Thursday, December 18, 2008

A Book of Aphorisms by Anthony St. John

Never argue with a woman cleaning the house during her pre-menstrual tension.

Never marry someone for their money. Marry someone for the money of their father.

Psychoanalysis is an hysterical reaction to history.

Journalism is an exaggeration of an exaggeration.

Tennis is the boxing match of introverts.

The first profession was marriage. Prostitution was created to preserve the idea of love.

I observe many people who believe in many gods; but, I do not see one god who believes in one person.

Better Be Christian at the BBC or you will be beebed by The Beeb.

It is not armed force that will bring us to peace; it is the force of argument that will.

My dearest Queen Elizabeth, I wish to tell you something. You do not see it, I know! But there are enormous cracks in the foundations of democracy in the Disunited Kingdom that are causing much unnecessary suffering for many of your subjects.

The Spanish burn out their frustrations. The Italians cultivate theirs.

How do you un-exist something?

Credit must be given to Europe for being so obstinate so long.

A museum is a reminder to us of how stupid we are.

The tragicomedy of this century is watching startlingly-slow industrialised nations enter the Computer Age.

Northamericans express scientifically their slowness to apprehend. Europeans express theirs artistically.

Stupidity is a safety measure to prevent the immediate escape of intelligence.

I have loved and I do love and I will love individual human beings. Yet I loathe mankind.

Who needs nuclear bombs when we have nuclear reactors?

The only hope we have is that our sons and daughters will be less daft than their fathers and mothers.

Yes, silence can be golden. But, it might also serve as the refuge of censors, bureaucrats and twerps.

The family is an organisation which—like the police—may disturb you early Sunday morning while you are sound asleep.

The Japanese are making real the dreams of Leonardo da Vinci. And the Italians are infuriated!

Electronically-controlled church bells ringing on early Sunday morning will be the eternal vendetta of dead priests.

A toy is a more sophisticated game.

Ernest Hemingway is a bore, but David Leavitt makes him read excitingly.

The most popular holy picture in Italy is green and it has a portrait of George Washington upon it.

If you want to live serenely with a woman, you must learn to stop urinating on the toilet seat.

The mass media cannot be held responsible for the way it tells us what news it tells us, but it is responsible for leaving out what news it has elected to omit.

We are doing something wrong, and we know it!

Is it not strange that we put men who call themselves Napoleon in mental hospitals, but those who claim to be representatives of unseen gods we put in pulpits?

The Vietnam veteran is not crazy because he went to Vietnam. He is crazy because he continues to live in the United States.

Mass media specialists might quicken up the speed of meanings of words and so dilute the previously recognised significance of them, and lead the way to creating a new vocabulary. Overall, unfortunately, they distort more than they create.

Atom bombs are like gods: people who believe in them say they are everywhere; but, no one ever sees them.

The Earth is said to be about 5,000,000,000 years old. We have not found in this time a universal name for a god [spelled backwards: dog!] or even for the measurement of our shoes. The only word I know which has a sense of that pertaining to or affecting the entire world, or all within the world, is the child’s utterance for defecation: pooh-pooh.

If we want to know our true selves, we must despair of us every day.

We will never be perfect, but we must always seek perfection.

The British will laugh at Northamericans for their electronic evangelism. But do not laugh at the British for their BBC evangelism.

The idea of god and churches have made human wisdom seem foolish. When will human wisdom make god and churches seem foolish?

Maybe the only way the Earth might save itself is if it is attacked from Outer Space and Earthlings are forced to unite together against a common enemy—not themselves.

Whenever I meet a very rich person, I ask immediately: “What is the capitalistic system like?” And the immediate response: “Don’t you know?” And I reply: “No, I don’t have enough money to enjoy it.” Then: “Why don’t you work like me and earn some so you can enjoy it.”

Becoming old means learning what dose of sentimentality you can swallow.

I have never met a woman who could clean the bathroom as well as I can. They are always in a hurry to do so many things: raise children, work, cook, clean…

DON’T THINK! You might become intelligent.

Can you cut off the taste of the food in your mouth using the power of your brain?

I have been on this side (capitalism) of the fence for so long that to switch to the other (communism) would be like swapping Christian for Jewish.

What would it be like for a Christian to see through the eyes of a Jew?

Being true to yourself is like shooting painful bulls-eyes.

The biggest business in Italy is not Ferraris or shoes or sweaters. It is Christianity.

A nation is developing when the perforation machines—used to divide individual pieces of toilet paper—are maintained.

I have never had enough money to say that I might have enjoyed the capitalistic system. Have you?

I live nine kilometres from Firenze. It takes twenty minutes to get there by horse and forty-five minutes to get there by bus.

I buy three or four eaux de cologne and mix them together when I get home.

Italians suffer an oral dyslexia.

Certain speakers of Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Provençal, French, Italian, Rhaeto-Romance, and Rumanian have done two very important things for me in my life: they have kept me in a constant, medium to low-high state of justifiable irritation; and, they have taught me to acquire some degree of patience.

Italians are like snow falling to the ground that does not stick.

Italians are the caretakers of the remains of one of the biggest lies in the history of the world.

I am a thinker who dreams and a dreamer who thinks.

Everybody is my friend!

Italians are at their best when they pretend to be happy.

There was a time when you took your date out and asked what book your date was reading. Today, you ask your date if he/she has ever read a book!

Before coming to Italy, I had always wondered why there are so many saints in Italy. Now I know why. You have to be a saint to live in Italy!

In love, in war four things count: you must be awake; you must be afraid; you must have respect; and, you must be assured.

Beethoven has “pushed” me more than anyone.

Capitalism is not working, but people are swearing to their gods that it is.

My economy is simple: All those who have more money than me, are thieves. And, to the rest, I am a thief.

People say they took an aspirin for their headaches. Or they had an operation to remove their cancers. Or they had a tooth extracted to cure their toothache. But never have I heard people say they have been cured of their neuroses or psychoses. Have you?

Is it not amazing that the same nation that drops napalm on children can drop men on the moon?

I snap out at the stupidity of man not because I am anymore intelligent, but because wherever I go for enlightenment, I am laughed at.

The mass media reports the news efficiently, elegantly, and fantastically. What it does not report, disturbs me.

He/she does not want to be in love. He/she wants to be in sex.

I do not want to be published. I want to be immortalised.

There are really only two political parties in the world: that of theism (black) and that of atheism (red).

Journalists and politicians sleep together in the same bed. But the journalists do not get up on the same side on which they entered the bed—after.

Rationalism would be a fantastic philosophy if there were enough rationalists around.

The Northamericans have out-Europed Europe. Old Mother Europe is choking with a feeling of discontent and resentment. She is contemplating the desirable possessions of Northamerica with a strong desire to have them for herself.

Europe is like a one-hundred-year-old on a life support system. Everyone is torn between pulling the plug and facing the inheritance tax music.

I have lived in “democratic” Italy for many years, but I have not yet had the liberty to attend a football match.

The United States and its allies continue to hang chandeliers of exotic weapons all over the world.

Phobias are un-definable reactions to universal insanities.

Mother Europe is going through her menopause.

We invite those who say they represent a god we have never seen, and beg them to fan crosses over the food we will eat.

There is a revolutionary wing in the Roman Catholic Church. After centuries, it is now permitting women to sing Gregorian Chant!

English is synthetic and radical.

I have met many stupid people in my life. Italians are the first to tell me they are proud to be stupid as long as it is Italian stupid.

We look to the past with a sense of superiority, and in museums and churches we come upon a spatial existence that bolsters our egos even more.

Communism did not work. And capitalism does not, either. Why? What are we doing wrong?

Northamericans liberated Italy from the Germans, but they did not liberate Italy from the Italians.

Italy is the richest, poorest country in the world.

Italy, Greece, Portugal and Spain are underdeveloped First World Countries.

Are the Germans more dense for building concentration camps, or for continuing to keep them in their memories.

There is an imperative in the world for all people to join in a spirit of community. But, there is not enough capital to permit them to do so.

The ultimate compliment is this: I enjoyed your work, and I learned something from it.

Science is twisting mankind’s arm to believe in itself, and religionists are fuming.

Without doubt there is no intelligence.

Writers are individuals who acquire patience by force.

One must measure carefully one’s dosage of irrationality.

Rationality is like wine. It can help you to digest; or, it can kill you.

Sure I won. But they gave the prize to another.

Italians are playing Russian roulette with a pistol that has one bullet in a chamber with one-thousand bores. They are convinced they will not be shot, and they have forgot the name of the game they are playing.

They are making radios so small you have to blow on them to change the stations.

Divorce is better than murder.

If you live in Italy for a hundred years and you are not Italian, you will never be made to feel Italian.

The easiest place to steal in this world is in a government. And you do not have to carry a gun.

Where are the politicians who can walk amongst their people without bodyguards?

It is more fun to make history than it is to write about it.

Jesus changed water into wine, and Science is changing Jesus into thin air.

We would not be here if we could not be.

Boy Scouts are shoehorned into the army.

There are women who flash their children just as an undercover detective flashes his badge.

Europeans are secure of their existences; Northamericans are insecure of theirs.

An artist does not need a professor. He/she teaches something even when wrong.

You do not hear people saying anymore that the world is going to the dogs. Just about everyone knows now this mess is not even fit for them.

For the most part, people listen to the music of a song; they do not listen so much to its words. Even French people. If they paid close attention to the words of La Marseillaise, it might become the most detested song in France.

I must be getting old. I am starting to listen to what others have to say!

Northamericans have been obtuse for more than two-hundred years. Europeans have been obtuse for more than two-thousand years.

Europe must unite to save itself. But before it does, it must take vitamins.

I do not accept awards—only money.

Walk backwards when you are leaving so I may think you are coming home.

I am an Inductionist. I analyze from Particulars to the General. I am a P(I)G!

Can it be that it is more of a crime to kill an animal which does not think than to kill one which says it can?

I agree with Harry Truman: History is bunk! After all, it should not be the goal of mankind to insist upon reviewing its stupidity. Rather, we should seek to do something about the present state of affairs—and now!

