it’s interesting that saddam was captured on nostradamus’ 500th birthday.
-moby

interesting quote:

“”trying to eliminate saddam…would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. apprehending him was probably impossible…. we would have been forced to occupy baghdad and, in effect, rule iraq…. there was no viable “”exit strategy”” we could see, violating another of our principles.
furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-cold war world. going in and occupying iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the united nations’ mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. had we gone the invasion route, the united states could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.””

and who wrote that?
george w. bush’s dad, george bush senior.
interesting.
moby

an interesting fact that i just read:

according to the world bank’s chief economist a european cow receives $2.50 each day in subsidies, but an average person living in sub-saharan africa receives less than $2 each day in subsidies.

moby

so by some fluke i find myself in the position of being a public figure.
it’s interesting. it’s got a novelty value. and it has anthropological worth. but what, if anything, is valuable about being a public figure?
one of my presumptuous goals is to somehow use my weird status as a public figure to do things that are interesting or good or informative.

that’s why i’ve started my area festival. that’s why i have ‘senor mobys’. etc. i’m not a bastion of altruism, but i would be deeply ashamed if i only used my public-figuredom to draw attention to myself.
wealthy people and public-figures are more often than not kind of disappointing. money and fame should be tools that creative people use to do interesting and benevolent and terriffic things with. right? no?
and i’m certainly not saying that i’ve done terriffic things with my money and public-figuredom.
i could always do better. but, to indulge in a bit of self-involved justification and/or defensiveness, i try to do my part. and perhaps i try to do my part in a schizophrenic and confused way.
yes. i want the world to be vegan and i want people to love and respect each other and i want life to be free of unnecessary suffering for every living thing, but i also want everyone to watch the south park movie and to see gwar at some point in their life. and i try to remember that my heroes are antonin artaud and bertrand russel and vito acconci and james turrel and marcel duchamp and bryan ferry and david bowie and kurt cobain and so on.
the world has to exist somehow. can’t we thus make the world better as opposed to worse?
can’t we make it smarter as opposed to stupider (yes, ‘stupider’ is not a word. but i think it looks funny).
can’t we encourage people not to be homophobic and misogynistic? can’t we encourage people to make music because they love music as opposed to money? can’t we somehow set an example wherein people communicate honestly with one another? can’t we make a world where the easy to avoid problems are easily avoided?
and yes, i’m a flawed and hypocritical person. i fuck up. we all fuck up.
but hopefully we learn from our fuck-up’s, and hopefully our flaws encourage us to be more understanding and compassionate in our dealings with other people.
eh, i’m naive. i know i’m naive.
but the world could be better, right? and it’s my simple hope that i can use my weird and unexpected status as a public-figure to somehow encourage or engender good and interesting stuff as opposed to bad and tedious and un-interesting stuff.
like i said, i’m naive.
and we can all do our part.
and again, i’m naive and idealistic.
moby

sorry. i’ve been lax in my updates as of late.
but it’s laxity borne of the fact that i’m really busy.
and i’m really tired right now.
so this might be brief, too.
but i was just reading about the fact that gw bush had prior information about september 11th and didn’t seem to act upon it. it’ll be interesting to see how this effects the publics opinion of his administration. and can i throw out 1 other thing for consideration?
here goes: there are long standing and well documented ties between the bush family and the bin laden family. why doen’t anyone look into this to see if it compromised the way in which the bush administration dealt with threats of terrorism?
there are a lot of weird elements to this whole thing. bush, more than any other president, is the true teflon president. clinton was impeached for having consensual (and unethical)sex. bush is best friends with ken delay who ran enron into the ground and was in many ways responsible for the california energy crisis.
bush’s family have long standing connections with the bin ladens and the saudi ruling family.
and it goes on and on.
but i’m too tired to write more.
in fact i think i’m asleep right now.
moby