Iwo Jima, the Veterans of Foreign Wars and Memorial Day

There appears to be no more popular symbol of American patriotism and resiliency than the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima. Do Americans think Mount Suribachi overlooked Pearl Harbor? (As if Hawaii in the mid-Pacific was even US manifest destiny). Of the USA’s far flung “possessions” Iwo Jima was not among them. As usual the US Marines were laying claim to lands of others, of the Japanese. It had as much to do with protecting our freedom as Montezuma and Tripoli.

Obama launches bold US medical relief program “Soldiers Without Borders”

The US response to Ebola is “Doctors Without Borders” with a cheaper payroll, serving US imperial needs above all. Okay, the US has been rolling out SOLDIERS WITHOUT BORDERS since Manifest Destiny and the Shores of Tripoli, but President Barack Obama’s initiative to send 3,000 soldiers to fight the Ebola-Zaire virus in West Africa marks the ploy’s most farcical disguise: soldiers-as-peacekeepers-passing-as-doctors. Who knew Specialist 1st Class meant health specialist? If your neighborhood doctor doesn’t accept Medicaid, maybe your local garrison will. Poor President Obama. Most of the national budget goes to the Defense Department, so our federal resources are mostly soldiers! When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. In this case, coffin nails, to contain the stricken people of West Africa. They need epidemiologists, we give them boots on the ground.

Angela Merkel il culone intrombabile

But Silvio Berlusconi might alternatively have used “strutto culo inchiavabile” to describe any other Euro usury kapo, like himself, or his mates Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron who paid a surprise visit to Tripoli yesterday to herald the victory of Neoliberal World Bank “Democracy” over Libyan sovereignty –or was it to say thanks in advance for the oil? News of Berlusconi’s wiretapped indiscretion via Twitter offered what online translators would not reveal, how to say “unf*ckable” in the languages of your upstream: infollable, onneukbare… his choice of words remain as yet censored in the German press. Wouldn’t it be curious to learn which cultures have no word for the concept? I’d have thought that would be American.