Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/12/13/more-iraq-and-more-iraq/
Jesse lost his non-paying job last week, so I bought him an abundance of beer. I drank enough beer that I don’t remember much of the actual beer drinking, but he did lend me a book I had long wished to read. It’s a biographical account of a Marine Corps grunt who made it through the Gulf War in one piece. I’ll share a couple of paragraphs from Anthony Swofford’s _Jarhead_, along with my own commentary. Here we find him marching through a valley filled with bombed-out Iraqi equipment, and dead, burnt, and surrendering Iraqi soldier:
This is war, I think. I’m walking through what my father and his father walked through — the epic results of American bombing, American might. The filth is on my boots. I am one of a few thousand people who will walk this valley today. I am history making. Whether I live or die, the United States will win this war. I know that the United States will win any war it fights, against any country. If colonialism weren’t out of style, I’m sure we’d take over the entire Middle East, not only safeguard the oil reserves, but take the oil reserves: We are here to announce that you no longer own your country, thank you for your cooperations, more details will follow.
More than illustrating a high point, a moment of victory, this excerpt also touches on a real problem of America’s ambivalence. Are we the colonial empire, or aren’t we? What responsibility do we have beyond having great military power? If we are to conquer, should we also rule?
Which is why I favored the second invasion of Iraq … the first time around, we were afraid to rule, to expropriate, administer and engage in prolonged occupation — we were unable to own up to the imperial ambitions that put us there in the first place. If it were up to me, we wouldn’t bother going to war for the sake of domestic economic stability, but once we bomb the heck out of a country, we ought to finish the really hard work of trying to put the pieces back together, as best we can. Yes, occupation is far bloodier than the invasion itself, but without occupation, the invasion itself is pointless. We are the imperial authority in Iraq, the conquering, hopefully benevolent empire, and beyond the fact that we are a lesser evil than the rule that preceeded it, the people there owe us no love.
Swofford’s next paragraph sums it up:
Our rucks are heavy with equipment and ammunition but even heavier with the burdens of history, and each step we take, the burdens increase.
A long hard slog, indeed, long delayed, and all the worse for it.
I hope the frustrations and the blood that will continue to be spilt in Iraq will discourage the Americans at home from engaging in further military adventurism. Syria? Iran? France? Not worth it. They can regime change themselves, as we can regime change ourselves, since none of us are especially encumbered by economic sanctions and a regime that controls the UN food rations, as a consequence of our previous militaristic dalliances.
The hope that one dubious bloodbath will deter future bloodier, even more pointless massacres, is the ultimate hope that we took from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. My reassurance is that after the Cold War we are more concerned with Global Warming than Nuclear Winter.
-d
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/12/01/trans-atlantic-thinking/
I will share a few paragraphs I found recently that help me understand some of the important ways in which European political thinking is different from American political thinking:
At the risk of overgeneralization, we might say that for Europeans (that is, for those Europeans not joined in the Axis cause), World War II, in which almost 60 million people perished, exemplified the horrors of nationalism. Specifically and significantly, it exemplified the horrors of popular nationalism. Nazism and fascism were manifestations, however perverse, of popular sovereignty. Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini rose to power initially through elections and democratic processes. Both claimed to speak for the people, not only before they assumed dictatorial powers but afterward, too, and both were broadly popular, as were their nationalism, militarism, repression, and, in Hitler’s case, genocidal objectives. From the postwar European point of view, the Allies’ victory was a victory against nationalism, against popular sovereignty, against democratic excess.
The American experience of victory could not have differed more starkly. For Americans, winning the war was a victory for nationalism — that is to say, for our nation and our kind of nationalism. It was a victory for popular sovereignty (our popular sovereignty) and, most fundamentally, a victory for democracy (our democracy). Yes, the war held a lesson for Americans about the dangers of democracy, but the lesson was that the nations of continental Europe had proven themselves incapable of handling democracy when left to their own devices. If Europe was to develop democratically, it would need American tutelage. If Europe was to overcome its nationalist pathologies, it might have to become a United States of Europe. Certain European countries might even need to have democratic institutions imposed upon them, although it would be best if they adopted those institutions themselves, or at least persuaded themselves that they had done so.
