Same Shit, different season

The Breakers. As I write, there is about 9 minutes to go in the game, and Adelaide are up by 6. Just once, I'd like to see a New Zealand team that can string together 4 quarters of quality basketball.

And the 'Breaker Girls', the skankiest cheerleaders this side of the 'player girls' (although this years outfit is marginally less horrifying than the gold lamé hot pants) are sponsored by a comdom company. There's just so many places to go with that, that I think I might just leave it to your imagination.

I promised a post about Africa, and some stuff, so here you go:

If you are born in Angola, you will only live, on average until you are 36. If you are born in Mozambique , you'll live to 37. The good news is, New Zealanders get until they are 78, and Americans 77 (I can't be bothered APA referencing, so check it out, here). The 10 lowest life expectancies are all in Sub-Saharan Africa, where civil war, AIDS, and generally disease and famine are rife (ditto, here).

Surely that's a bigger threat than terrorism? Surely the amount of people dying in Africa and South America and the Carribbean, and the rest of what is generally referred to as the 'third world', far outweighs the amount of people dying from terrorist acts. And where do the 'world leaders' think the terrorists are being bred? They aren't coming from relatively well off countries like France and Australia. They come from Iraq and Afghanistan and bred in the civil wars in Africa. And where do they think diease comes from? Where was AIDS bred? Ebola? Africa is rapidly becoming a black hole and a lot of the world seems to be ignoring it.

What concerns me, is that so many of Africa's problems are the vestiges of colonialism and the Cold War. Britain, France, Spain, Portugal and Holland pretty much divided up the continent and then used it's mineral resources. I know that's an overly simplistic way of looking at it, but I'm trying to boil it down to bullet points, here. How is that different to what is happening know in Iraq? George Bush had 2 basic reasons for the 'war in Iraq'. One: because Saddam had WMD. Hmmm. OK, well they haven't been found yet, and as several comedians have said, if the US had hung on to the reciepts, they would know where they sold the weapons. Two: that the Iraq people deserve a democracy and Saddam Hussein was a tyrant. Well, that's very true. The world will be a better place without Saddam in it. But how are the Iraqi people doing now? Are they any better off? Most of the aid agencies that were there prior to the war have left, because it was too dangerous to be there. They have no infrastructure, no hospitals, no schools, no running water and they still don't have democracy. And if someone can answer this question for me, I'd be grateful. How do you create a democracy in a country, by invading it, and then appointing a leader to 'create' a democracy. You can't instill democracy from the top down, it has to come from the people at the bottom. That's what democracy is: government by the people. True democracies are fought for, people die for them, and they are hard won. Not brought from an invading army. And if you want to counter that argument with New Zealand as an example, I would refer you to the Treaty of Waitangi.

OK, end of pontificating.

Lastly, I got this email forwarded to me...I like it...

Today is 'International Very Good Looking, Damn Smart Woman's Day', so please send this message to someone you think fits this description. Please do not send it back to me as I have already received it over fifty times and my inbox is jammed full!!!

GOOD MOTTO TO LIVE BY ...

"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, champagne in in one hand - strawberries in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming WOO HOO - What a Ride!"

Oh, and the Breakers lost 106-94.