person operating in Cobb County, PG had frequent encounters with the Big Chicken. There is speculation that future civilizations will consider the Big Chicken to be an object of religious significance. PG decided to give this hypothesis a test run.
When this story took place, PG enjoyed the “privilege” of making comments at PyroManiacs. One of the Pyros, Scent, was mean to PG. One day, while waiting at a red light on the Cobb Parkway, next to the Big Chicken, PG looked over at the sheet metal bird and said “G-d, what should I do about Scent?” “You should forgive him.”
A week or so later, PG was waiting at the same red light. Across the street from the Big Chicken was an “adult fantasy store” named Tantra. This combination of extra crispy poultry, and eastern sex magick, led to the next question. “Why does Jesus hate me?” “I don’t know.”
By and by on the four lane, the light turned red. PG turned down the radio. A traffic report was underway. “Hey G-d, whats happening?” “Don’t worry about me, listen to the traffic report”.
All parties must come to an end. One day PG asked a more serious question. “Are mom and dad ok?” There was no answer. PG began to feel sad, until he realized that this whole thing was becoming too serious. Even if Jesus worshipers obsess over the lifestyles of the dead, you do not need to imitate them. Just keep you seat belt fastened, and watch out for the nut behind the wheel.
This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Eleven Thoughts About Communications
When you publish a list like the one below, you are placing a target on your back. Above the bulls-eye is the word hypocrite. PG does not claim to take all of these suggestions. What follows is a goal to work for, not a script for situation comedy.
When in doubt, shut up.
A halo is best worn over one ear.
If you want to be forgiven, forgive. If you want to be understood, understand.
There are few situations that cannot be made worse with anger and loud talk.
You have two ears and one mouth. Listen twice as much as you talk.
A douche is a hygiene appliance. The verb form refers to using this device for cleaning purposes. Neither the noun, nor the verb, is appropriate as an insult.
A sentence has one period, placed at the end. Do not place a period after every word to make a point. You should find another way to show that you really, really mean it.
Not everyone enjoys the sound of your voice as much as you do.
Ass is a noun. It refers to either a donkey, or a butt. It is not an adverb, nor an adjective. Do not place ass between an adjective and a noun.
Before you “call out” somebody for “racism”, drape a towel over your mirror.
The third commandment says to not use the word G-d “in vain”. The G word should only be used for worship, and respectful discussion. Improper uses include expressing anger, swearing, selling life insurance, and pledging “allegiance” to a symbol of nationalism.
Pictures are from the The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
The Angel Story
Angel Poventud put a note on facebook the other day. “Good Sunday morning, biking to the Grant Park Farmers Market in a bit, then yard work. Brunch with the family and an apple appointment at 350pm at Lenox Mall. If you get a chance, listen to WERK, 91.1, Ga Tech radio from noon to 1pm Monday. Amanda Plumb was kind enough to let me ramble about all things life for an hour and 45 minutes. Bless her for having to get it down to an hour” PG felt obliged to make a correction. “That is WREK. There is too much werk in the world already.”
The interview is a delight. While PG and Angel have shared some cool adventures, they do not really know that much about each other. Angel’s story of growing up in the Everglades, and having the area returned to a natural state, is unique. The part about his Grandmother is heart warming. It is amazing to hear how this life has evolved into what it is today.
About half way through the chat, the kitchen timer went off. The potatoes were finished steaming. It was also 830 pm, in July, and not raining. PG needed one more bike ride in his life. He took off heading south, and climbed the big hill on Tobey Road, just past Skyland. PG used to live in a duplex on Tobey, and had gone up that big hill many, many times. He is used to seeing a Mcmansion where his addict apartment used to be. Sometimes, you need to accept the changes in your life.
Across Clairmont Road from the end of Tobey is the driveway to the 57th Fighter Group Restaurant. On many a summer evening, a ride down this driveway was a great way to extend a twilight ride. Tonight was Team Trivia, which PG has no problem missing. Going back out the driveway, through thick forest on both sides, the temptation is to coast with no hands on the handlebars. Good times.
Back home, the interview got onto the beltline. Angel leads walks on the beltline. PG has been on eight of these walks, covering the complete loop around the city core. (071109 073109 111109 112509 012310 022010 112810 120210) Angel had a different look every time.
While listening to the show, PG was editing pictures from The Library of Congress. These pictures are presented with this post. These pictures are from the Farm Security Administration. The California pictures were taken by Dorothea Lange. The Illinois pictures were taken by Russell Lee.
The Rainbow Flag
On June 19, artist Gilbert Baker, who created the rainbow flag in 1978, shared his memories of that period and the flag’s creation in a discussion at the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco with longtime activist and friend, Cleve Jones. The rainbow flag is so iconic, so ubiquitous, so universally recognized, that there is a habitual tendency to think that it has always flown to represent queer Pride. Yet it is not so: it was created and consciously adopted in the streets of San Francisco, when activists spoke of gay liberation rather than LGBT acceptance in the after-fires of the political fires of the late 1970s. And no, it wasn’t created because we’re all friends of Dorothy.
“1977 — that was a pivotal year,” Baker said. “That was the year of Anita Bryant. That was he year Harvey (Milk) was elected. That was the year we became galvanized.” It was also the year after the American Bicentennial Celebration, a period that Baker said made him more flag conscious as he cranked out hundreds of banners and signs for the endless parades that activists were busily organizing. “I thought, You know, we ought to have a flag,’” Baker said. “A flag is something you can’t disarm. What makes a flag a flag is that people own it. It connects to their souls. It belongs to them.” Baker said he did not want to work with the symbols of oppression that had been adopted in the early victim politics. “The Lambda was a little obscure,” he said, “and the triangles were given to us by the Nazis.”