Jed Rubenfeld
“The Two World Orders”
_Wilson Quarterly_, Autumn 2003
So, let us look, once again, at Iraq, through this sort of lens. The American point of view is that many nations of the Arab and Muslim world are failures, and Iraq is the most spectacular failure in the pack. In this time of increased danger, it is necessary for America to impose its style of nationalist popular democracy on a region where it is most needed. This is where we find ourselves at the moment.
The European view is that there is one very powerful nation, a well-meaning, if short-sighted, somewhat ditzy hyperpower called America. America is strongly, even annoyingly nationalistic. America has a fearsome, awesome military. America has a strong nationalist leader in the President, who is democratically elected in accordance with popular whimsy.
The view from Europe and on the American Left is that America is currently led by a drooling idiot who can not pronounce the word “nuclear”, is tutored by powerful, self-serving oligarchs like Dick Cheney, and finds itself in an unanticipated situation where the amazingly complex puzzle of “why did 9/11 happen” is ignored for the puzzle of “on this pretext, how much of our wacko, right-wing, neo-Conservative agenda can we shove down the world’s throat?”
Damn, I just scared ourselves. What do we do? Well, we put our shoulder to the wheel. Let us hope, and if the opportunity presents itself, apply our talents toward these objectives:
- That we successfully remove George W. Bush from office in next year’s election. Hopefully we get someone clever in there, capable of independent, strategic thinking, who can work with Congress and the world on a more progressive nation in a more just world.
- That the occupation of Iraq leads to a democratic government that is able to serve its people. I hope that the next generation in Iraq will look upon this period as one of liberation from tyranny and the birth of a modern, just democracy, and that they may look on us with some gratitude, after the fact, for the meddling we engage in today.
On the one hand, you’ve got a powerful, cocky, reckless leader. On the other hand, you’ve got a capable world that lacks the vision and temerity to offer a better route. The sanctions were a terrible joke that strengthened Saddam’s hand, and the alternative to American Imperialism was something like European Appeasement, where we gradually forgot our hatred of Saddam, and returned to normalcy, as he nurtured his insane ambitions against whomever he could reach. Hussein had to go, and George Bush was an implement of this larger purpose. Now that we’ve removed the one we can free ourselves of the other. It’s a tough world, but once in a while someone has to lead it.
/danny
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/11/19/timothy-levitch-waking-life/
Timothy “Speed” Levitch is a professional Cruiser in the midst of a torrid love affair with New York City. His work as a tour guide has been documented in a documentary titled “The Cruise”.
On this bridge, Lorca warns: life is not a dream.
Beware, and beware, and beware!
And so many think because then happened, now isn’t.
But didn’t I mention, the on-going WOW is happening, right now!
We are all co-authors of this dancing exuberance, where even our inabilities are having a roast! We are the authors of ourselves, co-authoring a gigantic Dostoevsky novel starring clowns!
This entire thing we’re involved with called the world, is an opportunity to exhibit how exciting alienation can be.
Life is a matter of a miracle, that is collected over time by moments flabbergasted to be in each others’ presence.
The world is an exam, to see if we can rise into the direct experiences. Our eyesight is here as a test to see if we can see beyond it, matter is here as a test for our curiosity, doubt is here as an exam for our vitality.
Thomas Mann wrote that he would rather participate in life than write a hundred stories. Giacometti was once run down by a car, and he recalled falling in to a lucid faint, a sudden exhilaration, as he realized at last, something was happening to him.
An assumption develops that you can not understand life and live life simultaneously. I do not agree entirely, which is to say I do not exactly disagree. I would say, that life understood is life lived. But the paradoxes bug me. And I can learn to love, and make love to the paradoxes that bug me. And on really romantic evenings of Self, I go salsa dancing with my confusion.
Before you drift off, don’t forget, which is to say remember. Because remembering is so much more a psychotic activity than forgetting. Lorca, in that same poem, said that the iguana will bite those who do not dream. And, as one realizes, that one is a dream-figure in another person’s dream: that is self-awareness!
Emphasis added by dannyman, per the rhetorical philosophy articulated in “Speedology: Speed on New York on Speed”
See also: Jimmy’s Chicken Shack
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/09/03/bringin-em-on-dean-franken-kerry-bush-and-hill/
So, I’m going to recommend an article published on Salon.com, because not only did it cause me to laugh out loud, but because it also scored a place for John Kerry in my fortunes file:
The swagger of a president saying ‘Bring ’em on’ will never bring peace. Pride is no substitute for protecting our young men and women in uniform. Half the names on the Vietnam Memorial are there because of pride — because of a president who refused to admit he was wrong.
