repent! the end is near ... again

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-- If you want to get people's attention, just come up with a disaster that will eclipse whatever disaster they are already suffering. That way, they will pay attention to you and stop paying attention to anything as insignificant as themselves. "Nyah, nyah, hyah! My disaster's bigger and better than yours!"

The poor old Rev. Howard Camping, who blew it with an earlier prediction of doom, now says that the end of the world is scheduled for Oct. 21. There is his smiling face on the internet accompanying the story. Yes, Howard, you are loved and elevated and oh so important... kind of like the god you prefer. Feel better now?

-- The Occupy Wall Street movement is scheduled to go global today, about a month after it started to simmer in the bowels of New York. On the political front, it was just a matter of time before some candidate tried to tap into the surging energy that Occupy Wall Street has evinced and it seems that the U.S. president, Barack Obama, is going to give it a shot. Will he or any other politician be able to co-opt the movement and put it to his own interests? I hope not, but you never know. Occupy Wall Street is between a rock and a hard place: Yes, there is vast agreement and vast energy, but the question that protesters must be asking themselves is, "agreement about what ... and for what?" A statement of discontent deserves to be made and I for one am grateful for that statement, but ... well ... in what action or set of actions will that statement chart a course? I do hope they don't fall prey to such human-imperative questions too soon.

-- Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has characterized U.S. accusations that Iran plotted to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador on American soil as "meaningless." I am inclined to listen to Iran in this matter: The whole plot thing was just too laughably ham-handed to be credible. But I suppose if the Joseph Gobbels apparatus swings into action and pushes hard enough, the U.S. may yet find an excuse to go to war with a country they have been itching to go to war with for a long time.

-- It's only a hundred armed Americans, but the U.S. has decided to send 'support' troops to Uganda, a place of bloody civil war. I can remember when Kennedy sent 'advisers' to Vietnam. If the U.S. decides to mix it up in Africa, maybe they will short-circuit China's desire and willingness to forge ties there... and divert a little attention from their own gloomy home front.
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