Zeet>
Zied
If you carry a big stick, Watch your back
In greece huge crowds protested presidents Bush's visit. In the middle east, arabs burn our
flag. Khadafi has called America the "great satan". U.S. citizens are hostages in Lebanon. Our
embassy was looted in Iran. Americans are prime targets for bombs on airplanes. Why do so many
countries hate the U.S? What have our leaders done wrong?
In the begining when Teddy Roosevelt broke the long tradition of American isolation he did
it with a bang. The young rough rider lead in an invation of Cuba, and stole our little baby away from
the clutches of "Spanish Butchers", (at least that's what the newspapers labeled the spainish for the
folks back home). Lucky Cuba, it got to be the subject of American "democratization" and liberation.
America turned her into a Las Vegas of sorts; where one could find all those illegal pleasures which
couldn't be found at home. Then American business men made the Cubans into sugar-plantation
slaves and set up a totalitarian dictatorship. The Cubans liked this so much that they revolted and
became the sworn enemies of American Capitalism.
But our foreign policy didn't stop with Cuba, the United States also saved numerous other
nations from the spaniards, with such joyful successes as the Philippines.
The United States has supported dictators and military regimes the world over in the name
of protecting the world from Communism. In many of these cases it could be said that these nations
would have been better off communists. Americans found themselves, and continue to findthemselves
in numerous wars to protect U.S. pet dictators from foreign nations, communist our otherwise.
Our presidents have built a military capable of sapping the strength of our great nation
every fiscal year. A tremendous military that has enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world
something like 6 times, (just in case we miss the first 5 times).
Ah, you think there must be a reason for this. In capitalism there is always one reason,
money. It is far better to have a dictator rather than a communist in charge, because with the
dictator our business men can trade, build, and exploit in true capitalistic style. In return for this
they are given a few million every year in military aid. In the case of El Salvador U.S. aid is more
than their annual national budget.
The United States used to try to set up real third world democracies. However a third world
democracy doesn't work very well, as in India and Egypt. The first is a basically one party country,
and the later had their president assassinated by fanatic Muslims. It is much easier to support a
dictator than to try to start a democracy, mainly because one can not truely "create a
democracy." The majority of the people must be educated enough to vote for reform. These people
must take an interest in politics, a large lower class doesn't do this, (a third world nation almost
always has a large lower class). Also a successful capitalist democracy could be an economic threat,
many of them seem to be profiting off of our own weak economy, such as Japan and Korea.
The system of supporting dictators is very good for the wealthy and large international
corporations. These third world pet dictators provide a large market for American goods and many
resources for American exploitation. However it doesn't do one bit of good for the common man. The
millions of average joes who can't afford to pay the accountant to cheat our way out of paying taxes.
We are the ones who pay for the brutal dictators and the oppressive regimes. We also pay for it when
a plane blows up and our neighbors or us get killed. When our boy soldiers are killed in a foreign
country, (whether a declared war or not). Sons of the wealthy never become soldiers.
Needless to say our "Big stick" foreign policy has created quite a few enemies. We seem to
make more every year. I guess if you invade, support, and sell weapons when ever you need to, how
ever you want to, and to who ever will buy; then you can't really claim to act in the best interest of
the world. Gee I wonder why those nasty nations take American hostages, or blow up 300 marines in
Beirut; we've never done anything bad to them. If you're going to carry a big stick then you'd better
watch your back.
But don't worry none of this effects you. This isn't your world I'm talking about. Those
hundreds of El Salvadorans being killed ever year don't mean anything. None of this will ever hurt
your little slice of suburbia we call home. Besides, I bet there's something good on the TV right now.
-this one may be in avant-guard (one fucking word) but hell I kinda like it.
Zied
Why are our public schools failing? Why are private schools better? What does the Japanese and indeed, most of the industrialized world, teach that Americans aren't learning? What the hell are we doing wrong? That's the question we've been asking ever since the first major international test found American students falling behind.
I don't have all the answers, but I have an unconventional idea that I think will work. Why don't we privatize our socialistic, stagnant public schools? The states would calculate how much they spend per year on each student, and then pay each school that much for each student enrolled.
The schools would compete for students, and in trying to out do each other, would improve equipment, teachers, most importantly, education. Students could take national tests, and parents could judge what school is best. Schools would also continue to provide busing, and other services in order to attract parents.
The states could make money by selling off it's school buildings, buses, and others to the new schools. Then to avoid starting the schools in debt, the state would add what ever it makes from these sales to the normal amount per student just for the first year.
As it is now, richer districts can afford to pass levies which improve rich neighborhood schools. Also money for schools are payed for by property taxes and other wealth detrimed taxes. Needless to say, rich neighborhoods have better public schools than poor neighborhoods. Thus rich get a better education, and the poor are denied even the basic right to a descent education. Teachers have a job for life, one in which there is little motivation or pay. A tremendous waste of money exists in any government branch, schools are no exception. You are probably paying, in taxes, more than your moneys worth. Most obvious of all is the inequity of money for schools, Capital has a full time janitor armed with a tractor while larger inner city schools don't even have computers.