He began researching rainbows and their uses in the Bible, in Native cultures and in the psychedelic hippy peace and freedom culture of the Sixties. “It represents all the colors, all the genders, all the humanity,” Baker said. “I wanted to expand on the use of visual images that would not depend on language.” Baker said the first two flags were made using all-natural materials and dyes in the fashion of the day. But the colors ran when they got wet. In addition, the flag started off with eight colors, not the six it has now, and each color stood for something different: pink (sex), red (life), orange (healing), yellow (sun), green (nature), turquoise (magic), blue (serenity) and lavender (spirit). “Eight is a very magical number,” said Baker. “It’s symmetrical, and allowed me to split them into hot and cold colors. It gave me a way to incorporate pink. Of course, it was a fuchsia hot pink. And it allowed me to bring in turquoise, connecting to Native island cultures.” But, in the long run, the eight color flag was too complicated and costly to reproduce in the pre-digital age of four-color printing. So he dropped pink and turquoise. “I felt strange because I was giving up sex and magic,” Baker said with a laugh.
Jones said there was a lot of community conversation at the time about the need for a unifying symbol. “When that went up the flag pole, all conversation on it stopped,” Jones said. “Everybody just embraced it.” It seemed, Baker and Jones said, that just about everyone wanted the gay flags except the flag industry: world of flag-makers and vexilographers. “It took about 10 years,” Baker said, recounting how he cut his hair and dressed in business attire in order to try to fit in at the flag industry conventions. “They pretty much decide on what a flag is. They would not even entertain a motion that there even was such a thing as a gay flag. A lot of good old boy flag companies down in Texas didn’t want to know anything about a gay flag.” But when one took a chance and made 5,000 little flags for Baker, they sold out in two hours. Game over, battle won. Now they are everywhere, and the rainbow is incorporated in knick-knacks and collectibles. Jones teased Baker about not having patented the symbol. “How do you feel when you see all this rainbow crap and you don’t stand to make a penny off it?” Jones asked. “It’s not about money,” Baker teased back. “It’s about power.”
There have been some iconic world record moments for the flag since then, such as the Stonewall 25 flag in New York City in 1994, and the sea-to-sea rainbow flag in Key West in 2003 on the 25th anniversary of the flag. And there have been the grim reminders of why the flag was needed, as when a parade of the flag in a celebration in Stockholm drew 300,000 spectators, and then was disrupted when gangs of young neo-Nazis grabbed and brutally beat some of the spectators. “It blew my mind,” Baker said. “There is this resistance that comes to us in the form of violence. We’re lucky to be in America. I think about those gay people in China who can’t come out making those rainbow tchotchkes and they can never come out. Or Uganda: there wasn’t any ’Will and Grace’ in Uganda. Our liberation is an ongoing struggle. It was before us and it will be in the generations after us. It’s more than the colors we can see: It’s the colors that we can’t see, the thing that go past our own lives.”
The text for this feature is borrowed from Creator of Rainbow Flag Shares His Memories of the Movement. Pictures are from The Library of Congress This is a repost. Out in the bay has a wonderful radio interview with Gilbert Baker.
Failed State Index
Fund For Peace is about to unveil The Failed States Index 2013. FFP takes 12 indicators, mixes them up with a secret formula, and produces a list of 178 countries. The worst country, with the 001 rank, is Somalia. 178 is Finland.
A blog called Musings On Iraq brought the FSI to the attention of PG. The country between the rivers is 011 this year, despite, or because of, the heavy American investment there. MOI does not deny the problems in Iraq, but questions the way FFP keeps score. When you start looking at the twelve indicators, compare the scores over the last few years, you eyes might start to glaze over.
“The most glaring scores however were for group grievances and security apparatus that went from 9.7 to 10.0 and 9.9 to 10.0 respectively. Obviously the insurgency is taking off again, but 10.0 was the score Iraq received when it was still in a civil war in 2007. Yes, violence is up, but it’s nowhere near the level it was at during the sectarian conflict when several thousands were ending up dead each month, the government largely shut down, and daily life was completely disrupted.”
The problems in ranking Iraq highlight some of the problems with a study like this. It is tough to really know what is going on across town, much less across the world. MOI describes Iraq in 2007 as a country in collapse. This was when Fox News told America that we were winning the war.
The bottom ten is dominated by Africa. The first Asian state to appear is 007 Afghanistan, another state with an intense American investment. 008 is Haiti, 011 is Iraq, and 013 is Pakistan. The rest of the bottom 20 is African.
The top ten is dominated by Scandinavia. 173 New Zealand is the top non European nation, with 169 Australia rounding out the top ten. The other eight top tens are European, with 170 Ireland ten spots ahead of 160 Great Britain. England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are considered as one unit.
The way that 160 Great Britain was judged, as one unit, probably affected the score of that state. Another state like that is 067 Israel/West Bank. This apparently includes Gaza. The troubles in the Arab parts counterbalance the good life in the Jewish state.
We are in paragraph eight, and still have not discussed 159 United States. 168 Canada and 097 Mexico round out NAFTA land. The top Asian state is 158 Singapore, 152 Chile tops South America, and 121 Botswana is on top of continental Africa.
According to the Guardian, “The organisation that produces the index, the Fund for Peace, is the kind of outfit John le Carré thinks we should all be having nightmares about. Its director, JJ Messner (who puts together the list), is a former lobbyist for the private military industry. … The main reason is that the concept of the failed state has never existed outside a programme for western intervention. It has always been a way of constructing a rationale for imposing US interests on less powerful nations.”
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
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