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2003-07-27 Southeast Asia

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Posted by Fred Pruitt 2003-07-27 00:07|| || Front Page|| [3 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 "This sort of thing just makes it worse."
Agreed. Every time I read one of these pieces about the Phillipines, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Yemen, et al I can't help but marvel at the notion that they are "countries" in the sense that we Westerners customarily construe the word.

The idea that any of these, not to mention the "countries" of the whole friggin continent of Africa, actually control the territory of their nation is a joke. It may be populated and it may have some form of civil authority and they may even vote in elections, but to consider (as 99% of us prolly do) that this means that Mindanao (Phillipines) or Hadhramaut (OBL's home province in Yemen) or the so-called North West Frontier Province (Pakistan, where Sharia Law was adopted last month) is anything like Kansas or Oxfordshire is utterly insane.

Since it's obvious that civilization isn't likely to come to these places anytime soon - and in self-defense of sanity and perspective - we need a new lexicon which puts the events in perspective... example: normalcy was maintained yesterday as some really insane shit happened in an insane place, details to follow...

Posted by PD 2003-7-27 4:22:57 AM|| 2003-7-27 4:22:57 AM|| Front Page Top

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