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I've been thinking alot about s**t that doesnt matter, heres a list.
CANADIAN SNACK FOODS/CANADIANS
Aero
"Big on bubbles" ("Les bulles...on s'y connaît!" wink is this candy bar's catchphrase, and sure enough when you crack one in half it looks like a chocolatey degenerative bone disease. I'm not sure why this is a selling point; it tastes like plain old regular Canadian crappy chocolate (which is to say, slightly different than crappy chocolate from the States) and I can't imagine there have been a lot of complaints about the specific gravity of chocolate bars. It floats in water, maybe that's good. C-
Smarties
I know a lot of Canadians are great fans of the Smartie, but I'm just not seeing the appeal as compared to M&Ms, except that Smarties have chimps named Bob and Einstein ("Robert et Pasteur" wink on the package. Aside from that, Smarties are like larger M&Ms with thicker shells, worse chocolate, and no letters printed on them. Also, they come in more colours, but in my view chocolate bits should not be pink. I'm still having trouble adjusting to blue M& Ms. They do not float in water. C-
Crunchie
This is chocolate-covered sponge toffee. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the phrase "sponge toffee" ("Tire éponge dorée" wink . It tastes like toffee, but it's approximately the consistency of vintage foam rubber. This, to me, is not optimal. It floats in water. D+
Coffee Crisp
This is a good idea! ("Une bonne idée!" wink It's chocolate with a coffee-flavoured wafer center. My complaint, however, is that it could be more significantly coffee flavoured. It could hold you down and make you sniff its beans, but instead it just kind of gives you a whiff of coffee before and after the actual chewing. That's a disappointment. It floats in water. C+
Big Turk
This definitely gets my vote for "Best Candy Bar Which Is Also Someone's Prison Nickname." It intends to taste like Turkish delight ("Loukoum" wink but as far as I'm concerned it's essentially Swedish fish covered in chocolate. Combining Swedish fish and chocolate is one of those really great ideas, like combining Playstation 2 and oral sex. It does not float in water. B+
Ketchup Potato Chips
Good god! ("Mon dieu!" wink These are actually good! Really good. So good that I was able to get past the unnerving phrase "simulated ketchup flavour." The important thing here is that they don't really taste all that much like ketchup ("ketchup" wink . They're kind of like vinegar chips crossed with barbecue chips crossed with, well, ketchup. Only good! Much better than you're imagining! It's like really gross food, only made by Jesus. Also, they float. A-
SODA FLAVORS
Cola
It says something about modern society that our most popular soda doesn't taste like anything in particular. I mean, I imagine there might be a passing resemblance to cola nuts, but I don't know anyone who'd be in a position to verify such. I once read an ingredient list of flavorings that supposedly go into the cola experience, and it was ungodly long and obscure. It made those complex food magazine recipes for stuff like pheasant au goulet--the ones that require you to have a separate knife for each body part of the pheasant and that require you to know that Bulgarian coriander is actually a breed of sheep--look like boxed mac and cheese by comparison. C-
Lemon-Lime
Actually, there's a wide variety of sodas which I lump carelessly under the "lemon-lime" category with no regard for whether they actually contain lemons and/or limes. Basically, if the bottle and the liquid inside are both greenish, and it's not ginger ale, it's lemon-lime. Fresca is lemon-lime in spite of tasting like grapefruit, and Mountain Dew is lemon-lime in spite of being made out of squeezings from the adrenal glands of snowboarders. C
Orange
When I was working at McDonald's as a teenager--I had a computer to pay for and some sins from a past life to work out--I noticed a cup of orange soda sitting next to a cup of orange juice. The soda was an intense, bellowing shade of orange, the sort that keeps crossing guards safe. The juice, by comparison, was a limp yellow, the shade of yellow that tells you the arm's going to have to come off. That's when I realized that we, as a culture, have no tolerance for natural colors. We want our whites to phosphoresce, our pinks to vibrate, and our orange soda to humiliate our orange juice. B
Grape
I actually drink more diet soda than sugar soda, not so much out of a desire to diet than a desire to not be on a sucrose high every moment of every day. As a lover of all things grape and artificial, I have been constantly disappointed by the difficulty of getting diet grape soda in California. One of the few perks of moving to the South is that you can get diet grape soda here, but only Diet Rite white grape soda, which tastes right, but it's not purple! What, I ask you, is the point? Whom, I ask you, are we fooling? It's grape soda, I neither want nor need it to look good in a champagne flute. A
Cream Soda
