XPost: alt.politics.socialism, alt.politics.economics, alt.politics.media   
   From: efreem2@alumni.umbc.edu   
      
   Subject: A problem with bicycle mittens   
      
   I have a pair of "lobster claws"; thickish bicycle gloves which hold my   
   index   
   and middle fingers in one sleeve, and my pinkey and ring finger in a   
   second.   
   This keeps all my fingers warmer.   
      
   However, my daughter asked how I could bike in these gloves.   
      
   I explained to her that you don't really need much manual dexterity to   
   ride   
   a   
   bicycle.   
      
   She said...   
      
   What do you do if a driver cuts you off?   
      
   *.*   
      
   My sister does a lot of telephone calling.   
      
   She called the phone company about something, and they were so polite   
   that she thought she had the wrong number.   
      
   Five minutes later a survey company called and said "They don't know but   
   we are conducting a follow-up survey."   
      
   "They know," she interrupted.   
      
   *.*   
      
   Man Who Plays Devil's Advocate Really Just Wants To Be Asshole   
      
   COLUMBUS, MO-Though area graphic designer Derek Sills says he plays   
   devil's   
   advocate to help his friends better understand opinions different from   
   their   
   own, sources close to Sills claim he takes on the dissenting role merely   
   to   
   be an asshole.   
      
   "Now, I don't actually believe this or anything but, for the sake of   
   argument, let's say your girlfriend is just dating you for your money,"   
   Sills said at a party last Saturday, after asking a group of friends to   
   consider that the telephone may have been a "stupid invention." "Just   
   playing devil's advocate here, guys, but perhaps slavery is the reason   
   African Americans are so successful in sports these days."   
      
   According to sources, Sills "crossed the line" when he asked if their   
   friend   
   Jamie's mother might have deserved to die.   
      
   *.*   
      
   Oneliners:   
      
   My old boss, spelled backwards . . . double s.o.b.   
      
   Am I getting older or is the supermarket playing great music?   
      
   The headlines nobody likes are wrinkles   
      
   When I saw my first strands of gray hair I thought I'd dye!   
      
   Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined   
      
   When women enter middle age, it gives men a pause   
      
   Cheerios are really bagel seeds.   
      
   New potential career choice: "gas price changer technician".   
      
   If you're pushing 80, that's exercise enough!   
      
   I'm in a long-distance relationship. I carpool to work.   
      
   *.*   
      
   The Department of Homeland Security   
   announced they will be ready   
   to deal with hurricanes in the future.   
      
   Like today, they called their cable company   
   and ordered the weather channel."   
      
      
   How come immigration has become a bigger issue   
   than the mismanaged war in Iraq,   
   the nuclear threat in Iran, energy independence, health care   
   and an environment that kills   
   more people every year than were lost on 9/11?   
      
      
   Following the birth of our daughter, the nurse told me   
   that I would have to take it easy   
   so for the next six weeks, "You can't do any lifting,   
   swimming, driving, sex. . . ."   
      
   I stopped her there. "I can't drive for how long?"   
      
   Issue of the Times;   
   Diego Garcia: Paradise Cleansed by John Pilger   
      
   There are times when one tragedy, one crime tells us how a whole system   
   works behind its democratic facade and helps us to understand how much of   
   the world is run for the benefit of the powerful and how governments lie.   
   To   
   understand the catastrophe of Iraq, and all the other Iraqs along imperial   
   history's trail of blood and tears, one need look no further than Diego   
   Garcia.   
      
   The story of Diego Garcia is shocking, almost incredible. A British colony   
   lying midway between Africa and Asia in the Indian Ocean, the island is   
   one   
   of 64 unique coral islands that form the Chagos Archipelago, a phenomenon   
   of   
   natural beauty, and once of peace. Newsreaders refer to it in passing:   
   "American B-52 and Stealth bombers last night took off from the   
   uninhabited   
   British island of Diego Garcia to bomb Iraq (or Afghanistan)." It is the   
   word "uninhabited" that turns the key on the horror of what was done   
   there.   
   In the 1970s, the Ministry of Defense in London produced this epic lie:   
   "There is nothing in our files about a population and an evacuation."   
      
   Diego Garcia was first settled in the late 18th century. At least 2,000   
   people lived there: a gentle Creole nation with thriving villages, a   
   school,   
   a hospital, a church, a prison, a railway, docks, a copra plantation.   
   Watching a film shot by missionaries in the 1960s, I can understand why   
   every Chagos islander I have met calls it paradise; there is a grainy   
   sequence where the islanders' beloved dogs are swimming in the sheltered,   
   palm-fringed lagoon, catching fish.   
      
   All this began to end when an American rear admiral stepped ashore in 1961   
   and Diego Garcia was marked as the site of what is today one of the   
   biggest   
   American bases in the world. There are now more than 2,000 troops,   
   anchorage   
   for 30 warships, a nuclear dump, a satellite spy station, shopping malls,   
   bars and a golf course. "Camp Justice," the Americans call it.   
      
   During the 1960s, in high secrecy, the Labor government of Harold Wilson   
   conspired with two American administrations to "sweep" and "sanitize" the   
   islands: the words used in American documents. Files found in the National   
   Archives in Washington and the Public Record Office in London provide an   
   astonishing narrative of official lying all too familiar to those who have   
   chronicled the lies over Iraq.   
      
   To get rid of the population, the Foreign Office invented the fiction that   
   the islanders were merely transient contract workers who could be   
   "returned"   
   to Mauritius, 1,000 miles away. In fact, many islanders traced their   
   ancestry back five generations, as their cemeteries bore witness. The aim,   
   wrote a Foreign Office official in January 1966, "is to convert all the   
   existing residents ... into short-term, temporary residents."   
      
   What the files also reveal is an imperious attitude of brutality. In   
   August   
   1966, Sir Paul Gore-Booth, permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office,   
   wrote: "We must surely be very tough about this. The object of the   
   exercise   
   was to get some rocks that will remain ours. There will be no indigenous   
   population except seagulls." At the end of this is a handwritten note by   
   D.H. Greenhill, later Baron Greenhill: "Along with the Birds go some   
   Tarzans   
   or Men Fridays ..." Under the heading, "Maintaining the fiction," another   
   official urges his colleagues to reclassify the islanders as "a floating   
   population" and to "make up the rules as we go along."   
      
   There is not a word of concern for their victims. Only one official   
   appeared   
   to worry about being caught, writing that it was "fairly unsatisfactory"   
   that "we propose to certify the people, more or less fraudulently, as   
   belonging somewhere else." The documents leave no doubt that the cover-up   
   was approved by the prime minister and at least three cabinet ministers.   
      
   At first, the islanders were tricked and intimidated into leaving; those   
   who   
   had gone to Mauritius for urgent medical treatment were prevented from   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)