The Bible and the works of Shakespeare have something in common: theists and Englishmen buy them, but they do not read them even though there are miracles to be found in both of them!

Have you ever seen a disabled horse or snake?

Italians are always dressed to go to church—but they never go.

I am ecstatically delighted to know I am not happy.

I’m happy I’m not happy.

The world is distressed and disabled, and two medicines are being prescribed: the witchcraft of capitalism and the witchcraft of communism.

Italian politics is like Italian religion: everyone believes in it—but no one sees it.

He thinks with his penis and fornicates with his brain.

Boxing is proof not so much that the human race is obtuse as much as it is proof that the human race wants to be obtuse.

Architecture is frozen music.

The sad truth of the matter is that Europeans are condemned to become more like Northamericans; and, Northamericans are condemned to become more like Europeans.

Italians are like stamps that do not have glue on their backs. They do not stick.

The nation that gave us hot dogs with sauerkraut and Beethoven cannot be all that bad.

Unlike the Germans and the Japanese, the Italians have still not “recovered” to some extent from their humiliations born during World War II. And just when Italians need to be healthy and strong to confront those European realities that will come after the turn of the twentieth century, they are weak and confused.

A unified Western Europe is just too sophisticated for a people who have never been able to afford safety to their citizens seated in football stadiums.

With all the gods and religions around us, would it not be more honest to say that they have been invented by man?

Democracy is more real when the promises of politicians are fulfilled before election day.

Which god do you believe in? There are so many of them!

The way to a woman’s heart is through her fallopian tubes.

Life is so unjust we are forced to do one of three things: Conform, and pretend we are not stealing; steal, and pretend we are not conforming; or, write poetry and conform and steal at the same time!

An Italian businessman dreams and then looks for money. A Northamerican businessman gets the money and then dreams.

Each hand washes the other and together they shake.

Knowledge derived from study and experience can be invested with that which serves to distinguish one thing from others and gives a result or effect that is intended.

I have loved women without touching them; and, I have touched women without loving them. Better to love and touch in unison!

He said he never had enough money to buy the wife he really wanted.

Children are incomplete adults. And we all know what happens to adults.

I have six billion friends, but I would not waste one minute with 99% of them.

My nation is the world and my nationality is worldly.

The coming battles to unite Europe will do more to strengthen socialism than did the two world wars.

Little facts can be the origins of big lies especially in the hands of journalists and politicians.

Tranquility or Artillery?

There are millions of women in the world who want a baby more than they want a husband. And they will fake taking their birth control pills to get their baby.

Now I know why Victorian men went away to smoke cigars and drink brandy after dinner. They were being kind.

When the family approaches you to ask when you are going “to have a baby,” ask them when they are going to pay for it!

He’s as Northamerican as cocaine!

Chevrolet…Apple pie…Coca-Cola…Mom…Valium…Librium…Marijuana…Cocaina…JUST SAY “No”!!!

He’s not obtuse. He’s frequently ignorant!

Do as I say. Don’t do as I do.

Larry is a lawyer and a liar. Larry is a liar and a lawyer. Larry is a lying lawyer!

No, history does not repeat itself! But human beings can be depended upon to be constantly obtuse.

Behind every great woman there is a baffled man.

Dumas said: “Next to God no one has created more than Shakespeare.” What about Beethoven?

The music of Beethoven has touched me more than the words of any literary genius.

Nations are diseases we must find vaccines for.

I am jumping for joy that Europe has selected Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony for its anthem and not some idiotic Gregorian Chant.

The image of a very large wedge.

And to think the United States is self-conscious about Europe!

Managing change means changing management.

The European Union, instead of leading to a utopia of neo-capitalism, will be the stimulus for a revival of neo-Marxism.

I am a rationalistic empiricist who acts on probabilities.

My writings need to be published so that they may find their just reality.

Why should we not save animals? We cannot save ourselves.

One of my passions is to let people know how obtuse they are without telling them.

Breast feeding is vital for the mother, for the child, and for humanity. But, above all, it is vivifying for the breast! It stimulates the prosperous growth of the nipples!

The Earth is billions of years old. What is “god” waiting for?

Simpatico is a word which means that if I stab you in the back you had better not cry, or else I will tell everyone you are not nice.

Our Father who art in heaven—STAY THERE!

There is not life after death. That is why we have inheritance taxes.

All the world is happy Europe is acting out its frustrations on the football field and not on the battlefield.

The problem with some countries in Europe is not that they should be worried about entering the twenty-first century; but, that they should be worried about entering the 1960s.

Maturity is the ability to resist.

They wear their children just as they wear their furs and gold watches.

She is the mother of John, Jr. but the husband of John, Sr..

For the world to have peace, we must confirm one and other. But before we confirm others, we must confirm ourselves. We must connect words and ideas with actions.

Being smart is knowing how ignorant you are. If you want to appear intelligent, tell everyone you think of yourself as being stupid!

Children are acting like adults. Adults are acting like children.

Italians are geniuses of design and fashion, but they are mentally retarded when it comes to selling and marketing.

I’m a capcom! A capitalistic communist.

“It does not make sense—and it should not.”

Although I am not an idiot, it looks as if I am qualified to do idiotic work only.

There is a north-south debate in Western Europe.

Are you politically inclined to the black or to the red? Hurry up and decide!

My blood is red and my heart beats on the left.

I’m not proud to be a human being, so how can I be proud to be a Northamerican or a Venezuelan or an Italian?

Love goes out the door when money comes in through the window.

He spies for the Central Stupidity Agency.

He is drunk, rich, over eighty-five, and lives in Switzerland—the perfect place for him.

Half the mothers of this world should be arrested for child abuse and not sent chocolates and flowers on Mother’s Day.

Northern Europe and Southern Europe are honing their swords.

There are two things to learn from university life: what excellence is and intelligence is not.

My errors serve me. I do not erase them; I cross them out. I want to see them always.

Medicine is the art of poisoning.

Do not be confused. He is not so much intelligent as he is.

New York is too fast for my body and too slow for my mind.

The United States was discovered by Italian journalists five-hundred years after Columbus arrived there.

I am a born leader but no one wants to follow me.

Italy is one big over-worked liver.

I am my best philosopher.

I have relieved myself of the idea of a god; but, I cannot extricate myself from the idea of man.

Does not a shopping mall or a stadium offer more spatial experience than a church or a synagogue?

The purpose of an artist is to tell people just how obtuse they are without offending them.

I came to Europe to meet and know intelligent people. Instead, I found out why Northamericans are so ignorant.

They are buying books the way they buy sweaters and socks. The colors of the dust covers must blend with the living room furniture and must absorb the colored rays of the television set.

I have so little money. The capitalistic system is treating me very badly.

They cannot even manage their own families! How can they manage their businesses? Their governments?

God is not dead enough.

Northamericans and Southamericans believe well in what Europe tells them.

Psychoanalysis is not much better than voodooism.

When will Northamericans wake up to find that they have sown more the seeds of hate and misunderstanding than they have planted seeds of love and understanding?

It is not that I am more intelligent than you are. No! I know how stupid I am and I know how to keep quiet about it.

If you want to take the war temperatures of the European war bodies, go to their football stadiums.

Do you think that an all-powerful, perfect, super-intelligent, pre-eminently righteous god could create two imbeciles such as you—and me?

Violence is not the reason to step out of society to analyse one’s own life situation and then transform it so as to achieve liberation from oppression within.

Is not good fortune traditionally a most unpardonable flaw among those who have not thrived?

Money is the best birth control in the industrialised world.

Something is holding up Europe and it is not the Europeans!

People are not as obtuse as they appear to be. They are waiting for something to catalyse them into action.

A genius is someone who really understands how stupid he/she is and does not pretend to be self-conscious about it.

Of course art should teach and delight. But before it does so it must sell.

Old literary agents never die, they just stop reading manuscripts.

You do not have to be an economist or political scientist to know that the best birth control device is a high cost of living.

Need we remind you again that it was the Northamericans who first dropped the atom bomb on innocent people?

When you believe in something fervently, you will eventually become imprisoned by it.

The more people tell you how happy they are, the more they are sad.

Societies that are disciplined to get what they want become dangerous when they do not get what they want.

Of course it is not his fault that he is a duke or a prince or a king; but, it is his fault to continue calling himself one.

There are people in this world who are proud to be stupid. Can you guess who they are?

In Italy the law is equal for everyone except those who squirm under the courtroom’s crucifix.

An artist is one who sells big with no effort.

An intricately-designed space station is enormously more beautiful than any painting hung over the fireplace. And what is even more attractive is that it has a purpose.

Only an idiot would pay millions for a painting he will hang in his living room.

The most widely-used contraceptive device in the world is not the prophylactic or pill. It is inflation.

People do not have babies not because they do not want them; but, because they cannot afford them.

My mind is sharp, crisp. But I drift in a sea of chaos.

I do not feel lonely. I feel alienated.

The streets of Europe are made for horses—not VOLVOS.

The crisis of our time is the inability of governments to reconcile the inalienable rights of all individuals to personal development with the necessity to diminish the misery of the masses.

Television commercials constitute a looter’s shopping list.

Has anyone correlated the growth of finger nails with life expectancy?

Will someone please tell me why the Queen of England, Elizabeth—perhaps the richest woman in the world—has always an I’ve-just-eaten-a-lemon look on her face?

Getting old means saying out loud what you thought—when young—should be kept quiet.

MEMO TO JOB HUNTERS: Until they start paying you, you have every right to be treated as a human being.

Science fiction is the hope of finding an enemy that is not human. I do not like it at all.

If hunters can hunt animals, why cannot I hunt my mother-in-law?

Art delights and enlightens.

I am a word ecologist: Let us change “elevator” to “lift”; let us change “trousers” to
“pants”; let us change “labour” to “labor”; and, let us change “Mr.” to “Mr”…et cetera.

Please, do not clone my mother-in-law!