I like foods that don't actually contain the ingredients in their name. Grape Nuts don't contain grapes or nuts, cream soda doesn't contain cream, Ritz crackers don't actually contain an upscale hotel, and so forth. The neat thing about cream soda is that it actually tastes vaguely creamy. Vaguely. B
Root Beer
My big problem with root beer is that someone informed me a while ago that it tastes like toothpaste. I wish she hadn't said that. I had gone some twenty someodd years without noticing the connection, but once I was enlightened, there it was. I still like root beer, sure, but now every time have I have one there's that brief moment of wary recognition. C+
NUMBERS
1/2
One-half seems like a powerful fraction in a democratic society, but when you think about it, it's actually the source of political paralysis. At best, one-half leads to recounts, revotes, and backroom deals. At worst, it leads to magazine headlines like "Deadlock in Washington: Will The US Survive?" The most powerful fraction in a democracy is "a number exactly one unit over one-half," but it doesn't fit on your calculator screen. C
Pi
Pi, by and large, is very useful, but there is this ridiculous obsession with finding the nth digit of Pi, where n is stupid. A value of pi that's accurate to the 31st digit is good enough to measure the circumference of the entire universe within one proton, so anything beyond that is bordering on the -- please forgive the coinage -- mathsturbatory. C-
i
There are two types of imaginary numbers: those which are imaginary just like those stories in Action Comics where Superman marries Jimmy Olsen and moves to Laguna Beach, and those which are imaginary in the mathematical sense of "hard to explain to your parents." The former includes numbers like "fourteen gazillion billion gazillion" and the latter includes i, a number which is equal to the square root of -1. While I have nothing but respect and tolerance for fourteen gazillion billion gazillion, I admire i for actually being the right answer sometimes. A
Zero
The invention of zero must have led to conversations reminiscent (or rather, prescient) of an Abbott and Costello routine. "I just invented an important mathematical concept!" "What is it?" "Nothing!" "Don't be modest, tell me what it is." "Nothing!" "Then what did you interrupt me for?" "Nothing!" No, that never happened, I just made it up. It's not even plausible. Forget I said it. C+
Three
I like three, which is a problem because whenever you tell someone you like the number three they think you've got some sort of mythical-c**-religious reason for it, like you're into the Holy Trinity or the Fates or Wilson Philips. In reality, I like the way it sounds when you yell it: "Threeeeeeee!" C
Curly Brackets
These are indispensable in programming (where they usually indicate a block of looping code) and emoticons (where they usually indicate a mustache) but I'm not entirely clear on where they'd show up in normal written text. Parenthetical statements on wedding invitations, perhaps. Or citations of illuminated manuscripts. B
Tilde
I know what this is for, I'm just surprised that it gets its own key and the noble umlaut doesn't. It's not even very useful for ASCII art, because font designers can't seem to agree whether it belongs at the top of the line or in the middle. I suggest we decide that by itself it's pronounced as a nasal "gn," such as the noise made by an annoyed Curly or an aroused Squiggy. C-
Commercial A
Okay, incredibly important point here: To anyone who's spent enough time on the Internet to get cold chills when receiving mail with the subject "Very Funny! Read!", the commercial a is pronounced "at." So those clever ******** among you who come up with spelling like "One-D@y Am@zing De@l S@le," are subjecting us to a mental pronunciation that comes out like "One Datee Amatzing Deattle Sattle." Stop it. B
Pound Sign
The name of this has only recently been standardized, and many still refer to it as a hash symbol, an octothorp, or a "tic-tac-toe board for little tiny miniature people." I don't mind the name, but on the other hand I've never seen it used to actually indicate pounds either in the scale sense or the quid sense. ("My quid sense is tingling!" wink I like to think of it as coming from the practice of pounding the phone buttons after going through one too many labyrinthine voice mail systems, but that's probably due to my fanciful nature. B
Backslash
I have, at various points in my life, been in the position to use both some form of DOS and some form of UNIX. Those of you who have no duck-strangling idea what I'm talking about, just smile and nod. The only point here is that DOS uses backslashes a lot and UNIX uses forward slashes a lot and the effect of using both is somewhat like having Darth Vader for homeroom and Yoda for first period. Many say that DOS is the dark side, but actually UNIX is more like the dark side: It's less likely to find the one way to destroy your incredibly powerful machine, and more likely to make upper management choke. C-
1001 ways to torture a cat
Many a time have I wanted to beat the s**t out of that furry little b*****d that always seems to piss me off. Either by taking a nice warm s**t on my brand new carpet, or decided to use me as a clawing device.
