The BALL REPORTS

Think about this...

March 18, 2007

Something to offend everyone! 

The Irish scholar Luke Gibbons wrote that Ireland is a first-world country with a third-world memory. We are all, even the United States, prisoners of our history. For what it's worth, in April 1861 Abraham Lincoln had implored his countrymen not to go to war, with each other. To listen to the 'better angels' of their nature. They didn't. Three and half million men went to war. 620,000 died in it. As many as in all the rest of America's wars combined. Four years later, word of General Robert E Lee's surrender spread fast. A galloping rider shouted the good news to General Sherman's army in North Carolina, and one gleeful soldier bellowed back at him, "You're the son of a bitch we've been looking for all these four years."

A Union soldier, a country boy, said: "My shoes are gone, my clothes are gone, I'm weary, I'm sick, I'm hungry, my family have all been killed and scattered. And I've suffered all this for my country. I love my country. But if this war is ever over I'll be damned if I ever love another country."

Later, Sherman said: "I know what military fame is. It's dying on the field of battle and having your name spelt wrong in the newspapers."

Salman Rushdie wrote recently, "When war is ordered in the name of God you begin to think less well of the name of God." But if war is the answer, what the hell was the question?

 

"Crime is far too lucrative to be left to criminals. There is no need to look for adventurous outlaws who will reveal themselves by clumsiness or repetition.

Port and the harbor master takes home peanuts a month, we are looking at ourselves - at the harbor masters ability to resist temptation on an unprecedented scale. And the harbor master's superior. At the Port police. And their superiors. At Customs officers and their superiors. Then the enforcers, the bankers, the lawyers, and administrators who are paid to look the other way. To imagine these people can synchronize their collaborative efforts without a central command and control system, and the active connivance from others in high places, is absurd."

To a convicted leader of a major drug syndicate who exclaimed, "As God is my judge - I am innocent!", a London barrister said: "He isn't, I am, and you're not." We live in hope.

A friend said it's all been a terrible misunderstanding. "We love the corruption and the black economy, it's so sensible, so alternative. We always believed it would be the most popular city in the world from which to run a business if you could only get a telephone connected - so naturally the best thing about the city was that you couldn't get a telephone connected."

Johnny Weissmuller broke 67 swimming records before retiring at 25, having never lost a race. He went on to play Tarzan in 19 films between 1932 and 1949, for which he was paid $100,000 per film, most of which, he said later, "I blew on boats, women, and good living." His advice to his successor as Tarzan was, "The main thing is, don't let go of the vine when you're swinging through the jungle."

 

Your humble Ace Reporter

Bob

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