John Kerry
I heard George’s “bring ’em on” on the radio and it made me cringe, and hope that they were somehow targetting that for American consumption and that such dumb sentiment wouldn’t make its way into the Arab press, and into the minds of radicals looking for some hair-brained reason to “bring it on.”
Anyway, the laugh-out-loud funny comes from Al Franken. You can read the article at http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2003/09/03/franken_dean/.
In other groovy news, a recruiter is presenting me today for a local university job that I think I’m a good fit for. With any luck, September will make up for August, karmically.
At any rate, I was thinking this morning that for D. Howard, Howard Dean is an obvious choice.
Well, since I’m babbling, I’ll mention that I saw a really chilling story in the Tribune today. A former minister is scheduled to be executed in Florida for murdering two abortion doctors. Excellent quote found on Yahoo, from Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood: “It’s sad that people like Paul Hill would murder in the name of life.”
I’m no fan of the death penalty, but a clergyman who is unrepentant about murdering people is the sort of monster that makes the death penalty sort of make sense. He says he’d kill again, because God is on his side. There is no question that he is a menace to society.
But perhaps life in prison would give him plenty of time to think about things. I would think a pious, pro-life Christian like Jeb Bush, who is supposedly going to let the man be executed, would want to allow the man time to repent for his sins before he dies so he could get to Heaven. Oh well.
Then the part of me that is just plain angry at Paul Hill would rather he rot in solitary until his God calls him off of this world. A long life of solitude is more deserved than the free press for martyrdom. But then, maybe that’s what Jeb is thinking.
And the whole idea of Christians in America murdering so that they can become martyrs seems to dovetail with all the Muslim fanatics seeking to be martyred in the Middle East. What with our Energy Consumption, and the vast military and financial involvement in the region that that brings us, most visibly with Israel and Iraq these days, it is like we our cultures deserve each other.
/danny
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/06/08/iraqs-underpants-gnomes-step-two/
I am reading Salam Pax’s web log and he is whining about how bungling and inept the American administration is now that it has control of his country, and about how scarey it is that despite all their claims of preparedness to the contrary they haven’t a clue what they’re doing, as if they only said these things to justify their presence there, and I’m starting to think that Salam sounds awfully lot like an American.
Our entire nation went through what sounds like a state of “military administration” when it went into a Total War economy to fight World War II. The stories we get now, somewhat removed from the actual events, is that while our nation was organized for the noblest intentions, it was Hell to live through this well-intentioned bureacracy on the ground. We went through it, though, because defeating fascism and Japanese imperialism seemed worthwhile. That, and it probably beat the Depression.
I am reminded of the Underpants Gnomes, who appeared on an episode of “South Park”, who had a great master plan to justify their nightly sortees of underpants theft:
- Steal underpants.
- …?
- Profit!
We read it at the time as an allegory for the dot-com boom, which has since gone bust. I can look at it now as the story for Iraq. I just hope the noble intentions leave enough room for something that could profit the people there. For now, though, let us acknowledge that Step Two can be Hell live through.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/05/21/sobak-ham/
I stumbled into work about twenty minutes early yesterday, and Gallery Man asked what’s up, and I answered quickly, with a single word, shit, which is the sort of answer that Gallery Man can accept in stride as part of the pulse of things. Then I felt bad because The Boss was sitting over in the cafe. I don’t know if he heard me but when he saw me I asked how I was doing, and I said I was great, which was perfectly true. When I’d answered shit, I was thinking about how my morning started hearing that we were pulling out of our embassies and missions in Saudi Arabia, and an analyst was condemning our reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan as a clear failure because they don’t exist and we are so far repeating this performance in Iraq, while Israel and Palestine are at each other’s throats all the more this week, which doesn’t bother me so much as our nation piling new fuck-ups on its plate.
If you aren’t sufficiently quesy about our neglect of world affairs, the New York Times has a piece on the other Dangerous Lunatic World Leader, from which I’ll cobble together:
Stalin and Mao were revered for their perfect grasp of dialectical materialism, an omnipotent science that made them omnipotent too. Kim Jong Il and his late father, Kim Il Sung, are revered, like the monarchs they more closely resemble, for their perfect embodiment of national virtues.