In New York you ask first what kind of restaurant you want to eat in.

Few men, when they love and/or sex, will slip a rubber sheath over their penises to reduce the geometrically increasing birth rate in the world. But most will do so to buy a sports car.

Europe in under the political and economical thumb of the United States of America and does not know what to do about it.

Europe is fascism with a capital “F.”

You can lump diplomats, journalists and lawyers in one group and economists, weather forecasters and astrologists in another.

What if it is not what we think it to be?

What if it is the opposite of what we think it is to be?

Did you kiss your child today. No. I did better than that. I never had one.

I loved two Jewish girls in my life. The first told me she could not love me because I was a goy. The second told me she could not love me because I did not have enough money.

31 December 1999!!! Finally, this century of shit is over!

Life is a video cassette that can be rewound fast or very fast.

One regime, headed by a retired general, gave us Elvis Presley. Another regime, headed by the Queen of England, gave us The Beatles.

I am fan of the team which pays my entrance ticket.

Padre Pio is not a saint. He is a multinat business.

Queen Elizabeth, where do you have your hair done? At the Royal Mint?

Queen Elizabeth, who handles your public relations? The Gestapo?

When they are not dropping bombs on anyone, deep down inside the Northamerican people are fine people.

The Italians are the best-dressed bankrupts in the world.

The question is not whether or not women should be allowed to be soldiers. The question is whether or not men should be allowed to be soldiers.

Pettiness is the foundation stone upon which is constructed fortresses of arrogance.

Of course you should marry. Who is going to cut your toe nails when you are old and gray?

Who cuts Queen Elizabeth’s toe nails? Prince Philip?

Modern Italian history reads like exercises in How Not to Do It.

Paul McCartney is the Frank Sinatra of the United Kingdom. He is so nice, nobody likes him.

All is economics and not politics. Politicians enter government because there is the easiest place to steal. You do not even have to carry a gun.

He is a philanthropist. He robs from the poor to give to the poor.

A purely negative effort is doomed to failure.

Anatomy is not destiny. But how we feel about our anatomy can make our destiny.

A good song has to do two things for me: bring chills up and down my spine and bring tears to my eyes.

Spies have a license to kill and lawyers have a license to lie.

Royalty is proof that humanity uses only ten percent of its brain cells.

Jesus Christ was “packaged” much better than Karl Marx.

A lawyer is someone who has discovered that logic does not exist.

Science and technology are out-miracling Jesus Christ.

Thoughts are the fingerprints of our minds.

The relationship between man and woman is based on the desperate hope that one might be better than the other.

A woman knows how to pullulate patience.

Marriage is the only battle in which you sleep with the enemy.

Dizzy as a fly in a pastry shop.

If money does not make you happy you can always give it away.

A unified monetary system is not the only thing Europe lacks. It needs shock therapy, too.

The Roman Catholic Church says that its priests cannot touch other men or women. So then, they are left to touch themselves.

Hitler and Stalin were what their people wanted them to be.

Our future is already our past.

The football stadium is the anus into which the Central Stupidity Agency sticks its thermometer to take the temperature of the violence of Italian society.

Is living with a woman without marrying her worse than living with her married? Of course, if you are not married to her, you cannot divorce her. Then you have to kill her!

Will someone please invent a system where numbers do not have to be stapled to the wool of my sweaters when I take them to be cleaned?

No one likes Northamericans, but everyone likes $$$.

God or money? Money.

I want to dedicate this book to Judith, Majorie, Lucia, Rosa, Maria del Pilar, and Maria Luisa. Without your help I would have had a more enjoyable and more prosperous life.

When you are in love with two women, give each of them a pistol and ask them to have a duel.

It is so much more fun making history than it is writing or reading about it.

Gianni Agnelli did more than anyone else to bring Italy into the European fold. He invented the FIAT. It is such a bad car, Italians were forced to buy foreign cars and communicate with countries beyond their borders.

Democracy means that a nation’s hospitals, schools, post offices, transportation systems and theatres and orchestras are more elegant than its jewelry shops, clothes boutiques, banks and ice cream parlours.

Italy is committing suicide and the pistol of choice is xenophobia.

You are not supposed to enjoy life. You are supposed to survive and try to better things for all individuals.

Besides having five or six extra cheap umbrellas in their homes and tend to lend you one when it has begun suddenly to rain, rich people often smell nice, too.

The best publicity is bad publicity. Q.E.D.: Journalists are imbeciles.

I am a spy. A secret agent. I am 001. I have a license to love.

Should we ground female pilots when they are in the throes of their pre-menstrual tension?

Economy is horoscoping with numbers.

Italians are trying awfully hard to be something they are not.

She is as faithful as a woman on her honeymoon.

Women are the juxtaposition between rationalisation and murder.

The Italians do not have so much a problem with English as they have with Italian.

Italian is a dead language. Deader than Latin.

The rich get richer and the Enrons get bigger. Three cheers for creative destruction.

After two thousand years the Italians are finally learning that a virgin could not give birth to a baby. And that a thirty-three-year old man could not change water into wine, but a middle-aged man from Seattle just might be able to do it.

The medium is not the message. The message is that the medium is not divulging all the message.

The mother of Leonardo da Vinci put bread crusts dunked in wine into the mouth of her child to help with his teething. Today Florentine mothers pop pills into the mouths of their babies.

Italians do not have money to spend on new schools, new transport systems, new hospitals, new irrigation systems…. But they do have money to buy perfumed toilet paper.

Marylin Monroe does not exist. Our collective idea of her does. This idea is so perverse, we do not have the courage to admit what it is. Negating this idea, we continue to enlarge the myth about her. The snowball going down the mountain gets bigger and bigger. Marylin Monroe, and others like her, is the realization of the myth to not know the Truth. We expand this myth with the hope of concealing what The Truth is. Do we really do want to know The Truth?

I do what I do because I could not be a great rock n’ roll singer.

Is it not wonderful that we can commemorate the death of Elvis Presley every 15 August without thinking about the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven!

Newspapers are filled every 15 August with stories about Elvis Presley and not the Virgin’s Assumption.

We are progressing!

Let’s compose an Ode to Tuna Fish!

I have opened the brains of the Italians which I found in their tongues.

Italians have micro minds—not macro minds.

Italians have taught me the meaning of democracy by taking it away from me.

The Italians will learn enough English to do business with Northamericans, but not enough English to do politics with the Northamericans.

Italy is the only country in the world where a father can take his son to Mass and Holy communion in the morning, take him to a whore house in the afternoon, and then make him read Marx and Engels in the evening.

The United States of America is a great nation—if it is not bombing you!

Less journalists. More Truth.

Let us thrive on our hypotheses.

More sport. Less religion.

Sometimes I wonder if the United States will have enough money to buy enough printing presses to stamp enough money for its needs.

I oblige think tanks to leak.

When someone calls me on the telephone to ask me to participate in a survey, I tell them I only answer surveys in person. And if someone stops me on the street and asks me to participate in a survey, I tell him or her that I only answer surveys on the telephone.

If you were an animal being transported to the slaughter house by train, truck or plane, would you be grateful to those human beings who were fighting to have legislation passed on your behalf limiting the number of hours you could travel?

Need is the seed of contrivance.

I have consigned my love to the non-intimidating perimeters of my poetry.

Think always the worst. If it arrives you are ready. If it doesn’t you have a reason to party.

Italian women swear by the tenderness of Mozart’s music.

I despise the DisUnited States because it did not give me a chance to be a hero during the Vietnam “War.”

Italian politicians are not politicians. They are a species of economists who do not know how to count.

Politicians seek a consensus. Italian politicians seek a pay raise.

I survived in Venezuela because I was a war veteran and a native of New York. I have survived in Italy because I was a volunteer in two mental hospitals.

Relatives are those individuals who remind you what diseases you will inherit.

Northamericans are the best thieves that there are and they steal for the United States. Italians are pretty good thieves and they steal for Swiss banks.

One of the benefits of the decline of Roman Catholicism is that cleaning personnel can store their cleaning materials in unused confessional boxes.

Will somebody please rip out the typewriter ribbon of Oriana Fallaci’s 1953 manual typewriter?

Passionless women mix water with their wine.

The journalist is a frustrated writer and the lawyer is a frustrated philosopher.

When I served in the United States Army Field Artillery they called me “a loose cannon.” When I served in United States Army Missile Training Battalion they called me “a wayward missile.”

In the Islam world, all women want to put a dog leash around the necks of their husbands. But in the Christian world, all men want to put a dog leash around the necks of their wives.

Why not a marriage license renewable every five years or so?

Relax! The world as we know it has already ended.

The world economic system that is now in place gives money to people to do something they don’t want to do so that they may have money to do something they want to do.

The situation is worse than Thatcher, Reagan, Bush I, Bush II, Blair, Chirac and Berlusconi ever could imagine. Why do you think we are stuck with these goofballs?

The Italian national motto is this: How can we suffer more?

He doesn’t accept praise or prizes. Just cash.

Don’t be foolish! Be a pessimist.

I don’t live in the United States because it is not good enough for me.

What is the difference between hard and strong? A hard person is always strong. A strong person knows when to be hard and then soft.

The United States of America was the first nation to use coloured toilet paper.

The Americans have been obtuse for two-hundred years; the Europeans have been obtuse for two-thousand years.

Don’t step on the tail of one billion Islamics! I implore you. (Maurizio Costanzo Show, 19 February 1991.)

You don’t study English anymore. You play with it.

It is not that the Florentines are living in the Past. If that was only so. No! It is worse. They are prisoners of a Past that does not pertain to them any longer. What poor things they are.

One cold Friday in December 2001, I stopped a Parmalat salesman who had been examining the shelves of a Panorama supermarket near my home. I pointed my finger directly in his face and said: “There is a Fiat Panda in your future.” He laughed. We met another couple of times later on, and each time he said: “Professor, there’s a Fiat Panda in my future! There’s a Fiat Panda in my future!! There’s a Fiat Panda in my future!!!” He was kidding with me. On 2 January 2004 I will go to the office of the director of my bank (Banca Toscana) in Calenzano, and I will say to him: “There’s a Fiat Panda in your future!” And I won’t be ribbing him.

