I was going to use this second half to show Penny’s side of the story but everything he has to say about it is beautifully articulated here and here. I highly recommend reading those especially the first one. It’s rare you get
“If you’re going to put that up on the Internet, make my cock look a bit bigger, would you?”
I was going to use this second half to show Penny’s side of the story but everything he has to say about it is beautifully articulated here and here. I highly recommend reading those, especially the first one. It’s rare you get to read a poet write in normal-speak about something he feels passionate about.
However, it’s occurred to me that some people may be getting a bit tired of Crass Week. I know I am and I have their logo tattooed on my arm. So, I’m going to talk about a “fight” I had with Penny Rimbaud about the world. It went on for several hours and ended with an agreement to disagree.
WHY DON’T PEOPLE KILL MUGABE?
I’ve said this a hundred times and nobody can give me a straight answer. I even met a Zimbabwean in Glasgow and all he could tell me was a bunch of platitudes about people not feeling empowered and blah blah blah. Look, when the Taliban decided Massoud was a threat, they got a guy with a fake camera to go in there and blow him up. Boom. End of problem. (By the way, I hate these bastards as much as the next guy but holy shit are they good at their jobs. 9-11 cost about $12,000 – worthy adversary much?). Massoud could have done a lot of harm to the Taliban but he’s out of the equation now. Why can’t the MDC do the same shit to Mugabe?
Penny’s contention is that people are in power because the American government (or, more specifically, the business interests that run the American government) allows them to be in power. “Why is Castro alive?” he asked, “Because it suits America to have him there.” I don’t buy this. True, the States made some curiously pathetic attempts to kill Castro. Poisoning his beard sounds like something out of Harry Potter, but I don’t believe the gov’t or even big business is competent enough to run the world in some kind of master plan way and move these despots around like a giant game of Risk.
Penny claimed that Mugabe was left in power because Zimbabwe sits right on top of South Africa and it’s a great route to get diamonds and oil and whatever else out of the bottom and up towards the top. I don’t buy this either. This whole notion of having to wage war with someone to get their minerals doesn’t make sense. The price of oil sky rocketed after we started a war with Iraq. If I want to get deals at WalMart I don’t start a fire in the lobby first. I walk in and grab the leaflet that lists all the bargains. South Africa would happily sell us anything we want. The world would. Shit, 80% of Canada’s economy is contingent on America buying from them. The majority of America’s oil comes from Canada. You don’t see us dropping bombs on Winnipeg. So no, I don’t think Mugabe is in power because of a trade route. There’s plenty of other countries on top of South Africa and I’d rather go through them than deal with a place where nothing lives and a cheeseburger is 15 million of their stupid dollars.
I see the government as a huge pile of incompetent boobs. It’s just Hollywood for ugly people and all they want to do is be famous and fawned upon. Big business is just a blind robot that does whatever makes them a profit. As I said earlier, Pfizer could stop meth addiction for a few dollars. The robot doesn’t do that because it doesn’t compute. The robot does not sit there looking at a world map and deciding which despots live and which ones die. That’s not how calculators work.
Penny pointed out the huge role Britain played in propping up the IRA. I don’t deny that. I’m not denying there are other interests that often fuck with the government. Bush invaded Iraq because the neocons pissed in his ear. Obama’s entire financial plan comes from Goldman Sachs who have recorded record profits since the bailouts. I also realize America has pushed for certain leaders over time. They loved Saadam for a while. Then they hated him. Exact same story with Noreaga. I’m sure there are cases where assassinating a leader will just lead to another one being put in his place but that’s very rare. Can we reign it in a bit please? This World Inc. shit is starting to sound like an action movie. It’s not. Look at every covert operation that eventually gets exposed to the public. The Iran-Contra affair was a fucking joke. It sounded like the Keystone Cops set it up. In fact, Ollie North’s book on tape about the whole thing is one of my favorite comedy albums of all time. When this government meddles abroad they almost always fuck it up. They’re not James Bond’s boss. They’re the DMV only way, way, way bigger.