In this small file, i'd like to suggest ways to hurt or piss of the little shithead that you can't get rid of, usually cuz you're mom thinks it's the nicest ******** alive.
1 -- Kick it Around, you know, when the ******** get's in your way, whether it be when you're taking a s**t and it comes in and watches, or when you're sleeping and it sits on your face. Just put a little force into it and BLAM! The ******** goes flying. It's especially nice to watch a cat go flying on a wood floor, with all four spread, doing 360's and crying like a Mexican without his burrito. Kicking him from under (like under the stomach) let's loose a flying cat, spinning and twirling in the air.
2 -- Tail tricks....This is the fun part...Seeing the cat can't really get to it's tail, you can do s**t with it and the cat it defenseless. Try tying the cat's tail to his front paw, cuz everyone time it walks, it's tail get's pulled, looks like some diseased person trying to walk. Or even better, get a nice grab of the tail, and start spinning the cat around using it, the cat will have to take the pain, cuz by force of nature, it can't reach it's paws around to scratch you since it's spinning so fast it's paws are spread-eagle like. If you have glue, and the cat's tail is long enough, or maybe just a tad shorter, you can glue it's tail to it's nose, which is cool. The cat moves his head and his a** comes up with it (how'z that for a chain reaction?) Like it'll be walking around town with it's a** all dangling up, all the other furry ******** will ram it up, which in turn, will make the cat freak when it tries to sit down (get it?). But that's kinda mean.
3 -- Wiskers (heh, heh, heh)....Ok, you know who you are people, you kind that clips cat's wiskers and laughs like hell. Cat's use wiskers to navigate in the dark, like when they're entering a tight spot, their wiskers will tell them if they're about to run into something (kind of like those cadillacs with those metal tubes sticking out the side). So what do you do? You cut the ******** wiskers, down to you start getting fur. Then you gotta through the cat in a closet, and open the door, oh, about 4 inches. The cat will naturally be ******** and stunned that us humans would do such a thing (it probably is equlivant of a cat cutting off your d**k) and he'll start bumping around, wondering what the ******** you just sit there and laugh your a** off. The cat might eventually make it's way out of the closet, but maybe you could, hmmm...Find something else to do to it after that? (grin>
4 -- Pillow Case....Well, this is kind of funny...All you do is throw the little ******** in a pillow case, and go into an open room (you don't want to beat it to death, well, not yet adleast). And start swinging the ******** around in circles, again and again, the cat will probably crying for it's life (but don't give in to it's whining, cuz when it get's out, it wants blood) keep swinging it around and around, faster and faster, stop when you're too dizzy to figure out where the cat is, then quickly open the pillow case and let the b*****d fall out (it WILL fall, believe me). You got to make sure you can see it (cuz you're gonna me almost as dizzy). The ******** will be sitting there, moving it's head in circles, still thinking it spinning. This is the good part, cuz as far as the cat knows, it's totally high on Catnip or something. You can do anything, it's up to you.
4 -- Water ...We all know that cats hate water more than dogs, and would rather travel in a car then deal with it. But cat's are funny as hell in water. Try filling up a tub, or a sink, or something with water in it that the cat will fit in. Throw the ******** in for a minute or two (unless it's definitely going to drown, we'll talk about killing them later) and watch it squeal..They act like water is acid or something and yet they still drink water out of the toilet when none is available (these ******** gotta get their facts straight). After the cat has had enough torture, grab it by the ear, or tail, or get a good grab around it's head and throw it out (throw it outside you fool). When a cat get's wet (especially a long-haired cat) they look like giant ferrets, really nasty like (which might persuade you to do something else, like nail it to a 2 by 4 and shoot it full of b-b's) but don't hurt it too bad..