We need to return the burden of paying from the schools from the cities and counties to the states. Give each school, no matter how many BMWs are in the parking lot or hundred thousand dollar homes across the street, the same amount of money per student. Give each young American an equal and honest chance at success. That is what our public schools are for.
-neat eh?
Zied
I remember seeing a guy put a bud can in his sports bottle. He looked around, to see if any one was looking and then put it in. He did it rather clumsaly. He looked like a typical dum jock. It was football season and he proably wanted to have some bud while playing. I feel sorry for him.
It seems that more and more we are living in our own little worlds. Avoiding contact whenever posible. It isn't uncommon to see a person walking around wearing headphones. Listening to his own little world as it sings or talks to him. Maybe some day we wll have vertual relatily helmets and sets and can just put these on and ignore the rest of the world. Then the next step will be to plug it right into the mind-electronic interface on our head. Direct connection to the brain. After that we can live in floating tanks, our bodies removed and play games with our minds. With artifical intelligence computers, etc... However there will have to be something done about the population rate. Perhaps AIDS will do some thing about that.
All our irregularities as humans are being soothed out. If some one is unusually hyperactive, they are given drugs to take care of the problem. Someday with the power of gene mapping we will be able to have "perfect" childern. But what is a perfect child? Handycapped and the retarded cured. Everyone normal? I read an artical saying that sucids victems have a certain level of opiates in their blood, much higher than other people. Someday they may be able to detect a person going to commit suicid and correct the problem. Correct the problem? Then no more devents. Maybe we can all be clones of the same stock. Smooth out the irregulars and "trouble" makers and then we'll have a perfect world. Right?
-so I didn't spell check it, sorry.
Zied
The way it works
You and I live in an America where one thing rules all, one thing controls everything. We live in a dictatorship and that dictator is money. Our economy is based on free trade, on capitalism. Capitalism means survival of the fittest, success for the those who make it. Every man, woman, and child dreams to be rich and powerful.
I am not here to say this is bad or wrong, on the contary I support survival of the fittest and wish sucess on those who deserve it. The alternative is Communism and it doesn't take long for that to become a lie, to be come a hollow dream in a hollow nation of stagnation and lost hope. Humanity has tried marxism and humanity failed. I am currently in biology and if you learn anything in biology at all you learn that those who've got it live and those who don't die.
What I'm trying to say is that in Washington D.C. if you want your views supported you make campain contributions. If you want to get elected you take campain contributions. You take money from the PACTs, in return for all your idealism, all your power of choice, your morals and your soul. If you take money from dairy farmers you vote for farm aid, or come next election you get a new job.
The single biggest force in the national goverment is defence contractors. Ya thats right the guys who sell wrenches for $500 and cruise missiles for a million or two a piece.
You see it all started in the Civil War the industrialists discovered you could sell anything for any price to the goverment. The only problem was the Civil War ended and the goverment didn't need weapons any more. You see America was once very isolationist, it didn't care about foreign wars. And lets face it there arn't going to be any wars on the home front. In fact the last war we had on american soil was the revolution. Then WWII came and America actualy joined a major war fullforce and you know what, we loved it. America loved the idea of kicking some good old Japanes and Nazi ass. We came out looking like heros. Just watch some old 40's and 50's movies, or maybe Hogan's Heros. The defence contractors loved it to, in fact when it was all over they had to come up with a new enemy, they had to find a reason for america to keep making bombs, rifles and jet fighters. Oh yes the 50's were a time to teach america to hate and fear those communists where ever they hide. To keep the great american military machine running full bore. To suck up every last hard earned buck for guns and tanks. These communists made great enemies until 1990, the year the commies went capitalist. Suddenly we had no reason for troops in europe, for B2 bombers. In fact we started shrinking the army to one-half it's previous size, and even started cancelling defence contracts left and right. We even started talking about a peace dividend. Is it coincidence that as soon as the horrible commies were gone we turned a minor incident into a full blown war? Did the defence contractors see fuel for the great american military machine? Are we and our parents sheep paying in blood to those who sold us the M1 tank? After all what good is a tank if you don't use it, and what good are sheep if you don't steal their wool and maybe kill a couple? This is a do or die world and a huge debt and a hefty ego arn't going to help us. I'd hate to see an America where the Japanise own the other half of L.A.
I support the sanctions and I support Saudi Arabia and Kuwait paying for our presence. I find it rediculous to think that war could be good for the economy in any long term sense. This war however is very good at drawing attention away from the recessation, from lowering the national dept, from limiting terms in office, from all the important and critial problems at home. This war strives for "freedom" for a monarchy which shouldn't really exist anyway.
This war is being fought by a "international" force which consits of one half world and one half America. America who sends its sheep to die to fuel the great american military machine.
But hey thats the way it works.
-this one woulda got printed had an issue of avant-one-fucking-word-guard come out before the war was over.