I resent the implication that every single global catastrophe can be traced back to the West. Isn’t it possible some of these people are fuck ups? Did we start the war in the Balkans too? Every time I came up with some kind of world mess, Penny would trace it back to the White Man going in there and fucking everything up. Sometimes we had to go back 100 years. We’ve been all over the world but we’re not magic. Just because we traded with a place once doesn’t mean we scarred it for life and it can never recover. In fact, I see this mentality as a strange form of White Supremacism. To say we are so All Knowing and All Powerful, we can control the world’s fate is to make us God-like. Penny couldn’t name one catastrophe that wasn’t traceable to the White Man. Bollocks.
If anyone has a right to complain about the U.S., it’s Japan but look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We obliterated those two cities in the war and today they make downtown Chicago look like Bangladesh. We tortured Japan’s economy for decades after the war and wouldn’t let them take a shit without paying us for it. They pulled themselves up by their boot straps however, and came back stronger than ever. Why can’t other countries do the same thing? They’ve had about a a billionth of the meddling Japan had. Zimbabwe had the opposite of meddling. The West went there and built and entire farming industry that employed thousands. There’s no reason this can’t continue. It has some of the most arable land on the planet. Wild animals jerk off thinking about it.
It all goes back to culpability as far as I’m concerned. My dad grew up in the slums of Glasgow and he studied hard, busted his ass, and got out. He didn’t blame anyone and sit there crying on a trash heap. Zimbabwe has to take some responsibility for itself and fucking murder Mugabe. America won’t instantly put in a new despot to fill his place. The MDC will move in and start repairing the mess that is that sad shithole. They’ll restore the wildlife and get some tourism going again. Maybe even start farming again. Eventually, Zimbabwe could be what it once was.
At this point we had made it into the wee hours of the morning and Pen wanted to go to bed. He said, “We disagree” and kissed me on the lips (he kisses everyone goodnight, every night). The next morning he said he envied my naïveté and wished he could think the same way because that is true existentialism. It seemed to be an “ignorance is bliss” kind of a comment. I said, “Yeah, but I’m right” and he said, “Yes, you’re always right, Gavin.”
That little piece of sarcasm is a souvenir I shall cherish forever.
Just watch Rambo III, it explains everything
Yeah, it seems white guilt goes hand-in-hand with white supremacy.
If crass “week” ends today you’re a huge vagina.
I read this in the AV Club’s David Cross interview yesterday and I think it’s Mcginnis. they have the same house upstate.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/david-cross,32321/2/
“I have a very good friend, we’re very close, and 80 percent of what we believe in politically, and about culture and society, is completely opposite. He’s very well-informed, well-read, and we argue constantly. We try to be very civil about it, but I can hear myself being really condescending. It’s out of impatience sometimes.”
Difference between Zimbabwe and Japan is, on average, about 40 IQ points per person. There’s your answer.
He’s totally right about the government being a giant DMV.
The IQ thing doesn’t work because there’s plenty of smart people living in shit. The Middle East is smart. Southeast Asia too. Does anyone want to live in Malaysia? Nope. The Georgians fighting Russia are plenty smart. They’re also fucking losers. The Balkans? Romania? Mongolia? All smart hellholes. I guess that’s my fault too.
When anti-Semites talk about the Jews they manage to blame everything bad about the world on them. If it rains on their birthday, the Jews did it. Most of the people I talk to feel the same way about the West. They all sound like Smurfs bitching about Gargamel.
Hello. I am an average man living in Zimbabwe. My life sucks! Before I read this, I didn’t like Mugabe very much, but now I am going to go give him a blowjob just to spite this writer who has never studied my country, doesn’t speak any of our languages, has never been here, only knows what he reads on CNN/Fox News/HuffPo, but thinks that his “hey why don’t they just kill him?” stoned-freshman-dorm-debate (I have never been in a dorm but I love the Verve Pipe song about being a freshman) is going to influence me.
I think this writer probably enjoys the luxury of enacting many “rape fantasy” scenarios with his wife but one of my family members was raped by Mugabe’s forces and now it is hard for me to even enjoy jacking off. My brother in law can’t have exciting sex with his wife (my sister) because she was raped so hard. Forget the blow job! If many soldiers force their penises into your mouth, you really don’t want to suck a penis ever again. It is sad. My brother and I don’t want to have any more trouble of this kind, so we don’t revolt. I think many of my friends feel this way.
people from zimbabwe don’t have computers
I agree with you on the point that not every despot is a product of white supremacy, but to answer your question about Mugabe, I think Ian Smith’s Rhodesia is still too fresh in the memory of Zimbabwe for people to stop submitting to these ZANU heroes of of the bush wars (you can see this to a lesser extent in South Africa, where you can get a pass for rape and become president if you’re still full of that liberating spirit of the ANC).