5 -- Misc. s**t....Stick the cat in the Microwave (no, really) and don't turn it on (yet) just let it sit there, and look through the little see-through window...It should be scared as hell, since it's in a really tight spot, can't move much at all...If you really want to screw the ********, nuke it! Just nuke it for 20 seconds at a time...The cat will start squirming at about 10 seconds (depending on the wattage of the Microwave)...After about 30 seconds, the cat will definitely have radiation poisioning, which will probably kill it within a month or less. If you nuke it for a minute, you'll probably kill it, depending on the size of the cat, the microwave cooks inside out, so after a minute, it's intestines and lungs will be a little toasty, maybe killing it, if not, probably sterilizing it or leaving it a slow and terrible death. Of course, you can go "All-Out" if you REALLY express rage for it, and can nuke it for 5 minutes...This is NOT for the Squeamish....I DO know someone who did this, and saw it....It was pretty ******** gross, and being the cat hater I am, I still felt sorry for it. In 30 seconds, it starts kicking and screaming and freaking out (which brings me to the point, you gotta make sure the door can't be opened, and you gotta make sure you don't want the microwave anymore). In 1 minute, it was started to spaz like nothing you've ever seen before, some blood was coming from it's mouth due to internal cuts the Nuking did, all types of seisures and some last moans were following at 2 minutes. At about 2 and a half minutes, the cat was still alive, it's pupils were dialated and it was twitching like someone stuck a Electrolysis gun up it's a**...At 3 minutes, it's almost dead...The smell of the cat would make any mortician throw up, that's why I would suggest alot of open windows and doors and some type of gas mask on. The last two minutes it the cool part...Now that the ******** is dead (for good reason too) it's time to watch the fireworks...I think at around 4 minutes, the cat started popping, it's eyeballs literally popped out of it's sockets, and the blood started to ooze, not a pretty sight..At about, 4 mins 15 seconds, it's fur starts to curl (although it was already crispy) and at about 5 minutes, the whole microwave is one big slaughterhouse. Which brings me to clean up...DON'T! I said earlier, Nuke the cat in a microwave you no longer want to use (not to mention the microwave is probably broken anyway). Just throw the microwave away and chuckle off a couple laughs...Even take poloraids if you want.
You're probably saying, how the ******** is he going to write another 996 ways to torture a cat? Well, the answer is, he ain't.
Being the vietcong
I. Gear
Some things are essential when you're ******** with people. For one, you should wear all black. And while we're presuming that it's night (and it should be), bring some flashlights along, too. Don't use them unless it's an emergency, but they ARE handy. Finally, a good sturdy backpack is absolutely essential. You gotta carry all this s**t, remember. The rest of your supplies really depends on your personal taste. Be creative. Here are some suggestions:
PAINTBALL GUNS: If you have a paintball gun, the evening can become suddenly magical. A paintball gun - even just a crappy Brass Eagle Talon or something - gives you a vast tactical advantage. Not only can you use it to damage property and vandalize stuff, but if you find yourself up s**t creek, it can quickly become your paddle - when being pursued by an authority figure, nothing makes them lose interest in the matter more than a few painful paintballs hitting exposed skin. If you've got twenty bucks, go out and get one of those kiddie paintball guns - the investment repays itself in satisfaction.
SPRAYPAINT: For when you want to leave your own special mark. Just make sure nobody's looking when you engage in your little bout of alternative art, because people have an annoying habit of calling the cops, releasing their dogs, getting a firearm, etc.
STINKBOMBS: Aah... never forget the classics. And who could forget the lovable stinkbomb, that immortal prank that did so much to get us through our middle teen years? Memories... but I digress. These are just perfect for open windows. If there's a screen, feel free to set the thing off right next to the window - some lucky wind and their whole house smells horrible. And if there isn't a screen, go ahead and throw it on in! Best if mixed with a hasty retreat afterwards.
ARTILLERY: My good friend Phil has had some interesting ideas involving home-made heavy weapons. One prototype he tried was basically a model rocket kit, except the launch pad was placed through a long tube, thus allowing it to be shoulder fired. It didn't work, but the design is sound. Viola! Your own RPG! Try packing the rocket's nosecone with match heads, I'll bet that'll really add to your enjoyment. Another cool idea was the pneumatic mortar - hook another long tube up to a pneumatic pump, and then prop it up with something. Now you can fire soda cans, like, a hell of a long distance. This would do LOTS of damage to peoples' property. We never got any of this s**t to work, but hey, maybe you guys will. E-mail me if you have any luck.
II. Targets
Now it's time to figure out just what you want to hit. Maybe somebody pisses you off, and you want revenge. Perhaps you might enjoy a little field trip to your local school. Whatever trips your trigger, kids. If all else fails, random violence and mayhem devoid of socio-political context is always fun.
