Ubuntu & the underdeveloped world

[poptones]

You know, I'm not generally a fan of this administration, and I'm
certainly no flag waiving "patriot," but I do feel there's a couple of
things that need to be mentioned here...

1) There are diverse political views all over the place. Listen to Neil
Young or watch one of his videos and compare that to the crap you get in
the news (especially from FOX). Plenty of us are critical of the
government, unfortunately it's not the government we need to be most
wary of - it's the corporations that, thanks to all those loopholes
caused by diverse and contrarian governmental policies, exist nearly
outside regulation. 

2) I collect music videos from all over the world. I'm not a fan of the
US pop music scene, but I find many foreign videos with the MTv logo
among my favorites. Anyway, mtv or no I have noticed there are a HUGE
number of foreign videos (especially from the FSU states) that feature
the theme of pop star is downtrodden back home, pop star begs, borrows
or steals passage to the US, pop star becomes famous and happy in
America. 

Walk the streets of Kiev, Tokyo or London and see how many american
flags you see plastered across chests, backs and butts. For such an
evil nation a whole lotta people sure seem to aspire to us.

And BTW the president had a news conference this morning and one of the
points he hammered home was the need to patch our southern border. You
see, hundreds of mexicans die in the desert each year struggling to
enter the US illegally. They die trying to walk across miles of open
desert and run out of water, and sometimes they die because the coyotes
(criminals who are paid thousands of dollars to smuggle them in) lock
them in trailers and leave them sitting in the sun - they literally
bake to death. There is an entire industry built upon smuggling people
illegally into the US, and one of the stated policies of this
administration has been to try to end this market - by opening up the
border to ANYONE willing to enter in a documented fashion and by
allowing non-us citizens to come and go as needed. 

No more smuggling, no more dying in the desert. It's not a terribly
popular notion with a great many of those "red folks" who voted for
him, either, as most folks I know around here (and I live in a state
where GW carried the vote with more than a 65% majority) talk about
mexicans with great disdain. This same president also wants to open up
reciprocity on social security, so those non-citizen workers can have
their time working here actually count toward their retirement back
home. 

How's that for "evil?"


-- 
poptones