Zimbabwe is fucked up. Rhodesia was the poster child for being fucked up. Mugabe offered hope, delivered on it, and I think it’ll still be a while before someone gets over the duality of hero/tyrant and hangs a fucking tire on his neck.
Rhodesia WAS super!!!
Zimbabweans use words like “HuffPo”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslows_hierarchy_of_needs
It’s hardly fair to expect people to oraganize,revolt,and restablish new organized states when, they lack the low level needs of food security, shelter. generally our survival instincts, allow us to play along with totalatarian states for the means of not starving AS immediately. staging a rebellion costs more in resource, energy, life, then just playing along and living your shitty life in some countries. with our full stomachs, and high level needs fulfilled its a matter of perspective, we cannot fully comprehend the abject misery of some people thus we can’t just say “why can’t you just kill your dictator” so matter of factly. that being said, the people of zimbabwe are hardly at fault, its just a matter of shitty circumstance for them really, the solutions are not as simple as gavin puts it, its way more fucked for a solution like “kill mugabe and farm”.
Hey man from zimbabwe,
You’re a pathetic piece of shit if anything you said is remotely true. If some fucking soldiers raped anyone in my family I would dedicate my life to getting back at them.
I’d get my family out of that shit hole, then come back and murder everyone I could find. Then I’d murder myself if it came to being captured. More than worth it if it meant ending even one of those soldier’s lives.
You know the reason why your brother can’t have exciting sex with his wife anymore? It’s not because she’s damaged, it’s because she thinks he’s pathetic for letting her get raped and not doing anything about it.
When some guy groped my girlfriend’s crotch on the street a few years ago I sprayed him with her pepper spray, knocked him on the ground, and started kicking him in the head until he stopped moving. I could have gone to prison for that and risked being raped myself, but I did it anyway.
I hope you read this.
That old dude soaks his cock in that pool everyday hoping that the sun warmed water will bring it to life like a packet of sea monkeys.
“one of my family members was raped by Mugabe’s forces and now it is hard for me to even enjoy jacking off.”
???? What the fuck does this mean? Did you jack off to your family member? ????????
Gavin if you want him dead so badly, you go kill Mugabe
You gave yourself away as a gamer who enjoys creative writing…
Mad typos in the third to last paragraph. I just wanta help.
Hello. It is me again, the man living in Zimbabwe. I want to say to Cheese Bottoms that you must live in a very strange country, Mr. Bottoms. I have never heard of a real man touching the groin area of a real woman. In my country we have a saying, “O young man, do not grope the crotch of any animal except if it is a male animal and you are a gay man, but woe be unto you if you are caught because we kill a gay.” You must see, we do not care for the pleasure of the woman. We do not touch her crotch and groin area because it gives her pleasure and that is forbidden. She should keep her mind from such things and tend to chores such as cleaning and cooking.
So I must ask you, Mr. Bottoms, is your girlfriend a man? I think this may be the case. The man who touched the crotch is probably a homosexual. I do not think you have seen your “girlfriend” with her clothes off. We watch the Jerry Springer show and see many such as you.
This is also why I do not like to listen to the advice of white people from decadent Western countries. You have many homosexuals which proves that your lifestyles only lead to the ruin of your societies. Maybe we live with Mugabe in exchange for no homosexuals.
PS Dear Uncle Wah, I never masturbate about my family but I used to really enjoy rape fantasy masturbation but now I cannot because my sister was raped. I feel too guilty.
I took too many meds and tatooed all your amazing presidents onto my thigh.
I got up to Kennedy and passed out. Nixon’s next, then Hoover.
You forget your country was founded on fraternity scratch my back I’ll scratch yours bullshit.
It’s never oil or freedom or whatever.