Chief among these virtues is “sobak ham,” a hard-to-translate Korean term that corresponds closely to the word spontaneity in its Marxist-Leninist sense. The Soviets considered the spontaneity of the common people, especially their tendency to violence, to be a dangerous force unless tempered with political consciousness. In North Korea, the people’s spontaneity is seen as one of the country’s greatest strengths.
North Korean novels and movies often show the hero casting off the restraints of his book learning in a fit of wild, sometimes suicidal rage against the Japanese or American enemy. The central villain of Han Sorya’s novella “Jackals” (1951), the country’s most enduring work of fiction, tells of an American child who beats a Korean boy so brutally that he ends up in a hospital — where he is murdered by the American’s missionary parents.
This propaganda appears to be effective even among North Koreans opposed to the rule of Kim Jong Il. When I visited a resettlement center for refugees near Seoul last year, many of those to whom I was introduced as an American recoiled in terror or glared at me in hatred.
I’ve been thinking of plenty of interesting ways to improve my own position in an American context, but it seems far more valuable to improve the situation outside of my prosperous, fat and happy nation. I need to see if there’s anyone lobbying to make sure Congress and George budget money to make Afghanistan a better place – the Afghans need the money far more than the Iraqis, who have oil money and a tradition of economic prosperity. If these people exist, maybe I can help get people to write letters to pressure appropriate congressional representatives where such pressure is due.
More immediately, I need to fix out my sleep schedule, which seems to run from 3-5AM towards noon at this point, which saps productive hours ringing the 3-11PM working shifts to which I’ve been exclusively assigned. But first, I think I’ll head towards work and stop for a Vienna Beef hot dog along the way. Yum.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/20/rachel-corries-legacy/
Say what you might about the folly of getting in the way of bulldozers, but thanks to the power of the Internet, and international travel, Rachel Corrie provides us with an insight into life in the occupied territories. If you’re going to risk your life and die doing something, the cause of helping the world understand itself is certainly a noble and worthy one.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/09/anglosphere-time-for-a-declaration/
There is great wisdom contained in this piece by James C. Bennett. I originally was going to quote and comment on a few bits, but really the whole piece is entirely excellent and should be read. And acted upon.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/06/give-war-another-chance/
Well, Janet Dahl is pretty conflicted over the War. Thanks, Linky, for the heads up. Her concern boils down to, “Sure, it seems like a great thing to get rid of a horrible dictator” versus an understanding of the cost of war’s destruction.
I like to take things from here. First off, let’s admit that our President may not be the best leader we could ask for. He may in fact, even be a petty, vindictive asshole who does what the money and his own sense of reactionary moral outrage tells him to do. The timing on this war is questionable, what with Sharon in power, oil prices already really high, North Korea looking for trouble, and the ever-present whining about inspections. The fact, as many of us see it, is that America is led by a lunatic who would be little better than his enemies were he not hamstringed by the Constitution that he’s been trying to rewrite.
So, a lot of folks, understandably, get very upset when he wants to send our nation’s young men into battle in the sandy hot desert, dodging not only bullets, and anti-aircraft weapons, but exploding refineries and oil wells and petroleum falling from the sky. On the home front, we expect more desperate young men to find their ways into Terrorist training camps to perpetrate ingenious new ways of murdering us here at home.
Many of us doubt his sincere intentions to commit to rebuilding this destroyed nation, with a democratic government. We sense that the required military occupation, on top of the war itself, will incense the passions of the Arab world. We want no part of messing with this.
But what can we do? Shall we protest in the streets about how awful war is? Do we complain about the legal precedent of invading a sovereign nation? What would we do in the President’s place? Wait another four months and hope that either Saddam Hussein has a change of heart, after over a decade, and disarms, or that maybe he will go away, either into exile, or is perhaps deposed by another aspiring dictator in the Baath party? We could wait until, say, July, when it is hottest in the Persian Gulf, and then fight, in the sun, or we could just wait and ignore him until he proves that he has weapons of mass destruction by passing some stuff along to an intrepid band of Terrorists who show it off in an American city.
