More Strange News

Greetings, friends,
Deutsche Welle showed lots of cute bits last night, including a expose on the town of Ulm, but not too much about the "crisis" other than how great everyone thought Tony Blair's speech was. On ITN and the BBC they're ready to extoll him as the next Winston Churchill. My personal little chill, however, came when DW showed some meaningless international business conference in Berlin, and it turned into another amazing love in. The Vice-Something of Poland said (in perfect German) that "we must put our differences aside and love like brothers", and then the German Secretary for Economic So-and-so said, "let us recognize the class division we have created between us and the "Ossies" (East Germans) and work to create economic opportunity all over Europe." Poles in league with Germans! West Germans reaching out to East Germans! Friends, I am looking forward to our next trip to Europe. It's a regular love-in.

The highlight of my evening was seeing the Deputy Foreign Minister of Iran on "Charlie Rose". Here's one country that won't join the love-in, and they sent a bureaucratic wonk with a brilliant sense of language. Not only could he deflect every jab against Iran, no matter how trivial, but without attacking the U.S. directly he presented alternatives that made our decisions look rash. Most notably, when asked if Iran would ever join a coalition against terror with the U.S., the minister said, "we are ready to cooperate with the only legitimate coalition, one which can draw on the resources of all members. It is located in New York City and is called the United Nations." He also repeated, again, that Iran encourages American visitors. I like that...no other sovereign state is making us that offer.

If you want to read the other interesting things our friends in Iran have to say, try these web sites:
http://www.irna.com/ (Islamic Republic News Agency)
http://www.mfa.gov.ir/ (Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
http://www.daftar.org/ (Iranian Interests Section, Embassy of Pakistan)
http://www.iran-press-service.com/
The world's not as small as everyone thought, eh?

Okay, for those of you with an insatiable appetite for destruction, here's a website for you:
http://www.nycsubway.org/irt/westside/wtc-damage/
It's about 16 photos of the Cortlandt Street Station, directly beneath the World Trade Center.

If any of you are reading La Opinion these days, what happened on Tuesday in Mexico City? On Azteca the news was showing old footage of Tlatelolco from 1968, then Vicente Fox making some speech, and then what looked like recent footage of more UNAM students getting the crap beaten out of them. And what's with the puppets delivering the news! It's the news, not "Super Bla Blazos"! Crazy Mexicans.

Okay, and here's a final question, to my nearest neighbors...hey, what's with that fucking helicopter? It's been sitting up in the air over Silver Lake for the last 30 minutes, annoying the neighborhood with its prop-wash and blocking our view of the full moon. Don't they know there's a WAR on?