Why are the Florentines dying of boredom? Or, are they dying of boredom?

Certainly! They have to crucify Wanna Marchi! She is so much like Silvio Berlusconi. The two of them are extraordinary salespeople. Both are capable of selling the Colosseo. One of them tricked the Italians with a little box filled with seaweed. (Venial Sin). The other hoodwinked the Italians with a trunk of demagoguery. (Mortal Sin). Let us defend the Marchi family from a Bad that no individual—including Silvio Berlusconi—merits: a political lynching. Yet, let us not absolve Wanna and Stefania their foolhardiness.

Cin cin, Florentines!!! You have made a gas chamber out of the cradle of humanism.

Gianfranco Fini is incredible! He declared that Benito Mussolini was the greatest statesman of the twentieth century. Today, 21 December 2004, he has rendered homage at the tomb of Yassir Arafat. Who’s pulling the strings of this marionette? Henry Kissinger?

With so many bookshops in Firenze, an extraterrestrial might be able to deduce—at first sight—that the Florentines are intelligent.

Bye-bye Camp Darby! See you in Albania.

Umberto Bossi: The Green Pitbull.

Saints and Saintesses of Italy! Unite!

I am a man decidedly against the relaxation of the breast, and each day—with passion, intelligence and courage—I fight to maintain all breasts as high as they might be, for all women, in this Universe.

Here work turbocapitalists.

Don’t cry anymore, italiano! Your Parmalat money is in the Vaticano!

Is your English or American accent holding you back in your career? Now you can learn English with a pure international enunciation and enjoy the rounds of applause of the international community.

The Americans liberated Italy from the Germans, but they didn’t liberate Italy from the Italians. N’est pas?

Esso. Sesso. Spesso. Exxon. Sexxon.

My dear Italian manager, the epoch of the smooth look is over. Let’s get to work! Now!

Italy is Argentining.

Is Italy Venezueling?

The Florentines don’t know how to manage a bus line. Quod erat demonstrandum, how can we expect them to be capable of administrating a network of museums?

Let us listen to a Florentine football/soccer player before the microphone, immediately after the usual defeat: “We played perfectly…B-U-T…”

One of the most frequently used expletives used in Firenze is the following: Nulla! (Nothing!)

The Italians continue to believe in God and God continues not to believe in them! An eternal impasse.

After centuries and centuries of “culture,” the Florentines still have not learned to regenerate their own race!

The Italians continue to understand Northamericans through the 1950s’ films honchoed on them by the United States’ Department of State.

The Northamericans are progressivists bending towards the Future. The Italians are entrepreneurs leaning backwards in the direction of the Past. And it is just right here we can get to the focal point of the sado-masochistic relationship between the Northamericans and the Italians. Opposites attract. No?

The Florentines are so stingy that they buy RESET chewing gum (powermint grains) and, before going to bed, attach it to their bedposts so that they can use it over again the next day.

The number one selling car colour in Italy is grey—the same colour of Italy’s medieval buildings and the skies over any polluted Italian city.

Italian food, without a doubt, is one of the finest in the world. It is also true that Verecolene is the number one selling over-the-counter drug in Italy? Buon appetito?

Luca di Montezemolo for President of the Presidents! King of the Presidents?

Italy is forever placed at the top of the worst lists and at the bottom of those best. Why? Why do Italians insist on being the best when no one else thinks of them as such?

Why do subscribers who possess a TIM 335 telephone prefix seem to be always more intelligent and nice?

Italians listen to English songs they don’t understand; and, they sing Italian songs that no one else understands.

Now even Fausto Bertinotti knows that fascists are imbeciles.

Hit the Vatican where it hurts! In its “rich” boxes!

In Italy, you must be rich, or faking it, in order to have a baby.

I am the inconvenient tenant in the grand condominium.

Italy is in a post-tsunami state of mind.

Paul Ginsborg is silly! He’s writing a history of Italy instead of a tragedy.

The Italian national motto: “How can we suffer?”

Children of middle class Chinese families collect books. Italian children collect teddy bears.

Cardinal Michele Giordano, Archbishop of Napoli, is my choice for Pope. (1 January 2004.)

Italians are great for keeping people in poverty: their own!

Even the Italians are beginning to speak badly about the Italians!

It’s not impossible to teach Italians foreign languages. It’s useless.

Note well, Italians! More than one Roman preferred death to exile.

I have a great idea! Let’s have a We’re in Via di Estinzione Party. Now!

My dear fidels and infidels: Please light a candle for the Italian economy.

There are more saints and saintesses in Italy than there are VERECOLONE tablets.

Will someone please tell me once and for all: Are the Italians poor or stingy?

Firenze is a rest home for ostriches.

I don’t know where Italian women go for their male hormones, but I am certain they have overdosed on them.

I, Anthony St. John, officially declare: Italy is a tragedy. Not a comedy.

In Italy, Art serves to channel to some “nowhere” whatever irksomeness is on the horizon.

Italians cannot organize a bus route, but they want you to know that they can sort out a world order.

The biggest problem Italian football is confronted with is this: When Italian teams travel abroad, they have to face real anti-doping tests.

Italians have a sense of themselves. Not an awareness of how they fit in with others.

It is not that Florentines are arrogant. No. It is that they spark you to be more haughty than they—if you can!

Italy is slow-motioning to tragedy.

Italian economists would do Italy and the world a great favour if they put down their Milton Friedman and Paul Samuelson textbooks, picked up a Bible, turned to the Ten Commandments, and then referred to Number Seven.

I want to be rich so that I can tip the waiter or waitress the same amount as the bill.

What’s so holy about the Holy Land?

Let’s have a The Most Stupid Journalist of the Year contest. Why not?

What I find amusing about Christmas and New Year is that people actually sustain the notion that they can be nice for a week after a year of backstabbing!

Did it ever occur to you that the human race just might need a swift kick in the ass?

Did you ever visualize the human race being generous and compassionate?

I admit it. I need psychoanalytical advice. The problem is I just cannot find a psychoanalyst who wants to pay me for my sessions.

I could never be a politician. And not because I am modest. It’s just that I would be constantly embarrassed to meet my constituents who were earning less than me.

The bigger the problem the easier the solution.

You do not have to be ashamed of not knowing something particular. But you better be humiliated for not knowing anything.

Modern political philosophy must start out on this premise of Joseph Stalin—a brutal man in a brutal time: The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million men is history.

Do something generous for yourself before you might think you could be munificent to others.

You will never understand your country without seeing it through the eyes of others who live in other nations.

I know I would make a great President of the DisUnited States of America because I would bop down the flight of stairs, hooked up to my Air Force One, without looking at my feet or holding on to the handrail.

The Italian Bluff is being called.

Excessive stupidity caused World War I and World War II. You do not have to possess a PhD from Harvard or Oxford to fathom that. And it will be the cause of World War III.

Western civilization is not consuming to possess, it is possessed to consume.

Take a headshot of your newly-born every month for the rest of his or her life. Then splice them together.

I have two dentists. A man and a woman. One for my upper teeth, one for my lower teeth.

I'm embarrassed! I was born in the DisUnited States and I'm not a thief!

The Italians are desperate to convince the world to forget that they helped the Germans kill tens of millions of people during the Second World War। Don't let them! Who knows? They might want to do it again!

The Italians build houses of sand in earhtquake zones, and as soon as they collapse at the first tremor, the Italians beg the whole world for aid.

Stop the World! I want to get off--at the next red traffic light.

Colin Powell is Uncle Tom's atom bomb.

Watch BBC, CNN, EURONEWS, FOX & SKY--News for people with an IQ under 70!

I don't go to funerals--so, please don't invite me to yours.

Italy is a nation more used to managing emergencies than a plan that looks to the future. Why? Simply because you get a lot more donations when there is an emergency.

Italians are prudent to the point of being pusillanimous; Northamericans are careless to the point of being reckless.

Italian journalists pretend to know something about everything but know nothing about one thing.

The Roman Catholic church sent missionaries (priests) to the Americas to teach the indigenous populations how to use toilet paper and to confess the Spanish soldiers who slaughtered 14,000,000 of the Indians. I am trying to teach a nation with a 2,000 year history, Italy, how to regenerate its race. And without success. The Italians prefer to commit suicide. Why? SImple. They have a horrible, insufferable guilt complex.

Have a nice nightmare!

Did you hug your banker today?

Never trust a man who ties his tie too tightly.

Mozart is dark chocolate for frustrated housewives.

Religious-like European football (soccer) is often violent, racist and more than not perfectly stupid. Yet let's face it: Anything's better than World War III!

Updated 13 February MMX

Monday, December 8, 2008

The Affluent Are Preposterously Stupid--I Have the Evidence!

The revolution has been fired up! When I showed to Northamerican friends my article, Incontrovertible Proof That Citizens of the DisUnited States of Northamerica Are So Sorrowfully, So Sanctimoniously Stupid (www.anthonystjohn.blogspot.com), I was somewhat disillusioned: they all agreed with me! Northamericans, and their other gang members, have all along known, “subconsciously,” for decades, that they have been doing something wrong, bloody iniquitous, and that one day their stokes of luck would fag out. Their fingers are no longer crossed. Are we approaching some sort of day of reckoning? I doubt it, but there is certainly going to be a considerable measure of “restructuring” to tend with as we are obliged to conform to an entirely new set of criterion. At least à la manière socialiste! The sooner we begin to stop encoding our misfortunes in purely financially viable terminology with spectacular pleas to some Lord Above, the better it will be for all of us. The once powerful DUS, forever the “abroad protectionist,” runs the risk of becoming the “at home isolationist.” Does this mean war?

