Stepping into the uncertain decade

Hopeful. Exuberant. Bullish.

It was the 31st of December 2000. There was abundant enthusiasm all around. The world economy was on a roll, with the USA leading the charge as usual. Dotcoms were bubbling all over, with mind-numbing valuations. Risk was contained neatly inside properly designed mathematical models that now governed a lot of stock market trading. Despite the LTCM debacle, rock-hard optimism about a pink future had steamrolled all objections from naysayers. Mainstream media, as usual, played along and magnified the sense of well-being and promise of prosperity.

Not a single soul - apart from the planners sitting inside Afghanistan - had an inkling that September of the first year of the fresh decade will bring havoc. That it will rewrite all rules of global diplomatic and military engagements. That it will force the 800 pound gorilla that's the US to actually flex its muscle militarily in faraway lands, in engagements that were potentially capable of bankrupting it monetarily and for a short while, even philosophically.

That's uncertainty for you. While the immediate physical pain of the horrific 9/11 incidents has subsided substantially, the learnings derived from the same poke fun at every human attempt to create some amount of predictability out of the utter chaos that's human life now. And the entire decade of the 2000s was spent with one crisis spilling into another, piling all along, and so on. Political crises completely overshadowed the various technological and economic gains made through sheer enterprise of innovative companies the world over.

Here's what really went wrong with the 2001-2010 decade :

Blackest of the Black Swans

1. Asymmetric terrorism: a whole new genre of terrorist reach and impact was created with the Al Qaeda creating missiles out of commercial passenger aircraft. American defence establishment - armed with the most sophisticated batteries of assault weapons and satellites - watched helplessly as this asymmetry engulfed their entire existence for a short period of time. It was clear to everyone that a new chapter had begun, with absolutely new levels of destruction now possible inside home territories. No nation was safe anymore. No shred of intelligence was extra anymore. No suspicion was unwarranted anymore. All this meant that the basic threads of civility that tie our modern civilisation into what it is came under attack. The impact was to be felt throughout the decade.
   
   

Obama solves Palestine problem, to move it to outer space

I wrote this article in a moment of agony, reading about the repeated Israeli attacks on innocent (?) Palestinians, and the utterly confused American stand on the whole peace issue that's going nowhere. The article presents a comical solution to the embroglio, and hopefully will force the reader to consider the sheer lunacy of the actual situation. The article also got published on a popular fun news site www.fakingnews.com Enjoy!
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Obama solves Palestine problem, to move it to outer space

Washington, DC, USA. In a surprising development late last evening, President Barack Obama (of the USA in North America), emerged from a 22 hours marathon meeting with representatives of NASA, CIA, FBI, Mossad, CBI, the BSP, Al Qaeda and the states of Israel and Palestine, to make a landmark announcement. He sounded optimistic, although desultory and shaky due to sheer fatigue despite consuming 43 cups of Starbucks discounted coffee with Dunkin diabetic donuts, while releasing his official press note.

Surrounded by all these representatives all of whom were equally shaky out of sheer fatigue, he said, and we quote. “The USA has realized that the tremendous efforts, time and resources invested over past 3 decades into solving the shitty Israel-Palestine problem have turned to precisely that – shit. There is more and more of that being generated with every passing week. Even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s efforts to clean up the mess are leaving more of it (blush). Hence, in a multinational operation of unprecedented magnitude, all parties involved have decided to agree to a project in which the entire physical state of Palestine will be moved to the outer space, 33 kilometers above the surface of the Earth. This way, the problem will be solved forever.”

To the tumultuous cheer of the media persons present in the briefing room, the President continued, “We have also realized that the Israelis actually enjoy attacking, maiming, handicapping and killing the Palestinians. It goes beyond their call of state-duty. It is a form of national sports, and is used for daily mock training of their regular troops. Since this cannot be changed we decided to change the target itself. Now the entire state of Palestine, including the disputed settlements in the West Bank (and the Gaza strip) will be dug out till a depth of 500 m into neatly packaged chunks (with humans inside) using giant Caterpillar machines (for which contracts need to be taken out) and will be transported to outer space using giant tows tied to Saturn 22 rocket series (for which contracts need to be taken out). All these chunks will then be neatly assembled by the leading engineers from Toyota’s famous assembling units (that manufactured those brake-pedal assemblies that have led to worldwide recalls) and in a short span of just 29 years, the project should see completion.”

Upon media queries on what will happen to the people tied inside these chunks, the President replied, “They will be supplied enough food, water and sanitation facilities to last at least three decades. They can continue to enjoy their safe lives (better than what they would be back on ground anyway) and continue to reproduce inside. As soon as the assembling would be complete, they can emerge to a victorious settlement of their new found homeland. What Gods could not do, we will have done.”

To a question on possible Republican vetoing of the project later, the President accepted that it represented a tricky matter and that if the Republicans were to come to power anytime in the next 3 decades, they could reverse his administration’s call, and then the fate of the Palestinians out there would literally be hanging in the air. He offered no solution to that future emergency, denouncing critics as naysayers, and advising them to believe in the power of “we can”.

His address was transmitted live to the entire world, with an estimated 1899 TV channels beaming it live, and 11 billion humans watching it to their pleasant surprise, including some from the forlorn and forgotten islands in Micronesia, who could not hide their tears of joy. Out of sheer joy, thousands of Palestinians fired several rounds of AK-47 shots into the Israeli territory, killing hundreds of civilians who could not hold their tears of joy on this stunning development. The Israelis too returned fire out of sheer joy, and maimed an equal number of Palestinians.

[submitted by International News Correspondent Inane Stupidities Amplified (I S Amplified)]
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