If you can, hit an area near a large wooded place, like a park. This gives you a sanctuary where you can flee to in an emergency, plus you can stash supplies in a nice secluded area. All great guerillas need a secret forest hideout, right? What the hell would Che Guevara be without a forest sanctuary, huh? He'd just be a dork with a Kalashnikov wearing a beret, and you know it damn straight.
Also, I would strongly recommend that you NOT hit your own neighborhood. No matter how hard you try, your parents or neighbors will always connect the dots. If they find out that a bunch of houses were vandalized in the area at 11 PM - precisely when you were out with your friends - you're gonna have some questions to answer.
III. Tactics
At last, we're ready to loot, pillage, burn, and rape! Well, no, don't rape anybody. But try to get a phone number or something.
Pile into a friend's car - or better, van - and drive out to your target area. Park the vehicle in a nice, secluded place and proceed on foot. DO NOT, under any circumstances, move in the open. Your best friend is the forest. Use it.
Carrying your equipment with you, move along just inside the tree line. Watch for houses with the lights off, or ones where you just can't detect any nearby movement. When you find a suitable target, get your paintball guns up and your spraypaint cans out, or whatever you're using. Then, when the time is right, strike!
From this point forth I'll be assuming you have a team of at least four people. Have one of your guys - one with a paintball gun - hang back and watch the perimeter, preferably from a high point. If trouble shows up, he shoots it and alerts the others. In this unfortunate event, the entire team should withdraw to the forest IMMEDIATELY.
While your sniper is in position, the rest of the team rushes into the enemy backyard. Quickly destroy anything you can get your hands on. Spraypaint is particularly handy here. IF you have some stinkbombs, ude those as well. Your goal should be to do as much damage as you can in as small a period of time as possible. You shouldn't stay in the yard any more than sixty seconds, or a minute and a half tops. Your mobility is your best defense against intervention, so don't linger. Once you've accomplished your appropriate level of destruction, withdraw to the woods. Since you're already getting the hell outta there, feel free to fire some paintballs at their windows on your way out.
Repeat this process with as many houses as you like. Remember - stay away from light, open spaces, and areas with a lot of people. Happy hunting!
How to overthrow a country
Introduction
I've been meaning to write this file for months, but it looks like the good Senator from California has put forth that extra effort I was too lazy to make in putting this together. This is not a humorous article, to bluntly say; it is designed to inform you of proper execution of coup d'etat, that 'stroke of state' that topples governments so often these days. Enjoy.
I. Before you begin
Subjugation of a nation is a tremendous undertaking requiring foresight, ingenuity, and careful thought. The first task of many is to decide whether the country is a suitable candidate for a drastic and sudden change in government. The degree of difficulty varies with size, population, political awareness, and literacy.
The large state, tending to contain a greater number of persons, differs substantially from the small state in that the body politic is much more complex and hence more difficult to seize control of. It is generally advisable to tackle a smaller, unimportant regime rather than a country that, if seized, might draw a foreign power into the coup hence rendering it a failure.
One thing to do before attempting anything of this kind is to make sure who your friends and allies are. With a little effort, it is possible to gain a mass of supporters such that it is quite difficult to quell your actions. A way to do this is to select (if possible) a nation whose government does not have support of all of its classes (poor, rich, middle). Or, if neccessary, lure to your cause a religious minority, or ethnic minority, that already has grievances against the current regime. Perhaps you might form a coalition. Summarizing, it is a requisite to get at least some support besides from soldiers of fortune, who are generally "gung-ho" incompetents anyway.
Ideally, you should be part of some branch of the armed forces, police, national guard, or some government agency equipped with personnel trained in the use of weoponry. In the public's eye, you already have some sort of authority, so a little more authority couldn't hurt, could it?
So, now what kind of government should we tackle? A democratic? Maybe. They are usually fragile, anyway. But much of the international community will frown on your taking a small, helpless, struggling democracy, and perhaps take actions that are unfavorable. How about a Marxist dictatorship? Now, that's a good idea. Most of the time these are anti-communist, even though they receive aid from the U.S.S.R., so it is a very good probability that Russia will not jump to help them. The Soviet Union waits to see if the new government will be pro-Soviet, not pro-Marxist, so you will be safe for the first few days. Also, not much of the world likes Marxist dictatorships.