This “divine revelation” might be attributed to many causes not the least of which is the intense, rather hostile, competitive pressures that are being set against the DUS from the outside world and which are confounding the DUS’s religious belief in itself that it is the globe’s economic and political King of the Mountain. The DUS’s penchant for arrogance has not improved its chances. Northamericans are in for a vulgar testing of their mettle. They, international interlopers and so much akin to such-and-suches such as the DisUnited Kingdom and France, have hardly any global friends. The world’s industrial nations have been living off the sweat and blood of the weak, the disadvantaged—and for far too long to now expect that handouts will win fifs (funny inside feelings) on their behalf. This is not an exclusively ethical issue. It is straightforwardly a matter of being intelligent or imprudent. The DUS and its chums have consistently chosen to be ludicrously obtuse. It is deplorable that during the 2008 DUS presidential campaign, all candidates made diminutive mention of the DUS’s position in the world, and they scarcely made note of other nations, besides their own, presenting the perception that the DUS is unique and omnipotent when most know it is not.

It is important, at this crucial juncture in humankind’s story, to try to identify clearly and distinctly the reasons why we have arrived at this stage of disgusting foolhardiness, and then with some cloudless way of thinking seek to rectify the mess we have created. My fingers are crossed. There are innumerable motives to which we may allude, but in this article I prefer to attack one that is on everyone’s mind, everyday: the wealthy, the elite, the corporatists.
Because the affluent are in the minority, they kindle in us a curiosity and, often, a deviant craving to imitate them for what we think we should have what they possess. The well-heeled have an unjust and extravagant hold on financial power, and they solidify their bases vis-à-vis potent media and communications outlets. Poor people, who Oscar Wilde said were more attached to money than the prosperous because that is all—if very little—they have to hold on to, will even go into debt on occasion to mime the well-off! Therefore, in this essay using deductive reasoning, going from the general to the particular, the line of reasoning will proceed from the very moneyed and then work down, and further, demonstrate that those rolling in it have even distorted those underprivileged below them. I have in mind to make the comfortable look incredibly dim-witted—even wicked, even unwell. It will be easy for you to figure out what I think. And I will bet there are billions in this world now cheering me on!

There are four considerations one should be aware of in the exploration of the topic at hand:

· The rich might be divided into two sweeping categories: those who have inherited their lucre; and, those who have generated (stolen!) it on their own. (These two categories will not be delved into to any great extent in this essay.)
· In this treatise we will deal with “the very rich” and not “the rich.” The Big Rich. Not The Little Rich. I have known personally, even intimately, some fabulously rich individuals—some of them recognized all over the world for their material goods. In Venezuela, I was in the thick of the economic and political corruption, but in Italy I am away from Rome and out of the center of Italy’s self-defeating political “naughtinesses.” Only once did I befriend, in Florence, an Italian political person later to be transferred to Rome to serve as a director of the Italian secret service! Nevertheless, in Tuscany, the headquarters of the world’s first bank, I have encountered many silly Little Rich characters ever on the hunt to be better off and still better off.
· I am not Big Rich or Little Rich. I pride myself in that and consider it an attestation to my intelligence that I am not. I have about €7000 in an Italian bank (I hope!), and I do not possess health insurance or a pension. Nonetheless, I am terribly curious to know that if I were Big Rich, even Little Rich, would I be as stupid as the moneyed “stupids” I have been on familiar terms with…. (Maybe I should sell THE RICH ARE STUPID! T-shirts and become a multi-millionaire!)
· I am a legal citizen of the DisUnited States of America even though I renounced my citizenship and prefer not to return ever again to my birthplace. Wherever I have resided outside the DUS (principally in Venezuela and Italy), I have been considered an ”American.” And that means I have been frequently taken, automatically, for being abounding. A burden I have had to support for decades. The fact that I was a first lieutenant in the DUS Army and am a Vietnam “War” veteran, it is assumed by most people that I possess some kind of stipend for life designated for my DUS military service. I do not.

I would like now, to get started, to refer to John Ruskin and his lecture, The Work of Iron, in Nature, Art, and Policy, delivered at Tunbridge Wells, England, 16 February 1858. JR is known for his defence of individual artistic freedom, and his disgust for the mass-production of art as it was cloned vulgarly all through the Victorian era. He was a stern, extremely moralistic individual, and a brief sampling of his thoughts will now give you an inkling into his meditative processes:

“You must either make a tool of the creature,
or a man of him. You cannot make both…

A happy nation may be defined as one in which
the husband’s hand is on the plough, and the
housewife’s on the needle…

We look with so much indifference upon dishonesty
and cruelty in the pursuit of wealth…

The definite result of all our modern haste to be
rich is assuredly, and constantly, the murder of
a certain number of persons by our hands every year.”

JR lived in another period marked by a distinctive character or reckoned from a fixed point or event. His “first principles” are not those which we adhere to in our own epoch. They belong to a particular set of circumstances just as, for example, Iosif Stalin’s coined first principle about his time declared that “one man’s death is a tragedy, but the death of a million people is history”—a maxim which fit the ethical destitution of his era. Another case in point is Jean-Paul Sartre’s thought-up first principle: “Hell is other people.” J-PS also suffered that horrible stage in the world’s expansion.

There is no way JR could have envisaged, for 2009, that the planet’s population would be coming within reach of 7,000,000,000 people. Just too many ploughs and needles. Today it is astonishing for us to connect JR’s parochial vision of his life with our own. And if we recognize his convictions for what they really are, we are further staggered by the fact that in 1860 there were no more than an estimated 1,300,000,000 individuals living on his orb. JR’s generation was not as complex as ours. Ruskin would be stymied if he could witness how we have survived—for almost 150 years after—with so many people inhabiting the Earth and in such close electronic and physical acquaintance.

Apart from JR’s fanatical religious pretentiousness, we find in him certain confidences which abide even today in our own inner selves. JR is a meat and potatoes fellow. He does not mix his Scotch with water, seltzer, milk or even iced cubes. He shaves with cold water. He takes the bus. If he smokes, he snaps off the filters of his cigarettes. Puts half a teaspoon of sugar in his tea or coffee. Walks a lot. Never puts whipped cream on his strawberries. Turns off the water when he cleans his teeth. Returns his metal coat-hangers to the dry cleaners. Breaks down his packing materials before he places them in rubbish bins. In short, JR is a minimalist. He is seeking to preserve what he possesses. He is not possessed to consume. He does not wish to waste. His feet are on the ground. Ours are not. For these qualities we may admire JR’s enthusiasms.

The first broadside I long to pile into The Big Rich, more than anyone else, is their propensity to accumulate useless items, lots of them, and waste the natural resources we might think, in a civilized society, pertain to all of mankind and not just a finicky cream of the crop. Whether it be land, water, petroleum, electricity, food, precious jewels, et alia, the well-to-do ones are quick to hoard their supplies of these reserves forever in excess of what more often than not a normal individual would require and/or acquire, and they do so outrageously without worry for the requirements of others whether they be deprived or not. They dig extra wells on their land fearful of drought. They illegally hide away currency in foreign banks “just in case.” They give their wives and lovers expensive diamonds and gold “just in case.” They buy three or four cars “just in case.” Everything in glut. Just in case. Sustine et abstine are negative concepts for these pathetic characters. I do not know of any other group that lacks so much conviction in the method that has offered them so much turnover! They advance no loyalty to the money-spinning arrangement that tenders them their cornucopia of material benefits! Confidence is more precious than gold say the Chinese. And even donkeys know they cannot chew on bullion. But not The Big Rich and their confreres, The Little Rich, who often go very far out of their ways to ape The Big Rich. Monkeys see, monkeys do! The Big Rich, The Little Rich and those who emulate them are “running against the walls of their cages,” as Ludwig Wittgenstein would say!

I would think, my dear reader, that “…the murder of a certain number of persons by our hands every year” is still ringing in your head! And it is accurate to agree with that reflection. I could write a book on the injustices that I have caught sight of and which have caused the death—both physical and emotional—of untold unfortunate individuals slaving for the dog-eat-dog economic hierarchy set so overenthusiastically in place in the DUS, Vietnam, Venezuela and Italy—locations I have frequented. I ask myself: What is the purpose of this master-slave routine, this “delicately-distributed suffering” ( JR ) that nowadays is sugar-coated with perks, bonuses, and tie-less Fridays…all cheap gimmicks to keep workers hanging on until the next slowdown, the next massacre of layoffs? Were all of these “scallywags,” these made-redundant-ones under some supernatural illusion when they threw their lives at their corporation’s buoyant promise of an eternity of sustaining profit?

It would not take Charles Dickens very long today to cut through the bogus mesmerising that innocent victims have had to endure especially during, at least, the last fifty years. Only a simpleton—Winston Churchill was not an imbecile, he just might have been drunk or his brain fogged up with Cuban cigar smoke—would have the pluck to unabashedly pronounce that the lesser of two evils we are welded with, Judeo-Christian Democratic Capitalism, is the best at our disposal!

Look at The Big Rich and The Little Rich quoting outrageous minds such as Milton Friedman and the “old” Jeffrey Sachs! They parrot these money-making lords of a funny money plumbing industry, and under their armpits, they carry the notebooks and case histories of University of Chicago and Harvard Business School’s sacred, doctrinaire tenets which have caused more havoc the past century than any other time in the history of this “better than nothing” fraud, this Tyranny of a Minority which benefits the few at the expense of the majority. Are people ever going to wake up and trade in their illusions for some hard facts? Are people ever going to become gutsy? Are people ever going to stand up for their privileges? Why are we feigning to be content with a technique that causes so many so much injustice? Indeed, we are a strange lot!

Oh, I must be crazy! Out of my mind. Rich? How could I have used that word? There are no rich in this world! I swear to it now that I have lost my insanity. I have never known one person who ever called himself or herself rich. They will tell you that what they are worth is only paper! Yes, cash, stocks, bonds, savings accounts and treasury notes! All sheets of nothing! I knew one multi-millionaire who told me he had to borrow $100 from his wife one morning to buy his lunch! Get it? They are just like you and me! They have no money. Just paper. And who is going to buy the titles (paper!) to the lands they own if an economic downturn forces them to become like the rest of us—unfortunate?