One of the things I’ve managed to do with my character is to get over the sense that the world would be a better place if only everyone agreed with me. This doesn’t mean I’ll stop arguing in favor of what I think is the best way to go about things: this is, after all, a favorite hobby of mine. I look at the situation now and I see a big old lemon. I could suck on the lemon and complain about how bitter it is, or I can sit back and watch George fumble with it and hope for lemonade. Given that the lemon is in George’s clenched fist, hovering over the Middle East, I’d just as soon let him try and run the show.
But we’re invading a sovereign nation! What value is a sovereign nation run by a tyrant who murders his own people, who has no respect for other sovereign nations? The enemy in question would have no right to raise such an objection. Indeed, if you refer to the American Declaration of Independence, we understand that nations “[derive] their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.” Our own sovereignty is founded upon the basis that sovereignty is derived from popular consent. What is Iraq’s claim to sovereignty: a lump of competing ethnic groups ruled by a bloodthirsty dictator within the lines drawn on a map by the British Empire?
What of the Iraqi people? Again, our founding document goes on: “all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” In the South and in the North of Iraq, the Iraqi people have risen time and again to throw off their Government, only to be crushed by their Despot, strengthened by our arms and our complicity in allowing him to crush his people. We are already guilty when it comes to Iraqi suffering. Bush’s insistence on “regime change” and the formulation of plans for a transitional government are evidence that America’s intentions, this time around, are purportedly to assist the Iraqi people in their duty to throw off Saddam Hussein.
What of all the terrorists that will be recruited in the wake of Iraq’s destruction? Iraq is already mostly destroyed, and a pretty miserable place to live. Young men leave the country to find their live’s glories elsewhere. Under a less-tyrannical US Military Administration, transitioning to some sort of more benevolent, representative government, there would be plenty of work to do in rebuilding a nation. There will also be less justification for US Military to protect the holy land, and troops will follow existing pressure by the Saudi Government to leave Islam’s heartland alone. Yes, there will be many vulnerable young men whose hearts will be wounded by their personal losses, inflicted by the United States. There are many such men already in Iraq, with nothing to distract them from this pain, and a dictator and Terrorist leaders offering them a chance at vengeance.
Whatever the President’s intentions, whatever his abilities, qualities, morality, or lack thereof, I see that our military has been assembled, ready to strike an avowed enemy, under the auspices of United Nations agreements going back over a decade. A lot of nations are opposed to letting Bush have his way with the UN’s blessing, because he is an unelected unilateralist idiot with undue influence on the world, who withdraws from those few International Treaties that his predecessors have signed. Nonetheless, the unilateralist idiot has picked his enemy well, if not his timing, and stopping what is already in action because we don’t like the guy behind it strikes me as so much futile resentment. The way I see it, the Iraqi people need a hand. If the vagaries of International politics have conspired in such a way as to give it to them, we shouldn’t stand in the way.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/02/21/war-articulated/
I was never too satisfied with my own attempt to articulate my position on the looming conflict but I am extremely satisfied with Azeem’s “War now is better than war later”.
The gist of the argument is that, yes, Bush is evil too, and his henchmen are making a mess of the process, but since we’ve put up the forces and the rhetoric to fight a war, it is best to get the thing over with and move forward in the world. I would add to this the obvious, that Saddam Hussein is unlikely to go away on his own, and the sooner we disarm him, however clumsily, and with whatever unknowable repurcussions, we’re still better off than with a wacko tin-pot dictator in the Middle East giving the shaft to his own people, and quite possibly giving nasty things to the enemies of his enemy to mess with us.
I also appreciate the reminder that just as American War is motivated by oil, French and Russian Peace is also tainted by crude. More than anything, though, it seems that Chirac is jealous not only of America’s power, but that a spoiled brat from Texas is willing to wield this power. It cheapens a French leader’s sense of self-importance, especially when small, emerging democracies on the same continent have the temerity to speak up and suggest that “maybe the moron has a point.”
It isn’t so simple as choosing between the lesser of two evils. It boils down to the fact that, rightly or wrongly, the issue has been brought to a head, and it must be resolved. The choice for the free world is to lose credibility by backing down, and allow a dictator to continue screwing his people, while contemptuously defying the will of the United Nations, or to let the United States go to war yet again, and deal with the consequences of the ensuing bungles of American foreign policy.
