It is a time of freedom and fear, of Gaia and of borders, of many paths and the widening of
a universal toll road, emptying country and swelling cities, of the public bought into
privacy and the privacy of the public sold into invisible data banks and knowing
algorithms. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the
planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection.
These are the times when maps fade and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread. Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times. Just came across this Perle of weirdspeak from the aptly named military advisor, talking about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction: "If others are going to take the view that, because these weapons weren't found, nothing that the United States says can be trusted -- there's not much we can do about that. It would be a foolish conclusion to draw." --Pentagon advisor Richard Perle. (Source: AFP, Jan. 9, 2004) Well, it's a head scratcher, all right. I mean, members of the administration repeatedly said they knew for a fact that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. We've got bullet-proof evidence, they said, just believe us. Then we invade, and there are none to be found. On a basic common-sense level, if somebody tells you something that turns out to be untrue, isn't it foolish to trust them in the future? Why is it foolish not to trust someone who has said inaccurate things in the past? Well, I'm stumped. At least we can rest assured that those guys at the Pentagon won't be drawing any foolish conclusions before they commit us to further military action... Return to the Irregular Times Main Page
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