The Anger of Compassion

My Bid In "Exploit the Earth Or Die"

I have become a gentleman farmer.

As of this evening, it is fully planted and watered down, my garden is. In addition to the oleander and lantana already maintained at The Anger of Compassion World Headquarters campus, I now have:

iceberg lettuce
green salad bowl lettuce
asparagus
broccoli
carrots
watermelon
strawberries
tomatoes
cucumbers
spinach
onions
buttercrunch lettuce
beets
raspberries
radishes
corn
nasturtiums
marigolds

Also have some herbs and seven rose bushes: two Summer Snow, two Europeana, Georgia Peace, Queen Elizabeth, and Love. I want more herbs, and I want to cook with herbs I've grown myself.

So I'm a gentleman farmer, exploiting the earth. Cool.

Decline and Fall of Western Civilization: Does It Ever End?

Quaint phrase I heard on NPR's "Morning Edition" this, um, morning: "pirate village." They even had the name of the damn place.

This Wall Street Journal editorial piece uses the term "pirate city," and, again, names the place.


My question is, Why is there such a thing as a "pirate village?"


Now I'm just a dumb goddamn Marine and former philosophy major, so maybe I ask too many questions. But...We breed the F-18, we Americans do, and their native habitat is the aircraft carrier, of which we have more than 10 or 12 of the goddamn things.

And the U.S. Navy, proprietors of said vessels, know where Somalia is and how to get those vessels there. They do. And the executive branch of the U.S. government -- Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, Pentagon, White House, you name it -- knows full well how to contact the commanding officers of those carriers.

Those vessels, with their crews and their embarked fighter aircraft squadrons (Navy and Marine both), are funded by dollars extracted by force from American citizens. It is therefore immoral to maintain such projects if they are never to be used for their only legitimate purpose, which is the protection of American citizens and American interests.

So I ask again: Well? "Pirate village?" "Pirate city?"

That such a term as "pirate city" can even be uttered in serious discourse indicates that we have descended a long, long way.