The best course to me seems for the nations of the world to let President Bush do what with his limited imagination he is capable of doing – let him have his war, let the bombs fall, and the people die, because however terrible war is, it is not definitively worse than the current “peace” – the smarter leaders of more progressively sober-minded, peace-loving countries should get together and hammer out the plan for what happens next in Iraq. Bush can be trusted with war, but Americans running a Muslim country is one of the things that seems to scare everyone; Those who want what’s best should accept what is likely to happen and best prepare for an aftermath.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/02/21/microsoft-and-commoditization-of-software/
Microsoft sells OFFICE (the suite) while people may only need a small part of Word or a bit of Access. Microsoft sells WINDOWS (the platform) but a small org might just need a website, or a fileserver. It no longer fits Microsoft’s business model to have many individual offerings and to innovate with new application software. Unfortunately, this is exactly where free software excels and is making inroads. One-size-fits-all, one-app-is-all-you-need, one-api-and-damn-the-torpedoes has turned out to be an imperfect strategy for the long haul.
David Stutz
_Advice to Microsoft regarding commodity software_
Amen to that, brother!
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/02/14/operas-sense-of-humor/
Microsoft are at it again, feeding Opera bogus stylesheets so their MSN.com site will come out broken. I shall link you here, to a good technical explanation of what is going on and, perhaps more interesting, Opera’s novel response.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/02/14/standard-of-living/
Mr Gordon argues that GDP comparisons tend to overstate America’s living standards and understate Europe’s. For example, America’s climate is more extreme than western Europe’s, so more has to be spent on air conditioning and heating to attain a given indoor temperature. This extra spending boosts GDP, but does not enhance welfare. More of America’s GDP is also spent on home and business security, largely because of a higher crime rate. In most of Europe, such spending is less necessary. The huge cost of keeping 2m people in American prisons (a far bigger proportion of the population than in Europe) also bolsters America’s GDP relative to Europe’s, but not its welfare.
Another factor is the greater dispersion of America’s population in vast, sprawling metropolitan areas with few transport options other than the car. This is partly the result not of private choice but of public policy, such as subsidies to suburban motorways and a starving of public transport, or local zoning laws that limit the minimum size of residential developments. It leads to higher spending on roads and energy, and hence higher GDP. In Europe the convenience of more compact cities and frequent train and bus transport does not count towards GDP figures.
From The Economist, “Chasing the Leader”
SUVs are good for the economy.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/02/10/atherton-police-blotter/
Tales of crime in America’s richest suburb, as reported in the Palo Alto Daily News:
WEDNESDAY
Stockbridge Avenue and Selby Lane, 9:33 a.m.: A black limousine reportedly cut off a gold Lexus and was travelling at 65 mph on Stockbridge, but police were unable to locate the vehicle.
First block Serrano Drive, 10:36 a.m.: A resident complained about a suspicious Chevy pickup parked in the street with a lawn mower: it turned out to be that of a legitimate gardener.
Think these rich people are being uptight? Well, there are consequences when one is not vigilant about suspicious lawnmowers plied by potentially illegitimate gardeners, as we learn the next day:
THURSDAY
First block Atherton Ave., 1:17 p.m.: A suspected stolen 2001 Mercedes was found dumped on Arastradero and Page Mill and Santa Clara County Sheriff’s officials asked Atherton police to contact the registered owner.
First block Bassett Lane, 10:13 p.m.: A black Ford Mustang was stolen and later found stripped in East Palo Alto.
Okay, it turns out that Atherton is only the second-wealthiest town in America.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/1998/04/10/chain-saw-theft-ends-rampaging-deer-terror/
OSLO, Norway (AP) — After terrorizing a small Norwegian town for weeks, a buck deer went too far: he stole a chain saw from Olav Haereid’s front yard.
The large stag had knocked over garbage cans at a child care center, threatened cars and had begun to frighten residents of Aardalstangen, the Aardal og Laerdal Avis newspaper reported Wednesday. The town is 220 miles north of Oslo, the capital.
Last weekend, the renegade herbivore spotted a chain saw in Haereid’s yard, picked up the saw with its antlers and ran off with it.
The saw was so heavy that the deer only managed to carry it a few yards, but the theft was enough for local officials to impose the ultimate penalty. The buck was shot.
“Sad, but we had no choice. People were becoming frightened of the big animal,” forester Vidar Moen told the newspaper.
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