Zied
Mrs Jones
My father was a driven man
He ruled us with an iron hand
My mother protected us
Which was really giving in to us
I had to go, to get away
Here in Spoon river is where I'll stay
I got a job managing men
Pushing around the best of them
Was married and gave birth
Thus my firsh born was unearthed
I demanded success, for him to be the best
He wanted to be like all the rest
Percariously balanced between mother and the ladder
But I knew not what was the matter
I tryed to do it all, and never took a fall
But now it's done and I wonder where was all the fun?
And why am I just like my mother?
My life was my work and my forgotten child hurt
-this one is about my mother
Zied
to ask questions of the clouds
to ask questions of the clould is to rip them apart,
to cut them to prices,
to reduce them to fragments of mathemactics and science.
to say why are you there?
why do you stay why do you float?
why do you form your self so?
what drives you on?
why, why, why...
cloulds are to be seen and loved and thought of.
nature is not biology,
space is not astrophsyics,
god is not a man.
you do not offer money to god,
any more than you buy and sell souls,
to be traped in worldy bonds,
and never see the unlimited sky
is to rot away in to grabage
and to be defined and reduced into billions of cells
organized into a functioning machine,
to reduce thought into a series of chemical interchanges.
to say that a person is group of meaningless data,
a pile of equations, a mere biochemical factory...
to say that the universe is a limited
or unlimited amount of emptyness is to say that a life is boring.
to cast away the buildings and the shelters,
to not be traped in a self sustained enviroment,
to not be protected and locked within a manmade world;
that is life.
-just something I typed in one day.
Zied
here comes the ant dream, for those who have read it already.
I had a distrubing dream last night. I was standing in a dark area surrounded by horrible, hopeless people. They were dressed in old beaten brown rags, and had a look of such utter hopeless dispair on their faces that I avoided looking at them. They were normal looking but their eyes and clothes told of misery and unspeakable things. I got out of the train which I had been in. It was an old black steam engine. There was no cloud of steam coming out and it moved with slow unnatural persition, I did not look at it as it moved away. The place I was at was bleak and grey, a city with out life or windows. I moved slowly not seeing much and talked to no one. I avoided looking at the people, the dull grey concret was all around in every direction. A man with a lean hard face and hungry eyes looked at me as he got out of a Mersades like car. He asked me if I smoked. I must of told him no because he said I should eat some cigerets to keep the ants for biting me. I said nothing and began to walk, I don't know how far I walked or where I walked. But I remember walking where there were fewer of the deslote people. There were no homes in the city only concret building and concret streets. There were no cars or wrecks of cars, in fact no derby at all except for the people. There was only occasional railroad tracks. Almost every one I saw was smoking and there were cigerate stubs on the ground. I remember coming to a intersection in the street and the cross road had a pair of tracks going down the middle. Two people were standing there smoking there a man and a woman. The man looked at me once as he walked the way I had come, the woman behind him. I bent down to pick up some cigarets and remember an ant crawling away. The cigarets broke into a hand full of blackish ash as I picked them up. Looking up I see the man in the suit with the hungry eyes, standing behind him is a woman in a fur coat. She was not young or beautiful but not yet old. The man may have spoken to me but all I remember was him asking if this was my train, it was. I thought about the ants as the train approched. There was something about the ants, I didn't know what. The big steam train came slowly without any sound, without any steam. I knew I would be getting on the train.
This is where the dream ended, I remember fearing the ants but I never learned why. Everything was vague and dream like.
-dude I still remeber that dream.
Zied
well now, wasn't that special?
James T Kirk
Geez. U/l it. Don't put it in a message.
James T Kirk
Okay, It's a dir room,
Roya
Woah...Exactly, how big is this newspaper going to be? Nice, Zied...Just try to spell check them...
James T Kirk
Ha, HIM?
Well, could someone capture that and u/l it as an ASCii file? I can't take things out of the message base. (sence it's an 512k file, it's REALLY HARD to find anything in it, thats assuming i can find a word prosessor that'll take that large a file.,)
Shane
jesus, zied... you're the dumbass that was online all fucking day...
Zied
no the dumn asses were trying to read those posts. heh heh.
James T Kirk
No, KeithCliff has been tieing up the line, he found Tw2002.
The Rocketeer
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The Rocketeer
It Works!
The Rocketeer
hello?
Zied
why is that loser contaminating my room?
Zied
what the hell? audin what did you do with those messages I put up wityh all my stuff, and shit?
Zied
what is story1?
James T Kirk
Your story's still there. I just connected thia room to the same dir that the GUN aritcals room it hooked up to.
AHH! It's CONTAMANATED!!!!! RUN!
Roya
Story1 is my story...Read it...It may look very hard to read at first, but the story explains why I wrote it that way...
Spur
Zied, I like the first one, the ants dream, and the poem about why... They were really cool.
Shane
Ants!! Ants!! Ants!!
Spur
I can see that, like in a movie. It's nifty, Even nify.
Zied
I'm glad you like them, but where are they (my stories poems and what ever else I put up) not just zeet1 which was a screw up.
Spur
They're in the messages, man.
Zeet> _