I should have qualified more before my definition of The Big Rich. Please excuse me? The Big Rich have armed bodyguards and bullet-proofed and armoured limousines to chauffeur them around. Can you think of anything more repugnant than that? They do not even have the courage to walk alone on a crowded street. Their yachts are manoeuvred and serviced by people they wish they can trust and who are usually lousy cooks. Their airplanes are piloted by who knows who, and when they embark to fly off to some business meeting or rendezvous, they hope the navigator is not drunk or high on cocaine. Their bodyguards usually have not even finished high school, and being thick as mud, they wonder if they will be quick enough to be at the ready to protect their precious assignments. And maids and butlers? You should hear them talk about those humble souls! Behind their backs, they gossip about them as if they were some inferior race. And, woe to him or her who forgot to shine His or Her Majesty’s shoes properly, or missed dusting the bedroom lamp table, or, worse, was late delivering their breakfasts in bed! Life imprisonment!


There is one thing good I can say about the affluent. They change their clothes abnormally, and because the have money to buy expensive perfumes and colognes, they usually smell nice!




Authored by Anthony St. John
Casella Postale 38 50041 CALENZANO FI Italia
5 January 2009




* * *

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Poetry Vietnam 10

Extract from A Book of Vietnam "War" Poetry


A Long String of Green Bras
Being Dried by Breezes off the
South China Sea


There’s a long string of green bras being dried by breezes
off the South China Sea, and I can’t see any panties or stockings.

It’s Thursday. Almost as if it was CLEAN YOUR GREEN BRAS
TODAY, GIRLS—IT’S THURSDAY.

B-cups. C-cups. D-cups.

34’s, 36’s, 38’s and two 40’s; yet, I don’t know if the 40’s belong to
old, obese nurses with sagging breasts, or young, slim ones with firm,
uplifted breasts—indeed very big!

The wind blows on and on.

Some bra cups fill up with balmy air and lunge forward—but for
a sec.

All of them are pinned up uniformly, naturally. Clothespins are all
in the same position.

The bras are each identified. Last names and serial numbers are
written in dark green, indelible ink.

Once which were the white manufacturer’s tags, are now green little
lappets—as required by Division Standard Operating Procedures.

The bras brave the excruciating torrid Asian sun.

Some bras have bolder shades of green than the others.

One or two have faded to dreary green.

The sun has shrunken them a bit; but, soon these sacks will be
stuffed, and their forms will be retained again—with a gentle
force.

My eyes travel down the long row of green, double-cupped flags,
and I imagine each bra’s owner taking her bra and fastening it
behind her back with her two hands.

The camera (my eye) swings to the front, and I see the breasts
in each bra snuggled together with a suntanned valley between
each of them.

Breasts and breasts and breasts.

Some are large enough to bob up and down.
Some are small enough to be thought of as being 60-watt light bulbs.

Some breast skin is thick, hard.
Some breast skin is thin, soft.

I long to slide my hands under the bras’ backs, and then slide
out and unhook them all.

I long to cushion my face on those mounds of breast flesh.

I long to feel the comfort and joy of their softness and care.

I long to be set in moments of abandonment and overwhelming
emotion.

I long to cuddle and find myself in the bosom of tenderness and
love of just two breasts.


17 February 1998

Poetry Vietnam 9

The Killer Landmine
(Made in USA)


Under a spreading bamboo patch
The killer landmine hides;
The mine—set to go at a snatch—
With prongs at all its sides;
And the powders of its mighty charge
Are cruel as Death itself.

Its shell is hard, and black, and round;
Its form is sleek and sound;
It’s meant to burst and bang and hurt,
So snug it’s in the dirt;
And it waits so long for that step
From which no leg can skirt.

Day in, day out, from light to night,
You sense its presence loom;
You can sense it as it lays in wait,
With fuses set to bloom;
A tinder box under the hot sun,
When at noon broiled sunrays zoom.

And soldiers humping to and fro
Look round and round and round;
They ache to rest their straining eyes,
And drink and breathe their sighs,
And sit on solid ground that’s bald—
Such sites with no place to hide.

It lays all day to have its way
With friends in rows so straight;
It loves to screen the coming troops,
And witness their death’s gait,
The grunts alert and feeling gay,
Know not it’s now too late.

Boom! Boom!! Boom!!! Boom!!!! All’s tossed up high;
You can see some body parts;
You can see the men crouched with sighs,
Some others pumping stopped hearts;
The mine’s no more; the legs no more,
What’s left is just the blood and gore.


12 October 1997

Poetry Vietnam 8

The Forward Observer:
(Foxtrot Oscar)


I bring the cannon’s roar to score,
To kill, to shock, to slash, to gore.
The woods’ green trees in smithereens,
And fish in streams scream out it seems.
Craters mar the wild’s lush, huge floor;
Faunae scat to hide from still more.
Flowers droop and stoop at swishes;
Rounds pound ground upon my wishes.
Little birds flap fast to shelter,
While snakes and bugs helter-skelter.
Wise owls cease their hoots when I shoot;
Jungle jabber wanes then goes mute.
Pit vipers wiggle from the scene,
And temper the glow of their sheen.
Brazen oxen stamp their tough hooves;
Spiders scurry to their Earth’s grooves.
Tigers! Tigers! All burning bright,
Running from sight from out of fright.
King cobra sways its death brattle,
In vain against the King of Battle.
Babbling baboons bite their big tongues—
Air seeping slowly out their lungs.
Pythons writhe then glide in water,
Safe from Arty’s salvos of slaughter.
Leeches creep fast to deep crannies,
Puckers puckered in blasphemies.
Wild boar heaves swiftly to steep land,
Far-off from the artilleryman.
Chimps and imps scatter on high vines,
Warned by the din of my shells’ chimes.
Bushes bear the blasts of fragments,
Shrapnel pocks without discernment.
Mission ended; wood upended;
Recon teams report the wounded.
I bring the cannon’s roar to score,
To kill, to shock, to slash, to gore.


26 September 1997

Poetry Vietnam 7

Extract from A Book of Vietnam "War" Poetry


You’re in the Army Now:
You’re Not Behind the Plough


Oh, shit!
I’m not behind the plough;
I’m in the Army now.

All is green and mean;
All is schemed and lean.

Not Air Force blues,
Just like Sue’s.

No Air Force starch,
With range to march.

No toilet bowls,
That flush when told.

No! I’m in the fucking Army now…

All is trudge and mud;
All is spuds and crud.

Not Navy whites,
On cool, soft nights.

No filmed shows,
With drinks iced cold.

No crisp, cleaned clothes,
And bunks to doze.

No! I’m in the fucking Army now…

All is Days to Go;
All is Where’s the Foe?

Not Marine teams:
Battlefield screams.

No hills to take,
And buddies’ wakes.

No gung-ho push,
Through the thick bush.

No! I’m in the fucking Army now…but not in the Marines!


25 May 1997

Poetry Vietnam 6

Extract from A Book of Vietnam "War" Poetry


Budweiser and Librium


Today we have BUDS and LIBS
To flush away the hopelessness
Of an infantry company.

Today we have BUDS and LIBS
To force along the faithfulness
Of an infantry company.

The maggots of depression are shooed surreptitiously—seemingly simply—with
powdered drugs and liquid suds pulsating through the blood systems of the foot
soldier specialists.

Let’s listen to them…

“Death Defier, man, oh man,
You’re a crazy motherfucker, man!”

“Go fuck yourself, Big Cock!
John Doe’s fucking your wife back in the real world, shithead!”

“Crusader, how many gooks did you zero today, man?
Hey, man!
You’re a gas with that pee-shooter.
Man oh man!”

“Where’s Security Clad?
Bet he’s jerking off again behind those trees.
That little fuckerooooo!
Hey, man, give me another BUD!”

“Atonement, what you gonna do when we get back to the real world?
Fuck all your boyfriends,
You big fucking shithead!”

THESE NINETEEN-YEAR-OLDS SHOULD BE IN SUMMER CAMP—
NOT ARMY CAMP.


1 March 1997

Poetry Vietnam 5

Extract from A Book of Vietnam "War" Poetry


We Gotta Get Outta This Place


If it’s the last thing we ever do…
We’ve got to get out of this place.

We’ve got to get out,
No doubt,
Out of this place,
We’ve got to get out.

Away from the counting of days all day,
Away from the pining for Kay so gay,
Away from the long nights lonely and lorn,
Away from a rival furled tight with his scorn.

We’ve got to get out of this place.

Far from the dilly and dally of green,
Far from the C.O. so pushy, so mean,
Far from the capsules and needles you’re fed,
Far from the yearning to snuggle in bed.

We’ve got to get out of this place.

Off to where shell swishes are not to fear,
Off to where grenades are not what you hear,
Off to where there are not boots to lace tight,
Off to where there are not snakes in the night.

We’ve got to get out of this place.

Not near the red ooze on the chopper’s floor,
Not near bloodied gauze and the wounded’s roar,
Not near the stench of a body’s burnt flesh,
Not near the gore of a soldier’s slow death.

We’ve got to get out,
No doubt,
Out of this place,
We’ve got to get out.


21 February 1997

Poetry Vietnam 4

Extract from A Book of Vietnam "War" Poetry


Four-star General and
So-called Venerable


What glory for a warlord fagged out on old days?
--Only nonsensical rows of flushing ribbons.
Only salutes and dues and tokens
Can rub out the thorny terror of his yore.
Still more boring chores; still more whores galore.
The rites of rank salve ferocious brain bustles.
At night, in the dim light, our hero bleats,
And his finger flounces Bible leafs.

What anodyne can we divine to quell his pinings?
Hour sessions housed in the halls of dream teams?

No.

Whisky sours to whist away the wildish traits of his ways?

No.

A tryst, with kisses and caresses, to temper his distress?

No.

No…?


“…Old soldiers never die; they only fade away….”

Yes.

Let him “fade away” through the spectre of his bitterness and hate.