If you have a choice of which nation to put down (you usually don't), do not select a NATO country, or some other nation that receives $4 billion annually, because superpowers do not like to see their money to go down the drain so suddenly. Pick Martinique, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, or Surinam. If you're white, don't go in an African dump unless you have a deathwish. Plus, if the country has low literacy levels, good, for the people there won't know what is happening.
Things to avoid:
- High literacy rate
- Large per capita income
- Voter participation
- An "established" nation
- Countries with allies
Things to look for:
- Civilian unrest
- Minority in control
- Centralized government
- Political apathy
Note: An OK from Washington or Moscow couldn't hurt.
II. The Mechanism of the Coup d'Etat
The first thing that should be done is the neutralization of all relevent political forces, including the general infrastructure of the state. This includes, among other things, highways, telecommunications facilities (including radio, TV, etc.), airports, and so on. The reason these are political forces is that they are controlled by nonmilitary portions of the state (in the event you were wondering). Unfortunately, these are a large and spread apart group of targets, so if you have no tactical or popular support your attemps will be fruitless.
Undoubtedly the absolute first thing you should do is to cut all forms of communcations with the outside world off at once. Be sure to include: Telephone, Telex, Wireless, Radio, etc. THIS IS MOST IMPORTANT. It will prevent the present government from mobilizing its forces, deploying their forces in strategic locations that are not normally guarded, etc. It will also prevent them from calling outside for emergency help, jeopardizing your hard work, not to mention your life. Soon the rest of the world will know something has happened, but they will not know who has taken the government, how the coup is progressing, and so forth. Make sure all forms of communications are completely cut.
One other important thing to do is remove air facilities from the use of the loyalist forces. It is not necessary to seize control of the airports; all that is needed to be done is to close the airports. A bomb or two in the middle of the runways will do nicely, or perhaps a couple of cars parked there, with snipers preventing their removal. You should not rely on airfields for your coup; if you rely on them and they are shut down, you will encounter problems. The old government will probably rely on them, and you will easily be able to prevent their usage of them. At an early time during the coup it should be evident as to its success.
Government officials and employees of higher rank have a choice to make-- whether to remain loyal to the old government, or to join the new attempt at government. If they stay loyal, they may be richly rewarded; if they defect, and the coup fails, they will be out of a job mighty quick. The success of your coup depends much on whether many of these officials decide to join the coup.
In addition to those people who remain loyal and those who join your cause, there is a "wait and see" element involved. Often this is the majority of the population, especially if the present regime is somewhat repressive. They don't want to show too much enthusiasm for either side, until it is more or less decided who will gain control. It's best to plan a sudden, abrupt seizure of all facilities to make the coup seem a smashing success; if this is done, the undecided will know to whom to turn.
When you take power from the original government, it is best to know who actually runs it. In most of the world (but not in the U.S.) there are two governments: 1- a largely ceremonial government, the part that people see on television and at most public events. They are, for the most part, what is known as a "figurehead", set off to the side to keep the government's "alter- ego" working on policy. 2- the "real" government, the government that formulates domestic and foreign policy, makes all executive decisions, and basically controls the infrastructure of the nation. The part of the government you will need to take is (obviously) the latter. It is composed of the executive head (called by whatever title he may hold- Prime Minister, President, General Secretary, etc.), ministers, and various deputy and second ministers who make small yet influential decisions.
The people you are most interested in detaining (or bumping off) are the Minister of the Interior (he normally supervises the police forces), the party leaders (of the ruling party, or of the only party, if a one-party state), the Minister of Defense, and the central figure of the "real" government. Once these people are neutralized, in one way or another, the basic functions of the state will be under your command, at least temporarily.
What is often done is to detain (under house arrest, of course) the aforementioned officials, and leave the ceremonial portion of the government alone. This is done to give an aire of legitimacy and continuity after such an abrupt turn of events. Later, these may be kept or allowed/forced to leave, as need arises.
You will not stay in power for long if you do not exert some sort of influence over the armed forces. The military has the ability to remove virtually any threat if perceives from within the boundaries of the nation-- especially YOU. If you are a foreigner, and do not have (or used to have but have now lost) support of the militia, prepare to die. You as a person will cease to exist, unless you leave the country. And, always have several prepared escape routes planned out in advance-- even the perfect coup d'etat will have its complicatons, and there will be things that you have overlooked. That is why it is best to have thoroughly studied the past and recent history of that state. Do your homework! If you do you will be richly rewarded.
