UPDATE: That reminds me – Freenet is not yet censored in any way.
Freenet is a global peer-to-peer network designed to allow users to publish and consume information without fear of censorship. To use it, you must download the Freenet software, available for Windows, Mac, Linux and other operating systems. Your computer will then form part of a global, decentralized P2P network, and you will be able to publish and consume information anonymously, either through your web browser, or through a variety of third party applications, such as Frost (see http://jtcfrost.sf.net/).
Retired U.S. Army Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, was paid $100,000 to endorse a veterans charity that watchdog groups say is ripping off donors and wounded veterans by using only a small portion of the money raised for veterans services, according to testimony in Congress today.
Gen. Franks’ involvement was revealed as members of Congress questioned Roger Chapin, who operates Help Hospitalized Veterans and the Coalition to Salute America’s Heroes Foundation, charities that congressional investigators say spend only 25 percent of the money they raise on projects for wounded veterans.
I’m disgusted but not surprised: after all this is a man who’s packaged himself and his complicity in an illegal war as though it were a product to be bought and sold like soap powder.
Whether he knew they weren’t much of a charity or not when he took the money seems to have been rather besides the point, which was the money. Otherwise he’d’ve endorsed it for free, it being a charity and all.
Funny, isn’t it, the bemused contempt felt for the customs of any given country by it’s nearest neighbours: the French freak out the British, who freak out the Dutch, who freak out the Americans, who freak out everybody, not least the Canadians…
To celebrate my return to this frigid, yet comparatively sane country, I felt it worthwhile to relay a list of five items which I saw during my travels which the locals thought was perfectly normal (I presume), but which freaked the heck out of me as a Canadian:
[…]
#4
A breakfast creation in upstate New York called “Stuffed French Toast”. What does “Stuffed French Toast” entail, you naïve non-American might ask? It’s French Toast (which, keep in mind is cooked in butter) stuffed with bacon, eggs and processed cheese (which they proudly call ‘American processed cheese’, I presume, to distinguish it from real cheese which could, after all, be French and/or offer unAmerican nutritional content). But here’s the kicker: on top of your “Stuffed French Toast” cooked in butter, you will find… a square of butter.
This really is a forthcoming movie. I can’t begin to articulate my what, rage? Sickness? No, neither are quite it. That someone in Hollywood apparently thinks routine torture and injustice are are just a normal hazard of life to make comedy (and a buck) out of speaks volumes to me about just how far down the rabbithole we’ve gone.
What kind of bizarro world are we in when scriptwriters see torture as normal?
From that limited clip that movie doesn’t look much like satire to me; it looks like a moviie whose makers, far from recoiling from torture, are revelling in their government’s criminality, treating crimes against humanity as just another saleable commodity to yuk it up over and market. No doubt they’d say if challenged that they are telling necessary truths through the medium of comedy.and that even mentioning Guantanamo Bay and US torture in a mainstream movie is transgressional and satirical in itself.
I’d say bollocks to that.
The creators of this movie – who surely know their intended audience down to the tiniest demographic – have shown their deep and abiding cynicism by adding gratuitously large amounts of and tits and ass. Oh and pussy too, just to make assurance doubly sure that it sells.
They’ll make milions, how can they fail? Harold and Kumar Gitmo has everything to appeal to the nihilistic, materialistic and disaffected young – torture, cheap anal rape jokes, tits and ass, torture, cheap dick jokes, more torture and plenty of drug references so mviegoers can turn and look at each other with a complicit smile and go heh, yeah, cool.
The whole movie’s an aknowledgement that OK, our government are torturing murdering bastards, but so effing what? Eat cockmeat suckers! Who could ask for more? It’s the perfect movie. Pass the popcorn, whoop, whoop! Go Hollywood, Go, go USA!