23 August 1996

Poetry Vietnam 3

Extract from A Book of Vietnam "War" Poetry


Another CA (Combat Assault)


Another C.A. today,
And all we can do is pray.
Hands touch at our taut guts,
And there’s little we can say.
Some vomit up curds and wheys,
For there is no other way.
Some cradle, hunched up in fright,
At sight of the sun’s first ray.
Some jump in place to please nerves;
This might be our last day.

Choppers in three’s hover low,
Green-clad fellows feel their foe.
Twigs and leaves twirl ‘bout at will,
Pilots’ stares so cold and still.
Clock-clockings announce the dawn;
At day’s end souls to mourn.
Flying numbed to the L.Z.,
There’s a zone without one tree.
Down we go with jumps to ground,
Is there contact to be found?

A run with gun to tree line,
No reason yet to swell fine.
Bushes eyed for A.K.’s nose,
Our hearts in fear feel frozed.
Low-bent bodies rush to hide;
Is this the last one to be tried?
A bullet in one’s own self?
Thoughts of those who fly to help.
Safe rock’s reached and down I go;
C.A.’s “cold”; no sound from foe.


10 August 1996

Poetry Vietnam 2

Extract from A Book of Vietnam "War" Poetry


Bob Hope, The Draft Dodger


Bob Hope ain’t no dope;
Spiels out heaps of hope.
Buys bonds stacked so pat;
Hoards his chicken fat.
Tells jokes to the boys;
Eyes on business ploys.
Flies on safest route,
Far from where they shoot.
Tours with luscious girls;
Sweeps by as do royals.
With his frozen smile,
He’s sent miles and miles.
At home Mom’s heart throbs;
Bob’s made globs from sobs.

On stage bosoms bob;
Right by there’s old Bob.
Smart quips shake the crowd;
Bob smirks as if proud.
R. Welch beats her meat;
Les Brown meets his beat.
HI FOLKS! Held on high;
Moms home mope and cry.
Big brass in front row;
Where’s gone our foe?
Green sea of G.I.’s;
Raquel’s pulled all eyes.
Bob fakes support role,
While she takes calls’ roll.
Raw meat for caged souls;
Bob’s met all his goals.

CRASH! BOOM! The show’s switched,
From nitwits to bomb hits.
Bob’s off and in-flight;
Away with all his might.


7 December 1995

Poetry Vietnam 1

Extract from A Book of Vietnam "War" Poetry


“I’ve Got Sunshine on a
Cloudy Day"


Medivac with blood-blotched pack,
From the sky in frenzied dive.
Heads upped high with thoughts aside,
Tried green stretcher for last ride.
“Rock of Ages” lades the air,
Greeny soldiers stooped in prayer.
Surgeons in tent stern and fast,
Joust with Death to let Life last.
Burnt green pants ripped off then thrown,
Steel pail brimmed with red-stained gown.
Spurts of blood dart at bright light,
Blood-soaked gauzes once quite white.
Pale face now fixed without life,
Dog tag snatched and sent to wife.
Plastic gray bag zipped and weighed,
Homeward jet: soon…slow…parade.
Doctors, nurses light up butts,
There’s some rest in Quonset huts.
Red guck hosed off chopper’s floor,
Snapping blades twirl round for more.

To my hootch the shout to march:
“Up and at it! F-O-R-W-A-R-D, ‘ARCH!”
Resigned to live, not to die,
I’m shrewd and spry through each eye.
In my head the dead man’s face,
Exhorts me not to act in haste.
Not with friends, I look about,
Noting some on Nature’s Lot.
In the dim of Mors and storms,
There’s a store of Earthly forms.
Wet tree leaves tint morning mist,
Verdant grass fonds in my fist.
Nature lures me ‘long its way,
My sunshine on a cloudy day.


1 October 1995

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

President-elect Obama, You're No Muhammad Ali...

30 October 1974 Muhammad Ali overpowered George Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire (today the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and won the world heavyweight boxing championship suffering a match that thrilled millions throughout the world. “The Rumble in the Jungle” especially enthused African people electrified by the hoopla focused on their continent, and it inscribed the name Muhammad Ali in the pantheon of the most notable and admired individuals living on our planet. The magnetism of the champ left its mark, and the hearts of millions of Africans beat with joy rejoicing over the occasion which had fetched for them certain fame throughout the globe. No one can talk with an African today without finding a propitious comment uttered about The Lip. Muhammad Ali did more to foster respect and admiration for the DisUnited States of America in Africa, the world’s second-largest and second most-populous continent, than any diplomat or businessman might have ever even dreamed of doing in those days.

Since the election of President-elect Barack Obama on 4 November 2008, I have been speaking to Senegalese, Nigerians, Cameroonians, Gabonese and Southafricans in Tuscany in order to canvass their responses to this out-of-the-ordinary occurrence which has transformed the political atmosphere of the DUS. Most of the individuals with whom I have conversed are, naturally, pleased that an Afroamerican is president. Nevertheless, there does not exist any exceptional fervour for BO whom they regard as a wait and see entity who really still has to explain to us just what he is all about. One Nigerian commented so: “Listen, Obama isn’t even 100% black! He’s a mix of white and black ancestry!” What do Africans think about whites? “Cautious optimism,” obviously! Let it be said that if the DUS’s State Department and Central Stupidity Agency were banking on BO to haul in lots of African fifs (funny inside feelings) for the good of “democracy” and dog-eat-dog capitalism, they had better go back to their global drawing boards and start from scratch.

Africa, with its 61 territories and 53 countries and 1,000,000,000 people, covers 20% of the Earth’s total land area. It is of keen interest to industrial and developing countries bent on making use of Africa’s gold, timber, palm oil, minerals, cocoa, oil, cotton and other natural resources which have always been sought-after commodities. Arab nationalists and European imperial powers in days gone by ravaged the enormous landmass of much of its reserves. In fact, before colonialism Africa, the oldest inhabited territory on Earth and the most polyglot, possessed 90% of the world’s gold. The atrocious Arab and Atlantic slave trade that is said to have imprisoned perhaps up to 50,000,000 Africans, remains fixed indelibly in the hearts and minds of the African people. Today, the place which is said to be the origin of the human species, is the poorest continent on Earth. (What do we mean by poor?)

I am prone to predict that one day, during the BO presidential administration, Africa will come to be referred to—in non-politically correct jargon—as the bête noire of the DUS. That Africa will be so knotty for Northamerican political leaders, it will draw out their utmost aggravations, their repulsion at their own powerlessness to be able to deal with that continent boiling so impetuously for justice and liberty.

For all of us, Africa’s times gone by have been non-edifying—to say the least. During its colonial times, it was hacked up into myriad portions at the whim of, principally, the Belgians, British, French, Germans, Dutch, Italians, Portuguese and Spanish. Cruelty and carnage were the order of the day. European cultural, economic and political powers wielded heavy-handedly, arbitrarily and disproportionately. Africans had little to say concerning their destinies. Besides enduring tropical diseases, slave trade, corrupt European governments, botched central planning, international trade regimes, despotism and illiteracy, they also had to contend with their own quandaries of superstition and tribal and military conflicts which stunted any hope the Africans possessed. Worse—for the most part a pastoral people—they were forced to subscribe to the agricultural techniques of their European marauders who even sometimes performed upon them quasi-scientific eugenic experiments and employed techniques of social engineering to compel Africans to submit to the customs and values of their often bloodthirsty trespassers. The partition of Africa by colonial and imperialist nations today is the inherent cause of much of the civil wars and tribal clashes that continue to rage wrathfully often fuelled by those arms sold to African political factions by the same states that at the start hewed Africa into territorial chunks!

There is no reason for us to suspect that BO is naïve enough to have forgotten that the Berlin Wall tumbled in 1989 after the floodgates were opened to wash away socialism (managed capitalism: Professor James Fulcher), swap it for unmanaged capitalism (Alan Greenspan), and then let it swing wildly in a frenzy of unmanageable capitalism (Professor Milton Friedman; http://www.revoke/miltonfriedmannobelprize.org). At that point in the history of economics, eyes came to be focused more assiduously upon Africa as the mammoth source of natural stores that it is. Kick-ass economies from all over the world, some let loose from the vices of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’ regime-like economic guiding principles, scurried to the Dark Continent. Unmanageable capitalism was in its heyday, and global corporations were off to the races.

Harvard Boys and University of Chicago Boys, all genius-like specialists in economics, backed up by DUS military bases dotted all over the African continent, dictated their requirements to fledgling African test-tube economies, and promised them pie-in-the-sky results if their ministers of economy would fall in with the pitiless theorems and arm-twisting guidelines of the University of Chicago’s Friedman and his puerile ones. (Did Milton Friedman’s mother breastfeed him?). The scam managed to hoodwink many high-ranking African political leaders as they fell hook, line and sinker for the guarantees of profit and prosperity, something they had been seeking for millennia, that were now pledged to them by foreign bankers and international fraudsters toting MBA degrees.

The African people—as did others around the world who had been duped by the Harvard and Chicago Boys—reacted ferociously when they comprehended that the radical economic policies foisted upon their often corrupt leaders were, in fact, greedy attempts to force feed them Western economic, political and cultural ideas and mores. A bitter taste was left to savour, and Africa’s plight, by now burdened even more by the AIDS virus rampant throughout its land, appeared dimmer than it did before. These days, Africans think twice and thrice before jumping on the financial bandwagons of slick university professors, their prodigies, and bankers and financial counsellors representing those countries which, often before, set about exploiting their material goods and dignity. In fact, continent-wide unification organizations are taking root ever slowly but surely. Africans are wary of others, understandably, but with the exception of one country that has stood above the fray…

China. If Africa is the grandest developing continent with the largest number of countries, China is the hugest developing country. Sino-African similarities do not terminate there. In 200 BC, the Han Dynasty had contacts with China. Trade and commerce between them is not something new-fangled. Africa and China, “the two birthplaces of mankind,” both have been beset by colonial aggression, and they have engaged in battles against imperialism and exploitation by a stronger country of a weaker one throughout their histories. They have also brawled for national liberation—freedom from the fetters of foreign oppression.