III. After the Coup
Once you have removed the major functions of the government and bureaucracy from the Loyalist government, you will not yet be in solid control of them yourself. You will want to retain your control, and thus prevent a counter-coup from ensuing. Your new regime will be weakest at this time, and many times some other group seizes the reins of government hours after a coup d'etat-- and this group is not necessarily the old loyalists. The military, political forces within the nation, and the public must all be satisfied to some extent in order for you to continue your rule. This can be attained either by a show of force, or by concessions made to any of these groups, such as a democratically elected government in the near future, or granting the military more influence over political decisions, and perhaps quickly promoting a number of young officers that proved faithful during the crisis. "Promote" those officers who have clout but you suspect might try to take more power for themselves to desk jobs, or remote outposts. And give them all pay raises, if at all possible.
The goal of the new regime is to "shear" off the top layer of government, and more or less retain the old bureaucracy. Lower officials should be made to feel as if little or no change has taken place, and whatever change that has occurred is for the better. After a short while these people will realize that the new government is fully in control, and all will be calm and orderly.
Mass media will act as a Vehicle to assert your control. Write the first communique as a positive, necessary step for a long-needed change. Reassure the people that the coup is a revolt for the masses-- not inspired by communists, or an extremist group, but by the public in general. Display the national symbols, and inspire the feeling of patriotism and unity. These techniques were used quite successfully so recently in the 1985 coup d'etat in the Sudan. People poured into the streets, waving the old flag of the country, and having an all-around good time. A popular general was instated as the new chief of state, and a democratic government was promised.
Lastly, your new regime has to be made to look legitimate in the eyes of the international community. Show evidence of atrocities made by the former government, witnesses, etc. Take positive steps in the direction of popular democracy, promise elections, and invite the foreign (especially American) press into the country to see these steps. Soon the world will forget about your coup, but whenever your country is in the news, they will remember this.
IV. A Final Word
You will probably realize now that the fast, simple coup was actually the result of much swift planning and hard work. The coup is not an easy thing to accomplish-- should you be planning one of your own, know what you are doing and be sure to succeed. Hopefully I have been of some help.
Christianity, By somoene else (name shall not be disclosed)
A True Belief
How can people ignore God?
Before answering that question, before stopping to read, take a deep breath and exhale. Good.
Catholicism and Protestantism (Christianity) are based on faith. A Christian is taught from the very beginning to have complete faith in the Holy Trinity (the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). Regardless of what the secular (unholy) world claims, whatever the Church says is correct. It is a Christian's sole goal to remain close to Jesus and God by denouncing secularism and wholly following His ways.
What are His ways? It's simple. Love. Jesus taught us to love. Obey the Ten Commandments (believed to be given to Moses).
1. I am the Lord thy God. (God is above all)
2. Have no other gods besides Me. (no false idols)
3. Thou shalt not speak the name of the Lord in vain. (no "goddamits" wink
4. Remember to keep holy the Sabbath day (Sunday, day God rested after creating the world)
5. Honor thy mother and thy father (self- explanatory)
6. Thou shalt not kill.
7. Thou shalt not commit adultery. (sex outside of marriage)
8. Thou shalt not steal.
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. (lie)
10. Thou shalt not covet. (envy)
Contrary to popular belief, Christians do NOT believe that all other religions are wrong. Speaking from experience (I went to a parochial school for nine years), students are taught to respect other religions and the people who believe in them. For example: On September 11, 2001, the attack of the World Trade Center was blamed on the Muslim religion by many; however, for days I learned the basics of Islam and that the event was done by Afghani radicals, NOT Muslims.
I have often been asked the question, "Why do you not stray from your faith?" I pose the reply, "Why should I?" Christianity is everything I believe in. Being brought up as a Catholic began my journey of faith, but I solidified the decision on my own. I've studied various other beliefs outside of Christianity (Wicca, Buddhism, Hinduism, Paganism, even Taoism), but it all comes back to the Catholic Church.
Another question some people have taken the liberty to ask me is, "Are you gonna try to save me?" The answer is simple: no. People have tried to save me-- by conversion to a different splinter of Christianity! I'm Catholic. They insisted that Protestantism is the only right way.
So, I end answering the beginning question: How can people ignore God?
He's there. He is in us. He is what created us. God is all-powerful, omnipotent, and He will be there when the rest of the world is not.
Current Music: Godsmack - Awake
Current Mood: bored
 Daakafal · Fri Dec 31, 2004 @ 05:14am · 0 Comments |
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