It’s setting up the next brother in charge with a sweet deal.
check out world systems theory… capitalism does fuck with 3rd world nations…
i agre with you and i think that peny may be a conspiracy theorist. i also agreed with you on the ftw post. its hard to reason with conspiracy theorists though. even if they are brilliant lyricists
COMMENT KILLER is beat. “We don’t wanna know what kind of a day you had, we want to know what kind of night you had.” (Cue laugh track)
I agree with Gavin. 3rd World nations shouldn’t rest on the hope of america coming to kick ass and solve their problems for them (like all of africa celebrating for Obama’s victory, as if it would somehow change their situation). They need to take responsibility for themselves, and we need to stop giving them money for poor behaviour. if you subsidize something, you get more of it. Liberals think if a woman has 15 kids that we should fork over some of our money so she can feed them. ya, it sucks that their kids are starving…but its their own fucking fault. and by us giving them money, we are subsidizing them and encouraging them to continually breed themselves into poverty. The same goes for their governments. we give billions of dollars in “aid” that just give dictators more power, more guns, and more ability to fuck over their own people.
Of course, it is politically impossible for one to say “cut off all aid to africa” because then the NY Times starts chanting the usual “racist” white supremacist bullshit, when its in fact the opposite. We need to fuck off, and stop thinking we can solve everyones problems (i agree with gavin…this is some strange tangent of white supremacism and moral superiority) and let shit hit the fan, its the only way things will improve. revolutions need to happen, and the people in their own countries need to establish working political systems…which history has proven to be capitalism. we can’t keep on meddling and propping up failed systems.
capitalism is, like, totally gay
@Russia
So your solution is isolationism? Brilliant! Why didn’t somebody think this up years ago…
@ man from zimbabwe
That was actually pretty funny.
@ Cheese Bottoms @ Cheese Bottoms
Creative writing? What about that was creative? If I do play video games that doesn’t mean I can’t put someone in the hospital and by the way, none of that was bullshit. Just because you’re a pussy who’s never beat the shit out of someone doesn’t mean other people don’t.
“if anyone has a right to complain about the U.S., it’s Japan” Are you so blind of all the wars the US has started, how many democratically elected leaders the US deposed, the CIA funded death squads ?
Just for starters check out what you guys were doing in the “fight against communism”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osKkRmLIldE
Shouldn’t the Cambodians complain ?
How about the million dead Iraqis ? Shouldn’t they complain about having their country invaded and destroyed?
How about all the US funded death squads in South America?
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/deathsquads_ElSal.html
How about the arming of Sueharto and the support in the massacres in East Timor ?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/1999/sep/19/indonesia.easttimor1
How about the US and UK funded deposition of the democratically elected government of Iran and the installation of a brutal dictator ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
People all around the world can complain about the US for its use of and support of violence and its contempt of democracy. ie the US is favour of democracy but not in other peoples countries.
“If anyone has a right to complain about the U.S., it’s Japan but look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We obliterated those two cities in the war and today they make downtown Chicago look like Bangladesh. ”
“they pulled themselves up by their boot straps however, and came back stronger than ever. Why can’t other countries do the same thing”
These are the most nauseating sentences I have ever read. So you are saying Iraq should pull themselves up by the bootstraps after being destroyed by the US ? That’s generous of you ! The US started the war and in my view they should rebuild the country and pay massive reparations. You guys are in a dream world, stop watching the bullshit that passes for news in the US.
gawd, turn this shit off
none of you know much about anything. and, man from zimbabwe, if you actually are from zimbabwe, i’ll shit my pants and eat it. my two cents
gavin, you sound like obama.
you shouting out “isolationism” is just the same as any liberal jackass shouting racism, or redneck shouting un-american whenever they dont have a logical argument.
“frenchy” not the same as “french guy”… you know… just for the record.
I can’t believe there are people claiming I am not from Zimbabwe. Is it because my English is so good? I think this is a form of white supremacy, with you white people on the Internet thinking that a simple man from Zimbabwe couldn’t write English very well. I think the writer of this piece should address this crime against humanity. Even in this country of mine, oh beautiful Zimbabwe with your black majority, I can’t even venture to my local Internet cafe to surf the Web without encountering white racism. I am sighing deeply now.
@@ french guy, not @ french guy (you meant @ Frenchy, as french guy pointed out.)
I was replying to what Russia was rambling on about. If his ramblings are not by definition isolationist, please explain to me what they were.
ok…so you can call it whatever the hell you want. isolationist, racist, the classification is up to you. now that is taken care of, explain to me why it is WRONG, or why it wont work.
You’re smarter than Penny.
again : french guy, not frenchy. beginner’s mistake.
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