Especially after 1989 China, too, drew more diligently nearer to Africa searching for those natural resources needed to sustain its turbo economy, a strategy wittingly adopted to nourish the West’s addiction to the theory that an increasing consumption of goods is economically beneficial—that presumption which is now debilitating and throwing into disarray most Occidental industrial nations. China approached Africa on a new footing. It pressed the notion of co-development between the two nations. Both of them are attempting to construct what is called “a new kind of equality and mutual support” said to be unparalleled in the history of international relations. China has encouraged Africa to find its own way, make its own choices, and follow the path considered best in the interest of its own populaces. China refuses to palm off any newly-conceived “political model” or one such as the supercilious Western countries’ Judeo-Christian capitalist democracy—a course of action which predisposed many African countries to humiliation after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

What is unique about this pact is that it is not based on any “historically accumulated rancour” which normally stultifies any concordat reached with an African nation say by France or England or any of the other states which traipsed through Africa to purely manipulate it. China and Africa have no chronicles of bloody battles to have to sublimate. They are beginning with a clean slate. They have no grave motivations to have misgivings about one or the other. This atmosphere of cooperation is akin to some all-directional independent diplomacy. The Chinese and Africans are disgruntled with the old Western colonial regimes, and are determined to seek an honourable and evenly balanced international order among all peoples. They realize that bipolar politics (Soviet Union-DisUnited States) belongs to the Past. We live in an age of multi-polarization, and even if there exists one “superpower”—for now!—there are also several big powers occupying the international stage and with which the DUS must now deal with in a more unassuming, open-minded and studied manner. Let us hope.

Already in 1956, China had provided no-strings-attached support for Africa. It is prominent for bringing about the Tanzania-Zambia Railway. The Chinese have bartered for African goods exchanging their textiles, light industrial products, rice, electrical appliances and motorcycles. The Chinese have made available desperately-needed technical assistance in the fields of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, fishery, manufacturing, and health care. Medicines, medical equipment, recreation and sporting equipment, and agricultural machinery have been dispatched to Africa. Chinese doctors, agricultural experts, physical training coaches, computer teachers and instructors have helped to offer the multi-ethnic, multi-tribe continent a better life. Incredibly to us and Haliburton personnel, experts sent by the Chinese government to Africa must be paid equally as those of the recipient countries they have been sent off to assist!

The point here is that China, with all the disadvantages of language and culture that it possesses when transacting politics and business in Africa, has stated that it is pursuing a policy of peaceful neutrality and nonalignment while strictly respecting the sovereignty of all African nations. Equality, mutual benefit, the relief of the burden of poor countries, and peaceful coexistence are the order of the day, and it only remains for us to see whether these standards will be adhered to vigorously enough or buried forever beneath the Babylonian Weeping Willow of political rhetoric.

Onto this mesmerizing African mainland will be plonked one day the President-elect of the DisUnited States of America, Barack Obama, who will become president on Inauguration Day 20 January 2009. BO will be lugging three dirty laundry bags with him when his Air Force One lands on the world’s most underprivileged continent:

· The Democratic Party. As much as BO thinks his party is the most democratic and viable political force in the DUS, it is not. There is not one. If we go back in modern history, it is easy to assess that the demerits of this cluster are rather extensive. Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt steered the DUS out of the 1929 Depression. He manoeuvred the country through World War II, and some say he was a cause of that conflict. Harry S Truman dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, and he did not seal, by doing so, any harmony of mutual respect between the DUS and The Rising Sun for the years that went after his tenure. HST’s diplomatic blunders also included the Korean War. Democrats John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson piloted the DUS out of the 1962 recession and escalated the Vietnam “War.” Democrat William Clinton baulked on sending troops to quell the slaughter between the Hutus and Tutsis—an act that surely would have won for him the admiration of most African people. Will Democrat Barack Obama be harked back to for his leadership efforts during World War III/Universal War I?
The Democratic Party’s political machine in Chicago is well-known for its opinionated shenanigans and sleaze, and it is the mechanism that pushed JFK over the finish line when he was elected president. Big money is the talk of the town among Democratic Party officials as it is with their opposition, the Republican Party.
BO is a product of the Chicagoans’ politics and served on the faculty of the University of Chicago.
When all is said and done, even if BO is the pristine pure Democrat he claims to be, most Africans are going to look askance at this proud Democrat—if only for his party’s Past.

· Europe. The DUS is a hodgepodge of various European émigrés. BO represents them. The DUS’s ties to Europe are more durable than those with Asia, Oceania (except for Australia and New Zealand) and Southamerica—three regions relations with are nothing to brag about. The DUS’s languages, creeds, customs and practices, history and collective memory, the value it subscribes to its heritage, public spaces and specific landscapes, political and economic inclinations are founded on the literatures, religions, the political theories and the Judeo-Christian democratic capitalist concepts of, particularly, German, Irish, English, and Italian immigrants who still cuddle those ideas and philosophies. Quod erat demonstrandum: Africans are chary of both Europeans and Northamericans. They should be. And they will also be iffy a propos BO.
· The tarnished reputation of the DUS. Would any African person in charge, in his or her right mind, want to do business with a DUS bank? If the citizens of the DUS cannot confide in their own banks, how can anyone expect that others would? The Captains and Robber Barons of Capitalism look ridiculous in their shabby outfits of covetousness and fraud. Still, the DUS’s plunge cannot be measured solely with economic and financial lingo. Examining any other sphere where the DUS might once have been appreciated and respected, one is not going to be very much encouraged. The Leader of the World has turned out to be The Policeman of the World. (Citizens of the DUS are a magnificent people—if they aren’t bombing you!) Which means that the DUS might be feared, but it is respected now barely so. The culpability cannot be placed, exclusively, on Bush I and Bush II and their Republican cohorts, and we will never be gratified and/or proud of their political performances. The blameworthiness must be levied on each and every Northamerican citizen.

Yes, we can join hand in hand with China to help Africa lift itself out of abject poverty! Yes, we can join nations from all over the world and build more hospitals and schools for the African people! Yes, we can demonstrate to the world that the DUS is not keen on only imposing its resolve upon the people of the Dark Continent! Yes, we can start off on an accurate foothold this time and seek fairness and parity for all African people! Yes, we can stop selling arms to African nations! Yes, we can! Alleluia! Alleluia!! Alleluia!!!




R E M A R K S




The Truth-o-Meter

When I think of Afroamericans there comes to my mind two unambiguous cases in point of institutionalised racism—not the kind where a gang of thugs beat up on one Afroamerican, or a bunch of criminals who thrash upon one Northamerican who is not Afroamerican. (I do not use the word “black” anymore to refer to Afroamericans, and I refuse to use the racist “of color” soubriquet.) The first is the United States Army in the late 1960s. In Vietnam, on the battlefield, Afroamericans were frequently superior in number and proportion (12% of the DUS’s population is Afroamerican) to Northamericans who were not Afroamericans, and, at times, the Afroamericans constituted 50% of an infantry company’s roster in attendance in the “boonies.” (15% of the US Army troops serving in Vietnam actually presented themselves at the combat zone. 85% performed backup, maintenance assistance, and other rear-echelon activities including thievery.) Base camp Afroamericans were frequently blackmailed with threats of being sent to the front line. And, one lieutenant-colonel from a southern state in the DUS, briefing me on my promotion opportunities, told me point blank: “If you want to make a career of the US Army, lieutenant, you better stay away from those niggers.” The second occasion for me to witness established racial discrimination was when I functioned as a social worker for the State of Florida in the very late 1960s. Here again the Afroamerican was criminally controlled and kept at bay through the administration of a contrived poverty. Both the US Army and the State of Florida, as many other DUS groupings, have progressed exceptionally well in doing away with intolerance in their organizations, but nevertheless there remains an unhealthy, unpardonable dose of bigotry in the sinews of the Northamerican population.

Be that as it might, I am pleased that an Afroamerican has been elected president of the DUS. I do not intend to say that it is the least of what could have been done for Afroamericans. I wish to declare that citizens of the DUS are somewhat now on the right path to justice and egalitarianism on behalf of the Afroamericans. A very long distance still has to be traversed before we can affirm that an end has finally come to this outrageous Northamerican perfidiousness. Even so, I am not gratified that that individual, that perfunctory representative of Afroamericans, Barack Obama, is the president-elect of the DUS, and I am still further disenchanted that many Northamericans, and their Afroamerican counterparts, voted for BO because he is, above all, an Afroamerican. They voted for the “color” of his skin knowing very well that a green man with yellow stripes could have got rid of the opposition in this see-sawing soap opera’s attempt to hit upon a way to extricate the DUS from the horrible crisis it finds itself bogged down in.

BO is very clever, physically potent, youthful as far as politicians go, deceptively coherent when he deliberates, upbeat, on the move, and fluky. I would like very much to pose the following uncertainties I have about him to him:

1

Who backed you in this gargantuan effort to become
president of the DUS?
The names of these prime movers, please.

2

When did you decide to run for president?
You were sworn in as a DUS senator on 4 January 2005.
You resigned that post 16 November 2008.
You announced your candidacy on 10 February 2007.

3

Where did the financial funding for your effort come from?
Each and every receipt.

4

What might happen if you, or a member of your family, is assassinated?
The DUS is in perhaps the gravest dilemma of its history,
and your elimination would be exceptionally traumatic for the DUS.

5

Why do you think you are qualified to lead the DUS?
Your credentials, your Washington experience,
your knowledge of foreign affairs…please!




Thank you.




Authored by Anthony St. John
Casella Postale 38 50041 CALENZANO FI Italia
1 December 2008
African statistics extrapolated from http://www.wikepedia.org/
The writer wishes to thank Professor He Wenping,
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences,
http://bic.cass.cn/English,
whose article,
“China-Africa Relations Facing the Twenty-first Century,”
27 May 2003,
was referred to for details in the aforesaid essay.




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